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lunastwilightblog · 3 years

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The Volturi are the good guys and Bella is the up-and-coming villain

I’m on my computer for this as I know it might be long, but bear with me (insert Emmett pun here) 🐻

So wait - the Volturi are the good guys? But didn’t SM write them as the bad guys?

Well, yes, SM did write Aro and co in as the antagonists of the series, but bear in mind that originally she didn’t write most of New Moon to happen, or the entirety of Eclipse. There was Twilight and Forever Dawn, which we’ll sadly never read. Her vision of the Volturi and their role as the evil villains who wanted to separate Edward and Bella became distorted as she had to flesh them out more and show their role as the governing body.

Then she wrote the Illustrated Guide and revealed their history and the horrors of the world without their authority; with the Romanians being as brutal as they were, the constant terror humans lived with and the fracturing of the world into many unstable and violent vampire-ruled empires (plus with way more children of the moon running about, probably as far west as - at least - central Europe).

When the Volturi were coming to power they were laughed at with the idea of their law, a significant reason the Romanians didn’t take them seriously. But now they are extremely popular.

This isn’t just because Aro created vampires to go out and sing his praises. Volturi rule has been a blessing for both humans and vampires.

For humans it’s the obvious: they are not living their lives in fear, they are not subject to massacres (except if caught in newborn warzones), their population has been able to grow and expand, modern medicine and technology have been able to flourish, society is much more stable, people need to flee areas much less (if ever) so they can stay put and complete research/live to meet their grandkids/etc, and not have to serve a vampire in the local castle.

For vampires it’s actually quite similar: with the human population growing to as large as it is today when at the time the Volturi came to power it was (estimated to be) only 210 million globally, vampires have been able to grow to even greater numbers also, and feed more often than before. If a vampire 2000 years ago killed 5 people in a town it would be an outrage the humans would certainly have noticed, however kill 5 people in a place as big as London, LA, Paris, Singapore, Bucharest... it would likely not be noticed very much, if at all (depending on who you kill).

Humans like to measure things in percentages. Those 5 people is a huge number to a town of 2000 - that’s 0.25% of the whole town’s population. It would be talked about, and relatives of the dead/missing would all know each other. Yet kill those 5 in a city of 12 million (as is London), that’s only 0.00004167% of the population. And chances are, the dead humans’ families don’t even live in the area (or could be in another country entirely) never mind know each other to realise there was a mass murder.

So vampires, as long as they hide from humans, as is the only law (besides no immortal children or consorting with werewolves), they have a lot more freedom nowadays than they did before the times of the Volturi. There are so many people that they can easily get lost in a crowd, move internationally, and not be pressured for allegiance by a local vampire warlord (before meeting Aro, Caius ran afoul of the Romanians, and he barely escaped with his life).

With there only being one authority, and one that does not interfere with your day-to-day life, is a dream come true. As long as they don’t break this law that is very easy to abide by, they can do whatever the f*** they want.

Carlisle would have never been able to get a job as a doctor if he was known to be a vampire, nor could any of the Cullens have entered education of any form. They’d be stuck sneaking into libraries after closing, and googling. Edward would have never met Bella (neither would Edward’s ancestors have immigrated to America - in fact, Europeans may have never discovered America in the first place. The whole Cullen coven aside from Carlisle might never have been born).

So what the Volturi have done (despite many of them having not-so-savoury personalities corrupted by hunger for power or violence) is bring peace to the world, get rid of tyrants, increase the food supply, allow a greater amount of freedom, and the first kind of trials and justice ever seen in their world. Sure, Aro uses trials to find new talent, but it’s still a world away from before.

Which leads me on to the events of Breaking Dawn, and Bella.

So. Maybe controversial, but: the Volturi did absolutely nothing wrong in Breaking Dawn.

They turned up thinking a serious crime had been committed. They stopped to talk (which Vladimir certainly never would have done!), considered the evidence and processed new discoveries and discussed their legality, decided there was no crime to punish, and left with only the informant dead. Yes, Irina had been innocent in the way that she strongly had believed she had been telling the truth and her memories must have presented good enough evidence to Aro initially, but their witnesses had come to see justice being served, and in the vampire world that is execution. Aro could have continued with prosecuting the Cullens for something he now knew was false, or execute Irina instead.

(Side note: she did kind of deserve it too. She didn’t bother to check her evidence, she wanted revenge for Laurent’s death so her accusation wasn’t coming from a place of good intentions but instead she was willing to have her friends and family killed for Laurent. She was also forcing Aro into a position where he had to prepare himself to kill Carlisle, whom we know he cherishes. Remember also that Aro turned down Laurent’s application to the Guard because he’d followed the Romanians for a while, so he won’t have been entirely trusting of Irina anyway, her having been Laurent’s mate).

Anyway. Onto Bella.

So Aro’s impression of Bella after New Moon seems to be positive. Why? Well, through Edward’s thoughts he saw that Bella was able to keep The Secret. He had heard how much she wanted to be a vampire. In addition, Marcus showed him how strong Edward and Bella’s bond is. Both of them knew, that if E & B’s love was almost as strong as Marcus and Didyme’s, that no matter what Edward currently said or thought about Bella being turned it was invalid. If Bella were dying, he would turn her for sure, which happened. Then the obvious, that Edward had already proven he could not live without her.

Bella was trustworthy and probably going to be turned. Alice showing proof was just a formality so Aro could say he had evidence rather than admit he’d just made assumptions (and Alice having had that vision may act as proof that his assumption was correct).

Therefore, from Aro’s perspective, Bella was a human who wanted to become immortal so much that she would rather die than not, and she was already following his law. She was no issue.

Yet.

Bella, knowing the law, should have been very grateful that she was left alive. Edward not being executed and she not being killed or forcibly turned on the spot... Aro had been very nice to them.

And again, in BD, he was very nice to them. Some people will inevitably say that he was weak in not killing them all. I mean, they stood beside Vladimir and Stefan! They have an army of wolves fundamentally opposed to vampires! Aro has lost Good Reputation Points by sparing the Cullens. He held as close to a trial as vampire society has ever had, and rightfully pronounced the Cullens innocent.

So shouldn’t Bella like him? He has spared her life and the lives of her loved ones more than one, and proven that he can be spoken to and conversed with properly and is willing to admit he was wrong. With Aro, we know it’s important to look more at what he does than what he says, and what he has done is be very kind to the Cullens (though who knows about the future?).

Yet Bella was creeped out by him when they met and interpreted him as a threat to Edward’s life. As she loves Edward, she’s always going to be of this mind, and first impressions are important.

Vampires are stuck with the mindsets they had when turned. An example of this is Esme, who was turned after her baby died and she tried to die too. She is permanently feeling maternal. She was turned only days after giving birth. Before knowing this, Bella even describes her as maternal and the mother of the family. Huilen also has a lot of care for Nahuel, being his aunt, because of her love for Pire, and while she was dying, Pire begged Huilen to raise him. Joham does not seem to have this parental love for his son and daughters; he never really knew Pire and was never affected by her love for Nahuel, and did not meet him until years after he was born. He’s only genetically a parent. He doesn’t have the protective mindset. When he was turned, he was a curious scientist (in fact, it was even why his creator turned him). He sees the world and people as things to study.

Anyway.

When Bella was turned, all she was thinking about was Renesmee. She begged Edward to get the baby out and didn’t care for her own life.

And she will be forever stuck in this high alert, must-protect-my-baby mode. Then for weeks as a newborn vampire, she was thinking of Aro as a threat and preparing to fight him. Compounding that, he was a threat to her daughter.

Both of these things will have had a significant effect on who she will have become after her newborn phase ended. It is impossible for Bella to ever like Aro now, even if she tried.

Her dislike of him, and willingness to fight against him, will be forever engrained in her brain.

This is dangerous.

Bella found the Romanians weird, but she didn’t dislike them per se. She would probably be willing to stand with them against the Volturi again.

We can take an educated guess and assume that sometime they will rise up again - and Bella might stand with them (though I highly doubt any of the other Cullens would).

Bella was not a problem for Aro until she stood beside Vladimir and Stefan.

Here is this vampire who can block most of his coven’s gifts, stuck with an intense dislike of him, who he has seen with his own eyes stand with his enemies. He has every right to be nervous now. Her love for her mate is almost as strong as Marcus’s bond to Didyme - how strong is her bond to Renesmee? Likely more. Aro knows the threat in that. He knows that Bella may be viewing him in the way Marcus feels when he thinks of taking revenge on whoever killed Didyme.

Nobody wants the Romanians back in power. Those who lived under their reign and those who have heard first hand stories told to them all know very well that life under Vladimir would be horrible, brutal, awful for all beside his close coven members (though considering he had a very large coven that was often squabbling amongst itself, it was probably miserable for a lot of them too).

But Bella is young. She has no memory of the world before the Volturi, and knows no one with first hand experience of that world other than the Volturi. She will have heard that it was horrible, but she has no emotional or personal connection to the near-ancient past, and vampires who lived during that time are disappearing. No one lives forever.

Then, she is American. Like Garrett, she values freedom, and the Volturi are the only oppressive vampire force either of them has ever known. Despite them being the least oppressive in vampire history, Bella and Garrett haven’t experienced the alternative. They are a government that is at times harsh, is corrupt, and executes people. They go to war and they obliterate their enemies. Bella doesn’t see that the Volturi is the least bad government her world is ever going to get, and that they’ve granted her so much freedom. She is unable to see that because, in her youth, she has nothing to compare them against.

By standing against the Volturi, Bella isn’t just standing against Aro, Caius, and Marcus. She is standing against the peace they have brought between vampires, against humans living without fear, against modern civilisation itself. She stands a representative of the next world order, and Aro can sense it.

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nevermindirah · 3 years

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Non-Jewish friends, y’all might be wondering right now: Israel is doing clearly unacceptable shit to Palestinians. So, why are some Jews ardent Zionists, and why do some Jews seem to feel personally attacked by criticism of Israel?

A lot of (non-Palestinian) non-Jews have asked me where I stand on Israel/Palestine over the years, apropos of nothing, just because I’m Jewish. For the longest time I felt so stuck because I just didn’t know much about Israel/Palestine and what little I did know turned out to be largely misinformation and I felt so much pressure to say The Correct Thing That All Jews Should Say About This Issue. Obviously the violence Israel is committing against Palestinians is horrific and the interpersonal weirdness individual Jews might experience as people discuss Israel’s horrific violence doesn’t compare. I’m making this post as a small supplement to the important conversations going on about what Israel is doing to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian refugees and their descendants living outside land Israel controls. I’m making this post because non-Jews might be feeling confused by conflicting messages about Zionism as either settler colonialism or Jewish self-determination. It sucks feeling like you have to choose only one oppressed group or another. It’s possible to support Palestinian liberation and Jewish liberation at the same time! Here’s some context that might help.

Palestinian friends will probably want to ignore this post, y’all shouldn’t have to deal with your oppressors’ feelings, and especially not right now.

Zionism is the ideology behind the devastating violence Israel is committing against Palestinians right now and has been committing against Palestinians since 1947-48. It’s heartbreaking and messy to talk about this reality, because Zionism originated as a strategy to protect Jews from antisemitism.

Any oppressed group can turn into oppressors under enough pressure, because humans are flawed. Jews fleeing antisemitism turning into Israelis ethnically cleansing Palestinians happened because Zionism is profoundly influenced by its time and place of origin: 19th century Europe.

Europe invented antisemitism, and basically every European country has done at least one very very bad structural antisemitism, like expelling all the country's Jews (the monarch and/or the church then stole all the wealth the expelled people had to leave behind), looking the other way when peasants murdered a bunch of Jews as an outlet for their frustration with the actual (non-Jewish) ruling class, banning Jews from owning property or holding certain jobs or being members of guilds etc, and of course the big horrific state-sponsored mass-murder operations the Inquisition and the Holocaust. From the 1790s through the 19th century different European governments emancipated their Jews, ie removed legal barriers to full citizenship and economic participation. But this didn't end antisemitism. Just like the legal improvements of the 19th and 20th centuries didn't end antiblackness in the United States.

Also happening in this time: nationalism swept Europe. From the French Revolution through the end of World War I, Europe’s predominant form of government transformed from multiethnic empires to nation-states, countries led by and for a particular ethnic group.

So this Austro-Hungarian dude Theodor Herzl came up with this idea for Jewish nationalism. Every other European ethnic group is getting their own country, so why not Jews? Maybe this is the solution to antisemitism! Maybe we’ll finally be safe if we just all move en masse out of Europe to a place that will take all of us and never expel us!

But also also happening in Europe and around the world in this time: European imperialism and white supremacist settler colonialism. Chattel slavery saw its height and then its end (legally, at least) during this era, but white supremacy entrenched itself across the planet in post-slavery economic practices and cultural imperialism as well as national and international laws.

I believe countries have a moral obligation to take in as many refugees as they can squeeze in. International law protecting refugees has evolved a lot over the past century, but we’re still devastatingly far from every refugee getting a safe place to call home, and the main reason for that is white supremacy. The Biden administration didn’t undo the Trump administration’s horrifically low cap on refugees until like last week and it’s because Democratic party leaders treat centrist white people as more valuable voters than the huge and growing numbers of people of color, immigrants, LGBT people, unmarried women, and working class people who want to vote for elected leaders who get that nobody’s free until we’re all free. Ahem. Back to the topic at hand, the US and many other countries turned away untold numbers of refugees fleeing the fucking Holocaust, so odds are slim they’d be more welcoming in less desperate times. Moving from places where Jews are an unwanted minority to places where Jews are still a minority and either still unwanted or little understood and unlikely to win revolutionary levels of support from a largely non-Jewish public seems like a bad plan.

In the mid to late 19th century, lots of Jews took the kernel of Zionism and ran with it in different directions. Maybe this ideology could mean Jewish cultural flourishing alongside stronger political/economic integration into the societies where we’re already living! Maybe it could mean a particular kind of socialism that advocates for the liberation of Jews both as Jews and as workers! Maybe it could mean a revitalization of Jewish religious practice both in Jerusalem where we have important heritage sites and everywhere we live across the world!

Eventually Herzl’s vision of Zionism won out over the others: Jewish nationalism in the sense of a Jewish nation-state, a country that has a Jewish demographic majority and/or that legally privileges Jews over non-Jews.

Problem is, if you want to do that, you have to find a piece of land on which to do it, and Earth was already a pretty crowded place a hundred years ago. Many locations were considered, and the one that ended up winning that debate was Palestine. Where a shit ton of people, mostly non-Jews, were already living. They were forming their own nationalist movement at the time: in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire they began to organize for local self-determination in Palestine.

The Herzl types who developed Zionism as an ideology and built institutions to advocate for and create a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine were a small subset of European Jews, mostly men, mostly with significant economic privilege within what Jews were able to achieve in their particular societies at the time. They were just as Orientalist as the non-Jews around them, just as antiblack, just as racist generally for all that Jews were (and sometimes still are) considered non-white in much of Europe. They had a cool idea (put a lot of effort into something that could protect Jews from antisemitism) floating in a bathtub full of shit, and they did practically nothing to protect the cool idea from absorbing that shit. Results of this include thinking about the millions of people already living in Palestine as if they were either like the rocks and the trees that will go with the flow and accept a new ruling class, or indistinct Arabs who would just leave for other Arab countries because what could be the difference — in the staggeringly small amount of time they considered the existing residents of Palestine at all.

This racist hand-waving extended to Zionist leaders’ attitudes about Jews outside Europe as well. White Jews in settler colonies like the US were largely anti-Zionist at the time (not wanting their own countries to accuse them of dual loyalty was a common reason) but European Zionist leaders took what help they could get from Jews in the US, South Africa, Australia, etc. Jews across the Middle East and North Africa, however, barely heard from Zionist leaders about any of this until Zionist militias had removed enough Palestinians from the land and it was time to repopulate it with whichever Jewish bodies were convenient. You might have heard "all the Arab countries expelled their Jews in 1948" but lots of first-person accounts tell a different story of Israel coercing Jews who’d lived securely for a long time in places like Morocco to immigrate to Israel and then confiscating their passports and forcing them to live on less-fertile land with fewer resources while serving as a buffer between Palestinians and European Jewish immigrants. Ella Shohat is the best-known writer on Israeli racism against non-European Jews and I strongly recommend Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Perspective of Its Jewish Victims as a starting point to learn more about this.

Which brings us to today. We still haven’t eradicated antisemitism, several European governments that did a lot of structural antisemitism they still haven’t made meaningful reparations for get to feel good about themselves for “giving the Jews a state” as if carving up the former Ottoman Empire was up to them and not the people who lived there, and millions of people across the world who previously either lived peacefully enough alongside Jews or hadn’t really thought about us much at all now have very valid reasons to be pissed at this country that claims it represents all of us.

Zionism was supposed to protect Jews from antisemitism. And Israel has saved Jewish lives! But if we hadn’t sunk the past 70+ years into an ethnostate we could’ve been putting that energy into other political and economic activity to create adequate international support for refugees while we work on ending root causes of refugee crises, like antisemitism, racism, climate change, and capitalism. Meanwhile Zionism has killed, maimed, incarcerated, stolen from, traumatized, and erased the history of millions of Palestinians just because they happened to be living on land that some dudes who had a lot more in common with Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump than with you or me decided needed to be cleansed for a Jewish ethnostate.

White nationalists in the US love Israel because they want American Jews to go away. Fascist leaders across Europe love Israel for the same reason, so much so that Israel’s prime minister is buddy-buddy with Trump and the equivalent shitstains of several European far-right parties. And I don’t know what it’s like in other white supremacist countries that are close allies of Israel, but the overwhelming majority of Zionist lobbying that pushes the US to give so much aid to Israel comes from Evangelical Christians, because they believe all the Jews have to be in the Holy Land for Jesus to come back. No thanks.

This whole thing fucking sucks. Jews and Palestinians, like all human beings, deserve to be free. Many Jews are understandably afraid of what might happen next if Israel decided to give up on ethnonationalism, allow Palestinian refugees to return, make reparations, and establish a pluralistic democracy that represents and protects all its residents — will some Palestinians murder Jews in revenge? That’s genuinely fucking scary. And it’s genuinely fucking scary to be a Palestinian in Israel/Palestine, and has been for over 70 years. We’ve gotta do something different. I say that as a white person sitting on land stolen from Piscataway people who has thought in detail about what portion of my income would be reasonable for my government to tax in order to fund reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.

Ok. One final piece of context before I wrap this up.

Most Jewish institutions in the US are explicitly Zionist, teach children that Zionism is THE way to ensure Jewish safety, and increasingly tell non-Zionist Jews that we're unwelcome or even that we’re not “real” Jews. This comes in a context where it’s only been 76 years since the latest and most gruesome of several attempts to wipe our entire people off the face of the planet. If you grew up in that environment, you, too, might be jumpy about even hearing the words Zionism or Israel, let alone considering the devastation this ideology and country have caused Palestinians.

Jews have a right to exist. Jews have a millennia-old connection to this scrap of land in the Levant, and we have a right to access religiously and culturally important geographic landmarks. What we don't have a right to is murdering or expelling other people in order to make an ethnostate, on that land or any other. Zionism is settler colonialism, but it’s settler colonialism by and for people who have a valid need for protection from structural antisemitism, which means that it’s going to take a lot of messy empathy to undo. The members of my extended family who voted for Trump (non-Jews in my case, though Jared Kushner isn’t the only Jewish Trumpite) are afraid that ending white supremacy will demote them from a privileged class to equal footing with everyone else — that’s the kind of fear individuals work on in therapy, not the kind that’s reasonable for a whole society to prevent from happening. I and millions of Jews do deserve for whole societies to work hard to end antisemitism.

I would never and will never ask a Palestinian to gently request their liberation. But if you’re not Palestinian, and you’ve got a little extra empathy to spare this week, I ask you to remember what I’ve shared here when interacting with Jews about Israel/Palestine.

If you’re a fellow Jew reading this and you feel like Israel is the only way to guarantee our safety, all I ask of you is to sit with the idea that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is too high a cost for safety that’s still not guaranteed, and start to imagine real-world ways we can protect our people from antisemitism without an ethnostate.

I made this post for people who know me (or know of me I guess?) in Old Guard and Cap fandom, despite my better judgment, because talking about Jewish Booker and Jewish Bucky and Jewish Natasha makes me so happy and I think some of the people I love on these characters with might appreciate this perspective. I didn’t provide any links in this post on purpose (to decrease its usefulness, so fewer people will reblog it) because the risk of anon hate when talking about Zionism outside my immediate fandom circles is so high. You’re welcome to reblog this post if you find it helpful! Unless you’re not within a few concentric circles of me, in which case, maybe don’t? If seeing this post makes you want to send me anon hate, no need: many people who share your perspective have already done so on Twitter.

Reliable sources on all this info are a few googles away, and I apologize for the things I know I oversimplified as well as any things I might have misremembered. I’m an American who’s never lived in Israel/Palestine who is posting this on my fandom blog.

TL;DR: This is a short ‘n pithy post about the same idea.

TL;DR, fandom edition: The shortest distillation of this anti-Zionist Jew’s feelings on the matter can be found in segment 4 of Five Times Booker Got Wasted on Purim and One Time He Didn’t.

#palestinian liberation #hi i'm an antizionist jew no i don't really want to talk about it #and yet #here we are #long post #mine #antisemitism #settler colonialism #racism #european imperialism #genocide cw

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descendantofthesparrow · 3 years

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Interlude - Rewrite POYW - Harry Hook x reader - part 2 - preparations

*i realized today was Saturday and was like “oh holy shit time to post part 2!! so enjoy!*

*felt like doing another episode entrance to this so deal with it*

-a camera pans from Auradon to the isle of the lost, zooming in on a large ship that held the symbol of Harriet Hook, the camera zoom fades into Harriet watching her crew move around the deck, a small stack of papers in her hand-

Harriet glanced up suddenly as Xiaohui slid down from rope as she switched out with another member of the crew for lookout in the crow's nest “what ‘cha got there captain?” she hummed, stepping next to Harriet and leaning over to look at the papers.

“just stuff that king beasty sent me, something about guardians for the twins, Sammy, and CJ” Harriet muttered, folding the papers and shoving them into her inner jacket pocket. “apparently because im a legal adult” Xiaohui rose her brow in confusion and Harriet waved it off “Auradon thing I don’t know, but since I’m an adult, they think that I can be the twin's guardian and they are trying to see if I can be CJ’s at the same time since im her sister n stuff” Xiaohui nodded a bit and looked back at the crew, most of which was getting the new supplies of food and water into the lower decks for safekeeping.

“I’m slightly impressed that (y/n) girl actually kept her word” Xiaohui hummed, crossing her arms and leaning on Harriet a bit, who pushed her back with her shoulder “like only a week ago the king announced the new program for us getting better shit and its already in full effect.”

“I think (y/n) scares whoever's in charge of that stuff and made ‘em work faster” Harriet snorted, remembering when she had passed by the main market almost everyone was whispering about the Auradon girl that had kicked her father's ass and left him as an amputee.

“well, she sure scared the fuck out me when she went apeshit on your dad” Xiaohui chuckled, pushing off the rails of the ship and about to walk towards the crew as they began to head out for another shipment “so how long do you think it gonna be before they get the next group of kids off” Harriet looked off for a moment.

“well with the letter Harry sent me, they are aiming for at least within the month, and at most within the next two, but first they got to get the guardian shit out of the way first” Xiaohui nodded, glanced back at the crew then back at Harriet, “I think once we get over there, I’ll be able to help out with choosing more kids to come over to Auradon, Evie might have her heart in the right place but she hardly even knows any kids, I have a lot more tabs on everyone on here and will be able to help get those who need it more off first.”

Xiaohui nodded again, understanding that the crew would probably be left on the isle for a bit longer just to make sure everything was running smoothly on their side, to make sure no one ruined a single kids chances at getting a better life. “now go on, Im pretty sure Sammy’s about to trip over nothing there”

Xiaohui turned and sighed, running over to Sammy and catching his arm just as he stumbled forward, she chided him as they walked off the ship and towards the barges again to collect the last of their shipments.

Harriet let out a small sigh and took out the papers again, tapping her foot anxiously as she flipped through the “guardian” application copies that Ben had sent her just in case she wasn’t able to be the twins and CJ’s guardian, and they needed someone from Auradon to be their guardian.

'Application of guardianship

Child; Skipper Smee - parent; Sam Smee

Guardian applicant(s) - Wendy Darling, Rapunzel Fitzherbert, Eric & Ariel Barnes’

'Application of guardianship

Child; Sterling Smee - parent; Sam Smee

Guardian applicant(s) - Wendy Darling, Eugene Fitzherbert, Eric & Ariel Barnes’

'Application of guardianship

Child; Sammy Smee - parent; Sam Smee

Guardian applicant(s) - Wendy Darling, Rapunzel Fitzherbert, Eric & Ariel Barnes’

Harriet raised her brow at the repeat of applicants, especially the Wendy Darling one, considering she dealt with her father and uncle Smee first hand. Though (y/n) had written on the blank side of the applications that Wendy had applied for that exact reason.

She folded away the Smee papers and looked at her little sister's Guardian application.

'Application of guardianship

Child; Calista Jane Hook - parent; James Hook

Guardian applicant(s) - Wendy Darling, Eric & Ariel Barnes, Tiana Maldon’

Once again Wendy Darling and freaking King Eric and Queen Ariel had applied to be a guardian of her “family” Harriet sighed again and let her hands drop to her thighs, staring off at nothing as she thought about the upcoming future.

She broke out of her trance as a sheepish Dizzy stepped onto the deck, hands clenching tightly to her denim jacket “um…Harriet?” she squeaked, stepping forward a bit as Celia, Dr.Facilier daughter, pushed her towards Harriet “I-I was wondering if there was anything about…me in those papers King Ben sent you?”

Harriet brought up the papers again and flipped through them, nodding as she spotted Dizzy’s name on a guardian application and a blue envelope “yeah” Harriet muttered, handing the envelope to Dizzy and glancing back down at the application.

'Application of guardianship

Child; Dizzy Tremaine - parent; Drizella Tremaine

Guardian applicant(s) - Ella Charming, Fairy Godmother, Anita Radcliffe’

She handed the younger VK the application a moment later and the girl gasped as she read the names of the people who signed up to be her guardian “Cinderella? Fairy Godmother??” she squeaked, crunching the papers in her hand as Celia walked up behind her and looked over her shoulder “why would they-holy moly!!!”

“please just say fuck” Celia laughed, snatching the application from Dizzy and looking it over, curling her lip at all the other information details under the main application script. “wow that’s a lot of shit do to”

The guardian applicants had to fill out most of their information, sign waivers, and multiple other things just to be the guardian of a singular kid.

“oh, Harriet?” Harriet looked up at the call of her name and raised her brow as Dizzy held out the letter she had gotten from Evie, pointing at the back of it “there's some stuff for you on the back of the letter”

She grabbed it from Dizzy and started to read, not recognizing the handwriting but it had been signed by (y/n).

-Hey Harriet, so real quick all I need you to do is pick out who YOU would want to be your fams guardians (aka CJ, the twins, and Sammy) and we’ll pick out who we think is best with your opinion in mind. the kids are never obligated to interact with their guardians but I thought you would be more comfortable knowing exactly who the guardians were.

There are two pieces of blank paper in the envelope with Dizzy’s name on it, one for Dizzy to write back to Evie and one for you to write to me.

-see you soon, (y/n) (l/n)

Ps. Gil and Harry scream-said “hi”-

Harriet snorted at the last bit and folded the letter back up and gave it back to Dizzy “ey Dizzy” the younger vk looked up at her with wide eyes, Celia peeking over her shoulder “who would you rather be your guardian, Cinderella, FG, or that Anita chick?” Dizzy looked off for a moment then shrugged.

“um, I don’t know?...I guess which everyone Evie picks out is okay?” Dizzy gave a slightly uncomfortable grin before jumping as Harriet's crew started to return and lug the last of the new supplies abord. “oh, um, I have to go, bye!” Before she could leave, Harriet grabbed Dizzy’s shoulder and grabbed the envelope from her, taking out one of the blank papers then letting the vk go on her way. Dizzy and Celia turned on their heels and raced off the ship, Dizzy’s letter from Evie clenched tightly in her hand.

Harriet hummed to herself and lifted the papers again, looking at the notes next to the guardian applicants that (y/n) had put.

She made eye contact with Xiaohui and nodded at her, the girl nodding back and taking command of the ship as Harriet moved to go into the captain's quarters. Sammy breathed a sigh of relief as Xiaohui took command, he might have been the first mate but he was horrible at being in control of things.

Harriet sat down at her creaky old cherrywood desk, grabbed a pen, and started to write.

“im still surprised that we actually got more people signing up to be guardians for the vks” you chuckled setting down the copy of Dizzy’s file and leaning back on Bens desk “I mean, almost all of them are repeats for the first round but my point still stands” Ben smiled and nodded.

“yeah, something about since the first round went well enough that people are not as averse to being guardians for the vks” Ben signed off a paper with a flourish of his wrist and set it aside. “though we might have to figure out something else as we go along, I don’t think there are enough adults in Auradon to claim every single kid on the isle, even if one person can claim two kids”

You sighed and nodded, rubbing the side of your head slightly “yeah, and at some point, we need to figure out another way to transfer kids off safely without having to go through the whole ‘guardian’ thing, because eventually, we will run out of guardians”

Gil, who had joined you and Ben for today's ‘vk shit’ meeting, looked up from his bowl of grapes “oh this reminds me of when Harry and I went to the animal shelter with Carlos, and-and um, there was a bunch of rooms for the cats n dogs n stuff and Carlos asked something about chips and the lady said that as long as the worker was licensed, they could claim the animal” he looked back down at his snack as you and Ben looked at him with wide eyes “what?”

“that-that was the weirdest thing you have ever said” you laughed, shaking your head a bit and crossing your legs at the ankles. Ben smiled at the blonde-haired vk and turned back to his papers, then popped his head back up with sparkling eyes and a wide grin.

“THAT’S IT!” you and Gil jumped slightly at his suddenly loud voice. Ben stood and pointed at Gil “Gil that is brilliant!”

You and Gil looked to each other then back at Ben “Ben please tell me you didn’t get an idea from Gil's weird rambling?” you laughed, leaning back a bit as Ben's grinning face turned to you. “you did….what is it then?”

“A shelter for vks!!!” Ben exclaimed, bouncing on his heels as he moved away from his desk and towards a large blue painted filing cabinet to the left of his desk. “here in Auradon! And I have just the place for it!!! And-and we can start an organization just for people to be guardians for vks! And we can figure out a system to have one person be responsible for multiple kids so we’ll never run out of them!” he rushed back to his desk and threw a set of building blueprints along with the deeds to the building.

You looked over the papers, raising your brows as you realized you were looking at a large castle that was written in Bens name “that…doesn’t sound like a bad idea?” you laughed, picking up the blueprints as Gil pawed at the deed. “in my world there's a thing called orphanages or foster systems, they kinda suck but usually there is one or two people in charge or responsible for sometimes over twenty kids, so this could work for our vks if we do it correctly and get good people” Ben grinned and nodded, grabbing the paper from you and shaking it in his hands.

“and-and! This castle, which was my parents, is in my name! I can do whatever I want with it! Let's turn it into the shelter! It's near the ocean too so these kids can see the real ocean every day and go swimming or build sandcastles whenever they want!!! And-and during the summer! Or warm days! I can hire people to take the kids on boat rids or-or!” you laughed and set your hands on Ben’s shoulders, calming him down a bit.

“Ben! Amazing ideas, love them, let's take it one step at a time, first we get Harriet and the others off” you gestured to the stack of papers for the six vks that held their information “then we start working on the shelter and the guardian organization, not baby steps, just one step at a time” Ben took a deep breath and nodded, the grin still wide on his face

“then let's finish up! All that’s left is choosing their guardians! Then we can send the limo next week!!!” he set down the castle blueprints and picked up two of the vk folders, handing you and Gil the last three “we got no time to lose!”

Celia slyly glanced up from her cards as Dizzy danced around her grandmother's hair salon, her aunt and mother busy working on some client's hair as Dizzy swept up the fallen locks. “now Diz” Anastasia, Dizzy’s aunt started to speak, the young vk immediately stopping in her little chore and looking to her “remember, while there will be people there that will accept you with open arms there will inevitably be people that will be out to hurt you” Dizzy’s shoulders dropped at the reminder and slowly nodded “that doesn’t mean we don’t want you going, it just means that even in Auradon it's not a fully safe space, there will always be assholes in every place” the clients ignored the surprisingly supportive talk from Anastasia and looked down at their torn magazines.

Dizzy sighed and nodded again “I understand” Dizzy smiled, starting on her chores again, though with less energy than she had a moment before. Celia looked away from Dizzy and shuffled her cards, laying them out on the table in front of her and closing her eyes, focusing her energy on Dizzy and hovering her hand over the cards.

In her mind's eye, three cards seemed to glow. She quickly picked them out and flipped them over to show their art. Celia opened her eyes, and looked at the first card, which symbolized Dizzy’s past.

The reversed fool. Celia furrowed her brows; Dizzy had been taken advantage of? When? Then again, Celia hummed looking to the next card, this was the isle, being taken advantage of was a daily thing, especially for someone like Dizzy who sometimes could be a bit airheaded.

The next card, which symbolized Dizzy’s present, was the upright chariot. Dizzy was heading in the right direction then huh? She was going to Auradon soon after all. Celia looked to the last card, which symbolized Dizzy’s future.

The upright sun. Celia nodded again, Dizzy’s adventures in Auradon would be successful then, all the more reason to see if she could stay on Dizzy’s good side even after she left for Auradon so that maybe one day Celia could have that success as well.

“watcha doin?” Dizzy asked suddenly, peeking over Celia’s shoulder as the younger VK jumped and threw herself over her cards. Celia looked back at Dizzy with a pout.

“if you have to know” Celia sighed, pushing off the table and gesturing to the now strewn about cards. “I was reading your fortune, I got curious” Dizzy hummed at that and kneeled next to Celia slightly, looking at the cards that were still facing up.

“what do they mean?” Dizzy asked, picking up the upright chariot and tilting it in her hands.

“just stuff from your past, present, and future. Your past is not the best, your present is going in the right direction, and your future is bright, that’s basically what those say” Celia held out her hand, Dizzy setting the card and a few coins in her hand “uh-“ Dizzy grinned.

“well you did read my fortune, and I remember you said you never read without a payment!” Celia stared at Dizzy as the girl skipped over to her chalkboard with all her chores on it and checked off the sweeping chore. Then she started cleaning the windows, picking up a rag and a spray bottle with a blue liquid chemical in it.

Celia watched for a moment before looking at Dizzy’s aunt and mother, who finished up with their last clients and sent them along, getting their payment and reminding Dizzy to close up properly as they went upstairs to the family's apartment.

“Hey, Diz” Celia started, fixing up her cards and putting them into her hip cardholder. The older vk hummed and turned to look at Celia “you…you aren’t gonna forget me once you get to Auradon…will you?” Celia, while her original intentions with Dizzy were ill-intentioned and she just wanted to get a leg up on a future in Auradon by being friends with the vk that had connections already, but Dizzy was just that kinda person you couldn’t be fake around, and Celia had come to genuinely care for her.

Dizzy’s face bloomed into a bright smile that could blind the sun and she set down her rag and bottle, skipping over to Celia and hugging her tightly. Celia froze at the sign of affection and moved to push Dizzy off but stopped herself as Dizzy pulled back and shook her head “of course not! Once I get to Auradon I’ll make sure you’ll be the next one off, just after me! I would never leave you here willingly.” Celia felt her nose and eyes burn and she quickly twisted around, wiping her face as Dizzy giggled.

“sap” Celia chuckled, letting out a small breath as Dizzy slammed into her and wrapped her arms around Celia, shaking them around a bit “hey hey come on” Dizzy giggled again and released the young shadow witch, skipping back over to the rag and bottle and resuming her chores.

Celia let a smile grow on her face as she bopped her head to the song Dizzy started to hum as she took out her pocket watch and checked the time. “oh shit it's late, I got errands to do, bye dizzy!” Celia grabbed her bag and bolted out the salon door, rushing towards the market to grab a couple of things for her “boss”

Well, less boss and more someone who just hired her to grab stuff for him because he was a hermit and didn’t like going outside his little underground hidey-hole.

Celia skidded to a stop as she spotted the short ombre blue hair of Hadie, the son of Hades. Aka the son of her “boss”. Hadie was a tall, oddly buff, blue ombre haired, punk-styled villain kid, the oldest on the isle at that at, being born before Hades had been shipped off to the isle.

“hey,” she muttered, reaching around him and grabbing a couple of peaches, that were not bruised thanks to the fresh shipments that were coming as of late, from in front of the much larger vk. Hadie glanced down at her and opened his messenger bag, allowing Celia to dump the fruit into it. “what’ca here for?”

“stuff” Hadie simply replied in his usual dry tone, following Celia as she started to travel the merchant stands, grabbing what Hades had requested from her and letting her dumb the items into his messenger bag.

One of the merchants, which Celia had stolen from before on her own time, sneered at her, flinching back as the spotted Hadie just behind her just staring at him. The merchant looked away as Celia took two cans of corn and dumped them into Hadie’s bag, skipping away with the older vk following her.

“why does he let her do that?” one of the market keeps whispered to their friend, who shrugged and looked back down at her stock of oranges.

“dunno, but it keeps the creeps off of her and keeps a fight from breaking out so who am I to care?” Hadie glanced at them but kept pace behind Celia, scrunching his nose slightly as one of the merchants leered towards Celia, the merchant reeling back as Hadie flashed his pocket knife.

Celia smirked to herself knowing that Hadie was subtly protecting her as she picked up things for his dad, and with a snatch of some packs of water, she was done for the day. “come on!” she yelled back towards Hadie, who grabbed a small pack of blueberries and followed after her, digging his key to the opening of the mineshafts that lead to his dad's lair out of his pocket. Celia bounced on her heels as Hadie opened the gate and followed him inside.

The two foregoed the bicycle contraption and just walked down the length of the tunnel that lead to the main area, Hadie taking one of the water packs from Celia and hoisting it onto his shoulder.

He ignored the echoing bark that blasted in his ear as he passed by a speaker that his dad made him set up a couple of years ago to keep trespassers out. He and Celia finally made it to the main living area and Celia skipped down the wooden steps, setting one of the water packs on the large metal table in the next room.

Hades looked away from the fading tv and raised his brow as Hadie let Celia snatch the bag from around his neck and take out the items she had taken from the market. “you get everything kids?” Hades teased, standing and walking over to the vks, ruffling his son's hair and laughing a bit as the just shorter Hadie smacked his hand away. “yep” Celia nodded, turning and holding out her hand to Hades, who dug into his jacket, pulled out a small red velvet pouch, and dropped it into her hand, Celia tugged it open as Hadie reached around her to grab a small peach and moved to plop into his dad's makeshift minecart seat. Celia nodded five rubies and several silver coins. “pleasure making business with cha’” Celia held out her hand, grinning as Hades gave it an exaggerated shake and skipped out of the lair, leaving the two gods behind.

She skipped all the way back to the hair salon and moved into the alleyway just next to Hades restaurant. Celia knocked a specific rhythm on the spray-painted door with the words ‘Pa Deranje’ on them. As it slid open Celia slipped through and ran into the quiet arcade her dad manned when school was out for the summer.

“Daddy~!” Celia cheered, running towards her father as he spotted her and held out his hands to lift her up and around.

“Cher~!” he called back, setting her back on her feet and wrapping his arms around her shoulder “so how was the hussle tonight?”

Celia grinned and held up the red velvet bag, her father grinning and holding out his hand. Celia dropped it into his palm and sat down at his fortune reading table, gasping happily at the steaming bowl of food that was resting in front of her.

Her father gestured for her to eat as he dug into the bag, nodding to himself as he saw the inside. He took out the silver coins and set them in front of Celia, stashing the rubies away for safekeeping as they were a higher currency on the isle.

“mmmhmm!” Celia hummed happily around her food, kicking her legs as she took another full bite of the soup-like meal. “what is this?!”

“good ol’ Gumbo my dear” Facilier took a seat in front of her and dug into his own bowl of Gumbo. “found all I needed to make it with at the market, thanks to those shipments” Facilier laughed at his daughter as she eagerly downed the gumbo, reaching out slightly to slow her “now slow down there cher, it’s a bit strong” Celia glanced at him and obeyed, setting the bowl back down and swallowing her current mouthful of food. “now after this you head straight to bed, it’s almost nine am and you’ve been up since eight yesterday” Celia went to object but stopped as her father gave her a look.

“fine” she pouted, smiling behind her bowl as he nodded and reached out to tweak her ear.

The two finished their “dinner” in comfortable silence, Celia finished first and stood from the table, giving her dad a quick kiss and hug before running up to the apartment where she and her dad stayed.

Facilier sighed and took the two empty bowls and followed Celia up the apartment, counting down from 5 and nodding as the telltale sign of Celia’s room door closing sounded just as he reached 0.

While the isle was just a bit better nowadays, thanks to the program that Hooks sons girl had started, he still hoped one day his little girl would be in Auradon one day and never have to worry about where her next meal would come from.

“one day cher” Facilier whispered to himself, setting his top hat on the hat rack and moving to his room “one day you’ll get your cut.”

-end of part 2-

here it is! part 2!!! hope yall liked it, and yes, Dr.Facilier is a good dad, i liked that in the OG D3 so thats what i kept, Hades is kinda an asshole but Hadie is Persephone's kid he’s gonna love and tease the young punk looking god to death, Dizzy's aunt is kinda nice, grandma still ain't but Anastasia was redeemed twice in the Cinderella sequels. anyway yeah tell me what u think and i hoped yall liked! part 3 next Saturday!

permtaglist

@queer-cosette @sephiralorange

@lunanight2012 @daughter-of-the-stars11

@musicarose @remembered-license

@random-thoughts-003 @rintheemolion

@verboetoperee @imtryingthisout

@thecaptainsgingersnap @jatp-rules-my-life

#Descendents #descendants #disney descendants #harry hook x reader #harriet hook #dizzy tremaine #celia descendants #dr facilier #hadie son of hades #hades #anastasia tremaine

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preciouspeterbparker · 3 years

Text

i wish i were, part 2

link to part 1

summary: it’s tony’s 18th birthday

warnings: non-con voyeurism, underage masturbation, underage sex, step-sibling inc*st, angst, fluff (can you believe it???)

word count: 3.3k

feedback is always welcome and appreciated!

enjoy!!

-bloo

The sharp sound of knuckles on a wooden door, accompanied by a sweet, loving voice he’s known his whole life. "Good morning, sweetheart."

Peter rouses from his sleep, grumbling at the soft yet incessant knocking on his door. He blinks blearily in the direction of the voice before burying his face in the warm spot on his pillow. "'M up," he croaks, clutching the comforter closer to his chest. "Just...just four...mmm...four more minutes…"

"Peter," comes Mom's soft chuckle as she enters the room. Her slippered feet shuffle along the floor as she makes her way over to the bed. Her fingers card gently through Peter's slightly sweaty sleep-mussed curls. "You wanted me to wake you up a bit early this morning, remember?" Maria laughs again at the grumbling that leaves the teen's mouth in response. She leans down to press her lips to the side of his head in a kiss. “You wanted to help make Tony’s birthday breakfast,” she reminds him gently.

“Yeah, I know,” Peter yawns, wriggling under the covers for a minute before pushing himself up into a sitting position. The comforter falls to his lap as he stretches, extending his arms in the air above his head and rolling his bare shoulders. “Did we decide what we were making? Chocolate chip waffles? Or blueberry?”

“Well, I was thinking chocolate chip. But your father,” she says pointedly, as if Richard can hear her from where Peter knows he’s sitting in his armchair with a mug of coffee and staring blankly into space, “forgot to get them when he was at the store. So, how about we go a little crazy and use M&M’s, hmmm?” Her hands go out in front of her in a ‘ta-da’ motion, hazel eyes twinkling playfully.

Snorting, the teenager climbs out of bed, adjusting the black joggers slung along his hips. He snags a random t-shirt from his dresser and pulls it down over his head. “Sounds good, Mama.” Peter gently bumps up against her affectionately as they leave his room, heading down the hallway and taking the stairs down to the kitchen.

“Hey Dad,” Peter grins at his father, who is indeed zoned out in the living room and jumps a bit at the sound of his voice. Typical.

Richard rolls his eyes at Peter’s giggling and sends him a smile. “Morning, Pete. Morning, honey,” he adds on when he sees Maria descending the stairs behind his son. He gets up to follow them into the kitchen, standing behind his wife and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “And where’s our legal adult? Already out buying lottery tickets and cigarettes?” He gulps down a sip of his coffee and takes a seat on one of the barstools at the kitchen island.

“Hush, Richie,” Maria chides, pulling her blonde hair up into a bun and grabbing her apron from its hook by the pantry. “You know Tony’s never up before ten on a Saturday, at least not of his own volition.” Reaching into the cabinet above the stove, she pulls down the flour and baking powder. “Punkin, can you get the eggs and vanilla, please?”

The teen hums in assent, pulling the carton out of the fridge and sidestepping to the pantry where he narrows his eyes at the racks on the back of the door that are filled with bottles of different spices and seasonings. “I don’t see vanilla,” Peter mutters under his breath. There’s almond extract, peppermint extract, lemon... “Mom, I don’t- Oh, nevermind, found it,” he exclaims with a flourish, brandishing the small red and white box in the air.

Warm conversation and the sounds of cooking fill the kitchen as Peter and Maria make breakfast, Richard chiming in from his perch at the island. Soon, there’s a large stack of rainbow-spotted waffles on a platter, laid out on the table with whipped cream, dishes of cut up cut up bananas and strawberries, and a bottle of chocolate syrup.

Richard gets up to pull some plates out of a cabinet and brings them over to the dining room table along with four sets of silverware. “Peter, will you go wake up your brother? Bring him down so we can sing. And eat, these waffles look amazing.”

“Yeah, sure thing, Dad.” Peter heads upstairs, passing his room and the bathroom before stopping in front of the door that’s across from his. “Tony?” He taps his knuckles on the wood a few times and waits until he hears Tony’s mumbled greeting. Smiling softly, he twists the knob and pushes the door open, leaning on the jamb as he does so. “Wake up, T,” he sing-songs, “it’s time for your birthday breakfast.” He curses the butterflies that have become active and hopes that he looks more casual and less obvious than he feels.

Peter’s breath catches in his throat once the door is fully open and Tony’s in his line of vision. The now-eighteen year old is sitting up in his bed, lit up by the morning sun shining in through the window on the opposite wall, comforter pooled around his waist. His dark hair is rumpled and wild. Peter fleetingly wonders if that’s what it would look like if he were to run his fingers through it, if he were to pull at it while-

“Mmm, g’mornin Pete-squeak. I was getting ready to come down. Smells so good it woke me up.” Tony raises his arms above his head, stretching, and thrusts his hips up a bit as he curls his bare back. Heat blooms in Peter’s gut at the way his older brother’s muscles shift under his tanned skin, at the thatch of hair under his arms, and it intensifies when Tony’s legs shift as he changes his posture to an arch, dislodging the covers.

Peter tries his best not to stare at the line of dark hair that goes from Tony’s belly button down into the front of his gray sweats. He’s- fuck, he can see the thickness of Tony’s cock pressed up against the fabric. Fuck, Tony's gotta be at least half hard… Or, God, is he that big soft?

He concludes that the latter must be the case, because Tony slides right out of the bed and shuffles towards him without an ounce of shame. His hand lands on the top of Peter's head, ruffling the already messy curls in his signature move. Peter wrinkles his nose, and almost ducks away from the touch before remembering to take what he can get when it comes to the feeling of his brother’s hands on his body.

"Let's go Pete-squeak, 'm starving." Tony lumbers through the door after grabbing a black t-shirt shirt off the floor and yanking it down over his head, and Peter follows dutifully behind him, the two making their way down the stairs. So what if his eyes are on Tony’s ass the whole way down.

Maria and Richard must have been listening for them, because it seems that the two immediately start singing from their places at the dining room table when they hear the boys reach the landing at the bottom of the stairs.

Tony promptly rolls his eyes at their parents, but Peter feels himself go a little hot when he notices the pink tinge that spreads over his brother's cheeks. There's a shimmer in Tony's eyes and Peter thinks, not for the first time, that his brother is kind of sickeningly beautiful. He takes a seat across from Mom at the table, Dad to his right and an empty chair to his left.

“Oh, Tony,” Maria coos once they've concluded their slightly off-pitch rendition of happy birthday, her own eyes shimmering with tears. She wipes them away with a sniffle. “My baby, I can’t believe you’re eighteen! Feels like just yesterday I was bringing you home, all eight and a half pounds of you!"

Tony makes eye contact with Peter before sitting down next to Mom and Peter, across from Dad. “Relax, Mama,” he chuckles, already reaching to stab three waffles with his fork and pile them onto his plate. Once he’s made his (nearly overflowing) plate, everyone else follows suit. “Thanks for making breakfast Mama, you too Pete. Thanks for...offering moral support while they cooked, Pop,” he grins at Richard, making Peter snort.

“Got any big plans today, sweetheart?”

“Not really,” Tony says around a mouth full of waffle, chocolate, banana, and whipped cream. The groan he lets out is absolutely indecent- or maybe that’s just the way it sounds to Peter as he tries to inconspicuously shift in his seat. “Fuck, these are so good, Momma.” Tony’s eyes are closed, so he definitely doesn’t notice the way Peter’s pupils are blown, nor does he see the long-suffering side-eye he knows both parents are throwing at him for his language.

“Well,” Maria continues, taking a bite of her own waffle, “I’m sorry Dad and I are busy, but we’ll all go out for dinner tomorrow night, how’s that sound?”

Richard nods in agreement, taking another sip of his coffee. “We can go to that Mexican place downtown you guys love so much.”

Tony bobs his head as he chews, reaching over to flick Peter’s ear. “No problemo, I was thinking maybe me and Pete-squeak can hang out today, anyway. And yes on dinner.”

Peter squawks around a mouth full of waffles, swinging his leg out to kick the brunette in the shin, ignoring Dad’s muttered “No violence at the table please, boys”. He screws his face up in mock indignation. “What makes you think I’m not busy today?”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Are you?” The he says it and the twinkle in his eyes feel like a challenge but-

Taking another bite, Peter shakes his head. There’s no use trying to deny it when he purposefully kept his schedule clear for the day in hopes of spending it with Tony. “Nope. I’m all yours.”

Tony notices the way that Peter looks at him sometimes, he's not stupid. He just chooses not to acknowledge it. (Well, admittedly, first he noticed the way Peter was around Pepper. His little brother has never been particularly comfortable around people who weren’t family, but this is different. He’s noticed the way that Peter makes himself scarce whenever he invites his girlfriend over (which, to be honest, he usually appreciates because who wants their sibling around when they’re trying to make out with their partner??), or the way he goes quiet whenever she’s brought up in conversation.) If Tony doesn’t acknowledge it, then he doesn’t have to think about the way it makes him feel, the things it makes him think.

And it works, for the most part. They spent the day binge-watching superhero movies on the couch, dozing off and on. Mom and Dad still weren’t home at dinner time, so Tony had suggested they make spaghetti, for no specific reason other than it’s the only thing he knows how to make. It was nice, jamming to 70s rock and singing along with Peter, talking about everything and nothing at all. They parked themselves back on the couch to eat dinner, choosing some random slapstick comedy on Netflix.

The movie’s over now and Peter just headed into the kitchen with their plates, claiming he had a surprise for Tony. The older teen leans back on the couch, stretching. He notices how dark it is; they’d turned the lights off once they finished eating in order to get rid of the glare on the TV. He debates getting up to turn on one of the lamps when he hears footsteps approaching.

Peter comes out from the kitchen and walks towards the couch. He’s holding a cupcake in his hands, a red single red candle placed in the center of the blue frosting. There’s a square red-wrapped box tucked up under one of his arms. In the dim lighting that shines in from the kitchen, the small flame reflects in the depths of his brown eyes, face illuminated in the glow. “Happy birthday to you,” he sings softly, eyes trained on the cupcake rather than Tony himself.

Tony’s suddenly struck with just how beautiful Peter is. He’s never really noticed it before (he has, but he’s been in denial for so long that he’s started to believe the lies he tells himself). His chestnut curls are strewn haphazardly on his head, and though he can’t quite make them out right now, Tony thinks of the freckles scattered over his cheeks and nose.

“...Happy birthday, dear Tony, happy birthday to you,” Peter finishes, sitting down on the couch beside him. He holds the cupcake out towards his older brother. “Make a wish,” he smiles, shifting the present that’s fallen into his lap.

“Hmmm,” Tony breathes, carefully taking the cupcake into his own hands. “What to wish for,” he mutters playfully, smiling back at Peter. He thinks for a moment before closing his eyes. He blows the candle out without making a wish, but what Peter doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He sits the cupcake down on the coffee table before making grabby hands at the box Peter’s now holding in his hands. “What’s that, Petey?”

“It’s uh,” Peter starts, swallowing. “A camera?” It comes out sounding like a question. “I know you’re leaving soon, for college, and I just- For memories- I don’t want you to...forget me,” he finishes quietly.

...Tony doesn’t know what to say to that yet he opens his mouth anyway. But before he can get the words out, Peter seems to catch himself and brightens up.

“And I want you to take pictures of everything at MIT so you can show me when you come back to visit- I’ve never been away from home before, I want to see what it’s like, what kind of fun stuff you get to do. Get some ideas for when I leave, next year.”

Tony tries not to let his feelings show on his face, choosing to let Peter’s first comment go. He gently takes the box from his brother’s hands and unwraps it, pulling out the polaroid camera. “This is so cool,” he grins. “Thanks so much, Peter.” Bumping their shoulders together, he starts to fiddle with the settings. “Help me get it set up so we can take some pics.”

Peter’s grin lights up the room.

***

Peter knew it was too good to be true, that something wasn’t adding up. He didn’t get good things like this. He didn’t get to be happy like he was today. And he had been so happy, happier than he’s felt in months.

He had deluded himself into thinking that Tony choosing to spend the day with him meant something special...now Peter knows better. He knows that he was just something to pass the time until Tony got to see who he really wanted to spend his big day with. He’d been caught off guard but honestly not surprised when the doorbell rang this evening, followed by Tony’s footsteps rushing down the hall and down the stairs, and he’d quietly closed his door at the sound of Tony’s breathy, excited, “Hey, Pep. Come on in, baby. Nobody’s home, just Peter.”

Just Peter. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? That’s all he would ever be, just Peter.

Now Peter’s laying in bed, facing the wall that his room shares with Tony’s. His eyes are red and sore from crying, and his lips taste like salt from the snot and tears. There’s a pile of cold, wet crumpled up tissues touching his elbow, tucked up close to his body. He’s bothered by the sensation but not enough to do something about it. He doesn’t have the energy.

Blinking slowly and wincing, Peter unlocks his phone and squints at the bright light in the darkness of the bedroom. 10:47pm. He was crying longer than he thought, almost two hours. No wonder he feels so worn out. He can no longer hear the sounds of whatever movie Tony and Pepper were watching downstairs. He briefly wonders if she went home-

But then two pairs of footsteps are making their way down the hall, and one keeps going towards what he presumes is Tony’s room while the other stops briefly in front of his door. Peter quickly fumbles with his phone to lock it and make the screen go dark, jerkily pulling the covers up over himself to hide his body, leaving only the top of his head exposed on the pillows as he feigns sleep. He just barely makes it before his door creaks open slowly.

“Pete? You up?” Tony’s voice is a whisper, and Peter desperately tries to control his breathing despite the way his heart is racing unsteadily in his chest. His performance must be convincing because a moment later his door closes softly and he can hear Tony’s footsteps leaving and then the sound of another door shutting.

"Fuck." It's Tony's voice that Peter hears first. “Been missing you all day, Pep. Kept wishing you were here.” Though muffled, the words are pretty easy for him to make out; they must be on Tony’s bed. (For the first time, Peter wishes that their beds weren’t sharing a wall. He regrets rearranging his room last summer. The sounds he’s heard over the past months no longer seem worth it. He doesn’t want to hear this, whatever it is.)

A feminine chuckle is what he hears next. “I just wanted you to be able to celebrate with your family. We’ll have plenty of time together in Boston.” Oh yeah. Pepper’s going to Boston too, attending Harvard rather than the engineering school. Peter tries really hard not to think about it, the amount of time they’re going to have alone together. “You’re leaving soon, and I know they’re going to miss you, especially Peter. He thinks you hung the moon, babe, it’s so cute.”

Peter tenses, and if he had hackles they’d definitely be up right now. He feels angry and attacked and seen in a way that makes him want to claw the skin off his body. His fists clench, nails digging into his palms and leaving crescent-shaped indentations in the flesh.

“...Know what else is cute? You.” He can almost imagine Tony’s saying the words to him, instead.

It’s quiet for a few moments and he foolishly thinks maybe they’ve gone to bed but then he hears the faint yet distinct sound of wet kisses, accompanied by choked off moans and whimpers. It feels like he’s gotten ice water dumped over him. He picks up on the quiet creaking of the mattress.

Pepper, high pitched and breathy, trying to keep her voice down. "Tony, yes, yes, right there." More whining and groaning, then-

Then Tony. "Yeah, honey? Like the way I fuck so deep in your pussy? Can you feel me all the way back there?" Peter can’t help but get hard at the sound of Tony’s voice saying the words, even though his heart feels like a stone in his chest. He feels like he’s lost feeling in most of his body, only registering the throbbing in his groin and the tightness in his ribcage. He distantly thinks that he must be dissociating but, maybe not because he’s aware, he- "Love how you're so wet on my cock- so tight, baby, fuck."

Peter shudders as he spits into his palm and shifts on the bed to turn onto his side. One hand snakes its way under the covers and into his boxers where his cock is rapidly filling out. He strokes himself to the quickening rhythm of the creaking and closes his eyes, trying not to picture what’s happening on the other side of the wall. It doesn’t work, but he doesn’t wipe away the tears that start to spill out from his eyelids. He’s close already, he’s so pathetic-

“Oh, fuck, Tony, please, gimme-”

“Mmmm, yeah baby- God, shit, I’m gonna cum, gonna fill you up- Fuuuck, fuck-”

With a sob, he cums into his fist at the sound of his brother’s release, burying his face into the pillow to muffle his cries. Peter takes a shaky breath and shakes his head against the fabric to wipe the tears away as the sobs intensify, wracking his body. He's gasping for air that will never come.

It’ll never be better than this.

#starker #starkercest #tony x peter #bloo writes bad things (tm)

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khoicesbyk · 3 years

Text

Dark Pleasure.

A/N: This AU is between my two all time favorite books Bloodbound and The Royal Romance! It is the crossover to end all crossovers.

A/N 2: This fanfic will be dark! And sexy! And violent! And delicious! And will quickly become your guilty pleasure.

Rated: Mature. | Contains sexual content and strong language. (You know? The usual from me. 😁) | Bolded and/or italicized words are conversations and thoughts of the characters. | Main Characters: Tristan Rys (LI) and Latisha Tucker (MC) x Adrian Raines and Tiana Reynolds-Raines | All Characters and names: (except MC and original characters created by me) are property of Pixelberry.

Current Word Count: 1,210 words. (more or less. I stop counting after editing and re-editing. 🤷🏾‍♀️)

Prompt Time! Today I’ll be using @wackydrabbles prompt #87 “No offense, but I'm not interested.”! It’ll be in bold in black.

If you’d like to be added to my tag list. Just reblog or dm me and I will gladly add you! 😁😘

Series TW: drug use, violence, murder, mentions of torture, prostitution.

This series is rated Mature. It is NOT reading material that is safe for those under 18. Reader discretion is STRONGLY advised!

(MAJOR SHOUTOUT TO @secretaryunpaid!!! SHE GAVE ME THE KICK IN THE ASS THAT I NEEDED TO START THIS SERIES! I DON’T THINK I WOULD’VE HAD THE BALLS TO WRITE THIS IF SHE HADN’T HAVE PUSHED ME IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION!)

Chapter 1.) Into The Shadows.

Tristan Rys has everything any man could ever want. Money, power, cars, girls, homes you name it, he’s more than likely got it. As President and Chairman of Rys International Group, it’s his job to provide his clients with every luxury their hearts desire. After all he’s known all around the world as The King Of Cordonia.

His late father Constantine started the company with just one small hotel and when he turned the business over to his youngest son, Tristan turned it into a powerhouse that rivals Marriott and Hilton. He has his Le Roi de Cordonie hotel group, his Lotus spas and The Underground nightclubs all over the world.

And now he’s looking to expand to the US. After scouting possible headquarter locations in California, New York, Miami, Boston and Chicago, he settled on Washington D.C. He took a liking to the busy city vibe. With D.C. being the home and hub of American politics and the potential growth of his client list, he was sold on the location. Because what better way to grow his true business than to be in a city that thrives?

What is his true business you ask?

Tristan isn’t just the owner of Rys International Group, he’s also one of the biggest drug lords in the world. No one has ever been able to touch him.

And right now he’s about to have the biggest investment meeting of his life. If he’s able to make this deal it would mean he’d truly be unstoppable.

He’s about to meet with Senator Adrian Raines.

Adrian has known Tristan since he was a kid. He and Constantine were great friends and eventually Adrian became one of Rys International’s biggest clients. After all, they hosted Adrian and Tiana’s wedding. So when Adrian heard that Rys International was coming to D.C., he had to see what brought Tristan to town. Although Adrian doesn’t run the day to day of Raines Corporation he was still willing to meet.

Both arrived to an empty Ocean Prime Steakhouse for their meeting.

“Adrian! It’s good to see you!” Tristan said as he stood to greet Adrian with a handshake.

“It’s good to see you too Tristan. It’s been a long time. I haven’t seen you since you were a kid.” Adrian replied, returning his handshake.

“Thank you for meeting with me, Senator.”

“Please you know you can always call me Adrian.”

“I know but I want to respect you and your new position.”

“Thank you. What can I get you? Scotch?” Adrian asks.

“Whiskey if you don’t mind.” Tristan replies.

Adrian signals for the waiter to bring them a couple bottles and glasses.

“Now before we get down to business, I gotta ask…how’s that spitfire wife of yours?” Tristan asks.

Adrian snickered.

“You know how she is about you. She won’t shut up about the new spa you opened up in New York. I can’t keep her out of there.” He replies.

“Yes I know. Still the best sex I’ve ever had.”

“You’re a liar but I’ll take the backhanded compliment anyway.”

The two shared a laugh as the waiter brought them two bottles of whiskey.

“I don’t know about you but I’m starving! So shall we order?” Tristan asks him.

“Of course let’s order.”

They placed their orders and while they waited for their food to be delivered, they started to discuss business.

“So let’s get down to it. Why am I here Tristan?” Adrian asked.

“I have a business proposal for you Adrian.”

“Oh? And what is this business proposal as you put it?” Adrian asks.

“Consider it a bit of a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’. I’m new to town and I know how cutthroat D.C. can be. And I’m a small fish in this very big pond.” Tristan replies.

“Meaning?” Adrian asked with an eyebrow raised.

“Meaning you give me protection here in D.C. and I fund your entire senatorial re-election and future presidential campaign.” Tristan replies.

Adrian scoffed.

“No offense, but I'm not interested.”

“Come on Adrian! You can’t seriously be passing this up!”

That’s when their food arrived.

“Need I remind you that you are one of the biggest drug dealers in the world? You’re a danger to my campaign!”

Tristan shrugged.

“Suit yourself Senator. I was actually looking forward to working with you but I’m sure your opponent in New York will be happy to take the deal.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh no? Why not? Because you’re an old friend of both me and my father?” Tristan asks.

Adrian smirked.

“You’re an asshole. You do know that right?” Adrian asks.

“High praise!” Tristan replies.

“If I agree to this, what do I really get out of this?” Adrian asks.

“Like I said, a fully funded re-election and future presidential campaigns. On top of the perks of being a valued member of Rys International’s platinum club and a few other personal perks and favors, of course.” Tristan replied.

“All while you get to set up shop here in D.C. and run your legal and illegal business, correct?” Adrian asks.

“A win-win situation if I do say so myself.” Tristan replies before pouring himself a drink.

“And how would we go about this…business?” Adrian asks.

“Very simple. Your head of security Jax will meet with my head of security Drake Walker and coordinate.” Tristan replies.

“Jax won’t agree to that.”

“Why not?” Tristan asks.

“Jax doesn’t like working with people.” Adrian replied.

“Neither does Drake. Unless it involves sex and liquor.”

“Oh well in that case, they’ll be great together. They’re both brooding, moody and love liquor and women.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“What about your brother Leo?” Adrian asks.

“Simple. While all that happens my brother will work with Raines Corporation on the business side of things.”

“And what about us?”

“Just two old friends working together to make sure that you are re-elected and my business flourishes here in America.”

“And no one will know about your cartel?” Adrian asks.

“Nope. Hell I’ll even throw you a cut of the profits…and a few of my finest girls.” Tristan replies.

Adrian sat back and thought about Tristan’s words.

“Come on Adrian. I know you’re considering it.”

“You’re an egomaniac!”

“And you’re the vampire who is married to the most powerful woman in the entire universe. And together you and I will become the two most unstoppable men on the planet!”

Adrian just shook his head then grinned.

“Damn you’re good…”

“That’s the nature of my business. So what do you say? Do we have a deal?” Tristan asks.

“This goes against everything I have believed in! I am better than this!” Adrian hissed. “And yet…this is too damn good for you to pass up.”

Adrian took a deep breath and Tristan rolled his eyes.

“Just say that you accept the damn deal old man!”

“Fine! You’ve got a deal! I can not believe I’ve been talked into this.”

“Wonderful! I’ll have my legal team contact yours and we’ll hammer out all the fine print.”

“You truly are ruthless, Tristan.”

“Jay-Z said it best. I’m not just a businessman, I’m a business…man.”

Adrian snickered.

“Here’s to a very lucrative partnership.”

“Finally!”

The two toasted to their new deal.

#choices #choices stories you play #pixelberry #khoicesbyk #choices fanfiction #fanfic #bloodbound #the royal romance #dark au

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dis--parity · 3 years

Text

@magickedhat | x.

『🔧』 The gift exhibits no particular lack of patience to their deliberation - only the weight it exerts on their arms as it’s picked up. With a proper feel of the object underneath the wrapping paper, its material becomes more apparent - a sleek metal, formed into sheets and notches that the wrapping paper so loosely conforms to. Maybe it wouldn’t have minded if Wren was a bit more reckless with their unpacking - but who’s to say? It’s just a thing. And that thing, unwrapped in all its glory, happens to be...!

A prosthetic left arm.

It’s painted in the hues of purple Wren is familiar with, coated in the motif of stars and nebulae loosely painted onto the metal. And, affixed to the wrist, in a frame where perhaps a larger apparatus may have once lay... a firework launcher. It even came with a few small fireworks - and there’s even some controls to safely operate it without having the arm attached - even to operate it remotely! But... there’s still that part that the end, that unique wiring pattern to connect to a certain receptacle that it lacked. And, engraved on the bottom, a signature - unmistakable in its serif font.

Alexandra Iskra-Cloutier – Robotsou Inc.

... the brand name, of course, being a mock-up, but still.

And then, there was the matter of the letter - which, upon its opening... would explain everything. Well, the sender certainly seemed to hope so, anyway.

Do you like it?

That’s right. I’m the one who’s been leaving gifts at your desk all this time. Given the circumstances, I had no way of knowing whether they were liked or appreciated - but I hope they at least brought you and Foxtrot a bit of joy.

It started out just after I met Foxtrot, and learned you two were together. I wanted to do something fun and nice for you two, help your relationship flourish that little bit more, you know. Believe me when I say I know what young love is like - nothing brings people together like a good mystery. I hope it had that effect.

But... as you can probably tell, I guess it’s become more of a form of reconciliation. I know I stayed nameless throughout it all, but I still wanted to show you that I cared about you and Fox. That I still value you and your friendship. I chose to remain anonymous in spite of this because... I just didn’t know how you’d react to learning it was me like that. I didn’t want you to think I was weird, or clingy, or possessive, or anything - and I’m sorry if that’s what it came off as, or if it’s doing that right now.

The arm you see before you is a modified version of the original flamethrower arm - I’ve re-engineered it into something just as flashy, but much safer and much more... legal. I figured you might appreciate it, as a memento of the good times we spent together. My final gift to you, at least under this guise.

Here’s the thing. I don’t know whether you still want to hear from me after what transpired between us - but at the very least, I wanted to let you know I still care about you and love you as a friend. I wanted to let you know I’m doing better since that incident, too - I took the issue to my therapist, and she’s been super helpful in helping me deconstruct what caused me to lash out at you like that. I’ve still got a long way to go in terms of figuring out a good way to vent, and managing a good relationship with anger, but I shouldn’t be blowing up at anyone anymore like I did with you.

And, most importantly... I wanted to sincerely,. explicitly apologise for what I did and said. You were the victim of something I failed to control, I lashed out at you and said mean-spirited things to you, all rooting from trauma that I’ve yet to completely heal from. You never deserved to be put through that, you received the brunt of the rage and emotion that should have been directed towards someone totally different, and I’m so, so sorry for that.

My optimistic hope is that you’ve recovered from that argument - or, at the very least, you’re willing to talk it out with me. But my fear - irrational as it may be - is that you haven’t, and as a result you never want to associate yourself with me or my baggage ever again. I’d understand if that was the case, honestly, but it goes against my hopes.

Again, this is nothing more than my way of saying that I still value you and your friendship. I just wasn’t sure if you felt the same way about the situation. If you don’t. and if the very text on this letter and what it offers repulses you, feel free to keep this arm around, as a memoir of what we once had and lost - or just discard it to a dusty corner of the circus if that’s what you want to do.

But, if my optimism works out for the better, and my worst worries aren’t true - come find me in the forest. We’ll talk it out from there, and maybe we can be friends again, if you want. You’ll know if I’m in there, trust me - and bring the arm, will you? It would only be right we celebrate us moving past this issue with a proper demonstration of this arm in the field.

The choice is yours - and I accept whatever it is.

Yours sincerely, Alexandra Alyssa Gale Iskra-Cloutier

#[ᴘʀᴏɢʀᴀᴍᴍᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ғᴇᴇʟ] IC #Wren Chater #magickedhat #{ DAMN SLURPEE DAMMIT IT'S HAPPENING }#{ LET'S-A FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO }#{ and uh. aheh. /sweats }#{ obviously don't worry about reply length }#{ there's a reason I put the letter under a readmore }

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lesdemonium · 4 years

Note

please please give us a 33. baby fic (i hope this means there is a baby and not the characters are babies or have known each other since they were babies) and 52. marriage of convenience geraskier mash-up 😌💕

oops i angsted all over this!!!

33. Baby Fic + 52. Marriage of Convenience

“What is this horseshit?”

Geralt looked up from the paperwork Yennefer provided him with. He was tensed, ready for a fight, but Yennefer held up her hand as if to stop him. It was with a huff that he allowed her to silence him, but he narrowed his eyes to find some way to voice his displeasure.

“The judge is a family matters type judge. He won’t care if you’re the better parent, or that Ciri actually knows you. In his eyes, the fact that they’re her grandparents and that there are two of them means they are the obvious choice. I agree with you, it’s horseshit, but if we want to win this, we have to play ball. Now, as your legal advisor, I cannot advocate for you... bending the rules. But as your friend. Well. I think you need to do whatever you possibly can to make yourself a more ideal candidate in this judge’s eyes.”

Geralt’s lips thinned. He wanted to yell at Yen, to tell her this was stupid and archaic and made no sense at all. He’d had Ciri for a year now after the death of her parents. As far as she was concerned, Geralt was her dad. Now her estranged grandparents thought they had rights, and by all accounts would win their custody battle? It wasn’t fair. It was deeply, deeply unfair, both to him and to Ciri.

“What are you suggesting I do, then?” Geralt finally spat, glowering at her.

Yennefer spread her hands out on the table, palms up. She looked at him, an eyebrow raised, and tilted her head. Already, Geralt didn’t like whatever plan she had in mind. But if it would keep his 18 month old with him, he would be willing to do anything.

“How do you feel about marriage?”

It was a stupid idea. Geralt knew that even as he worked himself up to have the conversation all throughout Ciri’s bedtime routine. He took his time with it, trying to stretch out the diaper change, putting on her pajamas, and reading her stories as long as possible. Eventually, though, it all came to an end. Ciri was tired, and when Geralt put her in her crib, she rolled over onto her stomach almost immediately, her butt in the air, chasing sleep.

Geralt’s steps were heavy as he made his way down the stairs. He could hear Jaskier at the kitchen table, typing away on his laptop, and Geralt’s heartbeat only got faster.

“Hey! Let me just--” he finished typing with a flourish, then closed the laptop. Jaskier turned to face Geralt with a smile, holding out his hand for Geralt to take. Geralt did, and sat down in the chair across from Jaskier. “How did the meeting with Yen go? What did she say about all this?”

Geralt swallowed thickly. “She said they have a case. Not really, because Ciri’s grandparents don’t know her and Pavetta and Duny had a will, but the judge they have, probably paid for... we’ll have an uphill battle. Yen thinks they’ll be able to prove Ciri shouldn’t stay with me.”

Jaskier’s face looked stricken. He tightened his hold on Geralt’s hand. “But that doesn’t make any sense! She’s been here since she was six months! You’re her dad. They can’t just... take custody away from you because they decided to swoop back into her life!”

Geralt shook his head. “They shouldn’t be able to. But they have money. This judge tends to side with biological family. We could probably dispute that, by leaning heavily on the fact that they were estranged, and I was in Ciri’s life even before the accident. But he also likes two-parent households. He’s not a fan of single parents.”

“God, of all the prejudiced--I can’t believe that. There has to be something we can do. They can’t just... take her.” Jaskier bit his lip harshly, looking down. His eyes were beginning to tinge red, and Geralt didn’t blame him. Geralt had cried his fill earlier that day.

“Will you marry me?”

The words burst out of Geralt so quickly, they were largely inarticulate. Jaskier’s eyes latched back onto Geralt’s as his eyebrows shot up. Geralt felt his mouth grow dry.

“Geralt, what--”

“A two parent household, Jask. We could be that if we got married. You’ve already been here for most of her life, she knows you and loves you. I love you. It would strengthen our case, and Yen thinks it’d be enough to get the judge to side with me.”

“Romantic, Geralt,” Jaskier said, voice dripping with sarcasm. He frowned and pulled his hand away from Geralt, instead wrapping it around his torso as if he were hugging himself. Or protecting himself. “Exactly what I’ve always dreamed my boyfriend would say. A marriage of convenience. Forgive me if I don’t swoon.”

“Jask, that’s not--” Geralt ran his fingers through his hair. It was what he meant, though. Jaskier was right. This wasn’t romantic, it was just pure convenience. He could understand the hurt, angry look Jaskier was giving him.

“I’m a little tired of Yennefer leading our relationship, Geralt. Do you really need her to field every single step we take? You only asked me out because she told you to stop being an idiot, and now you’re asking me to marry you on her legal advice. Jesus, did you consult her before we fucked, too? Did she give you tips and pointers? Should I thank her for you asking me to move in?” Jaskier pushed himself back from the table abruptly, the chair scraping on the floor. He stood up and walked into the kitchen proper, his back to Geralt.

“Jaskier, that isn’t what this is. It’s just to keep Ciri. I’m not trying to--”

“I know, Geralt. I fucking know, okay? And it’s very admirable and any other time I’d be swept right off my feet that you’d be willing to do anything for Ciri. But not when it means stomping all over me. I know Ciri always comes first, I agree, but can’t I at least be second?” His back was still turned to Geralt, but now Geralt could see his hands reach out to grasp the edge of the counter, holding Jaskier up. Geralt could see the muscles pressing taut against Jaskier’s skin.

Geralt stood, walking over to Jaskier slowly, as if he was a deer, easily spooked. Geralt reached out and touched Jaskier’s shoulder, and Jaskier yanked himself away.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to hurt you.” Jaskier huffed out a humorless laugh. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You and Ciri are my family. I didn’t want to make you feel otherwise, but I know this proposal isn’t exactly... encouraging affection.”

“You can say that again,” Jaskier replied.

When Geralt touched him again, though, Jaskier didn’t tug away. Geralt took Jaskier’s hand again, turning Jaskier until Jaskier faced him, teary eyes and all. Jaskier’s back pressed against the counter and Geralt stepped into his space, taking Jaskier’s face in his hands.

“I’ll admit I wasn’t ready to propose, not actually. I don’t want this to be our story or for a hasty, courthouse, wedding of convenience to be how I tell the world I love you.” He took a deep breath, watching Jaskier’s face. Though his mouth was still a thin line and his hands remained tight on the counter, he was at least listening to Geralt. “When I propose to you, for real, it will have nothing to do with Yennefer, and will be solely about you. When we get married, we’ll have a ceremony, however you want it to look, and I will kiss you until you’re embarrassed of me. All I’m asking of you now is to help me keep our baby. Marry me on paper, that’s all. Please, Jaskier.”

Jaskier sniffed and rolled his eyes. “Your actual proposal better be so fucking romantic. And it is officially yours. There is absolutely zero chance of me proposing to you, now. You need to figure out how to make it a story worth telling to make up for this bullshit.”

Geralt nodded. He swiped his thumb out to wipe away a tear.

“And you are so in the doghouse. For a while, Geralt Rivia. This was a colossally bad false-start, and I demand to be woo’d and courted for my forgiveness.”

“Of course.”

Jaskier pursed his lips and tried to blink away his tears. “And marriage is something you want eventually, for real, not just to give us some legitimacy? Because I didn’t think you even wanted to get married at all. Being yours without a certificate didn’t bother me. But doing it that way when you don’t even want to do it that way, ever, that would just kill me, Geralt. I’ll do anything to keep Ciri but don’t--please don’t--I can’t if doing this will ruin everything.”

Geralt shook his head. “It won’t. We were going to get married one day, no matter what. The right way. I’m settling for doing it the wrong way so that I can keep you both forever.”

“Will things change?”

“Absolutely nothing. I’ll love you just the same before and after. It’s about legality only. Otherwise, I’m very happy with us.”

Jaskier took a deep breath and nodded. His arms finally snaked their way around Geralt’s waist and Geralt took that as permission to kiss Jaskier. It was soft, chaste, just a testing of the water. Jaskier looked wrecked when Geralt pulled away, though. He wouldn’t press it further.

“Okay. Let’s keep our baby,” Jaskier whispered.

send me a geraskier prompt mashup?

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 4 years

Note

What do you think the Animorphs would be like playing D&D? Not "the Animorphs in a D&D world", but the Animorphs actually sitting down and having a campaign of D&D. Like the classes/races they'd pick, their play styles, wacky shenanigans (because we all know it would happen).

[Credit to Cates for 100% of the character builds, and most of the lore, in this AU. In case you were wondering, I’m the Jake-style “never read the manual” chaotic-dumbass bard of our campaign; she’s the Marco-style “uses the rules exactly as much or little as needed” DM.]

It was decided almost right away that one on the team had any alignment. As DM, Marco attempted to start there, only to have Ax begin questioning whether the manual’s explanations of “good” and “evil” truly captured human ethics on a grand scale. Tobias claimed that Ax was looking at it all wrong, that the moralities were only default behavior types within the game, and that within this particular context morality didn’t matter. Cassie got very concerned about the idea of context-dependent morality, Rachel declared that the book was stupid and short-sighted for claiming that destroying things was always bad, Jake quietly asked for the fourth or fifth time if this game was actually a good idea…

“Fine!” Marco announced. “You’re all amoral characters. Happy?”

“‘Amoral’ implies that we’re immoral, doesn’t it?” Cassie asked. “Or that we exist outside the spectrum of moralities?”

“Just…” Marco rolled his eyes. “Everyone leave that spot on your character sheet blank, okay? If it ever comes up, we’ll deal with it on a case-by-case basis.”

“Yes,” Ax said, “although you never did answer my question about the implied ethical structure of this universe.”

After that, character creation went fairly smoothly. Kind of.

“Why does Dennis need a backstory, again?” Jake asked, looking down at his sheet.

“Dennis?” Marco said. “Dennis?

“You already said I wasn’t allowed to use ‘Dylan’ or ‘Brad’, so…’”

“C’mon man, this is D’nD. There are no Dennises in medieval fantasy epics.”

“Fine.” Jake crossed out and rewrote the name at the top of his character sheet. “Why does Keith need a backstory?”

“To explain his motivation.”

“You just said that the whole time we’re going to be chased around by orcs and whatnot. Isn’t not dying enough motivation?”

“You really don’t understand this game, do you?” Rachel said.

“I really don’t understand this game,” Jake agreed.

“My character’s a dragonborn rogue named Joan, and she’s the greatest gymnast of all time.” Rachel added a Dexterity marker to her sheet with a flourish.

“I thought I was a dragonborn,” Jake said. “Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, we can have as many dragonborns as you all want.” Marco shrugged. “We just can’t have multiple bards. And since you called dibs on that class, and Rachel wants to be a rogue, we’re fine.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jake said. “I just want to help out the team. Or, uh, Keith does?”

“Great.”

“So that’s my backstory, right? Being a bard?”

“Yes,” Rachel said, at the same time Marco said, “No!”

In the end, Marco declared that if neither Rachel nor Jake could come up with a proper backstory, he was making their characters cousins. Tobias, who had a better flair for the romantic, declared that said cousins were from an internationally feared family of highwaymen.

“So does that get us any extra skills, coming from a family of pirates?” Rachel asked.

“Maybe it’d explain how good your character is at gymnastics,” Jake said. “Because of riggings and all.”

“Highwaymen.” Marco looked up from where he was trying to salvage Keith’s stats from the hopeless tangle of Jake’s incorrect math. “Tobias said you guys are highwaymen, not pirates.”

“What are pirates but highwaymen of the sea?” Tobias asked, tilting his head in thought.

“Just put us down as jewel thieves.” Rachel made a note on her own sheet. “Jewel thieves of diverse methodology. Wherever jewels can be found, there we are with threats of violence to take them away.”

“By the way, why is Ax now a tiefling?” Tobias asked Marco.

“I told Marco I have no preference for my class and race,” Ax said. “And the word is most pleasant, tea-fling. Ffflllling.”

“They’re blue and have tails.” Marco smirked at Tobias. “It’s perfect!”

Rachel and Jake might’ve been vague on the idea of backstory, but Ax was quite definite.

“I am Eldrias the tiefling, fffflllling, paladin. She was raised by cows,” he announced.

“Don’t you mean raised by wolves?” Jake said. “Isn’t that a thing, raised by wolves?”

“Uh-huh,” Marco said, “since your land-pirates make perfect sense.”

“Wolves are beautiful animals, but they pale in comparison to cows,” Ax said. “Among other things, wolves’ meat is not so succulent and does not pair nearly as well with french fries.”

“Okay then,” Jake said, “raised by cows. Got it.”

Becoming a barbarian was Cassie’s idea. She spun through the manual in a rapid burst of pages, brushing gentle fingertips over the beautifully rendered illustrations, and then pressed it shut. “Barbarian,” she said. “That’s the one that can protect the team the best, right? So I’ll be a barbarian.”

Marco laughed. “All right then. Barbarian it is. Anything else in mind, for this barbarian of yours?”

Cassie tapped a finger against her lower lip, fluttering through the first several pages of the manual once again. “I could make my character a big, tall guy, right?”

“Sure.”

“But I want pointy ears.” She grinned at the rest of the table, somewhat sheepish.

“Half-elf barbarian, then?”

“Half-elf barbarian.” Cassie looked down at the sheet in front of her. “He can be named Reisgalan Von Schwartzel of the Morsgalath Half-Elves, Lord of the Plains and Wielder of…” She glanced around. “What’s that thing with the spiky ball on a stick?”

“Mace,” Rachel provided.

“Mace is that spray you use on bears and muggers,” Jake said.

“And it’s also a spiky ball on a stick.” Marco glanced at Cassie’s sheet. “You have a backstory for Reisgalan Von Whatshisface?”

“Hmmmm. Can I be widowed and have a tragically dead prince I must avenge?”

“Is it me?” Jake smiled hopefully.

“What?” Cassie frowned at him. “No. That’d be horrible.” She looked over at Marco. “Uh, can my character be a guy and also have a dead husband? Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, sure,” Marco said. “I’m the ruler of this universe, so I say it’s fine. And Tobias is the designated rules lawyer, so he’ll probably have some reason that it’s not.”

“I am not rules-lawyering!”

Marco looked at Ax’s character sheet, and then pointedly back up at Tobias. “Ax, how did you end up as not just a paladin, but a paladin that’s even more overpowered than the standard build?”

“Paladins are allowed.” Tobias shrugged. “It’s right there in the manual.”

“Ax, how you have splint armor?” Marco demanded.

“Paladins can wear Heavy armor,” Tobias sing-songed.

Marco growled.

Ax squinted at his character sheet. “Tobias says when I get to Level Three, I will take the Oath of Vengeance and take a Vow of Enmity. I will know the spells Thunderous Smite, Command, and Detect Magic.”

Marco’s face was turning an interesting shade of red.

“Oh, and Eldrias the paladin is taking Great Weapon as her Fighting Style.” Tobias wasn’t bothering to hide his smirk. “It’s all perfectly legal.”

Ax frowned at Marco. “Banging your head against the table with that level of force may have an adverse effect on your brain’s ability to function.”

“I’m not rules-lawyering for selfish gain,” Tobias said loftily, looking over Marco’s prone form. “And besides, Ax is new at this. He needs all the help he can get.”

“You find yourselves in a magical land.” Marco made a wild gesture in the air. It was probably meant to look dramatic and mysterious. “A land known as Falicornia.”

“Marco sucks at naming things,” Rachel whispered loudly.

“Rachel sucks at listening,” Marco whispered more loudly.

“You were saying?” Jake asked.

“This magical land is under threat from the dread god Cthulu! You must stop him through using the Philosopher’s Stone, which is powerful but cannot be used except by those who do not wish to use it. It contains many powerful temptations for the bearer. You must journey across the land, facing many dangers, to bring it to the only magical mirror that can destroy it before Cthulu has the chance to rise from that mirror and take over the world.”

Cassie raised her hand.

“Yes?” Marco said.

“Why does Cthulu want to take over the world?” she asked. “Does he need it for something?”

Marco sighed. “He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu. Any other questions?”

“First question: did you steal more of this plot from The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter?” Rachel said immediately. “Second question—” She turned to Ax. “Have we showed you those movies?”

“He’s reading the books first,” Tobias said.

“I’m reading the books first,” Ax agreed.

“You were saying about Cthulu,” Jake said to Marco.

“Yes. He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu,” Marco glared at Rachel. “Just because.“

“Actually,” Tobias said, “the original version of Cthulu was kind of like the Silver Surfer of Norse Mythology, and his motivation—”

“He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu.” Marco took a deep breath. “Anyway. Moving on.”

“Okay, you’re here.” Marco pointed to the G.I. Joe figure sitting in the middle of their somewhat crudely drawn map. “The goblins are…” One after another, he set four white pawns from his mom’s chess set around the G.I. Joe that represented Jake, forming a half-circle that separated him from Ax’s Smurf, Cassie’s My Little Pony miniature, and Tobias’s Precious Moments angel figurine. “Rachel is, uh…” He set the teddy bear pencil topper several inches back, between two goblin-pawns. “There. So.” Marco looked up at Jake. “You’re under attack. You’re up first in initiative order. What’re you going to do?”

Jake frowned, surveying the scene in front of him. “I have magic, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, so I’ll use magic to turn myself into a bird, and then—”

“Yeah, no.”

“Then I’ll turn my teammates into birds, and they can—”

“You cannot turn yourself into a bird, you cannot turn anyone else into a bird, no one is turning into a bird or any other animal at any point in this game.” Marco glanced over at Tobias. “No offense.”

“Oh, I totally agree,” Tobias said. “A Level One bard performing an animal shapes transmutation? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Anyway.” Marco pointed at Jake’s G.I. Joe figurine. “Assuming we’re sticking to handheld weapons, what else do you want to do?”

“I… shoot the goblin?” Jake suggested. “With my…” He flipped over his character sheet, squinting at his own handwriting. “With my board-sword.”

“Pretty sure you meant ‘broadsword,’” Rachel said. “Okay, Jake killed the goblin, now what?”

Cassie peered over Jake’s shoulder. “It could just be a sword made out of boards, you don’t know.”

“Jake only has thirteen out of sixty odds of killing the goblin on one go,” Marco said.

Tobias flipped open his own manual to the entry on goblins. “Where are you getting these numbers from?”

Marco selected two dice from the pile, handing them both to Jake. “Oh, I just figure that if the goblin’s got an armor class of seven and five HP, then Jake’s got a thirteen-in-twenty chance of scoring a hit and then a two-in-six chance of it being deadly, given his hit dice. So if you reduce twenty-six over one-twenty down it’s thirteen in sixty. Like, point-two-one-seven out of one. Simple math.” He gestured at Jake. “Roll those.”

“You and I have very different definitions of the word ‘simple.’” Jake looked up. “Uh, ten and the other one says four?”

“You grievously injured but did not kill the goblin,” Marco said graciously. “Now it’s the turn for this leftmost goblin, who is going to run and stick a sword through Rachel…” He rolled, and winced. “That’s fifteen to hit, and two damage?”

“What’s that mean for my little rogue?” Rachel waved her pencil topper at him.

“You got stabbed,” Marco said.

“Uh-huh.” Rachel picked up her pen and sheet. “Where?”

Marco shrugged. “The leg, let’s say. Uh, upper thigh?”

“Mm-hmm.” She wrote that down.

“Okay, then.” Marco glanced at his sheet. “Next in initiative order is—”

“I cast psionic blast as a Level One spell, which would cause additional damage to fiends or the undead. Are they undead goblins?” Tobias asked.

Marco rolled his eyes. “Nope.”

“Then they each suffer three points of damage and do not have the opportunity to make saving throws for the next minute and a half,” Tobias said. “That’s my first spell slot today.”

“Okay.” Marco tipped over one of the goblin pawns. “That one’s dead. Cassie?”

“That one’s threatening Ax?” She pointed at the pawn within the same square as the Smurf figurine.

“Yep.”

She nodded. “Then I smash its head in with my mace.” She rolled. “Eight to hit, eight damage?”

“Oh yeah, you just annihilated that one.”

“Good, good, so now can I mace the one that attacked Rachel?”

“Cool your jets.” Marco held up both hands. “You don’t get to do multiple hulk-smashes in one round until several levels up from here.”

Cassie wilted a little. “Okay. But I want to run over next to that one to be ready to mace it soon.”

“All right, center goblin is going to try and swing his big old greatsword at Cassie as an attack of opportunity…” Marco rolled. “And that’s a miss. Rachel, you’re up.”

“I’m unconscious,” Rachel said.

Marco gave her a blank look. “No you’re not.”

“Yes she is,” Ax said. “You just allowed that goblin— gob-blin? Goo-blin? —to stab her.”

“I did not allow— The dice—” Marco took a deep breath. “Rachel, you only took two points of damage. Go ahead and make a turn.”

“Okay, you clearly said…” Rachel glanced at her own notes. “That the goblin stuck its sword through my upper thigh. And apparently these are pretty big swords. No way in hell that misses the artery, not if I’m only about human-sized at the time. You also said that the goblin has its sword back, which means it pulled the sword out, which means that by now I have definitely lost enough blood to be unconscious. It’s just basic logic.”

Marco opened his mouth halfway. “That’s not how damage functions in this game,” he said at last.

“No, she’s right,” Jake said. “She wouldn’t necessarily be dead from blood loss by now, but on the super-narrow chance she’s still conscious, she’s not going to have the, like, grip strength to be shooting people with arrows or anything. That’s just how getting stabbed works.”

“Actually…” Tobias looked up from where he was sorting his flash cards of wizard spells. “In combat time, each turn is six seconds. So it hasn’t been five minutes of game-time. It’s been less than three seconds.”

“So this goblin managed to stick its sword all the way through me, pull it loose, and then get back into position to make a different attack in less than a second?” Rachel said. “And I don’t need to take a second or two to react to having been stabbed?”

“Yes!” Tobias said.

“This game is not closely aligned with the timing and functions of real combat,” Ax pointed out.

Marco let out a noise somewhere between a sigh and a shriek. “No shit, Sherlock! Can we please just play by the rules?”

“I’m just saying it’s not realistic,” Rachel muttered. “You get run through the leg with a sword, you bleed to death. That’s how it goes.”

“Would you please shoot someone already?” Marco said.

“If you insist.”

At Level Two, Tobias’s gnome wizard joined the School of Divination for exactly one game. “He’s rules-lawyering things that haven’t even happened yet,” Marco cried, throwing out his hands like this was the greatest injustice ever visited upon humanity. At which point Tobias decided that discretion was the better part of valor and switched to the School of Evocation. Marco’s eye stopped twitching.

“No, no, no.” Marco leaned over to look at Jake’s roll. “You add your charisma modifier to your attack roll, and then your strength modifier to your damage roll.”

“So he adds twelve to his roll?” Cassie looked at her own sheet. “I add seventeen to my roll?”

“Modifier. Not the whole stat. Mod-if-i-er.” Marco groaned loudly. “Is Tobias the only one who even tried to read the manual?”

“C’mon, man.” Jake shrugged, grinning. “When have you ever known me to do the assigned reading?”

“I have Tobias here to summarize the manual for me,” Rachel pointed out. “Why bother?”

“I did attempt to read the manual. Man. Well. It was not the most boring human book ever written, but it was very repetitive.” Ax glanced around at all of them. “Not to say that all human books are bad, even if they are all repetitive,” he added quickly. “Take the books of Harry Potter, which are acceptable in addition to being repetitive.”

“‘Acceptable’?” Tobias shook his head. “‘Repetitive’? You, sir, are wounding my entire species — one of my species — Just don’t diss the Potter.”

“There’s no need to call me ‘sir,’ professor,” Ax intoned.

Laughing, Tobias leaned over to bump their shoulders together. “I take it back. I love you, Ax-man. Never change.”

“Anyway,” Cassie said, “we elected Tobias party leader, so he’s the only one who really needs to know how to play, right?”

“‘Elected’ is a pretty strong word for it. The way I remember it, I was like…” Marco put on a deeper voice, “‘Who wants to be party leader?’ and Jake yelled ‘NOT IT’ so loud that he probably startled pigeons in the next county over. And then Tobias was the first one to recover from the shock long enough to volunteer.”

“I didn’t yell it, I said it,” Jake mumbled. “Said it enthusiastically.”

“And you’re wrong. We did nose-goes.” Rachel tapped her own nose to demonstrate. “Tobias lost.”

Ax’s eyes widened. “So you and Cassie covering your noses was a primitive selection procedure in the manner of duck-duck-goose? I thought we were all simply being polite by hiding our hideous human orifices from one another.”

“Anyway,” Tobias said, “as party leader, I’m declaring that we can whine about noses — and bipedalism — at a later time. For now, let’s play.”

“Ah, yes.” Ax looked down at the dice, and then back up at Marco. “Who was attacking whom, again?”

Marco stared around the board, and then back at the dice. “Like I remember that now!”

It was a small miracle that they all kept showing up after that first week. Tobias and Marco were the only ones with both the skill and the enthusiasm to be any good at the game. Cassie and Rachel lacked the necessary motivation: Cassie tended to get lost in long conversations with NPCs and never advanced the plot at all, whereas Rachel was likely to start climbing the walls with impatience after half an hour of sitting still. Ax and Jake were both reasonably enthusiastic but terrible: Jake paid no attention at all to the math, and Ax paid too much. They had one set of dice between the six of them, if one was generous and called rolling a d6 twice the same as rolling a d12. (It wasn’t, but Marco’s and Ax’s attempts to explain this always made everyone else’s eyes glaze over.)

Seriously, though, Marco knew perfectly well why they kept showing up. And it had nothing to do with everyone getting on board with Tobias’s super-geeky idea. They’d tried Dungeons and Dragons, and they hadn’t actually started liking it.

It had nothing to do with the storyline. Or the dice. Or the characters. They weren’t here for swords or goblins. They didn’t drop everything to spend four hours a week in each other’s company because they liked the game.

Duh.

Of course, even their love for each other could be tested, at times, by their sheer incompetence as players.

“We’re still in the undercave?” Jake groaned, looking at the game board. “We’ve been down here for like six weeks!”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re stuck.” Rachel glared around the table. “Because we keep trying to fight the ooze monster and then almost dying. Because we suck at this game.”

“Still say there should’ve been illithids,” Tobias muttered. “We’re in the cave of the illithids, but instead we’ve got apocalyptic ooze where there isn’t supposed to be any. That’s why we’re stuck.”

Marco sighed into his hands. “For the last time, man, we’re not having any stupid mind flayers in this game. There is a way out, I promise you, if you guys would just stop and figure it out.”

“I stab the ooze?” Cassie suggested.

“You take fourteen acid damage and permanently blunt your sword.” Marco didn’t bother to look up. “Just like last time.”

“Ugh.” Cassie wrote down her new HP. “At least I ruled out repeated stabbing as a way out?”

“Okay, okay.” Jake stared at the game board, yet again failing to take the this map not to scale memo. “We can figure this out. Is it a cave kind of like those caves under Leeran?”

Marco lifted his head, tossing his hair out of his face. “I got schlooped back to Earth before you guys got to see those, remember?”

“They were very beautiful,” Ax said, “and also full of toxic eels. So perhaps Prince Jake’s comparison is apt.”

“The real toxic eel is the friends we made along the way.” Rachel tilted her chair back, picking at her manicure. “Think we should just call it a day?”

“No, no, Jake’s right.” Cassie stared at the board. “I believe in us.”

“It was kinda cool in the Leeran caves, so sorry you missed it,” Jake said to Marco. “I was dead and missed the Battle of Trafalgar, though, so it all balances out?”

“The Battle of Trafalgar was not cool at all.” Marco rolled his eyes. “It was a battle. It was gross and loud and bloody. Is no one going to try anything else?”

“I pull out my rope and my flint, I set the rope on fire, we all die of smoke inhalation,” Rachel drawled. “There, I got us out of the cave.”

“And into the afterlife,” Ax said solemnly. “If, indeed, this game has an afterlife. It was designed by humans, so I assume… Soom. That it must.”

“Look, if we could just fight the mind flayer instead,” Tobias said, “there are clear strategies in place for how to fend off psychic attacks, and even if a few of us end up as mind-witnesses we could still use a handful of different spells—” He swung his copy of the manual around to face Marco, pointing to a spot low on the open page. “If you’ll just look at what the book says…”

Marco slammed the book shut, hard.

Tobias had to yank his hand back to avoid smashed fingers. “Watch it!” he snapped.

“Guys,” Jake said. “Let’s—”

“Rule. Zero.” Marco flattened a hand on top of the closed book. “I’m the DM here, and I get to say that there are no mind flayers and definitely no mind witnesses, because I say so. I’m the Ellimist of this little universe, and you don’t get a counter-argument.”

Rachel snorted loudly. “Bad comparison. Tobias argues with the real Ellimist all the time.”

“Only when he’s doing something stupid.” Tobias was looking at Marco, not at her. “Or breaking the rules of his own game.”

“Tobias…” Jake inhaled slowly, massaging the bridge of his nose. “It’s just a game, okay? Marco… We are kinda stuck, dude, no offense. Couldn’t we at least try to fight whatever it is Tobias wants, see if that gets us out of here?”

Marco pushed to his feet, face flushed. “I’m running this game, because you people decided I should. And I don’t give a fuck how much Bird-Boy complains, this game is not going to involve anyone getting psychically mind-controlled. It will not feature alien tadpoles that crawl inside people’s brains and take over their bodies.” He swept a hand across the board. “There will be no illithids, there will be no brain golems, there will be no controllers—”

Marco snapped his mouth shut.

There was a long silence. Tobias stared at the floor.

“Mind-witnesses,” Marco said at last. “I meant mind-witnesses.”

THUNK.

Figurines and dice scattered everywhere. The play-dough lump of ooze flattened underneath the second game board Cassie had just dropped on top of the first.

“Anyway,” she said, giving everyone an embarrassed smile. “How about we switch to Monopoly for a while?”

“I call being the little dog piece,” Rachel said, pulling the box open.

“I’m sorry,” Tobias whispered to Marco, as Ax began clattering through the pieces and asking Jake questions. “I didn’t mean…”

“Yeah.” Marco pulled the bank toward him and counting out notes. “Same here, man. Uh, y’know. Sorry I…”

“We’re cool. We’re cool?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Does this highly successful roll mean I have first chance to stab Income Tax with my—” Ax squinted at his game piece “—car? So I’ll be attempting to inflict damage on Income Tax by running it over?”

“Many have tried that strategy,” Rachel intoned. “None have succeeded so far.”

“You know that your beloved manual lists exactly the same stats for hawks, eagles, and owls, right?” Marco asked, grinning evilly.

“What? No.” Tobias frantically flipped toward the back of the book.

“Anyway, is he right?” Cassie asked as Tobias searched. “Are we all supposed to be dead right now?”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Marco said. “Yes, the explosion would have done a lot of damage to all of you—”

“Thanks, Jake,” Rachel snarked.

Jake sighed loudly. “How was I supposed to know you had to throw the hand grenade after you pulled the pin?”

“You mean the part where Ax and Tobias were both yelling ‘toss it, toss it,’ and you were like ‘no, I’m gonna do an investigation check first’?” she said. “And then we all died?”

“Actually, I believe Cassie was raging at the time when the ceiling fell on us all,” Ax said. “Therefore, her damage would be halved.”

“Hell yeah!” Cassie laughed. “So it’s just…” She peered at Marco’s roll and winced. “Everyone else… in the entire party… who automatically failed a death check. Right, Tobias?”

“No,” Marco said loudly, “because Jake cast Teleportation Circle and got you all out of there before the ceiling fell.”

“But Tobias believes that that would be allowing too many actions on a single turn. Uurn. Earn,” Ax said. “And that Jake wouldn’t have time to set up the circle even if he did have a bonus action left.”

“For fuck’s sake, do you want to end on a total party kill?” Marco demanded.

Rachel smiled sweetly. “It’s not a TPK if Cassie’s still alive.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Oh, in that case—”

“Oh my god, you’re right!” Tobias sounded outraged.

“Am I dead?” Rachel pouted. “Just when this stupid game was starting to grow on me.”

“No, not that.” Tobias stabbed a finger on the page. “It says right here. ‘For hawk, see: eagle.’ It fucking classifies hawks as a fucking subspecies of eagle!”

“What were you just saying about us following the manual at the expense of our lives?” Marco said smugly.

Tobias stared in betrayed horror at the page for another second. And then he tossed the entire book clear over his shoulder and out of the room. It clattered loudly in the hall.

“So as I was saying, Jake cast Teleportation Circle,” Marco said. “And teleported you all out of there.”

“So we’re… not dead?” Cassie asked.

“Given the nature of teleportation, perhaps we are both dead and not, existing in the gap between states,” Ax said. “Like when our consciousness was trapped in z-space, and yet our matter remained on Earth. Or we exist in multiple universes at once, some in which we have died and some in which we yet live.”

“Yeah, cool, Schrödinger’s party,” Rachel said. “Blah, blah. Anyway, I’m gonna punch Jake in the arm for being a dumbass. In-game and out-of-game.”

“Good luck with that.” Marco cackled his evil DM cackle. “The only universe I care about is the one where the whole lot of you give me an initiative roll. Because I didn’t say Jake teleported you to a safe location, just a different one.”

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nooneactuallyasked · 3 years

Text

Diner Gal - Reggie x Reader Part 7

Requested: It’s a series, there are no requests here!

Word count: 1,333

Warnings: Cursing and weirdos-

Summary: Julie and the Phantoms ( + Flynn ) go to a musical diner/café/restaurant for inspiration and hopefully a future gig but they end up meeting a very special waitress.

Note: The plot thickens…

I’m so dumb, I’ve been writing out parts/chapters like a robot and forgetting to post them, send help lol. Anyway, enjoy!

Part 1 here Part 2 here Part 3 here Part 4 here

Part 5 here Part 6 here Part 6.5 here

---

“Cal?” Y/N called out, looking around. So much for an early shift so she could leave early. If Cal wasn’t there then her shift didn’t start and that was the last thing she needed when she also had to do rounds and show him the tapes and – well, you get the idea. “Cal!”

“What are you looking for?”

Y/N frowned and turned around, her eyes narrowed and focusing in on a boy standing a few feet away from her. “Who are you? And why are you here, it’s not opening time yet.” She felt a growing unease settle in the pit of her stomach, where was Cal when you needed him? Hopefully, his amazing dramatic timing would kick in and she would be saved from the weird atmosphere.

“Oh, I’m here for Cal. But you may speak to him first.” The boy, which she had now deemed “Blondie”, then stepped back, lifting himself into a sitting position on one of the tables. “How extremely kind of you, Blondie.” Y/N rolled her eyes, sarcasm obviously dripping from her mouth, which the boy either didn’t catch or chose to ignore.

“Cal! If you’re just deciding to ignore me I will skin you alive!”

Y/N rolled her eyes at the silence, turning back to the boy only to find him slumped on the floor against the table leg. “Uh…Blondie? You alright there, bud?”

“He’ll be fine, Cal’s not in right now so go on your way.” Y/N turned to face the new voice, her eyes searching the badly lit room. Why hadn’t she turned on the light! Oh yeah, she was supposed to be the only one here with the exception of Cal.

The voice was deeper, more sinister but not menacing, not yet, “Okay, who are you and does no one realise that we’re closed? There’s a sign for a reason!”

Y/N narrowed her eyes at the lack of answer, “Okay, mystery shadow man, can I call you that?” “Well- “ “You know what, I don’t care I’m calling you it anyway. So, mystery shadow man, do you mind either explaining or leaving because I have a shift to start and Cal needs to be here before that starts and legally you can’t be here since we’re closed. Bye.” She made her way over to the side door and opened it wide, adding extra drama by flourishing her arm in the same direction, “Stop by some other time when we’re actually open.”

“Alright, but before I go, you’re welcome. I’ll be back soon enough.” A low and sinister chuckle filled the air as the man made his way over to the door, “Okay, Creepy McGee, that’s great and all but you still need to leave. Goodbye.” Y/N grabbed the man by what she could now discern as a purple cloak/overcoat and pushed him out of the door. “Have a great day, sir. I hope to see you at Le Paradis du Chanteur very soon, preferably during the times we’re open. Goodbye.” She plastered her customer service smile on her face before slamming the door in his face. What is it with some people and just going, ‘Restaurant? Give me food. I won’t pay or even look at the sign to see if it’s even open.’ They act like cavepeople.

Y/N’s eyes widened when she remembered the blonde boy still unconscious in the dining area. “Of course it’s today of all fucking days.” She grumbled under her breath as she raced back to where she left the boy.

“Blondie?”

“Okay, what the fuck is happening today? Where the hell did he go? And it’s only 6 in the morning…great.”

---

“Alright, fess up. Who put this in my pocket? And just so you know, it doesn’t even work.”

Julie knew who did it, it was obviously Reggie. He was the only one that was dumb enough, and Julie meant this in the nicest way, to believe that it could be any of the three boys that would ask her to call Y/N. If Julie hadn’t found it so funny she might have been slightly annoyed but the note beside the old, broken flip phone that her dad used before her mum forced a new one into his hands just made her smile, it was so innocent:

“Call Y/N because her voice is nice and pretty and I want to hear it.

- The band :D”

Yeah, it was obvious, but making him spit it out was so much more entertaining. Reggie flushed and screwed up his face in thought, she wouldn’t catch him out if he said it was all of them, would she? No, he’d be fine.

“Well, who does it say it’s from?”

“ ‘The band’ “

“Then there’s your answer!”

“Reggie…I’m not stupid, just admit it was you.”

“…How did you figure it out?”

Julie rolled her eyes though a small smile played on her lips, “Who else would ask for Y/N because her, and I quote, “voice is pretty and I want to hear it.” Alex and Luke glanced at each other, before bursting out into laughter. Reggie gaze turned to the floor as his ears turned red, “I don’t know, probably a lot of people.”

“Sometimes I wonder why we keep you, then I remember we need a bassist.”

---

“Hey Cal! Calina! Calerella! Callie!”

“You know you could just come and find me instead of screaming a bunch of weird nicknames into the open air until I finally hear you.” Cal came out from the staff room and rolled his eyes at the sight of Y/N rocking back and forth on her heels whilst playing with a table cloth. “Oh I know, dear Cal, but this is so much more fun, don’t you think?” She grinned before summoning her serious business face, “Okay, here are my notes on all the performers we have, Julie and her himbos- I mean Julie and the Phantoms is first, I have the video on my phone too.”

She reached over to the table she was next to and lifted a pile of papers, all colour coded to the performer’s atmospheric colour (as she called it), and looking monstrously tall. “I’ll get started on that after we close. If you don’t mind staying behind, you know how much I need and value your input.” Y/N smiled at that, Cal was like her cool Uncle and it always made her happy to know how much he appreciated her. She walked to him, arms still full.

“Sure, old man. I’ll go put these in your office for later.” She nudged her shoulder against his, grinning as she did so, before walking out to the staff room.

---

“Alright, Callerina. I’ve given you all I have to offer, so I shall be heading home now. Plus, I’m not being paid for after-hours so, you know.” She shrugged, a grin easing onto her face. Cal looked up at her as she stood up, “My company is payment enough, obviously.” Y/N rolled her eyes and shifted her weight as she pulled her work bag onto her shoulder. “Sure, keep telling yourself that.” Cal gasped dramatically as Y/N walked to the door, “Listen here, missy, I’ll dock your pay if you don’t show me the respect I deserve!”

“No! Not my pay!” She leaned against the door frame, bringing a hand to rest on her forehead as she ‘fainted’. She caught Cal’s eyes and they both burst out laughing, definitely a cool Uncle and his favourite niece.

“Okay, see you later, Cal. Have a great night!” Y/N waved goodbye as she walked out the door, giving him one last smile. Cal sighed after the door had closed “I don’t what I’d do without that girl, honestly.”

“Hello, Cal. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Wh-who are you?”

“You don’t need to know that right now, just know we’ll be very close in the future.”

“The curtains haven’t closed on me yet, boys. I hope you’re prepared.”

---

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tipsycad147 · 2 years

Text

A JOURNEY INTO WITCHCRAFT BELIEFS

A scene from Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ in a 1550 painting by Pellegrino Tibaldi, showing Circe transforming men into animals

The history of witchcraft is complex, and often raises more questions than it answers. Where did witches come from? And did they always arrive on broomsticks? We asked Professor Diane Purkiss to take us inside the minds of ordinary people and intellectuals in medieval and early modern England to reveal how the figure of the witch was born.

Travel with us from the pre-Christian world to the burial mounds of the English landscape, where an underworld of elves, demons and familiars came alive in the popular imagination. Out of these murky beginnings, we discover how the witch became the subject of the chilling persecutions of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Diane, you’re an expert in witchcraft beliefs and their representation in popular culture. How far back does the belief in witches go?

Most people think that witches are a Christian invention. But the idea of the witch who flies in the night and draws power from dark cosmic forces to work her ill will on others pre-dates Christianity, probably by many centuries.

In Homer’s Odyssey (c.800 BC), Circe – who turns men into animals – is described as a witch, and Plutarch refers to witchcraft in his treatise On Superstition (c.AD 100). Illicit magic features heavily in Roman law statutes, some of which are passed down to the Christian world. However, many of those early laws were really laws against sorcery, which unlike witchcraft can be beneficial, and which requires special skills, tools and words.

Archaeologists have found hundreds of ancient Greek curse tablets, which the Greeks called katares, ‘curses that bind tight’, and they appear to have invented them, with a great number focused on sporting competitions or legal contests. The inscribed tablets were left in graves, wells or fountains, where the dead could better work their magic.

How did the figure of the witch emerge?

In later centuries, constant attempts to defeat heresy brought to light a number of figures who were difficult to reconcile with Christianity. Such figures were typically created without reference to witchcraft at all, but led to the creation of the figure of the heretic witch.

One such figure was peculiar to the western Alps. She was the female embodiment of winter, a female figure often called Bertha or Perchta or Befuna. She punished social disobedience and rewarded ‘goodness’. She was always portrayed as an old hag, because she represented cold and winter. It did not take long for intellectuals to note her resemblance to the witches with whom they were familiar from classical literature.

Slowly, and in bits and pieces, the idea of the witch emerged. Very broadly speaking, a witch is a person who employs magical entities, which may include powers she carries within her body, to harm other people. She doesn’t have to be female. She certainly doesn’t have to have a hat and a broomstick. She has to be marred, lopsided. She has to be like the dead: hard, infertile – and she has to hate. The dead hate the living and the witch hates as they do. There is no particular moment when this popular idea is formulated.

A woodcut depicting Frau Perchta, based on a 1486 manuscript of ‘Flowers of Virtue’ by the Austrian poet Hans Vintler

What did witchcraft mean to early Christians in Britain?

To understand this, we’ll have to go on a journey.

Imagine you’re standing on a hillside. You look at the lumps in the grass. You are probably wondering what they are, or what they used to be. A panel nearby says that they are prehistoric burial mounds.

Now I’m going to put you in a time machine and take you back 400 years.

You are still standing on the hillside above the site, looking at the lumps in the grass and wondering. But now, you are a member of the society that flourished in this area for centuries. You have heard many stories about these lumps in the grass. You have seen some members of your village community coming here often, and you have wondered why: are they searching for herbs to augment their porridge, or are they here for other, more sinister reasons?

Among the girls in the village, it’s whispered that if you come to this place at midnight on All Hallows Eve, you can see the dead rise and ride along the road to the market cross. They can’t pass the cross, and they stop there. It’s unlucky to see them, but if you catch the eye of one of the riders, you might be able to win supernatural powers of healing and prophecy that will make your fortune.

Ancient burial places such Ballowall Barrow in Cornwall were once cloaked in superstition. These Bronze Age tombs were thought to be home to dwarf mining spirits known as the knockers, whom witches might offer as good luck charms to unhappy clients

What’s in the earth below the humps of stone? Do you imagine a realm of the dead?

The vicar in the village tells you that the dead that remain in the earth are those condemned to hell. Some people say that the dead riders are wreathed in flames, and their saddles are red-hot iron. Those people say that if you do get any power from the riders, it’s the power of hell and devils.

But other, older people think differently. They think that the dead that remain in the earth are not demons but elves. Under the lumps of rock is a beautiful if sunless land where the elves banquet and dance and entertain their favourite mortals. However, the elves are still dangerous, especially if crossed.

The dead yearn for the lives they enjoyed, which means they may want to take back from the living. They remain where they were buried. Separation of self and body, or soul and body, may take months or years, and may never happen at all to those who are destined to damnation. So the places where pagans buried their dead are especially fraught. The pagan dead are like nuclear waste. You can bury them, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone. Anyone willing to feed them – on blood – can hope to put them to work in a series of worrying deals. This is where the familiar of the witch begins to take shape: like the dead, fed on blood, and like the dead, malevolent.

The interior of West Kennet Long Barrow in Wiltshire, a Neolithic grave that was used for almost 1,000 years

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/journey-into-witchcraft-beliefs/

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dovechim · 5 years

Text

free delivery not included (m)

➾ 7.1k

➾ summary: the premise is simple, really. you’ve been wanting to have a baby ever since you and your husband got married three years ago. Dr Kim Namjoon is the top fertility specialist in town who boasts a 100% success rate. the thing is, your husband has given up on trying to have children, so you find yourself visiting Dr Kim Namjoon in secret, only to realise that his methods are slightly unorthodox.

➾ warnings: mentions of infidelity and cheating, use of medical equipment (speculum), unprotected sex, oral sex (f receiving), impregnation, creampies, unprofessional behaviour from a medical professional, dirty talk involving humiliation

➾ a/n: a long time ago i said i was doing a fic for every member with this breeding kink and i didn’t know what i was getting myself into... a long time later, here is namjoon’s part :”) huge thanks goes to @jimlingss for as usual hearing my ideas out and hyping me up to write. i’ve been struggling with trying to like my own writing again but having kina’s support really meant a lot. of course, having all of you patient enough to wait for me is a huge motivating factor as well. without further ado, enjoy :)

Nerves are fluttering in your stomach as you take a queue number from the receptionist and seat yourself in the waiting room. This is most definitely not where you’d ever expect yourself to end up. Casting a quick glance around the room, you surreptitiously turn your wedding ring around so that the diamond on it is hidden and less conspicuous. Everyone else in the waiting room is here with their spouse; you are the only one alone and its painfully obvious.

“______?” The voice comes out of nowhere and jolts you out of your self-conscious worrying.

You spring out of your seat and nod to the receptionist as she directs you to the door at the end of the hallway. Feeling multiple curious eyes on your back, you read the sign on the door before knocking.

Dr Kim Namjoon

Fertility Specialist

“Come in,” a pleasant, timbre voice answers and you slip inside, only to be greeted by a man in tortoiseshell glasses, his blonde hair pushed off his forehead. He motions for you to sit down with a welcoming smile, and his warm presence already puts you a little more at ease.

You smile nervously at him as you take your seat in front of him, adjusting your skirt and tugging it a tad lower to avoid any form of eye contact with the handsome doctor.

“So, _____, what can I do for you today?” Dr Kim smiles as he rests his forearms on the desk, leaning forward. When he smiles his dimples are so prominent that it takes your breath away a little.

You can feel his attention focused on you, and for some reason this makes you even more nervous, so you drop your gaze down to your hands in your lap, absentmindedly playing with your wedding band in order to keep your nerves at bay. But then you remember that you’re also drawing attention to the fact that you’re married and here without your husband, so you immediately cover your left hand with your right. It’s too late though, with a tiny glance up, you catch Dr Kim’s gaze on your hands in your lap.

Clearing your throat, you pray that he doesn’t ask too many questions. “I-I’m here with concerns. A-about my fertility. I want to have a baby.”

Dr Kim chuckles pleasantly. “Well then, we’ll see what we can do about that. Just some questions for me to get a better sense of where you are in your journey to have a baby. How long have you been trying to get pregnant?”

He whips out a yellow legal pad and a pen to begin taking down notes, and without his piercing caramel eyes on you, you relax slightly; your heartrate slows down and the room in general feels less stuffy.

“I’ve been trying for three years,” you say in a near whisper, automatically wincing for the onflood of sympathy that you’ve come to expect whenever you tell someone about this.

But Dr Kim only nods once as he notes it down. “I see. And have you gone for any medical checkups in the past year? Anything of interest regarding your medical history I should know about?”

“No, I’m all clear,” you are now watching his fountain pen glide across the pages of his notepad with grace and ease, and before you can stop yourself, your eyes travel to the slim grip of his fingers.

“What about your… partner? That is, I’m assuming you have one,” Dr Kim looks up briefly to give you a smile.

“He’s also gone for tests and checkups,” you lace your fingers tightly together, thinking about your loving husband. “But the doctor said there’s no problem with either of us. I just… I don’t know why it’s taking so long. We’re both so desperate… I’mso desperate to have a baby.”

Your voice cracks slightly as emotion wells up in you, and you take a deep breath to center yourself again. “Dr Kim, I heard that you’re the top notch fertility specialist in town. My husband has lost all faith in us ever having a baby so he’s given up hope… he doesn’t know I’m here today. Please, can you help us?”

Dr Kim finishes his notes with a flourish, then he puts down his pen and looks up with a reassuring smile. “First of all, ____, I deeply sympathise with your struggles over the past three years. I know how incredibly emotional and difficult it can be to face such issues, and especially over such a long period of time. You are a very strong and determined woman to come here alone today without your husband. It shows that you don’t give up hope for something that you truly want, and for that I really admire you.”

His words take the tension out of your shoulders and sets you more at ease. You’d read articles about this man online, seen pictures of him even, but in real life he looks even more suave and breathtaking. Every single action and word of his is fuelled by a quiet confidence, a professionalism that is warm and reassuring.

“Over here, we have a 100% success rate with all of our procedures,” Dr Kim goes on. “We are proud to be the first fertility clinic that carries our own supply of sperm curated from our sperm bank.”

“Th-that’s amazing, Dr Kim” you nod as he hands you a brochure, but your eyes are fixed on his handsome smile.

“Please, call me Namjoon. I hope you can be more at ease with me. I want all my patients to think of me as a close friend,” Namjoon pushes his glasses up. “I can definitely help you with having a baby… but first I’d like to ask you what approach you prefer to take.”

You hesitate as you turn over the brochure in your hands. “Approach? What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I have several suggestions to help you conceive,” Namjoon says as he points to a list of options on the back of the brochure. “Firstly, IVF. In Vitro Fertilisation, a popular but very costly procedure that can take up to one year to show results. Seeing as you mention your husband not wanting to try any more medical approaches… I think it would be difficult for you to convince him to commit to this.”

“No, you’re right,” you sigh as you read over the estimated cost stated on the brochure. “Not only that, we just don’t have the means to afford that kind of procedure right now.”

Namjoon nods in understanding, and he directs your attention to the next option on the page. “No worries, let’s move on. The second option we have here is sperm donation, the most popular option for most of my patients. This treatment requires a healthy egg, which you definitely fit the requirement of. Like I mentioned before, we have our very own sperm bank here in the clinic, and once you make your decision, after a brief checkup, you can choose to have your first donation as soon as today. That is, if you’re deemed to be ovulating and fertile, of course.”

Your heart skips a beat. “Today? But that’s so soon! I mean, I’d love to see results as soon as possible, but my husband…”

“Ah, yes, he doesn’t know that you’re here, does he?” He shakes his head slightly in apology. “Forgive me if I’m stepping over the line here, but from a medical professional’s perspective, seeing as you and him have been trying to conceive for three years, it might be that your egg and his sperm simply aren’t compatible. If the both of you have gone for fertility checkups, and nothing abnormal has shown up…”

Namjoon’s voice trails off, and he looks at you to gauge your reaction.

“Actually…” your voice is hesitant as you meet his gaze. “I’ve come to that same conclusion myself. And before I came here today, I told myself to be open to the idea of getting sperm from another man. It’s just that… I don’t know how he would take it. Obviously he might not be very open to the idea, so that’s why I came here today without telling him.”

“I see.” Namjoon’s face is completely expressionless except for the muscle that jumps in his clenched cheek as he leans back in his chair. “Do I take it that you wish to receive a sperm donation today? Without your husband knowing?”

His question lingers in the air for a few moments. Your husband can’t possibly blame you for doing this. You’ve been trying for three years with no luck. Maybe it just wasn’t fated for you to have a baby with him. Why should you be deprived of the experience of motherhood just because of fate?

“He really, really wants a baby too,” you say, fully aware that you’re not answering his question. “If this goes on much longer, if I don’t get pregnant soon… he might end up leaving me for some beautiful, young and fertile twenty something.”

“I highly doubt that,” Namjoon shakes his head and holds up his hands. “Excuse me for being inappropriate, but any man who would leave someone like you is an idiot. You’re far too gorgeous for that to happen. And from what I can tell, you’re a strong and determined woman who knows what she wants too. It would only be a loss on his part, believe me.”

His smooth words and charming smile only make the butterflies in your stomach worse. “Dr- Namjoon… you’re used to complimenting women, aren’t you? Is that how you became the top fertility specialist here?”

He lets out a loud chuckle. “My patients feel right at home with me, and what can I say? I know women… intimately. Women like you deserve to be told how beautiful they are, and you deserve to be treated right too.”

Namjoon’s double entendre makes your heart pound in your chest. “You know… you really remind me of my husband. He could sweet talk his way into anyone’s life. That’s pretty much how I fell in love with him… and that’s why I’m worried. A charming and sweet man like you must definitely have a lot of women fawning over him.”

For the first time since the appointment began, you see Namjoon blush a little as he glances away for a moment. It seems like he is not used to being on the opposite side of receiving compliments, but the shy side of him is absolutely adorable. Namjoon pushes his glasses up on his nose a little, and he scratches his neck.

“That’s a wonderful compliment, thank you,” he manages to smile professionally, but only just. “I’m sure your husband knows how lucky he is to have such a wonderful wife like you. But if you’re really worried about that… let me help you. Personally, I want to make sure you have a nice and healthy baby, one that looks just as beautiful and is as kind as you.”

Elation lights up your face as you reach forward to grasp his hands involuntarily. “Thank you so much, Dr Kim!”

Namjoon holds both of your hands in his as he stands, motioning you over to the chair in the corner. “I’ll just do a quick checkup to determine where you are in your cycle right now, and then we can discuss options for the sperm donation. There’s a gown on the back of the chair, if you could just slip off your bottoms and put that on? I’ll give you some privacy.”

Namjoon draws the curtain and leaves you alone to change. Once the curtains are drawn, you slip off your pencil skirt and underwear, putting on the gown that comes down to your knee. When you’re done, you call out to Namjoon again, and he parts the curtain.

“Just hop up there for me will you?” Namjoon holds out his hand toward the chair.

You feel his hand on your waist helping you into the slightly high chair, and he directs your legs into the stirrups that go on either side. Namjoon’s warm hands secure your legs in a comfortable position as he checks in with you frequently. Your legs are now spread wide, and you are aware that your gown has ridden up all the way to your upper thigh.

“When was your last period?” Namjoon is washing his hands over at the sink and pulling on some gloves. He grabs a large container of what you assume must be some kind of lubrication before he pushes a wheeled chair over.

“Um, about… two weeks ago?” You hazard a guess, confirming after you check your period tracking app on your phone. “Exactly two weeks ago.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Namjoon raises his eyebrows in surprise. “That means you could be ovulating right now. I’ll know when I examine your cervix and your discharge, but let me just take a quick blood sample and send that off to the nurses just to be sure.”

He comes over to your side and takes your wrist gently, cleaning your skin with an alcohol wipe before drawing a vial of blood from your arm in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t even hurt, considering the fact that you are deathly afraid of needles, because all through it Namjoon keeps your attention on him with his gentle and soothing voice, and that charming smile of his.

“Let me get that sent off…” Namjoon is frowning in concentration as he scribbles something onto a label and sticks it onto your blood sample before he parts the curtains. A second later he is back again, and he positions himself in between your legs, a gentle touch on your calf. “Results should take about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, let’s see what’s going on here, shall we?”

“That fast?” You comment in surprise. From this angle all you can focus on is how the handsome doctor looks in between your legs, and his warm touch on your skin. “Wow. Technology sure is advanced these days.”

“Sure is,” Namjoon laughs in agreement. “Now just relax for me… I’m going to part your lips now and take a look.”

You can feel Namjoon spreading your lips with two fingers as he peers closely at you, and a heated blush is on your cheeks. You feel extremely exposed in front of this handsome doctor, even more so as his fingers brush across your slit, and you realise that he doesn’t even need any lube at this point. You’re about to hastily come up with some explanation as to why you’re this wet all on your own, but Namjoon saves you the trouble.

“Very nice, there’s some clear discharge indicative of ovulation,” Namjoon smiles as he gently collects some of it on his gloved fingers, showing it to you. “See how it’s so stringy? When I pull my fingers apart it doesn’t break easily. Kind of looks like egg whites.”

You feel his fingers part your lips again and this time, they are probing at your entrance.

“I’m going to slide two fingers in this time, it’s going to go deep so that I can feel your cervix. Tell me if you feel any discomfort, alright?” Namjoon smiles at you before his head disappears between your legs again, and two of his long, slim fingers enter you.

His fingers might have looked slim just now when you were eyeing them, but when they’re deep inside you, you feel a stretch that isn’t uncomfortable, but definitely something to get used to. Your instinct is to clench your walls around his fingers; at this point you just want him to stroke that special spot inside you. You can feel that you are drenching his fingers with your arousal, so there’s no pretending that you aren’t turned on. It must be because of your ovulation that you’re this horny just from getting an examination.

“Relax, you’re clenching really tight around me,” Namjoon’s voice comes off as a relaxed laugh, and you immediately make an effort to relax. “Has it been some time since you had intercourse? You feel really tense.”

“Um, no it hasn’t,” you say truthfully. “My- my husband and I had sex just this week. A few days ago.”

“Hmm,” Namjoon hums under his breath as he withdraws his fingers a tad. “Then you must be naturally tense. I need to examine your cervix, so I’m going to use a speculum. It might feel a little cold and the stretch might hurt a little, but bear with me.”

Namjoon pulls his fingers out, and your breath comes out all at once at the loss. He turns around and ducks out to grab the needed equipment, returning a moment later with a metal contraption. You’ve had speculums inserted before at previous checkups, so it’s no big deal.

He pours some lubrication onto the part that will be inserted in you, and you try your best to relax for him. With one hand on your inner thigh holding you steady, Namjoon slides the speculum into you, and goes deeper until it nudges at your cervix. Then, he starts to turn the screw on the side so that it begins to spread your walls open slowly, until he gets a clear view of your cervix.

Being spread apart like this and allowing someone else that isn’t your husband to see the most intimate parts of you only adds to the overwhelming rush of arousal that you feel right now. On one hand you feel incredibly immature, having a crush on your fertility doctor and wishing he would just help you with your problem personally, but the more primal part of you argues that it’s perfectly reasonable. This man right here is tall, fit and good looking, he’s smart on top of all that. Why shouldn’t he be the one to give you a baby?

“All looks great here, you are most definitely ovulating, _____,” Namjoon’s voice brings you back to the present. “Cervix is soft and open, so a donation today will greatly increase your chances of success. But we can discuss that more in detail when you’re more comfortable.”

“What do you mean? I’m perfectly comfortable with a thick metal rod in me,” your joke makes him laugh as he places a hand on your inner thigh, closing the speculum and removing it from you.

With some tissue he cleans you up, wiping away some of the lube and your arousal that had smeared on your inner thigh. His gesture feels so intimate and personal that you can’t help but feel the intense desire to feel his fingers without the rubber gloves, or to feel something else of his inside you.

Namjoon glances up as he disposes of the tissue. “I’ll give you a moment, I’ll just be outside and we can discuss the sperm donor that you want.”

He slips out of the curtains, and you pull down the gown, fanning your hot cheeks as you wipe the beads of sweat from your face. Getting down from the chair carefully, you push aside the curtains, leaving your skirt off as you sit in the same chair.

Namjoon is looking through a document. “Good news, the blood test results are in. You are, in fact at the peak of ovulation now. You came at just the right time, ____.”

“Can I really get a donation right now?” You ask as Namjoon turns to type something into his computer, having shed his rubber gloves.

“Of course! In fact, as your doctor I would highly recommend you do it today. If not, you would have to wait until next month,” Namjoon says. After a moment’s consideration, he adds on, “and since you told me you and your husband just had sex recently, it would be reasonable to convince him that it is his child you’re carrying.”

There is a weighted pause as the consequences of what you’re about to do sinks in. You’re at a fertility clinic, ovulating and about to receive a sperm donation from a complete stranger. Then you’re going to go home and in a few weeks, tell your husband that you’re pregnant with his baby.

You take a deep breath. “Alright. I’ll do it today. What are the options for sperm donors?”

“Here at our clinic, we use fresh sperm samples, we never freeze them. This is to allow for maximum success rate for our patients. I can open up the database of donors that we currently have fresh samples from, and you can take a look and choose from there,” Namjoon says as he types at his keyboard, scrolling through and clicking a few times. There is a slight frown on his face as he opens a few files.

“Is something wrong, Namjoon?”

“No, no, it’s just…” Namjoon pauses to type a few more things and hits enter with a look of frustration on his face. “It’s very strange. Somehow, our database only has one donor right now. I’m not sure if this is an error, because we ensure that we have at least 20 donors at any one time…”

“Who’s the one sperm donor?” You ask out of curiosity.

“It’s a Jeon Jungkook, 50 years old with a Bachelor’s Degree at… Hogwarts Witchcraft and Wizardry…” Namjoon looks at your troubled expression and clears his throat, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I thought so too. Let me just make some calls and check if there are any other donors.”

The normally cool and composed fertility specialist looks a little frantic as he picks up his desk phone and starts to dial a number, but then you put your hands over his.

“Namjoon, it’s okay. I decided which donor I want,” you give him a confident smile as he looks up in surprise, slowly putting down the phone.

“What? You want… a 50 year old man?” Namjoon shakes his head in confusion. “Who graduated from Hogwarts?”

“No. I want you to be my sperm donor, Dr Kim.”

A shocked silence settles in between the two of you for a moment as Namjoon’s eyes widen. “B-but that would mean… your husband. You don’t want him to know right?”

“That’s right. I want my husband to think the baby is his. But in reality, it would be your baby,” you withdraw your hands from Namjoon’s and sit back in your chair. “To be honest, Doctor, I’ve been attracted to you the moment I walked in. I want my baby to be as smart as you. I hope you can give me a baby boy that will look exactly like you.”

Before the doctor can say anything else, you go on.

“You said you only use fresh samples here at the clinic right? Without any freezing,” you recall his words from earlier. “It’s just… today is the perfect day for me to get a sperm sample,” you direct your gaze at his lips with a small sigh as you say this, completely committed to your role now. “I don’t see why we should let this opportunity go to waste. You can give me a fresh sperm sample right here and right now.”

“_____, I- I don’t know what to say… your husband…” Namjoon fumbles over his words; he has trouble looking you in the eye. “A-are you saying you want me to inseminate you? Is that really what you want? Tell me.”

You stand up from your seat and make your way around the table so that you are standing beside his chair. “Yes, Doctor. I want you to give me the baby my husband couldn’t. I want to have yourbaby.”

You slide your body into his lap, feeling the crisp material of his dress pants on your thighs as Namjoon’s arms circle your waist to help you sit on him properly. His thighs feel firm under you, and his mouth is now dangerously close to your neck. You can feel his body is tense under yours, a sharp intake of breath at your words.

“Is that so? What an unfaithful wife you are.” Namjoon admonishes you, and his breath ghosts over your skin. “Asking another man to give her a baby. Tell me, has anyone other than your husband fucked you before?”

“No, not even once,” your breath is speeding up now as Namjoon caresses your waist tenderly, bidding you to spread your thighs slightly to get more comfortable on his lap. “I love my husband. I really do. But I just want a baby so bad. I’d do anything.”

“Who am I to deny such a beautiful woman the experience of motherhood?” Namjoon hums under his breath, kissing the skin just behind your ear. “If a gorgeous woman such as you says she wants a baby, then it’s my duty not only as a doctor to obey… but as a man too.”

“Please…” you can feel your thighs getting slick with your arousal, and Namjoon helps you onto your feet.

“We have to do this the proper way, to ensure maximum success rate,” Namjoon directs you to the chair again, and draws the curtains firmly shut. “Thankfully, you’re my last patient today, so we can take as long as we like. By the time you walk out of this clinic, you’ll definitely be pregnant.”

You lie back in the chair with his help, not missing the way his hands are soft and gentle, making sure your head is supported against the headrest, and your legs are comfortably spread in each stirrup. From your vantage point, you can see Namjoon begin to take off his white doctor’s coat and reveal his white dress shirt and black pants underneath, but you stop him.

“Doctor, please keep it on,” you say, reaching out to grab his wrist. “I always had a thing for the whole hospital fantasy.”

Namjoon relents, turning around as he palms the growing bulge in his dress pants. “Does your husband know about this… fantasy?”

“No,” you answer truthfully as your eyes drop to take in the tent at the front of his pants. “No, he doesn’t know. Doctor, why don’t you make yourself more comfortable? It looks like you haven’t been able to… let go of some tension for a while.”

“What would your husband say if he saw you now? On your back with your legs spread… about to get a baby fucked into you by her fertility specialist,” Namjoon tsks under his breath as he situates himself between your legs, stroking your thighs softly. “What a pretty pussy too. Just begging to be eaten.”

“He- he would never find out,” you gasp and your back comes off the chair as Namjoon’s head disappears in between your legs, and you feel his tongue against your inner thigh. His fingers spread your lips again the way he did before, and then he is giving you open mouthed kisses directly against your clit, making your thighs shake and tremble.

You can’t see anything with the gown in the way, so with one hand you push it up to your waist. Namjoon’s blonde hair in between your thighs greets you, but the man himself is busy stroking his tongue against your clit, your juices all over his chin.

“So fucking sweet. I must say, I’ve never had the privilege to taste any of my patients before, but I bet you’re the sweetest of them all,” Namjoon places his thumb on your clit in slow circles, making eye contact with you before his tongue slides into your pussy.

Watching your fertility doctor eat you out like this must be a dream, you feel as if you’re in heaven especially when Namjoon switches to suckling your clit, and pushes two fingers deep in you. His fingers are long and nimble, hitting your sweet spot exactly right, and the delicious friction from his mouth just about sends you over the edge.

But just before you feel the knot in your lower belly snap, Namjoon pulls away with a satisfied smile, licking his lips and wiping the back of his chin with his hand.

“No cumming yet. You’ll conceive better if you orgasm with my cum right up against your cervix.” Namjoon knows exactly what a tease he’s being as he begins to unbuckle his belt, lowering his zipper and feeling the immense pressure against his cock subside just a little.

The sight of his cock awakens your desperation all over again. He is blessed both in length and girth; you surmise that the fertility specialist must be just as excited to give you a baby as you are, seeing as his cock is already fully hard. You feel a flutter of nerves as Namjoon strokes his cock and positions himself in between your legs. Trying to remember how big your husband’s cock is so that you can compare it to Namjoon’s is futile. All you can concentrate on is Namjoon as he fondles your clit, pushing three fingers inside you to prepare you.

“Please, doctor,” you push your hips toward him as a protest. Your eyes lower to his cock, already red and leaking, wishing you could wrap your hand around him and feel how warm and heavy he is. “It’s been so… hardfor me to have a baby. Please help me and my husband.”

“Don’t worry, just lie back and let me do all the work,” Namjoon pushes his underwear down, giving himself a few strokes and hissing in pleasure. His cock is engorged and angry, precum already dripping from the tip onto your inner thigh.

You can feel the head of his cock nudge against your lower lips, and your stomach tenses in excitement of finally feeling him inside you. “You feel so much bigger than my husband… fuck. A cock like that is sure to give me a baby… not like my pathetic husband.”

Namjoon places his hands on your thighs, hooking them around his waist as he begins to push the tip of his cock into you. The expression on his face is strained, his jaw is clenched at your words. The lubrication of your arousal and his precum allows him to slide in easily, but the stretch makes you wince and Namjoon swears under his breath.

“Fuck, such a tight pussy. I suspected so when I examined you just now, but it seems like even the speculum couldn’t loosen you up enough hmm?” Namjoon pauses for a moment to give you time to adjust, even though he’s barely even an inch deep. “Looks like your useless husband hasn’t been fucking you properly, or else you wouldn’t still be this tight.”

“Please fuck me properly then,” you hook your ankles around his back in an attempt to get his cock even deeper. “Show me how much better you are compared to my husband. When he fucked me I could barely even feel it.”

“Oh, you’ll feel this one alright,” Namjoon agrees with a laugh and a deep thrust of his hips that sends his cock halfway into your depths. Your walls are stretched to accommodate him, but you only urge him on, anxious to feel him all the way. Namjoon accedes to your whines and withdraws just a tad, then fucks you deep until he is buried balls deep in your pussy.

Namjoon leans over the chair to smooth a strand of hair out of your face as he presses a hand to your abdomen. “See this? I can feel my cock all the way here. Could your pathetic little husband do this?”

The veneer of professionalism is gone now as the filthy words begin to pour from his mouth. His hand is on your lower belly, where there is a slight bump from his cock being so deep inside you, and you gasp when he brings your hand down to feel it too. Never have you been penetrated so deep before, and yet the thickness of his cock leaves you almost breathless as Namjoon applies a light pressure on your lower belly.

“This is where I’ll be when I cum,” Namjoon strokes the soft skin of your belly. “Right up against your womb. Giving you a nice load of fresh sperm. Unlike your husband, I am perfectly healthy to fuck a baby into you. No pathetic weak shots of cum. No, my loads are so thick, you’ll feel every spurt against your soft, ripe little cervix.”

“Fuck me please,” you are begging, the torture of just feeling his thick length embedded inside you without even moving is getting to be too much. You attempt to push your hips against him just to feel some friction, but Namjoon’s strength pins you down to the chair. “Give me a baby.”

Namjoon pulls out and sinks back in so fast that your thighs twitch around him, hugging him closer and begging for him to go deeper and harder. Slaps of skin against skin begin to echo around the room, and soon you can feel how wet you are, dripping down your ass and completely soaking Namjoon’s heavy balls that are slapping against you.

“Yeah? You want a baby?” Namjoon’s thrusts are heavy, punishing, as if you deserve it for being such and unfaithful wife who would ask another man to give her a baby. “Whose baby do you want? Your husband’s?”

His cock seems to be splitting you apart. Your pussy is crying for relief, yet you want more of his brutal fucking. Every thrust brings his cock head right to the entrance of your womb, tapping your cervix gently as he reminds you where his cum will end up. When you don’t answer, Namjoon stops thrusting as a punishment.

“Tell me, whose baby do you want?” Namjoon asks again, rubbing his thumb against your clit and making you cry out. “You want your husband to give you a baby?”

“No!” You scream, body thrashing under him, and legs tightening around his slim waist. “I want yours. I want your baby, Doctor Kim.”

Satisfied with your answer, Namjoon resumes thrusting, abandoning his grip around your thighs as he circles your slim waist with his hands to pull you onto his cock. “This flat belly is going to be so round. Even after you’re pregnant, you’re going to keep coming back here aren’t you? Because you can’t resist a good fuck, and no one other than me can give you that.”

“Please, pl-ease,” you voice is barely there, your throat is dry. “Please keep fucking me. Even after you give me a baby.”

Namjoon chuckles as his cock sinks in deep, and he feels your walls flutter around him. “I’ll consider it after sales service for my best patient.”

You can feel your orgasm right there, just out of reach. Your clit is swollen and abused, throbbing just for a little friction that would send you over the edge. Fucked out and completely at his mercy, Namjoon places your legs back on the stirrups, spread wide as they can go as he continues with his punishing thrusts.

“Consider yourself lucky, _____” Namjoon’s thrusts are faltering as he swears under his breath. “I haven’t jerked off in nearly two weeks. You’re getting a huge load today. I hope you’re ready to get pregnant.”

You watch his sweaty face as he pushes his hair off his forehead, glasses slightly askew. His cheeks are rosy with exertion, and you want nothing more than to kiss his plush lips. “I’ve been ready for the past three years, Doctor. I want it. Give me all your cum and give me the baby I always wanted.”

Namjoon seems to want to say something else, but decides against it as he devotes the rest of his energy into his thrusts, pumping his cock in and out of you as you feel him start to twitch against your walls. The composure on his face is slowly slipping away as he pants hard against your skin, leaning over to support himself on the arm rests on either side of you as he fucks you good and deep.

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum, I can’t hold off much longer,” Namjoon is panting hard as he groans with exertion and pleasure. “Here it comes. Ahhhh, fuuuuck. Take it all. Take all my fucking cum!”

You gasp as he buries his cock to the hilt, feeling him hit your cervix hard one last time as he explodes. Rope after rope of warm cum drenches your womb, and you can feel his cock pulsing as he gives you every drop of his seed. After the first ten or so strong pulses of semen, it starts to slow down a little, and Namjoon thrusts in and out gently, making sure the last few spurts of cum still get as deep as possible.

It feels so wet and warm that you can’t help but relax as your pussy tightens around him to drain him dry. You can’t tell if Namjoon filled you up so much that you’re already leaking his cum, or if it’s just your arousal. Namjoon is still lazily thrusting away in your pussy, and his slower, gentler pace feels nice, but not quite what you need to reach your own orgasm.

After a minute or two, Namjoon slowly pulls out, making sure none of the cum escapes your pussy. He immediately reaches for a setting on the chair to tilt it backwards so that your hips are escalated slightly, and he secures your legs in the stirrups, making sure they’re still spread.

“We doing okay?” He comes over to stroke your hair and wipe away some of the smeared mascara on your cheek.

“I’m fine, doctor,” your eyes are closed and you are savouring the feeling of being warm and full of cum. Your pussy is still throbbing.

“Let me get you cleaned up,” Namjoon’s voice is soft as he moves away, fully aware that you haven’t cum yet.

To your surprise, a moment later you feel something metallic being inserted into your pussy again, and you open your eyes. Namjoon is back between your legs, and you realise that he’s putting the speculum back inside you and widening it so that he can see your cum drenched cervix once more.

“Just making sure you absorb all of that cum,” Namjoon reassures you with his ever gentle, reassuring hands on your skin. “Close your eyes and enjoy yourself, _____. Let me take care of everything.”

Namjoon positions himself so that he can see the flood of white cum coating your insides, and the pool of his semen just lying there. Your cervix is doing its best to soak it all up, but a little help wouldn’t hurt. Stroking your thighs gently, he places his thumb on your clit and rubs it in circles at the pace he knows you like, and sure enough, your body tenses up and your legs shake in the stirrups.

“You’re so close aren’t you?” Namjoon keeps his voice low, reaching for a medical sample jar that he had used to catch all the cum that spilled out when he inserted the speculum into your swollen pussy. He unwraps a sterile syringe to draw up the rest of the cum inside the jar. “Just need a few strokes to cum. Good girl. That’s my good girl… just relax and cum for me.”

His fingers speed up over your clit, and his eyes are drawn to the fascinating sight that is your cervix. With every tightening of your walls, your cervix is expanding and contracting, greedily swallowing down all of his cum so that the pool of semen inside you grows less and less. When you orgasm with a small whine of his name, toes curling and thighs shaking, Namjoon squirts the contents of the syringe into your womb, emptying it thoroughly as he drops a kiss on your knee.

As you calm down from your orgasm, Namjoon watches to make sure the pool of cum inside you is more or less swallowed down by your greedy cervix, before he unscrews the speculum and eases it out of you. He glances up at your face and your eyelids are droopy, chest rising up and down slowly as he helps you get your legs out of the stirrups and places them together on the chair.

“You did so well, that’s my good girl,” Namjoon comes around to kiss your forehead and stroke your cheek. “I think that’ll do it. Just rest here for a few minutes.”

“Come here baby,” you stretch out your hands for a hug, and Namjoon obliges. “How was that? Was my acting good enough?”

“Almost too real,” Namjoon admits with a laugh. “You really got me worked up there with that whole ‘my husband doesn’t know’ thing. When I said surprise me, I didn’t expect you to come up with such an elaborate scheme. I mean, you really went all the way with that roleplay!”

“So you were really shocked to see me walk in here?” You let go of him with a devious grin on your face. But then another though occurs to you. “Wait. 50 year old Mr Jeon Jungkook from Hogwarts? Did you make that up too?”

“Unfortunately I didn’t make that donor up. I think it’s a real error in our database. Probably some stupid young punk who wanted to make a quick buck and troll us at the same time…” Namjoon sighs as he shakes his head and adjusts his glasses, mumbling to himself about the calls he needs to make and the people he needs to sack. A second later, he frowns. “You’re lucky that you really are my last patient. And the whole ovulation thing- did you plan that too?”

“I thought you would have noticed since you got a notification about my ovulation on the app… but this morning you just left for work like normal,” you sit up in your chair and face him, watching his face dawn with realisation.

“Wait, that means… do you… really want to have a baby with me?” Namjoon takes your hand in his, barely able to conceal his excitement. “You’re finally ready?”

“We’ve been married for almost three years so if I don’t pop out like… ten babies for you, people are going to be doubting your capabilities,” you shrug nonchalantly, but there is a genuine smile on your face. “I’m doing it for the sake of your professional career, that’s all. And also, it’s nice to have a qualified specialist taking care of me for free.”

Namjoon is still shocked at your revelation, but he sees right through your wry comment. “I guess not everything in roleplay has to be just pretend. I’m Dr Kim Namjoon after all, and I always keep my promises.” He puts his arm around you and presses a kiss to the top of your head, one hand resting on your lower belly. “I might get you pregnant for free, but I charge for delivery.”

#bts #bts smut #btssmutclub #bangtanbookclub #bts namjoon #bts rm smut #bts namjoon smut #bts rm #bts fics

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whichstoodonrockyshores · 3 years

Text

Chapter Five

(gay gay homosexual gay)

The days leading up to the wedding weren’t much better. Danny was almost always upset, and the only things that made him feel better were reading and cooking, and talking to Vinnie. He liked the kid, he was much smarter than he thought. He just needed a little more education, and he could definitely flourish later in life. But Danny couldn’t worry about that right now, not when the wedding was so close. He was getting married, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“Uncle, you’ve been kinda sad for days! Is somethin’ wrong? I thought you were gettin’ married tomorrow, ain’t that a happy thing?” Vinnie asked, the night before the wedding, as he and Danny were eating dinner. Danny paused at the question, not sure how to answer it yet.

“I guess it’s a happy thing. I just… I didn’t want to be married.” Danny paused, trying to think of a way to explain this to a child. “Um… have you heard of Uncle Hamish?” He asked.

“Mhm! He’s the guy who lives in the woods, and no one likes him.” Vinnie responded. “What about him?”

“Well..son, do you know why no one likes him? That ain’t true by the way, I like him. He’s a good man.” Danny explained. “I think I’ll bring you to see him sometime.”

“Um..alright, why don’t some people like Hamish?”

“Before you were born, Uncle Hamish fell in love. With another man, like himself. His name is Otis, and they kept their relationship hidden until Grandpa Milton found out. He wasn’t happy, nearly killed them both, but they came to an agreement that they could both live as long as they never came back to town. And they didn’t.” Danny explained.

“A man can love other men?” Vinnie asked, looking pretty confused. He’d never heard of the concept before.

“Yep. It’s called homosexuality. And that’s why I don’t wanna get married.”

“You’re a homosexual?”

“Yes, I am. But don’t go sayin’ that to other people! Especially Lucy when she moves in, okay? And that’ll be tomorrow. And don’t say it to Grandpa Timothy or Grandma Helen either. In fact, just don’t tell anyone. Okay? I...I can’t risk it.” Danny explained, and Vinnie nodded. They both silently finished their dinners, and soon went to bed. Danny was laying in bed again, the gravity of the situation settling. He was getting married tomorrow.

He was getting married tomorrow.

And no amount of running would get him out of this.

Danny drifted off to sleep soon after, barely able to keep himself together. There was a sudden knock on his bedroom door, and he woke up and quickly looked out the window. It was a little after dawn, surprisingly. He felt like he’d barely slept at all. He got up and saw the person at the door was Vinnie, who looked a little upset.

“..hey, son. What is it, why are you still awake?”

“It’s nothin’ Uncle, I just realized somethin’! You’re not marryin’ this lady for love!” He cried, and Danny sighed.

“You’re right, Vinnie, I ain’t.”

“I don’t wanna turn out like that too! Forced to marry someone I don’t love!” He cried, as Danny bent down and pulled him into a hug.

“You won’t, okay? I’m sure that by the time you’re of age, the world’ll be different. And this arranged marriage bullshit will all be behind us.” He explained. He hoped his words would ring true later. He really hoped that.

“If you say so, Uncle.”

“And guess what, kid? You’re the ring bearer! You get to carry the rings down the aisle for us. Ain’t that neat?” He said, and Vinnie nodded.

“Yeah, that does sound pretty neat, Uncle.”

“I know! Now, I’m gonna make a great breakfast, and we’ll do the whole weddin’ stuff, and we'll come home and I’ll read to you again? How’s that sound?”

“Great, Uncle Danny.”

“Yeah, it is-“

There was a knock on the door, which Danny immediately answered. Vinnie, the curious child that he was, listened closely.

“A letter for Daniel Peachy. I was told this is his address?”

“It is, sir. Who’s it from?” Danny asked.

“Ronald Soto, it says here.”

“Oh! Thank you.”

“No problem, mister.”

Danny had a huge smile on his face, as he closed the door and sighed happily, holding the letter to his chest. He felt his cheeks get warmer as he twirled around, just elated Ron actually wrote back. Vinnie was slightly confused, as Danny sat down and opened the letter.

“Who’s that? Who’s Ronald Soto?”

“Um..my lover. He’s wonderful.”

“Oh! That makes sense. I’ll be back out for breakfast!”

“Alright, see you later Vinnie.”

Danny unfolded the letter, slightly anxious as to what it could be. He hoped Ron wouldn’t be too mad at him, he hoped he would understand-

Dear Danny,

It’s very saddening to hear about your marriage. I wish there was something I could do. And frankly, it makes me unbelievably angry that you are being forced into this by your asshole of a father! I would like to be there, so I can give him a piece of my mind! It’s just frustrating! Because I love you, I should be your husband, and that’s all that there is to it.

Thank you for the offer of letting me stay with you. I am considering it, and I might take it. Despite your marriage, I trust that you still have somewhere to house me. The local sheriff is onto me, so I might have to run again soon. I think I might just come to Hamish, Alabama.

And Danny! I love you. Don’t forget that, dumbass. Never forget that I love you. I can’t wait to feel your lips against mine again, and your big hands holding mine. You might be an idiot and all, but I can’t stop loving you for being yourself. Don’t worry about me, though. I’ll be alright.

Love,

Ron

Danny sighed happily, putting the letter on his room's desk, with the other one. He really hoped Ron would come to him. That would be so nice. He could finally hold the other man in his arms again. He’d give anything just to lay eyes on him again. He was smiling throughout breakfast, and Vinnie was giving him an odd look.

“Uncle, what did the letter say? You look giddy.”

“He said he might come and stay here for a little bit. The man is always on the run. But I’d love to see him again!” Danny explained.

“Why can’t you get married to this Ron fellow? You really seem to love him.” Vinnie asked.

“Well, it ain’t legal. Unfortunately.” He explained, and Vinnie sighed.

“So you can’t marry the person you love? Never?”

“..no, unless it’s legalized sometime soon. Which it won’t be. Most folks view it as an abomination. Goin’ against God and that..” he explained, a sad look on his face.

“..oh. Well, I’m sorry, but can we get changed? We should probably get ready for the weddin’.”

“... right, sorry.”

“It’s okay, Uncle."

Danny and Vinnie went into their rooms, and Danny changed quickly. The frills didn’t itch as much as he thought they would, which was definitely a plus. He looked nice. He took his hat off and brushed his hair back. He looked even better now. He was officially finished and left his room to see Vinnie struggling with his tie. He had messed it up significantly, and Danny sighed.

“Son, just, stop. Stop, put your hands up.” Vinnie stopped fiddling with his tie and put his hands above his head. Danny quickly did his tie for him and smiled. “There! You’re a handsome young lad, you know?”

“Oh, thanks, Uncle… I’m glad you think that.”

“Alright, I think it’s time for us to go.”

“You look weird without a hat.”

Danny just laughed at that and led Vinnie out of the house. The two of them walked in the side door of the church and saw Danny’s father, who was talking to Nancy. They seemed to be setting things up for the wedding.

“Hi, Grandpa Timothy!” Vinnie cried, and he turned his head, with a scowl.

“Hi Vincent…” he muttered back, and Nancy sighed. All of this made Danny kind of angry. That was just a child! Why did they hate him so much, he hadn’t even done anything to them!

“So, Daniel! All you need to do is walk behind Lucy’s mother, and stand at the aisle. Since you don’t have a Best Man, the Maid of Honor will walk behind you. After that is Helen, and then Vinnie.” Timothy explained. Danny nodded, that made just enough sense to him.

Before he knew it, everyone was in their seats. His mother was crying, and he was walking behind Lucy’s mother. She was a very pretty lady, he couldn’t deny that. Alice, the girl from the library, was walking behind him. His parents didn’t look very happy about that, but it was too late now. He stood up front, waiting. Danny’s niece, Helen, was gently throwing petals as Vinnie walked behind her.

Too late to do anything now.

#the peachy's #vincent peachy #danny #timothy peachy #nancy peachy #ron #dannron

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authorialarcanist · 3 years

Text

Gracidea Blossom Chapter 2: No Contest

(Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, & Platinum x Little Busters!)

Mirror Links: AO3, Pokécommunity, Spacebattles

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Previous - Next

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The next morning, the Little Busters gather outside Rin and Kyousuke’s house. The siblings are a little late to emerge, their parents having insisted on helping Rin pack after learning about the planned trip. She now has a bag waiting for her by the doorway, stuffed full of travel supplies.

Rin follows Kyousuke out the door, Lennon curled up in her arms. She can feel the Litten’s warmth bolstering her against the chilly morning air.

Once the five friends are all in one place, Kyousuke clears his throat. “Ahem. Good morning, gentlemen. We gather here today to bid farewell to our good city of Hearthome before departing on our trip. As such, I have determined that the day’s activity shall be a specialty which can’t be found elsewhere!”

Rin cocks her head. “We’re going back to Amity Square?”

“No,” Kyousuke replies, “That’s just a daily activity for you! Today has to be something special.”

Masato crosses his arms and pipes up. “Training, then! Super-secret muscle training we can only do here!” He grins, muscles in his arms bulging.

“Woah… does such a thing exist?” Kyousuke affects a shocked expression. “Masato, have you been hiding a secret muscle-training facility from us all along?”

“No, no, no, he just got carried away and invented a place that doesn’t exist,” Riki ripostes.

“Gaaaah!” Masato buries his face in his hands, thrashing back and forth in anguish. “I thought Kyousuke was going to show us a secret training ground! Now I got all excited for nothing!” Rin shrinks back a little. Muscles really are the only thing on that idiot’s mind. Scary!

“Putting the idiot aside…” Kengo glares at Masato’s theatrics. “Shouldn’t we focus on preparing Rin and Riki for the trip?”

“Boring! You’re all boring!” Kyousuke finally shouts. “Any old Trainer would spend the day before a trip packing and training! No, if we want to assert our individuality, there’s only one thing we can do today!” He makes a dramatic flourish in front of himself with his right arm. “That’s why, we’re going to hold a Pokémon Contest!”

“A… Pokémon Contest.” Kengo fixes Kyousuke with a flat look. “Even if we had fancy clothes with us for it, you do realize that the Contest Hall isn’t going to let us just waltz in and take over the stage, right? The judges have official competitions to spend their time on.”

“That’s fine, we can host our own Contest outdoors! I’ll be the judge, while you, Masato, Riki, and Rin are the contestants!”

“What about the fact that the three of us have grown, trained Pokémon? Even when it’s not a head-to-head fight, their conditions are still good enough that Riki and Rin’s new ones wouldn’t be able to compete against them.”

“Hah! It doesn’t matter if you’re amateur or adept, a Pokémon Contest is about heart!” Seeing the unamused faces around him, Kyousuke stumbles for a moment before picking back up. “…And besides, I’m sure I can come up with some house rules as a handicap.”

After a moment, Kengo just turns away with a sigh. “…Wonderful. Well, I hope you have fun. I’m going to go pick up supplies that will be actually useful.”

“Kengo, wait!” Kyousuke chases after him for a few steps, but gives up as he disappears in the direction of the city’s shopping district. “…That… That’s fine!” He rallies! “I still have a plan for how to do this without him!”

Masato takes the bait. “Oh? And what would that be?”

“We’ll just have a Pokémon Contest with the three of you!”

“That’s just the same plan, you idiot!” Rin kicks her brother in the shin, but even through a grimace of pain he refuses to break his heroic pose.

Riki looks uncertain, but… “Well… if you’ve put that much thought into it, then I guess we’ll be happy to try a homebrew Contest. Right, guys?” At that, Rin knows it’s pretty much decided. Riki always folds when her brother is involved.

——

Due to the Little Busters’ late night the day before, most of the city has already woken up by the time the quartet sans Kengo starts making their way to Kyousuke’s chosen stage. The sun is shining down, and the city is alive with its signature gentle bustle. Various residents nod at the group as they pass by, wishing them good morning by name. Just about everyone knows everyone else in Hearthome; still, Rin clings a little closer to her brother. They may not be strangers, but she’s perfectly happy with just the friends she’s got. This holds especially true as they pass the city’s Pokémon Gym, not far from the entrance to Amity Square on the east side of town.

Hearthome Gym is a large building of white stone, jutting out from the city’s ubiquitous brick pathways. Challengers enter through a one-story round vestibule facing the city’s main street, but the bulk of the Gym is behind that: a pair of large semicircles, each twice as tall as the entrance area, overlapping a little at the centers of their arcs like a pair of interlinked rings. One more circular floor rises just above where the arcs connect. Kyousuke has shown Rin pictures of a facility called the Prestige Precept Center in Orre; apparently, Hearthome’s leader modeled her Gym renovations after that building.

The Gym itself operates in a somewhat peculiar fashion. Rather than accepting a constant stream of challengers, as most do, Hearthome Gym runs on a strict schedule: it opens to Trainers seeking its badge on rare preordained days, taking all who approach in one big wave, and then closes its doors to them again until the next scheduled opening. Anybody who misses the day or fails their challenge has no choice but to wait and come around again next time. The upshot of this is that because of the Gym, every so often a wave of strangers from all around Sinnoh flood the town, all trying to get their badges at once. Rin hates those days, although she supposes that she can at least follow the publicly released schedule and know when to keep her head down. And, well, the Gym Leader is nice; the older girl likes to stop and chat with Rin about the cat Pokémon they both love from time to time.

Passing by the Gym, the four come to the open square in the middle of town. While the whole city is littered with benches and areas for relaxation, this plaza is a favorite spot for those who want a different experience from that of Amity Square. With the Gym not far to the east, the town’s Pokémon Center on its west side, and the grand half-dome of the Super Contest Hall stationed at its northern end, most foot traffic passes through the plaza sooner or later.

At the very center of the plaza is a great fountain, and Kyousuke wastes no time in clambering onto its rim. Curious spectators gather around, wondering what those crazy kids are getting up to today. “Now, then - Riki! Rin! Masato! The three of you will be the contestants in the Little Busters’ First Unofficial Super Contest!” He raises a sign that reads ‘Applause’, eliciting the desired reaction from a few cooperative passers-by. “As for the rules! Each of you will enter one Pokémon. We don’t exactly have music or accessories for the first two rounds, so we’ll be jumping right into the Appeal round. I will act as your judge,” he bows before sweeping an arm at the gathered residents, “As will our lovely audience. Finally, since Masato has been training his Pokémon for much longer than our other two competitors, they are both allowed to enter a second Pokémon in our Contest. Are these conditions acceptable?” His gaze meets that of each reluctant performer in turn. Riki and Masato nod; Rin doesn’t deign to respond. “Perfect! In that case… let the Contest begin!”

Rin and Riki each send out both of their Pokémon, while Masato takes a moment longer to decide.

“Now then!” For want of a sound system, Kyousuke has pulled a megaphone out from someplace. He gives his best shot at emulating a Super Contest Emcee. “Our contestants today areeeee…! Masato Inohara! With his Beedrill, ‘Beenniku*’!” Caught up in the moment, Masato waves at the motley crowd. “Rin Natsume! With her Chingling, ‘Santa’, and her Litten, ‘Lennon’! Annnnd last but not least, Riki Naoe! With his Bonsly, ‘Sly’, and his Turtwig, ‘Terra’! Your appeals… start… Now!”

The Pokémon leap into action, to the makeshift audience’s cheers. Masato makes the first move, having his Beedrill jab at the air with its stingers to show off the gleam of its chitin. Kyousuke applauds politely, and then it’s Riki’s turn.

“Terra, Tackle! Sly, use Flail!” The Bonsly flails about aimlessly while Terra tackles the air in front of Kyousuke with a burst of strength from its hind legs.

“Not bad, but you’re still missing something! Rin, you’re up!”

Rin has had some time to think of a strategy, so she responds immediately. “Both of you, Growl!” At her command, both Santa and Lennon open their mouths to emit a cry. With nobody following them, the cat’s meow and the bell-like jingle have a moment to mix and echo.

“That’s it,” says Kyousuke, caught up in the energy. “Just like that! Alright, next round! Rin, you’re first this time! Masato, you’re going last!”

At Rin’s command, Lennon breathes a tiny flame onto the pavement while Santa wraps its rope around a lamp post. The flame dances beautifully for a moment before guttering out.

“Sly, use Copycat! Terra, Withdraw!” Riki’s Turtwig pulls its head and limbs into its shell, the leaf on its head still sticking out a little while Sly vibrates for a moment, watching Lennon, and then somehow spits out an ember of its own. The crowd ‘Ooh’s and ‘Aah’s.

Rin glares at Sly for a moment, betrayed. “But he’s not even a cat,” she mutters.

“Alright, Beenniku, use Pursuit!” Everybody pauses for a moment, brought back to the present by Masato’s command. Suddenly, Rin’s Pokémon have lost their composure as the Beedrill chases them around the square. Although Sly is also running from the bee, Terra remains cool as a cucumber in its shell.

“Wh- Is that even legal?!” Rin shouts.

“In Hoenn, it would be! I’ll allow it!” Kyousuke waves his hand dramatically, before shouting, “Good appeals, but startled Pokémon lose points! One more round! Keep it up, you three!”

“And what in the world is going on here?” The Pokémon screech to a halt as a girl with purple twin tails appears in front of them, hands on her hips. She’s wearing a black ribbon in her hair, done up to look like cat ears, and a formal black dress. She’s clearly just come from the Super Contest Hall, and a pair of girls are flanking her, one with green hair and one with red.

“Pokémon Contest,” replies Rin matter-of-factly. “What about you?”

“How could you not recognize Hearthome’s Contest prodigy?” The green-haired girl speaks up with a disbelieving expression. “Our lady Sasami and her Pokémon are always… Smart!”

“Tough!” On her other side, the red-haired girl steps forward. Rin cocks her head. Have they rehearsed this?

“Cute!” Back to green hair.

“Cool!”

The two step aside, speaking in unison as they frame Sasami with their arms. “And, of course…”

At this, the subject of their performance finally steps forward, one hand elegantly in front of her mouth as she speaks. “…Beautiful! So, I’m sure you can see why a Contest pro such as myself is concerned about this parody you’re putting on!”

“Not really,” says Rin. “We’re just playing.”

“Wh- Just playing?” The other girl sputters. “Is a Pokémon Contest a joke to you? I know who you are, Rin Natsume. Don’t think that just because you’re the sister of the Champion, you can get by without applying yourself!” She takes a moment, visibly calming herself down. “Hmph. Well, then, if you want to prove you know how to perform in a real Contest, come to the Super Contest Hall tomorrow. I, Sasami Sasasegawa, will challenge you personally!”

“I can’t,” Rin replies. “It seems I’m going on a journey.”

“…It… Seems? Does it not concern you?”

Rin shrugs. “Sorry, Sasa…” She pauses for a moment, trying to get the other girl’s name down. “…Sashimi.”

A vein bulges in Sa…something’s forehead. “…You’re making fun of me. Of course you are. That’s it, Rin Natsume!” Her voice hits a somewhat hysterical pitch. “If you cannot take this seriously, I challenge you to a battle! Right here, right now! Go, Kuro!” With a studied motion, she throws a Pokéball. When it hits the ground, it bursts open in a swarm of bubbles, and out pops a Litten - like Lennon, but with black fur where Lennon’s is white.

“I don’t get it, but… I guess we’re battling? Come on, Lennon!” The shiny Litten jumps in front of Rin, facing its counterpart.

“So you even mock me with my own Pokémon…” Sasami growls. “Listen well, Rin Natsume! I always aim for nothing less than to win! To offer anything short of 100% is to disrespect both yourself, and your Pokémon! Kuro, use Lick!” The black cat jumps forward and licks Lennon’s face viciously. …At least, Rin thinks it’s viciously, since her Pokémon staggers back, muscles twitching.

“Lennon! Lick him right back!” Rin hesitates when Lennon looks back at her with a plaintive meow. “Wh- don’t you know that yet?”

Sasami gives a high-pitched laugh. “Oh-hoh-hoh! This is why it’s important to train your Pokémon, and not just play around aimlessly!”

“Ugh… Lennon, use Scratch!” Lennon jumps forward, a little slowly, but still manages to rake its claws down the other Litten’s side.

“Scratch him right back, Kuro!” At Sasami’s command, her own cat Pokémon begins to scratch at Lennon in return, and the two cats find themselves scratching back and forth.

On the sidelines, Kyousuke grimaces. “…I have to say, I’ve seen more exciting matches.”

“Shut up!” Rin takes her eyes off of the battle to kick her brother in retaliation, but he jumps smoothly out of the way. “Lennon, use—” Her Pokémon staggers, unable to move for a moment due to the earlier Lick attack, and then falls to the ground with a whine. “No! Lennon, return! Go, Santa!”

“A second Pokémon? No matter! If he’s as poorly trained as the first, this will be… a…” Sasami trails off, and her face goes red as she stares over Rin’s shoulder. Rin twists to look behind herself, and sees Kengo approaching with a pair of heavy shopping bags.

“Oh, you guys are still at it?” Kengo looks surprised. “I’ll admit, I didn’t think you’d manage to draw this much of a crowd.” Since the battle started, the motley observers have grown into a veritable audience, curious what would happen next. Kengo looks past Rin and notices Sasami. “Oh, and you would be miss Sasasegawa from the Contest Hall, right? I didn’t realize that you and Rin were friends.”

“I— Mister Miyazawa, er— can I call you Kengo? I was just— um—” Sasami toys with her hair, flustered. She looks between Kengo and the battle in front of her, where Rin’s Chingling has obliviously wrapped Kuro up, and is squeezing it with its rope. Kuro meows in frustration at its distracted Trainer. “I— that is— ask you to tea? I mean— Ugh! Kuro, return!” Just as Santa starts to nuzzle the captive cat, Sasami pulls out Kuro’s Pokéball and calls it back with a beam of light. “This isn’t over, Rin Natsume! If you’re going away, then— then I’ll just go and challenge the Gyms, myself! I’ll earn all eight badges, and then you won’t get off so easily! Mark my words!” With one final glance at Kengo, she turns and flees, her companions trailing after her with a fading ‘Lady Sasamiiiii…’

“…Odd girl.” Kengo watches her departing form, bemused. “Rin, do you have any idea what that was about?”

“I don’t really get it, but… I guess I won?” Rin picks up her Chingling, scratching it gently just behind the nub where its rope-tendrils connect to its head. She glances at Lennon, who meows weakly. “Oh… I’m sorry, Lennon, do you need to go to the Pokémon Center…?”

“R-right.” Kyousuke scratches the back of his head. “Well, I hate to call off our Contest before the final round, but… it looks like that’s about all we can manage today. Let’s just get your Pokémon healed, and then we can pack up Kengo’s supplies. Sound good?” Rin nods, hardly noting the others’ agreement as she returns Lennon and Santa to their Pokéballs. The five turn and make their way to the nearby Pokémon Center, where the nurse at the reception desk takes Rin’s Pokémon with a reassurance that they would be in good hands.

She hands Rin a slip with a number on it. “Your Pokémon should be all refreshed in a couple of hours, so just come back then and show us this, okay? We hope to see you again!”

——

Back at the Natsume residence, Kengo finally unloads his shopping bags. “Alright, then. I’ve got some food for the road, and several Potions, Repels, and a Revive for each of you. I’ve also bought a pair of first-aid kits; while the Routes usually have enough traffic to be safe, if you break a bone with nobody around it can still be dangerous. I also got a sleeping bag for Riki, since he doesn’t have one.”

“You really didn’t have to… How much should I pay you back?” Riki fumbles for his wallet, but Kengo stops him with a raised hand.

“Don’t bother. The three of us have earned enough in prize money that gathering a fund for your supplies really wasn’t an issue.”

“Oh…” Riki hesitates, but accepts the gift. “Oh! I think I have a collapsible portable stove in my room. Should I bring that?”

Kyousuke nods. “It can never hurt to have a way of cooking on the road - you can only live on cold canned food for so long without wanting to break something. Just make sure you remember to bring extra gasoline, too, or it’ll just be a fancy paperweight.”

“Right,” Riki responds.

“Before you go get it, let’s make sure we’ve gone through everything else you need to bring. Do you have an extra pair or two of hiking shoes?” Riki shakes his head. “We’ll have to go and buy you some before the day is out. You and Rin could both stand to buy some good hiking socks while you’re at it, too.”

“Don’t forget warm clothes,” Masato pipes in. “My muscles can keep me warm just about anywhere, but with how little bulk the two of you have, you’d better be ready for the cold.”

“…I don’t think muscles work that way…” Riki grumbles, but he diligently notes down the suggestions nonetheless.

“Let’s get what you already have packed, and then we can go look around for anything else you’re missing.” Kyousuke stands up. “Oh, and we can’t forget a sturdy water bottle. Rin already has one packed, but water is the single most important thing to have when traveling.”

The friends prepare to head to Riki’s place, but he looks a little uncertain. He speaks quietly. “…Isn’t this a lot for just going on a short trip with you? I mean, you three can take care of most of this, can’t you?”

“…” Kyousuke fixes him with a serious look. “It’s important to be fully prepared for a journey. You never know just what might happen when you’re away from home.”

“…Right…” Riki nods, takes a step forward, and then sways. Rin rushes to catch him before he can hit the ground.

She struggles to carry his weight for a moment before Masato comes to help her. It’s clear that Riki is fast asleep.

Narcolepsy.

It’s a chronic disease Riki suffers from, which makes him fall asleep randomly and without warning. He says he’s had it since before they first met him.

Rin looks to Kyousuke, wondering what to do.

“…Well, so much for finishing our preparations right now. Let’s get him to a bed, and then I’ll go pick up what I can.”

The others nod, and they haul Riki to a guest room. Rin’s parents are used to the boy needing to stay from time to time, so the room is set up for his use when they aren’t specifically hosting someone. After getting him onto the bed, Rin sits down in a nearby chair to catch her breath. She closes her eyes.

After a while, Kengo speaks in a low murmur. Rin can barely make out what he’s saying. “…sure this is going to work?”

Kyousuke whispers a reply. “Riki will be okay. He’ll have Rin with him. We just have to believe in them.”

Masato, this time. “…I just hope you’re right.”

Rin can hear the three open the door, leaving her to keep watch over Riki while they gather supplies. Her mind wanders back over the busy day, and her first Pokémon Battle. It was more exhausting than she thought, but it looks like she has a rival now.

Sitting in the dark room, before long, she too falls asleep.

#Little Busters!#Pokemon #Natsume Rin #Naoe Riki #Natsume Kyousuke #Inohara Masato #Miyazawa Kengo #Sasasegawa Sasami #Gracidea Blossom #fanfiction #Sinnoh

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