#ready to be pragmatic and almost normal!

[fairymint]

yo, I think I'm starting to gain energy momentum finally- I rested in bed for a good half a day so my arm wouldn't get mcfuckin destroyed, and it does feel better. Same w/ the headache I've been having, it's about gone.

Still got work tonight tho so might be slow-ish, really wanna do some digital cleaning.

[yeyinde]

SFW Alphabet | Captain John Price

(It takes a long time to chip away at the scar tissue that covers him, hide-thick. But when you do, when those walls fall, his head lifts, eyes shining bright like a pool of azure in the morning glow, full of love and affection, and now—finally, finally— catching sight of what was there all along, that he's what you deserve, it's all worth it. Every moment.)

—notes: so sorry this took forever!!

A—AFFECTION | how affectionate are they? how do they show affection?

B—BAD HABITS | what bad habits do they have?

It's subtle at first. A gradual build, a slow burn. Ever the pragmatic leader, he's always checking on everyone. Looking them over, eyes darting between everyone. It's normal. Expected. There is something reassuring in the weight of his gaze. No matter how bad things go, there is stability to be found in the cerulean that skims over you.

It's brief, fleeting. He trusts those he surrounds himself with more than anything, and he sits on the belief that if you were injured, you'd tell him. 

But then changes. The quick seconds stretch a little longer each time. His gaze lingers, and you find yourself meeting his stare more often than not. 

It grows from there. The deeper you fall into his orbit, the more it branches out. His gaze is accompanied by a touch—knuckles bushing over your forearm (“alright?”), his fingers curling over your wrist ("careful, love, watch the pothole;"). Small touches that begin to linger, blooming into more. His hand is steady on the base of your spine. fingers ghosting across the small of your back when he leads you somewhere, knuckles brushing when you walk side by side. The heat of his body when he stands close to you (that becomes progressively warmer the closer he gets). His eyes find you, instantly. Cutting across a crowded room. 

It warms you when you notice. When you step away to go to the washroom and find him looking up periodically, searching for you. 

His affection comes in shades that get darker and darker the closer you get to him, until you find yourself feeling almost naked, bare, without his eyes on you, his hand on your body.

Price has his vices—cigars, scotch; blame and anger. 

The weight of the world rests solely on his shoulders, and while he trusts the men around him to do their job, he takes the losses harder. It’s he who failed. He carries it with him, tucked into the scar tissue and the tension lines in the creases of his forehead, and the corners of his eyes. The headaches from clenching his jaw so tight. 

He's an intense man. A looming storm, always battle-ready. His anger simmers low in his veins, a constant buzz under his skin. It gets easier to reign in when he has an outlet for his rage, but he slips. He's animated and biting. He'll cut you to the core, and mean everything he says. There is no hold-barred in a true battle. Claymore at the ready, he'll dig into your vulnerable points (a finely crafted captain; a man made in death), until you're leaking hurt. 

But he'll never get to that point with you. He holds himself back until his nails bite into his palm. He'll storm away first. Leave. He needs space to work through his emotions, and the last thing he ever wants is to be a man like his father—throwing dishes and hands—but he gets agitated, and he can't help himself. He feels the urge to break brimming in his joints. 

He'll tell you he's leaving, and he expects you to understand why. There is a line there; a delicate precipice he walks each day. 

He will never hurt you. Ever. But he doesn't trust himself as much as you do. He needs distance because all he can see on your face is his mum, and he hates that his words sound just like his father. 

C—CUDDLE | do they like to cuddle? how do they like to cuddle the most?

D—DATE | ideal date

He likes to have you on him. Wants your head tucked under his chin, your hand on his chest, your leg thrown over his hip. He wants to keep you there forever, nestled to his side, nails carting through his chest hair. He wants to breathe you in and feel the weight of you, solid and steady, over him. Secure in his arms. Safe and sound. 

Sometimes, he likes to be on top of you, keeping you warm and secure in the bracket of his being. Tucked away from the world where nothing can hurt you. His back will take the brunt of it all as he shields you from everything.

E—ENDING | if they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it? 

His favourite place would be this dingy little pub that plays classic rock and serves the best scotch in town. He'd bring you in the evening, tuck you into the corner where you both can sit together, and talk. He isn't a man who likes to chit-chat, but he likes the little ways you show your embarrassment whenever you have the full weight of his attention. You're smart and funny. He could listen to you talk for hours about nothing. It relaxes him. 

He knows you probably had better—fancy french restaurants, sunset strolls by the sea—but this is the place where he feels he can truly let his guard slip just a little bit, and he wants to share that with you.

This is where he'd spent a great deal of time in his early career, nursing shot after shot until the demons were chased away in the malt that burned his lips, and stained his chin. It's where he picked himself up from his bootstraps and became the man he is today. 

You won't know any of this, and he'd never tell you, but he thinks you somehow feel it. You ease into him. Words softer indoors. You share stories over chips, and he gets to enjoy the way the fairy lights outside catch your eyes. 

For him, he prefers to bring you places of familiarity, of comfort. Small, intimate alcoves away from the worries of life. He likes to see your eyes grow a little hazy as you try his scotch, and misty when you choke on his cigar.

Direct. Blunt. There is no sense in dragging it out or mincing words. He's shattering your heart, of course, but it's a surgeon's cut. Precise and exact. You barely feel the blade when it slips into your flesh, but it's doused in finality. He's made his mind up, and there is no changing it.

F—FAMILY | do they want one?

G—GIFTS | how do they feel about gifts? how do they give them?

Yes. A big one. As big a one as you'll give him. 

The idea of family has been ingrained in his head since he was young. A nuclear unit. A traditional British household. His ideals are much less rigid compared to his father's, but he's always been a man who craved kinship. He wants to bask in the extraordinary, the mundane, and the ugly with you and any number of children you'll allow him. It’s something he dreams and thinks about quite often. 

If he had it his way, he'd fill up a house. Every room full. All bursting with life.

H—HUGS | how would they hug you? is it common for them to hug you?

Open moments of affection make him shift in his seat, a touch uncomfortable. He was raised a certain way, and often finds himself feeling undeserving of whatever is given to him. He's very subtle. Will stand somewhere, arms folded, lingering. He waits until it's just you and him. A private moment. He both does and doesn't want to be around when you open it.

Sometimes, he'll leave it somewhere for you to find. Other times, he stands in the background as you carefully pull it open. This, too, makes him a touch uncomfortable. The look on your face makes him feel shades softer than he has any right to be. You make him want to be a better man (and the greatest gift you've ever given him was the conviction in your voice when you tell him that he already is.)

In a casual setting, it would be one arm looped around your shoulders, tucking you into his side. The front of his body would be positioned away from you. It might seem distant and unfeeling, but he likes having you against him, and folded into the crease of his body where he can protect you the most. 

Sometimes, he’ll break. After a long mission away, when he finally has a chance at peeling off the skin he wears that keeps the world in check, he’ll latch onto your wrist, and pull you close. One arm will brace against your back from hip to mid-back, and the other is looped tight around your shoulders. He locks you in completely, and crushes you to his chest. Not a silver of space will exist from where his heart beats beneath his fatigues, and where yours pounds from under your shirt. 

(He is also quite a big fan of wrapping his arm around your waist, pulling your back to his chest as he leans over your shoulder in the morning, and brushes his teeth or helps you chop the veg.)

It takes a moment—a second for that part of his brain to begin to ebb into civilian normalcy, the one that is always (forever) locked in combat, one that he only gets to lock away when he’s with you; when he’s safe—and then he melts into you. A sigh leaves his chest and you feel the rattle of it through your bones as it travels through his esophagus, and out of his raw throat. It leaves his lips, stifled in the net of your hair. 

Price will pull you in closer, closer still, and then draw a deep, deep breath. He’ll hold you for as along as he can.

(He is also quite a big fan of wrapping his arm around your waist, pulling your back to his chest as he leans over your shoulder in the morning, and brushes his teeth or helps you chop the veg.)

I—INJURY | how do they react if you get injured?

J—JEALOUSY | are they the jealous type? how do they deal with it?

Apoplectic fury. Enough to rattle the ground in the sheer magnitude of his anger. 

Sometimes, he's good at stifling it. If it happened on the battlefield, when people's lives are at stake, he'll stem the geyser with responsibility. With purpose. No mistakes can be made out here. He has one focus, and that's getting everyone out safely. Other times, it erupts. It froths over in the hoarseness of his voice, words ripped out from deep within his chest. It's an aching cry, drenched in desperation. His rage is palpable. His eyes are burning sapphires, sharper than daggers. His fury is molten, but his resolve is ice-cold. Whoever did it, no matter who it was, will pay. 

He stands tall, firm, amid it all; weathers the storm until it's finished.

But in the quiet of his own mind, his home, he crumbles. 

He blames himself for it all. If only he was stronger, faster, smarter, better he could have saved you. No amount of absolution, no words nor evidence, will ever shake this guilt, but he won't wallow in it. Like all of the losses in his life, he sharpens them into weapons and wields them like a claymore. You can tell him you're fine, you're okay, but it is another weight added to the rest.

K—KISS | their favourite way to kiss you

He isn't a very jealous person. He's confident in himself, in your devotion to him. He knows you'd tell him if you were ever wavering. 

But sometimes, he wonders if you're sure. If you're okay with a gruff, irritable man like him. 

You deserve better than a man shaped by rough hands. 

Seeing you with someone better makes him jealous, makes him seethe. He wants to give you distance, and trust, to let you decide what you want for yourself. But he can't. 

He stands behind you, hands curled into the straps of his vest or on the lapels of his jacket, and stares them down. 

"There a problem here?" He lowers his voice when he speaks. The muffled sound of a denotation in the distance. Eyes narrowed into slits. "No? Then fuck off." 

It's childish, really. Stupid. But he likes the way you ease into him when you know he's standing behind you. When you turn, eyes wide and dark, and breathe out a shaky word of gratitude. It's become routine for him to pull you away into his office, and fuck you stupid. Until all you think about is him, and how good he makes you feel. 

(Sometimes, he thinks you stage these little moments because you like his possessiveness, his jealousy, more than you let on. 

And maybe he just likes to indulge you a little bit.)

L—LOVE CONFESSION | how did they confess their love?

His fingers thread through your hair, gripping a fistful at the base of your skull, and the other slung around your waist, locking you to him. No escape—not that you ever would, but he likes trapping you in the heft of his body. Likes when you squirm against him. When you push and push at his broad chest, and tremble when you realise how very negligible give there is. It makes him feel powerful in a way that is so different from orchestrating a successful recon, a mission. A man made of granite touching something soft. 

Price kisses with finesse. A burning cigar left smouldering in an ashtray. He batters you into submission and kisses you like he's teaching you a lesson in discipline. In docility. 

He doesn't relent until your knees quiver, and your lips and cheeks are rubbed raw, chafed by the coarse hair on his face. He locks you to him and takes his fill of you. 

He leaves you feeling ruined, and conquered. And when he pulls back, taking in the heaves of your chest as you gulp for air, the redness of your lips, cheeks, and chin, and the dazed look in your eyes, you've never seen him quite so satisfied as you do then. 

M—MEMORY | what are their best and worst memories?

Like everything about him, it's pointed. Concise.

He plays the long game—has to, really—and by the end of it all, of years dancing around each other until the steps become ingrained in your joints, saturated in muscle memory, he sneaks up on you. He takes you somewhere private. Tells you about his past, the scars he carries, his guilt, his failings, his shortcomings, his regrets, his selfishness—it almost feels like he's pushing you away, and giving you a laundry list of reasons to reject him. And in many ways, he is. He won't tell you about any of the good, only the bad. He'll lay his ugliness out to you, bereft of sympathy, and force you to reconcile the notion of good within him. 

It doesn't work, of course. He might just see the residuum of artillery fire on his skin, but you see the grit of a man determined to sacrifice himself for it all. 

You think it's a bittersweet moment when you accept, when you turn to him and say I love you, too, John. 

There is winning the war and the celebration of your victory, but John is not a man who would ever forget the battles lost, and you see those shadows amid the happiness that simmers. 

"Hope you know what you're gettin' yourself into," he says, as if he didn't give you every reason possible to say no, but you still said yes. "It ain't gonna be pretty, love."

And it isn't. It's ugly and brutal and full of empty promises and barren words spoken with the flavour of his vices, of things he'll never give up, and everything he wants but won't take. It's a lesson in patience and fortitude and tests your mettle every day, but you would never pick differently. 

There is a stunning, ethereal beauty in the breaking of it all. In the way it shatters around you. You're cut up and scarred along with him, but it's a battle you fight together. One you win, hand-in-hand. 

(It takes a long time to chip away at the scar tissue that covers him, hide-thick. But when you do, when those walls fall, his head lifts, eyes shining bright like a pool of azure in the morning glow, full of love and affection, and now—finally, finally— catching sight of what was there all along, that he's what you deserve, it's all worth it. Every moment.)

N—NIGHTMARE | do they have them? what are they about? reactions?

His best memory is getting out of Hereford. Of graduating and leaving home for the first time at eighteen. Everything was purged from that moment. He had a path, direction. 

His worse memory is all the men he lost, the ones he promised to bring home when he was a novice, idealistic, in his youth; and all the widows he made along the way.

O—OPEN | how long did it take for them to open up to you?

He has them. Always. They sneak up on him in slow increments when he lets himself be lulled into the false sense of security that the comfort of your embrace brings. 

They're always about the same thing. Isolation. He's locked in a room, shackled to a chair. All around him are bare walls. Empty. Grey. Nothing. He can hear sounds coming from just outside of the room. Yells, screams of agony, terror. They rise each night. Every dream sharpens the howls around him until they bleed with clarity. 

They're the agonised shrieks of his men. His men. The ones he implicitly promised to help, to bring home. 

He has to get up. He has to. Has to. The shackles fall. The chain clatter to the ground. 

And—

He can't move. His legs are paralysed. Not from some phantom weight or some outside force, but from—

His commander stands above him, drenched in the blood of his comrades, and says: don't move. Let them die.

He tries to fight. To open his mouth. But he can't. Can't. He—

"Let them die." 

(He does. He does. He—)

He wakes up with his heart in his throat, choking him. Cutting off the air from getting into his lungs. He presses his hand to his jaw just to feel his skin under his palm. Just to know he can. Freedom. He's not trapped. 

You will find him hours later in his study or standing on the deck, smoking a cigar (two, three…), and drinking scotch. Black label. He's half finished. 

His eyes are red when he looks up, bloodshot and blistered, and—

Vacant. Hollow. He offers a nod, says nothing. 

(You don't think he can speak.)

He wants silence. Normalcy. You leave him for a moment, and bring back tea for two, and a book tucked under your arm. You sit with him, drinking your tea, and wait until the shadows dissolve from his eyes.

Until he's back. 

His hand falls to yours. His thumb brushes over your pulse point. His skin is clammy. Cold. You let him touch you until the spasms in his joints cease. 

"Sorry, love," he'll say. 

You always shake your head. "Nothing to be sorry about, dear." Dear. Dear because it's soft and gentle and familial. 

You hear his breath stutter in his chest. "Y'right?"

"Are you?" 

It takes him a moment to answer. The heat of your skin bleeds into his. 

He clears his throat. Then: "getting there. Sit with me for a moment longer, will you?"

You tuck a smile behind the pages of Ulysses. "Always." 

A long time. Price is not a soft man on the battlefield. He is a leader, shouldering the lives of every man and woman who crosses paths with him. He might not remember every name at the start, but when the dust has settled, and the loss stack higher and higher. He carries them with him, tucked deep in the pockets of his heart. He's guarded, and distant. A protector, despite his insistence that he isn't. He doesn't want to burden you with his woes, his grievances. He keeps them, a rotten secret, as close to his chest as possible.

But he breaks slowly. The crushing of a geode. It happens when he loses someone he trained with, someone from his youth. It takes a tragedy for him to unfurl, to open up. 

It is a little bit like chiselling a dam. The first splinter is a trickle of water. Then a rush. Then a spray. And finally deluge. 

It's still held back by crumbling concrete, but he's open with you, now. When he comes home, he likes to lay his head in your lap, and tell you about all the things he couldn't do. 

He isn't looking for sympathy—he never is. He just wants you to listen.

P—PAST | how has their past changed them, has it made them better or worse?

His past changed and shaped him in many ways. It’s the catalyst for him becoming the man he is today and instilled a strong sense of justice within him. However, it’s not a happy one, and it also moulded and cultivated that necessary darkness he carries in order to complete the mission given him to—no matter the cost. 

Like many things, he takes it to the chin. Brutal, blunt. 

It takes a lot to crumble him. He locks his vulnerable emotions in a brassbound box, and keeps it tucked inside a crevasse where it can't be seen, nor touched. 

The spillover seeps into his veins where bubbles into anger, an old comfort for him. He's an apoplectic storm on the horizon. Sadness is bottled lightning; a livewire in a stagnant pond.

He uses it to push forward. 

Q—QUIET | what are quiet moments like with them?

Price sits in his favourite velvet green armchair, a report spread out in front of him. A glass of scotch is on the table. A cigar pinched between his fingers. The game plays on the television, turned low but still loud enough to keep track of what was happening. Everton was losing. He huffs when he sees it, and mutters something about messaging Simon later to really rub it in.

You read, mark papers, play on your phone. 

No words need to be uttered. The atmosphere is rich with tranquillity. 

It's the cosiness of a warm home in the middle of winter. A hot cup of tea within reach, made perfectly and still billowing with steam. It's pressing your fingers to the pages of a well-loved book, and falling in the margins of a story you never grow tired of. 

It is simplicity in its purest form.

His hand stretches over the end table, palm facing up. Your fingers slip in the gaps. It's not a perfect fit, but his worn, rough hands are the closest to home you've ever felt. 

R—RAINY DAY | what are they like in the rain?

He gets a touch morose in the rain. A shade quieter, distant. Lost in thoughts of a time you're not privy to, a world when he was a boy on the verge of becoming a man. A man following in a path carved out of blood and grit. Soot and ash. Battles play in the recesses of his eyes; sapphire artillery smoke, gunpowder in hues of blue. 

You wrap your arms around his middle, pressing your chest to his warm back, and listen, in silence, to the rain pelting the window until he's ready to come back to you. 

Other times, he basks in the nostalgia of his childhood. Wet pavement, thick smog and petrichor. Says it reminds him of Hereford. 

He got shot, he tells you, off-handedly, when he was a grunt in the mountains of Bulgaria, and ever since his leg acts up when it rains. 

Swats at you when you tell him that's just old age. 

S—SADNESS | how do they deal with sadness?

It takes a lot to crumble him. He locks his vulnerable emotions in a brassbound box, and keeps it tucked inside a crevasse where it can't be seen, nor touched. 

The spillover seeps into his veins where bubbles into anger, an old comfort for him. He's an apoplectic storm on the horizon.

(Sadness is bottled lightning; a livewire in a stagnant pond.

He uses it to push forward.) 

T—TIME | how long did it take you to get together?

Years. He's known about his attraction to you much earlier, and—of course—your attraction to him for just as long, but he’s a slow-burn. The equivalent of lighting a cigar and leaving it to smoulder on its own. He won’t act on his feelings until all the variables have been weighed, and measured; until he knows, unequivocally, what he wants from this. 

And even then—he still holds out. 

Pursuing this man isn’t easy. He won’t make it so. He’ll linger in the equinox of pushing you away and keeping you close; know he shouldn’t but he yearns. 

U—UNMOVABLE | what opinion will never change, no matter what goes against them?

Sometimes, he has to do things that are considered questionable or morally dubious. He has to get blood on his hands; to him, this is just another facet of eventual peace. He doesn't regret any of his actions—can't, really, or he'll crumble under the weight of his guilt. 

V— VICIOUS | what makes them vicious, do they try to hide it or overcome it?

Injustice makes him seethe—a lingering byproduct of his past, his childhood, when he was too weak, too brittle, too young, to do anything to help anyone. Seeing it now makes him brim with fury. 

Betrayal, too. He's quick to anger, especially when the lives of his men, innocent people, and those he cares about are being threatened or stifled by politics and political gain. He has little patience for the process, and prefers to operate under his own moral compass. 

He uses his viciousness on the battlefield to his advantage. He does not try to hide or overcome it. 

At home, he tries to keep it locked away. He isn't a bully but his anger makes him quite cross a lot of the time. Irritated.

He's biting. Condescending. A gruff cut of a man with not just a chip on his shoulder, but a gorge. He fills the gap with duty and obligations, but it surprises you at just how surly he is sometimes. Snide comments, the Looks. It stacks up. 

He isn't cruel, and outside of tense situations with enemies, it's quite funny. His biting sarcasm is toned down with a gruff sincerity. 

When out on a date, or grocery shopping, expect to hear something mean slip from his lips if the person in front of you is walking too slow, or there are no more shopping carts. 

It's often easier to hide your smile behind your hand, and give a weak apology on his behalf. 

(But he's very typical of the English—they could serve him raw chicken on a plate, and he wouldn't say a word to the waitstaff until they came around again, finally noticing the squawking bird. He'd glance at his plate, and mutter: "a few more minutes, I reckon.")

W—WARRIOR | how do they feel about you fighting? would they fight for you, beside you, etc?

Price would be your biggest ally and your biggest opponent. 

If it's your choice, then he would accept it. He understands the fire, the want to protect, to save. But if you didn't measure up, he would tell you. If you couldn't make it through the tough training regime, he'd be blunt and honest. 

He would fight the world for you, and himself as well. He fights for you, really, every day. 

He wants to fight beside you—to be there to offer that extra inch of protection, to be the stopgap between life or death, but he also knows you can't be a distraction. You can't be someone he worries about when he has others to bring home. 

X—XTRA | a random headcanon for them

He doesn't like the silence. Doesn't like being alone with his thoughts for too long. They creep up on him in stagnancy. 

Y—YEARN | how do they deal with yearning?

He compartmentalises it. Pushes it aside. It itches under his skin, but he's long since learned not to scratch at phantom wants. 

When it becomes unbearable, he allows himself a small moment to simply gaze at something that reminds him of you. Abstract concepts that will never lead back to you—a family passing by, a weeping willow, lilacs in bloom, the bright moon in the inky black aether—but each one holds a special meaning to him, and makes him feel closer to you than ever before. 

(Sometimes, he might crack. Might call you once, and only once, just to hear your voice. A random number a world away. You never answer, but he doesn't want you to. He knows he'll never be able to hang up if you did. He listens to your voicemail, saccharine and soft, and then he turns his phone off before the beep.)

Z—ZEN | what makes them calm?

—I absolutely want to stress that these are just my own personal thoughts and headcanons on Price. If you don't agree, that's perfectly fine! character interpretations are entirely subjective, and what I infer from a character will differ from people's perspectives. 🖤

You. Your head on his chest. Your hands on his skin. The weight of you pressing into his marrow. 

And a clean cigar. A neat scotch. Comforts, vices. It's all the same to him.

[mariamariquinha]

Poker Games (Mike Duarte x f!reader) - Part 3

Summary: Age is just a number.

Word count: 2.4k

Warnings: Bad words, unprotected p in v sex, smut, talks about age gap, conversations about male sexual problems, insecurities and slight jealousy. REAL sex here, you know? 

Author’s Note: I don’t have control over myself. It was supposed to be nothing, just a drabble, now it’s a third part. Damn. 

Safe to remind that I don’t write for Law & Order fandom. Think of it as an outbreak. A big outbreak. I... Just accept it. Please. 

ARE YOU A MINOR? CHOO! CHOO! THERE’S NOTHING FOR YOU HERE.

----------------------------------

You usually had your moments of feeling sexy, perhaps bold, when it came to your appeal over intimacy with other people. When you started to see Mike (when you started to date him), it hadn’t changed, but somehow the idea of being in a relationship with someone so… like him made you put more effort on things like that.

All in all, he was simple about his needs. Pragmatic even. And someone could say it meant that the guy was closer to his 60s than you, that age used to make things a little more slower to him, but you weren’t this eager for sex 24/7. You understood him, so you didn’t press, nor felt frustrated.

What you couldn’t tell, in fact, was that he started to feel bad about it.

For Mike, it started to come slowly. After forty, he already felt that the virility of his youthful years was already starting to fade away, but as he always remained active, this was delayed for a good few more years. You came, other people came, and… fuck, you came. Younger, of course, and determined about the things you wanted, the way you wanted them. Mike had never been so excited and hard with someone, taken by a desire he hadn't had in a long time.

With that, there was also the insecurity of him not being able to meet your expectations over time. That you would get tired and give up on maintaining the relationship, since you could find someone younger and more determined in these respects. Work made him more exhausted every single day, turning what could have been more lively nights into deep naps on the couch while trying to watch a movie - the fact that you’d never complained made Mike bothered.

So he got to a doctor. That type of doctor. With enough tests in hand to map his entire family tree, the said doctor reinforced that everything was fine, that this was normal for someone his age and that he would just need to… rest more. In general.

“How often do you have sex?”

Mike almost chose to not answer the question, but he did after a beat of heavy silence.

“Two times a week. I guess.”

During good weeks.

“And do you feel that the stress of your work interferes with your performance?”

“... Maybe.”

The recommendation made him feel even more geriatric than he already was feeling - eating healthy, exercising, reducing workload, cutting back on alcohol. And as much as he wouldn't even consider having this conversation with you, eventually you would realize something was wrong because you were smart, good at what you used to do.

“Did you go see a doctor?”

He had forgotten that you two shared Google Calendar for certain routine appointments, which only came in handy when he heard you ask that while you two were getting ready to bed. Mike was finishing brushing his teeth in the bathroom and when he looked up, he saw you finishing applying your hand cream while looking at him through the reflection of the mirror.

“Routine.”

“Mm,” You murmured. “And is everything okay?”

It was the intuitive side of you speaking again. From the time you’d been together, it didn’t take long for you to start to notice his demeanor - he wouldn’t go for a doctor’s appointment even if it was a life or death situation. Coupled with the fact that he hesitated in answering, giving you a single glance before going to wipe his face away from the subject, it was already obvious that something was going to come of it.

“You’re not sick,” You stated.

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

He turned fully to you, watching both of your hands being placed over your hips and face becoming more serious. Not seeing a way out, Mike crossed his arms and leaned over the sink, considering each word that would leave his mouth.

“... Men things.”

For a moment, you didn’t press - that early firm expression gradually disintegrated into something more compassionate, because despite everything, you understood and that was why this thing between you two worked.

“We don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t,” He shook his head. “Not now.”

“Okay,” And you walked closer to him, placing your fingers over his forearms to make yourself welcome to his embrace. Mike didn’t look at you right away, eyes fixed on the floor even if letting your presence stay closer to him. “But remember that we’re a team, yeah? I’ll be here either way.”

“Mm-hm.”

“So gimme a kiss.”

Even with the amused smile you gave and even though he returned it, Mike just pecked your lips and walked off to the bedroom without saying another word on the subject. You watched him, saw that he was upset about whatever had happened, and you went to sleep staring at his back with a little pissed off too.

-----------------------

You had worked with Velasco on a small case and you had to go on the stand when the day of the trial arrived. In a way, the two of you had gotten along really well and had even gone so far as to call each other by first names. He was just Joe. Good Joe. Friendly Joe.

Mike ended up going to court to accompany you, trying to take into account one of those tips the doctor had passed on about taking time off from work even under similarly stressful circumstances, and saw the way the two of you interacted.

It was the first time he was really jealous of you.

“I didn’t know you two were that close.”

“Who?”

“You and Velasco. Or Joe.”

You were already in the car when this conversation took place, about to go back to the station. Mike didn't even disguise his intentions with those words and you looked at his profile for a while before answering.

“We aren’t.”

“Mm.”

No one pressed on it, but the tension made place between you two. Particularly after that situation with the doctor, you often thought of ways to discuss the issue with him, to understand what he felt and progress from there. You liked each other enough to try to make it work - it hurt you to know that he preferred to remain reclusive in his own dissatisfaction instead of trying to dialogue.

That night, you didn't face his back to sleep because you also turned to your side. When you woke up in the morning, he was no longer in bed, and the message saying he went to his apartment made you sigh.

-------------------------

You took the first step. He had sciatic pain for days because he slept badly and you took some medicine to his apartment, only to find him using the bathtub with some grunts of discomfort. Opportunity seemed to have been served on a silver platter.

“Is it that bad?” You asked in a low tone, sitting at the edge of the tub and seeing him with his eyes closed.

“I should have listened to your complaints about that couch sooner.”

“Of course you should.”

At first, there wasn’t a second intention at the way you touched his face. Mike opened his eyes to stare back at you or the cleavage slightly exposed by the tank top you were wearing, then placed a hand on your thigh. No one said anything. You raised your eyebrows in question, he kissed your thumb that was close to his lips and that was enough.

Everything was very calm, without premeditation but perfect.

You did the work of leaning down and kissing him, first with a peck and then with your tongue, causing him to tighten his fingers on your leg and whimper lightly against your mouth. It had been a while since that had happened, Mike reacted immediately to his touch as if it were the first time. Gradually, with the kiss becoming more languid and your hand moving down his partially submerged body, you reached for his cock that was fully erect.

With hooded eyes, he obliged so easily to your touch that you couldn’t help but smile at the scene. The only palpable sounds around the place was his body moving at the water and your hand playing with his dick, up and down, sometimes massaging his balls because you knew he loved it. When he moaned (when he came), you knew that it would be the type of thing you wouldn’t forget.

You both kissed again. Mike mentioned that you were amazing, but you shook your head and said that it didn’t count if he was in a post-orgasm haze.

---------------------------

He got back to his morning runs, to the gym - and you started to try different things. The occasional take outs became more rare, the whiskey nights turned into wine ones (one glass for him, one for you) and now and then, when your body wouldn’t complain, you accompanied him in any of these activities.

In bed, it also became new. Not like he was already to the point of needing to find ways to get intimate with you, because Mike wasn’t on the verge of impossible erections or premature ejaculation, but you two thought that maybe this moment was also an opportunity to give next steps into the relationship. You brought toys, a game or two, not risking new positions because… Well, let’s not get too carried away. This made you laugh more, know each other better, become a single thing, per se, strong and loyal.

Mike thought about saying he loved you during those moments. Sometimes he would feel particularly emotional about something you did, whether it was bringing out some different healthy recipes or having an ugly laugh because you fell out of bed while you were in the middle of a make-out session, but he held back because he didn't want to make it all overly dramatic.

“Where are you going?” He mumbled one morning, arm curling more firmly around your body to keep you close.

“Work,” You giggled a little, not very convincing by the way you held his hand.

“It’s raining.”

“And will crimes in the Bronx stop being committed because of this?”

“... Yes.”

This time you laughed louder, enough for Mike to loosen his grip and let you turn to look at him. He was still groggy with sleep, intertwining his legs and opening his eyes little by little, the simple brightness of the room giving him more comfort to adapt.

“I really need to pee right now, why did you wake me?” His complaint wasn’t super serious, but you rolled your eyes at his teasing because he didn’t make a single movement to leave the bed.

“I also need to pee. If you're complaining too much, I'm going fi-”

“Don’t you dare!” Mike used his body weight to prevent you from getting up, smiling in victory before placing a kiss on your forehead. It was morning, after all, and you understood why there was something brushing your thigh when he got on top of you, but either way you kinda… clenched. Naturally.

And he noticed that too.

The first kiss was tentative, just a peck accompanied by a dirty smile. From the second, you both naturally took your time, tongues teasing one another while his hips pressed against your covered core. With the rain outside, you could almost forget about getting late, especially because it was so long sin-

“... I really need to go now.”

“Ugh, me too.”

It was the sound of rain that cut the moment short. You both felt that you could force yourself to continue, indifferent to the noise of the drops hitting the window urging your needs, but it was impossible. Not just for him. Lucky for you both, your house used to have a spare bathroom for visits, so the dynamic of two ridiculous people with weak bladders was a little desperate but organized. You even gave yourself a second look in the mirror, adjusted your hair, washed your face and used mouthwash as if Mike hadn't already seen you in the worst possible state.

You got back and wrapped yourself in the covers again, just in case. He came back seconds later, smiled at the scene and did the same thing, but the difference was that Mike already had a plan to follow, bringing you to him by a single pull of his arm to make you stay on top.

“I’ve dreamed about you tonight,” He bit your bottom lip before teasing it with his tongue. “Dreamed of that pussy… Made me so fucking hard, baby.”

There was no need to undress you, or perform any specific ritual - he pulled the fabric of your sleeping shorts to the side, along with your panties, lowered his underwear enough to release his member dripping with precum, and penetrated you in one go. You melted, grabbing a fistful of Mike’s hair while he buried his face between your tits.

It was so sensual, discreet, full of feelings and passion and… whatever the fuck you were feeling at the moment. The rain was still pouring outside, the bed creaking with your body bouncing over his cock, and even if the world was ending you wouldn’t bring yourself to give a single fuck, too fixed on showing him that you could wait, could do anything, just to show Mike that he was the one able to fuck you good like that.

“... Look at you… I love this…” He growled. “Love you so much.”

And you couldn't say anything because the phrase took you by surprise. In other circumstances, at least the less favorable ones, you'd say it was just the fact that you were in the middle of sex, fucking each other the way only you knew how to, with no regard for age or work or any shit like that. But no. Mike had a look of adoration, almost devotion, so open and honest that you believed it was true, that he loved you.

That made you smile. That made you kiss him, both hands holding his face and movements stilling, your hips rolling to give you time to savor his mouth. He hugged you during this moment, hands massaging and wandering your back as if to map every millimeter of your skin.

“I love you too, baby.”

If your phone rang while you were still making continuous, long love, no one bothered to do more than turn it off. When he got his phone, Mike insisted on saying that he would be late, that his car had broken down, that the traffic was bad, that they could wait.

They could wait as much as they wanted - his age, his doctor, his perspectives. There was only you there, making Mike sure that nothing would change the fact that a poker game brought him a reward way much better than paper clips, snacks or hundred-dollar chips.

You.

------------------------------

No pressure tags:

@cheesybadgers​

@thoroughlymodernminutia​

@the-hinky-panda​

@annetje​

@bullet-prooflove​​

@seaweeden

@mysoulisasunflower​

[isfjmel-phleg]

OC asks:

Rachel - 1 Rietta - 2 Declis - 8 Amarantha - 9 Elystan - 10 Tamett - 15 Josiah - 20

Rachel: What kind of person is your OC in a crisis? Are they calm and collected? Do they panic? Or are they chronically the cause?

Rachel is very nervous and prone to panicking but can be surprisingly proactive in a crisis. In Book 1 Chapter One, she and her little sister accidentally are left on their own in a large unfamiliar city and have to find their way to the train station, and she's a mess inside but manages to take charge and stay strong for her already scared sister. She's braver and more capable than she realizes.

Rietta: Is your OC a loner or a social butterfly? Are they satisfied with how they come across to other people?

Rietta is a social butterfly whom circumstances have forced to live as a loner, and she hates it. She loves people, she wants to make friends with almost everyone, and she acts as if she doesn't realize it when she gets rejected. She does. And it hurts.

She tends not to overthink how she comes across to people, but she has often regretted specific interactions after she's said or done something without thinking.

Delclis: What was your OC's most embarrassing moment? Does it still bother them or are they able to shrug it off?

He once fell asleep in the middle of a meeting with a lot of very important political people and even snored loudly in the middle of someone's speech, and ended up offending multiple people with this rudeness. This incident does bother him, not so much because he cares about the faux pas, but because all the fuss with trying to smooth over the incident was more than he wanted to deal with, and now he has to put more effort into not repeating this mistake.

Amarantha: Is your OC laid back or do they thrive on drama? What role do they play in their group of friends/associates?

Amarantha has never been laidback a day in her life. Everything is Serious Business. She may not necessarily create drama, but she is more than ready to react to it at any time. Among her friends, she would like to think of herself as the Voice of Reason, the Sensible One who knows what to do. A mom friend, but the kind of mom who's always lecturing you.

Elystan: Is your OC sentimental or pragmatic? Do they keep mementos or only what they need to survive? Have they always been this way or did something happen to make them change?

He is not sentimental at all, except when he is, and then he'll do everything he can to disguise it as pragmatism. He does very much keep mementos; things like the silver cigarette case that his father gave him when he was ten and Talfrin taught him how to smoke (...for medicinal purposes, long story) are very important to him. This trait has really only emerged since all the events surrounding his father's banishment, treason, and execution, and also after Edmara stops working for him. He had never really lost anything before then.

Tamett: What places hold significant meaning or memories for your OC? Do they have a positive or negative association with those places?

He has a very normal attachment to his home and the surrounding outdoors, which is associated with the times he's allowed to see his family and have some freedom. And, like every child in the royal household of Lienne, he has a dread of Odren's study, which is where you're called to whenever you've done something Out Of Line. It's not an inherently fearsome room--eerily over-orderly and pristine, perhaps, but not scary--but the severe scoldings dished out there give it the worst possible associations.

Josiah: Has your OC ever done something terrible and lied about it? Did they run away or blame someone else for it? How long did they maintain the lie and did the truth ever come out?

He managed to find a way to avoid going to lessons for anything athletic and somehow cover it up--for quite a long time. The lies were exposed when his father wanted him to display his fencing skills at a social event with a lot of important people and he made a fool of himself (and by extension his father) very publicly. Odren was furious, and that's why Josiah got shipped off to boarding school a year early.

[moe-broey]

AUTISM JUMPSCARE!!!!

I'm just feeling especially normal about the Askr siblings and I have one million notes on my cell phone that were never intended to see the light of day but. If you. Wanna indulge me.

^ snippets from a scrapped Hel Sharena AU, not really a fic just figuring out scenes (meant to be a comic). Context is a near death experience (she fucking kilt him almost) and girlbossery I guess (ready to kill her herself but also understanding of the self and the pain and various other horrors and ultimately finding a little kindness for yourself even just a smidge.)

^ Broken ass family.

^ Some misc ones.

There were two more I was gonna include but I felt they got too personal for me LMFAO, but the main takeaway from them is:

> Alfonse is a funny little man who's full of contradictions. Yeah yeah he's super cautious and has extreme difficulty letting people in. But he will speak freely and openly to anyone who will listen. He trusts his allies wholeheartedly (esp drives me insane How he does this, in a strictly practical way). He's just... so earnest. Try as he might to distance himself and remain guarded, his earnesty tends to seep through. (And hell if we're talking contradictions, not even mentioned in this particular note but about a thousand others of mine LMFAO I believe Alfonse is a very emotional character. Like. His emotions DO tend to be a driving force for him. Unfortunately he is also his father's son. Jokes aside though, he does naturally have a very pragmatic personality to him too!)

> Something something there's something uniquely isolating about being friends w your sibling's friends bc you know they would simply never know you otherwise were it not for your older sibling(s). Sharena is here because Alfonse is. I'm here because my sisters are. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, it just leads to some strange grey areas and never really knowing where you stand sometimes.

These two did go hand in hand, just. Removing the context makes them seem unrelated LMFAO oh well!!!!

Anyways. Autism moment over it's so fucking late dude. It's almost 4 I gotta be up by 8 LMFAOOOOOOO GIRL HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😔😔😔😔

[xerxeswitch]

There is nothing wrong with spirit shops if you look at what it's MEANT for. It is MEANT to give spirits a home. It's MEANT to give companionship for both person and spirit. Guess what? It takes a lot of effort to conjure and vet a spirit before the spirit is ready to be sent a home. I would think that's enough where it is reasonable to charge someone for that effort. But I see your point. There are a lot of scams out there and I'm not here to say you are wrong about that. But don't invalidate other peoples experriences with buying companions. Everyone is different. Blessed be!

Hello anon. I have to disagree. Not everything is "valid." I still don't believe it's "valid" to bind and market off these spirits/entities and sell them to people in general. From what I personally seen, a lot of spirits find their homes naturally in the flow of energy all around us and towards the beyond -- but that is as far as my observation can go. I wouldn't think home is being sold off to a stranger and hoping for the best. Almost every spirit shop is either a scam preying and appealing to other's greed, loneliness, ego, etc..Or it's a conjuror who's just messed up in the head trying to actually imprison certain spirits (or create servitors) and sell them off as "loving" or "powerful" beings for a quick buck. If a spirit/entity actually desires to be put in an object and being sold off to an unsuspecting person, that's a red flag for me from the spirit/entity. I don't agree with people buying or selling spirits/entities, but I don't believe every single person into this sort of thing is a bad person intentionally. I nearly fell into this starting out before. I find them moreso misguided; under the false impression that this is normal for both parties and not considering the pragmatism that it's still selling people. There are some spirited (or "real") conjurors out there who do believe they are helping spirits finding homes, and some do only the charging for the vetting process... but you have to be very careful. You can't be naive either. ... Look at Creepy Hollows or 99% of any Ebay or Etsy spirit keeping seller for example. I don't agree at all with what they're doing, and some don't even try on advertising themselves as reputable conjurors. You see this pixelated image from Google of this supposed entity or you see this stolen artwork from Deviantart. Next, you're going to see a description of this spirit/entity and it promises wealth, good revenge magic, or even sex. Some even claim they can conjure a spirit of your desires based on you choosing their gender, their sexual orientation, the type of spirit, how you want to be bonded or what item you can choose for it to be binded to, and even how close you want the bond to be between you two. Sounds bad already? Let's do it with humans now. (Take me out of context out of your own stupidity, this is just an example) Let's say I'm in the market for a human companion. I want the perfect companion to be a man. I want them pansexual. I want them to be Indonesian or something. I want them to be my lover and our bond to be level 5 with extra $20 thrown in for the best bond level, or including them shipped to me inside a stone of my choosing. My friend, that is called human trafficking. So, guess what. A lot of it is also spirit trafficking. But thankfully, a lot of it is just bunk and scams. I rarely seen an item that contains an entity that isn't a servitor, or just an energy accumulation instead. As for people actually having a spirit/entity from it... I am sadden to say that it doesn't end well a lot of times from what I've seen. There's a lot of trauma involved, anguish, toxic idealism, escapism over grounded actions, deterioration, lots of miscommunication too...and worse.... .... Back to the point -- In reality, you don't get to pick your friend's gender, sexual preference, etc. They come to you as they are because you get along with their personality and just their company as a person. You can't just force a "loving" relationship off the bat either. Love itself needs to be treated with respect and integrity, and it's the journey getting to know that love is what makes it so coveted.

... Besides, wouldn't it make more sense if the spirit/entity wants to just approach you themselves instead if they WANT a bond with you? Or at least have you take it out for dinner first? That's just what my first impressions are when it comes to meeting and growing a bond with a spirit/entity: good introductions, integrity of house rules, and making memories. Treat them with integrity and respect as you would want for yourself. Ask them what they're comfortable with too, and respect their space or their preferences too. True, every situation is different. But in most circumstances, it's hardly acceptable to traffick spirits.

Have a good day to you too. These are just my views about it. So take it with a grain of salt.

[eclipsecrowned]

Off of your latest posts, I'm putting down an uno reverse. Which of your ocs do you most want to ship? // anonymous

Cop out answer: All of them. I love exploring dynamics for all of my muses, but especially for my OCs. It helps bring a bit of legitimacy, for me, to their existence in an extant setting for those who belong to a fandom.

Cringe genuine answer: Below cut.

I fell back into W*steros hard, so I'm kind of champing at the bit to ship my three OCs.

Laerion, from the Dance era, kind of has a ship in an AU on discord, but nothing for his mainverse. And he'd be a great partner, a loving husband, someone who chugs his respect bae juice, who wants to share the whole world and all its wonders and beauty with the one he loves. He's beautiful, he's titled, and he's probably the most normal and fun guy in the entire shitshow of that era.

Mira, who I admittedly need to flesh out as a person before trying to trot her past the dash, but... She's always looking for a connection, even if not romantic. She's learned, affectionate, and excels at courtesies, all of which makes her wife material. But she also has a cold thread of pragmatism that can get her partner pretty far in life and politics. Add in she's a pretender to one of the biggest chunks of the Realm and well.. Whether love matches or political arrangements, I'd love to see what's out there for her.

I don't think I technically want to ship Lya, given her age, so much as I want to flesh out an endgame for her? I want to know what life looks like for her when she's grown. She survives the monsters in her life, she carves out a life for herself, she becomes more than her family. I wonder if that future includes someone who is there for her, and sees her as she is, and loves her for it. If she gets the soft ending and some of the domestic happiness she was denied given what her family is. Does she herself get to make a happy family in the future? It's not like. Her end all be all, but I think it could be a nice dash of flavor for her life after the war.

Other than that, I have a few muses I've never shipped I'd like to play around with:

Kayden Connors, who is always the wingman, never the GF. It's almost memetic at this point on discord. Like, my other six one six OCs? Vera gets with Ax's Eddie as the share GF of his open marriage with, well, you know. Raisa is married with two kids at this point. Kayden's there for so many ships for those around her but never really gets anyone herself. It's not for lack of trying, either. I just think Kayden should get to smooch, be sb's artistic and down to earth Goth GF. She should have someone to bring home to her dad when he finally makes parole :)

Mina Wakefield, who has backstory ships w Harley and potential ships w others, but nothing has sealed the deal! I want to see this woman kissed, whether that means getting back together with someone, finally making a move on someone, or someone surprising her with their interest. She's at a point in her life where she hit all her career and financial goals, and she's ready to settle into the domestic sphere. She wants the romance, the cohabitation, the commitment, and the kids, this woman wants to be a wife/partner and mom so bad omfg.

Merel van Breda, who prior to June actually never had a ship to her name. She is now in a polyamorous dynamic with a villain protagonist from her mainverse and his GF. Even so, I pine to see all the ways my girl can love and be loved. She's so young and deserves to have fun. I get she's ace-spectrum but also she's so into romance, so long as there's a good build-up to it.

Danae Spencer, who honestly is built for pre-established stuff. It doesn't even have to be for sure romantic. She had a bit of a sex-crazed party girl thing going for her in college until she got clean, and even after she's pretty sex-positive and loves it as a form of intimacy even with no strings attached. Besides that, she's loyal, diligent, flush with cash, and has a sexy accent. There would never be a dull moment with her, and time spent in the bedroom would be second to none. Be her ex, her former FWB, her new arm candy, her slow burn turning into something more than friendship or bodies.

Ogawa Yurie, legally barred from catching any feelings. In all honesty, her role at the temple depends on a certain level of devotion that her grandmother thinks will be sullied if she gets distracted by her peers. Grandma said no feelings allowed. I think it'd be cute for her to be involved in a mutual crush plot or something. I want her to have all those cute high school romcom tropes while still being an ass-kicking agent of good. Especially since literally any relationship she gets into will be by definition forbidden by her family.

[detectiveconnor]

@jericholeader​ / plotted (ish)

He was in love with David, you know. He had been. There was no real whirlwind element to it. It was faster than Connor thought he’d fall but he’d fallen nonetheless, and David was funny. Charming. Gentle. Connor had even been aware, somewhere in there, that the way that David was charming was something that could be used as a tool – and something David did use, sometimes – but it had never been something he used unkindly. They were in love. The guy he’d met in college was tall, with dark hair and warm eyes, and maybe a preference for things to be cleaner than Connor would have liked (Connor preferred lived-in), but it was not at all hard to meet him in the middle. 

Maybe it was stupid to say they had been in love, once, but Connor had loved him, once. That much was true, at least. He suspected now that David simply enjoyed ‘playing the game’, as it were: he suspected David Awl had taken pleasure, or some sick satisfaction, in kissing a soon-to-be detective goodnight, and then - after graduation - sleeping with the youngest detective this side of the US (he was working in AOD, at the time, but always pursuing homicide – always wanting that portfolio), and asking him to marry him. The relationship had lasted almost two years. By the time David asked Connor was beginning to suspect, with a cold creeping twisted awful feeling stuck to the underside of his ribcage, that he had something to do with the series of murders along the west coast. 

He’d still meant it, when he said let me think about it; he had thought maybe it would blow over. Maybe he was seeing something that wasn’t there, maybe the factors he’d pieced together were simply coincidence, maybe… it was not normal at all to think, maybe he had something to do with it, about the people you loved, but Connor was a detective who wanted badly to work in homicide. He had a degree in criminology. He knew it wasn’t… you didn’t always… sometimes it was people you knew. The evidence was there. It did not matter that David obviously would never (did he always believe that? Did he?): the evidence was there. 

When David asked him a second time, perhaps sensing that something was wrong (they’d not physically been together for months; Connor had several days at work which ran long; he rarely lit up to see him anymore, and sometimes only did it like it was an afterthought) – by the time marriage was raised a second time, Connor was already working with his colleagues to secure evidence for a conviction. 

It was stupid. 

It was searingly (it was painful, if he thought about it too long it was searingly), obviously, annoyingly stupid of him to have missed it for as long as he had. For twenty long months he had been in that relationship and he’d seen red flags and discounted them except for the fact that they grew and grew and grew. How many people were there who had died to this guy because Connor didn’t notice sooner? How many times had they, he and David, slept in the same bed (not to mention been intimate) the same night he had taken someone’s life? 

He had thought about fucking marrying him. For legal reasons, power of attorney and everything (because he loved him; because he asked; because David had had a point, it was pragmatic), but Connor had seriously thought about it. 

He was a lead witness, after being cleared of being ‘in on it’, of having a role in the murders, in the first place. The court case was prolonged. There was a lot of why are you doing this and a lot of I never - and a lot of you have to believe me, like Connor had not given him, already, more belief and more trust than was warranted. Like Connor had not already probably cost people their lives because he had not been ready to let little discrepancies turn into a hunch. 

Fifty years to life, was the sentence. It would not have been so long if Connor had not testified. The victims’ families thanked him, mostly. A handful blamed him, and probably rightly. The media – fuck. 

The media on the case were, truly… just… 

Relentless, and vulturous, and cruel. There was stupid – he was stupid, he was so blinded and idiotic and naive in a way that was embarrassing, he might not have had the violent felonies portfolio at the time but he lived with the guy, how could he not have known? How could he not have known, for almost two years, that he was in love with someone who could do that sort of thing – the murders lasted for six months before Connor raised the alarm, how could he have fucking missed it?

But ‘stupid’ was not cruel. 

The media was cruel, about how they went about reporting this case. Reporting about him. Them. The plural, ‘them’, the he-and-David, the two of them that they were because they were a couple. Had been a couple. David played the part of bereft boyfriend well, and Connor did not want to talk, so they filled in the blanks with what they could glean between David Awl and the interviews they dragged out into the open with Amanda Stern, on top of that, because someone somewhere learnt he’d changed his surname and of course, of course, Amanda had something to say about whether Connor-the-troubled-orphan-boy could possibly have been hiding something. Whether he was “silly” enough to have missed “the signs” (‘is your boyfriend a serial killer? Here are the 5 top things to look out for’ must have been an article he missed, in last week’s Gossip Magazine). Worse: whether she thought he actually cared at all. 

Connor resigned from his work as a Detective, after the conviction. It had seemed right. Not that he did not love it, simply that it had seemed like the next step to take and he did not have an idea of an alternative step he was willing to take. So he resigned. 

Lieutenant Hank Anderson of the Detroit Police Department, on the clear other side of the country, got in touch to offer him a position in the portfolio Connor had always wanted. “You’re good,” Hank had said, over the phone, when Connor did not immediately respond. 

Connor stirred. “I missed-” 

“Bullshit.” Bullshit. “How many other people in your building spoke to David on the regular? People whose job it was to catch him?” Connor remained silent. “And you listened to your gut and you found him anyway. I want that on my team. Are you coming or not?” 

Just like that, he had somewhere else to step to. An alternative step he was willing to take. 

“I’m coming.” 

There were benefits and detriments to moving to Detroit, which became clearer the longer he lived here. The – it had been a national news story, but because it was not a local national news story he was not always recognised when he went out. Many people knew his life story the way the news media had decided to portray it but many others didn’t, and he worried someone, a victim’s family, would ask for “A detective who can actually solve the case,” but so far that had not happened. The only two families who had recognised him might have taken a beat longer than usual to adjust to the knowledge that he was the one who would be investigating it, but they’d believed he would find the truth. He did. 

A detriment, one among many, was this: Connor had attended the hospital here in Detroit as a patient only a handful of times, and as a part of his work only maybe two or three times a month. Each time he’d run into someone, a forensic nurse or a trainee or someone, who asked questions he did not want to answer in the hopes of making small-talk. They were not ill-intended, he didn’t think. So far as he could tell there was a generally positive culture at Henry Ford Hospital, he’d just... run into people who thought he would be open because of a court case that had combed through every part of his life with a fine-tooth comb, because they knew things about him that had been taken and shared and spread and it was nicer to think of him as open than it was to think of him as private, the systems involved just took and took and took it anyway.

“Hi there. First time visiting our clinic?”

This was why Connor had come to a free clinic on the outskirts of central Detroit, hoping to get his left arm clear of glass (he’d had to break a window; the window had retaliated) and maybe wrapped up. It was close, and he was dizzy, and while he would normally have tried to leave this place for people who could not have chosen the hospital, and this was no emergency (he could just as easily have been dizzy over the fact he hadn’t eaten yet, today)... to many extents he just wanted it fixed, and to go home. He was tired. He did not want to field the hospital, tonight. The clinic did not seem busy, and he was happy to wait, in one of these hard plastic chairs in a corner somewhere.

He accepted the brochure of information about the clinic that the young man at the desk offered him and, after a short conversation, took a seat, arm still wrapped loosely in his jacket to keep it from getting cold. It was bleeding still, but not too badly. Two patients already waiting, ahead of him.

And, so far, not one person had asked him a completely unrelated question about a part of his life he wasn’t in anymore. So that was nice.

[misroberts]

it'd been a long time but still, his voice is a familiar sound. despite being slightly altered by the phone frequency she'd almost gasped when she heard it.

it starts out as a normal conversation, a typical re-acquaintance, well as it can be with her doing most of the talking. he's quieter, the small voice pricking her conscience warns but for what little he does say she is attentive. there's rasps now where there wasn't before but abigail does not speak on it, she waits for him to finish one more time and continues to wait even after he does. the quiet, seems to unnerve him.

@fortrauma: ' i'm sorry if this is a bad time, but i need your help. '

the anxiety doesn't immediately rise but remains patient in her stomach,“ what's wrong? ” she asks with eyes on the walnut counter.

mister kennedy, by their memory, had been a good boy; reflexively polite and allergic to things that had 'potential', to stain his integrity before whomever he chose to ingratiate himself with. traits she teased, never directly but often using them harmlessly against him. still, something intuitive signals that this was not a call for simple pleasure.

[ it was june of 1994 when stablehand and longtime acquaintance harris had driven in, in their jeep with a brand new person waiting in the backseat. it'd be later at dusk time when she'd learn, the real plan had been to have leon only idle while he worked with the palomino .. the two had hopped out almost at the exact same time onto the dirt drive but she'd only addressed one of them. hands on hips she'd gone down a laundry list of things that needed tending to while she'd watched the mans' struggles play out on his face. abigail had not allowed an opening to be distracted by the newcomer. ' go on now. ' the memory of her said, after directing harris to the pens — with a curt hand when they hesitated.

that'd left the nameless newcomer wide-eyed and helpless to the situation. separated from any ally. which of course was her intention, ' .. now, i don't recall invitin' anyone else here today. ' the picture of a pragmatic woman with their palms tucked into the back pockets of their jeans, finally laid full blue eyes on the young man.

kennedy had gone through the introduction like a soul wandering a pitch-black forest, unsure of where to put their hands or feet. and from then on, he was in her care. ]

at the present, several disemboweled noises made it to her ear. starts and stops as if the root of the problem would resolutely not grow into proper words. then another static pause, in which she swears ( upon god ) she hears another voice. too small and hushed too soon. at this point, anxiety is sitting in her throat.

“ come here. ” it wasn't a command or a plea. the silence grows again as she pushes the phone closer to her cheek, “ you want the room, it'll be ready before the week is up. i'll throw out laura - she's been startin' to annoy me .. just don't get distracted okay. ”

[haircuttingschools]

Hair Cutting Schools

Barbering is one of the world's most established callings, tracing all the way back to essentially the Bronze Time when razors were found among relics uncovered in Egypt which dated back to this period. While the normal discernment is that hair stylists simply trim and style hair, as a matter of fact they offer a large number of administrations, including shaves, ‘’Online learning courses’’ scalp rubs, hair shading, dying and featuring as well as nail treatments and pedicures. Hair stylists are among the best remunerated of individual appearance laborers, procuring a yearly normal of $24,781, albeit this might shift relying upon where the hair stylist is rehearsing and their degree of ability and experience. Proficient stylists are expected‘’Online bitcoin course’’ to get preparing from state-supported haircutting schools before they can be authorized to rehearse.

Haircutting schools, otherwise called stylist schools, are primarily centered around giving their understudies training in giving the total scope of hair and skin administrations for men, which incorporates trimming, styling,‘’Online health course’’ kicking the bucket and dying, shaving and facials. They likewise become familiar with the fundamentals of the various sorts of hair in light of identity, thickness, waviness and sensibility, and how to appropriately oversee them, as well as different hair and scalp conditions that could forestall or prevent legitimate styling. Prior to enlisting, in any case, understudies ought to ensure that the projects presented by the school are state-supported so as not to experience any issues some other time while applying for licensure tests.‘’Hairdressing course’’

Since almost 50% of authorized stylists are independently employed, numerous haircutting schools not just give preparing on all the haircutting and styling abilities hairdressers need to finish permitting tests, yet additionally courses that will serve them in great stead on the off chance that they decide to set up their own barbershops, for example, business money and the board and client relations abilities. Too, many stylist schools give their understudies the chance to partake in apprenticeship programs that would give them active work insight.‘’expert colorist’’ Understudies may likewise pursue these projects through worker's guilds that would put them in a real salon or barbershop.

In spite of the fact that hairstyling parlors don't have rigid section prerequisites, candidates are normally expected to have essentially a secondary school recognition or its same, and be something like sixteen years of age, in spite of the fact that permit necessities change from one state to another.‘’Online Courses’’ A full-time course at a stylist school ordinarily requires something like nine months to contend, in spite of the fact that it can likewise be required on a section investment premise. Graduates might be granted a partner degree upon effective culmination of preparing. After graduation, understudies need to get ready for their state licensure tests. Without a permit, ‘’barbershop course’’stylists can't be employed by salons or barbershops and can't set up their own practices.

Licensure tests ordinarily have a composed and a pragmatic part. In the useful piece of the test, understudies are expected to exhibit their haircutting and styling abilities to overseers. Your hair stylist school might set you up for licensure tests by taking practice tests. There are additionally numerous web-‘’Cryptocurrencies and trading’’based assets accessible on taking and breezing through hairdresser licensure tests. Whenever you have finished your test and acquired your permit, you may likewise need to occasionally restore it.

[rosendahl73mcmahon]

Chloé Faye Replica Bag Evaluate

A annoyed Lucifer explains that Reese is liable for his own actions and convinces the man to attempt to be extra up entrance and sincere with Linda. Listening to the recommendation, Reese goes to Linda's office and apologizes for being a nasty husband. While Linda additionally apologizes, Reese is pissed off that she nonetheless won't get back along with him and tries to clarify all that he has carried out for her, including attempting to poison Lucifer. Linda makes an attempt to call the police, but Reese pulls the phone away from her, by accident injuring her. Shocked by his own actions, Reese tells Linda to call the police, and he shall be ready for them in his office. Reese Getty was a senior reporter at the Los Angeles Telegraph. Marcie series calfskin handbag expansive washing or snakeskin bag physique shape abundance, large storage capability, rounded leather deal with conveniently transportable. To ask the 2 most popular most popular IT bag, that Chloe Drew bear the brunt! Almost love the replica bag tote of Chinese girls a hand, less than a year’s time, pig baggage swept the streets. But even so, but in addition didn't cut back the need of the women who want to buy. Hoax of exposure is a semi-comical or personal sting operation. It normally encourages folks to behave foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer intentionally presents as actuality. Computer virus hoaxes turned widespread as viruses themselves began to unfold. The exhibit could be seen via Oct. 30 and can present in textual content, vintage photographs and video interviews the historical past of instructional and social service the school offered. At the opening, there shall be a program of free actions, starting with a brief concert of jazz standards by vocalist Claire Frazier and pianist Frank Bright, followed by refreshments and free museum admission. The first McDonald's franchise opened in Phoenix in 1953 utilizing the arches brand. Businessman Ray Kroc joined the corporate as a franchise agent in 1955 and subsequently purchased the chain from the McDonald brothers. Based in Oak Brook, Illinois, McDonald's confirmed plans to move its world headquarters to Chicago by early 2018.. Though often 21 days or three weeks is average, it could truly range from anyplace between 8 30 days. Finish is exemplary, and even the faux leather versions really feel quite fantastic. Shoulder bags and backpacks of this quality normally command a high price. The original Chloe Faye small shoulder bag, for instance, retails within the area of $1500. The rounded silhouette of the Pixie purse is very pleasing, and the combination of leather and suede dull leather-based adds a layer of Replica Chloe Handbags Pixie Small Round Double-Handle Shoulder Bag Grey. A number of colours to select from, this also teaches folks to tickle not to choose which one is healthier. The bag has a quantity of model including a backpack , a medium day bag, and likewise a mini version. chloe drew bag replica It’s protected to say that the Chloé Faye bag is considered one of Chloé’s modern hits, and this is fairly a feat since the bag was only launched in 2015. This Replica Chloe Bags may be very eye-catching, like the metallic circle inherent in his brand, the unique massive body design continues the pocket and metal components of the Faye series on the bag physique, the small print subtly interpret the fragile pragmatism . One of the earliest recorded media hoaxes is a faux almanac revealed by Jonathan Swift underneath the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff in 1708. Swift predicted the demise of John Partridge, one of the main astrologers in England at the moment, within the almanac and later issued an elegy on the day Partridge was supposed to have died. Seamlessly combining the great thing about Chloe distinctive design and the practicality of a backpack, this is a distinctive designer duper that you will love as a lot as we do. The gold-colored steel fittings give this Chloe dupe a further touch of class. Once you see these amazingly priced baggage, you’ll know you’ve discovered the best selection. And cheap impressed name brand designer knock offs can be spotted from a mile away! The roy collection really has a complete of 4 different replica bag totes. In addition to the trapezoidal bag on the street map above, there are additionally the show Clutch, Double Clutch double bag design, and the 2018 Pre-Fall roy Bucket bucket bag. In addition to the Pixie, which can be utilized in both the back and the hand, there's another version of Pixie on the style show that is very eye-catching. The entire handbag is surrounded by a round metallic ring, and the metallic deal with is embellished with a young leather-based strap for the again. And the mannequin of the mannequin on the flyover, holding the strap around the hand, is the entire form. How can such an attractive shoulder bag from the celebs of the people who adore it, numerous stars have been conquered. Fashion blogger Caroline Daur a white coat with a black mini Faye Backpack walking within the streets of Hamburg, adds a cool magnificence. Replica Chloe Paraty Shoulder Bag Paraty series handbag design simple unique, customized triangular profile and iconic design rough edges, very gentle. Its distinctive large body design continues the pockets and steel elements of the Faye sequence on the body, making the entire extra sensible. Light green hand-painted natural python snakeskin or darkish purple-studded green ostrich leather ‘ are paired with a hand-lubricated calf leather-based deal with. The leopard-printed horsehair texture calfskin is ingeniously matched to the primary sample of the 2014–2015 autumn and winter present. The effect of the lace or embossed in the abstract stitching design ‘and the hand-colored python skin’ totally highlights the interplay of the sample in the pure texture and transparency of the material. The limited version wine red crocodile leather-based is the proper expression of the final word luxury of BAYLEE Replica Chloe Bags. This bag continues the brand’s consistent massive ring type, the form is round, and even the portable place is also a golden ring, giving the whole a retro really feel. In phrases of supplies, it mainly makes use of the mix of cowhide and deer pores and skin, which is extra unique. A hoax is usually supposed as a practical joke or to cause embarrassment, or to impress social or political change by elevating individuals's awareness of something. For example, to market a romantic comedy film, a director staged a phony "incident" throughout a supposed wedding, which showed a bride and preacher getting knocked right into a pool by a careless fall from a best man. A ensuing video clip of Chloe and Keith's Wedding was uploaded to YouTube and was considered by over 30 million people and the couple was interviewed by numerous talk reveals. Viewers have been deluded into considering that it was an authentic clip of a real accident at a real wedding ceremony; but a story in USA Today in 2009 revealed it was a hoax. Hoax news (also known as fake news) is a information containing details that are either inaccurate or false but that are introduced as real. A hoax information conveys a half-truth used intentionally to mislead the basic public. The Chloé Faye bag I acquired has splendidly heavy hardware which is on par with the burden of its authentic counterpart. wikipedia handbags

[morganayenneferburnham]

Have I Known You 20 Seconds or 20 Years? – Nikolai Lantsov Series

Chapter 1: Devils Roll the Dice, Angel Roll their Eyes

Chapter 2: You Did a Number on Me

Chapter 3: You Could Call Me Babe for the Weekend

A very short summary: Y/N has been working with the crows for a few years. Her life feels complete until she meets the insufferable Nikolai Lantsov. She finds herself forced to work with the King of Ravka on one of Kaz Brekker’s crazy schemes.

Word count: 2k

A/N: Finally starting to get somewhere!! I just started writing chapter 4, so it might take a bit longer before I upload again. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter in the meanwhile.

Thank you for reading! Just send me an ask if you want to be added to my taglist :) 

Chapter 3: You Could Call Me Babe for the Weekend

The next morning went by in a blur. They had moved everything to Wylan’s house on Geldstraat. Kaz was right. It would’ve been too suspicious if they had left for the party from the barrel. Questions about the job were being thrown from one person to the next. Various answers about cues and schedules flying in every direction.

“Wait, what time are we supposed to get to the party again?”

“Quarter after 6 bells, Jesper!” Yelled Wylan running by with an armful of party clothes.

“Nikolai and I are getting there at 6 bells. That way it won’t look like we know each other.” Y/N had been heading off in the opposing direction.

“Wylan! You forgot your jacket in the music room” Kaz’s raspy voice was easily recognizable above the others.

“I’ll go ahead and scout for the best location for you to hide to summon the storm. I’ll come get you at a quarter to 8 bells.”

Nikolai had to admire the crows’ ability to understand each other and get the job done in such chaos. They were running back and forth in every direction trying to get everything ready. Even Zoya seemed at ease discussing the plan with Inej. He needed this job to succeed. He needed to guarantee his country’s future. Once he was done dealing with this newest threat from Fjerda…? He’d like to work with the crows again. He felt much freer. Maybe it could become a side hustle for him and Zoya. It would give them a nice break from ruling a country.

He felt a soft hand rest on his arm. “Hey, we should probably go get ready for the party. We’ll meet here at 5 bells? That way we can go over last-minute details and head over.” She was smiling up at him. Her smile was soft as if she could tell he was anxious. He let his eyes trail over her tailored face and couldn’t help but miss her true features once more.

“Sounds good. I’ll see you then, my darling.” He pressed a quick kiss to her knuckles and watched her disappear up the vast staircase.

---

Nikolai made his way to the room Wylan had so graciously offered him that morning. It was not his room at the Grand Palace, but it was much nicer than the one he’d had at the slat. He took his time putting on the rich merch’s clothes Kaz had picked out for him. He was still in awe of the work Y/N had done on him. The young king found himself unavoidably staring at himself in the mirror mounted to his wall. He finished buttoning up his shirt and folded his suit jacket on his arm. It was almost 5 bells. He knew he should make his way back to the mansion’s parlor.

Nikolai had barely sat in one of the large armchairs when an appreciative whistle sounded on his left. He followed Jesper’s gaze to the stairs. Y/N’s dress accentuated her new body in all the right places. Nikolai couldn’t help but think it would’ve suited her even better before the tailoring.

“No one warned me I’d have to fight off every man who lays eyes on my wife.” He complained.

He watched as Inej and Zoya approached Y/N. The women shared a few whispered comments before they lead Y/N to him. He could’ve sworn he saw the girl’s cheeks turn red. He had to put up a lot more effort than he was used to in schooling his own features. The way the dress moved along to the sway of her hips, with every step she took, made his brain go blank. He imagined the way it would’ve been even more sensual with her natural curves. Maybe he could convince her to wear the gown again once she’d tailored them both back to normal. His mind was racing with images of her, twirling in his arms, wearing that damned dress.

“Anything you want to go over before we get going?” She was looking at him expectantly, her eyes bright, her tailored lips stretched in a small smile.

His mouth felt dry. All eyes were on him. He had to fight to kick start his brain again. “Nope, I think we’re ready.” He offered her a hand, his natural charm coming back to him. “Shall we, my darling wife?”

She took his hand and they headed for the door leading to the elegant boathouse. “No mourners” she called over her shoulder.

A unified “No funerals” rang out behind them. Nikolai made a mental note to ask them what the saying meant, at some point, when he wasn’t so distracted by the beautiful Grisha on his arm.

---

They’d taken a small, polished boat to make their way to councilman Van Verent’s house. It had only taken a few minutes for them to reach the sophisticated boathouse on the councilman’s property. A Stadwatch officer had taken their invitation before guiding them to the stylishly decorated mansion. Flowers from every guest’s country were arranged in beautiful crystal vases matching the colourful silk ribbons adorning the banister. As they entered the main hall, they were stunned by the sheer number of guests already in attendance. The main floor was filled with dignitaries from Kerch, Novyi Zem, Shu Han, Fjerda, and the Wandering Isle. Nikolai noticed the absence of anyone representing his country. Good, he thought, it’ll make the job easier.

To his dismay, Y/N was already catching the eye of a few men standing off to the sides of the room. He wrapped his arm tightly around her waist, pulling her closer, sending the interested parties a nasty look. He felt her breath hitch but didn’t release his hold on her body. She was his wife. Anyone who wanted to get to her would have to go through him. Nikolai was surprised by the jealousy he felt. He was usually in control of his feelings, always choosing to be pragmatic rather than emotional. He knew they had to put on a convincing act. He still wasn’t supposed to be this possessive of a girl he’d only met a few days ago, right? All the Saints and their mothers, Zoya will murder me if she finds out about this.

Y/N had maneuvered them towards a group of Zemeni dignitaries, quickly engaging in easy conversation with one of the wives. Nikolai used the opportunity to present their made-up business proposal to a few interested parties, promising to send them more information as soon as they went back home to the Wandering Isle.

They navigated group after group of foreign and domestic dignitaries for about an hour. He had to admit Kaz had done a wonderful job when creating their false identities, but he was tired of the constant mindless chattering. How lucky, he thought, the dance floor seems very appealing right about now.

He leaned in close, letting his lips brush against Y/N’s ear, interrupting her conversation. “You are doing a fantastic job, my love.” He felt her shiver against him. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of business partners once you’re done here. Now, however, I would very much like to dance with my beautiful wife.” She looked at him, surprise evident in her deep brown eyes. Nikolai smirked; he could get used to this. He offered her a hand before guiding her swiftly to the dance floor.

He felt men staring, once again, at ‘his wife’ as they graciously made their way to the middle of the floor. The small orchestra started playing a beautiful soft song, perfect for a romantic moment between lovers. Nikolai rested his right hand on the small of Y/N’s back, pulling her close, keeping her hand tightly in his own. He felt her free hand gently come to rest on his shoulder. His heart beating more quickly than he would’ve liked. Why am I so nervous? She was gazing up at him, a gentle smile gracing her lips. He swallowed hard. Nikolai had never felt more grateful for the dance lessons he’d taken as a child. He’d only done it to please his mother. He had to admit he was glad they were paying off now. To anyone watching them, they simply looked like newlyweds, madly in love, eager to share a dance.

They turned elegantly, in time with the slow music, their bodies completely in sync. Their breathing even, their steps well-balanced. The deep green skirts of her dress following every graceful movement they made. She followed his lead perfectly as if they’d been partners for years. She seemed to trust him completely, showing him how safe she felt in his arms. Time slowed for a moment. Nikolai found himself forgetting all about the job, about the plans they had to steal, even about his country. He wanted to stay in this moment, holding the talented Grisha against him, forever.

The sound of applause brought him out of his reverie. He took in their surroundings. Y/N looked as surprised as he felt. Her eyes wide, cheeks flushed. He had no idea how long they had been dancing, how many songs had been played. It dawned on him that they were the cause of the applause. People had stopped dancing and talking to watch the young couple, completely lost in each other, moving elegantly across the floor. He saw Jesper and Wylan, wide grins plastered on their faces, in the far corner of the room. They looked way too pleased. Saints, I hope they won’t tell Brekker about this.

He bowed, Y/N following his lead once again, before walking off the dance floor, towards the grand staircase. They had to stop drawing so much attention to themselves. He wished he could have a moment to talk to Y/N, alone, away from the prying eyes of the crowd. She was playing her role to perfection, all smiles, as couples complimented them on their dancing for the next few minutes.

The ornate wall-mounted clock chimed. Zoya, Wylan, and Jesper would create the distraction in 15 minutes. Wylan subtly nodded to him, indicating he had already placed the small incendiary charge in the dining room. He had developed this newest marvel by studying and modifying one of David Kostyk’s discoveries. It seemed the boy truly was a genius. Jesper would detonate the charge at 8 bells, the sound of his shot covered by the storm Zoya would summon. The fire would require all-hands-on-deck to be put out, leaving the office unguarded. If everything went according to Kaz’s plan, it would give him and Y/N about 30 minutes to pick the lock of Van Verent’s office, crack the safe and make their way back to the party with the blueprints safely tucked in the sheath hidden beneath Y/N’s dress.

They came to a halt in the shadow of the staircase, ready to spring to action at their cue. Nikolai made sure to pull Y/N close, slipping an arm around her waist.

“I didn’t know you were such a good dancer, my love.” He murmured. Better keep up the act. She makes it easy, though. I don’t even have to lie.

She laughed softly and turned in his arms, snaking her own arm around his neck, pressing her lips quickly against his cheek. “Thank you, darling. I am full of hidden talents, you know...” the raise of her eyebrow and her tone so suggestive Nikolai had to fight to keep a straight face. She’s only doing her job. She’s supposed to be my wife. It’s only normal that a young wife should flirt with her delightfully handsome husband. He was trying to convince himself but the playful look in her eyes told him otherwise. She spun around once more, keeping his hand on her waist, leaving him to observe the guests enjoying the party.

The clock chimed once more. 8 bells. Thunder boomed outside, rain battering the windows. A high-pitched scream sounded to his right, coming from the dining room. Other screams quickly followed. Guests ran past them, fleeing the room. Guards came rushing down the stairs, towards the fire. It was complete chaos. Nikolai found himself impressed, once again, by how brilliant the crows were. Maybe I could convince Kaz to help me plan my next military campaign? Or get Wylan to come work with David. I should at least sail with the Wraith and her crew.

Y/N’s fingers closed around his wrist. “That’s our cue.” She said with a sly grin on her lips.

---

Taglist: @power-of-words23

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

Pulse Point

A/N: Requested by anonymous. Warning for canon-typical violence; minor character death, nightmares, and post-traumatic stress. Also: borrowed Dr. Sweets from the show Bones.

Summary: A near-death experience leaves you with recurrent nightmares. Neal offers some comfort.

Word Count: 5,154

The steady beeping of hospital equipment was driving you insane. It had been hours now of nothing except the monotonous noise of your own heartbeat. If it didn’t shut up soon, you would claw your ears off. With a stiff body and an ache that penetrated down to your bones, you forced your body upright and pinched open the pulse monitor on your right hand.

You let out a relieved sigh as the equipment went silent and dropped yourself back onto the well-padded pillows behind you. The pulse monitor clattered to the floor on its long white cord and you settled down for a nap. The ache in your bones made you feel heavy, like lead. There was nothing quite like a well-deserved nap.

In mere seconds after you had closed your eyes, the equipment started acting up again, this time blaring one long, constant shriek. The surprise made your heart skip a beat, but your eyelids were too heavy to look and see what had happened. Then your heart kept skipping, and your throat tightened. You couldn’t breathe. Your chest burned. It wasn’t a heartbeat; it was a flatline.

You were dying.

The leaden feeling in your body doubled. Your muscles didn’t respond to trying to move and you couldn’t force your lungs to take in a breath. Footsteps pounded around you, incoherent shouts going in one ear and out the other. You were desperate for your paralyzed eyes to open. Was this what you’d have for the rest of your life? Nothing but darkness and unintelligible, mind-numbing noise, punctuated by electrical humming and the pain of a vice clamping itself again to your finger?

The flatline paused for a second. Your ears rang and you thought, for a moment, that you were safe, your heart was beating again. Instead, your stomach twisted and you realized you were losing feeling in your toes. No blood. No life. When the screech of your flatline came back again, it was louder, more piercing. The shrillness reminded you of screaming.

As soon as you remembered it, it was there – the same screaming as before, somewhere in your room, echoing from every corner. In the next pause of the flatline, it turned into a hoarse shriek and a plea. “No! Please!”

You couldn’t hear anything underneath it, no more overlapping voices, and your panic increased. Where were the doctors? Did they think you were gone? Help me!

Your eyes opened with a sudden snap, the droning of your alarm clock replacing the flatlining of the monitor.

As you stared at your ceiling, you panted for breath. Rationally, you knew, you had probably never stopped breathing, but in the panic of your nightmare, it felt like you’d been smothered. Terror powered your desperate gasps and convinced you that your feet and hands were numb, even as you could feel that one foot was poking out from the end of your blanket. After a long moment, you dared to move your arm, ready to scream if you weren’t dreaming after all and still couldn’t move. You turned your alarm off easily.

Soft rain pattered against the glass windows, creating shiny-looking streaks as droplets collected and streamed down the side of the building. It was much more soothing than the silence that usually reigned in Dr. Sweets’ office when he was waiting for you to talk. Maybe he should invest in one of those noise machines with rain as an option. You thought about making the suggestion, but knowing him, he would probably call you out on the procrastination, or deflection, or whatever else he wanted to call it.

You broke the silence. “I’m certain I can wait you out for the next…” You checked the clock. “Twenty-seven minutes.”

Dr. Sweets raised his eyebrows, still leaning his head on a closed fist, propped on the arm of his chair. “I’m equally certain I can recommend you remain on desk duty for the next…” He pretended to check his watch. “Twenty-seven weeks.”

You scowled.

Psychological clearance was a bureau mandate after something traumatic occurred during the course of the job. You’d been lucky enough not to need it up to this point, but after… that, you hadn’t been given a choice. Dr. Sweets was a highly qualified psychotherapist, and you were sure that he did amazing things to help a lot of people, but so far you felt neither amazed nor helped.

“Agent L/N, you went through something incredibly harrowing that you were very close to not walking away from.” The psychologist finally took his head off his fist and put his arm down in his lap. At least he’d taken the bait and you weren’t the one starting the discussion. “You were a half-inch or couple minutes from bleeding out.” He pinched his fingers to demonstrate as if you didn’t have a scar on your body that distance from your femoral artery. You’d never be able to forget what half an inch looked like.

“But I did walk away, and the person who did that to me is in prison for the rest of his life.” You crossed your legs, trying to look more comfortable than you felt. You weren’t sure how effective you were going to be at convincing a therapist that you didn’t need therapy, but it was worth the try.

He looked utterly unconvinced. Actually, the jerk looked like he knew exactly what you were trying for and thought it was cute that you thought you could trick him. “Justice, or even retribution, which it feels like you’re leaning towards, doesn’t erase a wrongdoing or its associated harm.”

“I didn’t erase it, I healed from it. I took medical leave, now I’m back.”

“Physically, you healed. It takes a lot longer to heal mentally from those kinds of wounds.”

“Does it?” You challenged.

“I think your nightmares speak for themselves,” Dr. Sweets said pointedly.

You glared at him, at a loss for a quick comeback. You knew you didn’t look like a million bucks, but you hadn’t thought it was that obvious you were losing sleep. If he knew, then the coworkers who spent a lot of time with you must know, too. Especially Neal – nothing got past him. Oh, that was embarrassing.

The nightmares had been recurring for weeks now. They had started once you had a return date to the office, but after actually resuming your work, they had increased in frequency and intensity. They weren’t identical, but they did all share some similarities: some fatal injury had you dying, alone, in the dark, like you almost had in real life. You never got to the point of actually dying in your dreams, you didn’t think, but you were just fine with that. They were bad enough as they were. Yes, they were a sign of trauma and anxiety. But if your mind didn’t heal itself from weeks safe at home, then you knew returning to normal as fast as possible was probably your best bet at getting over what had happened.

“I’m not your enemy here,” the therapist said to you more gently. You couldn’t say he was heartless, even if you didn’t enjoy the half-hour sessions where he tried to talk about your feelings whether you wanted to or not. “My goal is the same as yours. I want you back at work, safely, able to sleep through a night so you don’t jeopardize yourself or the people around you.”

You let out a deep sigh. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me about the affect this has had on you.” Dr. Sweets encouraged, not for the first time. “You’ve accepted what happened. I can see that. But the next step is processing what it means for you, as an agent, as a person… maybe both.”

You felt helpless. What was that supposed to mean? You couldn’t very well tell him you were terrified your job was going to actually get you killed or cost more lives on your watch. When your employer paid your therapist’s bills, you couldn’t fully trust doctor-patient confidentiality. Maybe it was just paranoia, but you couldn’t bring yourself to risk it.

“I can’t sleep,” you admitted. Your tone sounded mournful. In a way, you were mourning for a time when you could sleep through the night and enjoy your days at work. It wasn’t like white-collar crime was your passion, but you did like puzzles, and you did like being around the people you worked with, especially a certain blue-eyed felon. “I keep having nightmares that I’m… injured, and I’m alone.”

“Your wire was jammed and your team didn’t hear you signal for backup.” Dr. Sweets talked slowly, patient and pragmatic as he validated your nightly anxieties. “You expected help, but they didn’t know to come.”

“They did come,” you said with a shrug. “It just… almost wasn’t in time. I know it wasn’t their fault.”

Your words about time felt glued into your ears. Yours had come really close to running out. And for what? Insurance fraud? No amount of money justified murder, and you likewise couldn’t put a price tag on a life. So why were you so eager to leap back into the same job that almost cost you yours?

It was something you had been mulling over since it happened. Your job was dangerous. You had always known that. You’d been shot at, been near explosives… your partner had been abducted by a murderer not that long ago, and your best friend had had guns in his face so often that, honestly, you’d lost count a while ago. Somehow it just hadn’t clicked, you supposed, that you could legitimately die. You were protected by the bureau and your body armor, until that wasn’t enough. Other agents had learned that lesson in a much harder way; being confronted with that was hard to simply get over.

Apparently, your use of the word “fault” led Dr. Sweets to talk to you about guilt and anger around the incident. You didn’t blame your partner or feel angry, except at the man who shot you, but you let him continue around your noncommittal, half-assed answers. You knew he at least suspected you were putting him on again, but you also knew you hadn’t given him much to work with. Then again, he didn’t call you on your bullshit replies, either, so you weren’t quite sure what he thought.

While Dr. Sweets had yet to approve you for field duty, there was still plenty to do at your desk. You pretended not to notice the itch in your legs to go somewhere while you kept yourself busy, preparing documents, performing research, helping delegate and manage case files, and topping off your team’s coffee whenever they got low. You had become even more of a desk jockey than Neal; at least he got to go out with Peter when given the green light. You missed outings with your partner, or really with any other agent.

Comparing yourself to a caged tiger was likely on the dramatic side, so you put it out of your mind and refused to feel sorry for yourself. You understood the protocols and the routines and they were for your benefit as much as the bureau’s. Besides, your team wasn’t treating you like you were fragile or demoted. They leaned on you to help just as much as they ever did, the assignment of duties just went a little differently.

You doodled a cat on your notepad during a meeting. Everyone had great ideas and you tossed in some ways you could contribute when you’d been quiet for a while. Peter’s proposed field op was going to go smoothly. Odds were high that any hiccups could be taken care of by Diana’s swift running of interference. Neal was raring to go and Jones was a little too excited to play the part of an intimidating brute, in your opinion, and Peter was appropriately apprehensive (someone ought to be, after what had happened to you).

“Let’s sleep on it,” Peter decided after looking out the window and seeing how low the sun had sunk. “If we’re all still in agreement in the morning, we’ll set the ball in motion.”

Jones graciously commented, “Good idea. We can all think on it.” He was probably the most cautious of all of you.

“Y/N?” Neal asked. You immediately looked up from your (admittedly lopsided) cat drawing. The forger was still in his chair, even while the others were pulling on their coats and blazers. “You’ve been quiet. Do you have any concerns?”

You shook your head, but not too quickly that it raised suspicion. You could get away with doodling – Peter often turned a blind eye to it; after several years, he’d developed a soft spot for you – but only if you were still paying attention and participating, so you didn’t want to give him a reason to suspect you weren’t.

Peter, Diana, and Jones all said their goodbyes. The two younger agents left the room, but Peter lingered at the doorway.

“Neal, do you want a ride?” He offered.

Neal looked from you to Peter, and then shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ll find my way. You don’t want to be late for roast,” he added when Peter looked unconvinced. After glancing at you, your partner decided that he really didn’t want to be late for roast and left without another look over his shoulder.

Now that you were alone, Neal softened his expression. “Seriously, Y/N, what’s going on?”

“I told you, I’m not worried. We’ve thought of just about everything we can predict.” You said with a straight face, pretending not to know that Neal wasn’t just talking about this specific case anymore.

He wasn’t having it. “Don’t lie to a conman, Y/N,” he chided you with a small, fond smile. “Come on. It’s not just today, you’ve been quiet ever since you came back. It’s not like you.” You raised an eyebrow and pursed your lips, uninterested in talking. Neal reached partway across the table for you but stopped there. It was an invitation but not a command. “I’m worried about you.”

The thing about your history with Neal was that it was a close one. You went from strangers when Peter got him out of Sing Sing to best friends within the span of two years. You trusted him more than you trusted just about anyone, and there hadn’t been a time when one of you needed the other and was turned away. He didn’t come to you when he was upset – seeking out reassurance and comfort was not Neal’s strength, because it involved professing vulnerability – but he never turned you away when you came to offer it, either. Now it seemed to be his turn to do the offering, as he had realized over the last few weeks that you weren’t going to ask.

You reached for his hand and silently sighed in relief at how solid and warm it was to the touch, so unlike the few dreams where you screamed and cried for someone to help and found yourself grasping at tricks that weren’t there. Neal turned his hand to hold yours and gave it a squeeze.

“It’s been so hard, Neal,” you told him reluctantly. “I have no idea how you do it. How you just walk away from all the close calls.”

Neal frowned a little. “I don’t just walk away,” he objected. “I have bad nights. I have bad days. Sometimes I have a whole bad week, or a few bad months.” You knew the latter was a reference to losing Kate, and you sympathetically gripped his hand tighter. “But, you know… there’s always something I can find to focus on instead, and after a while, the things go in the past. I let go.”

That advice was entirely unhelpful. “I’ve been trying to let go,” you said sourly. It wasn’t directed at him, exactly, but moreso at your brain, which was failing in its task of moving past what happened. “It’s not working. I can’t sleep. Sometimes I don’t think I can breathe.”

“It’s not easy,” Neal agreed, stroking the back of your hand with his thumb. It was an intimately affectionate gesture that comforted and eased the nerves beginning to bubble in your stomach. “Company helps. The reminder that I have backup, even when it doesn’t come right away. I’ve got Peter, Moz. You.” He met your eyes with a small smile and raised your hand to his lips, gently kissing your knuckles.

“Company?” You echoed uncertainly. If you were unconscious, how was company going to make a difference to what you dreamed about? Then you remembered what you had said to Dr. Sweets about your nightmares always ending with being alone. If you knew, on some level, that you weren’t alone, maybe you would feel safer. “Like, overnight?”

His expression didn’t change to give away whether you were right or wrong. Instead, he just asked, evenly, “Is that what you need?” The way he looked at you then, without judgment in his eyes, but with determination in the set of his jaw, you just knew that whatever you said you needed, Neal would move a mountain to give it to you.

“I’m not sure, but… maybe?” You hesitantly guessed. If it worked, it would be worth the awkwardness. Even just one night of solid sleep would do wonders for how you felt, and it wasn’t like it would be the first time you had stayed with Neal overnight. Long marathons on slow weekends, and the less pleasant nights after Kate’s death, meant he kept an extra toothbrush and a set of your pajamas in his penthouse.

“Okay,” he said right away with nothing but quiet matter-of-factness. It was so comforting to be proven right that you could rely on him to help you with what you needed. His tone just said, you need this, so we’re doing it, full-stop. You just hoped you were right, both so you could finally go eight hours without fearing for your life and so you weren’t inconveniencing him for no reason. “Let’s get dinner on the way. We don’t have to talk about it,” he quickly said, seeing your face. “Whatever you need.”

Everyone should have a friend like Neal, but everyone should find their own, because this one was all yours. If it weren’t for the table in the way, you would’ve launched yourself at him in a tight hug. As it was, you settled for a squeeze of his hand and a grin as wide as you could muster. “Dinner sounds great.”

The stickiness of your pants along your thigh made your hands shake, unable to bring yourself to look at your palms. You knew what you would see all over them. The fire lancing up your thigh told you what you already knew. So did the weakness in your body and the fog in your mind. It was done. The hourglass on the desk was trickling through the last of its sand. Moretti was nowhere to be seen. You couldn’t even die in the presence of a murderer.

There was screaming coming from another room. It was the desperate wail of another agent begging for their life. “No! Please!”

“No,” you mumbled, using all of your energy to turn your head to the doorway. He couldn’t… not now that you were down… you couldn’t even raise your voice to cry for help. You were completely helpless. You couldn’t save him.

Your chest burned with the effort of your heart, ironically helping you to bleed out faster. Your breaths came labored, and then they couldn’t come at all as your vision faded. The dark carpet blurred from a mass of pilled fibers into a solid navy sea. The pain in your leg was excruciating, it was all you could feel; the idea of feeling peace ever again slipping away.

Screaming. Banging. Footsteps. More screaming. Pounding. Shouting. It was all indistinguishable, a mess of men’s voices and loud gunshots. Then, you heard it. Just your name, barely audible above the rest, in a voice that made you strain to see past the blackness.

“Y/N!”

You’d give the rest of your precious seconds away just to see him one last time, just to know he was beside you and you weren’t alone.

“Y/N!”

Footsteps came closer and the pressure on your chest intensified. The blood loss made you dizzy and your body shook.

“Y/N!”

You jolted awake, eyes snapping open in time to see Neal leaning out of the way just in time to avoid your hand flying at his face. You processed slowly that his hands were on your shoulders – had he shaken you? – and it was still dark. You could barely see his face, but his figure was lit from behind by the lamp next to his bed. You could tell from his messy hair that he had been sleeping not long ago, and you felt awful for waking him up.

After cursing, you sat up and gripped the warm blanket on your lap tightly. “I’m sorry,” you said remorsefully, feeling like a fool. Not only hadn’t you been able to sleep through the night, but now you’d ruined his rest, too. You cussed again. “I really hoped being close… just not being at my apartment, alone…”

It had felt like a safe bet off to a good start. You had gotten dinner together near Gramercy Park, then watched a lighthearted movie before turning in for bed. Neal offered to let you take his mattress, but you didn’t want to put him out and you had slept over enough that he didn’t feel like a bad host for letting you insist on the sofa. You’d been out by ten, but now you could guess it had been less than four hours. Your heart was still racing, your leg still tense with an imagined pain.

“It’s okay,” Neal said, sounding unsettled. He kept his hands on your shoulders like he was keeping you grounded on the earth. “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

Neal’s eyes must have already adjusted to the low light, because his aim was spot-on when he lifted a hand from your shoulder to cup your neck instead. His profile ducked and you felt his lips land on your forehead, checking your temperature, signalling forgiveness, and administering reassurance all at once. He rubbed his thumb across your jaw as he stood up straight, releasing you, and walked away around the couch.

You put your legs down in front of you and rubbed your face, exhausted mentally and physically. Helplessness made you want to cry. Time wasn’t healing. Sleeping pills just made it harder to wake up, letting the nightmares ravage your psyche for longer. Not even the proximity of someone you trusted and adored was enough to let go of the past.

The light in the kitchen came on, bright enough to illuminate the studio but far enough away not to be blinding. Neal came back to the couch holding a bottle of water and offered it to you before sitting down. He looked so adorable, still sleepy and with a bit of pink in the side of his face from sleeping with his arm under his pillow. You scolded yourself for even thinking about how cute he was when you were the one who had woken him up.

You sipped at the water. It was so nice and smooth on your throat. You felt fine, now that you were awake, but the vividness of your nightmares always left you feeling parched and you always expected swallowing to hurt as if you had strep. Neal leaned into the back of the couch and put his arm up along the cushions. You capped the water, bent your knees to pull your feet back up onto the furniture, and let yourself lean into his side. Neal dropped his arm softly on your shoulders, holding you in a tender sideways hug.

“I’m sorry,” you apologized again after a couple of minutes. You felt much better, much faster than you usually did, thanks to him, and if you were being fully honest, you were not ready for him to get up and go back to bed, but it wasn’t fair to ask him to stay up cuddling you at god-knows-what-time just because you were a wreck.

“I told you, it’s okay,” Neal said, his voice firm. If you apologized again, you figured he would start scolding you for it, so you let it go.

“I just – I should’ve expected this,” you said with frustration, feeling like you were confessing to knowingly bothering him. “I haven’t been able to sleep well in ages. I keep having these nightmares, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

Neal was quiet for a few seconds, making sure you had said all you were inclined to. Then, knowingly, he asked, “This is about the Moretti case, isn’t it?”

“I can’t let it go,” you said with a whimper. “It won’t leave me alone. Every night, it’s a little bit different, but at its core it’s always the same.”

Neal’s voice cutting through the fog of your nightmare had been a saving grace, giving you peace even in your unconscious, but now that you were awake, you realized with clarity that his voice saying your name wasn’t the only voice you could make out. In fact, you always heard the same thing, every night, no matter what else changed.

“What’s the same, Y/N?” Neal asked you, trying to help. He stroked your upper arm with his open hand. You were already shaking your head. Neal could comfort you all he liked, but he couldn’t bring back the dead. In grief and shame, you turned your head and bent your neck to bury your face in his shoulder. Neal tilted his head so his cheek was resting gently on your hair. “Tell me, darling,” he coaxed in a whisper.

You felt like someone’s hands were wrapped around your throat, strangling your reply. “Agent Flynn,” you answered dryly, barely more than mouthing his name. “In every nightmare, I hear… I hear his last words. Begging Moretti not to take the shot.”

Neal was quiet for a long time, but never pushed you away. He held you closer when you started to shake, crying against him as quietly as you could manage. The artist rubbed your arm and periodically kissed your head, but he knew that there was nothing he could say to erase the horror of what you had heard or take away the guilt that you had survived because Moretti was distracted by taking out the other agent.

Moretti was part of a family gang, often in conflict with the Barellis, who, interestingly, paid a little deference to the white-collar division ever since you and Peter had recovered a stolen Book of Hours. The Morettis had no such connection or gratitude, so their response to the FBI sticking their nose into an embezzling scam was violent and bloody. Moretti shot you in the leg and intended to finish you off, but one of his own men had reported you came with someone. He left you to bleed out, and only a few rooms over, you had heard Flynn’s pleas – and the subsequent gunshot. Your team, wising up to the dead signal, arrived for a takedown before Moretti could make his way back to you, but it was too late for your teammate.

Neal shifted after what felt like forever, only to pull you closer to his chest and wrap both arms around you. You trembled in his embrace, but that just made him hold you closer, like you were delicate and breakable. When he next talked, his low voice was quivering, just like your body.

“I thought we lost you,” he said, cupping the back of your head in a gentle hand. He massaged his fingers into your scalp, even as he kept you cuddled in his lap. “I thought I lost you, Y/N. Two gunshots. I thought…” He struggled to find his words and you hiccuped, trying to stop crying. “I was the one who found you, and I was so scared I was too late.”

You sniffled and uncrossed your arms to melt against his chest and hug him tightly around his waist instead. “I didn’t know you…”

“We found him first, but you weren’t there and I needed to find you.” Neal now sounded equal parts frightened and furious. “If he had taken you away, I would’ve…” He shook his head and pressed his forehead to yours, as desperate to be close to you as you felt to be close to him. “I would’ve shattered. I can’t lose you, Y/N. I just can’t lose you, too.”

“I’m so glad I didn’t die,” you blurted, almost in a sob. You felt so safe with him, but now you knew for a fact that your own safety wasn’t what had been tormenting you. It was a nearly debilitating case of survivor’s guilt. “I just wish I hadn’t been the only one who survived.”

“No one wants that,” Neal promised you, untangling his hand from your hair and stroking it down instead. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could fix this and take it away, but all I can do is be here and hold you and tell you it’s going to be alright. It wasn’t your fault.”

You sniffed. Neal’s words were more of a comfort than you had thought they would be. They changed nothing about the situation, but… you weren’t alone. You hadn’t been alone since you met him. You just agonized that Flynn had been. “Neal, I can’t lose you, either. I love you, you’re… you’re who I’m going to heal for.” You had to find a way.

Neal seized your lips with his in a searing kiss. It wasn’t as sexy or patient as you may have imagined, but you gripped his shirt and gave as good as you got, and wow, the man gave verygood. It was a desperate kiss, needing to bring you together and reaffirm your life. To you, it was the seal of a promise that you wouldn’t let the past crush your spirit. When you could sleep through the night and had a handle on your post-traumatic stress… if he would just be patient, you would be his the way you wanted him to be yours.

He released you to breathe, eyes opening wide as if he only just realized what he had done. Before he could pull away, you pressed your forehead to his again, urging him to stay close. Your breaths mingled between you and you were sure you could feel his heart beating through his chest.

“I love you, too,” he said once he had caught his breath.

[libermachinae]

Night Shift

Also on AO3! Summary: Prowl and Jetfire analyze leads on a Decepticon smuggling operation, working together late into the night trying to find the missing connections. A sleep deprived slip of the tongue leads Prowl to revisiting old choices. Word Count: 2146

---

Prowl didn’t keep track of his chronometer this late in the night. Morning was inevitable, and he knew he could rely on a burst of messages from Orion to let him know when it had arrived. As such, he had no idea what hour it was when Jetfire broke through the productive silence.

“How did you come up with these predictions?” Jetfire asked. Worst of all, he was speaking with his mouth full, apparently too incensed by Prowl’s logic train to be bothered with common decency. “Every gun you’ve pulled in has been running on fumes; I’ve had to scrape the insides of the barrels just to figure out what they’re fueled on.”

The impressive thing about Jetfire was that even as a voice over the comms, he sounded like the biggest bot in the room. It wasn’t just that his voice was deep; Orion, who wasn’t that much taller than Prowl, had a voice you could feel through the floor panels. It was something about the way Jetfire talked, deliberate and straightforward, rarely stuttering even when caught off-guard. It was refreshing.

“I’ve outlined the logic process in my report. I won’t be repeating it,” Prowl said, scrolling back through his files.

“What are they teaching in the enforcer academy that reports don’t need to communicate anything?” Jetfire grumbled

It would be a reasonable estimate to say they spent 50% of these near nightly calls complaining about their targets, their coworkers, and the administration, and another 40% about each other. Prowl sat through them strictly as a matter of convenience, being a faster mode of communication than the intermittent data bursts preferred by the sanctioned enforcer agencies.

Having someone at the other end of the line also assisted the rust sticks and nucleon microcubes in staving off recharge protocols.

“It’s as I explained to Tumbler: it communicates everything I intended it to.” Ideally, very little to anyone who couldn’t have worked it out themselves. That way, the important information stayed with those who could actually use it, and the rest—

“Who’s Tumbler?”

Prowl lost his train of thought as the rest of his processor caught up to what the .5% he reserved for conversation had said. He froze, rust stick halfway to his mouth.

“No one,” he said.

“Okay.” Jetfire drew out the word. “Did he buy that line?”

No, of course not. Tumbler was always relentless about that sort of thing. His curiosity and drive could have lent to the makings of a detective or captain if he’d dedicated them more often to investigations and less on critiquing Prowl.

“He was young and failed to grasp the necessity of efficiency in our line of work.” Prowl had tried to be patient, but he’d been young too, and Tumbler was the first partner he’d had who would listen to him. Even if it was just to argue that Prowl’s opaque writing was the cause of their inefficiency.

“Hmph.”

Jetfire liked to intersperse their conversations with meaningless noises, and although Prowl needed more samples before he was certain of his explanation, he believed they meant Jetfire didn’t agree with something he’d said but was ending the discussion prematurely. It was illogical, leaving a matter unsettled for which a solution existed, but normally Prowl’s priority queues were ordered such that work came before ideological disagreements.

“What?” he asked, finally setting down the rust stick.

“You’re normally terrible with names,” Jetfire said without hesitation. “I’m just trying to imagine what a bot would have to be like to leave that much of an impression on you.”

“He was talented,” Prowl admitted.

“Do you keep in touch?”

“No.” Prowl straightened his back and flared his sensory panels, ready to move on. “It was not a practical partnership. Being together diminished our respective abilities and prevented us from fulfilling our responsibilities. It was for the betterment—”

“Hey, hold on, Prowl,” Jetfire said, his rolling voice enough to draw Prowl up short. “I know that you—but, you know what that sounds like, right?”

Prowl frowned, immediately recognizing Jetfire’s social theory tone.

“Pragmatism,” he said. “We can’t have everything we want in an ordered society. I—we did what Cybertron needed of us.”

“By disposing of a part of yourself?”

Tumbler hadn’t liked that explanation either.

“We weren’t conjunx.” And for very good reason. There were more important things in life than feelings or fleeting commitments, and it was idealists like Jetfire who—

“Just because it didn’t have a name doesn’t mean it wasn’t important.”

Prowl’s thoughts stumbled. He hadn’t expected Jetfire to say that, not because it was out of character but because he was right. That was the exact sentiment Prowl had tried to put to words maybe half a dozen times and now it was being turned on him like a spotlight.

“There are things that should never be sacrificed,” Jetfire went on. Prowl felt his silhouette thrown into sharp relief. “Things we’re worse off for letting go of.” He paused. “A while ago, I was made an offer: instant entry to the academies. No exams, no fees. Everything I’d ever wanted. In return, though, I would’ve had to give up my wings. My… sponsor, I guess, knew I had the processor for science, just not the frame. They asked for me to give up one part of myself to let the rest go free.”

Prowl shook his helm, leaning away from the speaker. Jetfire’s tone was the same one he occasionally used with Bumblebee. With Prowl, he was hard edges and warning lights. They weren’t this for each other. They didn’t do this.

“You were nearly the victim of a scam,” he said, searching blindly for familiar ground.

“I’m sure it seems that way,” Jetfire said, unperturbed. “Do you get it, though? Giving up any one piece would’ve meant tacit agreement with the Functionists, that I wasn’t fit to do my work in any form but what they prescribed. Even if I’d told myself it was for Cybertron, it really would’ve been a sacrifice in their honor, and nothing would ever be worth that.”

Prowl wasn’t entirely obtuse. He understood what Jetfire was saying, but he couldn’t afford to hear it, not with everything he had already done and the plans he had yet to set in motion. Maybe Jetfire had found a way to live that allowed him to maintain his idealistic commitments, but most mechanisms weren’t so lucky. Everyone had to give up something.

“And now you’re here, working on behalf of the Senate,” Prowl said, just to prove that point.

Jetfire made his noise again.

“Right, I forgot,” he said. Annoyed or frustrated: the usual feelings they brought out in each other. “Waste of time. Forget I said anything.”

Prowl wouldn’t, but he also wasn’t going to give Jetfire an excuse to keep pontificating.

It would have been a waste of their time, anyhow, because however sincere Jetfire was in his admission, Prowl had never understood the hypocrisy of bots who would claim to reject Functionism while maintaining an almost fanatical devotion to their frames. In some intangible sense, maybe he did enjoy the opportunity to go for a long drive, but he couldn’t imagine himself grieving his tires for their own sake. He tried to compare it to what he had felt when Tumbler had said going to Kaon was a selfish, pretentious idea and immediately recoiled.

“Results are exactly what I told you,” Jetfire said. Prowl realized he hadn’t gotten any work done in the last several kliks. “Not nearly the concentration of materials to support your theory the Decepticons have contacts in Uraya, and a few that will probably trace back to Kaon, like everything else.”

“I’d like to see for myself,” Prowl said, standing. He didn’t often get this badly distracted, and it was easy to pin it on the state of his desk: used energon cubes and wrappers from the cheap snacks he kept fueled on littered the spaces he should have been using for case notes and displays. When was the last time he’d cleaned?

“Really?” Jetfire asked. “The data’s pretty clear.”

“Humor me.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?”

Neither said goodbye before they hung up: another of their customs.

Prowl cleared the mess into the trash. Exhaustion was nibbling at his processor like a corrosive. Another couple shots would get him through his morning meetings, and then a regular midday fueling would carry him over until he could recharge properly in the evening. Before that, though, the day had to begin, an event he discovered was closer than he’d expected when he stepped outside and saw the horizon just tilting toward the pale blue of an oncoming dawn.

The air was gentle, the pleasant cool that foreshadowed a blistering day. Jetfire was a dot over the Rodion skyline. Prowl glanced up at the few stars that could punch through the light pollution and was reminded, suddenly, of the time he and Tumbler had discussed getting a little patch of metal out on the Tungsten Moors. The barren sparkfields had felt nonetheless fertile with possibilities, and they had gotten hung up on whether it would be more practical to live in a house with two stories or just one. It had been a fantasy, nothing more; even on their joint income, it would have taken millions of years to save up. But there had been something, if not fulfilling, thrilling about it, making plans that didn’t hinge on work or promotions.

He wondered if Tumbler remembered that conversation.

Jetfire’s slow approach gave Prowl time to dwell while keeping an idle optic on his teammate. There was nothing spectacular about Jetfire’s flying: Prowl had worked with and chased down fliers who were faster, more maneuverable, and flashier in every way. But there was something resolute and sure about the way Jetfire coasted, a steadiness that Prowl would have appreciated sooner if he’d noticed it, his thoughts of Tumbler and past mistakes and pointless sacrifice sliding away as he watched Jetfire’s flight.

Jetfire’s flying was beautiful, in its own way. Its understatement reminded Prowl of his own assembly line colors, but with an underlying confidence that left Prowl feeling inadequate. Though technically strong, his power was limited to what he could siphon off Orion and their other high-level contacts. He’d experienced a taste of the real thing under Sentinel, but that had been an especially tenuous connection, liable to snap had he ever tugged too hard. Jetfire’s power was all his own. Not overwhelming, not enough to make the changes Cybertron needed. Incomparable, really, to what Prowl had wielded. But it radiated from the tips of his wings to the burn of his thrusters, self-realized, without reservation or concession.

Prowl’s tac net pinged him with the results for a problem he hadn’t realized he’d plugged in: 50% Prowl should have been strong enough to find another way, 50% choosing Tumbler would have made him stronger.

A perfect 50-50 meant his systems were badly in need of defrag. He cleared the cache and set his tac net to reboot, shaking his helm to dispel the resulting vertigo as Jetfire landed on the steps below him. Prowl waited patiently for him to complete his mode switch, taking two steps back so they would be at optic level with each other.

“Pleasant flight?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Jetfire said with a smugness that allowed Prowl to scoff as he motioned for the datapad.

Jetfire handed it over. Prowl knew he was being watched as he powered it on and reviewed its contents, but he took his time, using Jetfire’s results to run through a few warm up calculations as his tac net came back online.

“You didn’t check for copper fluoride,” he commented.

“No,” Jetfire said slowly, “because it wasn’t one of the compounds we were investigating.”

“Run the tests again.” Prowl tried to return the datapad, but Jetfire refused to take it. “The chances we would find evidence of materials native to the Urayan region were always slim to none. However, the old blackmarket pipeline between Kaon and Yuss ran directly underneath the city. Does that make more sense?”

Prowl saw the moment Jetfire finally saw the case as he did, a knotted web of deceptions meant to dissuade even the most seasoned detective from untangling its core. Jetfire took the datapad from Prowl and stowed it, though the hard look in his optics did not waver.

“Could’ve said that from the beginning,” Jetfire griped.

Prowl didn’t bother to respond. What was done was done. Talking so much about the past was a waste of time neither of them could afford, because for all that it might have mattered, nothing they said could change any of it. All they had was the future, and the possibility of starting each day stronger than they had the one before.

[forbiddensoul562]

Contagion

I could have sworn I’d published this, but I found it in my draft folder this morning... So... I apologize that it hasn’t gone through a rigorous editing process, but I hope you enjoy anyway!

Two years ago I sat on a train in Taiwan, headed from Taipei to a small, remote place called (I think) Wufeng. As I sat there, I thought about a post-apocalyptic zombie Meronia fic I’d read somewhere on here. It was very good, but I had no luck tracking it down again, and I thought that was a damn shame.

So, I pulled out my notebook and wrote a test first chapter of my own version during the whole two hour train ride. 

It’s not much, and might not have much substance to it. But I’d love to get anyone’s thoughts on it’s start.

Working Title: Contagion

The moment they appeared their existence made national news… The world screeched to a halt, all attention on these things. Humans… turned diseased, feral, or perhaps something else entirely. No one knew for sure where they came from. It was as though one moment the world continued spinning like normal, and in the next… these things began flooding the streets. The initial confusion of news analysts and reporters slowly began to turn to fear. It took only an hour before the first bite was reported... The victim turned, becoming one of the diseased. 

That was the moment public fear began to turn to panic, catching like wildfire.

As Near watched, from secluded inside his high tower, he was acutely aware that he was witnessing the turning point of human history.

By the second hour after the first report had hit the news, Near had decided that what he was witnessing was potentially the unravelling of human society. He was a detective… trained to solve the world’s mysteries. But this… There was no training for this, and even if he wanted to act, the pandemic was spreading far too fast.

By hour three Near found himself trying to name these things based on their condition – should he refer to them as the Sick, infected initially by some kind of widespread contagion? The news began to report them as simply ‘undead,’ and while Near understood that such a title effectively, and most simply communicated to the general populace what these things were doing, based on common knowledge from mass media, Near could only roll his eyes at how unoriginal and unfitting the term appeared to be.

At the tenth hour, local news agencies began going off the air as it was too dangerous to stay and try to report. It made sense, they had themselves and their own families to think about. It was in that moment that fear suddenly began to take the place of Near’s previously more pragmatic thoughts. A new, chilling terror of encroaching total isolation the outside world seeped into his bones.

It was then that he decided it best to make the one call of utmost importance in the dying world, before cell towers began to completely fall off the grid.

Rester handed Near the phone and the detective listened to the ringing tone as he pressed it to his ear, an unspoken panic brewing in his center and he couldn’t decide if it was premised in his worry for lines of communication, or something much more morbid. ‘Pick up,’ He mentally pleaded, desperately. ‘Come on, answer your phone…’ Of all the times to be ignored…

But then, as if by command, finally the other end of the phone ceased the repetitive tone, replaced instead with a simple, abrupt, “What?”

“Mello.” A heavy breath was released that Near hadn’t realized he was holding, momentary relief taking its place. “You’ve seen the news?”

[More beneath a ‘keep reading’, just in case Tumblr isn’t showing it...]

There was a brief pause from the other end, and Near felt his heartrate quicken in response. Time was just too precious for delays of any kind. Every second that crucial information wasn’t being conveyed was another second that Near felt his panic increase, worried that the call might drop and he might never get to say what he needed to.

“It’s starting to be chaos here, too.” Mello’s tone was somber, quieter as though speaking any louder would make the events all the more real.

“I see.” Near reached for a strand of hair, though the repetitive twirling sensation was proving to do little to calm his nerves, as it once had. This was just becoming too big of a catastrophe for his simple rituals to pacify his worry. “The world is ending, Mello.”

“Strangely dramatic of you.” The older successor muttered, but was quick to add, “You think I don’t know that?” There was an irritated edge to his tone, yet still Near couldn’t help cracking a small smile at Mello’s underhanded, and perhaps unconscious, implication that they both truly were not above dramatics. Though, perhaps he was reading too far into it, searching for a sliver of normality in a world that was quickly falling crumbling.

“No, of course you would already be aware.” After all, Mello was much more heavily involved in the world, or at least connected to it on a far more personal level than Near was. “No doubt the grid will be going down at some point. Maybe in a few minutes, maybe in a few hours, or days… So to that effect I wanted to contact you first over anyone else.” Near’s motions in his hair stopped, the white strand unravelling around his index finger. His vision and even his attention to the rest of the room seemed to blur as he focused entirely upon his connection to the only other person of importance Near had, in a world that was falling apart. “If things continue as they are, to the best of my ability I plan on attempting to create a safe zone within my tower. Right now it has the resources to survive here for at least a year, but I aim to build on those.”

When Mello said nothing in response, Near continued, rambling still, but this time more to the point, “What is happening right now is far greater than you or I, Mello, and on our own I do not think we will make it long. You lack the resources and I lack the physicality. But together, we-”

“Near, don’t, I’m not-”

“Mello, please.” He could hear the pleading in his words, “Just listen to me a moment.”

This time, the blonde remained quiet on the other end.

“If you can make it from your present location in California to here in New York… I would greatly benefit from whatever you have to offer to survival efforts. Neither of us will make it if we’re split up. This is not like anything else we have ever dealt with, and because of that I don’t think it makes sense to hold onto lingering animosity. Think of your survival.”

Near shook his head. Logic wouldn’t work with Mello… So he added quieter, “I need your help, Mello.”

There was a long silence between them, then, the words and residual antipathy culminating between them into that one moment of silence which seemed to hold all the necessary potential to be both of their ruin, not to mention all the others Near had every intention of trying to help. Everything hinged on this single moment… of being able to put aside disputes, and endless history for a greater good. It had never worked before. Yet this time, Near held his breath.

Finally, “I’ll do what I can.” The words were vague, but of course both successors understood the weight and challenge associated with attempting to travel from one side of the country to the direct opposite in the current collapsing state of things. But if Mello was as willing and able as his words alluded to, then Near was willing to hold his breath a little while longer.

Near nodded, “I look forward to your arrival, then.”

The detective was ready to end the call while he had Mello’s agreement and thus his own sense of hope, but of course Mello broke in before he could, “Yeah, you say that, but you’re not the one having to go out and deal with this shit. It’s a risk, Near. At this rate, who knows what the country will do in response...”

Near could read between the lines: Mello thought he might not make it.

But Near had to stay positive, even if he was feigning it for both of them, now. The thought of being alone to go going through what was shaping up to be the apocalypse was troublesome at best, and truly terrifying at worst. “Getting into and climbing the ranks of the Mafia was a risk, too.”

There was a short, curt chuckle from the other end of the line. “Yeah, well… we’ll see. I’ll try.” The younger successor didn’t like the tone latent in his voice. He didn’t like hearing Mello be anything other than his loud, over-the-top self that exuded confidence. But then, nothing was good about this situation or provided any reason for the blonde to hold onto his normal demeanor… Still, it was jarring and was almost worse than seeing the reports on the news.

But Near forced himself to nod, “Right, I’ll see you soon, then.”

Yet another pause on the other end, followed by a simple, “Yeah.”

In that moment Near found himself reluctant to cut their connection. There were so many things he wanted to say to the blonde successor… just in case this was their last time ever speaking. Years of harbored words flooded his mouth like bile, yet burning his throat with the knowledge that no matter how much he wanted to let it all spill out, Mello wouldn’t stand such talk. Not now. Maybe not ever. Though, perhaps it was better this way. He didn’t want to say anything that might prove a distraction to Mello’s journey across the country to get to him.

So he instead swallowed it all back down, promising himself that he would make time to pour out all of these words to Mello when the older successor made it to him.

He could only bring himself to whisper, “Good luck. Be safe. Please.” It was the closest thing to a prayer Near thought he could ever formulate. 

“You too, Near.” Mello said much quieter. “Don’t... let anything happen before I can make it there, alright?”

“I won’t.” He shook his head. “I’ll be here waiting.” With that, he pulled the phone away and hung up.

[heyyyharry]

Chapter 15: Marry Me

(from ‘The Winter and The Crown’)

…in which they get married.

Warning: SMUT

Word count: 5k

AU: queen!y/n, commander!harry

Description: Y/N and Harry set off on a new adventure to find ‘the cure’ for an ancient curse, meanwhile, the enemies are plotting to take her kingdom.

Wattpad link (Reyna as Peach | Y/N)

A/N: Mary explains everything pretty clearly in the last scene. I hope it answers all of your questions :)

.

.

.

A letter from Calanthe arrived the day after the dance. Y/N opened it in the presence of Harry, Lance and Jo.

“What does she want?” Jo asked impatiently while Y/N read it at her desk.

“Why are you here?” Lance asked Jo. He was standing by the door with his sword drawn and rested by his side. He’d been more guarded since last night as was she and everyone else in the castle.

“Why can’t I be here? Is it because of my sex?” Jo retorted, for a second forgetting that Lance was a king. Y/N could not blame her. It must have been devastating for Jo to be the last of them to find out about Mary’s betrayal.

“No,” Harry told Jo as he leaned forward in his chair with his hands together and elbows on his knees. “It’s because you’re a maid.”

Jo shot him a pointed look. “I’m Her Majesty’s Lady-in-waiting.”

“A maid,” Lance chimed in.

Jo flicked her gaze between the two of them. “Are you two best friends now or do you just collectively hate me?”

Harry and Lance exchanged looks before turning back to Jo. “You really want us to answer that?” Lance jokingly asked.

“She’s here because I trust her,” Y/N said, rising behind her desk. Jo made a face at Lance, and he burst out laughing.

“What does she want?” Harry asked Y/N.

Y/N folded the letter and put it aside as she leaned against the desk, arms crossed. “She wants the witch to be returned to Theros.”

As expected, Jo was the most horrified at this news. The real reason Y/N had asked for Jo’s attendance was that she cared about Jo and would never want to make a decision that would hurt her friend.

“Let’s do that,” Harry said.

“No!” Jo and Lance objected at the same time.

Harry froze and blinked blankly at them. Y/N felt bad that he didn’t know the whole story. She couldn’t figure out how to let him in without having him carry all her heavy burdens. Harry would always do too much for her; she didn’t have the heart to drag him deeper into this.

Lance cleared his throat. “We need her. She may have insider information.”

“I don’t trust her. She set Y/N up for death,” Harry said, his face twisted with anger.

“Mary knew the forest wouldn’t harm Y/N,” Lance calmly told Harry while his eyes stayed fixed on Y/N. He knew no matter what they all said, it was up to her to decide Mary’s fate.

“I don���t want her to have Mary,” Y/N said.

Jo clutched her chest in relief. Lance sighed and looked over to Harry, who seemed the most confused.

Y/N took a deep breath. “Calanthe says she’ll be at the border in two days, and she wants me to be the person who brings her the witch.”

“She doesn’t only want the witch,” Harry said through clenched teeth. “It’s clearly a trap.”

“Don’t go, Y/N,” Jo pleaded, her face pale with fright.

Lance said nothing; the look he was giving Y/N had conveyed every single one of his thoughts. Y/N studied each of the three faces in front of her, and her heart stung a little. These people all knew what it was like to lose her. She didn’t want to put them through it again. However, she had to be pragmatic at this point and not let her feelings get in the way. Whatever was best for her kingdom would be best for her, even though it felt the complete opposite.

“I’ll go without Mary,” Y/N said, not making eye contact with anyone. “Just me alone.”

“That’s suicide,” Lance broke his silence.

“I have to agree with the King,” Harry mumbled. It sounded as though he was in pain to say that.

“Maybe one of you should go with her,” Jo told the men.

Y/N shook her head. “She only wants me and the witch. I’ll go alone.”

“She’ll be waiting for you with her army and they’ll take your head, Y/N,” Lance snapped, his grey eyes piercing at her.

Y/N looked up and met Harry’s intense gaze begging her not to do this.

“Maybe I can have an escort,” she sighed, “but Calanthe specifically says in this letter that my betrothed cannot be there with me.”

Harry and Lance exchanged looks. Though neither of them said anything, Y/N knew exactly what was on their minds. She hated that they were put in a situation where it only benefited her.

“She wants to negotiate now?” Jo asked, her voice fragile. Y/N assumed she was scared for both Y/N and Mary.

“Apparently, she wants to talk. And she says that she’ll be there alone.”

“And you trust her?” Harry asked, raising both eyebrows as he stood up straight. “You want to rely on the promise of the woman, who’s only life goal is to ruin your life and make you pay for your father’s mistakes?”

“I don’t trust her,” Y/N said. “I trust myself. I know she and the Monks don’t want me dead. At least not before the battle. She’s causing all this chaos to trigger us to strike. She sets us up, blames us for killing George Wallace and is most likely going to use that as an excuse to invade the North. And she’s ready. I know she is. But so are we. I just want to hear what she has to say. Two can play this game. And I’m not afraid of anyone. Certainly not Calanthe.”

“It’s up to you,” Lance sighed. “We can only tell you what we think is best, but we can’t tell you what to do.”

Y/N frowned. “I still want your support.”

“You have our support, Peach,” Harry said though he didn’t sound so confident. That was good enough for her. She would not be able to go through with it without his approval. Despite what he might think, his feelings mattered to her.

“Absolutely,” Jo said anxiously.

“Well, at least I still have this ring to know if you’ll survive,” Lance said, showing Mary’s ring on his left hand as Jo shot him a glare.

Y/N let out a laugh then mouthed, ‘Thank you,” to him.

Lance gave a shrug and pushed away from the door, stretching his limbs. “If that’s all, I’d like to leave. I’m going to check on Mary. Are you coming, Jo?”

Jo bit her lip, glancing at Y/N. “I don’t know if I should. I don’t want to look at her right now.”

“You can’t just avoid her forever,” Y/N said. “She’s been through some traumatic events. You might be able to cheer her up.”

Jo took some time to think before letting out an exasperated breath. “Fine.”

She wished Y/N goodnight and followed Lance out of the room, leaving Harry and Y/N alone with each other. Silence sank in. For a long moment, Harry and Y/N just stood quietly, stealing glances at each other.

Suddenly, Harry chuckled.

“What?” Y/N asked.

“Nothing.” He pressed his lips together. “Would you like me to go as well?”

“No. You can stay,” she said, returning the smile.

.

.

.

Harry told himself to not trouble Y/N anymore by talking about this, but he could not shake off the fact that she would keep running back towards danger. He’d almost lost her last night. He couldn’t risk letting it happen again.

As she turned her back and remained silent, he had trouble doing the same.

“You don’t have to go alone. I’ll go with you. She just didn’t want Lance to be there, and I–”

He stopped talking and pacing as soon as he noticed that Y/N hadn’t been listening. She was staring out of the window, silent as a ghost. At first, he thought she was just pondering over Calanthe’s letter. But then her shoulders began to shake.

“Peach?” he asked quietly, moving closer and taking her by the hand.

She was crying when he turned her around. He hadn’t seen her cry since that night on the cliff. In fact, she hadn’t shown any emotions since they’d returned to the castle. His heart dropped as he cupped her face while she sniffled, trying not to look at him.

“I’m sorry,” she uttered painfully.

“Why?”

“I’m c-crying...”

Harry pulled her to his chest, putting his arms tightly around her. “Why are you sorry for crying?”

“Because,” she sobbed, “because...I don’t think I’m supposed to…”

Those words were like knives going through Harry’s heart. He held her closer and whispered into her hair, “You don’t have to be strong when you’re with me.”

She said nothing, wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed him in a tight hug. They hadn’t been intimate since they’d left the woods, and for a while, Harry had feared that the girl he loved had never made it out of that place. Now, seeing her break down right in his arms, Harry didn’t know if he should feel relieved or concerned.

“When I told you you were free to leave as soon as we made it back,” she said, her voice brittle, “I meant it...you can still leave this place.”

“Don’t you want me around anymore?”

Y/N pulled back, her contorted face made his heart ache. “I do. I’ll always need you. But...you didn’t sign up for this. You can still be happy. You told me you wanted to see the world. You can still have that life, find yourself a normal wife to love and cherish and spend the rest of your life with. This isn’t normal. I wish we could talk about the future and kids and a family and not death and war and uncertain fates.”

“Peach, stop–”

She shook her head fast and cradled his face in her hands. “It’s killing me, Harry. I don’t want to see you miserable, but I...I c-can’t make you happy anymore.”

“Hey, enough.” He grasped her wrists and gave her a shake just so she’d snap out of it.

Startled, she gawked at him with glassy round eyes. His fingers drifted to her face. Her breath caught at his tenderness.

“I want you,” he said. “All of you. It means I want this. I want your darkness. I want your pain. I don’t want you to ever feel like you’re suffering alone. You don’t have to even love me back for me to love you, Peach. I’m not going to leave you just because you’re carrying more baggage than you could bear.”

A tear rolled down her cheek and he wiped it away. She shut her eyes, taking a shaky breath. “I don’t want you to get hurt again,” she said.

He smiled sadly. “Hey. You got stabbed. I didn’t. Lance didn’t either, and he was the one without a sword. So you don’t have to worry about either of us. Just yourself.”

Y/N snorted as she rubbed her nose onto her sleeve. “You just had to bring that up, didn’t you?”

“I enjoy making you smile while you’re crying,” he said, lifting her chin. “That’s why you need me in your life. I don’t care what people expect from you, love. I just want to be there for you.”

Y/N’s lip quivered. She took his hands in both of hers and pressed them to her chest. He could feel her heart racing. “I’m sorry for pushing you away…”

He chuckled. “And I’m sorry for disobeying that order. I know you love me, Peach. You’re the only girl who would jump off a cliff for me.”

“You mean I’m the only crazy one?” she said, giggling through the tears.

He rolled his eyes. “I’ve known from the start. I told you you were crazy when I saved you from the river.”

She nodded, her lips curled gently.

“That’s how it works,” he added and brushed their noses together. “I save you. You save me back. Life could be easier without you, but I love myself a little challenge.”

Y/N pursed her lips, her brows drawn together, and Harry was afraid he’d said something wrong. “What is it?”

She squeezed his fingers before bringing them to her lips. “Marry me.”

Harry’s mind went numb for a second. He blinked at her, astonished. “Are you insane? We can’t just–”

“No one has to know.”

At this point, he was convinced she was unwell. “Peach, that’s wrong. You’re betrothed to Lance.”

Y/N shook her head fast. “A marriage based on an alliance will never be true. Lance and I both know that.”

As hard as it was for Harry, he had to say it. “I don’t think it’s untrue for him, Peach. The way he looks at you.”

Y/N’s eyebrows sloped. She sucked in a breath and averted her thoughtful eyes.

“I will always care for Lance,” she admitted, “and I want him to be happy and safe. So in a way, you can say that...that I do love him. However, the love I have for him is based on the purpose of survival. I can count on him, and he can count on me. We protect each other and the people around us. That is all.” She turned back to Harry, her eyes glimmering in the candle glow. “What you and I have is so different. I’ve loved you since the day at the river. When there was no danger or enemy. Just us being kids. And I know a lot has changed since, and things can’t go back to the way it was, but I’ll always love you the same and always want to be with you.” She slid her hands down to lace her fingers with his. “So...will you marry me?”

Harry could not stop the beam from spreading across his face. He knew this was wrong, but it was all he wanted and more.

“We don’t have any witness,” he blurted, making her giggle.

“We do. Us.” She looked heavenward. “And my parents.” Harry supposed he must seem so silly because she broke into a laugh when she saw the look on his face. “Just say yes, please? I’m a very proud person. You won’t like it when my pride gets hurt.”

“Are you proposing or threatening me?”

Without breaking eye contact, she took his left hand, slid her gold ring off his finger and kissed it. “Depends on your answer,” she replied with a smirk.

He snorted. “You know I’d just say yes to anything you ask.”

“Good.” Her lips curled as she put the ring back on his finger. “It’s official. We’re husband and wife.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”

“I’m the Queen. It works when I say it does.”

Y/N didn’t wait for Harry to come up with a remark. She grabbed him by the collar and tugged him in, locking his mouth with her own. She kissed him wildly. It had been a long time since they’d kissed like this. Harry never wanted this to end. Every touch of her fingertips increased the hunger in him. But he wasn’t going to let passion cloud his judgements. He would not pressure her into doing something she wasn’t comfortable with.

“Are you sure?” he asked breathlessly when they broke apart. “We don’t have to.”

“I want to,” she breathed, drawing him back into her. “Do you?”

He nodded, kissing her slowly. “I always want you. I missed you.”

“Show me.”

She slipped both arms around his neck and held him tightly, returning his kisses with equal desire. He knew they were spiralling down the pit of disaster, yet he didn’t want to stop.

The next thing they knew, his shirt had come off and her dress was on the floor. He lay her down on the bed. His hands cupped her breasts as his thumbs played over her nipples. She trembled and moaned into his mouth as she ran her hands up his broad back.

Pausing, she gazed up at him. “You’re so handsome. I love you.”

“You love me for my looks?” He laughed lowly into her neck. “Ouch.”

“That’s just a bonus. I love you for you.”

Harry smiled into her skin. “I’m flattered.” His voice a husky whisper. “And you’re so beautiful, love.”

Drawing in a quick, hard breath, her body tightened instantly in response to the wetness of his tongue over her nipple. She arched up into his mouth as a way of begging him not to stop. Knowing she’d only let herself be so vulnerable and helpless when she was with him, Harry’s heart doubled its side. He lifted his head to kiss her mouth again. He wanted to take it slow, but he knew this was torture for both of them, and he was dying to feel her again.

She pressed tight against the whole long length of him. It was evident how wet and ready she was. He slipped his fingers down between them and felt her there. His jaw dropped, mouth hanging open. She snuggled closer, her skin damp and hot and smooth. As he began to move his finger inside her, he could feel her heart pounding and her breath caught. He suckled her breast, giving it his full attention. She cried and tightened her fingers in the curls behind his head. She squeezed her thighs around his hand as he slipped in two fingers. Then she started rocking her hips.

“Easy,” he chuckled as she aggressively tugged his trousers down. His breath caught when she wrapped her fingers around his hot and hard length. She gave it a few strokes while kissing his mouth.

“Want you now,” she begged.

He couldn’t manage a single word, only nodding like a fool as he wrapped his hand around hers then rubbed himself against her soft, wet folds. Slowly, he worked his way inside. “Gods,” he gasped. “You’re so tight, love. Is it painful?”

“No,” she replied, swallowing hard. “It feels good.”

Harry was spending every ounce of control he had going slow to not hurt her. “Just tell me,” he said through clenched teeth. “If it hurts too much, we’ll stop.”

Y/N’s hands tightened on his shoulders as she arched her back and pushed back at him. To his surprise, she laughed. “Why are you acting like it’s my first time?”

“I’m sorry for caring about you?” he said between harsh breaths, smiling and kissing her cheek. Then, he thrust back inside her, seating himself fully where he most wanted to be.

She cried out, from pleasure, not pain, cupped his face and pulled him down to kiss him again. Her legs locked around his waist, refusing to let him leave her body. The fire spread up his legs and so he moved his trembling hand between them and rubbed her hard and fast. She tightened on him until it hurt, but it was the kind of pain he wanted to feel every day. She cried again with raw pleasure wrenched from her chest as he wrapped her in his arms and pumped into her.

“I love you,” he gasped, squeezing her thighs and going faster. “I love you so much.”

She arched into him, crashed by the second wave of pleasure. He caught her screams with his lips. Stars exploded behind his eyelids, and he could hear her whimpering his name again and again.

They lay still, legs tangled in between the sheets until the sweat on their skin was cooled by the wind through the opened window. Harry groaned as he propped himself up on his elbows.

Y/N caught his wrist before he could get up. “Where are you going?”

“To close the window.”

“No. Stay. I’m not cold.”

“I am,” he chuckled but lay down anyway and snuggled up against her. She giggled and tugged the cover over them, pulling him close to her chest.

“You’re such a Southern boy.”

“Thank you, Ice Princess.”

“Hey, I’m a queen.”

Harry grinned up at her and lifted his head to kiss her on the lips. “Well, Your Majesty. I’m coming with you to the border.”

Y/N’s smile dimmed as soon as she heard. He assumed she was having flashbacks of the last time they’d travelled to the border. Only one of them had made it back.

“No, you’re not,” she said.

Harry shook his head. “Dead or alive, we stay together. I can’t risk losing you again.”

Y/N groaned as she rolled her eyes. Harry braced himself for another argument, hating that he’d ruined the moment in which they both pretended to be two lovers without titles and responsibilities.

Surprisingly, she combed her fingers through his hair and said,  “All right. We’ll go together.”

.

.

.

“How are you feeling?”

“Much better. Thank you, Your Majesty,” Mary told Lance, yet she was looking right at Jo. Jo hadn’t said a single word to her since last night. In fact, she had been expecting Jo to visit her after the attack. She’d heard that the Queen had been hurt, so Jo must have been by Her Majesty’s side this whole time. Mary knew it was Jo’s duty, yet she could not help but envy the Queen. Y/N had everyone caring about her.

“I know this is a tough time for all of us,” Lance said, standing with his hands behind his back. He looked relaxed at all times, which made Mary wonder how bad a situation must be for him to lose his composure. She wouldn’t want to find out, though. “My Queen received a letter from Calanthe today,” Lance went on. A line appeared between his dark brows. “She demands you to be returned to Theros.”

The news stopped Mary’s heart for a second. She couldn’t breathe. She clutched Lance’s wrist, causing him to flinch. “Please, don’t! Let me talk to the Queen!”

Lance regarded her with a sympathetic look as he gently pried her fingers off him. “Y/N will go alone,” he said. “That’s the difference between her and Calanthe. She’s not sacrificing innocent people for her own good.”

A sense of relief washed over Mary only to drown her in guilt. She was the way she was now because she’d blamed Y/N for all of her misery. Meanwhile, Y/N was protecting her. If she survived this somehow, she’d have to spend a lifetime regretting all her selfish mistakes.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Lance said, eyeing Jo before he spun on his heels and marched straight to the door.

The door was shut behind the King, and Mary turned to Jo, hoping she’d start the conversation. Jo idled for a long moment, just staring at her feet, probably trying to decide whether she should follow Lance or stay. Mary half wanted Jo to stay and talk to her, half wanted Jo to leave so she could pretend she and Jo were still on good terms.

Jo finally made up her mind. She padded across the room and sat down on the edge of Mary’s bed. Mary’s muscles were still sore from the chase last night, so she sat still with her back against the pillow when all she wanted to do was get closer to Jo.

“I know,” Jo broke the silence.

Mary’s stomach dropped. “What?”

“I know the truth. About why you came here.”

With Jo looking at her with that much disappointment, Mary wished she ceased to exist. She reached for Jo’s hand only to be pushed away.

“I can explain–”

“Please do,” Jo said, her face twisted in anger. “I’m so tired of seeing the people I care about get hurt because of you. Have you ever done anything right since you got here? You’ve been ruining lives. Y/N almost died last night, and she’s going to put herself in danger again to protect you.”

Mary swallowed hard as she dropped her head. “I-I’m sorry.”

Jo let go of a harsh breath. “If something bad happens to her, I will never forgive you. Because when I have to choose between Y/N and someone else, it’s always going to be her.”

Even though Mary knew it already, hearing it from Jo still hurt. “I understand,” Mary mumbled. Her hands started shaking, so she clutched the sheets. “I’m sorry for lying. I can tell you everything right now if it means I can gain back a bit of your trust.”

Jo frowned as she looked away. “Go on.”

Mary nodded, taking a deep breath. “At the beginning of time,” she began, “the four high courts didn’t exist. One hundred kingdoms were independent of one another. When Lokesh became King of Isolde, the Monks convinced him that he was the chosen one and it was his destiny to rule over one hundred kingdoms. And so Lokesh and his three brothers started invading the other kingdoms, until the rulers of what we called the low courts today had to give up their reigns to Isolde.

“However, with greed running in their blood, Lokesh’s brother did not want to hand full power to their brother. It was the beginning of the civil war that lasted over a year. Lokesh wanted to win so badly he sought consults from The Monks, and they helped him make a deal with the Gods to trade his firstborn for victory.

“He didn’t have a queen yet, but he was madly in love with a witch, who was a member of the society. The witch was with child and unaware of her lover’s cruel intentions. Lokesh’s army was winning when the Monk came to the witch’s house to collect the baby. Scared and heartbroken, she set her house on fire and ran away with her child. They both fell through the ice and died in the lake.”

“She was the witch in folklore,” Jo said when Mary paused.

Mary nodded. “Yes. And without the child, Lokesh couldn’t win. None of the brothers did. The one hundred kingdoms were then divided into four high courts. The Gods were angry at the brothers’ selfishness and cruelty, so they stopped the seasons from changing and let Isolde suffer from the cold all year round.

“Every day, Lokesh would come to the lake to mourn his lover and child. Then one day he never returned, and the crown was passed onto his cousin. Y/N was the only one who could find the lake because she shares the late king’s blood. But also because it was believed that the witch and the king had unfinished business and so they would keep meeting in different lifetimes as different people until they set things right.”

“So Harry and Y/N…”

“I thought it was Harry, too,” Mary said. “But then Lance showed up. And now I’m sure it’s Lance.”

Mary expected Jo to call her crazy or a liar, but what Jo said to her was, “Are they going to end up together?”

“Lance and Y/N?”

“Yes.”

Mary lifted her shoulders in a half-shrug. “I don’t know. Every lifetime is different. But as far as I’m concerned, soulmates don’t have to be lovers. And not every kind of love is the same.”

Jo pondered over the given fact, her brows furrowed as she pinched her bottom lip between two fingers. “What does this mean for them?” she asked after a moment. “Will they have to sacrifice themselves?”

“Not...necessarily,” Mary said. “I know Y/N is the saviour in my sister’s prophecy. Lokesh started this mess, and she’s going to end it. We just don’t know how.”

“So why didn’t the Monks choose her instead of Calanthe?” Jo asked.

Mary laughed dryly. “My theory is that they know they cannot control Y/N. She’s a wild horse. Calanthe is a house cat. If Calanthe wins, and Y/N is dead. The Monks can take over one hundred kingdoms. But if Y/N wins, chances are nothing will change, or she’ll give independence back to the low courts, and the world will be as it was at the beginning.”

Jo raised both eyebrows, looking intrigued yet worried at the same time. “So Calanthe’s a puppet?” Mary nodded. “Does Y/N know about this?”

“Not yet. Do you think I should tell her?”

“Yes, before she’s going to meet Calanthe,” Jo said, rising from the bed and smoothing the wrinkles on her skirt. “Well, I must go now. Rest well.”

The words piled up on Mary’s tongue as she watched Jo make her way to the door.

She had to say it.

“Just so you know.” Jo stopped and slowly turned around. Mary took a steady breath. “I may not be strong like Y/N, but I care about you, and I’m not going to let anything or anyone hurt you.”

Jo tilted her head, her expression so unreadable that Mary didn’t know what she was expecting. Jo said nothing at all. She just left, shutting the door without making a sound.