#like once you leave the coast here it is so empty

[jessiesjaded]

There is just something so calming about driving off for hours and hours out in the country, barely anyone or anything

[propertyofwicked]

CAUGHT - LN

summary - sneaking around finally catches up to lando and his best friends little sister

warnings: smut at the very beginning, angst + swearing but fluff!! (fewtrell!reader)

part 3 to first and quiet

masterlist the playlist

“we really need to stop meeting like this,” lando grunted breathlessly, his thrusts never faltering as he bent y/n over the bathroom sink once more.

“maybe try not being so famous and recognisable and we could go on a date? to a restaurant?” y/n panted in response, hips rolling into lando’s tight grip on her waist, “like normal people?”

“but that would spoil the fun,” lando whined jokingly, “besides, if everyone knew about us, we’d have to start fucking in normal places. i don’t know about you but something about this bathroom really does it for me,” he added with a smirk, catching her eyes in the mirror.

“the toothpaste splatter real- fuck,” she started, cut off by the moan wrangling from her throat as lando pushed his length deeper, the pressure of the cold, bathroom counter pushing on her stomach, “keep going, fuck.”

“so good f’me, baby,” lando replied, feeling the way her walls tightened around him as he praised her, “all mi-”

“y/n? are you home?” max called out from the bottom of the stairs, sliding off his shoes.

“fuck sake,” lando groaned, stilling his hips but leaving his cock pressed deep inside of her, “i hate your brother.”

“y-yeah! i’m just….having a shower?” she called out in response before pushing herself up, pressing her back to lando’s chest before whispering, “no you don't. you do, however, need to get out of here without him seeing you.”

“have you seen lando?” max shouted again.

yes, he’s right here and he was very close to bringing me to orgasm, y/n internally grumbled as lando removed himself from her, finding his clothes quickly and tugging them on in a hurry.

“erm, not recently, no!” she replied, wincing slightly at the way her voice stuttered with the lie, her eyes making direct contact with the man in question. his arm reached around her, leaning into the shower and switching the dial quickly, spatters of water landing on his arm as he quickly retracted it.

“right you,” lando started, hands coming to hold her jaw, “shower. i’ll see you later,” he added, pushing her towards the shower, but not before pressing a quick kiss to her forehead, his heart softening at the sight of her eyes slowly closing in his embrace. he walked to the door, slowly prising it open as he peered through the gap, checking the coast was clear. nodding to himself at the empty hallway, he made a run for it, trying to walk in a way that exuded casual, but with some speed in his step.

had he only looked harder, he may have noticed his best friend stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching as he crept his way out of the bathroom.

y/n stepped into the shower, turning on the water just enough to create some steam. she wasn't really there to get clean; she needed a moment to compose herself and keep up the pretence that she was, in fact, taking a shower. she ran her fingers through her hair, feeling the cool droplets against her skin, and sighed.

and as she entered the kitchen, now with convincingly damp hair, y/n saw max sitting at the kitchen island, staring at the wall. his jaw was clenched tight, but every so often, his face would droop in confusion. he looked like he was trying to piece together a puzzle with missing pieces.

"hey, max," y/n said casually, trying to keep her voice light, "what do you want for dinner tonight?"

max didn't respond immediately. he continued to stare at the wall, his fingers drumming lightly on the counter. finally, he turned his head slowly to look at her.

"why did you say you hadn't seen lando recently," he started, his voice strained, "when he literally walked out of the bathroom you were in? i know your eyesight's not great, but i think even stevie wonder would notice a literal human being stood in the bathroom with him."

y/n's heart skipped a beat. she hadn't expected him to put it together so quickly. "max, i can explain..."

max interrupted, standing up and pacing. "i just don't get it. why would you lie about something like that? why was lando in there with you?"

y/n took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. "i didn't mean to lie, max. it's just... complicated."

"complicated?" max echoed, stopping to face her. "you call sneaking around with my best friend complicated?"

"yes, it's complicated," y/n said, her voice rising slightly. "because i didn't know how to tell you without you freaking out like this."

"freaking out?" max said, throwing his hands in the air. "you think this is freaking out? i'm just trying to understand why my sister and my best friend have been hiding this from me. whatever this is."

“max, i-” lando started, emerging from the doorway from where he’d been listening in.

“and you? of all people, you?” max argued, directing his anger at lando, “how did i piss you off that badly that you decide to fuck my little sister for revenge?”

“it’s not like that, we-”

“have you had sex with my sister?” max interrupted bluntly.

“well yes, bu-”

“how long?” max asked, turning to his sister for an answer.

“i’d say 6 and half inc-”

“how long have you been seeing each other, y/n?”

“3 months? 4?” she conceded, allowing her attempt of lightening the situation to wash over, ”and may i just say - insinuating that all i’m good for is a revenge shag? thank you so much for that,” she added sarcastically, smiling at him with no happiness behind it.

“are you serious? 4 months? lando? couldn't you have picked someone else?" max continued to argue, refusing to allow the guilt of his insulting comment to weigh on him in this moment, “literally, anyone else?”

“ouch,” lando commented, looking to the ceiling to avoid the awkwardness in the room, narrowly avoiding the daggers being shot at him from max’s stare.

“well maybe i would’ve if you hadn’t threatened anyone who tried,” y/n sighed, sick of his attitude, “is it that hard for you to just be happy for me? truly, would it kill you?”

“it might,” lando added.

“why didn’t you tell me?” max asked, looking to his sister as his voice lowered for the first time since she’d stepped into the kitchen.

"oh, sure, let me just check with you next time i develop feelings for someone. you don't get to control my life,” y/n rolled her eyes - max may be calming down, but she was just getting started.

“i care about her, max,” lando interrupted, trying to control the situation as he noticed the way y/n’s hands balled into fists against the worktop, “and i didn't want to hurt you or make things awkward between us. it was my idea not to tell you, ‘cos i didn’t know how.”

“we didn't want to cause any drama."

"too late for that," max muttered.

“clearly,” y/n responded bluntly, turning on her heel and heading towards the door as she stormed off in anger. but before she could leave, lando caught her, his grip firm but gentle.

"y/n, wait," he said softly, turning her back to face max. y/n felt lando's hands stay on her hips, rubbing gentle circles into her skin to calm her down. she relaxed slightly but kept her gaze fixed on max.

“i'm sorry for how you found out, but you have to understand that i'm capable of making my own decisions,” y/n said, her voice steady but still tinged with frustration, "finding out your own brother is the reason you have felt so alone for years is not a pleasant feeling, max.”

“it was for your own good.”

“my own good?” she scoffed, feeling the anger rise in her chest again, “for the sake of your own good i suggest you leave right now.”

“this is my house? i live here?”

“yeah? and if you don’t leave now you’re also going to die here,” she gritted, feeling lando’s fingertips press into her skin as a warning that maybe she maybe shouldn’t be so aggressive.

“fine,” max muttered, walking past the two of them and swiftly grabbing his shoes and coat before leaving the house, letting the door slam behind him.

y/n stood frozen for a moment, staring at the closed door. the weight of the situation finally caught up with her, and she felt her composure slipping, her shoulders shaking as the first tears began to fall.

lando was by her side in an instant, turning her round and wrapping his arms around her, pulling her into a tight hug. "it's okay, baby," he murmured, rubbing her back in soothing circles, "let it out."

the dam broke, and y/n let herself cry, all the anger, exhaustion, and frustration pouring out in a torrent of tears. she clung to lando, her fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt as she sobbed into his chest. lando held her close, whispering comforting words and continuing to rub her back.

after what felt like an eternity, y/n's sobs began to subside. she pulled back slightly, her face tear-streaked and red. she looked up at lando, her eyes filled with regret.

"we should've been more careful," she whispered, her voice hoarse.

"no, y/n,” lando shook his head, his expression firm, “your brother should be less of a dick. this is your life, you live it how you want to, and if he can't handle that, then that's his own burden to bear."

y/n sniffled, wiping at her tears with the back of her hand. "but he's my brother. i don't want to lose him over this."

"you won't," lando assured her, his hands cupping her face gently. "he's just shocked right now. he'll come around. but that doesn't mean we should regret being together."

y/n nodded slowly, taking a deep breath. "you're right. i'm just... so tired of all this."

"i know," lando said softly, pulling her back into his embrace. "but we'll get through it."

they stood like that for a while, the quiet of the house enveloping them. y/n felt the last of her tears dry up, replaced by a renewed sense of determination.

“i’m proud of you, y’know,” lando started, causing y/n to pull back slightly to look up at him again.

“why?”

“you stood up for yourself,” he smiled, “in all the years i’ve known you, i don’t think i’ve ever seen you stand up for yourself - not even to max. that’s why.”

“thank you,” she mumbled, before grinning at him, “turns out getting fucked daily fills me with confidence - not just cock.”

[sinful-mind-joyful-thoughts]

𝙎𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙧𝙢...

Read part 2 here - Soup...

*vision bored doesn't describe readers' looks it describes the vibes of the story*

screencaps: @din-jarring they are amazing, the best most amazing person. I definitely recommend you check them out 🫶🏻

Pairing: dark!Raider!Joel Miller x fem!virgin!reader

Summary: Seven years after the outbreak and with two days of starvation looming, desperation drives you to attempt stealing from your own assailant. But in this dire bid for survival, what unforeseen consequences await?

Warnings/tags: MDNI 18+, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT, BLOOD, VIRGIN READER, breaking and entering, bondage (belt), groping, spit, fear, non/dub-con, guns, toxic people, degradation, praise, (maybe kind of), fingering kinda, biting, male moaning, breeding kink, kissing, kidnapping, mean joel, daze, kinda inexperienced reader, UNprotected sex wrap it before you tap it, kids. THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT YOU CONSUME

WC: 2.5K

Your pulse quickened as a looming silhouette tore through the door of your family's cabin, a formidable rifle in hand. The once serene sanctuary of your family retreat had morphed into something ominous during the seven years since the outbreak. Time had shrouded the cabin in secrecy, but now it felt like it held more secrets than safety. With no one around to offer aid and your provisions dwindling, a sense of foreboding gripped you. Who was this intruder, and what did they want?

Huddled behind the worn fabric of the couch, you trembled, trying to decipher the intruder's intentions. The eerie silence of the cabin was only broken by the sound of your racing heartbeat and the slam of the empty cupboards. The emptiness of the cupboards, devoid of sustenance for two long days, added to the dread coiling in your stomach.

Your father's departure had cast the first shadow of unease. Taking the only means of protection—a small pistol—he left behind a void filled with questions and fear. When days stretched into weeks without his return, your mother embarked on a desperate quest to find him, leaving you alone to wrestle with gnawing uncertainty.

Peering cautiously from your hiding place, you observed the intruder ransacking the kitchen. Panic surged as you spotted the cabin door ajar, a white van parked conspicuously outside. Desperation prompted a daring idea – if there was nothing left to steal, why not take whatever the intruder possessed? With knowledge of the terrain on your side, you calculated a plan to hide in the woods until the coast was clear.

You watched the intruder's every move, hoping for the perfect moment to act. When he cautiously ventured into the bathroom, likely searching for supplies you lacked, you seized the chance to make your move. With a deep breath to steady your nerves, you slipped out the door and tiptoed toward the van, determined to reclaim control of the situation.

Peering into the dim interior, you scanned for any signs of danger before cautiously stepping inside. The van's interior was a jumble of crates and boxes, their contents obscured by shadows. Time was of the essence, so you swiftly lifted the tarp covering the crates, revealing precious bottles of water. With careful precision, you gathered as many as you could carry, ensuring not to drop any or create any disturbance.

Exiting the van, you concealed the bottles in a nearby bush, intending to wait there until the intruder departed. Once the water was safely stashed, you returned to the van, continuing your search. As you reached for a few cans of canned food, you suddenly found yourself confronted by a terrifying sight: a tall, muscular man with a rifle pointed directly at your face.

The sound of the cans dropping from your hands seemed to fade away as you stood there frozen in fear, unable to move or even think. The man had a heavy, muscular build, with dark hair and an incoming beard that made him look even more menacing. It was clear that he had been watching you, and that he had no intention of letting you leave without a fight.

As you struggled to comprehend the situation unfolding before you, the man's voice shattered the eerie silence, causing a shiver to run down your spine. "Caught red-handed, are we? Thought you could just waltz in and help yourself to my supplies?" His words were like a cold slap in the face, jolting you into a state of panic.

Before you could utter a word in response, he roughly pushed you onto your back, the barrel of the gun pressing into your chest. Fear gripped you tightly as you found yourself unable to move, your mind racing with thoughts of imminent danger.

"Please, I didn't mean any harm. I'll put everything back, just please don't hurt me," you pleaded, your voice quivering with desperation. But your words seemed to fall on deaf ears as he grabbed your arm with force, pushing your chest against the center console. Your heart sank as the cold metal of the gun dug into your back, a sense of hopelessness washing over you.

In that moment of vulnerability, you couldn't help but curse yourself for choosing to wear a dress today. The fabric rode up your thighs, leaving you feeling exposed and defenseless. It served as a harsh reminder of how unready you were for the predicament unfolding before you. While you weren't naive, you'd had discussions before, even received "the talk" about the delicate subject of virginity. But contemplating the act itself was a realm you never envisioned venturing into, especially not now. The weight of such responsibilities loomed heavy on your mind, intertwining with the immediate danger at hand, creating a tangled web of fear and uncertainty.

He knelt behind you, his rough, calloused hand replacing the gun at your back. "You want to leave here in one piece? Then you better be prepared to compensate me for what you were trying to steal," he demanded, his grip firm as he lifted the hem of your dress.

As panic surged through you, you attempted to break free, but his hold only tightened. He swiftly changed tactics, his unfamiliar touch gripping your waist just above where your panties ended. With a rough tug, he pulled down your panties, his words and actions leaving you feeling exposed and vulnerable.

"Now that's a pretty lookin' pussy," he taunted, his fingers tracing over your folds. You squirmed uncomfortably under his touch, his chuckle sending shivers down your spine.

Feeling trapped and afraid, you remained frozen, unable to escape his looming presence.

He started to palm your bare clit, making sure to rub the wet spit onto your pussy. You were starting to become wet at his actions, he rubbed his middle finger around your damp pussy teasing you, making you squirm again. “I like it when you squirm. Makes things more interesting," he chuckled, his words sending a shiver down your spine. In a desperate attempt to escape his unsettling presence, you jolted forward, scrambling towards the front of the van, hoping to create some distance between yourself and the menacing figure behind you. He pulled you back and firmly grasped your shoulders, preventing you from escaping further. Then, he cupped your face with his hands, his touch possessive yet tender, his eyebrows lifting in a silent question as his husky voice filled the space between you.

"I'm never—" he began, his lips pressing against yours briefly before he lowered his voice, his gaze locking onto yours, "gonna let you go." His thumb traced gentle circles on your temple, a stark contrast to the intensity of his words.

But then his touch shifted, his lips leaving yours to trail along the curve of your neck and shoulders, igniting a tingling sensation that sent shivers down your spine. It was as if he was trying to seduce you, drawing you in with each caress.

Returning to your lips, he initiated another kiss, and you found yourself torn between conflicting emotions. Part of you felt trapped and scared, but another part couldn't deny the thrill coursing through you. As he deepened the kiss, you found yourself responding, losing yourself in the moment.

Finally pulling back, a small smile played on his lips as he shook his head in disbelief. His voice dropped to a whisper as he repeated his vow, "Never."

As one of his hands traveled down your stomach, a shiver ran down your spine, and he began planting kisses along your neck. For a moment, you closed your eyes, lost in the sensation, feeling a sense of serenity wash over you. But reality crashed back down as he suddenly shoved you forcefully onto the center console. Your head collided with something hard, causing a sharp pain to shoot through you, and blood began to gush from your nose.

Shocked and a little dizzy from the sudden impact, you struggled to gather your bearings, your head throbbing as blood continued to trickle from your nose. Blinking rapidly, you tried to focus, but the dizziness made it difficult to think clearly. Panic began to rise within you as you realized the severity of the situation, your heart pounding in your chest.

One of his hands held you down harshly against the console keeping you trapped once again sanity has left you, his other hand swiftly unbuckled his belt, the sounds of his movements echoing in the tense silence of the van you felt hopeless and dazed as you felt his dick rub against your pussy still wet from the desire of his kiss.

He leaned closer to you, his entire body weight pressing down on yours, his chest now firmly against your back as he roughly pushed his dick into you. he was big you let out a loud shriek as a burning sensation cascaded through your body, causing your eyes to squeeze shut in pain. Desperately, you reached for his thighs, trying to push him off you.

"Quiet." He groans as he pushes deeper into your cunt you felt his pubes brush against your clit, he was so big so overwhelming you could feel him in your stomach even as he was still. He gripped your hands and grabbed his belt from beside him before tying your hands together behind your back. you could feel every movement making you let out small sounds of discomfort as his dick rested inside of you.

"Suckin' me right in." He lifted your dress higher taking a moment to stand and bask in the view of his dick being swallowed by your pussy. he started groping your ass taking his time as he started he's penetrating your soul. he began to thrust setting a slow but harsh pace. "You're gonna be achin' for days.” you let out a few broken moans at his movements your daze and confusion were replaced with a sense of pleasure and warmth as he continued thrusting in and out of you.

He shifted his hands to grip the makeshift restraints around your wrists, then began pushing you towards him so that you met his thrusts. As the new sensation overwhelmed you, you started to squirm again, unable to contain the mix of pleasure and discomfort. "I said squirming makes it interesting, I didn't say be difficult," he murmured, his voice low and filled with amusement. With a swift movement, he hooked you up so you were pressed against him, your struggles futile against his strength. He noticed the blood from your nose and chuckled, the sound sending a shiver down your spine as you whimpered in fear.

He started to thrust up into you harder. more primal for his desire, he moved one of his hands to play with your breast. you let out a loud moan as one of his thrusts hit just where it was needed for his movements to feel like he was heaven. He pushed you back onto the console, this time skillfully avoiding the sharp object, sparing you from any further facial damage.

His weight presses you down onto your back again, forcing you to stay still as he pounds deep into you over and over again. His power and speed never slow down as he bites down hard on your shoulder to muffle his moans, he hits that sweet spot inside of you with every thrust making it impossible to hide your obvious pleasure from his actions making sure to move your hips back to meet him every time it makes you feel so dirty, "You tried to take from me, but now you're learning your place. Beneath me, where you belong, like a whore".He stopped biting your shoulder and whispered, letting out a soft moan

"Don't call me that," you manage to mumble, your voice trembling with a mixture of fear and defiance, though you still push back into him, your back arching involuntarily making you press into his chest. "I-I can call you whatever I want when... when..." Your words falter as you struggle to find your voice, the pleasure taking over you. As he continues to pound into you.

But he cuts you off sharply, he pinched your side hard, causing you to whimper in pain. "Shut the fuck up," he commands, his voice harsh and threatening. "I'm tired of your mouth. Keep it up, and I'll find another way to shut you up."

His thrusts grew more erratic, his grip tightening as he abandoned any pretense of restraint, his small moans and grunts escaping him freely. "Shit, I'm gonna need Viagra or something to keep up with this pussy," he muttered, his words punctuated by the force of his pistoning movements. "Gosh... feels like you're gonna swallow me whole."

Suddenly, he stopped hitting that spot that had pleased you, and a sense of disappointment washed over you. As his thrusts became sloppy, you ceased meeting him halfway, hoping he would find that sweet spot again. But he didn't.

With a final, desperate thrust, he let out a guttural groan, his body shuddering as he reached his climax. As he withdrew, leaving you feeling empty and unsatisfied, a wave of sadness and confusion washed over you.

Your walls were slick, not with your arousal, but with his, milky ropes of his release making an obscene set of sounds as he pulled out of you. Still restrained, you watched silently as he got dressed and exited the van, leaving you feeling abandoned and exposed.

Minutes passed, the silence heavy and suffocating, before he returned with a few papers and items you recognized from your cabin. "Hey, those are mine!" you protested, your voice tinged with a mix of anger and desperation.

He ignored your protest, tossing the items into a bag without a second glance. "They're mine now," he replied coldly, his tone leaving no room for argument.

As he released you from your restraints, you felt a surge of defiance rising within you. "You can't just take everything!" you exclaimed, trying to assert some semblance of control over the situation.

But his gaze was icy as he looked at you, his expression unreadable. "Watch me," he muttered, before turning and striding away, leaving you feeling small and powerless once again.

"Get comfortable," he called over his shoulder as he headed towards the driver's seat, his voice devoid of any warmth or compassion.

You watched him go, a sinking feeling settling in the pit of your stomach. As you sat alone in the van, surrounded by the remnants of your life that he had taken from you, the reality of your situation began to sink in.

He wasn't just taking your belongings. He was taking you.

With a heavy heart, you realized that you were now at his mercy, trapped in a situation you couldn't escape. And as he started the engine and pulled away from the cabin, leaving everything you knew behind, he turned to you with a chilling smile.

"You're mine now," he said quietly, his words sending a shiver down your spine. "And you're not going anywhere."

[midsummer-semantics]

if the world was ending

Okay, I told myself I wasn't going to write anything for @steddieangstyaugust but apparently I lied (I'm sorry)

Here's for day 1: Second Chance

CW: Slight agoraphobia

[not posted to AO3 but you can find other things there.]

When the earthquake hits, he’d like to say he thinks about his parents first. That he wonders where they are and if they're safe or if they’d hear about it from wherever they are in the world. If they’d call to check on him, even though they never did before.

He'd like to say he thinks about Robin, who's two states away studying for a graduate degree in International relations and communication, and likely doesn't feel the ground moving beneath her feet like he does.

Hell, he'd like to say he thinks about the kids, but most of them are scattered themselves, starting college programs (Will, Mike, Dustin) or sports training camps (Lucas) or exploring the West Coast (Max and El).

No, Steve is alone in his big, empty house when it hits, and the only thing on his mind is that they were wrong. Indiana doesn't get earthquakes, so something else has to be afoot. Six years since they defeated Vecna, since everyone tried to move on with their lives while Steve stayed because that's what he does, he stays.

A touchstone Dustin had called him once. Something to do with foundation and a connecting center. Steve still thinks it might have just been him and the rest of the group trying to make him feel better about still being stuck in the same house, in the same town, doing nothing and going nowhere.

He's alone and he thinks 'This is it. What I've been waiting for.'

He has a 6-year-old emergency pack stored that should have more dust on it if it wasn't for the way he chronically checks it. His trusty bat and a duplicate he made just in case, plus the ax he used the last time, are all near enough to the door. He's not sure what the protocol is for earthquakes, having grown up in the Midwest, but he's pretty sure he's not supposed to be indoors, right?

It doesn't last very long, but it doesn't matter. A few seconds of the ground shaking and rolling beneath his feet are enough to jumpstart him into action.

He's gathering supplies, cursing himself for taking too long, when the phone in the kitchen rings.

He should ignore it, knows that whatever or whoever it is can wait until he's secured the area and alerted the cavalry that something is happening. It'll take days for people to get here and Steve thinks he might he able to hold off whatever's coming out of whatever rift has sprung up until then, but he doesn't have time to think about it too hard.

The phone rings off the hook as Steve takes too damn long to double-check that nothing is in the house before he even attempts to go outside, and Steve knows he can't just leave it. Not in case it's someone who's still in town who knows he's here: Mrs. Wheeler, Claudia, Jim or Joyce.

He nearly rips the cord out of the wall when he answers.

"Stevie?!" comes the frantic voice of the person he least expects to be on the other side.

"Eddie?"

"Steve, oh my god." He can hear Eddie panting. "Are you okay?"

It's the first time Steve's heard Eddie's voice in five years. Since Eddie made good on his promise to run like hell out of here, something he'd repeated to anyone who would listen until he finally did. Five years since Steve had realized he was halfway in love with him after saving the world and never got to say anything because he was a coward and Eddie was leaving anyway so what was the point?

He'd gotten one phone call when Eddie arrived in Denver and it's been radio silence since then. Truthfully, he couldn't blame the guy, but Steve had had... thoughts... feelings... probably brought on by end-of-the-world shit but nonetheless. And then Eddie just—

Vanished.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Are you?" he asks.

"We're good," Eddie replies, and only then does he hear the rough grumble of Eddie's uncle in the background, asking why Eddie's on the phone at nearly 3 in the morning.

"Earthquake, old man," Eddie shouts, still too close to the receiver for Steve's already damaged hearing.

Oh.

So, Eddie's in town. Cool. Steve had no idea. Doesn't know when Eddie got in or if he ever intended to tell Steve he was here at all. That's fine.

"Sorry, Stevie. Woke Wayne up. Shit— did I wake you up too?"

Steve swallows harshly, shaking his head even though Eddie can't see it. "No, I was already awake."

"Me too," Eddie replies. "Jet lag. Just got in a few hours ago. What a welcome home, huh?"

"Sure," Steve says, wondering what the point of this call is. "Look, I'm glad to hear from you, but I really need to—"

"Wait!" Steve shuts his mouth, his teeth clacking harshly. "It's fine. Everything is fine."

"Dude, there was an earthquake just now—"

"And it wasn't You-Know-What related," Eddie states, a bit of his franticness back in his voice. "They're leveling part of the plant for safety issues. Wanted to do it at night so no one would freak out." Steve cringes. Hawkins wasn't exactly magnanimous about the rebuilding efforts last time, but he doesn't go to city council meetings to hear about what the efforts might have been since then. "That's part of why I'm home. Wayne's got an extended leave until they sort out what else to do."

Steve sighs, dropping the emergency pack on the floor and leaning the ax he'd managed to grab against the wall. "Oh. Great. Wish they'd have told everyone else just in case."

"I know, sweetheart. But everything is okay."

Sweetheart.

Steve's actual heart skips a beat hearing that again.

"I'll be back, sweetheart. I promise."

"So... you're here then? In Hawkins?"

There's a beat of silence, some shuffling on the other end. "Well, yeah. I told you I'd come back."

"For your uncle."

"He's part of it."

Steve hesitates, hating himself for even considering getting his hopes up.

"And the other part?"

"My guy is here."

When the earthquake hit, he’d like to say he thought about his parents first.

No, he'd thought it was the end of the world. And above that, all he could think about was Eddie.

[xesiarah]

“˚₊‧ UNLUCKY ENCOUNTER ‧₊˚ ”

Yan!Loser oc x Reader

Synopsis — some call it a coincidence, some say it's fate, but I say it's absolute utter fucking, bullshit.

—

—

"I'm sorry."

The other line hangs up, the irrational telephone beep ringing against your ear as you genuinely start feeling the symptoms of hysteria bubbling up your chest and clamming up your breathing. At this point you definitely wouldn't say no to a fucking lobotomy.

This week has been feeling like the universe is actively trying to kill you off, like as if already getting coffee spilled on you wasn't bad enough; You, in this modern age and time having to use the telephone because your phone was snatched, along with your favorite handbag, containing the newly expensive perfume you brought still half full, and then just now your partner of 2 years breaks up with you after you asked them for help because you tripped on a rock, resulting on a sprained ankle and having to distressingly limp all the way to the phone booth.

Coincidence? Yeah, I think not. Just before this hell week was 3 days after your best friend ditched you for her new boyfriend, 4 days after you fucked up an important exam, and A WEEK after you befriended that jackass freak at school. Losing a few people here and there was to be expected but, c'mon! Isn't this just a new form of torture? You're sure that he was the one that caused all this, who else is to blame!? Maybe the rumor that said he must have all that hair to hide the dent he got when he was dropped as a baby was true, I mean. He probably performed some dark sorcery on you for whatever reason.. or maybe he's a sick masochist that fucks over people who don't treat him like an accused witch during the Salem Witch Trials. — Seriously, it was as if the universe's will to make that mfs life a living hell has rubbed off on you. But you know what, yeah.. It's fine, you can live with this.

Or not. Your alarm blaring for you to awaken gladly disturbs your nightmarish slumber, this is the 3rd time. The THIRD TIME! You've dreamt about him. — of that freak that brought you to your misery, who knows, what if dreaming about him more then once was some sort of bad omen? The 3rd time being on the first day of the week nonetheless. Of course the birds are extra chirper, you thought that maybe they're basking on your torment, if they were, you hope stray bullets manages to shoot all of them dead because we aren't having that kind of bullshit today. — You have finally devised a plan to avoid Satan's reincarnate for the rest of the school year as if they were carrying a covid variant. Finally getting that horrendous goblin off your back would feel like it's the second coming of Christ, and you're not about to let any twinks get in the way of living your life free from any agony inducing minger either.

You manage to find the will to exist. Entering the gates of your school muttering prayers to God, and whatever other deity that’s listening, to please not let you set sights of his probably-smells-like-cheese, greasy ass hair, the overgrown bangs covering ⅔ of his hazel eyes that always seemed to bother you, he even has those weird Incel glasses on.. maybe that one rumor that said he had some sort of eye fungus just makes this all more oddly debatable. You wander through the empty hallways, not seeing a single student kinda unsettles you. — makes sense though, It's pretty early, and you've never seen him around this time so, the coast is clear, for now, or so you thought. — You were approaching the rows of vending machines all pushed up against the back of the building when you caught a glimpse of a silhouette you're all too familiar with, he seems to be sketching something, not that you totally cared for whatever it was. You shrug, but when you were about to turn to leave he gets up and walks towards the boys bathroom, leaving his precious notebook unattended, out in the open, where anyone could take a peak... Just a little peak, alright? You tiptoed, walking towards it in longer strides to minimize your footsteps, upon getting closer, you notice the front page already wide open, as if he purposely left it like that, — that should've been the first red flag. Because inspecting it a little further made your jaw slack, the thing he was sketching.. was you. "What the fuck, I look amazing." You mutter, it's a little creepy but you're flattered with the way he straight up beautified you, admiring it for a little longer then you should've had was a mistake though, because just when you took your eyes off of the notebook, you see him literally lurking and hiding behind the bathroom's entrance. He's wide-eyed, and a huge creepy grin plastered on his face. — Genuinely scaring the flattery out of you and making you bolt straight to the opposite direction on instinct, the way he looked at you literally triggered your flight or fight. The sound of your fast footsteps filled the hallways, your heart going pitter-patter, quite literally about to burst out your chest. Fuck. Just your luck. Guess this won't be an easy day to get through.

Morning lectures are finally over. Which means you can finally celebrate the fact that you pushed through and made it to lunchtime! It was still agonizing nonetheless, waiting around corners to let him pass kind of felt like you're stalking him, can't say that you didn't get any weird looks either. The worse part was definitely him searching and skimming through the halls, asking everyone for your whereabouts, half of them made themselves look busy so he wouldn't approach them, and the other half straight up ran the opposite direction as if he threatened to bite their toes or something. Weirdly enough, most of them ended up slipping on wet floor, which just further gives in to your suspicion of him practicing dark sorcery. Anyways, you're proud of the little progress you made, and that's all that matters for now.

—

—

Lucian sits alone, his table is tucked away in the very corners of the cafeteria, no one even daring to glance at his direction, he used to typically eat in the bathrooms but nobody wants him in their presence to the point that they all stand up and leave when he approaches a table. — there's just this weird air surrounding the dude that automatically repels people away, and no it's not body oder dammit! He just gets greasy fast, and probably for threatening to unalive a teacher but that isn't important! The love of his life is avoiding him! He chews on his fingernails as he ponders, possible reasons fill his head, and they aren't very good ones. — Did someone make you do this? Is there someone else...? That surely can't be. That's just cheating isn't it? You love him after all! He saw the glint in your eyes when you looked at the portrait he drew of you. He could even show you his shrine! Made just for you, containing such precious things you lost! — His excessive chewing of his fingernails grow desperate to the point of drawing blood, he grimaces at the sight of crimson streaks, wiping it on the sleeves of his hoodie. — it just can't be. Why would you do him wrongly like this? You smiled at him, you laughed with him instead of AT him, you sat together.. So why!? Are you gonna leave him like his mother did..? Was that all a joke to you..? He just couldn't accept this, you aren't that kind of person! You know what, he finally snaps. he just has to hear an answer from you. — "He's right behind me, isn't he?" The person right Infront of you nods, and immediately scurries away. At this point you're frozen in place, what the fuck do you do? Just make a run for it? "Can we please talk..?" He speaks behind you, his hand is on your shoulder. You swallow, the remaining bits of your conscience crumbling as you fucking make a run for it, aggressive footsteps follow behind and you realize HE'S CHASING AFTER YOU. You have never let out such a gut wrenching scream than what you just did in this exact moment. — You hide behind a wall, thinking you've lost him. Not until a hand grabs onto your arm.

—

—

He caught you. He has you pinned against the wall, not in a shoujo cutsy romantic way, he looks as if he's a starved vampire about to chomp on your neck, and not in a good way. Just no fucking way this scrawny mf outran you. Another 'unfortunately' for you too, the Gods did not answer your prayers. You're trapped in between the arms of the man you swore to avoid like the plague for the rest of the school year, this was definitely not on your 2024 bingo list. You didn't even last till' the end of the day and that lowkey hurts your pride. — But holy smokes, they say that you experience something new everyday, and this is the first time you've seen him up close, messy bedroom hair, teary eyes that looked like he hasn't slept since the first star wars movie came out. Wowza. If he actually made an effort, or if he didn't have such unsettling vibes, you can't lie, he'd be a revelation hottie. — ... Shit. Not the time to be thinking about his potential glow up. — Poor guy, watching him trying to maintain eye contact but just failing horribly is kinda cute.

......

......

......

The fuck? Your face scrunches up just after you snap back out of, whatever that was. Seriously.. say WHAT now? That was a demon possession right there, you need to stop acting as if his existence didn't just cause your downfall unprovoked. "You're avoiding me.." His voice disrupts the silent war you were having with yourself. It sounded meek, he genuinely looked like a shivering wet dog, with those.. tears boiling up his eyes, and.. quivering lips. Fuck. What if you'd just slide down his arms and escape? Hell no, if someone walked in they'd think you were giving him a blowjob and that's honestly worse then whatever's going on right now. "A-Answer me!" He yells(?) hesitantly, the dude genuinely looks like he's about to burst into tears any minute, you're surprised how he somehow grew the balls to yell at you though. "Okay, dude I'm sorry..?" — It's sad how he goes ballistic over a 'friendship' that lasted a week, but he did show you the list of student names he wanted to glock, and you listened to some of his nerdy ramblings, so you guess he did cherish your short time together even if you gave him absolutely zero fucks. — he goes completely quiet for a minute before he finally bursts out crying, fat tears are running through his acne filled face as he drops to the ground. "I really just wanted a someone-" He says in-between hiccups, he's crying as if you killed his mom or something. You decided to just wait it out until he grew tired but his wails started growing louder till' you were forced to crouch down and comfort him. "H-hey, uhm.." Fuck. Screw it. You know what, Who cares if your life starts crashing down, it already was unsalvageable from the very beginning anyway. Everyone needs a friend and you're too nice for this. You finally give in, breathing in a sigh of defeat. "How can I fix this?" His cries shimmer down and you swear to fucking God you think you just saw him flash a smirk. This bitch looks like he's bout to spit out the most outta pocket bullshit. — and he indeed did not disappoint. The two unexpected words coming out of his mouth just further inspires you to jump off a bridge. "d-date.. me."

......

......

......

Maybe hiring a hitman on yourself wouldn't be so bad.

[21wanderer]

Benchwarmer

“Are you going to sit there all day, Rick?” the trainer asked his best rugby player, who sat almost motionlessly on the bench. “Yeah, I’m sorry” he replied trying to sound unwell, but not too sick either.

“My stomach has been acting up all day,” he lied trying to get the nosey trainer to leave him alone. He tried his best to look like he really wanted to be here, whilst being too unwell to actually participate. Practice had just started, there was about one and a half hour to go, and the waiting time was making him anxious.

---

He had prepared everything, signed up for an activity before the rugby team arrived to have access to the same locker room, replaced Rick’s water bottle with an identical one, but with the bodysuit serum and an acute laxative added, even made copies of the bathroom key and written the whole meticulous plan down in every detail to make sure nothing was overlooked. But if he thought that slipping on Rick would be a piece of cake, he was sorely mistaken. For all his planning he had forgot to account for the size of the bathrooms.

The bodysuit serum had done his trick by the time he let himself into the bathroom with the unconscious Rick, and he had managed to separate Rick’s head from his body, so he could slip into him, but crammed into the tiny bathroom, that just wouldn’t work.

He needed more time... and space, but he couldn’t risk anybody walking in on him. He carefully unlocked the bathroom door peering into the empty locker room. He had an idea, hopefully it would work, he obviously couldn’t afford to mess this up.

Rick’s teammates had already called for him, and he had been in the bathroom for almost 15 minutes, he needed to get out there, before they became suspicious.

Jolting out of the bathroom, he headed straight for Rick’s bag and rugby gear, from the bag he pulled out Rick’s sub suit as well as his socks and boots. He retreated to the bathroom with it, and it was much easier to pull on. The baggy suit would be the best way for him to hide his body, whilst he pretended to be Rick.

He slipped into the slightly amorphous suit, zipping everything, then quickly pulled on Rick’s socks and boots. The socks obviously hadn’t been washed since last practice, but he didn’t mind at all. That aroma would belong to him soon enough. He then grabbed Rick’s lifeless face and slipped it on, and he needed to do it quickly. Plunging his head into the hollow throat, he soon found the eye-holes and from there, he could begin to adjust the mask, making sure eyes, nose, mouth and ears all were aligned properly.

From any outside perspective he looked exactly like Rick, and as long as he kept the suit on, nobody would know. Checking if the coast was clear again, the Rick-imposter left the bathroom. He stuffed the headless Rick-suit into a locker and locked it, he would have to retrieve it after the game. He checked himself one last time in the mirror, the face was animate, Rick’s charismatic face moved as if it was his own. But he did not feel safe yet, if anybody saw the unfit body underneath…

---

With everything securely zipped, he made his way to the field outside, but headed straight for the benches. Now all he had to was to be patient and wait, it would be so worth it, once the waiting time was over. And although he was nervous, it did feel good to finally be in the position, where people saw him as Rick, being dressed in his clothes, seeing the world through his eyes. Soon the rest of the athlete’s body and life would be his. He just needed for practice to end, and for everybody to go home. Then he could take the final step.

[pursuitseternal]

“Unmask Me:” 🎭 NSFW Masquerade update for “The Rogue You Were”

Ascended Astarion x f!Reader |E| 4.7K of revealing smut

🎨by @glorious-void 🌹

Summary: Music and masks, dancing and deception. It’s so easy to hide your identity beneath a mask, but for you, as Regent Consort while Lord Astarion is away on his travels, everyone knows you. Everyone wants to be with you, particularly your love and Lord. Once he returns and is unmasked, of course.

CW: Mistaken identities, jealous/aroused Astarion, Dom!Astarion, outdoor sex, playful punishment, spanking, oral sex female receiving, rough fucking and regal engagements afterwards.

Previous ch | ao3 link | Masterlist

🎭🩸🎭🩸🎭🩸🎭🩸🎭🩸🎭🩸🎭🩸🎭🩸🎭

Regent Consort. That is your title, at least until your love’s return. You flounce your ebony skirts, that sultry hint of burgundy beneath a little nod to your beloved vampirism. You adjust the many layers of petticoat that fill out your gown. Alone in the ballroom, you pace by the window. Weeks of Astarion away, and he is due to return any hour now.

You know he will be hungry, he will desire you more than anything. He will be feral, wild. Untameable until he’s drunk his fill of your blood and fucked you enough. If he isn’t exhausted from his travels to the far East… alliances and silks from Cormyr and gems and… it was enough of a burden for him to shoulder. You have been left with enough to handle here in the City, his Right Hand to rule in his place, his Regent Consort on his throne. Your tasks have been ceaseless since he left so many tendays ago: Council meetings and trade deals to twist towards your benefit, not to mention cajoling Duke Wyll Ravengaurd enough—enough for him to remain oblivious to the fact that you and your love had far surpassed any authority he thought he held.

You smirk, gazing out into the night’s sparkling darkness. Of course you decided the best course of action was to stroke your old friend’s ego—and nothing touts a symbol of friendship and your own wealth and power like a good masquerade ball.

Of course, it just happened to fall on the same evening as Lord Astarion’s long-expected return. But your heart leaps in your chest, if it could beat faster, that is. Every detail has been carefully laid, and all with his secret knowledge. He approves of this wholeheartedly, those little flashes of his affection quaking down your bond as Master and Bride keeping him informed. You feel his love, his approval and his hunger. Your bond of heart, mind, and blood is enough only to coax his hasty return just a little faster.

His presence had long disappeared from your mind, leaving you without word, his journeys consuming enough of his power to claim his concentration. And so you wait, on baited breath, for his return. Soon, he had said. Tonight.

At long last, your guests arrive in your wide and sprawling drive, carriage after carriage emptying with elegantly clothed couples and painted faces. A parade of colors and paper and decadence. A night in honor of the Duke, a demonstration of the Vampire Ascendant’s immense affluence. The grandest host on the Sword Coast. The most powerful, handsome being in this whole realm.

Yes, you smile, releasing your folded arms to adjust your own demi-mask, Astarion will revel in the extravagance.

Once he finally fucking arrives, of course.

But you force a smile on your face as your guests parade into your presence, all fanfare and pomp and circumstance as befitting a ball for the Duke… as befitting a party hosted by the Vampire Ascendant and his Consort. Couples sweep into the grandeur, each pair, each guest more sumptuously dressed than the one before. You make your way to the head of the dais, your black Demi-mask in place, but you are certain your own scarlet eyes and your fang-toothed smile will surely make certain not a hand is laid on you.

No mistaken identity as to who you are tonight. You are Regent Consort, the Ascendant’s Lady. You are his.

And if your vampiric qualities aren’t enough to drive away would-be admirers, the decadent, gold and bejeweled crown on your head certainly will. A quaint little symbol of the power you tend in his absence. Your eyes scan mask after mask, even as you stand before his throne. Nodding greetings, formally and cordially welcoming guest after guest.

You scrutinize the most gallant looking, the most ostentatious of males. If he were to disguise himself, to play one of his little games with you… surely he would spare no expense on his costume. Even arriving from his travels… it dawns on you now, looking at this primped and preening man. You know why he has gone as silent as his empty grave on his end of your bond.

He’s planning something. A surprise, a seduction. Something that will surely set your slow, undead heart racing and make your folds drench down your thighs.

Once you unmask him of course. There would be… some clue. He wasn’t that clever, never one for details. He prefers to lure you in with honey-sweet words and a grind of his bulge somewhere on your body. Sensual, sweet thing that he is.

Your gaze has grown distant, your pleasant smile fixed on your painted lips. It’s only once the musicians strike up the music that you slowly return to your surroundings.

And it’s only once the drums begin pounding so loudly it shakes in your rib cage that you notice one male lingering at your feet. Richly brocaded damask, deeper crimson than what runs in one’s veins, his costume is breathtaking. Cut so perfectly around his waist and hips, drawing the eye towards that gusset between his thighs.

You quickly raise your gaze, realizing you are licking your lips as you scan this male’s body.

And you’re met with eyes that are so deep set in his golden Bautta mask, you can’t see the color. But you drink in that intensity. That gilded cover hides every sharp, pale feature, even covering his sly and sultry mouth. But all he needs are his eyes boring into you, already undressing you. It’s… delicious.

He would come in regal colors and damask, in a mask that’s inlaid and filigreed with real gold. That feathered cap on his head is a nice touch to hide his telltale silver tousles, as well. Slowly, this man turns towards you, and you can feel it, the way he is drawn to your power, eager to be your thrall.

He wants you, and you know it must be his plan, a master of stirring your body for him alone even in disguise. Feet treading up a stair or two in your direction, he gives an elegant bow, a swish of his scarlet, silken cape as he extends his gloved hand for yours.

Your feet follow him into the mass of people, the center of the dancing as couples begin to form in patterns and forms. Ready to dance.

He doesn’t need to say a word, only giving a deep, muffled laugh beneath that pointed mask as you sweep with your supernatural grace in his hold. A merry dance, one that weaves you around other couples at a clip, one that makes your own silken, gloved hand pass into the palm of every male on that dance floor. Spin after spin, pass after pass, and your flesh practically ignites with each time you cross with your golden-faced lover.

Your mouth salivates, and you wonder why he hasn’t whisked you away to your chambers.

As the music begins to slow, you feel a pinprick at the back of your neck, even as he… the man with the golden mask… your lover pulls you in one last spin. You see nothing in the crowd, but you feel… something. Something hot and sharp, eyes on you from somewhere in the masses.

Then again, all eyes are on you. You and your Lord do tend to turn every head in the room. And you do so as you pull him through the double glass doors and onto the open aired terrace.

Lit by only the moon and stars, you keep your hands on his arm and his waist, leading him as far as possible from the crowds. You don’t even know if the Duke has arrived, nor do you care. You need sating, need to indulge the tension that has flared between you two in that ancient way you always have.

He stops once you both reach the shadows, arms wrapped around your elegant dark dress, its gauze and crinolines dusky burgundy and black as you practically bleed into the shadows yourself. “My lady,” that voice whispers from behind the mask, muted and strange. A trick of his disguise.

“My lord,” you lilt back, taking a single finger to stroke the bare flesh of his neck where it peeks above the bright collar of his jacket. “I need something from you, ever so badly.”

“Then take it, my lady,” he tilts his head, baring more of his pale skin. Your eyes are wide, ravenous. You haven’t fed from living blood since his departure. For his was the only vintage you drank, the only kind that would fill you. Craning your head, standing on the balls of your toes, you lick your lips, barely restrained enough to take a little bit of time.

Your fangs finally bite, and warm, coppery essence fills your mouth… but only after a few swallows does it hit you.

Smack in the face.

Blood strange on the tongue.

And then you feel someone drawing closer behind you, soft footfalls that make your stomach flutter, your bond snapping taught. He’s here at last.

And this man beneath your mouth isn’t him…

“Darling, I’m hurt,” you hear Astarion’s voice, perfectly clear, breath brushing down your shoulders and back, “I thought we had something special…”

You round so quickly, spitting out the stranger's blood from your mouth in utter disgust.

He’s there.

Astarion.

You curse yourself. You should have known… how did you not? He was perfect in his disguise, he was…. Your rogue. Just as he was on those nights in the camp… simple and elegant and mouthwatering. A familiar frilled shirt, ruffles of embroidered silk framing his pale and perfect chest… tightly cinched breeches that hug his every sinew and line of his thighs and bulge. A mask, black as night, gilded with embellishments shaped like the rays of the sun—a little nod to his Ascendant power.

His greatest disguise as the Vampire Ascendant— the Rogue he once was.

But it’s his lips pressed in a hardened smile, his eyes practically glowing with power, swirling with the concoction of jealousy and arousal that makes you tremble before him. Both emotions strike you in your belly, launched at you, a blade from his mind thrust into yours.

You let out a whimper, your mouth fluttering at the sight of him, your elegant rogue, your vampire lover and lord and husband and master. “Astarion,” you gasp, feeling the man’s mortal blood seeping down your lower lip. Gaping in horror at what you have done.

“Tch,” he sucks his teeth, keeping his distance, totally giving no heed to the man who staggers a bit behind you. “Well, darling, it seems you have found your entertainment for the evening already. A pity I wasn’t more forward… more aggressive to catch your… hungering attentions.”

You feel it… knowing he feels it too. Your belly aches to begin feeding once more. “No, no…” you protest, drawing a step closer, wiping your bloodied chin on the back of your sable silken glove.

“Really, my Consort, who am I to deny you your hunger?” he’s hissing. Defensive. Eyes heavily lidded, jaw tweaking as he watches you unravel before him.

“Hungry? Yes,” you pant, a feral need unlocking inside you to be so close to your love, your maker, and yet kept at arm's length. “For you, my love. I thought he was you, Astarion.”

He sniffs, derision seething in that one breath. Disdain turns playfully at his lips and darkens his crimson eyes. “I forget sometimes how new to your vampirism you are, darling,” he chides, none too gently. “You have no idea the pull you have on others… the natural way your charms will command the weakest minds to bend their necks for your teeth. No matter what ignorant fools they are, trying to take what’s mine.”

And with that, he snaps. Uncontrolled aggression embodied, a growl in his throat, Astarion flies at the poor male. His bare hand locks around the other’s bleeding neck. “Get out of my sight, out of my palace… out of my city, if you wish to survive this night, you fool.” His voice is death itself, bone chilling and sharp. And the man waits not one second more before fleeing into the night, back through the crowds.

Turning back to face you ever so slowly, he pulls off his mask, fingers tugging swiftly at the black silken ribbon behind his head. You see it in his face, the darkening of jealousy… but also the arousal in the way his nostrils flare and his pupils dilate so wide. “Well, my treasure, I’ll admit… power never looked so good on another… on anyone that wasn’t me.”

You force yourself to inhale, lungs shaking as you try to breathe. “You’re not… mad?”

“Darling, I am furious,” he hisses, closing in on you swiftly, clenching his grip hard around your throat. “You’ve done remarkably well in my absence in most ways, such a lavish soirée, even I am impressed. But,” he thrust his smirking, snarling face into yours until your noses brush, “you clearly need a swift reminding, darling, of just what you’ve been missing… of what parts of me you’ve missed.”

Grabbing at your hand, he thrusts your palm against his cock, so hard and hot through the well-oiled, skin-tight leather.

“Just like old times,” you rasp under his clutches.

“Tut, tut,” he chides you, all honey in his venom. “Nostalgia for your vampire rogue isn’t going to work on me…”

“Well,” you smirk, rubbing your hand up and down against his twitching erection, “something has…”

His lips crush yours, certainly ruining what was left of your lip paints, licking off the remnant of that poor fool’s blood from your chin, your fangs. And most assuredly, making your lips swell and bruise as he works ravenously in his kiss. He keeps your palm pressed hard on that aching rise between his legs, slow little rolls of his hips against the pressure.

“Watching you touch another… dancing with another… watching your eyes batting at him…” He breaks from his words to dart his tongue inside your mouth, licking again and again until he’s replaced all traces of that offender’s blood with only the flavor of him. “Watching you beckon him into the privacy of your presence… your lips on his skin…” His body seizes, that blend of jealousy and arousal crashing into you again four-fold. “I’ve never wanted to kill and fuck more than I do right now…”

You watch his pale chest heaving, watching every one of his veins beat with his ascendant heart, perfectly perched under his beautiful skin. Head cocking, he grips the ruffled collar of his silken shirt, tugging it wide.

Licking your lips, you feel his command: If you’re starving, daring, then feed.

You don’t need him to offer again, don’t need any other influence on your mind. Your stomach assumes control. Crown tilting askew from the pile of curls atop your head, you bite his warm and tender flesh.

And you bite hard.

Lewd, loud, trembling as if you just came… you moan right under his ear. Your mouthful of his rich, powerful blood almost spills over your lips, but you don’t dare let a drop be wasted. His hand presses harshly against the back of your neck, your curls and pins tugging at your scalp with the force. But you don’t care. Not as one hand grips into his arm to hold him steady, your other bracing on the other side of his neck to feel that raging pulse under your touch. There is nothing now that matters more than his ascendant blood on your tongue and his warm flesh beneath your lips.

“Careful, darling…” he speaks, vibrations from his silken voice shaking your lips. “I can’t be too bloodless to finish satisfying our hunger. Bad form to have the Ascendant unconscious at his own gala.”

One last, long drink and you pull off the wounds from your fangs with a pop. “Yes, my lord, how else do you think I hunger?”

Oh, he catches you by your neck once more, more playfully this time, long fingers wrapping up around your jaw. “What a stupid question for one as clever as you, my pet. You’re going to take my cock so nicely, another nice warm welcome that I know you’re craving too, darling. But first, you’ll pay nicely for your charming little transgression.” He pulls you further from the chaos and din inside your palace, deeper into the shadows. You can smell the gardens below you, the heady scent of blossoms in the air, lilacs and roses and lilies, just over the waist high wall.

And it’s over that wall you feel him spin you, laying you out carefully over its wide edge.

“Bad girl, my consort,” he leans over, his body crushing you from behind slightly to rasp right behind your ear. “Though, it was rather… intoxicating… to watch those lips redden with another’s blood… to scent your arousal so potently at the mere thought of my return. I shall be lenient, my love.”

“You liked it, didn’t you?” you jeer sweetly, a little roll of your ass against where he presses you down into the stone. “Of course, I only indulged thinking it was you playing some cheeky little game…”

He sinks his fangs into your neck, making a sharp cry pierce your words and stutter your voice.

“… should have known your games are much more fun,” you manage to add as he sucks from your veins. One hand grips behind where your crown perches, yanking at the roots of your hair and tugging your neck to a wider angle. And then he drinks quickly and deeply.

“What am I if not fun, hmm?” he purrs beneath your ear, one hand clasped around your wrist, the other begins to lift the pile of your skirts, tulle and silks and crinoline piling high on your back until you feel the night air on the back of your thighs.

Until you feel the breeze on your ass as he slips your undergarments to your knees.

“Feel free to scream, my pet. There is no one out here but us creatures of the night now….”

Smack.

His palm lands sharply on your bare cheek. A gentle rub follows the pain, fingers angling their dexterous touch slightly between your pressed thighs.

Smack.

Harder this time, fully on the other side, he spanks you. And while you grunt, muffled into your bent arms beneath your head, Astarion groans.

Loudly. Full throated.

His hand massages that freshly reddening ass this time. You feel his body bracing along your side, spank after spank making you shake with pain, only to be brush away quickly with his tender touch.

It’s maddening, making your core heat even more than before. Your hips wiggle under his fingers, hoping he might accidentally slip one or two between your folds.

But nothing Astarion does with his skilled hands is accidental or blunt— refined, precise. Perfect. “Feeling sufficiently contrite?” he purrs, moving behind you. One single hand splays on your lower back, the leather of his breeches presses behind you, almost like skin against your bare flesh.

“Yes, sorry,” you mumble into the gauzy sleeve of your dress as you bury your face.

His touch slips just a little between your cheek, your arousal running down your thigh as he spreads you just a little. “What was that, darling? You have been awfully quiet in your penance, you know…”

A single finger, nail first, creeps to where you clit lies. “Yes…. S- sorry,” you groan, lifting your head, turning just enough to see where he crouches behind you. He looks delicious in the moonlight, if you didn’t feel your bond, know your body teemed with undead power, he would look as he did all those nights on the road. That same devious smirk, same glinting, feral gaze that wants to eat you right up….

Say no more… he purrs into your mind, a delicate brush of his power making you shake. Reading your thoughts as you gaze at him.

He slaps your thighs apart, burying his face between them to do just that.

Eat you right up.

That thick tongue of his sweeps from your clit to the end of your seam.

“Scream for me,” he bids you. Your back arches, your head lifting, like a wolf in heat, you howl. Your voice ricochets off the garden wall, followed by another whimpering sound as he keeps that mouth of his sucking on your clit. Fingers spread you wider, thrusting your body back and forth as his tongue slides into your channel, his breath hot each time he breaks to swallow you down. That bliss begins to swell, relief from longing for his body for so long finally within your reach.

Until he stops. And you pant and growl in frustration as that precious wave of orgasm washes out of your reach.

One last, long sweep of his tongue, and he moves out from under you. His hands squeeze hard into your ass, marking your pale, cold flesh with his nails, just a bit. Just enough for him to know you’ll sit with hidden discomfort for the rest of the night.

“You’ve earned my forgiveness, my lovely consort,” he raps, leaning over you, crushing you to kiss against that sensitive spot behind your ear. “And I’ve been wanting to this since the moment I left your bed, my pet…”

Recognition spikes up your spine, you know that warm, blunted head that slowly begins to enter you. Contented. Happy. You sigh and arch to look back, unable to see anything below his chest beyond that ridiculous pile of your skirts over your back. His gaze is fixed on your thighs, watching your folds swallow him up, the little tip of his tongue licking the corner of his mouth.

Sweat gathers under your mask, and you know your tints and kohl and paints are wrecked by now. But you don’t care. No one would notice under your demi-mask. And it was so worth it, to feel him buried deep inside you again.

That paradox of pressure and relief. To be so full and so happy again. A belly sated by his blood, a cunt brimming with his cock. Your delicate fingers grip into the edge of the balustrade, bracing yourself to ride his thrusts. The soft whines of music a merry tempo, one he almost seems to match as he fucks you. You groan, knowing it’s just a taste of the rest of your night, knowing that once your guests have basked in your presence for long enough, you’ll steal away, spending the rest of the night in each other’s arms.

For now he ruts into you, no holding back, no mercy or tenderness now. Just that blind drive to finally join with you after so long apart. If you close your eyes, you might as well be in some clearing near the Emerald Grove, addicted to giving one another your bodies. His sweet words in your ear, little grunts as he fucks with each snap of his hips.

Same cock… same arrogance… same moonlight-bathed faces twisted in pleasure as he takes you from behind. Even the scent of blossoms in your nose… truly just like when you knew nothing more than his charm and his vampirism. And didn’t you come to love all he was… all he became… the same and yet now so much more to you.

“I missed you…” you whisper into his mind, feeling how his body has wound tight through your bond, sensing his cock’s throb, his sensation of how good it feels inside you flooding your own body.

“I know,” he replies, a growl inside your ear, a caress of fangs in your mind. He chuckles into your thoughts, until his laughter turns into real breathless pants as that tension in his body claims its release. He slams into you, once… twice… until all you feel is the twitching head of his cock emptying inside. Leaning over your once more, Astarion places a kiss into your neck one more time. “I missed you too, my love…” he whispers for your ear alone. “Never again, my treasure. It was too long… too many horridly boring, ugly people. Why waste my time with riff raff when I could have just brought you with me.”

“At least you know better now,” you simper, moaning as he pulls from inside you, those skirts brushing over the raw, tender skin of your ass. You hiss, straightening.

“As do you, my naughty consort….” He’s already slipped himself back in his breeches. Bringing you in for a devouring kiss by grabbing your reddened and punished ass. Yelping, you kiss him back, feeling his wicked smirk against your lips. Pain shoots up your spine as he crushes the hard fabrics of your skits against your flesh… nevermind that your undergarments are abandoned on the ground now…You shrug, let them be.

You have no need for them, now that he’s returned.

He pulls you by your hand back towards the gala, retrieving his mask from the terrace, quickly replacing it on his handsome face.

You smile, shaking your head at his antics, his games… his rakish, seductive smirk. Licking your thumb, you clean the lingering streaks of your blood and cum from his chin. “There now, you look presentable, my Lord,” you speak in dulcet tones, regal and refined. “The Vampire Ascendant ready for his festivities, no longer unmasked like some feral, rutting monster.” You wink, a sly smile at him.

Hand braced at the back of your neck, he crushes you once more to his mouth, one more kiss, one more cleaning lick of his own tongue on your lips and chin. “And you, a radiant Regent Consort,” he grins, hands quickly, assuredly straightening your mask and crown. As you turn to enter, he whispers against your temple one more time. “Let’s turn some heads, shall we?” He offers you his arm, a gentlemanly bow at the waist, as if he hadn’t just been ramming into you on the terrace moments ago.

You flash him a smile, head held up high, as you enter the crowd and din and lights. They part like water before you, heads bowing… even the stony-gazed face of Wyll, new Duke Ravenguard, tips slightly in deference. He knows your power, cautious to upend the delicate balance you and he have established.

But Astarion… Lord Astarion… he carries you right past the Duke’s contingent, right up the dais stairs until he’s stopped before your thrones. He stops short, says nothing but a wave to the music to continue the festivities.

They promptly obey, and he sits in his throne… and before you can sidle over to yours, he wraps an arm about your waist and settles you on his lap.

You hiss, the bone of his thigh pressing hard on his bruises and bite marks that riddle your rear.

“Something the matter, my lady?” Wyll’s formal tone hasn’t changed a bit since your days on the road.

You glance up, smiling and demure. He’s grinning politely back, concern in his stone eye. Always that suspicion underlying his gaze, that mistrust of your new… vampirism. You widen your grin and give a little bubbly laugh. Assuaging the monster hunter. “Just so pleased to have Astarion back from his travels. I’ve felt so… empty… without him.” You hide the double entendre with a regal simper and a pat on his chest.

“Not too exhausted to enjoy your evening, I hope,” Wyll asks, pausing a bit too long until he adds, “my Lord?”

“Nothing I can’t manage to savor in spite of it, Wyll,” he jerked his head with a smile, shifting you higher up on his lap, dragging those raw marks to center over his still softening cock. “Now, enjoy your festivities, old friend….” He drags his fangs over the shell of your ear sucking it between his lips, a display of his desire for all to see. “We know we will.”

🌹 thank you to @glorious-void for the fanart, and to my consort coven: @marimosalad and @brabblesblog

[shortcakesturns]

Nic Sheff x female reader okay so like the reader also has some addictions but not drugs just weed and alcohol and maybe some self-harm too if you do that stuff and they basically try to help each other out but like Nic finds the reader like dead but not dead and yeah angst + fluff

Thank you!!

𝐓𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 - 𝐍𝐢𝐜 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐟𝐟

𝐀/𝐧: 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐝𝐫𝐮𝐠𝐬, 𝐚𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐡𝐨𝐥, 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦, 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐝𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐬, 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐝! 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐬!!! 𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐫! 𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝, 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫, 𝐦𝐲 𝐝𝐦𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰! 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐚 𝐝𝐨....

Living with Nic had been a roller coaster, with constant highs and lowest lows. Highs had been staying clean for days and lows were the days you were caught out in an alley buying from a mysterious man.

It wasn’t anything hard, so not a single thought crossed your mind while buying.

“it’s just weed nothings gonna happen.”

Weed wasn’t even the worst you had done, so you didn’t know why Nic was so adamant about you not buying anymore. Weed only took the painful thoughts away. Nic had pleaded with eyes full of worry for you not to go and buy. Here you were in a dark alley on a rainy night, meeting up with this random plug who offered to give you a good amount for a small price.

“10 bucks?” Confusion washed over your face.

“Yeah I mean, I just need to get rid of it.” he handed the bag to you.

“Alright man, thanks” You handed him the 10 bucks and strutted away feeling on top of the world for the deal you had just scored, you made your way to the car.

You glance at your phone, 2:48 am The phone reads. You glance at the text your mom sent about an hour ago still not knowing how to react.

“Y/n, you can't just keep ignoring us. All I'm saying is that it's bullshit you wasted your life when you could have gone to college like Amelia. Your sister is a perfect role model honey, love you!”

“Fuck Amelia and your petty bullshit momma, always Amelia this and Amelia that.” you talk to yourself leaving your mom on read.

You start your car and begin to head home, wondering what Nic would say if he saw that text, what he would say if he saw the weed you newly bought.

The drive was short, mostly when you're going 90 down a highway. Only takes around 10 minutes, the apartment you fled almost 45 minutes ago was now dimmed and seemed quiet from the window. You head up the stairs, play with your keys, and finally find the right one, playing with the handle you see the apartment is empty once you enter. A note is left on the refrigerator “went to get some food, I'll be back please be safe.”

You hastily open the fridge grab a bottle of tequila, rush to the bathroom, and lock it. Opening the window so the smell of weed would be faint instead of bold enough for Nic to walk in the door and notice. Turning on the water, you plug the drain to have a nice hot bath. You begin to undress and see the recently dried scars on your thighs, too far up for someone to see unless your clothes were off.

“Lucky you,” you said out loud yet again to yourself, it had been awhile since Nic had seen what your naked body had looked like, and you promised him you would stop.

“Yes Nic, I promise, I swear I'll never do it again.” the concern grew in his eyes as he traced his fingers over your cuts.

“Y/n…please. Never again,” he pleaded with you as tears fell down his face afraid he might lose you. That he might fail you.

You snap out of your thoughts and see the bathtub has filled up and you step in letting the hot water and steam consume you. You pop open the bottle of tequila and take a deep inhale of the cart you just bought, switching it out every time until your mind becomes hazy.

Something wasn't right, no you had gotten crossfaded before. Your head didn't feel light, it felt heavy and your movements were slow and you were struggling to move around, you couldn't focus. Had you been laced? What was going on?…. Your eyes began to go blurry and then it was black.

You could hear pounding on the door and the screams and cries of Nic, but you couldn't comprehend a thought, you felt so heavy and couldn't see.

“Y/n please, open this door please fuck. Are you okay?” his cries echoed through your head.

You tried to talk but nothing came out, you didn't move. A slam is heard, over and over again. The lock had come loose and you felt Nic hold your head above the water, now cold. When did that happen?

“Hello this is 911, whats your emergency.”

“Hello my girlfriend, she uh, she's passed out, she's barely breathing I-i uh- I think she overdosed? Send help please.” he breathes out shakily.

That was the last thing you heard before it all went faint and you woke up to the fluorescent lighting and hum. The occasional beep from a monitor.

Fluttering your eyes open, you see a curled-up Nic clasping your hand peacefully asleep and snot dried up around his bare nose. His eyes were red around the skin from wiping the tears away.

“Nic?” his head quickly jolts up and he stands up.

“Oh my god, hi sweetheart.” he grabs your chin gently kissing your lips afraid of hurting you. As if you were glass and he didn't want to break you. “Hold on, j-just hold on.” he presses the call button for the nurse.

“What happened? Nic…nic wh-”

“Baby, you were laced. Fentanyl. You're lucky you are even here, you were lucky to have the type of- no- not lucky at all but you didn't have the type that kills you instantly. but-” he drops his head into his hands pulling away from mine. “We have to talk.” he looks at me with his wide puppy eyes.

“Okay.” I look down at him. “You can't do this, you can't put yourself in danger. You can't lie anymore, you said you would be a better person for me. I said I would be a better person for you and you didn't hold up your end of the deal y/n. DAMIT.” tears threaten to fall from both of your eyes. He grabs your head and looks at you like nobody else exists in the world. His big eyes filled with tears was a sight that was engraved into your brain. “Just please baby. I'm here.” He cries.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry Nic. I just needed some time to wind down and I didn't know. I just didn't.” your voice breaks.

“Please we need to get through this together honey, I love you so much. I saw everything honey, please you need to get better for me. I can't stand for you to hurt yourself like this.”

“I love you, Nic, I promise I will change for you, baby.”

[six-eyed-samurai]

As per the results for my vote, here it is! But I never said it wasn't going to be angst~~~

Please leave a comment! It'll gimme motivation to score well in my exams swear UwU

I saw you and I just knew, one day you'd be my man. XOXO, your biggest fan.

Ryomen Sukuna was once known for his suave talent on the screen, for the thefts of more than hundreds of drama fans’ hearts everywhere, for his signature shark grin and trademark tattoos.

Ryomen Sukuna was once known for his lead role in the fantasy series Malevolent Shrine, directed by his half brother Kamo Choso, together with the uprising star Gojo Satoru.

Ryomen Sukuna was once known for the tragedy that ruined his life forever and kidnapped him within its dark, depressive grasp to never let him go and completely vanish from the public eye.

I'd kill for you, over and over, I will and could and can. XOXO, your biggest fan.

Ryomen Sukuna’s name was once known to cause crazed stampedes at any store, restaurant or mall he blessed with his presence, but now when he walked hunched and slumped into his stained sweatshirt barely anybody batted an eye at the man who was more dead than alive now.

Ryomen Sukuna's figure was formerly spotted immediately everywhere he went, especially with YOU, his dearest darling angel at his side, a magnet attracting eager, frenzied paparazzi and die hard fans. He couldn't have been more proud to show you in all your glory off to the crowd, to lay claim on you and just prove his undying love for you in front of everyone…once upon a time.

Ryomen Sukuna's expression of easy, lazy smirking from his acting days officially disappeared to be replaced by a face with an emptiness that rivaled the void and had completely forgotten any other emotion long before everyone saw the photo at his final interview on a subject he had no wish to talk about: you and your death.

I know she's hurting us, but don't worry, I've got a plan. XOXO, your biggest fan.

Ryomen Sukuna whose answer to the Jujutsu Tech Weekly’s question of what he regretted most was turning down directors Jogo and Hanami’s offer to collaborate in a movie together, but really? He regretted ever convincing you to stop hiding your secret marriage and step into the limelight with him.

Ryomen Sukuna who can boast about his natural acting talent, charisma and success with all the proof in the world to back it up, but he would never say he was one for observance, not after he missed all the signs of an obsessive, insane stalker tailing after him and his precious, pretty wife.

Ryomen Sukuna who wonders what would've happened if he had just BOTHERED to reply and open the thousands of fan letters he used to get - would he have seen the letters his so-called number one fan had sent him, seen the signs of a despairing delusional madness that drove her to start hunting them both down from the shadows? Would he have paid more attention to the way doors seemed to always be unlocked when the both of you headed home, the missing personal items, the defaced pictures online of his wife?

As they all like to say, into the fire from out of the pan. XOXO, your biggest fan.

Ryomen Sukuna's temper his frequent viewers, family and friends were more than familiar with that made itself known when he publicly threatened whoever was breaking and entering into your shared home with something more physical than lawsuits; but how was he to know she'd take it the wrong way and somehow convince herself that his wife was putting him up to it, to make his one and only out to be the villain of this imaginary love scenario between her and him, to declare herself his “saviour”?

Ryomen Sukuna's decision to move to a new, more private and secure manor by the coast was supposed to protect you from the strange unknown figure lurking outside the house and everywhere you went. Supposed to. Somehow they found out his new home address anyway, and the only one who knew it was Choso, who swore up and down he told nobody and nobody could have possibly known.

Ryomen Sukuna's management (namely, his irritated manager Kenjaku) who finally succumbed to his harsh insults and furious demands and investigated who's been following them around lately: the truth shocked everyone to the core (could it possibly EVEN be the truth?!) when Fushiguro Tsumiki was arrested.

She might bear your son but you and I will start a clan. XOXO, your biggest fan.

Ryomen Sukuna ignored all the warning signs, the final letter with the ominous words of “I'll be the one to teach you love” and the Fushiguro’s protests of her innocence in favour of announcing the big news to the press and celebrating the new beginning in his and yours romance story, this time with a new addition to the family.

Ryomen Sukuna rarely slept before, preferring to stay up late memorising lines and terrorising the crew, but now was just operating on caffeine and quick naps in his worry during your pregnancy. Did he cry when baby Yuuji was born? Yes, and in his delight - although he pretended otherwise - he never noticed that one guest at every one of his conventions with an agitated expression and a hysterical, hateful grudge against you.

Ryomen Sukuna thought the business with his crazy fan stopped when he had his loyal Uraume taking care of his family on the rare occasions you didn't insist on coming to watch him work and hired a secretary to go through and filter all his letters, or maybe he was just preoccupied with watching Yuuji grow up and showering you with all the love his rough, rugged self could give…because he certainly didn't notice the new “security cameras” being set up at his house.

What a fatal mistake.

We'll be alone eventually, a couple and no longer a ban. XOXO, your biggest fan.

Ryomen Sukuna who staggered back and nearly killed the messenger when he heard the news, who raged internally against whatever cruel god had decided to deal him this fate: you and Yuuji had somehow disappeared when driving back from the park and even though police searched high and low you both were nowhere to be found.

Ryomen Sukuna whose world shattered when the two most important people in the world to him were declared dead. Despite Choso’s frantic persuausion and attempted comforts he vowed to never return to the world of stardom, not after his celebrity status got you both killed. He disappeared into the sea of ordinary lives, all signs of vibrancy and life gone right down to his iconic pink hair; he dyed that black, black as his heart and as black as the sky the day his darling went away, the day the letter arrived.

Ryomen Sukuna who imagined the police might make your deaths more real and not so nightmarish when they found your body, but never this way - what sort of sick bitch would send him a parcel containing the severed fingers of you ans Yuuji with a heart signed “Always your girl, Yorozu.”

I'm yours, you're mine, your wife's gone, just say she ran. XOXO, your biggest fan.

Ryomen Sukuna who now wanders the world, alive but alone, so ready to once love what he had had. A fate crueler than him has revealed itself, for they never did catch whoever had done the deed. The last time anyone had ever seen Sukuna at all was at the trial where Tsumiki was released.

Ryomen Sukuna who's played his fair share in horror movie of twisted endings and gruesome grief, but nobody ever told him real life was inspiration for the dark content. Everybody's long forgotten him as he slid into the role of background cameos but he never forgot how even with his fame and money he could never save you and Yuuji, much less avenge you both.

Ryomen Sukuna's half assed attempts at suicide never seemed to work out and he's nothing more than an angry shell of his former glory now. He even tore down both your photos in a fit of rage once; the man in the mirror wasn't him, surely?

They hunted in my basement but never searched my van. XOXO, your biggest fan.

Ryomen Sukuna who is now known for his infamous brutal homicide of one Fujiwara Yorozu with his bare, bloody hands who approached him at a shady bar and whispered she had done away with the devil, won't he ascend to Heaven with her now?

“FXXK YOU, I'D RATHER FALL TO HELL WITH HER THAN BE DRAGGED TO ‘HEAVEN’ BY THE LIKES OF YOU!”

[y-rhywbeth2]

Lore Compilations (+ this blog's tagging/filter list at the end)

A WIP of a pinned post table of contents to tidy up the blog while I empty my fixations onto it plus a lore accuracy disclaimer (so I don't have to keep typing one), because why not. I like tables of content.

-

Disclaimer regarding lore accuracy: If you combine 50 years, 5 editions, 10+ settings, god knows how many novels, and then all the writers who all retcon and contradict each other's work then what you get is a clusterfuck. The lore I show here is compiled from all five editions of the game. You will likely see stuff out there that contradicts some things I say, or stuff I didn't mention/know. That's the lore for you. If you were the Dungeon Master making your own story, your job would be to pick and chose and build your own take on the setting out of it. I, personally, heavily favour older lore. Larian absolutely did this with Baldurs Gate 3 - frankly, I don't think they even know half this lore even exists, and Bioware took some liberties in the original games too. Wizards of the Coast themselves trample D&D into the ground all the time! All D&D is near enough fanfiction built on fanfiction. Therefore, if you find any information useful you may take it, leave it or tweak it to your desire for your own story, because it's D&D lore, and that's how it works.

Disclaimer regarding Larian's canon (and Bioware, and Obsidian): The setting shown in BG3 does not really match up to the setting as presented in sourcebooks (and sometimes novels, previous games, and 'word of god). I'm always talking about the latter and reframing the story and characters within the latter.

Disclaimer regarding asking me for my opinions on how [x] works in canon: I can make an educated guess based on the sourcebooks, but there are many gaps in many places and however educated the guess, unless it comes from a sourcebook, novel, or writer, it's just my own headcanon.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS [WIP] (I make no promises as to the speed or order at which any of this is produced - and some of these need updating)

Abeir-Toril Why it's called the "Forgotten" Realms

[Some of this is getting revamped at some point] History | Time & Festivals | Lexicon [1] [2] | Languages | Living in Faerûn [1] [?] | Notable Organisations | Magic | | Waterdeep | The Underdark | Geography and Human Cultures

Baldurs Gate: The City #1 | Demographics | Law & Legal System | Aministration & Government | ???

Human Names | Clothes and Fashion | Music | Dating, Sex, Marriage etc [part 1] [part 2] |

Religion How religion works in the Realms, the different pantheons in the world and then individual posts dedicated to the gods as individuals, how and why to worship them and how their churches function

Religion | Priesthoods and Temples | Deities

Death and the Afterlife Dying | Judgement | Afterlives

Deities in BG3 Shar | Selûne | Bhaal | Mystra | Jergal | Bane | Bane #2 | Bane #3 | Myrkul | Lathander | Kelemvor | Tyr | Helm | Ilmater | Mielikki | Oghma | Tempus | Silvanus | Talos | Corellon | Moradin | Yondalla | Garl Glittergold | Eilistraee | Lolth | Laduguer | Gruumsh | Bahamut | Tiamat | Amodeus |

The rest of the Faerûnian Pantheon Gods of Magic & Knowledge | Nature Deities | Cyric | The Elemental Lords | Good Deities | Evil Deities | Neutral Deities |

Arcane Magic

Public Perception | Types of Mages | The Weave | Specialisations | Obscure types of magic | Elven High Magic | ???

Vampires Feeding | "Biology" | Hierarchy & Powers | Weaknesses & Cures | Psychology

Elves The Complete Book of Elves once said ‘The elves of Toril do not follow the standards of most other worlds,’ which yeah, pretty much. The Player’s Handbook is not necessarily going to be accurate when talking about the Tel’Quessir.

Physiology and Quirks | Names | Clans and Houses | Culture | Subraces (still in progress) | Philosophy and Religion | Half-elves | WIP

Drow Culture | Other Drow Cultures

Planars & Planetouched Tieflings | Githyanki | Bhaalspawn | Devils

Dwarves Overview | Culture | Specific Cultures | Magic | Religion | History

Orcs

Hin - That's "halfling", if you're over 3'4" Overview | Names | Culture | Homelands | Religion

Gnomes Culture | Names | Homelands | History | Religion

---

Tagging system:

Various lore things that don't go in the larger compilations are tagged lore stuff. Things that aren't lore will get tagged babbling.

For sensitive material, such as if I feel like poking at the various delightful topics presented in the game:

I'll use edgelord hours as the generic "reader discretion advised"

The tag villainous nonsense means Dead Dove Do Not Eat.

the family circle is an extra warning for discussing the themes and subtexts such as those present with Bhaal's cult and the Bhaalspawn: including reproductive horror and sexual abuse, including the incest.

If I feel like posting anything I scribbled ("art"), the tag will be the scribbles

When I'm making posts and being negative or complaining about video games and trivial stuff, it will be filed as: griping

Whenever I find or consider something new about the Dead Three and/or want to rant and scream insults at Bane again, my tag is the idiot three

When I babble about my characters, I tag it OCs, and the ocs are also tagged by name. So far I've only mentioned Vel

If I don't want to put my babbling about certain characters into the tags, I'll just put the / in front. /astarion, /orin, /gortash, /durge, etc

When I want to babble about stuff happening in my game as I play it, they're tagged playthrough shenanigans. The original games are bg2 playthrough shenanigans.

When I start talking about my oc's romance with Astarion I'll tag it petty murder boyfriends

[crimsonicarus]

GR RPF FIC REC MASTERLIST!!

Long post!

Big shoutout to @arsenalgbt for suggesting i made a list, here are my fave GR fics, im a multishipper so it will be a couple or ships here, anyway, enjoy!

I wanted to also thank all the authors here listed for their awesome contributions to this lovely fandom, im really grateful for all your work <3333333

If any of the authors here listed would rather have their work taken down from this list please let me know .

new year's resolution by @wormeo-and-juliette

Pairing: OT3 Fernando Alonso/George Russell/Lance Stroll

Lance gets the text from Fernando well into the afternoon on the first day of the year: I slept with George.

Um. What?

eagle eyed by @prettydangrotten

Pairing: OT3 Alex Albon/George Russell/Logan Sargeant

“He’s watching, you know,” Alex says, voice level and conversational, like Logan being in the room is a normal part of this experience, “he’s hard.”

i’m your number one (it’s so obvious) by @63historian

Pairing: OT3 Lewis Hamilton/George Russell/Max Verstappen

“Tell him what you want, Georgie.”

He clenches his hole just as he starts begging, “I need you to come inside me, please, Max, please, I want it so bad.”

And who is Max not to obey such beautiful cries?

positive negatives by @ctimenefic

Pairing: Alex Albon/ George Russell

George doesn’t regret that shoot, exactly.

He had for a long time. After the first high of seeing the rushes wore off; after overhearing a murmured warning in general casting, days too late; after he woke up at three am to reread the release he’d blithely signed without thinking, and spent the next four hours staring at the ceiling hoping to wake up. He’d regretted it then.

For years after, the memory of it could hit like an ice cube sliding down his spine. Always, of course, at the most inconvenient moments. When he was working, or networking, when he needed his wits about him, couldn’t afford to stutter over his words. They’d put him in white silk, or offer him wine, or he’d walk into a room with slow, warm jazz playing, and the whole excruciating mess of it all would come back. He’d learnt how to smile through it, then how not to blink at all.

June is the coldest month of the year by @beabnormal24

Pairing: Max Verstappen/ George Russell

“Just don’t be a stranger, yeah?” It doesn’t sound as empty as George would’ve expected.

Max disappears in Monaco’s breeze with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket and his head turned to the side to look at the coast following him, or it’s him who follows the coast. It’s not that simple to guess when George feels the way he does about him.

He stares at the broad expanse of his back until he’s nothing more than a distant figure just like any other person around and he can pretend that he’s no one in the middle of the world.

The blessing of anonymity, he muses, gripping at the hems of his sleeves.

All of a sudden, his chest feels quiet.

nobody else by ginnydear

Pairing: Alex Albon/ George Russell

The Mercedes garage is almost overwhelmingly busy when Alex walks through the crowds of officials there.

or... what if the world was suddenly plunged into omegaverse and everyone started presenting at once... pt two.

 table in the back by @janinaduszejko

Pairing: Alex Albon/ George Russell

“Okay, here’s the offer." Alex says. "I’m going to make you something and if you don’t like it, you don’t pay. How does that sound?”

“So I get a good meal or a free meal?” George asks. “Sounds like a no-lose scenario.”

“Keen eye, George,” Alex grins. “Figured out my terrible business sense on the first try. Alright, take it or leave it.”

 all green lights

Pairing: Alex Albon/ George Russell

Sorry mate I think you've got the wrong number

chrome wheeled, fuel injected, and steppin' out over the line

Pairing: OT3 George Russell/Lance Stroll/Fernando Alonso

Lance and Fernando have been together for over two years and it is great. It is great apart from one minor detail. They are both dominant tops and the irritation is starting to grind them down. Enter Lance's ex-whatever, George Russell.

But George is not going to be as easy to get on board as Lance and Fernando think. He will give his whole heart but you have to open it up first.

DISCLAIMER: THE FIC IS NOW ON PERMANENT HIATUS

Very common crisis (series) by crimandclove

Pairing: George Russell/ Lance Stroll

January 2024 - George finds himself single, stressed, with a set of tits & one Lance Stroll in his home.

Calls and Cats by @raewritesf1

Pairing: George Russell/Max Verstappen

Things go awry when George’s video call with the quartet is interrupted by the form of a familiar half-naked Dutch driver wielding a Bengal cat in the background.

spread before you like a picnic by @janinaduszejko

Pairing: Alex Albon/ George Russell

Now, weeks later, he thinks that was probably the reason he’d said it, why when he came back to himself and noticed that Alex had manhandled him on his stomach and was in the process of peeling George’s jeans down, his first instinct was to say, panicky: “You can’t fuck me.”

it's not about having someone to love me anymore by linearity

Pairings: Alexander Albon/George Russell, George Russell/Toto wolff

George is an omega. He kind of hates himself for it.

Brake Balance by @russilton

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton/George Russell

"Why don’t you come dance?” With me goes unspoken, and George is eyeing him with a familiar look, like he’s sure Lewis will brush him off again, but he still wants to try.

Maybe it’s the buzz of alcohol. Maybe it’s the shiny skin of a tanned collarbone showing through George’s three open shirt buttons. Maybe it’s just the adrenaline of the whole day in general, but for once, Lewis thinks that sounds like a pretty good idea.

Stop overthinking, just go with it.

Bono’s words echo pointedly around his mind. Fuck it

ode to a conversation stuck in your throat by @prettydangrotten

Pairing: Alex Albon/George Russell

They’d agreed on friends when Alex had come to collect the last of his things from George’s flat. George had been adamant about it, all uncomplicated smiles, like they hadn’t just spent six months living in each other’s pockets and having some of the most bizarrely intimate sex of Alex’s life.

And friends is a noble intention, but. Alex still only has one friend who’s sucked him off in their driver’s room.

Allow yourself this happiness by Sonnenscheintraum

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton/George Russell

i can barely breathe (when you're here loving me)

When Lewis wakes up he knows he's going into rut. He will be able to get through the rainy and cold race in Spa if he takes enough suppressants.

But what if George by his side is actually making it worse for him to keep the rut in check?

How is he supposed to keep himself under control when George looks and smells like the most delicious way and makes him want to claim him?

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton/George Russell

Lewis Hamilton may be the sweetest person who ever stepped on earth and choose not to see the truth, but he deserves so much more than a broken, thirteen years younger college student.

So George does what is best for him.

 See my Vision (tell ‘em) by @russilton

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton/George Russell

“Feeling a little desperate, sweetheart?” It’s clearly rhetorical, but George nods anyway, and bites his lip at the conflicted emotions he sees cross Lewis’ face.

He knows it’s late, closer to Monday morning than Sunday night, but it’s been so long since they’ve had freedom to do whatever they want. He loves racing with his entirety, he even loves the intensive training and strict schedules, but he doesn’t love how the need to keep his body in perfect function for a race keeps him from Lewis.

George and Lewis have three weeks break between Monza and Singapore, and they just can’t wait anymore.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Black Light 13

Warnings: noncon, namecalling, violence, other dark elements. Proceed with caution.

Note: Thank you for waiting! Please let me know what you think as it helps me a lot with ideas and I love interacting with you all.

Part of The Club AU

You don't go home. He might be big and scary but you're a grown woman. He made sure of that, didn't he? So you disappear into the shadows and lurk, watching the girls in their shimmering dresses and the men in their open collars line up for entry.

August stands on one side of the doors, Lee the other, and they go about their work. They stop pairs and groups to check cards and wave them inside, pointing others back onto the street. One man refuses and receives a violent shake from your man. You almost giggle as you peer around the chipped brick.

It slows down to only a few ambitious clubbers here and there. It must get boring just standing outside and staring at the street. No wonder he's so moody. The only thing exciting in his life is his own emotion. You can't judge, you don't have much going on either. You haven't even got a summer job. Wait, that's a brilliant idea.

You calm yourself. Tonight, you have another mission. You just have to be patient.

You smile and nearly bounce in place. Oh, you are excited. It will have to wait of course, but it's always nice to have a purpose.

You yawn as your phone jitters. You turn away to hide the glow and check the notifications. It's Hottie. Her ID makes your stomach churn. For some reason, the idea of seeing her again makes you nauseous. Almost as if she did, she'd see right through you. She's so smart and tough, and you... you let him follow you and then...

Oh but it's such a special moment, you just want to bask in the afterglow just a little longer.

-

It's early. Or late, depending on your point of view. Time has always been a conundrum to you. A line with no end.

You watch as the club empties out, last call ending with a deafening silence. The absence of the blaring music is louder than its thumping bass. You linger, rubbing your eyes, yawning once more.

You back up as girls teeter past drunkenly in their heels. You can't see the front doors but you know he won't leave right away. He has to make sure everyone's out. You wait until the coast is clear and go to peek out once more.

Your mind wanders, as it often does, and you think of that day when he came to get that couch. You remember his truck... Hmmmm.

You creep across the street like a cat. You stay close to the wall as you approach the club and dip around to the lot. There aren't many cars there. You turn on your phone light and squint; you think that's the right plate. It is the only truck in the lot.

You shut off the light and put your phone away. You hug your scrapbook under one arm and step up on the large tire. You haul yourself up and flip over the top, landing heavily as the book falls out of your grasp. You retrieve it as you gasp for breath and drag yourself into the corner. He won't check back here, besides it's too dark.

You lay folded against the metal and try not to fall asleep. It's tempting as it's nearly three in the morning. You hear a door clatter open and shut, voices tossed back and forth. A deeper voice met by a sheepish murmur. You hold your breath until they fade away and the door opens again.

Footsteps and nothing else. Boots mulching on the stray bits of gravel across the pavement. The truck chirps as it unlocks and shifts as the driver side door swings out. Oh, it's him!

You lock up and fight the urge to jump out and holler 'surprise'. In due time.

He turns the engine over and reverses out with a sharp veer. You're jostled by the movement as he puts his foots down on the pedal. Oh god, he's an aggressive driver.

You're wide awake as he takes corners with no caution. He is consistent. You latch onto your scrap book, not wanting it to slide around and give you away. The cool night blows over you and sends a shiver up your spine.

Finally, he slows, coming to a halt after another jolting veer. You wait and listen as he gets out, grumbling in that cute way he does. You sit up and edge over to the other side. You watch his shadow and push yourself back as he passes.

As he turns between the next row of cars, you scramble to hope out of the truck bed and use the bumper to lower yourself down. You run after him, puffing as he walks steadily towards the apartment building. You're caught off guard as he turns and catches you by the throat. You squeak and drop the scrap book, clasping onto his thick wrist.

"Ach, Poo-kie," you croak out, "it's just me--"

He grunts and squeezes tighter before relenting, instead grasping the front of your shirt, "what are you doing?"

"Um, duh, I came to see you. My boyfriend--"

"Stop," he hisses, shaking you. "You're really starting to get on my nerves."

"Hey, don't be so rude," you hit his chest, "I came all the way out here in the middle of the night--"

"How did you get here? How do you know where I live?" He snarls.

You're silent. The truth might not help your case.

"Lucky guess?"

"Goddamn it, what--" he rasps, "you are insane. You are going to get yourself hurt, little girl. I told you, we only fucked."

"Well..." you bat your lashes, sliding your touch down his forearm, "we can do it again..."

"Huh?" He recoils, letting you go as you stagger on your feet.

"Yeah!" You clap your hands, "maybe this time it won't hurt that bad."

He's quiet, only letting out a deep exhale.

"You need to forget what happened--"

"How can I?" You counter, "it was my first. You're my first." Your voice grits as a swell of heat flows up from your stomach, "I won't forget."

"I'm telling you to go--"

"You said you love me," you pout.

"You made me--"

"And you made me do... do that thing," you accuse right back, "you don't just get to walk away."

Silence, again. He rolls his shoulders and crosses his arms, his silhouette looming even larger.

"You should," he growls, "walk away before this gets messy."

"I'm not going to," you say, lip trembling.

He shakes his head and drops his arms. He steps closer and reaches for your shoulders, gripping tightly as he leans in.

"You don't learn easy, do you?" he sneers and lets a hand snake up to the back of his neck. He twists you around, pinching meanly as he marches you ahead of him. "I'll fucking teach you.”

[pedrito-friskito]

strawberry wine - joel miller x ofc!liv stone/fem!reader

during - part eleven

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

you get the short end of the stick, but it’s worth it.

a/n: okayyyyyyyyy shit’s getting heavy, folks, but things are chaaaaaaanging. hope you’re ready 😈

word count: 4.4k

warnings: MY BLOG IS 18+, MINORS DNI, a lot of angst, a lot conversation, canon-typical violence and injuries (heavy on both), drinking, Joel has more feelings, I love Tess.

if you haven’t already, please read the announcement/follow up I posted about giving Liv a name.

✨follow @friskito-library for updates on new works/chapters✨

Tess likes to talk. You don’t mind; it makes the walk back much faster, and the QZ is within sight much sooner with the easy conversation between you. 

She talks about how she found Joel and Tommy, how they’d been stuck together ever since Kentucky. She mentions her husband, Nate, and you offer your sympathy — which she brushes off — and tell her about Dean.

“With a baseball bat?” she repeats, an almost incredulous look on her face. “That baseball bat?”

“Yep,” you laugh, hefting the thing in your hand. “Kept me alive this long. All those years of softball finally paid off.”

Tess tells you what she was starting to build in Baltimore, and you can’t help but grin. The two of you are more similar than you thought. You return her stories in kind, details of your own ventures. “There are lots of ways in and out of the Boston QZ,” you tell her, “you just have to know where to look.”

You don’t ask about her and Joel, and she doesn’t offer the information. He hangs back the entire time, a good twenty feet behind you, rifle slung over his shoulder. You chance a glance back once or twice, mostly making sure he’s still there, and his hard gaze makes you freeze every time.

This definitely isn’t the reunion you’d imagined. Honestly, you’re not quite sure what you had envisioned, but this sure as hell ain’t it. Fuck, why couldn’t you just keep your mouth shut?

You lead them through as quietly as possible, using a spot on the wall where the bricks have been cracked, leaving footholds behind for those who know to look for them. You send Tess up first, then Joel, and he waits at the top, grabs you by the arm and hauls you up the last foot. You open your mouth to say thank you, but he’s already released you, turned away yet again.

All right, so this is how it’s going to be.

Through the top level of the building, down the ladder into the alley. You stash your bat and your bag in the same place, tell Tess and Joel to leave their guns there, too. Joel’s reluctant, but Tess smacks his shoulder and he does as you say, that hard look on his face the entire time. 

Your boots splash in the same puddle they had last night. Tess is close behind you as you head out of the alley and skirt down the next building. A few more alleyways, heads ducked, avoiding soldiers and civilians alike, and you head down another alleyway, waiting for the coast to clear before shoving a dumpster aside, revealing a hole in the bricks that leads inside the empty warehouse.

“How did you—” Joel starts to ask, but cuts himself off.

You hold your arm out, gesturing him inside. “Quickly.”

The opposite end of the warehouse faces the gate almost directly. The windows on the lower level are covered with newspaper, shattered in some places, and you peer through one of the missing panes. Beside the main gate, there’s an office, of sorts. Where they take any survivors that make it to the gate, test them, either put them in the system or put a bullet in their heads.

“Wait here.” You prop open the window, slide through the gap and pop back up the other side. No one pays you any mind as you head towards the office, leaning up on your toes to peer through the little window in the door. Nick’s standing inside, staring at one of the old computer screens, and when you tap on the glass, he nods.

You turn back, waving at Tess. “C’mon.” They’re quick about it, and you push the door open once they’re close, following them both inside. Nick stares at Joel for a moment, meets your eyes over his shoulder. You try to school your face neutral, but you can’t tell if you get away with it or not.

“In there,” Nick says, the words blunt, and points down the hallway, to one of the smaller rooms. The office used to be a doctor’s office, you think; one main lobby, a bunch of smaller exam rooms down the hall. Joel and Tess do as he says, and you start to follow behind, but feel Nick’s hand on your shoulder. It makes you pause, and you look at him, turning beneath his hand.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” he asks, his voice low. “Joel.”

You repeat yourself to him a third time. “Does it matter?”

Nick’s brow creases. “Of course it fucking matters, Liv.”

You shake your head. “Just process them, please? Then you can throw me in lockup and this’ll all be over.”

The look on his face says he doesn’t believe you, but you push his hand off your shoulder, step into the room where Tess is standing, Joel sitting in one of the chairs, elbows on his knees. “This is Corporal Nick Cowan,” you introduce, jutting a thumb over your shoulder. “I trust him. He’ll test you both, put you through the system, and take you back to my place.” Your eyes flick to Joel. “Tommy should still be there.” You turn to look at Nick. “On the off chance he’s not, take them to Deanna’s.”

Nick gives you a curt nod, and you can feel Joel’s stare boring holes in your skull. It’s Tess that finally breaks the silence, concern on her face. “What about you? Why aren’t you taking us?”

“Cuz I’m gonna be in lockup,” you say, and Joel jumps to his feet, but doesn’t reach for you, doesn’t do anything but stare, “for the next two days.” You swallow hard. “There’s enough food at my place for you three, water too. Tommy knows where the whiskey is.” You give a little chuckle, staring down at your boots before lifting your head. There’s something like admiration in Tess’s eyes, whereas Joel is pure fire. You chew the inside of your cheek. “It’s fine, really. All part of the deal.”

“You’ve been in FEDRA lockup before?” Tess asks, crossing her arms.

You nod. “Once or twice. I’ve been caught by a couple other soldiers, but I have dirt on most of them. Makes it easier, but this is all part of the plan.” Your eyes dart to Joel before meeting Tess’s. “It’s fine. It’s worth it.”

Nick grabs your arm then, all business, fingers biting into your elbow. “Let’s go. Now.” His voice is louder, and you lift a brow as he pulls you back through the door. “You two, don’t move, or so help me god, I will throw you both right back through that gate.”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes. “Seriously?”

He stares down at you. He’s angry, you realize. “Seriously.”

Nick yanks the door shut, Joel and Tess staring at you as it closes, and he all but pushes you down the hall to the door, out onto the road, towards the building where you’ll be for the next two days. Lockup. “There were other soldiers in there,” he mutters under his breath. “I had to make it somewhat believable.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure.”

+

Since the world ended, Joel will admit he’s gotten quick to judge. First impressions were hell before cordyceps ravaged the planet, but now they’re even worse, if not more important. But Joel’s met one too many terrible people, and he’s learned to be quick on the draw, quicker on his judgement.

He knows almost immediately that he does not care for Corporal Nick Cowan. At all.

Mainly, he doesn’t like the way Cowan was looking at you. He saw the way he stopped you outside the door, the two of you whispering under your breath to each other, an almost defiant look on your face. Are you two…?

He doesn’t finish the thought.

Joel’s mind has been churning from the moment he saw you, standing there in the gas station parking lot, that fucking baseball bat in your hand. Something else had taken over, something like happiness, spilling into the corners of his heart the moment he had you in his arms again. Alive, breathing, whole, right in front of him. He felt whole, for the first time in a long time, holding you like that. It felt…good.

And then you opened your mouth, and it all came crashing down.

He hasn’t forgotten. He can’t forget that night. The gunshots and the blood and the way Sarah had cried. The way he’d felt her go. It haunts his every step, her voice a constant reminder in the back of his mind. He knew he’d have to tell you, if he ever found you again, and in a way, he’s grateful his brother was the one to deliver the news, but the way you’d said it, the broken apology, the tears on your face, it was too much.

It is too much.

Cowan returns not ten minutes after he’d hauled you off, and Joel gets to his feet when the door opens. The soldier gives him a look, but Joel doesn’t flinch. He’s used to this shit; the FEDRA soldiers in Baltimore were the same. “You can sit,” Cowan says, but Joel doesn’t move. Tess sinks into the chair he’d been occupying. There’s a clipboard in the soldier’s hand, and he flips the page over. “Names.”

“Tess Servopoulos.”

“Joel Miller.”

“Date of birth.”

“April 9th, 1969.”

“September 26th, 1967.”

On and on it goes, until the page is full. Cowan doesn’t look at either of them once, and then takes the scanner from his belt. He’s not gentle with it, the hard press of plastic and the following tingle at Joel’s neck making him wince. The scanner turns green both times, and Cowan scoffs.

“Well, there you go.” The soldier sighs. “Boston QZ works about the same as Baltimore. You work for the community, keep it running, earn your ration cards. Liv will tell you where to find assignments, what jobs you’re allowed to take. She’s responsible for you for now, once she’s out. You stay in her place until she comes back, and we go from there.”

“We don’t get our own space?” Tess asks, and Cowan shoots her a look.

“You wait for Liv,” he says tersely, “and we go from there.”

Joel bites his tongue.

He leads them through the QZ quickly, both hands on his rifle. Joel itches for his own gun, stashed in your hideaway, but forces his hands into fists instead. Tess gives him a pointed look. Don’t fuck this up.

It irks his brain that Cowan just knows where your apartment is. Tommy opens the door after the soldier knocks, and pulls Joel into a hug, Tess afterward. “You made it.”

Tommy steps aside to let them in, and when Joel turns back to the door, the Corporal is gone.

Good fuckin’ riddance.

“Much nicer than the shit we had in Baltimore,” Tess comments, shucking her coat off, and Joel huffs a laugh. 

It’s…well, nice isn’t really the word. The flower wallpaper is something else but the place looks lived in, which already makes it better than the plain walls and nondescript shit they had in the Baltimore QZ. There’s a butterfly painted on the window, a bookshelf built into one wall, another little shelf between the two windows with a radio perched on top. The flower paper doesn’t continue along all the walls, giving way to a yellow colour, the lower two feet of the wall painted blue. There’s a big window near the bed, a tall wardrobe beside it, a cracked radiator, the bathroom tucked beside the bedroom.

Tommy makes lunch, some kind of instant mac and cheese that tastes all too familiar to Joel. But washing it down with a glass of whiskey definitely helps. Tess busies herself looking through your bookshelves, combing through the titles. 

“Where did she get all this stuff?” Joel asks. The shelves are filled with books, but there are other things too, little knickknacks and candles and tchotchkes. A little elephant made of jade. Joel picks it up, rubs his fingers over the carved edge.

“If you’d been listening, on the walk back,” Tess quips, an almost sing-song to her voice, “instead of being an asshole, you’d know. She’s been doing the same shit we have. Smuggling. Looting places that have been deserted. And she’s clearly better at it than we are.”

Joel says nothing, his brow lowering as he puts the elephant back on the shelf. There’s a little glass dish on one of the other shelves, filled with rings of all sizes and metals. Wedding rings, he realizes after a moment, engagement rings.

Tess hums. Joel watches as she reaches down, rubs her thumb over the silver band on her finger.

“Who is she, Joel?” Tess asks, and a zap of cold slides down his throat. “To you. Who was she? And don’t try to bullshit me and say nothing.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, instead of nothing, and walks away from the bookshelf. There are no doors between the different rooms, the living room and kitchen and bedroom one open space with a dividing wall. He walks towards your bed, lets his hand trail over the plaid sheets and blankets and sinks onto the edge, parks himself in front of the window.

He stays there, until the sun sets. 

Two days in lockup, you’d said. You wait for Liv, Cowan had instructed.

Part of him feels like he needs to apologize. He’s going about this wrong, he knows that. But the memory of what he’s lost has risen to the surface of his mind, and made him hurt. Made him all too aware of how broken he is.

With Tess, it doesn’t matter. He cares for her — of course he cares for her — but the line in the sand is clear. It’s stress-relief, comfort, a placeholder for what they’ve lost. Tess lost Nate, and Joel lost you.

And what the fuck did he do to deserve to find you again?

Tess crawls into bed, eventually. She doesn’t say a word to Joel, doesn’t invite him to lay with her. He can hear Tommy snoring on the other side of the thin wall that separates the living room and the bedroom, his brother sprawled on the couch.

He gets to his feet, scrubbing a hand over his face. The wardrobe door creaks as he pulls it open. There’s not much inside, clothing meant more for warmth than anything else, an assortment of sweaters and flannels. He knows he shouldn’t, feels a prickle of guilt up his spine as he drags his hand through the fabric. His fingers catch on something softer than the others, and he pinches blue flannel, striped with white and grey.

You kept his shirt. All this time. Held it close enough to take it with you when you left.

It makes him ache.

Joel wanders into the kitchen, grabs the bottle of whiskey from where it had been left on the worn kitchen table. It’s a mess of coffee cups, pages torn from notebooks, a collage of maps spread beneath everything else. He sees paths marked in red, on the maps, places circled and x’ed out, scribbled notes and times and dates. The kitchen sink is clean, a few plates stacked beside, evidence of Tommy’s cooking still on the stove. The fridge is slightly crooked, from when Tommy had pulled out the whiskey.

He sees it, from the corner of his eye, on the top door of the fridge. Held in place by a magnet shaped like a strawberry.

July 4th 2002

The magnet falls as he pulls the polaroid off, but he catches it before it can hit the ground. The picture is torn at one corner, the edges a little warped, but otherwise intact. He can remember that night. The warm summer air, your head on his shoulder, beer and barbecue in his belly, the awe on Sarah’s face as you all watched the fireworks together. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Joel puts the magnet back on the fridge, but keeps the picture in his hand, sinks into a chair at the table, takes a swig from the bottle of whiskey.

He doesn’t hear Tess until she’s sliding into the chair across from him. He says nothing, another long sip from the bottle as she pulls the polaroid from his grip. She looks at it for a long moment, smoothing her fingers over the edges before handing it back to him.

“Tell me who she is, Joel,” she says again, more of a statement than a question. “Please.”

Joel’s throat bobs. Tess doesn’t often say please.

He blows out a shaky breath. “A ghost,” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching. “To be honest, I’m still not totally convinced she’s really here. That we’re really here.”

Tess grips his free hand, pushes the bottle away. “We are here, Joel. Liv is here.” She squeezes his fingers. “Please, I just wanna make sense of it all.” Tess pauses, leans back a little. “Did you love her?”

Joel just nods, the movement slow as molasses, making his neck ache. “Her parents owned a hardware store, back in Austin. She moved back from Michigan after she finished school, started working in the store, and I met her there. We had one summer, and then she got a job in Boston.”

“You let her go.”

His brow crinkles, and his fingers itch to reach for the bottle, but he doesn’t. “I couldn’t let her stay in Austin just for me, couldn’t let her throw away her future.” He shoves a hand through his hair. He’s still holding the picture. “We spent the rest of the summer together, and then she left. Came back the next summer, and we had another two weeks.” He rubs his thumb over the photograph, the image of you leaned against him. “But it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t enough.”

“She broke it off?”

He lays the polaroid on the table, thumb still tracing your outline. “She met someone. Dean. The space was too much, for both of us. I understood. I let her go.”

“And then the world ended.”

Joel reaches for the bottle then, and takes a long swig before sliding it across to Tess. “And then the world ended.”

“So, she’s the reason you wanted to go to Boston.”

He can’t bring himself to look at Tess. “I called her that night, when everything happened. Told her to get out of Boston, that I’d find her. It was never about Boston, exactly, it was just about going East, praying that we might meet in the middle. I looked for her at every QZ, every shelter, every single time I saw a body in the street, I was looking for her.”

“But you found her,” Tess says, her voice low, and Joel forces his eyes to hers. “Joel, she’s alive. She’s right here. Second chances like this…” She trails off, shakes her head. “This kind of stuff doesn’t happen all the time, Miller, not anymore. This is…”

“If you call this a miracle, Tess, I swear to god.”

She scoffs a laugh. “No, not a miracle. But…something. You can’t—”

“I told you who she was,” he cuts her off, that same feeling rising in his throat again. What the fuck did he do to deserve a second chance with you? “Now drop it.”

“Joel—”

“Drop it, Tess.” He shoves his chair back, gets up, heads for the bed.

If she notices him take the polaroid with him, she doesn’t say anything.

+

Stairs are hell.

Every step makes your side scream in pain. The pressure you’ve been holding against your ribs has done little to ease the ache, and even breathing makes it worse. Your mouth tastes like blood, iron and tangy against your teeth, and you know you’re lucky as hell your cheek isn’t broken. Bruised to shit, yes, but not broken.

They were feeling feisty in lockup, worse than you’ve ever had it before. Nick left you with two other soldiers inside, muttering something about disturbing the peace. They processed you, put the charge on your record, and when another soldier came to get you, your stomach sank into your toes.

Angie.

The same soldier who’d been working the pharmacy when you’d gone to get inhalers for Henry. You hadn’t threatened her, not exactly, but you’d made it clear that you could do some damage if she didn’t give you what you wanted. The pharmacy is a no-violence zone; she couldn’t have hit you then even if she wanted to. It would get her in deeper shit than you.

But in lockup? A whole other fucking story.

She grabbed you roughly, all but shoving you through the doorway that led deeper into the building. You don’t think the building was originally like this, all cells and interrogation rooms; FEDRA must have built it themselves. 

You were expecting to get shoved into a cell right off the bat, but instead, she lead you to one of the rooms, pushed you inside and yanked the door shut behind you.

“What are you—”

Your words cut off with the first slap, a hard backhand that made your head snap to the side. You grunted, grabbing the back of a chair inside the room. You had half a mind to grab the thing with both hands and launch it at Angie, but that would only extend your time in lockup.

All you could do was sit there and take it.

Her second backhand made your teeth rattle, pain sparking behind your eyes. You nearly ducked to dodge the next hit, out of instinct, but forced yourself still, tears springing forth as her fist connected with your cheek. Over and over again, you just let her hit you. She hit you hard enough that you stumbled back, tripped over your own feet and the chair behind you and hit the ground. She didn’t waste any time driving her boot into your side, and you just curled inwards, just took it.

You weren’t sure exactly when she left, all you knew was that the blows stopped landing, but the pain didn’t. Two more soldiers came in after, picked you up off the floor, and carried you out of the room. They put you in a cell next, gave you a bottle of water and a blanket. The fabric was mottled with blood when you finally opened your eyes, and your face ached something fierce.

You slept it off, the rest of your time inside. Ate the shitty bread when it was offered, used the water to clean the blood from your face. And then, your forty-eight hours were up, and they let you go.

Part of you expected Nick to be waiting for you outside, but you were happy he wasn’t. You didn’t want to feel like you owed him anything more.

It took ages to get back to your building. Every step outside made pain shoot through your side; you’re pretty convinced at least one of your ribs is broken. And now, fucking stairs.

You almost fall against the doorjamb once you reach your apartment, digging in the pocket of your coat for your keys. You’re fumbling with the lock when the door swings inward, revealing Tess, bright-eyed and wearing one of your t-shirts. “Jesus Christ.”

You actually fall forward then, and Tess catches you, sliding an arm around your waist and dragging you over the threshold. 

“A little help here!” 

Tommy and Joel are both sitting on your couch, and they both jump to their feet the moment they see you. Tommy moves before his brother, and is at your side in an instant, taking some of your weight from Tess. You’re grateful as hell, though the movement makes your side scream in pain. They bring you towards the couch, and from the corner of your swollen eye, you see Joel move out of the way, heading in the direction of your bedroom. You’re in too much pain for it to really sting.

You cry out as they lower you onto the couch. Tommy looks frantic, and Tess disappears for a moment, coming back with a wet cloth. She drags it over your cheek and you whimper.

“She’s messed up,” she says, you assume to Tommy. “They have a clinic here, right? Like in Baltimore.”

“Yeah,” Tommy says, “saw it when I first got here. I can go—”

You flail an arm out, your hand landing on Tommy’s leg. “Get Deanna.”

You think he nods — you hope he nods — and you hear the door bang shut a moment later. Tess wipes at your face more; guess you didn’t get as much blood off as you thought.

“Tess,” you call softly, and her eyes snap to yours. “You don’t have to—”

“Oh, shut up,” she tells you, her voice almost stern. You want to laugh. “Who did this to you? FEDRA? Cowan?”

“Not Cowan. Pissed off the wrong girl, I guess.” You actually scoff out a laugh, but it makes your ribs sing with pain. “Can’t fight back in lockup.”

Tess’s brow wrinkles. “Good to know it’s the same shit all over in some way, at least.”

You go quiet, for a long moment. Tess holds the cloth against your cheek, and you revel in the cool feeling, letting your eyes flutter shut. The pain throbs with every beat of your heart, every breath you take, but her hands are gentle, almost soft.

“Joel told me,” she says, breaking the silence that’s been filled only with your shaking breaths. “About the two of you, about…before.”

Tears fill behind your closed eyelids, and you feel them slip down your cheeks. “Doesn’t matter now,” you say, trying to shake your head but failing miserably. “He doesn’t…”

“Don’t worry about what he does or doesn’t. He’s a stubborn ass.”

“You two—”

She puts a finger on your lips, shushing you. “I said, don’t worry about it, Liv.” She shakes her head, brow pinched, moving the cloth to dab at the corner of your mouth. “Not right now.”

You hear the door open, and a moment later, Deanna’s face comes into view, hovering over you. “What the hell did you do, girl?”

“Made a deal,” you say, “but it was worth it.”

Through the thin wall, you think you hear Joel sigh, the noise long and deep.

PREV | NEXT

[mourningliliesmorningglories]

"Your clothes in the dryer. Your hair on the shower wall. Your toothbrush is too much. Your shoes empty in the hall."

James felt the absence before he saw it. He wondered how long he could keep everything resembling something normal. He wondered if he was the cheese that rots in the mousetrap. Regulus was everywhere, haunting him, taunting him. Regulus had belongings scattered all over his room; books on the bedside table, a quill on the desk since he disapproved of the glide of a biro, a grey blanket cast carelessly over the window seat. He remembered them wrapped up in it, Regulus telling him that their brains were 75% water and even then, that water was already on its way to become something else. The rain. The snow. The condensation on his window. James doesn't know how much water they shared. He hoped he'd feel him in the rain or the snow or in the condensation and know. You borrowed this water from him, ergo he is still here.

"The books on your shelf that you never read. The hunting knife you kept by your bed. The flowers you dried and tied up with twine, suspended from the ceiling."

Regulus knew that you couldn't be in two places at once. He couldn't love him and keep him. He couldn't succeed and lose everything. He didn't mean to not say goodbye, but omission is wishful thinking. James' face was undeniably hopeful when they parted for his final summer break. He couldn't say he was scared of the future or the person he had become. Regulus knew that just because something is left unsaid, it doesn't lose its meaning. A bag packed with hidden intention is still deceitful. A goodbye kiss is a goodbye kiss, even when only one pair of lips knows. Regulus could not live the life he desired and the one he was destined for. Regulus was named after the stars and so he trusted that his future had been written in them for as long as the cosmos existed. Yet he was selfish, quill to parchment, master to servant. It was unfair of him to make the request to Kreacher, to deliver the letter in a moment of quiet. It was unfair of him to give the directions ‘To James Potter, on his kitchen table, at dawn of the chosen day.’

"You tell me you love me, like it'll be the last time. Like you're playing out, the end of a storyline. I say I love you too, because it's true. What else am I supposed to do?"

It was the tail end of summer in 1980 when the letter came. Settled on the edge of the dining table in Godric's Hollow, as if knowing James was always the first awake, it sat addressed to him. He would know that handwriting on his deathbed, it stayed sat in his lowest desk drawer. The envelope was crisp with time, the ink faded from black to grey. The parchment had fared no better. Yellowed and splattered with faint water marks. He saw the words on the page and yet, not a single one made sense. James thinks of Harry, still flushed red with the newfound world, and Lily, who shone brighter than sun, who guided him home. James had made a life he couldn’t give back. He’d committed to woman, son and war. He thinks of all he lost to get here and why it came back. It feels like flying along the coast. Sea as far as the eye can see. Then abruptly, land.

"Begin, be done. Break a vow, make a new one. Call me if you need a friend, or never talk to me again. But please stay."

To the moon,

If you are reading this, I am dead, and you have moved on. Know I did not leave without saying goodbye because I wanted to consider that I might see you just once more. There is something I must do because I believe it may save you. I’d search one hundred oceans and one hundred caves. I’d drink from the cursed cup and yet not ask for your forgiveness. ‘I used to love you’ is not a phrase I shall entertain. There is only love. Nothing else. Even this I do selfishly. I would love to go back to how we were, wrapped in grey blankets, tracing shapes in windowpanes. Know that all my goodness is owed to you, my life is an oath in ode to you.

Please live. Please burn the letters and look ahead. Do not miss the lilies bloom.

R.A.B

wc: 770 // @jegulus-microfic

[amandacanwrite]

The Violet Thread of Fate ||

Reluctant Mentor Gale x Unskilled Wizard F!Tav

Length || About 4,000 Words

POV || Dual Narration, Third Person

Warnings || Descriptions of viscera, age gap (about ten years, both adults)

Summary || After waking up on the craggy shoreline of the sword coast, Elinna and Gale reunite with a new common ground.

A/n || I am feeling sort of on the fence about Gale's eagerness in his attraction to Elinna, but I also feel like it's still at least somewhat in character for him--after all in any playthrough you can wind up being blindsided by his feelings for you since he is usually so subtle about his affections. I also just think it's so fun to get the internal narration of Gale's attraction. He always seems so put together, polite and proper. I just love to see a man precariously balancing his carnal desires with his conscience and desire to be a good man. I hope you like it, I know things feel a little slow right now, but I'm planning on taking some creative liberties in the next couple parts. Please also lemme know what you think if you read it! I am absolutely tinkerbell and need the dopamine to live

Chapter Two: A Nightmare, An Awakening

Read Part One Here • Join Tag List Here

A Nightmare

Elinna thought she had died; thought the disintegration of her bodily form was the end of her short, unremarkable life. Much to her surprise, though when her vision once again returned to her she realized she had merely been spirited away somehow.

It took a few moments for her eyes to properly focus. When they finally did, she almost wished that the contact with the tentacle had killed her. It would have been far preferable to where she had wound up.

She found herself locked in a great chitinous pod, looking through smeared membranous glass at what she could only suppose was the nautiloid she had tried to escape from. 

Yes…death would have been a far preferable fate to becoming a mindless thrall on a mindflayer ship. As she squinted through the clear panel in front of her and saw what appeared to be a brain walking on four spindly limbs, she realized that her fate could be even worse than regular enthrallment. 

The minutes she spent entrapped in the pod felt like hours. A miserable limbo of wondering what would be coming next for her. What if she was already marked for turning into an intellect devourer? What if the enthrallment had already been put in place and she could simply be ordered to do something whenever a mindflayer so wished it?

She couldn’t just stay here. She had to move.

She tried, in vain, to wrench her arms free of the fleshy brindings within the pod. The sinuous tendrils only tightened more and more, leaving her fingertips throbbing and tingling from the blood flow being cut off. She tried to move her feet next and her boots sloshed in some sort of viscera at the base of the pod. She did her best not to vomit as the viscera eked some ichorous fluid into the fibers of her clothing and through the porous leather of her soft-soled shoes. 

The last thing she needed in addition to all of this was to be covered in the contents of her own stomach–empty as it was.

The shock of panic cinched tight around her ribcage, making it hard to breathe. And as she struggled to get her lungs to fill, she also struggled to think. 

“Calm down, Elinna,” she told herself. “Think about what you’ve read. Think about what you know.”

What did she know about Illithids? They were hivemind organisms. They required high-moisture, high-humidity environments to protect the mucosal membranes of their skin. They primarily fed on the brains of their prey and used psionic energy not only to fight but to control their biomechanical machinery. 

She craned her head forward to look for some sort of control panel–something that could get her out of this cocoon of horror. 

As she did, a valve-like door opened on the far side of the room, revealing a dizzying network of corridors. And…and one of them. A mind flayer. 

Elinna went dizzy as her heart thumped in her temples. She watched in horror and sickly anticipation as it levitated toward something in the center of the room; a cistern of sorts from what she could see. It waved a four-fingered hand and the vessel opened, revealing a golden, glowing brine pool that may have been beautiful if Elinna didn’t know precisely what it was. 

The mindflayer coaxed one of those disgusting tadpoles out of the amber liquid and levitated over to Elinna’s pod. She recoiled away from it as the pod opened, turning her face away from the creature and squeezing her eyes shut. She knew exactly how mindflayers reproduced, and she was not interested in getting a first hand experience with ceremorphosis. 

She didn’t have much of a choice, though. Even without the parasite, the illithid was able to compel her to stillness. 

It was an atrocious violation of her agency; surreal and nightmarish in the worst ways. Her mind was fully intact as the creature made her muscles release the tension they held and coerced her eyes to open. Her body was still and calm, but her heart was racing like a trapped rabbit’s. She watched uselessly as the tiny creature floated closer to her. She cried to cry out as it latched onto the orb of her eye and started to wriggle and squirm until it could find purchase beneath her eyelid. 

She was silent. Infuriatingly, horribly silent as the creature continued to burrow its way into her skull. 

Her pulse hammered in her ears as she screamed inside her own body, begging herself to fight, to tear her own eye out rather than let the process of ceremorphosis take place. 

But her body was still as the tiny parasite worked its way into her eye socket and back into her brain. 

Elinna lost consciousness as she felt the unsettling pressure of her brain matter being displaced to accommodate her unwelcome guest. 

When she awoke next, she didn’t immediately know where she was. She only knew that it was loud and it was cold. The sound of air ripping past her pointed ears is what brought her back into full consciousness, and though her eyes were open, she wasn’t actually seeing at first. 

There was a vast expanse of stars above her, the smell of salty air, the lingering cling of something far more acrid–like the smell of burnt sulfur woven into her clothes. 

She tried to parse what was going on, it felt like she was sinking into the ocean–but if that were the case, shouldn’t she not be able to breathe? 

Then she saw the burning wreckage of the Nautiloid and everything came back to her. 

The travel to Waterdeep, the encounter with Mr. Dekarios, the parasite and…

And she was falling through the sky! 

“Not again!” she cried as she stared at the ground rising to meet her with startling velocity. “No, no, no! I will not–This is not how I die!”

It didn’t go very well the last time, but it wasn’t as if she had any other ideas of what to do. She scoped out the approaching shoreline, selecting one spot and earmarking it. After choosing a point on a craggy cliffside, she shut her eyes and tried to gulp in a breath before it was whipped out of her mouth. 

“Inveniam Viam!” she shouted. 

That strange, surreal feeling of not moving, yet being in a different place came again, only this time it was followed very quickly by the feeling smashing into the ground beneath her, square onto her back. It wasn’t a far drop, perhaps only a few feet, but it was enough to hurt her. She blinked up at the sky above her, the glow of the stars somewhat dampened by the flaming wreckage of the nautiloid as it loudly crashed into the earth just a few moments after her.

She ached as she stood and looked out over the cliffside she’d misty stepped to, seeing the vast expanse of an unfamiliar coast crawling with intellect devourers and the blazing with fires choking out great plumes of black smoke. She dropped to her knees, feeling utterly defeated. 

She had no idea where she was. She had no money. No food. Not even a change of clothes with her. She didn’t even know where she was–and she knew she was more than a little directionally challenged. 

Her keepers at The Scribes Nest had told her not to leave; had warned her that there were dangers in the world. That she couldn’t hope to survive on the knowledge she’d amassed from books alone. That the lives of wizards often ended in folly. 

She knew this, of course. She’d read extensively about every wizard she could find and more than half of them were done in by their own curiosity. 

But the ones who hadn’t been rendered themselves undone…they were amazing. Elminster and Blackstaff. Lorroikan and Sammaster. Karsus and Dekarios.

Wait….

Gale Dekarios–he’d been touched by the tentacles, too!

And if she hadn’t died, then that meant he probably hadn’t either. If she could find him, if she could just appeal to him for one favor…maybe he could help her get back to Waterdeep. Maybe she would have an opportunity to prove to him that she could be a good apprentice; that she was worth the trouble of taking on as a student. Maybe he would know how to get rid of the tadpole squirming in her brain. 

But none of that would happen if she just sat there on her knees and despaired. 

She would need to get back up and put one bloody boot in front of the other. 

She would have to be brave and she would have to trust that Mystra would guide her to what came next. 

An Awakening

Hells…it just had to be a pocket dimension that saved him, didn’t it?

They were tricky little things–a slice of wild magic that functioned like an oubliette; a place to put things to be forgotten, or to be summoned at a different point in time. He’d used a few in his time, but never for more than storage during travel or to hide the occasional failed potion. He’d thought once that he might use one when it was clear that the orb would no longer be sated by the magic artifacts he consumed; discussed the idea with Tara before she requested not to speak of it until necessary. 

“I don’t like think of that eventuality, Mr. Dekarios,” Tara had said to him. “I know I tend to be pragmatic…but it makes me far too sad.”

“Focus,” he scolded himself as he looked around the darkened pocket. He needed to find an opening–or at least find a way to make one, failing that. 

It was a mistake that he’d even ended up in one in the first place. A mistake that stemmed from the first mistake when he’d tried to help that girl. 

If he’d had any sense, he would have let her run and gone straight to help his mother and make sure Tara would be okay. He could only hope that they were still safely nestled at his childhood home in Waterdeep. At least he’d not seen either of them during his wanderings about the ship. 

But then the spelljammer had lurched and started falling out of the sky, and he’d grabbed onto the strongest strand of weave he could find and followed it here. The unfortunate side of that, of course, was that the strength of that thread is precisely what made this particular pocket realm exceedingly hard to get out of. And the parasite so rudely deposited into his brain was not doing wonders for his ability to concentrate. 

He held his hands up and closed his eyes, attempting to feel out the strands of weave in this darkened place. Wherever he’d been transported to, it felt very far away from Mystra indeed. Like whatever reality he’d blipped into was one almost entirely devoid of magic at all. 

He focused a bit harder, the tadpole in his head wriggling with the effort. He continued to focus, trying not to think too hard about the unnerving sensation. Finally, with some challenge, he managed to pool some magic together. It felt similar to trying to collect enough morning dew on a leaf to drink.

There came a crackle, then a tear. Not nearly large enough to fit himself entirely through, but enough that he could get an arm out. 

Perhaps with at least one hand in Faerun, he could channel whatever remaining weave he needed to fully escape this dark corner of nothing. 

A sheen of perspiration shone on his brow as he felt around outside of the oubliette. He could feel the familiar moisture of coastal air and it sent a wave of relief through him. He wasn’t far from Waterdeep at all, then. Or at least he’d hoped as much. 

Perhaps he could just appear on the main road and hurry straight to his mother to make sure that she and Tara were alright. 

He was trying to grasp onto the weave when he suddenly felt the soft, almost tentative brush of fingertips on the palm of his hand. 

A person! Perfect! There was no better way to anchor a teleportation spell than to another living soul. It would be a little complex to explain that, though, and he was sure a mysterious arm poking out of wherever he could reach was more than a little unnerving so he settled for simplicity instead. 

“Hello?!” He called through the tear in the fabric of space and time. “Is anyone there? A hand? Please?”

He felt the hand withdraw for a moment, then it returned with what he assumed was the person’s other hand. One closed tightly around his fingers, the other grasped a bit higher, accompanied by the sensation of fingertips curling into the fabric of his sleeve. Small, gentle hands. Not small enough to be a child–but perhaps a woman. 

He closed his eyes once more and took a deep breath, allowing himself to feel the energy of the stranger on the other side of the opening. He tapped into it, smelling the faint, sweetly lactic scent of peaches; tasting on the tip of his tongue the light flavor of…honeyscotch candy. If Mystra’s energy was violet in color…this energy was the color of the sky during sunrise…a gradient of lilac, rose and cerulean.

Pretty… he thought to himself before slamming the heel of his hand to his brow. 

Focus you touch-starved buffoon.

“Whatever you’re doing is working wonders!” he said encouragingly. “I think if you just give me a good pull, I should come right out!”

The stranger pulled and he joined that effort by pushing himself through from the other side with what remained of that pooled bit of magic he’d gathered together. 

Finally, he flew out of the pocket realm like a cork from a bottle, regrettably landing right on top of the poor woman who had helped him. 

He was quick to shift his weight so he didn’t put the entirety of his considerable heft on the poor thing. Yet, his creaky knees slowed him down when it came to properly getting up. Then again…he couldn’t deny a certain reluctance to rise. He hated to admit it, and if anyone ever asked him he would deny it to the grave…but it was pleasant to feel the soft curves of a woman against him. A year was such a long time to be without it, and to feel warmth beneath him again…

It was a lascivious thought not becoming of a gentleman, he remembered, but one that occurred almost automatically much to his chagrin. 

“Hells,” he said. “Forgive me miss. I’m usually much better at this–and usually not so long sedentary that my limbs can’t keep up with my manners. Allow me to–”

He lifted himself up onto his elbows and finally laid eyes on his savior. 

It was the girl from before. What was the name? Elinna Inklynn. 

She stared up at him with wide eyes and a face flushed with exertion. How hard had she needed to work to pull him out of that portal? Seeing her so close now, he picked up on some of the qualities he’d missed in the dim light of the Waterdhavian evening. 

A constellation of mauve-tinged freckles dusted across her flushed nose and cheeks. In the daylight, her skin was almost pale pink. The soft swell of her lips sat slightly parted with a look of surprise. And her eyes…my those eyes were something to behold. Verdant as a sprig of mint and flecked with gold as if she had a vein of ore curling through the irises of her eyes. 

“A-allow me to help you up,” he finally stammered. “You’re not hurt are you?”

“Not by you,” she said somewhat breathlessly. 

He grunted slightly as he got back onto his feet, now allowing himself to think of the way her soft curves shifted beneath him. He reached a hand down and helped her back up to her feet as well, dusting off her theadbare apron and her slightly puffed sleeves. She was still flushed–perhaps dehydration or fever…or…

“You haven’t happened to have been on the receiving end of a rather unwelcome insertion in the ocular region, have you?” he asked. 

The flush could be a sign of the beginning stages of ceremorphosis. 

“I couldn’t have phrased it more repellently myself,” Elinna replied. 

“No use sugarcoating it, is there?” he asked with a smirk. “I don’t suppose you know what these little passengers will cause if left to their own devices?”

“Ceremorphosis,” she answered without missing a beat. “At least–if we don’t get it handled in a few days…”

Well, color him surprised. 

It wasn’t very often that ceremorphosis was talked about among the common man–it was even hard to find books detailing the finer details of the process. The girl may have been a poor magician, but she was clearly learned.

“Suffice to say, it is a process that should be avoided,” he said. 

“Agreed,” she said. 

It occurred to him that she was behaving…a bit stiff; almost aloof. The young woman he’d encountered in front of his tower had a bit more fire to her than this one did. Then again, they’d just gone through quite the harrowing experience. Both of them were covered in mysterious viscera, they’d been taken hostage on a mindflayer ship and well–the poor girl did just have a strange older man on top of her. 

The girl bit down on her lower lip and he found his eyes unconscionably glued to her mouth. She released her lower lip and he watched as the pale pink color returned to it, wondering idly what it would feel like to–

“Are we just—are we just going to pretend that I didn’t beg you to take me on as an apprentice and that you quite sumerilly told me to bugger off?” she asked. “Are we just going to be compatriots now?”

He blinked down at her, his mind catching up with her words. 

Good gods, he really was behaving like a lech. He didn’t know where this was coming from. Perhaps it was an undocumented symptom of ceremorphosis–this…uncommon desire he was feeling. 

Or maybe he was just, well, desperate. 

“Well, I take umbrage with that analysis. I don’t believe I told you to bugger off…At least not verbatim. I do try to not be a miserable ass,” Gale said a bit sheepishly. “But I hasten to point out that we do have a shared problem now–some common ground we didn’t have before. It seems wasteful to part ways at a juncture such as this, don’t you think?”

He looked around in the early morning daylight and frowned realizing that he didn’t recognize anything. “I certainly don’t know the area after all, and judging by the history you disclosed with me, you likely don’t either.”

“Well…no, I don’t. Aside from Waterdeep I’ve not been anywhere other than the Moonshae Islands.” she said. 

“And you seem to not have a very strong sense of location judging by our time in the alleyways,” he pointed out. 

“That’s true…so then… does that mean you’ll do it?” she asked. “You’ll take me on as your student?”

He grimmaced.

“No,” he said with not a moment’s hesitation. “Not a student–an ally. An equal. It’s best that we tackle this issue together, don’t you think? It makes no sense to travel separately when our searching will likely lead us to the same places. And besides that…”

Besides that, if he started to change into a mindflayer, he wanted to be sure he had someone nearby who could…put him out of his misery and get his body somewhere safe before it leveled a city. 

“But I could be more helpful if you teach me,” she pleaded. “I’d just be a liability without your help.”

“I have seen your magic,” Gale said with a bit of a teasing gaze. “And I don’t know if there is much I can do for someone who casts Misty Step with their eyes closed. It seems you’d be more of a liability with the magic than without.”

She blinked up at him like he’d grown a second head. 

“Oh, please,” he said. “You must know that it’s a spell that requires a clear line of sight.”

She shrank a bit. “I…didn’t know. No,” she said. 

“How could you not know such a thing? You must have read a scroll to learn the incantation,” he said. 

“I mean this with the utmost respect, but when is the last time you’ve read a scroll, Mr. Dekarios?”

He inhaled, lifting an index finger. Then he closed his mouth and looked off to the side. 

When was the last time? It must have been ages. 

“Well,” she said without waiting for his answer. “Most spell scrolls assume a certain basis of classical training, or at minimum an innate understanding of how to channel the weave.”

“I see,” he said. “I’m to assume you’re not a sorceress then?”

“Not to my knowledge,” she said with a sigh.

He clenched his jaw as he looked down at the younger woman. Gods, she really did need a teacher. Maybe he could at least talk to her about theory–or give her a few simple exercises for manipulating the–

No. No. 

He had more than enough on his plate without adding a poorly self-taught mage to it.

“Elinna,” he said. “Tell you what. I have a deal to offer–a concession if your like. If we make it through this and…make it out of wherever we are and back to Waterdeep, I promise I will introduce you to some colleagues that will help you get your start as a novice wizard. How does that sound? Fair?”

To his great surprise, she still looked disappointed by that answer. The girl really was an ambitious thing–coming right to his tower to seek his tutelage and no one else's? The poor girl had no idea what she was trying to sign herself up for; a depressed, anti-social, explosive wizard. A depressed, anti-social, explosive and impatient wizard. As far as teachers went, he was not the best candidate for the job.  

“Alright,” she finally said. “Let’s see if we can go find a healer together…or maybe some other survivors…of a bath.”

“Oh, to find a bath,” Gale agreed. “Ah, but–before you think you’re journeying with most ill mannered a man–”

Gale gave the young woman a slight bow. “Thank you for pulling me out of that stone.”

When he stood up to his full height again, the young woman was smiling at him, her pretty viridian eyes crinkling at the edges. She tucked a pale copper strand of hair behind one of her delicately pointed ears and looked a bit sheepishly down the craggy shore. 

“Ah–it’s almost a dead end over here–I think there might be more ground to cover if we cross through the wreckage…but I didn’t want to do that on my own,” she said. 

“A wise choice, I think,” Gale said. “No telling what you would have run into. Not to imply that you can’t hold your own, of course–”

“No, you’re right,” she said, looking away from him a little timidly. “I’ll feel better with you there–it’s nice to have a friend.”

He huffed a soft breath and found himself smiling at how willing she was to call him her friend.  Even after all the ways he had been a bit of an oaf to her, he felt in her he had found a bit of a kindred spirit. Someone else who sought camaraderie in perhaps…unworthy places.

 She looked up at him and bit the swell of her lower lip again. “Shall we go then?” she asked him. 

He gestured to the road ahead. “After you,” he said with a magnanimous smile. “Consider me your ever faithful guard dog, ready at the first sign of trouble.”

She snorted a little laugh and shook her head. 

And as he followed after her, for the first time in the last year, he hoped the pang in his chest was because of the orb.

Taglist || @auroraesmeraldarose @thoughts-of-bear @cherifrog @puckprimrose @drabblesandimagines

[abiiors]

west coast

a/n: apologies if this is a bit shit, i did just write it in one burst of horny at 12:30 am <3

this is fiction that only operates on horny. no logic to be found.

minors dni!! (use of "good girl" once or twice i think)

the sharp smell of a burning cigarette permeates the car, wakes up your senses, as you speed down the pacific coast highway. well, matty does anyway, gelled hair blowing in the wind, the thrill of the speed bringing a smile to his face. 

in the dying light of the day, he’s beautiful. all classic handsome with a stubble and a lit cigarette dangling loosely between his pink lips. the golden light brings out the browns and greys in his hair, makes his eyes look like pools of gold. his jawline is sharp enough to cut, especially when he takes a drag of the cigarette and blows out the smoke. 

he’s happy, carefree, singing along to a lana del rey song on the radio, one of your favourites too. their voices blend beautifully, and you wonder what it would be like to be that perfect. 

“you’re staring,” he smirks. he’s cocky today, you like that about him, about l.a. something about being here brings out the quintessential rockstar in him. and something about seeing him like that makes heat pool between your legs. 

“i am,” you challenge, feeling a bit cocky yourself, “what will you do about it?” 

views of the clear blue sea whizz past you but you keep your eyes on matty until he looks at you, only for a second before he returns his attention to the road. it’s empty, nothing but you, the music, and your thoughts that have long since crossed into filthy territory. 

you look at his lap, not the least bit subtle about where your eyes linger. 

“what can i do?” he asks in response, “i like that you’re staring.”

with a surge of boldness, you place a hand on his thigh, on the soft denim of his faded blue jeans. he looks straight out of a dream. 

wayfarers, white t-shirt, golden light. and your hand inches closer to his crotch. 

“minx,” he laughs, quickly catching up to your intentions, peeking at you from the corner of his eye. “you wanna do it here?”

“i’ll make it worth your time,” you lean over, trailing a few kisses on his jaw, leaving behind red lipstick marks and hissing lightly at how his stubble feels on your soft lips. “if you promise to keep us safe.”

sure, your tone is joking but the very real danger of it shoots a tendril of thrill through you, zapping like electricity. he shifts in his seat, clearly eager with anticipation. the next time to eye his crotch, there’s already a bulge. 

you twist your body in the seat, flicking your tongue on the corner of his mouth, chasing away the traces of your lipstick left seconds ago. matty hisses. 

“shit, baby,” he laughs, “go on then. make me feel good.”

you palm him before he’s even done speaking, eager to feel him, to taste him. to hear all the sounds that spill from his lips while his fingers thread in your hair. pushing you down, fucking your mouth. 

he’s already groaning, growing harder under your touch and shifting in his seat while you undo the zipper of his jeans. his other hand is out the window, tapping away the last of the cigarette ash before he stubs it out in the ashtray. the cigarette smoke blends seamlessly with his cologne, with the salty ocean air. 

“lift your hips for me then,” you whisper right into his ear, savouring the way his breath hitches. breaking his composure feels like a small victory, watching him eagerly help you pull himself out of his pants is better still. 

you trail the kisses down his neck, leaving soft red smudges on the collar of his white tshirt—shame you can’t get him out of it in a running car. you would have liked to leave bruises and bite marks all over his chest and stomach. 

“tease,” he hisses, impatient now, whiney almost. so you give him what he wants. 

without warning you bend all the way down, swirling your tongue around his tip and over the slit. the taste of his precum settles on your tongue, sharp and salty and mouthwatering. the sound that leaves him cannot be described with mere words. it’s a grunt, low and guttural—pule male desire and rockstar arrogance.

he lurches, the car stutters slightly and another shiver passes through you. what a way to go this would be…

“fuck—fuck,” his breathing deepens immediately, abs flexing ever so slightly against your cheek. you’re aware of the way the ends of your hair brush and tickle his inner thigh. you’re even more aware of how he throbs in your mouth even with just the tip in. 

placing a hand on his thigh to hold him down, you take more of him in. he’s hard and thick, stretching out your mouth and making your lips burn the lower you go. it’s a delicious burn. 

a jolt goes through you, one full of nerves and excitement and lust. desire settles on your bones like a living thing. oppressive in the best way possible, leaving you so momentarily blinded that when the car veers almost dangerously to one side and you only hum around him in warning. 

“focus, matthew,” you grit out, letting go of him, “on the wheel or i stop right now.”

he mumbles something incoherent, hand resting on top of your head, struggling with himself whether he should push you down. he could if he wanted to, you would let him, happily gag on his cock just to hear him make those sounds again. 

“please, baby,” he moans and that’s all you need to take him back into your mouth, all the way to the hilt this time. 

pleasure swirls inside you, hot and instant, a sweet ache settling between your legs, right where his tongue was the night before. you feel the sting of the stubble burn at the memory. 

your pace is deliberately slow, torturously so, hollowing your cheeks around him and letting your teeth scrape on the sensitive skin. matty’s hisses and moans wash over you, growing in intensity the more you let your tongue swirl over his tip. 

“this is torture,” he moans. his hand fists in your hair, tighter than before. it stings. it sends delicious tingles all over your body. 

this time he doesn’t stop himself from pushing your head down, guiding you just how he wants you, right until you can feel his tip touching the back of your throat. you gag slightly, drooling all over him. it’s already a mess, wet and hot. even more so when you slide your mouth up his length, simultaneously tracing a nail on the thick vein pulsating on his underside. 

matty’s thighs tremble dangerously. 

“wheel. focus.” you remind him. “i told you i’l make it worth your time.”

but you do decide to stop with the torture after that, bobbing your head up and down his length and increasing your pace. the salty taste of precum lingers stronger in your mouth, getting more and more intense each time you tease his slit. 

the faster you go, the more he slows the car, struggling to control the speed while he’s busy trying not to thrust into your mouth, trying not to fuck your mouth like he wants to. and you can tell he really, really wants to. 

“baby…” he warns; almost as if on cue, you feel the car pulling over to the side of the highway, slowing to a stop. your heart beats all over your body. this is it. you’re in for it now. 

“be a good girl now and open wide,” he warns a mere moment before you feel his hips lifting off the seat. 

matty’s fist tightens into your hair, keeping you in place so he can thrust into your mouth, over and over exactly how he wants to. being used like this has you moaning obnoxiously. you know what it does to him, how the sounds shoot straight to his dick, making him lose it more and more. 

“i’m close,” he moans. 

the sides of your mouth burn, stretched out fully from being fucked at a bruising pace. the ache between your legs increases, sure to have left an obvious damp spot on your panties by now. 

you need to taste him, feel him spilling in your mouth now. so you let your teeth graze over his length again, moaning, hollowing your cheeks until you feel the spurts of warm, thick cum spill down your throat. 

the sounds coming out of him—out of both of you—are downright sinful; loud and wet and obnoxious. you’re a sloppy mess too, a mixture of drool and cum running down the side of your mouth as you try to keep up with his thrusts, swallowing every last drop he has to offer. pleasing him like a good girl until his thrusts slow to a stop. 

only then do you let yourself straighten. 

you’re sure your face is a mess; mascara smudged under your eyes, red smeared around your mouth just like it is at the base of his cock, forming a filthy ring. your chin, wet and sticky from his cum. 

matty has his tipped back, eyes closed and breathing heavily. his sunglasses are pushed up on his head. his cheeks are pink, mouth parted open and still smudged on one side with red. 

he looks stunning, perfect. 

that is until he opens his eyes to look at you, gaze dark and somehow still hungry. you know it’s a silent command. you obey it, opening your mouth wide to show him that you’ve swallowed everything. all of it. 

the sun’s gone down now. it’s almost dark. even when the cars zoom by, they don’t stop or pay attention to you. but matty does, looking at you intently, mouth curling up as he lets his eyes roam over your flushed face, tangled hair, and wet mouth.

“come here,” he gestures, voice rough and gravelly. “it’s only fair i return the favour.”