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olboypacman · 8 months

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Dragon Falls to Spiders Venom, Chapter 3: Trapped in a Web/1st Date!? Pt 3

A/N: I headcannon that Juri has my taste in music. Some future chapters will be prompted by songs and that just makes it easier. I can’t imagine that Ryu is one who’s got an expansive playlist.

Also, this chapter contains lyrics from the Tupac song Temptations (though those lyrics will not be posted on the fanfiction.com version of this story per their posting guidelines).

I claim no ownership to Street Fighter or rights to aforementioned songs.

***

Juri didn’t let go of Ryu as they made their way, the Taekwondo specialist helping herself to the crook of his arm.

She talked to him idly as they walked. Juri occasionally ran her fingertips up and down his arm.

Juri surmises the simple action is causing a pleasant surge to run through Ryu’s body, as every time she does it, she can feel Ryu shiver slightly.

It certainly isn’t cool enough out here to cause that, she laughed to herself.

Ryu must not be used too much contact with the opposite sex, Juri guessed.

Ever since she latched on to him outside the restaurant, he’s been tense, not just in his body language but she also feels it his in arm.

It’s not like he’s trying to flex, plus he doesn’t really need to, Juri thought.

And he’s trying his best not to look in her direction.

If he didn’t have a small dusting of red on his face that wasn’t so cute, she might’ve been offended.

“So,” said Ryu weakly, still intrigued by everything around Juri, “what do you do for a living these days?”

Such a harmless, innocuous question, Juri thought lightheartedly.

She decided to answer, humoring his attempt to distract himself.

“Security consultant,” said Juri.

“I guess we’re in the same line of work,” he said, pausing to think about what he said, before he added, “in a manor of speaking.”

“Hmm,” Juri went as she gathered her thoughts. “Due to my former life, I’m decently versed in stealthy infiltration. Some of the jobs I’ve done for S.I.N required me to take down a target, some of whom were in well-fortified buildings. You know, police stations, government buildings and once or twice actual fortresses.”

Ryu nods along, now making eye contact with Juri.

“And therein lies my expertise, finding the weakness not just in the buildings that can be exploited, but patrols, the staff, whatever. There’s a lot of businesses and organizations in this town that would find those skills and experiences valuable. It keeps me decently busy, maybe 2 or 3 jobs a month. Plus, Chun-li says I need to keep some kind of employment. I can’t imagine Blondie keeps you terribly busy with the position he gave you.”

“Yeah, well,” he said somewhat nervously, breaking eye contact with her again, “I did tell you I planned to talk to him about that. I’d much rather earn my way, you know?”

“Mmhmm, prideful boy. I can respect that,” said Juri as she ran her hand down his arm teasingly slow, smiling at the small shiver she once more managed goad out of him.

“Juri,” he responded with a shutter she found to be very endearing, “Where are we going?”

“Since you asked so nicely,” she said. “Reliving some of what I told you has got me pretty worked up, and I need to work off some of that energy.”

She stops in front of him, leaning into his face while taking his chin her thumb and index pulling his face slowly closer to her, “It’s something I sometimes do on my own, but I haven’t had a partner in a while. I figured since I’m in such good company, I might as well take advantage of the companionship…”

***

As hip-hip music blared, though muffled, Juri leads Ryu by the hand down an alley toward the entrance to a building.

It was a nondescript medium sized brick exterior structure, looking like it used to be a warehouse or manufacturing building in its past life.

Besides the music ringing out, there’s a neon yellow sign above the entrance that read in graffiti style lettering, ‘The Lemony’, with cocktail glasses and music symbols underneath it that gave away what the place is now used for.

As they continued their approach, a small line could be seen, a group of friends and three couples, waiting to be let in.

Juri and Ryu take their spots in line.

Ryu can’t help but notice that hadn’t Juri let go of his hand, the simple action making him way past nervous not all used to this kind of contact from the fairer sex.

Luckily whatever deity’s looking out for him has made it that his palms are free of sweat, despite his nerves.

They got to the front of the line, now facing down the doorman, a tall muscular man (though slightly less so than Ryu), with a bald head, green eyes, black leather pants, a fanny pack around his waist, black sneakers and a black t-shirt that carries the name/logo of the club that matched the sign in color and styling.

The door man is looking to the true entrance of the building, which was a short tunnel that led to two very heavy looking French steel doors that also had the logo of the establishment on them.

The couple that was in front them opened the doors, the music now absolutely blaring, but then going back to muffled as the doors closed back up.

The doorman then looks to Ryu and Juri, his face relaxes as he sets eyes on the couple.

“Juri!” He said in a deep baritone, obviously recognizing Ryu’s company and not Ryu himself, “Been a while since you’ve graced us with your presence.”

“My friend and I feel like dancing tonight. I’m eager to see what he can do,” She responded once more.

“And this must be the boy-toy Rachel texted me about earlier,” he responded.

Juri’s face drops at the news.

“Hey,” said the doorman, as he brought his hands up defensively as he smiled, “don’t shoot the messenger. Kid’s just happy to see you playing the field.”

“She’s not the best match maker, I’ll tell ya that much,” responded Juri, folding her arms under her chest while still smiling, the playfulness evident in her features.

“And what about that other friend of yours? The uh, thick one. With the ox tails. My boss has been asking about her.” He asked.

“Trust me, he’s not her type.” Responded Juri.

They stand there for a beat.

“I’m Ronald Garett. I can guess you already met my sister at the Flamenco Tavern,” said the doorman addressing Ryu. “Through her slight annoyance with my sister, it looks like Ms. Manners here left hers at home.”

Ronald extended a hand as he dodged a mock punch from Juri.

“Ryu,” he responded taking his hand in Ronald’s, “Ryu Hoshi.”

Taking a 2nd look at the man Ryu can see the resemblance between Ronald and his sister.

They both carried a similar energy Ryu sensed but Ronald was more subdued than Rachel.

“Alright” he said, “it’s a 40-dollar cover and I’m going to need to see some I.D.”

“All business now Ronnie?” asked Juri lightly mocking, as she dug in her pockets.

“What can I say, I’m on the job technically,” said Ronald.

Ryu produced an I.D and the bills to pay the cover.

“Come on. I’m still treating you remember?” Juri protested as she saw Ryu handing off the bills to Ronald.

“No, no,” Ryu protested now, “I’ve got it. I’ll also cover whatever else we get into tonight. It’s the least I can do to repay you for dinner.”

“Fine, fine,” responded Juri. She took his hand once more, as she leaned in. “Plus, I like the sound of ‘whatever else we get into’. What else have you got planned for me?”

Ryu’s face heats up as Ronald takes the bills and hands their I.D’s back.

“Have a good time,” laughed Ronald, “And thank for looking out for Rachel!”

Ryu didn’t get a chance to regroup before Juri grabbed his hand again, guiding him toward the entrance.

She must be eager to work off that excess energy, Ryu thought.

Ryu was painfully aware of the lack of respect Juri had for his personal space, but oddly enough he didn’t mind.

The smiles, the touches, the teases were all actions he welcomed (and would tell Juri so if he were a tiny bit more courageous).

He could see himself pursuing something more than what has happened and may happen beyond tonight, but he feels like maybe he’d be pushing his luck.

Clearly Juri was a social butterfly who attracted people everywhere she went.

What would she even want with a guy like him?

He’s not even sure what he’ll be doing with his life beyond here now, let alone his non-existent love life.

Maybe she’s just being friendly?

But Ryu can recall Eliza acting similarly when she and Ken started seeing each other.

And despite the pieces that have fallen into his lap, Ryu maybe too dense to figure out this means.

She rakes her fingers against him again, and a jolt of delight runs up to his head and down to his toes.

Friends don’t touch each other like this, he thought as he shivered in pleasure.

Ryu looked around, taking in the people and the sights around him.

His summation of the building being medium in size may have been incorrect as this club looks way bigger on the inside.

The floors are made of a glossy black ceramic tile or maybe vinyl, with little white dots scattered randomly giving the illusion of a stary night sky. There is a dozen or so booths that can fit maybe 7 or people all round the edges of the room. They’re circular in nature, with tables in the middle of each that shares the same color and dot scheming as the floor and the seating looks to be black plush leather. It’s dark but not too dark to see where one’s going. There are spotlights all along the ceiling, some static, some rotating slowly.

Juri leans up as they’re walking toward one of four bar set ups, each one with bright lights along the bases and the shelves stocked with liquor.

“Ken or Chun-li ever took you clubbing,” she asked loudly as they approached the gaudily lighted structure, her breath tickling his ear.

“They have, but I never stayed long. I don’t mind crowds, but they tend to be too loud.” Ryu responded.

“And you’re enduring the noise, just for me?” She pouted, cutely poking her lower lip with her index.

Ryu dumbly nods, the cute faces she makes quickly becoming a weakness of his.

“Excellent!” Juri said, her smile bright despite the darkened place they’re in. “What’re you drinking,” she asked as they finished their journey toward the bar.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that,” Ryu lightly chided, returning a grin, “since I’m buying and all. So, what are you having?” He finished trying to lean cooly on the bar.

“Oh my god, you’re such a dork,” she giggled at him and his attempt at being trendy, “get me a sazerac thank you,” she went on as she laughed behind her hand.

Her laughter filled Ryu with the same pleasant feeling as being called his new nickname. Still unable to put a description to it, he turned his attention to the bar tender.

“What are you having,” a young woman dressed in a white tank top that bore the club’s logo and jeans asked behind the bar.

“Sazerac for my friend for here and,” Ryu paused very unfamiliar with alcohol.

He’s had a beer with Guile before and wasn’t very impressed with the taste. He’d only finished it out of politeness since the Air Force Major paid for it.

“I’ll have the same,” he finished.

He couldn’t imagine the drink Juri’s having could be any worse than a beer.

“How’s about we put these bad boys down and hit the dance floor?” Declared Juri as the bartender approached with their drinks.

They both take their glasses, “Bottoms up,” said Juri, as she offered her glass.

He obliged, the glasses coming together in light tink, in celebration of the new friendship.

Or whatever it is they’re doing here.

He brings the glass to his mouth, but his nose is assaulted by the strong pungent aroma of its contents. So strong he must suppress a recoil.

He looks to Juri, seeing she’s already finished hers.

She’s got a concerned smile on her face, “You know you don’t have to impress me getting the same drink as me. Sazeracs pack plenty of bite, and it looks to me you may not prepared for it. We can order you something else.”

Ryu should take the advice, but the idea of being bested by a drink doesn’t sit well with him.

“Maybe one sip wouldn’t hurt,” he said.

He takes a sip and the liquid burns as it rages down his throat, so much so he coughs as his eyes water.

***

She tried to warn him.

“You don’t drink much, do you?” Said Juri, as she patted his back as coughed.

“What was that?” He asked between coughs.

“Sazerac, starts with a glass rinsed and chilled with ice and absinthe and then set aside…” She began.

“Absinthe,” he questioned, his eyes going slightly wide as his coughing started to die down, “say no more.”

The bartender sets a glass of water down for Ryu, “I can get you something a little lighter,” she stated simply.

“We just might take you up that,” Juri said addressing the bartender, “are you ok,” she asked, still with a subdued smile on her face as her back pats turned into circles.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” he rasped as he wiped remnants of the drink and spittle from his face from an offered napkin from the bartender, “your mouth must be made of metal between this and all that horseradish you had with your dinner.”

He wore a blush on his face, from the coughing Juri surmised, but probably from embarrassing himself.

“Maybe next time listen to me, tough guy,” she responded, “and by the way. My mouth is made of softer stuff than that, play your cards right and I may prove it to you.”

She takes the glass from him, downing the remainder of his portion of the Sazerac in one gulp.

His blush darkens, either from the implication of her words or the indirect kiss of the shared glass.

He coughs once more into his closed fist, probably to break his nerve.

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of teasing him like this, she thought.

“I think I’ll take that drink,” he addressed the bartender but not breaking eye contact with Juri, “I’ll defer to your recommendation.”

It’s such a small consideration to make, but it still fills her with warmth.

Or maybe it’s the liquor.

“Get my man here a glass of a bourbon and ginger ale, one quarter bourbon, three quarter ginger ale with a squirt of cherry of syrup,” Juri requested.

The bar keep gives a look of apprehension but still goes about making the drink for Ansatsuken fighter.

She hands the finished concoction to Ryu, “Please don’t kill over in my section,” the bartender lightly joked.

“Drink it slow,” Juri asked.

He brings the glass to his face.

He’s not recoiling, so that’s a good sign.

He takes a good swig.

“It’s good,” he says, finishing the glass, “I think I’ll have another.”

“Not so fast, I don’t want you too loaded before I get a dance out of you,” said Juri, “like I said before I’m eager to see what you can do.”

Nervousness starts to creep its way back on to his features.

Juri likes that she can get these reactions out of him.

She finds his straight forwardness very refreshing in a world preoccupied with presenting a façade.

He throws a few bills on the bar to pay off their tab.

“Come on,” she said taking him by the hand dragging him to the dance floor before he had a chance to protest. “Luckily, it’s a weekday, so we don’t have to contend with a whole lot of people,” she said, as she navigated them through the assorted groups and couples in the area showing off their moves.

They settle on a spot with plenty of room between them and the other club goers.

An upbeat, relatively fast song is playing, and it doesn’t take long for Juri to find her rhythm.

She’s losing herself in the beat, her hands above her head, running her fingertips through her hair, her feet set as she moves her hips in time to the music.

She looks to her partner.

He’s moving, and well…

Let’s not be overly generous here.

He’s moving but not to any beat or rhythm Juri can pick up.

It’s more like he’s spasming out like a beached fish and said fish is being electrocuted.

He’s distracting.

So much so that she stops her own movements and starts shaking with laughter.

He picks up on this and moves closer to her.

She wipes a tear of mirth from her eye, expecting Ryu to at the very least upset at her laughing at him so.

I don’t get how such a talented fighter can be so uncoordinated on the dance floor, she thought.

He’s slightly flushed in the face, either from his one and a half drinks or from embarrassment, with a small smile playing on his lips.

“Maybe it’s too late to give a lesson,” He asked, shrugging his shoulders.

She raises an eyebrow at him, “Maybe you weren’t listening at dinner. It’s never too late.”

***

A good word to describe Juri’s movements would be hypnotic.

Ryu couldn’t help but be entranced by the way her hips swirled and twirled to the music.

And she would spin around, his eyes would drop down her figure.

Over her shoulders, down her back, to waist, again to her hips.

And lower even. Her actions producing a very enticing bounce to her…

“You sure you’re paying attention,” she asked lightly, disrupting the thought, looking back at him as she continued dancing, “find your rhythm, two-step for me.” She finished, going into the move seamlessly breaking into her previous moves sliding her feet across the dance floor snapping her fingers to the music while still maintaining her rhythm.

He tried to follow her advice of performing a ‘two-step’ to the music, but apparently, he isn’t doing a good job.

He tries the dance, but his movements are jerky and loose, and he isn’t sure what to do with his arms, so he keeps them bolted to his sides.

“Come on, do something with your arms! watch me,” she said, continuing the step, her elbows bent, fingers still snapping in rhythm as her arms flapped in time to the song.

Ryu does his damnedest to copy her motions, but he just can’t get it.

“OK,” says Juri, taking his hands in hers, “let’s try something else.”

“Thank you for having some mercy on me,” he says.

“Don’t thank me yet, the night isn’t over,” she responded.

Ryu observed her contemplation evident on her features. The Ansatsuken fighter surmises she’s working her way through her thoughts by tracing the calluses in his palms.

“You don’t have to work yourself this hard in order to teach me how to dance,” he said.

She looks up at him, her features soften as if she’s come to an epiphany.

“You’re a genius baby, I’ll be right back,” she said as she scurried off.

He stands there while he reflects on the night.

He doesn’t remember the last time he had so much fun.

Juri constantly keeps him on his toes with her teases.

And her laughter at his bad dancing.

If it was anyone else, he’d be self-conscious about it.

Melodic is the word he thinks of when her laughter comes to mind, it being added to his list of weaknesses regarding her.

Before he can consider the thought further, the lights dim, a slower song starts, and he can sense Juri making her way back to him.

“So, I’d figure a slower, more hands-on approach may be better,” she said.

Ryu laughed, “Like you haven’t been that way all night.”

“Guilty as charged,” she responded, “Well come on, budge in. I don’t bite,” she them playfully nipped at him, “unless you ask.”

He steps forward, this time he’s being the personal space invader, taking hold of her hands.

“Egar aren’t we?” She teased.

She pulls him close to the point where there’s practically no space between them. She takes his wrists, guiding his hands to her to her waist and then she places her hands behind his neck, her wrists resting on where the nape of his neck and shoulders meet.

As he adjusted his grip, looking to get a more comfortable hold on her, he noticed how thin the material of her romper is.

And the softness of her skin underneath.

She lets out a small giggle, as settled his hold on her.

“You trying to see if I’m ticklish?” She shot at him.

“I’m, uh, admiring the material of your outfit,” he responded lamely.

“Well stop admiring and start stepping. I want you to follow my movements. Treat it like a fight,” she said as she began to take small steps to the music still maintaining the same distance or lack there of between them, “like you’re looking to close the distance on me. I step, you step.”

She then fully committed, taking a larger step than before, expecting him to follow and he did.

“You got it?”

“Yeah, I think I follow.”

It took a few songs, but Ryu eventually found his footing.

He stepped on Juri’s toes a few times, but it looks like she’s not holding it against him judging by the way she’s been looking at him.

Speaking of which, his eyes fall on his dance partner.

Juri’s currently looking up at him, her expression even, eyes slightly lidded and her lips slightly parted. Despite the natural look, Ryu can tell she’s far from it.

He notices her left eye, the Feng Shui engine, glowing faintly.

“What,” she said, quirking an eyebrow at him and her lips starting to curve into a smile.

“I,” he stopped, wanting to complement her. But he didn’t want to make things awkward. “Nothing,” he completed the thought.

“Are you drunk,” she asked, “don’t worry. It’s fine if you are. I think it’s cute that you’re a light weight.”

“I mean,” Ryu trailed off, the warmth of his drinks coursing through him, “I can’t deny it, I am a little buzzed. But what about you? You did have wine with dinner.”

She laughed, her face going into his chest, briefly turning the dance into a embrace as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“You really didn’t invoke the ol’ ‘wine before liquor’, did you,” she said as her face emerged from his chest, hands going back to his shoulders and shaking her head fondly at him. She then brings a hand to his face, cupping his cheek, “your concern is touching, tough guy, really. But I’m fine.”

Yo, Mo Bee man, drop that shit, commanded a voice over the speaker as a new song started.

This track is slightly faster than the slower songs that have been playing, but Ryu’s able to keep up as Juri’s steps have become more energetic.

Ryu recognizes the artist of this song as Tupac, mostly from Ken’s playlists.

Juri adjusts her hold on him, running her hands across his shoulders, settling on the nap of his neck.

She began to run her fingertips in circles where she placed her hands, as she began to mouth along with the song as it played, and they continued to dance.

Tell me, baby are you lonely? Don't wanna rush ya

I can help ya if you only let me touch ya

If I'm wrong, love, tell me 'cause I get caught up

In the life I live, it's Hell see, I never thought I'd

See the day when I would calm down, you ain't heard?

I've been known to clown and get around, that's my word

See you walking and you looking good, yes indeed

Got a body like a sex fiend

She went along throughout the song continuing to mouth the lyrics earnestly, never breaking eye contact with Ryu.

Despite the club being darkened, Ryu can see her eyes shimmering like a beacon with an emotion he can’t quite place.

But that doesn’t matter as he can’t help but be drawn to it.

Their faces start to drift toward each other, like two celestial bodies in space.

Juri closes her eyes.

Ryu follows suit, as his heart drumming louder as each centimeter of emptiness disappears between their faces.

Their noses touch, lightly colliding.

But before their lips can meet, the song completes, and lights cut back on.

A more upbeat song starts to play as their faces start to part once more, but they’re still in each other’s embrace.

They don’t move, caught in each other’s eyes as the club and its patrons are still lively around them.

Juri breaks first, looking down to Ryu’s lips before looking back to his eyes as she bites her lower lip.

Between the alcohol and the way Juri’s looking him, Ryu’s head is swimming.

And maybe the alcohol is affecting Juri too.

He deflates a little at the thought, but he doesn’t let it show.

“I like this, being so close to you,” she said timidly, surprising Ryu as she had been pretty bold tonight, “but I think we should call it a night.”

Yet she’d made no move to leave his arms, and his hands remained at her waist.

“Are you sure,” Ryu asked shakily, “I don’t mind this either. The closeness I mean.”

Ryu must’ve found the courage he was lacking outside the club.

“Yeah,” she responded in a small voice smiling at his response.

She looked at him contemplatively before letting of him, and he let go of her.

But before he could think twice, she invaded his space again, kissing him on his cheek.

“If you ever want an ear to vent to, or another dance lesson. I’ll be around,” she said.

Ryu stood stupefied, yet elated at the possibility of seeing her again, “Y…Yeah.”

His hand starts to go to the spot Juri just kissed him instinctively.

But she intercepts it, slipping a piece of paper into his hand.

He looks down and he sees her phone number written on a napkin.

“Don’t keep me waiting, tough guy,” she said, repeating what she intoned when she initially invited him to spend the evening with her.

#ao3 fanfic #fanfiction #posted on ff.net #juri han #jurixryu #ryuxjuri #street fighter #ryu

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wen-kexing-apologist · 1 year

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Bed Friend and Reflections: Part 1

Well, if you thought that I was going to let Bed Friends pass by without creating a compilation of all the reflections in the show, you were wrong.

If you thought I was merely going to post the pictures and let us all get on with our lives rather than spend way way…way too much time overanalyzing every single reflection…whose blog did you think this was?

So without further ado, I give you….Bed Friend Reflections Analysis Part 1

Episode 1

We get our first reflection in the series within the first minute, with Uea looking at himself in the mirror over his monologue about being an ordinary salaryman. This sets up some of the recurring trends of the show in terms of its visual metaphors/in the subtle way they happen to be foreshadowing some of Uea’s history: Uea in a bathroom, Uea reflected in the mirror of a bathroom, Uea being alone in his reflections, even Uea in a gray robe which, moving forward in the show, we will only ever see him in when he is with King. Uea spends quite a lot of time, especially in Episode 1 and 3 studying himself, facing himself in the mirror. I like to think that is indicative of this idea that he truly believes that no one else is on his side.

And that continues to be evidenced in the second reflection we see in Episode 1, when he interacts with King in the hallway at work. King is at his side physically, but who is being reflected back at the audience in the doorway?

Only Uea. Uea hates King, Uea wants nothing to do with King, Uea is alone and will remain alone because everyone he knows that shows an interest in him is an asshole who wants things from him, and who doesn’t actually care about him. And he has no reason not to believe that because we establish pretty early on in the show that the people in Uea’s life (with the exception of Jade and Tonkao) are terrible and abusive people. @respectthepetty has ruined all casual viewing experiences of television for me forever and always at this point, so it is worth noting here too that the doorway Uea is reflected in has a solid metal bar that runs along it that provides a physical barrier between Uea’s reflection and King’s person, even as Uea and King’s actual bodies are standing next to each other. It’s a great way to indicate Uea’s internal feelings as being blocked and closed off from King. Uea’s reflection is looking in King’s direction but he has not let his walls down yet and therefore Uea’s emotions will remain behind walls.

We as an audience get the evidence for why Uea might close himself off and isolate from the people around him in the next reflection

Young Uea being shown in the mirror banging against the bathroom door, crying, apologizing, and begging to be let out. At no point in the flashbacks does baby Uea ever look at himself in the mirror, but it still serves as a really intriguing call back to the first time we see Uea in the mirror. That sense of lingering trauma, the weight that can suddenly be applied to something as innocuous as looking in the bathroom mirror. I know we never see Uea look at himself in the mirror of his mother’s bathroom but I do like to think the habit of him looking at himself as an adult does stem from young Uea trying to process his own existence, his own emotional state by looking at himself. Also, from a much less “analysis brain” perspective, people just…look at themselves in the mirror sometimes and there doesn’t have to be any ulterior motivation behind that.

That said, literally the next reflection we are given in Episode 1 is Uea looking at himself in yet another bathroom mirror after his mother texts him asking for money to pay his sister’s tuition

This reflection is the perfect one to present the argument that the reflections are indicative of the character’s genuine emotional states, because while Uea’s head is turned away from the camera and we cannot see his physical face, we are able to see the storm of emotions being reflected back at us in the mirror. Uea is being hit with a wave of emotions he isn’t really sure how to handle (and therefore he turns to alcohol, which we will get to in a second). But in this moment he is watching himself, he is trying to get a handle on his own emotional state and to steel himself for the remainder of the party.

But he isn’t capable of managing his own emotions so he drinks instead

And here we get a change in the reflections. We get our first reflection of King. This the first in a beautiful trend of King’s where his reflection is often showing that King is physically looking directly at Uea. I can talk all day about mirrors being a reflection of their true feelings, and this is further proof in my mind because it puts King in the scene with Uea when Uea is navigating his emotional turmoil. And while it is almost certainly more likely that King is blurry here because the camera is focused on Uea’s face and therefore blurs the background, it is fun to put the “analysis brain” on and extrapolate it out even further and say that King is blurry because we don’t know the shape of King’s interest in Uea yet.

We have seen King flirt openly with Uea throughout the episode so far, but we can’t know for sure if King is flirting because he wants to get with Uea or because he knows Uea hates him and he thinks it’s fun to mess with him. At this point in the show, we have not been given an idea of how much King cares for Uea and so he is blurry because we don’t know what to expect from the attention King is giving to Uea when Uea isn’t aware.

But King comes in to focus once Uea collapses on top of him

And we get our first reflection in the show that has both King and Uea present in it. There are no lines dividing them, there is no separation. It is King holding Uea and Uea finding subunconscious comfort in King’s arms. Uea, unable to cope with his emotions, has gotten drunk and passed out, and so we don’t see Uea’s face in the reflection only the back of his head, but we do see King, looking up at the sky, thinking desperately about what he needs to do to ensure he does not to make the wrong next move.

When he helps Uea to the car, Uea is very drunk and feeling sick, and we get another moment of only seeing Uea’s reflection rather than both him and King’s because he is fighting not to vomit right now. Now, one of the biggest back and forths we've had on this website about Bed Friend really has to do with the color coding of King, whether his color is blue or black or both. What I like about the reflection here is that Uea is physically wearing blue, being supported by King who is also wearing blue, and is in a solidly blue room. But his reflection also has blue lights running across his head. He has blue on his mind in the reflection.

And so King takes Uea back to his place and tries to be respectful, but Uea wants to fuck away his feelings.

And fuck away the feelings they do. Our second reflection of King and Uea together, and we can’t see either of their faces, but we actually get a double reflection here. The one in the mirror and the one on the window. Two minds, two different sets of emotions, Uea grappling with his trauma, King acting on his feelings for Uea.

We get two versions of King’s laser focus on Uea and his pleasure, both in reality and in the reflection, and we only get to see Uea’s face physically because he is trying to suppress his actual emotional needs through physical pleasure. Thus his face in the reflection is covered by his own hand.

Episode 1 ends with one of my favorite reflections, the double split. We see Uea reflected in his main mirror as well as his secondary handheld circular mirror. A fractured self. My lovely little cognitive dissonance image.

Uea is grappling with the one night stand he had with King, and he’s grappling hard. It is clear from flashbacks that Uea enjoyed himself in that one night stand, but he is struggling in the aftermath, realizing that he engaged in sex with someone that not only does he not love but that he considers a player. And we know that Uea has a complicated relationship to his own queerness due to his mother’s homophobia. There are two parts of Uea: one that enjoyed the one night stand and one that is trying to punish himself for the one night stand, for being a “slut”.

Episode 2

Episode 2 uses reflections far more sparingly than almost any other episode, with the first reflection being after King drops Uea off after their blood test. We see King through the sliding glass door on one side, and on the other side we have Uea’s reflection, looking at King.

Once again there is a barrier between them. But, in a genius move, this barrier comes in the form of automatic sliding doors. Why is this relevant? Unlike other commonly used barriers like pillars, this is something that can open when you get close enough. And again we get the reflection as true emotional insight, with Uea looking at King and genuinely pausing to consider his proposal. Why did Uea agree to friends with benefits? It’s a question King will ask in the next episode, but it isn’t something Uea answers honestly. At least, I don’t think it is. I think Uea started the FWB with King because it felt good.

So he agrees to try.

The next reflection has Uea’s reflection eclipsing King’s face through the glass door. Do I have brilliant things to say about it? No. Do I think it is a brilliant use of reflection? Absolutely. King is constantly thinking about Uea. When Uea suggests they try, the reflection has him and King joining together, forecasting what they will mean to each other in the way that Uea is on King’s mind.

I have nothing to say about the final reflection we get in Episode 2 except mmmm. Juicy. Tasty. Succulent. King’s reflection once again is showing us where King’s attentions lie…with Uea.

It just!!! It just shows us SO MUCH about how good King will be for Uea. To know how strongly King is focused on Uea at all times. King presents himself as someone who cares about Uea’s feelings, and does not want to overstep boundaries, but we know that behavior is genuine because of moments like this one where we see King’s reflection looking at Uea with disgustingly rapt attention. And it is important that we see this and Uea doesn’t. Uea can’t see the reflection, he has no idea that King is looking at him like this, and that helps reinforce the narrative when it comes to the future conflict. Because Uea can’t trust that King can change, and it’s because he hasn’t seen what we have seen. He hasn’t seen how early on in their relationship to one another King started focusing on him. It is additionally important to establish this theme of King’s reflections looking at Uea because it helps to lift King’s character as a good person when it comes time to compare him to Pock and Krit.

It has been mentioned before that Pock, King, and Krit do employ similar tactics when it comes to pursuing Uea. In that they pester him, trap him, and continue to push him even after a rejection. We’ve talked about how King differs in this regard because unlike the other two he never touches Uea during this phase. He is exhibiting respectful physical boundaries so we know Uea is generally safe with King. But we have not talked as much about how shots like the one above, with King’s face in his car mirror also serve to reinforce the fact that King isn’t like Krit and Pock, because unlike Pock and Krit, King actually cares about Uea’s feelings.

Episode 3

We open Episode 3 with an abundance of reflections. Uea, once again in the bathroom mirror, emotionally preparing himself to begin this FWB with King.

Notably, the first image and the image below show two mirrors, one for Uea and one for King. Uea’s relationship to and with King is open ended, we don’t know Uea’s true feelings, so we get an absence of King instead of the presence of him.

Until Uea starts touching himself, when the reflection pushes in on Uea and his pleasure. Personally, I like to read this moment as Uea imagining what might happen and getting himself comfortable with the idea of being intimate.

And as I mentioned, this first scene is taking place in bathroom mirrors, a very emotionally complex space for Uea. I haven’t read the book but I have been seeing the posts going around comparing the book to the show and there was pretty strong discussion about how the bathroom was both a safe place for Uea (locked away from his stepfather) and a place of fear for Uea (being trapped in the darkness). He’s taking the time here to reckon with the internalized homophobia he has around engaging in casual sex with King (honestly which is why I think Uea does ask to be exclusive with King).

But I don’t think Uea is fully able to get over his hang ups when he’s by himself, so we get another moment of Uea trying to get a handle on his emotions as seen by the reflection in King’s apartment window.

And we continue the lovely trend of hinting at King’s ability to emotionally support Uea because he does not let Uea stay in his head alone. Their reflections join together as King starts to talk about how hot Uea is.

The second sex scene starts with Uea once again psyching himself up beforehand.

And ends with Uea’s reflection looking at King. I hold that episode 3 is where Uea starts realizing he has feelings for King (and I specifically pinpoint that as when King suggests Uea spend the evening at his apartment after Pock harasses him the first time). But Uea won’t admit that so we get another barrier between Uea (and his emotions) and King in the form of Kings door. But we also get a line connecting Uea and King in the form of the balcony railing. If Uea and King are honest with their emotions they can find that connection to one another, but if they continue to hide their feelings the barrier will prevent them from progressing in their relationship.

King triggers Uea on accident while drying his hair for him and we get a flashback to baby Uea getting put in the bathroom again.

And we get a reminder that Uea is really having to grapple with a lot of negative feelings around his queerness and engaging in any form of sexual relationship with King. He was punished for his sexuality as a child, and he will carry that with him. He doesn’t get to shed that.

And though I don’t know if the cinematographer is trying to say anything with the next reflection, it is one that intrigues me.

Uea, huddled against the tile wall of the bathroom, casting a reflection on the wall. With the grout lines from the tile splitting his reflection up into little pieces. I just want him to know that he will be okay eventually. I just want him to know that he will be happier and be loved eventually. I want to interpret this reflection as Uea not being able to keep himself together.

And when we cut back to reality and Uea retreats to the hallway, we get our last reflection of Episode 3

King’s reflection looking, once again, in Uea’s direction. Because he unintentionally upset Uea, because he is worried about Uea, because King is always paying attention to Uea.

Episode 4

The first reflection of Episode 4 comes in the form of Uea’s bedroom mirror, with Uea asleep, covered in King’s colors. For me, this reflection really highlights the absence of King. King who would be reflected in the mirror right around where that pink blanket is if he were with Uea in the morning.

Uea is sleeping alone, but the focal point of that reflection is not Uea, it’s the space beside him.

Our next reflection parallels the ones we get of baby Uea in the bathroom, with older Uea still experiencing the same type of abuse he did when he was younger.

RTP has mentioned the t-shirt before, but his shirt saying Timing Is Everything here is an excellent choice. I like it because in general “Timing is Everything” is considered a positive statement. But the mirror flips the words, and we are literally witnessing the reverse sentiment. Sure, timing is everything and that can mean that the stars aligned so Uea and King could get together. But it can also mean that the lights can go out and Uea can flash right back to his childhood abuse. Or in the real timing of this flashback, Uea can wake up with enough time to fight back, but without the ability to convince his mother that he was assaulted, so he ends up right where he always does.

Uea has a fight with his family and goes back to King’s to blow off steam. But King has been increasingly tuned in to Uea and his emotions so Uea gets something better than sex, a bubble bath and a birthday cake hand delivered to him by King.

With the reflection off the bathroom windows being Uea’s face illuminated by a candle, and King’s arms holding the cake with the candle lit. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly for our boy Uea this is one of the nicer things anyone has done for him for his birthday. And we can see how important this moment is for him in the reflection because we know Uea finds safety in the light. The reflection in the window gives us a flame between King and Uea, with King being the one to extend that flame towards Uea, and bask him in the light of it.

LISTEN OKAY, I KNOW THAT I KEEP SAYING THE MIRRORS ARE REFLECTIONS OF KING AND UEA’S EMOTIONAL STATE BUT IT IS NOT MY FAULT WE GET A SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLES OF THAT VERY THEORY WITH THE BIRTHDAY CAKE SCENE.

We get King’s completely enamored attention on Uea

We get Uea’s peaceful, content, and happy face as he and King embrace, and we get a double reflection of King’s face in the window.

And we get their sweet kiss at the end, also shown to be in the mirror.

The next morning, we have King once again looking at Uea with those stupid brown baby cow eyes absolutely full of reverence. If there is one thing we know about our sweet cheese, good time boy, it is that he will maintain the thematic consistency of always looking at Uea whenever there is a mirror even remotely nearby.

part 2 // part 3

#bed friend #bed friend the series #bed friend analysis #kinguea #king x uea #uea x king #ueaking #netjames #domundi #mandee channel #bed friend ep 1 #bed friend ep 2 #bed friend ep 3 #bed friend ep 4 #im about to be unhinged and i will not apologize #bed friend meta

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notanotherreidgirl · 3 years

Note

spencer being really horny every time he’s around you but your completely oblivious until MORGAN tells you and then you take it upon yourself to go fuck reid (sub!spence pls!)

here you go! by the way, i am such a big fan of your writing and I was so psyched that you sent me a request - i hope you like it!

wc: 1058

Warnings: masturbation, language, oral sex (female receiving), penetrative sex, unprotected sex

Derek frowned. He wasn't usually one to meddle, leaving that to his baby girl but enough was enough. If he had to watch Spencer trip over his words (and his feet) when you walked into a room one more time he was going to lose his mind. Just last week he practically had to smack Spencer for staring down your low-cut blouse for 10 straight minutes during a briefing. Spencer Reid was a lot of things but subtle was not one of them.

The only thing worse than his perpetual and blatant arousal was your unrelenting obliviousness. There was Spencer turning bright red every time you so much as breathed in his direction and running off to the bathroom whenever you came within 3 feet of him and you had absolutely no clue. It was infuriating. Derek had never understood Penelope’s tendency to get involved in other people’s love lives until he was watching this scene unfold before his very eyes.

Spencer was returning from the file room, a stack of folders in his arms when he passed by your desk. At that very moment, you stretched, your shirt riding up to reveal the tiniest sliver of your lower back. It was perfectly innocuous for most, hardly noticeable really, but it was absolutely overwhelming for Spencer. The files tumbled from his grasp, scattering across the floor. You quickly bent down to gather them up which did nothing to help the growing bulge he was desperately trying to conceal. He dropped to the ground and hastily pushed the papers into a poor semblance of a pile - letting out a little yelp when your hands brushed - before depositing them on his desk and rushing out the door, mumbling something about forgetting a file.

When you got back to your seat Derek was there, toying with the Ray Bradbury novel that Spencer had given you a few weeks ago. You shrugged at him, preparing to get back to work and forget all about Spencer’s odd behavior. “When are you gonna put pretty boy out of his misery?”

You looked up confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on now. You’re too good of a profiler not to notice that Reid’s got it bad for you” he picked up the book as if to present evidence. You opened your mouth then closed it. Then opened it again.

“Oh.” It was all you could think to say. Your entire world just shifted to the left slightly and you swore you could hear it click into place. You turned on your heel, tracing Spencer’s steps and ignoring Derek’s laughter. Finding him was easy. He had retreated to the privacy of the file room, the Bureau had nearly gone completely digital and no one came down to rummage around for paper files when they could just look them up. He was biting down on his fist in order to muffle himself but his moans reverberated through the room. “You do this often?”

He jumped, making a useless attempt to cover himself with his hands but it was too late. Who knew the resident genius would have such a pretty cock? “I asked you a question”

“Y-yes. Yes, I do.” Much to Spencer’s chagrin, his erection did not subside after getting caught, if anything your presence had the opposite effect. He was sure he had never been this hard in his life. “I think about you all the time. I’m so sorry”

“You’re sorry? That’s not good enough, Spence” you pulled yourself up on a desk, parting your legs. “Come apologize to me properly”

After he got over his initial shock, he wasted no time dropping to his knees in front of you watching entranced as you removed your panties. His hands shook as they slid up your thighs and he brought himself to your core hesitantly, certain this was a dream. But all his disbelief was suspended at the very first taste. He ate you out like a man starved. You could feel him everywhere - licking up your folds, darting into your entrance, gripping your thighs, circling your clit - until you came apart. But he made no move to stop forcing you to pull him up by the hair. “You taste so good. Please, I want-”

You yanked his hair harshly and his words devolved into a lewd moan. “I don’t give a fuck about what you want. You got that?”

He nodded vigorously. “Good. Now I want you to fuck me, Dr. Reid. Do you think you can handle that?”

He stammered out a yes but you were already positioning him at your entrance, gathering a fistful of his cardigan and pulling him into you. His eyes were glued to where the two of you joined, watching himself disappear into you with wide eyes. You were setting the pace, propelling him in and out as he tried to process the enormity of the situation. Every time he started to wrap his mind around the fact that his dreams were coming true, you would envelop him in your warmth or let out a soft moan that dashed his mind to bits. He desperately tried to keep his release at bay but it was no use. “I-I’m going to -”

“Come for me, baby. Fill me up” you brought a hand to your clit, bringing yourself to your peak as he came with a low whine. For a moment the two of you just held each other, basking in the afterglow of resolving weeks of tension. Spencer swallowed before speaking. “I really am sorry. If I ever made you uncomfortable, I’m so sorry. I just can’t get you out of my head.”

“The only thing you have to be sorry for is not telling me sooner.” You placed a soft kiss on his lips and shuffled back, easing him out of you and letting his cum leak out. “You belong to me now, baby”

---

You had decided to stagger your return to the bullpen, having Spencer go first with you following 5 minutes later but your efforts were made in vain. When Derek spotted Spencer enter with a wide grin on his flushed face he stood right up and started clapping. Penelope sprinkled some makeshift confetti she had fashioned out of multi-colored post-its over his head as Derek grabbed his shoulder. “Finally! Way to go, pretty boy”

Blurb Masterlist

#blurbs #thx for sending <3 #unsuitable for work #spencer reid smut #spencer reid x reader smut

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julek · 4 years

Text

inspired by @valdomarx‘s post

Geralt’s fought many monsters throughout the course of his life. He’s studied them closely, gathering information about their weak spots and their strenghts, the causes of their existence and the consequences their actions leave in their wake. He’s thoroughly injured many of them, leaving the monsters no other choice than to flee, to exile themselves into oblivion. He’s killed many, as well, mainly the lesser creatures, whose understanding of the living and their intentions is so basic and sparse, not even a patient and dedicated Witcher can make them leave without spearing silver through their bodies. He’s seen monsters, felt them against his skin, carried their severed heads or dangling limbs as proof.

He’s never talked to one.

Sure, he’s sat down on a mushroom-covered log and gesticulated wildly at a group of trolls that were very keen on not leaving the pond they’d taken residence in; he’s screamed at a noonwraith to stop dancing around him and finally take a corporeal form; he’d even tried, early in his training, to engage in conversation with a particularly stubborn drowner, to no avail. Talking to monsters for anything other than bargaining their leave, or allowing them a few last words —or screams, or growls— had never been Vesemir’s indication, not to Geralt’s recollection.

Well, it hadn’t been. Not until Jaskier came along.

Geralt has never had anyone trail after him with such innocent curiosity, smelling of jasmine and sweat but not of fear — never fear. He’s never had someone test his patience and his very extensive knowledge on monsters daily, never had to explain why both Basilisks and Harpies had wings, but they weren’t pretty little birds who just wanted to be loved, Jaskier.

He’s never had anyone pull at his heartstrings the way Jaskier has, either.

It’s infuriating, really; he’s a Witcher, he’s never wanted anything for himself. Never found something worth keeping. But when Jaskier makes it clear he’s not leaving, not even if Geralt comes to him smelling of death and decay, twigs and blood and something else entwined in his hair, Geralt finds himself stuttering, his breath catching in his throat. He never asked —never would— but Jaskier gave him an answer anyway. It’s in the way the corner of his lips go up whenever Geralt gives in and makes a joke, it’s in the way Jaskier’s body seeks his warmth during the night, inevitably tangling their legs together. It’s in the way Jaskier’s eyes light up when they reunite after the winter, nothing but pure joy and relief overwhelming Geralt’s senses as he’s wrapped in a warm embrace.

It would be awfully presumptuous of Geralt to dive headfirst into his own feelings without being sure Jaskier feels the same, but that doesn’t stop him. He finds himself stealing glances at the bard during his performances, watching him in his element. He starts to ration their food to favor the bard, almost subconsciously, always giving him the juiciest pieces of meat and the freshest fruit he can find. He catches himself offering Roach the minute Jaskier’s scent turns sour with pain, either from a roaring hangover or from walking in those gods-awful boots he insists on wearing, the ones that accent his breeches and pair really well with the color of his hair—

And just as he’d feared, Geralt starts losing focus. Important things slip from his mind, and anything that doesn’t involve Jaskier’s choice of soap or doublet or undershirt flies right over his head at a worring pace. It’s not a curse, that he knows with certainty. The pull he feels in his gut whenever Jaskier’s away has nothing to do with magic, the feeling of contentedness that stretches over his chest when they’re together is not potion-induced.

They’re in a small hamlet near Vizima when Geralt snaps.

It’s dark, stars reflecting on the swamp. Geralt’s sitting behind a log covered in moss, not far from where he first heard footsteps approaching. He’s stalking a zombie, which is an easy task even though he hasn’t encountered many over the years. From what he’s gathered, zombies are rather innocuous, non-sentient creatures, usually in search of bones or small animals to take to their Bokor, their creator, whom they submit to. He’s not sure if such a small town could even host such a powerful sorcerer, but he’s not ready to rule out that possibility yet.

The zombie staggers across the forest floor, its movements slow and uncoordinated. It’s muttering something under its breath as it bends down to grab a small spider, crushing it between its bony fingers. The zombie stands tall again, but stills as Geralt’s sword is pressed against its exposed breastbone, the zombie’s eyesockets boring into Geralt’s face.

“Show me your hands,” Geralt grunts, careful not to press his sword too far, lest the creature dissolves under its weight.

Surprisingly, the zombie nods and puts its hands up, rotting flesh hanging from its fingers. They’re empty, and Geralt thinks he’s caught it just at the beginning of its hunt. He crouches down to check the ground, sword still in hand.

“You smell terribly, by the way. Jaskier would surely recoil,” he says with a chuckle, his mind conjuring up the image of Jaskier’s nose scrunching up in disgust. “Yes, if he were here, he’d kill you in a heartbeat, just to get away from the stench. Then he’d write a song about it, so your reputation would be truly lost.”

He picks up the spider corpse and inspects it closely.

“He’s very delicate, you see,” he tucks the spider away in his pocket, “like a flower. I’m no poet, but he really is beautiful like a flower. A rose, maybe.”

He stands tall, ignoring the way the zombie’s mouth hangs open.

“Yes... a rose is pretty and smells good,” he reckons, leaning his weight on the zombie’s chest. “Jaskier always smells good, and he always looks beautiful. And he’s so good to me, you know. He sees good in everyone. I’m sure he’d even see something good in you.”

The zombie hums, a low sound slowly making its way out of the zombie’s mouth, but Geralt cuts it off with a dreamy sigh.

“And it’s just so hard to work now. I can’t even concentrate during a hunt, because he’s made a habit of hugging me before a contract, for luck, you know, and when I move too fast I catch his scent on my skin, and I just can’t—”

“Kill,” the zombie slurrs, its face twisting with effort to get the word out.

Geralt’s eyes widen, golden slits shining in the dark. “Did you just speak to me?”

The zombie ignores him and moves its hand up, aiming for a weary gesture.

“J-just... kill me,” it pleads. “Please.”

Geralt frowns. He can’t recall the last time —if ever— he’s had a monster request him to end their existence. He usually has to fight his way through, and there’s more blood and guts and swords involved. Modern times, he thinks, everyone’s a critic.

He shrugs and drags his sword up, splitting the zombie in two. It falls gracelessly to the ground, and Geralt can swear he hears the bones rattling in relief.

“Rude,” he says as he gathers the bones in a bag, proof to take to the alderman. He’s never had a monster critique his hunting technique, so he’s not sure how to react — what would Vesemir say, hearing a zombie speak to him like that?

He clicks his tongue and makes his way out of the forest. In the distance, he can see a candle burning in the top window of the inn, can almost imagine Jaskier trying not to fall asleep to hear all about his heroics the minute he walks in.

He smiles, and makes a mental note to add to his bestiary. Zombies — sentient. Eager to engage in conversation. Nosy.

#mywriting #geraskier ficlet #geralt x jaskier #i saw george's post and had to drop everything and write this #never was hunting so easy as when geralt's lamenting through the forests #killjoy

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imaginesandinserts · 3 years

Text

Irreverent Drabbles: Perils of Realization

Title: Irreverent Drabbles: Perils of Realization Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Reader Rating: G Words: 6078

A/N: This takes place chronologically between chapters 28 and 29.

Irreverent Series Masterlist

You went on a date.

You realized that you were in love with Hotch, and your first instinct was to go on a date with someone else.

In all respects, it was a relatively good decision. Hotch was your boss and despite the close relationship you enjoyed with him, any romantic relationship between the two of you was impossible.

Miles Burton was a Senior White House Advisor whom you'd run into during your social obligations as a member of the Women in Service organization who had persistently flirted with you at the Griffiths fundraiser and had made it a point to say hello at the following two events you'd both been in attendance for.

Once you'd come to the fairly life-ruining conclusion that you were head-over-heels in love with Aaron Hotchner, you made sure to actually flirt back the next time you saw Miles Burton. That was how you found yourself on the date that had you questioning ever having harbored an attraction to men - dinner and drinks accompanied by a rendition of the 101 Life Accomplishments of Miles T. Burton.

This was hell.

After dinner, Miles had insisted on driving you home, and you cursed yourself for having taken a cab to dinner in order to avoid the lack of parking options in downtown. For some reason, he'd gotten it into his head that paying for dinner entitled him to having your mouth wrapped around his cock while he was parked in the street overlooking your house. You'd extracted yourself from the situation with as much contained outrage and dignity as you could muster, and having closed the front door, you find yourself leaning against it with only one thought in your head – Aaron Hotchner would never.

*------------*

"Rough night?"

You look over at Derek as he peers at you over his coffee mug, his eyes filling with amusement, no doubt having already taken in your slightly puffy face and the extra large cup of coffee you're carrying. After Miles had driven away - you'd watched from your window just in case - you'd needed a drink, which had turned into two drinks and ultimately falling asleep on the couch. You'd woken up late and having rushed out of the house - sans makeup - had arrived at work just in time. Hotch may no longer be upset at you being five minutes late, but he's still entirely stringent about punctuality and you hate to disappoint him.

"Bad date," you respond, dropping into your chair and whipping out the little compact and concealer from your bag so that no one else sees you looking like this.

Emily perks up at that, walking over to perch herself on your desk, the beginnings of a grin already forming on her face. "You finally went out with Burton?"

You look up at her, slightly shaking your head in disapproval at her glee. She'd warned you against him. Something about bad vibes, but since it hadn't been anything concrete, you'd impulsively gone against it. You should've known better. Emily's gut, when it came to men, was impeccably accurate.

Pursing your lips, you make sure your face no longer bears the telltale marks of having fallen asleep, drunk on your couch, before you look up at her and Derek once more. "He tried to Lewinsky me," you tell them ruefully, a scowl making its way onto your face as Emily unsuccessfully stifles a snort.

Derek's eyebrows rise in question. "It's fine, I'm okay," you assure him, before looking back at Emily. "You were right. He's an arrogant creep."

"I'm sorry," she tells you, scooching up further onto your desk and swiping up your coffee before you could stop her. "Everyday I continue to be attracted to men feels like a waste."

"Tell me about it," you mutter, careful to not allow your eyes to slip up to the landing where his office was.

"Oh come on, we're not all bad."

Both you and Emily turn to Derek with looks that say exactly what you think about that particular statement.

"Geez, tough crowd." He raises his hands in surrender, turning away from you both and back to his screen, no doubt to message Pen and fill her in on everything.

"I'd make a good lesbian."

You look up at Emily, who has a contemplative look on her face as she continues to take sips of your coffee. Your coffee. Your hot, perfectly sweetened and foamy latte.

"You would," you agree with her, reaching out for the cup, which she thankfully hands to you, before her eyes flit up to the landing. You turn and follow her gaze, eyes coming to rest on Hotch.

He's wearing the navy blue suit with the nice red patterned Gucci tie that you'd helped Jack pick out for him on Father's day. He has a folder on his hand and his brow is already furrowed, straining under the weight of the world far too early in the morning. His eyes move from the papers in his hand to all of you looking up at him, muscles tensed and breath held tight.

"Briefing. Now."

It takes only two words from him to get you all scrambling from your desks and rushing upstairs, his tone telling you everything you needed to know.

It was going to be a bad one.

*------------*

Five girls missing, three bodies found. Based on the pattern, it's already a foregone conclusion that the fourth girl was also dead. Not that you'd tell her parents that. Not until there was a body. All of your efforts were concentrated on girl number five.

You've felt the eyes of the entire team on you ever since the third body was found and Caroline Geller, lucky contestant number five, had been taken from the parking lot of a grocery store after work. All five girls were around the same age, pretty, low-risk, and had no connection to the unsub that you'd been able to work out.

You look up from the notes you'd taken while talking to Caroline's friends from work to see Hotch looking at you. When your eyes meet his, he's quick to look away, turning back towards the screen in front of him. You know why they're all concerned. While all of the girls are roughly the same age as you, Caroline Geller looked like you. Same hair color, similar features, comparable build – at first glance one might mistake her for you.

She taught ballet at the local dance school, volunteered at the soup kitchen every week, and had recently gotten engaged to her fiancé, a beautiful and heartbroken man who had planted himself on a bench outside the precinct and refused to leave his post.

You'd been at their home, combed through their life, seen the wedding invitation pinned to the refrigerator, held her pointe shoes in your hands as you looked around at everything left behind.

Your eyes stay fixed on Hotch's back as he continues to assess the screen of suspects and look at the evidence board, as though willing something to fall into place. He seems more affected by this case, this girl's disappearance, more than any other in recent memory. There's this childish, na��ve part of you that's hoping against hope that it has something to do with you. Because she reminds him of you. More likely, it's the fact that he's had to walk past her fiancé, every time he's left the precinct. Hotch had been the one to speak with him, and the poor man had broken down into tears right in front of his eyes. It was enough to affect even the coldest of hearts and Hotch hardly fit the bill of a cold-hearted man, despite any misconceptions made based on his reticent exterior. Aaron Hotchner was one of the kindest and most sincere people you've ever met – devout father, responsible team leader. His very aura commanded the sort of respect reserved for those men, the kind of men everyone looked up to and knew they'd never be.

Somehow, he's permeated your entire life without you realizing it. Ever since the two of you had made up, it felt like things were back to normal, even more than before he'd left. You had dinner with them as often as possible. Both him and Jack slept over at least once a week when there wasn't a case going on. The sight of Hotch in pajamas, disappearing into your guest bedroom was becoming a familiar one. It's beyond normal coworkers, beyond a normal friendship – you can finally admit that to yourself.

How it had happened though - how the two of you had allowed it to happen - still remained a mystery. It had been innocuous enough in the beginning. Accompanying Jack and Hotch to the Zoo or the Smithsonian. Relieving Jess when Hotch couldn't get away and she had to go home to her own family. Keeping him company late nights at the office because you hated seeing him be the last one there.

You can feel a lump rise in your throat as your eyes stay on his frame, watching as he points out an additional factor for Reid to consider in his geographic profile. You didn't deserve him. You didn't deserve someone like him, even if he were to give you the time of day.

You've already thought through how it would go if you were to tell him. Blocked out what you'd say and how'd respond. The initial shock of your revelation would catch him off-guard. He'd falter ever so slightly. It would be quickly followed by a professional and kindhearted rejection. You were his subordinate. You were too young. He's sorry if he did or said anything that might have led you on. Of course, he understands if you need some time and space to gather yourself and make your peace with the matter. Of course you'd still see Jack, he'd never deny you his son again. And he wouldn't. He'd stay true to his word.

But you'd never be the same again. You'd never be able to look at him again and feel anything but the sting of that rejection. The confirmation – you weren't good enough. It didn't matter that you'd changed everything. It didn't matter that you'd tried and tried to atone. You weren't good enough. You never would be. Not for that. Not for him. Slowly, you'd start to withdraw. You wouldn't be able to help yourself. It would hurt too much, just being near him. Without meaning to, you'd lose him.

*------------*

Samuel Nolen, age 45, a landscaper who'd worked jobs around each of the women's workplaces in the weeks leading up to their disappearance. He'd been the only common link Garcia had been able to pinpoint and he fit the profile exactly. Older white male, non-threatening demeanor, rotating job that gave him the freedom to watch his victims uninterrupted. Grew up with a single father, mother left the family when he was nine years old and was never heard from again. Garcia had found out that she'd moved out to Vegas and had a relatively successful career as a cabaret dancer.

He was sat in the interrogation room with both Rossi and Reid talking to him while the rest of you watched from the other side. There was something almost gentle about how he held himself, how he shied away from Rossi and leaned more towards Reid, whom he perceived as non-threatening. The guess was that he'd lured in his victims under the guise of needing help, and based on the man in front of you, you could see how some women might fall for it. He seemed nice. If there's one thing this job has taught you, it's that men don't ask for help from women. If a man is asking you for help, run.

Neither Rossi nor Reid were having much success with him. You could all see the twitch in his fingers as they curled around something imaginary. All of the victims had died via strangulation. The hope was that you'd captured him before he'd managed to get back to Caroline and subject her to the same fate.

Derek and JJ had been the ones to pick him up, and as Derek had marched him past you, through the precinct, Samuel's eyes had caught yours and they'd lingered, sending a chill racing down your spine. He might be able to fake it long enough to lure those women to their deaths, but there was no hiding that look in his eyes. The look of a predator.

"I want to talk to the female agent. I'll only talk to her."

It was the first thing he'd said since the interrogation had started half an hour ago. You feel yourself tense, the eyes of the rest of the team on you immediately. None of you needed to ask which agent. From the corner of your eye you look at Hotch beside you. He isn't looking at you, still glaring at the unsub through the mirror, but you can see that his jaw is set tightly.

When Rossi and Reid exit, Rossi immediately looks to you before his eyes go over you and to Hotch. You don't have to turn to see that they're engaged in a wordless debate about the right next move.

You can't help but think of that lovely empty house. The despondent man still seated outside. Those satin shoes that had just been broken in. They deserved to be worn.

"Hotch," you turn to face him, making up your mind as you do. You're going in. You're going to get answers.

He's already looking at you and you can tell that he doesn't like it at all. His forehead is already wrinkled and you can literally see the dissent on his mouth. He's incredibly protective of the team and everyone knows that you're being asked for because you look most like the victim. His ritual has been interrupted and he's going to be eager to resume it. With you as proxy.

"I have to go in," you tell him, before he can say anything to dissuade you from the notion. There was no point in waiting. Every second you waited, your chances of finding Caroline worsened.

His eyes bore into you, silently speaking his every concern into existence. You didn't have to do this, there was always another way. You look so much like her. You look too much like her. If you go in there, he won't see you. He'll see her.

It is a tense minute as you and Hotch look at one another. He's giving you the chance to back out despite knowing that's the last thing you'd do. Finally, a nod comes from him.

"We still have the personal effects that were found in her car?" You're already walking out to the main office as you direct your question to Emily, who is quick to follow you. She guides you to a box of items, among which there's some pieces of clothing. Grabbing the box, you go back to the office overlooking the interrogation room. If he was going to think you were Caroline, then you'd play into it.

Quickly, you shuffle through the clothing in front of you, selecting a well-worn seeming crewneck with her alma mater on it. Slipping your blazer off, you pull the sweater over your head, adjusting so it hung off of you in a manner reminiscent of how Caroline wore it in the photos you'd seen. You shuck off your heels as well, finding a pair of low flats in the box, which you don instead.

Behind you, you can feel the eyes of the team on you as you slowly transform yourself. For the final touch, you take your hair out of your usually prim updo and let it down. Your hair was a little bit longer than Caroline's, but, as you part it down the left side just as she did, you figure it was close enough.

Turning finally to face the unsub, you take your first breath as Caroline Geller.

*------------*

Aaron watches, fists bunched tightly together, thumb itching to move, to do something that would accomplish something larger simply watching and waiting.

They all knew what you were doing - playing up the similarities between yourself and the victim to draw out whatever it was about these women that played to the unsub's compulsions. Prey on his weaknesses just as he'd preyed on them. It was a good tactic – one he could feel forming in your head as you'd searched through the evidence box in search of props for your scene.

You're good in the field, there's no doubt about it. But here, in the interrogation room, that's where you really shine. It was one of the hardest taught skills and it was the one that you had outperformed in beyond imagination from the very start. Your methods unpredictable and out of the box, but highly effective. Out of them all, you were always the best at getting inside the heads of the unsubs and finding that one little thing that made them break.

He's seen it before countless times now, been witness to each spoken word, well placed emphasis, timely pause. The interrogation room was a stage and you were always the star.

It had been the topic of some conversation between himself and Rossi – how you'd managed to convince some of the toughest unsubs to crack under the pressure of your presence. Aaron, personally, chalked it up to your childhood and upbringing. When your entire life was a performance, you know how to play your role.

Now, as he watches you, he sees how you've managed to mimic the mannerisms of Caroline Geller from the home videos you'd seen of her – the slight tilt of the head, the fiddling with the ends of your hair. Your voice has shifted as well, a slightly higher and happier pitch, more like what one might expect of a dance teacher with students in primary school. You've done your homework on this one, that one is easily clear. However, it's the slight pause you have as the Unsub addresses you as Caroline, the nearly imperceptible tension in your shoulders as the Unsub mocks Caroline's desolate fiancé whom Aaron hadn't the heart to look at. This one had gotten to you, and you wouldn't be able to deny it. Not to him.

At long last, you get what you're searching for. The docks by the east river.

The answer came at a price – twenty five long minutes with just you and the Unsub as he poked and prodded at your psyche just as you did to him.

The confirmation from Garcia, of a heat signature at the given location, comes within the minute and Aaron is quick to rap his knuckles against the glass, signaling your curtain call.

*------------*

You can't save them all. That's the one lesson every new agent learns at their own pace.

You can't save them all.

She'd suffocated before you could get to her. You'd been too late.

JJ hadn't let you see Caroline's body, dragging you back and away from the dock containers when Derek had emerged with a somber face, slowly shaking his head.

Your gun feels heavy in your hand, and it is only out of sheer rote habit that you manage to disarm and reholster the weapon. JJ stands with you as the flurry of people begin to process the scene, lit only by the red and blue flashing lights of the police cars.

You'd failed. You'd been too slow to extract the location, too slow to get there. You'd been too damn slow.

You've lost victims before. Everyone has. But you lived in this girl. You'd worn her clothes, her shoes, taken her name. You'd walked like her, changed your voice to mimic hers. It was as though, by pretending to be her, you'd taken in a part of her that now yearned to reunite with the rest of its whole, but it wasn't able to. So now a piece of Caroline Geller rattled inside of you, sobbing and crying out for the rest of itself.

Hotch and Emily finally emerge and you follow JJ to join them as Hotch assigns everyone their roles. One of the policemen interjects and informs him that Caroline's fiancé had insisted on coming along and was now waiting with a deputy by the barricades. You see Hotch nod, his eyes briefly moving towards the direction of the barricade, before refocusing on the team and instructing Reid to assist with the evidence logging.

As everyone starts to disperse, you can feel a lead ball drop into the pit of your stomach, knowing that Hotch now had the task of informing the fiancé that Caroline Geller was dead.

"Hotch," you begin, his name coming out full and heavy, sitting in your mouth like warm air.

He halts at your voice, turning back towards you. He'd already given you your assignment, so he has to be wondering what you could possibly have to say to him.

You look up at him. It's just you, him, and Emily left now, as she waits for you to help her with processing paperwork on the unsub that Hotch had tasked you both with. "I – ," you falter as you meet his eyes, and you can barely see a hint of him behind them. He'd already donned his mask to go face the fiancé.

"I'm sorry," you manage quickly, jaw tight and heart clenching at the awfulness of the job that he now has to do. The job he always has to do.

The only acknowledgement you receive that he had even heard what you said over the din of the police and ambulance sirens, was the barest of wrinkling to his forehead. The ever so slight slippage of the mask during which you thought you might get to catch a glimpse of him, but he catches it far too quickly and keeps it in place. As if it never happened. Not even nodding, he turns away and walks towards the barricade.

It's a miserable few hours for Emily afterwards, you're sure, as you monotonously follow her back to the police station and begin the task of coordinating with the local office to handle the case and subsequent prosecution.

Emily likes to talk while the two of you work together. Rarely ever do the two of you work without talking, however she seems to pick up on your mood fairly well and the two of you quietly go through all of the required processes.

"You know what your problem is?"

You look up at Emily, who had finally broken the silence, her sharp voice cutting through the small storage room that the two of you inhabited, gathering all of the files that would need to be sent off to the local office.

You swallow, bracing yourself for the worst. At your slight nod, she proceeds, her voice a calm fury like you'd never seen before. "Even after everything you've done, after everything you had to go through, you seem to harbor this delusion that you're not supposed to be here."

"What're you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you. Apologizing to Hotch. You think you don't belong here. That you aren't good enough. You think that girl dying today was your fault."

You scoff, shaking your head. "It was my fault," you retort, grabbing the box you'd just finished packing and making your way to the door before you're blocked by Emily, preventing your escape.

"No, it wasn't. The only person responsible for that girl's death is the guy who's going to rot in prison for the rest of his miserable, fucked up life."

You sigh, shuffling your weight from one foot to the other. "If I'd gotten – "

"You can't save everyone," she interrupts, barreling onwards. "We're going to try. We're going to try our best every single time. But we can't save everyone. None of us can. Not you, not me, not even Hotch. But that doesn't make it your fault."

Emily stares down at you, reaching out and grabbing the heavy box out of your hands and setting it down on the floor by your feet. You look away, up at the ceiling, tears pricking at your eyes, causing them to burn. Your chest feels tight and you take a shuddered breath. The lure of wanting to believe her was so very strong, struck against the waves of dissonance it posed in your head.

Emily softens her voice, reaching out towards you and wrapping an arm around your shoulders as she easily pulls you into her chest. "Hotch isn't blaming you. He doesn't think you have anything to be sorry for."

*------------*

The plane ride back was a somber affair, everyone on the team off on their own. Spencer was reading a new book whose title had caught your interest, Rossi was tucked away in a corner with his eyes closed but you're not sure if he's actually asleep. Both Emily and JJ were sitting close together, quietly sharing a bag of Cheetos while JJ worked on her presentation to Henry's class for Career Day and Emily bided the time alternating between reading the trashy romance she'd found left behind in her hotel room and staring out the window. Derek sat across from you with his headphones on, leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed. Across the way, you can see Hotch diligently working on his report for the case, the only sound emanating from his faint taps against the keyboard.

Emily's words still play in your head, now competing with that churning voice that you'd had in your head for the past few weeks – you would never be good enough for the likes of Aaron Hotchner. Her words were starting to put some minute cracks in the foundation of that particular statement, and you had no idea what to make of that.

You hear the tapping of the keyboard stop momentarily and watch as Hotch turns up to look at you, your eyes meeting for a long second, before he breaks his gaze, returning back to the screen in front of him. From your seat, you can barely make out a slight crinkling of his forehead as his hands hover above the keyboard, as though faltering in typing out his next words. You have to guess that he's arrived at the part of his statement around the interrogation. You turn away, following Emily's lead and staring out your own window, while unbeknownst to you, his eyes can't help but return to you countless times more.

It felt as though you'd thought of very little besides Hotch, since that day that your mother had visited. She'd left in the wake of one of the few times you'd seen him lose his cool with someone, and having it be done on your behalf, in your defense, had somehow unveiled this entirely ridiculous truth that you'd tried in vain to deny.

You were in love with Aaron Hotchner.

You had no idea what to do with that.

Dating other people hadn't worked out so well.

Trying to simply get over it had been an exercise in vain.

You've run miles in your own head, trying to make sense of it. The question begged itself – why Aaron Hotchner? If you merely wanted a husband and kids, you've no doubt you could have that with anyone you got along with well enough.

Your mind had briefly flitted back to that final date you'd had with Cedric Kensington. It had been highly promising, you'd finally felt it heading in a definite direction and you could see it. You could see yourself being with Cedric, marrying him, having children with him if you were so inclined. Had you not gotten the call from Garcia, informing you that Foyet was back on the grid, who knows what could have happened. Maybe you could've had that with Cedric. Having that perfect life with someone else was not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

You'd thought of John. How it had never been the right time when it came to the two of you. Then finally, when you could conceive being something real with him, you'd faltered. You couldn't go through with it. It hadn't been the right time to choose him. It hadn’t been the right time to choose anyone but yourself.

It had taken you some time but you think you've finally come to the right conclusion of why it was Hotch and no one else – the possibility of losing him was terrifying. Even when the two of you had been on the outs, you hadn't been able to leave, staying anchored to him despite being furious with him. Seeing him had been torture. Not seeing him had been so much worse, and you couldn't bring yourself to endure that again.

Given the absolute fact of the matter – you being in love with Hotch - there were really only two paths forward that you could see. Ignore it and hope it goes away, or tell him and pray you didn't lose him in the process.

The Pro/Con list to that second option had begun, unbidden, the week prior. Your mind going rogue and dreaming up ridiculous and absurd scenarios of you confessing your truth to him.

Pro: You're absolutely, unshakably, madly in love with him.

Con: There's a fairly good chance that he does not and will never reciprocate those feelings.

Pro: Aaron Hotchner was loyal to you. You had always felt he was, but your conversation a few weeks back had cemented that. He would do anything to help you, no matter what.

Con: He's twelve years older than you and has a kid.

Pro: You love his kid.

Con: Between the two of you, your past trauma could be its own wing in the Library of Congress.

Pro: You're both good at getting the other person to talk.

Con: You work together and workplace romances are frowned upon. He was your supervisor, and dating him would no doubt lead to rumors and malicious gossip, which would follow you the rest of your career at the Bureau. It could tarnish you entirely and it could also hurt him.

Con: You would not be alright if the two of you didn't work out. You know that you weren't even together, but the idea of ending things with Hotch, after knowing what it was to have him – that would break you entirely.

Con: He was going to say no, so it was all a moot point.

Towards the end, you'd run out of items for the Pros to balance out each Con, and as of now, the Cons were definitely in the lead.

*------------*

The two of you are once again the last two people in the office. Emily had been the last to leave, leaving her book from the plane on your desk, having already put sticky note bookmarks in all the right spots. She'd winked as she left, encouraging you to skip the rest of the book and skip straight to the good stuff. You had to smile at her attempts to cheer you up. Some friends bought you a drink. Emily Prentiss curated sex scenes that she thought you'd enjoy reading.

You glance up and see that Hotch's door is shut, the orange blush emanating through the glass windows, alluding to the fact that he'd given up on using the overhead lights. They were too bright for him and gave him headaches, so despite the strain on his eyes, he preferred to read by the glow of his desk lamp. With Jack away at sleepaway camp for Cub Scouts for the week, he's unlikely to leave early.

You grab your finished report and head up the stairs to his door, stopping and knocking before hearing his permission to enter. As you open the door, your eyes go immediately to his desk, however he's not seated behind it. Instead, you're greeted by a most unfamiliar sight.

Aaron Hotchner is seated on the brown leather couch in his office, a glass of amber liquid in his hands. You don't think you've ever seen Hotch not working in his office. Sure, he'll take a break here and there when you interrupt, but the image of him outright sitting on the couch, not a report in sight, was entirely foreign to you.

It feels as though you're intruding. Like you’ve stumbled upon something entirely private, because Hotch doesn’t strike you as the kind of guy that makes a habit out of drinking in his office by himself.

You could imagine this was something he did with Rossi on occasion, the two of them sharing a drink after a rough case or catching up and reminiscing about the so-called good old days, before the team had a plane on call.

"You can set that on the desk," he tells you, his voice deeper, made warm by the liquor. He doesn't look up from his glass, eyes fixed on something in the far off distance.

Unsure how to react to the sight in front of you, you quickly make your way across his office, setting your file on top of the already tall stack at the edge of his desk.

Turning around, you quickly walk back towards the door, eager to not bother him any longer than absolutely necessary. When you get to the door, you hesitate, turning back to face him. Before you can stop yourself, you can feel the words tumbling out of you. "Hotch, are you alright?"

He looks up in your direction, his expression entirely unreadable. He nods slowly, and you can see a deep sigh work its way through him, before he finally meets your eyes.

"It was a rough case. Telling the families isn't something I'll ever get used to, I think."

You nod sympathetically. It wasn't fair that it always fell on him.

"I'll be fine, though. Just need to be alone after some of them."

You nod again, not trusting yourself to say much. As you turn to leave, taking his words as your cue, he speaks again.

"You can stay."

You turn back, your head tilting in some confusion as you meet his eyes once more. He looks at you for a second longer, before reaching over to the side table and grabbing a second glass. He pours from the bottle of good scotch that Rossi had given him last Christmas while you watch him.

Proffering the glass in your direction, he beckons you forward. "You're easy to be alone with."

Somehow, in a slight daze, you manage to walk back towards the couch, reaching out and grasping the heavy crystal glass in your hand. He motions for you to join him and you sink into your usual spot, tucking your legs underneath yourself.

His eyes stay on you as you settle in and take a sip of the scotch, feeling it burn your lips, the tip of your tongue, before blooming into a subtle smoky sweetness in your mouth, settling into your stomach like dying embers.

"Are you alright?" he asks, watching you carefully.

You try not to squirm under his inspecting gaze, unable to offer much beyond a shrug. "I will be."

It's quiet for a moment as he continues to look at you and you distract yourself with a stray thread in the cushion stitching.

You hear him clear his throat, shifting slightly on the couch so that his leg bends at the knee as he turns his body to face you, arm stretched out on the back of the couch, fingers grazing the top of your shoulder. "You did everything you could."

You feel that heavy tug in your stomach, unable to look at him, knowing that your face would betray you entirely.

He says your name, soft on his lips, gentle with every part of you. He waits until you look up at him, meeting his brown eyes that held the warmth of an everlasting hearth.

"You did."

You nod slowly, because who were you to disagree with him. Because if Aaron Hotchner said you did everything you could, then maybe it was true.

Not much more is said that night, as the two of you sit side by side.

Pro: You could be alone with Aaron Hotchner.

#aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner fanfiction #aaron hotchner imagine #Criminal Minds #criminal minds x reader #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds reader insert #irreverentseries

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notmrskennedy · 3 years

Text

Professor, pt 1

A/N - so i heard from like four of you which is enough to warrant me posting drafts that weren’t supposed to see the light of day - ANYWAY this was originally written in third person and let me tell you it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to change tenses like holy hell.

(Technically the prequel Friendliness but can stand alone if you really want it to. There’s a part two to this so watch out for that tomorrow.)

Summary - Spencer meets a professor and falls in love for a few hours

W/C - 2k

Warnings - none-ish? there’s a small smattering of violence and horrible changing of the tenses

-----

Spencer can’t help the irony that he’s in a freshman college class for the first time ever while protecting one of the students. Who knew that a tiny club of DnD players could incite so much rage out of an un-sub? So here he was, trying to blend in—even though he’s 25, he still looks 14 and there’s really no real reason why he should be worried about being caught—in order to protect a freshman who was more pimple than male specimen.

Joesph—the poor kid in question—takes a seat in the front row and Spencer’s obligated to sit within tackling distance, though he hopes it won’t come to that. Hopefully, Morgan will have the kid the un-sub goes for and Spencer can just enjoy being in college again. The painfully familiar auditorium seats, the stale air, and bad fluorescents feel more like home than he cares to admit.

College hadn’t been all too unpleasant. High school he’d gotten picked on mercilessly. College, however, had meant getting doted on by hot sorority girls and earning the protection of frat boys—they’d picked up rather quickly that he knew football strategy better than they did after Spencer had hustled a TV and 400 dollars from them. Sure, he didn’t drink, but every single drunk teenager had welcomed him with open arms and lots of ginger ale.

There’s chatter and for the ten minutes before class starts, Spencer is torn between trying to figure out which song is quietly playing around the room and watching for a particularly rage-filled college student serial killer. Instead, he just finds too many bored faces. Most of the kids are drinking coffee like the best of them and he’s itching for his next fix just looking at it.

The first two rows: a terrible vantage point to be profiling, but a beautifully defensible post. He watches absently as one of the TAs, who looks a little younger than him, organizes three stacks of papers on the front desk and flips through several different pages on the podium. His attention is focused solely on you for nearly a minute too long—he can hear the voice in his head chastising him for how often he gets distracted by pretty people.

You look of the fragile sort, the in-the-lab kind of future scientist. There’s something about you that’s captivating. It might be the way you keep reorganizing the papers to perfection or maybe it’s the way you study the room so closely. And while he thinks that you might not be able to physically stop someone, you sure look like the kind of person that could crush him in chess.

He’s 25 and is considering chess as a marriage proposal.

Joesph shuffles his books around in the seat in front of Spencer and you, the beautiful TA in question, hold a watch up as you move to the centre of the room. Class is starting. Class is starting and he’s hopeful the professor never actually shows up.

He notices your watch is on your right wrist—are you left handed?—as you smile widely and clap her hands together. First day jitters seem to keep everyone silent, waiting on baited breath for you to start. Spencer would stay on baited breath for the rest of his life for you. You were utterly captivating after all—he could see the drool from several students’ mouths a few seats over.

“This is Anthropology 101,” you announce. “If this isn’t your class, you’re free to leave. Or stay if you want. Did you guys know that anxiety disorders affect more than 40 million US adults? Or 1 in 5, I guess, if you want the easier pill to swallow.”

Spencer’s heart jumps into his throat and he wants to raise his hand just to ask you to marry him.

“Anyway,” you sigh, leaning back agains the front desk, “I spit out a lot of facts. Usually something that begins with ‘did you know’ won’t be on the tests. I try to be fair. Which brings us to ice breakers.”

The class collectively groans. You scoff.

“Oh hush, I’m the only one doing the ice breakers so chill out. Jeez.” Spencer waits patiently for your soft breath and then your further announcement of, “I’m officially Dr. Y/N Y/L/N, but that’s like only if my boss comes in or for any emails you send. You can call me Y/N because that’s like normal. I got my doctorate in forensic anthropology a year ago and I’ve been teaching since I started grad school three years ago. You’re in safe hands, I promise.”

He almost kicks himself. You’re the professor. How many times had he been nearly kicked out of a classroom when he was in grad school for saying he was the professor? How many times had he been 18 and trying to get an ounce of respect for himself?

You continue, waving your hands about like you could pull your ideas back down to earth. “Um—a fun fact about me is that I am not welcome in certain parts of the world for ‘violating’ what are called exhumation laws, which is silly in my opinion. I had the legal right to carry that head on the plane and—and I hope you did the reading because there’s a first day pop quiz.”

The entire class lets out one simultaneous frustrated whine that alights something almost wicked in your eyes. You wave over two students from the other end of the front row and they begin passing out test papers as you explain.

“You’ll have a total of fifteen minutes to answer ten questions. We’ll start on my mark. If you have any trouble, give me a shout and I’ll help you out. After this, we’ll go over the syllabus and if you’re lucky, leave early.”

Spencer’s passed a test and immediately notices there’s no place for a name. Just a bolded “Student #21” at the top. Another girl raises the question and you snicker. “I like puzzles,” is the only answer you give before the time starts.

Question four: what are the top three songs you’ve been listening to? Please list.

Question six: why are you taking this class?

A: This is a requirement

B: I heard it was easy

C: I heard the professor was hot

D: I really enjoy anthropology! (liar)

Question nine: Creationism or Evolution?

Question ten: Quickly. If you were going to have dinner, would it be with Bill or Hillary Clinton?

Spencer can’t hide the grin he’s got the entire test. It’s all ridiculous get-to-know-you questions. He can tell what merit you’re getting out of them. There’s one judging study habits, one judging religion, feminism, politics—you’ve created her own little innocuous questionnaire. Spencer was sure the students would just think you were strange, but he saw the cleverness.

Spencer also notices that once you notice him, you don’t stop noticing him. He wonders what you see. You’re so obviously profiling him that it hurts. Do you see the FBI agent? The scholar? The doctor? The drug addict? The man in a boy’s skin?

Your timer beeps and you shout for pencils down. Your makeshift TAs are dispatched to collect the papers and you make the stacks perfect when they make it to the desk. You move to the whiteboard, a set of papers clutched in your hand, and lean against it to address the class.

“Test go alright?” your grin is contagious and Spencer can’t help but mirror it. You glance at Spencer, turns back to the class, and tuck your hair behind your ear. You let the class chatter on for a moment, setting the papers down on the table, and readjust the undone cuffs of your white button down. He never thought that a sweater vest and jeans could look so hot.

You smirk and check your watch one more time. “Let’s talk about tests because I know you all have questions. Everything on the test is either written on the board, on the notes, or in the study guide—if you fail after that, come to office hours. I’ve got Advil for the hangovers.”

Thankfully, Joesph is one of those students who has to speak to every single one of his professors. Spencer waits patiently behind the kid, trying to keep the smell from the lack of deodorant just out of range.

He keeps a hard gaze on all of the students moving in and out of the auditorium. There’s nothing to see, just a lot of students with a lot of normal college apathy. No anger, no serial killer, no one to tackle.

“Sometimes the BO is worse than a corpse’s expulsion of gas,” you joke from your place atop the desk. Spencer looks up, and furrows his eyebrows as his brain processes. Your face falls for a split second, but your curiosity replaces it just as quickly. Joesph’s jaw hits the floor, stumbling for some way to explain himself or maybe some half decent way to insult the pretty professor.

Spencer laughs, probably a little more than he should have, considering he wasn’t supposed to out himself as an FBI agent. You tuck your hair behind your ear again and, for someone younger than 25, you are surprisingly wide eyed with perception and curiosity.

“Do you like puzzles, Doctor—“

“Reid,” he supplies, trying to swallow around the lump in his throat. “Spencer.”

You raise an eyebrow, chewing on your bottom lip in contemplation. You turn your focus back to Joesph—a boy worse at talking to those scoring higher than an 8 than Spencer was at the same age. “So, Joesph, why does the good doctor need to be within tackling distance of you?”

Joesph flounders, turns to hide his blush, and yelps like God himself has come down to kick him in the ass. Spencer takes one good look at the 18 year old girl charging towards a pimple of a boy and he launches before he can give much consideration to how much its going to hurt.

But between the noticing and the launching, he makes a list: she’s got so much black eyeliner that Emily’s high school yearbook photos would be jealous; she’s about to inflict about a 9 on the pain scale if she’s left to her plan; there’s obviously no plan other to scratch Joesph’s eyes out; her nails are the size of tiger claws and Spencer desperately wishes he had a better pain tolerance; there’s no weapon.

The tackle takes seconds. It’s a practised movement. Roll. Knee. Handcuffs. The girl is screaming and crying and kicking and biting. His arm’s on fire and she’s struggling enough that it’s taking more than ten seconds to get the handcuffs on.

It’s calculated as he presses his knee harder into her back. She yelps and stills long enough that Spencer closes the handcuffs on her tiny, sliced up wrists. The cutting explains some things…

“Hence the tackling distance,” You sum up, bending down just slightly to look the killer in the face. Your nose wrinkles. “You had very distinct ideas on the cultural value of suicide.”

Spencer shakes his head, hauls the girl to her feet, and beckons for Joesph to follow. The entire world falls out of view as he manhandles the girl into an easy walk. The students step to the side to gawk, and he’s thankful for the wide berth. If someone got hurt, the paperwork alone—

“It was nice meeting you, Dr. Reid!” you call and he glances back over his shoulder. You’re waving around the stack of papers in your arms, utterly ridiculous, terribly adorable. He hopes his smile is more suave than love sick, but the fleeting flirtation is especially over when Miss Unchecked Rage kicks out as Joesph comes into her line of sight.

Spencer throws his whole weight into keeping her down. There’s no room to fall in love after a day. Especially with someone on a college campus halfway across the country from him. There’s even less room to manoeuvre Miss Eyeliner even without Joesph waddling into her eye line every few seconds. Seriously, he thinks, how hard is it to keep behind me?

#spencer reid #dr spencer reid #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x reader #reid #reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #Criminal Minds #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid fanfiction

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bvccy · 3 years

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Tenderness and Ferocity | 4. The Third Night

Pairing: Winter Soldier!Bucky Barnes x Hydra!Reader Fic Synopsis: The Winter Soldier is starting to make stupid mistakes in the field, which is Bucky's way of trying to wrest back control and sabotage his handlers. Hydra brings a new doctor to figure out what's wrong with him and fix it. As she spends time with him, she becomes fond of the Winter Soldier, and he becomes fond of her. Bucky has other ideas. Or, a fic in which the Winter Soldier is the good guy and Bucky is actually the bad guy. Warnings for this chapter: light Smut Word count: 1984 Read on AO3: [link] [Previous Chapter] [Fic Masterlist] [Next Chapter]

"This is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or of a woman for their world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame." — Mervyn Peake

"See you tomorrow, Eeli!"

"Bye!"

"Night, Benji!"

"Good night!"

"Bye, Suzi!"

"Have a good night!"

She said her goodbyes to the evening staff, the duty officer, the cleaning lady, and made her way down the white corridor that led to the bus, which took all the day staff to their living quarters. She tried not to hurry too much, not to hold her purse too close, nor to smile too widely. She breathed a sigh of relief once she took her seat, her head leaning to cool against the window.

Although it was only evening, in the late winter it already looked like the dead of night, blackness stretching out forever starting fifteen feet from wherever you stood. The sparse trees looked like cardboard cut-outs under the stark nightlights, lifeless against a starless sky. There was a tranquillity in the effect: a feeling that, in a world where everything was fake, you too could be whatever you wanted.

The bus bumped along as usual, carrying its quiet cargo, but until she was off it she couldn't shake the nagging shame that was burning a hole in her purse. She surreptitiously squeezed it down, letting herself lean heavily against it while she looked out the window and tried not to think about getting shot.

The apartment complex was easily within driving distance but completely out of view of the Headquarters, even with the flat emptiness that lay between. It was built especially for the civilian workers, and named the Administrative, Medical, Economical, Research and Innovation Cadres Apartments. Or, as Hydra referred to it with great amusement, A.M.E.R.I.C.A..

Its outside inherited the bleakness that came with rushed work, cheap materials, and failed modernist concepts, but the inside had been renovated over the years into something that was at worst ergonomic, and at best managed to be cosy. It almost felt like home, and for a lot of the staff it had to be.

The ride squeaked to a halt, jolting its passengers awake. They waddled out in orderly fashion, saying their thank-yous to the driver, and their good-nights to each other as gradually they each went to their wing.

A few token trees, grown very tall over the decades, were spread around the park before the main entrance, their barren branches lit pale gold by the lamplights. The round fountain at the centre was finally unfrozen for the first time in months, its water sitting in a motionless reflection of the sable sky.

The night guardsman watched everyone amble in, nodding and smiling to whoever spared him a glance as he cradled a chipped mug of coffee in his chubby hands. She mouthed a "Hello" to him and kept on walking, her eyes going back down in what she knew was her usual 'tired' look and nobody spoke to her when they grouped up in the elevator, or when they spread out in their own directions, and then finally she was safely inside her little apartment — locked up and double-bolted.

She placed her purse very carefully on the hallway table. Put her coat up, tucked her shoes away, turned on the lights, turned on the heating, and went through the usual ritual of taking everything off and stuffing it in the laundry bin before taking a shower.

Dinner was, as usual, replaced by a cup of tea and biscuits in bed while her hair slowly dried, wrapped up in a thin old towel. She sipped her tea while scrolling through feeds of news articles, celebrity scandals, the occasional cat video, not really paying attention to anything. As soon as she could justify it to herself, she rolled out of bed and took her cup and plate to the kitchen. She brushed her teeth in a rush, brushed out her tangled hair, then finally approached the purse that was sitting innocuously in waiting.

It was stuffed full of notebooks, emergency cosmetics, obsolete post-its and little lozenge tins, so she had to dig a little until she found the one booklet where, as if by accident, a crisp white page had slipped in. There was hardly any way for someone to detect it, of course — "analog technology" is the safest way to smuggle information — but it didn't stop her from trembling all the way home.

She unfolded it, and smiled tenderly at the sight of the precisely drawn clock face. With the tip of a finger, she could just about feel the indent where the pen first went into the page, a phantom of the energy that passed through his arm for just one moment.

She put all her things away, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed with it. The lamp shining outside was enough for her to make out the page as it rested by her pillow. She had taken it without any particular idea of what to do with it, but she just knew she had to have it, had to have something from him.

The logical side knew that this was a normal emotional reaction for a woman, stuck somewhere without a palatable selection of men, however numerous. Her body recognised, before her head, that the Soldier would be quite a catch even if they weren't stuck in the middle of an industrialised nowhere, and in short order had reached the conclusions that he was: pretty nice, tempting, wasted on Hydra, stupidly beautiful, distractingly virile, before finally settling on him being utterly desirable.

Her head was still stuck at "wasted on Hydra".

But it would get there eventually. The more of him she brought out, the easier it was for her to see him as a person — and people can be admired, liked, and even wanted. For now, she would make do with this schoolyard token and allow herself to enjoy whatever she wanted in her mind.

She already couldn't remember what he felt like under her fingers, how exactly his voice sounded, even his face became blurred the longer she was away from him, but she could easily summon back the memory of what it felt like to be around him.

He was so pliant, especially that first day all strapped up and helpless. It was a heady combination — a dangerous killer rendered harmless. She liked dominance in the opposite sex, but there was just something about a big strong man being subdued like that while she had full control — made even more exciting, paradoxically, by his lack of interest in her.

She noticed him stare quite shamelessly, but blankly; that was just his programming assessing a threat, like all the other soldiers in the program... that's all it had to be. The Director's crass joke at her expense didn't make it any better, as if he wanted to remind her specifically that the Soldier didn't, and couldn't, find her nor any woman desirable.

Still, she could have done anything she wanted with him. The following days when he was free, he still obeyed her every word (mostly). But he also started speaking a little out of turn and telling tepid jokes; the progress, on a professional level, was considerable. When she had him eating out of her hand, it dawned on her how dangerously close she was to taking advantage of him — dangerous, of course, only if she got caught.

Fortunately she’d had the sense to ask for no surveillance, and had nurtured a reputation of being professional to a fault, unmoved by the raw masculinity of the Winter Soldier recruits that her other colleagues openly gushed over, and generally impervious to male charm — mainly to make it easier to turn down flirtations from the desperate men stuck there. "Don't bother with her. I already tried. You don't stand a chance."

She understood their loneliness, even sympathised with them, but she couldn't take the chance of opening herself to someone only to be used up, as it happened to so many others stuck there; especially not when none of them made her feel anything. Her Soldier though, he made her feel something...

He was more than just another big, dangerous man. In their efforts, Hydra had made him into an ideal. Unfortunately, they also misunderstood the nature of what they made. They thought they were creating a weapon — they did — but Hydra treated the masculinity inherent in her Soldier as just an excuse for brutality, deprecating what he really was and could be. Masculinity was about control and power — to be unleashed when necessary and otherwise reined in, a pack of wild dogs left unfed by their master and held back, held back, held back, to be all the more vicious when finally released.

By misusing her Soldier, they misused that which they channelled through him; the source of that ideal inherent to all men but which favoured so few; which expressed itself through tenderness, and ferocity.

Hydra unwittingly created a weakness, a crack for her to crawl into and bring out that which lay, waiting, underneath the mind. They had no patience for these abstractions, no way to deal with them, and so instead they brought him down and kept him there, ready to use when the brutality was needed.

She closed her eyes and tried to bring back the frissons she felt at the sound of his voice, rough and hanging heavy but so velvety sweet still, the shape of his body silhouetted in the shadows, his artist's-fingers resting obediently on the table, and that surprising mix of chocolate brown hair and grey eyes...

Maybe next time she could have him write something, she could analyse his handwriting; he should definitely still know how... Would he write in cursive or print? Would his letters be thin and sharp, or sensuously curved? Would they be large and take up a lot of space, or small and unassuming like he seemed to be sometimes...

She buried her nose in the pillow, feeling only her own perfume — would he like it? what would it smell like after he spent the night? — and wrapped a leg around the bulky duvet that wasn't nearly big enough to pretend...

Her fingers touched the page again as she squeezed her legs together, her other hand caressing her neck in lighter and lighter touches until she could almost imagine it being his breath, fanning over her skin from above.

She let go of the paper and turned on her back, shivering and sighing, and slipped her hand underneath, down the centre of her chest, stopping just at her lower stomach and pressed down — the way she thought he would if he caught her, if he wanted to hold her still. She bit her lip and teased her throat, content now that her imagination found what it wanted.

Maybe, he wouldn't catch her... Maybe he would break free and come to her, find her in bed, hold her against him, try to seduce her into running away with him. To make it more fun, she'd struggle. She allowed herself a half-bitten moan as she instinctively throbbed at the idea, and pressed harder, canting her hips more and more to an imaginary rhythm that he set.

The thought of his heavy shape pressing her down, his penetrating eyes above her, his uncertain smile, hopeful, desirous, and just that singular pressure... the feeling of being wanted, of being held, in the place where she most wanted him — not even between her legs, but deep, deep in her womb — was more dizzying than any sticky thing she had ever done on her own because she actually wanted him.

She let her imagination exhaust itself while in parallel her mind searched for ways he could break out, of how they could escape together — the mad dream of running away.

#Bucky Barnes #Bucky Barnes imagine #Bucky Barnes fanfiction #Bucky x reader #Bucky Barnes x reader #Bucky x you #Bucky Barnes x you #Bucky x OFC #Bucky Barnes x OFC #Winter Soldier fanfiction #Winter Soldier x reader #James Buchanan Barnes #The Winter Soldier #Winter Soldier #Tenderness and Ferocity #bv;fanfiction

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petrichoravellichor · 3 years

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Begin and End There (Part 2)

For Day 6 of the Supernatural Deserved Better Creative Challenge (prompt: Destiel).

Note: This is Chapter 2 of 2; you can find the post with Chapter 1 here, or you can read the entire work on Ao3.

Rating: T

Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, minor Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, minor Castiel & Sam Winchester, background Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester

Warnings: Brief, non-graphic mentions of canon violence; reference to Dean’s suicidal ideation/decision to temporarily kill himself in 13x05; references to repeated major character death that didn’t stick - to be clear, this fic has a happy ending and is basically everything Dean needed to say and Cas needed to hear.

Summary: After the Empty takes him, Castiel wakes up in the last place he expected (Chapter 1), with a second chance at happiness when he reunites with Dean and the latter finally gets to speak his truth (Chapter 2).

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“Love him, and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?” —James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

********************

“Dean.” Sam’s voice was imploring, gentle, just like it had been the first two times he’d tried. “Come on, sit down.”

Dean ignored him and continued pacing, the cramped stillness of the motel room a vicious sounding board for his thoughts. Among them all, he clung to one thought in particular, the only one keeping him sane: Jack’s gonna get him back. He said he would. He has to...

He could feel Sam’s worried gaze on him from where his brother sat in a chair by the door. It had been Sam who had insisted they grab the motel room after Jack had gone, having intuited, rightly, that Dean was a mess even if he was trying to hide it and that he needed somewhere private where he didn’t have to. The only problem was that, for Dean, privacy in the sense of space to break down meant an audience of zero, not one, and Dean didn’t know how much longer he could hold himself together.

“Damn it, Sam,” he growled a minute later, “don’t you and Eileen have stuff to talk about? You don’t gotta hang around like a damn babysitter.”

If Sam was annoyed by Dean’s tone, he didn’t show it; instead, he just leaned forward, folding his hands in his lap. “We do, but it can wait,” he said calmly. "Besides, you heard her: someone had to go back to the silo and make sure all the Apocalypse-world hunters made it back okay. She said she’d text me when she got there.”

Dean huffed out a sigh. “Yeah, well...Still. You could’ve gone with her, is all I’m sayin’.”

“No. Not until I know you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“Dean, enough.” Sam was frowning now, and there was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “You think I don’t know what Cas means to you?” He scoffed and shook his head. “Because if so, I’m sorry, but you’re not as hard to read as you think you are, not for me.”

Dean stopped dead in his tracks, stunned, and as he wilted under Sam’s knowing gaze, the full force of his exhaustion hit him all at once and damn near brought him to his knees. “I can’t lose him,” he heard himself admit in a hoarse whisper. He swallowed and shook his head. “Not again.”

Sam’s expression softened. “I know. We’ll get him back; if Jack can’t save him, we’ll find another way. We always do.”

Dean sighed, then nodded. Sam was right; of course he was. They’d get Cas back even if Dean had to storm into the Empty and grab him himself, grip Cas’s formerly feathered ass and raise him from perdition for a change. Cas, you idiot, what the hell’s the matter with you? he imagined himself demanding. You don’t think you deserve to be saved?

Suddenly, there was a shuffling sound outside, and before Sam could even begin to stand, Dean had bolted across the room and yanked open the door, determined to hear whatever news Jack was bringing them so that he could actually do something instead of just waiting, only...only it wasn’t Jack standing on the other side of the threshold.

Cas gazed back at him as though in a daze, hand raised in an aborted knock; after a beat, he lowered it and cleared his throat. “I—Hello, Dean.” He nodded past Dean toward the interior of the room. “May I come in?”

Dean nodded wordlessly, feet suddenly like lead as he stepped aside so Cas could brush past him. He closed the door and sank down on the edge of the nearest bed as Sam let out an exclamation of relief and stood to pull Cas into a hug.

“It’s good to have you back, man,” Sam said warmly, clapping Cas on the back. As they drew apart, he added, “How’s Jack? Did you have a chance to talk with him?”

Cas nodded, smiling. “I did. He told me everything that’s happened since…” Cas’s smile faltered, and his eyes darted over to land on Dean, who suddenly felt as though his face were on fire. Before Dean could say anything, though, Cas looked away, as though he were the one who’d been burned. “He told me everything,” he said instead. “He also said that he’ll be home as soon as he’s able, once he and Amara have finished remaking Heaven.”

Sam raised a brow, glancing curiously from Cas to Dean and back again; clearly, he’d clearly picked up on the weirdness between them. For a moment, Dean thought he was going to call them out on it and started casting about for something innocuous to say; however, Sam just smiled and nodded. “That’s great, Cas. Thanks for the update. And for saving Dean. If you hadn’t gone with him…” Sam swallowed, a more sober expression settling on his face. He reached out and clasped Cas’s shoulder. “Just...thank you. For everything.”

The genuineness of Sam’s words seemed to catch Cas off guard; then, after a moment, his lips quirked in a timid sort of smile, and he nodded. “Of course.”

Sam beamed at him, then took a step back and gestured toward the door. “Okay, I’m gonna go grab lunch while I wait to hear from Eileen, so I’ll see you guys later.” Then, with a poorly concealed smirk, he looked over at Dean and added, “Text me if I should steer clear of the Bunker for a few days.”

Dean glared daggers at him. Sammy, I swear to our kid who is now God...“How ’bout you just get a move on before I kick your ass? Bitch.”

But Sam just chuckled. “Good luck, jerk,” he replied, fondly; then, with a wave, he turned and headed for the door.

A moment later, he was gone, and the room was unbearably silent. Dean glanced up at Cas to find the latter regarding him almost shyly, as though any words uttered between them would bring the walls crashing down. For his part, Dean would have almost welcomed it. A quick death sounded pretty good right about now; at the very least, it’d absolve him from having to speak.

In the end, it was Cas who cleared his throat and broke the silence. “Jack said you wanted to see me?”

“Uh.” Dean sucked in a shaky breath, then nodded. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I did.” Then, feeling his face grow warm at Cas’s continued stare, he coughed and looked away. “Cas, have a seat. We, uh, we need to talk.”

He’d expected Cas to sit opposite him, in the chair Sam had vacated; but before he realized what was going on, Cas had crossed over to sit next to him on the edge of the bed, less than a foot of mattress between their thighs. The heat on Dean’s face licked down his neck and back, almost overwhelming him, and if his legs hadn’t suddenly turned to jelly, he probably would have bolted.

Instead, he just blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “So...Jack was able to get you back, huh?” He immediately wanted to kick himself, because of course Jack had been able to get Cas back, that much was obvious. Way to go, dumbass...

Thankfully, Cas just nodded. “He promised the Empty a future of noninterference within Its realm in exchange for my life, and It accepted.”

“Huh.” Dean chewed his tongue thoughtfully. “Sounds like one of us actually made a good deal for a change.”

Cas gave him a tentative smile. “I hope so.” A pause; then: “Dean, I need you to know that I don’t regret my choice, because that’s what it was: my choice; and there’s nothing you could have said or done that would have made me choose differently.” Cas was speaking quickly, urgently, looking at Dean as though afraid Dean would interrupt. “And I also need you to know that I meant every word that I said about how I see you. Now that Chuck is gone, you can finally be happy, and...if it’s possible, I would like to be part of that happiness.” He looked up at Dean sadly, adding, “but if that’s not what you want, if you want me to leave, I promise I understand.”

Dean, who up to this point had only been able to listen in stunned silence, finally managed to unstick his voice. “If that’s not what I...What are you...You think I don’t want you to be a part of it?”

“I...” Cas looked down at his hands. “I’m aware that my connection to Heaven is no longer of particular value, and more than that, I don’t wish the knowledge of what you mean to me to make you uncomfortable.” He smiled sadly. “You don’t owe me anything, Dean; I recognize that. I—”

“Stop,” Dean interrupted, because every word out of Cas’s mouth was landing like a knife in his heart. He reached out and gripped Cas’s shoulder tightly, causing the latter to look up in startled surprise. “Damn it, Cas, stop talking like I’d only want you in my life if you were a goddamn tool I could use. You’re not a hammer, remember? Not mine or anyone else’s.”

Cas’s stunned expression melted into one of soft wonder. He nodded slowly, gazing back at Dean with eyes so earnest and hopeful that Dean had to look away lest he fall right into them. With a nervous swallow, Dean licked his lips and dropped his hand from Cas’s shoulder, determined to keep going now that he’d gotten started. “And..and about me not owing you anything...Cas, I owe you everything.” He made himself meet Cas’s gaze again, because damn it, this was apparently something Cas had doubts on, and Dean needed him to understand. “You pulled me out of Hell, and you helped me and Sam stop the Apocalypse and saved both our asses more times than I can count, and Jack’s alive because of you and so is everyone else in the world. And you think what, that I’m just gonna forget about all that?” he demanded, just barely managing to keep his voice from breaking. He shook his head. “Fuck that, Cas; you’re not disposable.”

Cas, whose expression had become increasingly anguished the longer Dean spoke, now looked dangerously close to tears. “Then what am I, Dean? I...please, I need to know, I need you to tell me, because I don’t...I can’t...”

Everything, Dean thought fiercely; you’re everything. Fuck, he just needed to find some way to actually say it…

Suddenly, a thought occurred to him: maybe, if saying it out loud was too much...He closed his eyes and started praying. Cas?

He felt a slight shift of the mattress as Cas stiffened in attention. “Dean?” he asked, hesitantly.

Yeah. Yeah, I can hear you. Dean kept his eyes closed, responding in his head. Question is, can you hear me?

A beat of silence; then: “Yes. I can hear you.”

Dean let out a steady breath. Okay. Okay, good. ’Cause there’s something I need you know, but...He tried to finish the thought; damn it, he tried, but even like this, he just couldn’t fucking seem to—

Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder; his eyes fluttered open to see Cas leaning forward into his space, looking at him with soft understanding. “There’s something you need me to know,” Cas repeated slowly, “but you’re not sure how to say it.”

Dean blinked in surprise. “You...you got that part, too?”

Cas nodded. “The way it works...It’s difficult to explain in human terms. Prayers are something I hear and see and feel, all at once, and they don’t have to be words. They can be feelings or images or—”

“Memories?” Dean sat up straight, an idea forming. “Does it work with memories?”

Cas’s brow furrowed in apparent confusion, but eventually, he nodded. “Yes. If you show them to me.”

Dean didn’t waste another moment—he couldn’t, or he might lose his nerve. He closed his eyes and resumed his prayer. Okay, Cas, listen up...

He was pulling Cas’s trench coat out of the reservoir after the Leviathans had walked Cas into it, and the feeling in his gut...Dean knew it was grief. He’d lost friends before; hell, he’d lost Sam before, but this...this felt different...

But the Leviathans were on the loose, and the wall blocking out Sam’s Hell trauma had crumbled, and Dean didn’t have time to let himself stop and think. He folded the trench coat and stowed it in Baby’s trunk.

Months later, he was talking to Cas in an abandoned hangar the night before they stormed Sucrocorp and went after Dick Roman. Cas was saying he should stay behind, told Dean he wasn’t good luck and would just get in the way, but Dean wasn't having it. He’d done life without Cas, and it had sucked. Now, he knew he’d rather have him, cursed or not, friend or...He’d rather have him.

He only told Cas the first part, though.

Then, after, when he was tearing through Purgatory for over a year, Dean realized it wasn’t that he’d rather have Cas—it was that he couldn’t imagine not having him. He was going to find Cas no matter the cost, wasn’t leaving Purgatory without him. Cas was...he wasn’t something Dean couldn’t stand to lose.

And then Dean lost him anyway.

Dean was back topside, and Cas was still in Purgatory because Dean had failed to save him. The knowledge haunted Dean; he saw Cas everywhere, was sure he was hallucinating...until it turned out he wasn’t. And then he learned that Cas had made the conscious choice to stay behind, because apparently, Dean was something he could stand to lose, and that knowledge hurt in a way Dean didn’t have words for.

So they didn’t talk about it.

Then Dean was kneeling, bloodied, in Lucifer’s crypt, Cas standing over him with his angel blade raised. And Dean didn’t know what was going on, but he knew, he knew, that this wasn’t his Cas. His Cas. The words were loud in his mind, and he was both awed and terrified of how right they felt. He needed Cas, and he told him so...and Cas’s angel blade fell to the floor.

They didn’t talk about that much, either.

Years went by, and now Dean was the one standing over a bloodied, crumpled Cas, the Mark of Cain burning on his arm and Cas’s stolen blade in hand. He needed to hurt Cas, or for Cas to hurt him, to fight back and end the goddamn constant screaming in Dean’s head that was all blood and rage and hate and—Cas’s hand came up to gently clasp Dean’s wrist. “No, Dean...please.” And for a second, just a second, the hate in Dean’s mind was quiet, and in its place, strong, surging, and undeniable, was—

Dean stabbed the book next to Cas’s head and walked away.

Next, he was standing in a barn with his mom and Sam and Crowley, watching in terrified helplessness as Cas writhed in agony on an old couch. Ramiel could come for them at any moment, and yet all Dean could think about was the intensity in Cas’s eyes as Cas told him, told all of them, that he loved them, and fuck, Dean loved him, too, but not the familial sort of love that Cas seemed to be getting at, no. Dean loved him in a raw, real sense that he felt in his bones and that scared him half out of his mind, and he wanted to say it; but then Cas was convulsing, and it was too late…

Then Crowley snapped Ramiel’s spear, and Cas was saved, and Dean told himself that enough was enough, he needed to get his shit together and find some way to tell Cas what he felt before—

He was kneeling, silent, on the shore of a lake. The sky was starless overhead, and Cas was dead on the ground in front of him, wings scorched against the sand. And Dean was aching and empty, hollowed out by grief and regret, because he’d waited too long, and now it was too late…

And then he was dead, or something like it. He was in Death’s library and Billie was showing him the shelf of books with his name on the cover, detailing all the possible ways he could die, and Dean should have felt fear, should have felt fight, but instead, all he felt was finally. He hadn’t been able to save the people he loved, hadn’t been able to save Cas, so what was the point of going back? Sam would be better off without him, would get a shot at the normal life he’d always wanted. Billie could toss Dean in the Empty; he didn’t care anymore. Hell, he wanted it, anything to end all his goddamn regret—

But Billie sent him back anyway, and later that night, Dean’s phone rang.

Cas was back. He was alive and he was back, and fuck, he was so much more than Dean deserved. And Dean told himself that he was okay with that, with not having Cas in the way that he wanted, as long as he had him in some way, shape, or form. But then Jack killed Mary, and Dean...he was so angry and hurt that he lashed out at Cas, said horrible things he didn’t mean but didn’t know how to take back once they were out, and he couldn’t even look at Cas without wanting to scream and break and beg for forgiveness. He watched as Cas left him after they fought, left him like everyone else did, and Dean let him, because he knew now that needing someone wasn’t the same as deserving them.

Then they were back in Purgatory after a botched attempt at securing a Leviathan Blossom. They’d been ambushed, and Dean had been knocked out, had woken up alone with Cas nowhere in sight and limited time to make it back. And Dean knew he still didn’t deserve Cas, but he prayed to him anyway. He told Cas about the hurt and the anger and the helplessness he felt when it took hold of him, and he was sorry, God, he was so fucking sorry…

When he found Cas at the last moment at the base of a tree, he wanted...he needed to tell Cas what he hadn’t had the nerve to say in his prayer, because it was so much more than of course I forgive you; it was please forgive me, I know I don’t fucking deserve you but I want you, I need you, I love you…

But they had to go, because as always, there was never enough fucking time.

And then they were trapped in the Bunker’s interrogation room as Billie pounded on the door. Cas was going to die, and it was Dean’s fault, again it was his fault, because he’d screwed up, because he’d been stupid and angry and that was all he knew how to be—

But then Cas was talking with tears in his eyes, and each word was its own revelation, because Cas was looking at him the way Dean had never in a million years thought to be worthy of. And Dean forgot how to breathe, because suddenly, Cas was saying it, he said it: “I love you…”

And then the Empty took him, and Billie, and Dean was left alone on the floor. He was dimly aware of the way Sam’s name flashed on his phone, but he couldn’t answer, because then he’d have to explain, and…and...

Dean cradled his head in his hands and sobbed. He felt like his entire soul had been lit on fire and that every word he’d ever known had been ripped out of him by the roots, all except for the two he murmured, strangled and broken, into the silence: “Me too...”

Dean gasped and ended the prayer. He opened his eyes and felt tears roll down his cheeks; he hadn’t noticed them forming while he’d been praying, and he was about to reach up to dash them away when he saw that Cas’s face was wet with tears of his own; he looked more wrecked than Dean had ever seen him, and the hand he’d kept on Dean’s shoulder throughout the prayer had started to tremble. “Dean, I—”

“Look,” Dean said shakily, because if he didn’t say this now, he didn’t know if he ever could. “I...I know you said happiness isn't really in the having and all that, but...well, I think maybe it is. For me, anyway. Because Cas, if there’s one thing I’ve learned after all the crap we’ve been through, it’s that my life ain’t happy if it doesn’t have you in it.” He swallowed a lump in his throat and pushed on: “You said you thought you couldn’t have me, but the thing is, you’ve had me for years. And I just...I need you to hear me, I need you to know…” He almost stopped then, almost couldn’t go on, because the look of absolute love in Cas’s eyes was overwhelming, and Dean could no more deny it than he could give up breathing. He raised his hand, placed it firmly on top of the one on his shoulder, and squeezed. “You changed me too, Cas.”

Then Cas was kissing him, and Dean let out a muffled sob of relief as he felt Cas’s hands wrap around his middle and pull them flush against one another. His grip was hot and desperate on Dean’s back, and the way his mouth moved against Dean’s made Dean feel as though he were going to burst into millions of joyous pieces. He tangled his hands in Cas’s hair and kissed him hard, tugging him backward until Cas was straddling him on the mattress, his solid, unyielding weight a blissful, dizzying contrast to the lightness Dean felt in his mind as Cas’s tongue slid surely over his own, ravishing and reverent and real. They were real, and they always had been.

And Dean would never, ever doubt that again.

#destiel #deancas #spndbcc #spn #spn spoilers #my writing #begin and end there #fanfiction #if the network won't give them this then i will do it myself!

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writtenbynick · 3 years

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The Very Pretty Girl From The Studio

A few years ago I was teaching yoga classes out of a local studio, open to anyone that would like to attend. I had stopped working at the local gym recently, and did more private sessions for fitness, but mostly did yoga out of the studio (I have certifications in both fields). Mostly the clients were women in their 40′s or older, generally really nice people, but it was pretty rare that any of them were more than moderately attractive. That made it all the more noticeable when a really, really cute girl came in to try class one day.

She said that a family member of hers had come in and liked one of the classes, so she wanted to come try a class as well. I definitely lucked out that she happened to try mine. The best way to describe her appearance was to imagine a very “All-American cheerleader” type. She had the biggest brown eyes you could possibly imagine, amazing lips that were naturally very “pouty” for lack of a better term… long blonde hair, often done up in some sort of ponytail (the fancier-than-normal kind), or pulled back with little clips. She was maybe 5′3 at most, very petite, seemed to always be wearing pink or baby blue, and since it was yoga class she’d usually be wearing yoga pants. Almost always black yoga pants. They hugged her ass and legs so snugly, and she had a hell of an hourglass figure for them to work with. The “eyeball test” told me that her breasts were a medium C cup or so. She was pretty much the epitome of a girly-girl, and I mean that in the best of ways.

Over the next several months she returned to class very regularly. I learned that she was 23, in college to become a kindergarten teacher, and that she had a 2 year old daughter. We talked about plenty of things, but it was always pretty innocuous subject matter. Since I was at work, I wasn’t going to say anything that could be interpreted as inappropriate, or just lacking in tact.

I often made facebook posts about classes and the studio schedule, but she wasn’t on any social media, and asked if she could text me about classes. I was happy to share my number with her (but, to be fair, this was pretty normal for a fair amount of clients). She also attended classes with a few other teachers, but told me that she loved the details that I provided during class, and that it really helped her feel things in the poses that she never got from other teachers. I definitely have a “devil-in-the-details” mentality when I’m trying to instruct, so I really appreciated that it helped her get the most out of each class, and each pose.

Eventually, her college schedule changed, so she wasn’t able to attend my morning classes any longer (unless her classes weren’t in session for the day, for whatever reason). I still got the odd text from her, here and there, but not terribly regularly. And then one day she messaged me asking about my schedule, for fitness, for yoga, group sessions, private sessions… you name it, she was asking about it. I gave her the info she asked for, and she picked a group session, asking if she could attend, and ask me some questions after. I said that would be fine, and that I’d be happy to answer whatever she’d like afterward.

The session she decided to come along to was actually an outdoor class that took place after a hike. It was a really nice summer day, and she was in her standard girly-girl fitness attire. My group hiked up to our designated yoga spot, a little less than a half hour path up the side of a mountain if you pushed the pace (like going up the stairs the whole time). We got up to the top, did our yoga class, and she made it a point to stick with me when we walked back down.

We chatted about all sorts of things, and then at the bottom of the mountain, she said “can I ask you something? did you ever think about asking me out when I was coming to all those classes?”. I grinned, and told her “think about it - yes… but I was always at work, and didn’t want to be out of line”. I’m also about a decade older than her, and didn’t know if that was going to be appealing to her or not. She smiled, and told me that she liked that I was older, and that it made sense that I didn’t want to be out of line at work. She assured me that I’m a really good yoga teacher, but she also liked to come see me at the studio because she was attracted to me. She moved in close to me, put her arms around me, and leaned in for a very sweet kiss.

We had a few dates after that, usually going out to eat, and having very enjoyable discussions. Very early on I noticed that she took every chance to make physical contact… she’d playfully bump into me with her hips, lean onto my shoulder… put her hands on my hands, forearms, or even my chest. I really liked that she was the touchy-feely type, but without being overly clingy. She had very soft skin, and we often sat together and just talked… and I would run my fingertips over the skin on the back of her hands and wrists, her neck, her cheek… and we kissed quite a bit, deeply and passionately… her lips… oh man… those beautifully pouty lips…

And then, one evening after a date we found ourselves with some alone time. We’d only had a few dates so far, and she was pretty quick to say “we can’t have sex unless you brought condoms, I’m not on the pill”. I told her that since we hadn’t had that kind of discussion yet, I didn’t bring any, but that was ok, I didn’t have that kind of expectation.

Fast-forward about 20 minutes… we had been kissing, and groping, she was straddling my lap… my hands were entangled in her hair, my lips on her neck, her head tossing backward with gasps and moans of pleasure, her arms wrapped around me, and she started to grind up and down, up and down, up and down… she pulled away and looked me right in the eyes and said “I NEED YOU TO FUCK ME”.

I reminded her that we couldn’t do that, and I could see that she was almost oblivious to the world around us at that moment.. “Don’t worry” I said, and started to unbutton her jeans. She started feverishly tearing them off, revealing a pink thong that just barely covered her… I dove in, pressing my mouth into her inner thigh, licking and nibbling, and dragging my tongue over her thong to the other side so I could repeat all of these motions again… I felt the muscles in her legs tighten up, and then I pressed my lips down on top of the pink material… the pressure made her let out an “oooooohhhhh” that was music to my ears…

I gazed up in the direction of her face, and her eyes were closed… her hands were laying on her chest, motionless, other than the heaving caused by her deep breathing. I pulled the pink material to one side and began to lick her, long slow strokes upward, again and again… I could feel her getting wetter by the instant. God, I love knowing how much pleasure a woman is feeling as I take my time and explore just what buttons to push… while one hand held the thong to the side and pressed my fingers into her thigh, the other hand started to manipulate her lips… the wetness and the build up had already been enough that her lips were more than ready to reveal more of her… I moved my fingers upward slightly, drawing her skin away from me slightly, revealing her clit.

My tongue pressed down flatly, and firmly, and slowly I dragged my tongue toward her clit… as soon as I made contact, I increased the pressure, and she let out an even louder “OOOOOHHHHHHHH”. I firmed up my grip, and started to move my tongue forward and backward, and then used just the very tip of my tongue to move over her clit, over and over, changing directions with every movement. She bucked so hard I thought she was going to come out of her skin. “OOOHHHH, OOHHHHHH… MMMM….. OOOOOHHHHHHH”. She was cumming, her hands gripped onto the muscles at the base of my neck, and I felt her hips press into my mouth. She held on for a moment or so while I kept applying pressure, and little by little, I felt her start to relax…

She let her body lay back again slowly, and I slowed what I was doing as well… but I didn’t stop…She kept moaning, and breathing, and her body had these little spasms that told me she had more in her, and I’m not one to back away unless a job is truly finished. I kept swirling my tongue slowly, and then moved my hand to take the place of my mouth… I lifted my head, and saw that she was again laying back with her eyes closed, one hand moved up to her face, her skin was flushed, and there was a slight layer of sweat on her skin… I moved my hands away, pulled the thong off of her and tossed it aside, and slid my finger over her lips once more, just the tiniest amount between her lips rather than on the outside… she again let out an “mmmmmmm” as I began to press my finger inside of her… “ohhhh, fuckkkk”… and then started to motion my finger upward and downward on her lips, almost like the movements of a painter’s brush… she let out a bit of a shiver every time my arm motioned upward… I brought my mouth back to her clit, and again licked, and pressed, and pinched with my lips…

For a second time, I could feel her body reacting… I knew what to pay attention to this time, and using my mouth I started to repeat the movements that got her there the first time, but this time it was in addition to my finger, which had started to press further into her, and then move its way forward and backward, forward and backward… The moans… fuck, I’m a sucker for a vocal woman… She started to react more strongly, I could tell she liked the inward-outward movement of my finger, and coupled with my lips and tongue pressing into her, she was starting to build up again… I continued, and began to quicken the pace and could feel her hips pressing into my face… momentarily, I slowed down and added a second finger, and again she let out an “ooohhhhh, oooohhhhh, yessssss, mmmmmmm”… I sped up again, my two fingers moving inward and outward, inward and outward, and my tongue swirling over clit again and again… her muscles tightened again and her body curled upward, her hands on the back of my neck this time… “OOOOOHHHHHHHH GODDDDD”, her nails clutched into me, and she started letting out short, sharp gasps and her body started to move in rapid shivers.

Once more, her body started to soften and she relaxed her muscles back to a laying position. Her moans became softer as well, but more continuous this time… I kept moving my fingers and tongue, slowly and softly… I was very much enjoying the “afterglow” of her second orgasm, I’m sure I had a wry, satisfied smile on my face which was still between her thighs… my fingers were still inside her, and I realized they hadn’t done all they could do… with my palm facing upward I began to curl those two fingers (my middle and ring fingers) with the pads of my fingertips pressing into the inside wall, I could feel the raised surface of her G-spot… the instant I touched it she let out another long moan, and her hands twitched. She looked down at me with her mouth and her big brown eyes opened wide, seemingly in disbelief.

I moved my face away from her pussy, I could feel the devilish smirk on my face, a reaction to how expressive she was, how evident the intensity of her pleasure had become. She grabbed my face and kissed me passionately. I always get turned on when a woman tastes herself on my lips, and she was ALL IN. Not just kissing me, but licking my lips, and my face, her hands moving and guiding my face, her fingernails gently pressing into my beard. Fuck, this was turning me on… but I wasn’t done with her… I moved my thumb to her clit, and pulled my fingers more firmly into her G-spot. Her body heaved powerfully, for a moment I was afraid her head would crash into mine, but she turned her face, her cheek pressed against mine and her fingers grasped me tightly once more. “mmmmmmMMMMMMMMM”…. “OHHHHH….. OHHH OHHH OHHH”, she was getting louder and louder, her body became frantic, the more I pressed into her G-spot and clit the more she lost control, her legs shook, her hands held on for dear life, she leaned into me, and I felt her body shiver even more strongly than before. “OOOOOHHHHH GOODDDDDDDD….. FUCKKKKKKK”.

She orgasmed again, and it was a thing of beauty. I could tell her mind was completely free from any thoughts that didn’t have to do with the sensations she was feeling. She writhed and moaned and just when I thought her body would soften, she continued to escalate, almost to the point that even I was surprised. And then she pulled her face away, looked me in the eye, and kissed me again. The kind of kiss that means to engulf a person. There was a different energy about her now, and her movements were different… she adjusted her body to move away from mine slightly, as soon as my fingers were no longer inside her, she dropped onto her knees in front of me, and took my fingers into her mouth, her eyes locked with mine. She sucked them strongly, then took them out of her mouth and licked them up and down, and it seemed like she hardly blinked as she did so.

This got me INCREDIBLY worked up. And she was as worked up as I could possibly fathom. She clawed at my jeans and hurriedly undid my belt. She couldn’t get rid of my jeans fast enough to meet the pace she wanted to move at. Very quickly drawing my boxer briefs down to my knees, she took my cock into her mouth and started to move forward and backward as fast as she could. Those perfect lips of her looked so fucking good wrapped around my cock. I was incredibly hard, and this felt amazingly satisfying. Those big brown eyes looked up at me, and she opened her mouth a little wider. I could see her teeth as she tried to take me a little deeper. She paused and then backed off a bit, and then repeated this, probably four or five times, and then gagged strongly, taking me out of her mouth and stroking instead while she took in a highly needed deep breath.

I can’t quite put into words the expression on her face. She knew exactly what she was doing, and was singularly focused, but also seemed almost vacant. Again she took my cock into her mouth, as deep as she could go, I could feel her tongue trying to move forward underneath my shaft, and then relax a tiny bit, drawing me slightly deeper. I was inside her throat as far as it seemed I could go, and she gagged once again. She was going to continually try to take more and more, gagging every time, and pulling away with a smile on her face.

She pulled away for air periodically, sliding her very petite hands up and down the length of my cock. “You’ve got a REALLY BIG DICK”. She grabbed it tightly, just gazing at it, visually taking it in for a moment. She licked at the veins on one side, and commented that my dick was roughly the same thickness as her wrist, and then took it into her mouth once more, pulling away with a loud popping sound, and repeating this several times, and then taking another deep breath and going down as deep as she could once again.

This time she backed up a little bit, and did something I didn’t expect at all… she stayed in place, took my hands in hers, and placed my hands on the back of her head. She stayed there motionless for a second or two, and then her eyes looked up at mine, her eyebrows raised and lowered quickly, just once. I held her head in place, and started to raise my hips, and lower them again, somewhat gently. I could feel that I was colliding with the back of her throat, and took my time going slowly. She put her hands on my thighs and backed away, looked at me and said “do you want me to suck it, or do you want to fuck my mouth? I love being facefucked… and choked, and you can call me whatever you want… I get off on that…”

I could feel that same grin on my face… I enjoy many aspects of the back and forth that sexuality has to offer… I’ve described it at times the same way that vampire in the movies isn’t allowed to enter your home unless invited… I won’t be overly rough or dominant until I know it’s welcomed and desired… but once I’m given permission, I won’t hold back…

I stood up, grabbing a handful of her hair and started to walk toward the wall… she crawled on her hands and knees, and kneeled in front of me with her back toward the wall. I positioned my cock right in front of her face, and moved forward until it made contact with her lips. “Open your mouth”. She did so, with a smile. “Good girl”. I ran one hand over her cheek, and then slid my cock forward into her mouth. Slowly at first, I moved my hips forward and backward, checking to see how far I could go each time. And then a little faster. And then a little deeper. And then she gagged, gasping for air, leaving a strand of saliva dangling from the head of my cock all the way to her lips.

Right back at it, I pushed her onto my cock once more… she grabbed the back of my thighs with both hands, and pulled herself as far as she could go. Her mouth was so wet, she was drooling all over as I held her head and fucked her mouth. Realizing how much drool there was, she lifted her shirt up over her tits, her spit landing on her cleavage and bra. She put her hands on my thighs again, and took me into her throat. I pressed my hips forward rapidly and repeatedly, and she gagged again. The wet sounds from her mouth were unreal, this was so nasty, so sloppy… “am I being a good little slut? tell me…’ she asked me. “You’re such a dirty slut, on you knees for my cock, aren’t you?”. “I’m a whore, and I want you to RUIN my little throat with your cock” she replied, smiling immensely… Goddamn, she had always looked so sweet and innocent to me, and now to know how dirty she could be… the best of both worlds, I was loving it.

I let go of any thoughts of holding back, and started to not just move my hips, but to really fuck her mouth and throat. She gagged again and again as I thrust my cock into her mouth. I held her head in place, and bucked my hips, her spit spilled from her mouth onto her tits, she let out a slight vocalization that could be heard intermittently as my cock moved in and out of her face. “Fuck, your little slutty mouth feels so good”, she moaned again in delight. Her right hand came up to my left, which I took to her throat, grabbing on with just a little bit of pressure. She moaned even more. I started to push even deeper into her throat. There was roughly an inch and a half left that she couldn’t take… Her eyes opened up widely, and I felt her hold on for as long as she could before she pulled back a bit with a loud gasp. Her eyes were starting to water, which I might not have noticed if it didn’t leave a little teardrop line from her eyeliner.

She immediately got right back to it. “I’m going to cum down your throat”, I let her know… I kept going at a feverish pace, and could feel my cock begin to throb. Thrust after thrust, I was getting closer and closer. Her moaning and gagging, the strings of spit, those big brown eyes, and her perfect lips… and how incredibly slutty she secretly was… I felt myself coming to climax, and continuing to buck my hips, I unloaded shot after shot of cum right into her throat. Unsurprisingly, she gagged again, but this time she looked like she had totally glazed over, entranced in what was happening, incredibly present in the moment, but completely removed from reality at the same time.

She stayed on her knees, staring at my cock, her hands on my legs, her breathing frantic… she was still recuperating from everything that had just taken place, and she coughed for a brief second… and then again… I realized that she had the hiccups, and each hiccup was ending with something of a cough… I wasn’t sure if it from the erratic breathing or the pounding her throat had taken, but either way she was soooo very satisfied with herself… “you have a really, really big dick, and FUCK, you came a LOT” she repeated… It sounded so good coming from those perfect little blowjob lips of hers…

#me #mine #self #nick #story #my story #memory #my memory #memories #my memories #true story #sexy #hot #yoga studio

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nekodracones · 3 years

Text

even the stars have fallen to walk amongst us

AN: I wrote this in order to compete in a discord competition. It was a fun journey, but I’m pretty sure I’m not built for writing long stories. I don’t post here much, so if you like you can take a look at some of my little poems over at my Sky Instagram. I’ll probably post all the photos I used to conceptualise the flow of my story there, too. At some point when I get off my ass.

Other than that I really wrote this as a way to flesh out all the ideas I’ve had over the two years I’ve been playing sky regarding the hidden forest, since the devs haven’t been giving us much lore to work with. I considered making another post detailing my specific ideas and head canons, including the title, but I think it’s better to leave everything open ended. The imagination is a powerful tool, after all.

I hope you have as much fun reading and exploring my story and ideas as I did writing it. :) Thanks for reading!

☆ . * ● . ★ ○ . * . ° . ● ★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • °☆

So young a body, so old a soul. How many times have you returned hoping to be made whole?

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

Awareness came fitfully, and not all at once. Her limbs curled heavy around her sides, cradling her abdomen as though to protect from her some external impact, or perhaps to protect something within. It was as if her spirit had gone roaming uninhibited, and had only been drawn back into her body with great reluctance, sinking inexorably into her flesh- as it should be. For a moment, she lay on the cool rock beneath her, muscles and tendons aching, eyes closed. She didn’t want to get up. Above her, the birds chattered noisily, as they always did. Around her, the night air settled, soothing her tired body. Twin eyes blinked open, bleary. The little fox struggled to her feet, marvelling at her surroundings, none of which she remembered, and yet at the same time were familiar and comforting in the way that remembered dreams often are.

Ahead of her snaked six paths, twining their way through the frames of six stone arches into six distant horizons that were perhaps too far away to see or perhaps not so far at all, and a throbbing compulsion rose within her to set her feet upon one of the paths that began innocuously at the edge of the stone disc she stood upon.

The first path led into a pale lilac dawn, pale sands blowing onto its little dirt path, and she turned away from it, for the winds blowing from those lands were strong, and she had some impression of not being impressed by them.

The next path led into a cerulean blue morning, rolling green fields spilling out around its little dirt path, and she turned away from it, for she could feel a burning warmth radiating from those lands, and perhaps she would have turned towards it some other day, but tonight the air was crisp about her and the warmth did not appeal.

But the third path led into a dim blue forest, and the quiet twitter of birds and gentle suggestion of a cool breeze drew her towards it, little whispers of sound eddying and curling about her; she turned towards it and set her feet upon the soft loam of its little path, turning away from the other paths.

And so the little fox walked into the wan blue light.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

The sickled slash in the sky bleeds silver tonight. Midnight’s cloak of a thousand stars blesses our journey, casting us in their pale light.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

She walked for perhaps forever or perhaps not so long at all, and in time the air and light began to take on a different quality about her. It was in this fashion that she came up to the cliff’s edge, where the path crumbled away under her feet. Ahead of her a spire of pale light shone in the far distance, and she knew deep within her that that was where she must go. Below her, the cliff fell away into vistas of pale clouds, and emerging amongst them little islands of grass painted in impossibly vivid shades of green, primordial trees reaching into the clouds as though supporting the little aerial path they formed.

The little fox swallowed, and let herself fall.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

For the second time in recent memory, the little fox felt herself blinking awake in an unfamiliar place. This time, though, she felt hands on her, and a low, thrumming voice bidding her to wake. She looked up and into the glowing eyes of an antelope, horned and imposing. Cloaked in what looked like a fine fur cloak, once majestic, but was now not only yellowed with age, but also dripping wet from having carried the little fox out from the puddle she had landed in in her unfortunate crash-landing amongst the trees.

Are you alright? A voice, rumbling with low amusement, spoke not aloud, but rather in her mind. The little fox shook her head, then paused and nodded vigorously.

You may call me Deer, murmured the antelope, still radiating quiet mirth. It has been a long time since the Weeping Forest has had visitors, let alone one as enthusiastic about their landing as you. I wonder what you’re doing here? Most avoid travelling down the path into these lands, whether they know or not.

A good point that the little fox hadn’t really considered when first stepping foot on the path. She’d really just followed her instinct, then. She scratched her cheek, unsure.

The deer saw her hesitation, and reached out with a blue-gloved palm. I’ll come with you, the deer said. I may not know all that lies beyond, but I’m sure I know more than you. And it has been a long time since I’ve been able to move through these lands alone.

They walked, hand in hand, towards the gate set in the towering fortress walls, and the deer set a suddenly flaming palm against the crystal embedded within the wall. With a grinding sound, the gate shuddered open, and the fox and the deer passed through the vestibule, murals glowing golden as they passed. Boats stacked high with little bottles shone from the carved stone walls, and the pair paused a while to appreciate the artistry. The deer gestured at the carvings, shrugging. You won’t find a lot of those here. Those are used in the Clouded Plains to contain and calm light fragments. With time, they will grow into stronger shards that can fly further, and further, until they can finally return home.

They took her hand and led her into the courtyard, where she saw stone boats, laden heavy with their burdens, docked neatly at the side but overgrown with moss, as though they had one day been abandoned, forgotten despite their precious cargo. But her eyes soon turned to a ghostly silver figure crouched in the corner, and at the nod of her deer companion, the little fox headed over to investigate.

Summon your soul-flame and reach out your hand, advised the deer. It’s a soul imprint. Sometimes you can help them, if they let you. Just as the little fox was about to protest that she did not, in fact, know what a soul flame was, let alone how to summon it, her gut began to grow uncomfortably warm and their hand, outstretched to touch the ghostly spirit, pulsed, suddenly aflame.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

‘Shit, it’s cold. Any idea what’s with the odd weather in the Forest today?’ cried Zeynab, shivering. Josef turned to her, still loading the boats with the jars they had just purchased. ‘No idea, dear, but let’s go back and grab the last pallet?’ Zeynab sighed. Of course, her practical husband wouldn’t be wondering about the erratic weather patterns in the forest lately, with rain that chilled her to the bone and seemed to nourish the odd, blue-black plants growing all about. Her usual merchant had been unusually short with them as well, and she had written off her mood to the worsening weather, but with the increasing number of bruise-coloured plants all about, who knew why it was suddenly raining so much...oh well.

It wasn’t as if a little rain would kill them.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

The little fox came to, surfacing as though from a deep pool, falling to her knees on the damp grass and gasping for breath. Next to her, the deer was staggering to their feet. Above her, the female spirit stood, towering over them.

Blind silver eyes turned to the little fox and her companion. Why are you here? The spirit made no noise, face still as stone, and yet the little fox heard her voice rasping through her mind. If you are here for the Forest’s wares, there is nothing left for you here. We couldn’t escape, but you still can.

The little fox shivered. She had nothing holding her here beyond her innate curiosity, and the curious pull behind her navel drawing her to the faraway star-touched temple shrouded amongst the clouds. But she had never been one to turn from a mystery long buried (how would she know?), and so she bowed her head. There may be nothing left, but I wish to go on.

The spirit was silent for a long time.

Eventually, she lifted a translucent silvery hand. Take them. It’s not safe to go alone. Twin white butterflies, bone-white and luminescent, flapped lazily down from above and landed gently upon the spirit’s outstretched hand. I gift you the blessing of safe passage. With a light shard, small as it may be, the darkness cannot touch you for as long as you carry it. Be safe.

With a final rasping breath, the spirit sank into the crystalline dark figure kneeling at their feet, and the little fox and the deer were once again alone in the glade, two butterflies flapping about them. Solemnly, the deer guided the little fox’s palm to the figure, her own already lit with soulflame. With a quiet crackle, the figure burned away to a wisp of light, that soared up and away towards the distant temple.

Together, the fox and the deer turned away and pressed their palms to the crystal set within the wall, and watched its growing otherworldly light limning through the cracks between their fingers. The ancient mechanisms deep within the wall groaned as the gate ground open, and they walked into the darkness.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

- Robert Frost

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

Soon the dark that enshrouded them faded to gray, and then to pale light, casting the forest floor in pale shafts of light slanting from the fog-hidden canopy above. Ahead of the pair, a little mud path wound, escorted on both sides by cracked lampposts, standing forlornly stalwart in the rain sheeting down.

In her mind, the deer murmured, See, here the path ends. We shall have to fly. Indeed, the path ahead dropped off rapidly into a burbling brook winding through the forest. But the little fox had spotted a glint of silvery light in a crumbled gazebo hidden behind the calcified trunk of a tree. She took the deer’s hand and tugged them insistently towards the spirit, kneeling, barely covered by the eaves of the decayed gazebo. Her hand, already wreathed in soulflame, brushed the spirit on the crown of her ghostly head.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

It was a bright and sunny day- until it suddenly wasn’t. Ingrid shivered in the cave tunnel, chilled by the sudden cold rain, and torn between turning back and forging on towards Ana’s little shop. Her family had needed new lanterns to replace their cracked ones for a while now, and she had put off her duty for long enough. There should be lanterns ahead to warm her, she thought, but she did so hate walking in the rain, soaked to the bone, not to mention having to wash her dress after dragging it through the mud.

Mud which had been, annoyingly, increasingly common these days as the rain fell in stops and starts; a deluge that was growing to be more or less a fixture in the forest these days. She had hoped to make use of the clear skies that day to make her purchases, but clearly the weather refused to cooperate.

‘Ingrid? Did you bring an umbrella?’ A voice hailed her from behind. Shamil! He had snuck up on her behind, and like the sweetheart he was, had evidently brought her an umbrella. ‘Take it, it’s really pouring out there today!’ Ingrid smiled at him, something bubbling up happily in her chest, and a rosy flush warming her cheeks. She had settled down with Shamil a year ago, and he was still as sweet to her as he had been that day they had first met down by the brook. She bid him goodbye and continued down the little path to Ana’s shop, the rain not so much an inconvenience any longer; instead a pleasant background pitter-patter.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

This time, the little fox simply blinked away the afterimages flitting across the back of her eyelids. This spirit smiled at them benevolently, and reached out, a single cool palm tucking her sodden hair behind one ear.

You’re cold, child. The spirit commented idly, hand still trailing down the little fox’s cheek. Such wet weather, what were you thinking coming out here without an umbrella? She considered her little blue umbrella for a while, turning the handle over in her hands. I suppose you could use this, more than I can, anyway. It’s not like I’ll ever need it again. I gift you the blessing of protection. It shall armour you against the rain, I hope.

Silvered hands pressed the wooden handle of the little umbrella into the deer’s hands, who accepted it gracefully if not with a base expression of mild dubiousness. Don’t worry so much, child. Take care of it, my love gave it to me. Chuckling gently with a voice like a peal of bells, the spirit floated into the dark figure by her feet, and was gone.

The little fox set her palm against the figure, flame burning the figure away to nothingness. Like before, a wisp of light circled them once, before soaring over their heads towards the temple.

Well, let’s try it out. The deer carefully opened the umbrella with no little amount of bemusement, and they stepped out down the little dirt path the spirit had been headed in her imprint-memory.

Lo and behold, the umbrella did indeed shield them from the freezing rain, and hence the little fox and the deer huddled tight under its little circle of protection. About them, the two little butterflies circled, content to flit about in the rain.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

In no time at all they came upon a cave opening; where yet another silvery spirit knelt by a cluster of extinguished wax candles. The pair wasted no time lighting the spirit- they knew the drill by now. The familiar perspective change that descended upon them was no surprise either.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

‘Damn it, when will this cursed rain stop? Zeynab and Josef promised to stop by hours ago and they’re still not here. How am I supposed to make a living like this?’ fumed Ana, resident Silent Forest shopkeeper. Zey and Josef were a nice couple, she supposed, but absolutely mercenary with haggling. She was barely making a profit trading the last of her light-concentration jars to them, especially with the Plains (or Prairie, as some of the newer denizens were calling it) nearly having satisfied their demand for those damned jars.

Really, she made a living off fulfilling the needs of others, but some of these requests were getting more outlandish by the day. Call her a traditionalist, but all these nonstop newfangled inventions couldn’t possibly be just created from thin air, right? She supposed she wouldn’t know, though. Best to leave the planning to the experts.

For now, she would sit here a while by her little fire, gaze out at the deluging rain, and...well, she was pretty tired. Perhaps she could just close her eyes for a while…

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

This spirit gazed at them out of flaming golden eyes, regarding them calmly, a stark contrast to her irate visage earlier. Ah, visitors. You’re too late to buy anything from me, young ones, but I can offer you a dry place to stay for a while.

The little fox blinked up apprehensively at the wrinkled face of the shopkeeper. Thank you, she hedged, but we’re moving on soon.

The rain never stops. It makes little difference to dry off now, supplied the deer. The little fox snuck a glance up at the deer and smiled at them gratefully. The spirit had been so, so angry- she wasn’t good with anger.

Fortunately, the spirit took no offense, or if she did, she hid it well. Fair enough. But you won’t leave Ana’s shop empty handed! At this, the spirit turned away, and when she turned back, she had retrieved a wrapped bundle from one of the cases behind her, and offered it to the fox child.

Take this, small fox-child. The spirit, gently smiling, bent towards the little fox, unfolding the bundle to reveal a shimmering blue-green cape, material ethereal and smooth as gossamer silk; and yet held a comforting solidity. Your cape is thin, but the rain chills, and the least I can do is to gift you the blessing of warmth, such that the flame within you shall be stoked for a longer time.

At this, the spirit flicked her eyes amusedly at the deer. And you, deer-child. Your cape is more than thick enough, but you too shall feel the sting of this cursed rain dulled.

The deer dipped its snout, acknowledging, but turned from her and plucked the gifted cape from the little foxes hands and draped it about her. The cape, heavy against her little frame, wrapped around the little fox, and she spun around, causing the cape to flare out, admiring how it glimmered in the dim light. It fits you. I’m glad. The spirit clapped her hands together, her light waning gradually, until she too was gone, and they were once again alone with a darkness-encrusted figure.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

Over the burbling brook they clambered; and under yet another shattered bridge they took shelter. The rain pelted them, but with the blessing of warmth they barely felt it; and the umbrella caught the worst of it.

Shall we continue? Asked the deer, very low. Or shall we forge our path into that cave by the brook? I can hear the living rocks screeching; and they only screech where there is fallen prey to feed on.

The little fox said nothing, but she entangled her hand with theirs, which was good enough an answer. The darkness plant withered under their twin flames, and they were in the cave.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

It had been a long time.

Here in the darkness Lucim knew no day or night, and only restless sleep took her, sometimes, unwillingly and into the land of dreams, only to jerk her awake again, breathing hard, listening too-intently to the shifting of the deep earth beneath her. It was nothing, as always.

A lifetime ago she had been playing with the other village children, secreting herself away in the nooks and crannies of the Silent Forest she knew best. They never could find her. But one day the earth she had run upon for so long had opened up and swallowed her, and now...she had been hidden better than she could ever have herself, and they never would find her.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

The little girl-spirit leapt to her feet. I’m free! Oh, thank you, thank you, I’m going to return to Ama and Apa and they will be so happy to see me! She grabbed the deer’s hands and swung them around, laughing mirthfully. Oh, travellers, you are kind. I shall gift you the greatest blessing, the blessing of youth, such that your feet can carry you further and more swiftly, and your breath shall not grow short, for as long as you determine it not to.

With a final peal of laughter, the little girl was gone.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

The gazebo receded behind them into the fog, and the little fox and the deer, huddled under the umbrella, forged on through the trees and over the little outcroppings on the ground, rocks overgrown with moss. It was a hard journey, and even with the little girl-spirit’s blessing, the deer, much stronger, had to stop for the little fox.

Eventually they came upon a plateau overgrown with lichen, but the calcified fungi above provided a watertight shelter for the pair. Here the ground was still wet, but less of a marsh, and as they settled, chests heaving with exertion, the loamy soil crunching below their tired bodies with a clean, sweet aroma.

The little fox drew her fingers through the earth and brought a handful up to sniff at it, turning to the deer in silent questioning. The forest had clearly once been beautiful and less…wet-

The deer bowed their head somberly, considering the umbrella laying in their lap. It used to be simply the Silent forest. When I was still new to this world I traversed these lands freely, all alone and yet without fear.

The spirits sang with all the songs of the wind that whistled through these verdant forests, and from the trees sprang new growth young and verdant; blossoms and leaves falling like snow and growing green and golden in turn with the ponderous rising and setting of the sun and his moon. The grass came in thick, emerald green, and heralded the eternal springtime you could find amongst these peaceful woodlands. These glades used to be a nursery for light fragments to fuse and grow larger, and stronger, and then journey from these lands on to harsher ones, passing untouched into the heavens.

To the naked eye it looked something like a continuous stream of shining birds, glowing in the sky like the Milky Way, rising on unseen currents and soaring towards that faraway temple up above. Below, the burbling brook mirrored the birds winging their way past high above, winding between the ancient trunks of the trees. Little butterflies flitted about tall grasses and glowing spirit fungi alike. Beyond these glades; an open courtyard leading up to the temple corralled little spirit mantas until they were amalgamated enough to fly on into the Triumphant Ridges.

But such a rich font of growth had to be hiding some treasure, reasoned the elders. Everything comes from something- so the Silent Forest must contain natural riches untold- and it did. Everyone wanted something. The Clouded Plains wanted jars to capture their light fragments, the Triumphant Ridges blessed gold to craft their monuments, the Golden Sands colossal arks to explore their vast shores, and the Sacred Archives their darkstone to power their mechanisms.

Only the Isle Guardian turned away from them, his old face grave and wrinkled in concern- or perhaps sorrow. ‘Everything comes at a cost. The crust of this soft, borrowed world has gifted us many boons freely- to sup so hungrily at her lifeblood today is foolish. Tomorrow, she shall run dry.’

If only they had listened.

Silently, the deer raised its head. I have walked these woods a long time. All I have accompanied into these grasping trees have perished in one way or another, and yet none of them regret embarking on their journey. All I can do is ease their way, and hope and strive to bring one of them to the end one day. And eventually you children have stopped coming entirely, whether due to those whispers that all who enter these gates are doomed to death, or perhaps the spirits here have simply stopped calling for new blood. The deer raised a hand, and a butterfly settled, gently on their finger. But not one of them has thought to relive these spirits; fearing that whatever rot had petrified them would infect them too. I have hope, once more. Let us go.

Here, the deer reached out a hand to the little fox, and the little fox propped herself up, ready to take their hand, when suddenly the lichen-covered rock she had been sitting on gave way, and she fell back, back, back- a panicked shout in her mind from the deer- until the world turned inside out all about her and she fell to the end of time.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

By the golden light of your soul-borne flame The fallen have risen again in their silvered ranks, Clad in their eternal truth, shining.

And they shall stand up once more to say- ‘We never deserved these deaths, Rent open by hidden knives To feed the darkness hungering below’

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

I’m dead, thought the little fox, the certainty a thorned bud aching in her chest. She had fallen from a great height, after all, and her surroundings were so unfamiliar and lovely it was simply impossible that she was still in the forest. Next to her, the deer groaned as they peeled themselves off the ground they had slammed into facefirst, gingerly picking soil off their furry cape, now even more dirtied than before. The little fox felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t meant to kill her guide alongside her with her clumsiness…

But the deer was already gaping up at the forest, eyes glittering strangely in the light. It’s the forest of old. Look, look how alive it is. They whispered reverently, gazing upwards. The little fox looked.

Here the cloud canopy was higher than it was elsewhere, and bright sunlight filtered unhindered by clouds, through the primordial trees, down onto the verdant forest floor hundreds of metres below. From the trees sprang new growth young and verdant; blossoms and leaves falling like snow and presumably growing green and golden in turn with the ponderous rising and setting of the sun and his moon. The grass came in thick, emerald green, and heralded the eternal springtime found amongst these peaceful woodlands. The open glades were a nursery for light fragments, which flittered about, glowing silver and golden and all the iridescent colours of the rainbow.

To the naked eye it looked something like thousands of fireflies, glowing golden sparks in the pale wan light about the bases of the ancient trees, circling idly. Below, tangerine-orange fishes darted merrily in the spring burbling below, encircled on all sides by softly swaying grass, little flowers blooming amongst them.

Fox and deer alike stood in wondering amazement, drinking in the dreamlike beauty of the glade, so different from the drowned woodlands they had just left. With hushed reverence they crept through the sunlit glade, shocked into silence.

As they walked, the glade grew darker about them and the trees seemed to bend over them into a bower, and ahead- there was yet another hollow in a great tree trunk, as though the tree itself had been split open by some unseen force and carefully turned inside out, carefully revealing the hole in its core that descended down into the formless dark. From deep below the clarion call of a distant beast called, and the strange pull behind her navel tugged her forward- and down.

The little fox swallowed hard, commended her soul to the elders high above, and leapt.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

The stars may fall, The moon may sway, But wilder yet is my call. We the dragons- let us blaze this night away.

We begin here, while birdsong trills, Here animals frolic, clear waters flow. But let us soar over those faraway hills Into the wilderness where no men dare go.

Before velvet darkness turns to day, Let us run wild and free tonight.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

Sliding through the stone chamber was fun, but bouncing to a stop at breakneck speed less so. Soft grass broke her fall, and she skidded, inadvertently tearing up the grass as she went- until she crashed into the deer headfirst. Kinetic energy turned into the sharp pain of the jab of golden horns into her side, and they rolled together to a stop.

The deer huffed, winded by the weight of an entire fox, small as she may be, landing upon them like they were a convenient mattress, but quickly brushed themselves off, offering a hand to the abashed fox as they went.

You have a talent for unfortunate landings, fox, the deer mused. But look ahead- butterfly jars! The jars lay, abandoned and rolled onto their sides; some had cracked open, and around, butterflies teemed, a wild swarm basking in the patch of sunlight shining down from high above. The butterflies that the first spirit had gifted them flew up and forward to join their brethren, chiming happily, and the pair followed.

If one called to light fragments, most would happily carry you above, so long as your voice was deep enough such that they could hear you. Yet another non-memory rose like a surfacing fish to the top of the clouded pool of the little fox’s memories. With this in mind, she called to the butterflies with her voice of chiming bells, accompanied by the deer’s deeper, more melodious call, and the butterflies swarmed about around them and carried them to the high ledge above.

The platform sloped sharply ahead and then dropped into a sharp cliff leading into a sea of clouds; perfectly even, fluffy, and white- and a long distance down. Slim spires of earth protruded out of the clouds, topped with a dusting of verdant green grass. All about the cavern; birds glided amongst the formations, casting the entire location in an ethereal silvery light, which was no small feat. The scale of the cavern was large enough that it was difficult to judge it’s true size, and even as she stepped forward further into the strange warm light the entire cavern seemed to be bathed in, when the clouds suddenly burst apart and a colossal coelacanth rose from the depths, even it looked oddly stretched and faraway amongst the clouds.

The coelacanth emerged in a rolling blast of cool air, and with a sonorous boom that ripped through the cavern and through the two travellers, who subsequently had the breath blown out of them. It towered high above them like some sort of oversized dragon; oddly misshapen and color mottled in the golden light, which glinted over remnant scales dotting over its massive flanks. Wispy trails of clouds trailed behind it; caught upon its numerous ridges. For something so large, it was surprisingly silent and mobile; soon it had wound its way about all the odd islands of earth stacked high, and vanished into the depths of the vast cavern.

I don’t know what that was, breathed the deer, reverent. Something so large… it’s odd that it hasn’t made its way into further realms. Creatures of the light are always drawn ever closer towards the greatest source of light in the heavens.

I wouldn’t know either, the little fox whispered back. Any chance it’s just a benevolent coincidence?

Likely not. I’ve never seen any creature of light that colour, The deer murmured, grave. We should continue on, with haste.

The little fox and the deer leapt off the cliff and took wing, rising with the air currents, and at the top of the cavern, they finally landed on a plateau on the tallest pillar of stone in the cavern.

Above them hung a perfect sphere, luminescent with blinding warm light so piercing it was almost painful to the eye. It...simply hung in the air, a miniature sun warming all that its light touched. The little fox gazed up at it in wonderment, but the deer grabbed her hand and dragged her, with haste, towards the gates ahead, as though afraid of that innocuous, yet inexplicable miniature sun hanging above the Sunny Forest.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

Imagine a room, a sudden glow- A sunbeam gaze blessing all the creatures far below Blind forevermore

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

Here there had evidently been a landslide, for the earth that the little fox gingerly toed at was loose in large chunks, and the tree above them looked rather like it was clinging onto the sheer mountainside precariously, roots mostly exposed and dangling off the edge. With trepidation, the pair peered off the cliff and down into the floodplains below. There was nothing for it; they would have to go down.

Ahead of them, the temple loomed huge and imposing, and far below the crumbled ruins of pavilions dotted the flooded landscape, with many half submerged in the marshy ground below. Quite used to jumping off high ledges now, the little deer and the fox threw themselves off the edge, and landed, crouched, in the silty marsh down below. There was a darkness sprout ahead, glinting oddly. Ever curious, the little fox stepped out of the umbrella’s protective shade for a closer look- a manta lay, contorted and thrashing weakly, bright white light suffused and dimmed, choked by the growth of the darkness from its tender wings. She gasped, for her travels through the lifeless, rain soaked woodlands earlier had taught her she would not find anything still alive in these wetlands.

The deer, who had followed her over in a bid to find out what had drawn her over, clucked in sympathy. Together, they burnt the darkness away and freed the little manta, which circled about them in delight, before flapping its way gently over to a concealed alcove cut in the rock face. Here; the darkness had grown neatly over a hole- big enough to admit us, the little fox guessed. Perhaps it wants us to save its brethren within!

But inside the cave was nothing but a spirit, kneeling alone within.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

Once upon a time, down in one of the deep dark caves of the Silent Forest, there were five orichalcum miners hard at work in their subterranean mine. Orichalcum, an ore regarded with such high value as to be near-mythical, was treasured in the kingdom for its ability to project a subject’s wildest dreams into solid reality. Many teams had been sent out hoping to strike gold (or better), but theirs were one of the only ones to find a thin vein of the ore leading deep into the earth.

Work in the mine was hard. Dust clouded the air in the dig site; and the air was noxious, so heavy it was nearly tangible. They spent fourteen hours at a time seeking out miniscule scraps of the ore, and five hours resting in small rock alcoves they had carved out in the cave walls with their own pickaxes. It was hard in the start. Some miners escaped, yelling that they couldn’t take slogging away amongst the fumes any longer, and were sent home with nothing to show for their toil. The rest may have silently agreed with them, but none of them wanted to be dismissed without their pay. Slowly, they learned to make peace with the endless slog their existence had become; chipping at the walls daily with little hope of being sent home to rest until they had collected all the orichalcum possible. It simply wouldn’t be economical to spare any of the dig teams that had been sent out, searching for rare minerals in the Forest, after all.

Days, weeks, or perhaps even months into their idyllic existence, the daily monotony of their lives were suddenly disturbed by an ominous judder of rock, debris raining down from above. The miners all looked up- they were deep within the earth, what could possibly have caused an impact so great it had shaken the cavern walls?- and it was then that a massive blackened appendage punched a hole neatly through the top of the cavern and through the solid stone frame bracing the cave entrance.

Almost immediately, chunks of detritus falling from somewhere high above landed with a tremendous boom; neatly sealing off the newly-made hole- as well the airholes they had so carefully drilled in the cavern roof a lifetime ago. To make matters worse, the cave entrance had begun to sprout florets of malignant blue-black Darkness. The miners drew back. Everyone knew the Darkness released spores into the air almost immediately after budding, and everyone who breathed them in would inevitably succumb to the fatal wasting disease, black death. They needed a new air source, stat.

‘We shall have to dig ourselves out from the other end, go under the rubble, and hope we emerge in a safe location,’ cried Elsad, one of the more assertive miners. The other miners all looked at each other. It wasn’t as though any of them really had any other better ideas, and they were on a clock here. In unison, they focused their efforts on the western wall of the cavern; where the floor was higher and they were hence less likely to hit bedrock.

They never hit bedrock. Water erupted out of the new hole they had dug into a hidden aquifer; dislodging the loose rock about the hole, which crumbled into a massive cave collapse. By the time the dust cleared, three of them had been crushed by the rubble. There was nothing Elsad and the other miner could do for them, but comfort them as they feebly breathed their lasts.

Now they were only two, and their only hope of escape was either through an aquifer or through the unknown amount of rubble and Darkness crushing the cave entrance.

They sat down and waited for death to come. But Death is a cruel master, and Elsad soon noticed that her companion, bruised blue-black, had been unusually silent for a while. But when she turned to him, it was already too late. The Darkness had claimed him, too, and Elsad was alone in the cave. Cursing the heavens, she curled up in her little alcove.

About her, the water rose.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

There was nothing to say. The spirit bowed her head, silvery tears still dripping down her face, and raised her hands in silent supplication.

Please, free me, she cried, softly. Let me go back home. All I ever wanted was to go back home. May you be blest with my gift, the blessing of empathy, such that you may find and bring all our lost souls home. With yet another feeble cry, the spirit shrank into herself, fading into the darkness-encrusted body kneeling behind her.

The little fox reached down and took the body’s cold hands in hers. Be free, she thought, hoping with all her might, as her vivid darkness waned into a pale light.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

They left the tear-stained cavern behind them, following the manta as it led them steadily across the silted courtyard and circled back on occasion to warm them with its pure light. The deer hoisted the umbrella higher, in the hopes that it could be saved from the occasional mud splatter as they slogged through the marsh. They had clearly long given up on their fur cloak; for it hung damp, mud-stained, more brown than yellow, and more yellow than white. The little fox trailed behind, sodden despite the deer’s best efforts, and too tired to even try to keep her gifted cape clean.

Beneath a ruined bridge they found yet another manta, which, once freed, seemed content to circle about their little group, dipping and weaving between their legs. Up and over the bridge’s ruined pavilion they clambered, and took a brief reprieve beneath the eroded roots of the calcified white skeletons of the massive trees dotted everywhere about the landscape.

And through a pair of hollowed tree trunks the travellers found a pair of kneeling spirits, wrapped about each other as though deriving comfort from their incorporeal embraces.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

‘I’m telling you, there’s something seriously wrong with the trees!’, Voski whined, tugging on Leyla’s cape. ‘You’re telling me this fungal calcification looks normal to you?’

Leyla snorted, forcefully plucking Voski’s grasping fingers off her cape one by one. ‘You’re asking me? Besides, you’re the tree expert, go tell me more about how the trees going through an occasional dry spell as they do every few moons is anything special.’ ‘It’s not a dry SPELL at this point, it’s a dry SEASON, Leyla.’

‘Big deal.’

In a huff, Leyla stormed off. Voski was really too worried about the wrong things, she thought. The real concern here was how the number of light creatures in the Silent Forest seemed to be falling steadily with no replenishment. She would like to hope that they were simply migrating away as always, but if the trees were truly ailing as Voski said… perhaps something was truly wrong.

The trees towered mighty above, as they always did. Melodious birdsong floated through the Forest, as they always did. Ahead, the pavilion path up to the temple shone bright, lanterns lit at every gazebo, and though the courtyards were flooded by the neverending rain; the land still shone bright under the light of the sun far above.

A thunderous crash interrupted her thoughts, and the little bird she had been idly tracking through the hollowed trunks chimed its displeasure and took off, joining its brethren in the overcast skies.

She turned towards where Voski had been, fuming. ‘VOSKI. I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU WANTED TO PROTECT THE TREES.’ Between them, a newly fallen tree lay, calcified, bald trunk incongruous amongst the lush greenery. Voski, herself shell-shocked, threw herself onto the ground ahead of Leyla.

‘I’m so sorry! Are you hurt? I was only tapping the tree to check the bark for any faults,’ she cried, reaching for Leyla, who brushed her aside.

‘Don’t ask about me. Look at this.’

Together, they stared down at the tree, once towering mighty over the Silent Forest, but now entirely rotted hollow within.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

The two spirits, arm in arm, met their eyes somberly. We were only checking on the health of our forest, they said, voices as one. It looked fine, but we never thought that it would have rotted through.

The forest they set their eyes upon now was nothing like the forest the spirits had known. Where before, the trees had stood proud above; now many of them were splintered in the trunk, or stood as mere stumps, monuments to a glorious path. The sky was dark with fog; and no birdsong filtered through the forest any longer. The pavilions from whence they had came stood ruined and strangled within florets of darkness.

They turned to the moss-covered tree behind them. But by the time we knew, it was too late. When they turned back, their eyes were filled with sorrow.

The hunter placed one hand on each of their foreheads. I gift you with the blessing of foresight, such that you may see through this damned fog as we once did.

The lumberjack, however, raised her hands to her own head, and, reverently removing her crown, pressed it into the deer’s hands. A token of passage, she explained. You’ll need this to enter the temple. Take good care of it for me! With tearful smiles, the spirits sank into their darkened bodies.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

To the left, a massive, toppled tree lay. Wordlessly, the deer grasped the little fox’s hand and dragged her past it, soaring high above, where the birds once had, in the lumberjack and hunters’ memories. I saw something that wasn’t there...before, they murmured thoughtfully, which really didn’t answer much. Clearly much had changed in the forest.

The deer touched down gently in a decrepit pavilion, boots making a clacking noise against the slick stone of the foyer. The whale skeleton. It’s hard to kill these giant beasts; I wonder what could have. As with everything else, the skeleton was overgrown with darkness plants, emanating a bilious sense of wrongness. It didn’t quite seem right to leave them as they were, even on a creature so long dead as the whale, and so together, the little fox and the deer bent over, silently burning them off. The mantas circled anxiously about them as they worked.

Finally, the bones shone white and pearlescent once more, and-

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

Once upon a time, in a silent forest in a realm stripped of her treasures by man’s greedy fingers, there lay a vast silty marsh of waste, composed of the noxious fumes pouring from a hundred busy mines all around, the discarded slag pouring from the smithy high above, and the trash of all the men who had begun to traverse through her vast expanses. Borne of the myriad pollution pouring into the green clearings of the forest, this marsh was so bilious and foul that it had necessitated the building of the pavilion bridge above to allow safe passage to the temple above.

In these lands there are many old wives’ tales that float about, the bread and butter of many dinner-table conversations, shared only to be dismissed easily by most who hear them. But the older men and women used to say- for every beloved object, it would need only ten years to grow an awareness, a hundred years to grow a soul, and a thousand years to grow a sentience. And everyone knows that all living things are comprised of body, spirit, and soul, and anything with a defective soul will begin to decay, poisoning the spirit and body alike.

But the truth of these two statements is that an emotion in the opposite direction would have very much the same effect on the manifestation of a soul, and that a living thing only needs a soul, while the other two can be...sourced.

And so the marsh, neglected for so long, began to hunger for attention. First it sank deep within the burbling brook, and, fed into the verdant trees, instead began to draw the vitality out of them, taking indulgent tastes of their well-fed spirits, given so much attention and oh so revered by their local communities. When the trees were empty and dead; with even the fungi calcified into vague memories of their earlier shapes, the marsh was satisfied for a while.

But not for long. Next it began to drown unsuspecting light creatures, reaching primitive tentacles up from within the water, wrapping its around hapless prey, and drawing them down into the deep. With their glimmering spirits augmenting its mass, the marsh was satisfied for a while.

But not for long. Men themselves began to disappear, and locals started to warn each other to stay away from the river, for strange things happened if you stayed too long. The marsh, of course, had simply been plucking unfortunates from the riverbank as its fancied meal of choice. With their rich spirits augmenting its mass, the marsh was satisfied for a while.

And one day the marsh found a thrashing light creature caught amongst a cluster of darkness plants. A gentle light whale, which soon found it’s grisly demise within the eldritch abomination that the marsh had become.

With its pure, strong spirit, and its massive, sturdy skeleton, the whale was the last spirit the marsh ever consumed, for it was all that was needed to birth the Leviathan as a being that had claimed enough lives to form an amalgamation- a patchwork spirit and borrowed skeleton, strong enough to seek out the temple far above- for it had smelt the scent of the mightiest spirit high above, a familiar stink entangled deep within its decaying bones, and its patchwork soul throbbed in its swollen need, and hungered to consume it.

(Just like how the spirit had once consumed her own home and spat it back up, aching, forgotten, below her own temple.)

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

Her voice sounded different. A voice of chiming bells it was no longer, but now a sonorous wail. The whale call was mighty, and the mantas heard its call, carrying the little fox and the deer up towards the temple, where they were gently deposited.

Ahead, two stone doors loomed, and where they split neatly down the middle, an empty socket awaited. Gingerly, the little fox placed the diamond crown carefully into the hole, and it sank into the stone with a clink and a scrape- and when the doors opened, it was not with a scrape but with a sky, as though it had been waiting for their arrival for a long, long time.

Together, they clasped each other’s hands and walked into the nothingness. They walked for perhaps forever or perhaps not so long at all, and in time the air and light began to take on a different quality about them.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

Once, the hidden forest had a mother, A mother who never grew old. With a smile of sunshine, And a heart molded of pure gold. In her eyes two flaming stars, Upon her head a cold forged crown. Strong arms swinging a celestial hammer, But always gentle when setting it down.

But that golden heart was broken long ago. So now you shall see- When you visit her, Kind she will not be.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

In a land before time, or perhaps in a land that came so long after time that the space around her had forgotten what it felt like, the fox and the deer walked, and walked, and walked. About them shadowy memories of trees rustled, a susurration of a million quiet voices threading through their ghostly leaves and whispering in their ears. Ahead of them a figure far distance knelt bowed over -shimmering and waning in some pale, unearthly light. It never seemed to grow any larger, but after an indeterminate amount of time it raised a staff, face still downturned, and the trees drew apart before them with a sigh-

All at once the little fox realized that her sense of perspective had been entirely wrong, and the figure was a titanic woman towering over them, at once both a million miles away and an arm’s length away, and the staff was not a staff at all but rather a golden hammer, metal cracked and stained dark. But the woman’s face was the most terrifying of all, for where in all the other spirits two flame-bright eyes had resided, her eyesockets held only fathomless dark, and where a mouth had been was now a bloodied gash, and on either side her high, regal cheeks had been smashed and her nose broken. Down her arm, hanging at an odd angle, black blood dripped freely from ugly gouges, and her dress had been torn open, lacerations rent by some beast down her chest and opening her belly like a flower- the little fox stopped looking. The room stank of ichor and slag. And when she looked in their direction, she smiled. It was not a kind smile.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

Once upon a time, in a silent forest in a realm unmolested by man’s greedy fingers, a wise queen presided over her kingdom. Here was a land where flowers bloomed beneath the boughs of flourishing shrubs and glowing fungi, where birds sang and creatures frolicked, where a brook burbled happily as it wound its way beneath the roots of ancient trees. Her open glades nursed many a light fragment on their journey into harsher realms, and songs of her people and beasts alike filled the gentle winds with joy.

High above the queen in her smithy smiled, and her soul, pulsing gently within her, shone all the brighter, casting all the lands in its protective light, which shielded all from the darkness lurking beyond her realm’s borders.

But even the wisest of men are men, in the end, and men are hungry things, always grasping for more, more, more. Bounty exists solely for the plundering, the High Council said, and the queen was only too happy to allow her councilmen to do so, for they paid her a handsome price for her services, which she turned into infrastructure improvements for her people, for after all, she was a kind queen, and she cared for her people, but not so much her land.

In time her kingdom began to hear whispers of something stealing her men away, in the dark, dragging them down and away into the deepest parts of the little forest brook, and she spared no expense sending men to seek out the perpetrator, for after all, hers was a rich kingdom now, natural bounty spent for untold riches.

But she never could. How could she, when the culprit may as well have been the forest itself, given form and risen again from amongst her buried sins to punish them for their pride? For all that she and her men searched, they never suspected that the forest itself would turn against them. All about them, the forest itself began to weep, for it knew that the root of its evil could not be excised.

Until one night, the Leviathan rose out of the waters of the oil-slicked marshes below the temple and roared its furious challenge with an earthshattering scream.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

I didn’t know I was going to live until I had Crossed the oil slicked sands, Clasping a single accompanying hand.

I didn’t know I was going to live until I had Driven the cracked fragments of my staff through its skull And pinned it, thrashing, into the wastelands, Bright eye going dull.

It may already have killed me, and I didn’t know if I was going to live, Even after it had gasped it’s final breath, twitching.

And so I fell to the ground, Spent and shivering.

But still I didn’t want to die Unless I had spent myself down to my cold stone core, Until my limbs gave way, Until my heart refused to beat.

Until I had bought my victory With a thousand years of remembered pain, For a thousand more forgotten souls.

And so I grasped your offered hand And drove my staff into its dragonheart once more.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

For ten days and ten nights they battled across the skies, light against dark, perfectly matched. One, two, a hundred trees fell, crushed under the weight of their violent celestial battle, and still they fought on. The queen lost count of how many times she had thrown, or been thrown by the massive shapeless beast. Her mighty hammer blocked the blows of the Leviathan countless times, but she had not escaped its fury, for now her right arm hung useless and dripping ichor at her side, and her stomach had been torn open and she was losing her strength fast.

(Down below, rocks from the Leviathan’s most recent meeting with a cliff face showered down upon one little miner’s hole)

But the queen had the wisdom of experience and the sorrow of years of mourning her subjects backing her, and, with an effort, she finally regained the upper hand over the spirit. But her body was torn, crushed, and abused beyond the hope of any semblance of repair, and she knew then, that if she failed in her final blow, she would not have a chance again.

And so she heaved her celestial hammer high above her, and, infused with the power of her ancient soulflame, brought it squarely down upon the single massive eye of the Leviathan.

Soulflame met bright eye and fused in a burst of flame, which ripped down the amorphous dark of the body of the Leviathan, golden light racing through the cracks in its body. With a pained roar the Leviathan crumbled apart into three- a golden light swept past and up towards the heavens, a silvery, massive spirit- body, revealed under its shapeless dark, flung unceromoniously in the direction of the hammer’s swing, and a whale skeleton, freed from its prison, tumbled into the marshes below. The Leviathan’s eye, shining like a sun, was flung alongside the Leviathan’s spirit towards the edge of the forest, where darkness lurked and no man dared tread.

But the queen saw none of this, for her body too had succumbed to its injuries, falling down into the smithy where she had spent so many days ruling over her golden kingdom. Her body, devoid of soul but not of spirit, lay lifeless in her throne room, the beginning of its slow torturous decay. Around her, the kingdom began to crumble. She did not hear the screams of her subjects as they were swallowed- for without her soul to light the way, the pollution and darkness, taken on a life of its own, could not and would not be stopped.

Above, the rain kept falling.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

So at long last I have visitors to my glorious domain, declared the woman, face upturned, arms spread wide and gesturing up at what must have once been a truly glorious room. She seemed to not notice her injuries, or how as she moved, her dress slipped further, catching on the exposed bone of her broken arm, heavy with the stink of ichor that dripped down and ran into the water pooled around her podium. Welcome! I have waited long and eager for you.

The deer pushed the little fox behind them, hiding them from view. Your majesty. We are honoured to be in your exalted presence, he intoned, bowing deeply. But the little fox saw the tension in the line of their back, and their grip on her arm was white-knuckled and trembling.

You have just what I needed, she murmured, smiling her too-wide smile. Don’t hide it, bring it here. I would have a look at it. The woman trailed her fingers slowly across the hammer at her side. I don’t want to ask twice.

Still the deer bowed, and in a steady voice, they answered, This one is honoured by the request, but it is no treasure, merely an untested child. Here they raised their hands to their chest- I am a soul who has wandered this earth for a hundred years before the Darkness came and took what was yours from you, and have wandered a thousand years since. Surely I am enough.

The woman snorted. How dull. I can’t use your old, dim soul. I suppose you will make me ask twice. In the space of one heartbeat and the next, she had crossed the chamber, and, twirling her hammer with the ease of one long-practiced, she flung the deer into a wall, where their surprised yell had cut into a croak and gurgle of blood upon impact, leaving them crumpled to the floor. They did not move again.

The little fox, who had leapt, crying out, towards her fallen companion, was suddenly flung in the opposite direction onto the podium, caught by the handle of the golden hammer, and struggled, crushed beneath a colossal weight, pinned helplessly. Above her two claw-tipped hands reached, and she gasped, for in the space between her ribs the bright soul had begun to crackle painfully, drawn upwards towards a being so powerful and painfully devoid of one-

The little fox closed her eyes.

The fallen queen closed her palms about the flame, snuffing it out.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

All about the latticed windows set high in the walls slammed open, sending golden sunlight shafting into the forgotten throne room, and the bells flanking the great stone doors, silent for so long, began their sonorous tolling, and the doors slid open with a mighty scraping.

All the creatures of light, locked out of their home for so long, began to spill into the throne room, clamouring in their myriad voices. In the midst of the chaos the queen sat, stricken, singed hands stinging. Above her a newly forged darkstone diamond shone, adamant and burning with the light of a new soul. Below her two bodies lay, lifeless. In her face two flame-bright eyes gleamed with a strange wetness.

★ ° . . . ☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . • ○ ° ★ . * . . ° . ● . ° ☾ °☆

At the end of the world There lies a fallen star Memories of shining moments Crumbling like stardust.

☾ °☆ . * ● ¸ . ★ . •

These days, if you visit the Hidden Forest, you shall find that the corruption has stopped. Why? No one knows. Still it rains, but the air smells of growing things and petrichor, and the water does not sap at your strength. You may meet a deer guide accompanied by two spirit mantas, who will smile at you and tell you that sometimes, you do not need to be great to do great things, and you do not need to be brave to be courageous. You may meet a titan, diving through the air in a slow, momentous descent in a hidden cavern far beneath the earth, with its own little sun casting the chamber in eternal sleepy afternoon light. Far below the calcified trees a little brook winds its way through the woodlands, burbling merrily on its way into a vast flood plains, filled with water clear and sparkling. Above, flies a flock of migrating birds winging their way across the Forest, glowing in the sky like the Milky Way, past a silent temple where they say on the darkest nights of the seasonal monsoon, you can sometimes see a woman, silent under the weight of her sins, kneeling behind a altar built to an absent god. High above the altar a diamond shining brilliant with a pure, flaming light smiles down upon a resurrected kingdom.

And if you journey through the entirety of the forest, you may find that at the end, there stands a little child-star, eyes closed, face tilted towards the heavens, and you should know that once upon a time, she saved an entire world.

#sky #story #thatskygame #sky children of the light #hidden forest #cotl #teth #original character #fanfiction

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ieattaperecorders · 4 years

Text

Trapdoor

Inb4 we get a good description of the post-apocalyptic world, wrote a little monster encounter for these boys. It’s also here on Ao3.

- - -

“Where are you going?”

Martin turned to Jon who stood a few paces back, looking quizzical. “Towards the hills? You just said it would be safer there.”

“I absolutely did not say that.” Jon replied. “I said we ought to go this way,” he gestured in the direction he’d been turning. “Stick to the lower places, where there’s less room for things to sneak up.”

The rolling, rocky countryside had been suspiciously innocuous lately. Unsettlingly normal. For the last few kilometers, nothing had leaped out at them or tried to lure them towards apparent safety. No part of the world had suddenly twisted or inverted around them. In fact, for some time the terrain they’d been walking across had done an impressive job of resembling ordinary Scottish land on a gray and drizzly morning. It was leaving both of them tense, anxious, waiting for the hammer to fall.

“. . .I’m pretty sure I heard you.” Martin looked back at the hills. “And it feels safer to go that way? I dunno, higher ground? Doesn’t that seem right?”

“Martin.” Jon put his hands on Martin’s arms, speaking slowly and carefully. “You might want to consider the possibility that something is making you feel that way.”

“That doesn’t sound ri - - ah.” Martin caught himself. “Maybe. Er,” he lifted his arms. “Have I got any spiders on me?”

Jon peered over him nervously. “I mean. I don’t see any, but it’s not likely going to be that simple.”

“How do we know which way is safe, then?” Martin asked. “If we’re possibly dealing with mind control, it could be tricking you as well.”

“It’s wise to be skeptical where these things are concerned.” Jon said, “But I was able to see in the Unknowing, and I think this may be similar. Besides that, you seem a little . . . dazed, to me?”

“Yeah. . .” Now that he was focusing on it, he had to admit that his head felt off somehow. “I guess I am feeling a little . . . dazed.”

“I think that my connection to the Eye is the only thing keeping keep me safe. We ought to move as quickly as we can.” Jon looked at him intently. “If this place is affecting your mind, you might not be able to trust everything you see and hear. So stay close to me, try to ignore anything strange. I’ll guide you.”

There was something moving in Martin’s peripheral vision. Tiny ripples formed in the dirt, as if something was shifting underground. He swore he could hear a muffled noise, like a shuffling or hissing, coming from nearby.

“Don’t focus on it.” Jon’s hand came up to tilt Martin’s face towards his own. “Whatever you’re seeing, I’m pretty sure looking at it is a mistake. Just look at me. Focus on my voice. You can trust me.”

“Right.” That noise was getting louder, and Martin tried to ignore it. “Looking is probably a mistake. . . .”

Even out of the corner of his eye, though, Martin could tell that thing was moving closer. He was relieved when Jon turned, hand clasping his, and started leading him away from it.

“This way,” Jon said, pulling gently but quickly at him. “Try to keep your eyes on me.”

But it was really hard not to look down when the mud started to swirl around at their heels. The sound coming from below was just loud enough for Martin to make out a word.

Stop--

And he was pretty sure he did not want to listen to the ground telling him to stop moving, so he decided to quicken his pace a little. But he hadn't gotten far before the soil opened up behind him and a hand, black with mud, reached out and gripped his ankle.

Martin yelped and pulled away, but the hand’s grip was tight, and he only succeeded in yanking half an arm out of the ground with it.

“Don’t look down!” Jon’s voice came from behind him, hand still gripping his. “That’s how it pulls you in. Just keep moving!”

And Martin would have done as he said, except at that moment the soil shifted and a pair of shoulders joined the arm, as did the rough shape of a human head. There were more arms surrounding it, bent and twisted ones with joints like the legs of an insect and long, grasping hands. They reached out and wrapped around the muddy figure to pull it back down, but it was quickly struggling free. Choking, gasping and spitting mud, Jon’s face emerged from below.

“S-stop--” he gasped, looking wild-eyed at Martin “Stop listening to it!”

“Oh my God . . . Jon!?” Martin stared at the half-buried figure.

“Let him go!” Jon’s voice growled from behind him, directed at the muddy silhouette. “He’s not for you!”

The Jon that was covered in mud coughed and spat out a gobbet of earth, its hand still gripping Martin’s leg . He was pulling him towards the mud, he realized, and the grasping hands. Or, no, was he pulling himself out? Or was he just pulling Martin towards himself, away from the one who was holding him?

The one who was - - there was still a hand gripping his hand. Whose...whose hand was on him . . . .?

“Martin. Look at it.” The Jon clinging to his ankle fixed a penetrating gaze on him. Martin felt something . . . a painful moment of light piercing the haze in his mind. “Look at what you’ve been talking to.”

Martin looked back at the thing holding his hand. It was definitely not Jon. It had too many limbs, and not enough eyes, and when it smiled there was a hissing sound like that of a chittering insect.

He screamed, pulling his hand back and trying back away. Unfortunately the real Jon still held his ankle, so he didn’t back away so much as stumble and fall flat onto the ground. The monster loomed. It no longer looked like Jon, but it retained just enough detail - his scarred right hand, the color of his shirt, the lower half of his face now split with a too wide grin - to make everything else seem worse.

“Get away - -” Jon’s voice was hoarse, rough with the soil he’d been trapped in, but there was fire in it. “Get - - away from him.”

The creature froze in place as Jon pulled himself up beside Martin. Martin assumed that Jon’s gaze was keeping it still, but he wasn’t going to rely on the Watcher if he could help it. He took the moment of distraction as a chance to sweep the creature’s legs. Having a dozen, spindly, twisting limbs might be good for frightening people who wander into your terrible pit trap. But they didn’t provide much in terms of stability. The creature went down, landing half on top of Martin.

In a panic, he kicked it towards the hole that Jon had crawled out of. A new arm shot out of the ground just as the monster began to rise. A hand wrapped around one if its gangly legs, and was joined by another. Then another, and another, and many more, until it was looked more like a tangle of chitinous wire than anything remotely humanoid.

Martin and Jon scrabbled back from the pits’ edge as the thing was dragged down and swallowed, screaming inhumanly. The ground went quiet again, and the two of them stopped and breathed.

“Are you all right?” Jon asked.

Martin nodded. “I think so. What about you?”

“I think so.” Jon cleared his throat, voice still raw. “I wasn’t down there long. If, ah, if suffocation were lethal here I’d probably be in more trouble.”

“Here, hang on. . . .” Martin shrugged off his backpack. He was glad he’d had the foresight to bring some bottles of water, despite neither of them feeling thirst anymore. He’d known they’d have some practical use -- or, if he was being honest with himself, tea-related use. But this seemed the more immediate concern.

Jon took the water gratefully, swishing his mouth out and spitting a few times, then attempted to clean himself off. His clothes weren’t going to be pristine again, that was for certain, but he managed to get from ‘dirt monster’ to ‘man who’s been tramping through the muddy woods.’ Which wasn't far from where they’d both been to begin with, and would have to do.

“Stepped in the wrong spot.” Jon muttered as he scrubbed at his hair. “I was underground in an instant.”

“I didn’t even see. I’m sorry.” Martin said.

“It’s not your fault.” Jon replied. “That thing was toying with your mind. I could see it even from down there, but I couldn’t reach you. . . .”

“We should get moving again.” Martin said, getting to his feet. “That thing might be able to crawl out too.”

“Yes. You’re right.” Jon pulled himself up, brushing off what remaining soil he could, and took Martin’s hand. “Towards the hills?”

Martin nodded, slinging the bag back over his shoulder.

“Jon. . .” a startlingly familiar voice came from behind them. “What’s going on?”

Martin turned and found himself facing a figure that looked only vaguely like him. Actually, it would be more right to say it looked exactly like he would look if a number of long, twisted monster arms burst from his back and wrapped themselves around his head and body. It was covered in black mud and one of those long hands obscured the top corner of its face. It stood a few meters away, but Martin could still make out its expression, which was a mocking mimicry of concern.

The Martin-thing held out a hand. “Jon, listen, that’s not me,” it said. Its voice sounded off, though that much might just be because Martin was used to hearing his own voice resonate in his head. “I don’t know what it is, but that isn’t me.”

If the image hadn’t been so unsettling, Martin might have laughed at it. “Nice try? But I don't think he's going to buy it.”

Martin looked over at Jon, who was staring in shock at the Martin-thing. He turned back to Martin and his eyes narrowed with suspicion and concern. Martin groaned inwardly.

“Seriously?” He said. “You’re not really fooled by that thing, are you? It’s covered in weird spider-arms and dripping with mud.”

“Is that what you see?” Jon asked, brow knit.

“I mean, yes?”

“Because he looks entirely normal to me. And--” Jon tensed and Martin felt static at the edges of his perception. A quiet, pained grunt came from between Jon’s teeth. “He looks. . .authentic. Real,” he glanced back at Martin, looking intently at him. “So do you, incidentally.”

“Well thanks very much.” Martin said.

“I, ah.” Jon frowned. “I’m not sure. . .what to do with this?”

There was silence for a while as the three of them stared at each other, not moving. Jon was still holding Martin’s arm, but his grip had tightened a little. Martin suddenly wasn’t sure if Jon was clinging to him, or keeping him in place.

“Okaaay.” The Other Martin said. “So, uh. . . Jon, when you were still working in research, I picked your name for the yearly White Elephant. I barely knew you at that point, so I made the mistake of asking Tim what he thought you’d want. I probably should have realized the ‘it’s wine o’clock somewhere’ t-shirt wasn’t actually your style, but I thought maybe you and Tim had a similar sense of humor and you dressed differently when you weren’t at work.”

“Oh, we’re doing that, are we?” Martin said, annoyed. “Fine. I didn’t let you eat lunch alone for two weeks after you were stabbed. You didn’t want to talk about any of the things you were obsessed with at the time, so I started chatting about anything I could think of to fill the silence. Somehow I got onto cartoons we grew up with and that’s how I found out you’ve never played a Pokemon game but you know a really suspicious amount about the anime.”

The Martin-Thing? Other Martin? Martin was just going to think of it as the other one. It frowned through the tangle of its limbs at Martin’s response.

“The first time you told me that you loved me was on the train to Scotland,” it said, and hearing it talk about that made Martin’s teeth clench. “I was so startled to hear it that I froze and didn’t respond at all, and you started apologizing, worrying you’d made a mistake.”

“Our first night in the safehouse--” Martin said. “You were stroking my hair because you thought I was asleep. I thought you might stop if I opened my eyes, so I just kept pretending. I didn’t tell you about it for a week.”

“Two weeks after we met--” the other one began.

“Stop, stop!” Jon shouted, waved his free hand in the air. “None of that proves anything. There are creatures in this world quite capable of stealing memories, of replacing or re-writing them. You should both know that,” he added with a glare, “regardless of whether you’re real or not.”

The other one frowned. “Jon, it’s me . . . .”

The thing took a step closer and Martin started to back away. Jon kept his grip on him, though that only meant he was pulled along a step or two before he dug his heels into the soft earth.

“Don’t!” he snapped, and Martin stopped moving. Jon released his arm, pose tense, his gaze shooting wildly between them. “Don’t move. Just- - both of you stay where I can see you.”

“Okay. Okay . . .” Martin held up his hands. He could see Jon was starting to panic, and tried to sound calm. “I’m not moving.”

The other one mirrored Martin's pose and Jon nodded, frowning. He backed a step or two away, positioning himself more evenly between the two Martins. His arms were a little out from his sides, as if making ready to grab or push away either one.

“Maybe don’t get too close to it, though?” Martin said, an edge of worry in his voice. “Just in case? Okay?”

“Yeah,” the other one shot back, audibly offended. “Don’t get too close to it, Jon.”

Jon pressed a hand to his forehead, sighing. “Just - just let me think, all right?”

“Right. Take all the time you need.” the other one said, its tone unpleasantly familiar.

Jon paced back and forth with agitation, always keeping his eyes on one of them. Martin watched the other one, in case it made a move for Jon or for him. He couldn’t help but notice It was looking back at him with what he assumed was an identical, watchful expression. Mimics were absolutely the worst.

“Either somehow both of you are really Martin,” Jon muttered, still pacing “or my perception’s being altered in a way I can’t break through. But if it’s the latter I don’t know how we’d proceed. If they both look real, maybe it means neither of them is? But if that’s the case the real Martin could be anywhere, and how am I supposed to find him if I can’t trust what I see. . . .”

“I mean - -” Martin couldn’t help but feel a little hurt hearing Jon talk about him as if he was both not there and in fact, not real. It wasn’t his fault, but it did sting a bit. “How could we both be real?”

“Does that seem impossible at this point?” Jon threw his arms in the air. “That something could split a person in two? Or double them? That would feed into something, surely. The -- the existential fear of it all. Not to mention the fear of being deceived, of unreality, paranoia. . . .”

Martin considered this. “Well. . . that’s fair. But we both saw that other Jon. After that, it seems more likely that one of us is a trick,” he sighed, glaring at the other one. “And I mean. I know which one’s real, but I don’t know how I can prove it to you.”

“You didn’t say you were real.” The other one said triumphantly. “You said ‘I know which one,’ that’s probably a tell, Jon.”

“I meant me, I’m real, I was just trying not to be rude.”

“All right, all right. If nothing else either one of you could be a . . . a replacement.” Jon sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “But unless I know, I can’t take the risk of leaving the real Martin behind. So I think we’re all just going to have to stick together until one of you tries to, I don’t know, enslave my will or turn me inside out or something.”

“That’s a bad plan, Jon.” The other one said.

“Yeah, I kind of have to agree with the other one?” Martin said. “I mean, you’re talking about definitely letting an evil doppleganger tag along, I can’t see that ending well.”

“Well unless one of you wants to tear off a Martin skin and get this over with, I don’t see any other options!” Jon snapped, frustrated.

There was a pause, then the other one spoke up.

“What if you asked us who we are?” it suggested. “I mean. . .nothing’s been able to lie to you so far, right?”

Jon considered. He looked at Martin for permission, and he nodded.

“Yeah, all right.” he said. “Do it.”

“Who are you?” Jon’s voice reverberated, reaching into him. The words came out with no resistance.

“I’m Martin Blackwood,” he said.

Jon looked guarded but a measure of relief showed in him, and Martin smiled at that.

“And who are you?” Jon asked the other.

“I’m Martin Blackwood,” it said, “I'm someone who loves you.”

“I mean, I love you too.” Martin said, frowning. Hearing that thing say those words in particular made his stomach twist a little. “I just didn’t think that was what you were asking.”

Jon was quiet for a moment, considering, then he looked at the other one. “Who were you an hour ago?”

“I was Martin Blackwood,” it said. “I’ve always been.”

“And you?” Jon turned back to Martin. “Who were you an hour ago?”

“I was mud.” Martin said. “Eternally grasping, flowing ever downwards. I was hands, many and needful, aching to grip and wrench and pull. I was the thought of hands, hands that grip the mind. Ones you cannot pull away from without ripping out the most vulnerable parts of yourself. And now, I am Martin Blackwood.”

Martin blinked, hand halfway to his throat. The words had poured out of him, he hadn’t even needed to think. Where had they come from?

“I. . .I don’t. I don’t know why I said that?” He laughed nervously. “Why would I say that?”

Jon’s eyes were wide with fear and he backed towards the other one, arm out as if to separate Martin from it. And that wasn’t fair. Why was he trusting that thing over him? It didn’t even look like him.

“Keep away from it.” Jon said.

“Yeah, I got that.” The thing behind him replied.

“Wait- I, I know how this must sound,” Martin tried to explain, “but it’s got to be some kind of trick. I don’t know where those words came from. It’s me. It’s the real me, I promise.”

“I very much doubt that.” Jon said, his voice cold. He was looking at Martin with such hatred, and it stirred something raw and panicky in him.

“Ask me again!” Martin pleaded, voice trembling. “I’ll get it right this time, just ask again!”

“The answer will be the same.” Jon said firmly.

“Jon.” The thing standing behind him put a hand on Jon’s shoulder, speaking softly. “We should probably run. It feels like this is going to get worse really, really soon.”

“Don’t!” Martin resisted the urge to step closer, afraid that if he did Jon would just do as the other one said and start running. “I’m me. I’m Martin Blackwood. You heard me say it, you know it’s true. I’m Martin.”

“But you’re also a trap.” Jon said. When he opened his mouth again, his voice pierced through Martin’s entire being. “Aren’t you?”

This time he did resist, tried to close his mouth as he the words welled up in him. But it was no use.

“Yes,” tears gathered in Martin’s eyes as the truth forced its way through his lips. “A trap for you.”

“No different than the other half of it.” Jon nodded solemnly. “Just a little bit crueler.”

Martin was dizzy. Everything felt like it was falling away. His own words reverberated in his head, taunting him, and he wanted to scream. Then Jon turned and began to walk away, and Martin did panic.

“Wait! Please, just let me come with you,” he begged. “I’m not - I won’t cause trouble. I won’t even complain about the other one, I promise. I - -” he swallowed. “I don’t want to be alone.”

He saw Jon hesitate, gripping the other one a little more tightly, and it held him tightly back. It hurt. That thing didn’t look or feel remotely right, but it was holding Jon. Holding and being held by him while Martin was left outside. Only a few meters away, but it may as well have been the full length of the earth.

“I feel like myself. I feel like . . .like him,” admitting to being something other than Martin was almost physically painful, but he pressed on. “Like Martin. Maybe I didn’t used to be, but I am now.”

“A hand that can conceive of itself,” Jon said darkly. “Clenched by an unseen mind.”

Fairchild’s words now echoed by Jon rang in his memory. The old man had been right. It was horrid. Martin didn’t want to think about any of it. He just wanted to run to Jon, pull him into his arms, hold him close and be held. Couldn’t he just have that? Couldn’t it be that simple?

“I love you.” Martin said. “You can ask me, I’ll say it a thousand times, because it’s true.”

“. . . But you’ll still hurt him,” the other one said. Its voice was as gentle as its words were cruel. “Even if you don’t want to, it’s what you were made to do. The trap is going to close eventually.”

Martin shook his head violently. It wasn’t true. Whatever he might be, he wouldn’t hurt Jon. He just wanted to stay with him. He wanted to wrap his arms around Jon and never let go. He wanted to bury Jon’s face in his chest and hold him close and promise he was safe with him and be believed. Even if they weren’t his, he had memories of a thousand loving embraces. A thousand more gentle touches, kisses, tender looks. They felt no less real than this moment did.

At the same time, he knew Jon would never hold him again. Not willingly. Not anymore.

Something was moving under the earth, snaking closer to the three of them. Something that also wanted to hold them very, very close. Based on the uneasy way they were starting to look at the ground, Martin suspected they felt it rumbling.

“If you love him,” the other one spoke quickly, his voice wavering as the soil shook. “If you’re really me enough to love him, then I think you want him to be safe. And I’m sorry, but he’s not going to be safe with you.”

The heaviness of his words settled on Martin like the weight of all creation. He felt a thousand grasping hands reach out, fingers just breaking the surface of the soil. The two men holding tightly to one another jumped as the earth shifted around them. Then all at once the hands lost their will, and dissolved back into mud.

Martin sat on the ground. He held himself and looked down at the dirt, which was where he truly belonged. He’d keep his gaze fixed there until he heard them leave, then he’d look up and he’d be alone. A hand that could conceive of itself, with nothing to hold.

“. . . Martin?”

Jon’s voice was soft, and Martin assumed he was talking to the other one, the real one, the one who deserved him. But he repeated the name closer this time, and Martin looked up.

Jon stood just a little more than an arm’s length away. The other one was behind him, a hand held protectively on his shoulder. Jon leaned forward, face soft and sad, and Martin took a shallow breath.

“Maybe. . .” Jon said, gently “you should go back to being mud. I think it would be easier than being human. It wouldn’t . . . hurt as much.”

Slowly, Martin nodded. He didn’t remember being mud, but he was pretty damn sure it hurt a lot less than this.

“I don’t know if I can, though,” he said, an ache in his voice. “I don’t. . . I don’t know how to stop being Martin.”

“I can help you, I think.” Jon said. “If you’d let me.”

“But what if. . .” Martin frowned. “If- if I’m mud again. I won’t . . . I mean. . .what if I try to--”

“Then we’ll run.” Jon sounded confident, calm. “We’ve gotten away from worse before. You remember, don’t you?”

He did remember, in fact. Dozens of panicked escapes since the day they left the cabin. Memories of fear, of adrenaline, and of the fierce, mad victory of knowing you’ve reached the other side. They had dealt with worse. He looked questioningly at the other one, who nodded.

“Y-yes.” Martin said softly. “Yes. I’d . . . I’d like to be mud again. Please.”

He felt a vast and painful awareness reach into him, and it pulled out the story of a kind, nervous man who was always underestimated.

The mud slid away from the curves and angles of Martin Blackwood. Details fell back one by one - a quiet night working late, a hand gripping desperately at another, a sweater worn threadbare. For a moment, the mud felt the softest sensation of loss. Then a comfortable hunger returned to it and that feeling dissolved. Filled with relief and clarity once more it reached eagerly, gratefully, to grasp its nearby prey.

The two men staggered back, making the sounds that creatures make when they’re afraid, and their short clumsy limbs scrabbled around them. More of the mud came to join it. Dozens upon dozens of limbs, eternally grasping with an ache to wrench and pull, slid up from the ground to encircle the pair.

But this prey was quick. It was armed, and though the simple weapons could not do the mud any real damage, they were enough to knock limbs aside and open gaps in the tangle, clearing a path for escape. The mud stretched so many limbs to their limit, but its prey reached higher ground and soon it could not follow. Instead it watched eyelessly as they ran towards the hills where the ground would be too dry and too solid for mud to form.

There were countless dangers ahead of them, but this one, they’d escaped. They would not be wrapped in a thousand clutching arms, would not feel the grasping fingers twist in their hearts, would not be pulled into the endless down.

As the tangle of its limbs swirled in frustrated hunger, the mud laughed. It laughed, and laughed, in joy and in relief, as the two figures vanished into the distance.

#fanfic #tma #jonmartin #the magnus archives #tma fanfic

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snusbandxknifewife · 3 years

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Not me seeing this post:

And starting an entirely new Jurdan AU based on it lmao. Rated E for “Excessive Mentioning Of Sex Toys”

~~~

Dun dun.

Jude looks up as the front door of her father’s business, Lawn & Order, opens. The bell, added by her eldest sister in an effort to annoy their father, has been going off all day. Work is piling up on the receptionist desk and she curses to herself, knowing that more paperwork means less time outside.

A USPS delivery man walks in, hauling a hand truck nearly overflowing with boxes. Sweat drips down his face, pooling at his collar as Jude decides that maybe a little time in the AC isn’t too bad on a day as hot as this one.

“Sign here,” the obviously exhausted man says as he turns a clipboard towards her.

Funny, Madoc didn’t tell her they’d be getting a delivery today.

Still, she shrugs and absentmindedly signs the clipboard as the man unloads the hand truck with a dramatic groan. She should get up and help him, and, on any other day, she probably would. But today is for licking wounds and pouting.

The clock ticks quietly as Jude considers how she has to file papers and phone customers and clean the shop, just to go home for family dinner where her sister will undoubtedly be moaning about her cheating ass of an ex.

Not sure why she’s surprised, considering he cheated on JUDE with HER.

Taryn and Locke had been a thing officially for only three months, but they’d been sleeping together behind Jude’s back for much longer than that. The very idea makes her skin crawl and she would much rather spend her valuable time cutting someone’s lawn with nail clippers instead of playing nice with her poor heartbroken witch of a twin.

“Have a good one!” Jude clocks back into reality as the USPS man walks out the door, taking his hand truck with him and leaving her to the quiet of the AC unit and the court room tv playing in the corner.

Sighing, she gets up from her leather stool and walks around the counter to pick up the boxes. They look innocent enough, simple white USPS priority mail boxes that she expects to contain samples of seeds or maybe replacement weed whacking string trimmers. She could use some of those, the weed whacker she takes in her truck hasn’t been working as well as usual and Mrs. Mitsgunmins is kind of an asshole about precision.

She lets out a groan as she picks up the top two. The boxes are a lot heavier than she thought they’d be. Puzzled, she sets the two boxes on the counter, leaving behind the other two as she goes on a hunt for some scissors. Making it almost to her father’s office, she cusses audibly as she remembers the hunting knife she keeps in her boot.

It’s been a long fucking day.

Jude hums along to a commercial as she walks back to the counter, pulling out her knife along the way and slicing the tape of the top box. With a whistle, she opens the box and frowns at finding a bunch of little cardboard boxes stuffed inside. What the hell did Madoc order?

Her whistling stops in horror as she picks up one of the packages and spins it around, only to find bold neon print plastered along the front: XXX RECHARGEABLE NIPPLE CLAMPS

“WHAT THE FUCK?” Jude screeches at the top of her lungs as she drops the box and jumps back. Why the hell does her father need some hundred-or-so sets of rechargeable nipple clamps? Why do nipple clamps even need to be charged in the first place?

Taking a moment to steel herself, Jude moves towards the second box—staying as far away from the nipple clamps as possible—and reads the label for an explanation.

Ohhhh, these are for next door. The delivery man must’ve mixed up the addresses.

Letting out a sigh of relief, she pushes the nipple clamps back into their box and closes the lid, checking the other labels and seeing that all four boxes are meant for next door and thanking her lucky stars that Madoc didn’t suddenly decide to get his kink on.

Looking out across the driveway to the innocuous white building beside Lawn & Order, she rolls her eyes. The Sinful Serpent—complete with its shimmering golden apple sign—has been the bane of her father’s existence since it opened a year ago. Every day she has to hear about how he hates sharing space with some gross sex shop. While adult stores aren’t really Jude’s thing, she hasn’t cared too much because she hasn’t had to interact with the store or owner.

Until, she supposes, today.

She stacks the boxes back up and picks them all up with a grunt, thankful for the workout routine that her work provides as she curses the delivery man for taking his hand truck with him.

Only one car is in the parking lot of the sex shop and she celebrates the fact that nobody will see her going into the store. The last thing she needs is people recognizing her workplace on her shirt and bothering her or her dad. It’s already bad enough listening to old men ogle her when she goes to do landscaping work.

The front door is hooked up to an electronic bell that sounds like the twinkle of magic. As she pushes her way into the Sinful Serpent, she lets out a sound of surprise. Whatever she expected a sex shop to look like, this certainly isn’t it.

The entire store is decorated to look like a forest at twilight, with displays cut into bookshelves that look like giant trees and murals depicting faeries dancing through delicate nature landscapes wrapping around the walls. The lighting is low, except for where spotlights illuminate the wares. Over along one wall, by where the lingerie and exotic dancing costumes are, is a stage with a pole, the whole area bathed in blue light and covered in decor like coral. Between the entrance and exit door, the area for the registers resembles a castle.

“Give me a moment,” a voice calls out from within the castle. “I’ve got to check your ID.”

Jude panics, the very suggestion that she might be a customer in a store like this sending her brain into red alert. “I’m not here to shop!”

“The hell you here for then? Last I checked we didn’t have a gloryhole.”

She all but screams, short circuiting at being faced with a worse option than shopping at a store like this. As she tries to think of what to say, a young man pops up from behind the counter and surveys her, his kohl-lined eyes narrowed as he tries to figure out what her deal is.

He’s dressed in all black, his button up shirt undone halfway down his chest, exposing edges of tattoos that she doesn’t study enough to identify. His bottom lip and septum are pierced, as are his ears—which appear to have been elfed, because they end in sharp points. When he crosses his arms in front of his chest, his fingers are covered in glittering rings.

And he’s grinning at her.

“I uh, um,” she shakes her head, and then remembers the heavy boxes she’s hauled all the way over. “I work next door and, uh, the mailman,” she trails off again, her cheeks flaming as she lowers her voice and mutters, “I think he mixed up our addresses.”

His smile widens and his eyes look dangerous as he tilts his head. “And why would you think that?”

She glares at him and he chuckles lowly.

“We didn’t order these.”

“Can you be sure?” He asks, raising one painted nail to tap thoughtfully against his chin. “A landscaping company and adult entertainment store must have some overlap. Ropes and chains come to mind.”

“We don’t need rechargeable nipple clamps!”

“Everybody needs rechargeable nipple clamps,” he counters, his smirk replaced by reverent intensity.

She lets out a frustrated noise and slams the boxes on the counter, her back cracking in protest. “I don’t!”

“Woah! Stow the seriosity, Sunshine,” he lifts his hands in mock surrender. “I’m just playing with you.”

Grinding her teeth and digging her nails into her palms, she does her very best to keep from choking him out as he leans across the counter, his falling shirt collar exposing a necklace with a snake pendant hanging at his sternum.

She goes to spin on her heel and leave, but stops when a door—hidden behind a painting of a faun and nymph doing unspeakable things—opens, revealing a pretty young woman with blue hair pulled up into a messy bun.

“Cardan I can’t find the damn nipple clamps. I thought they were supposed to be delivered today?”

“Don’t worry, Nic,” the young man calls back with a smile. “Sunshine here brought them over.”

Jude, bristling at the title, misses how the woman momentarily blanches when she lays eyes on her. Quickly recovering and putting on a stony face, she walks over to the castle counter and inspects the opened box.

“You look familiar,” she observes and Jude zeroes in on her carefully cool tone. “Don’t you work at that coffee shop downtown? Bean There, Done That?”

“You’re thinking of my twin, Taryn.” Jude bites her tongue, doing her beat to avoid sounding annoyed at being confused with that backstabbing little—

“Sunshine here is our neighbor, Nicasia,” Cardan cheerfully announces. “She got our order and was kind enough to haul it over.”

“My name is Jude,” she grumbles.

He ignores her, leaning in conspiratorially and stage whispering in Nicasia’s ear. “She has insisted that she doesn’t need rechargeable nipple clamps, so surely they must belong to us.”

“Everyone needs rechargeable nipple clamps,” Nicasia whispers back.

“That’s what I said!”

Jude, rooted in place from the pure horror of listening to this conversation, watches as Cardan picks up a pair of scissors and opens a second box; pulling out a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs and grinning when he notices her watching him. Nicasia raises a perfectly groomed brow at the situation before grabbing the box of nipple clamps and heading to restock the shelves.

Once again, he leans forward, fingers spinning the handcuffs around as he smirks at her. “Now that the packages are handled, what can I do you for?”

Jude frowns, sure that he misspoke. It’s then that her phone goes off and she celebrates any excuse to get the fuck out.

Emergency situation at Dr. Wullworth’s. Need you to take over cutting at the Collethes. -Madoc

“I’m good, I’ve got a lawn to trim,” she says, turning off her phone and tucking it back into her pocket.

“Awe, Sunshine, you ain’t gotta clean up for me.”

She tilts her head in confusion before shrugging and turning to leave.

“Gotta go out the other door, Sunshine,” he sighs, almost like he’s disappointed. Weird.

Jude still tries the door, but it won’t open from this side, so she grabs ahold of her pride and walks around the castle counter, moving as quickly as she can and keeping her head down to avoid getting any further education.

“Bye,” she waves her hand awkwardly as she hits the exit door.

“Bye, Sunshine.”

~~~~~

Mostly setup for the AU. Yes all the last names are keysmashes. Yes I did go on early 2 bed’s website and choose random buttons until I found a sex toy that seemed a little odd. (The nipple clamps are rechargeable because they vibrate.) Big thanks to the discord server for helping me with ideas!

Tag list: @cardan-greenbriar-tcp @hizqueen4life @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @thewickedkings @aelin-queen-of-terrasen @cheekycheekycheeks @queen-of-glass @b00kworm @doingmyrainbow @andromeddea @jurdanhell @thesirenwashere @illyrianwitchling @courtofjurdan @clockworkgraystairs @st00pid231 @booksandlewks @fateandluminary

Let me know if you want to be tagged!

#jurdan #Jude Duarte #cardan greenbriar #tfota #tfota fanfic #sex shop/landscaping au #tyrannosaurus lex writes #literally just crack

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seb-owns-these-tatas · 4 years

Text

Sinners in a Pod (Chapter 1)

Updates for this will start posting after Witcher of the Night is finished. So, chapter 1 for this will only be posted right now and shall continue its updates soon. Currently, this is on hiatus. But, please do tell me what you think if you manage to read this! Thank you! 💞

PROLOGUE (Summary)

Characters: Mob/Professor!Henry Cavill x small!stalker!reader (AU)

Warnings: 18+ Blood. Death. Psychopathic issues. The Mafia. Suggestive content and thinking. Stalker and manipulative reader. The word ‘Daddy’ used in different ways? (I don’t even know why this is a warning?) Y/L/N means Your Last Name.

Words: 6.3k

A/N: Il babbo means Father and il compagno means comrade. Tell me if I’m wrong, I’m using google translate on this one. Sorry, if I’m making this on a hiatus. I wanna see how this will click for anyone. Also, the Geralt fic comes first because I wanna finish it. Hehehehe.

TAGLIST WILL BE OPEN FOR THIS ONE! Heehee! Don’t forget to REBLOG, COMMENT OR GIVE FEEDBACK IF YOU DID LOVE THIS CHAPTER! (I hope you would, bb!) IT’LL MAKE ME SMILE! Sorry for the grammatical errors and such because English isn’t my mother tongue!

Disclaimer: PNG’s and pictures used in edits are not mine even the GIF’s too. However, the edits and oneshots are definitely from moi.

MY WORKS ARE NOT NOT NOT NOT NOOOOOOT TO BE POSTED ON ANY OTHER WEBSITES. My official username in Wattpad is “TATATHEPOTATO” and that’s the only other site I have for writing aside from Tumblr. Thank you, Tater tots!

9:35 AM.

Mr. Cavill has been well-known in just his first day of becoming the substitute for your previous professor who has died due to an infectious disease that still had no cure. He has been the main topic of every person in the campus. Your professor in History was a complete hot-shot. An additional fact about him being attractive was his unconventional pedagogic style that can get students listening to every word that leaves his mouth, leaving you all wanting to hear more than just his educational discussions.

His presence definitely aroused each and every women's curiosity in your campus; hearing gossips about how they were willing to be the teacher's pet to have a piece of what your professor could offer like he was being treated as a play thing or some sort of food that they wanted to have a taste despite of how indecent it sounded. The hungry felines were willing and taking their chances, seeming to want and do it to also save their grades from their previous quizzes and special tests that they have taken from the deceased professor.

Until, You started to realized that you were even included in one of those students who was thoroughly affected by his presence; lately comprehending that he was being the main image of your filthy fantasies every night.

Especially whenever you notice how he tries to keep eye contact with you whenever he discusses. Your best friend can see how he kept on taking secretive glimpses without anyone noticing. Nonetheless, one person did and he was unlucky to have been caught by your best friend who promised to never lie and keep secrets when it involves you.

Though, there are certain situations that should be kept from her. Specifically the part about what happens every night with the idea of your professor fucking you like he'd never want you to walk for seven days straight.

That kind of fucking where you both can be considered as animals in a rut.

It took one look from your best friend to know that he was staring again. You could imagine his piercing ocean blue eyes that had a speck of brown drowning with it; observing every breath and move you make under those black spectacles of his. Curly hair gelled back looking professional but so tempting to be yanked hard.

You suddenly shook your head at the thought, blinking hard while you tried to keep focus on your paper.

Your best friend was done with her pre-test, but you weren't. She kept on silently but repeatedly snapping her fingers under her desk, giving you a signal that he was doing it again. You tried hard ignoring your best friend who was just clearly beside you; bringing you into a much more dangerous scenario by having your test incomplete or rather receiving a failing grade that would make you repeat this subject again.

Then, you'd remember the professor who could get you writhing under his gaze. He was also one of your fantasies---the one and only who could get you off every night---though, leaving you insatiable and craving for more.

Immodest thinking, but it was worth it every time you came.

"Daddy's lookin' again, hunny! Oh, teach me your ways, please! I would so let him fuck my ass raw, I tell you," She whisper-yelled knowingly. Only silence can be heard from around the four corners of the room, constant pages being flipped one by one, triggering you into panicking more than you should because you were still stuck on page one. You eyed the multiple choice that was written. 'Is it A? B? Or C?'

Your eyes narrowed on your test paper, struggling to think of an answer for the last question of the first page. The pen in your hand stopped on letter B, and in one quick motion. You encircled the whole letter before turning to the next page in a jiffy, never thinking whether your answer was right or wrong.

A small creak from your best friend's chair caught your attention, half on the test and half on your noisy best friend; seeming to be the person who was asking you answers when you haven't even finished the damned test yet.

"Psst! Bitch!"

You've sighed an exasperated one from being constantly distracted by everyone and especially from the penetrating gaze you could feel whenever Mr. Cavill tries to check on how everyone was doing from his desk.

"Ms. Rodriguez, I would rather like it if you try and keep your hands on your desk when you're done with the test,"

All together, the whole class turned their heads towards your best friend who had a panicking, shocked look written on her face. Her eyes seeming to tell she was guilty of trying to distract you while you answer the paper at hand. She evidently gulped, nodding silently and tentatively slipping her palms across her desk like a child getting a scolding. Embarrassment filling her body, the paper beneath her hands appearing to be more interesting rather than the gossip she ought to tell.

Mr. Cavill looked to be insouciant from her tricks, His eyes completely blank, cochineal lips forming a thin line from what he had in mind, "You all have thirty minutes left," the suave and sophisticated twang of his accent got you shifting in your seat. His baritone timbre that kept you up every night; never failing to give your core a throb whenever you get to listen to it personally rather than imagining it had you fidgeting with the sharp ends of your test paper.

He leaned back in his seat, the obvious bulk in his arms protruding once it was crossed. Your professor had always wore that extra tight, white dress shirt despite how it was popping out due to his sinewy biceps. The thatch of his chest hair slipping above the second to the last button of his clothing. You knew he was jacked in the flesh, the filament of his muscles straining out of his clothing which gives you images of what he could be like when he was stark-naked.

You had a bad habit of daydreaming in the wrong time.

Those Lapis Lazuli were brilliant under the morning sunlight that was escaping through the windows. Those eyes that you've been able to memorize landed on you, a sudden jolt in your insides made you feel warm and tingly.

"Please, do finish the test before the time is up, Students."

You were the first to break his gaze, the papers were an important matter and you didn't want to fail. Reason to that is because you didn't want to disappoint him by giving him a result that could make him think that you were never actually have been listening to his lessons and have just been daydreaming about his pretty little mouth on yours every day.

It was illicit of you to even think about having his mouth on yours or all over your body, exploring you till his curiosity would be answered and the same goes to yours. The devil was probably grinning in hell because of how risquè your thoughts have been.

Your soul was probably going to burn in hell.

Yet, on second thought; all seemed to be worth it.

Especially when you've been trying to stalk him for about two weeks already.

You haven't been caught yet; but, the idea of being collared seem to be a prize when you were a sinner.

10:05 AM.

"Time's up, everyone." Mr. Cavill's smooth, reverberant voice made you jump in your seat. You were only on the third page of your test and there were three pages left. The sheer frustration went to your head, emitting a vocal groan and a hard bite on your dried up lips. Every loud beat of your heart made your hand tremble in panic. Your eyes skimmed through every question, randomly circling any letter as long as you get to finish the damn test and not be left alone. Despite how anxious it made you feel, deep inside; you knew you were anticipating such a moment.

"Its time to pass your papers. Get your bags and you can go, I'll be seeing you guys tomorrow," He spoke in a monotone manner, his chair creaking once he stood up tall and lusty, grabbing onto the pile of papers, neatly stocking every test one by one with those hefty, streaking fingers of his as each student passed by in front of him. Some women slyly sparing him a glance, trying to check him out and that outstanding derriere of his as they smirked and quietly giggled on their way out.

Your tall, lanky but quite fit block mate stood along the threshold. His bright hazel eyes, tanned skin and dark red lips drawn with a grin as he held onto nothing but his pen; known to be a nerd but also a philanderer who had innocuous looks that appeared to be like he spends his time nose diving in games and books, "Have a great day, Mr. Cavill!"

"You too, Brent."

You could feel your breath shortening, grappling to answer your test urgently. Your breath hitched when somebody tapped your shoulder, you turned to look at the person you were expecting, but was left disappointed when you saw your best friend eyeing your papers; scrutinizing everything inside her head.

"Oh, you're doomed, Y/N." She inspected your answers and observed how her brows raise in an uncanny way, obtrusively telling that your answers were beyond incorrect. There were still students inside the room, slowly taking their time to leave before undergoing another set of lessons to be learned soon from their other professors.

"---I'll get going now, see you later, Chiquitita!"

She didn't even gave you a chance to ask some answers to your tests. What are friends even for?

Once the door was shut by her and others who left one by one, it was like every blood in your veins stopped cycling. No noise could be heard. You could feel an intense pair of ocean blue eyes began shooting you holes through your body that gave you the shivers.

Now, it was just you, him and nobody else.

You mentally gave yourself a slap for not reviewing for his test. It was quite embarrassing for him to see how you were struggling for a test that was undoubtedly easy for everyone.

"Ms. Y/L/N," Your professor started completely unfazed by your endeavor to get the test done in a minute. You breathed out a breath in utter frustration, closing your eyes and capping your pen closed. The time was up.

A large, warm hand gently clasped your shoulder, and you were sure you felt the imaginary sparks from it that also held a flush of shivers, creating a reaction that made your whole body go rigid.

"---Don't rush, you have all the time." Mr. Cavill surprisingly spoke in his calm, low voice. Warm, comforting heat gathered in a close proximity and before you could even realize what was happening; he was already hovering from behind, checking your answers for you.

His breathtaking face were inches away from you, his perfect side profile seen from your peripheral vision and his spectacles slightly falling on his tall, pointy nose. The dimple on his nose winsome for your taste and for every thirsty felines as well. Eyelashes long that can be considered as pretty, an exact length to beautify his eyes a lot more than it would. There was something mysterious about what lies beneath his bright azure eyes. Something dark was laying deep inside of it but it was a locked up window that nobody could ever get to see and understand.

Something about him was making you more intrigued for what his lifestyle is and the more curious you are, the more you were getting yourself at risk. Deeper. Intrusive. You were going to risk it all.

The deep scar on the top of his right eye brow distracted you from thinking anymore else. It looked like a battle scar that he once got from a fight, and it was quite interesting to see such a perfect face that held a flaw; telling you he was actually human after all and not a prince in your dreams.

"Ms. Y/L/N, I suppose you never listen to any of my lessons, am I correct?"

Oh, the way he says your last name always made you sin. Heat traveled towards your face, and some even had the audacity to travel down south. It was wrong.

You had to stop.

"I-I..I do, Sir." You struggled to keep your mind straight. Your eyes stared straight at the whiteboard in front of you, never giving him a glance.

Those heavy gaze of his fell on you; piercing and utterly inquisitive; giving your heart a chance to leave the curiosity before he would want to pry a lot about you that you couldn't imagine him to know, you could feel the disappointment within his eyes that crushed your hopes in making him proud.

"All of your answers are incorrect. It seemed like you've been guessing your answers the whole time,"

Shame and guilt was all you felt at that exact moment. The ends of Mr. Cavill's lips formed a tight thin line before languidly curving into a small, sinister smile that he never gave to any of his students. Yet, you were an exception.

"Must I say, do I sound uninteresting for you?"

An excruciating ring of your school bell rang loudly enough for you to jerk on your seat. You couldn't deny the intense attraction you were feeling towards your professor. The windows weren't locked anymore, and you knew for a fact that you've seen the treacherous glint in his eyes; giving you the key for you to decide if you wanted to enter. Deep down something diabolical lived inside and it left you curious enough to dig down whatever hidden darkness it could be.

"I..I.." You anxiously trailed off and stared into his eyes, feeling yourself get enticed by the gorgeous hues around his dark pupils. He was bold enough to stare back, his face too close for your liking.

"You think I don't notice it at all, do you? you're interested---curious even and that curiosity of yours will risk you a lot, sweetheart."

The words that came out of his mouth were utmost accurate, you felt your throat become dry from getting caught red-handed and from how he could read you with his eyes. Your professor was totally unbelievable and you didn't know whether or not he was just too conceited enough to say it straight to your face like it wasn't wrong nor indecent.

"I think...y-you got everything wrong, sir." you quickly scrambled out of your seat, books falling from your hands and you crouched down to get it, yet your professor was faster than you. He gathered those fallen books and stood undeniably tall, placing them on your opened palms. His eyes absolutely unreadable. You couldn't see what his emotions are at the moment, and it was terrifying to see that he looked like a sociopath for one second before playfulness have been replaced within his eyes.

He looked down at you, a small smile on show, "You think? No, Darling,---" Mr. Cavill momentarily paused with a smirk that got you swallowing the uncomfortable, heated feeling down your throat.

"---I know what's running inside those pretty head of yours and I assure you, it can be shameless and utterly unchaste as it can get,"

Without any second thought, you had everything around your arms; running out of the room. Never looking back at your professor who lowly chuckled to himself, seeing how he connected the dots with the right pattern. He knew you would end up walking with the same path as him, together and as one because of how you were hunting him down behind his back.

You were only acting. He could feel it.

Your unfinished paper was left on your desk, the ends of your test so wrinkly from the hard tugs while you tried remembering the right answers to those questions on his test. He remembered your face, he remembers every move you make all day and Henry knew you've been his shadow for the last two weeks like a canine he didn't remember that he has adopted.

Mr. Cavill had your papers at hand. He smiled to himself and with no doubt, he ticked every question correct despite of your wrong answers.

You passed his test and darkness was bound to happen soon.

10:20 PM.

The strange encounter you had with your professor didn't stop your undying attraction towards him, to be honest. It lured you into knowing more about him; becoming selfish to the point of being invasive, secretly following him around to find details about him and his life. All you knew was his name and that he was your History teacher.

William Cavill. That was his name. Other than that, there was nothing you ever did know except for where he lived. In a basic, plain rental apartments where everyone had one gate to begin with. You've noted that in your hidden diary made just for men who'd reach the point of being stalked by yourself. The kind of level where you plan on breaking inside his house to find more information because your lack of knowledge about him was frustrating you from the start.

You would try breaking into his apartment soon enough.

His place wasn't extravagant like how you imagined him to be, owning no car as he walks home and sometimes take public vehicles to arrive in your university like a normal human.

He wasn't rich. Though, his features could mistake him as a prince. Deserving more than to live in a ramshackle apartment.

You've lost track of Mr. Cavill and his whereabouts. One minute you were just following him in discreet, and now he was nowhere to be seen after turning at a sketchy street that made your feet stop from following him.

'Am I turning into a nutjob? No. I'm doing this to know him better, know what he likes or dislikes, knowing more about him that a typical woman would do. This is for the better and he probably will like it if he knew, I need to jot down things that will make him like me,' You thought to yourself, your feet trembling with every step you took; the brisk, cold wind making it difficult for you to keep steady as you walked through the dark, strange street that your professor just walked in minutes ago.

There was finally light after walking through a dark path; feeling like it could've been a new beginning for your life if you were being metaphoric. You've seen a streetlamp beside a locked up door and a dumpster. It was the only light you could see. From your perspective, the end of the street was a dead end.

You were about to turn around, thinking that this might be a trap for being caught because your professor was no where to be seen. Up until, you've squinted your eyes at two men talking farther away from the lamp, hiding amongst the silhouette of the night sky. One voice quite foreign and the other recognizable by your ears.

The pitter-patters of your feet were stealthy, strolling closer and closer towards danger zone.

"Did the Rossi's hired you?" there was a hint of Italian from the stranger's voice, you managed to move and hide beside the huge dumpster, and it was the right hiding place because you could see and hear everything.

Everything including Mr. Cavill's features. Howbeit, without the black spectacles.

Why was he here and why is he interrogating a man? a man that also seemed familiar to you?

"You just don't know when to shut up, will you?" He curtly spat, the usual calmness whenever he talks in front of his students was now gone and replaced with a very ill-mannered tone. A tone you didn't expect to come out from him because he was pretty much a reserved and refined man.

"I am living a good life by being a professor in St. Hallmark Institute. But, you've come to try and ruin everything,"

"I've never ruined anything in the first place. It was you who made your own destiny. You've told secrets to other people that was meant to be buried deep in the ground, Henry. Finally, I found you---we were all looking for you,"

Henry? who was Henry? All you knew was that his name was 'William Cavill' and not the Henry that he was talking about.

Your hands began trembling with your back against the dumpster, eyes popping out of its eye sockets from all the scenarios happening.

The more you wait, the clamorous and intense their voices have become, "You're a Cavill, yes? I've known that unimpeachable but minatory gaze in your eyes. A family where everyone kills for a living, one of his son's best known hit man in Jersey; definitely the best out of the rest and people have been striving to find you---wanting to experience services that would definitely be worth the shot because you've struggled to learn everything---trained to become unstoppable. Although, there is one mistake that runs in the family,---" pause, "Your daddy never misses, yes?" The man dragged on and on, he was walking on a path of burning coal and fire. Hence, you were sure he was soon going to get a beating out of what gossips he was saying.

You closed your eyes, breathing quieter than normal; scared to get caught listening to their conversation. You heard a thud on the wall beside you, and it was because your professor boldly strangled the man around his neck, choking him to the point of taking his life out of it. His rage seen from how the veins on his temples were protruding and aching to burst from his anger.

Your fingers trembled from the sudden violence. Downright feeling frightened for what was going to happen with the pestilent man who wanted to get onto his wick, provoking to turn him into a savage animal who wouldn't deliberate for the kill. This man was bringing back memories that Henry wanted to avoid and forget after months of thriving.

But, it never happens because he was born to assassinate and the memories and guilt continued to haunt him forever.

"U-Until, he missed the part that your mother wasn't the target, but your weak, senile, clumsy il babbo aimed the sniper at her head," The man was trudging with fire, a fire that wouldn't be easy to kill.

You heard a cock of somebody's gun, and a deep hitch of breath from the stranger. He violently thrashed against his hold as he could see the gun tucked between the side of his pants. The barrel of the gun shiny beneath the moon light. The Italian clawed on Henry's large hand that was wrapped around his neck with a vice grip. Your professor didn't felt any remorse, nor guilt. Only amusement after trying to spur him on.

"It's quite a shame that you think of me that way," he smiled, a pure wicked beam that you haven't seen since then, cocking his head to the side as he gave him a frightening glare and a simple raise of his eyebrow, "---I'm definitely not like my father because when I hold a gun?" Mr. Cavill seethed through clenched teeth and a tight jaw, "---missing a target would be one of my greatest mistakes and I haven't had any blunders since then,"

"---I never risk to make any mistakes, Leo. I'm far different from my father. When I annihilate a target, I don't think twice and I know you've heard the gossips,"

Leonardo Bianchi desperately tried to fight off the hand that was slowly killing him. After a few more attempts, he have seen that there was no escape and that he'd click the switch inside Henry's head to become the lethal weapon that he was born to be.

The family has given him the go signal. Leonardo has only been a pawn for the family's success into whatever decision they had for the only Cavill that was left alive. But, he had hunt him down; catching the beast as to where it lived; hunting down its location. But, tonight will be the night he reaches his demise, and the man definitely knows it when he'd been given the order to stay close and find what they needed.

Leonardo was just merely their cat's paw.

He loudly laughed manically, breathing labored as the latter heaved to live for his family that was held hostage by the organization that he was in. If he wasn't alive before they get to track him down then his very own family---the real ones---will lose a father and a person who protects them from treacherous doings that he had been involved.

"I won't be the only one rotting in hell, Henry---" he deadpanned, "---you are too because revenge can be bittersweet and you're living for it,"

Mr. Cavill's smile turned upside down into a phlegmatic grimace, sliding the pistol out of his black trench coat that was tucked in between his pants before closely aiming the gun right in the middle of Leonardo's forehead, sweat began to roll down Leonardo's temples from the fear of being dead in the middle of a dead end street. Henry's eyes held no sympathy and just undying wrath for how his past was haunting him down no matter what he does. No matter what he does, they always crawl back like they have been hiding under his bed since then.

Leonardo Bianchi shut his eyes before death could even take him. He knew then and there he was going to die because whenever one does get to find the hit man that every familia wanted to get a hold to, they die in that exact day; complicating their trackers and showing them the wrong location until Henry decides to leave whatever life he created in his current one.

Though, he doubt that he'll be leaving this place for good today. Maybe, fate was about to take its turn and play the wild card.

"Let's share hell together then, il compagno."

It didn't take two seconds before you've heard the blaring sound of a gun going off; never thinking twice about pulling the trigger. He was dead, just like that; leaving his family in the past of his sins.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Everything was gory. The bullet punctured the wall where Leonardo's head was roughly pushed with his dreams and faith that has been crushed in just a single bullet and because of one malefactor that you didn't expect to see.

Mr. Cavill killed a man with his gun and he wasn't just any man; the Italian man was his co-worker, a fellow professor too who went with the name 'Aaron Anderson' who also hid his Italian accent with a rough southern intonation of his tongue.

He was your new Physical Education professor last week ago and now Mr. Anderson was laying on the cold, hard ground on a dead end street.

Henry slipped the gun in his trench coat for safety; audibly sighing for a sight that he never knew would happen again. However, they took three months before he was found again rather than those weeks that they've taken for him to be hunted down. He didn't need another re-location of his life in another country or place; the latter was pleased to be a professor in your university, living in a secluded and a slightly run down rental apartment which was needed for his bolthole; so he would hardly be found.

Crimson blood pooled along the ground, he crouched before Leonardo; his eyes wide opened to tell that he was fighting to live with a gun on his head. Yet, Henry apathetically stared at his pale, bloody face, showing no ounce of pity for the whole situation. He took his white handkerchief tucked in his coat pockets, expunging the blood that coated on his thick fingers before bluntly throwing it on Leonardo's face. Once his rue was clean and forgotten, he firmly stood on his feet like this has been a daily occurrence for years end.

Curiosity killed the cat and care was too obsessed over the Cheshire cat. Now, she was left to deteriorate for letting her other professor be killed by his own co-worker.

Your hands began trembling and your breath was getting the best of you. Hence, it added more panic when the rough, relaxed sounds of footfall started to echo closer and closer before it ceased before the dumps that was behind you.

A faint click of a button has been heard before hearing his low, satiny timbre of his voice nearby; feeling as if eyes were boring into your head while you have been rooted, crouching beside the dumps.

"Blind alley. East side. You know where I am because I know you track me down, Huntsman. Go check your fucking tracker---yeah, yeah. Another bullshit of a carcass. Shot in the head, mate. Got blood on my hands again---it was the first time for the last three months though,"

He sounded like he was just talking dinner with the caller on his phone. Too stolid for what he has done after the shooting. Thus, you've heard soft tapping of his foot on the ground, nearer than it ever has been.

"---I want the whole fucking alley pasteurized in less than ten minutes, got it?" he brusquely ordered around, giving a moment for the caller to finish whatever he or she was saying before you've heard Henry scoff from above your head; making you audibly hitch your breath, "---Don't act like you aren't following me around and that you live nearby,"

You were caught. The cat was captured from her sheer curiosity. Cats have seven lives based on the sayings. Nevertheless, you only had one left for tonight.

It felt as if a bucket of ice was thrown on your head. The eerie, tranquil silence for waiting whatever it is that his friend wanted to say was killing you alive. You began to breathe fast, hyperventilating in your space as your nails scratched the clothing of your knees, panic was rising through and becoming uncontrollable.

Sure, you were a stalker. But, did you deserve to die in the same place where your P.E professor has been killed? will you accept the fact that you'll be perished by the man who was worth the obsession before you knew he was a convict?

If so, then why was your core still throbbing to be caught like it was giving you thrill and excitement to be lured in?

"---Might have caught a witness this time," Henry bluntly confessed, his tone quite exuberant from the expected emotion you imagined him to be in; sounding like he caught the biggest fish in the sea as he went on to talk.

"---Don't worry. This one's mine. I'll do all the interrogating tonight,"

Then, you've heard the shuffling of his clothes, thinking that he'd tuck his phone inside his pockets before you've felt him crouch beside you; slowly and painstakingly.

Warm set of thick fingers clasped onto your fretful ones, his touch sending sparks and probably knives from how tender yet threatening it felt; like his softness had a trade of contract with the Grim Reaper because he didn't seem to be like a person whose heart was delicate, virtuous and guileless like how you've imagined him to be.

His face can trick you into imagining him to be the opposite of what he actually was. An unfortunate disguise that he had which infatuated you to the core. Literally.

He pried those hands away from fidgeting over your knee, his eyes burning you alive as it felt so heavy on the side of your face.

"You shouldn't have followed me, sweetheart."

His presence was near. Too near for you to handle the bad omen lingering around. Your heart stopped beating from the moment those thick, rough, calloused fingers reach out to lightly clasp around the width of your soft, silky neck. The loose grip more frightening than to receive a rougher one because it was giving you mixed signals that you've hit a nerve and your death was just being postponed for minutes.

You've unconsciously swallowed, "You've seen the murder. I know you were a smart one no matter how you were always misbehaving---but, this time; you behaved like the good girl that your parents have always believed in," Henry whispered in your ear; his fiery, hot breath fanning the side of your face in ways that got your heart pounding in such crazy exhilaration. Shivers began to shake your spine, leaving you scared and thrilled for your life.

His thumb grazed along the edge of your jaw, your primal focus on his hand ghosting over your neck like he was planning to choke you alive. Henry could have it, he could do just that with how you've easily submitted to the murderer of your night.

Those cobalt eyes were cryptic. An enigma that kept you insane and wanting for more because of how secretive he was that got you following him around. But, you obviously couldn't deny the tremor of being caught by the man himself.

Your professor forcefully turned your head to look straight into his face. Thus, there you notice splotches of blood has painted his face; such perfect canvas that has been ruined by the blood of the person's life that he has taken. Henry was almost perfect, too perfect that it leaves you thoroughly intrigued for what flaw he had because you knew, deep down; there was something more.

His nose nuzzled upon yours, the dimples of his nose slightly grazing as he lowly seethed with spite and utter sophistication, "If you were any normal person, you should have left me alone since the last two weeks,"

He knew.

Mr. Cavill knows he was being followed by you and nothing was more frightening than a smirking devil who hid behind a picturesque face that would make you kneel before him like his Acolyte. Though, you were just thinking about it that you haven't even realized you were already glorifying him before you even know it.

His breath met your mouth. Your veins were flowing faster than it ever does before, much more than your orgasms could ever take. You lightly scoffed, sounding a little more shakier than how you imagined it to be, worried about everything you've done for the last two weeks. Your actions thoroughly inconspicuous.

The stalker title taken seriously like you have done it for a long time.

"But, I'm far from sane, Sir."

You knew you were. Saying it out loud was so bold in your part. But, if you were being honest it felt like this whole shaken girl that he was seeing has just been all an act that you wanted to manipulate.

Manipulation was just the icing on the cake because you could do more than that for the man you love. The facade that everyone sees was just merely a veil that came with your fancy dress, drinking wine as you let all the plans go through your head that was written inside your secret diary that was buried under the Sycamore tree that your mother loves to disregard because of how high maintenance it was, close to reaching its death as you noticed the leaves falling every day like bad-omen was coming. Hence, she didn't like how ghastly it appeared to be like; making it a better spot for your secrets to be kept under the pile of shattered dreams and bones.

If your mother wouldn't love the horrible ones, then you were willing to appreciate its natural beauty despite of how hideous it was for everyone.

Once you love someone or something, you never let it go that easily; reaching to the level that you would do everything in your will power to get and have what you want.

Henry's grip tightened in a way that got you grinning like a Cheshire cat, he was playing a game where he was trying to let you run for the hills. Mr. Cavill was mindlessly telling you that your life wasn't useful nor significant to him; though, you knew he didn't have it in him to place the gun on your temples because if he did then you should've been dead right now.

Deep within the waves of his ocean, you've seen something valuable that can be useful for you. Your lips curled wider as you've read his eyes that secretly tells you that he was more than interested for the poker game because of the cards he set beneath his palms; confidently assured that he would win.

He had a three of a kind.

But, you hold out a straight flush.

"---I doubt you're sane for stalking me around like it is a normal thing for a student like you,"

You quietly giggled beneath being dominated within his reach. Your tongue slipped out of your mouth, the wet muscle sticking out to lick the cupid's bow of his lips which made your crime-filled professor growl from the sudden action. He harshly huffed out of his mouth, giving you a menacing flicker of his Cobalt eyes which made you laugh out louder as the pungent, metallic scent of blood wafted through both of your noses.

Tag, he was it.

Now, you had more reasons to pry into his life more than how you were invited. Howbeit, Invitations weren't needed because your strong determination was enough to trespass into his dangerous world.

FEEDBACKS ARE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED, BB! (Strikethrough means I couldn’t tag the user. Please do check your settings, dollies!) PLEASE DO REBLOG! 🥰

Taglist for Sinners in a Pod: @amirahiddleston, @iloveyouyen, @godohammers, @uncoolcloudyhead, @marvelousell, @boundtomyfate, @evansislife, @rahdaleigh, @justine-en, @agniavateira, @maan24, @fangirl-inthe-us, @mary-ann84 @snatchedbylele

#henry cavill #henry cavill x you #henry cavill x y/n #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill x female reader #Henry cavill x small!fem!reader #henry cavill x little!reader #henry cavill fic #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fandom #mob!henry cavill #mob!henry cavill x y/n #mob! henry cavill x reader #hc #mafia #mafia fic

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tired-college-student-writing · 4 years

Text

Tim’s Secret Weapon pt. 12

I’ve been slightly obsessed with @ozmav ‘s Damian Wayne/Marinette Dupain-Cheng pairing as of late, and just saw a post that has inspired me more than anything else has in months, so I felt the need to write it

Summary- Tim has always seen the numbers floating above people’s heads, been able to perceive their threat levels with a single glance. After being a hero for so long he thought he was desensitized to seeing high numbers above people’s heads until Damian brings a new friend home.

Part 1

Part 11

Part 12(HERE)

Part 13

____________________________________________

Jason had started cackling as soon as Tim explained why he was cross, pulling the ring from his hand and tossing it back to its proper owner. Damian Bruce and Alfred were intrigued by the prospect by the fact Jason was predestined to be a miraculous wielder. Dick, on the other hand, was pouting at Jason being ‘officially more of a cat than him.’

“You’re not a black cat,” Tim snapped, using the door frame to stay upright, glaring at the stark white number over Jason’s head, “He may claim he’s all about destruction but it’s who he was made into not who he is at his core.”

“What?” Jason huffed, “You’re the one that said my number went up to 15! I’m a cat now, I’m leaving the birds to join Selina.”

“No,” He nearly growled in frustration, staggering over to the couch, “Adrian is the real cat here. At his core, he’s sweet and kind and trustworthy, but he also has chaos at his center. He can destroy a person he believes deserves it without a second thought, tarnish a reputation permanently with no remorse if he believed it was the best course of action, manipulate a person into behaving how he wants with precision and grace without anyone realizing that the ray of sunshine would be able to do so. He’s literally destruction. You aren’t like that Jason, not at your core. You’re a true holder, but you aren’t a Black Cat.”

The room was silent as he finally finished and he couldn’t help, but look around at their stunned faces with confusion. Even the Kwamis had frozen from where they had been whispering on the side table, glancing between each other and Tim.

“What?” He snapped, too tired to deal with anything else tonight.

“You’ve only just met Adrian,” Kim drew out, “And just spouted off stuff I never knew about the sunshine boy with such confidence I’m pretty sure you’re not lying.”

“What do you mean? Of course, I know that stuff, can’t you guys tell it too? That’s just what I can tell from observing if I really wanted to know anything important about him I’d have to do research,” He explained with a groan as he leaned against Dick’s shoulder.

Dick just looked down at him in amazement, “No Timmy, most people can’t tell that kind of stuff just from spending a few hours with someone.”

“Huh? You guys never acted like I was crazy before,” He pointed out looking at his brothers.

“I always assumed you researched our targets before we needed the information,” Bruce hummed, “We had meant to ask you how you knew some of the skills you had listed when you had never met the heroes before making the entries in your journal.”

“I mean I did look up some stuff, but isn’t most of that stuff common knowledge?”

Jason snorted, “I didn’t know Bruce spoke Portuguese before reading his journal entry, replacement. I can say with confidence that there’s no video footage of B or Bats speaking or reading Portuguese anywhere or any reason you should know that before I even kicked the bucket.”

“I…” Tim tried to think back, to why he knew this information, where he had put together the man had known so many languages.

“Tim,” Marinette piped up, “What languages does everyone in here speak?”

“French and English.”

His deadpan earned an eye roll from her, “No, I meant past that. Start with your family and then my team, tell me all the languages. Go.”

He was skeptical of what she was trying to do but decided not to question it, “All the bat speak Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, and BSL. Bruce knows Romanian, Portuguese, Dutch, Cantonese, and Greek. Alfred speaks German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Polish. Dick speaks Romani, Romanian, Dutch, and Russian. Jason has Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, and Russian. I can do Japanese, Romanian, German and Polish.

Damian knows Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, and is just short of fluent in Romanian.”

His eyes turned to the Parisian teens, ignoring the surprise at their extensive list of languages, “ Adrian knows Mardiran and Japanese. Chloe knows Japanese. Kim is fluent in Vietnamese and is nearing passable in German. Max knows Korean and Safan. Alix knows Ancient Egyptian and Arabic. Kagami knows Japanese and Mandarin. Viperion knew quite a bit of Italian but wasn’t quite fluent. Marinette knows Italian, is nearly fluent in Arabic and… actually, I’m not sure what the last one is, but it’s ancient, something close to Sino-Tibetan I think?”

Eyes flashed around the room, before settling on Tim.

“Seriously?” Tim groaned, “None of you knew that?”

Jason's eyes flashed to Damien, “Since when do you speak Romanian?”

He scowled, the tips of his ears burning, “It was going to be a surprise for Grayson, I was hoping to be fluent by his birthday…”

Marinette broke in before any of the brothers could make a comment, “Tim, Damien only practiced Romanian when he knew everyone was out of the house. Nor should you know about the Guardian Language.”

“Guardian Language?” He whispered, head too fuzzy for him to process more than that.

She winced a little, “When the role of Guardian was handed over to me, the language of the Guardians was basically downloaded into my head. It allows me to read the Guardian Grimoire and perform the spells within it to heal kwamis, fixing broken miraculous or create potions to allow them different abilities they don’t usually possess. Usually, there’s a lot of training to be able to deal with the new knowledge being shoved into their heads but my gaining of the guardianship was more than a little unorthodox so I had to deal with migraines for about six months after. I had to decode the secrets for myself even with knowing the language.”

“I don’t even know what the Guardian is,” Tim whispered as the truth set it, “I really shouldn’t know this stuff about you guys…”

“Another aspect of your power, no doubt,” Alfred cut in, “Hardly the worst thing in the world for a detective to have intuition-based knowledge of the people he’s looking up, hmm?”

Tim laughed, “Thanks, Alfred.”

The butler merely nodded, “However, I am fairly certain Master Tim hasn’t been truthful about how much sleep he’s gotten this week and a miraculous drain is dangerous even when well-rested, I suggest suspending this discussion until a proper hour?”

Damien gave him an innocuous look, “ You tried to lie to Pennyworth? Are you completely braindead.”

“Panicking over my secret being out means lots of comfort coffee,” He groaned back as he attempted to bury himself in Dick’s side.

“Go to sleep Replacement,” Jason huffed, as Dick pulled the other man to his feet. Zombie Tim's duty was something they all had plenty of experience in. It wasn’t long before he was stripped of his costume and sweatpants and an oversized tee pulled on over his bike shorts.

Tim barely registered the lights being turned off as he was bundled into bed, half asleep already.

When Tim arose the next morning he was surprised to see it was only 8 am, seven hours after when he remembered his brother’s getting him to bed. Typically, after the kind of crash, he felt last night he needed a solid thirteen hours of sleep and two cups of coffee to feel this alive again. His answer came from the tiny horse resting on the nightstand.

“Kaalki? What are you doing here?”

“Kwami healing,” She offered in an attempt to be nonchalant as she floated up in front of him, “ Tikki is best at it but every Kwami, barring Plagg, can offer some form of rejuvenation to those who need it. My way of healing is to replenish the energy that has been lost in a timely manner. It was the least I could do after causing you so much distress last night.”

Tim frowned and offered a flat hand for her to land on, “Don’t do that, there’s no blame on you or Marinette or anyone else. Accidents happen, and it’s not like there’s an instruction book on miraculous and metas.”

She fidgeted, “I believe you are correct but I still felt bad for causing such harm to befall you.”

Tim just shook his head, “Either way, thank you. I feel amazing right now.”

She smiled, “Perhaps if you hurry you can join your family for breakfast, I heard they were setting out to leave soon.”

He quickly pulled on his clothes and did his morning routine in the ensuite before entering the main room where his family froze in place as they were pulling on coats and shoes.

“What the fuck are you doing up?” Jason hissed, ready to force him back into bed.

“Kwami magic has its perks,” Tim defended, hands raised in surrender as Kaalki floated next to him, “I feel more awake then I have in years.”

Alfred grinned, “Ah yes, I remember how Duusu would help us relax after battles. Well come along then,

Marinette squinted at him judgingly, trying to figure out how he was allowed out by his family before Kaalki darted from his jacket over to Max’s. Instead, she just huffs and begins leading the entire group of heroes towards her parents’ bakery, Damien quickly falling in step to her left, glaring at Adrian who had fallen into step on her right.

“SO, replacement,” Jason drawled, dropping an arm around the short brother’s shoulders, “I didn’t get to ask last night cause you looked more zombie then me, but if I’m not a cat, what am I?”

“I don’t even know where to start with miraculous,” Tim huffed, pushing the older man away, “Where would I even start with which miraculous to give to you?”

“Well, how about we give you a starting point,” Adrian asked, turning to walk backwards so he could look at them with a twinkling smile, “Miraculous are broken into two categories, indirect and direct. Direct miraculous powers affect the target of the power directly like the Bee’s venom freezing someone, while the Indirect affect the world around the target, like the Horse’s teleportation. The Black Cat and Ladybug fall outside of the groupings as they’re both direct and indirect. Indirect users can’t use Direct miraculous effectively and can even have adverse effects of transforming too long and vice versa. So does Jason feel like a direct or indirect holder.”

“Indirect,” Tim started, finding the words just started flowing as he stared at the 11 swirling about over his brother’s head, “Jason’s cocky and more stubborn than the Blue Boyscout if you get him going, but he’s also loyal to a fault and filled with so much determination I’m not sure whether to be scared or impressed. No matter how angry he is at someone, or how much he thinks they deserve the consequences of their actions he will be there to protect them by any means necessary. He may talk tough and act stupid but he’s unbelievably wise with instincts unparalleled by normal humans when it comes to trust and how to get out of sticky situations. He can and will kill, but only if it’s the only option left to make it out of a situation alive.”

Jason scowled and pulled on the end of his jacket sleeve as he looked away, “Geez, rip me open why don’t you?”

“Hey, you asked,”

Marinette stared at him with a cryptic eye, “No, he’s right I can see it. I think I know what miraculous to give you.”

Tim’s attention fell away from the conversation as Jason tried to pry the newly found information from the young Guardian. Because that was the least of his worries.

Not when his eyes landed on vibrant blue hair, strikingly familiar, attached to a man sitting on the wall around the Seine, strumming his guitar absentmindedly.

“Found you,” Tim said, causing the man in front of him to smile up at him.

“That was quick,” He laughed, the thick gothic steel-colored 13 made his blue eyes take on a silver hue.

“It’s easy to spot such a high number when most don’t reach past six,” He shrugged.

“You and I aren’t very different, you know?” Steely grey 13 offered, looking back to his guitar.

“I think the masks gave that away,” Tim mussed, “I’m Tim.”

“Luka, Luka Couffaine,” Steely Grey 13, Viperion, Luka offered easily, “And I meant past the masks.”

“How do you mean then, Luka?”

The younger man looked up at him and waved a hand at the chair across from him, “How about you take a seat, Uccellino, and we can compare notes on what it’s like to be meta.”

____________________________________________

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