#stand behind more colors this INSTANT young lady!!!

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

okay and some flags for charlie too. with colors picked from frames of assorted shorts that she's been in. but only the frames with her in them.

[misselko]

Got this idea from Dimitri’s conversation with Byleth before Fort Merceus battle with the Death Knight. Put some angst, fluff, and a pinch of smut spices into the dish and let it simmer down! At least, that’s what I want! But it turned out... different ;) Sorry not sorry

This one took me some days to write. I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to give me some advice and ideas for my next fic! Your warm comments will be cherished very much 💕 Thankies!!

 

RECKLESS

Genre: Angst, Fluff

Warnings: Mention of blood, violence, smut

Words: 3316

 

POST TIMESKIP

Empire will be the only remaining enemy and to move on to the Imperial Capital, Enbarr, capturing Fort Merceus is a must. Praised as the strongest defense with its fortified military installation  in the Empire, seizing it won’t be an easy feat.

Liberating Arianrhod, calming down Holy Kingdom of Faerghus political issues, winning over the Leicester Alliance and gained their support. Getting a lead on Lady Rhea’s location. Although things were a rough go, but thinking back on it now, Blue Lions sure has really come a long way. Things have been wonderful in these past moons that it almost feels like dream too good to be true.

You don’t know why but you can’t shake your uneasy feelings and dread. War is raging and everyone knows there is a big battle on the horizon.

“We must not falter in our assault. The Death Knight is the enemy commander in Fort Merceus. He’s an unpredictable opponent. A dangerous one. Please proceed with caution, (Y/N).”

“I will, Dimitri. No need to worry.”

“I have not come this far just to lose you here. I’m serious. Do not be reckless out there.”

“Will you save me if I’m in trouble?”

“Of course, (Y/N). You were the heart of the Blue Lions, and the same holds true for the Kingdom Army.”

You smiled at his concern and hold his hands gently.

“I will do my best as well to support you, my Dimitri.” His cheeks turned into rosy blush at your words.

 

“Whoaa!! You’re getting pretty chummy, aren’t you, Your Highness? Go get a room!” Sylvain winks and got punched HARD, dragged away by Ingrid. You make mental notes on giving her a delicious roasted meat from that famous new shop in the town later as your gratitude. Serves him right!! ...But you wouldn’t trade them for anything in this world. Everything will be alright with them. Blue Lions are your precious family. It will be fine. Everything will be fine.

---

Capturing Fort Merceus is a daunting task. Endless enemies are approaching and relentless. Felix and Sylvain are working together cut through the snipers and mages. Ingrid and Ashe are doing their best to handle the pegasi knights. Dedue, Annette, Mercedes, and Flayn makes great combo on cutting through enemy reinforcements while providing healing to everyone. Slowly but sure, you and Dimitri managed to push Death Knight on the corner. But it doesn’t make things less difficult for both of you.

 

“You dare stand between me and my pleasure?”

The beginning of it was barely a bellow that grew steadily to a deafening roar, piercing the air and shaking the ground. Areadbhar crack in deafening clash against Death Knight’s Scythe of Sariel. They raised their weapons, waving them overhead.

 

“Yes. I dare stand against you, Death Knight!!”

 

Dimitri decides to face Death Knight head on as you tried your best to keep his back safe from the Imperial soldiers assaults. Keeping a close eye on him... just in case, following from a few meters back, cover his blind spots that way, look out for any potential danger. You could see them coming around, carefully and quietly trying to find their way to Dimitri.

 

Landing sharp blows, you bring the blade down on the head of another mage. Slashing your way through numerous enemies, you start to feel fatigued. Countless enemies lying dead behind. You looked around, among the sea of red and black, a swordmaster is sneaking his way behind Dimitri, ready to ambush him.

 

But you wouldn’t let it happen!

 

You were fully offensive, rapidly swinging your sword down on the swordmaster. You were able to deflect, parry, and block most of his attacks until his foot swept across your ankles, knocking you hard to the floor. The swordmaster stood above you, ready to press his sword into your chest to end your life. Fatigue made it harder for you to evade his deadly stab completely. Sound of a weapon piercing through flesh filled your ears, followed by an intense pain in your side. He pulled it back out with a triumphant smirk on his face. Despite the searing pain, you made it in time to grab your own weapon and thrust it up to his neck, your arms shaking as you tried to counter the weight of his attack. Grimace crossing your face as he fell, blood painting the earth a sick shade of red.

 

You sat up, wincing at the searing, burning hot pain on your side. The stab wound was way too deep. Your hands trembled, desperately attempting to put pressure on the wound as heavy flow of your blood is trickling through your fingers, colors your skin and clothes. The world had turned blurry, and your body felt weak. Ignoring the excruciating pain, you rush forward to help Dimitri. He has won against the Death Knight. But in his brief reverie, the Tempest King failed to notice two opposing snipers are approaching him, expression intent to kill, aiming their arrows at his back.

 

You acted on instinct, rushing forward, sprinting to intervene. To protect him.

‘We have been through so much together and he’d been through hell and back... I want to ease his pain. Knowing he’s safe... I can be at peace.’

You thought to yourself, launching forward. You barely has energy to stand up, but you tried to muster your last remaining strength to dove in before Dimitri. The arrows managed to easily make it’s way through your armor, landing in your chest and abdomen. ‘I have no regret when it came to protecting Dimitri.’

 

Your body slammed hard on the ground, careening across the battlefield. A sharp cry pained noise escaped you; that was all it took. Dimitri stiffened at the sound. It pulled him from the high of the battlefield down to reality in an instant.

 

“(Y/N)!!!”

 

He turned; filled with horror and rage. The fires blazing around him didn’t give off any heat. The battlefield around him turned black and white. His ears were ringing as if he’d been caught in an explosion. Dimitri went after the snipers and thrust them both at their hearts. After a quick glance to make sure no more surprise attacks happen, he kneels and pulling you into his chest. You looked so small, felt so limp that it sickened him. Broken and battered with littered scars and large wound on your side. Arrows jutting out of your chest, much too close to the heart, and another one lodged deep in your abdomen.

 

Dimitri watched as the blood pooled around you. Blood... there is so much blood. Your blood.

“Goddess... what were you- MERCEDES! FLAYN!! SOMEONE...HELP!!”

 

He pulled himself up, beside you, staring at your face. You were so pale. Oh, Goddess, you were dying. Were you already dead?

“I’m sorry.” There isn’t a reason to apologize, you aren’t sorry, but it still came out like the blood that is on Dimitri’s hands now.

 

“Don’t you dare apologize to me right now,” his voice choked off in his throat feels raw with emotions, barely able to hold back the sob which demands to escape, “not when you are like this. What were you thinking, (Y/N)? You have promised me to not be reckless.” He phrased it in a question, but both know why.

 

“Y-You... haven’t seen the... swordmaster... and those snipers. Y-You...were going to die...if they attack you. I want to protect you.... and I don’t regret my decision.“

 

You opened your mouth to speak but immediately coughed, feeling globs of blood on the corners of your lips. Dimitri gripped your hand, his hold so tight that it hurt, but you wouldn’t waste your breath on telling him. You could barely see Mercedes scurried over to your side as quickly as she could, Flayn follows behind her, leaving the Death Knight behind with tears running down her cheeks.

 

“Please stay awake for me a little longer, please.”

He choked out, pulling you closer if possible as it would keep you from leaving.

 

The chaos around you went mute as your eyes grow heavy. Maybe a quick nap would suffice.

 

“No...no, no, (Y/N)!! You can’t do this to me, you can’t-! Please, (Y/N), I can’t lose you too.....”

 

You felt like you were fading, and the sounds around you faded along with your hazy consciousness. You fell asleep.

---

Every second was filled with anxiety; you’d lost so much blood. The wounds were too deep to heal completely. There was little to no possibility of survival. Not after what you’d been through.

The days turned to one week, then two...then three. The physical wounds had healed, mostly repaired and faded to scars. There was potential for things to return to normal, and you may wake up sooner rather than later.

When you opened your eyes again, you found yourself in a dimly lit room, your upper body covered in bandages. The first thing you’re aware of is a dull throb radiating throughout your entire body. You were confused, and moved your head, unintentionally shifting your body and sending a wave of pain through your chest and stomach as you tried to get up. You closed your eyes tightly in response to the return of extreme pain, much worse than you had ever felt before. With much struggle, you sat on the edge of the bed shakily trying to stand up. The door creaked open and you looked up to find Dimitri peering inside.

 

”You’re awake,” he said, a look of surprise on his face. You tried to stand up and walk to him but failed, Dimitri ran in and caught you before you fell over. “I thought I was going to lose you, (Y/N),” he said, lifting you up effortlessly, settling you gently onto the bed and pulled up a chair. 

 

As cautiously as you could, you managed to sit yourself up. You kept a careful eye on the young king, noting how dark the circles under his eyes have become and how hollow his cheeks have turned. The fact that rest had eluded him for however long you were unconscious was as plain as day.

 

“You nearly died because of me. I have no right to be... you of all people shouldn’t-!” He managed to say, his voice shaking as his fingers trembled.

His head shot up to look at you, cerulean blue eyes dampened by tears that pooled in them. Your eyes were open, though weakly, looking at him and his disturbed state. You sensed his worry, but also his relief as he hovers next to your bed, engulfing you in his embrace and squeezing you against his chest for all he was worth. He was mindful of your wound, but that wasn’t enough to keep him away. No, he needed you. He needed to be beside you, to feel you, to know you were there.

 

“I’m okay, Dimitri...” You whispered, resting a hand on his chest where his heart thundered. You closed your eyes against him, relishing the feel of his tender warmth.

 

You felt how hard and rapid his heart was beating, almost deafening. Your arms wrapped around his heaving back weakly, rubbing it soothingly. He pulled you closer in response—closer, closer, closer, until every inch of you was smothered by him. Hesitant, trembling fingers graced your tightly wound bandages and you felt something warm and wet splatter onto your exposed shoulder.

 

"I could not stand to lose you,” he spoke slowly, holding your hands so tight that it hurts.

“But I fear that I may if I tell you what is on my mind.”

 

His voice was as quiet as it could be and it made you frown your eyebrows in worry. You were happy to see him alive, that was your goal when you decided to protect him from the approaching enemies. However, seeing him so distraught and afraid twisted your insides uncomfortably. The way he held your hand so desperately, afraid to let go.

 

“Dimitri.” You call him quietly, which makes him look at you with those gorgeous eyes of him.

 

You move your hand to his cheeks, caressing his soft skin, trying to bring him even the tiniest amount of comfort. Leaning to give him a soft chaste kiss on his lips. He reciprocated by open-mouthed kiss you with such fervor. There’s an undercurrent of desperation in the way Dimitri kisses you, as if this is the last moment he’ll ever feel it. It’s almost as if it pains him to be this close to you. You were alive, yet he couldn’t help but doubt it. Perhaps it was once again due to the vicious noises he still heard, though faintly. However, he was glad that they allowed him this moment of happiness.

 

“I won’t leave you, Dimitri.” You promised between ragged breath, your chest heaving.

 

“We are so close to ending this. Please, promise me you’ll stay safe. Rest, for now, my beloved.” Leaning down, he pressed a lingering kiss to your forehead, holding your hand to his chest. “I promise, I will never let you be hurt for my sake again.” Covering you with a  blanket  and tucking you into bed to retire for the evening.

---

After your awakening, the Blue Lions and Professor began incorporating regular infirmary visits into their schedule. They showered you with kind, encouraging words and occasionally bore small gifts (flowers and snacks), always encourage you to get better soon. But your most frequent visitor of all was your beloved gentle king.

It was two weeks since you have gotten better. Mercedes promised to take care after your bandages this evening.

“Are you ready, (Y/N)?”

You met Mercedes’ warm gaze with your own. With a firm nod, you replied, “Ready as I’ll ever be, Mercedes.”

 

The healer moved closer to you, her skilled hands undoing the set of bandages for the last time. Dimitri averted his frantic eyes to the wall when the dressing loosened just enough for your breasts to peak through. A cold, unforgiving breeze whipped the newly exposed skin, jolting a shiver down your spine. Mercedes sighed, slowly traced the scars your chest and stomach.

“I’m sorry but we will never be able to remove the scars. The wounds all healed, but... the scars will never go away completely. I’m sorry (Y/N).”

 

Your eyes immediately flashed over to Dimitri’s stiffening frame.

“It’s okay. I will never regret such a thing.” You smiled, tucking a lock of hair behind your ear.

“Do you need anything else, (Y/N)?”

“No, I’m all good, Mercedes! Thank you for your help.”

“All right, then. Annette said that she needs my help with her baking this evening. We have to finish it before midnight! Should you need anything, please feel free to call me.” Mercedes gave you last smile before excusing herself politely from your quarter.

 

“Dimitri.”

His jaw clenched tautly; his eyes crunched into a pain-stricken wince. Refusing to look at your scar, a harsh reminder of his failure.

“Look at me.”

He stilled and won’t budge to look at you.

 

“I will never regret nor blame you for this. It was my decision and if it means saving you, I’ll gladly do it again in a heartbeat. Or... perhaps.... I can understand if you find that my... scars are disgusting, appalling, even....” you whisper softly, almost inaudible. Your surroundings whizzed right past you before you were unceremoniously slammed into your bed.

“DON’T SAY SUCH THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF!!” He growled “I will not allow you to throw your life away for me. If.. If something ever happen to you.. I’ll live a life worse than death itself, (Y/N).”

 

Not a moment later did you feel something warm and soft press against your lips. His mouth moved awkwardly yet full of affection. Hands planted  on either side of your body, ridding any hope of escape from his ravishing kisses. Dimitri pressed his lips further into yours, swallowing your moans. His lips left yours to trail down around your neck, breasts, and stomach lovingly. “This wounds... I cannot lose you again, my beloved.” His body quivered.  The King kissing the scars on your cleavage and abdomen, worshiping them reverently with tender touches, almost like touching a porcelain doll. Afraid to break you with his almost inhuman power. Biting and sucking wherever his heart desired until you were covered in nothing but love bites, leaving you a panting mess.

 

Dimitri held you in his arms, stroking your hair and mumbling whispers of ‘I’m sorry’. Bittersweet smile formed on his lips. He gazed at you, eyes lidded with desires and need, mixed with guilt and love. “(Y/N)... My beloved...” You pulled away slightly to look up at him and smiled.

“Dimitri...” You cupped his cheek in your hand, in which he immediately melted into.

“I love you, Dimitri.”

 

He blushed at your words, then it dawned on his realization. Suddenly becoming very aware of the... intimate position you were in. “Um, w-well...” As he came to his full senses he released his hands from you, as though from fire and stuttered, quickly pulling away from your panting form. He wasn’t making eye contact anymore, and you followed his gaze downwards on your body. Oh. Without the dreamlike stupor a d hazy feeling to distract you, you realized just how naked you are. Nightgown pooled beneath your waist. Feeling an onset of bashfulness, you also brought an arm up to cover as much of your chest as you could; despite what you had just done with him, the reality of the situation was catching up to you.

 

He flinched, breaking eye contact and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Ah—Urghh!!! I’m sorry, (Y/N)!! I don’t know what came over me but.. but... P-Perhaps we should... stop... before it escalates any further...” The King unclasped his furred cloak hurriedly and put it over your naked body unceremoniously, hiding his flushed crimson face in his hands again, absolutely brutalized with shame. 

 

“Er.. Be certain to rest for now. We may have undone some of your healing.” Then he said hurriedly, almost inaudibly. “When your strength returns to its fullest, we can pick up where we left off. I promise.”

 

“Fine...” You giggled, finding his attempt at being serious too adorable. The heat and passion was still very visible in his eyes, and it was obvious that anymore teasing on your end would send him over the edge.

“Thank you for this lovely evening, Dimitri.”

You pulled his hand to your lips and give each of his fingers soft kisses, gazing at him lovingly. Dimitri’s jaw and pants tightened, the poor king desperately clinging onto the last thread of sanity and reason which threatened to snap at any moment.

 

“Good night, my beloved (Y/N).” Casting one last glance at you and bashfully looking down when he caught your eye, the Blue Lions Leader left with a haste that was probably unbecoming of a gentleman, his long legs taking the steps to the second floor dormitory two at a time. He somehow,  somehow  managed to reach his room without incident or interruption, locking his door behind him, leaning back against it and covering his burning red face with his hands. His body felt like it was on fire; nerve endings alight with sensations he had long believed were dead.

 

The pit of his stomach tangled in knots when he thought of (Y/N). All he could think about was your pure unadultered love, beautiful (E/C) that is gazing at him affectionately. Goddess, he was such a sinner. It made him want to put his hands on you. All over you. Repeatedly. Savoring the taste of your lips as you moan into his mouth. Feeling your warmth and love. Unclothed. His mind is running wild. This frantic sensation in his blood, while half-forgotten, was not new. It will be another sleepless night for the poor king. And it’s all because of you.

[ca-8]

Yakko x Reader Scenario: When You First Meet

'This is it. The beginning of the end.' 

Gripping on the straps of her backpack, (Y/n) exited the bus and stared up at the water tower that displayed the famous Warner Bros. logo. As expected, it emitted a smug aura onto the entire area; however, surprisingly, there was a slight twinge of mystery to it as well. But she didn't have time to ponder about it, so she only gave it an uneasy look and headed straight for the entrance.

Her heart stopped. She knew the place was going to be busy, but it was like an entire New York City packed in one section! So many writers, producers, actors, large men carrying heavy sets, every type of person working in film was scattered all over the place. It was like an ocean, with the people as marine life doing what they're designed to do, and (Y/n) being the puppy that was abandoned at sea.

The moment it all settled in, an involuntary realization invaded her thoughts. 'I don't belong here.'

The young girl reminded herself to breathe and rushed over to a vacant wall, then pulled out her phone. She had already sent her mother about a thousand messages telling her she was here, but since she hasn't responded, a few more shouldn't hurt. Fingers rapidly typing away, she bit her lower lip, already wishing she had stayed on that bus. 

"Oh, you're just gonna love it!" Her mother's squealing voice had already filled her skull. "You're so talented, I know you're gonna fit right in."

'Yeah, standing around all day with a bunch of people I don't know while doing something I suck at is exactly how I wanna spend my summer.' She let out a soft sigh. 'It's fine. Just shut up and make her happy, (Y/n).'

Several attempts of calling and texting later, no response. (Y/n) sighed again, and her eyes wandered over to the bustling crowd. 'No way. Absolutely no way.' But if she wanted to get the day over with, absolutely yes way.

First, she walked up to a lady looking down at the clipboard in her hands. "Um, excuse me," (Y/n) said. 

The lady's head snatched up. "KYLE!" she yelled, her eyes now ablaze with fury, "YOU IDIOT! THAT GOES IN THE WAREHOUSE ACROSS THE STUDIO!" And like there was nothing but a breeze behind her, the lady stomped off to the poor soul that had to face her wrath.

The breeze took a step back and ran around the corner. 'Maybe I'll find someone else instead…!' (Y/n) stopped and spotted a man sitting on the steps that lead to the entrance of a small building. She swallowed whatever was left in her mouth and reluctantly approached him. 

"E-Excuse me, sir?" she stuttered, hoping her voice was louder than the last time. As she got closer, (Y/n) noticed he was chuckling, and his gaze was glued onto a small piece of paper. 

"I...I did it…!" he said. She yelped and shrinked back when he suddenly jumped to his feet. "I FINALLY DID IT! WE'LL SEE WHO'S REGRETTING THE DIVORCE NOW, MARGARET!" And with a manic laugh, the man dashed into the building. 

'...Or maybe I'll just find it myself.'

It wasn't too long before (Y/n) got herself lost. Despite the help of maps that were stuck to some of the buildings, all of them seemed exactly the same. It was like a maze, and with each passing minute, she was more and more convinced that there was no finish line. Even worse, her mother was too busy to respond to anything she sent her. 

'Oh, what should I do?' (Y/n) thought for the thousandth time. No matter how hard she pinched or held them, her arms refused to stop trembling. Not too long ago, the outside of the studio became deserted and she'd hate to walk in a warehouse and possibly interrupt something important, so asking for help again was out of the question.

...Or, perhaps it wasn't. 

A tiny, hopeful smile crossed (Y/n)'s face when she heard the sounds of frustrated grunts around the corner. It was the first time she was so relieved to see a stranger. 

And thank god that stranger was a security guard. Though she wondered why he had a giant net in his hand, she shoved the curiosity as far in the back of her mind as she could and reached up to gently tap his shoulder. 

"Um, excuse me sir?" she asked as loud as she could. 

His head whipped around, revealing angry eyes and a scowl that said he was ready to kill. But right as his gaze landed on her, it changed within an instant. 

"Oh, hello!" he said with a bright smile. 

(Y/n) blinked, cocking her head. ‘What was this guy up to?’

"I'm sorry to bother you, but do you know where (M/n) (L/n) is filming? I'm her daughter, (Y/n), and I'm trying to look for her. She's not answering her phone either."

His joyful expression slowly melted into a confused one. "Uuhhh…(M/n) (L/n)?”

“Yes. She’s a part of Animal Kingdom? Do you know where that’s being filmed?”

“Oh! I know there’s a zoo around here called Animal Kingdom! I don’t think you’ll find it in a film studio, though.”

(Y/n) frowned. “...No, I mean the show. Aren’t they filming in a warehouse today? Do you know where that is?”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

Her eye twitched, and she was just about ready to drown the entire studio in the nearest ocean. “N-Nevermind, I’ll just-”

As if the universe wasn’t satisfied with tormenting her enough, the security guard suddenly launched up into the air and flew into the sky. Right before her eyes, the heavens were coated with explosives of every color that ever existed. 

“Oh my god!” (Y/n) yelled. ‘Who strapped fireworks on that guy?!’

“Oh, I knew you’d love it!”

Her eyes were ripped from the loud fireworks show as she was immediately smothered in a hug. “It’s so nice that another girl’s here! All the other ones here are either too busy or just keep shouting about a restraining order for some reason. I dunno, but anyway, I just know you're gonna love it here! Anyway, my name’s Princess Angelina Louisa Cantessa Francesca Banana Fanna Bo Besca the third! But since we're friends now, you can just call me Dot.”

This confirmed it. This was a trap set up by her mother to deliberately drive her insane, because how else can someone explain the nut jobs and talking dogs in pink dresses? 

A combination of those two things happened to be clutching her head and digging her face into hers. “...Huh?” (Y/n) mumbled.

‘Dot’ jumped off of her and smiled widely. “Sorry about Ralph by the way. I figured out you were coming at the last second and I really needed someone for your welcoming gift.” she said.

(Y/n) glanced up at the sky where the fireworks were slowly dying down. “Um...Is he gonna be okay?” she asked.  

“Of course he will!” her backpack said.

The teen screamed and threw her bag on the ground. A hand popped out and unzipped it with impossible ease, then a taller boy version of Dot jumped out, pulling up his long brown pants and flashing a grin. 

“H-...H-H-How did you…?!” (Y/n) stuttered, pointing at him. 

“What? Never heard of cartoon logic?” he said, approaching her. “And Ralph’ll be fine. His skull’s so thick, concrete’s the last thing that can kill him.”

“What-?”

“Anyhow,” he walked over to Dot and put an arm over her shoulder, “The name’s Yakko, this here’s my beloved baby sister Dot, and this is-” He stopped, staring at the empty space to his left. He leaned into Dot, whispering, “Say, uh, you don't mind looking for Wakko, do ya sis?”

Dot glanced at (Y/n) for an uncomfortable moment and suddenly shot her brother a glare. "I've got eyes all over this studio, Yakko," she warned, slowly stepping away.

Now (Y/n) certainly knew she didn't see pairs of eyes appear around every inch of her sight. 'Oh god, I didn't breath in drugs on the way here, did I? Actually, that would explain whatever the heck's going on.'

Yakko smiled as he watched his sister leave and turned to (Y/n). He walked closer to her, and she realized that his half-lidded eyes had a strange glint in them. “Sooo, your name’s (Y/n), right? A pretty name for a pretty girl.”

(Y/n)’s face heated up. ‘First I get lost, then see a guy get blown up, and now some other guy’s flirting with me? ...To be honest, this is still better than what Mom had planned for today.’

“So what brings ya’ here?” he asked.

“O-Oh, well, my Mom was supposed to give me a tour of the studio, but I’ve been giving that to myself all day. I tried finding her, but I’m pretty sure I’m nowhere near it by now.” Her eyes wandered over to the ground, but a realization made them perk back up and over to Yakko. “Hey, do you happen to know this place by any chance?”

“Know it? Please, my sibs and I live here, we know this place by heart and soul!” He mumbled something else, along the lines of “Basically made our hearts and souls”. 

Her heart jumped; finally, a piece of good news. “Really?” she said, a smile spreading across her face.

He nodded. “So where do ya’ need to go?” Before she could answer, he pulled out a piece of folded paper and moved in so close, their shoulders were smooshed together. Yakko unfolded it, and it turned out to be the biggest map (Y/n) has ever seen. “Well, from here, you’re gonna need to take a right and continue straight until you get to the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts exhibit. But be careful, I heard some of them escaped, and if anyone asks if you’ve seen any of them, don’t tell them I gave one to Dot as a late birthday gift. Anyway, you take a left from there, then a right where you’ll see the lot where they used to shoot Game of Thrones. Now this is only a rumour I’ve heard, but I think some of the producers are still on that set. If you happen to see them, do not, I repeat, DO NOT mention season eight, or maybe just don’t mention the show at all. Actually, don’t even look at them. As a matter of fact, you probably shouldn’t even go there at all, just keep heading straight until you get to the D.C. Universe lot. Then you just take left there, then a sharp right over over, then you keep going straight until you get to here, turn up over there, turn right there, and then you’re there. Did ya’ follow all that?”

(Y/n) stared at his face, which was practically radiating with enthusiasm, and she felt her eye twitch again. “...No,” she said, shaking her head.

His smile dimmed, but it became just as bright as the sun again a split-second later. “Ah well, maps are gettin' old anyways,” he said, throwing the map over his shoulder. “WAKKO!!”

And, low and behold, another anthropomorphic dog popped out of nowhere, and (Y/n) was starting to question if there was an army of them hidden somewhere. But she had to admit, it was pretty cute how this one was dressed in an oversized blue sweater and red hat. 

“Tablet, please,” Yakko said politely, holding out his hand. 

‘You're not gonna walk me there-?'

Wakko suddenly held his head back with his cheeks puffed out, then leaned into Yakko’s hand as he forced out a small object from his mouth. After an incredibly uneasy moment, a tablet glazed in spit was in Yakko's grasp. While he praised the little guy, (Y/n) forced back the urge to vomit.

“E-Ehhhh…?” She couldn’t say anything else while her gaze frantically went back and forth from Wakko and the regurgitated tablet. 

“Oh! Where are my manners?” Yakko said. “(Y/n), this is my dear little brother, Wakko. Wakko, this here’s our new special friend, (Y/n).” 

“Hello!” Wakko greeted, who was suddenly in her arms. “You’re really pretty!”

“Ehh? Thank you? I guess??” she said apprehensively, and finally managed to make eye contact. Despite his...quirks, he's actually a little adorable... She let herself grin a little.

The moment of semi-peace was ruined when she took notice of Yakko’s narrowed eyes. “ALrighty, (Y/n)!” he said loudly, grabbing his little brother by the collar and gently setting him on the ground. “Animal Kingdom, right? Let’s get ya’ right over there.” He moved right beside her and taped the screen a couple times. 

“Um, what’re you doing exactly?” she asked.

“Doing what every person does to get somewhere nowadays.” He grabbed her waist and pulled her against him, and (Y/n) flinched from his touch. “Please keep your arms, legs, and personal items inside the tablet at all times.”

Just when she was about to question him for the hundredth time, he pressed the screen again, and her vision became nothing but white. Her body felt like it was launched into a tornado; a strong force of wind thrusted her back, and somehow, the boy’s arm kept her from flying off from his side. A second later, her feet were back on the ground, the sky was where it needed to be, and reality was back in place. 

Except for (Y/n)’s mentality. 

She stumbled around, trying to find her balance as the world unbearably whirled around her. Finally, she shook her head, and quickly turned back towards Yakko, whose face tried to tell her whatever happened was perfectly fine and normal. 

“What was THAT?” she yelled, staggering towards him and gripping his shoulders.

And he still had the audacity to have that 'why-are-you-freaking-out-so-much-we-do-this-every-Friday' smile. “Thank you for attending Warner’s Travel Tours! I would say my Agent Ralph’ll take your bags, but I left him alone with my sibs, so he’s probably in the middle of the Pacific Ocean by now.”

(Y/n) could only stare at him. Her mind was twisting and turning, trying so hard to make any sense of what happened but only making her headache grow larger and larger. And then, her thoughts just went blank.

She smirked. Then giggled. And a few seconds later, she had burst out laughing whilst holding her stomach. (Y/n) looked back up at Yakko, wiping a tear from her eye. “Th-Thank you…” she said, catching her breath. 

His smile had grown and she thought his white cheeks were red for a moment. Yakko had opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was cut off by a net suddenly covering his entire body. Ralph was behind him, his skin and clothes burnt and ears practically smoking. “You’re coming with me, Warner!” he said.

And yet, Yakko only grinned. Like physics was his enemy, he disappeared from inside the net and appeared sprouting from the security guard’s back, cheerfully waving at (Y/n). “I’ll see ya’ around, yeah?” he said, then ran around the corner with Ralph sprinting right after him.

(Y/n) giggled and reached for the straps around her back. But when she only felt the (f/c) fabric of her shirt, her smile dropped, and a deep sigh escaped her lips. “Great…” she whispered.

“(Y/N)!” 

She gasped as a pair of arms squeezed the life out of her. Her mother spun her around to face her gleaming smile, which was immediately replaced by an apologetic frown. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get your texts! That scene took forever, but I’m glad you found your way here! You’re so smart! Anyway, I know we don’t get as much time now, but there’s still so much we’ll be able to see!...”

She rambled on and on and on and on. Her daughter’s shoulders slumped and she followed her to where she wanted her to go, but the frown on her face didn’t last long when she remembered the fun she had just a few seconds ago. ‘Maybe this summer won’t be that bad.’

[falcor-thee-luck-dragon]

Forgive, But First Fun - Nandor x f(vampire) reader

Summary: After getting left behind to fight off a pack of werewolves on your own, now mad at Nandor, you and Nadja have decided a little night out couldn’t hurt.

Warning: slight angst, fluff, fun times, and a tiny smut mention

Masterlist

Trudging angrily through the manors wooden doors, face stern and almost scary enough to put the fear of God into anyone. Your boots stomp into the large opening and onto the wooden floor boards as Gullimero, Nandor, and the documentary crew follow you in.

Your cloak is ripped and dirty as it lays in a pathetic black heap of cloth in Gullimero’s arms, your hair not looking any better, not to mention your face and arms that have various cuts paired with grass smudge marks adoring your skin. All in all you look like a hot mess.

“What the fuck happened to you lot? You’ve been gone all night.” Questions Laszlo as he walks into view from out of one of the hallways, his eyes scanning over a perfectly clean and handsome Nandor, then over to the dirty crew and disheveled Guillermo who’s got some leaves stuck to his hair.

“I don’t know.” You snap sarcastically, “How about you ask Mr. Dodgy-shit-stick over there.” Referring to Nandor who’s looking anywhere but you, keeping as silent as ever.

Gullimero looks between you and Nandor, then back at a confused Laszlo. “Oh, um they’re not speaking to each other right now.”

“And why the fuck not?”

Guillermo sighs before leaning towards Laszlo, “Nandor wanted to graffiti where the werewolves live and Y/N said he’d get caught and then Nandor said no I won’t and then he did.”

Laszlo raises a curious brow, “That’s it?”

“Oh, um....” Guillermo awkwardly scratches the back of his neck, suddenly pulling off a green leaf, “then they chased us to the park and when the pack closed in on us Nandor turned into a bat and left us behind so Y/N had to fight one of them off so we could escape and now we’re here.”

“Well that sounds rather exciting.”

“Not at the time.” Whispers Guillermo to no one in particular as he glances over at the camera.

“Huh,” Mutters Laszlo thoughtfully, scratching his beard as he thinks of how to help this situation, “well if you two dingbats aren’t talking to one another I believe Nadja needs you Y/N. Something about....well actually I’m not entirely sure.”

Perking up ever so slightly at this positive news, you cross your arms over your chest defiantly, “Well since someone does, I’ll be going then.” You grumble with a low growl at your Nandor who’s refusing to make eye contact while he stares frustrated at the floor.

Nodding in acknowledgment, Laszlo watches you stomp angrily up the steps before turning his head over to Nandor who’s now watching you leave with big sad eyes.

“Alright why’d you do it?” Interrogates Laszlo with a raised brow.

“Do whaaat?” Replies Nandor defensively, his once high and mighty aurora reappearing in an instant.

Rolling his eyes, Laszlo sets a hand on his hip sassily, “Well I sure as hell don’t want an angry Y/N wandering around this old place for the next however the fuck it takes you both to make up....in however fashion that may be. So I ask again, why’d you puss out and flee like a mangy opossum?”

Pursing his lips together in apprehensive embarrassment, Nandor mutters to himself before finally crossing his arms over his broad chest and sighing, “Because......I....I don’t know I panicked!” Exclaims the large vampire, causing Laszlo to start laughing. “Why are you laughing?”

Wiping a fake tear from his eye, Laszlo lets out a few more chuckles before finally composing himself, “My good man that is the second saddest thing I’ve ever heard. The first being when one of my many victims offered me one of their rare and exclusive Poki-muns card which I still have no idea what the fuck they were on about. Anyways, doesn’t matter, all I’ll tell is that you better make it up to her.”

“But she’s scary when she’s angryyy.” Whines Nandor with a frown.

“That’s all women my young pup, but since your lovely lady is a vampire she’s more dangerous.” He says while giving Nandor a kind pat on the back, “So uh, stay safe out there.” Adds Laszlo before turning and walking down the hallway leaving Nandor with his thoughts, Gullimero, and the documentary’s camera crew.

“What are you all looking at!” Snaps Nandor to the rest of the room.

——

“Oh my goodnessess that’s awful, my poor dark angel.” Soothes Nadja as you take a moment from your long and needed rant about the adventures in the park and Nandor’s cowardly stupidity. “That big hairy rhino doesn’t deserve you Y/N.” She reasons honestly, doing her best to make you feel better, knowing all to well the level of competent decision making skills of the other two vampires in the house.

“I know.” You mutter in agreement, your body tense and agitated as you pace back and forth in front of her as she sits in a chair, “Fucking beautiful idiot prick horse-fart of a husband. Urgghhh!” You proclaim loudly while throwing your hands into the air angrily, causing the furniture in the room to screech backwards across the old flooring at your outburst of vampiric energy. Nadja’s long obsidian hair blowing backwards as you do so while she keeps seated, unflinching.

Face softening, she gives you a sympathetic smile, “Oh my lovely fierce lioness, I know exactly what will make that sad little frown turn into a happy one.” Beams Nadja with an excited clap of her hands.

Hugging your sides, you let out a frustrated huff before giving your old friend a shrug, “What do you have in mind?”

——

“So we’re at the carnival!” Claps Nadja in delight as she smiles at the camera, “This will hopefully relieve Y/N’s pent up angers and keep her mind off of Nandor.....for now.” She adds a bit uncertainly.

“HA HA take that fuckers!” You shout joyfully from behind her, the camera panning over to you at the ball toss where you’ve been knocking down plastic bottles with a rubber ball. The stall owner cowering in the corner as he shields himself with a stuffed zebra.

The camera focuses back on Nadja, “I think it’s going really well so far.” She confirms with a convincing grin. “Relieving all that..uh....rage.” 

After winning a stuffed snake taller then you and deciding to wear it as a strange fashionable scarf, you and Nadja are wandering the carnivals streets while people watching to pass the time.

“So that’s why I never walk on the roof after 3am when I’ve had homeless man’s blood.” Rambles Nadja as your thoughts about Nandor come trickling down into your brain and nose. Huh, strange, must be cause you’re still wearing a thin red scarf of his.

No, stop thinking about him.

“Good lesson learned then,” You add with the flash of a smile before nudging her shoulder gently, “hey you wanna watch me win you something cool?”

Perking up in an instant, Nadja smiles a devilish fangy grin as she stops to eye up the multiple game stalls, “Why I would be delighted my dear Y/N, how about....um, oooh I want that giant tropical fishy with the long whiskers over there.” Points Nadja as your eyes travel over to the game stall with the large prizes.

It’s a game that requires the individual to shoot an arrow directly on three different sized bullseye’s stationed at various heights. Smiling like an idiot, you nudge your vampiric acquaintance in agreement, the both of you quickly swaggering over to the carnival game and it’s plush flashy prizes just screaming to be won.

“Hello good sir, my skilled roommate Y/N here is going to win me that fish.” Beams Nadja proudly as the teenager jumps off his chair to greet the two of you.

He smells like weed but surprisingly looks decent all things considered, “Uh yeah alright, two bucks for three arrows, hit every target directly on the middle red mark and if you make it on the bonus poster on the far back wall then you’ll have a chance to win that fish, good luck.” Mumbles the kid unenthusiastically as you slide him the cash.

Picking up the shitty yet still functional carnival bow, you give Nadja a wink before fitting an arrow in the nock and pulling back, lining up the shot and releasing directly into the first target to the left. Smirking to yourself you quickly draw again, hitting your second mark just as intended. Pays to be a skilled archer huh.

“Damn that’s pretty good aim.” Nods the teen as he watches in awe as you fit another arrow, releasing and punching a hole in the middle of the third target.

Nadja claps in excitement from behind you, “Yes! Win me that colorful fat bitch my feisty lioness!”

Standing like a warrior ready for battle with your bow in hand and wind blowing in your face, the kid almost drops the arrow he hands you for the winning shot as he practically swoons.

“Get those scissors ready, that fish is mine.” You growl in determination while picturing Nandor’s head as the final target, drawing back, you let the arrow fly straight into the bonus target. Winning Nadja her giant fish plushy.

“Yessss!” Shouts Nadja in delight as you drop the bow onto the table like a bad bitch before eyeing up the kid with a raised brow, “We’ll be taking the fish now.”

Wide eyed he almost falls off his chair, “Wait um, that’s the last one...I didn’t think, uh, my boss doesn’t want me to give away those ones.” He stutters out.

“What!” Snaps Nadja, “Then why are they just hanging there? You lied to us you little shit!”

“I’m sorry.” He pleads apologetically, “That’s what my boss told me. And no one ever wins the big prizes anyway so I didn’t think...”

“Well your boss he can eat a big horse turd cause I’m taking that fish.” You growl before jumping up and unhooking the fish from its perch above your heads, handing it to a practically glowing with joy Nadja who immediately hugs the thing.

Sticking your tongue out at the teen, you and Nadja turn to leave before a boney hand is suddenly on your shoulder, twisting around in an agitated instant, your face is mere inches from the wide eyed boy as he attempts to look even a tad bit threatening.

“No.” Is the only thing that slips from your tongue before your hand shoves him back, his whole body going air bound into the back of the carnival tent while the kid lets out a panicked scream.

“Ooooh Y/N that was very sexy of you.” Smirks Nadja while wiggling her dark brows, “Too bad a certain cowardly lion wasn’t here to see it.”

Petting the stuffed toy snake around your neck absentmindedly, you smile back a fangy grin, “Yes. Too bad.”

Continuing on your late night stroll through the carnival you both pass by random strangers, families, elders, children, and lovers all minding their sweet business completely unawares to the dark supernatural world walking right past them.

Although you’re quite enjoying this time spent with your best friend in the whole wide world, a low dull feeling of emptiness can’t help but creep into your undead being the more you catch sight of new and old couples walking together.

Sensing your growing sadness, Nadja nudges your shoulder playfully to gain your distracted attention, “Hello in there my black rose, what is on your mind?”

Holding the snake close to your body, a small smile creeps its way onto your face knowing she’s looking out for you, though it’s gone soon enough, “Oh you know....uh....blood.” You mutter unenthusiastically, trying to keep your thoughts away from Nandor and how much you miss him right now.

“Blood is it? But we just fed before attending the carnival.” Inquires Nadja in confusion as she keeps a normal pace at your side while the two of you follow the sidewalk past various shops and restaurants. “What is actually plaguing your mind my dear one?” She wonders with a frown, not keen on seeing you upset and in a grey mood.

Biting your lip anxiously, though not hard enough to draw blood, you walk past a couple more people before your eyes catch the sight of a small black bat disappearing behind a corner building just up ahead.

Squinting your eyes, your nose suddenly catches the scent of someone very familiar, “Nandor?”

Turning her head to face you, Nadja’s brows furrow in puzzlement, “What? No my sweet hurricane, forget that mangy old bear he’s not important right now.” Urges Nadja as she looks forward, suddenly surprised to catch a glimpse of someone who looks a lot like Guillermo racing behind the same corner you saw the bat fly behind. “Okay um what the fuck? Did you see that too?”

Glancing at Nadja you nod before quickening your steps as she does the same, her skirts flowing as she tries to catch up with you, though you’re much faster and with lack of annoying dress material, “Wait! You’re too fast.” Yelps Nadja.

Ignoring her protests you book it down the sidewalk like a maniac, almost running into a jogger before skidding round the corner of the brick building and coming face to face with a wide eyed Guillermo who gasps in surprise. Nudging him to the side, your eyes immediately fall upon the nervous fangy grin of your Nandor.

He gives you a shy little wave before shuffling awkwardly in place, awaiting your rampage of verbal and possibly physical assault that he’s certain is in the near future.

Taking a deep breath, you cross your arms over your chest defensively, “Were you following me?”

“Um, well.....I might have been....but only to make sure you were okay.” Mutters Nandor honestly, eyes shifting from you to the ground nervously as he awaits your wrath.

Pursing your lips together in thought, you shake your head before taking off the stuffed toy snake and holding it firmly in your hands. With a low growl do you grasp the snake in your right hand and hold it back like you might swing at any moment.

“You’re a fucking nincompoop you know that right?” Slips from your mouth without an once of anger lacing your words, instead do you hand the snake to Gullimero as Nandor watches in puzzled fear.

Taking a swift step forward, you point a finger into his strong chest while looking sternly up at him, “Racing off and leaving me too fight that angry bitch all by myself, and now following me when I needed a break from you! Nandor....... you’re something else.” You add with a shake of your head.

“Yes I know, and I’m sorry my love.” Smiles Nandor with saddened eyes, “I promise to keep you save from now on and fight off any werewolf who tries to hurt you....even if I am scared.”

Taking a step back, you can’t help the smirk that forms onto your face at his sweet words of forgiveness and sincerity. You know how much he fears werewolves and that he fled the scene thinking you were planning on following too, not realizing that you might actually give a shit about Gullimero’s and the crew’s lives.

“Oh my dear puff dragon,” You declare softly with a small smile, reaching both hands out to grasp his own, “I forgive you.”

Nandor’s face breaks out into the biggest and happiest grin you’ve seen since his last birthday when he walked into your shared crypt only to find you naked and holding a bushel of red roses while seated seductively on his coffin.

“Oh that’s fantastic because I was really missing you.” Reveals Nandor with a gentle squeeze of your hands. “Laszlo and Guillermo can’t make me laugh nearly as much as you can, they’re honestly rather boring.” He says before leaning in closer to whisper, “and not very attractive to look at either.” Causing you to crack another grin and your undead heart to fill with butterflies. 

Chuckling you reach up with one hand to pull his collar closer to you and a second later do your lips clash sweetly against one another in a heated moment of passion. He smiles into the kiss before moving to pull you in closer with both of his hands, one slipping low to cheekily pinch your round bottom.

Feeling him against you once again has to be the best sensation in the whole entirety of the world even if you’ve only been separated for a couple of hours. You absolutely love the way his fingers dig into your back and bum with an animalistic eagerness that’s slowly starting to drive you insane. Oh, the things he does to you.

Especially how his tongue slips into your mouth with ease while you tug at his hair long dark locks. “Y/N!” Suddenly shouts Nadja.

“Nandor!”

Begrudgingly pulling away, you turn around to face the confused lady vampire while Nandor hugs you from behind, happily smirking at her, knowing she can’t do anything to hurt him now. “Yes Nadja.” You answer.

With the fish plushy hung over her shoulder, her brows furrow in confusion, “What the fuck are you doing? I thought you were mad at him?”

“Yeah well, I was starting to really miss him and also I’m kind of horny now so.” You reply with a shrug as Nandor hugs you tighter, resting his bearded chin against your head while Nadja huffs in defeat.

“Alright. See you at home then.” Adds Nadja before turning towards Guillermo and shoving the giant carnival fish into his arms, “Hold this Gizmo I’m going home.” Then just like that she’s gone in a black wispy poof, flying away in bat form towards the vampire resistance on Staten Island.

“Okay then.” Mutters Gullimero as he looks up at the dark sky.

Feeling a wet kiss on the side of your face and neck you smile before turning around to face your dear husband, “Shall we take flight to seek out our bed chambers?” You speak slyly in a soft yet seductive voice.

“Yes.” Grins Nandor with a flash of lust and excitement before turning his attention over to Guillermo, “Hey Guillermo I’m leaving to make passionate love to my wife so don’t bother us or I will have a rat shit in your pillowcase. Okay?”

You giggle to yourself as Gullimero’s cheeks redden while he side eyes the camera, “Understood master. Have fun.” Squeaks out the loyal familiar as he stands there awkwardly with his hands full of two carnival prizes.

Nandor sneakily squeezes your bottom once more as he gives Gullimero a knowing smirk, “Oh, we will.” Then a second later you two are flying high above the city in bat form, ready to make love to your sweet Nandor for probably the twentieth time that week.

Down below the camera pans over to Gullimero as he blinks, “Well uh, I have these things now..” He says, holding up the fish, “and I am so not looking forward to cleaning up their mess.......again.”

[seacottons]

sir kiss me ; — c. san x reader

pairing: choi san x reader

wc: 4.7k

synopsis: if only you knew how much of a monster your soulmate was, you would've never went out of your way to look for him.

notes: circus!au, soulmate!au, magician!san, supernatural beings, violence, drugging, kidnapping, brief unconsented touching.

Nobody knows why or how, but everyone is born with an intangible red string tied around one of their fingers. It's said that the string is connected to one's heart, a figurative extension of the aorta. No one can see any other thread but their own.

It stretches for a few yards and suddenly cuts off, fading away into nothingness.

On the other end of every string is a person's soulmate, and only when the two meet, the other half of the red thread becomes visible.

The red string symbolizes the unification of two intertwined destinies; it is a force so powerful that no one can comprehend the mechanisms of it.

 Every one in this world will meet their soulmate eventually, and when they do, their string becomes as taut as guitar strings, and they have a longing tug in their hearts towards their partner.

You've noticed lately that your red string doesn't dangle in the air as much as it used to before, nor does it pool into a mess when you sit idle. It's become a bit stiff, and you have no idea why. 

You've been living alone in this fairly large town for years, and never has your string come this close to being taut and rigid. 

Not much has changed. Life took its usual mundane path.

The wind undressed all the trees of their gold and red leaves. Wagons in the town's markets were filled with heavy goards and pumpkins, and the scent of fresh bread and roasting chestnuts continued to fill the air.

For that reason, you had a small assumption that maybe it had to do with the sudden, traveling circus appearing in town. Their steam train was parked behind the eastern part of town, the colorful logo of Circus Wonderland standing out amongst the earthy terrain. Advertisements were plastered onto the town's stucco buildings, and no one could miss the the immensely large chapiteau the workers have been setting up for days now. 

You were quick to snag a pass, knowing they'd run out quick with how much the townsfolk craved amusement and entertainment. The opening night was flocked with a large and impressive crowd, but thankfully, you arrived in time to have a seat right up front. 

With the influx of people around and lack of breeze, you felt yourself heating up quite uncomfortably. A whisper of autumn's breeze danced your way with every flap of the tent's curtains as new spectators walked in.

Swallowing nervously, you peered down to your lap, gaze trained on the taut, red string tied around your finger. Your instincts had been right after all. A sudden feeling of uneasiness washed over you.

You hadn't mentally prepared yourself to meet your soulmate. What will you tell them? Will they like you? What if they end up not wanting to be with you? What if you end up not even finding your soulmate in the first place?

A round of applause and cheers filling the arena ripped you from your thoughts. You perked up to see a young ringmaster welcoming the crowd with a charming smile and sweet words, a few strands of blue hair framing his face. 

His voice blared over the microphone in his hand, introducing himself and announcing the next few acts to come, the very first being equestrian demonstrations.

A wave of gasps rushed from the spectators as a sudden herd of horses rushed in from the back of large big top, their braided and bejeweled manes bouncing in the process. Colorful headdresses, bridles, and feather plumes adorned each horse as they all trotted in a uniformed circle around the ring curb with such precision, it left everyone in awe. 

The equestrian master, Mingi- if you recalled the ringmaster's words, stepped onto the center of the ring, beaming quite proudly at all of the horses who bowed their heads to the crowds. He tipped his leather hat at the band in the back to signal the start of his performance, and the dozens of horses instantly snapped into motion. Some galloped with the beat of the drums, while others performed tricks and posed for the starstruck spectators.

The performance came to an end too quickly for your liking, and you subconsciously found yourself clapping enthusiastically at the bowing master and his horses, your jaw slack with wonder and amusement.

Uniformists rushed out to clear the ring of the props and prepare for the next act. You quite enjoyed the ringmaster's charming ways of exciting the crowd. Despite his small stature and pretty face, you can practically feel the waves of authority he exuded. One sharp look to the band and they cease their music instantly. One snap of his fingers and the uniformists quicken their pace even more so.

The circus was filled with amazing entertainers and performers. Clowns and elephants were a light-hearted, comedic act, but the ventriloquests, jugglers, escape artists, and contortionists were just as entertaining. A few performers that stood out were the death-defying, trio acrobats who went by the name YunWooSang. 

The white safety netting proved useless as the three seemed to fly in the air as they jumped excitedly onto the trampolines and swung from trapeze to trapeze. One of them even daringly made it across the tightrope whilst blindfolded. 

The red haired man with inhumane strength was also one of the highlights of the show. Metal, wood, and cement bent to his will and strength. For comedic relief, the ringmaster gave the unamused man a sack of freshly waxed apples, whispering in his ear and gesturing to the crowd. The other merely rolled his eyes and nodded, turning his attention to the red fruit. The crowd cheered as the ringmaster bought the microphone to the man's stoic face as he belted out graceful notes, all the while snapping the defenseless fruit in half and throwing the pieces into the frenzied audience.

The tall, black haired tiger tamer bowed to the applauding crowd before exiting the arena after others quickly moved the three large felines to the back. The crowd grew deafly silent as the white suit-tailed ringmaster made his way towards the illuminated center. With just a shot of his hand in the air, the music ceased abruptly. Even through the dark, you can make out the uniformists rushing to settle new props around the ring's perimeter.

"Did you all enjoy Seonghwa's act?" He threw a smirk to the restless crowd, shaking his head in amusement at the wave of enthusiastic cries, "Alright, then. We saved our best and biggest act for last," a roaring drum roll suddenly erupted from the band in the back, and the lights dimmed considerably, "For the grand finale tonight, ladies and gentlemen- please give a warm welcome to our very own illusionist and magician, San!"

Within an instant, after the lights above illuminated the entire arena, your breath caught into your throat. The deafening applause now suddenly seemed miles away and underwater, your own heartbeat dominating every audible sound around you. 

The past performances were so entertaining, that you completely forgot about the initial reason you came here in the first place. 

Raising your hand up ever so slightly, your eyes trained onto the taut string tied to your finger. It had become as stiff as a guitar's and no longer sagged like power lines. Your eyes roamed from past the metal bars, onto the arena, and finally stopping to the man in all red attire standing proudly in the center ring. He raised his hand in greeting, the string between the two of your forms rising with every movement of his hands. Behind him stood several of his assistants.

You suddenly shrunk into your seat, stuffing your hand into your coat's pockets and holding your breath. You couldn't even decipher the words escaping his mouth, the gears in your mind suddenly reeling to a halt. All you knew was that he had the smoothest voice you've ever heard, and your stomach flipped just as much as the acrobats did.

If he noticed the completed string stretching into the crowd, he didn't show it, instead going on with the show. He performed several jaw-dropping acts with the help of his assistants. 

You were too mesmerized by the acts that you failed to notice the magician's red eyes lingering on your form.

The crowd laughed light-heartedly when the magician gave one spectator a scare with one of his tricks. He smiled and tipped his head down apologetically.

"For the next act, I'd like to have one of the spectators come down and volunteer," San's rich voice boomed within the arena. Several hands shot out in excitement, the majority wanting to jump at the opportunity to witness the illusionist's tricks first hand. 

San's eyes flickered onto numerous spectators, before his traveling eyes stop at your form. Your heart rate spikes instantly, breath ceasing in your throat at the smile he shoots you. A red gloved hand reaches out to point at you, and you notice it's the same finger with your string tied onto it. The excited shouts slowly come to a dying halt, and San waits patiently for the crowd to cease their talking.

"You," he drawls out, making you sink a little further in your seat. Was it possible he was pointing to the person behind you?

"The one with the red string," his words only affirmed your suspicions, "Please come down here."

The people shuffle in their seats, hushed murmurs traveling like waves within the crowd. Many wide eyes ogle at your form, while a few people from the crowd congratulated you in regards to your completed red string. 

You gulped thickly, quickly shaking your head at the magician, who in turn rolled his eyes at your meek reaction. With a snap of his fingers, you're engulfed in a puff of smoke before finding yourself standing in front of him in the center arena. Your stomach lurched at the sudden change of gravity, knees wobbling and arms desperately reaching out to grab at the man's velvet coat to stop yourself from falling. You swallowed down the sensation of wanting to vomit your innards and took a deep breath before the magician helped stabilize your form upright with a light-hearted laugh, "I apologize for that, my dear."

"How did you do that?" you ask weakly. He gives you a look of amusement.

"A magician never reveals his secrets," he murmurs as he gazes down at you speculatively, brow quirking up as he takes ahold of your hand, where the string barely stretched an inch between the two of you now. He was so much more handsome up close. You felt the tips of your ears warm at the sudden realization of the close proximity between your frames. A feeling of self-consciousness washed over you, and you could only wish such a moment like this occurred without hundreds of eyes watching you, "If I had known I were to meet my soulmate today, I would've put on a much better show for you."

He spoke into his microphone headpiece, voice echoing within the arena. You hadn't noticed the way the ringmaster's gaze darkened from the back of the arena, eyes suddenly watching your form quizzically. A few heads popped from the back curtain, and hasty whispers were exchanged between the other performers and the ringmaster. The scattered applause around you startled you, and you smiled in embarrassment at the magician, who in return brushed a strand of your hair behind your ear, "Your name, beautiful?"

"Y/n," you shoot him a small smile, eyeing the red and black triangles painted onto his eyelids.

He grips your wrist, pulling your arm upwards before announcing to the crowd that you'll be a part of the final act of the show. He maneuvers the microphone from his face to lean down and whisper into your ear, "How well do you do with heights?"

You drew in a fortifying breath in an attempt to calm your erratic heartbeat, "Not so well, actu-"

He brings a cup to your lips, and you wonder where on earth he had managed to obtain it seemingly out of the blue, "Here. This'll help with the nausea in case." You eye the liquid contents warily, and he notices with a simple quirk of his brow, "Don't worry. It's just some of our liquid magic. A befitting name, right? Nothing harmful."

You down the liquid and wince at the burning sensation in your throat, and you assume that it's only some type of alcohol. You listen intently to the magician's instructions, eyes trained onto his red eyes that shined like rubies. You feel his breath ghost your face as he points up towards the thin tightrope up above. You hardly concentrate on his words, too preoccupied with dazing at his chiseled face. He was absolutely breathtaking with wide shoulders and black tresses framing his face.

"Is there a word I can say if things get too overwhelming?" 

He casts you a look of amusement, lips quirking up, "A word?"

He gives it some thought, before snapping his fingers, "I've got it. Three words actually. Say them anytime, and I'll stop the act," a glint of mischief flashes within his eyes as he faintly brushes the pad of his thumb across your lower lip, "The magic words are: Sir Kiss Me."

You want to smile at the play on words, but your nerve-wrecking thoughts left no room for humor.

He gives a simple nod to the band and they begin playing.

 Two of the three acrobats suddenly joined the two of you, the men running into the arena with nothing but tight fitting trapeze pants, their broad shoulders and chiseled muscles on full display. One of them eyes your form up and down with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"San, you're one lucky bastard if that's your soulmate," the raven haired male shoots you a flirtatious wink, ignoring the daggers the other shot at him.

"Shut up and get to it, Woo," San ushered one of the acrobats to begin performing their previous act. The black haired trapeze artist ran a hand through his long, inky locks, throwing the magician a mischievous grin. While jumping from the trampoline up to the trapeze, the sound of a loud bang startled you and the spectators. A puff of smoke erupted around the acrobat, and when it cleared, he was nowhere to be seen. 

The magician snapped his red leathered fingers once more, another bang following afterwards. The lights suddenly directed towards the back, where the very same artist waved enthusiastically to the crowd. 

The crowd grew silent when another bang sounded from up above. The drums and suspenseful music filled the arena as a puff of smoke caught everyone's attention, and from it emerged the third acrobat standing gracefully still on the tightrope above. Your eyes widened considerably. The male literally appeared out of thin air. San's head suddenly snapped to peer at you, and before you had the chance to blink, you were suddenly engulfed in another plume of smoke, before finding yourself in the arms of the blonde acrobat meters above the ground. 

Your frame tensed considerably, arms hastily wrapping around the male's neck with a loud cry of fear. You didn't dare look down, your eyes scrunching shut in fear. Laughing at your frightened expression, he clicked his tongue in dismay, arms reaching to unwrap your limbs from his frame before tipping you down the tightrope, "Don't give me that look. You're in good hands."

Before your frame succumbed to gravity, you felt your heart drop almost immediately. A silent scream caught into your throat as you plummeted down to the safety net. Just before you reached it, two hands shot out and grabbed at your frame, gripping your frightened form with so much precision and care. You were met with the sight of the tallest of the three acrobats swinging onto the trapeze with the back of knees. Your trembling pupils took in the sight of his lips quirking up mischievously as he suddenly threw your frame like a rag doll towards the raven haired man, who in return held you in his arms whilst standing as still as a statue on the swinging trapeze bar. Within the entirety of it, your eyes had remained squeezed shut tightly.

"Don't be afraid, sweetheart," he cooed mockingly, lips outstretched into a coy smile, "Wooyoung's got ya."

The fast paced performance left no room or time for anyone to observe exactly how it was done, and even the most rational spectator experienced a moment of doubt when watching the act.

With a wave of the magician's hands, four more bangs and puffs of smoke followed suit, and the three acrobats found themselves standing in front of San, their hands intertwined as they bowed gracefully to the cheering crowd. You jolted upon realizing you were held in the magician's awaiting arms, your frame scrambling to stand. San placed a hand onto the small of your back, urging you to bow along with him towards the cheering crowd. 

"You never did say the words, hm? I knew you could do it." Regardless of the many eyes watching you attentively, he turns to you, hand cupping the side of your face whilst thumbing the apple of your cheek with a small smile, "Stay after the show. We have a lot to talk about."

You can only nod faintly, head light from the adrenaline coursing through your veins. A man came to escort you back to your seat, and your turned back to glance at San's retreating figure. You hasten your pace as a wolf-whistle and degrading comment thrown your way reached your ears, and you gave the spectator a quick glare before making yourself to your seat. 

A few minutes tick by, and you notice your vision grows a tad bit blurry. The blue haired ringmaster enters the center once more, large grin plastered onto his face. He tips his head in gratitude at the cheering audience, before raising the mic to his face, "Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Circus Wonderland, we want to thank you all for your splendid patronage and love you've given us tonight. We hope we've scared the life out of you."

You noticed his eyes flash in your direction momentarily, but you dismiss the thought.

"Unforeseen circumstances beyond my control have taken place tonight. Unfortunately, we will not be able to give you another night of performances."

His words seemed to blend together, and you furrowed your brows, shaking your head in an attempt to clear your head. Just what did that magician really have in that concoction to make you this dazed?

A sudden wicked smile taking over his features made your heart stop for a second. The ringmaster's dark orbs illuminated a bright red as he chuckled at the confused spectators, "You will all go back home and forget the events of today," a gloved hand reached up to point a finger at you and ruby eyes trained on your confused expression, "except you."

You watched in bewilderment as the crowd quietly made themselves down the platform and out of the tent. The spectators all shared the same empty, mindless gaze as they trudged robotically back home. Blue wisps of light swayed around their bodies like halos and stretched into the ringmaster's waiting palm, and the overhead lights began flickering repeatedly.

"Inform the others that I want everything loaded into the train this instant," the man snapped to an assistant to his right, "Leave no sign we were here, or I will personally tie you to the train tracks."

 Voices from the back sounded out, and you noticed the abandoned tickets on the floor burned, the ashes dancing  into the air as nothing more than dust. Your head snapped back to give the ringmaster a wary look, body instinctively jolting up to blend in with the crowd. A sudden wave of dizziness hit you like a tidal wave, and your knees wobbled whilst you attempted to regain your footing. 

"Where do you think you're going?" an amused chuckle rang from the blue haired male as he suddenly vanished from the center arena and beside you. Before you had the chance to jump from his prying hands, he leaned in close, eyes glowing like rubies in sunlight, "It's a shame we can't have your life-source like everyone else here. After all, you've cost us a whole 'nother night of regaining our energy from you humans."

Fear yelled at you to escape, hide, run away; hell, to even fight back, but your drugged state made it impossible for your body to cooperate properly. You didn't want anything to do with your soulmate anymore. You made a pathetic attempt to crawl away, only to have the ringmaster grip you by the back of your coat. You clawed at his arm harshly, desperately wanting to escape his claws.

"Shouldn't you be in the back making sure everyone's packing," a familiar voice called from thin air. The blue-haired male's annoyed face vanished as a puff of smoke enshrouded your figure. You found yourself on the dirt ground behind the curtains of the arena, stomach flipping at the shift in gravity.

Peering up dazedly, you give the magician a confused glance, your figure stumbling to stand up to walk away. The sound of a few thuds caught your attention, and your breath suddenly came to a halt upon noticing the very same man from the crowd tied onto the wooden frame the knife thrower previously used. A thick ribbon gagged his mouth, and his wild, tear-filled eyes shot at you desperately for help when another knife was flung carelessly above his head, lodging into the wood. Splinters flew out upon impact, and the man quivered in fright, tears streaming down his face. The harsh winds of autumn nipped at your face, and you shrunk into yourself to find some warmth. Your surroundings spun and you began seeing double.

"Ah, Y/n. Nice of you to join us back here," San drawled simply, ignoring the rushing uniformists and other artists in the back, "Care to help me gut this man like the animal he is?"

This man was a monster.

The set of gleaming knives floated dangerously above his head, their sharp tips pointing into the direction of the constricted male. You shook your head as quickly as you could, instantly regretting it as you felt the onslaught of a mind-splitting headache. You desperately attempted to form words, wanting to ask what was going on, what he was, and to let the traumatized man go, but everything felt too heavy, and you couldn't properly think or hold your weight upright. No, you didn't care about any of that. You only wanted to flee from this nightmare.

"No worries, sweetheart," his sweet voice chimed like bells, juxtaposed by the ravenous, menacing look in his dark eyes, "I wouldn't want to soil you with this filth's blood anyway."

You turn your head away, a voice in your mind telling you the next scenes will plague your thoughts far beyond many sleepless nights.

To San, there was something so oddly satisfying about seeing the man's limbs outstretched and cuffed, awaiting the knives threatening to rip him into shreds. With a shrug of his shoulders and a flick of his finger, the knives surged forward, lodging into the man's chest and joints. He cried out in anguish, veins on his neck prominent as he struggled in his confines, desperate to flee the monster in front of him, "Oh, don't worry. You'll have the privilege of forgetting this night like the others," his brows shot up as a condescending smile crossed his features, "and you're also going to forget how it feels to speak as well."

Without an ounce of hesitation or empathy, San ripped the scarf from the man's mouth, and watched in amusement as one of the floating knives reached down harshly to rip past the seam of the man's lips, only to carve out his tongue. The muscle dangled limply by a thread of tissue, and San drank in the sounds of the man's clear cries of agony, his frame convulsing in pain.

"Mm, I guess our bloodsuckers can clean this mess up," he hummed lowly to himself, eyes watching as streams of blood dripped down the man's chin, patches of blood blooming on his other wounds as well, "Jongho! Seonghwa, he's all yours now. I think I might've killed him."

He peered down at your slumped figure onto the floor, chuckling to himself at your blown pupils and unfocused, dazed look overtaking your features, "Go to sleep now, y/n. It's going to be a long ride."

His mouth moved to form more words, but it was as if the audio somehow became distorted and disconnected from reality. A dark mist fogged your vision, the glowing red of his eyes and satisfied smile blurring and melting with all of the other colors around you, and you felt as light as a feather. You were aware of the sensation of falling. 

You were falling.

And then, nothing.

You awoke in a progression of steps that seemed to take an onslaught of hours. It felt like you had awoken from a drunken stupor. Your arms and legs felt much heavier than usual, and you had no energy to lift your head up, as if your neck could hardly sustain the weight. Disoriented thoughts filled your mind to the brim. A strange taste lingered at the back of your throat, and your mind drew blank as you attempted to process the events of last night. Was it last night? You had trouble recalling the sense of time.

As the thick fog of sleep slowly seeped away, you realize there's an odd, cold sensation around your wrists, and upon shifting them slightly, you realize they're bound with metal. A feeling of dread and fear overtook your expression. Despite the racing thoughts plaguing your mind, your body just felt too heavy and disconnected from your mind. 

Lolling your head to the side, you make out a small bedroom and a few windows. Trees and greenery rushed past the windows, the moon shining brightly in the night sky. You listen to the sound of a train moving steadily on railway tracks. Slowly, you come to the realization the events you thought were a dream were indeed reality, and this must've been one of the sleeping cars of the steam train.

Panic struck you like lightning, and you struggled to rip your confined wrists from the metallic headboard. The clanging of metal caught the other person's attention, and a chill travelled down your spine at sound of footsteps, before catching the sight of the magician looming over your frame with a smile playing on his lips.

The moonlight casts a silver glow around his dark silhouette, and his ruby eyes darkened with a predatory gleam as you gave him a wary and confused look, body stiffening in fear. You attempted to scoot away when the mattress dipped as the man settled beside you, hand reaching forward to cup your face. From your peripheral vision, you can see the crimson thread tying the two of you together. Your head snapped away from his touch with a soft whimper of fear, making him chuckle to himself.

"Where are you taking me?" you slurred, thrashing when he made another attempt to touch you. Unshed tears pooled like diamonds in your eyes, and among the melting colors of your vision, you still could clearly make out the glowing red of his orbs. You wanted to ask a million more questions, but your tongue felt too heavy and mind too slow.

"Wherever I'm going, my dear. You're mine whether you like it or not. You're going to spend the rest of your life with me, whether you want to or not, " his eyes glinted red as he leaned in to nuzzle the junction of your jaw, hand gripping a fistful of your hair to keep you in place as his lips pressed tender kisses against the column of your neck, "Welcome to Circus Wonderland."

[darkurgediary]

Two Worlds, Two Hearts: Chapter Five

Summary: News of Jareth's disappearance affects Sarah in ways she didn't expect, and brings on a new wave of conflicting emotion.

Warning(s): complicated relationships, creepy nightmare (which is all italicized so it'll be easy for anyone to skip over), and Ludo tears! If I missed anything please let me know!

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

The Labyrinth was crumbling.

Jareth was missing.

And now Ludo was crying with such an intensity the ground started to shake.

Hoggle didn’t know how much more of this he could take. The dwarf wove his way through withered hedges till he came upon Ludo, the great beast brought to his knees, thick tears streamed down his face, and a pitiful cry lurched from his throat. Sir Didymus stood before him with tiny paws rested on Ludo’s forearm. Uncharacteristically quiet in the face of his brother’s pain.

“Sarwah,” Ludo’s lower lip wobbled and he tried desperately to pull a string of snot back up his nose, when such an attempt failed, he instead wiped his face on his left forearm.

Hoggle grumbled to himself but still decided to ask, “whats tha matter with'em?”

Sir Didymus perked his ears, looking to Hoggle with a defeated express, “Sir Ludo claims to have seen young maiden over that way.”

The dwarf glanced in the indicated direction, just as he'd thought, no one was there. Hoggle even approached the area and walked around it. Like he was trying to prove to Ludo that his eyes had played a cruel trick on him. Hoggle understood it though, to a degree. Ludo claiming to see Sarah became a common occurrence over the years. Each time, it was harder and harder to explain to Ludo it wasn't real.

“If she ain't been back already then she ain't never comin' b-”

A whisper carried in the breeze and cut him off, “Ludo...” 

Curved horns raised from the ground as brown eyes widened, and basset-hound shaped ears desperately searched for the sound.

Sir Didymus behaved in a similar manner, his bushy tail swishing side to side in a blonde blur, “My lady!” 

Hoggle whirled around, eyes wide as dinner plates. He stumbled back and fell into the dirt. Gazing up at the translucent image of a woman standing over him. Tall, with long black hair, and pale-green eyes. Hoggle rubbed his eyes but still, the haunting presence lingered like a ghost in a graveyard.

If he’d been by himself he would have discredited it easier. With Ludo and Sir Didymus in his company, not even he could deny the sight of the specter before him.

“S...S'it really you?” desperation clung to his words, along with a loneliness he'd kept buried deep.

The image of Sarah looked around, confused at first, and then she saw him. 

Hoggle tried to swallow the knot in his throat as he extended a shaky hand towards her. The thin image of her flickered, and upon contact, Sarah disappeared again.

-----

“Sarah?”

She didn’t look up from the floor, focused on the arguably-ugly patterned carpet like it offended her. Sarah was at her wits end. First she had a Spriggan to deal with and now a Fiery of all things! She didn't even want to think about Jareth, Toby's claim of him missing affected her in ways she didn't understand.

Her name was called again, “Sarah.”

The tick of a clock brought her senses back one by one, slowly, she raised her head. Tired eyes shifted to the old fashioned clock nestled on the corner of the wooden desk. Sarah set her sights on the coffee table next where a teacup sat in front of her. It's contents long abandoned, the liquid just as cold as the blood in her veins. 

“You drifted off,” a melodic scratch of pencil against paper mixed with the question, “where did you go just then?”

Sarah studied him for a moment, Dr. Zakar looked more like an Oxford Professor than a therapist. His brown suit was freshly pressed and his shoes polished. Red hair slicked back save for the few strands hanging just about his brow. Black, thick framed glasses obscured his eyes so she couldn't look directly into them.

A lie would do little for her, yet Sarah couldn't find it in herself to give him the truth. Not the whole truth anyway. He would call the whole incident a wild hallucination.

“I don’t know,” She admitted. Leaning forward to drop her head in her hands with a sigh, “I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

He set aside the notepad, giving her his full attention, “Another nightmare?”

“No,” Sarah managed to compose herself. Without realizing it, she started to gnaw on her thumb nail.

“Remember that my job is not to judge you, Sarah. I am here to help encourage you through your struggles. You already have everything you need to conquer them,” Zakar explained calmly, recognizing the anxious habit. “That being said, I cannot give you any guidance if I don’t know the root of the problem.”

He had a point, she couldn’t deny that. As the events of the previous night played in her head like a broken record Sarah wondered where to even begin. It all spiraled out of control in a way she could barely process.

“Last night I found out someone I knew was…” the words trailed off into tense silence. Did she mention the Spriggan and the Fiery or leave it at that? “Missing. He went missing and honestly? I don’t know how I feel.”

“It sounds as though this person left quite an impact on you, I take it you were close?” His inquiry was laced both with concern and caution, showing his condolences but not wanting to further upset her.

“It was complicated, and it was a long time ago. We were different people then. I knew him without really knowing him,” Sarah clenched her hands tight in her lap, “some part of me feels like I should be worried, like I should run through every worst case scenario. What if something bad happened? What if he’s hurt? But...”

Zakar tilted his head, “another part says otherwise?” 

“It’s been fifteen years since we last saw each other. I wouldn’t even know what to say if I saw him again,” Sarah rubbed her temples and groaned, dark brows pulling together.

The clock on his desk chimed twice.

A frown pulled his features, “It seems we’ve reached the end of our session. Though I want you to know, Sarah. You will overcome this grief. Nothing has to be resolved tomorrow, there is a lot to process, and even more to work through. Go home and paint your frustrations, or write them down. Anything to get them out.”

As Sarah left the office she noticed the air felt significantly lighter than it had before she went in, Dr. Zakar’s parting advice stuck with her. She hated how much she thought of Jareth. Even before the news of him missing, the Goblin King often dwelled in a dark corner of her mind. If Jareth wasn’t in the Underground then where else could he possibly be? Sarah started her car and focused on the road ahead.

Upon return to her apartment, the last bits of anxiety washed away as the sound of whimpers and nails against hardwoods echoed behind the door. Sarah didn’t realize how much she missed having a dog till Gwendolyn came into her life. “Hey pretty girl,” Sarah cooed once the door opened Kneeling down to greet her three legged companion. Gwendolyn was a five year old pitbull with a coat the color of caramel and big brown eyes. Sarah’s heart went out to the pup, who came from a hard life on the streets. She felt like she couldn’t leave the shelter without her.

Sarah scratched behind her ears and paused as she set her keys down on the kitchen counter. She stepped towards the half finished painting, the one she’d done the instant she woke from her dream. At first she’d been in the forest with Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus in her company. Then the forest fell into a sea of white and silver. Sarah shuddered as the details haunted her:

She descended into a broken ballroom. Once pristine chairs and tables were thrown to various parts of the room, scuffed, bent, and broken. Shattered glass and glitter covered the floor, save for a bare circle where Sarah stood in the center of the room. Dawning the white princess dress she’d worn fifteen years ago. Frantic eyes took everything in as her head whipped around. Dancers laid sprawled over one another like puppets with their strings cut. 

Except for him.

His name left her tongue barely above a whisper, “Jareth.”

Rather than address her, the Goblin King stood frozen. The dark mask with twisted horns remained against his face, hiding his eyes from her. In an unusual motion he reached a hand out for her. Though he didn’t move in the same fluid, captivating way he had before. Instead Jareth moved like an old toy being wound up for the first time in forever. A crystal appeared in his hand, and his last words echoed around her.

“I ask for so little.”

He stepped towards her.

“Just fear me,”

Another step.

“Love me,”

Sarah retreated with each advancement, eyes wide, and skin white as a sheet. Whatever defiant remark she had ready to shout at him died on her tongue. Jareth loomed over her now, her back flat against the wall. She had nowhere to run.

Forced to look into vacant eyes as he sounded so defeated.

“Do as I say and I-”

Gwendolyn whimpered beside her, gently butting her head against Sarah’s leg.

Black curtains cascaded down her back as she turned to look at her companion, Sarah gave her a sad smile and smoothed a hand down her neck, “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

Sarah looked back at the expression she’d been so desperate to capture. Why should she be worried about Jareth? Why did her heart absolutely ache at the thought of him cold, alone, and hurt? Her hand started to reach for his half painted cheek but something stopped her. Sarah bit her lip in wonder as the idea of calling him raised to the surface.

With a small shake of the head, Sarah covered it, and tried to bury any other thoughts of him away for the time being. She had other things to focus on. The Spriggan, the Fiery, and Toby’s growing obsession with the Labyrinth. She took one final glance at the painting, “Where are you Jareth?”

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Taglist:

@faeriexqueen​

@tangentasilem​​

@withinthecrystal​​

@purplesigebert​​

[le0watch]

A Flower for Your Thoughts

The night is still young, the palace filled to the brim with young women hoping to catch the prince’s attention. Each young lady has her own dress, and the colors range from white to black, and the sizes from large and puffy to thin and flat.

They’re all so loud and persistent, and hardly give Prince Langa the space he desires. He doesn't even want to be here- it was a decision made by his mother and chamberlain back in their Kingdom of Snow. His mother was beginning to get worried that he was too lonely, and his chamberlain had suggested that they come here to try and find him a suitor. Because then, with a wife, Prince Langa wouldn't be lonely again.

And while Langa would love for a wife, this feels too forced, and not natural. The women here only care that he's a prince, and for the enormous amount of wealth and fame that comes with marrying him. None of them actually care for him… just his title.

He sighs heavily, sitting on the edge of a fountain somewhere in the large palace garden. He's been here a while- no one has been able to find and annoy him as of yet, and the sound of the trickling water was soothing compared to the yelling and calling of the women in the castle. He rests his chin in the palm of his hand, the loneliness he'd come to know so well back him settling in his gut.

“It's the same here…” he mutters quietly, staring at the cracks in the ground and the ants crawling through the grass.

Suddenly, someone flops down beside him on the fountain’s edge, her dress a brilliant blue that spills around her legs and feet. It splays out across the edge of the fountain, some of it brushing through the water beneath them. He flinches, ready for yet another suitor to try and woo him for his wealth.

“Where is everybody?” the girl says, and Langa is struck by how cute she sounds. He hasn't looked at her yet- afraid if he does, it’ll break the spell and she’ll start fawning over him. He feels her eyes on the back of his head a moment later, staring at him. “Did you get lost?”

A reflection of light catches his eye, and glances down at the ground eyes widening as they land upon a gorgeous pair of glass heels. He's never seen glass slippers, or shoes for that matter, but they go wonderfully with her dress.

“Pretty…” he mutters, before he realizes what he's doing.

“Huh?” the girl says, taken by surprise.

“Your shoes. I've never seen any made of glass before,” he explains, and finally works up the courage to look at the girl’s face. He nearly gasps, because she's even prettier than the shoes or dress she is wearing.

Her bright red hair is pulled into two braids that trail behind her shoulders, the rest of it a mess of curls on the top of her head. Her eyes are a gorgeous honey amber color, and they sparkle even in the dark of the night. Freckles pepper her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, and before he realizes what he's doing, he's looking at her lips, a soft, plump pink.

He has to tear his gaze from her lips as they turn upwards into a bright grin. So bright, Langa momentarily believes her to be the sun, and that morning had come early. Her beautiful blue dress contrasts prettily with her red hair and eyes, sparkling gently beneath the stars.

“Oh, you meant the shoes,” she says sheepishly, chuckling lightly. What a beautiful sound. He almost wants to take back what he'd said, and tell her that no, he'd actually meant that she was pretty.

“Yeah,” he responds instead, because his brain is slow and sluggish as always. This doesn't phase the girl, however, but makes her tilt her head to the side with a crooked grin.

“How long are you gonna stare?” she asks, making Langa jump out of his skin. Oh, great. She’d caught him staring at her like a buffoon- very unprincely indeed. But she instead exclaims, “Let's dance!”

That takes Langa by surprise. She was being so bold- she's not even asking him, she's just saying it like it would be the natural thing for them to do. “With me?” he asks, quite stupidly. Who else was there for her to ask? He blames his short circuiting brain on her and how pretty she is.

“Is anyone else here?” she says pointedly, her grin only widening. She sounds excited, and she grabs his hand, hopping to her feet and pulling him along with her.

He lets out a noise of surprise as he stumbles to his feet after her, surprised by her straight forwardness. Wasn’t he supposed to ask her to dance, if at all? Yet, he doesn't pull his hand away, nor does he say anything negative in response.

Once they're both standing, the girl waits patiently for him to get ready, bouncing on the balls of her feet. When he rests one of his hands in her hand and the other on her waist, her face flushes a pretty red, and she sheepishly chuckles.

“I uh- I’ve never actually danced before,” she tells him shyly, and he blinks down at her. She’s shorter than he is- but not by too much. Her head reaches just above his chest, and is peering up at him through her pretty red lashes. “So uh- could you teach me?”

Langa’s cheeks grow warm at her shy but excited demeanor, and for a moment, all he could do was stare at her pretty face. She flushes, and squirms a little under his gaze.

“I'm sorry- I shouldn't have asked if I didn't know how-” she begins to apologize, slowly pulling away from Langa.

But the prince quickly catches her, keeping her close. He smiles down at her warmly- the first time he's smiled in years since his father died- and gently guides her hands to their proper places, one on his shoulder and the other lightly gripped in his. His body buzzes from their intertwined fingers to his toes, a warm happiness settling in his gut.

He hasn't felt so infatuated in a long time- or ever, for that matter. But somehow, this adorable redhead had caught his attention. Maybe it was from how she treated him like an equal, or maybe it was due to her sunny disposition. Anyway, Langa feels as if his heart is going to burst from his chest at any second.

He's never felt in love before, nor has he ever experienced a crush. These are new sensations and emotions he's experiencing, but he's highly enjoying them.

“Your hands go here,” he explains, meeting her amber gaze. Her eyes seem to glow, like a pair of stars in the night sky above them. “And I will lead. Just follow my steps, and you'll catch on pretty quick.”

“Oh- okay!” she exclaims with one of her bright grins. He nearly melts under its warmth, but begins the most basic of waltzes, as to not overwhelm her for her first time. He listens to the faint music playing from the distant castle, taking the first few steps. She stumbles for a moment, and trips over his feet, but he steadies her each time. She flushes and apologizes sheepishly when she steps on his feet, but he reassures her with a small smile.

“Wow, you're a good teacher.” She sounds whimsical, and it makes him smile again.

“You're learning it on your own,” Langa points out. “I'm just guiding you through it.”

“Guess you're right about that!” she exclaims with another bright grin. He loves when he smiles and grins; she smiles with her whole face, eyes scrunching at the edges, the tips of her lips stretching to both of her ears. “Now, who might you be, anyways. I've been dancing with a stranger this entire time.”

“Wait, you don't know?” he asks in surprise, his eyebrows shooting into his hairline. Everyone who’s come to the ball is merely there to meet him and hopefully get him to pick them as his wife. Does she really not know- or is she just acting?

But no, in the short amount of time Langa has known this mystery girl, he knows for a fact that she wasn't acting, somehow. The genuinity shining in her eyes coupled with her curious smile proves that to him.

“Should I?” she asks, a teasing edge to her voice. She draws in a sharp breath of surprise when Langa twists her outwards, before pulling her back close to himself again. He smiles down at her, and she smiles back up at him, holding tightly to his hand. Her hand seems to fit almost perfectly in his.

“I suppose not, if you don’t,” he replies. She doesn't have to know right away, right? That would probably break whatever magical spell has set over them, and turn her from a fun young maiden to one just as desperate for his wealth as everyone else. “But you may call me Snow. That's what my mother calls me. And your name?”

The girl hesitates, her dress fluttering around her legs when Langa twirls her, holding his arm high to allow her room. When she’s pulled back in and they fall back into step, she finally says, “That isn’t too important.” Her smile dropped while she said this, making Langa’s heart plummet into his stomach. Oh no, he had upset her. Or, she just feels as if she is inadequate beside him. He has to remedy this instantly.

He opens his mouth to do just that, but the girl beats him by saying, “Why don't you tell me more about yourself, hm? Like why you're outside all alone.” She smirks up at him, her previous negativity disappearing in an instant. She's masking. Langa’s familiar with masking. He was basically raised to always have a princely mask over his face. He doesn't like her masking one bit. But he also knows he can't force someone to stop.

“Needed to get some fresh air,” Langa replies honestly. “It was much too crowded and loud inside, so I stepped out for a moment.”

The girl doesn’t respond until he's finished spinning her through the air, gaining a beautiful burst of laughter from her. Once she’s on the ground again, her laughter tapers off, but a smile remains on her face.

“And what are you doing here, hm?” she asks, and Langa's mind instantly begins rushing for an answer. “I thought only the maidens of the land were invited to the ball, not the men.” She’s teasing him, fluttering her pretty lashes at him.

He swallows heavily, butterflies in his stomach. This girl has to have magic, how else could he be feeling so much because of her all at once?

“That is true,” he says, wetting his lips nervously as he dips her low. She gasps before giggling, latching onto his arm to keep herself from falling. Even though he would never drop her. He doesn't want to tell her he's the prince, yet. Soon, but not now. Just a while longer as another random guy at the palace. He is enjoying it. “I work here. In the palace, I mean. I'm… an apprentice!”

Her eyes widen and she grins up at him, her flowing dress brushing against his knees. The blue of her dress contrasts amazingly with her bright red hair, and he thinks the color suits her.

“Snow the apprentice,” she says. Langa likes the way she says his nickname. Or maybe he just likes her voice. Maybe a bit of both. “I like it.”

Langa lets out a breath of laughter, and dips her for the final time in their waltz. They break apart, and he bows while she courtesies low to the ground. Her dress is like a halo around her, and she looks much like an angel on earth.

Once they've both straightened back up, Langa glances towards the palace, biting his lower lip. He’s sure that he is not yet missed- he could show her around the garden. Maybe even give her that flower… yes!

He holds up a hand in offering, and asks, “May I show you around the garden?”

She hesitates only a moment before she takes his hand, dipping her head shyly. He smiles, and she smiles back at him. He leads her through the garden, pointing out the plants he knows the names of.

“Those are my favorite flowers,” he says, pointing to a patch of blue flowers. “They’re called forget-me-nots. The story behind them just makes them all the more special.”

The mystery girl looks down at them, before releasing his hand to crouch in front of them. She picks one of the many buds, before turning back to him. A light flush colors her freckled cheeks as she stands on her tiptoes to slip the stem of the flower behind Langa’s ear. His breath catches in his throat at her close she is- her breath mingling with his, and he can see each time her pretty lashes flutter, and the way her lips hanging slightly open.

Once satisfied, she draws back, looks over her work, and then grins brightly. “It matches your hair!” she exclaims, and he's taken by her all over again. She retakes his hand, and he has to draw in a deep breath before he can speak again.

“Th- thank you very much,” he says, clearing his throat. He's sure he's blushing. His face is hot enough. He then tugs on her hand, “Now I want to show you something.”

“Haven’t you been showing me the garden?” she teases, but follows after him obediently.

He doesn't answer her, looking this way and that for the flowers he has in mind. Finally, he spots them: red hibiscus flowers. He tugs her along quickly, and she lets out a surprised laugh, stumbling a moment to be able to keep up with him. Once he's reached them, he gestures for her to sit down. She raises an eyebrow at him, but does so anyways, her dress pooling out around her on the grassy ground.

“Hope this doesn't ruin my dress,” she mutters, more to herself than Langa. He hums in response, but focuses on the task at hand. His father had taught him how to do this as a gift for his mother when he was younger, and they constantly did it for her when Mother’s Day rolled around.

He gathers a hand full of the brilliant red flowers before he steps to stand behind her, dropping onto his knees to reach her hair. He sets the fistful of flowers on the ground beside himself, and takes his gloves off. He then combs his bare fingers through her puffy hair, eyes widening at how soft it is beneath his fingertips. She stiffens at first, before relaxing as he gently cards his fingers through her hair.

Langa begins to part bits of hair into two sections, throwing the right side over her shoulder. She stays silent as he works, and when he looks at her freckled face, he finds her eyes lightly closed as she soaks in his soft touches.

He smiles softly at her relaxed expression, before beginning the braiding process. Each time he loops one large strand of hair over the other, he weaves a flower or two between them. He continues this until he's finished the first braid, smiling at his work. He guides the large braid over her left shoulder, and then quickly picks another handful of hibiscuses.

As he focuses on the right braid, the pretty girl in front of him hums softly. “Didn’t think you knew your way around a woman’s hair,” she says softly, lightly tracing the braid with her finger. “This is beautiful.”

“Just as you are,” Langa says before he could think it through. He hears her take in a sharp breath of air out of surprise, looking at him through the corner of her eye over her shoulder. He smiles at her with a wink, and her face turns a deep red similar to the flowers weaved into her hair. “My father taught me, so I could do this sort of thing for my mother. She's always loved it when I do it, so I thought you would as well.”

“I think I do,” she whispers, running her finger along one of the flower’s petals. Langa watches her for a moment, getting caught in how gorgeous she is just looking at the flowers in her own hair. Then, he shakes himself inwardly and gets back to work, weaving more and more flowers into the second braid.

When he's finished, he guides the second braid over her right shoulder. She traces this one as well, before turning to face him, grinning brightly at him, blinding him all over again. “Thank you very much, Mister Snow!” she exclaims, and grabs one of his hands. Their fingers weave together, and he looks at their interlocked hands with wonder.

“And thank you for letting me do it, fair maiden,” he answers courteously. She giggles at him, and he slowly brings her hand up to his mouth, pressing his lips against the back of her hand. Her breath catches, her face flushing an even deeper red. Man, red really is her color. “I've had such a wonderful time with you- please, I must know your name.”

She wets her lips nervously, her amber eyes sparkling with anxiety. He lowers her hand, and begins to lightly trace her knuckles with his thumb. She watches this for a few seconds, before drawing in a deep breath. She steels herself, before meeting his eyes.

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” she says, and he unconsciously scoots closer to her, his knees brushing through the grass. He stops at the edge of her dress, not wanting to drag his knees across the well sewn stitching or fluffy layers. She leans in close, like she's about to tell him a secret, and he leans towards her without noticing, holding his breath with anticipation. “My name is-”

She cuts herself off when the loud bong of the nearby clock tower sounds, her eyes going wide, grip on his hand tightening. He stares at her questioningly, still waiting for her to say her name, only for her to suddenly be pulling away, pushing to her feet while brushing the front of her dress off.

“I have to go,” she says, taking Langa by complete surprise. His mouth falls open as she begins to quickly walk back they way they’d come, dress swaying around her wildly. Her expression is one of regret, but she doesn't stop going, turning back for one moment to tell him, “It was a fun night. Thank you very much.” She does a small curtesy before taking off in a full on sprint.

Langa almost can't do anything at first. All he could do was stare where she'd just been, his hand, now empty, held out uselessly in front of himself. The grass where she'd been sitting has an indention in it from the grass laying across it.

Then, he snaps out of it, and scrambles to his feet, taking off after her. “Wait!” he calls after her. His heart is hammering in his chest- they were having such a good time, why did she have to suddenly leave? The ball isn't even over for another two hours. They had plenty of time, and he wanted to get to know her more. “Wait! Where are you going?”

“I'm sorry!” she calls back, disappearing around a corner. Langa runs as fast as his legs could take him, and finds her already halfway down the steps of the palace. Her dress flares out behind her in a mess of blue, brushing across the tops of the steps.

At one point, Langa’s heart stops when she seems to stumble and nearly trip over one of the steps. He hardly even notices the large amount of noise growing behind him; everyone inside must have taken notice of his plight.

But the girl catches herself, pauses to look back, and then takes off again. Langa stops at the spot she had- spotting one of her beautiful glass slippers. His eyes widen and he crouches down to pick it up.

Bad idea.

Because the girl manages to get into her carriage and the carriage takes off as soon as the door is closed. His heart plummets and even though he knows it's in vain, he still gives chase after the carriage as it pulls away.

“Wait!!” he shouts after the receding carriage, to no avail. He glances around for his horse, but is stopped when his mom appears beside him, panting.

“Who was that?” she asks breathlessly. Langa’s mind buzzes; no no! He doesn't have time to talk! He has to get his horse and get to her before he loses her! But his mom catches his wrist before he could run, stopping him in his tracks. “Snow!”

He snaps out of his daze, and looks down at her desperately. Kojiro suddenly appears beside his mother, looking between them with confusion. “She- I- She's the one, Mom! And she hasn't even told me her name!” he manages to exclaim.

His mother’s eyes widen, and she looks at Kojiro, who seems to understand her look. He peels away from them towards the palace guard, hopping onto his horse.

“Calm down, sweetie,” she tells him soothingly. He's trembling, he realizes. He doesn't want to lose this mystery girl and her pretty face and kind personality and the things she makes him feel. He’d just met her and started smiling again! “Kojiro and the guards will go and bring her back, alright? Just wait right here. They'll be back soon.”

Langa wets his lips, biting his lower lip anxiously. He tightly grips the glass slipper she’d left behind, the only connection he has back to her.

His mystery princess.

[asphyxiateher]

Only Monsters Come Out At Night

Chapter 2: Say My Name. A/N: Rough draft I’ll be posting to AO3 later after I go through the edits. Enjoy now, I’ll be polishing it later. I personally would let Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters step on me but that’s just me

Warnings: Character death, graphic descriptions of violence, gore, horror. Elements of non-con. 

              Time had no meaning for Desdemona anymore as her entire being floated comfortably into a quiet void. She was only accompanied by the sweet sound of silence that filled her ears and that in itself was comforting. She was in such a deep state of sleep that it felt like she would be trapped in the peaceful state of purgatory for eternity, but alas that would no longer be the case. Desdemona thought she was dead; in fact, she wanted nothing more than for that to be the case. Unluckily for her, she was about to wake to unfortunate events that would lead her to believe she was trapped in Hell. At first, she sees nothing in her field of vision but then she hears the shrill sound of familiar laughter that sends a shiver down her spine. The black abyss she grew accustomed to deteriorated all around her, a blinding flash of white light surrounds her for the briefest of moments before Desdemona’s eyes finally opened to reveal the disturbing scene before her. “Mother, my pet is finally awake! Oh, I was growing ever so impatient, my darling little one. I was so desperate to peer into those gorgeous eyes of yours again, I was tempted to pluck them out of your skull as you slept.” A voice whispered dangerously into her ears behind her, wet lips gently wrapping around her right ear before it was released with a pop. “Cassandra, you foul thing, learn your place! How many times do I have to say that it was I who found our prize? Do not touch what does NOT belong to you!” Screeched the woman with the green pendant as she materialized by her side in an instant. It didn’t take long for the fact to register that this was the first time that Desdemona could finally get a better look at the women who attacked the group in the village. Now that their hoods were down, she could better identify them by not only their hair color but by the manner of which they spoke and the pendants they wore. The way they continued to fight over her made her stomach turn as she struggled to comprehend why they wanted her alive and what they were going to do with her.

Another black mass of insects appeared and disintegrated into nothing just as quickly as the third woman decided to chime in, her yellow pendant gleaming brightly against the dimly lit room. Her dirtied, dark brown hair tickled Desdemona’s face as she leaned dangerously over her, the smirk on her face growing wider when Desdemona’s breath grew heavy again. She raised her hand and playfully walked two fingers up Desdemona’s arm and over her collarbone before she roughly grasped her prey’s chin and forced her to look directly into her eyes. “Hello, pretty little plaything, you’ll find that my sisters lack manners when they’re lusting over irresistible blood. You should feel honored you made quite the impression as you did. The others you brought with you are undeserving of your company and you’ll find that they deserve punishment simply by existing. Mother will see to that soon enough.” The brunette told her quietly as she straightened back up.

‘Wait, what did she mean by punishing the others for simply existing? Where were Desmond and Veronica?’ Desdemona worriedly thought to herself. The younger Hawthorne sibling attempted to move but she didn’t realize her wrists were restrained by old fashioned shackles until it was too late. She suddenly felt herself being lifted to her feet by the two crazed sisters standing on either side of her. Each woman occasionally nuzzled into her neck and sniffed at her, nipping at her and licking exposed skin whenever the impulse struck.

Desdemona glanced around her environment and realized that they must be inside the castle if the polished flooring, centuries old artwork and beautiful grand staircase were of any indication. Where else would they be after getting lost out on the trail?

The frightened young woman made the mistake of looking over to her left and found that the red-haired woman known as Daniela was staring at her with a glazed look in her eyes. The sight of her lips parting and blowing her a small kiss made Desdemona’s heart nearly jump out of her throat. She couldn’t avert her gaze out of fear and Daniela took that as an invitation to flirt the only way she knew how. She brought two fingers to her face, spaced them out to a “V” shape and made an obscene gesture with her unusually long tongue, moaning loudly when Desdemona blushed and looked away. “Don’t be shy, my love. Once we take care of Mother’s unwanted pests, we can finally be alone together and I’ll taste you once and for all. You’ll find that I do want to eat you but only in the best way possible. You wouldn’t deny me the pleasure, would you?” Daniela growls out, her eyes fluttering shut as the sound of Desdemona’s blood rushing through her veins and her rapidly beating heart thudding against her chest awakened a whole new need in Daniela. Desdemona wanted to cry out but refrained from doing so when she realized somebody else was coming.

Heels could be heard clicking from afar, a door slamming open and voices shouting in protest behind what seemed to be an impossibly tall, statuesque women. Desdemona’s jaw dropped for two reasons: The woman who entered the room dramatically exuded such class and confidence that it didn’t look awkward in the manner in which she had to bend so far low to pass through the doorway. When she uncurled herself from the uncomfortable position, her golden eyes met gray uncertain ones and they immediately pierced through Desdemona’s soul. The woman brought out a whole new level of terror within her. The second reason Desdemona’s mouth remained agape was due to the fact that the mysterious woman dragged along the wounded bodies of both Desmond and Veronica.

‘They’re still alive!’ Desdemona thought, hope rising in her chest the moment she saw both her best friend and twin reacting to her presence. “Des, you’re okay! Christ, the way these fucking things were talking about you, I thought the worst happened.” Desmond called out to her, desperation in his voice as he attempted to crawl his way towards his sister. Veronica tried to break free from the intimidating woman’s grasp but the woman merely raised a perfectly manicured brow in response and tugged on the chains wrapped around both Desmond and Veronica. They had collars clasped tightly around their necks and they choked as a result of the chains being pulled back.

When Veronica glanced back at Desdemona, the furious expression on her face softened when she noticed the bedraggled state her friend was in. Desmond noticed it too and it only served to fuel his anger. “What the fuck did they do to you? I’ll kill them, I’ll slit their fucking throats and make them pay if they so much as tried to ra-,” Veronica began but was immediately cut off with a harsh slap to the face. “Goddamn, bitch!” “Silence, vermin! Speak when you’re spoken to or you’ll learn your place soon enough should you continue to use foul language in my house. Now, pray tell my daughters, what is it that has you all so eager about entertaining this particular foreigner?” The elegant woman asks as she gives Desdemona a once over. The manner in how she reacts to inhaling Desdemona’s scent alarms the younger Hawthorne sibling. She decides to inspect her more closel with flared nostrils and enlarged pupils. She seemed…pleased, for whatever reason. ‘Do they plan on sacrificing you to appease whatever wicked deity they believe in?’ Desdemona nervously asked herself.

One of the daughters, the one known as Bela and the one with the red pendant, spoke first. “We were out on the hunt in the village when I suddenly picked up on her delicious scent, mother. She’s a carrier of our favorite blood type. We haven’t had anyone like her in so long, we were hoping we could make a feast of her with your permission.”

Desdemona tensed up at the suggestion and vigorously shook her head. “M-may I ask what w-we did to offend you and your daughters? I apologize for any wrongdoing, ma’am but we’re just Americans on vacation and we ran out of gas on the way to Bran! We weren’t expecting to get lost but please let us go, we didn’t come out here to hurt anyone!” She pleaded with tears streaming down her cheeks, her eyes flicking from Daniela to Cassandra and finally, the incredibly powerful woman standing before.

“Des, don’t go begging them. They’re not going to listen to reason, believe me; we tried!” Desmond warned.

The quiet dark-haired woman, Cassandra, sneered at Desdemona’s twin and slashed at his face with her sickle in hand. Desmond cries out and attempts to cover his face with his cuffed hands only to have them ripped away. She kicks his chest and flattens him on the ground. Cassandra smiles wickedly as she brings her heel to the open cut and presses hard against his face for a moment, stomping on him a few times for good measure. Both Veronica and Desdemona scream, begging the sadistic sister to stop tormenting him but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

“Good, girl, Cassandra. The hideous man-thing won’t shut his hole. I’m this close to gutting him on my newly polished floor and letting you girls get your fill for the evening. Ugh!” The woman in charge said before looking over to you once again. “It seems your exotic little treat has good manners considering what she is, however, and wishes to bargain with us. I can be a most gracious host and I’m all ears but I have two conditions if you wish to prolong your life, little one. Allow me to introduce myself first. I am Countess Alcina Dimitrescu and these beautiful girls of mine are my daughters Bela, Cassandra, and Daniela.”  

Veronica scoffed and spat at the floor, earning a glare from the titan of a woman who was apparently on the edge of snapping. Desdemona was ready to leave in one piece so of course she stepped in and spoke on behalf of her brother and her furious friend. “P-pleasure to meet you all, I’m Desdemona Hawthorne and that’s my twin brother, Desmond and my childhood friend Veronica. Ma’am, or My Lady, this all has to be a colossal misunderstanding and we are willing to pay any price if you allow us to leave and return home.”

The trembling girl gasped the moment she felt a pair of cold hands wrap themselves around her breasts from behind. Another set of hands reached for her belt buckle and began undoing her jeans rather enthusiastically. The next thing she knew, her v-neck shirt had been torn in half and her pants torn and ripped off her body.

“Desdemona, such a lovely name and what a lovely body. Mother, please let me keep her? I promise I won’t break her.” Daniela whined as she rubbed her hands up and down the length of her victim’s bare torso. It didn’t help the situation at hand when Daniela’s touch left Desdemona arching back into her, which must have sent the wrong signal because the delusional woman squealed with delight.

“If you or Cassandra had it your way, you’d bleed her dry on the first night and waste her blood when I would savor every inch of her until her very last moment!” Bela complained, her fingers inching dreadfully closer to the band of her undergarments.

“Get your filthy fucking hands off my sister, you twisted bitches. Stop fucking touching her! I’ll kill you, I swear it!” Desmond bellowed, managing to pull away from Lady Dimitrescu’s clutches and lunged at the women that were touching his twin inappropriately. He swung his arms at Daniela and used the length of the chain to whip against the side of her body. Daniela, caught off guard by his sudden attack, screeched in surprise and this immediately angered Alcina.

“ENOUGH!” Lady Dimitrescu signaled for her daughters to apprehend Desmond and the girls obliged, their concern for Daniela overwhelming even to them. Bela and Cassandra ambushed him on either side and using their transformative powers, they pulled him away from their youngest sibling and slammed his body against the nearest wall. Cassandra pinned his shackled hands above his head while Bela held onto his thrashing legs tightly.

Veronica was breathing heavily but made no move to run to him, not while Alcina held her leash tightly. Her brows were furrowed, teeth gnawing at her bottom lip as she tried to refrain from saying anything that would cause them to harm Desmond.

Desdemona could only cry out for mercy as it physically pained her to watch her own twin suffer at the hands of these monsters.

Meanwhile, Alcina had been hunched over Daniela and whispered disturbingly soothing things into her daughter’s ears, words expressed by a loving mother to her daughter, and it looked almost normal. When Alcina stepped away from Daniela, she composed herself after displaying what she deemed a moment of vulnerability and shot Desmond a withering glare. “How dare you touch my daughter with your filthy man-hands, you wretched creature. I can see there is no taming a wild animal like you and like all wild animals, they must be put down! I was ready to lay down my conditions if I were to let you leave alive but you really screwed yourself. Desdemona Hawthorne, seeing as you were polite and tried to communicate in a manner I found pleasing, you shall be gifted to my daughters as their personal form of entertainment. You will be their plaything, and your trashy friend, Veronica, who is now under my employ as a house maiden, will be forced to clean you up after every time they choose to play with you. She will be beaten and broken until she learns what it is to be obedient.” Alcina growls out menacingly, enjoying the way Veronica begins to hyperventilate at the terrifying concept of being broken in by someone like Lady Dimitrescu. Alcina drags Veronica across the room as she approaches Desmond and Veronica is now desperately trying to claw her away from the elegant countess. Raising her free hand in the air, sharp elongated claws form almost immediately at the tips of her fingers. It was in this moment that panic begins to set within Desdemona as she realizes what she’s about to do and so she attempts to rush Lady Dimitrescu. Daniela is quick to catch her prey and uses force to subdue Desdemona. She slams her knee against Desdemona’s back and brings her down to her knees, hooking both of her arms from around and underneath the smaller girl and forcefully raises her arms up. “Let this be a hard lesson, my darling. Don’t you ever disrespect my mother in her own home or disobey her when she gives you an order. There are worst things than death, love, and they wander the mansion unsupervised at night.” Daniela whispers into Desdemona’s ears before bringing her attention back to her mother. Heart hammering against her chest, Desdemona’s blood runs cold when she sees Desmond shed a tear at the realization that he was going to pay the ultimate price. In a quivering voice, Desmond beckons his sister to look at him one final time.

‘Oh no, no no no. They can’t do this, they won’t do this! I have to help him. I’m not sure I can live without my other half, it would be too cruel for me to go on without him!’ Desdemona thinks, weeping at the sight of her twin brother sacrificing his own life for hers. “P-please, my l-lady, let him go I beg you! Don’t hurt him please, I’ll do anything if you let him go. Don’t take him away from me, please.” Desdemona begs. Steely gray eyes meet hers and she recognizes that he is resigned to his fate. She sucks in a deep breath, unwilling to break eye contact as he says his final goodbye. “See you on the other side, Dezzy. Promise me you’ll make it out of here. Mom deserves to know. I love you and V…so very much.” He tells her with a wavering voice. In the background, Veronica is verbalizing her objections and pleads for Desmond’s freedom but in the end, it was all for naught.

With an evil smirk and a deep chuckle, Alcina brings down her claw at Desmond’s abdomen, slashing him so deeply that his innards begin to seep out of him.

Desdemona feels like she’s suffocating, her lungs unable to function as she struggles to make a sound no matter how much she wants to cry out her brother’s name one more time. She throws her head back and opens her mouth to wail but nothing comes out but a few choked coughs. The surviving twin couldn’t explain it but it felt like Alcina personally reached into her chest and destroyed the most important part of her being. Desmond was her other half and upon death, a most profound connection between siblings is severed and there lies nothing left but an echo of what was once there. Desdemona felt…empty, as if she would never be whole again now that her brother was gone.

She shuts her eyes and the horrifying image of Desmond’s intestines piling up on the floor and blood sloshing everywhere replays again in her mind. The hurt is renewed and this time, she summons every ounce of emotion she could as she screams out his name, Veronica’s loud, panicked screaming fueling her grief.

“DESMOND!”

She screams it over and over again until her body slumps in Daniela’s arms. She’s too weak to do anything else. She can hear voices and the sound of heels clicking but she can’t hear what is being said. Desdemona tries her very best to drown out the background noise as her sorrow was too great but Cassandra’s voice breaks her out of her reverie and it is what she murmurs in Desdemona’s ears as she passes by that makes her whimper for an entirely different reason.

“Just you wait until I make you say my name like a prayer, love. This is only the beginning.”

[astarryon]

Tame Your Demons

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Violence, blood mention, implied assault, language, general criminal minds things

Summary: The deal you have with Spencer is simple. You call him to take care of the men looking to take advantage of innocents on the street, and he comes to ensure you don’t kill them before he gets the chance. Unfortunately for the both of you, though, things don’t always go according to plan.

A/N: This is my latest love letter to Spencer Reid and Criminal Minds! Part Two will be posted a little later this week, and will be for a slightly more mature audience, if y’all catch my drift. A big thank you to @reids-trauma​ for letting me run this fic by her, she’s literally half the reason it even saw the light of day. Enjoy!

Masterlist

––

You see him before he sees you.

It doesn’t hurt your feelings— it’s the norm, in any case, and it’s what typically happens each time you reach out to plan a rendezvous. Part of the agreement is that you get to set the location, and you’re always careful to pick places you’re comfortable enough to slip your way out of unnoticed in case he ever morals up and brings his team to corner you. To his credit, that hasn’t happened yet — though you’re not naive enough to give up on the idea that it ever will just yet — but never subscribing to uncertain chances was a lesson you’d learned a long time ago.

But you know you’re safe for tonight, at least. He wouldn’t be meandering around the bar for such a prolonged amount of time searching for you if there were rows of feds waiting to take you into custody as soon as you stepped foot out the door. It takes a full fifteen seconds before his wandering gaze finally touches on you, another three before the glint of recognition appears in his eyes, and by the time he’s straightening his spine and striding purposefully toward you, it’s been an entire minute. Damn. Someone was really starting to lose their touch.

“You’re late, Doc,” you simper, arching a brow as you knock back a hearty sip from your glass. “Didn’t your mommy ever tell you it’s rude to keep a lady waiting?”

“Couldn’t be helped,” Reid huffs, crossing his arms over one another as he tries — and fails — to sidle up to you in a casual manner. You note the way he avoids touching the bar at all costs, how he folds in on himself like an exceptionally uncomfortable piece of origami. And then, of course, there’s the suit, far too dressy for a place so casual as the lively little bar nestled in the far side of downtown Georgetown. Jesus, the only way he would look like even more of an off the clock fed would be if his badge were superglued to his palm. “Getting away from the others without raising suspicion on such short notice isn’t exactly the easiest thing to pull off.”

“Yeah, well,” you chuckle, taking another sip from your glass. You make eyes at him, pointedly and conspicuously allowing your gaze to rake his lanky, suit clad frame head to toe. He looks good in the outfit he’s picked, the dark black of his jacket drawing the eye to the maroon button down he wore beneath it, and you marvel at the way his chosen color palette sets off his skin in the dim light. If Reid notices your staring or cares, he makes no show of it. Your ogling doesn’t bother him, not like it used to — doesn’t even make him blush, to your admitted dismay, though you suppose that makes sense. Spencer Reid is nothing like the sweet, shy boy he used to be. He’s not so wide eyed and naive anymore, though you’d never expected that to last very long in the first place. Still — getting a rise out of him had always been your favorite part of your arrangement. If you don’t get to keep that going, these meetings are about to become significantly less fun. “That’s the deal, isn’t it? When I call, you come running.”

“That’s the deal,” he mutters, nonchalantly waving off the approaching bartender. “And I came running. So who is it?”

You jut your lip out into a pout, resting your elbows atop the bar before settling your chin against your palms, sparing only a moment’s thought for how low the neckline of your dress must be dipping with the switch in position before casting the worry out of your mind. Were any other man your company tonight, you might have felt more concern for your modesty, but Spencer Reid was far from being anything like most men, and, honestly, the day you caught him checking you out was the day you mentally marked another tally on your side of the metaphorical score board. “Why’s it always straight to business with you?”

“Because—“

“No ‘hello’,” you go on, skirt riding further up your thigh as you cross your legs over each other. Not even a spare glance. Damn. “No ‘how are you,’ no admission of your undying love for me. If you’re not careful, Spencer, you’re going to start hurting my feelings.”

“No offense,” Spencer retorts, sounding particularly unconcerned with whether his words actually offend you or not, “but your feelings aren’t exactly my top priority right now. Arresting whoever this man is before you take it upon yourself to brutalize him is.”

“Well he’d deserve it, if I did,” you tell him matter of factly, swirling the contents of your glass as you pretend to be more interested in that than the eye-catching man just beside you. “This one likes to take advantage of young girls in clubs who accept drinks from strangers because they don’t know any better and still think there are nice people left in the world. Sometimes he keeps track, like it’s a game, and tries to see how many he can assault in a night, and this most recent time three of them made it home all right, but the fourth one turned up in a dumpster. So, yeah, Spencer, you’ll have to forgive me for figuring that if he ends up in a back alley with a couple of bruises and a broken leg he probably got what was coming to him, but don’t insult me by implying that I don’t know how to keep a promise.”

“If broken legs and bruises were all you left men with it wouldn’t be such a problem,” comes Spencer’s dry remark. “Unfortunately for the both of us, you seem to have a particular affinity for leaving men in comas.”

An affinity with which Spencer was all too familiar, you knew — not because he’d fallen victim to your habit of enacting revenge for all those poor defenseless victims, but because he’d caught you in the act with someone else. Two years later and you still weren’t positive how he’d managed to track you down. Spencer had told you minimal things — that an acquaintance on the city’s police force had reached out for his advice on a mysterious case of incapacitated men turning up in dark alleys, rarely little more than a few minutes away from going brain dead. That he’d been surprised to realize you profiled as female, considering the amount of unadulterated rage your behavior presented. That he’d made the decision to do what he could to keep from turning you in provided you help him be able to do so with a clean conscience before he’d even found you standing over some man with a white-knuckled grip on a tire iron.

“Give me your word that you’ll contact me first,” he’d instructed, a shockingly small amount of hesitancy glinting in his irises. “Give me your word that from the moment you call me, I have twenty four hours to find you so I can take care of all those awful men the right way. If I don’t make it in that time frame, they’re fair game, but if I find out that you laid a finger on them before you called me, I’ll personally see to it that you do time for every single man you’ve hospitalized. Can you agree to that?”

And you had. Partly because you had no interest in spending any prolonged amount of time behind bars, and partly because the odd sense of emotional recognition he’d gazed upon you with had been so unlike anything you’d ever been met with from another human being that you were essentially startled into instant complacency.

“He’s in the bathroom,” you sigh, downing the rest of your drink and flagging the bartender down for another. More for show than anything else, though you know the theatrics aren’t strictly necessary. Your drink of choice while out with company is much more coke than it is rum, and after two years there isn’t any doubt in your mind that Spencer is aware of that. “Has been for a while now, as a matter of fact, because he’s pompous and arrogant and wants to make sure the bait is set right for the barely legal girl he’s meeting here tonight.”

“Don’t suppose you want to share with the class the barely legal method you used to figure that one out?” Spencer deadpans, plucking your new drink from the bar and draining a few healthy sips before you even have the chance to reach for it. That’s something he’s never done before, though you suppose his repulsion to germs wouldn’t factor in one way or the other since the drink was fresh. But Spencer never indulged in alcohol around you, and was always incredibly careful to keep his guard up during these meetings. Either he was playing a different angle tonight, or something in him had drastically shifted.

“Only if you want to share with the class why I’ve been tailing this guy for two and a half weeks while you dodged my phone calls,” you retort, never breaking eye contact as you grab the glass and tilt the rim to your mouth, in just the same place that Spencer’s had been. You think you see a vein in his neck pulse as you swallow, but you can’t be sure whether the lights are playing tricks on you, so you decide not to count it. “Not like you to leave an innocent man’s life in my hands.”

Spencer arches a brow, eyes narrowing as he searches your face for something you’re not sure about. “Not like you to wait to hear back from me before doing anything about it.” He pauses, then, and more to himself than to you mutters, “And I’ve never said they were innocent.”

“Guess you’re right,” you mutter, shrugging a shoulder and leaning back in your chair as you let your eyes scan around the restaurant. The man you’re looking for is still nowhere to be found, and with the way your nerves are beginning to fray beneath Spencer’s all too calm and collected scrutiny, it’s hard to get ahold of your imagination as it barrels toward the worst case. “He’s still not back.”

“He’s probably still in the bathroom,” Spencer offers, giving an unconcerned shrug of his own. “You said he was a primper.”

“It’s been almost twenty minutes,” you shoot back, fixing him with a harsh stare. Normally you’d bother to be a bit more vivacious when speaking to Spencer, even in spite of your own irritation, but the sinking feeling in your stomach is making it impossible to pay attention to niceties. “That’s never happened before. Something’s wrong.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing.” But even to you Spencer’s words sound hesitant, like he’s trying to convince rather than tell, and somehow his lack of confidence only serves to make your throat that much thicker. “He couldn’t have left already, you would’ve seen him.”

Yeah, you would have — provided you hadn’t allowed every ounce of your attention to be monopolized by Spencer. You’d been so preoccupied with trying to appeal to his attention, so hung up on matching him wit for wit and taunting and tempting him with bared flesh and sultry gazes that, truthfully, anything could have escaped your notice in the last couple of minutes. Anything. And if some poor girl ended up preyed upon, if she ended up beaten or assaulted or worse, it wouldn’t be as simple as blaming the monster taking advantage of her. You wouldn’t even be able to blame Spencer for distracting you. No— the only person you’d have to blame would be yourself.

“He’s gone,” you breathe, horror a jagged knife twisting in your stomach. Your hands shake so badly that Spencer has to uncurl your fingers from around your glass so he can set it gently down for you. “God, he’s— I let him get away. He’s gone.”

“Don’t work yourself up,” Spencer insists, and if you weren’t sure your panic was playing tricks on you, you’d have sworn you saw his hand reach out to comfort you, just as you saw apprehension tensing his expression. Of course the one thing it took to get a reaction out of him would be unbridled panic. “Listen to me, everything is fine.”

“Not for whatever girl he decided he liked enough to blow off his date for!” you hiss, and it’s a strain to keep your volume low enough not to attract the attention of any other patrons, but you manage. “We need to— Spencer, we have to stop him! He’s going to hurt somebody!”

“Okay,” Spencer tries to calm you, quickly moving to his feet. You can’t get a read on the way he’s looking at you, can’t tell if he’s taking you seriously or trying to decide if he should make a phone call to he nearest psychiatrist, but he seems to be picking up on the urgency of the situation, so you make the choice to let it go. “Let me go check the bathroom to see if he’s still here. If he’s not there, then we can start worrying.” He turns, taking three steps towards the bathroom before spinning on his heel and coming back to say, “Just— stay here, okay? Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

And as you watch his back as he makes the trek towards the restroom, you think about doing what he tells you to. Truly, you do. Spencer could walk into that bathroom and find the man you’d been planning to turn over to his custody and come back with him in handcuffs, unable to help leveling a handsome smirk at you by way of a silent I told you so. You could be panicking for nothing.

But… if there was even the slightest chance that someone innocent could be in the worst kind of danger, was it really worth leaving their fate up to a coin toss?

You’re on your feet as soon as Spencer’s out of sight, beelining for the exit and dodging between other patrons until your legs have carried you out the door and immediately to the dimly lit corner of the block, lined with the closed shops and darkened alleys the man you were after would need to get away with the unspeakable acts he planned to commit. Even as you book it to stop what you know in your gut to be happening, you can’t help but to hope that Spencer had been right. Things would certainly be easier to stomach, were that the case.

But, as you’d somehow known with sickening clarity, the closer you draw to the dark alley gaping between the buildings down the street, the more prominent sounds of a struggle become. You heard a man’s voice — deep and angry and enough to set your hands shaking and your mind blazing with fury — and then, beneath that, the muffled, whimpered cries of a young woman, the sounds of which were so pitiful that you didn’t need to have laid an eye on her to know that she was already sobbing. After that, all thoughts of Spencer effectively flew out the window. Suddenly all there was in your mind’s eye was you, some poor innocent girl having the worst night of her life, and what you were going to do to ensure that nothing bad befell her or any other girl ever again.

“Hey!” you screech, running head first into the alley. “Get the fuck off of her!”

There isn’t any time to survey your surroundings, to take stock of the fact that the man you’d known would be out here was in the process of brutalizing a young woman — one who looked to be barely more than a teen, to your unadulterated horror — nor was there time to really assess what you were barreling toward. All you knew was that your body moved of its own volition, and it was much too late to think things through once you’d collided so forcefully with the assailant that you’d knocked him bodily to the ground. It was too late to second guess yourself now, to wonder whether it wouldn’t be smarter to wait for Spencer, who could actually, legally take care of this guy. The only thing that mattered now was getting justice for everyone who had been too incapacitated to stand up for themselves.

“What the fuck?” the man hisses from beneath you, but you’re already whipping around to get a look at the frightened girl staring down at you. Her eyes are rimmed red, tears trailing down her cheeks, and to your morbid relief, you note that she appears to have no more than an expression of horror on her face.

You’d made it in time, then. By the grace of some higher power, you’d made it in time.

“There’s an FBI agent in the bar down the street,” you bark at her, struggling against the brute strength of the man you were trying — and failing — to keep pinned down. “His name is Spencer Reid. Find him.”

And that was all you had to say before she was running off down the alley and out of sight, the mercy of her safety striking such a psychological chord that you were just distracted enough for the man beneath you to throw a punch that successfully manages to clip you on the jaw, causing stars to swim in your vision as a result.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he hisses, quickly pushing himself to his feet and leering over you with a sneer. It made sense that he was under the impression that he had the upper hand— were you anyone else, he likely would have, and you’d have been little more to him than a replacement for the target you’d just saved.

But you weren’t anyone else. You weren’t helpless, or defenseless, and you certainly weren’t about to let this lowlife get away with all of the things he thought he was. No — you were someone hellbent on making a lasting difference in the world, and if that had to start with this guy getting his head bashed in, then so be it. You were down a tire iron, but your rage was weapon enough.

You wait until he grabs at your shoulder, waiting for just the right moment as he fully extends his elbow before punching as hard as you can against it in the opposite direction, not pausing to hear the sickening crunch of his bone snapping before rolling to the side, jumping to your feet, and subsequently kicking out his knee with a high heel clad foot. His howls of pain are equivalent to music in your ears, but you don’t pause to revel in the sound before you continue on with enacting your justified persecution. In this moment, you aren’t yourself. You’re not sure who you are, as a matter of fact, but you know it isn’t someone willing to let this lowlife get away with the mass amounts of pain and terror he’s inflicted on so many innocents.

“You like that, baby?” you snarl, letting your foot fly against his unprotected ribcage over and over again between sentences. “Does that feel good? Hmm?”

“You—“ The man cuts himself off with a hacked cough, spluttering and moaning as blood trickles down his chin. You’re not sure if that’s because you’ve kicked him in the face without noticing or because you’ve done enough damage to have already caused internal bleeding, but you’re not overly focused on figuring it out. “You psychotic— bitch,” he spits, and the hatred he gazes up at you with is so potent that you can’t help the wicked grin that curls across your mouth in response.

“That’s right,” you murmur, hovering your foot over the center of his chest for just a moment before digging your heel into his sternum. The harder you press, the louder he roars, and the louder he roars, the more you’re inclined to ensure that his screams continue. It’s a vicious cycle, but one you’re much too fond of to let go. “I’m a crazy, psychotic bitch because I’m a woman who stands up for herself and other women, and because I won’t let shitbags like you take advantage of us. Do you even know how old that girl was?”

His face contorts in pain, hands flying to your ankle in an attempt to pry your foot off his chest, but with one arm out of commission and pain proving to be too much of a distraction, he doesn’t manage to make any significant progress in alleviating your attacks. “Fuck you,” he hisses, but even to your ears, the vulgar words sound weak and reedy.

“I’m sure you’d like to,” you shoot back, digging your heel in that much further. You wait until you see tears welling in the corners of his eyes before letting any of the pressure up, and when you’re sure he’s hurting too badly to try and pull a fast one on you, you step off his chest and kneel to the ground, straddling his torso before your hands snake up to form a necklace at his throat. “You’re not used to girls fighting back, are you? You’re not used to anyone putting up a fight, and because of that you think you can just take whatever you want. Is that right?”

His eyes bulge out of their sockets as you begin to squeeze, hissed obscenities caught in his throat with nowhere to go, and the more he claws at the manacles your hands form, the tighter you let your grip become. It’s power, what you feel as you reconcile with the fact that you’re now quite literally holding this man’s life in your hands, and for a moment, you forget everything else. That you were only in this situation because you’d set out to save someone, that you’d sent that very same someone to go and fetch Spencer to come resolve all of this, that you weren’t an angel of death enacting revenge upon those who rightfully deserved what was coming to them. All those things washed away in the night, in just the same way as the beginning rainfall washed the man’s blood onto the ground in runny pink ribbons. It was only you and him, now. Nothing else mattered.

“You know, it’s men like you,” you snarl, squeezing so tightly against his throat that your knuckles go white and your fingers stiff, “that make people afraid to walk home alone at night. To send their kids off to college, to let their little ones grow up and experience the world. Because there are always— always monsters like you just waiting to take advantage of us. And no one’s ever made you pay for that, before, have they? That’s why you’re still so cocky, and confident enough to pull this shit out in the open because you know you’ll get away with it.”

Distantly, in the back of your mind, you think you hear someone calling your name. It’s hard to say for certain; with how focused you are on enacting revenge, on making sure this lowlife feels every single ounce of pain he’s ever managed to inflict on another unsuspecting human, your senses aren’t left with much more of an attention span. Even if they had been, you wouldn’t have bothered using it. Your fury, burning your nerves like hellfire, proves such a strong beacon of desire that you have no choice but to indulge. It feels good, the way his breath catches beneath where the heel of your palm digs into his throat, and you can tell by the way his eyes are beginning to cloud that if you keep it up, if you press just a little harder, squeeze just a little more—

Warm, strong arms snake around your middle, forming an inescapable cage of iron trying to pry you off the man beneath you, and the primal snarl that rips from your throat in response is a clear threat, but it does nothing to deter them. Hyperfixated as you are on finishing the job and ensuring that the man on the ground never lives to breathe another day, you don’t have the attention to spare, but your subconscious takes in the sharp scent of cloves filling your nostrils, the soft brush of curls against your shoulder, the domineering grip shackling your wrist maintaining a surprising air of gentleness. Your name is hurriedly whispered into your ear once, twice, three times, and by the fourth round you realize they’re not whispers at all — they’re shouts.

“Let go of him,” Spencer barks, bruising your ribs with how harshly he yanks you backwards. “Listen to me, listen to me. Let go of him.”

“Get off me!” you hiss in pain, stars dancing across your vision as you feel a slight bend in one of your bones, throwing an elbow back in retaliation. It lands square on his chest, and though the resulting grunt of pain he gives is certainly satisfying, it isn’t worth the grip you lose on the man’s neck. Once you’re down by one hand, it isn’t at all difficult for Spencer to wrench the second one back, and before you know it you’re a good ten feet down the alley, kicking and screaming wildly against Spencer’s grip as the monster you’d nearly strangled to death sputtered his way back to life.

“Calm down,” Spencer snaps, voice deep and low in your ear as he adjusts his grip around your torso so that you’re more fully pressed agains his body. “You need to breathe, do you hear me? Snap out of it. She’s okay. You got here in time and she’s okay. She’s safe, and you’re safe. Calm down. Calm down.”

You want to tell Spencer that he’s wrong. That you can’t be safe, that no one can be, so long as the man groaning on the ground across the alley is allowed to keep breathing. That this man can’t be allowed to live another day, waiting for the next opportunity to take advantage of an unsuspecting stranger who didn’t know any better. That it would be better to put him down now than to wait around for him to fuck up all over again, to ruin someone else’s life.

So you do.

Or, you try to. But all that manages to leave your mouth is little more than bent sobs and broken screams.

“It’s okay,” Spencer goes on, “it’s alright. Everything’s alright.” He uses the grip he’s got on your arm to spin you around, muffling your sobs as he brings your head against his chest and keeps it there with a gentle hand rested against the back of your head. Your body’s shaking so badly against his that, with your eyes still closed, you’re certain you’re still struggling to free yourself from his grip. It isn’t until you feel your fingers — numb with cold and shock and adrenaline — curl into his jacket that you realize you’re holding onto him for dear life. “Just breathe. Just breathe. You’re okay.”

“He was going to—“ You cut yourself off with a choked sob, shaking your head profusely. “He was going to—“

“I know,” Spencer murmurs, “I know. You don’t have to explain, just breathe.”

You hate this — that he’s caught you in such a vulnerable position, that he’s bearing witness to the rapid decline of your mental state. You hate that this is what it took to finally get him to wrap his arms around you, to offer words of reassurance and certainty rather than fixing you with unimpressed looks and exasperated eye rolls. Most of all, though, you hate that he’s now seen you at your worst, and that, going forward, he’ll never quite be able to dissociate you from the monster you truly are.

You don’t know how long he holds you there, murmuring insistent reassurances into your ear as he holds you gently to his chest. For how at odds it is with every other interaction you’d had with him — those ones where he’d roll his eyes, wave you off, regard you as little more than a vapid, spoiled brat who was all too used to getting her way — it’s nearly impossible to reconcile how you’d grown used to being treated with how you were being treated now. And though it’s certainly the last thing your mind should be focussing on, though you really don’t have the mental capacity required to work through this on top of everything else, you can’t help but come to the realization that you’re actually quite fond of the change.

A voice from across the alley cuts through the careful atmosphere of misguided comfort Spencer has crafted for you, and though he won’t let you turn around — actually goes so far as to squeeze his arms more tightly around your middle so that you can’t — the very sound of the man’s voice sends you dangerously close to the edge of the precipice all over again. “Are you… the fed that bitch was talking about?” His voice is hoarse, and half his words come out in broken hacks. It’s childish in the most juvenile of ways, but you can’t help the twinge of satisfaction that sparks to life in your blood. “Arrest her! She tried to kill me!”

“Actually,” Spencer mutters darkly in response, “from where I’m standing and from what that high school senior told me, she was only trying to stop you from committing assault. If anyone here is getting arrested tonight, it’s you.”

“Are you— are you fucking serious?” The blatant shock shooting his cracked voice up two octaves might have been funny, were the situation that led to it not so horribly severe. “She broke my fucking leg!”

“Thing is,” Spencer shoots back, never even missing a beat, “they do a lot worse to rapists in prison. I’d know— I’ve seen it.” The way his voice drops as the words tumble from his mouth catches your attention, but you don’t have the time to properly contemplate asking why before he’s going on. “You ask me, she went a little too easy on you. Remember that when you finally get what’s coming to you.”

And then Spencer’s calmly leading you away, maintaining a gentle yet firm grip on your waist to keep you from trying to look back. Even if you could, you don’t imagine you’d be much inclined to. You have no remorse for what you’d nearly done, and, truthfully, you’d left men in far worse states in the past. You know that; Spencer does, too. Yet, even in spite of that, even in spite of the fact that this was the second night he’d born witness to you attempting to kill a man, his touch on your body remains soft, and he curls over you like a protective blanket.

“We can’t just leave him,” you find the strength to whisper once you’ve put a healthy amount of distance between you and the alley’s opening. The street lights grow brighter the closer the two of you get to the bar, and you’d never admit it out loud, but it makes you feel that much safer. “He’ll get away. You need to… you need to go back.”

“I called the police as soon as I went to go check the bathroom,” Spencer tells you, leading you back into the safety of the bar. Suddenly surrounded by the sounds of raucous laughter and joyful whoops, it’s almost easy to forget what just occurred outside — almost. “They were on standby in case anything went wrong, but I had them hang back until I could get you out of there safely. They’re probably in the middle of cuffing him now.”

“And the girl?” you ask, so dazed that you don’t even protest or make any sort of snappy remark as Spencer gently helps you into a secluded corner booth. “She’s... you made sure she got home safe?”

“I called her a taxi and gave her my phone number,” Spencer answers, fixing you with as reassuring a stare as he can manage. “She’s going to give me a call in the morning about pressing charges. She was scared and a little banged up, but he didn’t... nothing happened. You stopped it before it could.”

You’re too weak to do anything with the knowledge but nod and sink down to the table, protectively covering your head with your arms as you squeeze your eyes shut and try to breathe. Dark thoughts, thoughts twisted in rage and a deeply intense need to protect, continue swirling through your mind, and if you’d thought catching your breath was impossible before, it’s effectively become something of an Olympic sport now, though the reasoning for why effectively evades your understanding. What you’d been through tonight, what you’d been ready to do to that man — if he could even be called a man — isn’t anything that’s never happened before. Hell, scum like that were the very reason you’d gotten caught up with Spencer in the first place.

But… something’s different now. You can tell by the way the oxygen rattles through your lungs, the way you can’t still your shaking fingers as they clatter against the tabletop. You don’t know what it is, where it’s come from, or how to stop it, but it’s there, and you can feel it.

Fingers softly brush up against one of your wrists, startling you so forcefully from your reverie that you can’t help the cry of shock that drops from your mouth as you yank your arm back with as much urgency as if you’d been burned. Seconds pass, then ten, then thirty, and even as your subconscious mind works double time to interpret the concerned light in Spencer’s eyes in response to his touch, you remain unable to fully come back to the present.

“You need to eat something,” he tells you, casting his eyes back down to the table. It’s a testament to how much time has passed that there are now two glasses of water covered in condensation that, up until this point, you’d not even been aware were present. “It’ll help with the shock.”

“I’m not going into shock,” you mutter, squeezing your hands together and resting them in front of you. Spencer catches sight, but if he has something to say about it he keeps it to himself. “And I’m not hungry. I just want to go home.”

“And I’ll take you there,” Spencer responds, metaphorically digging his feet in. “But you need to eat something first. And drink water.”

You roll your eyes, shakily moving to stand. “I’m not—“

“Sit down.” The hard glint in his eyes, sharp and metallic as a knife, makes it clear that he isn’t asking, and against your stubborn will, you immediately do as he commands. You want to think it’s simply because you’re too tired to fight back rather than too frightened or intimidated, but then, you can’t quite be sure. At least, not until Spencer leans across the table, insistently holding your gaze in something that you think might be a warning, and it’s only now that you realize he’s been holding back his frustration in favor of seeing to your needs, just as his composure begins to slip. “I told you to wait for me at the bar.”

“Yeah, you did,” you respond with a halfhearted roll of your eyes. “You should have known better.”

“No,” Spencer shoots back, “you should have listened to me. Instead you went and broke your word, all because you had something to prove to yourself.”

You can’t help but scoff in disbelief at Spencer’s implication, momentarily startled into genuine speechlessness. Those words hurt — so much so that you really weren’t inclined to admit that they did, lest Spencer think he have more power over you than you were actually willing to give him. So instead, you pushed back the hurt and leaned into the rage. It wasn’t healthy by any means, but at this point, you’d try just about anything to cut through the debilitating numbness medicating your senses at the moment.

“I didn’t break shit!” you hiss, repressing the urge to scream. “And if you really think I did what I did because I was thinking of myself, then you’re just as bad— no, scratch that, you’re… you’re even fucking worse than the rest of them!”

And you expect Spencer to launch some scathingly cruel insult back at you, one that cuts you deeper than you’d ever known words could be capable of, because Spencer’s a genius, after all, and he’s kept up with you enough over the years that he knows how to make an insult hurt if he wants it to. To your admitted surprise, though, he doesn’t open his mouth and hurl knives your way; he doesn’t even look at you like he wants to hurt you, in the way that you’re positive you’re looking at him. Instead, he only blinks down at you, carefully analyzing the expression on your face and the fury in your words before giving you any kind of response. It’s more than you deserve, really.

But Spencer’s soul has always struck you as kind.

“You could have gotten yourself hurt tonight,” he sighs, shaking his head in what you think could be disappointment. “You realize that, don’t you? That what you did was reckless and ridiculously stupid?”

You bark a harsh laugh in response to that, shaking your head as you go on squeezing your hands together. “In case you didn’t notice, I wasn’t the one in danger. Believe me, you didn’t have anything to worry about.”

“You said he’s escalated to killing girls after assaulting them,” Spencer presses, and it’s only as you minutely glance down at the table that you realize he’s curling his hands into fists of his own. “Did you ever stop to think that if he’d managed to overpower you, that could have happened to you too?

“Well it didn’t, did it?” you snap, searching for the power to quell your sudden annoyance. You know it’s misplaced; Spencer’s only doing his best to take care of you, without saying as much in so many words. You should be happier for it; after all, hadn’t you spent years attempting to get Spencer to consider you? To leave lasting impressions on his mind? To sneak your way into his late night, private, personal thoughts? Sure, on the surface it had all been more for show than anything else, but… even if he’d never known the truth, you certainly always did. “I’m fine. Okay? Fine. I’m not going into shock—“

“You’re certainly acting like you are.”

“— I’m not having a panic attack—“

“Again, you could have fooled me.”

“— and I’m not hungry! Okay? I’m not! I just want to go home!”

And it’s lucky that Spencer had the foresight to seat the both of you as far away from the general population of the bar as possible, lest any of the unsuspecting strangers hear the two of you squabbling over something so harrowing, but even if he hadn’t, you wouldn’t have cared enough to bother lowering your voice. All of these people, laughing, chatting, obliviously participating in their good times, and all the while an innocent girl had nearly been violated just a few buildings away out on the street. It wouldn’t have been their fault — really, the only person that should have been held accountable was hopefully being dragged to the police station at this very moment — but the fact that life could so casually go on while a child had to suffer the worst night of their life in silence just didn’t sit particularly well in your throat.

You inhale a deep breath, squeezing your eyes shut as you brace against the inky misery staining your senses. When you open them again, blinking through the stubborn tears trying to form in the brim of your eyes, you find Spencer carefully considering your face, and all you can do is hope he doesn’t notice the way your lip wobbles.

“I just want to go home,” you say again, hardly managing to get the words out in anything above a whisper. “Please, Spencer, just… I don’t… I can’t be here right now. Please just take me home.”

It’s hard to say what exactly takes the fight out of him. It could be the way you’ve said his name, softly, desperately, pleading in a manor which you’re certain he’s never heard from you before. But then, it could also be the tears welling in your eyes, far more conspicuous a sight than you’d have liked and one Spencer had only ever been confronted with once before. Whatever it is that’s done the trick, it prompts the softening of his gaze, along with the gentle downturn of the curve of his mouth. Just out of the corner of your eye, you think you see his fingers dancing hesitantly over the table top as they steadily migrate closer to yours, and though he doesn’t try to make contact with you this time, he manages to offer you an inexplicable amount of comfort as his fingers dance in a mirror image of the motions of yours.

“Okay,” Spencer concedes, frustration fading out of his expression to allow concern to take the lead. “If that’s what you need, then okay. But— just, put this on, at least.” Before you can interpret his meaning, he’s shrugging out of his jacket and pushing it across the table, and before you can protest, he’s pressing forward stubbornly. “It’s raining outside, you’re shaking, and that dress is gorgeous but it’s not going to stop you from catching hypothermia. Just wear it until we get to the car.”

He’s not leaving you a choice, judging by the glint in his eye that makes it clear he isn’t willing to hear any back talk on the subject. You consider doing so anyway — partly because you’re not sure you’re in the mood to take orders from Spencer, no matter how emotionally distressed you are, and partly because you’re afraid the weight of his jacket on your skin and the scent of his cologne in your nose would be just a bit too intimate for you to handle in this moment — but ultimately, you do as he asks, grabbing at the dark bundle of fabric and wrapping it around yourself like a blanket of protection.

It’s… warm. And it smells good, too. Embarrassing as it is, concentrating on further inhaling the scent of it — of him — is nearly enough to instantly cause your hands to cease their trembling.

“Let’s go,” Spencer murmurs, offering his hand as he stands from the table.

Wordlessly, you take it.

––

Part Two: Something of a Dangerous Game

[misselko]

Got this idea from Dimitri’s conversation with Byleth before Fort Merceus battle with the Death Knight. Put some angst, fluff, and a pinch of smut spices into the dish and let it simmer down! At least, that’s what I want! But it turned out... different ;) Sorry not sorry

Please kindly leave some of your comments or ideas for my next fic! Your warm and loving words gives me energy to write more!!

RECKLESS

Genre: Angst, Fluff

Warnings: Mention of blood, violence, a little smut

Words: 3316

 

POST TIMESKIP

Empire will be the only remaining enemy and to move on to the Imperial Capital, Enbarr, capturing Fort Merceus is a must. Praised as the strongest defense with its fortified military installation  in the Empire, seizing it won’t be an easy feat.

Liberating Arianrhod, calming down Holy Kingdom of Faerghus political issues, winning over the Leicester Alliance and gained their support. Getting a lead on Lady Rhea’s location. Although things were a rough go, but thinking back on it now, Blue Lions sure has really come a long way. Things have been wonderful in these past moons that it almost feels like dream too good to be true.

You don’t know why but you can’t shake your uneasy feelings and dread. War is raging and everyone knows there is a big battle on the horizon.

“We must not falter in our assault. The Death Knight is the enemy commander in Fort Merceus. He’s an unpredictable opponent. A dangerous one. Please proceed with caution, (Y/N).”

“I will, Dimitri. No need to worry.”

“I have not come this far just to lose you here. I’m serious. Do not be reckless out there.”

“Will you save me if I’m in trouble?”

“Of course, (Y/N). You were the heart of the Blue Lions, and the same holds true for the Kingdom Army.”

You smiled at his concern and hold his hands gently.

“I will do my best as well to support you, my Dimitri.” His cheeks turned into rosy blush at your words.

 

“Whoaa!! You’re getting pretty chummy, aren’t you, Your Highness? Go get a room!” Sylvain winks and got punched HARD, dragged away by Ingrid. You make mental notes on giving her a delicious roasted meat from that famous new shop in the town later as your gratitude. Serves him right!! ...But you wouldn’t trade them for anything in this world. Everything will be alright with them. Blue Lions are your precious family. It will be fine. Everything will be fine.

---

Capturing Fort Merceus is a daunting task. Endless enemies are approaching and relentless. Felix and Sylvain are working together cut through the snipers and mages. Ingrid and Ashe are doing their best to handle the pegasi knights. Dedue, Annette, Mercedes, and Flayn makes great combo on cutting through enemy reinforcements while providing healing to everyone. Slowly but sure, you and Dimitri managed to push Death Knight on the corner. But it doesn’t make things less difficult for both of you.

 

“You dare stand between me and my pleasure?”

The beginning of it was barely a bellow that grew steadily to a deafening roar, piercing the air and shaking the ground. Areadbhar crack in deafening clash against Death Knight’s Scythe of Sariel. They raised their weapons, waving them overhead.

 

“Yes. I dare stand against you, Death Knight!!”

 

Dimitri decides to face Death Knight head on as you tried your best to keep his back safe from the Imperial soldiers assaults. Keeping a close eye on him... just in case, following from a few meters back, cover his blind spots that way, look out for any potential danger. You could see them coming around, carefully and quietly trying to find their way to Dimitri.

 

Landing sharp blows, you bring the blade down on the head of another mage. Slashing your way through numerous enemies, you start to feel fatigued. Countless enemies lying dead behind. You looked around, among the sea of red and black, a swordmaster is sneaking his way behind Dimitri, ready to ambush him.

 

But you wouldn’t let it happen!

 

You were fully offensive, rapidly swinging your sword down on the swordmaster. You were able to deflect, parry, and block most of his attacks until his foot swept across your ankles, knocking you hard to the floor. The swordmaster stood above you, ready to press his sword into your chest to end your life. Fatigue made it harder for you to evade his deadly stab completely. Sound of a weapon piercing through flesh filled your ears, followed by an intense pain in your side. He pulled it back out with a triumphant smirk on his face. Despite the searing pain, you made it in time to grab your own weapon and thrust it up to his neck, your arms shaking as you tried to counter the weight of his attack. Grimace crossing your face as he fell, blood painting the earth a sick shade of red.

 

You sat up, wincing at the searing, burning hot pain on your side. The stab wound was way too deep. Your hands trembled, desperately attempting to put pressure on the wound as heavy flow of your blood is trickling through your fingers, colors your skin and clothes. The world had turned blurry, and your body felt weak. Ignoring the excruciating pain, you rush forward to help Dimitri. He has won against the Death Knight. But in his brief reverie, the Tempest King failed to notice two opposing snipers are approaching him, expression intent to kill, aiming their arrows at his back.

 

You acted on instinct, rushing forward, sprinting to intervene. To protect him.

‘We have been through so much together and he’d been through hell and back... I want to ease his pain. Knowing he’s safe... I can be at peace.’

You thought to yourself, launching forward. You barely has energy to stand up, but you tried to muster your last remaining strength to dove in before Dimitri. The arrows managed to easily make it’s way through your armor, landing in your chest and abdomen. ‘I have no regret when it came to protecting Dimitri.’

 

Your body slammed hard on the ground, careening across the battlefield. A sharp cry pained noise escaped you; that was all it took. Dimitri stiffened at the sound. It pulled him from the high of the battlefield down to reality in an instant.

 

“(Y/N)!!!”

 

He turned; filled with horror and rage. The fires blazing around him didn’t give off any heat. The battlefield around him turned black and white. His ears were ringing as if he’d been caught in an explosion. Dimitri went after the snipers and thrust them both at their hearts. After a quick glance to make sure no more surprise attacks happen, he kneels and pulling you into his chest. You looked so small, felt so limp that it sickened him. Broken and battered with littered scars and large wound on your side. Arrows jutting out of your chest, much too close to the heart, and another one lodged deep in your abdomen.

 

Dimitri watched as the blood pooled around you. Blood... there is so much blood. Your blood.

“Goddess... what were you- MERCEDES! FLAYN!! SOMEONE...HELP!!”

 

He pulled himself up, beside you, staring at your face. You were so pale. Oh, Goddess, you were dying. Were you already dead?

 

“I’m sorry.” There isn’t a reason to apologize, you aren’t sorry, but it still came out like the blood that is on Dimitri’s hands now.

 

“Don’t you dare apologize to me right now,” his voice choked off in his throat feels raw with emotions, barely able to hold back the sob which demands to escape, “not when you are like this. What were you thinking, (Y/N)? You have promised me to not be reckless.” He phrased it in a question, but both know why.

 

“Y-You... haven’t seen the... swordmaster... and those snipers. Y-You...were going to die...if they attack you. I want to protect you.... and I don’t regret my decision.“

 

You opened your mouth to speak but immediately coughed, feeling globs of blood on the corners of your lips. Dimitri gripped your hand, his hold so tight that it hurt, but you wouldn’t waste your breath on telling him. You could barely see Mercedes scurried over to your side as quickly as she could, Flayn follows behind her, leaving the Death Knight behind with tears running down her cheeks.

 

“Please stay awake for me a little longer, please.”

He choked out, pulling you closer if possible as it would keep you from leaving.

 

The chaos around you went mute as your eyes grow heavy. Maybe a quick nap would suffice.

 

“No...no, no, (Y/N)!! You can’t do this to me, you can’t-! Please, (Y/N), I can’t lose you too.....”

 

You felt like you were fading, and the sounds around you faded along with your hazy consciousness. You fell asleep.

---

Every second was filled with anxiety; you’d lost so much blood. The wounds were too deep to heal completely. There was little to no possibility of survival. Not after what you’d been through.

The days turned to one week, then two...then three. The physical wounds had healed, mostly repaired and faded to scars. There was potential for things to return to normal, and you may wake up sooner rather than later.

When you opened your eyes again, you found yourself in a dimly lit room, your upper body covered in bandages. The first thing you’re aware of is a dull throb radiating throughout your entire body. You were confused, and moved your head, unintentionally shifting your body and sending a wave of pain through your chest and stomach as you tried to get up. You closed your eyes tightly in response to the return of extreme pain, much worse than you had ever felt before. With much struggle, you sat on the edge of the bed shakily trying to stand up. The door creaked open and you looked up to find Dimitri peering inside.

 

”You’re awake,” he said, a look of surprise on his face. You tried to stand up and walk to him but failed, Dimitri ran in and caught you before you fell over. “I thought I was going to lose you, (Y/N),” he said, lifting you up effortlessly, settling you gently onto the bed and pulled up a chair. 

 

As cautiously as you could, you managed to sit yourself up. You kept a careful eye on the young king, noting how dark the circles under his eyes have become and how hollow his cheeks have turned. The fact that rest had eluded him for however long you were unconscious was as plain as day.

 

“You nearly died because of me. I have no right to be... you of all people shouldn’t-!” He managed to say, his voice shaking as his fingers trembled.

His head shot up to look at you, cerulean blue eyes dampened by tears that pooled in them. Your eyes were open, though weakly, looking at him and his disturbed state. You sensed his worry, but also his relief as he hovers next to your bed, engulfing you in his embrace and squeezing you against his chest for all he was worth. He was mindful of your wound, but that wasn’t enough to keep him away. No, he needed you. He needed to be beside you, to feel you, to know you were there.

 

“I’m okay, Dimitri...” You whispered, resting a hand on his chest where his heart thundered. You closed your eyes against him, relishing the feel of his tender warmth.

 

You felt how hard and rapid his heart was beating, almost deafening. Your arms wrapped around his heaving back weakly, rubbing it soothingly. He pulled you closer in response—closer, closer, closer, until every inch of you was smothered by him. Hesitant, trembling fingers graced your tightly wound bandages and you felt something warm and wet splatter onto your exposed shoulder.

 

"I could not stand to lose you,” he spoke slowly, holding your hands so tight that it hurts.

“But I fear that I may if I tell you what is on my mind.”

 

His voice was as quiet as it could be and it made you frown your eyebrows in worry. You were happy to see him alive, that was your goal when you decided to protect him from the approaching enemies. However, seeing him so distraught and afraid twisted your insides uncomfortably. The way he held your hand so desperately, afraid to let go.

 

“Dimitri.” You call him quietly, which makes him look at you with those gorgeous eyes of him.

 

You move your hand to his cheeks, caressing his soft skin, trying to bring him even the tiniest amount of comfort. Leaning to give him a soft chaste kiss on his lips. He reciprocated by open-mouthed kiss you with such fervor. There’s an undercurrent of desperation in the way Dimitri kisses you, as if this is the last moment he’ll ever feel it. It’s almost as if it pains him to be this close to you. You were alive, yet he couldn’t help but doubt it. Perhaps it was once again due to the vicious noises he still heard, though faintly. However, he was glad that they allowed him this moment of happiness.

 

“I won’t leave you, Dimitri.” You promised between ragged breath, your chest heaving.

 

“We are so close to ending this. Please, promise me you’ll stay safe. Rest, for now, my beloved.” Leaning down, he pressed a lingering kiss to your forehead, holding your hand to his chest. “I promise, I will never let you be hurt for my sake again.” Covering you with a  blanket  and tucking you into bed to retire for the evening.

 ---

After your awakening, the Blue Lions and Professor began incorporating regular infirmary visits into their schedule. They showered you with kind, encouraging words and occasionally bore small gifts (flowers and snacks), always encourage you to get better soon. But your most frequent visitor of all was your beloved gentle king.

It was two weeks since you have gotten better. Mercedes promised to take care after your bandages this evening.

“Are you ready, (Y/N)?”

You met Mercedes’ warm gaze with your own. With a firm nod, you replied, “Ready as I’ll ever be, Mercedes.”

 

The healer moved closer to you, her skilled hands undoing the set of bandages for the last time. Dimitri averted his frantic eyes to the wall when the dressing loosened just enough for your breasts to peak through. A cold, unforgiving breeze whipped the newly exposed skin, jolting a shiver down your spine. Mercedes sighed, slowly traced the scars your chest and stomach.

“I’m sorry but we will never be able to remove the scars. The wounds all healed, but... the scars will never go away completely. I’m sorry (Y/N).”

 

Your eyes immediately flashed over to Dimitri’s stiffening frame.

“It’s okay. I will never regret such a thing.” You smiled, tucking a lock of hair behind your ear.

“Do you need anything else, (Y/N)?”

“No, I’m all good, Mercedes! Thank you for your help.”

“All right, then. Annette said that she needs my help with her baking this evening. We have to finish it before midnight! Should you need anything, please feel free to call me.” Mercedes gave you last smile before excusing herself politely from your quarter.

 

“Dimitri.”

His jaw clenched tautly; his eyes crunched into a pain-stricken wince. Refusing to look at your scar, a harsh reminder of his failure.

“Look at me.”

He stilled and won’t budge to look at you.

 

“I will never regret nor blame you for this. It was my decision and if it means saving you, I’ll gladly do it again in a heartbeat. Or... perhaps.... I can understand if you find that my... scars are disgusting, appalling, even....” you whisper softly, almost inaudible. Your surroundings whizzed right past you before you were unceremoniously slammed into your bed.

“DON’T SAY SUCH THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF!!” He growled “I will not allow you to throw your life away for me. If.. If something ever happen to you.. I’ll live a life worse than death itself, (Y/N).”

 

Not a moment later did you feel something warm and soft press against your lips. His mouth moved awkwardly yet full of affection. Hands planted  on either side of your body, ridding any hope of escape from his ravishing kisses. Dimitri pressed his lips further into yours, swallowing your moans. His lips left yours to trail down around your neck, breasts, and stomach lovingly. “This wounds... I cannot lose you again, my beloved.” His body quivered.  The King kissing the scars on your cleavage and abdomen, worshiping them reverently with tender touches, almost like touching a porcelain doll. Afraid to break you with his almost inhuman power. Biting and sucking wherever his heart desired until you were covered in nothing but love bites, leaving you a panting mess.

 

Dimitri held you in his arms, stroking your hair and mumbling whispers of ‘I’m sorry’. Bittersweet smile formed on his lips. He gazed at you, eyes lidded with desires and need, mixed with guilt and love. “(Y/N)... My beloved...” You pulled away slightly to look up at him and smiled.

“Dimitri...” You cupped his cheek in your hand, in which he immediately melted into.

“I love you, Dimitri.”

 

He blushed at your words, then it dawned on his realization. Suddenly becoming very aware of the... intimate position you were in. “Um, w-well...” As he came to his full senses he released his hands from you, as though from fire and stuttered, quickly pulling away from your panting form. He wasn’t making eye contact anymore, and you followed his gaze downwards on your body. Oh. Without the dreamlike stupor a d hazy feeling to distract you, you realized just how naked you are. Nightgown pooled beneath your waist. Feeling an onset of bashfulness, you also brought an arm up to cover as much of your chest as you could; despite what you had just done with him, the reality of the situation was catching up to you.

 

He flinched, breaking eye contact and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Ah—Urghh!!! I’m sorry, (Y/N)!! I don’t know what came over me but.. but... P-Perhaps we should... stop... before it escalates any further...” The King unclasped his furred cloak hurriedly and put it over your naked body unceremoniously, hiding his flushed crimson face in his hands again, absolutely brutalized with shame. 

 

“Er.. Be certain to rest for now. We may have undone some of your healing.” Then he said hurriedly, almost inaudibly. “When your strength returns to its fullest, we can pick up where we left off. I promise.”

 

“Fine...” You giggled, finding his attempt at being serious too adorable. The heat and passion was still very visible in his eyes, and it was obvious that anymore teasing on your end would send him over the edge.

“Thank you for this lovely evening, Dimitri.”

You pulled his hand to your lips and give each of his fingers soft kisses, gazing at him lovingly. Dimitri’s jaw and pants tightened, the poor King desperately clinging onto the last thread of sanity and reason which threatened to snap at any moment.

 

“Good night, my beloved (Y/N).” Casting one last glance at you and bashfully looking down when he caught your eye, the Blue Lions Leader left with a haste that was probably unbecoming of a gentleman, his long legs taking the steps to the second floor dormitory two at a time. He somehow,  somehow  managed to reach his room without incident or interruption, locking his door behind him, leaning back against it and covering his burning red face with his hands. His body felt like it was on fire; nerve endings alight with sensations he had long believed were dead.

 

The pit of his stomach tangled in knots when he thought of (Y/N). All he could think about was your pure unadultered love, beautiful (E/C) that is gazing at him affectionately. Goddess, he was such a sinner. It made him want to put his hands on you. All over you. Repeatedly. Savoring the taste of your lips as  you moan into his mouth. Feeling your warmth and love. Unclothed. His mind is running wild. This frantic sensation in his blood, while half-forgotten, was not new. It will be another sleepless night for the poor king. And it’s all because of you.

[elsannabackwardsposts]

Bonus Feature (apology for the chapter delay)

I think this was a requested Bonus prompt from a long while back. Posting as a little apology for the delay in getting out Chapter 40 Part 1. :) 

Flynn POV; Mid-Chapter 12 time frame

“Hey, Elsa,” waved the boy from across the lobby of the campus’ business building. The blonde woman turned her attention from her notebook, curiously looking up from where she sat on the cushioned bench. With a smile, the brunet plopped down beside her, backpack falling at his side. “Got a minute?”

Raising a brow, Elsa nodded, making one more pencil mark in her notebook, filled to the brim with print outs of what looked like a class’ power-point slides. Once the book was closed, resting on her lap, pencil fit through its coiled binding for safe keeping, she turned her head to face her underclassmen.

Taking the acknowledgment as her means for him to continue, he sighed. “I need some ‘dating’ advice..” He had caught the widening of blue eyes, and although already knowing the real reason behind why the older rower held such a surprised reaction, he played it off innocently. Running a hand through his loose bangs, he sighed, shrugging his arm. “I know. Me, of all people. Crazy.”

When he glanced toward the Senior again, he noticed that she’d schooled her look back to that of a more controlled expression; one which matched her soft voice. “I don’t know how much of a help I’ll be on this..”

He waved his hand. “Don’t sweat it. I just don’t really know how to approach this one girl. None of my usual ideas are working..” He let his gaze fall, hand absently raising to scratch the nape of his neck. “She’s on the team, which may be why it’s harder. I’ve never, ya know, dated on the team before.” Flynn knew it wasn’t the greatest way to pose this question, but really, he didn’t know what else to do.

“You know how I feel about dating teammates, Flynn..” Elsa said quietly, having turned her eyes away solemnly, a bit of warning in how she spoke his name.

“Yeah, I know..” he said apologetically with a sigh, lulling his head for an instant before locking his honey-hued gaze on her. “But you’re also filled with wisdom that I don’t have,” he said, trying to give a cheeky face, although feeling the sincerity slip a little too much into his words. It did seem to give the blonde a pause before looking back at him with a bit of amusement. “Seriously though, if you were to ever go about dating again, team or not, and, hey, look. I get it, you totally won’t, but just hear me out.” The smolder was locked and loaded in his wide, pleading eyes.

The older of the two made a face, finally rolling her eyes in an exasperated manner, motioning her hand with a twirl, letting the man continue. He smiled.

“Alright, so. If you were to ask them out.. what would you suggest? Or even say?”

There was a long silence and the blonde averted her eyes. The way her expression morphed into a pensive gaze gave away the fact that she was just taking her time to really think about the question. So Flynn casually pulled his leg up to his lap, relaxing back into the seat, prepared to wait patiently for his quiet friend’s response.

“I’d make sure to remind her of the importance of putting crew and studies before a relationship.” The young captain groaned, lifting his eyes dryly to the ceiling with a long blink. Elsa frowned at his reaction. “What? It is very important to get that out of the way in the beginning,” she stated firmly.

Hanging his head, Flynn nodded, voice defeated, but tinged with a delicate sadness more than anything. “Yeah, I know..” Seriously. What else did he really expect from the lone woman? After all she had been through, of course she would opt to make sure every one else was warry, not wanting to see anyone else get all caught up in feelings only for it to all end painfully. But he could appreciate it fully all the same, because no doubt Elsa would not offer this advice, one learned so deeply due to cuts in her own heart, up to many others, if any others, but him.

Tucking a strand of flaxen hair behind her ear, Elsa softened her look. A few thoughtful seconds later, she gently added, “Just.. keep showing her that you care; that you respect her. Be yourself. Honesty is what means the most to everyone.”

Turning, seeing the gentle look cross his childhood friend’s face, the boy felt himself inhale, just in the slightest, just because of seeing the glimpse of ease emanating behind sapphire eyes for the first time in a long time. Unable to handle the elated emotion of seeing the Senior finally melt, even if in the slightest, in a highly delicate moment which could be easily ruined if he harped on her heart’s submission, or made mention of it at all, he instead played it off in the best Flynn way possible. He made an ugly face.

“Ugh, that’s it?” He closed his eyes, tilting his nose up. “No offense, but that really is girly advice.”

“Full offense,” Elsa genuinely laughed, hand shoving the boy’s shoulder lightly as he grinned back. “If you didn’t want a woman’s input, why did you not ask your guy friends?”

Flynn rubbed the light scruff of his beard. “I don’t talk about this ‘touchy-feely’ stuff with most people. And Hans is never around anymore since he’s so busy with Anna. I really didn’t have anyone else.” His honey colored eyes fell to the side, noticing how Elsa had looked down to her hands again. He blanched, realizing his words. Shit. “Ah..! I know you two don’t get along, sorry for bringing him up.”

But the girl shook her head. “No, it’s fine.” Her blonde brows furrowed in a strange way, as if there was a hint of confusion and some sort of disdain intermingling in her emotion. “Honestly, sometimes I forget that they’re together, so thanks for reminding me.”

Something about the way she said that made Flynn pause. He honestly couldn’t really comment much, as the young couple always seemed to hang out outside of crew practice; only a handful of sparse remote moments could be recalled of the two giving off romantic vibes at the boathouse or after a race. Maybe Anna wasn’t the type to talk about her relationships very much with her teammates, airing away from typical PDA-type antics. Or maybe the Freshman was discreet enough and careful of Elsa’s feelings to not bring up the boy in conversation (as Flynn had just absentmindedly done here), effectively keep Hans out of Elsa’s mind.

He hoped it was the latter. From what he had begun to observe, the rowing pair had seemed to have a good mesh, even noticing a bit of brightness returning to his best female friend as the fall season began to roll into early winter. If Anna was that considerate of Elsa’s feelings, she was definitely a good person who’d treat her friendship with Elsa well, prioritizing the gentle soul over the novelty of a boyfriend.

His eyes scanned the Senior once more, noticing something else in her eyes; a distance usually reserved for her pensive thoughts. A place she’d fallen in and out of periodically as her years at university rolled on, usually when reflecting on her race performances and, if ever another person, it would be her Ex.. But this expression was never offered regarding the auburn haired Junior boy. So, given the conversation, did that mean it was the talk of Anna who had triggered the look this time?

Blinking, Flynn held his breath instantly as the connection was made, looking at the stoic woman with a new eye. Her expression paired with her previous reaction at the couple’s mention. His brain was suddenly pulling up images from before; her reaction Halloween night, the way every time he recently messaged her she happened to be studying or exercising with Anna. Nowadays, everything that he knew of Elsa revolved around Anna. When had that happened?

Could it be that she..?

Does Elsa actually have feelings for..?

Blue eyes were suddenly on him, narrowed. “What are you looking at?” asked the woman tersely, a frown on her lips, making Flynn startle.

“Ah, sorry, thinking of, um, you know, how I can go about wooing my lady.” He grinned sheepishly.

Sitting forward, he watched as Elsa slipped her notebook into her backpack and sat up straight, sliding her satchel strap over her shoulder. For a moment, the Junior Captain thought the woman was about to stand and take her leave, but instead, she stayed still, a pale hand lingering on the strap.

“Hey, um..” Flynn was looking directly at the porcelain face which was turned downward, gaze locked on the brilliant tile floor. “What about studying together and hanging out afterwards at your place?”

The boy blinked and tilted his head. “Huh?”

Elsa made a small grimace barely visible in her side profile. “A suggestion for you and her.. to get closer.”

The Starboard rower brought his palm beneath his chin as he leaned forward, eyes still watching the Senior. “Huh. Well, we don’t have any classes together, but maybe that’d work.” He looked to the high vaulted ceilings and the gorgeous chandelier overhead and smiled. “Yeah. Study date and a movie. Sounds like a plan!”

This time, the blonde looked at him. “Why a movie in particular?”

He laughed good-naturedly. “It’s the perfect ‘hang out’ excuse to blur the lines of a friendly date. Even if nothing happens, or if conversation lulls, you can at least extend your time with the other person and quietly enjoy it that way.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be a Netflix and chill deal.”

The Senior slowly nodded in understanding at his response, if not also scrunching her nose in confusion at the final weird phrasing he had chosen, before finally standing and bidding a farewell. Flynn reciprocated in kind and watched his blonde friend head off toward the glass-walled entrance of the building.

He leaned back, arms crossing against his chest with a smirk.

Despite his excellent acting skills revealing the total opposite, Flynn himself did not miss the subtle implications hanging in the blonde’s suggestion, nor how there was an honest curiosity in hearing his interpretation of why a movie could be a nice transitional date option. He really hoped he had worded the idea optimally enough. And although he certainly was down to implement it in his own endeavors, with what he had assumingly discovered regarding the elusive woman’s heart, he hoped he would not be the only one picking out a movie this week..

[bluecoffeemondays]

For Want of a Dowry | Chapter Two

Chapter One

Chapter Two (Part 3 / 22)

Chapter Two

They arrived fashionably late. In Darcy’s mind, it bordered on offensive. Still, he abashedly rejoiced at not having to spend any more time in the company of total strangers than was strictly necessary. So he withheld his guidance on the propriety of entering an assembly a whole hour after it had started, and it was with a slightly soothed mind that he entered the dance hall behind his friends. They need only stay for a half-hour.

“Ah, Mr. Bingley.”

A short, squat man wearing the fashions of two seasons approached with the eagerness of someone who knew he was inferior to his neighbors. He grinned excitedly and bounced up and down on the balls of his well-worn boots.

“I have the distinct honor of welcoming you and your party to our humble little gathering, Mr. Bingley. I know it is not much compared to the finery you must be accustomed to, but it is certainly a…” at this point, Darcy refused to subject his ears to the outrageously sycophantic groveling the strange little man dove into and turned away. 

He watched, with ill-disguised impatience, the proceedings before him, ignoring the curious murmurs and stares. Across the room, a flurry of motion caught his eye. A fair young lady in a cream-colored frock was practically sprinting through the crowd. In an instant, her arm was snatched, seemingly out of thin air, by another lady, and the culprit was forced to halt. This one looked older and wore a pale yellow dress that contrasted very prettily against her dark curls. The younger of the two, who was a full head taller than the other, caught Darcy’s eye. She gasped and tugged on her companion’s arm, bending down to say something, flinging her hand in his direction. The shorter woman raised her gaze to meet Darcy’s and–

Before remembering who had just been making their acquaintance, he whipped his eyes from hers and turned back to Bingley’s party.

“--and there is really nothing that can compare to the splendor of St. James. Why, when I was introduced there myself, I had the honor of meeting a person no less than Earl Howe, who was all affability and politeness that his noble birth bequeaths him. I say, sir, your–”

“Thank you, Sir Lucas, for your kind welcome,” Bingley said quickly, smiling so affably that one could not be offended by the interruption. “My sisters, you already know from calling on us last week. This is Hurst, Lousia’s husband–” Hurst gave a short bow which Sir Lucas returned, smilingly, “and this is Darcy, a dear friend of mine, from Derbyshire.” 

There was no alternative, so Darcy deigned to return Sir Lucas’s bow. “Mr. Darcy from Derbyshire–you can’t be the Darcy from Pemberly mentioned when I was presented at St. James’s Court?”

Darcy bowed again. “The very same.”

“Oh! But this is too fortuitous; I was just saying to Lady Lucas–”

“I was hoping, Sir Lucas, that I might have the honor of an introduction to your eldest daughter,” Bingley said, shooting Darcy a nervous smile. 

“Indeed! There she is, over there, in the pink.” Sir Lucas gestured over to a cluster of young ladies whereabouts there happened to be two ladies in pink. “No, no, not Miss Kitty, the taller of the two.” Bingley’s party looked. There was a cluster of around half a dozen young women, including the two Darcy had spotted earlier. The girl in the egg-shell dress looked properly chastened and was standing, long elegant neck bowed, in apparent reverence to the shorter lady in the daffodil dress. The young lady in pink, evidently not Sir Lucas’s eldest daughter, had the fair coloring of the youngest of the bunch and was just as handsome. The same could not be said of Sir Lucas’s daughter, who stood awkwardly, wearing a fuchsia frock that did nothing for her sallow complexion. It did not help that she was standing next to perhaps the prettiest girl Darcy had seen thus far in a sky-blue dress that brightened her golden curls and gave the overall impression of a sun against a brilliant horizon. 

Bingley stared at this vision in cornflower blue. Darcy frowned and leaned over, knocking a little harder than strictly necessary into his friend. 

“Er, yes. Miss Charlotte. Please, Sir Lucas, lead the way.” Darcy watched as Bingley was shown across the room to homely Miss Charlotte in the offensive pink dress. Miss Bingley, who had been quiet until now, sidled up to him with a grim smirk stretched across her face.

“Shall we be quite safe here, Mr. Darcy, do you think?”

He gave a curt nod. On his right, Mrs. Hurst was cajoling her husband into leading her onto the dance floor. Miss Bingley inched closer, twisting her tall figure towards him.

“You did promise me a dance tonight, Mr. Darcy. I have quite the perfect memory, you see.” She said with a flourish, mouth stretching wide into a smile as he held out his hand.

They danced. Darcy felt hot under the intent stares of the entire room and could hear murmurs of “10,000 a year!” and “half of Derbyshire!” whichever way they spun. Miss Bingley snorted, and Mr. Darcy shared her disdain. How garishly gauche of this small town to discuss the personal financials of a stranger–and a gentleman, no less.

The song ended, and they made their bows to one another. He could see in her eyes the hope he would request her hand again but disappointed her with his silence. Instead, he offered his arm to her sister, who had followed them off the floor, which she delightedly accepted.

While Mr. Darcy led Mrs. Hurst out to the center of the room, Elizabeth watched as her new neighbor, a Mr. Bingley escorted her dear friend Charlotte Lucas back to her side. She had never seen her friend as happy as she now was, having been singled out by the handsome new man as his first dance partner. Elizabeth could barely conceal her own broad grin for her friend’s triumph. Poorer and plainer than the Miss Bennets, Charlotte had the disadvantage wherever she was introduced while in company with her prettier friends. Elizabeth thought it entirely unfair: Charlotte was a lovely woman who had cleverness and a care for others that so many of her peers lacked. Also, thought Elizabeth irritably, it wasn’t Charlotte’s fault that long, lean figures with little in the way of curves hadn’t been in fashion for a while now. With her willowy frame and warm fawn coloring, Charlotte always reminded Elizabeth of the woodland nymphs and naiads from Grecian legends.

“Miss Lucas, would you do me the honor of introducing me to your beautiful friends?”

Elizabeth grimaced. Probably unintended by the beaming Mr. Bingley, who now stood diagonal to herself, his use of the word “beautiful” in reference to the Bennet sisters in the proximity of Charlotte always needled their friend. Indeed, Charlotte’s face had drawn in a smidge, but with good humor, she obliged.

“Mr. Bingley, these are the dear friends I was telling you about, Miss Bennet–” Jane curtsied, cheeks coloring prettily, “Miss Elizabeth,” Elizabeth gave a shallow curtsy, “Miss Mary, Miss Kitty, and Miss Lydia” in turn, Elizabeth’s three younger sisters bobbed in greeting, Lydia, who was tall and coltish still, a little clumsily.

“A pleasure,” Bingley cried, bowing to each sister. “Miss Lydia, Miss Lucas informed me this is your first assembly out–how are you enjoying it?” He spoke to the youngest Bennet, but Elizabeth could see his eyes kept darting back to the oldest.

Lydia blinked owlishly. She sent a furtive glance to Elizabeth, who nodded in encouragement.

“Very good, sir. Although, no one ever says how hot it gets in the ballroom. They’d be better off knocking down the walls and letting us waltz out in the pasture. At least then you could hop in a trough if you got too warm.”

“Lydia,” Mary Bennet hissed, looking positively aghast, “hold your tongue.” 

She needn’t have worried. Mr. Bingley roared with laughter, startling nearby people on their way to the dance floor. 

“Too right you are, Miss Lydia,” Mr. Bingley said, grinning. “I’ve often thought the same.” Then, shooting another conspicuous look at the eldest Bennet sister, he said, “I hope to have the privilege of dancing with each of you this evening, as I’ve rarely seen such an abundance of beauty and good humor. Miss Bennet, are you engaged for the next?”

Only Jane looked surprised at this query. “No, sir, I am not engaged,” she replied quietly. Mr. Bingley was smiling so hard that Elizabeth thought it was a miracle they hadn’t heard a tooth crack.

With some reluctance she returned the small smile Jane had given her as she was escorted onto the dance floor, standing near one of Bingley’s sisters and his tall friend, Darcy.

John Lucas, a younger brother of Charlottes’, approached with a toothy grin and his friend, one of the Goulding men.

“There you are, Charlotte. It was a real treat watching you dance with our new neighbor–how did you find him? Father says he is all kindness and cheeriness.”

“I liked him well enough,” Charlotte murmured, a ghost of a blush dancing across her cheeks.

“More than well enough, I’d rather think, Charlotte,” Kitty Bennet said, her voice alight with mirth. “And why not? So handsome and good-humored–”

“Kitty,” Elizabeth said, her voice light but full of meaning. She could tell her friend liked this Bingley more than she was inclined to let on and wasn’t about to let Charlotte’s tender sensitivities be injured by a sister of hers. 

“That is to say, I rather hope he keeps his promise to dance with us all. What fun, don’t you think?” Kitty finished somewhat awkwardly.

“In the meanwhile, you had better dance with us, Miss Kitty,” Mr. Lucas quickly. “Miss Lydia, might I have the next?” He bowed very formally and with a somberness that made Lydia giggle.

“Why, of course, good sir!” Lydia said happily and let herself be whisked onto the dance floor.

“I guess you’re stuck with me, Miss Kitty,” Mr. Goulding said with a wry smile. Kitty grinned and accepted his proffered arm.

It was all very neatly done, Elizabeth thought: Mr. Lucas, a childhood friend of the Bennet girls, would be an inoffensive dance partner for Lydia, and Kitty, slightly older and out two years longer, had the advantage of dancing with almost whomever she pleased without fearing the wrath of–

“Elizabeth Bennet!”

Charlotte, Mary, and Elizabeth turned at the sound of the familiar voice. Mrs. Bennet was storming towards them. Beside her, Elizabeth felt Mary mutter something very close to “Oh heavens,” and back away into the surrounding cluster of onlookers, Charlotte on her heels.

“Mama?”

“What on earth possessed you to permit this?” Mrs. Bennet thundered.

“Permit what, Mama?” Elizabeth asked innocently.

“All…this!” Mrs. Bennet flapped her arms looking very much like an angry bird.

“Mama, I haven’t the pleasure of knowing what you are referring to.”

“Oh, you do try my nerves, Miss Lizzy. You know very well my specific instructions for the night: Kitty may dance with the Lucas men only, Jane with the Lucases, the Gouldings, and the Purvises, and Lydia with no one!”

“What of Mary and me?” Elizabeth asked curiously.

“Mary wouldn’t leave the wall if it kicked her,” Mrs. Bennet said dismissively, “and you have far too much sense to take a fancy to any of these men.”

“Well, Jane could hardly refuse our new neighbor,” Elizabeth volleyed back, ignoring the slight against her middle sister. “And we’ve known John Lucas since we were in leading strings. He’s not going to seduce Lydia.”

“Watch your tongue, child. You have no idea how far men will go when there is money to be had.”

“We are hardly wealthy, Mama. Besides, the men in this neighborhood know very well what you think of them.”

“Don’t be so contrary, Elizabeth; it’s not becoming. You know what I mean.”

Elizabeth smiled and did not say anything more.

“Now, about this Bingley fellow,” her mother began, her eyes wrinkling in concentration, “They say he has 5000 a year, which is nothing to sneeze at, of course, but no property! No estate to his name! No, no, Jane will do better. Now, about his friend–well. I would be very well pleased if Jane could snag him. They would make a handsome couple, besides.

“Mama, people will hear you,” Elizabeth warned, watching as the aforementioned friend of Bingley’s swept past them with his partner.

“He has 10,000 a year, and owns half of Derbyshire, they say. Of course, I was rather hoping that Jane would hold out for a titled gentleman, but I wouldn’t have your father say nay to offer from him.”

“Once you’re done charting Jane’s future,” Elizabeth said irritably, “you might turn your attention to the fact that the friend isn’t the one so taken with Jane. I think Mr. Bingley seems quite pleasant.”

“Oh, pleasant to be sure, my dear, but you wouldn’t want Jane with someone so untethered, would you? Always jumping from one place to the next and all for lack of a proper house.”

“He might very well buy one. That does seem to be his intention given that he is currently at Netherfield and not, say, jumping around from place to place.” At that moment, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley’s sister, a Mrs. Hurst, spun past them. Mr. Darcy shot her and her mother a look of the deepest loathing, which Elizabeth returned in kind. Her mother remained painfully oblivious.

“Of course, darling, but Jane would do much better with someone firmly settled. Perhaps I will ask her dance partner to introduce her to his friend at the end of this set.”

Knowing there was nothing for it, Elizabeth sighed and walked away, dodging one of the Grant brothers, who considered once a month to be a sufficient amount to bathe.

She sat out the next. Mr. Bingley had swapped partners with Mr. Goulding and was now chatting affably with Kitty, though he never seemed to be very far from Jane and Mr. Goulding. Mr. Darcy had left Mrs. Hurst to her husband and was now stalking almost angrily down the length of the room and came to stand not very far from Elizabeth.

My, but he was a dour man! thought she, looking at him from the corner of her eye. She figured it was his purported wealth that made the other Bingley sister, Miss Bingley, follow him around the room almost as closely as her brother followed Elizabeth’s sister. Miss Bingley looked positively affronted when Mr. Grant bowed before her but, to Elizabeth’s delight, could not refuse if she wanted to stand up with Mr. Darcy again.

The set ended, and the hapless Mr. Grant led Miss Bingley to the floor while her brother claimed Jane’s hand again. Elizabeth watched as he said something to her sister and then moved towards Darcy, who was but a few yards away.

“Come, Darcy,” said he, “I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing and stalking about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance.”

Darcy replied: “I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this, it would be insupportable.” He paused, and there was a hint of grim satisfaction as he continued, “Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room, whom it would not be a punishment to stand up with.”

Elizabeth smiled to herself. There went her mother’s great plan to engage Mr. Darcy to Jane. 

Bingley looked offended. “I would not be so fastidious as you are,” he said with no real bite, “for a kingdom! Upon my honor, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life, as I have this evening; and,” he said almost as an afterthought, “there are several of them you see uncommonly pretty.” His gaze turned toward Jane. Darcy’s eyes followed his friend’s, narrowing as he replied:

“You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room.” 

Elizabeth’s smile slipped. Familiar though it was to play second fiddle to Jane’s beauty, the bluntness of Mr. Darcy’s proclamation still packed a sting.

“Oh! She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld!” Mr. Bingley cried, which returned part of Elizabeth’s good humor. “But there is one of her sisters sitting down behind you, who is very pretty, and, I dare say, very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.”

“Which do you mean?”

Elizabeth hastily withdrew her gaze as both men swiveled to examine her. 

“She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me” said the taller of the two.

Mr. Bingley had a very uncharacteristic frown on his face as he retreated, but, Elizabeth noted, was quickly replaced by a brilliant smile upon his return to Jane’s side. 

Elizabeth felt a hot anger wash over her briefly but, as she was not made for ill humor, stood and was almost immediately entreated to dance by Mr. Lucas, who had just brought Lydia off the dance floor.

Quickly, the story that Miss Elizabeth Bennet had been slighted by Bingley’s friend had circulated around the room, and within half an hour, the offender had been given the cut direct by her mother. Not handsome enough, indeed.

Next Chapter (Chapter Three)

[manananggal]

I Wish I Had A Better Excuse, Like...

a/n: i read high tide at midnight again and i’m just - woof woof bark bark. beata is my trese oc. she’s an aswang raised by a hilot. stuff happened, and she becomes part of the diabolical crew. this is written mostly in english, but has a few tagalog phrases especially near the end. obviously i have no idea how to write fight scenes.

 ///

Beata is a bit nervous about today's spar.

Alexandra – well, considering that she practically took her in after the Incident™, that makes Alex her Bossing too, doesn't it? – informed her a few days ago that her Kuya would be joining them for training. Bossing didn't exactly say who, but it's not as if there's anyone else who'd join them.

She was still sort of hoping that it would be Sir Rick who'd be there - not that he ever joined them, but a girl can hope, can’t she? But when Beata saw the strong, looming figure in a salakót by the entrance of the gym, she couldn't help but be glad she brought the new sports bra she got from Valentina's Secret. It’s comfy, and she was only able to afford one because of a sale. It's powder-blue in color, with a sweetheart neckline that pushes her girls in the spotlight without the risk of them spilling out. 

She checks herself out in the ladies' room mirror and bites her lip. 

While her outfit looks great on her, like - instant boob job, because they look like  decent B-cup right now, and if she-saw-her-picture-in-a-dating-app-she'd-immediately-Swipe Right™, a knot of worry formed in the pit of her stomach.

There’s a voice at the back of her head that sounded like a mix of her mother and Sister Johanna from high school asking her just what the hell she thinks she’s doing. 

It’s effective enough to make her trudge back to her locker and dig through the bottom of her bag for a white, threadbare shirt which she tugs over her head right away.

"How the hell does Wari do that?" She grumbles, standing in front of the mirror again. Her reflection did nothing but throw her disgruntled expression right back. 

She could always ask Wari for tips, of course. But the Encanto would want to know why, and Beata doubts it will take her that long to figure out what's up, and it's not like she needed any more people on her case. With a sigh, Beata heads out, letting the wooden door swing behind her.

--

Carlos Trese, sans his usual salakot and armor, meets her near the center of the sparring mat. He's traded the usual maong for dark sweatpants, but the white camisa chino remained. His head is newly shaved, save for the close-cropped patch that emphasized the sharp widow's peak that everyone in the Trese clan seems to have.

The two of them gave each other the customary bow, an acknowledgment and a promise that neither is out to genuinely hurt the other. No claws and no weapons, but it doesn't mean that Carlos would be less than terrifying.

Beata exhales slowly as she slides into the first stance; her right leg in front of the other and bent slightly at the knees while her right arm extends forward as the left is positioned close to her chest, bent at the elbow, both palms facing the opponent.

Basilio yelling, "Kick his ass, Bibi!" from the sidelines didn't help settle her nerves. She stomped down the urge to stick her tongue out at him and kept her focus at her sparring partner.

She never expected Carlos to go easy on her, but what she didn't expect was him charging towards her right off the bat, and Beata yelps in surprise, barely able to block the oncoming punch. She takes a backward step as her left forearm deflects the hit. She could already feel the bruise forming, but Carlos left his chest unguarded – it could be a trap, or he could easily block any incoming hit, but Beata knows she's just fast enough to land one, and so she took the risk.

Beata was able to push Carlos backward as her right palm rushed forward, striking him flat on the chest.

"Nice, Beata." He says with a curt nod. "That was good."

Her eyes flickered to his face, and she was granted one of his rare smiles. It gave him a rather boyish look, less menacing and closer to the impish grins the Kambal would have on their faces.

And her heart decides it's a good time to speed up, to rattle inside her ribcage, and she knows,  she knows it's not because of the spar. Because if it was, then Beata wouldn't have the fluttering, jittery feeling in her gut now, would she?

It was mortifying, this silly, little torch she holds for the eldest Trese sibling. It started on the day he saved her from a gang of aswang. They needed her blood for some ritual. She was too out of it to remember, and not even Alex's spell helped her recall anything except for the flash of the Verdugo's blades and the pained shrieks of her captors.

In her foggy, half-delirious state, the warmth of his skin that seeped through his clothes was her beacon, and she remembered the way his voice reverberated through his body as he told her to hold on. She found out later that he carried her on his back, away from the rundown townhouse in Wack-Wack that served as her prison for a few days.

She'd been waitressing at the Diabolical for a month when he returned, and Alex – well, Bossing – introduced the two of them formally. Carlos Trese asked how she was doing as he shook her hand.

The contact lasted no more than ten seconds, but the feeling of how much bigger and warmer and more calloused his hand was compared to hers stayed long after he left.

Beata made the mistake of asking the worst person about Carlos. She was a few bottles in, with her head buzzing slightly, and the conversation flowed freely between her and the kambal.

It had been a casual question: 'Do you guys know if Carlos is seeing anyone?'

But those nine words were the beginning of the end, and she watched, like it was in slow motion, as the smile in Basilio's face stretched into a grin.

He, of course, told Hannah, who told Amie, who told someone else, and the news made its way to Hank. Beata's not sure who told Alexandra, but bossing knows everything that happens in her club.

"Ayos ka lang?" Carlos asks, a crease forming in the middle of his forehead.

She could only nod as it felt like something lodged itself down her throat.

--

The two of them have been at it for fifteen minutes, maybe more. It was a dance, a flurry of kicks and punches and dodges - 

She thought she'd been doing a pretty decent job holding her own against the force of nature that is Carlos Trese – she blocks, and she counters when needed, slips in a hit or two of her own whenever she sees a sliver of a chance. She is just bold enough to drive a spear-hand strike at his torso, one he was able to swiftly block and sends a countering side-elbow strike against her face. It made her leap backward, earning her a nod from him.

But he's not the Verdugo for nothing.

Beata was able to dodge the knee-strike he aimed at her middle section, but in doing so, missed the knife-hand strike headed at the side of her jaw.

Against her better judgment, the young woman froze, wrenching her eyes shut as she anticipated the oncoming strike.

But it's been a few seconds, and the pain hasn't registered. There was, however, a feeling of warmth on the side of her face. Ever so slowly, Beata opened one eye, daring to look up at her sparring partner, only to see him staring down at her with an expression she couldn't quite place and his fingers hovering just beside her temple.

"That would have been a lethal hit," He comments as he withdraws his hand. "Don't let your guard down easily, Beata."

Beata, the paragon of articulate speech that she is, could only manage a strangled sound that she hoped sounded affirmative. She knows her face is as red as a tomato, but it's not just because of the spar. Carlos wasn't wrong though, had it been a real fight, she wouldn't have to worry about her skincare routine anymore.

She slipped back into an offensive stance before launching herself at him.

--

Someone called for a break, and Beata, despite her endurance, was grateful as she all but dragged herself to the other side of the gym. She slumped on the bench, trying to catch her breath. Already, there is a dull throb that formed at the base of her neck. She presses her fingers against the sore spot, hoping that she still has Salonpas left in her drawer.

As she cooled down, she let her eyes wander to the only other people inside the gym.

She watched Alexandra walk a bit ways off, talking to someone on her phone.

She watched the Kambal, both dashing even in cotton shirts and jogging pants, goof off with each other. Basilio trying to do a fucking Jyuken stance is funny enough to pull a giggle from her. Even funnier was Crispin barking out corrections on how to do the pose right .

A few feet away from them, Carlos Trese's shoulders shook as he laughed. Who knows when was the last time he was able to just sit without having to worry about the next monster coming at him?

She thought she'd already calmed down until Carlos stood up and lifts up the bottom of his sleeveless shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.

Beata froze; the rim of her tumbler is just barely grazing her lips. She blinks a few times as what seemed to be a high-pitched, ear-splitting wail of a siren echoed inside her head.

She averts her eyes because she has dignity, dammit. She's not gonna gawk at him like a voyeur; she's definitely not gonna burn this image in her mind's eye and save this once she’s alone.

And he removes his shirt. Completely. Because she's not stressed enough as it is.

She's definitely  not  looking at him, or his chest, or his equally broad shoulders, or –  Oh. Of course, he's got a six-pack, damn it all  – or his biceps, or how his faded scars contrasted against the brown of his skin. His sweatpants hung low on his waist, and her eyes seemed to fixate at the gutters of his hips.

It's definitely not the reason why her heart starts pounding heavily or why her throat seems to suddenly run out of moisture when her tumbler is already half-empty.

"Alam mo, this is creepy, even for you." A voice pipes up beside her, making the young mananaggal jump from her seat. Had she lathered herself with lana, her wings would have sprouted, leaving her upper body in the air and her lower half losing balance, comedically toppling on the floor, spilling her guts in a literal sense.

Beata's head whips to the side. The grin on Basilio's face, eerily enough, matched the one on his bone-while mask. She'd been too caught up… well, looking, she hadn't noticed her friend pop up beside her. How long had he been there?

"How is me drinking water creepy?" Beata counters in a well-rehearsed deadpan. She doesn't need to be reminded how weird it is. She's fully aware, thank you very much.

Basilio chuckles, slinging an arm around her shoulders. Beata tries to scooch away in her seat, but his reach is way too long to be avoided. "You could just go for it and ask Kuya to stay for dinner, Bibi." He had the guts to actually wag his eyebrows at her.

"Ugh, Crispin?" She made a show of scoffing. "If what that girl from the wind tribe said is true, salamat na lang,"

"Bibi, you know I'm not talking about –  wait – what did she say about him?"

"Wala," Beata grimaces as she pushes away from the long-haired twin. "Also, couldn't you wipe yourself off bago ka mang-asar? Manghahawa ka pa ng lagkit, kadiri amp,”

Finally getting the message, Basilio himself scooted a good few inches away, letting her out of his grip.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as he ran a hand against his other arm, muttering, "I'm not even that sweaty," to himself.

Beata rolls her eyes. Sometimes, it's really hard to imagine how the underworld trembles at the mere mention of The Kambal.

"Hoy teka – don't change the subject!" Basilio says, raising one hand to give her a light chop on the top of her head.

"Aray!" She glares at him. "Parang gago naman 'to eh! What was that for?!"

"Beata, just talk to Carlos," Basilio says seriously, the way he does when he's imitating his older brother. "I'm getting tired of you giving him puppy-dog eyes every time you see him –"

"I'm not –" She objects, glowering.

"– or you completely stuttering when he's near –"

"H-hindi kami close!"

"– or you suddenly disappearing into the kitchen when he's at the bar –"

"I was needed there!"

"– And you haven't actually spoken with him, have you?"

"I-I've talked to him!"

"Yeah. Once."

"Point still stands that I was able to hold a conversation,"

"Telling him that Bossing isn't at the club doesn't count as a conversation, Bibi-girl." He winks.

"Sure, it does. He even said thank you before leaving," She insists. "And I sparred against him today. So… so there."

"Well, you wore that new sports bra for him, and he didn’t notice,"

Her mouth fell open. "H-huy, gago, hindi!"

Basilio's eyes widened at how squeaky her voice came out. "I was teasing! Oh shit, you really did, didn't you?"

"Oh, my God," She groans, burying her face in her hands. "I hate you so much,"

Beside her, he all but exploded with laughter, and Beata was so, so tempted to see if his regeneration abilities could keep up if she started to rip out his arms just before the next one grows.

"Don't worry, Bibi. I won't tell,"

"Sure you won't."

"I mean, you never wear that when you're up against Kuya and me,"

"Shut it, Basilio," She moaned, face still hidden.

He touched his shoulder to hers. "Yiie, dalaga na siya..."

"Para kang gago,"

"He's got big feet…" He goes on.

"No, Basilio. Just... no."

"And you know what they say about men who've got big feet." A pause, and then. "I mean, I would know…"

"Isa pa, ha. Pag 'di ka talaga tumigil, sinasabi ko sa ‘yo... ”

Basilio's laugh echoes throughout the gym.

[yandere-society]

Roses | M

Sypnosis: You grew up dirt poor in the shadows of society, barely managing to survive without parents or family and very little money. Somehow through multiple part-times and endless overtimes, you land a job at the most profitable company in your country: the Jeon estate. Now you work for the young head of the estate, Asia’s most powerful man, Jeon Jungkook, as an assistant. One day, as you are preparing for the Grand Valentine ball which Jungkook has formally set up for his and his fiance’s anniversary, you realize two things; Jeon Jungkook and the rich like him will always live above people like you and two, Jungkook really loves his fiance. Or…is it really her he loves?

Pairing: Jungkook x Female Reader

Word Count: 5,350

Admin: @roses-ruby​​

Valentine’s Day Event Masterlist

Warnings: yandere themes, blood, death, murder, mentions of smut, mentions of sexual harassment, evil plans, letter openers; those knife looking kinds 

You had always been jealous.

“I’ve been thinking about her a lot these days…”

The morning air wraps around your frame with frigid clarity. You had to breathe once, then twice to be able to concentrate on the intense eyes before you.

“Your fiancé, sir?”

With a sober gaze, you focus on the handsome yet stoic man sitting in front of you. His stare was vacant but captured your whole torso in a viper like grip.

“About what to get her.” He speaks in the same dull tone as before.

“…Maybe roses?”

Women like roses, right?

He tilts his head at you, as if he was signaling you about how thoroughly he was contemplating your answer. The action raised goosebumps along your upper arm until they met with the cold polyester sleeves of your dress shirt. There was such beauty even in his most simple movements, but truthfully there was nothing quite simple about the raven-haired man that eyed you with such an unreadable expression. Even though you reacted in such a way, you refused to let him see you fazed. To invite him to sink his teeth below the upper casing like he so desperately wanted.

Not yet.

With a sigh that yelled defeat, he leaned back in his chair. Mumbling to himself.

“Roses it is.”

And just like that, he dismissed you. Looking off into the distance on the left, where a large window displaying the huge metropolis laid bare. You wonder how it must feel – the raw power of staring out that window, knowing that every inch of the land could be yours within seconds. All he had to do was say the word. How would it ever be like to wake up every day wearing uncountable riches and diamonds and dynasties upon your thick skin? Either to mold or to destroy.

How does it feel to hold the fragile earth within your fist?

Perhaps you were curious because you’ve never had that luxury. Left behind to rot by that very earth itself, you’ve never had any luxuries. For you were just a simple, everyday peasant unlike the heir to the Jeon throne himself. The differences between you both were similar to that of the sun and moon. He sat on a throne you could only watch upon, forced to stand up on your impoverished legs for the rest of your life until they were to cave when you were to finally die.

Only the red are privileged to sit.

Your pace is nimble, but you manage to make it back to your desk outside his office. With a sigh, you plop down onto your rolly chair. The cushions mold into your stiffened back and your muscles relax against the plush. In the back of your mind, behind your closed eyes, you picture someone pressuring each side of your heart. Being the cause of the faint ache you felt inside your chest.

But you don’t get to rest for long, as a loud bang enters your office hallway. Startled, you sit up – and as soon as you do, the chalky screeching surrounds your ears.

“My God, some people are insufferable! I mean how hard is it to clean a dress? A monkey with a sponge could do it! Accident they say, those lazy rats. Really – and today of all days as well. This is sabotage! I will have them regret the day they tried to cross me-”

You watch with wide eyes as the lady in red hair clacks around in her maroon heels. She was seething with anger, cheeks rosy and steam coming out of her ears. But even through her fury she remained the epitome of beauty, her doll like features heightened by her puerile attitude. All you could do was gape at her as the pounding in your brain grew from her each word. With one final stomp, she stops, right in front of your desk. Her body was facing your boss’ door as she glared into the distance quietly before whirling her head at you. Eyes squinted with menace making you jump in your seat.

If looks could kill.

“What are you looking at, pig?” She snarls

Before you could answer her, the door opens. He comes out with his hands in his pocket, heartless as usual. But his eyebrows were furrowed, and you could sense the annoyance in his stance.

“What’s with all the commotion?”

“DARLING!” It was as if all her animosity had vanished in that instant. She leaped over at Jungkook, arms flailing and eyes sparkling. Your lips twitched subtly at her shrill scream.

Wrapping her long arms around him, she practically moans into his neck. Her red lip gloss smearing over his soft skin. He places his hands on her hips to hold her – and himself – steady. They look so perfect together – a sight to behold. Yet something threatens to crawl out your throat the more you watch them.

“Darling, it was awful! The Chang’s, darling – they ruined my expensive, custom made ruby iridescent Prada evening gown! They ruined it, darling!” She loudly wails into his shoulder.

Jungkook listens to her cry, before sighing. You couldn’t read him completely, it felt like he was looking at a young child throwing a tantrum. A precious child. “Why would you even use an industrial dry cleaner when you have professionals at home babe? What did they do to it?”

She backs away from him, looking into his eyes like a hurt puppy.

“T…They tore a piece from the bottom…from the wash they say… Miuccia designed it for me herself Kookie…y-you can’t let them get away with this.”

Jungkook stares into her glossy orbs for a bit, before he glances at you. His gaze makes you jerk, facing elsewhere in a heartbeat. It felt like you were interrupting them, your cheeks burn with shame. Your heart even more until you heard him huff.

“Alright, I’ll contact Min. He’ll be able to handle it.”

“Oh darling, I love you so much.” She screeches, hugging him once again.

Min. That was the family lawyer. A cut-throat man who managed to make powerful billionaires beg for their livelihood on Jungkook’s feet. One small-time laundro mat was a speck of dust compared to them. Your chest ache grew as you clenched your fists beneath the desk. The poor Chang’s had just managed to put their oldest into college, they had no savings left. They were barely handling 3 more kids and multiple elders to nurture, 9 people in total in one small apartment. Something like a lawsuit was bound to put them out on the streets. But now that they had crossed paths with Jeon’s beloved fiancé, how horrible their fate was bound to be.

There were thorns in your throat.

“Darling, I just wish tomorrow will be perfect.”

Her tone always contained a particular weight that captures your attention back to her. Jungkook was still looking at you, his stare heavy, holding down your shoulders. You felt the red explode inside your pupils as she wrapped herself around him before kissing him.

“Don’t worry, it will be. I promise.”

They start to make out, unabashed. But what shame would a rich person ever have? The cold morning air surrounds you again, as you steady your breaths, and try to get back to work. Manage to yet again contain your jealousy.

Sadly, you end up missing the intense eyes that were still on your figure, gripping tightly and never moving off once.

-

Valentine’s day. A time of small importance to you.

Is what you say as you eye the crimson curtains and scarlet carpet. The chandelier had a red tinge in its shards, lighting up the vast room in an almost bizarre way. A ballroom fit for the never early King and Queen. You stare at the monotone waitpersons cavorting about, carrying colored shots and expensive sweets in their trays. Your eyebrow perks up as your gaze lands on one of them being subtly touched by an older gentleman. His aged wrinkles in his drunk, lustful gaze versus her frightened young orbs and doe posture. It reminds you of your past. In all those cheap diners and broken eateries, being groped and disregarded all at the same time. In those days as well, Valentine’s day meant nothing to you.

Turning back to the long table before you, you pop another chocolate covered strawberry into your mouth. At that moment you hear soft laughter, making you look toward the left end of the table. There stood your coworker, Jimin, in his pink tux and blonde hair. He was talking to another coworker. You turn your eyes away once he catches your gaze.

And coincidentally, they end up meeting with the man you’ve been avoiding all night. On the other side of the table, stood Jungkook. Your breath gets caught in your throat. Jungkook in his infrared suit. A blend of garnet and carmine and sanguine. Gelled hair, bright skin, dark glare. Such marbled precision. He was staring at you then too, when Jimin came to flirt with you a while ago. As well as when Taehyung tried his luck.

And oh, if looks could kill.

Your little moment is interrupted when another man in red walks up to him, starting a conversation. His red wasn’t as strong as Jungkook’s, you noticed. Actually, you’re sure Jungkook probably held the strongest red in the world, just like her. They were born with it after all. You, on the other hand, worked your whole life through the mud pit to be able to bear pink upon your frame. A few of your coworkers wore pink too, some of their attires barely blushing, while the ones worth more wore fuscia. The waitpersons wore white and that forced you back in time the most… the time you could only wear white like it was a scar engraved into your skin.

Maybe you should make peace with the fact that a day like today wasn’t something for people like you to enjoy. That even if some people still view you as nothing but a body to fulfill their desires, you now have a face to go along with it unlike the servants around you. Maybe you should be thankful you are more blessed than the help. And the helpless. Even if you desired a lot more. It’s always been like that hasn’t it. A few speeches of wisdom draped upon the less fortunate public.

“Be grateful for what you have.”

Startled by the voice, your head whips back, where the lady in glimmering red stood. It was her, the one who had arrived with him, hand in hand, half an hour late. Yet she had instantly been the main attraction at the ball, people swarming towards her like hungry bees. Her gown was the color of a rose’s center – the strapless dress, lingering the ground like a mermaid’s legs, hugging her slender figure so delicately – it was the epitome of perfection. Your pink sun dress fell short in comparison. The impenetrable beauty was addicting, attracting even the shyest of insects into her clutches. For a second you got high on her scent alone, before the malicious tone of her words settled into your brain.

Why was she here? A minute ago, she was stuck to Jungkook’s side like she was glued together with his larger frame. Perhaps she gave him some space to breathe for once, but that still doesn’t explain why she came up to you out of all the bugs about. Seething in her perfect set of teeth, she glares a hole through you, making you unnerved. Even with ill intentions written in her eyes, she presented a beautiful, kind smile on her cherry lips.

“You’re probably happy knowing that you’re the only secretary Jungkook hasn’t fired within a week. You’re probably thrilled to have someone like Jungkook promote someone like you to the department head. You probably get off every time he calls your filthy name.” She breathes into your face; her breath was cold and pupils sharp. “You might think you have him wrapped around your finger and I’m not sure you know who you are, but since your poor education has failed you so greatly, I’m here to remind you.”

She steps closer into your space, as a way to intimidate you. “You’re a mutt he’s taking pity on and nothing more, you understand me? A pig shouldn’t get so happy being fed the scraps of a stallion. You mean nothing to him and as soon as he’s fucked you senseless, he’ll forget about you like every other girl that has tried to take my place.”

Her smile never faltered. If anyone was watching this interaction, they’d think she was having a pleasant discussion with you. That the reason you were shying away from her was because you could not handle her radiant glow and pouring compassion. And in the same second the gears in your mind started turning, searching for a possible response, she took a step back.

“Don’t try to get too close to him. Don’t smile so much when he looks your way. Don’t let your pathetic feelings cross the line. Stay in your lane and be grateful for what you have. Because trust me, I can make everything disappear.” With a nod, she brushes past you. 

Gone, just like that. 

The spot that once held her being is forgotten, your head turning to watch her leave. A few butterflies fly up to her, each one wearing a thousand more on their figures and necks, but nothing that could be compared to her red.

It felt as if she never threatened you. As if she wasn’t the villain you just witnessed but a sweet cerise princess. You watch the girls gush about her life; about how luxurious her dress, her hair, her nails, her jewels, and the Grande Valentine ball was. About how blessed she is to have loving wealthy fiancé like Jungkook. She laughs agreeing with them while exhaling the same breath she took pretending to be humble.

Soon you were blending into the background. As usual.

Finally able to pry your eyes away, you stare at the ground, feeling the ache in your chest slowly cover your vision. It felt like the green, bitter thorns from a Rose’s stem, pressing against your heart with brutal force. You already felt like an outsider as soon as you stepped in here, but this was the final straw. The thorns grew amongst your chest, you spent hours finalizing every single thing about tonight on Jungkook’s command. All for his precious fiancé, choosing the colors out of your personal reach and decorations and the drinks and the food. And yet you feel like you just showed up uninvited to a stranger’s house. Knowing nothing here was meant for you.

Parting your lips, you begin walking towards the exit, ready to crawl back into your mouse cave where the lights weren’t so exposing.

You trudged along the exit hall, feeling the cheap heels of your shoes leaves sores against your soles. The ball was only an hour in, and you were fleeing way before midnight. It shouldn’t matter however; it was best to remember that Valentine’s day and its activities hold no meaning to you. Foggy thoughts run throughout your head as you watch the gleaming floor.

When you were almost at the door, a shadow overcasting the tiles and resembling a person makes you halt. Your head tilts up to catch the man in the elegantly fitted red suit, staring back at you with those familiar eyes.

“Leaving already?”

-

You aren’t sure how you ended up here.

All you remember was him telling you to follow along and you obeying his command silently. He led you out of the banquet hall, into his rumbling sports car and then straight inside his mansion. Jungkook never uttered a word, but his essence – his aura…it spoke for him. You walked behind him placidly, like the prey of a snake slowing moving inside the predator’s seams. When he walks into a room, the walls light up immediately at his presence. They glow of a lavish chamber leaves you jolting in place as he carelessly strides to his open bar.

How was this any different from where you just came from? If they wanted, they could have just held the ball here.

You watch as he grabs a bottle from the shelf, turning around and placing it on the counter as he picks up a glass.

“Would you like a drink?”

You immediately shake your head in decline. He shrugs, pouring himself a good amount of dark liquor. As you stand still, watching him take a sip, confusion finally settles in from the whole ordeal. Why would he bring you here? Your ignorance made you feel like scum on the back of his expensive shoes.

She probably always felt at home here.

Jealousy was a suffocating feeling and to deal with the pressure, you look away. Try to think about something else other than his ethereal face. On a small, decorative table to the left of you was a stubby golden vase, filled to the brim with roses. The vibrant flowers capture your orbs closely, like you were being lulled in by their appearance alone. You take small steps up to the table, your heart beating in your ears. When you were close enough you could see the thorns decorating the stems.

The thorns that hindered the beauty of the red.

Furrowing your eyebrows, you pick up a knife – possibly a letter opener from underneath the vase. You carefully take a stem into your hand, pinching it beneath your fingers. With a quick breath, you slice away a thorn, then two. Ridding the plants of its spikes and ugliness in animosity. Making it perfect with each removal.

Your haste movements froze when a hand grabbed yours. You look up to see Jungkook, holding onto you while staring at you with an unreadable expression.

“What are you doing? I thought you liked roses?”

That’s what you wanted to ask him, what was he doing? Why did he bring you here? But it’s not like the rich were born to be questioned. As you hold his gaze with anger, but bite your tongue from speaking, he sighs. Taking the knife out of your hands and placing it back on the table. He replaces the object with his fingers and your whole body heats up from the rush of your hands.

His scent was heavenly. Like a thousand roses laid amongst a field.

“You…at the ball…you seemed off.” He says, capturing your attention with the same incomprehensible face he always has on. “There were so many bugs flying around you there…I needed to take my chance.”

“…What?”

You watch closely as Jungkook tongues his cheek.

“You’re always so…closed off. Like there’s nothing on your mind…like you couldn’t care less about anything. I always…notice.” He huffs, looking at the floor in concentration. “I remember, it was your third day. I was passing by on my way for an early brunch with a buddy. And I saw the support manager fall onto a wet floor. The way she screamed…I and everyone around us rushed to her. Through the commotion and her cries and everyone making sure she was okay…I spotted you sitting at a desk 10 feet away. I saw you…and you didn’t do anything, even though she was in obvious pain… you just gave her a glance and then went back to work. She ended up breaking her arm and suing the company, so I got rid of her but none of that mattered.”

He looks back up at you. “What mattered was you…you caught my eye. Your lack of interest in everyone, your empty eyes. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

It goes quiet for a moment and you now know how haunting the silence is in a big space like this. That and Jungkook’s presence made the atmosphere surreal.

“Would it have made a difference?” You question. His eyebrows raise at your response. “I mean…if I had cared…would her pain have disappeared?”

Jungkook gazes deeply into your eyes, like he was trying to read you. The hand that held you shifted slightly and you tried to not let the movements affect you. It was then that he broke out into a smirk, he seemed intrigued.

“I guess not.”

“No, it wouldn’t have. The one place there is no worth – no red – is in compassion.”

He chuckles. “I suppose with my status and what my family’s taught me…I’m inclined to disagree. But I can’t help…like this…like you.”

It was your turn to raise your eyebrows as he looks away, turning crimson. “I can’t explain why…so don’t ask me. I’ve been involved with plenty of other women…but it was always carnal pleasure. My fiancé always made sure they didn’t last long anyway but it doesn’t matter…they bore me. Yet…I don’t know what it is about you that calls to me. To keep you close to me.” He turns back to you with a determined face. “I want you and I want to get rid of anything in my way that keeps me from you.”

It felt like time stopped. The lull reverberated off the walls with intensity. There was a strange new sensation in your chest the more you stared at his sharp features. He was born with the beauty of red. When you finally felt like you could breathe again, you took your hand out of his. For a split second, you felt his whole physique embody a pout before you lightly placed your finger on his shoulder.

He froze under your touch. You continued to lightly rub at the fabric of his red coat, before placing your other hand on his other shoulder. Jungkook couldn’t look away. Especially not when you moved closer to him, not when he could feel your soft breath hit his face.

“Is this…close enough?” You whisper, watching the way his bright eyes turned dark. Within moments you felt a sudden source of heat around your waist, before you were pushed into his sturdy chest. His heartbeat matched your rhythm and your lips hovered one another as your orbs fought for balance. There was a cocoon of warmth around you, traveling up your spine as his thumb brushed your waist.

“It’s perfect.” He says before you feel his naturally red lips touch your coral ones.

It had been a while since your last kiss. That would explain why your tongue felt so sensitive and weak against his. Your hands hold onto his shoulders to keep yourself steady and at that moment, you recall how this very scene happened before you just yesterday, with his hand on her hips. You recall the jealousy. Bitter thoughts don’t ever completely vanish, do they?

As he bites your bottom lip, you fail to conceal a moan. He smiles into your kiss, before breaking away. Your lips were raw, and although you couldn’t see yourself, you knew they were swollen red. So you begin to smile as well.

“You’re so beautiful.” He says before kissing your cheek, down your jaw and into your neck. “All mine.”

You hold onto the back of his head as he nips at your neck. Gazing at the roses behind him.

“And you, mine.”

-

You woke up to the dark.

It didn’t take you long to figure out you weren’t in your house. The smell…the atmosphere…the scenery…it was all different. Not the familiar color you were used to. Your ear catches the sound of soft snoring, so you turn to see Jungkook sleeping peacefully by your side. His dark bangs covered most of his eyes and you slowly raised your fingers to move his hair out of his face. He seemed so different when he was asleep compared to his cold office demeanor. So calm and innocent – almost like a child.

In that second, your throat feels dry, so you try to sit up. Maybe you’ll have that drink he spoke of now. But a heavy arm thrown across your body stops you. You peek underneath the blanket to find Jungkook’s biceps holding onto you tightly. He was definitely the possessive type. With a quick inhale, you subtly try to remove his big arm off of you. Freezing whenever he faintly stirred. When you’ve managed to become free, you get out of bed, wincing as soon as you get up.

Even without the light, you could tell how damaged you were as you limp towards the door. He didn’t hold back in bed, wanting you to show him every expression of pleasure – of pain you were capable of. Him and only him, he said. There were bite marks on your neck and ass…he loved using his mouth. And then there was his endless fucking stamina. But truthfully you didn’t mind it one bit, it felt like he was pouring his deep rich wine upon you. You felt yourself inflaming up from the inside out, it was a feeling like no other – addicting.

Actually, you’ve always known about his interest in you. He had managed to make his face unreadable because of the position and line of work he’s in. But he’s still always slipped around you. You saw the subtle yearning and longing way before you came up with this plan. A plan that was necessary, you had never been this lucky before after all. And you wonder if she saw it too. If she knew you weren’t like Jungkook’s others. Perhaps that’s why she came up to you tonight. To try and stop you.

But mere warnings don’t work on the desperate.

As soon as you’re in the other room, the living room lights flash on. Prompting you to squint, while trying to adjust to the brightness. Once again, your attention is immediately captured by the vivid red roses in the golden vase on the small table across the room. You begin walking towards the vase mindlessly but once you were a couple feet in, you notice another shade of red to your left.

A glittering red.

You turn to face her, the princess of the kingdom, in her soon to be king’s castle. Naked and sullied in retrospect to her lavishly covered frame. But strangely, compared to you in this moment she was weak. 

It was her face. Her face as she glares at you, eyes squinted, and lips pulled back. Mascara and tears ran down all over her cheeks and her eyes were puffy swollen. She stood there, shaking in her heels as her hands clenched into fists. How could she look so pathetic dressed in red of all things? There was something funny about the sight…it almost made you burst into laughter. Instead you pursed you lips and raised a brow.

Right then she launched herself at you.

“You BITCH!” She screamed at the top of her lungs before you felt her sharp nails collide with your cheek. Your ears rung as you try to regain your balance. You didn’t have time to react as she pulled your face up using your hair and smacked you twice before pushing you down. Already frail torso crashing upon the tiles a bit too easily.

Really, you felt like laughing as you laid there while she screamed and pounded her weak fists onto you. You couldn’t feel the pain, nothing at all, not even when she banged your head against the tile. Not when she kicked you in the gut. So you laughed, and you felt her go quiet for a second. Small giggles turning into something insane. Your laugh got louder and louder as your cheek connected with the cold floor. The ringing surrounded your ears, but you still heard her curse underneath her breath, calling you crazy. You’ve always hated her voice.

“DIIIIEEEEE! DIE YOU CRAZY BITCH! HE’S MINE!” You could hear her tight dress starting to rip with every sudden jerk and twist. It was ironic. Your head felt light and your vision started to blur as she pulled at your stands frantically. Suddenly, you were being pulled up onto your legs with the world spinning around you and thrown right into the small table you couldn’t stop being called towards.

On impact, one of the legs gave out, causing you and the vase to slip onto the ground. You were completely out of it for a few seconds. After a blurry moment, you could finally feel the wet water and the broken wood and the shattered glass and the cold metal scraping against your skin as you struggled to get up. That…and the green thorns stuck inside your chest, bleeding raw.

Once you were up, you struggle to maintain your steadiness. As your slippery feet came to a halt, you stare down at your wounded chest. At the thorns in your heart, before you hear her shrill voice coming towards you again. So, you timed it in your head. Waited for the bottom ruffles of her beautiful dress to slide along the tiles and signal you. Let her red give her away.

And once she was close enough, you spun around. Extended your hand until you could tell the blade collided through something hard yet pudgy. Everything comes to a standstill. You hear her inhale loudly before her face actually appears before you. Eyes wide and mouth parted. Her hands were still in midair, they were coming for your neck. Her shaky pupils gape at you, before looking down below where the knife met her.

When she’s distracted, you take out the letter opener from her stomach before slamming it back into her once again, a little left. It made a soft, stubby sound and she gasped faintly. Your hands shook dimly with the blade still inside her, blood staining your fingers. The ringing had vanished now, and you were facing the silence of the mansion. Now that you had gotten the gist of it, as quick as you could, you stabbed her a third time. It was your final attack because as soon as you took the edge out, she fell backwards with a loud thud. You didn’t have time to process everything, just cringed at the way her head collided with the floor.

For a while, you just stood there. Weapon in hand, watching the way the blood slowly oozed out of her sides. Her eyes were wide open in shock, lips parted, and jaw unhinged. Bringing the blade up to your face, you closely examine the loose blood along the edges as the knife gleamed underneath the lights. Red was truly a magnificent color. If you were to split her open, would she bleed it all out before you? Let you have all her secrets and riches? You take the blade and carefully wipe both sides of the blood onto your chest, over your heart. Making a perfect x and letting yourself become red.

Like you’ve always wanted.

Once you were done with that, you look back at her. At her lifeless face and sunken eyes.

“What are you looking at, pig?”

Just then a hand grabs yours from behind. You dropped the letter opener in surprise, and it crashes onto the floor with everything else. The object is replaced by long fingers. Your head whips back to meet a bare Jungkook standing right behind you, as handsome as ever, staring at you with a smile. There was a little insanity in his eyes, the same one you saw every morning in the mirror.

“I was wondering how to get rid of her myself.” He says, before wrapping his arms around your shivering torso and placing his mouth on your neck.

It had only been a few hours after Valentine’s day, and here you stood. Being gently rocked by your boss, with his beautiful fiancé bleeding out on the floor in front of him. Even in death…she was the epitome of beauty. And you had always been jealous.

Not of who she was to Jungkook.

But because of the vibrant, glowing, bleeding red rose she always resembled.

What you were jealous of was the rose she embodied.

The rose you wanted to be.

[dzamie-oc]

15 - Floral

What’s so scary about a flower-breathing dragon? Well, the flowers, for starters. I rather like playing around with alternate breath weapons.

Length: 2100 words Rating: T (death, mild body horror) Summary: A man tells the tale of his failed expedition to slay a flower dragon, while a boy listens in.

-----

Isaac sat in the corner of the tavern, eating a sandwich his dad, the owner, had given him. He knew not to pester the customers - especially the well-armed ones - and in turn, he was protected by common decency and the knowledge that an adventurer who struck a child for no reason was on a fast track to get beaten up, themselves. So, he would often sit and listen to their tales of glory, and tonight was no exception. For now, he focused on one peculiar-looking fellow. His face was grizzled, and everything about him gave off an air of danger, and of experience with danger... with the exception of his left arm, which hung limply at his side, covered in wildflowers in all colors from the elbow down.

“Nice arm,” another patron had said, mockingly, “did you fist a dryad?”

“Like it?” the man growled, “the dragon of flowers is giving out free samples if’n you want one of yer own.”

This only seemed to spur the other fellow on, as he laughed and jeered, “you found a dragon that breathes FLOWERS, and you STILL got your ass kicked? I guess age catches up to everyone!”

They were joined by an elf. Isaac couldn’t tell if their ears were long enough to be a girl elf, but he could tell, even through their inhuman grace, that they were limping; a quick glance at their feet, and the boy saw one covered in flowers just like the man’s arm. “Appearances are deceiving,” they said. “Had we not taken its threat so lightly, perhaps we would not have left six corpses and a live dragon behind.”

The elf’s addition, at least, seemed to give the mocking man pause. “You lost six men? How?”

“Four men, two women,” the grizzled man corrected, “and it would’ve been five and three if the two of us hadn’t bolted before its second breath. As for how...

“The dragon’s lair was easy enough to find. Middle of the forest, suddenly there’s this huge, flowering... hedge of some kind. Only one way in, so we take it. It felt like being in a corn maze, except there’s flowers all over the place. Mildred, here (he gestured to the elf), suggested we use the old trick of sticking to one wall until we get through it, in case it is a maze. Turned out not to be, but it was a good idea nonetheless.

“So we’re walking through the dragon’s lair, or garden, or whatever, and we see this big, purple flower - seriously, like twice the size of my head - all closed up, like it hasn’t bloomed yet. The eight of us, we figure we should figure out what to do about it - cut it away, ignore it, or what. We don’t wanna burn it, because if the fire spreads, well, we’re right in the middle of it. But as most of us are standing around like clever people, this one hotshot - think his name was Tyrill or something - gets it into his mind that he should just go up and whack it. With his fist. And it’s not until he’s got his fist cocked back, readying a punch, that we see him, and before we can drag him away or even shout at him not to be stupid, POW! He smacks the flower. And it explodes! Well, it opens in an instant and a purple gas bursts out. Most of us are able to retreat back away from it, but Tyrill obviously gets a face full of it.

“Now, obviously we want to get him away from whatever that flower was, but none of us are stupid enough to run into the mysterious purple gas, so we just wait there. And Tyrill just turns to us, says ‘hey guys, I found the dragon!’ and then... plants his face into the middle of the flower. Not even like it’s a pillow. The petals close up around his head, and start dragging him through the hedge. None of us wanted to leave him to die, of course, but that gas made him do... whatever that was, so we couldn’t risk it. I assume he died, of course, but it’s not like any of us actually saw the bodies.

“We continued on, following the winding trail through the flowers, and then saw what looked like a pair of jaws, but plant. Or, if you held your hands like this (he pressed his forearms and hands together, then opened his hands and curled his fingers in - a venus fly trap, although neither Isaac nor the taverngoers knew of such a plant). This part here, this isn’t how we lost all those folks, but how to avoid losing more if you try to follow in our footsteps. Now, I don’t recall what exactly we used - Mildred, do you? No? Ah well, it’s not important - but we threw something small at it. A knife or a stick. The damn thing snapped shut faster than you could blink, in case someone had accidentally brushed it while walking by.

“There was also this one flower, growing easily a dozen feet up, with a thick, sturdy-looking stem. We rested for a while near it, and for some reason, one of the gang decided to lean against the plant. You’d think we would’ve known by then, but, well, I guess she was tired. None of us paid any heed until she said it felt itchy, and when she tried to move away, it had stuck fast to her - or she had stuck fast to it. Me and one of the other guys tried to pull her off of it, but it didn’t work - the guy planted his foot against the stem for leverage, but all that did was get it stuck, too. Poor dude had to keep going with only one boot. Still, a better fate than the lady found. I can’t say what, exactly, it was doing to her, but she started screaming in pain at some point and couldn’t stop ‘til she was hoarse. Healing magic helped for a while, but it would always start back up again, until she pleaded for us to not waste the magic and to stop making her suffer longer.”

The grizzled man finished off his drink and stared down at the table. “I’ll confess to some measure of cowardice, aside from fleeing the dragon,” he said, “she asked for a swift death, and I faltered. One of the others had to be the one to grant her that.

“...anyway, where was I? Right, well, it turned out that the dragon was waiting just further ahead, in a flower-covered clearing. Dozen feet long and a tail to match, white scales with yellow and green patches, a flower tucked under each horn, and at the end of its tail was a big, purple flow- oh, gods above. Mildred, I think I know what happened to Tyrill. The dragon, its tail ended in a purple flower, and it looked awfully lumpy, like there was something under its scales. I don’t know how, but I think its tail... ate him.

“It said... something. I think it asked us a question, but I don’t think any of us were paying attention to the words of a beast. I made sure no more strange flowers would somehow strike from behind us, Mildred drew her bow, and three of the others just charged right at it. The dragon took a deep breath, and a moment later, three bodies fell to the ground, covered in these flowers.” He held up his arm to show his botanical injury. His story had attracted the attention of several other people in the tavern, and someone had ordered the man another drink. “Even those who tried to shield themselves, all that did was cover their shield in flowers as well.”

One of the onlookers asked, “so, did you get caught on the edge of the blast?”

The man shook his head. “No, the first one only hit those three, but the other three of us quickly bolted before it could take a better shot. Unluckily for us, we had to run down a straight path away from it, and so it got off a second attack just as we rounded the corner. Well, Mildred and I. Samuel - I think it was Samuel who hung back as well - lost both legs, an arm, and a fair amount of his upper body. Last I saw of him, he shouted at us to leave him and run. And run we did, as quick as we could while not running into any more of those crazy plants. It was a stroke of luck that we didn’t find any other beasties as we fled back here.” His gaze swept around the table. “And that, boys, is why I’ve no shame in admitting I ran from a ‘flower dragon.’”

With his story concluded, a few of the others swore vengeance on the dragon, while others told them to stop fooling about. Isaac, however, made plans of his own.

Late at night, the boy crept out from his room and snuck out of his home. With a jar full of dirt, Isaac wandered through the dark woods, on a mission. Before long, he found himself before a hedge of flowers that bloomed even at night. The boy took a deep breath, put on his best serious face, and stepped inside.

He kept his eyes peeled for weird flowers, and, on seeing a big, red one, stopped well before it. “Mister flower dragon?” he called, though not too loud in case the dragon was asleep. “Or, miss flower dragon? The man didn’t say. Your flowers are very pretty.”

Something rustled in the hedge to one side. Isaac took a step away, just before a draconic head poked through a foot or two above his head. The dragon looked around, then noticed and focused on the boy. It tilted one way, and asked, “aren’t humans diurnal? It’s very deep into the night for a human.”

“I don’t think I’d be allowed to go if I tried during the day.”

“Ah, a young one. And what brings you to my home, little one?” The dragon stepped out of the hedge as though it wasn’t there, and laid down around Isaac. His way deeper and his way out were cut off by white, yellow, and green scales, but he found it didn’t scare him much. “I hope you aren’t thinking I’ll eat a bully for you. ...well, maybe if you can lure them here.”

Isaac shook his head, then held out the jar. “I saw the flowers you gave that man’s arm, and they were very pretty. May I have some? Only, not on my body, because my dad would freak out.”

“I would hope so, or I think he would not be a very concerned father. Set the jar down, and I’ll give you some flowers.” Isaac did so, and the dragon breathed over the opening of the jar. Colorful flowers immediately sprouted and bloomed in the jar, as well as on the ground around it. Isaac took another step back, just in case, and found himself nearly stumbling over the dragon’s tail. “Now, if you put just a drop or two of blood a week in the pot, they should stay nice and healthy. It doesn’t have to be yours, it doesn’t have to be human. Use a mouse if you like.”

The boy, however, was staring at its tail, which looked kind of lumpy on the underside. “Did you really eat that guy with your tail?” he asked.

The dragon shook its head. “My tail doesn’t eat, only holds. I will let him out in the morning, but for now, he is in a deep sleep. ...did you hear what to do with the flowers?”

“Oh, okay then. In the story, he didn’t really do anything, so that would have been very mean to eat him for just that.” The sound of the dragon’s claw tapping the jar drew his attention, so he nodded. “Do I have to water them, too?”

“No, although it won’t kill them.”

Isaac picked up the jar again and slowly climbed over the dragon’s body, taking care not to kick it. “Okay, thank you! I’m glad you’re really nice and aren’t gonna eat that guy.”

The dragon laughed. “Of course. Four is more than enough to keep me going for a week; this enthusiastic fellow can leave if he likes.” As it watched Isaac walk back towards the entrance, it began to slip back through the hedge. “Goodnight, little one.”

“Goodnight, flower dragon! Thanks again for the flowers; I’ll take good care of them.”

Unseen by Isaac, a scaly head with a flower behind each horn popped up above the tall hedge, watching him depart. If any creature got too close, it found itself beset by flowers.

[jean-does-not-have-a-horseface]

Before Dawn: Bonus Chapter (1)

Helloooooo, alright listen, I re read a choice with no regrets and uhm here is this, a little insight on what has happened a little while before our story began, I'm sure you'll want to see some nice bonding with Isabel

Warnings: just a few teeny little mentions of intercourse

@hidehaskak of course here's your tag❤️

Turtleneck

"Yehawhaww" The moment you appeared at the entrance to the roof Isabel screamed at the top of her lungs in great enthusiasm. You stood silent after you spared her a smuggling nod pacing your eyes between the two men that accompanied her, awaiting for a signal of approval. "I knew I could get you to come! You guys don't mind her hanging out with us right? She's a friend."

At that sound the males finally gave in, letting Isabel close the distance between the both of you. Her significantly smaller arms wrapped around your frame in a pure hearted childish manner and seeing that you towered over her you placed your hands on the small of her back, almost too reassuringly to the males' liking. Their unforgiving gazes burned holes in your whole body with much rage built in for ruining their fun for the night.

You knew you were practically unwanted, but it was for Isabel that you stepped foot on this rooftop to begin with. Tired of her never ending pleas to join her and her so called bros as they looked at the stars and talked about everything and anything you had decided to violate curfew and join her, not them, just her, because you wanted to share some more moments with her. This young little redhead was growing on you in the best way possible, you thought she kind of reminded you of yourself in times where you needed salvage or just a friend with whom you could share your piece of mind and heart.

She wasn't like that at first. Isabel probably resembled a rose, it occurred to you, with her godly youthful looks and her thorn like personality. It was a result from growing up in a trashhole like the underground, among thugs, being forced to build a rough personality if she wanted to survive, it was merciless for her and any other girl down there. But the bubbly side of her personality assured you she was much more than a badass teen who could hand you your ass in any fight, she had a pure heart and you longed to help her feel like she deserved post childhood experiences. But for now, it felt as if your roles had reversed. Sure, you were -if not just as her- bubbly and kind but sometimes you were frustratingly unresponsive and ill faced that it worried her until she got to know you. You hadn't put yourself in a place to talk about you trauma to her; she had her own demons and there was no point in burdening her with your abusive background, but you managed to explain to her that most of your weird and uptight behaviors, most things you could dispose of to become a better person, were curved into you in ways you could share yet. And Isabel, as respectful as ever had assured you it was fine not to be able to share.

Most girls would shut her out due to her formal nature as a thug, much like your friends who at first were adamant about discouraging you to befriend her. They had assumed she wouldn't be able to be nice and kind or to talk like them, but you were against any pretentious act behind her back. Maybe it was due to egoistical motives that you wanted to salvage this little girl, because she reminded her of you, and Nanaba, the only person who fully knew about your situation was taking a stand against this at first. She didn't want you to hurt yourself or the redhead in the process of trying to project your condition on her. But you didn't give up. With Isabel as your new bunkmate you had many chances of getting it right.

"Did you bring what I asked you to?" Isabel hurriedly asked, reaching her hands to make a quest inside the tote bag that you carried. You showed no sign of holding back as you let her peak into the cream colored bind, but only managed to cover your ear as her squeks got louder. "Thank you thank you thank you! Sit down, show me!

Isabel shooed Levi and Furlan apart, placing herself right next to the blond man while tapping her hand on her left side. You followed her smile hesitantly and proceeded to sit down to where her hand was rested a few seconds ago, next to Levi. You felt his eyes ravaging your whole form, up and down as if you were some dirty pig that seeked to rub its mud onto him. When seated neatly enough as to not touch him you proceeded to pry open your tote bag and toss a share of it insides to Isabel.

With a determined face she got a strong hold of the grey colored yarn and the pair of slightly thick needles you had managed to recover for her. "Okay show me, show me!"

"Oh what's that?" Furlan peeked his head over Isabel's shoulder to inspect of the situation.

"It's yarn and needles."

"Ahh, Furlan don't interrupt, (y/n) show me how to cast on!"

"See that's the easiest part, sweetheart." You watched Isabel coo at the support in your tone while she puckered her lips to a cute kid like pout. She followed your slow movements as if you were a goddess, showing her how to create new wolds with her strained hands.

Levi, even though he was suspicious of you, a member of Erwin's team who tried to coax her way into Isabel's life, felt somehow relieved to see that beloved expression on Isabel's face. He had overheard her once, taking to her self in the mirror, wishing she had a lady friend to spend time with and it pained him that she had a feeling of such lack inside her. Therefore your presence was a little soothing in their company. He would be lying if he said he personally didn't like it. After all he had thought you were a beautiful company to Erwin in one of the many times he had come across him in the Underground, silently watching him from the shadows. Not that he was a creep to begin with, it was just his lack and a response to the question of whether you can ever see a stranger twice, that you were actually a scout.

"Where did you learn to do this (y/n?)" Furlan was set to break off Levi's thoughts for one too many times tonight.

"Old mothers are adamant about these things, you know, good girl stuff and all."

"Oh." He began with a flirtatious tone that made both Levi and Isabel turn to him wide eyed "Good girl huh? Every Bad boys dream, including min- ah shit Isabel, ouch!"

The squint in Isabel's eyes was something that you couldn't see and you even ignored it as a matter of fact. Isabel was aware of your teeny crush on Levi, she had gotten it out of you one day during training after she had caught you gawking and drooling at him for doing the bare minimum. It was simply natural for her to get overly excited at the fact. Ever since then she had been convinced that him and you would be a perfect match, that you wouldn't have to be so uptight with him after all but you would always brush her off. It didn't torment you just get, even if his cold gaze somehow tickled your heart at certain times you were perfectly fine with hanging out around him. But there was no point in trying to convince Isabel to give up, not when she practically lived off of you and the male duo. Perhaps that was why she had squinted her eyes so hard at Farlan, she didn't want the couple in her head to be broken apart before it even started.

For the rest of your time with them you barely speak. You were fine with standing there and knitting away your project, a grey ribbed sweater that you had accidentally managed to make huge up to a certain point when you didn't find a purpose in casting off and undoing. You wondered if Isabel really wanted to knit or if it was her excuse to have you hang out with the ravenette since she had seemed to long forget about her needles and was fixated on a bottle of booze, talking away about some merchants in the underground flee market. You figured you should take your leave being to alienated to break their usual trio, you couldn't even keep up with their conversations, not that they cared to include you.

"So if you're all about playing housewife what are you doing here?" Farlan's voice calls out to you almost strained from any actual purpose, he probably knew it was kind of rude on the part to not include you after Isabel had invited you.

You remained silent for a few moments, tilting your head back to stare at the jewel decorated dark sky. Finding the right words for your purpose seemed unbelievably difficult and suffocating but it perhaps was nothing compared to their previous lifestyle.

"I didn't want to die." Two of the three almost fall to instant, bubbling laughter the moment your thoughts longer in the air as actual words.

"And you came here out of all places?" Levi sternly inquired without ever initiating some sort of eye contact.

"I wasn't top of my class, but even if I was I wouldn't go in the MP. I don't want to live a full life as a bastard you know and Garrison, let's say I have my reasons as to not going there."

Something about that bastard themed sentence caused curiosity to twitch inside Levi's chest but he didn't quest on it, oversharing wasn't in his plans to do so with a practical stranger, even if deep down you didn't exactly feel like one. He couldn't be explain that feeling but he could certainly understand what it was that made Isabel so attached to you. Something about your aura was like fresh, dripping honey, unprocessed yet sweet and endearing and overpoweringly strong to the flavor.

"You're not a bastard you had parents right? You just talked about your old mother."

Conveniently, Farlan's words allowed you to shut up and look away, further away from the former thug trio and into the vast horizon that laid before you. You contemplated what was it that enamored everyone outside the walls. With all that death, the scouts corpses that rot every where, you didn't have anything against the walls or life inside, taking down Titans and following orders was therapeutic enough to you as long as you came back to an eventual cup of milk tea and your knitting and embroidering projects. You couldn't bring yourself to give a damn about your future, but you liked fighting for the future of others, maybe somewhere there was a child, just like you, who wanted to get away from an abusive household and start a new life or pick up on experiences they had never lived. These people deserved not to feel caged inside the walls and plus, the nature of the Titans was very much appealing to you due to Erwin and his constant pep talks.

"Wait so how did you end up in Erwin's squad if you're mediocre?" Farlan pushed again, not wanting to let you stay silent for what's worth it.

"Don't forget I'm a veteran. I've outpassed the years a scout is expected to live so Erwin decided to move me to his squad, Mike insisted since we were from the same district."

"Oh so you fucked your way up huh?"

With the corner of his eye Levi watched as your eyes widened in shock. He couldn't possible know about your past, but you didn't seem the tyoe to go around and fuck your superiors so you could earn a higher rank. You were too ignorant to anything, it was prominent that you didn't care about even receiving your own room for serving well all these years.

"How dare you! As if it's something to open your legs for!" There it was, sweet confirmation that you indeed were ignorant.

"Good girl and all huh?"

"Sure."

There was something tense in the air as Farlan flirted, the subtle roll in your eyes, the unusual monotony of Isabel's voice, even Levi has seemed to bring his shoulders towards his collarbones in any attempt to distance his mind off of the unrequited nature of scenery. You weren't flirting back, momentarily he wondered if you even knew how since the sheer blush on your face betrayed your otherwise distinctive spitfire. You acted more childish than Isabel, in a way that you probably didn't realise caught Levi's attention because he didn't mind to spare you a glare, he'd rather keep it to himself.

____

Next time, it was supposed to be Farlan who approached to help you get your foot out of the muddy hole it was stuck to, Isabel squealed profanities at him, but it was Levi who had managed to push past him and the redhead, exposing his self to the cold pouring rain to run towards you. Just how stupid of your team was to leave you in the pouring rain to make your foot in your own?

His mind was at gaze as he sprint, random thoughts filling empty apathetic species that begged for overthinking to take over them. He knew Farlan didn't really like you, he was just trying to such to their plan and keeping you close was in sole purpose of getting closer to Erwin but for Isabel is want like that. She really liked your company, even he enjoyed some of your company at times and they weren't taking any chances with using you.

Moreover and much to his despise, he found himself in a very murky situation with each extension of his foot to your location. Fuck did you really have to look like that? With one leg stretched, toned bottom swaying in the air, strong veiny hands gripping on your knee, mud on the tips of your fingers and hair wet, making wild moves as you flipped your head upwards to get it out of your face. He twitched at the way a small tress stuck to your chapped lips, almost as if you were a goddess of water, a Nereid, as if you were made to be in this drenched state. Small droplets traveled from your chin down your exposed neck, hiding inside the base of your soft grey turtleneck, it was indeed a magnetising scenery, an alluring unraveling play to his eyes but he dared to rip his eyes away. He wondered if anyone could perceive this scene the way that only he did.

"Tch, try not to get that filth on me." He spoke as his sleek palms wrapped around your torso in delicate force, fitting almost perfectly. He closed his eyes. What the fuck was he even thinking? He wasn't even going to stay here for long.

"Wouldn't dream of it, but I beg of you to help before I get sick"

From a distance Isabel watched with teary eyes. A soft feeling of happiness engulfed her whole, not letting her give some form of attention to Farlan who clicked his tongue.

"Whatever Farlan, Levi is finally going to get some action for once. It's not like it's interfering with our mission!" Her brows forrowed at his sight. "He likes her, can't you see?"

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that if you don't actually tell him"

Her eyes harded at what Farlan had said. Of course, she knew Levi would deny ever laying his eyes on anyone but she wanted to be there to watch him experience falling in love, hell even falling out of it. Farlan should plainly accept that Levi is not always going to be hang up from their group. Sticking together even after their time at the military was a given, but wanting to have lovers and relationships now that they could enjoy their lives? Isabel was eagerly excited for it.

She watched you and Levi as you freed your leg from the muddy puddle, flying over by the force you had both been laboring and falling on too of each other, Levi's face was contorted in anger, fumingly red as he tried not to tell at you and she was definite about his feelings towards you.

Outside and laid with his back in the mud, Levi felt startled in a way he hadn't experienced before. He could faintly feel the tips of your breasts on his chest and he guessed you were using cloth binds since the impact wasn't enough to get him beyond a little flustered, but he could admit that this was embarrassing. He was angry, for being muddy that is, god knows just how much he despised mud and the smell of filthy rain but there was something about the way you straddled him and it touched a little flicker inside of him that told him it was alright to be muddy for a few more seconds, as long as he was underneath you. Despite his lack of experience in romantic or tense moments, he only had had sex a few times that he could count on one hand and he had despised each one for being disgustingly filthy, he definitely could sense the electric field in the air around you.

But as soon as the moment occured and you took your glistering eyes off of his, you pushed strength into your arms, digging your palms in the dirt to lift your self up and he was once again his normal self. With a click if his tongue he slipped from underneath you, denying your open hand that seeked to offer him a little help. He wasn't here for a sappy little romantic adventure, he was here to find those documents and kill Erwin, you were merely getting in the way of his brain functioning properly.