#no strict timelines yet

[james-stark-the-writer]

I love being insane and rambling/loredumping for over an hour in a voice note about a niche thing in the lore/world of my nonexistent book that will probably never come up and is probably not important to the story at all that I know of because I haven't really started writing it yet besides two chapters and some snippets that were like a few years ago because I cannot be bothered to do research for a different WIP that is not even past the basic stages (the real inciting incident hasn't even happened) bc it's not a current priority before finishing the first draft that I have been working on for the last four years or the first draft of the other WIP I've been working on since the year two thousand and sixteen.

[the-case-book-of-fanfiction]

Burns Like Rum

Ship: Astarion x female!human!reader/Tav

Summary: Astarion's hunger worsens every day and you don't have any blood to spare—but that doesn't stop you from inadvertently tempting him at every turn. Luckily for both of you, you've both got the same idea to cure him of his hunger.

Word Count: 7,840 words

Warnings: sexual content (18+), menstruating reader, hungry Astarion, mutual pining, possibly OOC dialogue, vampire feeding, soft Astarion, no particular timeline but Astarion hasn't told you anything yet

18+ Warnings: period sex, fingering, oral (f receiving), hand job, bite kink, blood kink, aftercare, use of the words cunt & cock

Note: For my usual readers, more Stranger Things content is coming, I promise! But this bitey boy currently owns my heart so I'm gonna show him some love :)

☟ Continue below the fold ☟

Astarion was hungry, and it was entirely your fault, for more than one reason.

The first was that, almost a month ago now, you had let Astarion drink from you. He'd been starving, and it didn't help that the others had given him strict rules about feeding, so when he flashed those sad but gorgeous red eyes at you, complaining of hunger, you'd all but gifted him your neck.

He'd practically drained you that night. You had been weak for days. Of course, the others, namely Gale and Lae'zel, were furious with you for letting him drink from you, but the sated, content look on his face after feeding made it all worth it to you. He'd become more comfortable around you after that, too, and you'd considered that an improvement.

It hadn't been all that bad, really, for him to sink his teeth into you and drink until your grip on him had grown so weak that he'd let up to check on you. In fact, it had been...rather pleasant. He'd been gentle, careful, his bite sharp but considerate. You knew then that you'd risk becoming anemic for a week just to feel the pleasure of his hand cradling your neck and head, his mouth against your neck, his tongue soothing the bite he'd left when he'd had his fill.

But in the weeks that followed, his hunger gradually returned, and with a vengeance. It was as if he'd never fed from you at all, suffering hunger pangs he hid from the others—but you noticed, recognizing them from the night he'd begged you to let him drink from you.

You'd offered him more of your blood since then, but he'd refused you every time. He could smell your guilt, your need to make him feel better simply because you felt responsible for his current pain.

"I won't accept blood from someone who feels obligated to give it to me," he'd said, and his tone made it difficult to tell if he was being snide or kind.

Sometimes, you simply didn't understand that man.

And then three days ago, you'd been injured in a fight. It was nothing fatal, the gash in your midsection missing any major muscles and not deep enough to jeopardize your organs, but it was bloody. You'd limped your way back to camp, your head swimming, the world around you growing darker around the edges with every step.

You'd fainted in Astarion's arms—although collapsed was a better word for it, according to Karlach—drenched in blood, some of which was yours and some of which that wasn't.

"You should have seen his face!" Karlach had laughed when you'd woken up the next morning, woozy but fine thanks to Shadowheart. The blood loss kept you off your feet for the day to recover, and Karlach had taken the time to visit you.

"What do you mean?" you asked, although you already had a good idea what might have happened after you passed out.

"You put him in a right pickle, collapsing on him like that, all covered in blood and losing more of it quickly," she said. "He didn't know what to do with you. It was— It was like he didn't want to drop you, but he really did want to drop you, because all he wanted to do was drink from you. Can't say as I blame him—he's not fed in weeks and you turn up with his next meal draining out of you." You hid your face in your hands with a groan. "Why'd you beeline for him anyway? Shadowheart's tent was just a few paces away!"

You glared at her through your fingers. "You know why I went to him, Karlach!" She, of all people, would understand. She had been the first person to find out that, as much as you flirted with them all, Astarion was the one you wanted.

"Well, obviously," she said, "but it didn't occur to you that he might...have an adverse reaction?"

Rolling your eyes, you snarked, "No, Karlach, it didn't, I was bleeding out and suffering from head trauma. I just...saw someone I trusted to keep me safe and ran to him."

She cocked her head to the side. "That's sweet, but stupid."

You snorted. "Yeah, I know—Shadowheart won't stop yelling at me for it."

You hadn't seen Astarion until that night, when the group of you had gathered at the campfire. It hadn't meant to be like that; you'd seen him and had wanted to talk to him, at least apologize for throwing your bloody body at him, but Shadowheart followed you closely to keep you safe and soon the others had gathered.

It had been like a very strange family dinner, made awkward by everyone dancing around exactly why you'd gone to Astarion, knowing a hungry vampire and fresh blood were not a good mix.

The final reason you were making his hunger unbearable made itself known at the end of the night, when it was just you, Astarion, and Shadowheart at the dying fire.

She must have caught sight of the way you kept looking at Astarion out of the corner of your eye, embarrassedly looking away or pretending to gaze into the trees behind him every time he caught you looking. She tapped your shoulder and told you she needed to get rest. The "you should, too" was implied, hanging in the air along with her worry about your healing.

"I'm fine, Shadowheart, really," you insisted. "I won't rip myself open again, I promise."

"I'll keep an eye on her," Astarion promised. "Nothing too...strenuous for her just yet." Something in his voice made you shiver.

She left the two of you alone. You looked first at the fire, then down at your hands, folded in your lap. Anywhere than at him.

You didn't even hear him move. You only knew he had when you felt him sit on the log beside you, one of his hands covering your own.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his voice soft. "I...am sorry I didn't visit you, it's just—"

"It's just that I threw myself at you when it looked like I'd taken a shower in blood and that made things a wee bit difficult?" you interrupted, the words spilling out before you had time to process that you were speaking. Embarrassed heat flushed through you instantly.

But Astarion only gave you that soft, slightly toothy smile. You drank it in, relishing his smile lines and the brief contentment on his face. "Something like that, yes," he said. "I was...worried I might hurt you if I saw you again and you still smelled so deliciously of your blood. I'm so hungry, darling, it's unbearable. All I wanted was to feast until there was nothing left of you, and I'd never forgive myself if I—"

"Stop." You held up your hand. "Please. I don't... Don't be so nice to me, it makes me feel like I'm on my deathbed."

Astarion laughed, throwing his head back. "I'd hardly call wanting to drain you nice, my love." Almost unconsciously, your gaze dipped to his exposed neck and you wondered idly what he would do if you were to bite him back.

Probably the strenuous activity Astarion had promised Shadowheart you wouldn't be doing.

He met your gaze, a sudden depth and seriousness in his crimson stare. "Stick with me, and you might soon be on your deathbed." Pointedly, he broke eye contact with you, letting his eyes drop first to your neck and then further down your body. You tingled, the feeling reminiscent of the anemia that had possessed your body in the hours and days after he'd drank from you.

You realized Astarion was waiting for a reaction from you, hoping for something more than your stunned silence. So you let your eyes drift across his body, resting on his mouth as you said, "Doesn't sound like a bad way to go out."

From the back of his throat came a sound that wasn't quite a growl or a groan, but somewhere in between, just as needy as either sound. "Don't tempt me, darling," he whispered. "I promised Shadowheart I'd keep you safe, and you certainly wouldn't be if I did everything I want."

Your heart skipped a beat. "Astarion..."

He closed his eyes, leaning toward you, releasing a tense breath. "Darling..."

"What if I want to tempt you?" You put your hand on his leg, sliding closer to him.

"Cheeky thing," he said, eyes opening in small slits. "But only when you're healed. I can still smell the blood on you." He sighed. "You have no idea how much restraint it takes not sink my teeth into that pretty neck of yours."

You frowned. "But I am healed," you said. "Just tender. Shadowheart wouldn't have let me leave her tent otherwise."

"I can't blame you for wanting me," Astarion teased, that familiar charm honeying his words, "but I've never been wrong." He cupped your cheek, his touch taking the bite out of his words. He offered you a small, sympathetic smile.

You put your hand to your abdomen, half-expecting to find that your wound had ripped open of its own accord. Your shirt and the bandage beneath it was dry—but a sudden twinge of pain, appearing only once it had been acknowledged, came from lower. You hissed.

Astarion sat up straighter. "What is it? Are you alright?"

"Shit. I think I've figured out why you still smell blood," you said through clenched teeth.

Astarion's eyes dipped to where your hand rested. "It's that time again already, is it?"

"It's early," you groaned. You stood slowly, regretting it instantly.

He tracked you as you moved, his gaze becoming dangerous and predatory. It was the look that had scared you when he drank from you, practically convincing you he wasn't going to stop. Still, his need for you burned through you like rum, its heat spreading through your belly.

"I didn't smell it before, not under all the blood you had on you," he said. His voice was deep, dark, dangerous. "But, oh, darling—I smell it now." He licked his lips and your stomach did flips that were neither pleasant or unpleasant. The hunger in his eyes was palpable

"I, ah, have to go. For your sake and mine. Um. So, uh, goodnight, Astarion. I...I'll see you when this is all over."

He stood up quickly. "Darling, do you need—" He cut himself off as you waved away his concern, crossing the camp to your own tent.

"No! Goodnight!" you called over your shoulder.

Astarion sighed. "...Night."

~❊~

You avoided Astarion like the plague. Well, perhaps not, because while you never wanted to see the disease, you were always on the lookout for your favorite vampire.

You caught glimpses of him through the open flaps of your tent, sauntering by with a swagger you found unfairly attractive. You saw him reading on his own when Shadowheart helped you changed your bandages, his handsome face fixed in concentration. A few hours later, you heard him arguing with Gale about the very same book, which had apparently gone missing, and you hated the flutter in your stomach at the growl in his angry voice.

"Stop that," Karlach said, glancing up at you as the pair of you cooked, Karlach helping you roast root vegetables evenly.

"Stop what?"

"Mooning over him," she said, jerking her head in Astarion's direction.

Your body flushed with heat. "I'm not—"

"You are, and we can all tell, and you should just get it over with, but only if you mean it."

You frowned, tearing your eyes away from the blessed sight that was Astarion basking in the sun. "Sorry, what?"

Karlach sighed. "If you sleep with him—" You spluttered. "—it had better be because you truly want him and not because you're bleeding."

You blinked at her. "Karlach, of course I want him, you've heard me talk about him before this!"

"I know, I know," she relented, "but I have a feeling there's more to our vampire than meets the eye." She glanced over at Astarion. "Just...be kind to him, dear. He's more fragile than he looks."

You followed her gaze over to him. He was stretching, his arms lifted high above his head, undoubtedly oblivious to the two of you watching him. Want and need bubbled up inside of you, both clamoring for Astarion, agreeing that he would fulfill them both. The deep-seated lust you'd had for him since he'd first put a knife to your neck burned even brighter as the breeze that had been kicking up dust all morning played with the silver hair curling around his ears.

His nostrils flared and you knew he'd smelled you. He looked over at you and Karlach and you froze. She waved cheerily, then frowned at you when you didn't move. You swallowed harshly and went back to removing the scales from the fish in your lap.

"He doesn't like not being around you either, you know," Karlach said, returning to the task at hand. "He's always looking at you when you're not looking. You're perfect for each other like that."

"I don't want to make this harder for him by being around him," you said, glancing back over at him. He was watching you as he poured himself a glass of wine. Had it been normal circumstances, when you weren't driving him insane simply by smelling like blood, you would have teased him for day-drinking. "He's already so hungry, I'd only make that worse. It was bad enough I threw myself at him covered in his favorite snack!"

Karlach snorted. The sound of a light laugh floated over to you and you looked up to find Astarion smirking into his goblet. He beckoned you over and your eyes grew wide.

"Excuse me for a moment, Karlach," you said, clearing your throat.

Karlach followed your gaze and giggled. "More than a moment, dear. I'll come back later to help you finish this." She left the log you'd been sharing and you waited until she was in her own tent again before you jumped to your feet and practically ran to Astarion.

"Hello, darling," he purred. "Care for a drink?"

"I could go for a little," you said.

Astarion smiled, that rakish charm summoning warmth that spread through your entire body. "I hope you like red," he said, and put his own goblet to your lips.

You held his gaze as you drank. You saw his nostrils flare, his pupils growing large. You knew he could hear how your heart was racing, could smell your arousal mixing with your blood.

He pulled the goblet away from your lips and took another swig. You licked the red wine off your lower lip and heard the breath catch in his chest.

"You're starving, aren't you?"

"You have no idea," he whispered.

"I might," you said. "Thought I'd say it's a hunger of a different kind."

Astarion's smirk was so wide you could see his fangs clearly. "Oh, really, darling?"

You nodded, taking a step closer to him. He breathed in deeply. "We could help each other, you know. Satiate our hungers."

His eyes grew dark, trained on yours. "Is that so?" He raised his hand, nearly brushing your cheek, but stopped himself just before he touched you. "You'd let me soothe your pain by..." His gaze dropped to your waistline. "...eating from you?"

A tremor passed through you at the sound of his voice, deeper than you'd ever heard it, laced with a danger and a seduction you were embarrassed to find attractive. Your body was tuned to it, his words seeming to drop like a stone from your ears to your core, spreading fire through your veins and melting your organs.

Astarion took a small step closer to you and took your chin in three gentle fingers, tilting your head up toward him. For a moment, you thought he might kiss you then and there. "I'm going to need an answer, darling."

"Yes." You couldn't get the word out fast enough. It came out breathy, nearly lost on the wind still swirling between you.

He chuckled. "Well, then. You asked for it." He dropped the hand on your chin back to his side. "Once everyone else is asleep, come find me. We'll find a quiet place and...have a little fun."

~❊~

Of all the nights, it had to be this one where everyone came to check on you before they went to sleep. Thanks to Astarion avoiding you like the plague when the two of you had become inseparable, your monthly bleed had become public knowledge. So practically everyone in camp came to you with solutions you declined, claiming to feel fine, even though your pain had worsened over the course of the day.

You watched Astarion slink off into the forest after the sun had gone down and waited until the others were sequestered in their tents, nearly an hour later, to pull your boots back on, stand on shaky feet, and follow the path you assumed he'd taken.

You had started to believe you'd taken a wrong turn somewhere when you heard his cool voice from behind you: "There you are. I've been waiting."

Astarion stepped out of the shadows. He ran his gaze over you, observing your slightly hunched stance, your hand on your lower abdomen. Your shoulders relaxed at the sight of him; he looked softer in the moonlight. The silver light fell across his curls and the statuesque panes of his face, somehow making that face that was so gaunt with hunger unbelievably beautiful.

He looked like a poet or a god, even in just the simple shirt he insisted on wearing around camp instead of the finer silks you knew he carried with him. Or perhaps it was the simplicity that made him so godly. You couldn't tell.

A frown graced his brow. "The pain is worse now, isn't it?"

You nodded. "Just a bit."

Astarion left the small hill he stood on and came closer to you. He offered you his hand. "Come on, dear, let me make you feel better."

You let him guide you away from the path you had taken and into a small clearing just a few feet away, conveniently hidden by thickets, trees, and tall grass. He stood aside, letting you take it in for a moment, as if waiting for your approval of the place. You looked down at the mossy ground and decided it would be soft enough.

"Well, this is nice," you said, seconds before you heard fabric rustling. You turned and blinked rapidly at what you saw: Astarion, his shirt now off and in his hands. You watched him lay it down where the ground was most level. Your breath caught horribly in your throat at the sight of the scar covering his back. You fought back the urge to ask, knowing it would only piss him off.

He turned back to you with a smile. "Your bed for the evening, my love," he said, gesturing to it.

"Oh, Astarion, I can't, I don't want to get blood on your shirt. What would the others—"

Astarion cupped your face in one hand. "The others will assume I hunted something and got messy," he said. "And I'll enjoy your scent while I have it."

Flutters in your stomach nearly brought you to your knees. You looked up at him, drawing in a tiny breath, and brought your hand up to hold the wrist that cradled your cheek.

"Please," you whispered, unsure of exactly what you were begging for but knowing what you wanted.

"Promise me you'll tell me if...I'm too much," Astarion said, and you got the sense he'd changed what he was going to say.

You nodded, whispering your promise, and wound your free hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, standing on your tiptoes to push your lips to his.

It was a messy first kiss. It was little more than teeth and spit, but it felt like heaven anyway, because his free arm was winding around your waist and pressing your bodies together, his leg sliding between yours. Bliss spread through you, starting at your core.

Astarion pulled away from you. "Someone's eager, isn't she?"

You whimpered and he stifled it with another kiss, softer than the first. He was gentle, more than you'd expected from a starving man. He cupped the back of your head and your hand dropped to his hip. You opened your mouth to him and reveled in the feeling of his tongue sliding against yours. He made a soft sound of satisfaction and pushed his leg up against your clothed core. You moaned loudly, your grip on him tightening. Need flooded you and your hips pushed down on his leg, finding relief in the pressure.

The two of you pressed your foreheads together, breathing heavily.

"Shh, darling, not too loud. You don't want the others to come investigate, do you?" His cheeky tone suggested he would love it if the others found the two of you like this—or, perhaps, further along.

You wrapped both arms around his neck and buried your head into his shoulder, heat burning through you, a mix of embarrassment and pleasure. You felt like there was a pendulum inside you, swinging constantly between wanting to slow down, afraid of coming off as too eager, and desperately needing him to get to it.

Astarion chuckled. "Don't hide, love." He smoothed his hand over your hair. "You do trust me, don't you?"

You kissed his shoulder and heard his breath catch. "With my life, Astarion."

"Are you ready?"

You nodded and he walked you over to his shirt and helped you to sit on it. He watched you lay down, his gaze falling your exposed neck. There was something more than hunger in his eyes; it made your breathing hitch.

Astarion crawled over you and placed his hand underneath your head before he kissed you. You draped your arm over his shoulders, holding him close to you, enjoying the soft touch of his lips against yours. It was chaste, as were the next few that followed it in quick succession, one after the other.

One hand slid down your body and stopped at the hem of your trousers. He tugged at the shirt tucked into them. "Darling? May I?"

"Please do," you said.

"Arms up."

He pulled the fabric over your head and tossed it to the side. He looked down at your torso from where he straddled your hips. His hands skimmed over you and he leaned down, pressing more gentle kisses to your neck and collarbones. Your body tingled with remembrance, practically yearning to feel his fangs sink into your neck, to feel your blood leave you with a burning that felt like intoxication.

"Astarion." His name was a breathy cry on your lips, and you saw how much he liked the sound of it when he looked up at you, a smile curving onto the lips still pressed to your skin.

"Yes, dear?"

You gently coaxed him back up to you with your hand on his chin. "Let me kiss you."

He smiled, brighter than the moonlight falling around you, and you pressed your mouth to his. He hummed happily into your mouth, a pleasant sensation that made you reluctant to break the kiss. But you did, kissing along his jaw and down his neck instead. You nipped gently at his neck, pulling a surprised laugh from him.

"Really, darling? Biting the vampire?" Astarion's eyes were sparkling with amusement. His face had relaxed into an easy smile. It was a good look on him; you liked it.

You giggled and placed another kiss over the bite. The pair of you rolled onto your sides and you peppered his chest with kisses, your arm wrapped loosely around his waist. You went back up to his neck and sucked lightly.

"So much for the others not knowing," he teased.

You looked at him through your lashes. "What if I want them to know?"

"Cheeky little thing," he whispered, dragging a finger down the side of your face. "As much as I love this—and believe me, I do love this—I can't wait any longer. I'm starving, darling. Let me taste you. Please."

Slightly subdued, you rolled onto your back. "Alright," you whispered, your chest tightening in anticipation.

Astarion climbed on top of you again. He undid the laces at the front of your trousers and slipped his hand inside them, moving slowly and keeping his eyes locked on yours.

The moment two of his fingers slid between your wet folds, your eyes fluttered shut and a happy sigh slipped from your lips.

"There she is," he whispered, his eyes half-lidded, as he worked you gently and slowly. You felt the blood and arousal gather on his fingers as he grew closer to your entrance. He dragged them back up to your clit and rubbed in a slow circle. You gasped, arching into his touch. Astarion giggled. "Oh, you like that, don't you?"

You wriggled underneath him, trying everything in your power to get more of his touch. He smiled down at you, kissing your cheek and cooing softly at you. If he spoke words, you didn't hear them, too lost in the pleasure he easily, skillfully, brought to you.

Without warning, Astarion plunged both fingers into your entrance. You moaned, grabbing at his hair. He chuckled, curling his fingers inside you. Whimpers slipped past your lips; you couldn't have controlled them if you tried, but you were by no means trying. His smile grew with every sound you made, and you wanted nothing more than to see that smile.

Just as suddenly as he'd pushed his fingers in, he pulled them out. You whined instantly but he shushed you and removed his hand from your pants. A small streak of blood was left on the skin of your stomach as he raised his hand to his mouth. You watched raptly as he licked your blood from his fingers, never once breaking eye contact with you.

He wasn't even touching you and the fire in your belly grew at the sight.

Astarion moaned softly around his fingers. You watched his deft tongue catch every drop of blood, thinned by your arousal, from his hand. He whispered your name in a whine and you let go of a long breath.

Once he'd licked his fingers clean, he bent down and yanked your trousers off your legs. You spread them automatically and he put one leg between them. He pulled off your undergarments and sat back, admiring your naked body with a satisfied smirk.

"Look at you," he whispered.

The need for him to touch you won out over the desire for him to keep staring at you. "Astarion." His name was a loud whine, emphasized by your writhing hips.

He chucked. "Needy girl." His hand returned to your cunt, his palm applying pressure to your clit while his fingers toyed with your bloody folds. His eyes practically rolled into the back of his head, the smell of blood so heady even you could smell it.

He teased your entrance for a moment and pulled his fingers back up, the tips of them coated in thick blood that looked black in the night. He sucked it from his fingers with a toothy smile, his fangs peeking out over his bottom lip.

You pushed your hips up enough to catch his eye. "Please," you whimpered.

"Alright, love, alright," he said. He put his hand back and slipped his fingers back inside you. Relief curled through you—as did his fingers. "I'll starve myself a bit longer for your pleasure."

You cupped his neck and brought his face to yours and kissed him fiercely. He made a surprised but pleased sound into your mouth and quickened his pace. You gasped against his lips and he ducked his head to your neck, kissing you quickly with every curl of his fingers.

You twisted your fingers through his hair, rapidly kissing the top of his head, pushing your hips up into his hand. He chuckled, his breath ghosting over your skin and raising goosebumps. You shuddered in his arms.

"I've got you," he murmured, sucking a light mark into your neck. You felt his teeth prick you and saw the shudder that passed through his body at the tiny droplets of blood that appeared.

He pulled away from your neck and curled his fingers just so. You groaned.

"Astarion!" you cried, throwing your head back.

He grinned and quickened his pace. You sucked in a deep breath, fighting back tears of pleasure.

"Let go, darling," he whispered. "I've got you."

Astarion looked back down at your neck. He locked eyes with you as he pressed his tongue to your skin, slowly licking up the droplets as they began to run down your neck. The combination of his intense stare and the movement of his fingers was all you needed; with a loud cry, you came on his fingers, your walls clenching so hard around him he could hardly keep moving them.

He chuckled. "That's it, dear, that's it." He cooed softly, helping you through it with his voice, his soft touch, and gentle kisses to your lips.

You were breathing hard when he finally pulled his fingers out of you. You whimpered at the slight pain but realized your cramps had all but disappeared.

Judging by the state of his hand, you didn't want to know how bloody his shirt was. It looked as though he'd reached into someone's chest and ripped their heart out; his hand was drenched and rivulets of blood ran all the way down to his elbow.

Astarion giggled at the sight while you burned with embarrassment. "Well, well, well. Someone's happy, isn't she?"

"So are you," you said, nodding to the bulge in his pants.

He grinned. "Well, what did you expect? You were quite vocal, my needy little thing." His eyes drifted back down to your cunt, lust curling through his gaze. "Tight and wet and utterly desperate for me."

He licked a stripe up his hand, his eyes fluttering shut. "Oh, darling, you taste good." He sucked your blood off of every finger, pleasure sliding over his face.

You smiled. "There's more where that came from."

Astarion raised one perfect brow. "Can you handle another little death?" he teased.

You nodded. "I can take a few more."

He chuckled and groaned at the same time. "Oh, my love, don't make promises you can't keep."

You met his gaze as he finished cleaning off his hand. "Believe me, I can keep it."

The vampire grinned. "Very well, then. I'll eat good tonight."

He kissed you chastely as he put his hand between your legs again.

Astarion brought you pleasure unlike anything you'd ever felt before as his fingers slid over your blood-slick skin, teasing your folds and entrance with a smirk, often just barely inserting the tip of his finger before pulling it out again and tracing over your clit and smearing blood across your skin. He kissed and sucked on your breasts, leaving darkening bruises and tiny scratches from his teeth, licking up the tiny beads of blood that sprung from each nick. He kissed along the line of scarring and stitches you had gotten from your injury, fading fast but still a reminder of what had gotten you on your back for him in the first place. Now that he'd eaten a little, he was intently focused on bringing you to the edge and pulling you back, again and again and again.

He worked another orgasm out of you and was on his way to coaxing out the third when you stopped him.

"Is it too much?" he asked, frowning. His unbloodied hand moved to rest on your hip, his thumb smoothing over your skin. His eyes searched your face, looking for anything to tell him why you'd stopped him.

You shook your head. "I need more, Astarion," you gasped, slurring his name into Astari. The unintended nickname made him blush. "I need more of you. Please. Please."

The smile returned to his face, cockier than before. "Oh, darling. I need more of you, too," he said, looking into your cunt and licking his lips. "I could just eat you up."

You spread your legs wider. He settled between them. "Please do."

He breathed in deep and his eyes practically rolled back into his head. "You're going to be the death of me— Ah. Well, you would be, if I was alive."

You frowned. "Would this even be happening if you were alive?"

Astarion thought for a moment. "Let's not think about the logistics," he decided and licked the drying blood from his fingers off your abdomen. Your body trembled. He lifted your legs over his shoulders. You squeaked and smiled at him.

"Lay back," he whispered. You obliged him.

Wet warmth touched your skin just above your clit and you glanced down at him, watching him slowly lick the drying blood from your skin. He kissed your skin as he cleaned it, leaving you covered in slowly darkening bruises.

You stared at the stars as he pressed a soft first kiss to your clit. You let out a slow breath and he began to suck, his lips closing around it, his tongue licking light stripes.

You pushed your hips against his mouth. "Circles," you whispered.

"As you wish," he said, his breath fanning over your cunt and making you tremble. He went back to his feast, licking in circles this time, and you let out a soft whimper. You reached down and he reached up, lacing your fingers together and squeezing your hand. You squeezed back.

He moved further down until his nose bumped your clit and his lips found your entrance. He moaned, the sound deep and guttural, at the taste of your blood. He lapped at your entrance, his tongue sweeping up the blood as soon as it collected there. You shuddered, your breaths coming in heaves.

Astarion kissed your entrance once before he dove in, pushing his tongue into your cunt. You gasped and he laughed and buried his face in you.

Through the pleasure, you wondered dimly how he was breathing (did he, as a vampire, need to breathe?), but the thought was pushed away the moment his splayed fingers on your hip dug into your flesh and pulled you even closer to his mouth.

The sounds you were making were obscene: your moans were loud and coarse, and your cunt squelched lewdly as he drank your blood and arousal. You felt filthy, aware that the mix was running down your legs and buttocks but knowing the vampire eating you out was enjoying you too much to care.

Astarion himself was quite vocal, moaning into you and making you shiver. He whimpered, whined, groaned, and keened, growing louder with every swallow of blood. He alternated between watching you writhe and squeezing his eyes shut in pleasure.

You watched his hand slide from your hip to his bulge. He palmed himself through his trousers, hissing in pleasure, and the sight was enough to send you over the edge for a third time.

But Astarion didn't let up. He lapped at you, sucking so harshly your pleasure bordered pain, until your legs stopped shaking and your breathing evened out.

He lifted his head with a grin. "How do I look?"

You looked at him and started laughing. He was the smiliest you had ever seen him, his eyes practically glowing, and the lower half of his face was covered in your blood. His teeth were stained red and sticky blood dripped slowly from his fangs. It ran down his chin in rivulets and splatters dotted his lower cheeks like freckles. Some of it was even in his hair.

"You're ridiculous," you giggled. "And a messy eater."

He snorted. "Excuse you!"

"It's all over your face!"

He sat up with a grin, licking his lips. "You mean you are all over my face."

Satisfaction curled through you. "Yes," you said, reaching for him. He took your hand again. "Yes I am."

He wiped his face with his hand and licked it clean once again. You reached up and wiped some off on your thumb, then held it out to him. He took your thumb into his mouth and sucked. Your heart stopped beating.

"Feeling better?" he asked you, lightly placing his palm over your abdomen, applying a little pressure, and rubbing gentle circles.

"Much better," you said. "Thank you. But, ah..." Your gaze drifted from his beautiful, if slightly pink, face and down to his bulge. It was just as, if not more, prominent now that he'd gone down on you. "What about you?"

Astarion smirked. "I like your enthusiasm, but don't worry about me. Not tonight, darling."

You frowned. "Why not? What if I want you inside of me?" You walked two fingers up his leg and slowly covered his crotch with your palm. When he didn't protest and his eyes fluttered shut, you gave him a gentle squeeze. He let out a soft moan through closed lips and tilted his head back. You kissed the column of his neck and bit down gently. You sucked—hard—and a rumbling moan came from his chest.

"Because," he said finally, drawing in a ragged breath. "Because that would be a terrible waste of your precious blood." He looked at you with half-lidded eyes. "When this is over, I promise you, you can have as much of me as you want." He pushed his hips into your hand and you gave him another gentle squeeze. He gasped.

You nuzzled into him and his arm wrapped around your shoulders, holding you there. "And what if I want all of you?"

The question hung in the air. He looked at you for a long time and suddenly you saw the fragility Karlach had mentioned this afternoon, which felt like years ago instead of mere hours. You reached up to cup his cheek and, though you were stark naked, the sexual desire in the air seemed to have disappeared.

"I want all of you, Astari," you whispered. The nickname made his eyes grow wide. "All of you, in every way, for as long as possible. If you'll let me. If you want me, too."

He whimpered, and the sound was broken. You hated hearing that pain coming from him. "I want you, I do, I just..." He closed his eyes and you were suddenly very sure there was a darkness, a secret, he was trying to hide from you. You were certain it had to do with his vampiric master he'd so often complained about. "I'll try, my darling, I'll try for you."

You sat up on your knees and cupped his face in both hands and kissed him. You didn't break the kiss once as you pressed your body against his and held him tightly. You felt the scar on his back and wanted to ask but didn't, letting him keep his secrets for now.

His arms came around you, cradling your back and holding you tight to him. The kiss became a long-lasting hug, the both of you burying your heads in each other's shoulders until Astarion pulled away from you, a smile on his face. You returned that smile and sat back on your heels.

His eyes trailed over your body again. There was a note of nervousness in his voice as he asked, "Darling, would you mind...touching me again? I could use some relief."

You grinned. "Of course, my love. All you had to do was ask."

Relief crossed his face. He leaned back as you trailed your hand from his shoulder, down his chest, and back to his bulge. You tipped his head back with your free hand and kissed his neck while you rubbed him. He pushed his hips into your hand, sighing blissfully, and your hand was in his trousers in seconds. He grew loud, thrusting his cock into your hand with a power that surprised you.

"Take what you need," you told him, your voice hushed, your lips directly next to his ear. "Help me give you what you want."

He whimpered, your name a broken cry from his lips, and he cuddled into you as he came. He buried his head into your neck, hiding his eyes and barely holding back grunts. As his thrusts grew weaker and you slowed your hand on him, you felt hot tears on your neck and wondered what this poor man had been through that he hadn't yet told you.

You removed your hand from his pants and he immediately wrapped you in another hug, one strong enough to knock you down and knock the breath of you. You held him as tightly as he held you.

When Astarion at last pulled away from you, his tears had stopped but his eyes still shone with them. He kissed you softly.

"Thank you," he whispered. "I... Thank you."

You brushed some of his hair from his face. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "Nothing. You were... It's just that no one has cared about me during sex in a very long time and...you did. So...thank you."

You took his hand and squeezed it. "Oh, Astarion," you cooed. "I always care about you. Like this or otherwise. You could stop this right now—or before it even began—and I wouldn't have stopped caring about you."

He smiled. "Oh, darling. I love the sentiment, but I'm not done with you yet."

Astarion kissed down your body and laid between your legs again. He licked another stripe up your cunt and you saw the coating of blood on his tongue before he swallowed. "Shall we try for a fourth? Or perhaps even a fifth?" He raised his brow, leaving the decision up to you.

You laid back. "We'll try for as many as you'd like," you said.

He bared his teeth in a feral grin. "All night it is!"

~❊~

You woke up the next morning sore and alone and with very little sleep.

Astarion had been relentless and stopped only when you simply couldn't take it anymore and he was practically drunk on your blood—all without making you bloodless and woozy. When you had finished for the final time, he had cleaned you up, helped you back into your clothes, picked up his own shirt, and walked you back to camp. He was so gentle that you didn't even mind the teasing about how you limped.

Dawn hadn't been far off as you each went back to your tents after exchanging a final, solid kiss. So you woke to the sound of everyone else beginning their day just a few hours later.

You felt the soreness in your core before you even moved. Biting back a sigh and not regretting it one bit as you pictured Astarion's happy, bloody face, you rolled over and hoped your recent injury would be enough for the others to let you sleep in.

You were wrong.

Shadowheart opened your tent a few minutes later with a urgency that made you jump.

"What? What's wrong?" you asked, blinking blearily in the bright sunlight.

"Are you alright? You never sleep in, you're always up making breakfast!"

You groaned. "Is that it? Are you just hungry?"

She peered at you. "Are you hurt? Did your wound reopen?"

"What? No! I'm fine, I'm just tired, that's all! I have lost a lot of blood recently, in case you forgot."

She sighed. "Oh. Alright. Well, just know the others are worried, too—Astarion especially."

You remembered how he'd checked in on you last night and had asked if he'd hurt you at all when you'd returned to camp and wondered if you had worried him by sleeping in. Suddenly you were grateful the others could chalk it up to his not-so-secret crush on you.

You dressed and hid the light bruises on your neck and collarbones in a high-collared shirt. You only noticed you were walking with a slight limp still after you'd left your tent and made your way across camp.

Karlach called your name and was at your side immediately. "You're limping! Are you hurt? Do you need me to fetch Shadowheart?"

You blinked at her. "What? No. I'm fine!"

"You don't look fine," Gale said, a few feet away, looking up from the book he'd been engrossed in for days. "Did you hurt your leg the other day? Or have your stitches ripped?"

"My, my," said a suave voice behind you. You turned and found Astarion grinning like a cat. "You do have quite the limp, there, darling. Are you sure you're alright?"

You huffed at him, your body remembering his touch immediately, his ghostly hands sliding across your skin. "I'm fine, I promise. Now hush and someone help me make breakfast."

Both Karlach and Astarion sat with you, Astarion very close to you and giving you a smile you couldn't help but return. Karlach stared at Astarion like he'd grown two heads, her gaze flickering between the two of you. She gasped very suddenly.

"Not a word," you hissed at her, knowing she'd figured it out.

Astarion smirked.

"And nothing from you, either," you added. "You're the reason I'm walking like this, you bastard."

He smiled sweetly at you, catching the fondness in the words. "And I gladly will be again." He took your hand and lifted it to his mouth, kissing it. Your eyes grew wide.

Karlach squeaked.

"You know nothing," you told her. "At least for a little while."

"Yes," Astarion agreed. "At the very least, tell Shadowheart nothing—I broke my promise to her to keep our dear girl from doing any strenuous activity."

You turned red and Karlach groaned, "Not before breakfast, please!"

Astarion opened his mouth—undoubtedly to say something about how you were technically his breakfast, based on the hour you'd returned to camp—but you moved quicker than he could speak. You grabbed him by the collar and yanked him toward you, kissing him heartily to shut him up.

A heavy silence settled over camp. You cracked one eye open and found the rest of your companions staring at the pair of you, mouths agape and eyes wide.

"Oops," Astarion muttered, sounding rather pleased.

You cleared your throat. "I, ah, I've been meaning to tell you all. Honestly."

Gale heaved a sigh. "How much do I owe you, Wyll?"

Your jaw dropped open. "You placed bets?!"

"Alright, you bloodsucker," Wyll said, holding his hand out and waiting for his payment from Gale. "You win."

"Yes," Astarion said, and you expected him to be wearing a smirk infused with his charm, his triumphant eyes on the others. But when you turned to him, he was staring at you, a dopey smile fixed on his face. "Yes, I did."

☞ ❊ ☜

Baldur's Gate 3 // Astarion Acunin

part 2 (Sweet Like Wine) {here}!

Taglist: {comment and let me know if you'd like to be added to the Astarion taglist!}

[crazylittlejester]

(lu headcanons)

I know in my heart that Twi looks so standoffish and rough around the edges and like he’d beat you up but he’s absolutely the kinda guy who would stop you from accidentally trampling a pretty flower and he lights up whenever you bring up animals and will ramble on and on about them. Looks like he could kill you, but is an absolute sweetheart, and he’s so passionate about his animals

Wars seems like he’d be really strict or like he’s just a pretty idiot but no, ask him any question about history or fairies and you won’t be able to shut him up. He’ll pull out a journal and flip through it and hand it to whoever asked him the question while he rants so they have something to look at and follow while he goes off (not that his handwriting in that journal is legible or in any language familiar to any of the others but its the thought that counts). He knows so so much and loves to learn and teach others, it makes him feel useful and like he can actually make a difference in something that doesn’t require him actively shedding blood. He knows the most about the timelines but none of the others have asked him yet so he hasnt had the chance to yap

Time also looks incredibly strict but he’s got no thoughts in that head half the time. He’s also incredibly gentle and kind to animals like Twilight, but he’s also a little insane at heart and still a moody little shit, his lack of control over his facial expressions and misunderstanding of social cues just leads the others to think he’s all business and no fun

Sky looks like the most innocent sleepy little guy but he could kill a man with his bare hands. He’s killed a god, he’ll do it again. He wakes up every day and chooses peace and love because murder is wrong, but that burning rage boiling deep inside him never goes away. He chooses to be kind because that’s the person he wants to be, but he’s incredibly capable of just going off the rails at any point

[yandere-daydreams]

tw - forced marriage, unhealthy relationships, possessive behavior, and border-line shitpost energy.

It is common knowledge that Lord Scaramouche, Sixth Harbinger of the Snezhnayan Fatui, the nationally acclaimed and universally feared Balladeer, does not like to share his toys.

The timeline of your relationship should be proof enough of that -courted after only a handful of chance encounters during his time in your humble village, married as quickly as he could find an alter and an officiant willing to misinterpret your frantic sobbing as an 'I do', hastily locked away in an estate populated solely by masked guards and servants under strict instruction not to speak a word to you - but, if there was a soul in Teyvat who dared to ask for more evidence, you would happily point them towards the smoldering remains the book that you'd been too caught up in to keep track of one of his frequent one-sided rants, the patch of sand and stone that had once been the flower garden you lavished with all of the love and attention you'd withheld from him. He's as savage as he is predictable. His precious things, from his vast collection of porcelain dolls to the ancient sword that he keeps hidden in a velvet-lined box in his study, are safely stowed away, while yours are swiftly and mercilessly destroyed.

If there's something you'd like to keep, it has to be bargained for. You'll spend weeks singing his praises and cuddling up to his side, cooking all his favorite meals by hand (much to the distress of his small legion of private chefs) and letting him speak at length about the bloody, visceral vengeance he plans to rain down upon his countless enemies. It's only when you have him content and assured of your love for him that you pounce.

His lips purse, eyes narrowing. "No."

"Please, my lord." You lean forward, clasping your hands over your lap. "Won't you at least try to consider it?"

"Absolutely not." His tone is surprisingly haughty, especially considering his current position; head resting on your thighs, gaze pointed at some indistinguishable point on the far wall as you rake your fingers through his hair. "You expect me to strain my staff and myself just so you can... what? Visit your sister for a few boring days?"

"Her son is turning five, and she just had her first daughter. I thought it might be nice to see how she's doing and lend her a hand."

He scoffs. "You expect me to be so patient with you and yet, here you are, practically begging me to let you run off to the countryside just to see another man."

"Surely, you aren't denying my request because you're jealous of an infant."

"No. Whatever. Be quiet." If you didn't know better, you would think he's pouting. "My answer hasn't changed. I can't afford to spare that much thought on such a petty errand, not with the Tsaritsa as demanding as she is."

You hum, letting your head lull to the side. "You know," A weighted pause, your nails scraping against his scalp. "Her home isn't as... accommodating as yours. Her only spare room was converted into a nursery some years back, so we'd have to stay at an inn."

His lips quirk downward, unimpressed. "And?"

"And, there's only one in my village. It's quite a meager thing, too. Even this time of year, there's only going to be a few rooms available." Your touch lingers near the nape of his neck. "I know I usually insist on separate bedrooms, but given the circumstances, there's a good chance neither of us will be able to be so selfish."

There was a beat of silence, then another. You think, for a moment, that Scaramouche might be holding his breath, but you quickly remember that he doesn't breathe at all.

Finally, he responds. "A few days would make for a pathetic visit. Tell her that we'll be staying for a month."

As savage as he is predictable. That's all you could expect from your husband, wasn't it?

You lean down, pressing a fleeting kiss into his temple. "As you wish, my lord."

[muniimyg]

falling in love 》 series m.list

note: for the sake of timelines ,, let's say this extra takes place around ch 5 !!! the text (pic 1) is considered part 1 for this extra <3 hope that makes sense !!!

warnings: implied smut !!! jk is abt to eat her out lol

taglist request: CLOSED

🏷️ permanent taglist: @joonsjuice @taetaecatboy @pb-n-juju @miss-rainy-days @firesighgirl @whoa-jo @vantxx95 @pamzn @kakixaku @casspirit0705 @tae165 @defzcl @sopebubbles @leefics @ggukkieland @bebebutbetter @yoongimentita7 @boraength @era-genius @4ksj @vampcharxter @miss-jupiter @floweryjeons @taegijns @jeonqkooks-main @ellesalazar

//

“Oh, what the fuck? How’d you get in?” 

Jungkook’s eyes are barely open, but he is already lifting his covers for you to join him. He can’t help but offer you a sleepy smirk as you undress your outside layer. Eyeing your thin and flimsy pajamas, you attempt to sound strict and lay the boundary for tonight.

“Stop looking at me like that…” You warn. “Jungkook, we are not fucking.”

He puts his hands up, pouting innocently. “Can we revisit the topic after your meeting?”

You glare at him. 

“... Fine,” you huff, settling beside him. Jungkook feels instant relief as he reaches for your body and pulls you closer. 

Happily, he wraps his arms around you, resting his head on your stomach. He has waited for this all day. It was the one thing he was looking forward to. Even if you didn't come, he was looking forward to dreaming about it. Yet, here you are... Holding him like he's all yours.

Which he is.

The placement is just a little shy under your boobs, so you can’t blame him when he sneakily slides his hand under your shirt and squeezes them. 

“Jungkook!” you laugh, playfully pushing him away. “Seriously? Just wait an hour.”

“So we are fucking after your meeting? In an hour to be exact?”

You purse your lips at him. “Pookie, can’t you just behave?”

He ponders. Then, he remembers he doesn’t give a shit. 

“When does your meeting start?” He asks. 

You reach over for your laptop and turn the screen on. Reading the time, you shrug at him in response. “Hmmm... In like 20 minutes.”

“20 minutes is enough time,” Jungkook insists, giving you no time to escape. Hastily, he places small and sweet kisses on your lips and then on your cheeks. 

Giggling, you push him off with a groan. “Yah, Jungkook—”

“Oh come on, pookie! Did you really think my back was the only thing that was gonna get rubbed tonight?”

Your mouth drops. 

Jungkook laughs heartily as you roll your eyes at him and complain about his unhinged behaviour. Once your whining dies down, he pulls you even closer and sinks into your body. He holds you tight as you rub his back. 

“Were you napping to ignore your problems?” you ask him quietly. “And can you—holy shit—I can’t breathe! Do you have to hold me so tight?”

It feels like your bones are about to be crushed. Jungkook’s body is warm and so fucking beefy. It’s comfortable and all but wow do you need some air. In response, he buries his face in your body, tightening his grip. You let out a squeal. 

“Yes,” he murmurs. “If I don’t, you might run away.”

Dramatically, you gasp for air. “J-Jungkook, I won’t run away. I’m in my pajamas. I’d have to get dressed first, of course!”

Your joke doesn’t amuse him. 

“When I fall asleep… You might leave.” Jungkook says, revealing his hidden feelings. 

You bite your inner cheek, navigating through your feelings. Honestly, his room was warmly lit… It’s pretty chilly tonight… Not to mention that it is getting kind of late… Maybe you should stay the night. Although it’s kind of funny he assumed you were going to leave. Never have you ever done that to him. Never ever could you do it. 

“I’ll only leave if you snore.” You tease him, booping his nose. “Also, I didn’t know you were such a light sleeper."

He scrunches his nose in response. “Now you know. Take note for next time,” Jungkook yawns. “And yeah… I didn’t know if you were actually coming so I thought I would just sleep off my bad mood.”

“Did it work?”

Jungkook lets out a drowsy-like chuckle. “No. You woke me up.”

“Geez, okay… I’ll leave—”

Jungkook plops up on his elbows and hisses, “Shut up and listen to my day, woman. You’re the only good thing in my life so you’re not allowed to leave. Don’t even joke about that. God, you’re so fucking mean—”

You cup his cheeks and bring his lips to yours. Kissing him gently, you add another peck as you pull away. Holding his face close, you kiss his cheeks and murmur, “Hmmm, sorry, sorry…”

He huffs, pouting for another kiss. You give in. 

Then, he begins to ramble about all the things that made his day so horrible. 

You lay there, rubbing his back, and offer a few, “Mhmm,”’s “Oh, seriously?” and a few, “Eww. No, you’re so right. That sounds awful. I’d be upset too.” Listening to his tired voice makes you sleepy. Not that he’s boring but more because it was so soothing. That’s something you would have never admitted a few months ago…

But things change. 

He changed.

You changed too. 

Unexpectedly, being together is so comforting. Despite being each other's pain in the ass, you two were always there for each other. You two, for some odd reason, have begun to need one another. 

Each other’s warmth, each other’s touch, and each other’s presence—all of it. 

God, you two just made everything better for one another.

If falling in love was a feeling… This is it. 

Being with Jungkook is so easy.

Like... You never understood when people said that about their significant other, but now you do. The weird part is... He isn't even yours.

It's like whenever you have issues that are blown up in your head, he doesn’t try to find solutions. Instead, he listens and helps you reflect. Jungkook has a good understanding of what is his to handle and honestly? He handles you well. 

Besides, being with you is his favourite part of living. It’s as if his body wasn’t aching from the 4 hour long soccer practice. It’s as if nothing mattered because at the end of the day—if it meant that he could be with you. 

Your meeting goes smoothly. Jungkook behaves (let’s give him a gold star!) and at one point, he falls asleep. His little snores made you roll your eyes, but it didn’t motivate you to leave. If anything, it’s the reason you stayed. When the call ends, Jungkook slides his hands down your shorts and chuckles. 

“Forgot to eat dinner,” he claims, peaking with one eye. “Lemme eat that pussy…”

You blink at him. 

He returns your look with a pout. 

“Pretty please?”

You stay still. 

Then, he huffs and abruptly gets up. “You’re so annoying,” Jungkook groans as he walks to his door. Just as he’s about to leave, he makes his final comment. “Do you know how hard it was to not eat you out while you were being all cute and academic? I behaved and now I’m starving. I’m gonna make some food. You craving anything—oh fuck yes.”

Jungkook’s words are cut off as you fling your panties onto his face. 

He blinks at you, scrunching your panties in his hands. His eyes almost fall out of his head as you open your legs and lean back against his headboard. Oh, god... He is so lucky. Today truly is the best day of his life.

Jungkook watches with steady eyes as you lift your flimsy top to expose your breasts. Then, you put your hands to your sides and grip his bed sheets. He loves the way you look right now... It's mesmerizing.

Therefore, Jungkook wastes no time.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you..." He praises your body, more than ready to dive in. You roll your eyes at him but secretly love this. You know you do. You feel it between your legs and even in your heart.

He positions himself in between your legs and kisses your inner thigh. As he begins, you grip his hair with one hand and whimper, "y-you... Craving you."

[queenpiranhadon]

A/N: You all voted on this poll, and this poll, and this poll and after a LOT of voting ((again) again) , I wrote this for all of you :D Thank you to my first not irl moot, Bee (@swans-chirping-in-the-distance) for beta reading this ily girl 😭 Here's my masterlist!

Warning(s): Enemies to lovers trope, mentions of anxiety, night thoughts (iykyk), reader wants to strangle Sirius lmao, maybe some inaccuracies idk man, reader is a Ravenclaw, reader is in the year below Sirius, reader is a bookworm, reader gets stressed apt academics - don't even try to call people like that nerds, anxiety for this sorta stuff is really serious, reader snaps at Sirius, reader’s nicknames are sweetheart, love and angel, slowburn kinda- they're just figuring stuff out, reader is GN but written with f!reader in mind.

Pairing: Sirius Black x GN!Ravenclaw!Reader

•─────•°•❀•°•──── ʜᴀᴛᴇ ─────•°•☁︎•°•─────•

The halls were quiet. 

 Too quiet.  

And you knew that, but it didn’t stop you from traversing the halls of Hogwarts, relishing in the darkness that enveloped the halls, and ultimately concealing you from any prying eyes.  

Stars twinkled through the windows that cast soft rays on moonlight onto the empty halls of Hogwarts, you should’ve felt at ease. 

But you didn’t. 

Technically, you shouldn’t be awake right now, and technically, you shouldn’t be in the halls right now, either, given the strict curfew Hogwarts has on its students. 

Didn’t stop you from leaving though. 

You had just finished a big essay for Herbology, and your anxiety had gotten the best of you, creating the twisting feeling in your gut, the one of failure, your subconscious whispering false notions and spiraling into possible timelines of being forced to work as Filch’s assistant because you failed to pass your exams, and- 

Needless to say, you needed to clear your head.  

Which is why you snuck out of Ravenclaw Tower, and why you were walking through the halls of Hogwarts. 

And why you now found yourself hiding behind one of the almost intimidating, looming pillars in the hall, footsteps resounding through the hallways.  

Your heart pounds - you would for sure be screwed if you were caught. Your mind races, thinking of countless possible ways your life would be ruined if whoever was there found you.  

Your body feels like it’s on fire, buzzing with the urge to run and hide, back into the safety of your sheets; better to give yourself to the torment of your thoughts than be caught in a place you weren’t supposed to.  

You curse mentally to yourself, until a husky masculine voice snaps you out of your mental tirade of self-abuse. 

“You can come out, sweetheart; I won’t bite. I’m supposed to be here as much as you are.” the male says smoothly. He had voice of a man who thrived off his confidence.  

Your body physically slumps in relief at the knowledge that it isn’t a professor. And then the tension came back, once you realized who the voice belonged to.  

Sirius Black.  

The boy in question was in the year above you, but it didn’t stop him from continuing his onslaught of pestering you when he could. And you tolerated it- knowing this was just how the Marauders were sometimes- but then Sirius did the unimaginable.  

You were reading your book- one of mystery and romance, each inked word drawing you in more and more until the book was physically ripped from your hands, your progress lost in the process. To say you were furious was an understatement.  

You probably yelled at him for 20 minutes straight, going on a tangent about how you never do that to someone and that he was an unsufferable prick, and yet all that son of a Blast-Ended Screwt did was stare at you with those stupidly gorgeous eyes and an even stupider grin plastered on his face.  

And after that day, he had made a point to poke fun at you whenever he could.  

Maybe running into a professor in the middle of the night wouldn’t be so bad.  

“I know you’re there, love.” he says; you can practically hear the smug grin on his face.  

“Shove off Black, you’re not supposed to be out either.” you bite, speaking in hushed tones unlike the loud boy on the other side of the pillar you were hiding behind.  

“That may be true, but I’ve never been good at following rules, have I?” he teases, trying to rile you up. “But I seem to have caught the Ravenclaw’s self-righteous angel doing some misdemeanors of their own.” 

You want to wring his neck- stupid Black doesn’t know anything- doesn't know how much your anxiety bothered you at night, and the moment you try to get some reprieve, you have to deal with him.  

“Can you actually shut your mouth?! You don’t know anything about me, and you never will, so stop acting like you can read me so easily, because maybe, just maybe, people have lives outside of you and your thick head Black.” You snap, storming off from your hiding place where Sirius can see you, determined to leave for Ravenclaw Tower. 

But before you can, he grabs your wrist, tugging you backward and into his chest- strong arms wrapping around you and securing your frame, effectively trapping you in his embrace.  

“There you are.” he whispers. 

You feel your face heat up, the proximity of the two of you was unbearable, his warm breath fanning over the back of your neck. You tense up, and yet, some part of you melts into his touch- and you hate it.  

“What in the world are you talking about, Black.” your tone harsh but no bite.  

You feel his head tilt up. The arms encircling you tighten as his tone turns thoughtful. 

“Do you hate me?” 

That caught you off guard. “What?” you stutter, taken aback. 

“Do you hate me, angel.” he repeats calmly, still looking through what you think in the window on the opposite wall from the both of you.  

You look down in contrast, mulling over his words. Do you hate...Sirius Black? Sure, he annoyed you to the end of the world, made your blood boil to the point where he could cook pasta with it, and made you want to rip the strands of your hair out, but somehow, hating him didn’t seem right. It didn’t sound right, the words hate and Sirius Black.  

“No.” you whisper, deciding to look up at the window with him. “I can’t.” 

You know he’s smiling when he softly says, “Me neither.”  

You both don’t say anything after that, silence ringing out through the halls of Hogwarts, and after a few minutes of just standing there in each other's presence, you speak.  

“So where does that leave us?” 

[overtaken-stream]

Where On3 Will St4nd

King The Wildfire x F!Lunarian!Reader

100+ Followers Special!! I APPRECIATE YOU GUYS SO MUCH! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! THANK YOU GUYS FOR THE SUPPORT!! <3 (This was posted so late oml) This bad boy has been cooking in my drafts for close to a year and a half it feels like, it is very much burnt to a crisp. Thank you anon who asked me about King meeting another of his race! This would not be here without you <3

Also, sorry for the grammar mistakes, English isn't my first language.

word count: 8.9k

Warnings: incorrect cultural description(?)/practices(?), Self-harm(Burns), Imprisonment, Timeline is a mess don't come at me.

( The Land of a Demon )

Onigashima is an intimidating island; the smell of ash penetrates every corner of the scene where a battlefield will unfold. There are no flowers to add color to the brown mud and grey rocks, no snowflakes to grace the island or land on the red mist. The only thriving presence is the skull, where the fire emanates—the lair of a wrongdoer rotting and resting in this sinful place.

The skull, or rather, the rock resembling a creature much like the one on Thriller Bark—Oars, to be exact—was its name. But even he, the Junior, paled in comparison to the Skull Dome. No human could have sculpted it; giants, maybe, but even then, there are doubts.

It was formidable for you to step into the den of a beast earlier than expected, where you would be alone and defenseless. The dreadful aura the place is emitting is fitting for an Emperor of the sea. The deeper you went, the lighter you felt, the fearsome and overwhelming feeling was replaced by the intimidating, and may I say, strict walls you can find in the Wano Kuni, or the Flower Capital to be more exact, the only thing Onigashima lacks is the malnourishment that comes with Shoguns' rule, the exhausted faces of workers, the food prices and the dirtied outskirts. The separation of morals between the Wano Kuni and Onigashima shows clearly in the environment, it's like stepping into a completely different world, detached by the innocent victims who got birthed in this tangle of knotted rope, a mess, a sculptor done masterfully by manipulators of different social hierarchies. It's an art piece that took lives. A work in progress.

Their happiness depends on us. The ones who took it in the first place. The pirates.

We are the only people who bleed flames and light up the shadowed space that is Wano.

Soon.

...Soon.

After the worrying incident of the crew splitting apart yet again to get Sanji back and despite your worries for the polite cook- you were among the majority who continued traveling toward Wano. The plan was for you to become a Geisha working alongside Robin to get selected by the Shogun, but at last, the paths split and here you were in the den of beasts.

There was little chance of concealing your true identity in Wano; the absence of hair dyes posed a challenge. However, with strategic tying, the Obi belt effectively concealed the main factors that could give you away. The uncomfortable sensation is so familiar that you've learned to master not showing the everlasting pain on your face. The lightened makeup applied by the elderly further masks your skin, with red lips complementing your Obi and velvety gloves. The black hue of your flower kimono, snug tightly to your legs, hinders your pace, restraining you from keeping up with other women who, despite being more nervous, are less experienced in the field of treachery. Tonight, it will be challenging to differentiate professionals from novices, and you vow to take advantage.

The occasionally beautiful scenery inside the castle fails to comfort you amidst the fast-beating hearts; it is unsettling. The empty halls, guided by one of Kaido's puppets, make everyone dizzy with the maze-like walls—plain, hard to remember its turns.

In what way did the he turn last time?

The candles dwindle in plain sight as the floor creaks, accommodating the heavy steps of someone on the other side of the hallway. The sound becomes more vivid as it picks up pace, running past your group from the other side of the wall, capturing the attention of a soldier who turns and continues guiding with an anxious face.

It's only when the others, approximately ten pairs of feet, follow suit that you realize the commotion beside the separation. Judging by the soldier's expression, it seems to be a normal occurrence. However, you do not halt your steps; you continue to motionlessly follow, much like a sheep. It turns out the other women have the same idea.

There's an Oni free of its cage.

Debris falls from the shaking ceiling onto your shoulders. You wipe the black fabric clean, huffing as you quicken your pace, gently pushing the ladies to make way. The man, with spiky brown hair, takes another turn to the right this time.

``Sir, how far are you going to make us walk? Do you want us to be gasping for breath when we entertain our customers?`` You ask in a monotone voice, the impatience underlines your words, while your facial expression is the same as the one you entered with.

The soldier angles his neck to look up at you before his expression turns sour.

Lazy sons of bitches are too tired to answer a simple question. Tsk.

Your eye twitches as you await his answer. Not minding the spooked expressions of the ladies.

``Just above this floor.``

You only take your eyes off of him when the dark wood stairs come into view. It's been twenty years since the Beast Pirates invaded Wano Kuni and the history of Onigashima, they left a mark that will be impossible to remove. The residue of red that has maintained its place on the stairs is proof of that, who knows how many more illicit and barbaric things this place... This Country has witnessed. Who knows how many more will be lost.

Yet, people ignore it for their safety, geisha act no differently, even if they feel the warmth of a body no longer on the bottom of their okobo, they don't look down. For their security. Though you seem to be unable to look up, whoever the unfortunate victim was, you wish them a peaceful afterlife.

You hold in what anger you have, clenching your fists onto the sides of your kimono. There will come a time for you to spill it.

Soon.

...Soon.

A dreadful feeling emanates within the group, snapping you out of your daydreams. You didn't mean to get lost in your head, but the moment you let the fabric loose, the double door opens, and the women hurry their way to spots alongside every wall, unhappiness settling in their guts. They put their knees onto the soft purple cushions. Your eyes travel over the shamisen lying beside the cushion you were supposed to rest on. The three-stringed instrument you pick up seems to be brand new—unused and unprepared. However, even as you fix the strings, you feel relieved. Kyo Mai is a slow dance with complicated steps, and your confined wings always disturb your enactment. You were supposed to play the instrument and stay hidden among the performers, even with your snow-white hair and height.

The door opens right after everybody picks up their fans, you hid away in the background with the shamisen now in the proper hold.

(Away from the intimidating aura the girls seem to be spooked of. They don't break under the pressure. They repeat what was practiced.)

Here they come.

The All-Stars.

( Eyes That Follow )

From the three goliaths that were sitting and having an exchange, you've decided that Queen was the worst out of all of them. His immense and twisted pride shows even during his interactions with the women currently swarming his sides, the sadism that chokes the air out of every woman doesn't reach the beasts.

He calls it... “Flirting” it's not obvious to the naked eye but the girls feel uncomfortable, even when they smile, you can tell. It's for survival they smile. It's for survival they nod their heads as Queen throws compliments at a woman who isn't here. Komurasaki.

You feel sorry for the girl, to have Queen captivated was horrifying. You hold hope that Komurasaki will never meet him in person, even as your eyes continue to wander over Queen, for he, even if the filthiest of the All-Stars, was the most social one. A star scientist. It's when Queen starts practicing his singing talent that one of them calls.

``Oi.``

You straighten up. From on top Jack, The Drought looks down at you.

``Could you start the music already?`` His unreacting eyes only leave your face when you answer with an apology. It was obvious he was trying to silence Queen.

As you pull the shamisen closer to your body, you can hear the blond's offended complaints soon be replaced by the excitement when he realizes the Geishas' standings.

``Well, aren't you a beauty with white hair of yours, musician? Though no one will beat my Komurasaki! That bastard Shogun! Such a shame.``

You aren't sure what he pulls out of his pocket—a paper of some kind? A picture. You thought maybe some information would leak out of their mouths, yet the only conversations you hear are Queen's complaints and praises towards the women. Lost in your own mind, studies continue to mix. Is Kaido awarding his men before the festival? It seems unlikely, but unfortunately, that might be the case.

As you begin the melody of "Crane Wedding," there isn't another noise except Queen's malicious giggles interrupting you. That is until the sounds of squeaking leather picks up in the trapped room. You fix your eyes on the instrument while somebody else's eyes drill into your face, past your cosmetics and the flawless kimono. They don't move from your face; in fact, you might even think they are staring past your soul. You can feel their eyes travel to your neck, covered by the geisha's makeup. They stare, and you don't dare to look up meet meet them.

The pleasant music of yours doesn't halt as a geisha brings in the food, throwing a quick and nervous glance your way, but soon she too turns towards one of the three men who called her, leaving you alone with that crushing stare. The time stretches along with the performance; the short melody now feels like a loop of endless tactics put together. Lovely notes turn into a disgusting mess of mud inside your mind, plugging your ears and forcing you to hear the way your heart speeds up, noticing his eyes cling onto the darker color not peeking from under the makeup. You're nervous, as are the dancing geisha, whose only audience is Queen at this point. It's soon when the second, heavy pair of eyes turn towards you, but this one is much quicker to leave you be.

That must have been Jack.

King. He's the one that continues to stare.

The corner of your lips twitches after the realization. You try to keep away from falling and dissecting below his gaze. It lasts even after the dance was finished, his red eyes hold you hostage for the most part, even when you get up and do what your teacher, a sweet old lady has taught you.

It's fear, not of him, but rather afraid of him finding out what no outsider should know.

It's doubt, he is doubting you. Suspecting you, yet he asks no question. He only stares you down like a predator when you finally meet his crimson eyes. Your (E/C) eyes reflect his fully leathered top half.

You aren't afraid of him, no you can't be, you've faced many opponents in your 25 years of living, and you've gone through the suffering even the strongest men cannot withstand.

You are a Straw hat.

You are part of a future Pirate Kings crew. You cannot be intimidated by a mere second in command. You hold your head up high.

It turns out to be the right action that causes him to back down slowly, surely you are let go from the muddy waters.

( Eye to Eye )

The sunrise began as Jack got up, and soon Queen followed him. After his callouts to King, who threw an audible shut-up in his way but did not move from the spot he was standing, Queen wasn't convinced until Jack bulldozed through the door opening and intentionally dragged Queen out of the way.

The poker face you've kept up so far slips when King calls every woman out of the room except you. You can feel Haki building its way through your veins, but you don't jump to conclusions, even as he gets closer to you with a towering height difference, his latex and bands stay unmelted when the fire on his back explodes, little sparks jumping towards you, who is by now trapped between the wall and the giant. You can feel the hot sparks on your clothing land and extinguish themselves, The conclusion is slow beneath his red eyes that are staring at you so angrily, any other emotion so hard to read beneath the mask that thoroughly covers every part of his body, the folded black wings are no exception.

Besides blocking your means of escape, he has yet to do anything physically, the temperature in the room rises with how fast the heat is produced on his back. The fire is so familiar you might even get lost in it, in the old times, when fewer shit stains were roaming the planet. It makes you sweat underneath all the tight clothes you're wearing, especially on your back where the wings have started to ruffle, trying to let some air into its layers to no avail.

You wish you had talent in observation haki to determine what he was going to do next.

You flinch when his right arm raises from where it slept beside his thighs, it slowly gets closer to your frozen form, even if you try to lean away, there is no point, you realize. You are tall, but as both of you stand beside each other, He towers over you, but his intention isn't to intimidate you. The instinct is your strong suit and your weakest point.

You can feel the leather wipe away at your excessive makeup, from your cheek to your platysma his hand travels with a heavy heart on its sleeve.

If King was anyone other than King, you would have slapped it away.

If only he didn't share traits you are so familiar with.

If only you didn't share traits he is so familiar with.

You can feel the cosmetics dragging and staining his gloves, wiping away half of your disguise easily, thanks to the heat, he keeps a note of your half-disguised face with calculating... Wide eyes. The other half of your face, one that stayed untouched, must be melting.

It's the shaky puffs of air released from his mask that gives him away, the sudden rise in temperature in an already hot room, it must almost be 40°C, yet he does not budge.

Is he relieved...? Enthusiastic much...?

Not a word is said when he takes his arm away, now covered in white. You can see the way the pupils shake, you are sure he can see yours too, the furrowed brows and slightly parted lips of yours must be a giveaway.

The wings.

The eternal inferno.

A laugh escapes in the room-turned-oven, a nervous laugh of a feminine voice. You must be in shock to have fallen so low. Not even trying are you?

In a world that ought to hunt your kind down, to exterminate the past, the world that succeeded in destroying your kind, you don't feel alone. Or... You will no longer.

In the fervor, the mask comes off, leaving his sweat-covered face uncovered for you to see.

(``What tells that you are the only survivor?`` King used to ask himself back in his younger years before he made it clear how erroneous that question was, not to mention unlikely. It a proof of his childish innocence and the improvement. If more of his kind existed, they would be in the hands of the Government, doing god knows what to them. It always made the locked space of memories in his subconscious bubble up and boil over in quiet rages and liquor-companied nights. As he looks at your somewhat clean face, he is comforted by the pitiless thought that, by some luck, someone else managed to survive the hell he also went through. He wishes he could feel at ease, but he has to be sure. He has to eliminate every doubt in his mind.)

It's not out of intimacy and lust that he asks an inappropriate question to your calmed self about stripping. The surprised look in your eyes indicates a misunderstanding of his intentions. It's only mutual trust that guides him to do what he does next. Slowly but surely, he tries to pull his mask off, letting the tight piece tug at his scalp as he sets his hair free. Only when the temperature doesn't change, even when his skin feels the air, does he let the fire return to its original size.

King The Wildfire, only looks down at your complicated emotions. Even if he does not remember the company of his people, he would truly be a fool not to recognize his own biology. Though he doesn't hold onto hope, suspicion still lingers in his red eyes. It differs from your beaming laugh full of shallow happiness, representing more of a nervous tick than anything. It's been so long since he has heard a laugh not accompanied by sadistic undertones—exploiter gifters who dared to approach him—and the liquor Kaido keeps so close during his episodes.

``... I apologize for the heat."

You smile with somewhat shocked eyes looking up at him. ``...You know, it's been a while since I've felt the excitement of my kind.`` a nervous sigh you let out lead the conversation.

`` you don't have to apologize.``

``Yes... I-`` He has forgotten many unique reflexes with time. For this instance, it doesn't pains him. Every day he forgets what distinguishes the instincts of Lunarians, for he feels less of his kind.

He counts it as a sin, a shameful part of adulting, a side effect of having to live among the likes of Kaido's men, therefore his choice.

You acknowledge his position with his back turned to the door, sitting down cross-legged as he mentions for you to do the same. You obey, his wings hovering over you and hiding your figure from the outside world.

He asks once more to turn your back to him. You try to find any joke to fit in the thick air of nervous glances, but you find none. The unconscious mutual loyalty the both of you have towards one another is born by the shared traits, of family. Of shared pain.

You take the Obi belt in your hands and off of your waist.

He has many questions he cannot get out of his mouth, but for now, he keeps quiet. He is sure you have no intention of reliving the hell on earth that is the past.

You turn your back to a beast with the pattern of a face on its back.

As you take the black fabric of your kimono off, layer by layer the cold bites at your wet body, and the salty smell lets out into the heated air, though none of you care for the odor. You drop the kimono just below your belly button and let the relief that comes with letting your wings flex and take hold.

With a fast-beating heart, King watches.

It's in a haze that he reaches out to your back, his fingers connecting to the shoulders where the wings come from, sending a shiver down your sweat-covered spine, they're smaller he thinks, more fragile than him, though there is no difference in the power of flame and healing when it comes to genders. She could make them bigger when required. They aren't fragile, they are as powerful as his, but the size difference makes it easy to tickle his instincts, long forgotten and left in the past, starving for attention. His hands run over your coracoid, trying to find the place where the feathers meet the skin, attempting to find the evidence that you are real.

He barely hears your name, caught in the view of the wings turning from black to dark blue at different angles. Though he doesn't answer, he has already shown you enough of himself, it is no longer essential. King will do just fine.

The wings are erogenous, however, even if you shiver under the sensitive touches, no lust taints the special moment between the survivors.

``(Y/N).`` you spell out your name.

By instinct, his fire becomes ablaze when his hand sneaks up your humerus, lingering touches ruffling your feathers as the fire licks at your ungroomed wing. It lights the reflective white strands of hair that escaped from Geiko Shimada. The warmth on your back is comforting to the point where you lean your wings into it. Finally, you light the eternal flame, his hand engulfed in your flames goes undamaged. It extracts and attracts the fire from his hand into the center of your spine, causing the fire to grow and spread onto your wing feathers.

Looking back you're met with what you would call, a confused face of King whose features have been caught in the yellow glow of a fire that you are able to control.

King only stares at your almost nude form with a wrinkle of thought between his eyebrows.

( Guard )

In the way King shelters you, with him beside you and you hidden in the massive wing as he walks into his chambers, you would be wrong if you said you aren't anxious. Happy but skeptical. You doubt he'll hurt you, but the mask locking away his facial structures works as an intimidation factor.

The click of a lock on his door is the only sound that disturbs the silence. Now you are in his territory, his nest.

``King?`` you turn around to look at him.

``Where did you come from.`` It's scary how quickly and unnoticeably he changes his mood. But it is probably because the enthusiasm has passed and questions have started to surface, what you thought to be a nice welcome, turns into icy bars locking you out of your getaway, just like earlier. His red eyes leave a permanent mark on your (E/C) ones.

Where did you come from. that's not a question. Questions don't make you feel as if the warmth has left your body and sent shivers down your spine. They don't drag you down the lone caves and lock up your respiratory system.

Questions aren't meant to stop time. But the way both of you aren't moving, they might as well.

You have to be careful with every word and syllable you mutter. ``I've come fro-``

``How are you alive.``

``I-``

You barely have time to finish your answers before he's asking another one, slowly he steps toward you. In the dark, his leather shines, but as you take another step back you cannot help but glance at his wings. How the moonlight seems to bend with each curve of his feathers, sinking into the crevices and lightening them up in a blue hue, similar to you, but unlike the yellow glow, King's replaced by the white. You can't help but be deprived.

There is only one sentence that is louder than the rumble coming from within him. The declaration you acknowledge within all the noise clogging your ears.

You don't feel the suffocation of this situation, nor do you hear King's voice anymore. The pressure (Despite the windows being open) comes from the claustrophobic chamber. Your wings stay close to your back. The masked face looks down on your kimono, his pupils have seemed to freeze on your form, and the angry aura that he emits is all but a facade of defense. His jaw is moving but all you can hear is a rumble that pours out deep from his chest, it's incredibly loud yet deaf to the ears of normal humans, the volume that should shake walls only quiver your brain.

The moonlight seems to cage you in, showing your footsteps to a starved predator, it's the devil's eye that replaces the moon, with red pupils that stare you down. He overshadows your form, sending warnings throughout your system-

The possessiveness only sends shivers down your spine.

(Fight or flight?)

From somewhere far away, a boy with a straw hat on his face lifts his head from where it's laying in a hammock, letting the yellow straws that are incapable of being split slowly drop onto his bandaged chest. The rough feel of the same material wraps around his forehead trapping a few black strands of hair with it.

He grumbles, the ache in his limbs starting to become much more obvious, with half-lidded eyes Luffy looks up from the opening of the hammock, letting his head peek over at the sleeping skeleton currently knocked out in the same way Luffy was supposed to be.

Something's happening.

He is sure of it, but with grogginess biting away his consciousness, he has no energy left to chase after that feeling, he turns his stiff body the other way, peeking from the left he comes face to face with the man who is a family member in all but blood, who he got back just a few hours ago.

He smiles and lies back down, from the position he is in, a window the size of his head stays open, it shows the moon and the stars twinkling their way into existence.

He wonders what others must be up to, are they watching the moon with him? Basking in its glow like a tiger?

He hates that he has to keep them waiting, but it was necessary.

Soon.

...Soon he'll be there.

Wait for him... A little more!-

( Domain )

There's something cataclysmic lurking in the walls of his chambers, causing your ears to bleed. The shackles rattle loudly next to your helix as you scratch at your ear, only making the headache worse. The heavy pull of sea stone brings down your mood. Rough exterior already leaving its mark on your hands

The mirror rests across the bed, compelling the disheveled mess of yourself to face the view. Hair strands fall on the sides of your face, greasy with gel, and your face—oh God, your face—appears smudged, as if the color is melting away. The swollen eyes that signal a newly awakened person squint to see your reflection.

The clothes are still on your body despite being passed out on the enormous bed of a murderer, a killer, and a tyrant's sidekick last night. Another ridiculous error to add to the imaginary board.

Back when King unleashed the color of the Supreme King on your cornered self you didn't dare fight back, and the shackles were here in the form of consequence to your conclusion.

The room was dark, with the only source of light being the window next to the mirror. The bars on the outside really make you feel at home. The decor set a scene suggesting no man had ever lived there. Occasional scratches marked the floor, and the specially modified bed, along with what you could only guess was a closet, were all tailored to fit his taste. Gothic undertones and a taste reminiscent of some old king's private quarters defined his preferences. You could barely discern the detailing on the bed and the strangely designed closet colored in black and gold. The dominating dark blue swallowed any light that entered the room, and there was a door to your left, likely leading to the bathroom.

The quiet morning was disturbed by the entrance of King, he stands in front of the same door you remember entering last night.

You feel quite disgusted.

``I didn't expect you to be awake.`` For a moment before you passed out, you didn't either.

The uneasy eyes meet kings' as time stills. Dragging out the undesirable connection. It only serves to tug your heart down to your gut. The happy moment, the relief and sorrow for the past nothing but a distant memory in the dark shadows of a realm not your own.

He moves closer to your bed, hands dropping what seems to be extra clothes near your feet. The man doesn't flinch as you push your legs closer to your torso and away from him. The rejection is disregarded.

``You should change.`` Carefully you nod your head.

``The bathroom is over there.``His stern voice shakes the weak walls of your mind as he turns his back on you before walking over to the entrance.

You can't help but let out a shaky breath as the door is locked and you're left alone with thoughts you can not connect no matter how hard you try, it only serves to make tremors run up your spine and into your fingertips, it's a dread invading a carefully maintained flesh you tried to protect with the hands of a child once. The deep noise your restraints produce was nothing but a ghost of your past just a couple of days ago. The weight on your wrists burns. The crackle is deafening and bone-shaking. There's no one else to hear you.

``... I need...`` Time to think, to process. Your lips shiver.

The soft white walls are nothing but an illusion. You wonder if the blue-colored room of a beast is a delusion.

The eyes and the goggles flash before you, white coats accompanied by bloodlust run over your thoughts.

Breathe.

You push your knees off of the bed, sweat traveling down your face, the cold is in no way a comfort.

The warm water is what tempts you to tread the wooden floor.

( Lone Wolf )

The water is hot against your skin as the shower head lets the boiling droplets escape freely from the metal, and steam coats the world in the lightest tints. King brings the ache you've long forgotten existed ever since the smile of a boy with the straw hat lit your life full of shadow. You wish you could be happy in the burning downpour, you deserve it, however, the inferno on your back heals the drawbacks, leaving no trace of your accomplishments which took more than a couple of burns to earn.

And you wonder what have you done to earn this.

The happiness of no longer carrying the guilt was relieving, even if it lasted for a couple of minutes.

As a little lady you would wish for a knight to come and take you away to the land of dreams, make the walls just a bit more colorful and alive in the world that burns dreams. The warm hands would he have, the soft look and the shine in his eyes, the wings on his back, and the fire that would put the sun to shame with its flames. The honey on his lips and the daisies in your hair.

The desires were harmless, they gave you hope, something a human would have.

(You can still taste the metal. You can feel the debris fall and you hear their landing making the ground of pure white shake.

Your instincts would only let you run. Would only make you avoid the black broken bricks covered in glitter. Shining green from the light and smoke.

You have no idea what exploded. You won't want to know.

That night, the girl left that place and its guards to be doomed into oblivion.

That night, a knight was left without his princess.)

The sizzling sound you feel is draining you of the energy you might need, it's a waste yet the fire on your back regenerates the lost skin again, again and again. Until you give in and stop the shower, only for the shackles to be felt around your hands. Your wings are open, fully on display.

Sensing the burns in your bones, you wonder what would have happened if you were more close to the explosion of the past, wonder if it would have been better as the water droplets fall from your wet face.

It's fairer than facing the reality that complicates the fragile string of truths once again.

Hands clenched into fists and fire growing ever hotter on your back, you wonder if you are patient enough for this, no longer does a little girl await for saving. She doesn't need to anymore. Someone else might.

It brings up a question. Can you be the light needed for one's darkest times?

You walk out of the shower with a hot back and bloody palms, the fire burns brightly above the feathers. You can only hope to fuel it forever. You keep the wings close, your captor closer.

No longer will you be truly alone.

( Purity )

If there's one thing you've learned as a child, it's that they aim for the stars, with no plan in mind and ambition in their belly, only a brave few truly make it into the sky and those who could not are left with clipped wings and broken dreams. Fragile to the point they crash onto the soil and shatter, never to be put together again.

It makes you proud that your captain never crashed down, that his wings were never clipped, you're sure that the thoughtlessness was enough to boost him to reach beyond the stars.

Before, you wondered if you were able to grab onto the lights that looked down on you during the night. Now you live to see it come true.

However, where you succeeded some failed.

And so King came crashing down with the one who put his wings back together, feather by feather, vigorous and more dreadful than ever.

He split the skies until it cried.

You refuse to allow him to recite Kaidou's doing to you. Day after day in the dark and cold chamber, your fire brightens the dark and continuously burns on your back, never once diminishing.

Nobody is allowed that pleasure.

( Prison )

Getting used to a closed environment comes naturally, as much as you hate to admit it. The dim walls are a new addition to your view, which is no longer full of white coats and a bright enclosure. The heavy shackles are much harder to familiarize with.

In a cold chamber time moves fast.

Your only interaction with the outside world is King, dark and broody, full of confidence and gentleness, he treats you as if you're fragility itself. You won't beg for a way out, you never did, humiliation over naught is an intense feeling to swallow. He's careful with his words, careful in the way he acts and reconnects with his instincts right by your side.

Day after day his visits keep a consistent schedule, with two plates of food and loneliness in his belly he strives to spend breakfast, lunch, and dinner together with you, speaking only a few words of insight. There's fire on your back yet, it does nothing to protect you from the coldness he brings. Wings stay close to your back, never truly opening in the cage. The words he says don't carry the weight of a man born for death.

One wants to lower your walls while shackling you with his, to the point that the invisible distance strains you, he is full of drought and he craves to end the famine.

Time passes and the longer you ignore the elephant in the room, the heavier its weight on your shoulders grows. You destruct yourself for a question you're not ready to hear the answer to. The pressure leads to an opening to form.

It's said in an outlandish way, heart swelling with numbness and hate tingling your fingers. Your eyes stare onward, beyond the figure meeting them.

``What are you achieving?`` Why have you caged me? Weren't you in my position once upon a time?

It stops him dead in the tracks. His eyes don't widen yet his mouth does in a way that seems robotic. The air stills, only the noise of crackling fire could be heard, heavy and rich with the enigma the man was created to be.

Why did you choose kaidou?

You want to ask.

``...Nothing. I achieve nothing.`` you ignore the strict undertone and drink the tea he brought not too long ago. It conceals the wary gulp.

``I would never have taken you for a liar.`` An intense sound is created as he slices the distance between you two with his flight, black wings ajar. a sharp feather rests near your throat. You have to be attentive. Careful to not snap the thick rope that holds his pieces together.

Blood seeps out of the cut.

``Why do you wish for death?``

``You could have murdered me the night we met.`` It's too late for your soul to perish. His reasoning for keeping you alive is clear to you.

His hand, clenching the root of a dangerously pointed feather shakes with the conflicted emotion.

Your back lights and the cut is healed.

He cannot do it, not to his kind. With a quiet grunt, King backs off to leave the chamber, his feather crumbled and abandoned on the cold wood.

Every night is spent alone on a bed made for your kind, it's just that this night feels full of plain dismay and sorrow.

The past does not visit tonight.

( The Other Side )

Your words penetrate him, though he doesn't indicate. The conversation is buried in the depths of ash, fire blooms inside of him, it rages and burns, and wherever he steps the smoke trails after him.

``Haven't you walked the same path?``

His subordinates are seated around a large table, smiles and crevices on their face.

``Do you not know darkness?``

He does. He is intimate with it.

``The hopelessness of being someones plaything?``

He can feel the heat of the past catching up to him, engulfing him in the ball of flame and strapping him on a table. He knows how it feels to be burned to oblivion, the only peace he has known. Words of madness leave his lips, everyone, including himself knows that it's empty threats, for he stands on the other side of the glass. Nothing but a guinea pig

``I know that you know it too. We walked the same path.``

He would have grabbed anyone's hand if only they reached out. It just so happened that he grabbed someone who could change the world, for the better or for worse.

He looks at the barren wasteland of Onigashima.

Was it truly a choice when your options were between freedom and its absence?

He finds that time flies swiftly when sailing. It halts when on the land.

(He has never belonged to either.)

``Why do you recite history?``

He comes to a conclusion, one of selfishness and fear. Clenched fist heats up, he does not pay attention to the rising temperature.

He craves his kind. The hopelessness is the reason he captured you.

His teeth grind against one another. He isn't on the level of humans, his superior biology won't let him stoop that low, but he finds that mentally, he and them are cut from the same cloth. Other's consequences directed him to repeat what he feared.

The thought has long since passed.

King finds it hard to care about them.

But you are entirely foreign. He can taste the smoke of Punk Hazard.

You try again and again. Lightly scratching at the metaphorical walls of him until your hands grab his heart softly, ripping the veins and staining your hands with his blood.

Your mouth only forages for the food King fetches. He wonders about you and the possibilities of it all until the voice he has gotten used to brings him back to earth, you do nothing to cushion his fall, only stalling his drop with words he feels entirely uncomfortable to understand. For the reason that he had no one to share it with.

``There's a saying about them`` You say, looking oblivious with the plate resting on your knees, mouth cooling down the food.

``A man is wolf to man.`` He gets it, King is sure he will hear your voice saying it whenever the existence of The Celestials get brought up.

``I'm glad you aren't one.``

For a moment King thinks about the blood he spilled, the curses his shoulders withstand and the beginning of it all, the things he has seen himself do, and replies.

``I could say the same.``

You can see his face, swatted with shadows even without the mask, crack, and the hidden comfort dawns on his face.

The soup in your hands is warm like the sunlight, the mask he gripped whenever entering the room rests on the bed, no longer present in his claws.

A path reveals itself to the two of you.

(There's a flower that blooms only in cold surroundings, It feeds from the ground and awaits the warmth of the sun, from the grey clouds and falling snow, the light peeks through.)

( No Regrets )

Through the window, you can smell the madness in the air, it's evident in the way King comes in while the walls around you shake with the rhythms of Queen's performance.

Your heart follows along with the melody without your consent. After all, there is not much to do with the man that you have come to accept. The walls are nothing against the booming voice of a man too loud and apathetic. But within the confines of the castle, the tense atmosphere can be felt with the help of King. Every step he takes and grunt that follows brings forth his thoughts and instincts, there's something in the air. Teetering on the edges of your mind.

The Lunarian gets closer to you, finally reaching down to your level. For minutes he stares at you, taking in your features as if you'd disappear. The leather flexes as his left-hand holds your wrist.

The red eyes don't move away. Neither do yours.

The metal spikes on his mask gleam. His eyes tell a story as his head drops down, gloved fingers sliding over the rough material of your cuffs.

Time is ticking, and you are waiting for him to succumb to temptation and finally make a move for both's sake.

King's face tilts up with a heavy sigh in tow to look at you, only for a soft smile to greet him. The cuffs are warm around your skin and cold to the room.

After all, the sun speaks of your captain's arrival.

It doesn't take many days for King to return with the key in between his fingers and no fire on his back. Your smile greets his eyes, and the knowing grin settles on your dark skin, yet the maliciousness is nowhere to be found between your lips.

Ever since his release, King has never felt at peace, perhaps he can only close the distance.

(A glimpse of sunlight was all the flower needed to rise from the frozen land.)

The heavy cuffs harshly meet the floor.

( Reunion )

The smoke is filling your lungs, the familiarity making your heart clench and bring forth a cough. The walls are stained with blood, but you don't dwell on it. Instead, you let the sounds of battle lead your wings; feeling the air make way for you is a sensation missed. The chunks of limbs and lifeless bodies are nothing but a blur in your vision. The battle has long begun, and your release from the King's chamber is far too late.

A cunning smile flashes in your mind, long black hair, and rosy cheeks decorate the memory.

``Better late than never.`` Her composed voice would say, accompanied by her icy and all-knowing stare.

Suddenly, a blue light shines through the castle wall ahead, accompanied by the noise of a gigantic object impacting from the other side. With a single flap of your wings, you pick up speed, aiming to breach the barrier. Your tough feathers shield your body as you slam into and shatter the wall's material. Unscathed, your eyes adjust to the bright figure standing on your left, emanating a stunning light that brings life to its surroundings, leaving your eyes wide. You notice a trail of smoke to your right.

You get a better look at him as the surroundings clear up.

``S-Sanji?!`` You feel quite happy to know that his issue has been resolved, judging from the way his face brightens and stands on the ground of Wano's borders. Although he always lights up near the opposite sex.

``(Y/N)-Chan?!`` His matted blond hair is a detail you only notice with the advanced eyesight your kind seems to possess. The bloody lip and his bruised forehead made him quite a sight. Although the swelling is nowhere to be seen.

You can try to make the words of delight resurface in your mouth, it's always nice to let others know of your feelings, though sometimes it sure gets hard to pull them out from the bottom of your heart.

``I'm glad to see you here!`` it lets the burden on your shoulders lighten.

Sanji responds the way you except him to.

``(Y/N)-Chwaaan!!~♡ It's been so long since I last saw you!`` No longer able to contain the love in his body, the hearts burst from his very soul. Happiness fuels his wiggly movements. ``Oh, how I missed you!~``

A large smile stretches your lips, dry as a desert. ``It's nice to have you back!-``

You could have said more, but the time has already run out.

There's water leaking from the floor above, a loud shriek is heard and your back is met with a cold, menacing look from who seems to be Sanji's opponent.

The reflexes kick in, sinking into your veins, moving you out of the threat of a mechanism falling on top of you.

You'r gaze falls on the Beast. His eyes meet yours.

There's a glimmer of familiarity in his eye.

``Out of the way!`` Sanji's yell warns before the foe swings his oversized arms once more.

The amount of force needed for your wings to fly backward is more than necessary, though the opponent's swings seem to be getting swift at every dodge, the heat produced on your back strengthens your arms and then fists, and you look for an opening to get one hit in, but for a second you can see the furious blue eyes tell you his whole story, the desperation of a man becoming more clear to recognize...

You decide that this is not your battle... The heat is diminished.

( A Change )

The short encounter with the cook was not for naught, his instructions led you directed to a stadium full of warriors ready to risk their lives for a nation that has only its history to live for.

Within enemies, there are familiar faces mixed in, who are also fighting alongside you. With Kaido fighting Luffy and Sanji taking on Queen, it's only logical to assume that the first mate would go for the top of the food chain.

There's so much to do, yet the responsibility does not intimidate your kind.

You're left to protect the survivors of a war already won.

The aftermath was nothing more than a reunion for your crew.

( Hello )

The victory comes and brings midnight with it, cheers and smiles bloom on the warriors' faces as you breathe heavily, and everyone starts to tend to their wounds, burns and deep slashes are nothing compared to what they've achieved. Pirate crews are no exception, they rest and gain the energy they'll need for the morning, until then it seems that you're the only one with stamina left.

The fire on your back grows small until it vanishes completely.

Of course, after Kiado's defeat, warriors took advantage of the weakened Beast Pirates and imprisoned those who could still stand, albeit their dreams were and still are drowning in pieces far too small to see or collect. It's evident that they hold no hope for the future.

But there's a link connecting you to one of them.

You walk near the exit door, watching as men talk among each other and discuss their next step, whatever that may be. Your semblance to that man does not get mentioned by anyone after all, they have not seen his face, but the single glance from Zoro as he stayed awake for 5 seconds is enough for you to tense up, you wonder when it will be brought up. Zoro might have fallen asleep but your heart stayed heavy next to him.

It's a dangerous idea you have, suspicious even, though they must understand, Luffy's intelligence, Nami's smile, Robins's knowledge, Usopp's understanding nature, Chopper's innocent outlook, Franky's family ties, Brook's dedication, Sanji's acceptance, and Zoro's strict attitude. If a word got out, you'd have to face your friends, have to rip a bandaid off of an old wound and hold in a cry. You just have to wonder when?

Yet you still head towards the Udon Prison, consequences last in your mind, the night sky looks down upon you, the stars begging you to go back, however the dark clouds hide them away.

The night air feels nice on your skin, even as you stand above the walls keeping in the Beasts. You can tell that no one is awake, exhaustion haunts the air as you leap down on the dry ground. Mad Scientist Queen is lying face down, covered in bandages that soil the dirt underneath him red, you're glad that his snores are loud enough to hide your wings' shuffling.

The sudden chill runs up your spine and alerts your senses, face tilting sideways, you look at a disheveled man standing over you from behind.

``Hello again, King.`` He thinks of your eyes and how beautiful they look under the moonlight. Your beauty would put Luna to shame.

Your greeting is dismissed.

``Why are you here?`` His dry mouth can barely open to question you.

``To see you of course.`` This time he keeps his mouth shut. Yet his eyes observe your appearance, the dirt, and blood that soaks your Kimono.

To see him after a loss, in a state such as this is a crime that would be punished by death. You're the only exception to the rule that didn't exist yesterday.

``Let's take a seat.`` He hasn't even noticed you move into the center of the prison, too busy trying to keep all the blood inside his body to not flat-line. The bandages are not doing much, and the fire he used in his battle has extinguished itself. All his strength was used up and you wish to see him in this state? There are no words left for him to speak, so he takes the seat next to you. His knee touches yours, the intimacy is foreign.

``This calls for a celebration, don't you think? I grabbed us some booze.``

The liquor bottle nudges him and he takes it with no complaints. The reasoning for others' celebration is obvious, dethroning an emperor is a big feat for anybody.

``After all, a God has awakened.`` King knows.

His eyelids are closed yet he can see the vague silhouette of JoyBoy, the godly form only brings bitterness to his tongue, so he tries to drown it with the smoky taste of beer, which accomplishes little.

``I was mistaken.`` with Kaidou. Regret fills him.

He isn't angry at his loss as much as he is irritated.

``You were.`` The moonlight shines down on both of you. The silence is deafening, nothing but your heartbeats are heard.

``I was saved by that man.`` His head looks up at you, and each of his limbs freezes at the implication. The misery and hopelessness engulf the surroundings. He thinks about nothing except the straw hat with a red ribbon.

``I see... So you're apart of his family?``

``I am.`` the soft look in your eyes makes him envy you.

``...Are you happy?`` He doesn't know what he will do if you respond negatively. King already imprisoned you, took your independence, and chained you to him, yet you didn't burn out, How will he treat you?

``I am, were you not?`` with Kaidou? He doesn't have a straight answer, so he only responds with silence. This was a question he thinks you know the answer to.

It isn't until your hand grabs his cheeks that he opens his eyes in surprise, also realizing he closed them.

``What is that look?`` The strict tone in your voice is nostalgic. He tries to direct the conversation elsewhere, however his mind is flooded with the feeling of your warm hand on his face.

``The marines will come.``

``They'll come for you too, you know.`` You respond with the warning, the Navy isn't known for mercy after all, they'll go after the cause too.

``I don't want that... I don't... I don't want to be alone.`` You add, sheepish of your request, is it too much to ask? You have friends who you consider as family, but King is... Different.

King also does not want to be the sole survivor of his race, he has carried that burden for long enough and now that he had a taste of his people, he wishes to not go back.

``You won't be.`` It's the only promise he'll keep, for your sake and his.

For this, he will have to leave the prison.

``Stay alive for me.`` You beg and he complies.

It all starts with your wing enveloping his form, the soft heat from your contact, and the gentle touch of your fingers over his cheek.

( See You Later )

It ends with a promise and an escape into the night.

With you in the company of your friends on the Thousand Sunny.

And with him on top of a waterfall, watching with curious and intrigued eyes as he holds the leftover newspaper, the ship descends down the mountain and leaps into the ocean next to the koi fish.

He finds your smile now meters away, he gazes with a newfound meaning to his life.

[danrifics]

you all pestered me for it and here it is. the closeness analysis/ theory.

now if you didn't see I basically had this theory that the closer to BIG and COTY we get in the DAPG timeline the closer dan and phil sit to each other. Dan made a comment about how them playing Heartthrob being like a gay soft launch and that got me thinking of some other ways they could have done it and one of those being the idea that as time goes on you get less and less strict and worrisome about what others think of you and so they end up gravitating closer and closer.

This post will be under a see more cos its probably gonna be long af.

I will be splitting it into stages.

2014 -15

2016 - 17

2018

revival

sorry the screenshots arent clickable to make bigger tumblr only allows for 30 on a post so i had to group them together!

(i will not be covering horror games apart from in the revival stage and i will also not be talking much about gamingmas 2023)

2014 - 15

now when i initially went to collect my evidence, i was suddenly worried maybe i kinda had things wrong because i feel like in Donkey Kong Country (the first dapg video, see screenshot below) they're sat pretty close but honestly when we get to how they sit a lot later on you'll see that this is actually pretty far apart

now here are some screenshots for the inital look at at the end of them we'll talk (this will be the layout for most of this post i think)

now of course this is only a selection of those year's videos if i screenshotted them all i fear this post would never end. now these first 2 years are a good mix of at desk videos on sofa videos. i noticed from some other videos not show here that in sofa videos they rend to sit a lot closer to each other than they do at the desk, this is kinda funny to me cos really they definitely have room for a wider frame on the couch if they wanted to sit like normal people.

2016 - 17

2016 and the start of 2017 feel like a mixed bag of how close together they are but i did notice that the more into 2017 we got the more they seemed to be shoulder to shoulder! these also started to wean out sofa sitting games (not 100% gone yet but almost). now if you're wondering why i've kept this screenshot apart its cos this is the last one in the first london apartment.

and honestly from here on out is where i believe the "soft launching" begins!

so lets finish 2017 and see if im right!

just had to single out this screenshot for a sec:

in case anyone wondered that is the face dan made during dream daddy when phil reads "we were roommates for a while too"

softlaunch?

anyway moving on

watching these videos definitely feels like something changed btw, while they still arent as close as we'll start seeing them sit, i definitely noticed more often they were shoulder to shoulder. but like a new room has definitely changed the vibe a little bit between them, and now we can move on to the next and final year of pre hiatus dapg, where things as you will see immediately start to change.

2018

like i said... immediately we are met with this, i would also like to let everyone know that 2018 is my favourite era of pre hiatus dapg

lets see what the rest of this year will bring

now i'm splitting 2018 up into parts because i need to do a whole talk about the tour situations so for now lets look at the above screenshots, now its very obvious that they are sitting so much closer to each other which i think is really funny considering how big that room is and often in this section of videos there is a lot of room either side of them so they literally do not need to be that close.

now lets talk about the tour bus. this is how close they're sitting

thats for sure a 1 person seat yet they've both forced themselves on even tho the sofa literally behind them would have been perfectly fine to sit on, and they cant give me "this is the only place to set up the camera" babe its really not theres a whole surface behind you.

okay thank you for listening to this, moving on to the final part of 2018!

(the last 2 screenshots are out of order oops)

idk about you but yeah i think they are definetly a lot closer than they were way back in 2014. i really dont have a lot to say other than that, and i have definetly proven my theory so now we've established that lets have a brief look at post hiatus dapg!

Revival

Now this is gonna be really brief its just a summary of where we are post BIG/COTY and post hiatus (things my brain still cant quite believe is real)

now here are the revival moments i wanna give a mention!

firstly sims season ep 3 when dan moves his chair away from phil and their wheels are literally locked together, pushing phil's chair too

heres dan looking into the monitor and then moving closer to phil <3

and finally

hand hold

thanks for reading all this and sorry if it didnt live up to the hype lmao

[precious-little-scoundrel]

| Ida’s Law

Introductory Part

Summary: The American War Effort had conceded to the enlisting and commissioning of women into the Air Force at semi-integrated status. Deemed a more reliable if not safer combat post, the going rank of officer in the Air Force was intended to secure fair treatment and combatant status for these women, as it had for their male counterparts. Like most things in war -or life, if one is a woman- such recognition must be fought for.

Warnings: disturbing content- if you made it through last one this one should be a breeze, however it picks up where we left off so expect mentions of war, wounds, illusions to past rapes, Nazis being racist fucks, possibly some internalized misogyny about it all and some hopefully very 🥹🤧 reunions

A Note Going Forward: With this part now published, I am happy to open this series up for prompts. Ideally I’d like this series to end up being exclusively prompt-inspired and will be putting out prompt lists accordingly. I think that will be a fun way to keep the interaction going, stretch my own skills and explore all the different scenarios that may intrigue y’all. You’re welcome to come up with your own prompts, too. All are welcome, none guaranteed but let’s be real -I’m obsessed with this AU so I’ll likely do it. For now I’ll be keeping all writing to POW Camp and Liberation and Post-Liberation timelines.

“Well, what do we know?” Ida Brady asked the first officer out on the other side as they began to filter through the laborious processing of the camp. She counted them down, one familiar face after another appearing through the doorway again with no worse indignity than the new identification tags hanging from their necks.

“I hate a guy named Johann, and I like a guy named Fritz, and the lieutenant guy wasn’t bad.” Maureen declared, straightening her precious cap atop muddy auburn tresses. “Who went and named their son Fritz after the last war? I mean really? Who does that to a kid? It’s like he’s making up for it now, though, awfully nice.”

“Mm, I thought so, too.” Ida hummed, “Might keep an eye on that one, work on him a bit. You think, Kendeigh?”

“Work on him yourself, Ida.” Maureen scoffed.

“Not much to work with.” Ida retorted, the first general reference to her disfigurement she’d made. “What do you know? What’s up?” she left off to inquire after Tallulah Smith who came out the other side of processing looking more than exasperated.

“Know? They don’t know squat.” she said, “Never heard of a Cherokee.”

“I’ll be.” Maureen was grinning sharply. “Wasn't enough being a woman for ya Smith, ya had to go and be a brown one.”

“You’re tellin’ me.” She griped, “They kept insisting I was a fighter pilot. That’s what all the ‘dark ones’ are, according to them. Told them I’d rewire their insides and maybe then they’d take my engineering degree seriously.”

“I’d like to see that.” Maureen murmured, drowsiness beginning to take over at the comparative calm of their new surroundings.

“Looks like we got everyone, yeah?” Ida peered over the heads of the crowing room and counted out her charges in a silent tally.

“Looks like.” Smith agreed. “Got billet assignments?”

“I do. Colonel Clark, most senior prisoner here, said the combines are strict but the rooms aren’t. Let’s try to behave until we feel our way, then we can swap, if they allow.”

“It’s going to smell like feet no matter where and who we share it with.” Smith pointed out and Ida heaved a great sigh as if that were the hardest prospect she’d yet encountered.

“Mm.”

“Buck is out there!” Maureen suddenly cried out, grabbing at Ida’s arm, pointing out the window at the muddy yard.

“How nice. Gotta get this sorted first, eyes in, Kendeigh.”

Maureen reluctantly tore her eyes away from her dearly missed pilot. “Yes sir.”

“All right,” Ida’s voice carried as well as it ever had, commanding immediate quiet and attention, “those in the 350th, 419th, -the hundredth!- on me. Gather ‘round. That’s it, come on. Alright, well, we made it, well done. Truly, well done to all of you. Now I know you well enough to not accuse any of you of being pure idiots, just because we made it to where we wanted to go doesn’t mean any of what’s ahead is going to be easy. Be wary, don’t let your guard down, you don’t know plenty of these men and they don’t know you, I’m sure there are measures in place for spying already. Be sensible. I am certain we can rely on the kindness of those in the hundredth, but even then keep in mind, if you are cold, they are too, if you're hungry, you best believe they are hungrier, the last thing we need is a crisis of chivalry in here. Rely on them, except their help, but don’t ever take from them. Understood? And one more thing, since the human spirit is irrepressible I feel it’s warranted to make one more housekeeping note. None, and I do mean none, no inner relations at all are allowed. I don’t care how cold you are, how sweet he’s been, or how much you’ve missed him. The Red Cross aren’t sending rubbers, and don’t ever take the promise of a pull out. Do you want a one-way ticket to a death camp or a bullet to the head? Get pregnant. Simple as that. You think the Jerries think poorly of you now for being female? Try being a matron. The point is to blend in as much as possible, keep that in mind. Whatever you do, keep that in mind. Understood?”

“Yes sir!”

“Colonel?” One voice demurred, raised hand and respectful title only forerunners for an obvious objection incoming.

“Yes? Sanchez, isn’t it? You’re not one of mine, I think.”

“No, sir, 55th -fighters.”

“Yes, well, welcome. What’s your question?”

“No offense sir but- what about the guards?” Sanchez asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Brady replied with typical candor, “I believe so far we’ve seen a mix here. I’m sure our friends can give us tips on who to watch out for.”

“No sir, sorry I meant-“ Sanchez kept her teeth clenched until her thoughts seemed to form better, “-you said no relations. What about the guards? No disrespect meant colonel and I don’t know about yours, but mine -they weren’t pulling out.”

“Mm.” Maureen thought that if Ida smashed her lips together any tighter they’d turn whiter than her skin, the bent aviators she had managed to preserve this entire time did a remarkable job of masking whatever feeling was stiffening her spine to the current degree, but all the same, her spine was stiff, “no offense taken, an excellent point. I’ll inquire about any possible…remedies. Anyone else?”

A multitude of hands shot up and Ida Brady scanned them with bewilderment until she realized her lapse in specificity. “Anyone else with questions, I meant! Saints alive. No? Good, let’s claim our bunks and see about a wash.”

After the dark interior of the building, being processed for hours, the hazy late afternoon light of outside glared painfully against Ida’s bloodshot eyes as she stepped out, leading the way down the three wooden steps to the muddy yard. Monochrome, this place, brown wooden buildings and brown earth and a muddy sky and brown flight jackets one after another.

And there in the midst of it, waiting for them with ever constant patience and thinned stateliness was Gale Cleven and his lost blue eyes and an alarmingly symmetrical set of facial scars.

“Major.” Ida felt her face soften into an odd expression she realized was likely that of relief. Cleven had that way about him, it was better suited to her preferences than Egan’s blustering warm hearted concern, Colonel Harding’s gruff joviality or her John’s perpetually intense concern. Her little brother was, oddly, nowhere to be seen now and that was a comfort in this wide open, highly observed space.

“Colonel.” Gale Cleven’s eyes weren’t a lost blue anymore but a pair of stormy seas and Ida steeled herself for pity. She found smoldering rage in his face instead. Another relief.

“How was it?” he was nodding to the command hut.

“Fine.” she assured.

He was searching for something in her face and Ida was sure it was easily found skin deep along her puffy, purpled left cheek, but if she had anything to do with her expression alone, he’d be kept guessing for ages. “Good.” he decided at last but his smile was tight, “Made John wait in the combine, he’s in there pacing like a madman. They make a note of who’s attached to whom, Colonel,” he explained, “a more discreet reunion seemed in order.”

“We’d appreciate all the direction you—“ Ida had begun but was cut short by Lt. Kendeigh who broke ranks from the processed group and came out of the hut behind Ida like a bat out of hell, running up to Cleven and tackling him in a hug, rather like a dog with their long lost master.

The Major’s lanky frame staggered under her surprise attack, perhaps more from shock and ill preparedness than poor rations and a weakened constitution. Or at least Ida, hoped that was the case.

Well, there went all intentions for discretion about partiality on their part, five seconds had gone by and Maureen still hadn’t let go, her valued cap about ready to knock off her head and his too. Seeing the gig was up, Cleven even belatedly brought an arm up to hug her shoulders, his pleased face bashfully pacifying her intensity. “If it isn’t my favorite bombardier.” Cleven mumbled, his lips failing not to tug upwards in the tiniest of smiles, and he gave her a pat on the back.

“Buck!” Smith was coming in hot behind Kendeigh and knocked Ida’s shoulder in her haste to get around her and join in. “Thank Jesus you’re here.” she grunted as she squeezed him and Kendeigh both, “I mean -we’re sorry you’re here but since we’re here-“

“Glad you’re here, too, Smith.” he assured her gently, another pat on another back and Ida watched Cleven’s composure began to flake as he took stock of their roughened appearances. “It’s gonna be ok now.” he offered, and coming from someone else that statement would’ve sounded a great deal less impressive than it did coming from him. It also sounded hollow without Bucky’s typical parroting of the upbeat sentiment. “Let’s get you girls sorted.” he nodded at Ida who fell in alongside him, if only to distance and displace Kendeigh and her over familiarity just a tad.

“What’s your Kommandant like?” Ida asked by way of conversation as Gale directed them in a trudge along the brown paths towards his specified hut.

“Think I know him as well as you.” Gale admitted, “Tried to stay low, been no reason for socializing. Wouldn’t advise a trip to the camp doctor though.” He added the last part after a beat.

“Why?”

“Your Johnny says he’s got an experimental mind.” Gale smiled wryly but there was a grieved look behind it that made Ida’s pulse pound in alarm, “If you go in with a cold, you might come out with a radioactive arm instead.”

“Noted.” Ida muttured with a shiver, wishing to god her jacket hadn’t been taken off her a couple stops ago, the sun was waning in the dull sky and the breeze was frigid without it. “Speaking of doctors,” she decided to go for it, “is Johnny -my John- is he alright? At the gate it was such a racket, was he…standing?”

Gale paused in his step up into the combine, brows knitted in surprise and she noticed along with him that their little march had drawn quite a little audience from the fellow inmates. Females in a Stalag -what a novelty. “Yeah, John’s fine. He’s fit.” Gale still had that quizzical look on his face.

Ida swallowed hard and gave him another curt nod, one she wanted to come across as grateful but wasn’t sure it did, her battered cheek was responding less and less to her mind’s commands. “Right. This us?”

“Yeah. Figured we’d try to keep as many close as possible.” He explained, “Welcome to paradise.”

“What did y’all name this shack?” Maureen asked him as she stepped over the threshold, it was dark inside and smelled of lumber and smoke.

“We haven’t.” Gale admitted, forlorn at the realization that things like that didn’t occur to people like him. If Bucky had been here, he’d have had it named in an hour, and something awful, too. Something that would make them all laugh.

“Damn oversight, Gingerale.” Maureen teased merrily but Cleven noticed the dimming light in her eyes as she took in the cramped, uninspired utility of the place. One wooden doorway after another.

“Talked it over with Colonel Clark during your processing,” Gale said, “decided it were best if we mingle you all among the men we know. Boys from your squadrons, friendly faces. A few of you in each room.”

“I call dibs on yours.” Maureen unabashedly grinned up at Cleven but Ida saw how a heartbroken look of protectiveness skittered across his features.

“Alright.” he muttered without a fight for once.

“Mm, Smith, Sanchez, Tong, you in here.” Ida decided and having snapped her fingers she was moving on to the next stuffy room. Asking Cleven at each about their current occupants, and with the precision of memory required of a woman who had to memorize her opponents on the promotional ladder, chose their new bunk mates accordingly.

“And where’s Johnny bunked?” she asked him in a low tone as she watched the next set settle in from the doorway.

“In with me, further down the hall, Demarco, Hambone, a few others.”

Ida seemed to hesitate as she eyed up an extra bunk in the current room that the last of her girls were settling into.

“Don’t be a stick, colonel,” Maureen spoke up gently, a surprising liberty even for her, “you need friends right now. Bunk with us. Everyone’s going to be fine. Can’t be all places at all times, ya know?”

Ida didn’t reply but after a moment she admitted, “I should go see John.”

Gale and Maureen exchanged a look and then moved in unison to catch up to her as Ida Brady walked, brisk as if she were back home at Thorpe and about to pick a fight with Jack Kidd, down the long hall to one of the last rooms. “In here?” she asked Gale, pointing at the closed door -they liked to keep it so for warmth and privacy, and to acclimate the guards to it being closed when the radio was out.

“Yeah that’s us.” Cleven replied, reaching out and snagging Maureen back a step as Ida turned the handle. “Let’s give ‘em a minute.” he suggested, referring to the Bradys.

He held her jacket sleeve for a brief moment before turning it to grab her hand, he’d missed those hands. To his horror their usual calloused elegance was a swollen paw of bruises. “The hell, Maureen?” he whispered in shock, turning it over to examine it, grip strong around her wrist before she could pull away. “Who did this?”

Maureen did her best to shrug, “Some bitch stood on them.” she said simply, and surrendered the other hand for a similar heartbroken inspection.

Kendeigh was indeed not as visibly marred as Ida Brady or a few of the others, but still, Gale kept turning her crushed hands over and over, recalling with vivid agony the way he’d admired them at all manner of work before. To hurt them that way, to restrain her so meanly- “Maureen,” she’d never heard his voice dip so low, and his eyes were simmering where they cataloged her hurts, “what’d they do to you?”

“What’d they do to your face?” she shot back, perhaps more perturbed by the immaculately symmetrical scars on his once porcelain face than her own condition. Women expected the treatment they’d gotten, in some twisted way, but this on the other hand, it disturbed her.

Gale looked taken aback by her question and quickly dropped her hand to touch his right cheek as if to remind himself the scar was obvious to everyone. “Flak.” he replied a beat too late.

“Awfully precise.” she snarked.

“I asked you first.”

“I told you, a bitch stood on them.”

“I’m your superior officer.”

“Who it looks like someone had some fun with,” Maureen snapped back, “who did this?”

“What happened to you?” He hit right back but his voice quavered.

“I’m fine now. I wanna go see the boys. Come on.”

“Just- give them another minute.” Gale insisted, pulling her back away from the doorway again, “It’s a lot.” He reminded, “For a brother to see his sister like -that.”

Maureen couldn’t argue with that, besides Gale looked so sad and more fragile than she’d ever seen him, and the gentle hold he had on her jacket was as needy and scared as a child’s. “I’m glad we’re in this together.” she whispered.

“Me too.” he admitted, guilty and sad over how true that was before letting her press her lips to his.

Ida Brady didn’t know what she expected when she opened the door, not much she supposed, just a living brother with any luck. It was a decently tidy room, plates stacked on a rough hewn board at the far end, eight bunks lining the walls, stacked three tall. A table was in the middle and there sat dear old Crank and Hambone too, Murph with Benny. A card game was ongoing.

They looked so fine, quite normal, all in all.

All motion in the small room stopped upon her entrance. Cards were dropped and cigarettes forgotten in open mouthed shock.

“Holy shit -colonel?” Demarco didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body, and his disbelieving horror over her appearance came through loud and clear in his greeting. She hadn’t seen him at the gate.

The same for Hambone’s face, one that had never bothered to be discreet in pleasant circumstances, much less in shocking ones like seeing a notorious superior officer come in looking about as battered as a body could get -although his torn cheek was one to talk. Crank recovered first, in his mild, stammering sort of way, glancing at the lean figure who still stood looking out the lone window.

“Well, if it isn’t Ain’t Pretty Brady.” Crank clapped uneasily, summoning her nickname from basic just to cut the tension, it served to startle John.

He turned from the window abruptly, blank faced and unblinking as he realized the sister he had been watching for had already arrived. If their ole nan from the motherland had suddenly materialized before him he could have hardly looked more haunted or aghast, wide fringed fox eyes and that straight fold of a mouth -always so very held together, her little brother. Even after his third belly landing.

But those startled unblinking eyes...

Ida wanted to tell him to blink, that it was all alright now, that they were both alive and that it was good enough, it had to be. But she seemed to have fully lost all power over her throbbing cheek at last, she could feel her lips move in a motion she realized with supreme panic was likely a wobble of emotion. She ripped her aviators off, as if seeing her eyes might help his to come alive.

“John John?” she croaked in greeting, oblivious of the childish endearment tumbling off her lips in a room full of soldiers. If it were something their family was in the habit of doing, Ida Brady might have rushed him like Maureen did her pilot, or held out her own hand to be held, asked for a gesture from him -after what she’d gone through, surely it couldn’t have been weakness to want a clap on the shoulder, a flick to the bicep, a little “well done” for staying alive.

But she just stood there and watched him clock her shame. She could feel her swollen lip splitting in real time as the swelling and incessant trembling tore the taut skin apart, they’d passed around a single canteen in processing and it wasn’t enough, the walls of her throat felt collapsed together. Maybe she should have asked for a mirror first, maybe Cleven or Kendeigh or Smith should have told her she’d bring a whole room to a frozen standstill by her looks alone. They’d seen her at the gate -were these meager lightbulbs really so much more illuminating?

“Eye-eye.” Johnny let it out in a breathy rush as if he’d suddenly come to, and then he was in front of her, hands cradling the sides of her neck, thumbs hooked gently under her bruised jaw. A calloused pad swiped away the ticklish trickle of blood sliding the crease of her mouth.

Eye eye -his onetime baby babble for Ida, and she’d never let him forget it.

She could have wept at the useless sentimentality of it, of the gentle familiarity of familial hands, at the seething loyalty storming across his face.

“The fuck did they do?” he articulated at last, voice gravelly as shit but also reminiscent of the squeaky olden days when his castrato role suddenly no longer served one Sunday in choir.

“You’ve got legs.” she answered instead, sounding maniacal in her happiness.

He looked at her like she’d gone fully crazy as well as beat, “Yeah? Yeah I do.”

“They said, they said you didn’t.” she chuckled, a bizarre merriment trying to take hold in her relief, “During interrogation, that bespectacled cunt told me you had your legs crushed when you crashed.”

“No? No- no I jumped.” He insisted, then let go of her face to step back and gesture to two fit legs, as long and lanky as she remembered, as long and lanky as her own. “I jumped, I’m fine. They told you that?”

“Yeah.” Ida said, “Told me the longer I didn’t comply the longer you were without medical attention. I -I’ve been so…uneasy…about you.”

“I’m fine.” He repeated, hands back on her shoulders and she was grateful for it despite the bruises he was gripping, grateful for the way he kept touching her like he was going to hold her together with his own two hands, same blood, same flesh, same memories, maybe whatever she’d lost he could supply back like a blood donation. “Those sons of bitches.” he cursed them.

“Plasma for planes.” she agreed.

He kept looking at her, at her cheek and at her ragged hair and at the missing buttons, “You didn’t tell them anything did you?” he suddenly asked, wide eyed. “You know i’d rather die than have you tell.”

Ida scoffed, and gave him a grin, the best one she could manage with her cheek and split lip, “What do you take me for, Johnny?”

“A cold hearted bitch, I hope.” he returned the small smile but his voice cracked, still that hint of something long gone and juvenile.

“That’s what their Lieutenant called me.” Ida confirmed, a little proud, and sensing a renewal of his inquiries, Ida chose to take the offensive and call out for a conspicuously absent Kendeigh, “Candy! Didn’t you want to tell Johnny about your charming admirer? The Lieutenant?”

Kendeigh came round the doorway hastily, her lips puffy and cheeks oddly red. Cleven followed after and matched her, and his blush did nothing but highlight those scars of his. “Brady.” Maureen greeted, boldly hugging Ida’s very stiff brother without care —due to his red cheeks and rigid shoulders Ida concluded Cleven had given his own inner-relations talk to the men—, “Yes, I wanted to -oh hello Crank, Benny you son of gun- wanted to tell y'all about my ticket outta here -hell Hambone, how’d you manage to get uglier? -see my integrator, he found me fairly fetching. I think one of these days he’s gonna roll up in his shiny car and take me away from here and you’re all gonna wish you’d taken time to learn a little know-how about Alligators and their hibernation tactics in the winter. He was enthralled.”

There was an awkward silence hanging in the room, Crank grimaced a smile out of sheer generosity of heart and Benny Demarco still sat with his cigarette neglected on his open lip. Cleven, used to her preening brazness kept a tight lip, though a thousand questions seemed to swirl in his eyes.

“He the one who stood on your hands?” John Brady asked her without hesitancy.

Maureen whirled round then, comedy hour over and an angry flush creeping up her neck at his directness. “No.” she snapped. “Can’t some of them be alright?”

“A German’s a German.” he countered.

“There’s Fitzs and then there’s Johanns.” she disagreed nebulously and only Ida got her reference.

“And a shower is a shower,” Ida butted in before this became an experiment in an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force “which we need, badly. We’re…filthy.”

“We’ve got working sinks, trough sinks.” Cleven clarified with an apologetic look as if it were his fault the showers only ran once a week and poorly at that, and the water they had was frigid already in autumn.

“Water is water.” Ida reasoned in return, wondering when Johnny was going to finally let go of her arm.

“We’ll clear it out for ya.” Cleven said.

“And we’ll guard the entrance.” John added emphatically.

“Thanks.” Ida muttured, “Some of us could use to mend our uniforms.” she added, refusing to blanch at the subtle inventory of her jagged tears and crusted blood being made by every man in the room.

Maureen at least had her jacket intact. Her cap, too.

“Here, you can have my trousers while I stitch yours.” her John decided and was unbuckling his belt before she even registered the hand gone from her shoulder.

“What?” Ida balked, “You’re going to go ‘round in your skivvies?”

“Not as uncommon around here as you’d think, Ida.” Gale said, a small smile on his face. “I’m afraid order and decorum has gone to shit without you.”

“Well I’m here now.” she replied sternly but didn’t stop Johnny as he stripped.

“And so am I.” Kendeigh grinned and all Ida could do was to bless the saints for having let only one terror into the camp, were Bucky Egan to be here too, things would become intolerably lax. As soon as she thought it she repented it, sending up a prayer for the poor, absent bastard.

“Say Benny, you’re shorter, can I have your pants?” Maureen pleaded.

“Why mine?” Demarco protested, only offended at the height implication.

“Because Cleven’s too tall and I’ve already been in his pants.”

“Maureen!”

“Ida, order somebody to give me their pants.”

“You can have mine.” Crank offered kindly, and then stood up and bashfully began to unlayer. It left him in skivvies, a snuggly sweater and his flight jacket.

“It’s a good look, Crank,” Maureen grinned at the finished product as he handed the trousers over. “I’m seeing you in a different light.”

“Maureen!”

“Just sayin-“

“Take the pants with you to the washroom!” Brady interjected desperately as Maureen looked ready to strip right here and now. “Jesus, Kendeigh.”

“Touchy, touchy.” Maureen ribbed him, out for blood in her tired state and if she couldn’t have that of the Germans she would of her friends’.

“Alright let’s - let’s settle down.” Gale implored, a tired expression firmly etched onto his face and Ida herself considered giving up on the wash altogether and tumbling into the available bunk to court the oblivion of sleep. Were it only blood and dirt she just might, her usual tidiness be damned.

As it was -it was, there was…the filth was so much worse.

And if Ida thought on it too long she’d go mad and want to pour boiling lye on herself to wash herself clean and to kill the shame of it. She’d have to scrub the pants before she gave them to Johnny to be mended, it was bad enough for a brother to see the blood and busted seams.

“Yes, settle down for God’s sake.” she echoed Cleven, and something about her hoarse voice compelled Maureen to temper herself more than any direct order could. “A wash, come on, let’s get the girls. Oh and one more thing, Cleven-“ Ida turned to Gale and found him alert, eager to help. She was afraid she was only setting him up for failure but she had to make an effort to find those “remedies” she’d promised Sanchez. “There any lemons around?”

The incredulous look on his face suggested he thought she knew better, but he was ever polite in his reply, “No, colonel. No lemons.”

“Mm. Nutmeg?” she tried to recall each wicked trick she’d heard condemned when a girl got herself in the family way without the needed family in place.

“No, no nutmeg.”

“Mm.”

“Nothing but potatoes and cigarettes, ma’am. Do you- why?” he asked.

“Nothing.” she assured, “Just, a hot toddy sounds good right about now. You know?”

“Uh,” he floundered, half in suspicion and half in genuine confusion, “never had one.”

“Well then,” she grinned as she passed him, “that’s something to add to our to-do list for when this is all over. Jameson, though, none of that Kentucky stuff.”

“Yes ma’am.” his tone was vacant, smiling concern brittle, “You uh, you alright, Colonel?”

Ida gave him a withering look and then Gale too, had cause to be repentant.

“Come on Kendeigh, let's get the rest.” Ida gestured as she followed Gale back into the hall, aware of Johnny’s eyes still on her, still taking stock, “They better not be in bunks without a wash. Come on, showers, everyone! Out, come on out. You can sleep afterwards. Out! Would one of you be so kind as to wake us up in time for roll call?” she inquired of the male officers straggling behind her in the hall.

“Course! Yeah, for sure.” about five offers went up.

“You wake Me up.” she clarified coming to a full stop, wary of the enthusiasm, “I’ll wake up the rest.”

“I’ll get you up.” Her John said.

He’d probably sit and watch her sleep, too, needle and torn pants in hand, like a creepy little owl but that was one of those things she figured make or break a family, you either find it endearing you have a brother who rarely blinks or you go mad. Today, after all of it, she didn’t mind having a guardian Angel. Or a watchdog. Speaking of-

“Hey,” she asked him, “you two flew out together, where’s Bucky?”

But no one had an answer for that, not even Little John.

💋Hope you enjoyed AND REMEMBER -prompts are now open.

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[blughxreader]

hi! i dont think i can ever get enough of yan! platonic! Batfam 🥲 can i get a neglected reader who has successfully escaped, only to come back to gotham by some unprecedented causes a few years later? i have plans to write a fic like this and want some inspiration (and to fill the yandere batfam tag)

Platonic Yandere!Bruce, Dick, Jason with a darling who escaped and returned to Gotham

Headcanons, WC: 1,048

Notes: SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG! This ask is five months old lol. I had to cut out the baby boys to finish </3 If I can come up with ideas for Damian and Tim then I'll add to it.

Bruce

The weight of Bruce’s mistakes hangs over his head every day, but his mistakes with you are by-far the heaviest.

He should have appreciated you more. He should have told you what you meant to him. Instead, he let you feel invisible. It kills him.

When you’re spotted in Gotham years later, he can hardly believe it.

He’ll drop everything and go straight to you, deploying all the boys to ensure you don’t slip away. If it’s daytime, Bruce Wayne will make a rare appearance and corner you with paparazzi, and if it’s nighttime, then Batman will swipe you off the streets before you can cry out.

He’ll forgive every outburst you give. You’re furious and he understands—he considers your anger entirely his fault so he’ll give you a lot of slack.

Bruce will drown you in gifts. Because Batman takes up so much time (and it was lack of attention that drove you away in the first place) he’ll try every means at demonstrating his love. Gifts, vacation homes, front row seats to events (with strict supervision).

This version of Bruce would keep you under 50 cameras and a body guard at all times, but he’s also very conscious of your mental health. Where he’d be able to guiltlessly lock you up forever if he hasn’t neglected you, he can’t in this timeline. Your life would be heavily supervised, but you’d also get a lot of perks.

He would make a routine with you.

Every morning, he’d eat breakfast with you, and every Friday would be a special dinner with just the two of you. His hours are valuable so it means a lot for him to carve out the time just for you.

Dick Grayson

Dick prides himself on his strong leadership and generosity. Ask anyone whose ever met Dick to describe him, and they could list pages of positive traits. So it's a wonder how you, his precious little darling, managed to be overlooked by him.

Guilt literally eats him alive. Dick begins to second-guess every interaction with you, going over all clues he might have missed. He throws himself into the investigation looking for you, investigating every single fact you've ever mentioned about yourself.

When you finally return, he's dead-set on making up for lost time.

Dick wouldn’t approve of your reasoning for leaving. You should have told him--should have insisted on being heard--instead of leaving. He feels terrible that you were neglected, but he feels worse knowing that you’d rather be thrown to the wolves than seek their help.

It's a steep learning curve for him to realize you're not the lonely child you once were, but instead a bitter, jaded young adult who confides in only themself.

Dick drowns you in attention. He tries forcing your innocence back, not accepting your refusals and anger. You're still so young, and even if the sparkling child-like hope is missing from your eyes, Dick still believes he can make things right.

Family bonding time is a must. He arranges play-time with you and Damian. He insists on Sunday movie nights. He learns how to cook new dishes with you and Alfred. He will keep you busy.

These activities are only a surface solution for a deeper problem. Fundamentally, you've changed, and Dick knows this. He has no idea how to treat you now, so he resorts to what he does know--your childhood he missed out on.

Jason Todd

Jason is particularly torn. He knows what its like to feel abandoned, yet he realized too late that he was the perpetrator.

When you are finally back in the arms of the Batfamily, Jason has no idea what role to take in your life. He sees you turning down the family when they offer love and he doesn't know if his heart could take your rejection.

Jason is stand-offish. Playing the role of "tough older brother" doesn't bode well, so he needs time to rework his philosophy on handling siblings.

Instead, he does your bidding. He would help fix whatever unprecedented reasons that led you to return to Gotham, no questions asked. If you need to pass a letter on to a friend, Jason is your guy. His regular possessive yandere tendencies are hampered by his guilt, so he'll be very lenient with you as long as it's nothing dangerous.

The fact that you escape and survived by yourself cast you into a new light in Jason’s eyes. He thinks you’re impressive, dependable, capable. He wonders how he didn’t see it sooner.

That being said—you’re his little sibling. You shouldn’t have to be so strong, and Jason wants to ensure you’ll never have another reason to protect yourself.

He hopes that over time, you'll trust him. He wants to be able to sit with you and talk about whatever is on your mind, to be able to hug you as he leaves for work, and to send you off to bed when it's late.

But right now, you need space. He'll let you heal, and he'll take whatever anger you give him. Because he knows that this is the only way you'll let him into your life again.

Bonus: Y/N

Considering Y/N was clever enough to escape the Waynes while also having the willpower to return to Gotham shows that they’re intelligent, good-hearted, and forged from steel.

They probably rank somewhere between lawful-good to chaotic-neutral. (A lawful-neutral would be infuriated by the Waynes’ underhanded tactics, and probably wouldn’t return to Gotham.)

Y/N is done yearning for attention (or, if they were originally kidnapped, done with playing nice), so they’re immune to the Batfam’s manipulation.

Upon first glance at the Batfam after all those years, they’d immediately go fight or flight. Y/N would pull every dirty trick in the book to escape, and would be as hateful as possible to kill any affection they have for them.

After being kidnapped, Y/N gets very good at playing mind games and deflecting their submission tactics. They’d be able to manipulate the household like a giant game of chess.

Y/N’s only weakness is the child inside of them that still cries for their family’s approval.

The conflict revolves around how the Batfam can extort this weakness vs. how well Y/N can stay true to their values.

[scarlett-vixen]

Summary: Just my thoughts on how Mammon is handling things while MC is dealing with the Nightbringer timeline. Disclaimer: I could not be bothered to go back and check the first few lessons to see what we did and didn’t know so just….use imagination if I got stuff wrong alcksnns

Three weeks had already gone by since you left unexpectedly.

“Hey Mams, I’m running to the store real quick to grab extra sides for dinner tonight! You wanna come with?”

For whatever reason Mammon had declined to join you. It was now a deep regret. Why did he say no? He was your right hand demon, your first man, the two of you were always seen together and yet he had said no. Maybe he had grown so used to you going off on your own that he thought nothing of it. Maybe he had been too comfortable with you always returning. Admittedly, your first year in the Devildom Mammon was almost over protective of you. He threw a fit any time you went somewhere without him but after four years of visiting he had grown out of that habit, still sulking when you went off with his brothers or on your own but not nearly as insecure as before, he knew you’d return to him every time.

“Alright well I’ll be back later then! Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone!”

Those were the last words you had said.

At the time Mammon had scoffed, ‘don’t do anything stupid?’ When has The Great Mammon ever done anything stupid?? Three weeks later and he was starting to realize all the stupid things he had done in the past, all his mistakes, all his screw ups, all his failed plans to make fast money, all the lectures he’d received from Lucifer for his stupidity. All the times you’d been there to bail him out.

“Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone!”

It was a simple request, but was becoming harder to do the longer you were gone. You always kept him in check, reminding him that even if he was able to steal the 600 billion grimm vase from the Demon Lords Castle, Diavolo would eventually find out, talking him out of selling his brothers belongings or darkest secrets on the deep web, and saving him from Lucifer’s wrath when he really screwed up. Maybe if he had known you when they first arrived he wouldn’t have been labeled a scumbag by the rest of the Devildom, maybe he’d just be “Mammon, Avatar of Greed and Simp for the Human Exchange Student” instead of “Mammon, The Scummiest Demon to Ever Exist and Will Try to Steal Your Wallet”.

“I’ll be back later!”

Later. What an unfair word to use. Mammon thought “later” meant a few hours before dinner, but dinner had long since passed and his appetite was dwindling day but day. Did you know what you meant by “later”?

Lucifer had seemed…off… when he announced your sudden departure, he sounded calm and collected like usual but being the second born, Mammon knew his older brother was hiding something.

“MC and Solomon are currently assisting Lord Diavolo with a task in the human world, we have been instructed to NOT visit the human world in their absence. Lord Diavolo does not know how long their task will take but ensures that they will both be home relatively soon.”

It was faint, nearly non existent, but Mammon heard the way Lucifer’s voice wavered as he said “does not know”. His younger brothers were too busy protesting, wanting to know what was so important that you had been sent home during THEIR time with you, demanding they be allowed to call you. Mammon had slipped out unnoticed, gone to his room and sat watching his phone in silence.

Even if you were on some secret mission for Diavolo, even if HE wasn’t allowed to contact YOU, Mammon knew that if you were in danger you’d contact him. So he would wait. When you didn’t come home after three days Lucifer’s mood started to change, Levi said he was turning back into strict Lucifer because you weren’t here to knock him down a peg, Mammon didn’t believe that.

Levi had it partially right though, Lucifer was reverting back to his old ways, in fact they all were. Levi was grouchy and hiding more, Belphie slept practically all day every day in the attic, Beel was eating everything in sight and pacing the kitchen late at night, Asmo kept his face in a mirror all day and was changing his nail polish every hour it seemed. The only one who didn’t really seem to change was Satan. No, that wasn’t true, Satan had changed too, but not back to his old angry “ticking time bomb” ways, instead he was holed up in the library or his room constantly.

“Whatcha readin Lil Bro?” Mammon asked as casually as he could, only to be met with the icy stare only his brother could cast.

“What have we talked about Mammon.”

“Right, my bad. Uhm, How’s the book?” Mammon tried again.

“Puzzling. I thought I understood the logic but then I got to page 12 and it all logic went out the window.” Satan continued to flip through the pages as he spoke. Beginners Guide to Understanding Time Travel, Wormholes and Beyond was printed in a shimmering purple on the front cover. Time travel? Since when does Satan care about that stuff? Mammon started to speak and then noticed the pile of books around Satan’s chair, each one having to do with time travel, teleportation, unexpected wormholes, vanishing spells gone wrong and such. That sounds more on track, Satan isn’t angry because he’s distracted.

“Does Barbatos seem to be acting weird to you?” Satan asked abruptly, snapping his book closed as he did.

“Wha- Barbatos? You mean weirder than he normally is? No? Don’t really talk to ‘em much though…Why?” Mammon was starting to put the pieces together but he wasn’t liking the picture.

“Oh…nevermind then, I thought of all demons you might be in the same mindset as me.” Satan opened his book back up and started tapping his finger on the side, his tell that his nerves were getting to him.

“Hey.”

The word was sharp and stern, but had a soft undertone. Satan looked up at his older brother who seemed very serious now compared to how he had entered earlier.

“They’re coming back. Lucifer said so.”

Satan’s face fell in shame, foolish of him to think Mammon didn’t know what he was up to. The second born felt a little guilty after watching the way Satan shifted uncomfortably in his chair, he hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, he knew his brothers were all missing you and that slowly but surely they’d all be at each other’s throat because of it.

“Listen, I know you ‘n Lucifer don’t see eye to eye all the time but,” Mammon paused for a minute, this was your speech you always gave when Satan was being stubborn or refusing to listen, he felt his throat tighten up at the thought of not having you here to give it. “Just trust him this time alright?”

A thick silence filled the room, Satan gave a small nod as Mammon turned to leave. Feeling a knot form in his stomach, Mammon headed upstairs, it was one thing to give himself false hope but filling his brothers with it? That was a harder pill to swallow.

“Make it quick.”

Before he could even knock Lucifer’s voice called from inside the quiet office. The second born entered slowly and shut the heavy oak door as quietly as he could behind him. Lucifer was bent over his desk doing paperwork per usual but there was a noticeable difference.

The record player that normally had his favorite cursed record playing while he worked sat silent, the only noise in the room came from the crackling of the fireplace, Lucifer himself looked like he had just gone for a twenty minute jog with Cerberus. His jacket tossed haphazardly on the couch in his office, his shirt untucked and unbuttoned at the top, his hair disheveled, his face twisted in the way it did when he was going over the credit card bills. The thing that alarmed Mammon most though was the number of coffee cups scattered around the room, coupled with the number of empty Demonus bottles on the table in front of the fireplace.

“Do you need something Mammon or are you just looking for things to steal?” Lucifer snapped, still looking at the papers in front of him.

“Hey! Who do-” The Avatar of Greed stopped himself, now wasn’t the time for arguing. “Actually yeah, I had a few questions…”

“Fine,” Lucifer let out an exasperated sigh, propping on elbow up on his desk and resting his head in hand while still scanning the documents below. “Go ahead.”

Mammon tried to think of how to phrase his question, but how do you calmly ask if the love of your life is okay? If they’re coming back? If they’re even still alive? He knew his window was closing and gave up on being subtle, Lucifer always preferred straightforward questions right?

“Where’s MC?”

The question hung in the air for a minute before Lucifer responded.

“In the human world Mammon, we’ve been over this. No you can not go visit, no you can not call them and NO I will not tell you where in the human world. Is that all your questions answered?” Lucifer spoke with his usual confidence but the pause between the question and his response gave Mammon the real answer.

“You won’t tell me ‘cause you’re not allowed to or ‘cause you don’t actually know where they are?”

“What?” Lucifer’s voice was suddenly very quiet, Mammon was familiar with the tone though, it had been his own tone several times. Only used when caught in a lie.

“Just tell me the truth Lucifer. They’re not actually in the human world are they?”

“What.” Lucifer’s voice much louder and more stern this time.

“You don’t know where MC is do ya?” Mammon felt his own voice begin to shake, the thought had been chewing at him for weeks but saying it out loud felt like swallowing razor blades.

“Of course I know where they are.” The first born now staring his younger brother down, eyes filled with a familiar rage. Mammon knew he was still lying though.

“Tch, ya right, if ya knew where they were then why do you have a list of locations in the human world on your desk with different places marked out??”

“This is a part of their task with Solomon and it’s none of your concern.”

“Actually, it is! They’re my human too!”

“I don’t have time for—”

“Where are they Lucifer.”

“I told you Mamm—”

“Where are they!”

“I can’t tell y—”

“WHERE ARE THEY?”

“I DON’T KNOW! I HAVE NO IDEA MAMMON! DIAVOLO DOESN’T KNOW, BARBATOS DOESN’T KNOW! WE HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THEY ARE!”

Lucifer had jumped to his feet when he began to yell, he now stood with both hands pressed firmly on the desk below him, out of breath from shouting and head hung low. Mammon stood on the other side of the large desk, eyes brimming with tears, both from rage and sadness of knowing you were lost. He started to express his rage when Lucifer began to speak again, this time in a tone that Mammon had never heard from him before, this Lucifer sounded guilty, exhausted and overall defeated.

“MC was last seen in town running errands, the time of disappearance is still unclear. Barbatos believes it may be a skip in the timeline, Solomon went after them.”

“How’d he go after ‘em? Does he know where they went?”

“No. Solomon went after MC blindly, Solomon has strong enough magic to return to us if and when he finds MC, but…MC’s magic is still questionable. We haven’t heard from either of them since MC first went missing. Nobody knows where they went. Nobody knows if they’ll return.”

Lucifer dropped heavily into his chair, eyes closed but fresh tears staining his cheeks. Mammon couldn’t remember the last time he saw his brother cry, it was a sight that filled him with more fear than an angry Lucifer could ever try to do.

“When’s the last time you slept?” Lucifer scoffed at the question.

“As if you have room to ask such a thing, we both know the answer to that anyway. Coffee is to stay awake. Demonus is to numb the pain; not helping much anymore though.”

“Ya can’t keep drinking your issues away, it’s not healthy and it ain’t bringing them back faster. You need to actually sleep Lucifer, gonna burn yourself out sittin here all day everyday lookin at these damn maps!” Mammon had never been so bold with his brother before, at least not about self care. Lucifer gave him a puzzled look before chuckling.

“How is it that you know exactly what they would say to me if they were here? I suppose there is a benefit to you always following them around after all.” Lucifer began to clear things off his desk, folding papers up and placing pens back in his desk. “You're right Mammon, I need to rest. Did you have any other questions?"

"No…..I'm good." Mammon turned to leave and was nearly out the door when he felt Lucifer's hand on his shoulder.

"I trust you know this already……but you can not tell the others.

"Don't worry, I won't." Mammon continued on his way down the hall in silence. He entered his room and flopped down on his bed, rolling over to check his phone. The screen lit up with the photo of you at the RAD festival last year, the smile on your face lighting a fire inside him.

Mammon couldn't help but feel like he'd lived through this once before, a faint image of you walking through a doorway, promising to return, but never coming home. His heart sank at the thought. It had to have been a really vivid nightmare, that’s all.

"I’Il be back later!"

It didn't matter if nobody knew where you were. It didn't matter if you had gone back in time, if you had gone to a different time line, or if you were just in a different realm. It didn't matter if his mind tried to tell him this had happened before.

You'd return to them.

You always did.

[kaelidascope]

Fandom and LGBTQ Hostility and My Experiences Trying to Exist in Both Spaces Online

I came into these spaces with a very strict rule that I would not react or do anything cancel-worthy out of an overabundance of caution. Digital footprints are dangerous. The things you say online will follow you around forever. I know that first hand. I’ve bottled up and stayed silent about a lot of things I’ve either witnessed first-hand or experienced because I was trying to maintain a clean online persona. I’m not an ‘airing out dirty laundry’ type person. 

In light of recent events however, it’s gotten so bad that I can no longer sit here and not say something about how I feel. I’m disappointed and frustrated with the experiences I’ve had both in fandom and LGBTQ+ spaces and I can’t be complacent. I’m tired of getting treated like this, I’m fed up and I’m not going to put up with it anymore. I feel it’s important I voice what I’ve been watching and what’s happened and how I’m not going to tolerate it anymore by calling it out first hand. 

This is a two-topic rant. They overlap in some instances, but it directly has to do with how fandoms behave in general towards each other on Twitter and Tumblr, and also how absolutely hostile LGBTQ+ individuals are nowadays to each other on the same platforms. 

I come from a different generation and a different social media platform. I wasn’t on Twitter and Tumblr until last year. I’m not dismissing the fact that I may have missed out on decades worth of culture and social expectation. The places where I come from aren’t exactly fantastic either, but at least here, more queer people are interacting with each other with shared interests much more widely than in places like DeviantArt. The amount of culture and information I’ve absorbed in one year is more than I ever had within the past twenty years. It should be a good thing, and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t. 

This is not the way I wanted to come out online to anyone. I’ve been figuring out where I sit on the gender and sexuality spectrum for a while now. I will not document a specific timeline for anyone because that’s nobody’s business but my own. Within the last year, I took a massive stride forward in exploring things I legally didn’t think I was allowed to. I expected backlash from cishets and the usual thing I see LGBTQ+ folks write essays over, about how the world hates us, but at least we have each other. Shockingly, the backlash didn’t come from straight people. It came from other queers. 

I am 27 years old and I am entirely self-sufficient. I’m mixed Puerto Rican living in a red state. English wasn’t even my first language. I don’t have a network, so I’m teaching myself these things. I'm asking questions. I'm reading materials and expressions of self-experience and self-identity through fanworks and other autobiographical content. I'm actively trying to seek community and support through transgender and non-binary individuals with shared interests and so far all I've been met with is hostility and assumptions. So much so that I've now been made to feel like I'm on a timeline to figure it out so I can have a well-practiced, short introduction to copy and paste to every person who comes across me. And the only reason I even need one is so that they can make the decision to pass judgement over whether or not I'm allowed to speak, write, draw, wear, act, breathe the things I do. I'm disappointed. I'm anxious. I honestly feel more shoved into the closet now than I ever did before and I shouldn't be. Nobody should be treated this way when trying to figure out who they are. I probably won't even get an apology for the things that were said to me, either. I pride myself on the extraordinary caution I take to be politically correct, vetted through reputable sources, and as close to authentic as possible. And yet somehow I’m still getting called things like terf, transmisogynistic, triggering, when I’m fucking trans myself and all of my content gets vetted/REQUESTED by trans individuals. I get promised up and down that people are kind and welcoming in these sorts of spaces and honey, they aren’t. The people you choose to be friends with aren't as inclusive and friendly as you think they are. You don’t even know me and what body parts I have. The fact that you need to know in order to decide whether or not to treat me with respect is telling of an internal issue that has nothing to do with me. 

I have no reference point. I live in a place where laws ban anything gender and trans. I have no local resources or community. I've barely met any LGBTQ people in person. If I have, they never came out publicly. Most of my queer exposure has been online, and the fact that I've seen nothing but angry, mean, exclusive and discriminating behavior without any sort of reasoning why other than selfish defensiveness, I don't know where else I'm supposed to go for support. Something a lot of you guys need to take into retrospect is anyone who identifies as LGBTQ gets shot where I live. We have sundown towns here. If you don’t even know what that is, good, but also that’s telling of your privilege that you need to consider when talking to others not from blue states. I didn’t grow up in an environment where we had these highly liberal culture points and the word ‘gay’ was never allowed to be said out loud. We did not have gay clubs in school. I'm about as fucking late to this as you possibly can get. The only reason I know anything about our history, representation, and barely anything about what's socially acceptable and what's not, is because of the internet. So many of you had the privilege of being exposed to this information as young as under the age of 10. I didn’t. Sue me for not immediately knowing what every gender label means right off the bat. Half that stuff isn’t even legal here. 

I can't believe it's boiled down to the fact that I have to somehow justify my existence on this Earth and give an explanation that fits into predetermined boxes just to do anything to engage with other people. I have no time or space to figure it out. I’m disorganized and overwhelmed because I can’t ask questions about ‘can butches do this?’ ‘How versatile is transmasc/transfem?’ ‘Am I more genderqueer or do I fit under the trans umbrella?’ Gender and identity is fluid and ever changing. I have actually seen people harp and attack individuals for "defaulting" or "detransitioning" when they change their mind after giving this big coming out speech. It’s like support on these platforms is entirely conditional and a one-time thing. Y'all really expect people to wear the first style of shirt they buy for the rest of their life? Are we not allowed to do anything unless we know for sure? How’s college working out for you, for those who believe this mindset?

The vocally aggressive ones who use big words that contradict their statements can do, say, and be whatever they want.  But people like me can't. The ones who have to straight pass in public to keep their jobs and maintain their life safely. Some of us have been on our own since 19 with no family support. Consider the environment someone lives in before assigning your harsh assumptions. I can’t just change myself on a whim without doing significant damage control. Half the jobs I work for don’t even allow unnatural hair colors. If we list our pronouns as anything other than our assigned sex at birth, it causes legality issues with taxes. The way I have to navigate how to explore my identity and also keep a roof over my head and my bills paid may seem highly conservative to most. It’s in no way shape or form meant to reflect disrespect on how others live and express themselves. I am doing the best with the environment I have. The way I do things is not meant to be read as a message of ‘you’re doing it wrong because you’re not doing it the way I do.’ None of us are wrong. That should not be the subliminal message here. 

You know someone actually challenged me on that? Saying I was being harmful for purposefully straight presenting in public? Please research your country and state specific laws before you say that to me. If I could afford to live somewhere safer and queer-friendly, this conversation would be different. I am working on getting the fuck out of this state. But I don’t have a partner or parents money to default on. I’m doing this by myself. It’s not impossible, just a slow process. 

I'm disappointed and fed up. I've reached my limit, and I don't really care anymore if someone uses this essay to try and cancel me 5 or 10 years from now when the world goes through another gender renaissance of terms and identities. I will not put up with being treated like this when you refuse to listen to anyone else other than the sound of your own voice. I’m trying my best to learn, adapt, and express myself. I do not need to be lectured or be called derogatory things just because you think I’m coming from a malicious place.  

It’s not just about the hostility and gate-keeping behavior exhibited in online queer spaces. The same exact thing happens in fandom spaces too. People get pissy about queer headcanons and presentations so much to the point of taking it upon themselves to police the fandom and scrub it clean of “impurities.” I’ve watched y’all go through people's social media pages for any type of ammunition for justification of a personal grievance. It shocks me how much hyperfixation gets put on specific and morally harmless things when there are people out there writing diabolical shit way worse than what I have to offer. And y’all happily support them too but bark at me about what I make cus that author fits your social criteria and you assumed I didn’t. Don't think I'm ignorant to every single scrap of hate mail and harassment I've gotten over the past year and a half in my inboxes. Including the passive aggressive posts about my work, vague tweets, and discussions about me in discord servers. Over what? Have you actually read my work? If it’s actually as problematic as you say it is, provide me with a modern and unbiased example why this particular scene and execution is harmful. And not because you got triggered or disliked the kink, or read the summary/tags and assumed it was something it’s not. I don’t know how much more caution tape, massive warnings, obvious clear-cut tags (that were provided to me by queer individuals to PUT on there in the first place) out of insane amounts of caution I can do. I have always been willing to provide spoilers and explicit details in case someone is unsure how they’ll be affected by something I make. If you already don’t like it based on my warnings, that’s always been more than okay! My work is not for everyone. I’m getting tired of politely and respectfully saying please move on, because the message seems to be getting lost in translation. So let me be clear; 

Get off my pages if you don’t like what I make. It’s not for you. It will never be for you. Dead dove. DO NOT EAT. PREFERRED DEMOGRAPHIC 25+ ADULT CONTENT RATED E FOR EXPLICIT. I can recommend so many other fantastic creators with better suited content for you! If I could hide my content behind a roped off section deliberately keeping you from seeing it, I would. BLOCK ME. 

If your response to this section is ‘well then just don’t write it’. Honey, there’s people out here in the RWBY fandom writing trans incest actively commenting on all your shit and you respond back. A magic grimm-goo strap and monster smut featuring a transfem character (again, requested by literally 3 trans people and WRITTEN by one) should be the least of your worries. 

I have actively chosen not to address the harassment and hate mail, because it's sad that half of you hate me so much you need to make a point of telling me so regularly. I sincerely hope moving on with your lives will grant you peace of mind. Truly.

This is why I barely interact with anyone. Nothing but hostility, harassment, and expectation to behave in ways I cannot emotionally commit to. I am exhausted, uninspired, and have such a bad taste in my mouth it's proving extremely difficult to want to do anything creative. It’s been worse with my recent exploration of my gender identity. Opening one door to write about certain things somehow, miraculously, closes ones I previously existed in. I’m practically getting kicked out if I’m not 100% one way or another. I don’t go out of my way to shove my content down your throats. Why you feel the need to come to me and tell me you dislike my existence because you read it, despite me stating this is not for everyone and probably not for you, doesn’t have anything to do with me. Idk what else I can do. Disappear off the face of the planet, I guess. That seems to be what the overall solution is when y’all find something you don’t like. I can't believe I witnessed grown adults in their mid twenties with self-proclaimed senses of rightness start a trend on Twitter to go through people's mutuals and their likes to see if they’re socially acceptable in Fandom spaces or not. That was fucking ridiculous. And especially not fair to those who had their private accounts leaked and put on blast when it was already behind an vetted follower wall. Believe it or not, people draw weird, lewd, diabolical shit. They’re actually being responsible by putting it behind a paywall, or some type of ‘proof of age before following’ requirement. It falls on the people who go on there, take screenshots, and post them publicly for minors and non-consenting individuals to see without filters what was previously hidden. It’s irresponsible and immature. 

For fear of getting canceled by the Fandom, I moved all 600+ accounts I was following onto a private alt. I don't interact with my main anymore. I went so far into hiding and didn’t dare share anything about liking content made by people I wasn’t allowed to like, because that’s how cruel it is out here. It's honestly stupid I even felt like I had to do that. For what? People glazed over the brief moment of drama within a few weeks and went right back to posting the same shit they always have. They find new things to gossip about on their privs. New enemies to cancel on Twitter. New things to deem problematic and attack. 

I will be heard with this letter. I don’t care to be associated with anyone who treats people like this. I don’t believe in it, I won’t support it, and I’d rather have a small circle of people who won’t be rude or attack other people for existing. I’m not going to sit here and take the abuse any longer. Leave me in peace. There is no reason any of this should be happening. 

This is not meant to undermine the support I have gotten from the few who know what I'm going through and have given me the space to figure it out. I appreciate every question answered and insight provided as much as your abilities allow. I'm so grateful for it. I just wish it wasn't 2 people while everyone else is an asshole.

[seramilla]

Hmmm after Emily learns the truth about WHO her mothers are, wouldn’t she also want to know how and why they got together? Wouldn’t she want to know the REAL reason behind Carmilla’s fall? And wouldn’t Sera feel obligated to tell her everything (within reason Emily doesn’t have to hear about their love life) because she’s kept Emily in the dark for so long now Sera must face these bright and unbearable realities. Like how she had to hide her pregnancy from the elders. How different Carmilla is from the slander spread by the elders. And Emily notices an unsettling trend with each answer she receives. The elders keep coming back as a point of conflict.

This is slowly turning into a merger with the Homophobic Heaven/Carmilla Fell Later AU, because I am really enthralled with the idea of how Carmilla fell in that timeline, not as a follower of Lucifer, but because she loved Sera so much. These two may eventually be one and the same AU, so just a heads-up if you're noticing a lot of similarities between the two. My brain was already rolling with angsty thoughts of how to describe Carmilla's falling to Emily, and it just came out that way. I may end up making a fic out of this somehow, if I can wrangle the two timelines together and make it make sense. There's just something about Carmilla and/or Sera having a secret daughter, combined with religious guilt and convoluted, angsty confessions of love for their children that gets me in a WAY. Tell me I'm not the only one!

"How did you and Carmilla meet, Mom?"

Emily's been asking a lot of questions lately. That's to be expected -- the very nature of Emily's relationship with Sera has been turned on its head. The younger Seraphim is making up for a lifetime of not knowing how she really fits into Sera's life, and it's the least Sera can do to fill in the blanks for her.

This particular question makes Sera smile a little. She hasn't thought about how she met Carmilla in so long. She has so many fond memories of those times...probably the only truly wonderful, carefree days she's had since Carmilla fell.

"I had just been appointed High Seraphim," Sera says. "It was only me back then. Carmilla was in charge of Heaven's holy arms. They weren't called Exorcists yet...this was before Adam took over, before Lucifer fell...even before the Garden was a place humans could dwell. Carmilla and I were both so young, and I was what you might call...a workaholic. I was stubborn in my ways, and only cared about making Heaven perfect. That's what I was created for. It was a lonely existence."

Emily is listening to Sera with rapt attention. The younger Seraphim has never known Heaven to be without its strict enforcers, without Winners, without all the pomp and circumstance of the nobles and elders who would bring down the proverbial hammer on anyone caught getting out of line.

Sera thinks, things had so much simpler back then. Right had been right, wrong had been wrong, and nuance did not yet exist.

Until Carmilla had taught her differently.

"Carmilla was always a dreamer, like Lucifer. She was also much too smart for her own good. Always inventing things, imagining things...wonderful things, but also things that could kill an angel, if she wasn't careful. That's how we were introduced. She was experimenting with some new contraption she'd built...something she probably shouldn't have been testing so close to a noble's house, if I'm being honest. Some Dominion angel or another who would throw a fit if even one of the flowers in his garden got trampled."

Emily giggles. She knows exactly the types of angels Sera is talking about. The uppercrust of angelic society. The Lord's favorites.

"There was a complaint filed by this particular...individual, and when I arrived to investigate, Carmilla and this gentleman were...having a bit of a spat out in an empty field. It looked like a few punches had been thrown, because they were both covered in scrapes and bruises. The moment I laid eyes on her...I knew she was going to be trouble."

Emiliy gasps. "They did not! Did he hit her?!"

"Oh, I'm sure he did, but you should have seen the other fellow...he was in much worse shape than Carmilla was."

This particular memory sends warm, mushy pangs of fondness directly to Sera's heart. Even though she hadn't thought it at the time...she'd always admired Carmilla's ability to defend herself. To not take any bullshit from anyone for any reason.

"I asked what was going on, and the Dominion complained that this 'ruffian soldier' was experimenting with deadly weapons on his property. When I asked if this was true, Carmilla didn't even attempt to deny it. She made me aware that it wasn't his property, though, and come to find out, she was right. He had tried to remove her by force, and she had retaliated. In the end, both were charged with misdemeanor crimes. Carmilla spent a few days in a jail cell...her sentence would have been longer, but I pulled some strings to get her out early. Heaven's army couldn't be without its commander, after all."

Emily shoots Sera a particular look. Like she knows Sera probably had ulterior motives, that had absolutely nothing to do with Heaven's army, and everything to do with the fact that Sera was fond of Carmilla.

"Uh huh. Suuuuure, I totally buy that excuse. There was no other reason for you to get her out?" Emily quips.

"Well...yes, but I didn't know it at the time! We had just met, and I...I felt sorry for her! It didn't have anything to do with love yet."

"Yet," Emily repeats, grinning like a maniac. "You are so transparent, Se--Mom! It's not even funny!"

Sera rolls her eyes in defeat. "Fine! Yes, something about her was...intriguing, even back then. And as soon as they let her out, she came directly back to me...to thank me, so she said. But...she started coming back every day! And I let her! It was all downhill from there..."

"OoOooOooh! You liiiiiked her!" Emily starts poking into Sera's sides, jibing at her mother to just admit what she's slowly building up to saying anyway. Sera turns toward her and starts jabbing at Emily with her fingers instead. Emily giggles, shouting, "I give! I give!" when Sera won't let up.

Sera smirks. "Now are you going to let me finish?"

"Yes! Just get to it, already!"

"As I was saying..." Sera starts, looking over at Emily to make sure she won't interrupt again. Emily swipes over her lips like she's locking something up tight, and pretends to throw away the key over her shoulder.

"Thank you. As I was saying...Carmilla started coming to visit me every day. At first, it was to thank me with words...then gifts...then invitations to go out on the town. To treat me, she said. I had never once been on a...date, before, even though we never called it that. We would never use those words within earshot of anyone. And before too long...she admitted she had feelings for me, and I didn't know how to respond. I shut her out, denied it, for so long. But she was stubborn. She never gave up on me. And eventually...Heaven, it was probably years, or decades later, after we'd fought and made up about it several times. Eventually, she convinced me that she really loved me...and I had to admit to myself that I loved her back."

Sera pauses for just a moment, reliving the memory in all of its warm, fuzzy details, and then looks over at Emily, who is staring back at her, eyes huge and glossed over, like she's about to cry. She's holding her hand over her mouth, to keep from interrupting again. Sera smiles at her.

But then Sera looks down, at her lap, and braces herself. She knows the tone of her story is about to take a dark, desolate turn...she's readying herself for it, so she can get past these painful memories for her daughter...so her girl will finally know the truth.

"Carmilla and I loved each other very much. I felt guilty about it, at first. Heaven had always taught me that same-sex relationships were dirty, and wrong, and sinful...but over time, she taught me there was nothing remotely wrong with what we had. And I believed her. How could there be anything dirty about us loving each other with everything we had, heart, body, and soul?"

Sera pauses again. Things are about to go south pretty quickly, and she's readying herself, and Emily for it -- for real, this time.

"We had...well, we did things that people in love do. It went on like that for years. Maybe we got cocky, or weren't careful enough, thinking we would never get caught. But someone must have seen us, at some point...or put two and two together. They never implicated me in the act...but someone told the elders Carmilla had a female lover. They took her into custody immediately. They did...so many horrible things to her. Tortured her. I begged with her to come clean, and just tell them it was me, and maybe I could get us both a lesser sentence for cooperation or good behavior. But she wouldn't have any of it."

Sera is the one crying now. Toward the end of that last statement, her voice wavers, and tears start falling down her face in rivers. The old wounds in her heart are slowly being ripped open again at the telling of this story, bleeding anew. She does her best to keep it together, for Emily. But reliving these memories is not easy for her, no matter how much she wants Emily to know.

"They gave her a sham trial. Everyone knew the result before it ended. Lucifer had fallen not long before this, so I knew what was coming before it happened. I watched them...I watched them push her. She fell, right over the edge, like she was nothing. She was my everything. They made an example of her...a spectacle of her. Just like they did with Lucifer and his followers. And right before she went down, she told me she loved me one last time. And then she was gone. And somehow, that made it so much worse."

Sera is actually sobbing now. Crying ugly, wet tears into her hands, trying to keep Emily from seeing, so she doesn't have to watch her mother break down in front of her. Emily rushes toward her, hugging Sera tightly around her shoulders. Sera leans into the smaller angel, letting Emily carry some of her weight...along with the weight of her sorrow and pain, that she's been keeping to herself for all these years.

When she's managed to calm down a bit, Sera continues her story. The next part is much happier...as happy as it could be possibly be, at least, after having just watched her partner receive a fate worse than death.

"What made it so much worse was that the same day that she fell, I found out I was pregnant with you. I had just lost my love, my light, my reason for being...and suddenly I had to find new purpose again, in order to keep you safe, and hidden. I hid away for a while, as best I could, and kept you a secret from the elders until you were born. I claimed that I'd commissioned you, from the same place that I was forged, because with all the new Winners entering Heaven, I needed an assistant. They were so gullible, never imagining I would double-cross them like that. So I raised you as my sister...as my heir. And that's how we wound up here."

Emily has been sitting in silence for a long while by this point, and she continues to be silent, in heavy contemplation, for several moments after Sera concludes her story. Sera reaches over, and rubs her hand against Emily's face. Emily looks up at her, and then holds Sera's hand against her cheek to ground herself.

"Thank you for telling me all this," Emily says, voice a mournful and somber timbre, like she's been reliving all these moments right along with Sera. "I'm sorry for making you...have to recount all those painful moments. But I understand now, why you did what you did. I'm so sorry you had to go through that, Mom. I can't even begin to imagine how awful that was. I love you so much."

Emily starts to cry then, too, and Sera pulls her into her arms, and they just sit and hold each other for a while, and cry together, mother and daughter.

"I care about you so much, my love," Sera says. "You were the reason I held on for so long. You are my everything now, Emily, in her absence. You saved me. I could never imagine my life without you in it."

[lesbianchemicalplant]

Google confirms they will disable uBlock Origin in Chrome in 2024

Google confirms they will disable MV2 extensions including uBlock Origin in mid 2024 https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3/ https://9to5google.com/2023/11/16/chrome-extensions-disabled/

(November 16th 2023)

from the comments (emphasis mine)—

[comment:] Not so fast there partner. Hill has prepared for the scenario with a new extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh

[reply:] Yes, but ublock origin lite lacks a lot of features that actually makes ublock the best:

“ uBO Lite: • Filter lists update only when the extension updates (no fetching up to date lists from servers) • Many filters are dropped at conversion time due to MV3's limited filter syntax • No crafting your own filters (thus no element picker) • No strict-blocked pages • No per-site switches • No dynamic filtering • No importing external lists ”

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1067als/eli5_ublock_lite_vs_ublock_origin/ Not being able to update the filters without having to update the extension itself is a really big deal! I mean when ublock 1.53 came out, it took google almost a freaking week to finally allow the new version. Why is that a big deal? Imagine that you have a site that you use a lot, that site then implements a way to detect adblock but you are stuck with ublock origin lite, in other words, you can't craft your own filter to by pass that site anti-adblocking (if you have the know how), you can't also come to ubo reddit to ask someone else to craft them for you and with that instantly solve the issue and you also don't have access to element picker which could also solve problem! Now, the only thing you can do? Report the problem to ubo team, then wait until they add the new filter which will bypass the antiblock to the new version of ubo lite which you don't know when its getting released and after that you will have to wait until google authorizes the new update to be released which like I've said, takes several days! Another example is youtube itself, if we were stuck with ubo lite right now, we would be losing the war against youtube anti-adblock badly! Because the only reason ubo is kinda able to keep up with youtube anti-adblocking is because after youtube updates their blocking script (which is every 12 hours), ubo team then updates their filters and then we as users just need to run the update manually inside the extension and boom we are back on business! Which won't be possible with ubo lite at all.

Firefox also plans to eventually deprecate MV2 (no timeline yet), BUT Firefox's implementation of MV3 will allow extensions like ublock origin and privacy badger to continue actually working:

Mozilla's implementation of Mv3 will differ in two critical ways from Google's. First, it will provide developers with access to the APIs Google considers too troublesome to retain.

"While other browser vendors introduced declarativeNetRequest (DNR) in favor of blocking Web Request in Mv3, Firefox Mv3 continues to support blocking Web Request and will support a compatible version of DNR in the future," said Shane Caraveo, engineering manager for WebExtensions at Mozilla, in a blog post. "We believe blocking Web Request is more flexible than DNR, thus allowing for more creative use cases in content blockers and other privacy and security extensions." (However, Caraveo says Firefox also intends to support DNR for its performance and compatibility characteristics. The blocking version of Web Request can slow things down if coded clumsily, so Mozilla wants developers to have the option to use the less intrusive and less dynamic DNR API.) Second, Mozilla is supporting Event Pages in Firefox's Mv3 implementation. Mv3 dispenses with persistent background pages – scripts that run in the background, potentially slowing things down and consuming resources. As an alternative, the spec provides Service Workers – scripts that run and then shut down. But the Service Workers API – which Mozilla intends to support eventually – does not have access to the Document Object Model (DOM) or other WebAPIs. So Event Pages – non-persistent background pages – provide more options for developers.

(obligatory: switching from chrome to firefox is easy. it can import your autofills, history, passwords, etc. without any headache. it is not hard to switch)

[arkaix]

*breaks through the wall* I CANNOT EXPRESS ENOUGH HOW GRATEFUL I AM FOR YOUR MORTIMER POST I AM KISSING YOU RN /PLATONIC PLATONIC-

mortimer is so underrated us mortimer fans have to scrounge in the dirt for content and will have to keep doing that until pastra shows us mercy and he shows up in some promo art or in doai itself. but seeing fan content that we all create makes it worth the wait frfr! anyways, im going to be freaking out over this for the next week, thank you so much, farewell-

ABJDJRJFJJEJXJRJEHHFHTJW thankyousomuch aaa (⁠つ⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)⁠つ I cannot WAIT to see how Mort will fit into the main story, but for now we'll make it work with what we have (not much TwT)

Recently Pastra posted a tweet with the moral alignment of all the characters and 👀👀 Mortimer is lawful neutral apparently!

That's interesting, maybe since Mort is working for the Lankmann foundation he'll be thinkin' "Yea maybe what's happening is fucked up but I believe it's necessary/ the lesser evil"

That's not gonna stop me from drawing him as a little gremlin hehehe

(definitions taken by the D&D alignment chart wiki)

Now while we're here allow me to ramble a bit about this tweet because there's a lot to ponder 👀👀

here goes out the window any chance that Clyde might be an even remotely peaceful creature in normal circumstances: it's here to get its revenge and it's gonna cause as much damage as possible in the meantime <@_@>

On the other side Winfrey is true neutral aaaaaaa ✨✨

Klaus is the one that baffles me the most because?? The one Veldi who Pastra described as the sadistic one is Lawful??

We know for a fact that Klaus is the name of officer Krueger's son, who in the current timeline is still VERY young (we're talking like 10yr young). We still don't know yet if in this new version of the story Veldigun share a mind with the ones they consume but if that's the case, will lil' Klaus have a warped and strict vision of society and rules? Will this aspect be influenced by Klaus' dad himself? Will his "system" or strict code of conduct be related or opposite to the one reinforced by Lankmann?

SIMON IS STILL GOOD CONFIRMED YEAAAAA

______________________________________________________________

Oh and if you were wondering about Lankmann:

That also surprised me 'cause my first thought was "Well he'd be lawful evil, he is in charge of a rigid system he created and is absolutely willing to sacrifice a few people if that can help save the county from the whole Veldigun crisis" but talking with some friends I realized this alignment makes sense too, if you think about Herbert as a ruthless man who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal, no law and no moral is unbreakable. It is debatable if he also actively wants to cause harm to others, but my guess is that he just doesn't care who gets hurt.

That being said thank you so much for the ask, have a cyber hug (⁠つ⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)⁠つ⊂⁠(⁠・⁠▽⁠・⁠⊂⁠)

[honeybeezgobzzzzz]

☠️ Something Dread, Something Red: Chapter Ten

Something Dread, Something Red: Stuck in a proposal to a Marine Commodore, you escape minutes before your wedding in one last ditch effort to avoid getting married to a tyrant. Barely making it to the port of your town, you stumble across a ship just starting to leave and beg for passage off the island. You fail to notice that the people you beg for help, are pirates.

Warnings: Teasing.

To Note: “Red Haired” Shanks x FemReader

Word Count: ~2.9k

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You haven’t been allowed to help with cleanup after dinner; Lucky promptly shooes you out of the kitchen and gives Gab the task of distracting you so you don’t sneak back in to help. You like to think that you know the men pretty well at this point, and they know you too. They know the first chance you get, you’ll put yourself to work. So Gab drags you to Shanks’ room to play a hand or two of cards, however many it takes for the dirty dishes to be done.

Gin rummy is one of the first games the men teach you to whittle away time at sea. You... are not very good at the game. It’s a skill-based card game, and since you are still new to it, you really don’t have any skill at all! You let out a soft growl and nearly throw down your cards in frustration.

“This is pointless,” you complain, dipping your head back and glaring at the ceiling of Shanks’ cabin. It seems that no matter who you play against, you always end up losing! “Who even invented this game?”

“No idea, but you’ll get better with practice,” Gab states, laying out yet another winning hand. You groan and slump in place. “And the point is money, Aria. Gambling. Earning a quick Berry.”

“Or losing a quick Berry,” you huff, knowing that gambling is a treacherous game that many men and women lose themselves in. You’ve seen it from the shadows of Bonn Manor after your mother held a ball. Card games and drinking are popular events post-dancing, and you hadn’t understood the passing of Berry at the time, but you do now. Seeing your expression move to one that’s far away, Gab prompts you.

“Aria?” he calls, pausing in shuffling the cards. You blink and force yourself away from the memories of Bonn Manor.

“Sorry, what were we saying?” you question, your eyes fluttering and fingers drumming on the table. Gab squints at you.

“I lost you for a moment. What is it? What were you thinking about?” He pushes, not liking how you seem to relapse into your shell for a few brief moments. You press your lips together. “Aria?”

“I was just—” you cut yourself off and take a deep breath. “My mother liked to hold monthly balls in Bonn Manor. Card games were a popular activity after dancing. I never understood why they passed Berry around. At least not until now. It seems so frivolous and wasteful, gambling Berry like it was mere pocket change.”

Gab goes back to shuffling the cards, listening to your words and pleased that you are opening up more. He and the rest of the crew know the basics of your situation and what kind of personality you have, but no one has heard much about your past. This is the first time you’re openly offering to speak about it.

“Did she ever let you participate?” Gab asks, having a feeling the answer will be no since you had no idea how Gin rummy worked when they first introduced it to you. You softly snort, remembering the strict timeline your mother enforced.

“No, once the dancing was finished, she always declared that I was in need of retiring to my rooms early. She liked to boast that I spent most of my time practicing how to be a lady. Practicing stitching, etiquette, history. I was a dutiful daughter that strived to be the perfect offspring.” There’s a bitter note in your voice, and the corner of your mouth twitches. “I only know what went on behind the sitting room doors because I snuck through the servants’ halls once.”

“Once?”

“I got caught,” you reply, remembering the week you spent recovering after your mother had beaten you to what felt like one lash away from death. You’ve never tried anything like that again. The flashbacks of the welts and bruises haunt you even to this day. You’ve never seen your mother so angry. You reach for the stack of cards, taking them from Gab. “It’s my turn to deal.”

Dinner has passed, and the dishes are washed, so the men are all laying low for the night. Either nursing a beer, sharpening a blade, or practicing some fancy trick, they have cleared out from the main deck. You have been sitting in one of the lounge chairs reading a book Benn lent you when Shanks approaches. Your gaze lifts from the words in front of you, and you smile pleasantly.

“I thought you would have retired yourself to whatever it is that you do at night,” you speak, observing the red-haired man. You’re fairly sure that he mentioned needing to talk to Building Snake about the Red Force’s current course. “Or at least be busy speaking to Snake about our current course.”

“I did talk to Snake,” Shanks replies, leaning against the railing of the ship. “It turned out to be a simple adjustment with the log pose, weather ahead we want to avoid. As for why I am not returning to my latest book, I’m making good on my promise.” Your eyebrow arches at his mention of a promise, and Shanks offers you his hand. “You are going to want to change into something easy to move in for this.”

Wracking your brain for the promise Shanks supposedly made to you, you close your book and take his hand. Shanks effortlessly pulls you to your feet and directs you to his cabin.

“What promise are you talking about exactly, and why do I need to change clothes?” Shanks glances back at you, lips twitching at the puzzlement on your face.

“You wanted to learn how to use a sword, did you not?” Shanks raises his own eyebrow. “Now’s a good time, full moon with lots of light, and the men are settling down for the night, so you won’t have an audience. You are going to want to wear something that lets you move around. Your pants are a good option. Also, you won’t want a loose shirt. The fabric might get in the way.”

Stopping in front of the door to the cabin, you stare at Shanks with raised eyebrows. He sure gets bossy on occasion. Not that you mind. You find it a rather attractive trait of his. Stop it, Aria. Clearing your throat, you reach for the door and look back at Shanks.

“Pants and a non-loose shirt. I think Anna picked out some clothing items that match that description. Mentioned it was good for working out, but I have no idea how to work out, so…”

“We’ll get there eventually,” Shanks replies before leaving you to change. You watch him disappear before entering the cabin and shutting the door behind you. You haven’t been able to try out the clothes Anna said were good for working out yet, and you’re excited to try something new again. Trotting over to your trunk of clothing, you carefully pull out folded stacks of clothes until you find what you’re looking for: a tank top, sports bra, and comfortable cloth pants.

Stripping yourself out of your day clothes, you wrestle yourself into the sports bra and are surprised to find that while it feels constricting, it doesn’t make you feel like you’re being suffocated. Further pleased with your new clothes, you pull on the soft pants and admire the fact that the cloth hugs your skin close. You have never seen your legs like this before and feel a sliver of shyness. But you’ve seen many women out and about wearing pants like this and even more revealing clothing, so nothing about your outfit is unfit to be worn.

“Stop being such a prude,” you mutter to yourself, putting your arms through the armholes of the tank and dragging it over your head. The tank is loose but not too loose. It’s just airy enough that you’re sure you won’t overheat doing whatever vigorous activities working out constitutes. Knowing Shanks, he isn’t going to overwork you (he certainly still thinks you could do with more meat on your bones), but you still like the idea of dressing for the occasion. Some things never change. Since you’re going to be learning how to use a sword, you figure it’s probably in your best interest to put on your shoes, sneakers rather than your sandals. It would be doubtful Shanks would even humor you wielding a blade with your feet vulnerable, kitchen knives aside.

Reaching for a hair band, you pull back your shoulder-length lavender hair to keep it out of the way and to stop it from blowing in your eyes. After you cut it, you realize that without tying it off, the strands have a habit of flying into your face. Humming to yourself, you slip out of the main cabin and go in search of Shanks. It’s dark out now, but the hanging lanterns on the ship give off plenty of light. Looking around, you search for Shanks but can’t find him anywhere on the main deck. Perhaps he has migrated to the weather deck?

Walking over to the stairs leading to the upper-level deck, you climb them to see Shanks standing in the middle of the deck, sword in hand. The lights from the lanterns highlight his red hair as he swings his sword around methodically and with acute precision. You’re fascinated with the way it looks like the sword is attached to his hand and the way his body moves… He has probably been practicing his whole life! Shanks flicks his wrist over his head while turning and immediately halts in place.

“Aria,” he calls, automatically lowering the sword from your direction and promptly sheathing it at his side. “I can say you finally managed to sneak up on me.” He speaks while drinking in what you’re wearing. It’s by far the most revealing of clothes you’ve worn to date: trousers that hug your legs, a tank top that clearly shows your shoulders, and he’d better stop staring at your body. He looks back into your eyes. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, though it’s hard to be ready for something I have no knowledge of,” you answer, your brows scrunching as you try to imagine exactly what goes into learning how to wield a sword.

“The fact that you’re thinking about it makes you ready.” Shanks says before walking over to the cutlass he’s picked out for you. He picks it up, once again checking its weight and balance, before turning around and offering the handle to you. Your eyes flutter at the man just handing you a sword before telling you about them, then you gingerly reach for the hilt and grasp it in an awkward pinch of your fingers.

“This sword isn’t nearly as heavy as I thought it would be,” you comment, moving the blade around to get a better look at the sharpened edge.

“First things first,” Shanks begins, “Terminology. This is a cutlass. It’s a short sword that is good for quick movements, typically slashing. Not intended for thrusting or stabbing, but slashing. Quick and easy, makes for an easy getaway.” You narrow your eyes.

“Are you insinuating that I will be looking for fights, Captain?” you half-heartedly accuse. Shanks snorts at you and moves to stand next to you.

“Perhaps not looking for them, but they might go looking for you,” he corrects you, reaching over with his hand to show you the correct way to hold the cutlass. “You are slight in stature still, and it would be in your best interest to use that to your advantage. Being large isn’t always an advantage.”

“And here I was under the assumption that men were of the belief that bigger is better,” you say smoothly, blinking innocently. Shanks is half convinced you know exactly what you’re speaking of, and it isn’t size. Don’t open that can of worms, Shanks. He clears his throat and continues.

“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘the bigger you are, the harder you fall’? Use your size to your advantage. Big doesn’t always equate strength, but big doesn’t equate slowness either…” A dismal point he is making.

“So I should simply be faster?” you offer, thinking about size and speed. A light-weight sword would move quickly, unhindered by weight. Shanks smiles, already knowing that your mind will keep you out of trouble if you ever get into trouble.

“Precisely,” he says, his smile turning into a grin. “You are smart and fast. Having a blade to match will be far more fitting than a heavy broadsword. Now you want to hold it like this and not grip it too tight. You’ll get cramps up your arm if you do.” From there, Shanks’ fingers direct your own to wrap around the hilt of the cutlass, showing you how to properly hold it and how to treat it while wielding it.

He stands behind you and reaches out with his arm to show you the motions he wants you to practice, not intentionally swinging the cutlass but moving your entire arm. He makes a point that you should never fight with your wrist because you could injure yourself and that the golden rule of learning how to wield a sword is that it’s an extension of your arm. It’s getting to the point where your arm is beginning to ache from all the repetitive swings you’ve been doing, so Shanks decides to switch you to some footwork. He brings out a broom and begins poking at you. You clearly don’t appreciate the sudden prodding and swiftly move out of range every time he jabs at you.

“This is entirely unfair!” you exclaim, dodging another poke from the broom handle while Shanks grins at you. You are adorably angry and, of course, still holding the cutlass in your hand. But you refuse to swing back at him in revenge and just continue to dodge!

“Wouldn’t be if you swung that sword at me,” he teases, swiping at your side. You growl when the broom taps you and glare at the pirate clearly trying to egg you into swiping the cutlass at his body. “You’re not going to hurt me,”

“Shanks!” you hiss at him when he catches your arm with a tap. Your legs are starting to feel heavy from all the prancing around you’ve been doing, and since you aren’t used to this much exercise, your stamina is running on empty. “If I was the one with that broom, I swear I would—” You trip over your own feet dodging the broom and mid-twist, you begin falling backward with a yelp. Shanks is reacting before you even have a chance to register that he’s moved.

The broom droops from his grasp as his arm shoots to your falling body. He swings you around to brace your body against his, but in a twist of legs, you both end up falling backward. Shanks, at the very least, is glad that he’s going down first and can cushion your fall. So hitting the deck, he makes sure that you land on him rather than the hard wood. You do with a slight ‘oof,’ but thankfully no sounds of pain.

“… I think I’ve reached my limit for the night, lest I stumble overboard,” you speak after a few moments of silence. Shanks chuckles and gives your waist a light squeeze.

“And you think that I wouldn’t immediately go right after you?” he replies, only antagonizing the pitter-patter of your heart further. Oh, when you say things like that, Shanks… You bite your lip and go to roll to the right so you aren’t still lying on top of the red-haired man. He stops you the moment he gets a glimpse of your lower back from your tank riding up. You feel his fingers trace your skin where you once had mottled marks from your mother’s lashing. All that remains are slight echoes of trauma. Marks that will fade in time. Time he wishes you didn’t have to wait on.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” you reassure him, rolling back onto your back next to him and twisting your head to look into his eyes. You’re still tucked against his side and have a brief thought that it feels nice to be there. Only in your deepest of dreams, Linaria. “They stopped hurting two weeks ago.”

“You should never have been hurt in the first place, Aria,” Shanks softly answers, his eyes a storm of conflicting emotions. He still can’t understand how a mother could beat her child to the point of blotched bruises that took weeks to heal. How could any mother beat her child?

“No,” you agree, “But what happened is in the past, and I only wish to look to the future. You gave me that.” Your words are only partially comforting because the longer you stay on the Red Force, the more he doesn’t want to see you go, and the more he wants to continue to protect you. But he puts those thoughts aside for tonight and simply enjoys the time spent with you during your first lesson.

“As you wish, madam,” he finally speaks up, making you roll your eyes once more before looking straight up at the stars.

“They seem especially bright tonight,” you comment, making no motion to move away from his side. Shanks turns his head to admire the stars along with you, enjoying your chosen closeness and comfort. It isn’t until Shanks’ arm begins to fall asleep from your head resting on his bicep that he realizes you’ve dozed off.

Date Published: 2/2/24

Last Edit: 7/29/24

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