#uses magic to make sure she sweats just enough so her muscles glisten but not enough that it fucks up her hair. she’s the worst

[snowberry-pie]

i love sifri’s vanity. i love how she’s constantly trying to maintain this carefully crafted aesthetic she has going on or else she’ll keel over and die

[mithrilwren]

I really, really wanted to contribute something to Essek Week​, but unfortunately with two essays and a novel chapter due by Monday, I didn’t have the time or mental energy to write anything new. Cue me remembering that I’d actually started working on an Essek-centric shadowgast Pirate!AU last summer, that never saw the light of day! Though I did a whole bunch of research for it, summer ended before I could get farther than the first couple chapters. Still, I’m very fond of the premise, and I’d like to finish it one day. I can’t guarantee I will (life’s too busy to commit myself to another Big Fic Project atm) but in the meantime, here’s a little taste in the form of the first chapter.

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For @essek-week Day 7: AU

Courts of Silk (Chapter 1)

Essek startled from his trance to the crackle of blistering thunder overhead.

Mind bled of all drowsiness in an instant, he unfolded his legs and slid off the berth, drifting to the center of the room and tilting his ear towards the boards above. 

A storm…  but the skies were meant to be clear for days, and he trusted Avus to know it. Could the weather have turned so–

Boom.

Essek’s eyebrows flew up as the deck visibly lurched below his feet. 

Not thunder.

Cannon fire.

More sounds now, hurried ones – an erratic tempo of feet pounding through the corridor outside his little room, the floorboards creaking dully under the weight of the crew scrambling over the deck above. He flinched as a louder noise pierced through the commotion: the rattling of a heavy fist falling against the door of his cabin, hard enough to shake the wooden frame. 

“We’ve been boarded!” Zel’ra’s guttural shout startled him out of his confused stupor, and he flew to the door and flung it open. The quartermaster stood outside, her snarling jaw dripping with whitish battle foam, the kind that bugbears of Rosohna so seldom have occasion to sport within city walls. “Come on, magic boy, time for you to earn your– Shit!”

Then she was gone, and Essek was left staring dumbly at the empty corridor, as Zel’ra raced back the way she came. A moment later, there was a yelp, and the grisly crack of metal hitting bone. Then there was no sound at all, save the rocking of the ocean’s pulse against the hull, and the thump of confident, unfamiliar footsteps, coming closer and closer to his open door.

He had only a few moments to make his decision. The fight might still be going on above deck, but if intruders had already made it below, there was little hope of a favorable outcome for the crew of the Barren Bow. He hadn’t thought the Empire would be brazen enough to attack a diplomatic ship in open waters, but there were soldiers of all ilks on the open sea, and no government to hold them to account so far from land. He would not put it past a Dwendalian crew to sight a Dynasty flag on the horizon and decide to take the matter of revenge in their own hands. If so, there was no telling what treatment they might expect at the hands of their attackers. Rage was rarely tamed by abstract rules of engagement, and he doubted anyone would care to ask what the nature of their mission was, once the killing began.

But perhaps…

Quickly, Essek drew aside his sleeve and materialized the leather–bound contents of his wristpocket into his hands. His spellbook lay beside precious components in their embroidered fold, and there, at the bottom of the pile: the folio. He whispered a quiet word and the paper folded apart, revealing its damning – and perhaps, in the right hands, lifesaving – contents. 

The letters. 

If the tides were so unfavorable that he could not fight, perhaps that might be enough to–

He vanished the whole affair back into the ether as two shadows fell across the door. 

From the darkness of the hallway, two figures stepped over the threshold. In front was a young woman: human, with swarthy skin made darker still by the weathering burn of long days at sea. Her hands were tucked beneath bare arms and her hip turned out to an unconcerned jaunt, adorned by a sash of deep blue. Behind her, and looming so tall that she had to hunch to fit through the frame of the door, was a giant of a woman. Taller even than Zel’ra, her bare shoulders glistening with rippling muscles and sweat, pale as moonlight – or as the steely glint of the broadsword at her back. The younger woman swept him over with piercing eyes, her confident grin not quite masking the focused gaze beneath. Though she bore no weapons, Essek could feel the stain of threat in every taut sinew of her body. He held still, waiting to see who would make the first move.

Her eyes finally paused, centered on the floor beneath his feet, and her grin dropped into something more like a startled ‘oh’. Too late, he realized his mistake – that his levitation, as natural and instinctive as standing on his own two feet, had just given him away. 

“Mage!” she sputtered, and her hand was gripping his arm and twisting it behind his back before he even realized she’d moved. Essek dropped the levitation spell, hoping to get enough leverage from the sudden height difference to slip out of her grasp, but before he could so much as shuffle to the left, the taller woman was at his right, clutching his other arm with a grip strong enough to break bone. 

“Shit,” the first woman spat as she stepped back, allowing the second to take both of his arms into custody. “Who the fuck did we just board?”

Essek kept silent, staring at her, searching for any sign of weakness and finding less than nothing. If he had just had his hands free for a moment longer… but that didn’t matter now. There weren’t many spells without a somatic component at his disposal, and cantrips wouldn’t save his neck, should the giantess move quicker to snap it than he could speak. 

Without a means of immediate escape, he looked next for any way to identify his captors. They were human, but their loose, subdued dress – for the younger woman, a vest of blue cotton, the other, a braided grey tunic, and frayed ribbons in both their hair – was nothing like the silver and crimson finery of the Righteous Brand. 

If not from the Empire, who were these people? Hired thugs? Mercenaries?

“Are there more of you skulking down here?” 

He didn’t ask the woman to clarify, though he wasn’t sure exactly what she was asking. More drow? Yes, but he was not about to reveal the nature of the delegation travelling under his protection to her. More mages? No. As always, he had convinced the Bright Queen that his effort alone would be sufficient. For the first time in a very long time, he wished he’d been a little more conservative in estimating his own skills. Given the current situation, someone else’s power at his back might actually be welcome, rather than distracting. 

Her burning gaze made it clear that he had to say something, and soon, but for once, the right words did not come. The truth did not matter: he knew that any unfavorable answer would be taken as a lie.

Still, Essek would not panic. The only way to regain control of the situation was by carefully gathering information, finding something that he could use to shift the balance of power at a more advantageous moment. That was his particular specialty. 

“I do not know,” he answered coolly. “For I do not know who is above and below deck at all hours of the day. I can only speak for myself.”

“Beau! Fjor– fuck– Captain Tusktooth wants you on deck!” A new voice, its timbre high and grating, like glass against cold iron, echoed from around the corner. The woman – Beau, he filed away – turned her head and shouted back out the door. 

“Just a second, we’ve got one more!” Then, “Tell him to get Caleb over here, we’ve got a goddamn mage to deal with!” 

The giantess at his back leaned down, so close that her dreaded locks nestled amidst the silver chains that hung from tip to base of his pointed ear. “You aren’t going to give us any trouble, are you?” she murmured, and despite every ounce of training he’d undergone for exactly this sort of intimidation, he still couldn’t help the way he shivered at her dark tone. There was a deep quality to her voice that sung of violence, for violence’s sake, and though he wasn’t yet truly afraid, he had no wish to provoke her.

“How could I?” Essek gently flexed his arms in her grasp: not enough to challenge, but enough to reassure her of his helplessness.

Her lips curled back, and… yes. There was a little fear gathering there, in the back of his throat. A good kind of fear – the prudent kind. It would keep him alert, and focused, and ready to strike back when the moment was right. 

When she started pushing him forward, he followed her lead willingly, and the two of them shadowed Beau into the corridor and up the steps that led back above deck. Essek winced as the bright noonday sun slipped into view, already anticipating the stinging burn that was sure to follow. He’d managed to avoid the deck for most of the voyage, much to the chagrin of the Assarian crew. He was not born into a body made for manning rigging, and certainly not under an unrepentant sky determined to scorch his face and hands and neck and leave him itching and miserable for days without relief. His better use was below deck, planning for the engagement ahead, and his hours of fresh air better taken in the evening, when the gentler light of the moons was merely a prickle beneath his skin, rather than a flame. 

Everywhere he looked, he saw mismatched bodies. Though Essek hadn’t met the entire complement of the Barren Bow’s crew, he had to assume most of the scattered orcs, goblins, and bugbears belonged to their side. Most of the ones on their feet were being held in the shallow recess at the centre of the deck, where great cannons might have been lodged on a more modern ship. A handful of unremarkable humans, each equipped with a rapier – or, in one man’s case, a salt-encrusted retort – stood above them, keeping watch. Amidst all that humanity stood a wild–eyed goblin in a blaring yellow dress, hefting a crossbow composed of whirring gears and levers of an intricate make that rivaled Waccoh’s own craftsmanship. She was currently in the process of shouting threats down across the heads of his cowed compatriots. Some were clutching broken arms or wiping blood from contusions and burnt welts. Lying at the center of the group was an unconscious Zel’ra, the goose egg at the back of her skull already angry and red. 

Finally, he spied the remainder of the drow contingent clustered by the ship’s rail. Diplomats, all of them, bound for a parley at sea and not trained for conflict beyond what it took to hold a dagger right-way up. He was the only one among them battle-tested, and even then, his means leaned more towards subterfuge than outright combat. Theoretically, the Assarian crew was meant to be their main line of defence in case of attack. Clearly they had not proven up to the task. 

Essek would be filing a very unfavorable report with their commanders upon his return, if any of them survived the day. 

“Captain!” Beau shouted, and a tall half-orc stepped away from the railing, his wide-brimmed hat only partially disguising the many scars that littered his face. 

“Weather’s turning,” he said, casting his eyes towards the – as far as Essek could tell – clear horizon. Those same yellow eyes flickered up, above Essek’s head, and for a moment seemed to narrow before turning back to Beau. “You finished clearing the hold yet?”

“Didn’t make it that far.” Beau jerked her head, and Essek was thrust into the sunlight all at once. The glare was blinding, and apparently not just to him. The giantess’s hands jerked around his arms, like they wanted to fly up and shield her eyes as well. That was all the opportunity he needed. 

With one quick motion, he jerked his arms from her grasp and drew his hands together, tracing familiar glyphs out of nothing but muscle memory as his mouth uttered an incantation, and the world exploded around him. The giantess was flung back against the doorframe, wood splintering beneath her weight, and both Beau and the half-orc slammed into the deck and began to hurtle towards the side of the boat. Forcing his eyes to stay focused amidst the chaos and the harsh light, Essek caught the glitter of a cutlass skittering along the boards as he took stock of his position on the newly reborn battlefield.

Nearly all of the boarders were in a concentrated area in front of him, and the rest of the Assarian crew were protected by the lip of the recess in the deck. The terrain could not be more advantageous. Essek allowed himself a small smirk as he raised his hand and prepared a vacuum blast that would level the whole of the upper deck, and deliver them all to safety in one swift stroke. 

How arrogant, that this petty group of mercenaries thought they could capture–

“Counterspell.”

The magic sizzled and died in his hand, and Essek whirled, searching for whoever had spoken behind him. Thugs he could handle, but it was always best to deal with a mage first, when they could do such infuriating things as what had just occurred. But once he turned, he found himself facing an empty doorway, and an empty deck above that. No trace of whoever had cast the counterspell. 

The giantess was gone as well.

He heard the click before he could parse what cold and heavy thing was tugging on his wrist, but he was horribly aware of what was happening by the time his other wrist was wrenched behind his back and small hands clasped the second iron band shut. A stomach-churning wave of exhaustion passed through him from scalp to toe, and he staggered, only barely holding on to consciousness. Head lolling towards the floor, he saw two soft-soled boots landing lightly on the deck in front of him.

With great effort, he managed to drag his head up from his chest, and found himself staring into blue eyes and dusty freckles, lips pressed into a thin line, all framed by tangles of copper-red hair. 

“Good work, Nott,” the man said. His accent was one Essek had only heard once before, though through the mire of exhaustion he could not remember where.

Behind Essek, the half-orc groaned and pushed himself up off the deck. “Next time you have a brilliant plan for subduing the prisoner, maybe let’s try not putting us all in the line of fire, hm?” 

The man ignored the sarcasm, still looking all too carefully at Essek.

“Are you finished?” he murmured, and though his body was lithe, his soft voice sung of as much violence as the giantess’s darker growl. 

With a sigh, Essek let his shoulders drop. He could still feel the pulses of magic coursing through the iron bands around his wrists. Even if he got his arms free again, the cuffs would not be easily slipped, or broken. These people, whoever they were, came equipped to handle wizards like himself. Was that what they were, then? Assassins in disguise? Privateers? The blunt instrument of some government or another?

Not that it made much difference now. Whoever they were, he was at their mercy. 

“Spin him around.”

Essek felt himself being maneuvered away from the man’s incisive gaze. Through bleary eyes he caught the looks of frustrated disbelief from the four drow delegates, lamenting their crushed hope in silent, huddled unity. He was meant to be their protection. Now that Essek was taken, what else could save them? Not one of them was brave enough to attempt it themselves. A shiver of disgust ran through Essek, as heady as the self-recrimination it concealed at having allowed himself to be captured so easily.

The half-orc strode up to Essek, the sword in his hand now replaced, though Essek hadn’t seen the man move to retrieve it. It was a silver cutlass, fine enough to cleave a person clean through and leave one half still propped up on the other. Too rich a prize by far for a simple mercenary – he must have come by it dishonestly, or been given it as boon or bribe. Neither prospect boded well. 

The hand that gripped the sword told an equally foreboding story, for only the thumb was composed of green flesh. The rest of the fingers were severed at the third knuckle, and replaced by metal imitations fixed to the wrist by a harness of leather cords. Still, he held the hilt with all the confidence of a trained fighter, and the surety of his grasp left Essek little doubt as to its effectiveness, mechanical augmentation or no.

“My name,” said the half-orc, “is Captain Tusktooth.” A hint of bright teeth flashed from below the wide brim of the hat. “And this ship is mine now. Its cargo, mine too.”

The answer about the identity of his captors, at last, became clear, for what little good it did him.

Pirates.

“By whose authority?” Essek shot a harsh look at the foolish dignitary who had chosen this moment to find their courage, but Tusktooth only grinned harder.

“By my own.” Behind Essek’s back, Nott and Beau slipped back through the splintered doorframe and down into the depths of the ship once more. “Now, my crew is going to finish taking a look through your cargo. I trust that your captain has been honest about the contents of your hold. Are there any other surprises I should be warning my people of? Anybody else looking to make trouble?”

Would that there were. “You will find little of value to take. We travelled light.” He spoke the truth, having no more useful lie at his disposal. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and another wave of exhaustion teased at the edges of his mind. He fought it with all the strength he had – which was growing less and less by the minute.

“So your captain told me. But that wasn’t my question.” Tusktooth’s voice grew as keen as the blade in his hand as he lifted it and placed the edge to the shallow of Essek’s throat. “Are there others like you aboard?”

He did not flinch. Torment and torture were old friends: his own cherished instruments. He did not fear what this man would do to him, any more than he feared death itself. At least, that is what he told his errant heart, as sweat began to bead at the nape of his neck.

“No.”

Tusktooth stared him down for a minute longer, and Essek held his gaze as best he could with the sun still searing his eyes. But at last, the sword withdrew, and Essek’s breath came a little easier. “Then let’s call this an exercise in… mutual trust.” He smiled once more, and Essek returned the expression with a vague twitch of lips.

The tense exchange was followed by ten excruciating minutes of silence, during which Essek did his best not to fidget in his heavy robes, even when his exposed skin grew so heated he felt liable to burst into flames. As they waited, the redheaded man pulled Tusktooth aside for a private conversation, and Essek sweated, and watched, and tried to formulate a plan.

The pirates would find nothing of value to steal. The Barren Bow had provisions for the voyage, but anything else aboard was the purview of the Assarian crew, who had planned to head back towards the shores of Igrathad as soon as the parley concluded. There were no scheduled stops for trade, and thus, no trade goods in their hold. There weren’t even guns to offer. Essek would never dare to admit it aloud, but the Dynasty lagged sorely behind the rest of Wildemount in outfitting its fleet with the relatively new technology of cannonry, at least of the type that lacked a magical component. Firearms had only entered the sphere of weaponmaking some thirty years prior, and with Xhorhas primarily landlocked, the navy hadn’t been high on the priority list for refurbishment. 

His best hope was that some of the crew had hidden stashes of coin in their quarters. Otherwise, there would be nothing for the pirates to take, and without anything to satisfy them, well… he did not want to be in manacles when that news was delivered to a man who’d already put a sword to his throat. 

If only to convince himself he was not totally beaten yet, Essek watched Tusktooth and the redhead carefully, seeing what he could glean from body language alone. Their conversation was hushed but tense, and every few moments the redhead would turn his eyes towards the drow delegation, and then to Essek himself. He made sure to drop his own eyes before they could meet again, not wanting to spark another confrontation by appearing insolent. As for the pirate captain… there was confidence, yes, but the unwavering edge of confidence seemed to drop away from his shoulders as he spoke to the other man. His arms moved more wildly; his words were more rapid, and at a higher pitch. Perhaps his earlier confidence was not so unshakeable as it at first appeared.

At last, Beau and the goblin re-emerged from the staircase. “We got shit all,” Beau said, tossing down a half-empty sack by Essek’s feet. He winced as a few bruised tubers rolled out across the warped deck.

“...Shit.” Tusktooth ran a hand over his mouth. “Shit. Nothing?”

“Nott and I checked every inch of that hold, the crew quarters, everything. No money, no timber, no – fuck, I don’t know – fine silks or–”

“No cannons,” Nott added mournfully. “No black powder.”

“We went through all this for nothing?”

“Maybe someone’s holding out on us,” Nott said, brandishing her crossbow. “I could make ‘em talk for you, Captain. Make them squeal–”

“Oh–kay, Nott,” Tusktooth said, “let’s take it down a notch.” But despite his placating tone, his look was thoughtful. Again, he turned to Essek. “You never never did say what you all were doing out here, so far from home. You don’t look like a sailor to me.”

“Yes, friend,” said the redhead, stepping up to Essek from Tusktooth’s other side, alarmingly calm, and placing altogether too much emphasis on the second word to be trusted, “what is it you do here?” Essek took a half-step back, not liking the feeling of being pressed in from all angles, and walked himself straight into the chest of the giantess. 

Nowhere to hide. And with his hands bound behind his back, no way to levitate up to a level where he didn’t feel every inch of height his captors had over him. Which, at his firmly average height for a drow, was many.

Focus, Thelyss. Focus.

“Why should I answer your questions,” he sneered, “when you have not done me the same courtesy? Who are you, to board a vessel commissioned lawfully by the Bright Queen herself?” It was a dangerous ploy, but a considered one – a hastily calculated risk. If the pirates could not be convinced there was nothing of value to be found, they might decide to punish the crew for concealing their rightful prize, and when even a beating couldn’t drive his compatriots to forfeit non-existent gold, the pirates might well scuttle the ship and leave them all to drown at sea. He doubted simple brigands would care much for the particulars of a diplomatic mission if there was no treasure involved, so there was little harm in broaching a subject that might be far more dangerous to discuss with more educated captors.

But apparently, some aspect of Essek’s logic had failed him again, because the redhead immediately shot a wide-eyed look at Tusktooth, before looking back to Essek. “The Bright Queen?”

Essek gave a little bow. His head swam as he dipped back up – the handcuffs, no doubt, though it could just as easily be the beginnings of heatstroke – and he had to swallow twice to find the fortitude to speak without slurring. “Essek Thelyss, Shadowhand of the Kryn Dynasty and ambassador of the realm.” The last part was an… embellishment, and if he chanced a glance over at the true ambassadors, he imagined there would be many offended looks. But thankfully, all attention was solely focused on him. “I assure you, you won’t find the prize you’re looking for on a diplomatic vessel, gentleman. Your friends have already given you proof – we carry nothing beyond our own provision. Unless you have a particular taste for the delicacies of Xhorhasian fashion, I’m afraid we have little to offer you.”

Nott snarled, but the redhead put up a hand. “Captain,” he said slowly, looking at Tusktooth. “Might I… make a suggestion?” 

“You may.”

“It’s not something I’d usually propose, but times being what they are…” Tusktooth nodded grimly.

“We haven’t got many options left.”

“Precisely. I believe that our friend Mr. Thelyss here has lied to us.” He could laugh for the irony of it all; this was the most truthful Essek had been in years. “There is indeed something very valuable aboard this ship.” His blue eyes pierced through Essek, and it was only his determination to keep the – now violently pitching – contents of his stomach where they belonged, that stopped him from speaking up in his own defense.

“And that is...?”

“Himself.”

[shadowayne-deactivated]

dancing with your ghost

Melinda stands in the open doorway, a duffle bag slung over her shoulder with nothing in it but a collection of Polaroids, a ring, and his shirt.

Artificial light filters into the room from the hallway, bathing what is in the doorway’s path with a dim yellow light. The unmade bed is illuminated, untouched since she left a week ago.

It has been two seconds and also three months since she’s been gone, yet she knows she’s aged a hundred years.

Melinda’s exhausted, but she can’t curl up into the sheets, achingly alone, laying in cold sheets without the sound of his weak breathing in and out next to her. Not without his hand gently held in hers, fingers twitching occasionally.

She hasn’t slept in weeks. She spent every second listening to his heart beat and falter and beat and falter and beat, until it didn’t do anything at all.

The idea of laying in bed with no soft, strenuous beating under her hand- it feels more vast and empty than even the nights she spent in the tiny apartment after Bahrain; ghosts and guilt and hate replacing the spot where Andrew used to lie next to her.

Melinda closes the door behind her, the door that separates her and her ghosts from everyone else.

She has thousands of ghosts haunting her, but none of them are Phil.

The room is pitch black, but she doesn’t turn on the light. She lets it sit, the inky darkness swirling around and seeping into her body as she closes her eyes and breathes in deep, faltering slightly when the memory of his bloodshot eyes and rapid loss of speech float through her mind.

She uses vague muscle memory to light the same, unscented candle that has been sitting on her small desk since early in their time in the Lighthouse. Daisy found a short break day to deliver them each a small gift soon after they returned from the future.

Daisy’s gift for Coulson was a boy hula dancer, to match the other one sitting in a storage building with Lola. Daisy joked about finally being allowed to drive the precious car, and Coulson just shrugged with a small smile and an odd look on his face.

Now Melinda knows what the look meant. He already knew, even then.

She drops the bag on the cement floor and it lands with a hollow thunk. She pops open the bottle of beer that was pressed gently into her hands when she stood in the center of the common room on shaky legs barely holding her up as Daisy clutched her. She didn’t cry, just held on tight like Melinda would blow away.

Maybe she will.

Her stomach is full of rocks and she sits down on the chair next to her desk, gripping the back of the chair with her free hand, looking down at the ground because she can’t see her room without being hit with a memory of him.

Everything has Phil in it.

He is in Daisy’s earnest face. He is in the maroon couch where he explained to the team that he was leaving for good. He is in the small collection of cooking utensils hung on the wall in the cafeteria area from when he insisted to cook them a meal at least once every couple of days for morale, even when the world was falling apart around them.

Now she knows, can see what he was doing. He was trying to hold onto something he loved to do because he knew he was running out of time. He knew, so he tried to spend that time with them while he could.

Once, Daisy and Jemma joined him. The three tried making lasagna but it was mainly Phil cooking while Daisy and Jemma ate the ingredients and messed with him. They were going through their own personal hells, yet they were smiling and giggling, the unfamiliar sound of joy ringing through the lighthouse and lifting the mood of the entire base.

It was one of the only times she saw him smile recently, before Tahiti.

He smiled a lot in Tahiti, at least when he was awake.

Melinda still marveled. He smiled until the end. He smiled when she talked, when she laughed, when she brushed soft kisses to his lips as she cradled his head when he couldn’t stand anymore.

She asked how he could smile when he about to see nothing ever again. Be nothing.

“I won’t be nothing, Lin,” he replied. “I’ll be your memories of me. And I smile because I see your love, for me and for Daisy and for the team, and I know that you will live. And that’s all that matters.”

He said it so simply, so matter of factly.

Melinda wonders if he’d be smiling if he would know she can’t live without him. Won’t.

She’s nothing without him, nothing without her better half holding her away from the edge of the pit of mania and darkness and sickness, the kind that creeps over your mind so quickly that you don’t notice it until you’re gone.

Without him, she is silently drowning, thousands of hands grabbing at her skin and ears and eyes, rough, unlike his careful caresses.

Without him, she is dying.

Melinda takes another sip of the beer and rests her forehead on her desk, for the first time noticing the sheen of sweat that is sticking some of her hair to her face.

There aren’t five stages of grief. Whoever came up with that was wrong.

Everyone experiences loss differently, but the one thing that stays the same for every person is that the loss never leaves. It stays heavy inside a person, creating a chasm of emptiness. Every new loss adds to it, making it deeper and wider until there is more emptiness than there is human.

Melinda is nothing but empty.

They danced together, before he was barely able to tell her he loved her.

The radio was playing faint tunes as he sat at the dining table, reading a book. (Not Ulysses. They didn’t have enough time to get it for him.) He had a cannula running up around his ears and tucked inside his nose, trying to feed to him the oxygen he fought every day for.

A song came on that Melinda recognized. It had played at her 19th birthday, her first one celebrated at the academy. Phil had dragged her out to a club near the base, and slow songs had played over the speakers as he got her a sundae and offered to pay but she refused to let him.

The lyrics played, but she didn’t pay attention to what they said, not back then.

Oceans apart day after day

And I slowly go insane

Phil, with his endless energy, had bounded up and held out his hand. “Dance with me, Cadet May?” he had asked in a teasing tone.

She’d grinned. “Sure, Cadet Coulson. Show me your moves.”

If I see you next to never

How can we say forever

In Tahiti he’d gotten up, less energy than even a few weeks before, and held out his hand to her, his giddy smile exactly the same as thirty years ago in that club, somehow untouched by time. “Cadet May?” he prompted.

She suppressed a grin. (She wishes she hadn’t. She wishes she let herself be free with him, be happy without any boundaries, but she still wouldn’t, couldn’t.) She took his outstretched hand and got up.

Wherever you go

Whatever you do

I will be right here waiting for you

They stood together, her mostly supporting him, and they were barely moving, simply swaying, but Melinda was looking in his bright blue eyes that were getting hazier by the hour and felt like she was back in their undercover missions, getting spun around and twirled so quickly she was lighter than air.

Whatever it takes

Or how my heart breaks

I will be right here waiting for you

The song ended, and Melinda was brought back to the present, where the sun was setting and Phil was sagging in her arms. She murmured that he needed to sleep, and helped him into their bed.

He didn’t get up again.

Waiting for you

The whole time they were in the magical place, he promised her that the pain was bearable, but when her back was turned he’d grimace and make fists so tight his knuckles would turn white.

He’d never been good at hiding things from her.

He hid the scar tearing through his soul, though, for months. Maybe she couldn’t read him as well as she always thought she could.

The middle of their first night he woke up still half asleep, crying that he didn’t want to die. The opposite of seven years ago, when he’d pleaded with Fury to let him.

She held him, softly kissing him on the head as she soothed him back to sleep, his head on her thigh as she sat against the backboard of the bed.

“I don’t want to die either,” she whispered in the dead of night, after he’d fallen asleep and couldn’t hear her anymore. After nobody could hear her anymore.

waiting

“I will love you for the rest of time,” he always said. “You won’t hear it, you won’t see it, but you will feel it, and you will know.”

She remembers his words, but she’s sitting alone in a tiny room lit by a scented candle and the alcohol in her throat doesn’t burn enough to abate the emptiness.

She isn’t angry anymore. Or sad, or upset, or even scared.

She isn’t anything at all.

“You will feel my love, even when I’m gone,” he said.

Melinda sits and she drinks until the bottle is empty and the wick of the candle burns down into the molten wax and extinguishes the flame, leaving her in the dark black well of grief.

“You will feel my love,” he said.

And she doesn’t say out loud what she knows deep down.

Because the darkness already knows too; knows because of the glistening tracks on her cheeks and the empty bottle clutched tightly in her hand, soon to be replaced by another.

She doesn’t feel it.

And she’s not waiting anymore.

[c-rose2081]

Through the Rubble

—

It started and ended with Mal.

Mal, Maleficent’s only daughter. Mal who so desperately wanted to follow in her moms footsteps; to become the most evil of them all. Mal who was far to soft inside to ever be truly be cruel or heartless.

Mal; the girl who failed to defeat Maleficent.

Audrey, like the rest of those at the coronation, stood in petrified horror. She could see all that was going on, but couldn’t move a muscle. There was a scream caught in her throat still; one which the Dark Fae had oh so gleefully silenced. Mal and her little friends stood face to face with a monster. And were there such a thing as happily ever after, they may have succeeded in overpowering her.

But life was cruel, and Maleficent was evil. The magic wand in Mal’s grip shattered to a million pieces. It wasn’t built to be held by someone of Dark Fae blood. The VK’s were powerless. And as Maleficent transformed into a dragon with a mighty roar and scream of triumph, the walls of the Palace came tumbling down. Audrey was caught in the chaos like everyone else, but unlike everyone else, she somehow lived.

It was pure luck — a miracle, honestly — that she wasn’t crushed or suffocated when the walls collapsed. She was instead trapped in a den of darkness and mortar dust, the magic which held her limbs in place gradually wearing off. Through the cracks, water gently trickled down from a rain that had begun falling. From these trickles the Princess drank, spitting out the coppery blood which lingered on her bit tongue, and washing away the taste of brick and sand. It felt like forever before she was able to move again, and even longer until she had full control over her body.

Audrey began to dig herself from the rubble when she was strong and well rested enough. A few times she had nearly been crushed by her own tunnel, and another time she had screamed when a lifeless hand brushed against her exposed thigh. The hand could’ve belonged to anyone really, as the skin was already hard and cold like frost. Audrey swallowed thickly and kept moving upwards, through the dark maze of stone, rebar and glass. She couldn’t risk another collapse by trying to identify who had touched her. What good it would do anyway other then make her heart hurt? By the time Audrey broke through into the fresh air, heaving and sweating from endless crawling, scuffling and shifting of rubble, a chill night had fallen.

Pulling herself out of the pile with a squeak of pain and a grunt of effort, Audrey skidded down to the floor on her side. The once polished marble was slick and muddied with rainwater; the roof was completely gone, exposing the grand foyer to the dark, dreary sky. Clouds mixed with billows of ash from fires all around Auradon, the horizon painted a vicious, burning red.

Beast’s Palace was no more. Maleficent had taken the whole place down with her, leaving behind only lumps of undefinable dust. Audrey sat atop a rather large block, squinting through the night to see if she could spot anyone; a survivor, even just a body. But as she had been, everyone attending the Coronation was now stuck under several feet of debris. How she had managed to get out herself, the Princess wasn’t sure. Somewhere down there, Chad, Grammy and her parents slept on. And Audrey felt tears leak from her eyes as she imagined it.

Shaking her head and swallowing those emotions for the moment, Audrey began picking her way further into the mess. In her hazy brain, she could still imagine how the room used to look. She could see the beautiful alabaster pylons and the heavy velvet blue drapes. She could still see the glisten of golden chandeliers above, and hear the echo of voices.

This place was now empty, and filled with ghosts.

Shaking the vision of what had previously been here, Audrey made her way towards where she recalled seeing Mal and her friends last. She didn’t see any bodies, but then again they could’ve been swept aside or taken someplace else by Maleficent. They could still be alive; Audrey wouldn’t be the wiser. But she didn’t care about Mal, or her little friends. She didn’t care about anything other then falling to her knees and digging through the dirt with her bare hands.

It felt hopeless after only a few minutes. Her fingers and nails were bleeding, but Audrey continued to sift. She was pushing away blocks, cutting her palms on glass, and leaving red fingerprints all over the floor. She was ready to give up, her emotions hot and burning in her throat as she began to cry. But then her bloody hand wrapped around something small, and a cry of triumph left her throat.

A wood fragment.

It was insignificant, and shaped like a small elongated diamond. The outer edge was painted ivory white, while the interior glistened with natural wood and gold flakes. Audrey cradled the shard like it was the most precious thing in the world. And to her, alone in a rubble pile with the world burning around her, and the dead sleeping somewhere under the ruined castle, it was.

Audrey continued her search with fervor. Day in and day out, hour after hour, she sifted and moved the palace by hand. For nearly two years, as Maleficent set up her dominion in Auradon and the world was ruled by villains, Audrey stayed in the ruins. She barely ate or slept; her back and shoulders developed a permanent hunch from crawling around on the floor. Audrey’s once healthy physique deteriorated. She went just a bit mad, searching, praying, uncovering bodies and reburying them with a little prayer but nothing more.

But with each magic wand fragment she found, the fire of hope burned brighter within her.

Two years rolled into three, and three into four. Audrey, unrecognizable, continued to live amongst the rubble. The remaining walls were covered in vines and foliage, and animals made homes in the nooks and crannies of the piles. Audrey was dying slowly, but she continued to dig. Her weak bones couldn’t lift much anymore, and her back couldn’t hold her upright. Her coronation dress was brown where it was once pink, and her hair had gone long and now kissed her tailbone.

It was on a rainy afternoon that Audrey found what she was looking for. It was nearly washed away in the storm, and had the former Princess not been looking for it, all hope would’ve been lost. She scrambled on her knees, catching the tiny white paint chip with shaking, bony fingers. Her wide brown eyes stared at the flake in disbelief as she ghosted her thumb against its surface.

Holding the fragment to her chest, Audrey crawled her way back to the small den she had carved for herself. Here, on a piece of her own skirt, the other fragments lay waiting.

“...please work,” Audrey rasped, having lost her voice a year before to a rather bad case of pneumonia, “please work,”

Dropping the paint fleck onto the pile, nothing happened at first. Audrey was heartbroken, but gasped and grinned widely as there was a brilliant flash. The wand, in all of its beautiful splendor, wove itself back together before her eyes. The cracks disappeared, and a sturdy ivory shaft was left behind.

“Thank you,” Audrey whispered to the thing, picking it up in her hands as the magic thrummed through her, “you can fix this, can’t you? All of this death and destruction?”

The wand wasn’t sentient, but Audrey held it to her ear as though listening. She had gone just a bit insane, searching for all those years. Loneliness and longing had tainted her heart and mind black, “please help me fix this. I know you can,” she told the wand desperately, taking the handle in her hand and waving it, “please work for me. Bibbidi-Bobbity...Boo,”

And with a flick and flash, everything went dark.

Late night lit doodle from my drafts. Thought about time travel and such.

[halothenthehorns]

All in the Family

Warning for some blood and gore in this one

Chapter 145: Silver and Opals

HPHPHPHP

Something constricted over his face, pinching his nose shut and clasping down too close to his mouth, the edges of it just below his eyes and on the curve of his jaw, something pointed digging just beneath his chin on one side.* He breathed in the dusty scent right onto his tongue, there was no natural lighting in the gloom for him to see what was happening.

"Guys!" Remus squeaked at once, his hands scrambling over nothing of value as he reached up to try pulling it off. "Guys!?" There was a muzzle on his face, somebody had slapped a muzzle back on him!

"Somebody get me out of this thing!" He was already howling like an animal, he could hear the desperation in his own voice and he didn't care as his skin pulled and stretched and it wouldn't come off! This was no cruel prank, even Sirius would never do something like this as a joke.

"Sirius!? James?! Help!" He couldn't even back away as whatever it was held him in place by his face, and there was screaming all around him now. He couldn't even tell if it was his own. "Padfoot! Prongs! Pete?! Somebody!"

He could still breathe, it was neither tightening nor loosening, but that was somehow worse as his eyes adjusted to nothing. He forced them to remain open. They were not in the dimly lit hospital! He'd rather black out than live like this though. There was nothing but blank wall in front of him, he couldn't feel a single one of them around him, his breath was hot and kept blasting right back into his mouth with no escape. "Sirius! Sirius!" His nails were scraping dangerously against the ridges of his eyes, determined to rip it off by any means necessary.

Peter wasn't sure if those cursed robes once thrown out of Grimmauld place had been sent here, or if they weren't one a kind, but he wasn't getting the air to ask as the material wrapped tight around his throat. He gasped and spluttered in disgust, hearing the shouts and cries around him, but instinctively tried to vanish with a little pop that thankfully worked. Scampering a few feet away to be sure as they fell back harmlessly to the rack, he changed back and yelled in fright, spinning on the spot with no idea where to begin.

Regulus was hanging onto the handle of a black cabinet and stumbling dangerously, about to fall into something that seemed to have no true back and no telling what it would do.

James had tried the same trick, but Prongs's hooves slid uselessly on the ground as it held tight, so he changed back and lashed his hand onto an already trembling case full of jewelry that was about to topple him as the black cord wound tighter up his leg and tried to continue pulling him back towards a dangerously whirling device that glinted of metal even in the non lighting. He tried desperately to go for his wand while being torn in two, but didn't seem to be making much progress.

Sirius couldn't dare try the same, wrestling with a panther that had him ruthlessly pinned to the ground by its claws digging into his chest. Only a hastily thrown up shield charm was keeping his neck safe, and the glistening fangs shoved his wand's barrier a little lower to the ground every time.

Remus was losing his shit, he hadn't even gone for his wand to get out of that thing keeping him in place, it was too dark for even his sharp eyes to see exactly what it was.

A splattering of blood suddenly came from above and he looked up to see Frank yelling as a broom slammed him repeatedly into the ceiling, he'd bet anything he was incapable of letting go. He couldn't even spot the other two to know the horrors they were in.

Lashing out his hand to grab the back of Regulus' robes, he verbally threw a spell wildly at James while issuing a silent apology. It worked as it should, the severing charm cut straight through down to the bone, releasing him and a howl of pain as Regulus got his feet back under him.

All Prongs seemed to notice was that he was free and he immediately took in the same situation. Feeling guilty as hell for prioritizing, but Remus was screaming his lungs out so he was definitely more alive than Longbottom not even doing that anymore, Peter turned to Regulus and said, "mind your head."

He needed no further instruction as he once again over extended his magic, shooting Regulus up to the ceiling with far too much vigor. His arms had come up to cover his head on instinct, so when he found himself next to Longbottom he reached over to yank him off without any further hesitation as Peter tried to lower them back to the ground. The broom fell to the floor with an innocent clatter now that its rider was free.

"No James!" Sirius called calmly and clearly from where he was still wrestling with the cursed item like it wasn't salivating to rip his head off, hands straining to keep his shield up on the thin wood, every muscle visible in his arms and covered in sweat, a small puddle of blood pooling along his sides from the rivulets of cuts because of those hind claws. "Get Remus out!"

Moony had stopped calling for help and was now just screaming incoherently. Heeding Sirius by instinct alone, he changed course and rushed over to slash his wand through the air like a whip as he cried, "relashio!"

It worked thankfully, the bony hand fell away, the fingers uncurling with an ugly crackling noise. Remus finally staggered back clutching at his mouth and gasping in relief. James put a tentative hand on his arm in case he still lashed out in fear, watching closely to see the bloody scratches under his eyes in case that thing had done any worse to him, but Remus turned and held onto his arm still fighting back tears, his knees shaking as he held painfully onto James' elbow while he got his breath back. The few salty ones that leaked out must have stung terribly as they mingled with the blood, but he didn't let go to brush them away.

Prongs tried to be as reassuring as he could while he started dragging Moony back towards a still struggling Sirius, still limping as heavily as Remus' weak appendages. Peter was by Sirius' side now, but none of the spells he used were working anywhere past causing stuffing to fly as the creature continued.

There was a terrible look on Wormtail's face for whatever he was about to blast next to get that thing away, and James desperately tried, "finite," first despite his friend trying to cut off circulation to his arm.

The mock animal went still, and then zapped back to a plush sized toy. The desperation was still in Peter's eyes as he went towards the back, but James seized him and pushed him towards Regulus hovering over an unconscious Frank. "Walk him through some healing charms Pete."

Sirius struggled to his feet but was managing it well enough, so James sorrowfully wrenched his arm free and transferred a still hyperventilating Moony to him, hating to turn his back on the pair as Sirius tried to follow but couldn't as Remus latched onto his back and Padfoot groaned in pain. James was already rushing to the back alone despite leaving a thick trail of blood.

The moment he stepped through the curtain he heard the problem and snapped back to Prongs, which thankfully saved his human ears from the tinkling trance of music holding Evans and Alice in place, blood already starting to dribble from inside their ears. Their eyes were wide and glassy, and he huffed in frustration he could see nothing to turn off. Perhaps an intruder alarm, or something irreparable had broken upon their landing.

He stepped farther in, turned clumsily on the spot, and began nudging the two gently out with his horns while trying to favor three legs. They started moving, thankfully, but slow stumbling steps that made his limb feel like he was trailing a log behind him now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off. He feared that numbness, it could not be a good thing.

As the two stepped back into the rest of the store, it visibly started to wear off, and he changed back, collapsing to the ground in cold flashes of pain, using what little breath he had left to cast a healing charm. He passed out before he could see the bone, muscles, tendons, and flesh knit back together.

Lily and Alice screamed in tandem at the sight before them, burning their already ringing ears. Alice vaulted over the counter like it wasn't there to get to Frank and Lily dropped to her knees in a puddle of Potter's blood. She pushed his pants leg aside and saw he'd reduced it down to a deep cut instead, still oozing.

"He okay?" Sirius demanded from above her, turning a bit gray but holding his wand steady, clearly ready to use it on him if he didn't pass out first. Once again his chest was desecrated by multiple scratch marks, Lupin hanging onto his arms for life, as he watched her every move like that was no hamper at all.

"I got the rest," she promised. "He'll live."

Sirius released an erratic laugh that terrified her as she got her arms under his limp form and began dragging him out of the darkening pool for her own sanity, only managing a few feet where the counter stopped before she sat down beside him in exhaustion, the six of them sizing each other up and just taking in their next precious breath.

"So, who wants to find the book?" Regulus whispered into the following silence.

Sirius' laughter increased, his arms going behind him to hold Lupin in place as his eyes stayed on Potter.

"Stop that," she scolded in exhaustion. He didn't until she got wearily to her feet and used shaking fingers to prod gently along his chest, causing him to hiss in pain and eyes to finally flinch onto her properly. He gently pushed her hand back and finally turned his wand on himself, but stopped quickly and put it away.

He hadn't managed to get them all, and her hands trembled terribly as she got the last few to close while trying desperately to ignore the nausea of seeing the blood flow while he watched her with a steadfast expression.

She tried to go around him to Lupin who was still shaking and gasping, but Sirius crowded him against the wall and tightened his grip with a reproachful look as he jabbed his head at Frank instead. Lupin was taller, she could see the damage under his eyes, his nose was swollen, red, and dripping blood, but he didn't seem an immediate concern as he kept his face tipped towards the ceiling and kept breathing, so that wasn't a fight she was going to pick as she did so.

Pettigrew had walked Regulus through it for the most part, oddly as she'd expect him to do it himself, but he'd only gotten the worst of it and Lily tried her best to help the rest through. She still worried they hadn't done enough when Frank still lay passed out and looked pleadingly back at Potter and Black, who weren't in a position to help anyone in their state.

With a mental slap, she reminded herself she could do this! She wasn't going to let Frank suffer brain damage now! Fumbling desperately with the straps of her bag, she knew for a fact she could do at least one quick potion to help any internal swelling go down. Her hands continued trembling though as she started crushing ingredients on the filthy floor, worried about contamination, her mind starting to fog over as she kept wondering what if she did it wrong, what if she made this worse too?

Alice took her hand, her own flew to her shining amber eyes. "What can I do?" She demanded.

Her first instinct was still to push her away, to not let her guard down now, she could do this herself; but Severus' biting insult flashed through her mind to stop her. She was more than just a mudblood, she did deserve to be here! She pushed the empty cauldron towards Alice and told her in a remarkably steady voice, "start filling this with water, slowly. Only a cup at a time, I'll tell you when to stop."

She still patiently went through every step in her mind before she did it to double check herself, but the potion came out the exact right color as she ladled out the first spoonful and gently eased it into his mouth.

Peter got the nicked Weasley's potion kit out of Alice's bag and went back over to Prongs, nearly tipping the entirety but one drop of that blood restorative into his mouth before wearily handing it to Sirius.

"Thanks," Padfoot did not sound like he meant that as he tapped it, took a sip of his own, and pocketed it, but Peter nodded all the same as he hovered awkwardly.

"I'm sorry," he told them sincerely, though he wasn't sure how much Remus was listening.

"You should be," Sirius clearly meant that, and Peter winced. "Hell Peter, you nearly cut his leg off, what were you-"

"Guys," James groaned from their feet. They glanced down to see he looked every color of awful, but he was blinking dazedly up at them.

Sirius tried to bend down on instinct so he didn't have to crane his neck so far, but Moony still refused to let go and Sirius was starting to look a little flustered as the realization kept hitting him he couldn't help both at once. He was far more angry at himself than he'd ever let anyone see. Only this damning fact had stopped him from telling Evans to back off in the first place.

James didn't seem to want much help anyways, pushing Peter's hands away until he was leaning comfortably against the wall so he could see every corner properly, but he still had no energy to use the most minor of spells. Even his voice came out rough, but kind as he looked at Peter and said, "thanks mate. Everyone's okay, that's the important part." Frank was starting to stir as well, and the girls were dabbing a bit of that potion as far into their own ears as they reasonably could.

"I am sorry," Peter still insisted, but James waved him off with a faint smile.

Sirius was done being nice though. "James didn't try to cut Remus' face off to-"

"He did good Sirius," James repeated firmly now, frowning up at him as best he could from the floor, but he knew Sirius could hear it at the very least. "Who knows what the hell anyone else would do, grab the book? Freeze up? Can't you just be grateful?"

Prongs really meant that, and Sirius watched him sadly as he realized he didn't feel the same. It was the principle of the matter, the instinctive magic he'd heard each of them use underneath Remus' pleas for help. There was a fracture now when he looked at Peter he decided he was done trying to fix for James' sake.

During those three weeks he hadn't been speaking to any of them, Peter had never crossed his mind. Going back to Grimmauld hadn't even crossed his mind, he'd considered living in the Forbidden Forest for the summer without a second thought to Regulus. Only because of all of this mess was he even making more of an effort to involve himself with him, but he'd spent every waking hour wishing he could talk to James again, trying to pretend Remus had just over reacted and would want to come talk to him any day now, forcing himself to respect Moony's wishes and not start the conversation.

He'd been in the wrong, and he knew that now, he still felt the guilt of those actions every time he looked at Remus. He'd done Peter wrong by viciously over reacting to this future, but he'd tried what he could to make amends for that. He didn't hate Peter or Regulus, but he was done trying to make it more.

"Sorry," Peter whispered one last time.

"Yeah, so am I," Sirius stated, but there was something wrong with the delivery. There was a sincerity in there that did not lean towards an apology Peter suddenly flat knew he didn't want to know the meaning of.

James swallowed at the following silence and said, "Maybe I'll try losing an eye next, get out of here looking like Moody!"

Sirius got a grudging laugh and played along like nothing had happened. "First Harry, now him, you trying to mimic everyone in this future mate?"

"Just the cool people," he grinned.

Peter sighed in relief when Regulus summoned the book to get them out of this place and went quickly back over to him. James watched him go with a deep ache of loss as he gingerly stepped over the thick blood still covering most of the floor.

"Silver and Opals," Regulus said clearly and more calmly than Sirius would have given him credit for, as traumatized as he still looked glancing around at every single thing and even the floorboards like they were still going to be attacked any moment inside the rest of Borgin and Burkes. He hadn't been able to see what Regulus survived, but guessed it as he particularly kept eyeing that black wardrobe.

Both Black boys had been in here on multiple occasions well enough they recognized the store now that their eyes had adjusted to the gloom and Evans had lit her wand tip for light. It glinted repeatedly off the metal fan still spinning lazily, the edges razor sharp as a blade and brushing a pleasant breeze across them all, its cord like a dead snake not stopping the movement. Sirius couldn't tear his eyes away from its progress, never ceasing the whole chapter.

Peter was back over here, so Regulus felt safe enough to keep his eyes mostly focused on Harry's speculation as he did a silent one of his own. They were all flinching away from the jewelry case and wondering if they were finally going to hear what Malfoy had bought from this very place, and who it was going to be used on.

Katie Bell, unintentionally, as she'd been the delivery but not the target before it went wrong. Regulus took in every detail he could even as terrifying as it was to describe the sequence of events. All of them spent a very long time checking every spot in here with only their eyes to make sure that necklace wasn't available now, and even still never looked at anything for too long in fear it would curse them next.

Sirius was still practically supporting all of his weight as Remus continued to lean into his back, hands holding tight to his upper arms as if restraining Sirius from doing something instead of himself, which was falling to the floor, face still turned away to breathe in freely even as his fingers held tight. Sirius had to fight the urge to offer him a piggyback ride his knees were still shaking so bad.

"Hey, Remus," Sirius forced his hands to stay in place at his side, letting Remus cling to him in whatever way he wanted in front of the others. Keeping his voice soft and gentle, if James heard he wasn't giving it much notice as he continued listening in worry as McGonagall was caught up to speed, and Malfoy's detention ruined his only suspect. "If you're so worried about being distant, then why not knock it off? Nobody's holding any of this against you."

It was maybe a little hysterical, the laugh that came out of him. That Sirius decided to try talking to him like nothing had happened in between.

Remus let his forehead rest against the back of his shoulder now, he couldn't smell the sweat and blood through his burning nose but he could feel it. Finally his lungs began to even out as he pressed a kiss where none could see as he soaked in his meaning. What Peter had done was the ultimate betrayal of this future and James was still trying to work with him. Ironically Sirius was also reassuring him of the fear Padfoot knew nothing about. Sirius wouldn't go anywhere even if Remus did confess his crush.

He was still reluctant to do so, traitorously letting his mind play him now that he could pretend this was going to last forever, there was nothing in these environments to stop him keeping Sirius to himself. He'd have to tell Sirius when they got back to school, he still knew himself well enough he might murder the first person who made a pass at Sirius in front of him, or Sirius himself, and not be able to explain himself. He had time to do that though, ages of this book left plus the next, and possibly even more if they kept cycling through Harry's life.

It was probably the delirium in him that suddenly found he never wanted it to end.

HPHPHPHP

*If you would like to feel what Remus went through, pinch your nose with either hand using thumb and forefinger, the latter of which and middle finger will rest under your eye, while your ring finger and pinky would sit below your jaw digging in. Now imagine that as a skeleton holding on and not letting go while your other hand tries pulling that off.

The one inspiration I take from the movies, and it's that creepy thing. I cringe every time the scene's coming even though I know it is, and it just grabs Harry's wrist!

[voltagesmutter]

Comte - C, F, J, K, O. Daddy of the mansion. 

*Warning: Mentions of sexual activity involving periods.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

Finds elegance in giving you a pearl necklace. Whilst your body will be jewelled with expensive bracelets and trinkets, when making love Comte likes to remove the gold chain from your neck and replace it with his seed. The pearly white essence lays against your skin, followed by a charming grin and comment “Ma Cherie, all the money in the world couldn’t buy how exquisite you look right now”. 

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

In his room there's a velvet armchair encrusted with gold decor, placed in front of the roaring fireplace which gives a subtle glow to the room. Having you straddle him over his chair, cock buried inside you as you rest your hands on his chest, sweating foreheads pressed together. The casting of the fiery glow creates a halo around the outline of your body, the sight of an angel before him as you both take your time to savour the intimate moment. Letting you being in-control of the pleasure, using him almost for your own needs and wants in a unhurried way. A soft exchange of ‘I love yous’ as his hands guide your hips in a slow movement, no rush to find a release, just a tender moment of love and admiration between you.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

When he was younger, he had a ‘bad boy’ period where he was almost like Arthur, a different mademoiselle nearly every other night. But this period was extremely brief, he went through it in an attempt to calm his sexual desire. The reason this period came to such a sudden end? A young lady who he pressed against the wall, his lips falling to her neck and she let out a cry of “Arthur”. Needless to say, Comte then stayed clear away from any woman out of fear of touching somewhere Arthur already had done. He did not want to be anywhere near where Arthur had been.

So his hand became the next best thing. Not fond of masturbating, ‘its a ghastly thing for a nobleman to do’. So he jacks off when and how he needs too, but when you step through that door and come hurtling into his life... That sexual desire he managed to suppress came bubbling to the surface faster than an erupting volcano. He spent so many nights before you became a couple fisting himself to the thought of you, the scent of you, all of you. You broke the daddy of the mansion.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks) 

*Mentions of period sex

Really into getting busy when your on your period.  If you're into it, he’ll camp out between your thighs morning to noon, commenting “Your scent is divine Ma Cherie, I could smell you from outside, now please let me have a good taste”. I mean the mans a fully fledged vampire, he literally drinks blood to keep a live so getting to savour it from you, directly from your core, the man thanks the many gods he doesn’t believe in. 

Loves to write dirty letters for you to find, especially if he has to disappear for a few days on ‘urgent matters’. Expect heavily detailed letters about your previous encounters together and what he plans on doing to you the moment he gets back.

“Ma Cherie,

You were practically radiating the other night, the glow of sweat glistened in the moonlight as you slept so peacefully against my chest. 

The deepening crimson mark up on your neck is not only a sign of my love for you, but also a warning to the others. They dare come near you whilst I am away and they’ll have wished they had stayed dead. If that flirting-oath even makes an attempt at you, he will regret the day he was reborn.

How I already miss your sweet scent, the hints of rose that linger upon your skin through the day. How sweet your pussy smells for me when it’s dripping for my touch, simply begging for me to fill it.

I know your blushing at this, I can already imagine the red tint dotting cross your cheeks but do not fear Ma Cherie. You have nothing to be embarrassed about when it comes to me.

I’m sure that last passionate night we spent together has been satisfactory enough for you until I return, my you did look radiant as you trembled beneath me. The quivering of you tight walls against my bare flesh, the luxurious taste of your skin which you so beautifully offered. 

My dear, I may be the one to grant ever-after life, but your beauty, your smile, your aura possesses the most power of all, you give a reason to want to live forever. 

I will return before the week is over, where I will take my rightful place beside you.

My love, Ma Cherie.

Je t'aime,

Comte.”

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

Comte is daddy of the mansion, he is always in control so the day you drop to your knees, palms parting his thighs telling him, “You're so good to me monsieur, please let take care of you,”. He sinks so deep into the realms of pleasure to feel your lips wrap around him, he struggles to not fall out apart after only a few moments of your hallowed mouth working over him.

Comte is a god of oral, just ask Leonardo. His tongue works magic as it flickers over your clit, two slender fingers pushing in and out of your core in-time to his moving muscle. As mentioned in K, if you're on your period he will go down on you for days, like the man barely parts for breath as his hands keep your thighs spread.

“C-comte!” It came out in a half groan, half whine, sounding almost inhuman. Fingers tugging at the caramel locks, guiding him to where you ached for him, hips bucking against his face. Walls pulsing as he brought you to a third eye-water climax of the night by just purely his tongue. 

“Mademoiselle,” The lingering gaze of his liquid-burning golden eyes found yours, a predatory smirk across his face as the glimmer of crimson dripped from his chin, “You are far sweeter than rouge could ever be, please ma cherie… be good and let me feast upon your heavenly nectar,”. One slow swipe across your folds sent your back arching off the bed, a cry once more of his name from your lips as he continued to devour you like a starving man.

ABC’s masterlist here

[iamverycrappyatwriting]

A Final Rest

A mage reborn fic

Leon x F!MC Dephria

Not fully canon compliant

Mild NSFW 16+ but minors DNI

Tw some body horror, grief

Leon wasn't sure how long he'd been lying in this meadow, warm and sleepy as a gentle breeze stirred the long grass and wild flowers cushioning him. His bleary eyes made the meadow almost sparkle in the afternoon sun, giving the day an etheral quality. He didn't remember the last time he had been allowed a day off of respite like this. Not since... His memories blurred as he tried to pull them forward. It had been a long time, anyway. Since there was a time when he didn't even need to bring a sword with him, or wear armour.

He shrugged off his shirt, leaving himself with a bare chest as he lay back once again, crossing his arms behind his head as he closed his eyes and settled in to bask in the sunshine. This is exactly what he needed after everything that had happened lately.

He almost jumped when he felt the small, cool hand touch the hot skin of his stomach and run up to his chest, forgetting - or unaware? - he hadn't been alone. But as soon as he felt the familiar soft skin exploring his, he relaxed. Of course he wasn't alone. Why wouldn't Dephria be there to relax with him? There's no one he'd want there more, nor anyone else who deserved a break as much as she did. He opened his eyes to stare into her shining violet eyes as he felt her settling her body in next to his, her head nestling into his shoulder, her soft, long auburn hair spilling out around them. She flushed in response to him staring into her.

"Sorry," she murmured, clearly embarrassed to have disturbed him.

"Don't be sorry." He grinned as his heart swelled at the sight of the mage, her cheeks tinged pink as she looked down away from him. She looked so small and cute to him in that moment and he wrapped his arms tightly around her to pull her on top of him. She let out an indignant squawk as he did so but it made him grin even wider. God, he had missed her.

"Leon!" she scolded, as he pressed her into his chest, pressing his face into her head and inhaled deeply. And enjoyed her warmth, her softness, her smell - she always smelled of petrichor with a hint of jasmine. By Jove, he had missed that smell so much. Nothing else compared. He pressed his lips onto the top of her head, caressed gently by her silky soft hair.

At the feeling of his lips on the top of her head she looked up at him from his chest and grinned - that damn crooked grin - and she pulled herself up on her elbows and leaned in and kissed his lips. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach, still when they kissed. Still. Her lips were soft and she tasted sweet every time. He would never tire of these lips, it felt like a release to all his worries, all his stress. It felt like home. What had been clearly intended as a relatively chaste kiss turned into something heavy as he deepened the kiss himself. He had missed this so much. Where had she been?

Dephria leaned heavily into the kiss after Leon had chased her lips down to deepen it, her hands reaching into his hair as she straddled his waist as best she could with her bad leg, her tongue touching his lip begging for entry. With a gasp he let her in, his hands falling to her hips, squeezing her curves - Jove, was she soft - and pushing and pulling her to create friction as she moaned into his mouth, their tongues and lips dancing together, passionately, frantically like they might run out of time. He burned all over, he could never have enough of this, of her. He needed more, wanted more.

Sensing his craving, or perhaps equally as excited, Dephria pulled her lips away from his and kissed first his cheek, then his jaw, nibbling his earlobe, kissing down his neck, savouring the sensitive skin there. Leon found himself shivering despite the warmth of the day. When she reached his chest Dephria looked up at him with those tantalizing purple eyes of hers making a sultry expression as she stuck her pink tongue down, running it along the divet between the muscles in his stomach down towards his navel.

"Jove be damned, Dephria!" He huffed as she smirked into his skin and kissed his hips. He couldn't handle much more teasing. He wanted to touch her all over, sink his fingers into her voluptuous curves and make her moan and shiver, to undo her as she was undoing him.

She looked up at his again from her spot on his hip and smiled again.

"Remember our first night together?" She asked laying her head down on his lip looking up at him, a mischievous grin on her face. Where was she going with this? He squirmed impatiently, wanting to adjust himself for comfort. But he found when he tried to bring the memory to the forefront of his mind it was blurry, constantly flitting away from his grasp. It distracted him momentarily as he quieted himself to try and catch it, but it evaded his grasp continuously and that was a strange feeling.

As though she could not notice his change in demeanor, Dephria carried on, her mischievous look taking on an icy edge.

"The night I gave you my innocence, and my heart," she continued, her tone flirty, a grin on her face but a steely look in her eyes like she was setting a trap. Leon was beginning to feel less excited and more, nervous. Since when was there clouds in the sky? When did the day turn grey?

Dephria adjusted herself to be looking more directly at Leon, still running her hands over his skin but he was not excited anymore, more apprehensive. The breeze turned cool as goosebumps appeared on his skin, a heavy feeling settling over as if lightening were about to strike.

"I..." He began, he wanted to say yes. He knew they had made love when they finally admitted their feelings for each other, he knew they felt it was now or never, that it was life or death and they wanted to be together at least once if they were to die but he couldn't remember the act. He couldn't remember the where, the when. It was an empty feeling he was chasing trying desperately to grasp and the harder it was to remember the more everything felt wrong. He couldn't bring himself to lie, or admit something was wrong even as the grass he lay on felt rough, dry and stabbed his now cold skin when previously it had felt soft and comforting.

Dephria's smile took a sinister quality.

"I asked for you to wait for me, I asked for you to trust me," her voice was no longer her soft lilt, but harsh and rough, accusing. "But you didn't trust me in the end, did you, your Highness?"

Leon flinched away from the title. Leon, he was Leon. She knew that, she didn't call him that. She knew how much it bothered him to hear her call him that. When it was just them it was just Leon and Dephria. Just two regular people. In love. Not King, not prince, not royal mage, not loyal retainer. Just them. No title, no expectations. Why was she calling him that?

Thunder rumbled somewhere in the sky, drawing Leon's gaze as fat rain drops began to fall, cold and icy. It was sunny, it was warm, where did this weather come from? His eyes fell to the meadow where not only had the grass turned brown and dried up but also the wild flowers were gone, replaced with thorns and stinging nettles. What was going on? What foul magic was afoot?

"Leon!" Dephria snapped loudly drawing Leon's attention back to her as she knelt over him now. "I gave you my innocence! I gave you my heart! My everything and you BURNED ME!" Cold terror filled Leon as he looked at Dephria, her voice hoarse and rasping as her hair singed to nothing before him, dark smoke stains appearing on her skin, turning into blisters, bubbling all over her skin as flames with no source licked her. Heat rolled off her in waves making him sweat, drying out his mouth and lips despite the cold wind and the rain, which had whipped up into a frenzy as she screamed.

She was burning, he realised with horror.

He remembered now, he remembered everything. Skin sloughed off her body, pink muscle glistening underneath as the acrid smell of burnt hair and flesh assaulted his nostrils. She glared in fury at him as her lips burned away revealing her teeth as she gnashed at him.

"I did EVERYTHING for you and you BURNED ME!" Leon felt a tight nausea in his stomach as he stared up at her, frozen and speechless at the accusation.

Her beauty fell away, her muscle peeling back to reveal bone, her violet eyes the only thing remaining as she accused him, her voice dry but booming and full of hatred. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't even reply as he just stared in horror and her bones blacked before her eyes, and still she screamed with no vocal cords left.

"I gave you everything, I loved you and you KILLED ME," she accused. "You didn't even respect what was left of me, you threw me away in an unmarked grave to forget me, so no one could mourn me."

He did, he had. The woman he loved. He hadn't let his loved ones change his mind about her, hadn't let them save her. She had told him she used him to kill the saintess and he had believed her when everything he knew about her would've led him to believe her incapable of such an act. She gave of herself again and again for his causes, burning herself out over and over again for him. She gave him everything, mind body and spirit and he took and took and in the end he killed her. He watched her burn at the pyre.

Her bones slowly began to turn to ash, crumbling away to blackened dust, but even as her bones charred and fell away her eyes remained, accusing, hating.

"You killed me!" She shrieked again with no form to scream from. Lightning cracked as the wind whipped around his hair, throwing her ashes into his eyes, rain stinging against his bare skin. It felt like a pressure building endless as lightning cracked in the sky, a storm in full swing now.

"I did, I'm so sorry," he wailed, his own chest alight, the wind stealing his words away.

"You took my innocence and killed me with it!" She shrieked as all that was left of her, her violet eyes swooped towards him. Leon flinched, raising his hand to protect his eyes, embracing for impact.

He awoke with a jolt, half falling out of his bed, trying to jump to attention, holding out an invisible sword, tangled in sheets, his heart beating hard and his breathing harder.

He was no longer in that accursed meadows, but rather in his own royal bedroom, alone.

The nausea left from his dream was too much and he grabbed his bedpan to wretch the contents of his stomach up into it.

After vomiting he sank to the floor still tangled in sheets as he tried to calm his breathing.

It was just a dream, just a dream. But his attempts to calm his breathing failed as his breath hiccuped and turned into sobs, slow at first but the more he tried to repress them, to calm them down the more they choked him until his body was wracked with sobs as his heart reminded him it was an open wound.

[mythiica]

Vibrators + Main 6 {The Arcana}

Title: Vibrators + Main 6

Fandom: The Arcana

Character: Main 6

Genre: WINKWINKWINKWINK

Warnings: many warnings, you have been warned

Kinks: everybody got a special vibrator, dom mc, mild bondage, cumshots, squirt, hair pulling, tbh i dont remember everything

Intended Gender Audience: Neutral Audience 

Word Count: each around 345 words; total: 2090 words

POV: second person

Other comments: ive succumbed to the arcana, specifically lucio and muriel

Asra - vibrating cock ring 

          Asra drops his trousers to reveal his hard cock. He’s wearing a dangerous smirk and grips his base, showing off the cock ring with confidence. You follow the curve of his erection with a finger until you can wrap your fingers around him. Groaning softly, Asra laces his fingers in your hair as you slip a digit under the ring and pour your magic into the toy. It starts vibrating dully, and the magician suddenly tightens his grip on you, tugging your hair slightly before his hand falls to cup your face. He asks you if you intend on making him cum just from the vibrations, but you shake your head. You intend to pleasure Asra completely tonight, so you start lapping at his tip while pumping his base. Asra hums with happiness, his eyes never leaving you as your tongue dips around his ridge, sucking and teething on him slightly. He gets cocky, trying to thrust into your mouth slightly, so you apply pressure to his base and vibrate the toy more. His muscles tense sharply at the simulation, leading precum to dribble down his length. That beautiful moan of his resonates from deep inside his chest, and you run your tongue over his tip just so that you can hear it again. A happy grin stretches across his face, and Asra brushes his thumb over your swollen lips as precum drips down your lips. He praises your skill and prods you with his tip, only for you to increase the vibrations more. Asra’s knees buckle, but he regains his balance, tenses his muscles, and inhales deeply. A string of dirty talk tumbles from his mouth, and you reprimand him by vibrating his cock until Asra cums hard. His eyes close tightly as the white paints your face, and you hold out your tongue to catch some of it. He hums happily and nuzzles his hand against your cheek, asking if he can use the same vibrating trick on you next. 

Julian - bullet vibrator

         Julian knows he is in for a long session when you tie his arms above his head. The silk keeps him in place, even if he fights against it, and you pride yourself in knowing that Julian will have to behave if he wants to receive pleasure. You magic your favorite bullet vibrator and nuzzle it against Julian’s nipple while swirling your tongue around the other one. Of course, he squirms and whines, just as you expected him to, so you coo at him playfully and brush his hair back. You drag the vibrator down along his abdomen, kissing a line parallel to the toy’s path. He sits up slightly, just enough to watch you as you rest the length of the vibrator against his hardening cock. Julian twitches from the short lived sensation because you bring it to rest between his scrotum and his hole. This incites happy groans as Julian flexes his muscles, trying to free himself so that he can take control of the toy. Lowering your head to his thigh, you nip his skin and tell him to relax, that you will take care of him. Julian trusts you, so he settles back and bites his lip, sweat dripping down his brow. He inhales sharply as you pass the vibrating toy back and forth over the sensitive skin. The tip of his cock has flushed pink, making you giggle slightly before lapping at his ridge. Another drawn out moan rolls off his tongue and Julian throws his head back, auburn hair fanning out around his head. To your surprise, Julian has already begun to salivate and it rolls down onto the pillows. He sees your gaze and mewls playfully at you, prompting you to insert the bullet vibrator into him. You have lubricated the toy enough that it will easily slide inside of him, so you divulge Julian and dip it in. Julian arches his back and fights the silk ties – his breathing becomes labored and heavy, a sure sign that he enjoys the sensations. Julian does not know that there are many power levels that you are waiting to try, and you smirk against his length, pressing kisses to him as you increase the speed. 

Nadia - clitoral vibrator 

         She smirks and cups her nimble fingers under your chin, her eyelids heavy with lust. When she speaks, her hands slipping down the sides of your body, teasing lit heavy in heavy word she speaks. Clitoral vibrator in hand, she turns it on slowly, ready to drag it across your thighs, but you take it from her instead. A smirk stretches across her lips as your countess lays back against the plush pillows and blankets, stretching her legs apart to welcome you. Lowering your head to her naval, you kiss down, following the muscles in her abdomen. Nadia squirms, an unusual sight, but you enjoy it so much. Setting the mouth of the vibrator to her folds, you allow it to settle against her before you start kissing her inner thighs. Your tongue rolls over the soft skin, teething slightly until she moans happily. Nadia’s hand dips down to tangle her fingers in your hair, and you pour magic into the toy, increasing the power of the vibrator. You tease her painfully like she does to you, moving it in circles around her clit, but not daring to put it directly on her bud. Nadia mumbles under her breath, something about it feeling amazing and throws her legs over your shoulders, pulling you in closer. Finally, you push the head of the vibrator against Nadia’s clit, making the countess arch her back and moan beautifully. The sound resonates in the room, and her folds glisten wet with her essence. Another string of mewls slips from her lips when you start lapping at her until she contorts with pleasure. A knot builds up in the pit of her stomach, and you are surprised that her orgasm is approaching so quickly. She grips tightly on your hair, pushing your nose to nudge against the toy as your tongue drags across her pussy, making her tense to brace herself for the onset climax. Nadia squirts more than usually, and the pressure pushes the vibrator away, but you stay, arms locked around her hips, dipping your tongue into her to carry her through the pleasure. 

Portia - rabbit vibrator 

         You tease your favorite red head slowly, only the tip of the vibrator inserted into her. Slick drips from her folds, coating the plastic of the toy and soaking the sheets below her. Portia squirms, mewling and pleading for you to push the vibrator in deeper. It is the fourth time that you have denied Portia her orgasm – her clit is swollen and her folds are dripping. You lean over Portia to take a mouthful of her breast into your mouth, rolling your tongue over her nipple. When you ask Portia what she wants, she squirms more, trying to formulate a proper sentence. However, when you turn the vibrator to a lower setting, Portia whines and asks you to push it in entirely. Squirt threatens to burst from her folds, so you divulge her, dipping it in further but not thrusting it. The power increases, and Portia arches her back, hand flying to meet your hair. She pulls you close as the pleasure washes over her, her body tensing against yours. The prongs of the vibrator rub against her swollen clit, making her numb as she cries out. After a moment, Portia buries her face against your neck, red hair slicked back with perspiration as she tries to catch her breath. She grinds against you, toy still vibrating inside of her, riding her climax out entirely. You lean back to smile at the state she is in: messy hair, chest rising and falling steadily, purpling hickeys peppering her pale skin, and the line of smudged makeup under her large eyes. She kisses your jaw gratefully and shifts her hips, reminding you about the vibrator. You bring your hand down to take hold of it, but start to thrust it into her instead of removing it. Portia cries out, surprised by this, and more moans erupt from her throat. The night is far from over for Portia...

Muriel - Hitachi wand

         Muriel is accustomed to pleasure in the form of your body against his, so he is reluctant to try using a toy. However, he trusts you and your judgement: he is willing to try and you promise that if he doesn’t like it, then there is no need to continue. What he isn’t expecting is to immediately harden as the head of the vibrator presses against his shaft. It’s almost like he’s going to cum just by being touched with it, the steady vibrations coaxing him to follow the motion of your hands as they drag the toy up and down him. Every moan resonates from his chest and he tips his head back, flushed and squirming gleefully at the sensations. Muriel whispers your name through his teeth – trying to formulate more wouldn’t be possible as all other words disappear from his mind. Muriel is not terribly fond of dirty talk, but when you ask him if it feels good, Muriel half whines-half groans that indeed it feels amazing. Although he prefers your touch, Muriel can feel the magic you use to enhance the toy, and it sends sparks throughout his body. He tenses hard, letting precum dribble down his shaft; you are quick to use it as lubricant and focus the vibrations on Muriel’s tip. He inhales sharply and clutches the sheets around him tightly, biting his lip to keep himself from howling with pleasure. He loves this: you delivering him to high heaven because he knows it is a sign of your love. Muriel is lost in thought, and when you brush yourself tongue over his wet tip, Muriel cums without a warning. White paints your bare chest, his muscles, and the toy, so Muriel tries to apologize for it. You have other plans, smiling happily instead and soothing him with gentle kisses to his inner thighs. Your praises comfort him, and you lap at his release before kissing along his cock as well. Muriel wonders... if the toy could do that to him, what could it do to you?

Lucio - vibrating fleshlight 

         Although he tends to take control in the bedroom, he is more than willing for you to take the lead. Lucio quickly regrets this, not realizing that you have a long night of edging torture planned for him (as mild revenge for all the times he has denied you orgasms). You run the vibrating fleshlight up and down his base quickly, never lingering in a single place for too long so that the pressure builds up slowly. Your count pouts and whines, wishing he was pounding into you instead of the fleshlight, but you lend the toy some of your magic so that feels warm and vibrates faster. Lucio turns his face to the other side, burying against the pillow. He has left a smear of eyeliner against the sheets, and the rest is blurred under his eyes, but you brush your thumb over his skin to wipe it away. When Lucio growls at you, you lean back and smirk before pulling the vibrator away completely. You scold him and pump his numb cock once before setting the vibrator to the lowest setting. He apologizes immediately and begs you to increase the speed. Cooing at Lucio, you listen, resulting in him bucking upwards fiercely as he seeks his orgasm. You place a hand over his thigh and dip your head down to kiss along his hip, following his light happy trail down to his neat base. When you suck sharply at the most prominent vein, Lucio’s hand lands on the back of your head, pushing your head closer to him. With the vibrator working his tip and you at his base, Lucio cums hard, white spilling outwards rapidly as you milk him for more. Lucio makes a mess, but that is the furthest thing from his mind as he moans and cries out praises for you. You lean back, pleased with what you have accomplished, but you pump him with the fleshlight a few more times for good measure. Lucio catches your wrist and pulls you up, taking the toy from your hand. He felt the magic you gave it and now wants to return the favor. 

[missingartist]

The Witcher’s Mate Chapter Five

I have had an awful week at work! But all your likes and comments have made me feel so much better! Please keep commenting!!!!!!!!!

Requests are open! 

Geralt quickly snatched the women from Jaskier’s arms before placing the young women on what he could barely call a bed. It was a straw mattress lain against the far wall; her body was limp against him as he arranged her body carefully in an attempted to slow the bloodflow. The bottom of her blouse stained a rusty red as the blood slowly seeped from the opened wound.

‘Igni’ With the muttering of the word, a flash of light flickering on the dozen of candles around the room, washing them in a warm glow. ‘Jaskier are you just going to stand there? Grab me a cloth.’ Geralt grunted as he pressed his hand against the wound.

Jaskier pulled a drying cloth from a nearby rake and tossed it at the steely-eyed Witcher. Geralt tenderly soaked the blood with the rag, pressing it the wound to get a clear look at the offending incision. The golden eyes drank in damages. There were five claw marks that left thin veins of red against her porcelain skin, faint and light, they had started to clot, and the bleeding had all but stopped. Above the slivers of red, just above her hip, a weeping gash of blood poured from a gnarled wound. The knife had been blunt, and when the insane Tradi had lunged for her soft skin it tore and ripped. It was not a mortal wound, no organs or arteries damaged but the blood that seeped out of the slash was alarming. Cersi was across the town and even on the back of Roach there was no guarantee that she would not have bled out. Geralt could stitch her up or brand her with an iron to cease the bleed, but even with his mutant eyes, he could not see the damage inside. Even unconscious, her body was so reactive, a slight shimmer of sweat began to develop across her skin, and every muscle was tense.

‘Fuck……’ Geralt pulled back and fished a vial from his pouch.

Uncorking the bottle with his teeth, he pulled back the cloth and tentatively poured the liquid on the bleeding. Swallow was toxic, he had never used it someone who was not a Witcher, but Geralt had been a Witcher for longer then he could remember, and the times he had heard it used the people died horrible deaths, burnt from the inside out. If they did their life was not worth living, driven made or deranged. The two men watched her skin bubble and shift as the wound sealed itself smooth, no rough scar tissue, just an angry patch of red. He let her eye search the area; just a few freckles dotted across her hip. His cat's eyes raced to her face looking for the signs, anything that could betray the damage on the inside. Gradually her body relaxed, melted into the thin mattress, sighing in contentment.

It was only now that he let his eyes scanned her body. The clothes she wore where ill-fitting, hiding a feast beneath. In the commotion, her skirt had racked up bunching around her waist ,revealing smooth shapely legs, thick and chunky thighs. They travelled up under her potato sack skirt to a work of art, her waist was narrow, flaring out to round plush hips. Travelling up her breast stood firm, parting to the side as she lay on her back. Most women wore corsets, but her figure stood proud and firm, unaided but the amour like clothing. Her neck was graceful, swan-like, leading up to her face, her curls swirled around her like a hallow, the light highlighting the gold of her curls. Her face was peaceful but dark circle marred underneath her eyes, and her cheekbones looked hallow, dehydrated. Her beauty was mesmerising but confusing. Geralt was thankful but concerned. He wanted her to survive but he knew there was something, something strange. Nothing he had ever heard of could endure a Witcher’s potion. A less … no it wasn’t possible

‘Hmmm,’ Geralt hummed as he picked up a moth-eaten blanket and draped it over her exposed body.

Jaskier stared over at his friend. The white-haired man was staring down, pensive at the women on the floor. Witcher with a heart he mused. It would be a great song. Or bedding the grateful damsel in distress whom he rescues from the clutches of death. Even better. Jaskier turned his eyes to the man on the floor. The mage, Tradi, he was cold and death, throat cut open, twisted in anger. In his hand there was a heavily ornated journal, it was a deep purple with what looked like peals sown onto the cover and gold thread stitched into the spine of it.

‘Well, what do we have here… he won't be needing this anymore. I could rebind it and put my song it …..I could even have is published. The Tales of the Witcher and the Bard….no the Bard and the Witcher.’ Jaskier pondered as struggled to release the book from the death grip of the corpse. Brandishing in the air in success.

The scent of the pages hitting the air cause Geralt's nose to twitch. A mixture of sour milk, pig and decay. Human Skin. Without a thought, Geralt snatched the book from the victorious Jaskier, inhaling deeply he could smell it now. Some of the pages where old, 30 years at least, and somewhere new, recent, days old. Probably from the victims of the Griffin. A Mage would never use human skin; only the most despised magic was held on human skin. Old magic, evil magic that even Elves feared, not even using it when the humans massacred them.

‘Geralt…. You get the join. A bard cannot live on his art alone.’ Jaskier whined, attempting to reach up to The Witcher.

‘Human skin possess bad magic… igni.’ Geralt growled as the book remained unheard against the fire smell. ‘This must be destroyed properly, in a purifying ritual.’ Geralt bite out as he tucked it into his bag, his eyes training in on the girl.

Jaskier eyes followed Geralt’s. The girls stirred slightly and curled into the mattress; a pained hiss escaped her lips as she grimaced, brow furrowed. The bard's eyes soften, she was a beautiful thing, it surprised him that she would be working in a tavern which was little more than a high-class brothel. Adva looked almost childlike, innocent and sheepish, dressing in rags, making her look frumpy and older. She could be little more than 20, an orphan probably or sold to the tavern as a child, didn’t know anything better and properly wouldn't leave till she died, either and the hands of disease or a patron. But then again he had seen her throw a gigantic ball of water at the monster, powerful enough to stun to allow Geralt to strike the fatal blow.

‘Will she be okay?’ the bard asked.

‘Hmmm’ was the only reply that Geralt gave. As he wiped her brow of a kitchen towel found on the back of one a chair. The white-haired man crammed his bulking frame a ragged chaired she had in front of a large desk. The chair was possibly the nicest thing in the room, soft and padded; it looked like it had once belonged to a wealthy merchant, woven with vivid colours and threads. Settled down into the chair, the thin, timid legs at the bottom snapped causing the base of the armchair to hit the floor with a thud.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glistening leather of a burgundy book, a journal that was too elegant for a mere kitchen maiden. Pinching it from the desk he examined it at the page it fell open. The words were curvey and neat; one letter flowed to the next if they could be called letters. It was not a language he had ever seen- not Elvish or the Elder language.

‘Fuck’ Geralt growled, wiggling himself into a comfy position and stretching his long let out in front of him as he settled his eyes on the women in front of him, the book lying in his lap.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx When the sun was finally up in the sky, Geralt left the woman sleeping, watched over by Jaskier. Geralt was certain that the Swallow he had used would take to ill effects of her, she slept peaceful and undisturbed even though Jaskier strummed his lute and practised and pondered his new hit. The tavern was now alive with the sound of life; they squeaked and squealed about the sounds of last nights battle. When the sun was high in the sky Geralt, with sword in hand, struck the head of the Griffin ignoring the cheer from the crowd that gathered at the back of the Tavern. The Witcher made his way through the town; no one bothered him, the people cleared a path, the sight of him bloody and carrying a severed head was enough. The guards at Lord Brightwater’s manor stepped aside without questioning him.

The Witcher found the way to his meeting room with ease. The scent of him was robust, old parchment and cheese, but it was mixed with another smell, the smell of Cersi, roses and honey, a sickly sweet smell that lingered in the air, temping. A smell mixed with the salt fragrances of sex. Sure enough, Cersi sat prompt up against a vase stand, looking at the greying lord as he busied himself with the accounts in the same dress as yesterday.

‘I have slain the beast.’ Geralt uttered, dropping the severed head of the mahogany desk, causing the Lord to look up from his papers.

‘A Griffin…you were right.’ Cersi grinned, cat-like as she moved to examine the head.

‘Interesting… it looks like the creature was hit with a water blast of some kind….whats wrong with its eyes’ the mage questioned as she examined it.

‘The price has doubled.’

‘I paid you to dispatch the beast, and you did. I will pay you the agreed amount.’ Lord Fagen gritted out, pulling open a drawer and tossing a large coin purse at the monster hunter, who caught it with ease.

‘Wasn’t as ssimplyas that, the best was being enchanted, controlled to stalk the people of Brightwater. I had to dispatch him to.’

‘Tradi’ Cersi winched as she sat upon the edge of the Lord's desk.

‘You knew?’ Geralt snarled at the sorceress.

‘I had my suspicions. Tradi was alleged to have been dabbling in dark magic, experimenting on his King’s people. The guild could never prove aanything, but it was enough to get removed from court. A mage without a king such a sad thing.’ Cersi shrugged.

‘Didn’t think to mention it before?’ Geralt nostril flared, as he looked at his friend with angry.

‘I didn’t have a lot to go on. Besides, I was quietly confident in you.’ Cersi spoke sweetly, playing with her blonde hair.

‘Hmmm. Doesn’t change a thing, the price has doubled.’

‘It is out of the question. The town has been damaged far too much. We will need every coin to rebuild, better and stronger.’ The lord bit back, acidly.

‘Now now, Fagen. Honest pay for honest work. Maybe we can bargain with Geralt. He is reasonable after all. There must be something that he wants. Or perhaps someone.’ Her tone was dripped in honey, but the inference was there, steel-edged and obvious.

There was silence between the three as they watched each other, ‘Tradi attached Adva. Wanted something from her. I will forgo the payment for Tradi for her. Her… powers would be helpful on the road.’ The Lord stood and slammed his fists onto the desk, enough for the whole room to vibrate at the force. ‘I will not allow you to take here anywhere. She is safe here. Take your money and go Witcher. Before I call the guard.’

Geralt grunted out violent puffs of hot breath. Something primal within him howled at this man; a poncy lord thought he had the power to separate him from Adva. He was never one to be told what to do, especially when it came to women. The magic he felt between them was intense; he didn’t believe it was a soulbond, things were myths, told to doe-eyed girls to give them hope in the bleak futures married to ignorant or foolish men. But he would be damned if he let Adva stay here. The two men inched closer together, centimetre by centimetre

‘Boys enough. Fagen…Love let me deal with this. I know what needs to be done. Go?’ There was an edge in her voice; it was forceful and almost harsh. The Lord slowly left, not before casting the evil eye at him . Awww the things a man in love will do. Geralt mused as the man slammed the door shut.

‘Sleeping with a Lord now? Ordering the poor man out of his own chambers. Hmm,’ Geralt folded his arms, looking down at the women.

‘Fagen is… protective. He was the one who found her abandoned all those years ago. He never had children; I suppose he looks over her in a way.’ Cersi sighed as she stood, brushing her hands over her crumpled dress that had probably spend the last night on the floor, before moving to the desk and pulling out a long dry bit of parchment.

‘Then why not adopt her? Why send her to apprentice at Tradi for him to abuse or to work in a whorehouse.’ Geralt snapped.

‘It is complicated Geralt…Sending her to Tradi was a mistake, caused this nasty situation. You need to take her away… far away. Take this’ Cersi spoke with a tired voice.

The parchment in her hand was a certificate, a certificate of service. Such documents were standard among orphans, women placed in service till they where 25, past from one owner to another. Only when the orphan married or was old enough was the person free, that was why most only lived very short terrible lives.

‘You want to help?’ Geralt was no fool, Cersi was a excellent mage but not without her own motives.

‘I don’t think Brightwater is the right place for Adva anymore. She seems to have outgrown it. You can buy Adva from Vivian, 500 coins should do it, and the young sweetling begins the new life together with an honourable Witcher. How long are you going to deny your bond? Take her with you there isn’t a force in the world that can keep you apart now.’

‘I don’t think Adva would be very happy to find her being sold from one person to the next. I don’t think she had a very good opinion of me after our first meeting. I have known you too long. What are you getting about this?’

‘Maybe not but entwined destinies will stop at nothing. Soul mate is soul mates Geralt, you know better than to mistrust fate. I am merely trying to stop your mistrust of emotions from killing you both. But heed my warning take care of her Geralt or dealing with me will be the least of your worries. Come you need to leave soon.’

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx A hot sensation was the first thing she felt. Searing. Groggy, Adva woke, her body ached, and the right side of her body felt tight like the skin was too small for her body. Light pooled through the narrow window and onto a vicious read stain that smears from one side of the room to the next. It looked like…blood. Tradi. God, what had he done? Anxiety rose within her, eeverythingflooded back to her. The gods the glowing-eyed Griffin, the pain, the evil look that consumed Tradi’s features, the knife, the cut. Adva’s hand flew to her side, blood-stained clothing remained but no wound no scratches. She felt the pieces of her knife from Tradi hands; she knew she collapsed. After that, she had no idea.

‘The sleeping beauty is awake; you gave us quite a scare. Never seen Geralt so worried. Watched you will the sun broke in the sky.’ The companion spoke as appeared from nowhere.

‘I…What….Thank you…’ No word would work or seemed appropriate.

‘Jaskier…humbled bard at your service.’ The brown-haired man bowed with a flourish causing her to laugh.

The bard had a kind face, that was permanently smiling, even at the town square he looked happy, approachable, warm; a contrast to his friend. Adva couldn’t help but smile at him. Sitting up she cast her eyes around her room,; bookspulled from shelves, pages torn, most she never got to read, she had been trying to learn the ccommonlanguage, it was hard and so different from what she had been taught, she had been so close, but now it seemed impossible. Casting another glance around the room she spied broken furniture, herbs and potions spilt onto every possible service, it broke her heart a little, she had very little and what she did have was precious to her. Now she had nothing. Her blues eyes fell to her desk; her book was gone, the one thing she had from before, the last thing she had of them, her family. Tradi must have taken it… but the witcher killed him — the Witcher.

The man's voice broke through her thoughts as raised voices filtered through the worm-eaten wood. An argument, she felt the vibrations of the voices rather then what they were actually saying. Jaskier seemed to hear them too, as he inched towards the door.

‘My mother always told me it was rude to eavesdrop, why don’t we go and watch. I bet Geralt is going to cause a fight, he always does. Come on.’ The singer squeaked excitedly as he broke through the door.

It all honestly it was the last thing she wanted to do, last nights events had drained her, but she wanted to know what was going on and if the Witcher had her book. Standing caused her to groan, her side was on fire, red and inflamed, whatever they used worked, skin smooth and as it was, but whatever it was was slow to heal whatever damage was on the inside. Hobbing forward, she braced herself along the wall and down the hall to the main tavern.

It was still early, and few had graced the parlour, the only ones in the room were Vivian, Nesta, Cersi and Geralt. Jaskier perched on the sidelines. Nesta wrung her hands nervously, eyes widening as she saw her, instantly rushing to her, her light irises searching her face before she hugged her close, hard.

‘You must run. Vivian is selling your service to the Witcher. Take this. It not much but all I can spare. Take it an run.’ Nesta whispered into Adva’s ear while pushing a handful of coppers into her dress. Adva pulled back, and eyes wildly followed her friend's frown. A joke surely, but the concern that burnt in Nesta’s eyes was real and true. They were as close as a sister and looked out for each other. Adva would brew potions and balms to help with overactive clients, keep Nesta healthy and pretty and Nesta would mother her, keep away unwanted advances.

‘550 is our final deal’ Cersi spat.

‘It’s a deal of 550 coins. I’ll sign her over. Pleasure, I will be happy to take her back when your bored of her…. She can be a bit of penny pure pants, it attractive in a way but get a little boring after a while.’ Vivian purred and she strolled away, jiggling a coin purse as she went.

‘Cersi! How could you?’ Adva gasped, backing towards the door, wincing as her tight skinned pulled around her healing skin.

‘Adva my dear… I didn’t want you to find out like this. Please understand it isn’t what you think… it will become clear soon.’ Cersi walked over pleading, pulling on of her hand into her own. Snatching her hand away and stood back. Adva couldn’t help it, but she felt disgusted, she knew what happened to most of the orphans who were sold, they would go from one person to the next, most didn’t make it to 25. Slavery was what it was, just because she had no family, she had survived Tradi and she didn’t want to know what was worse than him.

‘Don’t touch me. I thought you were my friend… I am not going anywhere with anyone.’ Adva hissed.

‘I am sorry. I hope you will not hate me for this. Take this with you. It will help you understand. Please forgive me.’ Cersi pleaded, pushing a book into Adva’s hands.

Adva stared at the book for what felt like ages. The Witcher- A history. Turning her head up again she opened her mouth to speak, to argue, to plead but as soon as her eyes met Cersi’s a cloud of yellow flew out of hands, and she inhaled a lungful of bitter herbs, sour and nasty. The room spun, and her eyelids felt heavy, her feet could no longer support her body. The last thing she saw before her vision fell black were Golden orbs and the fate sound of a voice.

‘Take care of her Geralt. If not for her sake for yours.’

So what do you think???? Let me know your predictions or what you want to see! 

[lucky-bucky-boy]

Captain

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Word Count: 2670

Warnings: ROUGH sex, choking, a slap, unprotected sex, authority kink, oral (male receiving)

A/N: I kinda feel like this is meh but also like I outdid myself. Let me know what yall think tho

I do not own these characters. Do not repost my writing/fics anywhere without my written permission.

-

Another shot of burning liquid, a chorus of laughter from the girls around you, eyes pinched shut to ground you. Maria had just told the group her most embarrassing memory, one the involved Fury and being caught in an all too suggestive position that you hoped the vodka could wipe the image of.

Sitting your small glass down, Wanda grabbed the bowl of crumpled up papers and shoved it towards you, "(Y/N)!" She called through a series of giggles. "Your turn!"

A playful sigh and roll of your eyes as you plucked a piece of paper out. Opening it up, you pursed your lips, contemplating the prompt in front of you.

"Whatcha get?" Nat pushed, lips wrapping around her beer.

"What is your most unpopular opinion?" Rereading the question over and over again the answer swirled in you. It was simple, easy for you at least. But you knew the girls surrounding you wouldn't agree.

"Come on, it can't be that hard," Nat pushed, "Like, do you secretly love Justin Bieber? Or have an obsession with the Pussycat Dolls?"

A scoff fell from your lips, "No, but you guys are definitely going to give me push back when I tell you." You grumbled, grabbing another bottle of Smirnoff Ice.

"Come on," Wanda pushed more.

"Really, (Y/N/N), it can't be that bad." Maria chimed.

With an exasperated sigh you leaned back in your seat, "Fine, but I swear if any of you give me grief I'm going to bed." A nervous tousle of your hair, "I don't think Steve deserves the title of Captain. You can't just get pumped with a serum and suddenly be called Captain America."

A chorus of "what"s and "you're joking" came from the group of girls.

"No, I'm not."

"You're being serious?" Nat asked, "You genuinely think Steve doesn't deserve it?"

"What don't I deserve?" A voice echoed behind you, sending a shiver you knew all too well down your spine. A curious, almost stern tone in his voice.

A rush of regret flooded through you as you turned to look at the blond. He must've just gotten back from a run, hair slicked back with sweat and tight fitting under armour shirt sticking to every muscle, voice deep as he messed with his beard.

"Tell him, (Y/N)." Wanda's voice came through a series of nervous giggles.

A loud groan as you turned to face Steve who was moving closer to you, towering over your sitting figure. "We needed something to occupy us while we drink so we put a bunch of questions in a bowl and we're going around answering them and I pulled "what is your most unpopular opinion" and shockingly enough my opinion was unpopular and the girls are being dicks now."

Steve chuckled softly at the rambling that fell from your lips. "And I'm assuming that opinion involves me. What is it? The beard?"

A purse of your lips and a small shake of your head. "Nope, not that. I actually really like the beard. Wish you would've grown it out long ago."

A pure look of confusion paired with a small tilt of his head. "What is it then?"

"You don't want to know, Rogers."

"Then why did I ask, (Y/L/N)?"

A chorus of "ooooh"s and giggles from the girls around you instantly had you blushing a dark red. After throwing them a glare, you sighed once more and turned back to Steve. "I said that I don't think you deserved to have been given the title of Captain. You can't just be pumped up with the super soldier serum and just magically be given the title. Like if they gave it to you now, I'd understand that but they gave it to you straight from the bottom."

Steve quirked an eyebrow at you, chewing his bottom lip as he processed what you had just told him. His teammate, one he genuinely respected, someone he'd even called a friend, and one with added benefits some time ago; someone who has followed him into the line of duty nearly blind just said he didn't deserve the title of Captain. "Why don't we talk in private, (Y/N)? We can clear some things up between us. My room. Now."

He left no room for argument as he left you there, shocked and nervous as you turned to the girls who begin laughing. After an annoyed "fuck you guys" thrown their way, you chugged the rest of your drink and made your way to Steve's room.

A soft rap of your knuckles met by a gruff, "Get in here", a quickness to your heartbeat, the adrenaline sending a shockwave to your core when you saw Steve, hand running through his hair as he paced. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Shut and lock the door." He turned to look at you, face devoid of any emotion. The second he heard the door click he stalked towards you. A dark look in his eyes as he trapped you against the door, hands on either side of you.

"Steve?" Your voice came out smaller and weaker than you had anticipated.

"I don't deserve the title Captain?" There was a slight scoff in his voice. A hand came up the grip you chin, tilting your face up, lips just ghosting over yours. "I'm gonna make you regret that."

Before you could retort his lips were against yours in a bruising kiss, stealing the breath from your lungs. It didn't last long, a large hand wrapping around your throat as he pulled away, "If you call me anything other than Captain I will punish you harder than I ever have. Do you understand me, little girl?"

A squeak fell from your lips as you attempted to nod, but that wasn't good enough for Steve. The hand around your throat let go and lightly slapped your cheek. "Speak when you're spoken to, bitch," he growled.

"Yes, Captain," you whined.

"Good girl. Seems like you do know how to take orders from your superior." A devilish smirk danced across his lips before kicking your feet out from underneath you, watching you drop to your knees.

"Take my cock out and suck it like the little slut you are." His voice boomed with the command as he watched you do as you were told.

Pulling his pants and briefs down just enough for his thick length to bob out, you were quick with your movements, not wanting to piss him off any more. Precum glistened on his bulbous tip, practically begging to be licked away. And you wasted no time, suckling the tip of his cock before taking down as much as you could.

Steve didn't let you stay in control long. Grabbing a fistful of your hair he begin to move your mouth up and down his length, growling particularly loud when your throat spazzed around his cock as you gagged on his girth. He waited until your mascara ran down your cheeks from the tears streaming down your face to pull off.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself, little girl?"

A wicked smile graced your lips. "That really all you got Stevie? Must've lost your touch after I stopped letting you fuck me whenever you wanted."

A scoff fell from his lips, hands tangling in your hair and pulling a wince from you as he practically dragged you to the bed. A rough shove and you landed on the plush mattress you'd been on multiple times before, the softness a welcome contrast to the man before you. Before you could scramble to look at him, Steve manhandled you onto your knees and landed a sharp smack to your ass.

The moan that ripped from you made Steve chuckle darkly. "Let's not forget who would beg me to fuck them, little girl. Who would tell me how much the loved my fat cock splitting them in two." Another smack to your ass  "Or have you become too far stuck up your own ass that you forgot who really knows how to take care of you?" Another, harder smack. "Speak when you're spoken to."

You managed to choke out, "I haven't forgotten, Captain," around your whines and whimpers.

Steve pulled away from you, "Strip. Then hands and knees. If you're not ready by the time I come back I swear to God you will regret it." His voice was commanding and left no room for argument, not that you would at this point, too far consumed in your own desire to risk a release.

As he disappeared into his walk-in closet you made haste on discarding your clothes, being sure they made it into his hamper as well as not to piss him off more. You couldn't deny it though, you missed this, missed him. But that was something to address later as an ache of need shot through your core.

You positioned yourself in the middle of his bed, on your knees and leaning your weight on your forearms to arch your back. The sound of his closet closing made a wave of anticipation run through you, the urge to close your thighs overpowering.

"Look at you," his voice was condescending and dripped with a tease, "So fucking wet. Such a little bitch that I haven't even had to touch you and you're already soaking my sheets. Dirty little girl," the bed dipped behind you, "what should I do to you? I don't think you've quite learned your lesson."

A whimper left your lips as you tried to find an answer. "I think I deserve to be spanked, Captain."

You could practically hear the smirk on his lips. "You do? Good girl, maybe I'll actually let you cum. How many do you think you deserve?"

"10?" Your voice was questioning, hoping he'd let you off easily. Steve didn't like being embarrassed, didn't like having his authority questioned.

"I was going to say 20, but since you're deciding you want to be a good girl, I'll be nice and do 15. But I won't hesitate to give you more if you act up again. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Be a good girl and count." A firm hand came down hard on your ass, easily leaving a handprint and turned your skin bright red.

"One," you choked out.

Steve continued, turning your ass and thighs a pretty shade that screamed bad girl. You felt the scraping of his beard as he left kisses across the sensitive skin. "Fuck, such a good girl for me. Why can't you be this good when I'm not around?" A kiss turned into a bite, a strangled sound pulling from you.

"Please," you pleaded.

"Please what, little girl?" He asked, sitting up and threading a hand through your hair, tugging you so your back became flush with his bare chest. His cock was pressed between your ass and his abdomen, precum sticking both of you. "What could you possibly be asking for?" He teased.

"Please fuck me. Please make me cum. I'm sorry, Steve - Captain, I'm sorry. I was just upset that you had stopped giving me attention," the confession slipped out without you even realizing.

"What was that?" He snickered softly.

"I was just being a petty little bitch because you stopped messing around with me to go on a date." You whined, face flushing.

"So you're jealous?" His breath ghosted over the shell of your ear. "Baby girl, all you had to do was tell me how much you missed me."

"I missed you so much, Captain, please. I feel like I'm going insane."

"That's the point."

Steve's hand moved from your hair to your chest, massaging the plush flesh, thick calloused fingers swiping over your nipples and sending shockwaves to your core.

"Remember that time I made you cum just from this? Just from playing with your pretty little tits?" That drip in his voice never left. "God, remember the sound of your pretty little whimpers pleas is enough to get me off."

The shiver that went down your spine didn't go unnoticed. "But, that's not what I'm using you for tonight. You were a bad girl, you're lucky I didn't spank you more. So, I'm gonna use that tight little pussy to get myself off. And I don't fucking care if you cum or not," with a forceful push your face was buried in the mattress.

His large hands massaged your ass, spreading your cheeks. "Such a pretty sight. I'm half tempted to fuck that little ass of yours instead." He chuckled at the whimper that left you, watching as you wiggled your ass. "You wouldn't even care. That's how badly you want me to fuck you. Pathetic."

Seemingly having grown impatient with himself, Steve lined himself up with your core after swiping the tip through your soaked folds to make it easier. He gripped your hips in a way you knew you were gonna be bruised tomorrow and slammed in, forcing all the air out of your lungs with the force of his thrust.

He set a brutal pace, slapping your ass when he pleased, moaning and groaning out obscenities. "Pretty little cunt squeezing me so perfectly." "No man will ever be able to please you like I do." "You're just my little cockslut and you fucking love it." It was true. All of it, and you knew it. Steve brought out the best in you, sent you to the highest havens, made you want to do things no one else ever had.

A vice grip as your walls spasmed around his intruding member signaled you were close. It was amazing how he could get you there without even touching your clit. The white hot euphoria begin to build stronger and stronger in you, a perfectly angled thrust that felt like it hit your cervix ultimately being your demise as the dam broke and pleasure wiped over you.

A scream that died off into a strangled moan as he continued to thrust, chasing his own end with erratic movements. "Captain please, cum in me," you whined, pushing your ass back to meet his hips.

"Fucking hell," he groaned, finally spilling everything he had into you. A few more thrust to ride out his high before he pulled out, watching the mix of both of your cums dripping out of you.

"So pretty. Stay there, baby girl, let me clean you up."

Steve disappeared from behind you and you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. He returned from his bathroom a moment later with a warm washcloth. "You might be a little sore, sugar, just breath m'kay?"

You nodded in response and relinquished in the feeling of Steve wiping you down. His touch disappeared and he appeared in front of you now, wearing a pair of pajama pants and holding a pair of his boxers and a t shirt. "Here’s some clothes, get dressed and let's cuddle."

He watched as you sat up and took them, slipping the shirt over yourself and tossing the boxers to the side, earning a light hearted chuckle from him. The softness on his face quickly changed to worry as he knelt down on the bed in front of you, cupping your face. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" He asked.

A sleepy smile was all you could muster. "No you didn't. But I did miss you a lot, Captain." You're voice had a tease in it and Steve couldn't help but shake his head and laugh.

Pulling the covers out from beneath you two, he repositioned the both of you, pulling you into his side and letting silence consume you for a few minutes while the lustful moments sizzled out and changed to that of an intimate one.

"I feel like we have a lot to talk about," he finally spoke up.

A huff of an attempt to laugh fell from your lips, "Yeah, we do. But not right now. Tomorrow, I wanna savor this."

Tags: (I tagged everyone who liked and reblog if it allowed me to) @taylortheyellowlobster @superlulumac-blog @the-musical-junkie @cecey-child @buckyssoul @nomadmilk @dewy-biitch @holylangdon @cosmic-cause @trappedinthisfabulousshow @ohbabycal @nobody916 @this-aint-a-scene-its-maggie @flowersnbeer @thesleepy1 @selenafawks @capsiclesdoll @primordialhandmaidan @liffydaze @joonmail @kirmt15 @heavxn666 @steeeeverogers @yokaimoon @alohagigikai @ohlalalina @cloudywriter @jimintishy @c-d-h13 @imafangirlofeverything @missnighttigress @elizabeth-marie-moon @melissamaine @fanfictionrecommendations-com @rosywaifu @benegrido @panemedited @rowann003 @ladyoathkeeper @thatweirdchick147 @herglowingwayz @wwhitewwolff @imxxtrisha2 @dead-butonly-ironically @spreaded-butter @cake-reads @l0st-inmy-0wn-th0ughts​ @cassidyjocross​ @ashwarren32​ @quitepointless​ @seesaw-it​ @vapingisntmything​ @romaniandumbass​ @thefandomallrounder​ @glass-hummingbird​ @effmigentlywithachainsaw​ @accesspasswordrustyisacowboy​ @deviltownn​ @kitten051989​ @navispalace​ @godlymissbalor​ @gracefulvaudeville​ @johnnynunzio​ (aka this is the one who inspires me to write)

[sugamoonv]

Pied Piper

“I’m here to save you, I’m here to ruin you“

Pairings: Faerie!Jimin x Reader / ??? x Reader

Word Count: 7.5k

Warnings: smut, manipulation, dubious use of magic

Summary: Everyone knows to never trust a faerie

A.N: SURPRISE!!!!!!! The fic that no one asked for but I wanted. I’m super excited for this; it’s going to be a two part series. I have gone in and fixed things so this is also be safe for poc readers

Masterlist

Next

Your foot splashes in the water when the mossy rock you attempted to step upon shifts throwing you off balance. Water rushes inside the deerskin so when you lift your foot back up, the moccasin hangs pathetically off of your foot. You step onto the rock again, more carefully this time, and when it doesn’t move you bring both feet together before leaping onto the next. 

Water rushes all around you deafening any and all sounds. The otherwise crystal clear water made the sand and fish underneath unseeable with the white froth of the mini waterfalls and current. There were small pools here and there, where the river was calm and minoes swam, but that was also where the biting flies conjugated. That was also the only place you chose to rest, choosing to sacrifice your skin to the bugs for the coolness of the shade and privacy of the trees. 

Your satchel slams against your hip as you jump to another rock and one more step and you’re on the embankment of the river. Tree branches whip you as you push them aside and stray twigs and stalks on the forest floor marr your calves before they snap under the pressure of your weight. Where you want a slight path, it doesn’t exist in a place you’ve never been and so you make sure to tread extra heavily so that at least your footsteps may be seen. 

There’s a boulder about a quarter into the river surrounded by smaller boulders. The top of the stone is concave and appears smooth and even enough for you to sit on so you don’t mind soaking your other shoe in order to get there. There’s another rock that’s half in the sun so you can leave your shoes there to dry while you work. 

It takes some tugging to pull your shoes off and they land on the other rock with a slap, immediately turning part of the stone dark gray as water trickles out. You tuck the bottom of your dress underneath your legs so that the ends hanging off the sides of the boulder don’t dip into the river and you stare inside your bag contemplating on what it is you want to do. A leather-bound book with blank pages rests prettily inside with the books that do contain ink, two of them interesting to you and the one you’re being forced to read by your mother and suitor. 

“You’re not supposed to be here, little one.”

You twist your torso to see a man perched on the small cliff above the bank of the river looking down at you. No, not a man. A faerie.

Your town was riddled with magic. Many women unable to find a husband to support themselves turned to herbal remedies and reading the stars. Farmers and desperate mothers left offerings to Gods, many you knew the name of, some you worshipped, and others that were foreign to you. The night spoke with the howls of creatures sounding other than the beasts men could hunt. And the day ended with bedtime tales of human-like creatures that dwelled into the forest and would steal children from their village with promises of sweets and the honey sounds of music. 

The faerie was beautiful, they all were, it was part of their lure. The long limbs on him would look odd if it weren’t for the defined muscle beneath his golden skin. His lips were upturned in a smirk that screamed danger but filled you with the pretense of safety as if this man were your friend. Perhaps if you were a child, this would be easy for him. But you were an adult now, anchored down with the responsibility of having to marry, start a family, and make some contribution to your village and after spending your in-between years wandering the forest and seeing glimpses of them and wood nymphs as they passed by, you knew better.

“Why don’t you talk, little one?” In the blink of an eye, he transported himself onto the sand behind you. You keep your back turned to him and try to read the words on the page but they keep blurring together. “I promise I’m harmless.” Not likely.

He transports again so he’s sitting directly in front of you and it takes everything in you to not give in to the temptation to look up at him. The air around him feels different even, like syrup and it makes you drowsy and relaxed. 

“What is your name, little one?”

You pretend to read and he watches you with a smirk still on his face. Your heart pounds against your ribs. 

“My name is Hoseok.”

Another trick. The moment you give them anything, your words, jewelry, voice, a name, they would use that to get under your skin. Any offers, whether intentionally given or not, made you vulnerable to them. 

Hoseok tuts and strokes your jaw delicately with the tips of his fingers. Goosebumps rise on your arm and you’re not sure if it’s because you can instinctively sense the dangerous nature of him or because you like the sensation of his magic brushing against you. 

“I can sense you are unhappy, little one,” he whispers into your ear and you can feel the pull of his words, the hidden promise to escape in his tone. Even if you gave them nothing, they still were able to use so much against you. 

“Tell me what it is that weighs you down.”

Flashes of the man that had been pursuing your hand pop up in your mind, you hear the faint sound of your mother’s lectures, the stares of your neighbors, and the sting of rejection as your mocked for asking to become an apprentice. You close your eyes and lean into his touch and the magic of his pull feels like the sun warming your skin or the warmth of a fire on a cold day so when you resist, it’s like a wave of icy water washes over you. 

“No,” you spit at him though it has no effect on the grin on his face. He watches as you hastily stand and gather your belongings and slip-on damp shoes onto your dry feet with knowing eyes. A single word. One single word and he latches onto to you. 

You’re surprised the faerie doesn’t pursue after you. The woods feel oddly empty and scary without his presence but you know that too is just a trick. You jump at every rustle made by a bird or squirrel or rabbit until you find your way home. People glance at that dirt on the bottom of your dress and your flushed face. You must look crazy as you run home. 

You burst through the front door and slammed it shut behind you as you throw your back against it. Your chest heaves and sweat dribbles down the side of your face and makes the skin on your chest glisten. 

“Y/N?” your mother calls from another room and she rounds the corner. It takes her a moment to take in your appearance. “What…happened…to you?” she asks slowly, “Look at you, you’re absolutely filthy! You have dirt, all over your dress! And where have you been!? Your fiance is coming very shortly and now we have to get you ready all over again!” your mother scolds.

“Fiance?” Your stomach drops. 

Your mother stops talking and looks at you. “Yes, fiance,” she says exasperatedly, “He came for brunch yesterday and asked for your hand and I told him yes. You would have known if you were here and not out pestering the blacksmith or medic. He’s a very nice man and has a very stable future. He’s supposed to be taking over his father’s business.”

Your mother pulls on your wrist since your frozen in shock and that’s the kickstart that gets you moving up the stairs to your room where you’ll have to prepare a bath. You numbly swirl the hot water in the tub before undressing and stepping in. The steam makes you sweat until you sink your head under the water. The only thing you can focus on is the fragrance of the soap and the feeling of your mother viciously scrubbing it into your scalp and then onto your back. 

Your mother drones on again with all the ways to act like a proper lady as she twists strands of your hair into a more fitting style. You stare blankly at your reflection in the vanity, makeup adorning your face from the crushed berries, minerals, and rose petals. 

Your mother sighs pityingly seeing your expression, “I know this isn’t what you want but it’s what must be done. SeokJin is a nice man. He’ll treat you with respect and perhaps one day you can learn to love him like a wife. But this is unfortunately what us women must do to survive and this is the best I could do.”

Tears well in your eyes as you continue to stare at yourself and your mother wraps her arms around your shoulders and bends to rest her forehead in the groove of your neck and shoulder before kissing your temple and standing straight. 

Jin is waiting at the bottom of the stairs with his hands folded behind his back and a polite smile. He bows respectfully when you and your mother reach the last step. You put a smile on your own face though you’re sure he can tell it isn’t completely sincere.

For the next forty minutes, the only sound at the dining table is the sound of utensils clinking against your plates. Your mother attempts to start a conversation and Jin adds in his opinions when asked but the conversation quickly dies with your short, clipped responses. You feel guilty but you’re unable to make yourself say anything more than a few words at a time. 

“Would you like to take a walk?” Jin sets his fork and knife down on the empty plate in front of him. Needing fresh air, you nod and Jin smiles and stands, bowing to your mother before he walks outside with you. 

You follow a trail in silence for a few minutes. The sky has become dark and the first hints of the night show themselves with a few dots of stars behind the clouds. The warm breeze has turned cool and many people have returned to their homes so the streets are quiet. 

“I’m sure your mother has told you of my offer,” Jin strikes up a conversation. 

You nod and keep your eyes on the ground. 

“It’s quite a bit much,” Jin laughs and clears his throat, “Getting married, planning a wedding.”

You walk by him and listen to him speak, not having anything to add. He speaks more about trivial things that pop into his head and tells you a few jokes. Jin doesn’t seem to mind your silence too much and happily replies to anything you say and you’re glad that he doesn’t push because his presence grows comforting. Not comforting in a way you would think of a husband, but of a childhood friend. 

“Jin!” someone shouts out and you and Jin turn to the source of the noise. A figure walks towards you and when they get close enough, you recognize it to be Namjoon. 

You remember Namjoon from school, your teacher would use him as an example many times during your lessons. He was a few grades above you so you never truly befriended him but you knew who he was. He joined got an apprenticeship right after graduating and was now one of the town’s bookkeepers. You would say hi to him whenever you went to the library and he was working. 

“Namjoon…” Jin draws out his name as though he’s warning him of something. The smile on Namjoon’s face falters when he gets closer and he sees you but he quickly hides it. You miss the cautious glance from Jin as a signal to Namjoon. 

“Y/N, hi,” Namjoon bows to you, “I didn’t see you,” he tries to laugh off his embarrassment. Namjoon’s gaze lingers on Jin. “How are you? Did you finish your book?”

“I did, yes. Thank you,” you reply courteously. Namjoon nods and looks to Jin again and an uncomfortable silence falls on the three of you. 

Jin blushes and clears his throat. “No one knows now but I should tell you that Y/N and I are engaged.” His voice is meek and he immediately looks to the ground as Namjoon’s head snaps towards him. 

Namjoon’s lips slightly part and he blinks away the moisture collecting in his eyes. He clenches his jaw and forces a smile onto his face. “Congratulations,” Namjoon’s voice cracks and he coughs, “That’s wonderful news.”

You want to run. The reminder brings a wave of nausea to your stomach and your skin crawls. But you hide your discomfort with an insincere smile of your own and dip your head in a small bow, “Thank you.”

“It’s getting late, I think perhaps I should walk you home now.” Jin forces his eyes from Namjoon and turns to you and desperately wanting to be alone, you quickly agree. “Namjoon,” Jin calls out to the man departing, “I was thinking about getting a new book to read. Will you be working tomorrow?”

Namjoon stands still for a moment before speaking, “Yes, I will be.”

“Good,” Jin confirms and then you’re both walking away. Neither of you talk on your way back and neither of you wants to. Jin leaves you with a few kind words and makings for future plans. 

The next few days pass by relatively calm. You avoid your mother as much as possible as the only thing on her mind these days is your marriage and the prospect of having children. And that’s why you’re running now. The idea of having to become a mother too much for you to handle and rather than staying and talking about the gender of your future children, you ran. 

You pound on the door of the house secluded from the rest of your village. When no one answers, you pound again. 

“What do you want?” Yoongi rips the door open to your flustered appearance. “Why are you here?” he scowls down at you. 

You grin at him, his intimidating expression is meaningless to you. “Can’t a girl just visit the town witch because she wants to.” 

Yoongi’s scowl turns into a glare. “No. Now, why are you here?” 

“I came to see if it’s done.”

Yoongi sighs and glances past you before ushering you in. His cottage is actually quite large but is made small with all the objects inside. Plants sit on every possible surface turning his cottage into a greenhouse. Wooden and stone bowls lie about and you can smell the scent of burning sage and lavender. A wisp of smoke hugs the ceiling as it spreads throughout the house. A black cat mewls at you from a tabletop and you reach out and scratch the top of its head as you pass by. 

There’s a small stone bowl being held over an open flame, held up with one of Yoongi’s spells. The liquid in it is a dark purple, almost black and bubbles with the heat. Yoongi walks around it to a table and clears away some of the space. His cat leaps onto the table and butts its head into Yoongi’s arm and he absent-mindedly begins petting the cat as he leans against the table facing you. 

“I’m missing an ingredient,” Yoongi informs you, “I thought I had some stocked up but I must have used it all.” Yoongi scratches the back of his head. “Other than that, it’s almost done.”

“What are you missing?”

“Peacock flower.”

“A flower?” you ask disbelievingly.

Yoongi sucks in a deep breath. “I need the seeds from it in order to complete the potion. I checked my garden too to see if any were growing but there’s none.”

“Wouldn’t it be in the forest?”

“Yes,” Yoongi sighs, “but I can’t leave this so I can’t go out to look for it.”

“Okay, so what if I went to look for it?”

Yoongi looks at you with his eyebrows raised before he shakes his head and picks up his cat to drop him on the floor. The cats runs off once its feet hit the ground. He turns his back to you and pulls out a notebook and opens it and you see his hand moving as he draws something on the page. You tinkle with a few of his things for a few minutes as he draws in silence. 

“This is what it looks like,” Yoongi rips out the page and hold it up to you. It shows a long stem that branches off multiple times. The petals of the flower are split into four parts and widen out like a fan with bumps at the end. In the middle of the petals is an antenna that splits into multiple parts and has bulbs on the end. “They’re tall and hard to miss but they don’t grow close to here. You’ll have to venture far out to find them.” He lowers the page so he can look you directly in the eyes, “Is this something you really want to do?” 

You keep your eyes locked onto his and nod. 

His eyes flicker about your face before he presses his lips together. “There’s a chance you could get lost.” He turns from you again and moves frantically pulling out ingredients and setting up bowls and mortars and pestles. He throws in a plant that’s unfamiliar to you and begins to ground it, “I can make something that will help me keep an eye on you,” he slams the butt of his palm on the flat part of a knife to crush a beetle and scrapes it into a bowl, “I’m going to give you this and when you get lost, sprinkle this in a circle around you and I’ll be able to see exactly where you are.”

You fiddle with the locket around your neck containing the dust Yoongi made for you. He stands on the steps before you so he has to look slightly down at you standing on the ground. His fingers are nimble as the fasten one of his cloaks around you and then folds the drawing he made and folding it into your palm. 

“Do you remember what to do if you get lost?” Yoongi’s face is completely serious. 

“Yes, mother,” you tease him but his expression doesn’t lighten. Instead, he looks at you annoyed. 

“I’m serious, Y/N. You’re going to be going out a lot further than you’re used to and there’s a lot of creatures that dwell in the forest. I’m a witch and I’ve had to find my way out of dangerous situations, you’re only human.”

“I’ll be okay,” you chuckle out the reassurance, “You’ve always looked out for me. This is no different, if I feel even slightly unsafe I’ll sprinkle your magic dust. I trust you, now please trust me. I’m only going out to look for a flower,” you tilt your head up at Yoongi and raise your eyebrows. 

Yoongi steps down to be level with you and grabs you into a hug. You wrap your arms around his thin waist and rest your head on his chest, turning your face to the side. He holds you there for a few moments before pushing you away and holding you at arm's length. 

“Just be safe, okay?”

He watches until you completely disappear from his view into the forest. 

There’s a path that you follow for a while before the grass begins to overtake it and it becomes mangled with the roots of trees and rocks buried in the dirt. The only sounds are of the leaves rustling as birds take flight when you come too close. Sunlight occasionally filters in through the tops of the trees making small sunlight patches and showing the particles floating in the air in it’s rays. You’re lucky Yoongi’s cloak only falls to about your knees because you’ve already managed to snag your dress on a low hanging branch and tear a hole in it. 

“Well, well, well,” Hoseok saunters over to you, “I wasn’t expecting to meet you here, little one.”

You roll your eyes and continue walking through the thicket. 

“Still ignoring me, I see,” Hoseok laughs. He flashes right in front of you and delicately lifts part of the cloak to inspect it, “I’ve seen this before,” he hums. 

You yank the cloak from his fingers and brush past him but he appears in front of you again and you step to the side to avoid him to continue walking but he grabs your arm last minute. His hold is much harsher than what he’s shown before and it catches you off guard. 

“Does the witch know you have his cloak?” Hoseok cocks an eyebrow and looks at you arrogantly. 

“He knows,” you growl and tear your arm from him. Rage buds in your chest when you hear him cackle behind you and he teleports himself back in front of you. 

“Did he give you this?” You swat his hand away as he reaches out for the cloak. This time when you try to go around him he steps in your way. “Did Yoongi give you this, little one?” 

You look up at Hoseok in shock and your heart stops. He knows Yoongi’s name. 

“How do you know his name?” you breath out. 

“How do you know the witch that lives in my woods, little one?” he counters. 

“I asked you first.”

He peers at you for what feels like an eternity before he burst out laughing. “I like your spirit, little one.” You twist your face from his palm that cups your cheek, nose sneered at him and stomp off. Hoseok only follows you silently now. 

The shadows shift as the sun grows high in the sky then afternoon sets in; all without a pip from Hoseok who still has yet to leave you alone. The microscopic bugs that swarm your head and try to burrow in your hair that you keep having to swat away are a more welcoming presence than the faerie. You hold your tongue but the entire time, your mind has been bogged trying to think of how Hoseok had come to know Yoongi’s name. You could only hope that Yoongi had a safeguard to protect himself from the faerie's magic. 

You unfold the drawing that Yoongi gave you as you come to a patch of flowers and you only get a glimpse before its snatched out of your hands. 

“What is this?” Hoseok asks airily though its rhetoric as he’s scanning the page. 

“Nothing.” You dart your hand out to try to get the drawing back from Hoseok but he moves his hand from your reach even faster. Each attempt is foiled by Hoseok’s long arms and impossibly fast reflexes. 

“Flos pavonis,” Hoseok pips, “Now why would you be looking for this, little one?” His eyes drift to your stomach and he tilts his head curiously, “Are you with child?”

Your nostrils flare and you attempt to grab the page again but Hoseok lifts his hand so it’s too high for you to reach. 

“It’s none of your business.”

Hoseok smirks. Another opening. He presses his palm flat against your stomach and you let out a protest and stumble away from him. His smirk grows wider.

“Hmm, not with child so why else would you be looking for this particular flower?” He puts a finger to his chin as he pretends to think. Hoseok sets you on edge as he turns his gaze down to you in a predatory stare. He steps close enough to you so that you’re able to smell his musk. He brings your chin up with a hooked finger so you have to look at him, “Perhaps it’s because the desire to become a mother doesn’t run deep. If it’s a remedy to your natural curse you’re searching for, I can offer you a way to get something so much better than what a witch can.”

The pull returns. The world around you begins to smudge and the hair on your arm raises despite the burning warmth you feel within. Your eyelids begin to droop as you relax in Hoseok’s close proximity and with the little strength you have, you clasp your hand around the locket full of dust. 

Hoseok tuts at you and wraps his hand around your wrist to pull your hand away. “You won’t be needed that where we’re going, little one.” His voice seems to drift away from you as you enter a state of half-consciousness. “All you have to do is say yes. Say yes, Y/N.”

“Yes,” you gasp like a prayer, “Yes, please.”

Hoseok feels powerful. And if anyone were watching, they would say that you disappeared into thin air, without so much as a cry for help. 

The air is thicker in the faerie realm. It feels like you’re floating as Hoseok carries you through the forest. All the colors stretch and blur together in one giant haze and the feeling is euphoric. You have a dopey smile on your face as your eyelids flutter shut and you feel magic thrum your veins and settle deep in your bones. You wonder if this is how everyone that goes missing feels like because if so, you understand now. 

When you wake again, you’re in a large bed under silk sheets enclosed in with sheer drapes. There’s a pink hue to the room that coats the white decorations giving the space an elegant appearance. You swing your legs off the side of the bed and your feet land on a plush rug covering a section of the dark wooden floors. You also notice that the worn-in dress you had left your home wearing had been changed with a silk slip with spaghetti straps and a deep v-neckline. 

Sun filters into the room despite you not seeing any windows. Everything feels slower here, as though you were given a sedative that masks the panic being in a different realm would bring. Your locket hangs daintily on the edge of a small dresser across the room and slowly you get up and walk to it. Your hands feel too heavy to hook the clasp. 

“Here, let me,” someone softly offers from behind you and before you can look, there are warm hands brushing against the back of your neck and a faint click and the chain feels cool as it rests. The person’s hand gather your hair and they let it fall so it doesn’t pass your shoulders. 

You allow the person to spin you to face him and when you do it’s the first time since you’ve been here you remember you have a beating heart and lungs. The magic that felt like molasses sticking to your skin falls away to fresh breath of his magic. It feels as though you’re eating spoonfuls of peanut butter but instead of sticking to the roof of your mouth it’s smooth on your tongue. 

His wavy hair takes on the pink hue of the room but you’re not sure if it’s because that’s the actual color of his hair or if it’s white like the majority of the room. Either way, it looks soft and pliable. And his lips are an even richer pink contrasting nicely with the healthy blush of his round cheeks. Despite the intense almond shape of his eyes, his gaze is soft upon you. 

“Who are you?” you get the words out with some effort. 

The corners of his mouth lift into a soft smile. “I can’t just give my name out to any pretty face. Haven’t you heard how much power that kind of knowledge can hold over a person? That’s something you’re going to have to earn.”

You find yourself rapidly nodding. His name is something you desperately want to know. You can feel the desire deep in your bones like some unscratchable itch. He breathes out a laugh through his nose. 

“Come on. Let’s go eat.” He intertwines his fingers with yours and tugs you behind him. 

Rule number one of entering the faerie realm: Don’t Eat Any Food

You stare down at the full plate of food in front of you, mouth-watering. The man happily eats across from you and from time to time, your eyes drift to his lips as they wrap around his spoon or press against his cup. 

“Ah,” Hoseok’s voice cuts through the dining room, “I see you’ve met our little one.” The man’s eyes follow as Hoseok’s hand crawls to your shoulder and he squeezes. Hoseok takes the seat next to you and immediately a servant rushes out a plate of food. “I assume our Prince has been nothing but courteous to you.” This time, Hoseok’s speaking to you as he takes a bite of his chicken. 

It’s odd. This faerie has been pestering you for days and you’re just noticing the sharpness of his jaw and defined edges of his lips. Your hand reaches for the locket. 

“No, no, dove,” the Prince has somehow moved behind you and stops your hand. Your fingers relax and your locket falls back to your chest. The Prince looks over to your plate and pouts, “She hasn’t eaten any of her food.”

This somehow breaks from your reverie and the cold feeling washes over you again only this time it feels like aloe on an untreated burn. Your head snaps to Hoseok who you’ve come to realize constantly has a smug look on his face. 

“You said you were going to get me something better.”

Hoseok takes another bite of his food and takes his time chewing. After he takes a long sip of wine he pivots towards you in his chair. “I withheld my end of our deal. The remedy you’re seeking, you’ll have to go to someone of a higher power.”

The Prince. 

It’s just now that you notice his absence and as though he were able to sense your thinking of him, he returns through the doors, each step elegant and demanding of your attention. In his hands, he holds a parcel and he moves your plate out of the way to set down the mysterious package in front of you. 

“It’s food,” he mutters kindly, “I’m not offering it to you so you’re safe to eat it.” His eyes are honest as they bore into yours. 

“More than courteous,” Hoseok slips under his breath, fully enjoying the scene before him. 

You cautiously unwrap the brown paper to reveal a loaf of freshly baked bread, one similar to the bread from the village baker. In fact, it smells almost exactly the same. The steam wafting from the bread is eerily close to the scent of the wooden house you would pass on the way to school or of the baker’s son as he ran around trying to sell that few loafs leftover at the end of the day. 

You eyeball the loaf and the Prince squeezes his hands together. “I got it from your baker. I know this is you and your mother’s favorite kind.”

You look at him with wide eyes. “How do you know that?”

“I asked,” he states simply. 

How stupid of them. 

You clench your jaw and ignore the rumble in your stomach the enticing aroma inspires. “I was looking for a flower and Hoseok said he could get me something better.” Hoseok glances at you disinterestedly. “I have someone waiting for me and I promised them I would return, so unless you have something for me, I want to leave.”

The Prince admires you fondly and runs his thumb along your cheek and the sickly sweetness seeps through your skin but now you’re prepared to fight it. “Follow me, dove.” He doesn’t take his eyes off of you as he gives a command to Hoseok, “Hoseok, clean this up.”

“Yes, my Prince,” Hoseok bows with a mischievous glint in his eyes. 

You keep your eyes off of the Prince and on the paintings adorning the marble walls. You can feel his eyes on you from time to time and the sensation of him looking at you stirs something between nervousness and excitement within you. He leads you in silence and you blush with the inquisitive glances of the faeries that pass by you and him. They all bow to him and he returns the gesture gracefully and the formality of each second long exchange makes you feel out of place. He stops in front of a set of double doors and smiles at you before pulling both open at once. 

Inside is a plethora of fauna that puts Yoongi’s garden to shame. The witch’s garden that you always admired in esteem for the many species of flowers, vegetables, and herbs that stretched around the entirety of his house was microscopic to this. A maze of green stretches on before you so far you can’t tell where it ends. There’s a cobblestone pathway to lead you into the foliage and as the Prince walks ahead, you see bursts of colors from budding petals on closer inspection. The air is warm and nectarous and the dew collects on your skin. While your baby hairs stick your forehead, the Prince seems completely unaffected with the heat. 

The Prince stops a patch of yellow and orange flowers that stand tall above both your heads. 

“Hoseok informed me what it is you are looking for.” 

The Prince drags down the stalk of a flower so the petals brush his nose and you swallow heavily when his eyes flutter shut and serenely buries his nose in the middle of the petals. He opens his eyes and looks to the side at you and with the way the light hits his face, you see the light dusting of lilac upon his eyelid and the darkness of charcoal on his lashes. It was really unfair for a species like him to add to their already ethereal beauty. 

“Is this something you really want, dove?” the Prince gingerly asks you and his hands return to cup your face and you nod in his palms. “Why?” his tone is innocent and holds no judgment. 

“I want more in life than to just be expected to marry some man and have his children. I want to be seen as more than a vessel and a maid.”

“Many women have the same desire yet they find happiness in the situations they are put in. Is this man you are set to marry really that abhorrent?”

A flash of guilt darts through you at the thought of Jin and how by now enough time has passed so he’s on your front stoop alone while your mother runs about searching for you. Yoongi’s still probably sitting in front of the potion you asked for with only his cat to keep him company because the brew requires someone to stir it every twenty minutes or else it begins to harden. 

“There’s nothing wrong with him. This is about what I want,” you sternly tell the Prince and he grins down at you. The odd feeling of pride swirls in your chest. 

“Very well.” The Prince stretches up and a sliver of skin shows itself as the silk shirt he’s wearing rides up. He pinches one of the bulbs of a flower and a few seeds tumble from the split open wound. The dimples on his back are so very tempting and the world around you goes hazy until the Prince lowers to his feet and is completely covered again. 

The Prince drops the seeds into your hand and closes your fingers around them for you. The pad of his thumb rubs along your knuckles and he moves in closer to you so the fabrics of your shirts brush together with each breath. Oh so very tempting. 

“There is a price for those seeds, dove. They contain far more magic than anything you will find in human soil and this kind of magic doesn’t come free.”

Your eyes flicker between his eyes before squinting. “What is it you want?”

The air is getting thicker and your legs begin to weigh you down rather than hold you up. 

“A kiss,” he whispers with parted lips. His eyes glance down to yours and he flickers out his tongue to bring moisture to the pink tissue of his lips and you stare conflicted at the movement. “Just one kiss.” You can feel his warm breath and your mouth grows dry and begs for hydration that only the Prince can give. 

You can’t possibly bring yourself to pull away, not with how the seeds dig into your palm within a tightened fist and the Prince’s magic seeping into every pore. You can at least say you hesitated when closing the gap between your lips and his. 

The Prince’s lips are soft and move delicately with yours until he presses further. His hands slip down your arms and tighten on your hips in order to tug you flush with him and when you gasp at the unexpectedness of it, he carefully nudges his tongue against the inside of your bottom lip. He becomes more daring when you softly moan and meet his tongue with yours and then it becomes a dance where he swirls his tongue before pulling back and sucking your bottom lip in between his teeth and then bruising them all over again. 

Your heart beats heavy in your chest but the only thing you feel is the Prince and the butterflies restlessly fluttering in your stomach and lungs. His fingers dig into your flesh. 

“Can I?” He presses his forehead to yours and marvels at the redness of your cheeks and the puffiness of your lips that he’s induced. All you can do is nod. “I need to hear you say it, dove.”

Fuck. It’s hard to speak when your tongue is sticking to the roof of your mouth. “Yes,” the confirmation sounds mangled but it’s enough. 

He bunches the rough fabric of your dress and pulls it up until your left in your slip and when he takes that off, you’re fully exposed to him. Your nipples button in the fresh air and despite the way his eyes devour you, rather than wanting to hide you feel in control. 

You quiver as he brushes the side of your breast and then gently rolls your nipple between his pointer finger and thumb. “How beautiful, my sweet dove. Look at how you respond to my touch.” He’s talking about the way your nipples harden with his help. 

“Please. Please touch me,” you beg him fully immersed in his magic. 

“What do I get in return?” He teases you and takes pride in the goosebumps that raise on your arms when he withdraws his hand. 

Rule number two of entering the faerie realm: Don’t Give In To Temptation.

“Anything.”

His eyes set ablaze and within a second, the garden around you disappears and you’re in another bedroom. The size of the room nearly equals the size of your kitchen and living room combined. A large bed sits in the middle of the room covered in pillows and small lights line the top of the walls. Only they’re not lights; when you look closer you can see the sway and brighten and dimmer. A crown of flowers rests on top of a cushion on one of the many vanities in the room and next to that are several chokers, necklaces, rings, and bracelets. The gems on them glisten and scatter light onto the ceiling

The Prince hooks his finger under your chin and draws your attention back to him and he slowly closes the gap between your lips in another kiss. His lips drag slowly against yours as he takes his time and gently pushes you into the bed. He follows without breaking contact when your knees buckle and you fall backwards on the feather-soft quilt. 

“You’re so soft,” he praises as his hands leave feather-light touches on your thighs before dipping in between them and pressing on your inner thighs. He forces your legs apart and settles himself in between them, hovering over you so he can capture your lips.

The Prince grinds his clothed hips into your bare core and the satin smoothness of his trousers is a pleasant, foreign sensation. You mewl into his lips and try to lift your hips to meet him but he presses down harder pinning your hips to the bed with his. Your breath quickens to an alarming rate when he slides his lips down your neck, occasionally nibbling at the skin and then he presses his lips to your areola. 

His tongue smoothly runs along the tissue before swirling around your nipple. The other breast is being massaged with one of the Prince’s hands and the other is still holding your leg to widen your hips for him. You gasp when his teeth scrape against your skin and he replaces the sensation when he sucks a nipple into his mouth. He does the same with the other breast so when his lips are peppering down your body again, your chest glistens with his spit. 

Your breath comes out in huffs when he reaches the space right before your mound and his thumb harshly digs into your thigh. He nudges his nose into your lower stomach, glancing up at you quickly before focusing his attention on your thighs. He starts at your knees and works his way back up until he’s at the junction of your hips. 

You fumble with your words as you don’t have a name to call out and in a panic, your mind flashes to the addressal from Hoseok. “My Prince!”

The coals within the faerie burn hotter. He looks at you intensely like a predator stalking its prey. The only difference is you want to be devoured by him. 

“Patience, sweet dove.”

The Prince dips his pointer finger in your folds and gathers the wetness to trace your sensitive outer lips. He smirks when you jump at his finger brushing against your clit, desperate for attention. After circling your labia a few times, the Prince adds a second finger. 

The stretch from his fingers has you clutching the quilt beneath you as he slowly pushed his fingers deep within your core. He waits there for a moment, keeping an eye on your face for any signs of discomfort and when you show none, he expands his fingers into a ‘v’ before bringing them back together and drawing them out. He gradually scissors you open until he’s confident you’re stretched enough. 

Sweat beads at your hairline and your chest and cheeks are flushed. The arms in your muscles burn as you keep them tense with the strength of your grip on the bed. The Prince has taken to thrusting his fingers into your core at a rapidly building pace until your juice collects on his hand and each move is indicated with a squelch. It’s only when your breathing is fast enough and the pleasure strong enough to make you lightheaded, the Prince finally places his lips onto you. 

He starts off lightly kissing the top of your mound and his soft lips have your stomach muscles tightening and you clenching around his fingers now moving languidly inside you. He pokes his tongue out to leave kitten licks against your clit and the sounds you’ve been holding back escape. Your moans bounce off the wall and sound throughout the room as the Prince adds more pressure to his tongue. 

“Oh my god-fuck, I’m so close,” you slur past another moan when the Prince rims your entrance with his tongue then returns to swirl your bud into his mouth. 

“Come for me, Y/N. Let me taste you.” He hooks his fingers up so they press into the bundle of nerves and hollows his cheeks so there’s suction on your clit and the coil in your stomach snaps so you’re seeing white. He collects your sweet nectar onto his tongue with small slurping sounds as you come down from your high. 

You look down at the Prince through half-lidded eyes and push his hair from his forehead. He meets your eyes at the touch and crawls up to cage you with his arms. You taste yourself on his lips and tongue. Drowsiness washes over you and it becomes a struggle to keep yourself awake but you use what energy you have remaining to reach down and tug on the waistband of the Prince’s trousers.

“No, dove,” the Prince airily giggles as he catches your wrist. 

“Let me take care of you,” you pout and he looks adoringly down at you. 

“Not tonight.”

You flit in and out of consciousness while the Prince gets up from the bed and comes back with a nightgown and a wet cloth to clean you. You finally succumb to the dream world when he tucks the quilt under your sides and adjusts a pillow beneath your head.

Permanent Tags: @eshika0102 / @detectivebourbon / @omgsuperstarg / @luna-xial / @strawberry-leche / @yoongiismytruelove

[voltage-vixen]

A Fornicating Faction (NSFW-Request)

(This is featuring the trio from MK.) *Warning: This fic contains group sex, and some s&m references.

“Oh, that’s tight Kei,” MC grunted in response to the erotic Englishman’s bondage job on her wrists and ankles.

Kei’s erection strained tightly against the constricting fabric of his pants, while he watched the vulnerable agent struggle helplessly, as she attempted to free herself from the leather bondage restraints that were keeping MC compliant to his every fantasy. Ignoring the throbbing feeling coming from below his waist, Kei straddled her naked body, and slowly crawled up towards her face. His long fingers wrapped the fleece lined blindfold over her smoky eyes, robbing MC of her most subservient assets. The blond Englishman chuckled in approval, and deliberately brushed his covered cock in her face, before leaving her abandoned on the bed.

“I never thought the day would come that we would see our MC be so submissive,” Kazuomi’s voice boomed throughout Kei’s bedroom. He confidently strutted into the private chambers, while Yuzuru quietly trailed behind him. “Sorry, Yuzu and I are running a bit behind schedule. Thanks for preparing our little lamb for tonight’s slaughter Kei.”

MC’s coils tightened in anticipation at Kazuomi’s dominating words, and her lips curled into a small smirk. A few nights ago, after having one too many drinks, MC enrolled into a wager with the trio formerly known as 3S. If she lost to the men in a game of poker, MC was to surrender her body to their wildest sensual desires. Although casual sex was not something MC normally engaged in, she had grown close to these attractive guys, and the prospect of them dominating her was something that sounded extremely arousing.

“We had a bet, and I’m a woman of my word,” she purred in response to the lone finger that was now trailing down her body.

“Hot already? I’ve barely touched you MC,” Kazuomi crooned into her ear, “Although, I guess that seems about right considering I can bring any woman down to her knees.”

MC wanted to wipe that arrogant smirk off his face, she knew that he was wearing in true Kazuomi fashion, but his simple touch was already making her melt. Tonight-and just for tonight-she would obediently allow them to execute their whims, while MC passively adhered to each and every command.

“Stop trying to take her for yourself Kazuomi,” Kei huffed, “Even back in school, you never were any good at sharing.” Kei disrobed his clothing and sighed in relief when his thick cock was finally sprung free from its confinement.

Yuzuru, who up until this point had been silently observing, removed the clothing from his lower half. Taking his long length into his cold hand, Yuzuru slowly started to stroke up and down, while he curiously watched his two friends caress the brass woman.

Kazuomi’s tongue was presently worshiping her swollen breasts, and Kei’s fingers were working their magic to gratify MC’s dripping cunt. Her nipples were erect, and Kazuomi gently kneaded them with his teeth. Kei’s withdrew himself from her and MC let out a growl of displeasure.

“Patience MC,” Kei ordered the withering spy. Kei licked his fingers, and sucked hard, ensuring that he lapped up every last drop of her bliss. “I’m going to get a toy, that I know a bad girl like you would enjoy.”

“Damn it! You guys are all talk, but let’s see how you are in action!” MC proclaimed out in aggravation. Her body was ready, and MC needed a lot less foreplay, and a whole lot more fucking in order to really savor every second of this crazy night.

“Sweetheart, you have no idea what you just initiated,” Kazuomi groaned, as he pulled away from the bed. He started to strip his clothing, while Yuzuru haltingly strode over to the bed, gazing at MC in a similar way a lion surveys its prey.

MC’s body was glistening with sweat. The satin sheets on the bed were sticking to her back, and MC’s hair was a disheveled curly mess. God, she needed to touch them. Any of them would do just fine, but MC NEEDED to feel them. Throwing her pride out the window, MC wriggled in sheer desperation, and tried to arch her pelvis up from the bed.

“Please. PLEASE, I need one of you fine gentleman inside of me,” she begged with no shame, “I can’t take this any longer. Not without someone fucking me.”

Firm hands suddenly clutched her hips, and MC could tell by the faint scent of the natural cologne, that her assailant was Yuzuru. His nails dug into her rosy colored skin, and he teased MC by pressing the head of his member against her entrance.

“You might regret saying that,” Yuzuru whispered, “Especially when I end up breaking you.”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she retorted, while biting the inside of her cheek. That bastard knew what he was doing felt good, yet he continued to draw out his torture session.

Fortunately for MC, she didn’t have to wait much longer, because she felt Yuzuru’s hands grab onto her firm breasts and give them a few hard squeezes.

“Don’t forget you said that then,” Yuzuru remarked, before taking the deep plunge into her awaiting core.

“Ahh! Yes! God, yes!” MC panted in rhythm to his powerful thrusts.

“Not God. Yuzuru. It would be in your best interest if you remembered that,” he muttered in response to her incoherent babbling.

“You must be quite the special woman MC,” Kazuomi called out, “Yuzuru’s animalistic side has been fully awakened.”

He watched while her breasts bounced and smacked around, and pumped his cock a few times, before pushing his cock between her pouted lips. She readily accepted his erection and ran her tongue down the thick penis that was fully occupying her mouth.

“That’s it. Can you feel Yuzuru and I stretching out the different areas of your body?” Kazuomi cooed. MC tried to nod but gagged when Kazuomi’s erection pressed further into her mouth.

Meanwhile, Kei had finally returned from his closet and took a moment to appreciate the sight that was taking place before him.

“Beautiful,” he admired, “All three of you are absolutely beautiful.” Kei approached the threesome, and revealed to his friends the anal beads he planned to use on their unsuspecting MC.

Making his way around his two friends, Kei sucked on his finger, and tested the waters by sliding it into her tight asshole. He felt her initially clench her muscles, but soon relaxed when Kei softly massaged his thumb along her sensitive hole.

“Let yourself unwind,” Kei smoothly guided. Pushing the beads into her, MC roughly grasped the bounds containing her wrists, and started to violently thrash around.

“Oh, yes! I’m ready to cum! L-Let me cum,” MC whimpered in hopes they would show mercy on her desperate soul.

Kazuomi soon shot his load into her mouth, and MC swallowed the hot seed, while he removed his limp penis from her. He shared a private glance with both Yuzuru and Kei, and the three longtime friends all exchanged a nod.

“Only if you declare us the winners of tonight’s love fest,” Kazuomi proposed, “Acknowledge your role as the mouse in our game, and we’ll have you screaming to the heavens in no time.”

MC openly scowled, knowing very well that the men were probably all grinning at each other, relishing the fact that she was at their mercy. Normally she was never one to let a man tell her what to do in bed, yet tonight was an exception. Her orgasm was within reach with the help of these tricksters. If they were going to use her, MC was going to take a page from their rulebook and use them right back to find her release.

“Fine, but only if you release my ankles from these shackles,” she negotiated, “I want to change positions to ensure that I’m guaranteed to fully receive your “happy ending” services.”

“You drive a hard bargain, but we’ll allow it,” Kazuomi neutrally responded.

Soon her ankles were free, and MC took a moment to stretch them out. Once she was comfortable, she lifted them up into the air, and Yuzuru helped situate her onto his shoulders. This angle allowed him to penetrate MC even deeper, and Yuzuru’s penis was once against surrounded by her sweltering dampness in between her soft thighs.

Yuzuru rammed into her, and MC let out sharp cries of bliss. Kei’s fingers were toying with the anal beads, yet he made sure his tongue was focusing on her hypersensitive clit. Kazuomi also joined back in and was groping the fleshy mounds of her chest. Every caress, squeeze, fondle, and pet the guys were unleashing on MC, was enough to send vibrations pulsating throughout her boiling frame. She let herself go, and her walls came crashing down around Yuzuru. “Hmm,” Yuzuru and MC moaned in unison, and MC howled, as they rode the waves of their climax together. Yuzuru’s hips resumed their gyrating, until both had finally reached the end their euphoria.

MC yelped when she felt Kei withdraw the anal beads, and gasped when Kazuomi freed her wrists. She quickly tore off the blindfold and was now facing the three winners of the bet. Swinging her legs to the edge of the bed, MC tried to stand up, but collapsed when her wobbling knees refused to support her weight. Opening her mouth, MC went to speak, yet was unable to since her throat was scratchy and hoarse.

“There’s no need to push yourself,” Kazuomi reassured. He pressed himself against her back, and Kei went to fetch a glass of water. MC nodded her head in thanks, and gently rubbed her slightly sore wrists.

Yuzuru broke the silence by offering a suggestion that had caught everyone off guard. “Since we’re the ones that made you feel this way, I think it’s only fair if you allow us to pamper you. I’ll go run a bath.”

Without waiting for a response, Yuzuru lifted MC’s petite frame, and started to carry her towards the bath.

“Oh, I can’t wait to see her reactions when we pound her this time,” Kei cheerfully admitted to Kazuomi.

They entered the bathroom, and Yuzuru began to run some hot water. Kei poured in some foamy bath salts, and Kazuomi initiated a foot massage. She uttered a content sigh, which only urged the impatient men to commence their explorations of her body. MC knew she was in for a never-ending night of intense lovemaking, nevertheless, her core was ready to be filled with the toe-curling gratification she was sure only this trio could deliver.

Throwing her head back, MC felt hands run along the side of her neck, and all the way down to her defined curves. Kazuomi tugged her hair and bit her responsive earlobe.

“Let us be your fuck boys for the evening. After all, our guests’ satisfaction, is our number one priority here at the Raven Hills.”

Succumbing to her own lusts, MC omitted a small cry of consent, before submerging into the next round of their thrilling game. This game was rare in the fact that even losers were winners.

“O-Oh,” she murmured at the feel of licks and bites marking her skin. Just for the remainder of their evening together, MC would submit, and allowed their claiming marks on her body.

Feel free to check out my Masterlist!

@agustd54, @joanneshiba

[ruthoakenshield]

The Last Sanddancer (chapter 5)

The Last Sanddancer (chapter 4)

The Last Sanddancer (chapter 3)

The Last Sanddancer (chapter 2)

The Last Sanddancer (chapter 1)

Dwalin sighs as he walks back to the Healing Hall. He feels guilty for not being able to protect his One and for distracting her and getting her mortally injured. He remembered how she looked when he jumped out of that bush and saw her in the glade. 

Her hair shone red as fire and her green eyes sparkled like emeralds. Her tanned skin shone like honey as the sweat glistened in the sunlight on her arms, face and chest. Her short, lean body moved with a lithe grace he has never seen before. Her motions smooth and swift. He could tell by the way the goblin heads were flying that she had a hidden strength in her lean muscles that was deceptive. The way she moved with those weapons was like a deadly dance. He longed to see more of her dances. He longed to hear her voice and introduce himself. He longed to hold her against him again and smell her hair. Oh, Mahal, her hair. It smelled like woodsmoke, Cedar and Pine. It was as red as Dain's hair but it was oh, so soft. His fingers itched to run through her locks again.

Yes, he loved her from the moment he set eyes on her. She was his One. When he laid with her the first night that they had found her, she was cold and shivering from the fever. He could feel how toned her torso was and the strength she had. He couldn't wait to face her in a practice ring and see what she was capable of with those curved weapons.

He wondered how the dwarves could have forgotten the clan of the Sanddancers. He certainly had never heard of them. Had Balin? He would have to ask him. Dwalin made a mental note to ask Ori to scour the library to see if there was any mention of a Sanddancer Clan of Dwarves on the Eastern shores of Middle Earth. He wanted to learn about them and her history.

Dwalin entered the Healing Hall and Oin looked up to see him walk in. "What are you doing back down here? It's late. Go to bed, Dwalin." he said shaking his head.

"Please, Oin, I just want to sit with Elora." Dwalin said quietly.

"Why would you want to sit with her, Dwalin? There is nothing more we can do for her right now." Oin chastized. 

"Oin, she is my One. It is my fault she is in this condition. I distracted her when we jumped into the clearing to help her fight the goblins. She saw us, and we both felt the realization that we were in the presence of our One, and she got too distracted by the feeling and let her guard down in the middle of the battle." he explained. Oin could see the guilt written all over Dwalin's face.

"Fine, you may sit with her." Oin relented.

 Dwalin went over to the chair that Elrond had used and sat down. He looked down at Elora's still form and gently ran a finger along her face. She instinctively turned her head a little into his hand. He smiled. 

He noticed her hair was all tangled and matted from the three days of being carried. He stood and went to ask Oin for a comb and oils to get the knots out of her hair. Oin provided him with both and he went to sit at the head of her bed.

Dwalin moved the chair up to that end of the bed and then sat down. He gently lifted her head and pulled out the long locks from under her body and moved them so they hung off the top edge of the bed. He poured some oil into his palm and rubbed them together. Next he gently ran his hands through her hair, finger combing it to get the bigger knots out first and working the oil into her hair to condition it and make it easier to get the smaller knots out. 

Dwalin took his time and enjoyed the feel of her hair in his hands. Once he worked out all the larger knots, he took the comb and sectioned her hair and started to comb out each section. Slowly he worked from the ends up to her head. Carefully picking out the smaller knots and oiling the kinked hair till it was in smooth curls. Section by section he worked until all of her hair was combed through and lay in sleek, firery red curls. 

He grinned. It had been so long since he had done this. He remembered helping comb out his mother's hair when she was still alive. His mother had taught him how to oil her hair to get the knots out and told him that someday, his One would appreciate that trick.

He looked down at the mass of curls before him. If his mother only knew how right she had been. He took a small section and practiced braiding his family's braid. Then he took another section and practiced the courting braid. Over and over he would braid her hair and then take the braids out until he was satisfied in how they would look in her hair and he could do it confidently. He removed the practice braids and smiled as he petted her mane of hair smoothing it back out.

Dwalin sat back in the chair, then he heard a soft voice say, "Oh! Please don't stop doing that! It felt so good!" His eyes opened wide and he got up and walked around to see Elora's face. She lay there, awake, looking around and when she saw him her eyes opened wide and she smiled a small, bashful smile. 

"Oh! I remember you! You were in the glen with another dark haired person!" she said quietly. Elora felt the same zing go through her that she felt when she looked up at them in the glen.

Dwalin chuckled, then gave her a small bow. "Dwalin, son of Fundin. At your service." he replied with a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous grin. 

Elora beamed at him. "Elora Jewelgleam, of the Sanddancer Clan. I'm afraid I am unable to be at anyone's service at the moment, as it appears the goblins got the best of me." she said as she tried to look down at her side and winced. 

Dwalin chuckled, "My apologies for distracting you from your dance of death in the glen. You appeared to be getting those goblins pretty well without us distracting you!" he apologized. She chuckled. 

"I was tiring quickly. I am not used to such a fast paced dance of death. I hate how goblins swarm all at once. Orcs aren't nearly as fast as those damned goblins!" Elora explained. "I was glad to see someone come to help, but was surprised to feel my One was nearby. Since there was only you and the other dark haired person, I wasn't sure which one of you was my One." she blushed. 

Dwalin grinned. "Do you now?" he asked teasingly. Elora giggled and nodded. Dwalin gave her a bigger grin. 

"Mr. Dwalin, would you please tell me where I am?" Elora asked as Dwalin pulled the chair back down to her side and sat down. He held her hand and caressed the top of it gently.

"The dark haired dwarf you saw me with was my friend and our King, Thorin Oakenshield." he and I were taking a short trip to just relax and so he could get away from the Kingly duties for a while. When we found you, we were two and a half days from Erebor, The Lonely Mountain.

Once we finished off the last of the goblins, you were unconscious. We found your pack and weapons and carried you to the spring and tried our best to clean you up and bandage your wounds. We took turns carrying you back to Erebor. The first night you began to spike a fever as the poison worked its way into your system from the wound in your side. The Yarrow we put there, helped to slow it enough for us to get you back to Erebor.

You have been in and out of consciousness and in a great deal of pain. We decided to keep you sedated as we traveled. We used a tea that both soothes pain and makes one sleep deeply.

We arrived yesterday afternoon and brought you here to our Healing Hall. Lucky for us, Lord Elrond and his company of Elves arrived a few days before us to discuss a trade negotiation. When he found out what happened to you he rushed to help. You are still with us because of his and his two son's healing skills." Dwalin told Elora. Her eyes got wide. “Elrond is here?” Elora asks. Dwalin nods.

"Oh!!! I guess I owe you all a very big thank you!" She said. Dwalin squeezed her hand. "I was so afraid we were going to lose you before I even got a chance to say 'Hello' to you!" he sighed and lowered his head. "I feel awful that because I distracted you, you let your guard down and were mortally wounded." Dwalin said sadly. 

Elora looked at him and marveled that such a big, burly dwarf was such a big softie. She squeezed his hand and said, "Honey, it wasn't your fault. I was not expecting my One to jump into a glen while I fought off a swarm of goblins! Neither of us had any way of knowing that we were going to meet our ones like that! Do not feel ashamed or guilty for my injuries. Elrond has worked his magic, and I will be back on my feet dancing in no time." she said as she reached for his face. He leaned forward and let her touch his beard. He closed his eyes and relished in her gentle touch. 

"Mr. Dwalin, is there some water nearby? I am terribly thirsty." Elora asked. He opened his eyes and nodded. I will get you some, Amrâlimê. I will be right back." Dwalin said and kissed her hand. He stood and went to get a cup and a pitcher of water from Oin. "She is awake, Oin, and is asking for some water." he informed Oin. 

Oin nodded and handed him a cup and a pitcher of water. Oin stood and followed Dwalin back over to the bedside. 

"Hello, Lass, my name is Oin, I'm the healer here in Erebor. I see you've woken. How are you feeling?" Oin asked as he held his trumpet to his ear. Elora giggled, "I feel thirsty, hungry and tired, Master Dwarf.

He chuckles. "The thirsty and the tired we can aid you with. I'm afraid it is late and the kitchens have closed for the night. You've been unconscious for several days, so we'll have to gradually work you back into eating solid foods again." Oin told her. "For now, let's start you with some water and teas. Come morning, I will send for Bombur to bring you some broth and yoghurt and a fruit mash." he explains. Elora nods.

"Dwalin can help you with drinking some water. How is the pain for you? Do you need anything for the pain?" Oin asks. Elora winces as Dwalin helps to raise her head to sip some water. she nods and he lowers her head. "Something for the pain would be appreciated. Thank you." Elora says as the pain subsides. "As long as I don't move too much it's not too bad. But if I try to raise my head, it hurts... a lot!" she says.

Dwalin chuckles. "Thorin received a similar wound in the Battle of the Five Armies." he tells her. "Except his was on his belly."

Elora winces. "I seem to remember Beorn having to leave to go fight in that battle. I miss him." she says. "I stayed at his house after you all had left. He told me of your visit and asked me to stay with him until he heard the outcome of the quest. He didn't want me to get eaten by the dragon or hunted down by Azog.

When Radagast stopped to ask for his assistance in the battle, he made me promise to stay and take care of his animals until his return. They were very happy to see him once he got back. He told us of the battle and how a human named Bard killed the dragon with the last of the black arrows from Dale." Elora said quietly. 

Dwalin grinned. "Aye, lass. Be glad you stayed behind. It was not a nice battle nor was it a nice winter after that. The stench the following spring was atrocious! But Bard and the humans of Dale were able to rebuild with our help and they helped us clean out Erebor so our dwarves could rebuild and restore it here.

The elves helped restart trade and provided cloth until we could get word to the merchants across Middle Earth that the dragon was gone and trade was welcomed. It has taken time, but we are back to normal now. Minus the Gold sickness, which Gandalf removed from the treasure hoard. The Arkenstone was restored to a hidden spot deep within the mountain and no member of the ruling family knows where it was buried. All we know is that there is a warning stone and a spell of protection over it so no one can disturb or take it ever again." Dwalin tells her.

Just then Oin returns with a cup of tea. "Here lass, this should help with the pain. It will make you sleepy too. Don't fight it, Elrond says you were weakened by the poison and if you are to regain your strength, you are to get plenty of rest." 

Elora sighs, and winces. "Very well, then Master Oin. Dwalin, will you stay here with me?" Elora asks. Dwalin grins. "If my lady wishes, I will stay." he replies. "Please stay." she says. He takes the cup from Oin and gently raises her head enough to help her drink the tea. Once she drank it, he laid her head back down and she started to fall asleep. "Goodnight, my love, he whispers and kisses her hand. Go to sleep. I will be here when you wake." 

Elora smiled at Dwalin, closed her eyes and slept soundly for the remainder of the night. Oin brought a pillow for Dwalin to rest his head on and a blanket for both Elora and Dwalin. Dwalin laid his head on the pillow, held Elora's hand and slept as well for the remainder of the night.

@fizzyxcustard​ @deepestfirefun​ @dabisburntnut​ @rachel1959 @queenofmankind​ @thorinthehottotty​ @dumbassunderthemountain​ @thetherianthropydaily​ @demoniccheese83​ @tschrist1​

[queenofeden]

I SAID IT WOULD GET DONE AND I DID IT

Day 27: Sex Pollen

Pairing: Julian Devorak/Female Apprentice

Word Count: 2180

Summary:

He’d thought that would be the end of it. He’d thought very, incredibly, extraordinarily wrong.

✨ My Ko-Fi // Read on AO3 ✨

Stupid, Ilya. Very, very stupid.

He looks at the mess of sparkling powder, now strewn across the floor of the shop, mixed with minute shards of broken glass. Bad enough, that. Already the fine dust had plumed up into his face, bent low in his attempts to stop the jar’s inevitable tumble. He’d then done what any responsible man who had dropped and broken something that did not belong to him would do, and hastily swept all of it up and dumped it into the bin, stirring up more particles like motes to dance and hover in the air. He’d apologize to Laurel later, he reasoned. Whatever its contents had been, surely they could be replaced. She was well enough acquainted with his clumsiness not to leave things of too much import laying out on counters where they could be swatted over by errant coat tails or overly enthusiastic, gesticulating hands. She’d give him a gentle ribbing, perhaps pout a little, but he could certainly kiss that sour look from her face given enough time.

He’d thought that would be the end of it.

He’d thought very, incredibly, extraordinarily wrong.

It had started almost like a fever, a sudden coming on of warmth, sweat prickling at his brow. Julian was no stranger to the feeling, but the speed with which it hit did set him a little off-kilter. Then, very much unlike a fever, he had started to feel the burn deep in his groin. His cock had hardened with inexplicable quickness, leaving him flushed and gasping, grinding the heel of his palm into his crotch to stem the feeling. His knees had buckled, nearly sending him careening towards the floor if he hadn’t caught himself on the edge of the dining table first. It took all of his power to shuffle himself towards the bed, his mind a swimming, dizzy fog of pure arousal.

He’d barely had the wherewithal to shuffle his pants down to his knees, relieving the pressure on his unnaturally straining, aching cock. It helped, until it didn’t. Already he was oozing precum, ruddy and twitching as if he’d been hard and wanting for hours instead of just mere minutes. Julian grits his teeth against the wracking pleasure, rolling under the surface of his skin like a static current. Reluctantly, he takes himself in hand, unsure if it’s the right move but unable to think of anything else beyond the blinding, all consuming feelings of Want! Need! Touch! He hisses, eyes near rolling back into his skull as he comes, dribbling over his fist from only that single, perfunctory touch.

In the wake of his orgasm he feels cool relief flood through him, clearing the haze from his mind. Panting, he wipes his hand off on the coverlet, careless of the mess. It had to be that powder, whatever it was. It had to be. Some kind of magical reagent, meant to do… Well, he couldn’t imagine this was its intended use but what did he know, really? 

Laurel would know, once she returned home, Laurel would– the thought of Laurel is enough to spark the burn inside him again. He groans weakly, gripping the root of his cock, trying to think of anything but her for once, but nothing stops the rush, his cock swelling again, ruddy and glistening with his earlier spend. Magic, of course it was magic, just had to be magic. Why wouldn’t it be? Magic powder in a magic shop doing magic on his… He shakes his head, thumping it back against the mattress. A feeble whimper escapes from his throat as yet another wave of pleasure crashes over him, rolling in and out like the tide. 

This time when his thoughts drift inevitable to Laurel, he does not stop them. Thinking of her, imagining the softness of her skin, the rose and sandalwood smell of her hair, strewn across his chest in waves and tangled curls. His chest shudders, grip tightening on his shaft. It isn’t so quick now, the second wave more forgiving. He strokes himself, palming over the head, smearing precum over his hand with a muffled cry, biting the inside of his cheek so harshly he tastes the bright, metallic flash of blood against his tongue. It makes him keen, bucking his hips upwards into the tight grip of his fist.

And then a click, the sound somehow muffled yet heightened, his ears straining for the next– yes! Thank the merciful heavens, yes! The click of the second lock, and then the third, the jangle of keys, the click of a heeled boot against the wooden floor of the downstairs. Julian opens his mouth to call her name, but only a quiet whimper escapes, tongue clicking weakly against the roof of his mouth. 

The footsteps pause.

“Julian?” Her voice calls up the stairwell and Julian’s cock twitches with interest in spite of himself.

“Up –” his breath catches, panting as his hand flexes around himself. “Upstairs!” 

Please, his heart screams out at the same time.

It feels like a lifetime passes and no time passes all at once. The pounding of her feet on the stairs, the swish-clack of the bead curtain as she slams it to the side, hands already blazing with a crackling energy that makes every hair on his forearms stand on end.

And then she stops, taking in the sight of him no doubt. He can’t bring himself to look at her face, honestly afraid that if he sees her face he may spill again, there and then. He hears her make a quiet noise of confusion, the light and spark of her magic dulling, then fading away entirely. He hears the thump of her bag drop from her shoulders, whatever groceries and supplies she’d purchased rolling haphazardly across the floor.

“Oh –” she breathes, and takes a step forward. Julian keeps his eyes fixed on the wall behind her until he can’t bear it anymore and closes his eyes with yet another bitten-off whine. He feels the edge of the bed dip under her weight. “Is this? Gods, Julian, you frightened me. I thought something had happened to you!”

“S-something, ohhh, something hap – something certainly did happen,” Julian tries to laugh, the sheer hysterical absurdity of it all setting over him, mixing with his already cloudy thoughts. 

He feels her lean in like a weight across his body, even without her touch. Through the thin skin of his eyelids he sees the shadow of her hand reaching for his brow, and he jerks away, eyes flying open to see liquid blue eyes staring down at him, crinkled at the edges with concern.

“Don’t – don’t touch me,” he gasps. 

Please touch me, his brain cries.

Ignoring him, she crawls closer to hover at his side. “You’re not making any sense, Julian. Why can’t I touch you?”

He sucks in a deep breath through gritted teeth. Every muscle in his body screams, every joint feels like jelly. “D-dropped something. Downstairs. I – I don’t… what it was?”

Laurel’s brow furrows, her head shaking slightly before stopping, her eyes widening with surprise – then alarm. “The vial on the counter?” she asks.

Julian nods. “Broke it, tried to clean but… Must’ve, ah, breathed too much in?” He barks a laugh, brain floating and utterly weightless in his skull. “Should have been wearing a mask, eh?”

“Oh, oh my poor darling –” Laurel whispers, and places her hand gently on his forehead. Was he burning up? Her hand feels ice cold against his brow, a soothing balm. He nearly sobs. What he would do for that touch everywhere, for her lovely, perfect hands to quench the fire clearly raging away inside him.

“Why? Why would something do this?” he grits out, because even tormented like he is he has to know, wants to know, needs to know.

Laurel laughs, incredulous and startled. “Well, it’s not supposed to do this.”

They both glance down at his straining erection at the same time, still held in his loose, distracted grasp. Ever the showman, his damned cock, under their combined attention, bobs and aches anew with such force it steals the breath from his lungs. He bites at his bottom lip, chuckling, shaking his head all at once.

“Laurel, fix it? Can you? Fix it?”

Laurel blinks. “Fix it?”

“Laurel –”

“I – there is no antidote, Julian! It’s – it’s an aphrodisiac, a highly concentrated one! You’re not meant to – it just… needs to run its course. I don’t know what you want me to do!”

He meets her eyes, pleading, unable to speak the words but hoping that the look on his face – flushed, eager, pathetic – speaks for him.

“Laurel,” he sighs, shifting against the mattress, the sheets sweat soaked beneath him. He reaches for her with the hand unoccupied by his desperate, leaking cock, and places it over her knee. She covers his hand with her own immediately, instinctively. Then a sense of realization seems to settle over her, eyes widening once again, cheeks and neck flushing prettily.

“Oh, oh I – you’re certain?”

“Please,” he says, this time aloud.

Laurel chews her own lip, eyes darkening as the black of her irises overtake the grey, the lightest blues. 

“Yes, yeah, I – oh honey of course I can do that.“ She leans down, brushing his hair gently away from his face and kisses him, like some fairytale prince, meant to break the spell on him.

That isn’t how it works, much as he wishes it was, but the kiss is sweet – her mouth tasting familiar, faint like candied lemons. Her hair falls around him in a curtain as she deepens the kiss, tongue dipping between the seam of his lips. He opens for her eagerly, lips parting, tongue darting forward to meet her own. She moans, shivers, and he feels it travel through him all the way from their lips down to his cock, and once again he jerks and spills over his own hand.

Laurel breaks free of their kiss, looking wild-eyed. She glances back at his cock, then to his face again.

“Is that–?”

Julian grimaces, already feeling his sac swelling again, his cock – only gone half hard – once more rising to the occasion. “Didn’t help the first time,” he grunts, twitching in his own grasp.

“First time?” she asks, voice a low, hoarse whisper. He loves that voice, loves knowing that she only sounds like that for him, with him. “How many was that?”

“Only two, but – nngh –”

Laurel’s hand meets his thigh, creeping close to his swollen cock. Her fingertips trail through the pool of cooling spend on the crease of his thigh, and brings them to her lips. Julian chokes on a moan, wanton and desperate. Her smaller hand lays on top of his, fingers curling around the ones already curled around his cock and eases it away, replacing it entirely with her own.

“Once more, yeah? Just like this, I’ve got you now.”

Julian can only nod, the feel of her hand on his cock at last overwhelming and all-consuming. He had thought her touch would sate him, but it seems to only make him burn brighter, hotter. Perhaps instead of simply being smothered, he would flare, expand rapidly, and then collapse, like a dying star. That’s about how he felt, like the universe was shaking apart in and around him all at once.

She strokes him, using his own slick to ease her movements, thumb rolling over the head, under the glans with every upstroke. Julian cannot speak, he cannot see, his entire body, his soul, is concentrated into the apex of his hips where she pumps him. He cries out, voice breaking around her name as he comes for a third time in what could only be a half hour at most. It should be painful, but it isn’t. It is very nearly the most exquisite orgasm he has ever experienced, even if the thought makes him queasy.

Laurel shushes him through it, slowing her strokes until he has no more to spill, and then sits back, looking flush but satisfied.

“There, that should–”

Her voice trails off as once again, as every other time, Julian’s cock immediately begins to harden once more, his stomach twitching, his voice raising in a high pitched keen.

“Okay,” Laurel mutters, and begins to unbutton her blouse, pulling the hem free from her skirt. She eyes his cock with all the intensity of battle that he has ever seen in her. As though it were an adversary for whom she must calculate a plan of attack. She pulls her shirt up over her head, along with her breastband, leaving her topless in nothing but skirt and shoes. It should be comical, it would be comical, if she wasn’t the most beautiful sight he had ever laid eyes on. Her dusky pink nipples harden in the sudden coolness of the bedroom and Julian’s mouth waters to take them into his mouth.

Laurel sighs, and looks sidelong at him, apologetic.

“I get this feeling that this is going to be a long night.”

[weepylucifer]

Let’s Go in the Garden - Ch. 9

David gets a clue. Peter gets confused. Nightingale wins two fights, both on a technicality.

I had no promising leads yet on our missing magical object. At this point, this wasn’t all that surprising: there was a long list of potential contacts yet to call and visit, and the demi-monde was vast. A list had found its way into my hands of potential sellers of magical objects, left on my desk in the tech cave and written in a loopy hand that most assuredly wasn’t Nightingale’s. And even if - when - I found the person who’d sold Ms. Maxwell the crystal ball, that still didn’t necessarily have to leave me with any hints as to where the damned thing had gone.

I was going over the list of phone numbers, working my way through them slowly, when Beverley entered. You could sort of slightly see a tiny bump beneath her dress now. I had to contain myself from dropping to my knees in front of her and smushing my entire face against it.

“Babes,” she said, “We agreed no police stuff in my house, right?”

I put the list away. “Sorry.”

“Why aren’t you doing this at the Folly?” she asked.

I had to struggle not to roll my eyes or groan. “Because it’s unbearable in there.”

“Yeah?” Bev came to sit with me on the couch. “I would’ve thought they would be getting way less heat.”

A heat wave was threatening to eclipse London at present. And Beverley was right: usually, the Folly with its high-ceilinged rooms was cool in summer and bordering on unbearably arctic in winter. It was probably that now. If the air at the Folly felt so thick it practically suffocated you, it was for a metaphysical reason.

“It’s not the weather,” I explained, “It’s Nightingale and David. Something set them off again, and it feels worse than it’s ever been.”

Beverley flicked her hair back. It was still slightly damp from her morning dip in her river. “Aren’t you people supposed to be professionals?”

“You’d really think that,” I said.

The day before yesterday, I hadn’t seen David around the Folly at all. And then yesterday he’d been back, but somehow he had, in my absence, managed to fuck some nebulous something up on such a tremendous scale that Nightingale flat-out ignored him now. Which somehow managed to be worse than the constant arguing. At some point I’d brought him a cup of coffee down to the basement and asked him what was going on, and he’d looked at me with haunted, red-rimmed eyes, looking like he hadn’t gotten any sleep the previous night, and rambled something about, “I went too far, but then again, I went too far a while ago.” Then he’d muttered something about wings and Oberon being right, and closed the door in my face.

I’d gone and asked Nightingale what the deal was, and he’d only said, “I shan’t get into it right now” and asked me how my investigation was coming along. I would have greatly enjoyed a little more active participation from him, but I hadn’t said that.

But I couldn’t avoid the Folly just because I didn’t like the atmosphere there right now, not when I had work to do, and when there was a practice session scheduled in less than two hours. Bev was right, I couldn’t do this stuff at her place. So I went, and told myself I could still make a day of it. Maybe I could just hole up in the tech cave, work through my list of contacts and avoid all nonsense.

—-

I found Nightingale in the gym, where he was busily maltreating the punching bag. “Ah, Peter, very well,” he said, looking up as if he’d been waiting for me. “Would you like to join me for a bout?”

He had evidently been at it for a while, or at least long enough to work up a sweat. He was breathing a bit heavier than normal, and his hair looked darker at the nape. Some almost artfully tousled strands were stuck damply to his forehead. It didn’t actually look half bad, I had to say, objectively, of course.

Now, normally I’d probably object to any kind of intense workout in this kind of weather. But the basement was still quite cool, and we’d been going to practice anyway.

“Sure, I’ll have a go.” I picked up a spare pair of gloves.

Nightingale was holding back, I noticed a few minutes in. He blocked my jabs and my impello with his usual natural ease, but he was on the defense. It wasn’t at all like earlier, when I’d spotted him take unbridled swings at the punching bag, swings driven by a real, deep well of… something. He kept his shield up, in more ways than the literal, as if he was scared to take it too far, as if he would forget himself, haul off and hurt me. It made for a tension in the air that I didn’t like, and the match failed to really get going.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a motion by the door. It was David, maybe lured here from his lab down the hallway by the unusual noise. He entered quietly, and sat down on a bench across the room to watch. And, well, Nightingale didn’t tell him to leave (didn’t acknowledge his presence at all) so I didn’t see why I should raise attention to it.

I tried not to give myself any openings by glancing over at David, but I felt myself getting distracted wondering why he was here. I fumbled an impello and Nightingale sharply admonished me to focus - and then I spotted a hole in his defense because he had been stealing a look at David for himself. And this wasn’t the angry sort of glare I’d been expecting. This was… something more complicated, and at the same time incredibly simple. I’d seen this before, once, in the memory Molly had shared with me of Nightingale so many decades ago. The way he assured himself he had David’s eyes on him, the way he casually flicked a strand of hair out of his face as he got back to tenderizing me with his magic and fists. He was making sure his boyfriend was paying attention.

Suddenly and seethingly, I became aware of what a sight we had to make to an attentive gay guy on the bleachers. I don’t mean to brag, but I keep fit, and Nightingale was all lean muscle under that suit that he was currently, in a rare instance of dressing down, not wearing. And now that I was aware of it, I definitely saw how David watched with rapt attention, his eyes a little over-bright. And it wasn’t just Nightingale, I noticed. His eyes also caught on me.

I wasn’t sure at first, so I made a show of flexing my right arm, snuck a glance at David in my periphery, and… yep. Definitely checking me out.

It felt different, then. Knowing that every single move I made, every single breath I drew, every single bead of sweat was being observed in that way. It heightened my awareness of myself, of my body moving in this moment, of Nightingale opposite me, but it didn’t necessarily heighten my attention to the match. I was having to try hard to focus, to not keep looking back at David, to move purposefully and not just in a way that David might find appealing.

(And why the hell was that a consideration in the first place?)

In the past I would have blocked it out, and maybe approached him later with some phrase like “Hey man, not that I’m not flattered, but I don’t really swing that way” or something else inane like that. We all change and grow. It seemed like a dumb thing to do now. He wasn’t doing any harm by sitting there and watching. And besides, Nightingale for his part probably wanted him to.

It still felt weird, thinking of Nightingale as, well… wanting. That he’d had that potential all along.

(Why did I want to appeal to David? Another man’s boyfriend, if of somewhat uncertain standing? Plus, I really didn’t swing that way. Or at least if I swung that way, I’d never sat down and unpacked that. Plus, Beverley.)

At about this point, I caught an impello square in the chest and landed on my back on the mat in the beached-turtle-position. Nightingale was on me quick and, even as I struggled, held me down.

“Count him out, Davey,” he yelled across the room to Mellenby, who, suddenly acknowledged, jumped to his feet. (I sort of craned my head and peered over Nightingale’s shoulder to see him). Two spots of red had appeared on his cheeks.

“Oh! Um… t-ten… nine…”

I pushed to get free, but Nightingale wrestled me back down. We were very close. I could smell his sweat, his aftershave, I could see perspiration glisten below his collarbone. I could feel his breath on my skin, and the hair on my arms stood on end. He could, I knew that now, subdue me with his magic, but he didn’t. It was a complicated and ethically dicey forma. Much easier, I reckoned, to hold me down physically for the ten seconds.

But was it? I could see his arms straining. I was younger, in my physical prime, and I worked out fairly often. I wasn’t muscle-bound by any chance, but I’d been keeping up with my fitness plan more regularly, I thought, than Nightingale. Within the bounds of his magic, he was unparalleled, and this was something he knew and relied on. But purely physically…?

I heaved myself upward in one final attempt to break out of his grip.

Nightingale gave me a grin. Suddenly, he was even closer, his mouth very near my ear.

“He has a way of looking at a person, huh?” he whispered.

All the air went out of me at once, and with a splat, I landed back on the mat. “What?”

I felt Nightingale chuckle, the subtle vibration of it in his chest. We were… really very close, you see. He was warm upon me, which could have been nice, actually, if we didn’t have a heatwave going. “You noticed it.”

Equally quietly, barely moving my lips, I breathed, “How do you stand it?”

Nightingale moved off a little so that I could see his expression. His grin had slid over into wolfish at some point.

“Used to it,” he replied. “He’s been making eyes at me on the rugby pitch since I was fifteen. But I am not fifteen now, and,” He gave me a light, friendly punch to the shoulder, “Neither are you.”

“…three… two… one, you’re done,” David said. He announced it in the tone of someone bringing a message of great relief: finally, the sports event is over. We can move on with our intellectual lives.

But the sports event had only just begun.

Nightingale let go of me, straightened up and wiped his brow. I was winded, so I stayed lying down until a hand inched itself into my field of vision: Nightingale again, this time giving me a hand up. I took it and got to my feet.

“That,” I said, slowly getting my breath back, “was fighting dirty, sir.”

“I learned my fighting in the army, not the police.” Nightingale gave me a smirk that was way too self-satisfied. “Nice going,” he said to me, probably out of sportsmanship and politeness rather than respect for the feat of athleticism I had just displayed (haha). He spared a vague nod at David, seeming to want to go back to ignoring him. Boy, would my therapist have had a field day with the two of them.

That thought gave me an idea. “Why don’t you two duke it out?” I suggested. “Might clear the air in here.”

It was a testament to how much of the… human side of Nightingale I’d glimpsed lately, or maybe just how long I’d known him, that his withering glare didn’t make me shrivel up and sink into the floor right there. He was doing that to hide his feelings, he couldn’t fool me anymore.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said.

“I’m sure I’d learn a lot. See how it’s done on the advanced level.” Secretly, I was hoping for some awe-inspiring demonstration of higher-order magic - and, of course, that they might just figure out their problems through the medium of controlled violence. Bev had made me punch a tree, back when, and yeah, it had felt sort of cathartic, truth be told.

“David is in no fit state,” Nightingale said.

“I am perfectly able, Thomas,” David objected. “And there is no need to speak for me.”

“Are you certain?” Nightingale asked. “We don’t want you having a little episode of some kind.”

“I don’t think little episodes are a problem with me.”

“You cannot know that yet.”

David raised his chin. “Yes, actually, you’ll find I can,” he said. He said it quietly, but there was something in his voice that warned us not to piss him off right now. “Different people will react differently to similar stimuli. I’ve had enough time, I should think, to learn to gauge my own reactions.”

Nightingale shrugged. “Have it your way.”

“The cuffs come off, then?” David asked.

“For a limited time.”

David nodded and held his hands out as Nightingale approached him.

“Do they need true love’s kiss to open?” I asked. Not that I wanted to see them snog it out again. Why would I?

Nightingale threw me a peeved look. “Yes, very humorous, I’m sure.” He touched David’s wrists and muttered a few words. I could feel him building up a forma, but it all went too fast for me to decipher what it was. The cuffs fell off.

David stepped into the ring opposite Nightingale. They exchanged silent nods, and threw their shields up.

It whoomphed.

I felt something almost like a pressure wave, something that made my head throb and, bizarrely, my teeth ache, as if someone was clamping my head into a vice. These were heavy-duty shields, such as I’d never seen Nightingale use outside of the few scrapes we’d had with Chorley and Lesley, and maybe not even then. These made riot gear look flimsy.

Nightingale’s felt like solid metal armour-plates, a weight upon the world, making the air around it hum. (I noticed he crooked his non-dominant arm a little, as though he was holding an actual shield.) I thought that if I squinted, I would almost see the contours of it. David’s shield felt different, flowing, liquid. More… abstract, somehow. Almost like a water bubble encasing him, ready to flow exactly where it was needed at a second’s notice to stave off any attacks.

“This is your… modified shield spell,” Nightingale remarked, in the same tone of voice he used when I experimented with tweaking formae he thought I rather should’t. He had sounded exactly like this when I’d come up with the skin grenade.

“Yes?” David sounded defensive. “It ensures a faster response time.”

“You don’t need a faster response time if you’re properly covered.”

David sighed through his nose. “I work with what I have, Thomas, not with what you have.” It had the sound of a tired reminder to it.

Were they going to get a move on, I wondered, or stand here and bicker forever?

Then David launched the first attack.

I hadn’t expected David to open fire, but he did. And these weren’t harmless little impellos meant to repel the opponent a bit. He threw a round of fireballs with no hesitation, and I thought he’d really lost control of himself, but Nightingale blocked them without so much as flinching. They splattered against his shield and, with a twist of his hand, he sent them back, where David’s modified shield… subsumed them. Apparently this was expected.

I suddenly remembered all kinds of stories about soldiers playing catch with live grenades and the like, things I’d thought were stupid jokes. I could vividly picture the two of them throwing a grenade back and forth between them now, bouncing it off their shields.

Nightingale retaliated with a shower of ice shards, something he’d learned, I recognized, from Varvara.

“Ah, thank goodness for Ivan,” David said as he dismissed them with a flick of his hand. They veered off sharply and bored into the wall a lot closer to me than I appreciated, making me duck.

David scrutinized the room for a split-second, eyes catching on the gym equipment. There was a lot of it about, monkey bars and the like, that no one ever used, both Nightingale and myself preferring the firing range or a turn at the punching bag. With a wave, David wrenched a massive metal bar free, about as thick as his forearm and as long as he was tall, and launched it, without wincing, without blinking, like a spear at his boyfriend.

It stuck in Nightingale’s shield, suspended in midair, the tip inches away from his face. He grinned a jagged grin. “Phallic imagery. Love it.”

Clanging loudly, the bar hit the ground. And then Nightingale threw the punching bag.

“Hey!” I yelled. “I bought that!” No one heard me. I considered ducking behind something, but behind what? Nothing seemed safe. It would’ve been wisest to get out of there, but I couldn’t. I was mesmerized.

David stopped the punching bag in midair and chucked it against the wall, and I swear the impact made the room rattle. Flakes of ancient paint rained from the ceiling. They both, with an identical gesture, zipped their shields upwards for a split-second to avert debris from above and clear their fields of vision. Most likely a reflex from the war.

David cast a twisty forma I’d never yet encountered before and threw something at Nightingale’s feet, something that glistened, something long and thin and silvery like a trip-wire. Nightingale evaded it easily, but while he was distracted with it for a moment, not paying attention to his shield, David stepped forward and swung his fist.

It was a good thing he’d put the gloves on, because he landed a solid blow to Nightingale’s jaw. Nightingale caught his fist on the next upswing and, magic forgotten for the moment, they simply struggled against each other for physical dominance. It was not a sexy kind of struggle. There were glares and exposed teeth and sweat and grunts of effort. It was all very masculine, and not sexy at all. A bead of sweat dripped from Nightingale’s hair into his eyes and got caught in his lashes. David snarled as they held each other in deadlock. If my crotch felt… tight, it was a simple pants malfunction, nothing more.

Then Nightingale remembered he had magic, and tried to chuck a dumbbell at David’s head.

David’s shield flowed back up within the blink of an eye, condensing where it was most needed. It repelled the foreign object,  which bounced noisily across the floor with the force of impact as David grabbed Nightingale and attempted to wrestle him onto the mat.

Being wrestled to the ground by a hand on his waist and another on his shoulder was apparently a tad too intimate for my guv’nor’s taste as he threw his own shield back up in full force which, in turn, repelled David. David rolled himself off and, still with a snarl, threw an impello the size and force of an anti-tank missile against Nightingale’s shield, but Nightingale stood his ground.

And then he simply remained standing and increased power to his shield by increments as David chucked everything he had at it. He built up formae that were modified in such unorthodox ways as I’d never seen, and the results were… mean, spells designed to be nasty, put on the earth to cause the maximum amount of damage, of pain, and suddenly I realized that they were recreating here, in a safe environment, things they had done on actual battlefields, to people other than each other, people who hadn’t known how to block them within seconds, people now very brutally dead. I couldn’t suppress the chill I felt.

But David wasn’t going to bounce things off of Nightingale’s shield forever. His next spell was something that stuck, and Nightingale’s shield began to fizzle, crackle and sputter… out.

A shield-breaking spell? Why had I never learned that that existed?

There seemed to be only one thing for Nightingale to do. He’d have to extinguish his shield and cast a new one, which would leave him unprotected for a moment, all the time a skilled opponent would need. When the shield went down, David’s fist already jabbed through the opening - only to be instantly encased in a solid, invisible barrier when the new shield suddenly clamped around it.

The sudden tableau stood in silence.

“Too slow,” Nightingale breathed, panting slightly with the exertion. “Now you’re dead.”

“Fuck yourself.” David muttered some doubtlessly choice curses in what I thought to be Yiddish as he tried to pull his arm free. “Go fuck yourself! Why won’t you just let - me - inside!”

Nightingale suddenly released him, and he stumbled a few steps backwards. Nightingale smirked, in a way I’ve never hoped to see Nightingale smirk. This wasn’t that mischievous grin he sometimes got that made him look all boyish. This was a vicious, ugly thing. “The dead don’t talk, Davey.”

David let out a wordless cry of frustration. He swung again, smashed his fist against Nightingale’s shield, where it connected without any effect, and did it again, and again, and again. His hands were scrabbling at the smooth surface, feverishly clutching for any purchase at all, never attaining it.

“Just! Let! Me! In!”

“That’s simply not how it works, David.”

I was beginning to think there were undertones at play here, that maybe this was about more than the imminent fight. On the other side of the barrier, Nightingale stared down at David motionlessly, his face a mask, his grey eyes shuttered. I thought this was going to drag on forever, that this was simply never going to end.

But then suddenly, David stopped, and took a step back, and, more horrible than any of his attacks, then David slumped.

“I give.”

And the mask cracked. Right down the middle, like his shield had cracked before.

“What?” Nightingale asked. His voice was little more than breath.

David took two steps back. His eyes were fixed on the floor, shining with humiliation and the onset of tears. “I give. You win. You’ve made your point. Put the cuffs back on me. It’s no use.”

“What?” Nightingale said again, more sharply, taking a step forward - and stopping.

“I’m sorry…” David trailed off and took his gloves off. He let them fall to the ground where he stood. His knuckles were bloody. “You’re right. It’s never… going to be alright again, is it? There’s nothing I can do now.”

Slowly, like a boxer retreating from a match lost, David walked away towards the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in my room, catching up on some rest.”

And with that he left.

Like someone in a horror movie turning to face the monster, I turned to look at Nightingale. He was staring at David’s retreating back, his face filled with pure disbelief that this was happening. “But… you can’t just…”

The door fell closed.

“…stop trying.”

David was gone.

A minute-long horrible, empty silence elapsed. I couldn’t look at Nightingale during that silence, so I turned my back and I stared at the door. If I were different and he were someone else, I might have gone to him. Tried to do something. Put a hand on his shoulder, maybe. I sure as hell considered it. But I didn’t: I turned my back and I stared at the door.

“Sir,” I eventually said.

He exhaled audibly behind me. Somehow, this told me that it was safe to look again now.

Nightingale was peering around the gym, taking in the destruction he and David had wrought. Discarded equipment that had been used as weaponry was strewn everywhere. The punching bag had ripped open on impact with the wall and was now leaking stuffing. Most surfaces were covered in a fine layer of ceiling dust.

“Well, Molly will be overjoyed,” Nightingale muttered. He turned back towards the door, where David had disappeared to, and suddenly I got scared, like I hadn’t gotten scared throughout watching the whole fight, because Nightingale looked lost.

Nightingale could look many things, but lost?

“I… suppose I should…” Go after him, was how that sentence usually ended. But I could see he wasn’t equipped to right now. I still had no idea what was going on between them anyway, and therefore couldn’t tell what solution I should ride for. Go settle it now? Take some time and space? Dump him, gurl? And since when was I the expert on that sort of thing, anyway?

“Guess I’ll go back up to my list,” I said, backing myself out of this. “Someone should probably investigate the crime here.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” As he spoke, Nightingale was gathering himself back together, like he was picking up pieces of his resolve from all over and pulling them back close to him. It was a remarkable thing he did. “You said there were… strange vestigia at the crime scene?”

“Very strange,” I said. “I couldn’t really place them, and neither could… David.”

I gestured to the door as I said his name, then noticed and quickly stopped myself. Nightingale’s eyes followed my gesture, and for a moment, emotion flooded back into his face: the disorientation, the shock, the… longing. But he got himself back under control.

“Perhaps we should both go and check on that, to be sure,” Nightingale said. “Before they fade.”

I was surprised, but only for a moment. And who was I to tell my boss how to deal? And I had wanted help with the case.

This I could offer him: distraction.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He looked down on his endearingly old-fashioned gym attire. “Let me freshen up and change into something more appropriate, and we’ll be on our way,” he said.

—-

Nightingale drove us; apparently he was eager to demonstrate sole ownership of the Jag again. He’d come down in a fresh suit and a pair of sunglasses that had been all the rage in… probably the 40s and had since circled back into fashion. It was very bright out, so I didn’t question this, and especially didn’t try to look at his eyes.

Halfway to our crime scene, even he had to make admissions to the heat and peel out of his jacket. “Really is hot out,” he said and loosened his tie and undid his top button and I wondered if the end of times was really to come.

The doorway to the backstage was opened to us by a man dressed in glittering corsetry, heels, tights and a wig. He took one look at Nightingale and said, “Sorry, hon, I already have an understudy.”

“No, we’re from the police,” I hurried to clarify, showing the man my identification. “We’re here about the murder.”

“Oh.” The man looked sheepish, scratching his head under the wig. “Oh, yeah, poor Deirdre. Come right on in.”

I led the way, wanting to examine the props department, Ms. Watley’s dressing room and the stage again.

“That lipstick is extraordinarily well-suited to your complexion,” I heard Nightingale tell the actor behind me. “Incidentally, are you free later? Oh, and I’m Thomas.”

He was going to kill me with all this someday.

But hey, again, who was I to tell my boss how to deal?

“Roger,” the actor replied. “That is to say, my name is Roger, and I am free later.”

“Splendid. Hold on a second, I do hope I brought my phone along…”

“I’ll just write down my number somewhere. Let’s step over to my dressing room and find a pen and paper, yeah? Loving the suit and cane, by the way. Very classy, though a bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

Nightingale didn’t explain that the cane was his wizard staff that held supernatural power. He said, “But it worked, did it not?”

They dipped on over into a dressing room labelled “Roger Cartwright” and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Seemed like it was on me again.

The props department was empty; apparently they hadn’t found a replacement for Ms. Maxwell yet. Forensics had been and gone, and the room had been cleaned up since. Then again, they hadn’t been looking for what I was looking for.

I started scanning the shelves and opening closets, but found nothing that looked like our errant crystal ball. But at one point, on a shelf in a closet at the very back of the room, there was a suspiciously empty space - I ran my fingers over the wood and felt, very faintly, the vestigia I had felt on the corpse: something smooth, round, made of glass, and a sudden stab of greed.

Behind me, a door opened and closed and Nightingale entered. “Pardon me,” he said. “Quite the engaging conversationalist, that Mr. Cartwright.”

“Got some lipstick right there, sir,” I said, gesturing at his collar.

He didn’t even have the common decency to blush. Not a muscle in his face twitched. “Found anything yet?” he asked me.

“Not the vestigia I was looking for,” I told him, “but our murder weapon was definitely here. See?”

I made room for him to examine the spot for himself. Owing to the narrow space, he passed very close by me, and I could smell the actor’s somewhat loud cologne on him. I couldn’t even say why that annoyed me so much. It wasn’t like I’d never gotten… involved with people connected to a case, even, on one memorable occasion, the perp herself. Roger Cartwright wasn’t even on our list of suspects. So then why did I feel all peeved about it? Maybe it was the vestigia having some kind of aftereffect. Maybe it just seemed inappropriate, this soon on the wake of the huge blowout with David.

Nightingale affirmed that yes, the murder weapon had been here. So Ms. Maxwell had bought it, most likely from someone on the goblin market or somebody affiliated, and had brought it here. And then… she’d been murdered?

Why? And why had she taken the damned thing here, and not to her flat to serve as a set-piece in her fortune-telling setup?

Next, we went up on stage again. There wasn’t currently a rehearsal on, so both the stage and auditorium seemed very large and empty. Yes, I knew that there were actors, technicians, and generally all sorts of theater people milling about the building, like Nightingale’s new friend, but out here, you could forget that fact. The set was still up for the scene they’d either last rehearsed or were planning to rehearse next: an elevated, throne-like chair, a banner behind it that said “WELCOME, TRANSYLVANIANS”. I didn’t remember enough of the musical they were putting on here to know what any of that meant. Maybe it was a play about vampires.

A single stage-light had been left on. Weird.

I pointed this out to Nightingale, who explained that this was a sort of superstition among theatre folks. “They generally leave a light on at all times. For the theatre ghost.”

“And does this place have a ghost?” I wondered.

“I wouldn’t know, but it’s very likely.” Nightingale smiled slightly. “Every theatre worth its salt has a ghost.”

“No one here told us about any hauntings.”

“But have we asked?”

Just then, as if on cue, the strange vestigia flooded back.

For a moment I felt it all again, the heady mix of exhilaration and stage fright, the greasepaint and scratchy, weird-smelling costumes, the glare of the stage lights and the murmur of the audience, a million billion trillion lines rehearsed and recited, the applause and, at last, the bows before the crowd, the stresses and fears and utter joys of being an actor on a stage.

And the theatre ghost stepped out from behind the curtain.

It was a slight figure, smaller than me or Nightingale, in a dark tailcoat and a white mask. The mask brought back memories, and I shuddered.

You have to leave, said the ghost. They didn’t say it in words so much as... project it. I couldn’t have said how their voice sounded, if it seemed male or female, or anything like that.

The wave of vestigia was so strong, the order so vehement, I felt myself almost start towards the exit. Nightingale gripped his staff tighter.

“We are investigating a murder that took place here,” he said. “May we ask you a couple of questions, sir or ma’am,” and, after an almost imperceptible break, “…or other?”

You must go, said the ghost, even more intently. This place is not safe.

The cloud of vestigia swelled again, eclipsing me, urging me to comply. I spun around and would have run for the exit had Nightingale not grabbed my arm and held me in place.

“Stay,” he whispered to me. “We shan’t let this person or entity intimidate us.”

He straightened his back, and turned and faced down the ghost.

The ghost looked at him.

Were there eyes behind the mask? It was hard to discern. I was seeing this figure as if through a thick fog - fog machine, yes. Another staple of theatre. I could smell it now too, amidst the vestigia, that dry, musty fog-machine-scent. They’d likely have one here, for dramatic entrances and death scenes and the like.

What are you, said the ghost. And suddenly there was something in their “voice”, a tinge of… uncertainty.

Nightingale raised his warrant card. “DCI Thomas Nightingale, Russell Square. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Folly before?”

Are you

like

me?

“Pardon?” Nightingale asked.

And we were alone on stage again.

“What… the fuck was that?” I looked around the stage, peered behind the curtain, and found nothing. “Where did they go?”

“Interesting,” Nightingale said. He was doing that unflappable thing again. “They seem to have their own Phantom here. It’s almost a bit gauche.”

I stared a bit. “Gauche, sir?”

“Well.” He shrugged. “It is at the very least not all that threatening, seeing as we were able to withstand it with relative ease.” He seemed to want to flatter me by including me in that, considering I had almost given in to the ghost’s orders.

“What is it?” I asked. “Some kind of… genius loci of this house? A… spirit of theatre?”

“Perhaps,” Nightingale said. “Maybe something not nearly as strong as that. Maybe just a fae with a very specific glamour.”

I nodded. Of course, the strange sensations I had felt just now, and already once before, had to be someone’s glamour. But the truly weird thing about the ghost struck me as…

“They kept telling us to leave,” I said.

“There is likely something here that someone doesn’t want us to know about.”

“Maybe it’s that,” I said. It hadn’t sounded much like that. Or maybe it had, but there’d also been something else. It’s not safe here, the ghost had told us. Like they wanted to... warn us. Like they didn’t want us to get hurt.

—-

Back at the Folly, I did what I should have been doing all along, I sent a text to Zach Palmer asking for his help with digging up any person selling actual magical crystal balls on the goblin market. There was always a small but significant overlap between the various esoteric subcultures and the demi-monde.

I wanted to head home and spend the evening with Bev, but before wrapping up and heading her way, something compelled me to troop to David’s room. He’d looked beat earlier today, and I wanted to check in on him, and maybe gain some insight into what the hell the newest conflict was.

David answered the door after my first knock. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

It occurred to me that if he’d been waiting - wishing -  for someone to knock on his door, it had most likely not been me.

“Yeah, sorry. Has, um… Nightingale been by?”

David sniffled. “Briefly.” He showed me his hands, and I didn’t get it at first, but then I spotted the inhibitor cuffs, back on his wrists.

He’d said he’d rest, but he looked knackered. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, his curls springing every which way.

“What happened?” I asked. “I mean… earlier, that was… well. That was something.”

“I’m not sure what to tell you. Thomas is…” David sighed. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“That sucks,” I said eloquently.

“Yes, well. Thank you for asking.” I thought for a second he’d close the door in my face and go on moping in his room by himself, but then he said, “You know, I need to get out of here. Will you accompany me for a walk?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

We took a walk around the square. Molly spotted us leaving the Folly and hovered with Toby’s leash, so we took Toby along. Nobody seemed to have thought to walk him yet today, and he was enthusiastic.

“You know, I hear this used to be a good cruising ground a little while ago,” I told David. “For gay folks, I mean.”

David chortled. “Figures,” he said, “With Thomas being master of the Folly.” He didn’t deign to elaborate.

“We don’t really say ‘master’ anymore,” I said, which David received with a distracted nod. He seemed to have too much on his mind to inquire after that.

“So, what’s going on now?” I asked again. “I really thought you guys were… getting over things.”

David stuffed his hands into his pockets, looking morose. “The problem goes much deeper than I had expected,” he said. “If it were only the war, we would’ve settled it by now. We had… an understanding between us regarding the realities of the war. But it’s more than that. Thomas is… determined not to let me get too close to him again, and I’m beginning to feel like there’s nothing I can do. That this… will be the state of things forever.”

“If it’s not the war,” I asked, “what is it?”

David kicked a pebble across the pavement. Toby tried to fetch, and I had to hold him back. “Thomas has been alone for a long, long time,” David began, “Well, alone except for Molly. Molly’s splendid, but she’s not one for conversation. She’s apparently the only friend Thomas has had since 1945. He’s… forgotten how it is to have people, I think.”

“That really sucks,” I said again - exceedingly helpful, I know.

“He’s had to keep… everything close to his chest, I reckon.” David chewed his lower lip, apparently unsure how to best phrase his thoughts. I didn’t really know what to do with what he was telling me, what to focus on, what to think, how to react. So I ended up looking at his mouth.

“And he muddled along like that, somehow, and he’s… well, he’s out and about, he does things, I reckon he functions well that way. Or well enough. He doesn’t seem to want to… endanger this functional state by revisiting things from the past. I am… a thing from the past.”

“Nightingale’s not the vulnerable type.” I said this impulsively, without really thinking.

“He might begin to be,” David surmised. “If he had somebody near who broke down certain barriers. A lover, par exemple.” He bit his lip again. “Much responsibility rests on him now. Perhaps it’s best not to rock the boat.”

He looked miserable as he said that. I called Toby to heel, and David squatted briefly to pet him. Small, furry animals: invaluable in any crisis. Even annoying ones like Toby.

“Good boy,” David muttered. Toby wagged and tried to clamber up him with the verve of small dogs everywhere.

“Hey listen,” I said, “you’re not thinking of doing anything… stupid, are you?”

David looked up. “What, to the dog?”

“No,” I said. “Not to the dog.”

“Oh, you mean… that.” David got up and wiped his hands on his trousers. “I don’t think… not anymore. It seems an extreme sort of step.”

I nodded, and still resolved to keep an eye on him.

“You know, at first I thought… when I first saw you, I thought you were it. Thomas’ person. My replacement, I suppose. I know better now, but… goodness but I almost wish you were. It would be… well, it would certainly have been better than nothing at all.”

“High praise,” I said laconically. “But no, I’m really… not. Never been. I mean, I’m straight. That is, I’m probably mostly straight.” God, what was I saying? “I’m just, things are great with Bev. We’ve got a kid on the way.”

“Congratulations,” David said. Somehow it lacked sincerity. “Thomas and I used to joke between us that men like us get puppies, not children.” He stroked Toby’s head again. “Eh, my sweet boy?”

I nodded vaguely, barely hearing him. Because frankly up until now I had been coasting, swept along by all kinds of recent events. And… well… a child. My son or daughter (it was much too early to tell yet). I was sure that Beverley would get on swimmingly (hah), she had it all planned out. She’d start university again after taking a six-week leave, she’d take the baby to classes with her and get her degree with a kid on her arm, a high-powered career mom who still found time to heap love and support on her little sunshine and have her scheduled me-time on the weekends, and she’d do her river duties on the side. But I? Me?

I had no idea if I’d make a good dad. I mean, I was pretty sure I’d stay on top of changing diapers and the like. But later? When the kid was a bit older? Could I be supportive and present, patient and reliable in a crisis? I was leading a dangerous life out here. Most of the time I was busy with my job and apprenticeship. Police work and magic were time-consuming pastimes. But, and I’d felt this viscerally during the time I’d been suspended for the Chorley debacle, quitting would… well… quitting would make me feel as if…

…quitting was not an option.

I was still thinking of it - him or her - them - in the abstract, I realized, as ‘the kid’. They would have a name. They would have a personality. They would need me to be there.

I felt something touching my face, and jolted back to the present moment. It was David, gently tilting my chin down to meet his eyes.

“Hey,” he said lowly. “Where did you go?”

“Sorry.” Apparently the supportive walk for David had turned into me panicking by the side of the road. “It’s just… it’s nothing.”

I couldn’t unload this on him right now. He’d talked about having children with such an undertone of yearning. It hadn’t been possible for him back in the day, and I couldn’t see Nightingale adopting in the present, either. Men like them had been deemed dangerous to children, way back when, just by… existing. So he’d gotten all these apprentices to fill the gap, and Nightingale had had his young soldiers, and then they’d lost them all at Ettersberg, and at last lost each other.

“Hey,” David murmured. He still cupped my chin in his hand. It seemed… weird, but good-weird. I didn’t move away.

“You said I could kiss people on the street now,” David said. “I still haven’t gotten to.”

My eyes slid down from his eyes to his mouth again. “Yeah.”

“This is a street,” he stated.

And reader, I wouldn’t say his lips didn’t look… inviting.

He leaned in. I didn’t lean away.

For a moment, we hovered.

“Nah, we can’t do this,” I said, and tooka step back, breaking whatever had just possessed us. I laughed a little. “Um, not that I’d hate to. But, um, Bev, you know.”

“Heh. Quite.” David withdrew. He’d reddened a bit.

“And for you… I mean… it shouldn’t be me, right? Should be Nightingale.”

David saddened again. “I’m not sure that it will be.”

I patted his shoulder. “Hey, buck up. He’ll come to.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Toby tugged on his leash, making known to us that he’d quite like to head back to the Folly now.

“I’ll take him,” David said. “You go home and see your girl.”

That threw me a little. He had just tried to kiss me, hadn’t he? “Ah, what?”

He gave me a crooked smile. “It’s fine. I’ve known your type of men. You must go see your girlfriend, affirm certain things. Go on, I’ll be alright. Try not to think of me and Thomas when you make love to her. I hear It helps.”

I went home to Bev with my head reeling.

[dc-x-readers]

Protect (Zatanna Zatara x Reader)

Request from @freedomfighterposts Request to have a Zatanna x fem reader where Zatanna wants to practise more of her physical abilities and seeks out reader who trains people like Jason Todd to help train her. Zatanna gets enamoured by readers sweaty, glistening abs and muscles and acts very submissive to reader but then Z uses magic to impress reader into getting a fancy date which reader isnt the most comfortable with where its zatannas turn to act dominant.

I am aware that Zatanna was a part of the original group for Young Justice, but I have decided to ignore that for the sake of this story. In this Imagine Zatanna joined Young Justice around the time Donna Troy did. I got a little carried away with this one. Sorry

You lived your life by two rules: Keep moving, and don’t get killed. They seemed to be simple rules, but somehow they consumed your entire life.

You had been a nomad of sorts since you turned fifteen, moving from place to place just long enough so that you could survive. That all changed when you met a half feral Jason Todd. He was scared, strong and angry, just arising from the Lazurus pit, and you felt pity. So you taught him how to fight, and how to kill, his previous mentor had done a good job with defensive techniques, but Jason had been sorely lacking on the offensive.

When Jason announced he was going home, you went with him. Because why the hell not? You had already been in one place too long, and you liked Jason, he was like a little brother.

In Gotham, after the whole debacle with Jason and his father, Jason introduced you to the Batman. Jason said you were the best trainer out there, and Batman didn’t believe it.

Batman asked to spar with you, no weapons, just one on one. You knew Batman was strong, he was an inch or two taller than Jason, who towered over you, and he was seemingly built with all muscles. Besides that he had experience. But you agreed, because Jason wanted this, and you would do anything for the stupid boy.

You and Batman circled each other, your fists raised to fight. He attacked first, coming at you with a powerful swing. You planted yourself to look as if you were going to block the move, but at the last second circled away. Batman stumbled forward slightly, but he turned quickly with a kick to you gut. It knocked you back, but you countered with three rapid punches.

The fight went on for fifteen minutes, before Batman finally knocked you down. You were both sweaty and tired.

From beneath his cowl you saw Batman grin slightly, he had won, but you had put up one hell of a fight. Almost his equal in the match.

“If you want Y/N.” Batman said, “I have a job for you.”

And you did want, because it let you be close to your chosen brother. Batman appointed you the trainer of Young Justice, a group of teenage heroes. And your first lesson would be the following day.

You arrived in Mount Justice about a half hour early, Jason by your side. He was no longer a member of the little sidekick group, but he wanted to be here with you on your first day. You didn’t tell him you were grateful, but he knew.

He knew you weren’t the best with social interactions, a side effect of living on the road for so long, connections were hard for you to make. Jason being here was his way of supporting you.

The Young Justice members came into the room, most one time, a few moments late.

“To start I want to train one on one with each of you. Five minutes sparring with me, see where you are all at. And no use of powers, I want to see your innate ability.” You stated, and began to pull your shirt over your head, leaving you in a sports bra.

You shirt covered you face when you heard running footsteps, the a voice breathlessly saying, “Sorry that I’m…”

The girl trailed off, and you threw your shirt to the side seeing a youn g woman with long black hair and a ridiculous costume. She was staring at you with a slack jaw and wide eyes.

“Late.” You supplied.

The girl nodded twice, still silent her mouth still hanging open. You turned away, uncomfortable with her stare, but from the corner of your eye you saw a girl nudge her in the ribs.

You called forward the members of the team one at a time to fight.

First was Donna Troy. She had lots of power, but relied too heavily on her strength.

Next was Tim Drake. His moves were calculated and with quick precision, but he had the same problem that Jason had when he started. He was inept at offensive fighting.

And it went on until it was time for Zatanna, the girl who had stared at you. She shuffled to the center of the ring, her get up was terrible for fighting. Tights, High Heels, and at tuxedo jacket?

She wasn’t as bad as you thought she would be, which wasn’t saying much. She was able to spin kick, and do acrobatic flips, but she wasn’t able to really fight.

When all the sidekicks were done fighting, and Jason was done snickering at their attempts, you clapped you hands together once. You looked at each of them, they were all woefully untrained, and those with special abilities relied too heavily on them.

“You all did okay, but we have a lot of work to do.” You stated. “I’m going to make a schedule for training, and if any of you need just sign up for more.”

Most of the kids groaned, but you gave them a glare which shut them up.

The schedule was posted at the end of the day, most people were only one two to three times a week, but those who needed extra help, like Beast Boy and Zatanna were on the schedule five times.

Training was easy, you had been fighting your entire life, and you picked up new moves easily. You also learned the best ways to avoid injuries. So passing on your knowledge seemed fair.

You came to enjoy your daily spars, you liked fighting with Tim the best. He was quiet and took instructions well, never trying to talk with you unless to ask relevant questions. The same could not be said for the rest of your students. They all wanted to know your history and your life story, usually if you glared at them extra hard the line of questioning for the day would be done.

Zatanna however was different, she seemed quiet when she was with you, her eyes were always wide as she stared at you. When you put your hands on her to correct her posture sometimes she would jump, or flinch. You wondered what you did to this girl, and why she was so afraid of you, especially because you knew she was rather talkative with the rest of her peers.

It was your twelfth training session with Zatanna and her progress was incredibly slow. All of your other students were showing marked improvements, but Zatanna was showing nothing.

At the end of your session you looked her up and down. She was sitting on the bench, exhausted, drinking for a bottle of water, clearly she was working hard, but nothing was clicking for her.

“Zatanna.” You said, she looked up at the sound of your voice, her eyes met yours then turned away quickly. You gracefully chose to ignore that. “Next time we work together wear gym clothes, not… that.”

And for the first time since you met her you saw Zatanna bristle with emotions. Usually around you she was shy and guarded, but suddenly she looked frustrated.

“Why? What’s wrong with my uniform?” She asked defensively.

Uniform, so that’s what she called her get up.

“It’s not good for hand to hand combat, too many moving parts, and high heels.” You repled, leaning down to get a sip of water yourself.

“I don’t understand why I even need to learn this stuff.” Zatanna spoke angrily, her tone was sharp, “I have my magic. It’s all I need.”

“And if your magic fails, if someone takes it away?” You asked coldly, and you saw Zatanna open her mouth, about to mount another defense, but you continued. “What if you’re up against an enemy who is evenly matched in power. You need other skills to survive as a hero.”

You turned around an stormed out of the room, not giving  the girl a chance to respond. But the next time you trained with Zatanna, she was wearing gym clothes, and you smiled.

Zatanna’s progress was still slow, but she was doing better then before. She was still shy, an blushed whenever you gave her slight contact. It was after a particularly rough session that you finally asked.

Normally you wouldn’t pry into your student’s social life, because you didn’t want them to ask about yours, but she was different. She seemed afraid of you, and that was off-putting.

“Do I make you uncomfortable?” You asked as she sipped from her waterbottle.

Zatanna almost choked, her eyes darted to you, then back to her drink, “Of course you make me uncomfortable, I mean your so hot. And all controlling, and you have glistening sweating abs, and your biceps. And oh God, I just said this all out loud.”

You stared at Zatanna shocked, people generally didn’t like you, you were stony and hard to get along with.

Zatanna looked at you, her face was a deep red by now, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” You asked dumbly.

“I made you uncomfortable didn’t I?” Zatanna sighed, “I really need to learn how to filter.”

You sat down next to Zatanna, she was looking down at her hands rather upset. You felt a pang in your chest, you didn’t like seeing her like this. So sad and worried.

“You didn’t make me uncomfortable.” You lied. She did make you uncomfortable, but it wasn’t really because she had feelings for you, it was more because most people made you uncomfortable. You had kept everyone at an arms length before Jason, and it was hard to let anyone in now.

Zatanna looked up with a soft smile, “Really?”

“Really.” You confirmed.

You stood up, readying yourself to pack up your things. But Zatanna said something that shocked you, “Would you go, I mean would you like to go on a date with me?”

You stared at her unsure what to say, you had never been asked out before. Zatanna seemed crestfallen at your look, so you quickly smiled, not liking to see her upset.

“Sure.”

The night of your big date with Jason you were pacing in your apartment. Jason was laughing as you nervously checked your hair and reapplied make-up.

“Just be yourself.” Jason said rather unhelpfully.

“Shut up!” You shot back, making him laugh more.

You had changed your outfit three times before Zatanna knocked on your door. She arrived looking gorgeous, a well tailored suit jacket and slacks, with no shirt beneath. You could see her pale skin, and your heart fluttered at the idea.

“Come on, the restaurant is waiting.” Zatanna said with a large smile.

You smiled nervously, and nodded, following her out to the car. Jason called out behind the two of you, something about not doing anything he would do. You blushed harder.

Zatanna lead you to a glossy and sleek black car, opening the door for you. It was strange that she was so confident on this date and you were so nervous, it was as if you personalities had switched.

The restaurant was really nice, you and Zatanna had a low lit booth in the corner.

You opened your mouth, but unsure what to say you closed it again.

“Are you nervous?” Zatanna asked playfully.

“A little.” Was your honest answer. Zatanna’s smile grew wide at the news. She looked so pretty in the here.

“Wow, I thought you were super alpha female, not scared of anything.” Zatanna smirked, “It’s good to know that I am aloud to be more dominant in this relationship.”

You didn’t really know what Zatanna was talking about, but when she smiled at you everything felt safer. She talked to you the whole night, and you actually enjoyed your time.

As much as you physically protected her, teaching her to fight and all, she seemed to emotionally protect you.