#i need to be ripped to shreds there i do not have enough resolve to sit down and work enough to make my art better

[rapidhighway]

nngnngg nhhnnnggg hnnnggggg can't I just draw like that one person why is their art so good why are their ideas so good I'm literally seething from envyy gggrhhrrhdd

[gay-dorito-dust]

hi hi!! could i request blade, dan heng, jingyuan, (and anyone else u may want to add) reacting to finding out you’re being creeped on at work please? i’m going through a similar situation at my job atm and would really appreciate it :’) thank u! <3

I hope the situation gets resolved soon sweetheart, you don’t deserve some creep making you uncomfortable or being well…a creep in general.

Jing yuan:

The dozing general seemed a bit more alert when you admitted to him that you were being creeped on at work, a place where this sort of thing shouldn’t be happening at all but is nonetheless.

He can tell that you were greatly affected by it and would do anything and everything in his power to rid you of it all. Jing yuan promises that the anxieties and the stress of having to constantly look over your shoulder, praying that the person responsible for all of it wasn’t nearby would be gone in a heartbeat.

His status as the General was more then enough to scare the creep stiff and profusely apologise for not knowing that you were his partner, rather then apologise to you like he should be, only for Jing Yuan to smile apathetically and say:

‘I’m not the one you should be apologising to,’ he then gestures towards you, ‘they are. So I’d suggest you get on your knees and plea for forgiveness. Quickly.’ He adds with a seriousness as his eyes glowed gold upon opening them and his smile faded.

Needless to say that the creep handed in their notice not long after the encounter with the General.

Dan Heng:

Hates, hates, hates seeing you this scared and uncomfortable by the actions made by one person who thought that it was acceptable to be a freak. All Dan Heng wanted to do in that moment was comfort you and reassure you that everything was going to be okay, but how could he when he himself wasn’t quite sure that was going to be the case?

He hates being uncertain, especially when it’s in regard to your safety in general, because he couldn’t fathom anything happening to you and he was there to protect you like he should’ve.

So instead he helps you in arranging a meeting with your manager about the creep’s behaviour towards you, going as far as to keep a list of all the things they’ve done during their tenure at your workplace in the instance should you not be believed. ‘Just in case.’ He’d say to you as he produced a thick folder filled with the creeps vile actions within the past few months alone.

Thankfully your manager wasn’t a piece of shit and the folder of evidence was enough to take action against the creep, and within immediate effect the bastard was gone by the end of the week; Just as procedures were later put in place for the safety of all employees who believed they were being harassed in the workplace.

After all was said and done, Dan Heng would still want to walk you to work and back, just as a precaution and a reminder that he was always going to be with you no matter what.

Blade:

Doesn’t take to the fact that you were being creeped on lightly and especially not when it was at your workplace either, and he will most likely try to take action into his own hands through any means necessary.

He’s aching to unsheathe his blade and put it to good use and end the pathetic creeps life for ever coming near you with impure intentions without feeling an ounce of guilt. However Blades sets this thought aside and decided to focus on you instead by standing guard outside your workplace until your shift finished.

He didn’t care. He’ll stay as long as he needed if it meant knowing that you were going to be okay, and even if the creep did try to pull something, Blade would be there within seconds to rip them to shreds. However Blade was already an intimidating bloke alone with his physical appearance, that he didn’t need to do much to scare the creep stiff, staring them down with his ruby eyes.

His natural stone face was also benefactor that Blade had going for him in terms of frightening the creep into handing in his notice that very same day. While It may not be how he wants it to end, but that didn’t mean Blade stopped waiting outside your workplace for you.

Just incase a new creep arises in the old one’s place and he needed to get a bit…physical.

[demonicbaby666]

i. A late night text

Feelings Are Fatal Masterlist | Masterlists | ii

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Pairing: Jennifer Jareau x fem!Reader

Words: 5.4k+

Warnings: 18+, minors DNI, fingering, oral sex, alcohol mentioned

It was a single text. 

‘What are you doing?’ 

It was nothing of significance. 

‘What are you doing?’

It painted light on your blackened phone in the dead of that Friday night. When you should have been out with friends and not rotting in bed with Netflix pulled up on your laptop and a family-sized pack of Doritos nestled at your side. The city roared with life. The hustle and bustle of busybodies dancing, shouting and singing called so desperately for your attention. The universe begged you to live for once, not for anyone else but for yourself. 

‘What are you doing?’

You knew what it meant–the true meaning behind messages sent after dusk and before dawn. They pulled uncomfortably at the muscles in the stomach, forced gooseflesh to pebble the expanse of your arms and raised the hairs on your skin to stand tall. They made you weak, ripped your resolve to shreds and forced the self-preservation you built for yourself to melt. 

Regardless of the outcome always being the same, every night, you told yourself, would be the night you’d be strong. You’d put your phone on silent, place it to the side facing down, and recommence a wild evening of trash TV in which you would think nothing of debauchery. 

‘What are you doing?’

Ten minutes. It was your max. Ten fucking minutes and the blasted, overpriced hunk of metal was in your hands as you nervously stared at the three dots that seemed to be taunting you, flickering back and forth until another grey bubble burst into light. 

‘Case is closed. I’m back home.’ 

You were better than this; you had enough respect for yourself not to do this. You didn't need to answer someone’s beck and all. 

The clattering of words typed out on your phone filled the sorrowful silence. 

‘I’m outttttttt at the mo. Gimme 20 and I’ll make my way over.’

The necessary number of Ts needed was one, but it didn't hurt to overplay the whole ‘out on a Friday night’ thing, and it wouldn’t be the first time either of you had liquor running through your systems during one of your nightcaps, even if it was a lie this time. It was a needed lie. The tattered pyjamas you wore and the mess on your head wouldn’t paint the image you wanted in JJ’s mind. Dancing amongst friends and strangers, hot and horny, that was better suited to your dynamic–which, simply put, was emotionless fucking. 

Time, it would seem, was not on your side. This was unfortunate because, even if your clothes were to end up on JJ’s floor, you still had to think through what to wear to both give the illusion you were flitting from club to club and impress JJ enough to have her distracted from the fact you were so quick to drop everything and come crawling. 

It was exhausting–the need to make her want you more than she supposedly already did, the hollowness that accompanied every late-night visit you paid her, the following mornings you spent in a taxi crying on the way home, smelling the sweetness of her perfume on whatever article of clothing you'd borrowed from her. Most painful of all was knowing she’d never feel the same. 

You needed it to stop. This needed to stop. 

She was your best friend, for Christ's sake. You were, in plain and simple terms, your best friend’s fucking booty call. Your best friend with whom you were so stupidly and utterly infatuated, it’d been a miracle you hadn’t outright admitted you loved her amid a mind-blowing orgasm—which she had given you several. 

All it would take was one text. Your fingers itched to type the words out as you stood over your unmade bed, teeth mindlessly nibbling at your bottom lip. 

‘It's over. I can’t do this anymore.’

A single finger hovered over that blue arrow. You’d only have to click send, and all of this would be over. You could go back to pretending you were JJ’s friend, that it didn’t hurt when she was away on a case and most likely sharing a bed with a far more attractive woman than yourself, because needs must and all, that it didn’t affect you that she only looked at you with such fervency when she needed an outlet for her stress and that you most certainly did not want anything more than unembellished platonic love from her. 

Your body’s need for her won out with the selection and subsequent deletion of the message.

The only dress available was one far too short for the evening air, and frantically searching for another was not an option when you were already lost in half sets of lingerie. So, you settled, even if it meant risking your legs to hypothermia. Even if it meant wearing a g-string in favour of finishing your makeup because that was the only pair of underwear you could find with a matching bra. It didn’t necessarily aid you in any way that the rightly impatient Uber driver outside was threatening to wake the whole block with a blaring horn. 

It was pathetic. You knew it. The driver knew it from the second you tumbled into the car out of breath and dressed like a hooker. Still, he was kind enough to greet you with a grunt and murmur of your name, instead choosing to silently judge you through his rearview mirror and remain silent for the duration of the drive. 

The city lights glinted defiantly against the blighting dark. You watched, mesmerised, as street lamps, neon signs, and lone candles swaying in closing restaurants bled into one. They morphed into one big blur until they were slowly replaced by the quiet stirring of TV screens and dwindling dimmed bedroom lights. 

The area housing JJ’s apartment was quiet, eerily so. Only the hum of the engine, the distant shrill of a car horn, and the crunch of tyres against asphalt as everything came to a halt could be heard through the dense silence. 

Another glare from the rearview mirror afforded you no extra time to prepare for what was to come. Your only comfort was a deep breath and a silent prayer that your emotions wouldn’t step out of line as you reached for the handle and pushed the door open. 

Blonde hair greeted you as you exited the stuffy Uber, and immediately, you were pulled into a warm embrace so tight you could smell the familiar scent of JJ’s shampoo–honey and home. You’d missed this. You’d missed her. With hands at your waist eagerly pulling you in, you lost yourself in the feel of the warm body pressed against your front. 

Occasions like these kept you coming; you were a scavenger, living off scraps. Pitiful was what it was, yet you couldn’t find the strength not to come running when JJ called. It was easy to pretend that evenings like these meant more than they did, that JJ wanted you more than just for your body, that you wouldn’t meet up with her in a couple of days for a coffee and act like none of this had happened. 

When your bodies perfectly slotted against each other outside her apartment complex, your head nestled in her neck, and her lips hovering over your cheek, it was hard to think of yourself as anything other than made for one another. They were the type of thoughts you kept under lock and key, aware but discontent that they’d always exist for you and you alone. 

You’d learnt to live that way because you knew your feelings were woven so deep into the fabric of your being that it was hard to imagine a life without them. Somehow, you knew JJ had always been there, rooted so deep in your heart, that having her infinitesimally, compared to how you wanted her, was better than not having her at all—even if it hurt, even if it turned your tears to acid as they burned your cheeks. 

“You smell nice,” you mindlessly sighed into the warmth of JJ’s neck. It couldn’t be helped. Slips always happened when she was affectionate. 

“You smell like vodka,” She chuckled. 

So what if you had a shot or three before racing down to the Uber? After all, you had a lie to sell and were nothing if not committed to the gambit. 

“Yes, well, I was out,” You muttered. 

Shaking yourself out of your love-fueled daze, you attempted, and subsequently failed, to peel yourself out of JJ’s embrace. Her hands were stellar on your waist, refusing to budge. However, you couldn’t say you minded, not when she slowly walked backwards and spun the both of you so your back was to the wall. A thin smirk lined her rosy lips, and you settled on lightly slapping her chest when she wouldn’t release you in reprimand for her earlier comment. 

“But then I got a tempting text from a certain somebody.” 

“Pray tell, what was so tempting about this text?” 

You reminded yourself why you were here and, more importantly, what you were here for. 

“It wasn’t the text itself. It was how wet I got when I realised who it was from,” you replied, running your tongue along your lip. 

“Fuck,” JJ growled, her pupils dilating. The release of your waist was quickly remedied by the grip of her hand sliding into yours and the eager jerk of her pulling you through the complex’s doors.

Unlike your own, JJ’s apartment was spacious. Despite there being a certain emptiness in the place, it had character. There was the mustard couch you’d spent many evenings eating ice cream on, binge-watching whatever JJ decided to throw on. There was the vintage coffee table you’d helped pick out and carry back from the local thrift store that had honestly seen better days now that it was marked with one too many wine stains. There were the pictures that dotted stone grey walls bright with happy memories—a couple with the team, some with just the BAU girls and the ones you most treasured, the ones with only the two of you. 

In a delicately carved rustic frame was the picture of you and JJ at Sandbridge Beach. She was buried up to the neck in sand and had on her goofy smile, the one that showed all her teeth. You stood proudly above her, plastic shovel in hand, with an equally goofy smile of your own tugging at your lips. You looked happy. 

It was packed that day, but after the three-hour drive filled with 2000s tunes and an unhealthy amount of Cheetos that JJ demanded she be fed, you weren’t about to turn back around. She was adamant about that. So you pretended that no one else was at that beach, that the people next to you weren’t rolling their eyes at your childish antics, that the water wasn’t polluted with the masses when JJ lifted you, slinging your legs around her waist and died with laughter as she dunked the both of you under cold salty shores. You were happy.

There was something so bittersweet about staring at these memories built on friendship. The reminder of what your relationship truly was tugged at your chest each time you burst through those apartment doors. Of course, you wouldn't have it the other way. Your place was no better; if anything, it was worse; in the foundations of every nook and cranny, there was a memory of your and JJ’s friendship. No, being here was more manageable. At JJ’s, you could - as you always did - leave in the morning and find solace in your empty bed, find peace in soaking your pillow with tears, relish in the shame of knowing in only a few nights, you’d do it all again in a heartbeat. 

“Tell me you weren’t out for long,” JJ groaned from behind you, hands mapping a path down your back, resting on the curve of your ass. You could feel the frustration bubbling in her chest. “Dressed like this.”

You only just about managed to say, “An hour or two,” before the blonde had you turned around, lips turning your brain to mush as she kissed you for the first time that evening. Though sudden, it was entirely welcome, and how could it not have been when she tasted so sweet? 

The first time you sampled her was five months prior. It was after you hosted a small gathering at your place, where drinks flowed freely, and laughter was heard from every corner. She stayed that evening when the place wasn’t nearly messy enough to need help. With a bin bag in her hand and conversation light on her tongue, she collected cups and wrappers, wiped surfaces down, and when there was nothing else to do, she crept up behind you and whispered all the sinful things she wanted to do to you the second she saw you in that dress. 

Garcia introduced the two of you five years before; for most of those years, you’d pined for JJ, longed for her, and loved her. It started small, like falling in love with how she looked after Garcia. Then, when the two of you began to spend more time alone, it was the way her eyes shone under low lights, the way her hair looked after it was windswept and slightly knotted. 

After that night, it was the smell she left on your pillow, the tingling she left between your legs, and the smile she plastered on your face. Then, as all things go, because happiness was not a thing you got to experience for long, life took it away. 

The following day, she was gone. The right side of your bed was empty and cold. 

You didn’t think much of that morning. Bursting through Garcia’s door, sitting on her couch and crying your eyes out wasn’t a fond memory. The blonde was kind enough not to pry, kinder to let you stay the day, then night. By the following day, you’d built your walls back up and reminded yourself that what you felt for JJ was one-sided and what she wanted from you would never be what you wanted from her. 

“I’ve missed you.” 

This. She meant this, surely. She’d missed the sex. Not you, never you. Telling yourself that was supposed to help, yet it only intensified the sting of longing caged within your chest. 

When JJ’s tongue pushed eagerly into your mouth, the small squeak that echoed in your throat morphed into a liquid moan, and you thought nothing more of her admission. If you did, with most things regarding JJ, it’d have driven you crazy. Instead, you focussed on the fingers skimming down the back of your dress, curling at its hem and delving under. Her touch was feather light at your thigh, and whilst you appreciated her being gentle any other time, now was not the time. 

You didn’t want her to treat you like a glass figurine, like you were something she could break, because she’s already broken you, and her light touches and soft kisses would never be enough to put you back together. 

No. Only crushing you over and over with an iron fist and sex-addled savagery would compensate. 

With one hand firmly placed on JJ’s shoulder, you moved the other to her questing fingers. Tearing them away from their tender endeavours, you rose them higher and higher till they were ghosting over your sex, mere millimetres away from your soaked panties. 

“Someone’s in a rush,” JJ laughed, nipping down the length of your throat. 

“Well, I assumed I wasn’t summoned here for casual banter.”

“The kitten has claws,” the blonde mumbled, continuing her descent to your neck. There, her pearly teeth nibbled at your thudding pulse point while her fingers remained vexingly still. 

“Stop talking.” 

Somewhere between dragging JJ out of the longue and into her bedroom, she had managed to unzip your dress and gift it to the corridor floor. You were equal in your endeavours, ridding her of her t-shirt, unbuckling and pulling leather through belt loops. Between all the kissing, it was an impressive yet chaotic sight. 

By the time you arrived at the foot of her bed, you both had quite the view, JJ more so. 

The look she got in her eyes was something you’d never forget. It was as though she was trying to take every part of you in at once. You were the open spread at an all-you-can-eat buffet, and she didn’t know what to begin with. That look was scorched into the back of your eyes and ingrained into every late-night fantasy. This time, however, it was shadowed by a look of something darker. 

“Were you planning on meeting someone?” she asked, taking a small step back and frowning. 

“What?” 

You looked down, admiring your lingerie set with great pride, until realisation dawned on you. Before coming to JJ’s, you were ‘out’ without knowing where you would end the night. The red lace cladding your breast and sparse over your cunt would have led anyone to believe you wanted to entertain a particular type of company, and whilst any willing participant would have no qualms with seeing you in such a set, the look in JJ’s judgemental eyes told you she was not partial to that thought. 

“That is not a night out with the girls' set of underwear.” Her eyes were back to roaming your body, only now the attention seemed more desperate. 

“Would you rather I take them off?” You tried to rid the room of tension with a sprinkle of seductive humour. Entertaining the thought she felt she had some claim over you was moronic. 

Maybe it wasn’t the answer she was looking for. Or perhaps it was. Maybe this was all a game of chess, and she would always remain two steps ahead. 

Whatever it was, you knew your part in it was a mere pawn. Your job would always be to heed and obey but put up a bit of a fight, come when called, but don’t let it be known you’re desperate, take and give pleasure, but don’t let any memories of it fester inside you and bring up feelings of true significance. 

At the latter, you’d failed - even if love blossomed in your heart years ago - but you could do the rest. 

“Or I could go put my dress back on. If the image isn’t to your liking?” You look over her shoulder into the corridor, where your dress lay in wait.

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned, voice low and gravelly, fingers pinching your chin to force your gaze back to her. 

Her eyes were two glaziers, flecks of grey pebbling her irises like raindrops on a sheet of water. Surely, you committed a heinous crime in a previous life, and this was your penance–to be tortured over and over again by your own heart, to kiss this beautiful and kind woman, have opened the depths of your soul to her, and have her see nothing but a body in which she could use to decompress and view as nothing more than a friend come morning. 

These evenings, blanketed by the cover of night and veiled under the guise of necessity, would be the most you would ever have of her. And, yes, it was selfish to take and take, trick her into believing you were using her in the same way she was using you, but your punishment came swiftly. It was delivered to you on a tray of coal the mornings after, and time and time again, you invited the sordid torment into your home with an enveloping hug and salty tears. 

Fingers dipping into your panties drew your attention away from the tempests of JJ’s eyes, and through the lump in your throat came a gasp, morphing into a moan when JJ slid down to your sex. 

“You weren’t kidding about how wet you got.” JJ tilted your head ever so slightly to the side to nibble at your earlobe, sending a single electric current running down your spine. It was joined shortly by a second when the blonde sucked her shimmering fingers to her mouth. 

“When have I ever lied to you?” You asked, somewhat winded. Except a couple of minutes ago, alongside every time I pretend not to hold you in my heart. “This is what you do to me.” At least that wasn’t a lie. 

While JJ was momentarily distracted by your admission, you took the opportunity to level your state of undress. Dropping to your knees, you tugged her trousers down and over her ankles, pressing kisses into the meat of her thighs. She showed no reservation or aversion. If anything, her fingers threading through your hair was a cue to offer her more from your auspicious position. 

And offer, you did. 

Moving her underwear to the side, you breathed in the sugared scent of her and felt saliva gather at the sides of your mouth as plain want turned to ardent need. Somehow, by some miracle, you were allowed to do this—taste the most intimate area of JJ’s body, hear her moan above you and watch the gentle push and pull of her chest grow rapid. 

Restraint was not something your nighttime companion liked to exercise, so it came as no shock when she used her sturdy grip to urge you closer. Despite her silent request for more, JJ’s head still jerked back and let out a rather loud ‘oh my god’ when you followed instructions and sucked her clit into your mouth. But her reactions had never previously bothered you, and they weren’t suddenly about to. 

You let them guide you. 

When her moans became strained and whiny, you knew to slow down. When her left knee twitched ever so slightly, you knew to move a smidge to the right. And when one of her legs hooked over your shoulder, you knew to bury as many fingers as she could take inside her and pump till her throat was raw and cum was dripping down your chin. 

“You’re too good at that,” JJ happily sighed, dropping her thigh down from your shoulder and mustering the strength to pull you to your feet. 

Happy to taste herself on your tongue, the blonde leaned forward, slotting your lips together and letting loose a contented hum. You matched her vocal bliss, growing nosier with the removal of your bra and the playful tweaking of your nipples. Her touch was addictive, and your hips pledged to reveal as much. They slaved away, trying to locate anything to grind down on, first the sticky material of your ruined panties, then, with great relief, the toned length of JJ’s thigh. 

The inner turmoil settled down, quieted by the hastening pumping of your heart. You welcomed the fall onto JJ’s bed with a mere squeak and watched enamoured as she rid herself of her bra and underwear, then moved onto the mere strip of material keeping her from seeing you fully and gloriously bare. 

You smirked at the wolfish glint in JJ’s eyes, the slight parting of her lips as she let out a shaky breath and spread your legs–an invitation to fill the vacant space with her body. 

It seemed that JJ had other plans. In one swooping move, she had you flipped on your stomach, manoeuvring your body till your cheek was pressed against crumpled sheets, ass raised high in the air, and ankles hanging off the bottom of her bed. 

“You’re perfect,” JJ breathlessly whispered, crouching down and using the pads of her thumbs to part your folds. The casualness of voicing such a thought left you dizzy. 

Why did she always have to do that? Take your breath away with words alone, and on top of that, act like it meant nothing. It meant something to you. It vexingly meant too much to you. She threw these compliments about, always sounding so sure, so firm in her belief that they were fact and not opinion. 

“JJ,” you whined, growing restless with the influx of poignant thoughts, desperate for more than her warm breath hovering over your sex. 

“Yes?” she feigned innocence, taunting you with her candied tone. 

You grit your teeth, taking a deep breath to alleviate some of the tension growing taunt in your stomach. “I swear to god if you don’t-”

Your own drawn-out cry cut you off. JJ’s tongue was back on you, only now it was consistently moving up and down the length of your pussy, occasionally circling the bundle of your nerves waiting at the apex of your sex. Even if it had only been slightly under a week since you last tumbled under bed sheets with the blonde or two days since you stuck your hand beneath pyjama bottoms and tended to your own needs, you were convinced the releasing tension burrowed deep into your bones had been gathering for not days, but months or years, waiting to be granted this kind of attention. 

Her tongue was insistent, steadfast on your clit from the moment she suckled it into her mouth like a starving baby to its mother's tit. She moved feverishly fast, then lulled her pace. The press of her tongue was harsh on you, then so light you barely felt the echo of it on your clit. Over and over, fast then slow, concrete then pillow soft until finally, she had you dribbling between whines and moans, your knuckles white with the force of your hold on bedsheets. 

The fiery inferno intensifying deep within your gut was utterly unruly. Its heat burned from your core up to your chest, down to the tips of your toes, which hung precariously off the end of the bed. Every word leaving your mouth was incomprehensible. They came out muffled, embedding themselves deep into crinkled cotton, and honestly, you were thankful. Between your senses leaving your body the moment JJ touched you and the disappearance of any inclination to keep things platonic between you, you knew what you wanted to say, or rather were trying to say, would have thrown a wrench into this delicate dynamic you both shared. 

A cry resembling JJ’s name echoed in your ears as she picked up her pace, ceasing her teasing touches and now favouring consistent flicks of her tongue. 

Abruptly, she stood up, and you would have vocalised your annoyance had it not been for what she did next. Using the full force of her body, she slotted her fingers in and out of you at what could only be deemed a brutal pace. Each thrust ended with fingertips grazing your g-spot, something the blonde never failed to hit, edging you closer to the summit of your release. 

“Touch yourself,” JJ panted from behind you, sounding almost as wrecked as you felt. 

You let out a hiss, your nipples so very sensitive as they brushed against cotton sheets in a desperate attempt to work your hand down to your clit. It was an outward struggle to maintain a repetitive pattern, the slip and slide of arousal making it impossible to work the set of nerves for any longer than a few seconds, but your efforts were not in vain. 

The flutters of pleasure rolling around in your stomach were hastening, the shuddering of your canal walls around slender fingers was intensifying, and all the while, JJ’s misshaped voice echoed in your ears, becoming more and more muffled. 

Pinpricks of light burst behind your eyelids, a fire roared in your stomach, and your hips caved to carnal need, uncontrollably rutting forward and back with the careful aid of JJ’s unoccupied hand. 

Your body was being ripped apart. Every inch of you stretched so thin that you were sure this would be when you’d break with ‘Jennifer’ on your tongue and adoration heavy in your heart. 

JJ did not let you lose yourself as you plummeted into the fiery pits of your orgasm. Her fingers, still tucked inside your twitching cunt, swept back and forth, hell-bent on prolonging the undulating pleasure coursing through your core. Her lips, pressed against your neck, moved lower to your arched spine where she lay kiss after gentle kiss. And her words, a second ago, hot and demanding, were now kind and coaxing. 

She tended to do this–piece you back together without having ever known she tore you apart, often until you were spent and your limbs immobilised. That night was no exception. You gave as good as you got, ignoring the orange and yellow hues painting the horizon outside the window and the cruel reality they brought with them. It was when you could no longer keep your eyes open that you succumbed to the pull of sleep. 

—

Most mornings, you’d wake up alone. Whilst it was a depressing reality to some to turn and find your sheets cold, it was what you’d learnt to prefer. There was, of course, merit to opening your eyes and being greeted by the luminous sight of blonde hair and copious amounts of nakedness. The sight would always be welcome, that remained undisputed. It was the urges you quarrelled with in the early hours of dawn that you had an issue with. You’d think that months of sleeping together would teach you some restraint. Alas, whenever you woke up to the sight of JJ, all you wanted to do was curl into her, wake her with soft, affectionate kisses and beg her to make you her signature chocolate chip pancakes. 

That wasn’t written into your invisible contract. What was agreed, or what you decided was non-verbally agreed, was that you’d have sex, sometimes you’d stay for the night, and in the event you did, you’d be out of her hair before she started her day, so both of you and JJ were spared from any spontaneous love declarations. 

Still, it didn’t make it any easier to remove JJ’s arms from around your waist, to quietly slip out of bed and force yourself not to look back lest you fall right back into her arms. 

There was no chance you were returning home in the clothes you’d worn the night before; comfort was always essential for your walk of shame. So, you tip-toed over to JJ’s closet and slowly pulled the doors open. No matter how gentle you were, the hinges refused to allow you a peaceful exit, sending a painful squeak out into the morning quiet. 

“Where are you going?” JJ grumbled, and you tried so fucking hard not to fall more in love with her when she did that. When she acted as though it was weird for you to leave before breakfast, like she wanted you to stay. It was helpless; when her droopy eyes locked onto yours, you felt your heart race and your stomach flutter. How could anyone look so perfect, having only just woken up? 

“I’ve got a thing,” you muttered, throwing one of her sweatshirts over your head. 

“A thing?” She gave you a cautionary look when she once again managed to catch your attention, her disbelief cutting a crease between her eyebrows. “It’s too early for a thing. Come back to bed.” 

Why did she have to do that? Force you to break your heart by denying yourself the very thing you’d yearned for since the moment you met her. 

“I’m having coffee with Pen.” 

She begrudgingly sat up and levelled you with another condescending glare, “At this time?”

“Well, you see,” you said, staring back at JJ unstirred as you pulled on a pair of stolen leggings. “I have to go home and do this thing called having a shower so I don't meet our beloved friend looking and smelling like I spent a great portion of last night between your legs.”

“But-” 

You strode over, bending at the hip to cut her off with a chaste kiss, ignoring the pull of your heart to fall back into bed and pick up where you left off last night. For a bit longer, pretend that this was a real relationship where you could kiss the woman you loved whenever and wherever you wanted. 

“I’m going now,” you mumbled over her lips, ripping away to grab your phone and walk straight out of her bedroom. 

You heard a heavy sigh, the thud of her head defeatedly falling back on a pillow as you clambered out of the apartment, heart tucked under your sleeve, tears stinging the backs of your eyes. 

Taglist: @sincerestlove @hot4milfs @chestnutninny @theoneforhobbies @lez-talk1 @obsessedwjill | Click here to be added to the series taglist

[olenvasynyt]

Does Elain "owe Lucien anything"?

This is a summary of my tiktok video! Feel free to check me out on there too!

Something I see people often say is Elain doesn’t owe anything to Lucien.  She does not need to try to talk with him, she does not need to explain her reasons for avoiding him, she does not owe him her time and affection, which is what she says here.  

Chapter 18 of ACOFAS: “‘He brought you a present.’ ‘And that entitles him to my time, my affections?’ ‘No.  But he is a good male.  He cares for you.’” “He doesn’t know me.” “You don’t give him the chance to even try to.” Her mouth tightened, the only sign of anger in her graceful countenance.  “I don’t want a mate.  I don’t want a male.” She wanted a human man. Just because Lucien was her mate didn’t mean he had a claim on her time.  Her affection.  She was her own person, capable of making her own choices.  Assessing her own needs. “He is a good male,” I repeated.  “And it…it just…” I fought for the words.  “I don’t like to see either of you unhappy.”

And I mostly agree with this: Lucien giving her gifts is not enough to entitle him to her time and affections. 

But the way people write this off as something that’s really simple is annoying to me.  Because some people say “oh she doesn’t owe him anything!” as if this is some blind date Elain went on with a guy she met online and it go well or she doesn’t like the guy.  “She doesn’t owe him a next date, she doesn’t owe him a text back”. 

This isn’t online dating.  This isn’t a tinder match that went sour.  Elain and Lucien have a soul-level connection, and since SJM wrote them to have this soul-level connection, it is going tobe addressed and resolved.     Elain is not just going to continue to avoid Lucien and have her entire book revolve around plots that have nothing to do with him, we already see how they’re connected, not just with plots like Koschei, the human lands, Spring, Papa Archeron, etc, but again, they have this mating bond!  Are we seriously expecting something like, oh Elain just isn’t interested, so she doesn’t owe him anything and the bond will be rejected and they’ll go their separate ways.  

They are going to interact, they will talk to each other.  This is how these tropes work; the reluctant mates, suppressed feelings, avoidance, etc.  Whether or not you believe Elucien is endgame, you have to acknowledge that Lucien will play a significant part in Elain’s story.

And I feel like a lot of people (cough cough E/riels) know this, so they come up with plots for Elain 's book where Lucien isn't relevant. They know that once Elain gets to know Lucien, it's over for their ship.

And another thing people say is, Lucien is part of the reason Elain was thrown into the cauldron, so she doesn’t owe him anything because he did her wrong.

So 1. Hybern was the one who kidnapped Feyre’s sisters thanks to Ianthe, Tamlin and Lucien were not part of that plan and they both actively show disgust for the plan as it was happening.  Which was in the text and people love to just completely forget that.

Chapter 65 of ACOMAF: “Why do you think I asked my dear friend Ianthe to see who Feyre Archeron would appreciate having with her for eternity?...consider it my wedding present for you both,” he added to Tamlin. But Tamlin’s face tightened.  “What?” I was going to vomit.  Tamlin, to his credit, looked like he might, too. Lucien’s face slackened.  “She sold out—she sold out Feyre’s family.  To you.” Nesta began thrashing against the men who held her. Tamlin said, “stop.” The king did no such thing. Lucien, beside Tamlin, again put a hand on his sword.  “Stop this.” Tamlin spat at the king, “This was not part of our deal.  Stop this now.” “I don’t care,” the king said simply. Tamlin launched himself at the throne, as if he’d rip him to shreds.

 And 2. yes, they did ally with Hybern but Lucien actively shows his dislike and mistrust towards this allyship.

Chapter 1 of ACOWAR: “Let’s find a way to ensure our lands and people survive.” “At the cost of how many others?” Lucien demanded. Again, that warning look from Tamlin but Lucien ignored him.  “What I saw in Hybern,” Lucien said, gripping the arms of his chair hard enough the carved wood groaned.  “Any promises he made of peace and immunity…” He halted, as if remembering that Ianthe might very well feed this back to the king.  “We have to be careful.”

But getting back to Elain’s feelings about the situation: a lot of this is assuming, but from their conversation, ELain holds resentment towards him.  She says “you betrayed us.”  

Chapter 24 of ACOWAR: “You were in Hybern.” “Yes.” It was all he could say. “You betrayed us.” He wished she’d shoved him out of the window behind her.  “It—it was a mistake.” Her eyes went frank and cold.  “I was to be married in a few days.” He fought against the bristling rage, the irrational urge to find the male who’d claimed her and shred him apart.  The words were a rasp as he instead said, “I know.  I’m sorry.”

And this sort of resentment / betrayal can actually be compared to another SJM couple. 

And spoilers for TOD:

This is going to have a very similar vibe of Chaol and Yrene in TOD.  Where Yrene dislikes Chaol because he served the King of Adarlan so she associates him with her family’s death.

Yrene hated Chaol at first because he was from Adarlan and served under the king who was the reason her family died.  She also actively avoided him in the beginning: when her head healer told her she would be working with Chaol, she refused at first.  Then she said that she would chose if she wanted to help heal him or not, and she made that choice herself.  And for the first few appointments with Chaol, she was short with him and left abruptly.  But as she spent time with him, she learned who he was, how loyal he is, and all the regrets he had, as well as his intentions.  

Chapter 8 of TOD: “You served a man who did such things.”  And likely acted on his behalf. ‘Would you believe me if I told you that he left his dirty work to others beyond my command, and I was often not told?” —- “So you may look at me with resentment, Yrene Towers, and I will not blame you for it.  But believe me when I say that there is no one in Erilea who loathes me more than I do myself.” “For the path you found yourself forced down?” “For fighting that path to begin with—for the mistakes I made in doing so.” “There are choices in my past that I have come to regret. But I can only move on--and attempt to fix them. Fight to make sure they do not occur again.” 

Chaol being on Adarlan’s side was a huge part of Yrene’s struggle in their relationship and I don’t think Lucien’s betrayal wiill be a big part of Elain and Lucien’s relationship but we can still get something like this, where she might resent him for allying with Hybern. Lucien didn't do any wrong to Elain but he became the face of every bad thing that happened to her: the tramatic moment of her becoming Fae, Grayson rejecting her, etc. But then she learns more about the situation and who he is in general, how loyal he is, and his good intentions.

Chaol and Yrene have a journey of healing and self-love, getting over mistakes, etc: and Elain and Lucien can also have this in their story.  Resentment for the other switches into understanding.  Avoidance and hiding feelings and refusing to talk about the past switches to openness and acceptance.  They can be like Chaol and Yrene where they both open up about parts of themselves they never admitted out loud to anyone else.

And they can have a similar bond too, and an acceptance of this bond.

Chapter 64 of TOD: And this bond between us, Yrene…it changes nothing.  With you and me.  You’ll need your own space; I’ll need mine.  So if you think for one moment that you’re going to get away with flimsy excuses for never leaving my side— She’d poked him in the ribs.  As if I’ll want to hang around you all day like some lovesick girl!

There are plenty of reasons why I think Elucien is going to happen, and this is one of them.  They have this connection, these tropes that always make for a wonderful, heartwrenching story.  I don’t want a broken bond, or this avoidance to just be for nothing in the end.

[vellichorom]

i think the stanley parable is an experience where you get to take a glimpse into a day in the life of this man who's been alone for Far too long, really unstable, & he made a game he wants to show you, the visitor! so you get to walk in the shoes of his character & experience that game, but your company is far too much to handle as you meddle with his obsession & simply EXIST as another person to him, & he rips you to shreds out of sheer, unadulterated, animalistic fear. but god he needs you.

his game isn't enough & he is still vulnerable to the all too painful human desire for attention. to be known, recognized, loved. you've given him too big of a taste & touched upon too big of a vulnerability just by realizing he exists, & he is begging you with every fiber to stay.

but you can't help no matter what you do. he's not your problem to solve & you don't have the resolve as it is.

maybe it's better to leave him to his devices & play his own game. let him fall back into the loneliness he's always known. maybe it's better to turn a blind eye. for your own good.

[alilbatflies]

Had this on my mind for a while before I managed to put it into words somehow. something something the devotion of a guardian angel to their human...

... ... ...

I have a guardian angel.

It gives me advice. It guides my way.

It’s not malicious, like a demon would be. I hear its voice at all times. It speaks softly to me.

I’ll keep you safe, is what its words mean.

There is a bug on my wall. I do not want it there. I reach for something to squish it with, some death easy for it to bear.

Don’t kill the bug, my angel whispers.

“But it scares me.”

It scoops the bug up on a piece of paper and moves it outside, away from me.

There is an Inconvenience at my doorstep.

How do I make it go away? It doesn't want to leave. Like a bug crawling up the wall.

I shoo at it, tell it to leave.

Much to my surprise, it listens to me.

It walks away. I watch it leave. My angel watches with me.

I watch other people. Many of them walk the world without a guardian. I wonder sometimes…

“Why did their angel leave?”

They have sinned.

It is human, I think. The path is narrow and oftentimes bumpy. The ride of life can get out of hand quite easily.

I wonder what it must be like, for an angel to leave. I wonder if those without an angel know their shadow is their only shield.

“Will you leave me, should I misstep?”

You will not.

“You can’t know that.”

I will not let you.

I cannot imagine seeing that through. And yet, my guardian angel sounds so sure of me.

I’ll keep you safe.

Sometimes, I wonder: Would my angel choose me?

There’s a Problem at my doorstep.

How do I make it go away? It doesn’t want to leave. If words aren’t enough, do I stain my hands with its blood, until it’s scared and running for shelter? Do I fight it away?

Violence should never be your answer.

I talk to the Problem. It does not listen to me at first. I talk some more and more until it finally turns. It leaves slowly, checking for an opportunity to be bothersome again.

I feel better now that the Problem is gone.

I am exhausted. It took a lot.

I fear the day my strength will be futile against the Bad Thing at my door. I doubt my guardian angel’s words will help then, at all.

I have a guardian angel.

It gives me advice, it guides my way, making sure I don’t wander astray.

It always follows behind me. I only catch an occasional glimpse of its glow in the corner of my eyes. The glow of a halo, I think. It is too faint to make its shape out properly.

You do not need to see me, my angel says. Listening is enough.

Perhaps those who have lost their angels have heard, but not listened.

I’ll keep you safe, it reassures me.

There is a Danger at my doorstep.

How do I make it go away? It doesn’t want to leave.

I assess the Danger, it terrifies me. My hands are shaking. It’s too heavy for me. Do I attempt to fight it? It will rip me to shreds. It will overwhelm me.

How do I defend myself from something so out of my league?

The Danger gets worse the longer I let it be. I have no resolve to face it.

Violence should never be your answer.

I wouldn’t win, anyway.

I turn away and hide my face as the Danger moves towards me.

I keep my eyes closed. I cover my ears. I feel myself crying unwanted tears.

Somehow, I feel no pain.

From behind me, the sounds of a fight. Bones snap and it occurs to me, my guardian angel whispered just as the Danger leaped my way.

I’ll keep you safe, it reminded me.

The sounds fade away.

I blink my tears away. When I look up, the Danger has gone.

From behind me I hear a thunk. It sounds like a heavy string snapped. In the corners of my blurred vision, I see a shadow.

Two horns where my angel’s halo used to be.

I have a guardian demon.

It gives me advice. It guides my way.

It is not malicious, like many think a demon to be. I hear its voice at all times. It speaks softly to me.

I’ll keep you safe.

No matter the cost, no matter what it takes.

It’s not always what I want it to be.

I didn’t choose it. My guardian chose me.

There is a bug on my wall. I do not look as my demon scoops it up and takes it outside.

Things are as they’re meant to be.

My guardian stays by me.

My hands are clean.

A path of bloody steps marks my way. It trails after the sinner that protects me.

I have a guardian demon.

My angel fell for me.

[dark-elf-writes]

Iron Bull dragged Annabeth away. He's the biggest and he remembers a similar incident a few years back on Seheron he doesn't talk about. She's screaming, and begging and it can't be. Can't be the end. She can't have lost him like this. Haven falls and her screams echo louder then ever.

(when he comes back, she drops to her knees praying to the gods. Later she grabs him and kisses him and begs him to marry her.

He's hers and she will make people know it. She can't lose him. Never again)

In the end it’s decided that Dorian and Bull will go with Percy and Annabeth to the final trebuchet. Thalia, Grover and Thalia try to argue, try o go with them, but there’s too many wounded, too many dying, and the evacuation group need as many heavy hitters can be spared. Between Nico and Thalia they have ground and air coverage (and fuck those lighting bolts and massive cracks in the ground are next level magic that makes Bull itch) and their little healer friend already looks almost dead on his feet as he runs from one cot to another, stabilizing those that need carried and tying the final bandages on those that can walk. They need to stay back. Need to help the evacuation. None of them like it.

(Percy doesn’t try to convince Annabeth to stay back. No one is brave enough to suggest it when they see that dragon bone sword of hers and the cold look in gray eyes.)

Still Percy smiles and twirls that odd sword of his. “You’re acting like this is my first siege. I got this.”

He’s scared. They’re all scared, really, but for kids they hide it better than anyone Bull has ever seen. Better than some soldiers. Better than the whimpering veteran (ex Templar it looks like. Glorified guardsmen, not meant for assaults like this) Will is shoving a potion into before herding him off to join the others.

Bull can respect it. He also hates it.

The tamassarins would love to get their hands on these kids, bas or not. Warriors born and bred. Unflinching in the face of death.

Why does the idea make him want to roar?

So only the four of them head for the trebuchet and resolve to make the Templar bastards fucking choke on Haven if they want it so bad.

Annabeth takes a hard hit from the lumbering behemoth of red lyrium that was apparently once a human. It’s only the Vint’s quick barrier that keeps her bones from clapping in impact. She still hits the snow with a shriek as Percy takes the final blow. Bull waves the kid off before he can run to her, already moving to lift her.

There’s no time, and He’s the closest to the trebuchet. It needs to be aimed, and strong as the kid is Bull will be able to move faster carrying Annabeth if they need to make a break for it.

And they do need to make a break for it. Percy gets the damn thing aimed at the mountain just in time for the dragon to come back.

A wall of blighted fire separates Bull, Dorian, Annabeth from Percy. A hulking darkspawn walks through the flames like they’re nothing, focused only on the glowing green light of the kid’s hand.

Bull can do the math. The Vint can too by the way he sucks in a breath and curses when he sees the splinters that were once his staff.

Percy does the math in his own it seems, looking at the darkspawn, at the fire and the dragon, at the horizon cold and empty showing the others were still running. Then he looks at Bull and nods. His sword is missing. He looks so damn small compared to the bastard stalking ever closer. He does not waver.

Bull wants to roar. Wants to rip that fucking darkspawn to shreds. Wants to haul the kid out with his bare hands.

But it’s three lives to one, and Annabeth has done the math too.

“No!” The girl screams, twisting with more force than Bull anticipated for her size and with her injuries. “No! Percy!”

“Bull,” The Vint gasps, drawing in the dregs of his magic without a focus and hefting the girl’s sword. He will run back in, Bull realizes. Will give his life to get the kids out. Against his will, Bull feels a flash of respect.

But he knows how this goes.

He adjusts his grip on Annabeth in one hand, snags the back of the Vint’s robes in the other, and runs.

The girl screams the whole way, beating on his arm until he will be covered in bruises and calling him every name under the sun until her voice breaks and shatters. The Vint is kind enough to cast barriers over him so she can’t do too much damage. Bull wishes he wasn’t. Wishes he could feel the full force of her blows. Wishes she had that damned sword in her hands so she could run him through with it.

They make it to the last stragglers on the path and keep running. Annabeth rights the whole time. Fights until the flare is set off and the avalanche comes down.

He will never forget the scream she let out until the day he died. Will never forget how she finally wrenched free of him and collapsed into the snow whispering prayers through her sobs. Will never forget the haunted looks on the other kids’ faces as one by one they joined her.

(He doesn’t let their little healer tend to the scratches and bruises covering his arm. The kid doesn’t push all that hard anyway instead resting glowing hands over Annabeth while she prays.)

Bull finds his boys and sags to the ground by them. Only Krem is brave enough to press a hand to his shoulder.

[greenmansgrove]

I struggle to feel qualified to do my own readings…

and I also struggle to understand my self-readings. I worry for bad news, I worry for bias, I worry for missing something. And yet, I still feel called to perform readings, particularly in the times of strife I’m experiencing now. I actually performed this reading the night of my birthday — a yearly tradition.

I mainly use John Matthew and Will Worthington’s Green Man Tree Oracle, which is just a illustrated ogham deck and even includes the Forfeda. Saturday’s reading was as follows:

Ivy / Gort - Call upon those around you.

Vine / Muin - Consider what you hold dear; learn to let go.

Elder / Ruis - Sometimes we must make sacrifices.

*sigh* When I most need the readings, they always rip me to shreds. Given my predisposition towards hyper-independence, I know that I am being called not only to draw from my community for support, but also, given the difficulties I am experiencing, think about what matters most in these times and understand that, even if I have to give up what I want most at this time, that the blessings after such a sacrifice may increase.

It doesn’t feel fair, but I know there is truth in it. It hurts to hear when I spent so many year in deep material and emotional insecurity. I was beginning to resent this reading. What happened to my “protection” and safety I thought my first ogham reading had assured me I’d had in drawing Rowan / Luis two years ago? Just when I thought I was finally reaching stability, it all falls away before me.

I thought of The Morrigan, too. Chiefmost among her signs to me has been Elder / Ruis. It is how she lets me know she is near and watching. Thrice now I have found it growing in places dear and sacred to me. But it almost never comes up in my readings. The first and only other time I have pulled Elder was in the reading I performed for myself in September, when I began my dedications to and preparations for joining The Order of the Morrigan. At that time, I understood it to be confirmation of what she wanted of me, but perhaps it was also a warning of what was to come and something for which she was trying to prepare me.

Now I pull Elder again, when I know exactly what sacrifices are being asked of me. It is not necessarily a physical sacrifice or a sacrifice to the Morrigan, but a sacrifice of something towards which I had worked hard and which I may now need to put off in favor of focusing on what matters most. I almost resent this, too.

I admit that in working with the Morrigan, I fear being tested. I loathe the idea of a god testing my faith and resolve. Perhaps others are comfortable with it, as is their prerogative, but given my own religious trauma, I feel it is a breech of trust and mutual faith, and it is a boundary I have sought to set with the Morrigan since making my dedication. Was she testing me now? Or was she punishing me? That, too, I loathed, because as much as I reflect, I struggle to think of what I could have done and how to make amends.

I required clarity. Thus, I pulled from my Oracle of the Morrigan illustrated by Morrigan Oran. I had officially dedicated this tool to the Morrigan earlier in the week during the full moon, and I was nervous about my ability to interpret the abstract symbolism, but I needed clarity from the Great Queens herself. She would want me to stretch my oracular skills.

After shuffling the deck several times with my question in mind, I pulled the “Cycles” card. I took a long, hard stare at the card and read the little booklet’s entry, which the illustrator had channeled in her creation of the artwork. At first, I was only more frustrated at the vagueness. But soon enough, at least one meaning dawned on me, and it was almost as if I could hear the Morrigan saying,

This is all part of a Cycle. There will always be bad times. Neither you nor I can prevent them all, no matter how much you pray or what sacrifices you make. It is the way of things.

Though I still worry for bias, I found this comforting. Perhaps I am not actually being tested or punished. Perhaps this is not more of the same through which I have struggled in the years prior and against which I have been bracing. Perhaps I am just in a bad spot, and I can and will pull through.

I suppose I have the skills and resources on which to pull. I want to put my faith in this reading and find the will and confidence to keep moving and accept the sacrifices I must make. I am scared to, but I know I can.

[beneathstarryskies]

Word Count: 1756

Summary: Dante has some very devilish needs when he gets home from a long job.

Warnings: smut, porn without plot, literally no plot at all, fem!reader monster fucking, devil fucking, DT sex

A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY @actuallysaiyan!! HAVE SOME PORN TO CELEBRATE!

~

Dante doesn’t say a word when he comes home from a long, very dangerous job. Although you can tell right away there is something different about your usually sweet-natured boyfriend you couldn’t put your finger on it. He seems a little irritable. Instead of your usual welcome home kiss, he mutters a rushed greeting before heading upstairs. In a few more minutes you hear the old pipes in the office creak to life when he starts the shower. You sigh softly before going back to cleaning up around his desk a bit. You can’t help the ache in your chest when you think about the cold greeting. You know there’s no way you did anything wrong considering you haven’t seen him in days, but he seems upset with you.

You put the cleaning supplies away before heading upstairs after the shower turns off. You knock on the bathroom door gently before opening it up, getting an eyeful of Dante’s muscular body only covered at the waist with a thin towel. You notice the lack of steam in the room and realize he took a cold shower.

“Dante, did I do something wrong?”

As you reach out to touch his shoulder you notice his skin going flushed and steam comes off of him. Your brows furrow as you pull away from him. He turns away from you shyly.

“No, I’m sorry,” his grip loosens on the towel in an attempt to hide the throbbing erection he’s had ever since he walked through the front door and caught your sweet scent. “I just…Baby, I don’t know if I can be close to you right now.”

You close the space between your bodies, letting one hand soothe through his wet hair. Dante growls then purrs before stepping away.

“Talk to me, Dante. Just tell me what’s going on. I’ll do anything-”

Before you can finish you’re being pushed against the wall. Dante’s large form boxes you in. You can feel the heat radiating off his skin and his throbbing cock is pressed against your stomach. He leans down enough to bury his face against the crook of your neck, taking in more of your scent and letting a low growl rumble through his chest. His hands are tight on your hips.

“Don’t say things like that,” he growls.

“It’s true, baby,” you whisper. “I love you. I’ll do anything to help you.”

You reach down to palm at his cock through the thin towel. You know all about Dante’s heritage. Although it took him a while to open up about it with you, once he was comfortable he was completely honest. You’re able to easily put together that all of this was connected to him being half-demon. You grip his shaft through the towel, giving him a teasing squeeze.

“Fuck,” he groans.

“Let me help, please.”

With those words, his resolve crumbles. His lips are crashing against yours in a heated kiss. His teeth scrape against your bottom lip, forcing you to give him entry to explore your soft, warm mouth. A string of saliva follows his path when he pulls away.

You don’t have time to catch your breath before he’s tugging at your clothes. The pretty little dress you’d put on for him is ripped to shreds in his effort to get it off as quickly as possible. You open your mouth to protest, but your words are stolen by another deep kiss. His long fingers brush against your clothed slit, but he only seems more irritated by the presence of your panties. There’s a burn against your skin from the speed he pulls them off and discards them unceremoniously. His towel drops to the floor. His cock is rock hard. The red tip leaking precum makes your mouth water, but he’s pulling you close before you can even consider dropping to your knees.

“Dante, please,” you whine.

“I need to fuck you.”

When he picks you up again, your legs wrap around his waist with ease. He guides his leaking tip to your entrance and bottoms out in one quick thrust. He growls as he’s buried to the hilt, and wastes no time picking up a brutal pace.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he grunts.

All you can do is cling to him while he has his way with your quivering cunt. It’s unlike Dante to be this way with you. He’s usually so loving and considerate, but fuck you can’t help feeling excited at the way he’s treating you. His cock rams into you over and over, brushing against the sweetest spots hidden deep inside of you. Your thighs are trembling around him.

“Cum on my cock, baby. Please, please,” he whines.

You notice the heat on his skin becoming almost unbearable even to you. Sweat glistens across his forehead and yours. He pushes you flush against the wall so he has a better angle to fuck you deeper and harder. When he grips onto you, it’s bruisingly tight. Every time his skin slaps against yours, red sparks fly through the air. His groans are slowly becoming deep, primal growls.

“Fuck, fuck,” he pulls out of you and steps away just in time for you to notice the red aura around him. The room becomes sweltering and he lets out a roar, “Go!”

You scurry to the bedroom just as a blast of energy rips the bathroom to shreds. You hear the crashing of the mirror and your shelves falling off the wall. The thing that emerges moments later is obviously Dante, but not in any form you’ve seen. You’ve heard of his devil form, but you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing it in person. Your heart pounds as you take in the looming, bright figure coming towards the bed. His head is adorned with large spikes and horns. Wings spread out behind him as his claws scrape against the floor with every heavy step. Your eyes trail down to the large, ridged cock leaking a red luminescent fluid. Dante is surprised to smell a fresh wave of arousal coming from you.

You crawl to the edge of the bed, sitting up on your knees so you can reach out to touch him. Your fingers slowly trail over the scaled skin, carefully exploring the spikes and ridges. He purrs softly as his large, clawed hand carefully comes to soothe your cheek. Goosebumps prick your skin at the feeling of his claws. He’s careful not to put enough pressure to hurt you, but there’s just enough danger to be invigorating.

“Let’s keep going,” you say shyly.

Dante lets out a pleased grunt as you move to lay in the middle of the bed, keeping your head propped up by the pillows. As soon as his weight is put on the bed, it cracks beneath him. You squeak when the bed crashes under his weight, but neither of you seems to mind. He props up on his knees and carefully holds onto your hips to move you closer. He reaches down to stroke his cock before guiding it to your entrance. Even just the head sliding into you burns with the stretch.

You stop him, earning an annoyed growl. However, his glowing eyes watch you carefully as you roll over to fish something out of the nightstand drawer. You return with a bottle of lube. He watches you squeeze some onto your hand before rubbing it over your vulva. You make it a point to make your touch slow and sensual, earning a soft groan from him. You lean up to squeeze a few drops of lube on his cock and spread it over his shaft. He shudders as you stroke his ridged cock as best as you can. Your hand doesn’t even wrap around the shaft because he’s so thick. Once you’re satisfied that there’s enough lube, you lay back against the pillows.

“Let’s try again,” you say softly.

He lines his cock up with your entrance again and slides the first couple of inches in with ease. He growls at the sensation of your walls fluttering around him. When you don’t stop him, he pushes a little further inside of you. He’s halfway in when your hand comes to press against his rock-hard abdomen.

“I don’t know if I can take it all,” you say shyly.

He huffs, but begins thrusting shallowly. Even with just half his cock sheathed inside of you, you feel so full and stretched. It feels amazing. The texture is so different from anything you’ve ever felt, and it’s driving you crazy. You already feel the coil in your stomach tightening as he rubs against your sweet spot. You’re whining and moaning so sweetly for him. It’s music to his ears.

“I’m gonna cum,” you whimper.

You reach down to rub your clit, and you cry out when the coil snaps. Your juices gush all over Dante and the wrecked mattress. He growls as his pace picks up. He takes advantage of the extra lubrication to push deeper inside of you, finally bottoming out. His hands grip onto the bedsheets on either side of your head as he gives you a moment to adjust. When you start rocking your hips against him. Pain and pleasure mix dizzingly as he starts fucking you again. His grip on the sheets tightens when his eyes fall on the bulge in your lower stomach. He sinks his claws into the mattress, the stuffing spills out.

Your hand comes down to feel the bulge, “Fuck, you’re so big.”

He grunts in response. He’s trembling as he nears his peak, sparks fly through the room as he fucks you a little harder. With a few more deep thrusts he’s spilling a heavy load of cum into your pussy. It’s already leaking out of you. He makes sure to give you every drop before pulling out of you. You feel so full and bloated from all the cum inside of you.

In a flash of red light, Dante returns to the man you’ve come to know and love. With flushed cheeks he takes in the sight of the bed torn to shreds and your pussy leaking his cum.

“Fuck, baby, I’m so sorry,” he leans in to kiss you softly.

“Don’t be. That was amazing,” you run your fingers through his hair.

“I love you,” he presses another kiss to your forehead. “I’ll replace the bed, I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that. Oh, and the bathroom.”

He chuckles before pulling you close to his chest, “Deal.”

[seok-jinnies]

so close to perfect | jjk

jeon jungkook x reader

angst with a happy ending, idol!au, established relationship ; wc : 1480 words

rating: pg13

warnings: swearing, mentions of insecurities, jungkook is a bit of a dick here i'm sorry lol

note: this fic was inspired by this song! it's been collecting dust in my drafts for so long and then i realized that i haven't posted anything in months so....... hope you guys enjoy!

jeongguk has always been your constant, and even with what seems to be the whole world against the two of you, you can't bring yourself to let him go.

Sighing, you take a sip from your tea. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

Jeongguk blinks. “What?”

“I said,” you repeat slowly, “you’re a fucking idiot. I know what I got into. You don’t get to make decisions for me.”

“I’m not making decisions for you, (Y/N).” He scoffs, leaning back on his chair. “I’m telling you that this isn’t working out between us. We need to break up.”

For a few moments, you say nothing. The sounds of the cafe downstairs fill the silence between the two of you and you idly wonder if he’ll gain some sense the longer that you stare at him. You raise an eyebrow.

“You literally told me that you wanted to start a family with me yesterday,” you deadpan. “People don’t change that quickly, especially not you.”

“Then you obviously don’t know me well enough!” He fires back, leaning forward as he grips the edge of your table. His jaw clenches, and in another time, maybe you would have found it attractive. Now, however, it only fuels your irritation further.

Pinching the bridge of your nose, you consider actually slapping some sense into that stupid, big head of his. “Jeongguk, I’ve known you for ten years,” you remind him calmly. “I know you better than I know myself, which is why I know that you’re an awful liar and that every sentence you’ve uttered in the past ten minutes has been pulled straight out of your ass.”

You can practically see the gears turning in his head. It was clear that this strategy wasn’t working out, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it was time for him to switch tactics.

When his gaze grows harder, colder, you already know that the next thing that comes out of his mouth will tear your heart to shreds. Still, you tilt your chin upwards, meeting his gaze head-on.

“(Y/F/N),” he says quietly, voice so dangerously low. You brace yourself for the impact. “How do I make you understand that the past three years have been nothing but a waste of my time?”

Bull’s-fucking-eye.

He takes your frozen state as a sign to continue. “The past three years have just been one big trainwreck. You’ve done nothing but hold me back in every aspect of my life. You have been nothing but selfish and it shows even now,” he scoffs. “You refuse to listen to me when I tell you something. It’s always your way or the highway, isn’t it?”

You’re stunned into silence. So this was the path he was going to take, huh? Somewhere, underneath the wave of hurt that washes over you is a thought: textbook. This is a textbook manifestation of your worst fears, your deepest insecurities. He knows you better than you know yourself; knowing exactly which buttons to press to hurt you the most. He’s cutting into your very soul with surgeon-like precision. The wounded, angry part of you wants to take the bait, to rip him apart but you don’t have it in you to tear into him just as he had done with you.

So you say nothing, merely tilting your head to the side. Slowly, you bring your cup to your lips, sipping quietly before setting it down once more. His eyes are still dark, filled with barely repressed rage.

“You’re always fucking clinging to me too!” He spits out. “You act like you’re so high and mighty but then you act like a fucking child whenever you don’t get what you want. Grow the fuck up,” he laughs humorlessly. “Loving you is the biggest mistake of my life. I wish I never fucking met you.”

At that statement, you can’t even hold back a wince. If you weren’t watching him so closely, you would not have noticed the way his eyes widen infinitesimally, fingers twitching as if he wanted to reach out for you. He bites his lip and for a second he looks like the Jeongguk that you know and love. That’s all it takes for you to strengthen your resolve once more, to force your tears back, and to face this head-on as if he hadn’t hit you where it hurt the most.

“Is that all you’ve got?” You say coolly as if your heart didn’t ache at his words. “Let it all out, love; I’ve got all day.”

His facade begins to crumble. “Why aren’t you mad at me?”

You raise an eyebrow. “Do you want me to be mad at you?”

He visibly deflates in front of you. Shaking his head, he looks at the coffee table, fingers tracing the scratches on the surface.

“Just break up with me,” he whispers pitifully. “It’s the best thing you can do.”

You hum softly. “Do you want to break up with me because of the reasons that you listed earlier? Or…”

“Or?”

“Does this have something to do with the conversation you had with your manager this morning?”

His head shoots up, eyes widening comically. “How do you know that?”

“I have my ways,” you shrug. “That, and the fact that Yoongi overheard the two of you and gave me a heads up.”

“How did he even overhear us?”

You only shrug once more. Yoongi was, well, Yoongi. He was a man of many (slightly concerning) talents.

“If you’re worried about me receiving hate,” you start, pulling his hand into your grasp, “then you have nothing to worry about. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

He scoffs quietly but there’s no real malice behind it. “People are cruel when they want to be. I’ve been on the receiving end of that, (Y/N). I never want you to know what that feels like.”

“So you were just going to take the easy way out?”

He blanches. “No, I… I just wanted to protect you…”

A sad grin creeps up your face. “And look where that got us.”

Letting go of his hand, you take another sip of your tea, almost spitting it out when you look at Jeongguk and realize he has actual tears in his eyes. “Guk?” You say worriedly, hand reaching out to cup his cheek. He leans into your touch and closes his eyes, eyebrows still adorably scrunched in that way it always did whenever he was close to tears.

When he opens his eyes again, you smile.

“I didn’t mean what I said,” he says hoarsely. “I don’t think you’re selfish or immature or clingy. Loving you, meeting you has been the best thing to happen to my life and⁠, and I⁠—” He swallows thickly, a single tear rolling down his cheek. You’re quick to wipe it off even as you feel your own eyes well up with tears.

“I love you,” he admits. “I look at you and my heart feels so full and you make me so happy and I just, I love you so much⁠—” he sobs, dragging his seat closer to you so he could hold you close. You stiffen when he buries his face in the crook of your neck, only relaxing when you’re sure that no one else is on this floor of the cafe. Your arms wrap around his hunched form, letting him cry freely.

“I’m so sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean any of it I swear,” he blubbers, nose all red and runny. It’s almost adorable how he looks at you so earnestly with tears in his eyes. “You’re my everything, (Y/N), I mean it.”

He pulls away from you with a sudden urgency, hands cupping your face gently as he looks into your eyes deeply. “You don’t hold me back. You make me a better person every single day. I’m an idiot who should have talked to you about this first before forcing you to break up with me.”

“You are an idiot,” you agree. He snorts at how quickly you agree, but all you can think of at the moment is how easily he puts your heart at ease despite being the very person to have ripped it apart moments earlier.

“Don’t get me wrong, we’re going to talk about this in detail but this isn’t a discussion we should be having in a public place.” You rise from your seat, patting his cheek gently. “Let’s go home?”

He nods happily, giving you that smile⁠—that soft smile of his that makes you forget about everything else, the one that tells you he loves you more than anything in the world. “Let’s go home.”

The two of you still had so many things to talk about, so many things to unpack from today’s events. It almost seems daunting now that you think about it as the two of you walk home with your hand in his, but as long as you had him… then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

[chaos-caffeinated]

Euphoria (Lady Dimitrescu x Nonbinary*!AFAB!reader)

Warnings: Angst-to-Fluff, Self-harm, body dysphoria, shouting, unintentional misgendering

NSFW because of the warnings and potential triggers, however NO SEX SCENES

Word count: 2789

Chaos's A/N: This is the most...vulnerable piece of writing I have ever written that doesn't involve sex, it didn't need to happen. Nonbinary is used as the umbrella term, as my intention was to be inclusive. If you think it is not inclusive enough, give us a DM in our asks and I resolve it. Thank you.

P.S. There will be two sentences in bold, and it was quite coincidental because I was reading fanfiction before finishing it, and what she (Lady Dimitrescu, but also the author wrote it) said not only made me cry, but it represented what I was hoping for her to say but I could never get out. I will post the link twice, below this postscript, and within the sentence. Please show support by reading it, and to the writer, NorthTrader77!

Comfort's Embrace - NorthTraveler77 - Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse) [Archive of Our Own]

Please, enjoy.

For a couple days you were emotionless, for a couple days you were isolating yourself, for a couple days it was hell for you. Especially for Alcina who wanted nothing but your company, but seeing you avoid her made her upset. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she would proceed to go to her bedroom.

The reason it was hell for you wasn't because of your treatment with your lady, or even her daughters despite them constantly teasing you and trying to get you to lash out on them.

No...

You were assigned female at birth, and you were currently sitting at the corner of the room you were first given before you slept with your lady, rocking yourself as you try so hard to push aside your thoughts, covering yourself in blankets plus blankets plus more blankets, with your arms crossing over your chest as you sobbed away. You hated your chest, you hated your curves, your hair, your face, your legs- EVERYTHING.

You hated the fact that you were reminded of a girl, Alcina would compliment you, and as much as you appreciate her comments, she was unintentionally misgendering, and you were suffering in your own silence. You couldn't tell her you were having a body dysphoria, you couldn't tell this 1900s vampire that you were suffering from your own demise, you were terrified at the idea of her knowing. You didn't want her to know, you didn't want her to be tainted with the knowledge that defined barely coming onto the surface of human knowledge in the west and the castle in the east...she was not going to accept you...like them.

Sometimes you can hide, and hold off your discomfort, your need to cry, your disappointment and your broken heart coming undone, but this time you couldn't. You were stuck in this castle with 4 women, stuck in castle like a...damsel in distress.

You quickly covered your mouth and muffled your screams as you cried and cried.

Alcina could hear a heart pumping rapidly, like a stressed human, and she thought it was her daughters killing a maiden. She stood still as she carried the glass of wine in her left hand, lifted so elegantly while she read a book in her right hand, trying her best to distract herself until one of her daughters knocked on the door. Bela entered the door, relieved to see her alone, and saving herself from a punishment.

"Mother, is (Y/N) alright?" She asked.

Immediately concerned, Alcina turned her head slightly to glance at Bela, "What did you say?"

"(Y/N), she's in distress."

"So that isn't a maiden you're prepping for a new bottle?" She asked, clarifying as remained in her seat. She would run if she could, but her habits won her over as she saw Bela shake her head, "I thought it was a trespasser, Mother. Cassandra and Daniela are currently outside, and I wanted to find the intruder, but no one is here."

"Thank you, Bela. Go to your sisters, I will go find her." She instructed.

"Yes, Mother." Bela turned and closed the door behind her before going to her sisters.

Alcina immediately stood up, placed the glass on the short table in front of her before looking for you.

You were currently gripping at your chest, expanding the shirt until you heard ripping cloth, clutching at your head, your sobs getting more desperate and sorrowful. Your arms flailed around as you slapped yourself, scratched yourself, your body having a pressured sensation that worsened your flails, at one point drawing some blood. You gasped upon viewing the cuts on your arm, viewing your multiple fresh cuts. You brought your arm to your lips and licked at your blood, drawing more and causing more tears and sobbing. Your leg bounced to release some anxiety out of your system, only to flail once again.

The door opened and your eyes shot up, widening as you noticed who it was.

Alcina opened the door, not only to sense your heart beating, but the smell of blood awoke her maternal instincts. It was your blood in her nostrils and she wasn't even feeding from you, she thought you were in danger. She knew she wasn't your mother, but you have mentioned in the pass how your relationship with your family was almost nonexistent, and it saddens her in a way that you didn't have the relationship like her daughters have with her.

Her eyes widen in shock, her lips parted as her eyes landed on you, your body covered in the blankets, but your face filled with tears, sadness, and pain.

"(Y/N)!" She shrieked, strolling towards before she stopped in her tracks upon seeing how you reacted.

You whimpered, turning your head down and facing the wall, avoiding her stare, pulling the blankets for your comfort.

"...(Y/N)..." She whispered, "What happened? Who did this to you?" Her anger raised, ready to strike at whoever did this to you.

She was going to be mad at you, she was going to be mad at you, mad at you, mad at you-

"(Y/N), who, did, this, to, yo-" She spoke with pause, not taking your silence as answer. She didn't like to be ignored, but the sake of knowing who hurt her precious draga, she would mutilate them until they suffered a bloo-

"Me!-" You shouted, interrupting her thoughts, crying in shame, covering your face with the blanket. Alcina can see some of you, her expression in pure shock as she found out, "...(Y/N), if you're lying to me-"

"I'm not..." You whimpered, cowering into the cornered wall.

"Can I know why?" She reached her hand towards your body, finding your arm and squeezing lightly in comfort as you yelped in pain, causing her to flinch and bring back her hand. She was confused, but silently heartbroken to see you like this. What caused you to end up like this?

Her tone immediately calmed, using her comforting tone, "Princess-"

"Don't call me that!-" You cried out, clawing your head, your arms covering your ears, "Anhthinganythinganythinganything but that!" You trembled.

Alcina was beginning to get stressed, but she remained still, and her expression remained unreadable. She waited until you were able to speak, able to look at her.

However...when she saw an impulsive swat on your body, she immediately grabbed your wrists, her other hand held you from the blankets, pulling you closer, "I do not tolerate self-harm, (Y/N)." She warned, sternly. She had to maintain a strong look, even if it hurt her to see you in such a state.

She said your name...your name...the name you chose, the name she says when she's worried about you. Alcina saying your name had such a bliss feeling to it, it was relieving to hear it.

"...a-..again..." You stuttered, tired, your exhaustion showing as you struggled to raise your face, to look into her yellow eyes, "Please...say my name..." your tear up once again, your lips trembled lightly.

Alcina stared at you for a moment, your pleads were of desperation, and she was going to give you what you need, "...(Y/N)..."

Your lips curled ever slightly, but noticed by Alcina.

"Again...please." You plead, trying so hard to hold on, glancing at her with your heavy-lidded eyes.

Alcina carefully lowered your arms as she placed her gloved hand against your cheek, you leaning towards her touch, breathing low, on the brink of passing out. She leaned closed and kissed your other cheek, "(Y/N), my human..." she whispered against your ear. Your eyes shot wide, your lips parting slightly as they trembled as you weren't expecting her to say the last part. You didn't think you would have tears left to cry, but you raised your tired arms, muscles also trembling as you wrapped them around her neck, pulling yourself to her in a desperate, needed, and a thankful hug, crying softly against her shoulder.

Alcina wrapped her arms securely on you, one hand placed on the back of your head, She raised herself, holding you close, "Rest, draga mea." She whispered, feeling your body limp, your arms falling to your sides.

She took you to her chambers, a need to see for herself what injuries you sustained. She laid you on the bed, and already noticed something that upset her. The shirt you had on was not only ripped, nearly shredded, but you had scratches on your abdomen, your chest. Alcina removed your shirt and proceeded to take care of you, leaning down to lay gentle kisses on your warm skin. She can taste the blood from the scratches, fortunately they were shallow, but to have drawn blood on your beautiful body, what happened? Where you no longer happy to be with her?

Until she remembered your voice,

...Again...please....

And the way you reacted to her calling you a human, to say she was confused was an understatement, she was beyond bewildered.

It took a while before she finished healing your scratches, from your body, to your face. She sighed softly, peppering your face with her loving kisses. Your unconscious state would remain the same, but it hurt to see you in that state while she took take of care of you. It reminded her of something common, but never wanting it to occur on you, "(Y/N)...what happened?" She asked out loud, more to herself than to you. Instead she walked to her closet before returning and sliding you in a silk robe, hoping for the best comfort and tucking you in the bed. She would have to send some maidens to the previous room to clean up the mess, but she was now preoccupied with staying by your side. She was going to know what happened, and why you reacted in such a manner.

~

When you woke up, tired, your eyes blinking slowly before you started feeling your body, immediately closing your eyes and biting your lip softly to hold back tears. Instead, you closed your hand in to fists, and opened them slowly, not even wanting to focus on your body. You made her sad, disappointed, upset. She no longer wants to be with-

"Darling, you're awake." Alcina sits next to you on the bed, reaching forward and wiping a traveling tear on your cheek, "Why are you crying, draga mea, talk to me..."

You sobbed softly as you raised your hands to your face to hide your shame.

"If you don't talk to me, I will never know how I can assist you." She pointed it out.

You took a deep breath, only to gather more air and breathe out in small increments to control your breathing.

Your eyes travelled to your lady's eyes, those beautiful yellow eyes, and you noticed something different about them.

"Al...Alcina..." you shook your head softly as you closed your eyes softly, "I can't...I'm too scared." Your hand reached to your face, and Alcina takes your other hand, her thumb rubbing lightly on it, "There is no reason to be scared, iubere mea, only you are scared. There is nothing you say that will upset me, nothing." She reassured, placing down your hand and reaching forward to curl a few hairs behind your ear, an excuse to touch you reassuringly, "Nothing." She repeated.

Despite her demeanor, her confidence, her elegance, her passion, and her grace, she wouldn't lie to you. You just knew.

You take a shaky breath, reaching forward to get a hold of her hand, Alcina responding by squeezing it lightly, comfortingly resting on the bed.

You confessed, saying that you didn't feel as though you belonged to being described with feminine attributes, but you also didn't feel you belonged purely to the masculine attributes. You were neither a woman or a man. You explained to her how long you have kept hidden the fact, and how your current name, (Y/N) is the name you chose because it suited better than your previous, assigned name. You were open about how your family disowned you for the shame that you supposedly brought upon them, and how they dismissed your feelings as they referred to you with she/her pronouns, forcing you into female clothing, and how your lady would say those things and you were forced to hide yourself in fear of how she would react, afraid that she would kick you out if she found out.

Alcina felt a tremble from you, and her expression never changed, she was thinking, long and hard, "Hm, well, this is quite a predicament..." She stated, lifting a finger to her chin, "And I am ashamed for not knowing about this, but will you teach me more about this?" She asked, smiling small.

Your heart beat fast, but not in the stressful way, in the unexpectedly way, and how you couldn't help contain a smile. You nodded proudly, "Yes, I will." Smiling brightly at her, "Thank you, Alcina, thank you so much." you tear up once more, only for the overwhelming joy you felt. Alcina removed her heels for a moment and laid beside you, hushing you gently as she began to ask questions such as a term that can describe your gender identity, how she would refer to you, the nicknames you prefer, the nicknames you would prefer to stay away from, how to handle your body dysphoria, how to deal with misgendering, and your fashion sense.

As Alcina gained more knowledge, she couldn't help but ask, "Sweetheart, babes..." She tested out a few pet names which you loved so much, "If you knew from what period I was, why didn't you take advantage that I didn't know such thing?"

You quirked your eyebrow, "Hm?..." You tilted your head slightly, "What?"

"You could have said you like specific pet names, and how you like to dress a certain way. You already told me your name without me knowing of your previous name, why didn't you make more progress like that to help you with your discomfort?" She asked.

"Well...hm...I feel like you would be suspicious of me lying, or hiding things from you...and I wouldn't have the chance to explain so much...like I did right now...and sometimes I did like some feminine pet names, but my discomfort got the best of me." You explained as you can, "It feels so good to finally get everything out, and it feels even better that you are still with me."

"Oh, but, iubere mea, I would never reject you for who you are, it is why I am with you in the first place, dear." She kissed the top of your head, "You are, (Y/N), a strong and carrier of a golden heart, caring, but you are stuck by the chains of your past. I am not like the people who left you, you can be open about yourself at any point with me. You are allowed to be vulnerable and I will never turn away from your needs. I will always return your affections and I will always keep you safe. You do not ever have to put on a façade with me simply because I am from a different time period."

She saw you tear up once again and you hugged her tighter, Alcina returning the tight embrace. It was new to her, having to be so open with her feelings with anyone that wasn't her quill and a paper, but how could she hold in that stuff when you gave her such an important piece of yourself, and she was to be honest at the moment. She took a deep breath and used the hug as an excuse to let you know how she also felt.

It was a tight, heart-felt embrace, and you knew it. You felt her strong arms envelop you, but you also felt her loosen up as well, relaxing. In addition to telling you to be open about yourself with her, you thought she also had to follow through what she said with you, not hiding anything. You remember seeing her write letters and letters, and sadden at the thought she was alone for so many years. Your hand reached up to run your fingers through her hair, comfortingly. You pull away slightly, just to see her face, which she had her eyes closed in the intimate act. When she felt you pull away, she opened her eyes only to meet with yours, filled with joy and some tears sliding down your face. You gently grabbed her face as she allowed you to and pulled her into a passionate kiss. Alcina rested her hands on your waist as you both pulled away again and rested your heads against each other, eyes closed, and her thumbs gently rubbing against your back, and you reciprocating by rubbing against her cheek.

[yelena-bellova]

Safe Haven: tfatws!Bucky Barnes x fem!reader - Chapter Eight

chapter seven - Chapter Eight: Bloodshed - chapter nine

Series Masterlist

Plot: After murdering one of the Flag Smashers in broad daylight, Sam, Bucky and Y/n confront John Walker.

Warnings: violence, blood, talk of death, injuries, hospitals, minor panic attack, ANGST GALORE, one teeny tiny little bit of fluff so ya’ll don’t completely hate me, Bucky’s a flirt and a concerned (almost) boyfriend, Y/n is still a badass, heartbreak, did I mention angst, more angst, and some more angst, k bye...

Word Count: 8k

A/N: THIS CHAPTER was the hardest one to write, I seriously struggled with this and drafted it so many times. I love writing angst but this shit actually hurt to write. I read up on blunt trauma injuries but I’m not a doctor so this definitely isn’t 100% accurate. I’m also super unoriginal with my titles but this one holds two meanings. Hope you enjoy it!!

----

Anger. Disgust. Horror. Fear.

All emotions that were coursing through me as Bucky, Sam and followed Walker’s signal via Sharon’s satellite. One thing I noticed about the dynamic between the three of us was that we didn’t always need to communicate verbally. With a single shared look, we had made the unanimous decision that we needed to do what had crossed all our minds at some point.

Sharon’s satellite had led us to a warehouse on the outskirts of the city that we approached with caution. Once we were outside the door, Sam turned and held up a hand to me. “You’re staying out here,” he said.

“That’s not happening,” I replied firmly. “No, he’s right,” Bucky nodded, “We don’t know what Walker’s capable of right now-“ “We know exactly what he’s capable of right now,” I interrupted, shoving Sam’s hand down to his side, “And I’m not about to watch you two walk in there and sit out here wondering if the same thing’s going to happen, because you wouldn’t if it were me.” I had successfully tied their hands, both flesh and metal, behind their backs. They both turned back around, sandwiching me between them as we took the first step through the door and into a very uncertain situation.

We entered to see Walker, kneeled on the ground and bracing his head against the bloodied shield. He stood up, slipping the now deadly weapon onto his wrist and began walking towards us. “Walker…” Sam started. “You guys should see a medic, you don’t look so good,” he said as he passed us by, heading for the exit. “Stop, Walker,” Sam stepped forward, Bucky and I following.

Walker turned around, breathless in his anger. “What? You saw what happened, you know what I had to do. I killed him because I had to!” his voice rose with each word, his face turning more and more with rage, “He killed Lemar!” “He didn’t kill Lemar, John,” Bucky stated, “Don’t go down that road. Believe me, it doesn’t end well.” “I’m not like you,” John said lowly.

“Listen, it was the heat of the battle. Okay?” Sam’s voice was calm, contrasting Walker’s energy, “If you explain what happened, they may consider your record.” “Nobody else needs to get hurt in this, Walker,” I spoke up, the first non-sarcastic and non-confrontational thing I had said to the man. 

“John…” Sam paused, gauging what the reaction to what he was about to say may be, “You gotta give me the shield, man.” Walker’s head raised up slowly, the look in his eyes was unsettling as they danced between Sam, Bucky and I. “Oh, so that’s what this is. You almost got me.” “You made a mistake,” Sam shrugged.

He gave us a small sneer, “You don’t wanna do this.” A tense silence fell upon us, a preface to the inevitable moment about to take place. Sharon’s voice rang in my ear, how far was I willing to go? Would it be worth it if I lost my life or worse, lost Sam or Bucky? Without needing to think about my answer, I was resolved in my decision that this fight was too important to all three of us not to push forward. “Yeah, we do,” Bucky replied, speaking for us. 

And thus, it began.

We shot forward towards Walker at the same time, Bucky landing a couple punches on him while Walker kicked Sam backwards. I focused on sending energy blasts that he easily dodged with the shield, even with Bucky’s attacks coinciding. Bucky got a hand on the shield finally and tried to wrench it from Walker, who elbowed him causing him to wobble a little. Walker swung his arm and landed a perfect punch against Bucky’s cheek, sending Bucky to the ground and giving Walker the opportunity to stand above him and raise the shield threateningly. I quickly built a force field around Bucky as Sam came forward and kicked Walker, turning his attention away from Bucky and I. Sam released his wings to hit the shield, Walker’s arm flying back before coming back forward to try and hit Sam. Bucky leapt forward and banged his metal fist against the shield to no avail. I let the blue energy flow from my fingertips and towards to shield, trying to pull it from his grasp. Walker spun the shield around trying to hit all three of us, Sam and I dodging it while Bucky wasn’t as fortunate. Once he knocked Sam over, it was just him and I. He lunged at me with the shield  and I quickly formed an idea, I didn’t need Vibranium to have an equal shield. 

I created a force field with my hands about the size of Walker’s weapon, charged forward to meet him and my energy based shield made contact with his metal one. I shoved and threw him off balance, he quickly caught his footing and looked up at me in shock. Once he had gotten over his initial surprise, what followed was pure rage. In my efforts to take the shield from him, I’d taken the power it brought without actually confiscating the weapon. He growled and lunged at me again, meeting the same end result except he bounced back faster and continued his rapid attack. After a dozen unsuccessful hits, he kicked my leg out from under me and I landed on my back against the concrete. He stood over me and raised his shield, but was tackled to the side by Bucky before he could bring it down on me. Bucky landed punch after punch against the shield, Walker got in a few hits as well until they were pushing on either side of the shield towards one another, glowering. Walker ducked as Bucky was about to hit him, his metal fist instead hitting and taking out a beam. Sam was behind me on his feet only to have Walker kick him in the face, I threw my hands out and paused his fall, returning him to a standing position. I turned at just the right moment to see Walker fling the shield at Bucky with a yell, sending Bucky clutching the metal and slamming into a piece of machinery. Angrily, my eyes located a smaller piece of equipment and telepathically lifted it into the air, flicking my fingertips towards Walker and making it hit him in the head. He groaned as it made contact before doing the same as Bucky charged at him and hit him in the back with the shield. With his focus back on Bucky, Walker stalked towards him and gripped the shield, shoving him back against the same piece of machinery. “Why are you making me do this?” Walker growled in Bucky’s face before raising to a complete yell, “Why are you making me do this?” To accent his words, he swung the shield around as Bucky was still attached and sent him flying across the room, landing against a piece of electrical equipment. He fell to the ground with a pained grunt, his eyes shut and electricity causing his Vibranium arm to cease up.

“Bucky!” I cried before taking off across the room to him, fearing the worst. I dropped to my knees and attempted to roll him onto his back, my hands cradling both his cheeks. “Bucky, Bucky, I need you to wake up. C’mon, wake up,” I said, leaning closer to his face in hopes that he’d hear me better. I could see his stomach rising up and falling down rapidly, but he showed no signs of waking. “Bucky, we need you. Please don’t do this to me, wake up,” my voice quivered, tears starting to water my eyes as he stayed unresponsive. The grunts and groans echoing through the room finally registered with me, I looked over my shoulder to see Sam and Walker engaged in heavy combat. I quickly looked back to Bucky in hopes he would awaken on the spot, when that didn’t happen I brushed my thumbs across his cheekbones, touched my forehead to his and prayed for the best. 

I rose to see Sam flying around the room with his grappling hook attached to the shield and dragging Walker across the floor. He caught his footing and stood horizontally against a machine. I raised my hands to aid Sam and energetically pulled him in his direction. It wasn’t enough as both Sam and Walker lost their grip, both face planting on the cold ground. The shield rattled as it hit the floor, the three of us watching from where we stood before bolting towards it. Just as Sam was closing in on it, Walker tackled him to the floor. Sam extended his wings and did a loop in the air, trying to shake the iron-like grip Walker had on him to no avail. I took the chance to grab to shield, groaning at the weight of it as I picked it up. Walker had mounted Sam by now and without knowing what I was doing, I clumsily flung the shield at Walker but didn’t actually injure him. What I did succeed at doing was making him even madder than he already was. Still atop Sam, he twisted to land a punch to my gut that left me clutching the area. He didn’t stop in his attack and pulled me down by my throat, squeezing tight while still keeping a hand on Sam to prevent him from interfering. I gasped and gagged, trying to find any shred of air to take in just before Walker threw me away from them, my body sliding across the ground. I wheezed as I sucked in a breath and cradled my stomach, the pain in both my throat and abdomen screaming for relief. From my spot, I couldn’t hear what Walker was snarling to Sam but I could see what he was trying to do. His hands had a vice like grip on each of Sam’s wings, it didn’t take more than a loud cry and a good pull for the two pieces of Stark tech to be ripped from the EXO-7 pack. Sam writhed beneath him, desperately trying to free himself as Walker raised his shield in the air. 

It was then, at the sight of my brother about to be murdered in cold blood, not at the hands of a police officer or a Madripoorian bounty hunter, but a deranged Super Soldier that something inside me snapped.

I found the strength the rise to my knees, I could feel the energy that surged through my body rise to a level I’d never felt before. I stuck out my hands and with a yell, I fired two steady streams of blue energy straight at the shield to keep it from coming down on Sam’s throat. Walker was thrown off, his position on top of Sam losing stability as he tried to deflect my attack. I screamed as I rose to my feet, the rage I felt with Walker coming to its crescendo. He could take the shield, the mantle of Captain America, but he wasn’t going to take my brother from me.

I adjusted my stance as it was taking everything I had in me not to fall over, I was trying to keep my balance and ignore the pain that was demanding my attention. Just as I started to question if I had enough strength the keep this newfound power going, a now conscious Bucky jumped in from the side and tackled Walker. I let the energy die in my hands as I stumbled towards Sam, making sure he was alright. 

“Get to Bucky,” he gritted out.

Wasting no time, I turned around and made a beeline for Bucky, who was getting pummeled by Walker. He rammed Bucky’s head into the shield before sitting atop him, crazed and ready to drive the shield into his neck. “No!” I screamed, coming behind Bucky’s head and expelling streams of energy from my palms that hit the shield and once again prevented Walker from going any further. I was losing strength fast, unlike them I wasn’t a super soldier and Walker’s blows had left me in some of the worst pain I’d ever known. Sam sprung into action beside me and punched Walker in the side of his head before twisting his arm and pulling it back. He turned on his thrustesr and pushed, Bucky was freed from Walker’s grip and kneeled in front of him, their faces inches apart. I came to stand on the other side of Sam and used my energy to pull, aiding us in our efforts to rid the man of the power he was so determined not to lose. The four of us were piled together, each crying out of pain or yelling out of anger, fighting for a symbol that was supposed to bring us together.

A sickening crack sounded off as Walker’s arm snapped, sending Sam tumbling with the shield in his hands and me landing on my back. I cried as my head smacked against the concrete and found myself unable to rise, my ears ringing and my mind spinning. I felt two arms wrap around my torso and raise me up, refusing to let go even when I was steady on my feet. I didn’t need to open my eyes to knock that it was Bucky, his hot and heavy breaths against my ear and his scent invading my nose. My eyes fluttered open and though I wanted nothing more than to let sleep take me over in his arms, I pulled out of them as Walker stood to his feet again. “It’s mine,” he said. From behind me, I could hear Sam panting. “It’s over, John.” “It’s mine,” Walker growled as he stepped forward with his fist raised to Bucky. Exhaustedly, I shot a large blast at him that left him stumbling to catch his footing. His unhinged eyes sought me out and came charging towards me, I sent another blast but my weariness was beginning to sink its teeth into me and the blast wasn’t as strong as it should have been. He caught himself much quicker and swung again only this time, I wasn’t fast enough in my attack and he successfully grabbed me by the throat and raised me in the air. I kicked and clawed at his hand, desperately trying to free myself from the grip that was slowly tightening and causing my throat to constrict further. I couldn’t find any hole that would allow any air to fill my lungs, all I could do was continue pathetically trying to pull his fingers off me as I looked at his manic expression.

“You’ll never be a hero,” he snarled at me.

My eyes blurred with tears, not from his insult, but from the fact that I knew I was inching closer towards death. It was then that I made out Bucky’s body hurling itself towards Walker, tackling both of us to the ground. I felt Walker’s grip loosen ever so slightly just when Sam’s arms wrapped around me and pulled me backwards, freeing me. I wheezed and took a strained breath in, the cool air flooding my lungs blissfully. Sam laid me down carefully on the ground, a safe distance away from them as Bucky began using Walker as a punching bag. The wannabe Captain America may have been unhinged, but Bucky wasn’t far behind him as he kept up his unrelenting attack. With my ability to breathe returned to me, a fraction of my strength returned but not enough to rise and join the fight. As Bucky hoisted Walker into the air and Sam charged towards them with the shield, I raised a shaky hand and sent a blast of energy at Walker that hit just as his body made contact with the shield. The three of them fell to the ground with a collective groan, once I saw through my half shut eyes that both Bucky and Sam were still breathing, I allowed my head to loll to the side and closed my lids. I felt the warm blood on the back of my head, the drying drops on each of my cheeks, and the ghost of Walker’s handprint around my throat. The pain was starting to overtake me, whether leading me to death or unconsciousness, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was Sam and Bucky were safe and if that was true, then I could slip into whatever state was coming for me at ease.

Just on the outskirts of falling asleep, I heard a heavy set of footsteps coming towards me. “Y/n, Y/n, c’mon, stay with me. Stay with me, honey, come on,” Bucky’s voice flooded my ringing ears, his fingertips gently cradling my bruising neck. “Get her to the hospital,” Sam strained from nearby.

The last thing I remember was being lifted into Bucky’s arms, the cool Latvian air hitting my skin as we made it out of the warehouse and his warm lips pressing themselves against my forehead.

——

Beep. Beep. Beep.

My eyes drowsily opened, the lids feeling as heavy as lead. I had to blink several times just to make sense of the blur of white surrounding me. Eventually I gained enough clarity to see it was a hospital room and I was laying in a bed, a cannula looped over my ears and drying my nose up with ice cold oxygen. I had stickers on my chest with wires coming off them and snaking into the beeping machine, monitoring my steady heartbeat.

“You got,” a voice to the side of me said quietly, “So lucky.” I tilted my head carefully against the pillow to see Sam, still in his suit, seated at my bedside looking more relieved than I’d ever seen him. I laid my palm out for him to grasp, squeezing with what little strength I had left. 

“Are you alright?” I asked, not recognizing my own voice with how hoarse it was. 

Sam scoffed, I could see he had a few stitches on his face accompanying a couple bruises. “I’m fine. You however’ve got three bruised ribs, a bruised stomach, a concussion and your face is all stitched up.” I made a noise of acknowledgement before looking on the other side of the room, someone was missing. “Where’s Bucky?” “Getting stitched up, we’ve been here about two hours but he wasn’t leaving until the doctor assured us you were gonna be fine,” Sam answered, rubbing my frigid hand between his warm ones.

I cleared my throat, trying to regain my voice. “What about Walker?” “Don’t know,” he replied, “My priority was making sure you were alive.”

My head was spinning, both literally and metaphorically as I thought back to the last sight I’d caught of Walker, laid out on the ground after being used as a human hammer. Walker and I were never going to be friends, he’d even tried to kill me, but I hoped that we hadn’t left him for dead in that warehouse.

“Doc says they’re gonna keep you here tonight for observation but if you do alright,” Sam explained, “They can release you tomorrow.” I gave a small nod, my head pounding with the movement causing me to shut my eyes again. “Get some sleep, you’re not missin’ anything. I’ll be here when you-“ I was already gone.

——

The next day, I woke up feeling as well as one could for someone who had gotten their ass kicked by a Super Soldier. The hospital agreed to release me with the instructions that I rest and took my painkillers. Both Sam and Bucky spent the night in chairs, I learned, the two men refusing to leave my side and clinging to the doctor’s every word when they discharged me. 

If Bucky and I hadn’t been skirting a line before, we definitely were now. His eyes were trained solely on me at all times, he guided me out of the hospital with a protective hand on my back. As I’d been cleaning myself up before discharge, changing into the clothes that Sam had brought me that morning once he knew I was alright to be left alone, I thought back to the last thing I remembered before passing out. Bucky’s gentle kiss was imprinted on my forehead, he was the only clear thing in the chaos of that moment where I didn’t know if I’d live or die. What wasn’t clear was whether or not we would ever speak about these stolen moments we were sharing and the intimacy that had come so naturally to us. Maybe after this was all over, before Sam and I returned to Louisiana and Bucky to Brooklyn, we could talk. But until then, we had bigger fish to fry…

The three of us stood in our respective corners of one of the resettlement camps which the police had come and swept clean of all life, trying to determine our next move. Bucky and Sam seemingly weren’t speaking unless absolutely necessary, I knew that Bucky still held it against Sam that he’d given up the shield. The fight with Walker would have only amplified those feelings, we’d had to go to such great lengths to correct Sam’s “mistake” and Bucky’s cold stare reflected that. I sat to the side trying to ignore the pain that radiated in my chest each time I inhaled, my bruised ribs forcing me to take shallower breaths.

“The GRC is conducting raids to try and find Karli,” Sam stated to the room, “But so far they’ve only found her followers. They’ve searched this camp and just like the last camp, nothing. She’s gone, we’ll never find her.” “You don’t know that,” I said hopefully from my seat, “She’s popped up before, she’ll pop up again. She can’t help but make a show of all this.” 

“Hey,” Torres announced his entrance, looking to Bucky, “You got your sleeve back.” I chuckled quietly at the memory of the first day we’d worked together, instantly regretting it at the pain in my abdomen. Bucky, however, didn’t find Torres as amusing as I did and made for the exit of the room, brooding as usual.

“Are you off to take care of Zemo?” Sam asked mockingly.

Bucky shot him a glare from the doorway before looking at me once more, making sure I was alright. Without a word, he walked out of the room. “Alright, good to know you survived!” Torres called. 

It was clear that Bucky was indeed going to catch Zemo, possibly kill him even. If that were the case, I needed to get one piece of information from the Baron before he met whatever fate the Super Soldier was going to deal him. 

I rose from my seat with a groan, walking over to Sam, “I need to go with him.” “What?” he furrowed his brows and looked me up and down, “Are those painkillers making you high?” “Zemo said something very…Zemo-ish, when you were talking to Karli,” I explained, placing hand on his arm, “He was fascinated by my last name, he said it sounded familiar.” “Why would your last name sound familiar to Zemo?” he echoed the question in my mind.

“It shouldn’t. He escaped before I could get a chance to ask him about it, I need to go with Bucky and talk to him before he slips again.” 

Sam sighed heavily, weighing the scenarios in his head. He couldn’t stop me from going and I wasn’t asking permission. I’d promised to follow his lead throughout this, but this regarded my family and not even my own brother could get in the way of the concerns I had. “Alright, call and let me know where you two end up.” I pecked his cheek quickly and took off power walking since I couldn’t run due to my injuries. There weren’t many exits available to us since the police had marked a lot of the building off limits, I followed the way we’d come in and spotted Bucky making his way out to the street. “Bucky!” I yelled as I hurried towards him, he turned at the sound of my voice. “What’re you doing?” he asked, gripping each of my arms gently in his hands, “You shouldn’t be moving this much.” “I’m coming with you,” I said, ignoring his concern for my wellbeing. “What?” I took a second to catch the breath, my stamina hadn’t been great before the fight but now I was practically leveled by simple tasks. Bucky waited patiently and guided the two of us to a bench to sit. “Yesterday when Sam was talking to Karli, Zemo made a point of telling me that my last name sounded familiar. He wouldn’t go into any further detail and obviously the wheels came off of that whole situation, but I need to find out what he meant by that.” “Are you sure he’s not just messing with you?” he asked, trying to keep me away from the situation at all costs.

“He very well may be, but he may not be. But I won’t be able to sleep if I let you do whatever you’re going to do to him without finding out the truth.”

Bucky copied Sam’s sigh almost to the exact pitch, his worry for me taking center stage. But as it had been with my brother, I wasn’t asking for permission. “Alright, come on,” he said defeatedly, standing up and helping to pull me up, “We gotta find a ride.” “You think you have an idea of where he is?” I asked as we started off down the sidewalk. “I know where he is,” Bucky answered confidently, his hand returning to its familiar spot on my back as we crossed the street.

——

While I didn’t agree with Bucky’s methods of getting us transportation, hot-wiring an old European made car, we were successfully on our way to Sokovia.

The car itself was rusty and on the slower side, there weren’t even seat belts but it would do the job of getting us there. Bucky had informed me we were driving straight through the night, he’d also turned down my offering to take a shift at the wheel stating that all I needed to focus on was resting. We’d been driving for a few hours now in comfortable silence, me watching the scenery out the window and sneaking a long glance at Bucky every once in a while.

“So what are you planning on doing when we get there?” I finally asked, “I don’t like the guy but I don’t necessarily want to kill him.” “I’m not gonna kill him,” Bucky quickly shut down the idea, “I’m gonna do what I should’ve done, turn him over to the Wakandans.” I hummed in acknowledgment, thinking of a question that I wanted to ask but didn’t want to make Bucky uncomfortable. In the end, curiosity got the better of me. “Can I ask you something?” “Hmm?”

“You know I don’t condone it,” I said firmly, “But Zemo ruined your life, what is it that’s stopping you from killing him?” Bucky squeezed the steering wheel a little tighter, his glove creating a sound as it stretched across his hand. I held my breath as I awaited his answer, praying that he didn’t go silent on me. Instead, he reached into his pocket with his free hand and fished out his book with the list of names he needed to make amends with, waving it a little. “He didn’t ruin my life, he certainly didn’t make it any better, but he didn’t ruin it.” “What if he tries to kill you? He seems to have a vendetta against all Super Soldiers, even the good ones.” “You think I’m one of the good ones, huh?” Bucky briefly took his eyes off the road to look over at me, his eyebrow quickly rising and one corner of his lips turning upwards.

My smile grew, though I still tried to control it. “Don’t let it go to your head, Barnes.”

Bucky turned his attention back to the road, his smug grin still showcased on his face. I was utterly convinced with the rays from the sunset shining through the car windows hitting him perfectly, his features bathed in gold, that there was no way he could be more beautiful. This was the most at ease I had seen him since I’d met him which was strange considering the circumstances.

“So how is it all going down?” I asked, watching him slip the pocketbook back in his jeans “I already made a call, the Dora’s gonna meet us there,” he answered plainly, though I could see the guilt that was threatening to peek through at betraying the people who had gone to such great lengths for him. I moved to adjust myself in my seat, sending a shooting pain through my abdomen. I hissed at the sensation, my hand flying to cover the area. “What? What is it?” Bucky’s mood had shifted from calm to panicked in seconds. “They said that might happen,” I said, my voice slightly strained from the pain, “I’m fine.” Bucky’s head rotated between watching me and the road, I knew that it was only because we were too far away from Latvia that he wasn’t turning the car around and taking me back to Sam. “Hey,” I said softly, reaching for his nearest arm to give it a reassuring squeeze, “I’m fine.” He sighed, both stress and relief seeping out of the sound and telling me it wasn’t time yet to remove my hand. A few breaths were taken before he decided to finally speak, “You gave me a heart attack yesterday, when you passed out I thought you…”

His sentence trailed off leaving me to fill in the gaps of what he thought had happened to me. I was just as terrified when it was him who laid unconscious in my arms. “You scared me too, I was practically slapping you silly trying to get you to wake up.” “I know, I heard you.”

“You heard me?” “I couldn’t move, felt like I couldn’t even open my eyes,” Bucky said, pausing for a second as he relived the moment, “You sounded like you were underwater, but I knew you were there. I could feel you.” The air had shifted from light to tense and now to the great something that Bucky and I always seemed to be enveloped by. And this, this small admittance of recognizing one’s presence in the middle of battle was the most we’d ever acknowledged it. Something about Bucky’s voice when he’d said he could feel me, my hands pressed and stroking against his cheeks, that led me to believe he wasn’t just stating a fact. It didn’t break or quiver, he didn’t stutter or stumble on his words, but I could hear in his serious tone that there were emotions he was holding back. The phantom of that dark moment was clear and present in the car, pushing the two of us together while the spirit of hesitation was wedged between us.

I embodied both as my hand slipped from Bucky’s arm and I gathered the courage to speak. “I heard you too, just before Sam told you to bring me to the hospital.” There was a pregnant pause as Bucky absorbed the news, “You remember anything after that?” I knew, he knew, we both knew what he was asking. He wanted to know if I remembered the kiss, the last thing I’d felt before giving into my body’s trauma. The way his lips had brushed my forehead so softly as if he was afraid to break me any more, yet somehow I’d felt every bit of his concern and care. It had crossed a line that we’d come so close to crossing in that alley, him caging me in and me pressing his hand to my chest. Had I not lost consciousness, I’d have pressed my hand against the back of his head, threaded my fingers through his hair and redirected those lips down to meet mine. Did I remember? “Yes.” Bucky glanced over at me, carefully scanning my face for any signs of discomfort with his decision. When he found none, one side of his lips pulled up in the now familiar smirk. “Good.”

I found myself biting down on my bottom lip to keep from breaking into a grin, forcing my mouth into submission. If in another lifetime I had ever met 1940’s Bucky Barnes, I had a feeling he was like this but all the time. Flirty, bold and a smash hit with the women. And here he was, eighty years later, charming me so well that I had forgotten momentarily that we were on our way to essentially arrest one of the world’s most dangerous men. Such was the hold he had on me…

“Get some sleep,” he said like nothing had transpired, the audacity of him…”It’s gonna be a while till we get to Sokovia.” “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Mr. Barnes,” I said playfully.

“Oh, now I’m Mr. Barnes?” he shot back with a single laugh. “That’s how you’re supposed to address your elders.” “Ha ha ha,” he unenthusiastically shot back, the smile on his face contradicting his words.

I moved to settle into my side of the bench seat but stopped myself before I could truly get comfortable. If Bucky could be bold, then I could be too. Careful to not awaken the pain in my abdomen or chest, I slid across the long seat until I was pressed against the Super Soldier. I placed my head against his arm, effectively making him my pillow and letting myself be swept away to sleep, comforted by the warmth he provided and how his tense body relaxed at my touch.

There was a chance for us.

——

Bucky parked our car in the Sokovian woodland, saying we needed to walk to rest of the way as not to alert Zemo to our being there a second before he should be made aware. He hadn’t been wrong, there stood the Baron in front of the memorial to his once whole country. As we silently approached, Bucky pulled the gun he had out of his coat pocket, holding it at his side instead of in the air. We had an agreement, he’d get his closure with Zemo and then I would get my answers.

“I thought you’d be here sooner,” Zemo said, acknowledging our presences, “And I figured you would be with him. Don’t worry,” he spared Bucky a glance, “I’ve decided I’m not going to kill you.”

“Imagine my relief,” Bucky sarcastically retorted, clicking the gun as a period to his sentence.

Zemo pivoted and slowly walked towards us, “The girl has been radicalized beyond salvation. I warned Sam, but he didn’t listen to me. He’s as stubborn as Steve Rogers before him. But you…They literally programmed you to kill. James, do what needs to be done. Karli has people everywhere, and there’s only one way to make sure she cannot continue her mission.” “I appreciate the advice,” Bucky replied, “But we’re gonna do it our own way.”

Zemo chuckled softly, “Yeah, I was afraid you would say that.”

Bucky stayed silent, the only sound between the three of us was the sound of the pistol’s safety being turned off. I paid close attention to how Zemo’s eyes followed the noise and how they expectantly waited as Bucky cocked the weapon and aimed at Zemo’s face. He nodded, giving Bucky permission to prove that his killer instinct was still there. The Baron wanted sweet death to take him and reunite him with the family he’d lost years ago. Perhaps I would want the same thing if I had lost everyone, but not everybody deserved an ending so sweet.

Bucky pulled the trigger, the chamber revealing its secret that it was indeed empty.

Zemo flinched at the shot that never fired, his face painted with shock that Bucky hadn’t committed the deed we all assumed he’d want to. Once the victim, the small smirk of victory across his lips proved that Bucky was actually the winner in Zemo’s plot to bring down Super Soldiers. Not just because he had escaped with his life, but because he had healed his wound. With each bullet that clanked to the ground, released from his metal hand, the power his grudges against Zemo had held over him disappeared.

The Dora Milaje appeared then, marching in from behind Zemo to come and escort him to his fate of their choosing. “Ladies…” he greeted them before turning back to Bucky, “I took the liberty of crossing off my name in your book. I hold no grudges for what you thought you had to do. Goodbye, James.”

“We’re not done yet,” I stepped forward from behind Bucky, “You still owe me an answer. You said my name was familiar, why is that?” Zemo’s lips parted only to close once more, eventually nodding and taking a breath. “Very well, I suppose everybody deserves to know their roots. What did your father tell you he did?” My father? What could he have possibly known about him? How could he ever have been on his radar? “He was a soldier, US Army, he came home to Louisiana and became a contractor,” I answered, not letting on to my confusion. “Sadly, what he told you was a lie,” Zemo stated, “When I heard your last name, I could not place where I had heard it before. It wasn’t until I brought it up to you that I had figured out you were his daughter. Your father was in service of a kind, but not to your country’s government. Not at least in the way you think.”

Fear was starting to creep in, its inky black tentacles starting to take swipes at me threatening to drag me down. I did my best to keep my expression steeled, “How dare you say my father was a liar...He bled and fought for my country, he dedicated himself to the service.” Zemo paused, he didn’t seem like he was taking any enjoyment in having this conversation with me. “Y/n, your father was a part of HYDRA.”

I could no longer keep my emotions off my face as my jaw went slack and my brows scrunched together. “No, you’re lying,” I shook my head, trying to deny what he had no reason to make up. “His name was listed in the files that Black Widow released to the public years ago. When I was deciphering the files and I found his name, I quickly learned that he dropped his last name in favor of his middle once he left their service. Perhaps he was afraid they would find him or your family,” Zemo further explained, “When I came looking for him and discovered he had killed himself long ago, I let you and your family be. I had no interest in tearing the three of you apart, only your father.” 

“W-why were you trying to find him? How could he have possibly been of use to y-“ my sentence stopped cold in its tracks. There had only been one reason Zemo was interested in HYDRA, why he had scoured file after file and become obsessed with the organization. And as I connected the dots, I quickly tried to scramble them again.

“Your father,” Zemo stopped once again, knowing his words would have a lasting impact on me, “Was one of the Winter Soldier’s handlers. One of the men in charge of containing, controlling and torturing the man standing next to you.”

In my life, I had known a little too much pain. There were three moments that stuck out as the worst in my life. The first was as a child when the police knocked on our door, telling us that my father had been found dead. The second was when Steve informed me that Sam was dead. This was the third and it struck me like a dagger in both my heart and back. My father had posthumously wounded me and betrayed me.

“I am sorry,” Zemo said, his thick accent dragging me out of my pain for only a second, “I don’t take any joy in telling you this.” It wouldn’t have mattered to me how he felt, my entire life was crashing down around me and I was struggling just to find the strength to draw another breath. My father had painted himself a veteran, he’d allowed me and my family to believe him to be a hero, when all along he had been working for the enemy. And the worst part of it all was that he hadn’t hurt just anybody…He had hurt Bucky.

There was nothing left to say, through my teary eyes I watched the red and silver blurs that were the Dora Milaje lead Zemo away. After the shock came the panic, leaving me to stumble away from Bucky to brace myself against the memorial statue. My breathing started to quicken as I conjured up images of my father, young and ambitious, hooking Bucky up to machines. Torturing him. Breaking him. He may not have been one of the masterminds behind the creation of the Winter Soldier, but he had played one of the worst parts. He had beaten Bucky down day in and day out, stripping him of his humanity and everything that made him the man I had fallen for. Now, however many years later, here I stood, the offspring of someone capable of such evil. 

A familiar hand gently gripped my elbow, “Y/n…”

“No,” I trembled, violently ripping my arm out of Bucky��s grasp, “No, don’t.” “Y/n, you didn’t do anything,” Bucky hurriedly assured me, reaching out for one of my hands, “You didn’t know-“ Guilt had taken full hold of me and I couldn’t stand to watch Bucky, the person who suffered most at the hands of my father, try to tell me that any part of this was acceptable. “Bucky, get away from me,” I took several steps backwards, holding a warning hand out, “You can’t.” “Don’t do this,” he urged, disregarding my order and walking closer toward me, “You’re innocent in all this.” “Stop,” I yelled through my tears, throwing up a force field to separate the two of us. Bucky looked heartbrokenly at the barrier, placing his metal hand over it and pleading with his eyes to drop it. “Don’t say it’s okay, don’t say that I’m innocent. H-he hurt you and I’m…I’m him.” Before Bucky could argue the point that I had no role in my father’s sins, I dropped the force field and redirected the energy to my palms. I shot into the air and flew off in the same direction we’d come, desperate to take myself as far away from Bucky as I could. I wouldn’t have hurt him even if my life had depended on it, but the guilt I felt for what my father had done to him was overwhelming. The whole time I had known him I’d been trying to help him through his trauma, so desperate to be of any service to him to save him from being swallowed by his demons. I had made my father the example, the cautionary tale, when all along he had been the villain. And I, in some way, felt responsible for all of it.

With Zemo’s one sentence, he’d taken a match to everything. The man my father had made himself out to be, my family’s belief in him, my belief in myself and the chance that Bucky and I could find happiness with one another. I wasn’t sure which one hurt the most to lose, all I knew was that my little experiment was over. A child of HYDRA trying to be a hero was nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

——

Three plane rides and one rental car later, I was turning my key in the door of my house, the only luggage with me was my newly attained emotional baggage.

It was past AJ and Cass’ bedtime, a thought that occurred to me as the front door creaked to announce my arrival. Had it been a normal night, Sarah and I might have watched a movie with them, indulging in ice cream sundaes before sending them to bed. We’d have retired soon after, a long day of catching and selling awaiting us at the crack of dawn.

How far away it all seemed now, this life that a week ago had been the only life I’d known...

I found myself frozen in the entryway, knowing once I took the first step in that I could no longer go back to who I’d been the past few days. The energy that I’d used to protect and shield those I cared about in battle would stay trapped forever in my veins. The drive I had to help people would have to be utilized in different ways, but never again on such a grand scale as saving the world. I was to go back to being exactly who I was before I’d gotten to notion in my head that I could play some bigger role in the world.

I took steady strides down my hall, each step taking me further and further away from the person I foolishly thought I could be. Walker had been right, I wasn’t a hero. 

I made my way into the living room, the sight of Sam dozing on our couch surprising me. The fact that he was here let me know that either he’d given up on Karli or there was simply nothing left to do. Knowing my brother, who never gave up on anyone or anything, it was the latter. I patted his knee just hard enough to alert him of my presence, he stirred and blearily opened his eyes, blinking a few times before focusing on me. “Hey.” “Did you bring back Sarah and the boys?” I asked, tossing my keys on a nearby end table.

“Safe and sound,” he answered, some of the tension in my body dissipating. I settled down next to him in the corner of the couch, the two of us leaning on one another physically and metaphorically. Since the beginning, it had always been Sam and I against the world. Now the world had gone against us and here we were, both fighting to keep our eyes open after being dealt a good many blows. 

“You went to see him, didn’t you?” I broke up the silence we were resting in, with our backs pressed to one another, I couldn’t see his face, “Isaiah.” “Yeah,” Sam mumbled, his head falling back against mine. I’d known since we’d left the man’s house that my brother wasn’t done with him, there were too many questions to be asked. “You guys catch Zemo?”

“Mmhmm,” I replied, knowing the inevitable question was coming but still praying it didn’t, “The Wakandans came for him.” “So where’s Bucky?” Sam asked tiredly.

With my last look at James Buchanan Barnes, I had seen heartache etched into every line of his face. The pain I had caused him when I’d barred him from coming any closer to me had birthed equal hurt within me. The last thing I had ever wanted to do was hurt Bucky, and I knew that between my father’s past and my disappearance from his life, I had done just that. But in my heart, I knew that eventually he would resent me for what my family had done to him. And the day when he stopped gazing at me with the softness in those piercing blue eyes I adored so much was a day I couldn’t bear to experience. The connection we had would eventually fade, he’d continue avenging and I would live quietly in my corner of the south. I was letting him go to protect him, to prevent him from having to relive every trauma every day each time he looked at me. It was my final way of helping him.

“He’s safe,” I answered, mumbling the words as my eyes watered and my voice threatened to crack.

----

A/N: ........So........How we feeling? (Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in this angst fest of a series!)

Safe Haven taglist: @tanyaherondale​ @wanniiieeee​ @asoftie4bucky​ @edencherries​ @i-reblog-fics-i-like​ @ttalisa​ @gcfty @withyoutilltheendofthismess​ @rinaispunk​ @weirdowithnobeardo​ @felicityofbakerstreet​ @godlypotterwhodiaries @eternalharry​ @voguesir​ @mizz-kraziii​ @okayline​ @smellmymisunderstoodfluff @wanderin-stories​ @nicklet94 @intricate-melody​ @aesthethickks​ @stumbleonmywords​ @simplybarnes​ @21bruhs​ @lostinwonderland314​ @superbookishhufflepuff​ @kaelyn-lobrutto24​ @zozebo​ @fandomxreaders @kittengirl998​ @sarai-ibn-la-ahad​ @i-know-i-can​ @x-judyjude-x​ @thebi-valkyrieofvalhalla​ @buckverse​ @living-that-best-life​ @haphazardhufflepuff​ @citlalireedus @lindseyrae20​ @missstef23​ @qhbr2013​ @sebby-stann​ @bluemoon-icecream​ @iixbella​ @lets-love-little-me​

[fleur-de-violette]

And I’ll look into your eyes to find out if I’m real

A3O Summary: Bruce wants a lot of things. A bath. Seeing his family. Not having been missing for a whole year.

He wants Dick to wake up and realize he’s not a hallucination.

Whumptober 2020 day 6 – Stop, please. Note: Have you seen that the whumptober 2021 prompts are out? They’re super cool and I didn’t finish the 2020 so it’s safe to say I won’t do them. Still, I’m excited for it.

Back to the fic, warning for hallucination, lots of crying and pretty much general angst. Enjoy!

-

Bruce wants a bath.

He wants a lot of things. One of them is a bath. He never considered himself too dependent on the luxuries that came with his civilian identity, but right now, he really wants to be in clean, warm water with a nice scent, maybe a few candles, and some relaxing music.

It isn’t as much about the bath itself, because he had the time to clean himself, warm up and relax his aching muscles in the shower, it’s the idea of it. He wants to be in a moment where he could allow himself to lose time without feeling guilty about the next crisis. These moments are too rare, if not nonexistent, in his life. And now isn’t one of these moments.

Bruce wants a lot of things.

He wants Alfred not to look so tired. He wants to see Tim smile, really smile. He wants to take the next flight to Hong Kong just so he can hug Cassandra. He wants to solve a case with Steph, watch that smart spark in her eyes and find out how much she grew up. He wants to go to Crime Alley and check on Jason. He wants to shake Gordon’s hand and to kiss Barbara’s hair. He wants to feel Selina’s body against his. He wants to understand Damian. He wants to see Dick’s eyes.

He hasn’t seen Dick’s eyes since he came back from time. Batman’s white lenses had left his son’s face sometime between the moment he passed out next to Damian and the moment a neurosurgeon removed a bullet from the inside of his skull. Dick had yet to wake up.

And Bruce hadn’t seen Dick’s eyes in a year.

It’s something that hasn’t happened since that fateful night at Haly’s Circus. Even when they weren’t talking, he always took the time to check on his ward. His son.

He never wanted things to go this way. He has all the money anyone could wish for and more, a position of power, both in one of the biggest companies on earth and in the most famous superhero team in the universe. He’d been trained by the best of the best.

And yet.

And yet he can’t stop his family from ripping to shreds.

The Joker is still loose. He’s got a dozen missed calls on his phone, mostly from Clark. He doesn’t care. Right now, he doesn’t care. He’s tired.

Dick must be tired too. Bruce tries to tell himself that this is the reason he hadn’t woken up yet. He’d been assured by several doctors that the surgery went well. Dick should wake up anytime now, and the confusion and pain will decrease within the next few weeks, leaving only a scar on the back of his head, until that, too, will be hidden behind the thick black hair Bruce hadn’t ruffled affectionately in ages.

Bruce’s hands hover over his son’s unconscious body, as if afraid of touching him. Of breaking him more than he already did. Not for the first time, he wonders what would have happened if he had ensured that the young boy from the circus found a good foster family and left him there. If he hadn’t, with all the vanity of a twenty-four-year-old millionaire, thought he was the only one who could take care of him.

He sighs. He lowers his head once again toward Dick’s face and sees two cloudy blue eyes looking back at him.

He blinks. Tries to control the avalanche of emotions falling upon him. “Hey,” he says, choking on his own voice.

He’s not really expecting an answer, so he’s surprised when Dick opens his dry lips and lets out a small, “Hey. Long time, no see.”

A tear Bruce knows Dick doesn’t even notice forms itself in his son’s eye. Bruce wipes it away gently. “Are you in any pain?” he asks.

“I’m okay,” Dick lies. Bruce doesn’t call him out on it.

“Do you remember what happened?”

Dick goes to shake his head but aborts the movement with a pained jerk. “No,” he says instead.

“Do you want me to tell you?”

Dick lets out a small laugh. “How would you know? You’re a figment of my imagination.”

Bruce suddenly feels very cold. He takes in both the knowledge that Dick doesn’t think he’s real and the implication that hallucinating him is something he’s familiar with.

His hand presses a little more on his son’s face. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m real.”

Dick closes his eyes and another tear escapes one of them. “Don’t. Please.”

“Talk to me. What can I do to convince you?” Bruce feels a pressure building behind his own eyes.

“Please, stop,” Dick repeats. “I can’t. I can’t believe you.”

Bruce takes a deep breath. “Okay, we’ll take all the time you need. You don’t have to believe me now, but you need to calm down.”

Dick is close to hyperventilating now, and Bruce wonders if he should just leave the room and let Alfred take care of him. But that seems too much like running away for his liking, and he’s been away long enough.

“I can’t believe you’re real,” Dick continues, not caring, or perhaps not registering what Bruce said. “I can’t, you’re not. I can’t hope, because what if I wake up and you’re gone? Again?”

Bruce feels his heart shattering into pieces, but he can’t let himself break down. “Breathe, Robin,” he says, immediately wincing when the name passes his lips.

Calling him by a title he hadn’t worn in years probably won’t help Dick’s grip with reality, but he can’t help it. Right now, he can only see a distressed child in front of him. A child who always responded well to this name.

And it seems that some things can’t be erased by time, because Dick gasps and takes a few more deep breaths, calming down. Bruce thinks the worst of it is over. He thinks maybe Dick will fall back asleep, and wake up again in a few hours, less confused this time.

He’s wrong.

Because not a minute later, Dick opens his eyes again, and says, “The real you would be much angrier than that.”

Bruce feels the mass in his throat, the one that appeared at the beginning of the conversation, start to grow again. “What? No, why would I be angry?”

“Let you down,” Dick answers in a way that makes Bruce wish he had never asked. “Disrespected your will. Let Gotham become a mess. Destroyed Batman’s name.”

“You didn’t,” Bruce murmurs. “You didn’t.” When Dick doesn’t seem to calm down, he adds, “You’re a better Batman than I’ll ever be.”

Because this is true. He doesn’t need Alfred of Gordon to tell him what he always knew. Dick is the essence of what Batman should be. He’s the Batman Gotham needs, even if she doesn’t deserve him. And for that reason, Dick shouldn’t have been Batman. He’s perfect, and he’s destroying himself.

Batman had never been a title to pass on, let alone to Dick. Sure, he trusted his son and first sidekick to take the mantle if he was unable to, but he never had wanted him to be Batman. No one but him was supposed to be Batman. Cassandra was the closest to the title, but she wasn’t ready, and he couldn’t let that burden fall on her.

Still, he hadn’t wanted it to fall on Dick, either.

“Why are you saying that?” Dick asks. Bruce can practically see the gears turning in his head. Good. He knows firsthand that Dick is a damn good detective. He will figure this out. “This is not something I believe or fear or want to hear. Why are you saying that?”

“I’m real,” Bruce repeats, and Dick lets out a sob.

“You’re not,” he protests, but Bruce can see his resolve weakening. “You’re not. Tim said, but you…”

He stops. Blinks. A few more tears fall out of his eyes, and Bruce knows his own aren’t dry either. “You’re real. You’re… please, be real.”

Bruce bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from breaking down. “I’m real,” he chokes. “I promise.”

Dick’s eyes go wide. “What about Damian?” he asks. “Aren’t you angry?”

Bruce sighs. What about Damian? This is a whole different question. The kid is sleeping in his room right now, having finally listened to Alfred, leaving his Batman’s side. He had barely said a word to Bruce.

Bruce has been gone for a year, not by choice, sure, but gone nonetheless, and now he doesn’t know where he fits, between his son in blood and his son in everything else.

Batman and Robin, a bond that can’t be broken. A bond that still exists, he hopes, between himself and Dick.

“I will talk with him,” he says because his relationship with Damian, his complicated feelings about the mere existence of Damian and his anxiety about having to work with him as a Robin, aren’t Dick’s responsibility. They never should have been. “I’m not angry with you.”

Dick blinks again. “My head hurts,” he finally admits.

Bruce’s hand hovers over the morphine drip. “Do you want more painkillers?”

“If I sleep,” Dick asks, “Will you still be there when I wake up?”

Bruce bends down, leaves a kiss on his son’s forehead. “I promise.”

“I don’t believe you,” Dick says. “But thank you, for being here.”

Still, he closes his eyes and his body relaxes a little. Probably as much as it is possible while recovering from brain surgery.

Bruce stays there a long time, his hand still on Dick’s face. He’s broken a lot of promises. But he’s sure of one thing.

He will be here when Dick wakes up again.

He will still be real.

Ending Note: Hope you enjoyed the fic! Many thanks to @ohmytoddhewitt for beta reading!

[peachy-panic]

WHUMPTOBER DAY 2: CHOKING

Direct continuation from this. 

MASTER LIST

Tag list: @distinctlywhumpthing

Warnings: captivity, choking, alcohol, noncon stripping, restraints.

Previous

Elijah pressed himself impossibly further into the corner, his earlier dilemma of dread versus anticipation resolving itself with the sharp spike of fear that cut through his core at the return of his captors. His feet — which had been left bare since his shoes were taken, along with everything except his underclothes — dragged against the gritty, dirt floor as he drew his legs tighter. An involuntary whimper curled in the back of his throat at the sound of keys sliding into a lock, his door jarring with the movement.

Even the dim spill of light from the hallway was agony on his eyes after hours in the darkness. He blinked against it as the door swung open, peeking up at the two silhouetted figures. His own erratic breathing was hot against his knees, coming in too-fast puffs as the men stared at him from across the room, unmoving. They whispered something to each other, quiet enough that Elijah couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“P-Please,” Elijah found his voice after a few beats, strung tight in his throat. “Please, just let me go.”

The shorter of the pair chuckled, and Elijah flinched, recognizing him by the sound as one of the men who had been directed to strip him earlier. His arms wrapped tighter around his body, the memory of the terror of what he had thought was going to happen in that moment pulsing in his veins. They’d had fun with it; delighted in Elijah’s panic as they shoved him from person to person like a ragdoll, ripping and pulling at his clothes until he was left in nothing but his undershirt and briefs, shivering down to his bones in fear. They had mocked him, smacking lightly at his face and gripping his jaw between hard, calloused fingers as he begged them not to hurt him.

He had been spared from further violence then, but any illusion of security he created now would be foolish. He had no idea what was going to happen to him, what they intended to do, only that he had no control over it. The best he could do was try not to think about it. Exist moment to moment and try to survive as long, or perhaps as painlessly, as he could.

“Can I…” Elijah swallowed hard, tentative eyes raising to theirs, searching for some shred of mercy he had yet to find in any of the men at the camp. But he had to ask. He had to. He was already so dizzy and his head pounded from dehydration, his body still struggling to acclimate to the heat of the foreign country on top of everything else. He couldn’t even bring himself to feel the humiliation of begging for basic necessities. “Can I please have some water?”

For a devastating moment, Elijah thought his plea would be rejected and felt a surge of panic at the thought of dying from dehydration alone in this filthy cell. The taller man looked down at him with an expression Elijah couldn’t quite read in the darkness but felt his skin crawling regardless. After a moment of consideration, he hummed an amused sound in the back of his throat, sauntering forward and crouching down beside the captive. Elijah recoiled, watching with wary eyes as the man dipped a hand into his vest, pulling out a large, rusted flask. He unscrewed the cap and extended it to Elijah, whose gaze flickered between the item and his captor’s face, trying to read the situation for whatever was at play. Unfortunately, he was hardly in a position to let skepticism outweigh his need.

“Drink.” The man shoved the flask closer, knocking into the side of his raised knee.

Elijah flinched at the sudden directness in his tone and took the offering with two shaky hands, not daring to push him. He didn’t allow himself a moment to hesitate before bringing the rim to his lips, his throat suddenly parched and aching under the realization of just how thirsty he was. He tipped the flask back and let the cool liquid rush into him, his body desperate for the sustenance.

He was two swallows in when fire erupted in his throat, a bitterness filling his mouth and stomach. He ripped the flask away, coughing and sputtering as his body tried to reject the liquid that was definitely not water. Before he could recover, a rough hand seized Elijah by the hair, yanking his head backward, and he let out a yelp between coughs.

“You said you were thirsty,” a mocking voice chimed in his ear. He registered what was happening just a moment too late, a muffled objection dying on his lips as the neck of the bottle was forced between his lips, knocking against his teeth. His hands rose instinctively to resist, fingers digging into the man’s muscular forearm in an attempt to push it away, but the grip on his hair didn’t budge.

It burned like poison in his throat. He tried to cry out around the intrusion in his mouth, but it sounded like he was drowning. He felt like he was drowning. He had never had a sip of alcohol in his life — if that’s what this was — and he hated it with every fiber of his being. His body threatened to expel it even as the bottle was still crammed down his throat, and it took all his willpower to hold it back, sparing himself a second choking hazard.

After an eternity of blind panic, the man released him and Elijah scrambled backward, his shoulder blades colliding with the stone wall again. He coughed and gasped, trying desperately to pull oxygen into his lungs and clear the spots from the edge of his vision. Distantly, he heard the two men laughing at him and couldn’t comprehend what he had possibly done to earn this kind of cruelty.

He started to cry.

“Please.” His bottom lip quivered as he looked up at them from the dirt floor, feeling more terrified and pathetic than he ever had in his life. “Let me go.” He broke off into a sob when the guards only laughed again, cold hopelessness washing over him. He pulled his knees up to his chest once again, his forehead falling forward against them. “I want to go home. I just-- I just wanna go home.”

“You should have thought about that before you went running off where you aren’t supposed to be,” one of the men chided.

“My… my camp— the group I’m here with,” Elijah tried again desperately. “They will notice I’m missing. They will have to report it to the church. They’ll have to get the police involved.”

The taller one crouched down beside him again until he was at eye level. He shot an amused look up at his counterpart before looking back at Elijah, something like amusement in his gaze. “You think so?” He tilted his head, looking at Elijah with faux sympathy. Mocking.

Elijah swallowed, trying hard to make himself level the man’s gaze. “They’ll know I went missing,” he repeated weakly, hating how much it sounded like he was convincing himself as much as anything.

The man clucked his tongue, then, bracing his hands on his knees, abruptly pushed himself to a standing position again. “Well, you’re right about one thing, then.”

Elijah’s eyebrows drew together in confusion as he watched the guard retreat to the doorway. He stuck his head out and whistled with two fingers to his lips. In a language Elijah couldn’t decipher, he shouted something, an order of some sort by the directness of the tone, down the hall. For a moment, there was no response. Then, the distant sounds of a struggle as more footsteps approached. The guard in the doorway looked back at Elijah, a satisfied grin on his face.

He didn’t understand what was happening at first, as two more figures came into view: one tall and muscular, similar to the build of the men who had taken him here, and the other pale and thin, caught in the larger man’s grip. There was something familiar about him, something that made Elijah’s mouth go dry even just from the silhouette in the doorway. Cold, hard dread sank like an anchor in his stomach as the details came into focus.

It was the shirt he noticed first. The stark white, short-sleeved polo emblazoned with the mission logo on the breast. They had all been given one at the megachurch before they made their journey overseas. It was the same one that had been slashed down the middle and torn from Elijah’s body only hours ago.

The hair, he noticed next. Striking red curls that glinted copper in the bare strips of light. It was the same hair that Elijah had been drawn to from the very first day at the airport.

Grayson Dawning was the house leader for the male sector of the mission, and the only person to offer to sit next to Elijah on the airplane. It has been a mostly quiet ride, but he hadn’t teased Elijah on his choice of books or made fun of him when he clutched anxiously at the armrests during takeoff and landing. He’d even given him a stick of gum to help alleviate the pressure in his ears.

And now… he was here? He was here. Elijah blinked at him, confusion and terror and a horrible, horrible guilt flooding up into his throat.

“No,” Elijah whispered, pushing to his feet on instinct and adrenaline alone. He steadied himself against the wall with one hand, watching the scene in front of him in horror.

The glow from the hallway illuminated Grayson’s face just enough to expose the raw, naked fear in his expression. Elijah could see the way the edges of his frame trembled in the silhouette. Wide, green eyes locked onto his from across the room, confusion and panic thrumming almost tangibly in the air between them. His hands were tied together in front of him with rope, his bicep enveloped almost completely by the man at his side, but otherwise he appeared to be unharmed. This, alone, allowed Elijah a single breath of relief.

Without warning, Grayson was shoved forward into the cell, stumbling and falling to his knees several feet out from Elijah. He froze in position, tensed and keeping his head bowed as if anticipating a blow, his bound hands clutched to his chest. Elijah watched helplessly, still holding onto the wall for support, his eyes glued to his kneeling companion.

Mercifully, and to the surprise of both of the captive missionaries, no further onslaught followed. The guards, all three of them, retreated into the hallway, pulling the heavy door shut behind them wordlessly. Elijah and Grayson stayed frozen as the keys jingling in the lock intercut with the sound of their staggered, labored breathing. Elijah watched their shadows retreat from under the door, listening to their footsteps grow quieter, their laughter muffled by distance. Then he turned his attention to the center of the room.

Squinting against the darkness that overtook the room again once the door was shut, he could make out Grayson’s figure, slowly uncurling to sit up on his knees. The small bit of moonlight was just enough to reflect on the whites of his eyes, directed right at Elijah.

The rhythmic thwips of water dripping from the window could be heard in the tense silence that separated them, two sets of terrified eyes cutting through the dark, clinging to each other for some spark of guidance, of hope, of comfort, finding none of the above.

Slowly, Elijah let his weight fall back against the wall, sinking to the dirt once again, into the same corner he had holed himself in for the preceding hours. Trembling hands wrapped around his knees, and he kept his eyes straight ahead, unable to look away from the petrified boy staring back at him. Of all the fear and pain and hopelessness that he had experienced since being brought here to this hell, none of them sliced as deeply as guilt.

“I’m sorry.”

*********

“The first thing you remember saying to him was an apology.” The doctor’s voice was soft, pulling him into focus. It wasn’t until she nudged the box of tissues closer to him on the coffee table that he realized his cheeks were wet with tears. “Why do you think that is?”

Elijah plucked a tissue from the top of the box, pressing it under his eyes. He didn’t look up at her as he answered, his gaze zeroed in on another well of moisture at the top of the window.

“Everything that happened… all that time we spent there…” He trailed off, watching the bead of water grow larger and larger, wondering when it would break. He didn’t bother using the tissue when another wave of tears rolled down his face. Finally, he met the doctor’s eyes. “He was there because of me,” he said. “Everything that happened there.. It was because of me.”

Next

[lightsinthedistancee]

Under the Cover of War: FO!Poe Dameron x Resistance!Reader

Pairing: FO!Poe Dameron x Resistance!Reader

Word Count: 2.4k

Summary: “‘Let’s go,’ he murmurs. ‘Let’s run.’ His gaze is fixed on you, begging for this. He needs you—he needs you to be there for him so that he has a place in the galaxy, a place he would never have otherwise. ‘Please.’”

Following the destruction of the Hosnian System, a promise and a dire decision are made by you and Poe.

Warnings: Language

“Why?”

The single word is clipped, volatile, dangerously soft in nature. It’s a question, a plead, an accusation, all at once. It seems to scream in the silence, to imply a million other queries that Poe doesn’t want to answer.

He simply remains quiet as he stares at your back turned to him. You sit on the edge of the bed, breath shaking, refusing to even look at him.

He inhales, blinking rapidly. “Sweetheart—“

“Why?” This time, it’s a scream. The sound is ragged, painful, your voice cracking. It makes him flinch, makes him draw into himself.

The loud cry echoes, disintegrates as the seconds pass.

He wishes he could transport himself back to five minutes ago, before either of your holos had rung. Before the First Order had reported a victory to him, before the Resistance had reported a devastating, unfathomable loss to you.

He wants to return to when he’d laid beside you, running his fingers down your sides, when the memory of pressing you into the sheets was still fresh in his mind.

But somehow he knows that whatever the two of you have will never return in any way.

“How could you?” you whisper, the shock of five of the galaxy’s most populous planets being obliterated in mere minutes still in the process of shattering you to pieces.

Poe wants to shrink into the air, disappear in moments. He knows you’re crying, that you can’t handle it. He’d be lying if he said he himself was handling it at all.

“I…I don’t know what happened.” He stares at the sheets, tears running down his own face. He can’t imagine it. The deaths of tens of trillions. Their screams, the pain they must have felt in the blinding light of imminent death.

Your hands tighten into fists as you shake. Your form is locked in tension, perhaps about to abruptly turn around and strike him, perhaps about to break and collapse into a distraught pile of bone and flesh. “You’re a liar.”

The words are akin to a strike itself. He near hisses, unstable in his new knowledge. “Why the fuck would they tell me? I’m not even a colonel.” His volume rises, swirling in the atmosphere, ready to completely burst free. “I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it—“

“But you certainly have something to do with those who ordered it!” You finally turn to him. You’re livid. Eyes red with tears, lips in a tight line, a glare that threatens to break him.

And your statement is not something he can deny. He deflates, silent. He can feel your eyes on him expectantly, but nothing comes.

When enough time passes, you stand from the bed, grabbing your things from the bedside table. As your fingers delicately wrap around the blaster you regularly carry around, he briefly thinks that perhaps you’re about to turn around and shoot him.

But you don’t, and something new finds home beside your anger: a heartbreaking sense of disappointment.

It’s on instinct when his hand shoots out, grasping your arm. “No, wait…please. Don’t go,” he says quietly.

You’re all he has. There’s nothing more to say other than that. Life in the Order is a cold one, always has been. While he may not agree with the side you’ve chosen, you’re the sole warmth in his life, the sole radiant light.

You jerk in his grip, but he tightens it, eyes unashamedly pleading with you, begging you to not leave him.

Even in the place you always meet him, buried beneath layers of rock, surrounded by passages of clandestine activity necessary in your illicitness, his meetings with you never fail to be the only times he’s truly happy.

“Please…,” he pleads once more, thumb running over your knuckles.

A debate takes place on your features, and he can read you better than he can anyone else. He’s the person you’d let into your heart, the person you’d revealed every personal secret to. He’s the one who’d whispered ‘I love you’ one fateful night, the one to whom you’d whispered it back. He’s the one that had challenged your blind loyalty to any ideology, the one to whom you’d done the same.

He can see all those things viciously, ruthlessly grappling with the horrifying events that had just transpired: bodies being ripped to shreds, building being reduced to dust, life being annihilated in fire.

And in an act of emotional obscurity, the two opponents are shockingly close.

It’s evident which wins out when you limply fall back to the bed, body slumping to lie down, eyes tiredly closed.

“Then tell me why,” you whisper, barely audible.

“Why what?”

“I want to know why you joined the people who did…this.”

And at that simple request, he feels his walls rise. Even if they’d fallen long ago when he was around you, they’d never truly disappeared.

“I thought we don’t talk about stuff like that,” says Poe quietly.

“Well, I changed my fucking mind.”

He gazes around the room, reminded of the sole thing that prevents full, unconditional commitment to the other. The space they are in is a brutal reminder of the fact, for it presents itself in sets of two, an embodiment of duality.

Two blasters on top of the bedside table. One polished and new, the other dull and thoroughly used.

Two sets of boots clumsily scattered by the door. One shiny, lacking a single scuff mark, one that’s appearance suggests it’s been passed through several owners.

Two jackets. One with the hexagonal, sixteen-rayed symbol of the First Order, one with the starbird of the Resistance.

It’s a glaringly horrid representation of the two of you, never destined to be the same.

“Did your tongue also vanish along with the five planets?”

He slowly comes back to the present with your words, forcing away his disconnect.

It’s not something he can afford right now. Maintaining his privacy, hiding the events of his past, concealing the cause of his motives—he can’t afford any of that if he wants you.

And somehow, all he does want is you. You, you, you—to the point that he wonders if it’s unhealthy, if it’s even real and true, but that’s something he refuses to consider in the moment.

Even though you’d seen some of the darkness through him, he is certain that your loyalty to light is stronger, if only marginally, and that means he has to tell. He has to reveal.

“My mother,” he simply says, gaze unfocused. “She was a rebel pilot. She died.”

The slight stirring of your body freezes. He’d never talked of his family’s loyalties; he’d always given the impression that they’d passively existed in the deluge of light and dark that had overtaken the galaxy.

“She’s why I joined.” He flinches at the memory, grimacing at the pain he’d felt as a boy. “She died because of rebellion recklessness. Because of belief in blind hope.”

The anger—it’s simmering once more, bubbling higher, inching further and further to the edge of his chest.

And he can tell yours is too. Your fingers grip at the sheets as your eyes narrow. “Reckless…blind…hope?” He’s questioning your belief, accusing it of something dangerously irrational, and you yearn to lash back on instinct, to defend the beliefs you’d lived your life by—even as your own doubts of it conceal themselves in the background.

He laughs bitterly, his voice rising again. “Don’t kid yourself. That’s what the New Republic lived off of, and it was a fucking mess.”

You tense up, practically shrieking your next words, wholly, viciously attacking him back. “Who are you to say that—“

“There were people revolting in the streets!” he yells, his voice perhaps even louder than yours had been. “There were people in the Outer Rim starving! It was chaos—“

“And the First Order is what? Orderly?”

“They’re better than you and your—“

And he falls silent all of a sudden. He stops himself.

He knows where this is going. It’d happened and been resolved before, but he has a sneaking suspicion that that won’t be the case if the two of you continue down this road.

“Fuck,” he groans under his breath, his back slumped as he rubs his face with his hands.

“Me and my what?” you ask quietly.

He just shakes his head.

You fall back to your laying down position, head burying in the sheets, trying to block everything out. He’s right. He’s entirely right. The flaw in the Light, the flaw in the Republic, but you can’t bring yourself to denounce the loyalty you’d inherited.

He sniffles, hiding his tears behind his hands, and his figure—he knows it’s one of pure pain. As good as he’d gotten at hiding his emotions, they always seem to show themselves in your presence, no matter how hard he tries to defeat them, and it’s undeniable that you feel them to the fullest.

“You say ‘mama’ in your sleep sometimes,” you whisper all of a sudden.

At the revelation, he goes still. It’s an unsettling thought…that perhaps you’d known of his weakness long before he’d willingly showed you, long before he thought you deserved to know.

That maybe you’d heard the words of him crying out for his mother before you’d even known the slightest deeply-personal thing about him, when you’d only known the feeling of him inside you and the feeling of his lips on yours and the weight of his body as he slept beside yours.

His reluctance to look at you only increases tenfold when the shame floods in. The shame of a lifetime at this point—of weakness regarding his family, of putting blaster bolts in people who didn’t deserve them, of not being able to let go of his past, something he’d been striving for his whole life.

It all externally devolves into a mere fit of subtle trembles.

“Poe?” Your tone is soft now, gentle. You’re on your knees, sitting up, a single hand on the side of his face joining the space between the two of you. A certain mixture of concern and inquisitiveness finds home in your eyes, and for a second, he thinks your expression reflects one of a person staring at a beaten-down, once-aggressive animal.

“I regret it—joining the Order,” he simply says, voice cracking. The gas, plasma, fire, flesh, and bone of the destroyed system fill his imagination. “Is that what you want to hear?”

“Only if you mean it.” There’s still no sympathy to your voice, but there’s a softer edge to it, the kind that’s always existed but disappears in every fight.

“I do.” He leans back into the pillows, forearm over his eyes. It feels as if this has been going on for far too long, for he’s exhausted.

Your hand finds its way into his curls, tracing from his hairline to the base of his neck. It’s hauntingly reminiscent of what he’d felt so passionately and tenderly before the conflict had even begun.

“All darkness dies in the light,” you whisper.

It’s an ambiguous statement to many, but he automatically knows what you’re asking of him—you want his darkness to die in your light.

And while part of him begs and yearns to submit to your wish, something about your words perturbs him—the words unsaid. His darkness…the one he’d held for so long, you don’t want it to disappear, you don’t want it to transform, no, you want it to die. You want him to kill it.

“I can’t,” he says softly, fingers fumbling with the sheets, almost hoping to blindly find you.

“The Light Side’ll—“

“I’m done with the fucking sides,” he interjects, his words lined with a sharp edge. A puff of air leaves his lips as he desperately wishes for calm, one with at least some semblance of permanence. He finally looks at you, eyes now completely devoid of any anger or menace they’d held before, just the sadness of someone who’d made one too many wrong choices. “It’s just pain either way, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” you admit, a brief expression of hesitance crossing your face. “But you have to choose.” The hesitance turns to anguish, a revelation in its most subtle form. “There’s more pain if you don’t, and perhaps…perhaps that’s why I chose my side.”

He props himself up on his forearms at the mere implication—the implication that your unwavering loyalty to the light is not so unwavering, that you’d gone head in like he had with his loyalty and was now beginning to doubt things.

“Some don’t choose—“

“And they suffer for it,” you interrupt, finishing his statement with your own thoughts. It’s something you’ve seen your whole life: those who don’t choose being made to do so—often in violence.

He laces his fingers with yours, delicately wrapping each of your digits around his palm.“We’ve suffered our entire lives, darling,” he muses. “Born into a galaxy at war, a brief respite, and then yet another one…just suffering, suffering, suffering…within us, around us…what’s a little more?”

The whole room seems to freeze as you peer at him, part curiosity, part doubt, part disbelief. “What are you suggesting?”

“I think you know,” he says softly. The warmth staring back at you is undeniably something you would die for.

“Say it.” Your whisper is said with the deepest conviction, awaiting the words that would cement your decision, perhaps a decision you won’t know until you hear the offer leave his lips.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs. “Let’s run.” His gaze is fixed on you, begging for this. He needs you—he needs you to be there for him so that he has a place in the galaxy, a place he would never have otherwise. “Please.”

Your breath shakes, just barely, contemplating, debating. There’s an inevitable weight to war, the kind that crushes people to pieces, and the temptation to run from such a force—it feels right. It feels right to be free, to live safer, to be with whom you want. “There’ll be sacrifices to make.”

“There’ll be sacrifices either way,” he insists, and you’re certain he’s right. “Darling….” His words fade off, and he surges forward, gently locking his lips with yours. It’s tender and pleading, the ultimate question asked once again through touch.

“Poe….” The way you say his name is filled with something decisive, something deliberate. The seconds pass. He waits. “Let’s go.”

..::::.. ..::::.. ..::::.. ..::::..

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[ibelongtowrath]

Repent - Simeon x Reader (Obey Me!)

A/N: I got an idea for a dominant Simeon and decided to combine it with a request I had. I will see all of you in hell. Prompt: “You have no idea how badly I want you.” Pair: Simeon x Fem!Reader Tags/warnings: NSFW/18+, dominance, cursing, degradation, oral sex, face fucking, spitting, finger fucking, squirting, choking, rough sex, and a whole lot of sin. NSFW below the cut!

My...why don’t you come to my room tonight, beautiful girl? I’m sure that you will look even more delectable, standing before me. - Simeon

Your hand reaches out, almost hesitantly, placing three quick, light raps on the door. Turning your hand around, nails briefly dig into your palms before fanning your fingers back out, nervously studying the lines etched into the skin. Were you really about to lay with Simeon, one of the holiest of beings? 

A few moments later, the lock unhinges with a click. Your heart begins to race, the accelerator stuck to the floor, pedal to the metal as the door opens; painstakingly slow, creaking in the effort. Rendered speechless, your eyes meet Simeon’s, the gentle, tender look in his allowing your shoulders to relax, not realizing you had been carrying so much tension.

“My, my, little lamb,” Simeon chuckles, a soft smile dusting his handsome face. “You certainly are prompt. Please, do come in.”

The Angel gestures for you to step in, closing the door behind you, the familiar click! of the lock almost jarring in the serene quiet of his bedroom. Shadows flicker across the room, painted in the light of the candle as the flames dance, casting a hazy glow in the low light, almost sensual. The ever-eternal darkness of the Devildom looms just outside the window, concealed by heavy curtains. You turn to study him, his features even more handsome in the candlelight, excitement gripping your heart once more.

Simeon pauses briefly, eyes drinking you in before striding slowly over to his nightstand where his D.D.D. rests. Picking up the phone, he crosses back over to you, pulling up a familiarly provocative photo: you, posed, back arching in snow-white lingerie, teeth biting your lip suggestively. Your eyes scan the screen, heart racing as though it might burst, that very same lingerie hidden beneath your clothes.

“Sinner,” Simeon hisses, circling you. “You dare tempt me, a Man of God…an Angel? One of the highest beings in all of the realms?”

The angel’s words drip with venom seemingly laced within every syllable. Goosebumps dart across your skin as your blood turns to ice, a shudder radiating throughout your body. Nervous eyes slowly flit from a set of soft, full lips to the Angel’s intoxicating jade gaze, beautiful enough to get lost in; tonight, though, what appears to be a searing annoyance is etched into his jewel-toned irises.

“Um....,” you stammer, words sticking behind your teeth.

You swallow. The Angel watches you, fighting a battle to conceal the smirk that so badly wants to paint his handsome face. How could you think to tempt him, an Angel? He won’t tell you yet, though, that he wanted nothing more than to tear the clothes off your body, kneel between your legs and taste your sweet nectar upon the receipt of your gift.

Simeon revels in the control he has; though, he is more than aware that he is to be a representative of all celestial beings, destined to uphold standards of purity while in the heart of all that is not pure, in Hell. But, oh, oh...how badly he wants to sheath himself in the constricting warmth of your walls, to taint you with the colors of his sin.

Simeon steps toward you. Your gaze rakes over his body, unable to control the wanton desire flowing deep within your veins. He can feel the yearning, sees it written in the delicate features of your beautiful face.

“I thought you would enjoy it,” you respond, holding steady. “We were just talking the other day, you joked about me tempting you...and you’ve invited me here.”

“And did you think my resolve was so weak that I would give in so easily to such temptation? To bring me to sin?” Simeon bites back. “I am nothing like these demons, these beings with no remorse about committing such acts, acting upon their sins without a shred of inhibition.”

He won’t tell just yet that he, too, aches to indulge you, to give you exactly what you want, for it is exactly what he wants as well. No. Not yet. First, he must make sure you understand: to lay with an Angel, to corrupt him, comes with a price. 

It is not as though Simeon had never sinned before. Even the highest of the celestial beings relinquished control to their temptations, and quite often. He certainly was no stranger to it. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone. The entire Celestial Realm would be at a standstill. No, he would simply ask for forgiveness, as they all did.

In the meantime, he will certainly enjoy playing with his food before he sinks his teeth into your flesh, leaving his mark on you. Demons are not the only beings with sharp fangs.

“What am I going to do with you, my dear?” Simeon muses, his eyes drinking in the sight of you before him.

Simeon circles to your back slowly, almost achingly so, like a lion ready to pounce on its prey. He reaches out with a hand, weaving the fabric of your shirt between his fingers and tears it off your body, smirking as you gasp in surprise. 

“Are you surprised at my strength, little lamb?” he asks, injecting his smug demeanor into each word. “Thinking of us Angels as weaker beings compared to your precious Demon Lords, hm?”

He moves to stand before you, fingers dancing up your torso before reaching between your breasts to the band connecting the cups of your bra. He tugs, ripping the carefully-coordinated lingerie in two; your breasts spill out, and you shiver from the exposure, the room unexpectedly cold as your nipples harden. 

Simeon threads his hands into your hair, tugging you forward to his bed. You lower yourself to sit as he pulls your hair again, urging you to lay supine, on your back. You swallow, heart beating rhythmically; the wetness between your legs an obvious indicator of your abundant arousal. As if sensing this, he makes quick work of removing your jeans, sliding a few fingers across your panties, and smirking at the way your excitement seeps into the flimsy fabric.

“Naughty thing...have you no remorse either, just like these demons? Making yourself so wet, so lustful for me?” he purrs, rubbing his fingers harder against your panties and relishing your mewl of pleasure and aching desperation before tearing them off of your body, exposing your glistening heat. “Tsk, tsk.”

Briefly teasing his thumb over your sensitive bundle of nerves, Simeon steps back, smirking as he walks back to the nightstand. Turning your head to the side, you observe him, admiring the expanse of his back, the cutouts of his top that give a delicious peek at the defined muscles of his v-line. Watching as he pulls out rosary beads, metal glinting in the hazy low light of the room, adorned with a cross.

“Such an insatiable little slut,” he continues. “What exactly have you imagined me doing to you, little lamb? Perhaps you have lain in your bed at night, a hand between your legs, touching yourself to the thought of me doing something like…” 

Simeon pauses, lowering himself between your legs, placing featherlight kisses along the delicate flesh of your inner thigh; his teeth sink into the soft skin, eliciting a gasp of pleasure from your sinful lips as he makes his way to your sex. His tongue darts out to place a few slow, sensual licks into your sweet arousal, curling his tongue to fully taste your essence as his nails find purchase on your thighs.

“...this?”

He smirks again, your moans like the sweetest melody to his ears.

“You have no idea how badly I want you, pet,” Simeon moans, softly. 

His lips linger between your legs for a few blissful seconds before he pulls away, straightening himself and feeling his cock twitch at the sight of you spread open like a forbidden tome. He begins to drag the beads between your wet folds, soaking them in the nectar of your lewd excitement. You keen at the sensation, moaning as the beads massage the swollen bundle of nerves at your core. He leans over you and holds the rosary, slick and shining in the flickering candlelight, against your lips.

“Open your mouth and taste your sin on this sacred relic, sinner,” Simeon commands.

Your lips part, tongue reaching out; taking the beads in, tasting yourself off of them with a moan. Simeon’s cock strains harder against the constricting fabric of his white pants, desperate to give in to his carnal desire and bury himself between your walls. He swallows, urging himself to keep control, to not give in just yet. 

He needs to see you struggle just a bit more.

Easily sliding two fingers inside of your dripping heat, Simeon smirks at your lewd gasp, curling them upward to elicit another loud moan. He adds another finger, skillfully pumping and curling in a come-hither motion; your wetness dripping down his hand, spilling onto the top of your thighs.

“Oh, my...someone is certainly excited for me, hm?” he teases, pressing harder against your walls, smirking at your lewd, pleasure-filled gasp.

“First...I will recite a prayer of forgiveness for you, dirty sinner, as I have sincere doubts you know of it,” he spits. “You are not to cum until I am finished. If you do, you will face consequences.”

Simeon increases the pace of his fingers, continually pressing into that sweet spot, letting the sensation overcome you. His cock hardens, straining harder against his pants as he listens to your sweet, sweet moans; thoughts rendering nearly incoherent watching you arch your back in pleasure. His breath hitches as he inhales, closing his eyes and beginning to recite:

“Have mercy on me, O God,

according to Your unfailing love;

according to Your great compassion

blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity

and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is always before me.

Against You, You only, have I sinned

and done what is evil in Your sight,

so that You are proved right when You speak

and justified when You judge...”

The Angel feels you tighten around his fingers, your impending release imminent. He continues his ministrations, reciting the prayer for both your repentance and his. 

“S-Simeon, I’m going to cum…,” you whine, gasping as your thoughts cloud over with pleasure.

He grins, relishing the way you cry out and arch your back as your release begins to grip you. You shudder, the blazing fire of your pleasure washing over your body as your back arches and body jerks forward. 

Simeon smiles, dark and wicked. You moan his name loudly as your fluid arousal gushes from between your legs, dripping down your thighs, making dark wet marks in his sheets; undeniable evidence of your sins displayed before him.

“Oh, little lamb,” he purrs, pulling his slick fingers from you. “I couldn’t even finish my prayer before you came all over my hand like the dirty little slut you are. I did say you would face the consequences if you could not control yourself. Now...”

Fingers threaded through your hair, Simeon tugs you up to a standing position. Legs shaking, you stumble, whimpering in surprise. He turns you around, gently, tracing a finger down your spine painstakingly slow, watching as the goosebumps prick your skin, shuddering in the feel of it. 

Your heart pounds, chest rising and falling rapidly, labored with the effort of your panting breath. Hands reach forward, tucking your own behind your back, wrist atop wrist. Cool metal kisses your skin as the Angel wraps the rosary beads around them, binding them together. He leans forward, gently pushing your hair aside before pressing a soft kiss into the back of your neck.

“Face me, beautiful girl,” he whispers into your ear, breath tickling against your skin.

You obey, turning slowly, head down. Simeon tucks a finger under your chin, lifting your face to meet his gaze with yours before moving his hand down, fingers lightly wrapping around your throat. 

“Kneel,” he orders. “You filthy fucking sinner. Get on your knees before me.”

He squeezes lightly, not enough to hurt but to emphasize before releasing his hand and tightening his grip on your hair as the Angel yanks you down to your knees. Your eyes widen, watching as he begins rolling down his white pants, exposing his swollen length. A nearly feral desire fills you, teeming with need; wanting nothing more than to get close to him, to nibble his hip bones and eyeing his hardness with frantic hunger. He looks down at you, a wicked grin turning up at the corner of his lips.

“You’re just like these demons,” he hisses, “no hesitation before giving in to your desires.”

Gripping his hand tighter in your hair, Simeon pulls your head forward and begins to thrust into your mouth, slowly at first, allowing you to adjust to him. His hips move back and forth, achingly slow, groaning in the feeling of his cock ensconced in the wet warmth of your mouth.

“I’m going to fuck your mouth, little lamb, and if you’re a good girl...perhaps I will indulge you, and fuck that tight little pussy. I will fill you with the seed of an angel, and you will be mine.”

Simeon increases the pace of his hips, rocking faster, caring little for your comfort. Desperately trying to relax your throat, a few gags escape your lips. His head drops back briefly in pleasure, groaning as he feels his cock slamming into the back of your throat. Tears form in the corners of your eyes, raining down your cheeks.

“Keep your eyes on me, my pretty little slut,” Simeon commands, bringing his head forward once more. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Your eyes flit to look up at him, face stained with tears as he fucks your mouth, focusing on his beautiful jewel-toned gaze. After a few more thrusts, he groans, tugging your hair and pulling you off of his cock, spit coating your chin as you inhale sharply and deep, relieved at the break.

“Get on all fours on my bed, lamb,” Simeon orders, “in a prayer position. Or is that unfamiliar to you?”

You nod, hands still bound behind your back by the sacred rosary. You rise to your feet slowly, legs shaking slightly, knees reddened, lines etched across them from the wooden floor biting into the skin. You turn around, making your way to Simeon’s bed, immaculately made. Simeon places a hand on the small of your back, guiding you onto the mattress, lowering your head to the pillow. Spreading your legs, you arch your back, backside pointed to the Celestial Realm.

“I suppose you can’t have your hands clasped in prayer before you when they’re bound behind your back,” he laughs. “Let’s fix that, shall we?”

Simeon removes the beads restraining your wrists, lacing his fingers through yours and squeezing briefly before moving your hands above your head. Removing his own, he intertwines your fingers, wrapping the rosary around your wrists painstakingly slowly before pulling them just barely tight enough to restrict their movements. 

Leaning forward, he presses a soft kiss to the back of your neck before lowering your head against the pillow. He teases a few fingers between your legs, thumb dancing over your clit. You mewl, pushing back against him, aching to feel him buried to the hilt inside of you.

“S-Simeon,” you whimper.

“You want to know what it’s like to be fucked by an angel, my pretty little sinner?” Simeon asks. “Beg me.”

Keening, you turn your head to look at the Angel behind you. Raw need flowing fiercely, your excitement coating your wet folds and dripping onto the backs of your thighs, shining in the hazy candlelit room as your lips part to beg.

“Please, Simeon, please fuck me,” you whine, voice laced with feverish desire. “I need to be fucked. Please.”

“Good girl.”

Satisfied with your mewling begs, Simeon decides to indulge you; though he also is indulging himself, hardly able to hold back anymore. He thrusts into you roughly, relishing your pleasurable cry of surprise as a smug smirk paints his face, contrasting his otherwise serene beauty.

 “You’re so tight and so wet for me, my beautiful sinner,” he breathes, groaning at the sensation.

He moves his hips back and forth achingly slow, allowing you to adjust to the stretch of his cock between your walls. Your own body pushes back against him, desperate for him to go faster, harder, burying himself to the hilt and he grins at your evident eagerness.

“Fuck me harder, Simeon, harder,” you keen, turning your head to the side and moaning. 

The Angel chuckles, bending forward, lips next to your ear; his warm breath kissing your skin as he speaks.

“You have been such a good little slut, I will indulge you...though you should be careful what you wish for, pet. We can be equally as relentless as demons,” he murmurs, nails digging into your hips.

His own hips snap into yours at an unforgiving pace, fingers tightening their grip, pulling you back in perfect time with his thrusts. The carnal sound of two bodies coming together pierces the otherwise still quiet of the room, lit by flickering candlelight; casting a sinful shadow across the room.

“Did you imagine this as well, when you touched yourself to thoughts of me at night? My cock buried inside of you, dripping all over me as I bring you immense pleasure?”

You cry out in ecstasy, each slam of his body against yours eliciting a mewling gasp from your lips. Simeon snakes a hand around you, thumb circling your clit. He spits on your back, continuing your song and dance to an animalistic rhythm only the two of you can hear.

“Is this exactly what you wanted, my little lamb? To lay with a Holy Being, so you can say that you’ve laid with the Highest and Lowest of beings in all the realms?” Simeon growls.

Another feral growl of pleasure rumbles from his chest, feeling your tight heat clenching down around him. He rubs your clit faster, thrusting harder, eager to coax out your release; desperate to feel his own.

“That’s right, my beautiful, filthy sinner. Cum for me. Scream my name and fill this Hell with the sounds of your repentance,” Simeon rasps, edging closer and closer to his climax. “Sing it to the highest of the heavens, the holy Celestial Realm. I want to hear that sweet melody of the sinful pleasure I am giving you. Cum for me.”

As if on cue, you shudder, feeling the sweet pleasure of your release ignite, pulsing waves of electricity across your body. 

“F-fuck, Simeon!” you moan, pulling against the rosary beads wrapped around your wrists, desperate to curl your fingers into his skin, the floor, anything as your orgasm grips you.

His own release chases yours, the sound of his name from spilling your lips as you are in the throes of ecstasy pushing him over the edge. He groans, filling you with the seed of his sin. Panting, Simeon presses his chest flush to your back, peppering soft kisses across your shoulders and the back of your neck as he unties the beads from your wrists. He pulls you into his arms, both of you breathing heavily; his head drops down to crash his lips against yours, stroking your cheek with his thumb.

“My little lamb,” he coos, kissing your cheek, “you are something else.”

Simeon grins at you, tilting your head up to meet his eyes. You can’t help but grin back at him, face shining in the afterglow of orgasm. His breath hitches, reaching another hand up to brush his thumb across your lips.

“God help me. I believe I am going to be reciting many prayers of forgiveness in the near future. I hope He doesn’t tire of hearing them.”