#worst take of all fucking time I am frothing at the mouth with rage about it

[asteria-argo]

if I see one more post on ANY site calling a male character "female coded" I will be walking directly into the woods to become an eldritch monster that eats the curious and the wayward

[servingrobin]

Hi Boa! I read your favorite position with monster trio and Law if i am correct. So i was wondering what if reader would be fucking Law stand up, pinned against the wall. Male reader, female reader, go ahead. Maybe Law tease them all day or just pent up. And it was worsen with Law bratty behaviour, so they ended up having sex. Suit yourself about the punishment and etc. Be wild and take good care of yourself.

Ahhh super fun I like this 😝

Trafalgar D Law/ set on the polar tang

Warnings: brat!reader, fem reader, rough handling, semi-public, slight humiliation, dirty talk, spitting

✨requests open✨

It had been a long day. You had several ship duties to attend to, you were running out of clean clothes, every member of the crew seemed to be trying to personally annoy you, and worst of all - Law was making it his mission to tease you to death.

It started in the early morning, his soft lingering touches brushing against your sleepy thigh as you curled into him, sleep still crusted in your eyes. Law skated around your whole body with whispered touches, circling your most sensitive points and sending your every downy hair on your body on edge. Once Law saw your eyelashes fluttering to electrified awakening he stopped his ministrations, planting a soft kiss on your lips and scooting out of bed to get started with the day.

His morning teasing had left you on edge in all ways, and you were snippy with the rest of the crew because of it. It didn’t help that it was fully one of those days where everything was going wrong. The washing rota had been messed up so you had no clean clothes, someone had broken your favourite mug without a word, and then worst of all was every time Law saw you. He’d knock you into the halls, grabbing and pinching at you as you passed by. He did this several times before you were truly pissed - any of these things would usually roll off your back but your pent up frustration was starting to come out.

You huffed around the underwater vessel, stomping from room to room as you went about your duties. Law found your attitude more than amusing, his snickers every time you passed and he made a grab sending you frothing at the mouth.

Finally you’d had enough. You were about ready to murder someone, storming back to your room and slamming the door. You threw yourself down on the bed with a cry and sulked for a good few minutes before rage overtook your senses. There was no way you were going to sit upset when the demon who did this to you say pretty upstairs.

You caught each other in the hallway. Law reached over for yet another grab at your plush ass cheek and you slapped his hand away, shoving him against the wall.

“It’s not fair! You can’t keep doing this to me!” You whined, painfully aware of how immature you sounded but too angry to care. You held Law against the wall by the shoulders.

Law smirked at you with devious eyes, glaring at you with enough force to make you shrink back. You recognised your demeanour changing and squared your shoulders back to reinforce your rage. Law simply laughed at you and in the blink of an eye had you flipped over, your back hard against the cold wall and your core clenching like a bitch in heat.

Law nuzzled into the side of your neck, his breath hot and heavy running down your chest. He traced his way up to the shell of your ear with his tongue and breathed deeply into your skull.

“Brats don’t deserve treats baby, you couldn’t take a little teasing so you have a tantrum? Boohoo.”

He was taunting you, body rock solid against you as you shuffled to free yourself. You were a strong fighter but no match for your Captain, especially when he concentrated all his force on holding you in place.

“I think you need to learn a lesson here baby, now be a good girl and take off your clothes.”

You floundered, eyes darting from door to door down the hall, but Law was dead set and you could see on his face nothing but resolution. You trembled as you shucked off your top and trousers, leaving you stood in nothing but your underwear.

Law tutted at your pause and reached over, tearing the underwear clean off your body in one strong pull. He snorted when you tried to hold your hands up to cover yourself, extremely aware of the rest of the crew in the rooms around you.

Law didn’t say anything else, simply stared at you with growing heat. He pulled your hands away from your chest and watched your tits bounce, huffing as they jiggled so nicely for him. In a smooth motion he spat down on your chest, covering your breasts in glistening moisture.

Law pressed his hard-on into your hip, grinding against you for friction whilst he played with you. He pulled and twisted and smacked at your tits until they were sore, glowing red from his torture. You moaned feebly as the slick grew between your legs.

Law finally pulled his own trousers down to rest just below his cock, his tip poppy red and weeping fluid already. He wasted no time in hiking your leg up around his waist and plowing straight into you.

You let out a shaky moan and Law spat into your open mouth, bringing his hand up to shut it after. He kept his hand there as he began thrusting up into you, knocking you back into the wall with every push.

“Atta girl, keep your dirty mouth shut or everyone will hear you taking this dick like a good little whore.”

His words ignited a fire within you that was stoked with every thrust. A burst of flame that erupted when Law closed his mouth around a nipple and started nibbling. You let out a muffled squeak as you came for the first time, hips bucking wildly into your Captain.

Law laughed right in your face as he sped up, thrusts bruising as he slammed into you again and again. He reached his other hand down to your clit and started stroking, bringing you quickly to the edge once more.

With a squeak you squirted all over the man’s hips, tears forming as you rode out your pleasure. You felt over sensitive,fully electric, and still Law kept going.

His thrusts were growing sloppy and he rutted closer to his own end. You could only hold on and try to stay standing as he used your cunt for his pleasure. The sensation was completely overwhelming and you shook with the exertion of staying stood, but Law simply grabbed you by the waist while he fucked into you.

With a low growl he came, full pumping thrusts that filled you to the brim. He rested his forehead against your bare shoulder as he dropped down from his high.

“Let’s get you dressed sweetheart, don’t need anyone seeing what’s mine.”

[naffeclipse]

Okay, I think I was far too tired last night to fully gush about the ending to Getaway. (Even now, I'm running on 5hrs sleep so bear with me)

I am just... I am frothing at the mouth at this. Just this image of Eclipse sitting in Y/N's chair, no his chair now. Everything is his. He wants to possess Y/N so fucking badly and when he can't, he'll take everything that was theirs for his own. It's HIS now and he'll destroy it all as he sees fit until he gets what he wants.

His obsession with Y/N is deliciously terrifying. I know it's been said before that Eclipse will have Y/N or he'll have them dead and... that's definitely true but I think it's more complex than that. YES, in a fit of rage I could see him killing Y/N (and he certainly tried this chapter) but that's just the nature of him; reacting on pure emotion alone.

It's obvious now that he's had some time to cool down that he doesn't really want Y/N dead... prefers the idea of them alive and by his side even now. The fact that he's sitting there just burning in everything he's feeling is evident that he's not done with this fixation of his, not by a long shot.

“It enrages him how much you force him to fight.”

And yet he's still fucking fighting, isn't he? He's got it so bad in the worst way and I don't think he could shake it if he wanted to. Y/N is too ingrained in his very being. At this point he is eat-sleep-breathing Y/N and that is when things can become truly terrifying.

“When you run, you will run to him.”

He is utterly possessed by Y/N. Fucking fool can't even see it. He should've burned that shirt along with everything but he kept it. This is getting dangerous in the best way.

My hats off to you, Naff. You've written a truly terrifying villain here and I am delighted by him. I know I constantly joke (half joke) about being a simp but if this were a real, living person I would run for the hills so fucking fast. He is so... god, I don't think I have the words. Complex and twisted and just all around a wonderful terror and I thoroughly enjoy every scene he is in. He elicits these fantastic sensations of danger and desire and I am here for it!

First off, CERT PLEASE GET SOME REST ALJDFA YOU'RE SO SWEET BUT SLEEP YOU NEED 8 HOURS

He already owns Y/N in his mind, it's just a matter of time before they get with the program, and he doesn't care how many buildings he has to set on fire to make that happen :)

Eclipse is losing his little robo mind over Y/N!! It's so bad, he's got it so bad. You're right, he'd definitely snap their neck if they pissed him off but it's so much more fun to have them actually around to play with. Just hope he can keep his head long enough when he gets ahold of Y/N again.

Cert, you're going to make me cry, oh my gosh!!! That is such high praise ahhhh!! Thank you so much!! It warms my heart that you enjoy him and my writing, just ahhh, I'm getting so toasty from your kind words ♥ ♥ ♥

[ronoken]

Moon Warriors- A Terrible YA Story Starter

So, I have a terrible hobby. I like to see how awful I can make a story. For example, I was trying to avoid doing work and thought, “What’s the worst possible thing I could write that could be classified as a YA story?” And then I cranked this out in 30 minutes. Enjoy. Or don’t.

Like, it’s bad.

***

Once upon a time, in a land that is totally like our own, but more dystopian, because you can always add a smidge more dystopia (seriously, it’s the “hold my beer” of writing styles), lived a princess warrior. She had been taken from the royal palace, which was totally opulent and beautiful and loaded with people wearing wigs and makeup and lots of fancy clothing. It had been the night of the Spit On The Poor ball, where factory workers were sewn into the ballroom floor for the bourgeois to dance the night away on. After the dancing and the feast, which consisted of at least three hobos, the guests would wander to the gladiator pits where children would be chained to one another and were told to fight to the death, with life-saving medications being offered as the prize to the victors.

Anyway, the princess, who was a baby, was spirited out of the castle just as the cable news feeds to the kingdom were cut and the poor were suddenly deprived of their conservative news feed. Like the great white shark in Jaws 3 that had been trapped in a container after the pumps had been shut off, the people thrashed and growled, and demanded their precious feed of systemic bigotry resume to tell them how their situation was normal. Without this reassurance, they turned their frothing hatred towards the castle, and stormed it in a mad desire for flesh and live panel breakdowns of how other-colored people were responsible for unemployment.

And so, the princess lived. She was raised by her kindly nursemaid in a small village, called Poor People District-19. She grew up smart, and plucky, and fast. She was a cunning as she was beautiful, and she was totally hot, so that worked in her favor. Her hair was always hanging down and kinda dirty, but not so dirty that you’d go “eww!” More like she was one shower and a nice change of clothes away from being Princess McHotCharacter. Her clothes were rags, but nice, color-coordinated rags, and she was totally good with handheld weapons, like knives, arrows, and spears. She survived by hunting and doing underground video blogs about the tyrant king who had survived the uprising of 17 years ago who was also her dad BUT SHE DOESN’T KNOW THAT.

The princess didn’t know she was a princess. Instead, she was simply Jessica. Jessica Steel-Tiger; a rough and tumble gal who was too focused on freedom and her people to think about love.

At least that was the case up until the robot prince visited her land to see what poor people were. He was from the moon and lived there in harmony with the other robot people. He however had a sinister secret; he was born human. He had a whole bunch of cybernetic implants and stuff, so he was a kick-ass cyborg, but he still looked hot, so we’re good. He had some cool circuit-looking tattoos that were actually circuits (because TECHNOLOGY) along the side of his face, and his eyes would glow light blue due to robot-related things. His face was symmetrical, his hair was blond and kinda pointy, and he had abs. Hot, semi-robotic abs. His semi-see-through chainmail shirt would show them off as he travelled in his bubble-topped robot motorcade. He also had an axe or something. I dunno, it was cool.

Jessica was poised to take out the motorcade all Ewok-style, which was a thing in poor people lands. She had rigged up some boulders to roll off the tops of buildings (all poor-looking buildings, with no glass and soot stains on the sides) and some logs to roll across their path to slow them down (poor-looking logs, what with their lack of park and ramen cups squished into their branches). Then, she would leap atop the car, fight the robot prince to the death, chop off his head, and put it on a rusty girder pike in the town square. Actually, it was more of a town triangle- they couldn’t afford squares.

The rocks fell and took out the police hover cars just like she planned. She also had some nets for the walking soldiers, because nets.

Nets!

 Anyway, everyone was taken out except for the robot prince, who opened the bubble top of his car, picked up his wicked-looking axe thing, and scanned the rooftops for the person responsible. He was soon rewarded with the site of Jessica doing a ton of somersaults through the air and landing perfectly on the hood of his lime green prince transport, as lime green is the color of lunar royalty. She twirled her staff and looked him in his handsome, robot eyes.

“I’m here to kill you,” she hissed.

The prince froze, mesmerized. “Wow. I have no idea who you are, but I am attracted to you.”

Jessica blushed and sputtered. “But, but you’re my enemy! You can’t be attracted to me. NOW WE FIGHT TO THE DEATH!”

She swung her staff, and he countered with his axe, and they dance/fought to a cool techno beat all around the street. He would be all, “I’m gonna hit you with this!” and swing his axe, and it would slo-mo miss her as she did a cool dodge backwards. She would do a twirly spin hit against him that would be countered by the handle of his axe, and then they would push against each other and get real close, each locking eyes with the other.

“I find you menacing and attractive,” the prince said.

“Your ability to defend yourself and your awesome eyes have aroused me, but that doesn’t excuse my rage towards you!” Jessica countered.

“Why do you hate me?” The robot prince asked, confused. “It is because I’m different? Robot different?”

“No! Because you’re evil!” Jessica countered.

The robot prince stared into Jessica’s eyes. “But… What if I could change?”

Jessica grabbed him and kissed him right there in the middle of the street. The kiss was electric and sparky, because he was half-robot, but his mouth was all hotness. It made her all angry and flustered again, but in the hot way that can be taken care of in about five minutes if necessary.

“Come with me,” Jessica said. “Join my rebellion and help me fight the evil king.”

“The king is totally evil,” the robot prince said. “He murdered my father. I am here to secretly get near to him and then kill him with my robot parts.”

“Then you’ll join my rebellion?” Jessica asked?

“Yes,” the robot prince, who was probably named something kinda dumb like Thunderrose Abberstone or something, said. “Can you teach me to be as awesome as you?”

Jessica shook her head. “No, but I’ll teach you to be as awesome as you,” she said.

Blushing, the robot prince nodded in agreement and followed her into the city to plot their rebellion.

And then they fucked.

[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

We’re All Mad Here | Jurdan College AU

Summary: Ire is a thin blanket around us, an opaline veil that makes everything shimmer and sharpen with pristine clarity. I have never felt more alive as I do when I look at him, and feel nothing but hatred.

Rating: T

Content Warnings: Mild cursing. Minor mentions of anxiety, panic, murder.

Part I   |   Part II   |   AO3

Part III- Rival

He is hanging my shirt to dry on a shelf, high up where I can’t reach, weighting it down with two cans of coffee beans.

I stare at his back. The black fabric of his shirt pulls into ripples and waves as he moves. The sleeves are still rolled up past his elbows, exposing pale forearms and the creeping blue veins there.

In the front of the coffee shop, customers continue their prattling, spoons continue pinging against ceramic mugs. The espresso machine drones on. All of it sounds muffled from beyond the kitchen door.

In here, though, there is only the refrigerator’s low thrum and my raging heart loud in my ears.

Greenbriar. My mind reels. This man, my classmate—a Greenbriar progeny.

Namesakes of the city’s most prestigious university and beneficiaries of a mega-corporation called The Mab Group, the six children of Eldred Greenbriar are not quite heirs to all of Insmire, but they may as well be for how much power their name holds.

If the heir in front of me is in one of my mandatory lectures, he must also be in the same year as me. Which can only mean one thing.

I look up at him with renewed hatred.

He appraises me, taking up a casual stance leaning against the island countertop right across from where I sit. He crosses his arms and seems entirely unaffected by my serrated gaze. Which only makes me grit my teeth harder.

“You seem awfully quiet, Jude,” he says, voice made of velvet. “Have you pieced it together? Have you figured out who I am?”

I have to fight to keep my breath from going ragged, my hands from shaking. I grip the edge of the counter with a vengeance. It’s my only tether to sanity.

He brushes one knuckle across my whitened ones. They are nearly as white as his, now. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he says. The laugh that skitters from his lips is hushed and dry, like a centipede’s legs scraping as it scuttles through seared grass.

Out of every pompous prick in the Greenbriar line, the one who stands before me is by far the worst. And not just because he spilled coffee all over my only nice blouse—though that has certainly been added to the growing list of all the reasons why I hate him.

I have only ever seen his name on paper. A list tacked to a bulletin board outside the Politics and International Relations department. Three names, one from each year. His name instead of my own. For a year, that list has haunted me.

Cardan Greenbriar is known for his debauchery, not his intellect. He’s the kind of entitled that makes me want to paint the wall with his brains. And then my own. This, a kind approximation of his person, I’m sure.

Perhaps that’s why it hurt so much when he won Top Scholar last year. Perhaps that’s why I never learned his face—knowledge of it would only derail me from my goal.

“I have to say,” Cardan continues, “I’m disappointed it took you so long to deign to work it out.”

“Starved for attention, are we?” I hiss through my teeth.

Something I can’t quite decipher snaps across his face; but then it’s back to that cool veneer, and I wonder if I imagined it. One corner of his mouth tugs up.

“Figures,” I say, tearing my eyes away from his and towards the ceiling. Mostly to distract myself from that corner. “Your whole family seems to think the world revolves around them. I’m surprised you haven’t keeled over with the weight of my offence.”

“On the contrary. I find your not knowing me… refreshing.” He starts unrolling his shirt sleeves.

It is an exceedingly nice shirt for a day off. Come to think of it, all of his clothes are exceedingly nice. Gilded filigree triangles make the tips of his collar look dipped in gold. Between them, right where his top button should be, clings a black onyx brooch in the shape of a beetle.

I narrow my eyes. This is obviously a rouse of some sort. I think about how kind he acted before. His seemingly innocuous request to help get the stain out of my shirt. His sudden change in demeanour. There’s something missing, but I can’t figure out what. I don’t like it—this waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“What do you want with me?” I ask.

“The same thing you want with me, Jude,” he says, black tourmaline eyes unflinching. He buttons his cuffs. “I want to ruin you.”

I clench my jaw as his words soak in. My nostrils flare. My heartbeat is so wild in my chest I think I might die. Or be sick.  

I want to tell him the feeling is absolutely mutual. I want to breathe fire and be livid and berate him for the crime of his family’s existence. I want to tell him to go fuck himself. But I know what will get under his skin most.

“I want nothing to do with you,” I say, sticking out my chin, defiant.

Cardan’s mouth splits into a hideous smile that must usually be reserved for the pillow and languorous mornings in bed. Though, I suppose for him, such mornings probably lie within the same realm of pleasure as tormenting enemies in the kitchens of what is apparently his coffee shop.

“Fortunately,” he says, pushing off the counter, “You won’t have anything to do with me much longer. I have a meeting.” He holds out a hand. I blink at him. “Jacket please.”

“Like hell,” I seethe, clutching at the lapels.

“Fine.” He drops his hand. “An interview without a statement piece wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for today. Though, I suppose it shouldn’t matter.” He straightens his collar, his black beetle brooch. “Dain will hire me regardless.”

Something sinks in my stomach like a stone. Dain.

Dain Greenbriar. CEO of the Silhouette Gazette, taking time out of his very busy schedule to interview today, and only today, for one coveted position amongst his team of interns. Dain Greenbriar, his brother and my would-be boss had I not been so foolishly diverted.

But I have been a fool. One look at Cardan tells me this. The spill, the innocent act, the plea to help me. It was all a ruse. Strung up and sutured by none other than the youngest Greenbriar, himself—and I, a much too eager victim.

He’s smirking and my face heats. Something roils right under my skin, white-hot. Just waiting to be unleashed.

So I unleash it.

I lunge. Across the countertop. I am diving, scrabbling, reaching.

Right for the knife block. Metal sings as I rip one free. A sound almost as glorious as the way it feels to angle a blade right at Cardan’s throat.

He braces his hands on the countertop behind him but does not lift a finger to defend himself.

I only see red, and the way he regards me cooly. A smirk juts the cliffs of his cheekbones. The steel I hold to his skin reflects his face so that I see it twofold. Even my own weapon taunts me.

He looks down his nose at me, despite being held at the peril of my blade. I know then what it is to loathe with my entire being.

“That internship is mine,” I tell him, my breath a jagged thing in my lungs.

“Looks unlikely, sunshine,” he says, and I want to scream. “What with you missing your interview and all.”

“Because of you, you snivelling little coward.” I press the knife’s edge flush against his throat. His eyes shutter. It’s the only surrender I get to savour before I am fixed with his stare once more.

“Ouch,” he mocks. “Not nice words.” Though he is smirking, his gaze glitters dangerously, as if he might murder me outright. Even though I’m the one with the knife.

“You took Top Scholar from me last year,” my voice quakes. Bile rises in my throat at the admission of it—my one and only failure. Until today, at least.

“Took?” His brows rise high and arrogant on his forehead. “I think I won that title from you, fair and square. Upset that someone bested you for once?”

“Please,” I scoff, indignant. “You’re a nefarious moneybags prick. Your family probably paid someone off.”

His laugh is surprised and derisive at once. “Nefarious moneybags prick,” he muses, giving me a full grin. “Now that, I have not heard before. Kind of a mouthful, though. Got any nicknames?”

I only lean in closer, pressing the knife harder. One slip of my hand and— “Give me your interview slot.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“You’re quite confident for someone held at knifepoint,” I say through gritted teeth. “Give me your slot.”

“What are you going to do? Murder me about it?”

“You really want to test that theory?”

He considers me for a moment from under hooded lids. His eyelashes are stupidly long. It’s disgusting. “Even if you had the balls to do it, which I don’t doubt you do,” he says. “You wouldn’t. Wanna know why?”

“Why?” I say with ample venom.

“Because it would cost you everything,” he tells me. “How my father would froth at the mouth for the opportunity to put you in shackles.”

Ire is a thin blanket around us, an opaline veil that makes everything shimmer and sharpen with pristine clarity. I have never felt more alive as I do when I look at him, and feel nothing but hatred.

“It’ll be your word against mine,” I say, “And you’ll be dead.”

Cardan rolls his eyes. “Even if you had a valid excuse for murder, which you don’t,” he points out, “And even though my family does not give a rat’s festering ass about me, they would not hesitate for a moment to rip you apart in court. To see the Duarte name trampled down into the dirt where it belongs.”

I know what Cardan says is true. I would revel in dragging the Greenbriars down to the deepest trenches of hell, even if it took me with them. Just as surely as they would relish in my demise. It has always been this way. For as long as I can remember.

I am sure he reads this all on my face as I think it because his smile is a sharp gash of white.

“You may have held the title of Top Scholar once, but I bested you last year,” he says. My mind sieges against the notion. “And though I fully intend on doing so again this year, if you murder me for it, you won’t even be in the running for the title come tomorrow morning. No, the only title you will ever hold for the rest of your small, pathetic life will be Inmate.”

I almost concede a flinch. Small. Pathetic.

I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to get under my skin, and credit where credit’s due: It almost works. But my fickle temperament, his not knowing what I will do next; these are my only chances at gaining control again.

I cannot show my hand.

So as my instincts scream against it, I tilt my chin up to look at him. “And how are you so very sure, Greenbriar,” I spit, “That Inmate is not a worthy enough title for me?”

“Because, Jude,” he says my name like it is his favourite flavour of sin, and I despise the way my heart flies into my throat at the sound, “It’s not. I am observant, if nothing else. I happen to know that being locked behind bars is a far cry from what you crave most.”

“As if you’d be privy to what I crave,” I say, though my stomach turns itself in knots, my grip loosening on the knife. Because he’s right. He’s so very right, I am nauseous at the thought of it.

Cardan shrugs. “Believe me, or not. I have my ways of knowing,” he says. Then, with the newfound space I have given him, he leans down close to my ear. “I reckon, however, that I am far too insignificant a name on what is presumably a very extensive blacklist for you to be kept from your higher ambitions by murdering me on a whim of passion.”

He makes a lazy trail with his index finger from my left elbow up my arm. My cheeks blaze, but the skin still pebbles there. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.

“There are so many more valuable prizes for you plunder,” he croons, breath fanning across my face. He leans back a bit to look me in the eye. “Aren’t there, dear Jude?”

It is the secret of myself unravelled before me. I cannot bear how vulnerable it makes me feel. I stagger back, breathless, and blink.

My knife is in his hand. How did it get there? How had he taken it without my noticing? He’s moving away from me now.

“As lovely as this little meeting has been,” Cardan says, sheathing the knife back in its stand, “I think I’ll be going now.”

He brushes himself off, grabs his to-go cup from the counter, and I’m standing there like an idiot with my mouth hanging open. He pauses in front of me before he goes. I’m not sure what it means when he frowns, but I hope he feels every poisoned dagger I sink into his skull.

Then, Cardan does the very last thing I expect.

Every inch of me goes still as he takes a strand of my hair between his fingers and tucks it carefully behind my ear.

“It really was quite the show,” he murmurs. As if we are lovers tangled in sumptuous silk sheets. Instead of what we really are.

Rivals. Luring each other into cages of our own making.

Just like that, he’s gone, and I am left alone with my threadbare self.

♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛

It takes me all of twenty seconds to react. I count them going by on the ticking hand of my cracked watch as I try to cobble together a plan, try to breathe. I feel like the walls are closing in on me, all my demons crawling to the surface. But I’ll be damned if I let them win. If I let him win.

Then, I am chugging my cappuccino. It’s lukewarm. The syrup has pooled at the bottom and I get it all in one gulp. Sickly sweet and absolutely revolting, but I need the fuel.

When I’m done, little rivulets of coffee stream down my cheeks. I wipe them off with the sleeve of Cardan’s black jacket, grab my bag from the floor, and start running. I leave my shirt hanging to dry on the shelf. Buttoned, the jacket covers me enough and I cannot waste time. Not now.

I careen through the metal doors, apologizing to a grumbling Liliver as I sprint out from behind the counter, and wonder just how much Cardan’s glorified bathrobe would go for on eBay. He did say it was designer…

Finally, I’m outside again. It’s stopped hailing, and the air is blessedly cool. It helps me sort through my muddled thoughts.

I see Cardan’s wretched curls bobbing up ahead. He stops for the red man on the pedestrian signal. Idiot.

My breath swirls around me. I look both ways and dive between a reasonably spaced motorcycle and a bus onto the median in the middle of the road. Then between a bus and a less reasonably spaced car, who has to put on their breaks. The driver lays on the horn and I flick him off over my shoulder.

I’m already on the opposite side of the road, flying through the heavy glass doors of the Silhouette skyscraper. I don’t look back to see Cardan’s face, though I can imagine some pretty satisfying expressions on my own.

It’s enough to help me form the next steps of my plan.

I survey the lobby. It’s all glass and dark wood and marble. A crystal chandelier hangs from the ceiling. It smells like coffee and expensive cologne. Moneybag pricks, indeed.

There’s a sign to the right for the lifts; and right next to it, the door to the stairs.

The Gazette’s main offices are on the fifteenth floor. Which is actually probably the fourteenth floor, when you factor in people’s weird aversion toward the number thirteen. The stairs would be faster, anyway. Especially if there were multiple stops on the lift. Or many.

I think I could climb thirteen stairs. I don’t think Cardan could.

Moving as quickly as I can without drawing too much attention, I slip into the stair-well. I climb one floor, slip out into the hall, press the lift call button, slip back into the stair-well, and climb to the next level.

I do this thirteen more times, pressing the lift call buttons on every floor. I get some weird stares, some alarmed looks from people passing by. But mostly, I ignore them. My vision is tunnel-like.

I cannot let Cardan beat me. Everything I’ve been working toward for the past thirteen years is riding on this internship. If I can get just two minutes alone with Dain, maybe I can convince him to let me reschedule my interview. Maybe I can fix this.

By the fourth floor, my thighs start to burn. My feet slap against the concrete steps. The sound echoes off the stair-well walls.

Small, pathetic.

To see the Duarte name trampled down into the dirt where it belongs.

I want to ruin you.

It really was quite the show.

It’s that last one that sets me sprinting. By the tenth floor, I am heaving breaths. My lungs feel like they’re full of hot lead. The only things keeping me going are my goal and Cardan’s extremely punchable face like a beacon in my mind’s eye. I hate him I hate him I hate him. It drives me.

Finally, I slam my shoulder into the door with a sign next to it that reads, FLOOR 15, in bright red.

I spill out into a warmly lit hall. It’s lined with framed newspapers, chic black and white photographs of the city, and one large gilded mirror. There’s a potted organza sitting on a copper accent table just opposite the lifts, but not much else.

The set of glass double-doors to my right reads, “THE SILHOUETTE GAZETTE”, just above the handles, in bold black lettering. The same doors my mother walked through to get her internship here when she was my age. The same doors she walked through every day for so many years after.

No time, no time, no time. Cardan is hot on my tail. I can’t be sentimental, now.

I’m a little frazzled, but only a tad sweaty. I glance at the mirror. No, that’s utter bullshit. I look like I’ve walked through a sprinkler.

I take a moment to straighten my pencil skirt. Smooth the hair away from my face, dab the sheen on my forehead and nose and chin and everywhere else with the back of my hand. No time.

I roll the sleeves of the ridiculous jacket so they don’t swallow my hands. The red lining is vibrant against stark black. I throw my shoulders back, and before I begin to doubt myself, stride toward the doors.

My boots click against the dark granite tiles, but when I step over the threshold, it’s all grey carpet and phones ringing, the shuffling of hurried feet and stacks of paper.

The familiar smell of freshly pressed ink greets me. The man behind the reception desk straight ahead does not.

The receptionist is burly and bald, save for a tuft of black hair right on the top of his head, pulled back into a small bun. Blue ink creeps from underneath the collar and sleeves of his crisp white button-down. Tattoos. Lots of them. He wears a floral printed tie and doesn’t glance up from the computer when I approach.

I clear my throat. “Ex—cuse me,” I say. “I’m… here for an interview? With Dain Greenbriar. About an… internship?”

“Are you sure about that?” the man asks in a gruff voice, still typing away.

My brows cinch. “Yes. I scheduled it weeks ago.”

“It’s just…” he looks up at me then, “You don’t sound so sure. Besides, he’s in a meeting right now.”

My jaw clenches. “No. Actually. He’s not,” I say as politely as I can, then throw a glance over my shoulder to make sure Cardan isn’t on his way to dropkick a wrecking ball right through my life. Again. “I’m his 8:20. I know I’m incredibly late, but I got into an accident on the way here.” It isn’t technically a lie, but it slides from my tongue just as smoothly.

The receptionist gives me a disapproving look. “He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

“I really only need five minutes of his time,” I say, breathless. “Could you please. Please. Just page him. Everything in my life depends on it.”

He raises one brow, regarding me dubiously. “Uh-huh. That’s what they all say.”

“Look,” I say, starting to panic, “I don’t have much time to explain before the world’s largest middle finger to the very foundation of this establishment walks through those doors and ruins everything. But if you do this for me, and I get this internship, I will bring you coffee every morning for two months.”

He’s silent for so long, I think he’s going to reject my offer. But then he says, “Make it three. Regardless of whether you get the internship.”

“Deal,” I blurt before I can stop myself. Before I can think about the strangeness of his contention. I certainly don’t have time to haggle.

The receptionist sighs, lifting the phone to his ear. Punches a few numbers. Listens. “Wait over there,” he mouths at me and points to a cluster of sleek leather chairs in the corner of the entryway that look about as comfortable as your standard park bench.

I thank him silently and head over, plopping down on the nearest one. I was right. It feels like I’m six again and sitting on the lap of my sister, Vivienne, whose legs are notoriously spindly.

The receptionist is muttering words I cannot hear into the phone’s receiver. I presume it’s Dain, but for all I know, he could be talking to Glinda in accounting, or whoever. Laughing about the silly little girl who just fell through the doors, looking for all the world like she’d been down the rabbit hole and had to claw her way back up to get here. He wouldn’t be far off, if I’m honest.

Or worse, maybe he’s calling security.

I shove those thoughts from my mind and lean back in the chair. My right leg starts to jiggle like it always does when I’m nervous. I lean forward again, bracing my elbows on my knees. I need to focus.

There’s a sudden movement in my periphery. A tall man in a navy blue suit enters the reception area. His golden crown of curls and swaggering demeanour clue me in enough. Dain Greenbriar.

The last time I saw the second eldest, and arguably the most decent of the Greenbriar progenies, was thirteen years ago. In a rescue chopper. Above a boating accident. He was in the pilot’s seat flying the chopper, while Madoc was tending to my sisters and I. But I still remember his confident air, that dash of white smile when he told us everything was going to be okay. Even though it wasn’t.

He hasn’t changed much.

“Miss Duarte,” Dain says, stopping near the reception desk. I wonder briefly if it’s a power play. Make me come to him. It’s fair enough, if that’s his ploy. It’s what I would do.

I’m surprised I’m not more phased by the memory of him. I expect to feel an inexplicable sense of dread. I expect it to be difficult to see him now, in the flesh, but it’s not. I feel nothing. Maybe that’s the difficulty. Or maybe this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I rise to my feet and make swift but assertive strides.

The thumping of the chopper was so loud that day, I don’t think anyone said much. So I’m not sure I’ve officially met him. Though, I could be remembering it wrong.

I stick out my hand anyway. “Mr Greenbriar,” I say. “I apologise for my delay. I was in an accident and couldn’t get here sooner. Thank you for meeting with me.”

He looks me over none too swiftly. He’s either decided that my appearance is evidence enough of my story, or that I’m attractive enough to forgive the faux-pas, because he takes my hand in his, giving it a firm shake that I return in kind.

“As much of a pleasure as it is to see you again, Miss Duarte—”

“Please. Call me Jude,” I say, then clamp my mouth shut. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Who the hell do I think I am, cutting off the man who’s about to hire me?

Dain’s smile is small and savours highly of pity. A sinking feeling starts in my gut. “Jude,” he continues, apologetic, “I wish we could be meeting again under better circumstances, but I’m afraid I have an appointment very soon and quite the busy schedule today.”

“I only need a few minutes of your time, Mr Greenbriar.”

“You understand, Jude, that we take our internships here at The Silhouette very seriously.”

“Yes, of course. I am one-hundred percent serious.”

“Unfortunately,” he says, “Interviews at the Silhouette require more than a few minutes to be conducted.”

“I’m sure I can give you a shortened version. When is your next appointment?” I ask, and he pauses, then looses a hesitating laugh. I realise too late that he’s not laughing at my gusto. He’s laughing at something over my shoulder.

“Now, apparently,” Dain tells me.

I whirl around and see a most loathly figure walking through the doors.

♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛

More like this:  Crashing  |  Fine Line  |  King

Last Part

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AN: We love a petty Jude. Just hitting all those lift buttons on her way up. Also some of y’all guessed it but Jude definitely went for those knives huh. Anyways, thanks so much for reading! If you liked this chapter please do let me know, via comment/reblog/keyboard smash! It truly does help me recharge my writing energy, and I appreciate every single one.

If you’d like to be added to the tag list for all future updates of We’re All Mad Here, let me know via comment/ask/message!! Thanks again for reading! Back to the forest now. -em 🖤💫

Title Inspo: Rival by Ruelle

Tag List: @the-mithridatism-of-jude-duarte​ @velarhysismine​ @knifewifejude​ @danieldesario​ @annihliation​ @wickedqueenoffantasy​ @not-tess​ @clockworkgraystairs​ @jurdanhell​ @afexiss​ @snap-crackle-and-pop​ @rowaelin-percabeth @runnybabbit9​ @cardaans​ @hoegreenbrair​

[yourwinedarksea]

i would literally read anything you write but consider this: self-loathing what-percent-human am i prompt

If I tell you, Witcher, that I can neither forgive Stregobor nor renounce my revenge, is that it?

I admit I’m a monster?

He leaves her in the muck and the blood of Blaviken. Leaves her bloodied and dirtied and dead.

But she follows him still, in the taste of cheap ale at the back of his mouth, in his dreams where she’s being cut open, picked apart and cut into pieces. A thing to be labelled and sectioned and studied.

A jar on a shelf.

No more princess.

It’s only in the after of leaving her in the muck, with her slit-throat drying bloody and brutal, and the stones being pelted at him, that he thinks about her words. Stregobor’s words.

You made a choice and you’ll never know if it’s the right one.

And he won’t, he realises, not ever.

.

.

               It’s in an apothecary he visits that he finds Renfri first. A jar on a shelf, a bit of a monster, no more than skin or blood or ground-up bone.

It’s not really her, he knows, these shelves are no homes for a princess, but he looks at the pieces floating inside and wonders just how small she ended up. Wonders how much monster a girl can have inside of her, how many pieces Stregobor saw fit to cut out. Ten percent? Twenty? If he took her tongue and her eyes and her liver. If her blood darkens on a shelf as the months pass.

If her heart, floating, suspended in brine, gathers dust.

What percent is enough to make someone monstrous?

They made you. Just as they made me.

Not quite, he thinks, but is it better to be mutated, better to have been a little boy forced to become something else— or is better to have been born wrong, to have never known the difference in your body, to have never seen your own face change?

But that’s all fucking wrong anyway.

When I cut my finger, I bleed. That’s human, right? When I overeat, my stomach aches. When I’m happy, I laugh. When I’m upset, I swear.

And when I hate someone, for stealing my whole life from me, I kill him.

And this is the worst of it, Geralt knows, that whatever Renfri was, whether Princess or Shrike or Monster… she was a girl first. And no matter what grew inside of her, no matter what tainted her. No matter what sun or moon she first drew breath beneath…

She was a girl first.

(And like him, she saw her body change, saw her face change, saw blood on her hands and tasted it in her mouth… a mutation of a different kind. But a mutation all the same. Forced to adapt. Forced to learn. Forced to go out into a world that could find them no home

but for the dirt, eventually.)

.

(Or a jar on a shelf.)

.

.

                 But still, Renfri is an apparition. His own personal haunting. A thing lingering at his back like the swords he carries, strapped and bound for use.

But she’s not so quiet as a ghost. She’s the spit from a merchant’s mouth, the curled lip of a man in the street, the tightening hand of a woman on her child’s shoulder.

They made me. Just as they made you.

Renfri is, he thinks, that moment between Geralt being a not-quite man moving through the motions of the life chosen for him and the moments where he is Witcher and Demon and Mutant and Butcher.

She’s always there in his head, with her cut throat and her bloody skin, asking him what he’s going to do if they come after him. How many stones can you take, she asks, how much spit and spite and spewed curses?

How heavy is your sword, Geralt?

Too heavy, he thinks, to lift it for so little a thing as a curled lip.

He isn’t sure he ever heard her really laugh, but she said she did, and he knows she bled (out in the muck) and so when she laughs at him in his head, he takes it as a true sound, a spoiled (rotting) princess with a laugh like a broken chime.

You’re a fool, Geralt.

It won’t be stones, next time.

 .

.

               As the years pass, Renfri fades into a voice in his head, into images behind his eyelids, no girl, no princess, just a phantom he knew once. But in her place, like chains on a floor, like a howling spirit cursed to roam, Butcher rises and spreads and Geralt of Rivia is less and less a thing to hire and more and more a rabid dog, frothing at the chain that holds him, waiting to be put down.

Butcher, they say, you’re not welcome here.

Butcher, they whisper, slaughtered a whole village.

Butcher, they spit, you’re the Butcher of Blaviken, aren’t you?

In his head, Renfri laughs.

You’ll be next, you know, she says, there’s a nice jar waiting, we’ll label it together.

 .

.

                 The Butcher of Blaviken—

And his fist is in the bard’s stomach before he really thinks it through, only knows that for a moment, when the bard had first called him Geralt of Rivia, it had been a moment where he’d forgotten Renfri.

There was no spit, no curled lip, no tightening hand on a child’s shoulder. Just a bard and his eager, awkward smile that grates at Geralt like a hacksaw. It reminds him, stupidly, of Marilka.

But for some reason, the bard doesn’t leave. He talks on and on and on like a song echoing through a cavern but—

 For a moment. For awhile. He forgets about jars and shelves and percentages. For a moment, for awhile, he lets the bard stay.

 .

.

               There’s a dead Witcher in a coffin of salt. He wants to ask the witch if she took any parts or if the monster only took the best bits to eat and left nothing worthwhile behind.

Is a Witcher body worth more or less? Does it taste different? Did the Striga taste her own kind on her tongue?

Autopsy, Stregobor had called it, and he wonders what the witch do with the parts left behind. If she’ll cut him open more, split the cavity of his chest-wound wider until she can peel him open the same way Geralt knows Renfri was. If this Wticher will find a home in a jar in a shelf, labelled, tucked away to gather dust.

How much of him is no different than the men already left half-eaten by the Striga? How much of him is mutated? How much monster hides inside a body so well formed to match a mans’?

Forty? Sixty?

Too much, he thinks, or maybe too little. Too little of both, caught in between like bit of sinew in between his teeth.  Too monstrous for man and too human for monsters.

 .

Or maybe it’s just that you’re more human than you want to be, Renfri says, as his blood surges up beneath his hand and the Striga is nothing but a half-feral girl-child, fearful of the monster that saved her. Black-eyed and armoured, black-eyed and pulling her into consciousness and out of the dark where everything is so much easier—

Maybe you’d like to be less human, wouldn’t that be easier?

And yes, he thinks, maybe, as the darkness takes him and all there is is the girl and the dawn chasing out the shadows of the rotting castle, chasing out the stench of a girl trapped in a body that wasn’t quite right, made of hunger and rage and a weak, jealous man’s obsessive love.

 He wonders what they’ll do with his body.

.

                 The princess? He asks, because he pulled her out of the dark of her own body, cut the mutated umbilical cord binding her to her mother’s corpse and let the girl slip free, six years too late.

I’ve arranged for her to stay with the Sisters of Melitele for awhile, Triss says. And the room smells like blood and death and magic. Like herbs and bandages soaked in his own blood.

(And Renfri, he thinks, like blood and muck and her eyes, wide— that final breath—)

Who’s Renfri? Hers was the only name you uttered, over and over again in your sleep.

Jars. He thinks. Labels. Dusty parts on a shelf.

My humanity, he thinks, like a stitch I can’t stop picking at.

(And he wonders then, if he could unwind himself, pick at the stitches that hold him together until he can see his own insides. Until he can jar himself up, label his own pieces and parts and weigh them out, find out how much he’s worth. How much coin his blood would fetch.

How much monster makes up Geralt.

My coin, he says instead and he can tell Triss is waiting for more, that she wants to open him up in a different way, to understand him without looking at his bones, but—

Is that all life is to you? Monsters and money?

But what is a Witcher without their body? What is Geralt if not Witcher, if not Mutant, if not Butcher?

It’s all it needs to be, he says.

[explosivebang]

Wip tag

My buddy @quartzess tagged me on this but idk enough people on Tumblr to tag on this, so I’ll put some people on as time goes on. this is pretty long so more under the cut

1. describe the plot in one sentence

Man tells daughter she can’t be queen, she says ‘Fuck you’

2. pick one sight, sound, smell, feel and taste to describe its aesthetic

sight: The light of the sun as is drowned everything in its path

sound: The clashing of blades as will went against will.

smell: the clouds of incense as they wafted through the hair

feel: Cold metal, sharply cutting skin.

taste: revenge. Can I say revenge?

3. which 3+ songs would make up a playlist for the novel?

Dreamin - The Score ft Blackbear

Belgrade - Battle Tapes

Starlight - Starset

Victorious - Panic! At The Disco

Lonely Dance - Set It Off

Dancing With The Devil - Set It Off

Wired - Mallory Knox

Reckless - Jaxson gamble

4.  what’s the time period and location in which the novel takes place?

Takes place on the continent of Aegis between the Northern Kingdom, Thoran, and the Southern Kingdom, Ceres. General time period is that weird fantasy medieval time zone.

5. are there any former titles you’ve considered but have discarded?

Not particularly? Originally All the King’s Men was just a placeholder but the more I fleshed out the plot and the more I decided to make it about women instead of just using that as backstory I felt the irony from the title fitted a lot more as time went on and now I really like it.

6. what’s the first line?

“The whispers clogged her ears like hair in a drain, disdain washed over her like slime and at this rate vague murder of the next noblewoman to side eye her was very much on the table.”

7. what’s a dialogue you’re particularly proud of?

"Everything i do for good will be attributed to someone else. My strength must have come from father. The throne given to me by you, as if i didn’t fight for it,” Kavi growled, a hand slamming against the table that kept her from strangling her brother. “Everyone will assume I am the puppet of someone else. They will rage when my council is full of women. They will froth at the mouth any time I do anything that uplifts the lower class or women. When i do good for everyone, they will assume a cardinal must have been behind it. If I get a husband, even worse, they will say it was thanks to him. But I have accepted my fate. Because frankly this country deserves better than our bastard of a father who fattens himself on the plight of the people, and you who clamber after his coat tails."

“Is that how you truly feel?” Vikan asked, almost reverently, as if the answer was some holy secret. Kavi snorted. “It’s how I’ve always felt you insensitive prick. It’s not like I’ve ever hidden how I feel, if anything I roared it from the battlements whenever I could!” she roared

“I’m so sorry…” he whispered “I only ever wanted to keep father happy. I only ever wanted a sister.”

“And I always wanted a brother, but we don’t always get what we want. Some of us have to fight for it. But you wouldn't know anything about that would you?"

8. which line from the novel represents it the most?

“I’m smarter, stronger and, fraaaankly, better suited forthe thrOne! And the only diff… diff…-” Kavi began

“Difference?” Ely offered

“That! The only difference between me and him, is vat he has a dick. Wait… vaat’s it” she slurred “I’ll get a bigger one!”

9. who are your character faceclaims?

I never really thought about it to be honest

10. sort your characters into hogwart houses

gryffindor: Kavi, Zev

hufflepuff: Aera, Vikan,

ravenclaw: Ely, Grey

slytherin: Virin, Naina, Noir

11. which character’s name do you love the most?

Ely, it’s pronounced the same as the first syllable from Elijah. I like Aera too and Naina.

12. describe each character’s outfit.

It generally changes from what I’ve planned and I haven’t thought of any outside of Kavi soooo

Kavi: A dark, leather tabard with tails, under a flat metal breastplate. Her legs are protected by thick boots, greaves and sabatons. With vambraces and gloves and a sharpened blade at her side she’s always ready for battle.

13. Do any of the characters have distinct birthmarks/scars?

Kavi has a scar across her nose and going up the left side of her jaw that she got from a bar brawl. “On the upside, my father can’t marry me off for my face”

Noir has a scar on her throat as mark of her place as a Ceresan Assassin to the crown. Those women are extra.

14. which character most fits a character trope?

Kavi fits the violent princess trope, Ely is the “So competent, she could take the goddess to task if she showed up with the wrong paperwork”, Aera is the dangerous airhead and Noir is the silent assassin.

15. which character would be the best writer? worst?

Grey and Virin would probably be the best writers because Grey reads so many scriptures and has probably picked things up. Virin however is a Courtesan, her entire job is to use words to sway her audience, in this case the audience is her marks but it can easily be switched to readers. Oddly enough, maybe Kavi in that way that her drunkenness could fuel a lot of plotlines, but other than that she would probably be the worst in the group because she is too blunt and doesn’t like to mince words like authors would.

16. which character is the best liar? Worst?

Virin for the aforementioned reason, ie its her entire job. The worst would be Aera, the sweet little airhead that she is, would probably be the worst liar.

17. which character swears the most? least?

Ironically not Kavi, it’s Ely when she’s drunk which, doesn’t happen often as a result. Aera swears the least.

18. which character has the best handwriting? Worst?

Kavi has the best hand writing weirdly enough, whereas Ely has chicken scratch “but in my  defence… yeah I got nothing.”

19. which character is most like you? least like you?

It’s probably Ely?

20. which character would you most like to be?

A weird mix between Kavi and Grey. I want Kavi’s ability to do the right thing damn the consequences and trust my decisions no matter the cost. But I also really want Grey’s peace of mind, her ability to have faith, not necessarily in a god, but her faith in the world and the people around her.

[krystalreverb]

Crown Prince

here we go guys yet another let's do this

laslow's pissed you guys watch out because laslow is P I S S E D

this is a quick little implied sexy fic because I feel bad about not having wifi at home so I had to lug my computer to my boyfriend’s house to post my terrible fanfiction, my endings are crap, but here you go

CW: violence, blood, implied sexual content

Laslow had just sat down to eat. This was not what he needed this morning. It was 5:30 in the morning, and Laslow just wanted to eat. But here he was, listening to a group of obviously extremely stupid wyvern knights chattering back and forth simply inches from him at the next table over. A shadow passed, but did not alert Laslow.

“I'm just saying, for a guy who's supposed to be leading us, he doesn't do a whole lot of his own work, does he?”

“I mean, he's supposed to be the prince, but he's like, totally stiff and harsh. I don't think there's a person alive who's seen him smile. He's like one of those Hoshidan automatons, all lifeless and stern.”

“Ahem.” Laslow finally interrupted.

“Oh, great. It's the prince's little lapdog. What, gonna cite us for a little talk?”

“I may do more than cite you if you continue. Prince Xander is a bloody fucking saint, and you lot have no idea what he's been through.”

“I'm just saying, he could lighten up a little.”

“Could you, in his circumstances? He's responsible for hundreds of thousands of soldiers. You lot included. I have seen him hunched over his desk at 4 in the morning, reviewing troop orders. I have seen him at his worst, and you lot don't deserve the mercy of his smile.”

“Listen to this guy! What a load of shit. You're his personal retainer, of course you're obviously sleeping with him.”

“Excuse you!” Laslow stood. “I don't appreciate this attack on my character, or the attack on his! I suggest you smarten up and recant before you see exactly what I mean!”

“Come on, then! Tell us! What makes the high and mighty Prince Xander tick?”

“You lot have no idea what it's like. Do you have any idea how much a crown prince sacrifices? You sacrifice your happiness, your freedom, your very soul again and again, shielding pain, because without you the army would crumble, and your kingdom along with it. Do you know what it's like, coming back from a raid limping and bleeding, but having to put on a smile because showing weakness would be a death sentence?” Laslow was almost frothing at the mouth with anger. “Prince Xander sacrifices so much of his personal freedoms and liberties just so you lot all stay alive through the next day! Without him, I have no doubt you will all fall to some sniper's arrow in the middle of the night. Do you have any idea what he's been through? I don't think you do!”

“Alright, now you're just getting mouthy. He's a prince. He has all the money and power he could ever want. Who wouldn't be a little fucking happy with that? And he still shoves people away. You can't talk to the guy! He just brushes you off.”

“He doesn't have the opportunity to be happy about that! Don't you understand?”

“Name one person he hasn't shoved away and alienated because of his machismo fuckin' harshness.”

“He still has me!” Laslow roared. “I am by Lord Xander's side day after day. I haven't taken a bloody day off in months because this war is still raging. I, too, have stayed up far beyond a healthy bed time helping him. Lord Xander makes it a requirement that both of his retainers know how to sign his name properly. He simply is loaded with too much work to do it all himself.”

“Ha ha ha! Such a dutiful little lapdog! Tell us, does he reward you? Tickle your ivories, late at night?”

Laslow swore he felt a vein in his forehead threaten to burst from stress. He gritted his teeth.

“Alright, I'm going to give you to the count of three. If I don't see some recanting, I'm going to recant your fucking noses into your skulls. One.”

“Really? You're gonna fight all of us? In case you haven't noticed, numbnuts, there's ten of us and one of you.”

“Two.”

“He's really gonna do this. Alright, boys, form up. Let's show this little pampered poodle who the real men in this army are.”

“Three.” Laslow's fist launched into a soldier's nose, knocking him clean off his feet. Blood sprayed from his ruined nose. Laslow jabbed out an elbow, slamming one guy in the side with it, making him double over. He flipped his fist up, smashing him in the face and sending him reeling backwards.

One guy got behind Laslow and locked his arms above his head. To retaliate, Laslow jumped high, curled up, then slammed back down with enough force to throw the guy over his head and into the far wall, breaking both of the poor bastard's arms in the process.

The mess hall burst into chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

The knights started playing dirty, coming at Laslow two or even three at a time. One-by-one, Laslow knocked them all unconscious with well-placed punches to their heads, one after the other. It was almost a beautiful dance, the way he flipped and spun around the knights trying to hit him. Not a single hit was landed on Laslow. Soon, Laslow was surrounded by a squad of fallen wyvern knights, broken and bleeding. Laslow's fist dripped with blood, not all of it his own. Laslow looked up.

He locked eyes with Xander.

Laslow bolted, running out of the mess hall, abandoning his breakfast.

“Laslow!” Xander called, but it was too late. The mess hall quieted into a dull murmur of shame at their behavior.

Xander went running after Laslow. He found him, washing the blood off his hands in the kitchen's sink. “Laslow.”

“I'm terribly sorry you had to see that, milord. I didn't know you were there.” Laslow said quickly.

“Laslow, you were defending my honor. I'm not upset.”

“I just punched out ten Nohrian wyvern knights with my bare hands, and you're not upset?”

“I'm mildly annoyed it resorted to violence but they kind of had it coming. I suppose I should be grateful I have such a dutiful and strong retainer.”

Laslow chuckled. “It's strange, a bit. I have such intimate knowledge of what it takes to survive in wartime. It isn't easy. Those knights seemed to be under the impression that you're untouchable, infallible, like you're something more than human. You're a human being, milord, regardless of your status, we're all the same in the end, just a sack of bones and meat. And I saw many of my friends die in war. Every day I had to put on a smile, just so my dearest friends would keep up morale on the battlefield. Everyone looked up to me for strength. And here I am, a foreigner trying to make my way in Nohrian society.” he rambled on for a bit. “But I... I heard them, and I... just snapped. How dare they? You do everything for them. Your very soul is fractured, and you're doing everything you can to hold it together. If they can't see how much you do to ensure their survival... then maybe they don't deserve it. No.... no, I shouldn't say that.” Laslow shook his head and fished around in the kitchens for something he could use to dress his wounds.

Xander stepped forward, removed his gauntlets, put them on the counter, and gently took Laslow's hands in his, murmuring a healing spell as he ran his thumb over Laslow's wounds softly. The  glow of the magic washed over his flesh and his bloodied knuckles were slowly healed, skin and muscle knitting back together over the wounds.

Laslow breathed a sigh of relief. “I truly am sorry you had to hear that.”

“Shhh.” Xander hushed him gently. “You've shown great strength and conviction of character. You only hurt them to defend me. Those knights, when they wake up, will be subject to a court martial for insubordination.”

Laslow took a couple deep breaths, but couldn't hold it, and broke down sobbing. Xander rushed forward and gathered him in his arms, giving him an armored shoulder to cry on.

“I'm s-so-sorryyy.... I c-can't.... I'm such a fucking fraud....”

“What do you mean, Laslow?”

“You o-o-ought to k-know the truth.... can we speak somewhere more private?” Laslow sniffled.

“Of course. Come with me, we can speak in my study.” Xander took Laslow's hand gently and took him to his study, locking the door behind them.

“Okay.. Okay.... Okay. Here it is.” Laslow broke down and explained everything, from the origins of his birth, to the tremendous battle with Grima, to being sent to Nohr and fighting for Lord Xander. “So you see, m-milord... I know what it's like, to be the pillar of strength for an army. To give up my own freedoms and happiness so that others may live. It's not easy.”

Xander slowly processed what Laslow had just told him. He was a prince, working under another prince. “....It appears you do.”

“I'm sorry, milord. At first, coming here was a job. But over time, I've grown attached. I could never and never will abandon you, my lord.”

Xander nodded slowly, still processing everything. “You've had such a fraught life, and you are still choosing to defend mine?”

“Absolutely. Until my dying breath, milord. I don't care if I die tomorrow or live another hundred years. As long as you would have me, I would be by your side.”

“But you were once a crown prince yourself.”

“Please. I told you about the war. There's nothing left of my home country. It's a barren wasteland. I'm not the prince of anything anymore.” Laslow shook his head. “Gods.... I'm just so angry. How dare they insinuate that you're not doing everything you can to help them?”

“I like how it's my honor you're defending and not that they insinuated you were sleeping with me.”

Laslow snorted. “Ha! How little they know. They think themselves regular detectives, they do. But they've missed so many clues.” He stepped forward, and Xander pulled up his chin just enough to kiss him deeply, pulling him into his arms.

“Perhaps they know too much.” Xander murmured against Laslow's lips.

“Would you have me take care of them, my lord? I can make it clean. I can make it look like an accident. Assassination is sadly one of my numerous wartime life skills. I can even set Peri up to do it. Nobody will dare court-martial her. Not unless they're willing to be messily parted from their flesh.”

“No.... No, don't kill them. Let them wonder. Let them fester.” Xander said. “Wouldn't it be grand? And they still don't know a single thing for sure.”

“You're so devious, milord... it's quite stunning.”

“I would hope so.” Xander kissed him again, and Laslow melted in, double-checking that the door was locked behind them before climbing up onto Xander's lap in his study chair.

“Strip me bare before you, milord. I am yours, and only yours. Only you get to see the scars I bear.”

“Yes....” Xander breathed softly, hands reaching up to unbutton Laslow's uniform shirt with practiced, deft fingers and sliding it off his shoulders and onto the floor.

The next time Laslow caught those ten knights (now reduced in rank and confined to the castle for an indeterminate period of time), they couldn't even look at Laslow, quiet and ashamed of their defeat. Lucky for Laslow, as he was sporting a rather large hickey on the side of his neck just under his jaw, not quite fully covered by his disheveled uniform's high collar. Laslow looked satisfied and pleased with himself, and when Xander strode in for lunch, Laslow simply gave him a smug look, and Xander smiled.

[dabiapologist]

[MY HERO ACADEMIA FANFICTION]: It Surrounds You

Written for Kinktober 2017 Day #1

Prompt: Scent Kink/ Olfactophilia 

Rating: E/NSFW

Word Count: 2.9k 

Pairing: Shigadabi, Shigaraki Tomura/Dabi

Tags:  Day 1: aphrodisiacs/olfactophilia, Im not sure which this falls under cause it's a little of both?? idk??it's kind of a loosely-based concept though handjobs, aphrodisiacs, olfactophilia, scent kink?? Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot

Summary: 

It’s growing on him, that godforsaken smell.

He always knows when Dabi is nearby; his arrivals and departures are announced and preceded by the smell of something burning. It follows him around like a black cloud, a sinister smell that reminds Tomura of the incinerators at morgues or funeral pyres.

Dabi is a walking funeral pyre. 

Read it on AO3

He had tried, sincerely, he had tried, not to take notice of them or anything that even remotely had to do with them. The small bar was suddenly a busier place than it had been, what with the arrival of the duo; the creepy high school girl who was always eyeing him like she’d slit his throat the second he let his guard down, and grin through it to boot, and the rude zombie guy whose real name he still didn’t know aside from a shoddy alias.

They were here, and he hated it.

Kurogiri was right; he did need them and their abilities to expand his organization. But that damn well didn’t mean he had to like it.

Or them.

Especially him.

He was a freak in every sense of the word. But admittedly, yeah, he was intrigued. Within the safety of his mind and his thoughts, Tomura could safely say that there was the slightest modicum of curiosity. After all, even in a world of super-powered people, it wasn’t every day you stumbled upon someone like Dabi, villain or otherwise.

“This is a bar, right? How’s about a drink?” Dabi drawls in that low, emotionless voice of his. Tomura clenches as Dabi pushes himself off the brick wall he had been leaning against and, shooting him a passive glance, not seeming to care if he minds or not, slides into the empty seat directly next to Tomura.  

He didn’t have to sit there. There were five empty seats directly to his right that he could’ve parked his carcass on instead of next to him. But, Tomura quickly realizes, behind that seemingly emotionless facade, Dabi hides an irritatingly antagonistic personality.

Kurogiri slides over a glass of something dark and presumably strong by the smell of it.

“You seem like a bourbon-type.” Kurogiri says, and the shapeless void that is his face morphs into something that could almost be called a smile.

“Yeah, sometimes.” Dabi replies.

Tomura watches the exchange from behind the hand on his face. His eyes follow Dabi’s hand as it reaches toward the glass, follows it up to Dabi’s face, watches the Adam’s apple marred purple bob slightly as Dabi downs the liquor in one go.

Tomura caught himself wondering more than once what story lay behind the burnt, purpled skin, held together with surgical staples. And at this moment, he caught himself wondering just how it was that none of that liquor was seeping back out through the parts of Dabi’s chin and cheeks that were bound together.

It still irked him that Dabi’s very first words to him were that he looked gross. Had Dabi looked in a goddamn mirror lately? At least Tomura could say that he didn’t look like a walking corpse.

“Something on my face?”

Dabi turns to him in the stool; of course it was the stool that squeaked, and the sound makes Tomura’s eye twitch. Apparently noticing this, Dabi, for the first time since joining their little motley crew of evil, gives him a faint smirk. “You’ve been staring at me since I sat down. Am I not allowed to drink?”

“I don’t care what you do.”

“Oh?” Dabi intones idly as he fishes something out of his weird leather fanny pack. “It seems like you do.”

“You smell burnt. It’s disgusting.”

“Shigaraki Tomura!” Kurogiri all but shrieks, already set to intercept another fight. But Dabi doesn’t move. He eyes Tomura for a second before shaking his head and going back to what he was doing, laughing to himself. He brings a cigarette to his lips-- figures that the low-life had a box of cigarettes in his stupid pack-- and flicks it with his finger. It ignites with a dark flame at the end that quickly fades to a normal orange-yellow.

“I have a flame-type quirk, so it’s not that shocking.” A deep inhale. In the silence of the bar, Tomura can hear the faint sound of the cigarette paper singeing. It’s annoying. “Heh, and you had the nerve to say I’m the rude one.”

Dabi exhales thoughtfully, hooded blue eyes still focused on Tomura. “I’m amazed you can smell anything from behind that corpse hand you have stuck to your face.”

It takes everything Tomura has not to wrap his hand-- five fingers-- around that smug, crusty throat and disintegrate the man right then and there. But a firm but worried look from Kurogiri stops him from carrying through with the obvious intentions in his movements. Dabi notices it, too.

A crinkled note in an equally crinkled hand slides across the bar. “For the drink.” Dabi mutters, cigarette dangling from his lips. He leaves the room. But not before Tomura can catch another horrible whiff of burnt flesh and cheap cologne.

*****

It’s growing on him, that godforsaken smell.

He always knows when Dabi is nearby; his arrivals and departures are announced and preceded by the smell of something burning. It follows him around like a black cloud, a sinister smell that reminds Tomura of the incinerators at morgues or funeral pyres.

Dabi is a walking funeral pyre.

The smell envelopes him, invades his nostrils long before Dabi makes his full presence known. He slinks into the bar, hands crammed in his pockets as usual, Toga bouncing and giggling at his heels, practically frothing at the mouth about someone’s blood or something. Tomura can’t be bothered to listen to her insanity, especially when Dabi, in that infuriatingly low-key way of his, shamelessly invades his personal space yet again by taking up the seat next to him at the bar. It’s not long before a bourbon is sitting in front of him and a cigarette is dangling from his lips.

The man smokes like a chimney, but that’s hardly the worst thing about him, so Tomura slides to the left a bit and remains silent.

The familiar smell of cigarette ash blends with Dabi’s natural smoky... musk, in his nose and Tomura gags noiselessly behind the hand covering his face.

He’s saying something at the moment, something about Yuuei’s security measures, but Tomura isn’t really listening. It’s unusually warm in the bar; he feels clammy and demands that Kurogiri turn the air down. Kurogiri eyes him strangely, but does it anyway.

He doesn’t really notice a change and it bugs him a lot.

*****

It always seems warmer here now. And it doesn’t take Tomura long to realize it’s because of Dabi.

The man runs hot; sitting next to him really is like sitting next to a human furnace, or something vaguely resembling a human, Tomura supposes. But it’s raining today and it’s cold in the bar, so Tomura doesn’t mind it as much.

“You don’t complain about my smell anymore.” Dabi says suddenly.

“Fuck off.”

Dabi turns to him. Smooth tanned skin and scarred purple run side by side, splitting his face into a Glasgow smile that only seems to grow more menacing when Dabi actually smiles, exposing teeth.

“No need to be so hostile, you know,” Dabi drawls around a lazy french inhale, “Just making an observation.”

The heat in the room only seems to grow as Dabi turns to face him fully in his seat. “You seem a little pent up, Shigaraki.” He says bluntly.

Tomura can feel his temper starting to rise. In the few short weeks since they’ve joined together, Dabi has made an art of igniting the metaphorical flame under Tomura’s bottom, bringing his temper to a nice, even simmer.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Dabi’s expression remains annoyingly impassive. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

He does. Of course he does, he’s not stupid. And he’s certainly not that naive. Dabi’s expression still doesn’t change, but Tomura can see in his eyes that Dabi knows he’s lying. And he can see, in the way the corners of Dabi’s eyes crinkle and the hoods of his eyes drop, and in the way that faint smile curls into something in the realm of seductive, that Dabi has no qualms about humoring him.

“...I guess I’ll just spell it out for you then.”

The smell of smoke and charred flesh fills Tomura’s nose as Dabi leans in, and his heart skips in his chest when he feels Dabi’s warm breath puff in his hair and teeth tug at his earlobe from behind warmer than normal lips.  

If it was warm before, the bar might as well be on fire now.

His face is burning, his ears are burning, his fingers are twitching. Tomura curls his hands into fists, quelling the urge to kill the other man.

“You...you piece of shit…” He hisses, hand inching towards Dabi, who slides back into his seat, seemingly unfazed by the creep of certain death looming over him in the form of a spidery, twitching hand.

The fact that Dabi clearly doesn’t love himself should’ve been readily obvious, but now, it all but bowls Tomura over the head. The nerve, the absolute fucking nerve.

Dabi calmly downs the rest of his drink before sliding the glass over to a speechless and awestruck Kurogiri, who had witnessed the entire exchange and subsequently the audacious --and frankly suicidal-- move, and wanders out of the bar without even glancing back. Toga bounds out after him, giddy and psychotic.

It’s not until the door to the bar closes that Tomura finally snaps back and releases a loud cry of pure rage before smashing the glass that Dabi had been drinking from against a wall and storming out of the room.

*****

Fuck.

Just like that, it became a fucking association.

It’s two days later and Tomura is sitting in front of his computer, quietly seething at this realization.

He scratches at his neck, growling. That bastard. That no-good, motherfucking bastard.

Tomura can’t even be around him now. When Dabi enters one room, Tomura swiftly and noisily exits. Sharing the same airspace with Dabi is already way too close of proximity now.

The smell, the stench, of the other man drives him up the wall. But it doesn’t drive him up the wall in a way that Tomura is okay with. Before, it disgusted him on a purely visceral level. Now it disgusts him for an entirely different reason. The smell of smoke and burning bodies wells up in his nose and his mind. His eyes drift shut as he fingers his earlobe, the sensation of Dabi’s teeth softly nipping at it still very fresh in his mind.

The thought of it brings an unfamiliar and unwelcome heat to his face and his neck and ears. His heart lubs out of rhythm in his chest. His cock twitches in his pants.

Tomura wants to kill the first person he sees. He really hopes the first person he sees is Dabi.

He scrolls past a news article; a random spectacle downtown with some small time villain and those damned Yuuei first years.

The smokey smell has not dissipated, and it’s really bothering him. Tomura remembers once, when All for One explained to him how powerful memories and associations based on smell can be, and if his master said it, obviously it must be true...

... but still.

His room smells like it’s on fucking fire now. And it's a problem, because, well... he doesn't hate that.

“Didn’t know you guys actually had WiFi in this dump.”

A pair of hands like burning coals smooth down the front of chest, slow and indolent, like a jungle cat stretching out for a nap. Dabi all but collapses onto him, chin resting on the crown of Tomura’s head as he wraps his arms around Tomura’s neck. Exactly the person he didn't want to see. He catches Dabi's reflection in the computer screen, it's one of very subtle amusement.

“Get the hell off of me.” He seethes, jerking around in Dabi’s unwelcome embrace. Dabi clucks his tongue, and another first since they’ve been forced to endure each other’s company: Dabi laughs.

“You’re avoiding me, Shigaraki.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. Every time you see me, you run. Man, I didn’t think you’d spook so easy…” The amusement hanging in Dabi’s tone nearly sends Tomura into a rage. Somehow, miraculously, he fights the urge down by sitting on his fingers, making sure to keep his thumbs out so that the chair doesn’t disintegrate out from under him and make this already uncomfortable situation into an all out fiasco.

“I’m busy. Go away. Take the little crazy nymph with you and go patrol or something.”

Tomura can feel Dabi smile into his hair. The room suddenly feels twenty odd degrees hotter, and Tomura isn’t sure if it’s exclusively because Dabi’s body is resting solidly on his back. He can practically smell the heat coming off the other man in waves, and it makes his breathing hitch embarrassingly. He doesn’t need to look in a mirror to know that his whole face is pink, and in the privacy of his room, he doesn’t have his hand to shield his face from view. Or at least, what was the privacy of his room.

“She can function on her own, you know. Just because the old man brought us at the same time doesn’t mean we’re joined at the hip.”

"All the same, I'd like you get the hell out of here."

"Ah, I see. You're you still sore about what I said the other day."

Tomura growls, fingers itching to grab Dabi by the face and watch him crumble. But before he can respond, Dabi keeps talking, still draped over him like they're married or something. What the fuck.

"The fact that you're still this upset about it basically proves that it's accurate."

"I'm going to murder you."

"You can try. And regardless of whether you succeed or not, you're still only proving me right by attacking me."

Tomura spins in his seat, nearly knocking Dabi over onto the floor. "Why the hell do you even care?" He snaps.

Dabi calmly turns him back around, and, to Tomura's annoyance, puts himself right back where he was before, namely leaning against Tomura. "I don't, really." He says simply, "I just get bored, sometimes. And... well,"

Rough lips brush the back of his neck. Tomura tenses at the sensation. “To be perfectly honest," Another kiss behind his ear. “You kinda seem like you need it.”

Tomura jolts when he feels a hand dip between his legs and cup his crotch. He hadn’t even noticed Dabi’s hand move; it’s kind of hard to notice anything presently but the way Dabi is wrapped around him, teeth grazing the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck, already tugging his half-hard cock out of his pants.

Frankly, Tomura has half a mind to elbow Dabi right in the face. But the thought fades the second Dabi’s palm squeezes over the head of his cock and he starts to pump it slowly. The crude staples running along Dabi’s palm make for a strange but pleasant sensation, one that Tomura quickly finds himself being unraveled by. Tomura swallows thickly, trying to fight down any noises that might escape him. Like hell he’d give Dabi the satisfaction. But the scent of the other man, like a smoldering ember, and the heat enveloping his body... it’s all Tomura can do not to come completely undone under Dabi’s ministrations.

He fears he might eventually grow fond of it, at this rate.

They’re cheek to cheek now as Dabi leans his head into the crook of Tomura’s neck to get a better a view. In the corner of his eye, Tomura catches Dabi’s teeth snag his scarred bottom lip, and the breathy little hiss of pleasure he lets out as he pumps his hand faster does not go unnoticed, either.

Dabi’s good at this. Way better than Tomura would’ve ever given him credit for, given their disastrous introduction and general disdain for one another. His hand moves with the confidence of experience; much different than Tomura’s clumsy attempts at masturbating himself when the urge arises, while simultaneously trying not to accidentally disintegrate himself cock first. In that respect, he’s secretly grateful that Dabi noticed his… needs. All five fingers are definitely integral to achieving the desired result, and it’s definitely better when someone else does it for you.

It’s not long before Dabi has him on a steady but slowly climbing gradient. Down the hall, he can hear Kurogiri talking with the girl with blood and the knives. They’re loud enough that they drown out Tomura’s broken gasps and moans that seem to echo in the small room.

Through it all, Dabi doesn’t say a word. Even when Tomura groans his name, coming in fast, heavy spurts into his hand and the computer desk, the other man is oddly silent. It’s not until Tomura is coming down from the high of his climax and is tucking himself back in that Dabi finally talks.

“You sound cute when you come.” He says casually, wiping his hand off.

"Shut up." Tomura mutters tersely as he stands on shaky legs. He grabs a hold of the desk for support. Dabi watches him, amused.

"You okay there?"

"Shut up." He repeats, but there's no real bite to it this time around. "...We should keep this between us."

"Naturally."

"I'll see you in there. We have plans to discuss."

"Fine. See ya." Dabi turns to leave, hands crammed in his shirt pockets. The scent of smoke and ash leaves with him, and the second he's gone Tomura already misses it.

[oh-ishouldnt]

The favorite - part 01

The favorite - part ½ | Jack Maynard | imagine

Word count: 2123

A/N: The name Kirstie is being used.

More imagines here | Requests are open! 

“I’m just going to take my wallet, Y/N.” Conor said to you. “It won’t take 5 minutes, I swear.”

“For your own good, Conor, I really hope you won’t take too long to come back” You warned, snorting as he opened his front door.

“Jack isn’t even at home, Y/N/N, you’ll be fine” Conor promised.

“Oh, yeah, he would be the first to leave the place, right?” You remembered, calming down instantly.

Conor nodded his head and you two entered the house together, finding the exact opposite from what Conor have said: Jack Maynard was on the sofa watching TV.

“What the hell are you doing here?” You asked seeing Jack’s head turn to you.

“This is my home, Y/N. I guess I live here?”

“No, is not.” You hit back. “You moved out.”

“Okay, guys, you work the things out, I just need to get my wallet.” Conor asked, he gave up of the whole Y/N vs. Jack a long time ago.

“Yeah, but my name is on the rent’s contract, so technically I still live here.“ Jack answered, ignoring his brother.

"That’s a waste of money, isn’t it?” You commented, crossing your arms and supporting your weight in one leg near by the door. Where were Conor? Gods, where the fricking wallet has gone? “But I guess it suits you… You’re a waste of human being, so…”

Jack was pissed off already. At first moment, he thought yoj would be a really nice girl, all his friends only said funny and interesting things about you, yet when he met you, you were a pain in the ass and continued to be since that.

“Shut up and get out of my house, Y/N.” Jack commanded.

“Sadly to you, this house also belongs to your brother, as you might forgotten, and he…”

“Is going to take his best friend out on her best night ever.” Conor completed your sentence before you and Jack started fighting for real and ended killing each other.

Conor took your arm and drag you to the front door as you almost froth of rage.

“You look beautiful in this tight red dress by the way, Y/N!” Jack yelled as you and Conor were leaving.

“I can’t say the same to you, Jack!” You yelled back.

You and Con started walking down the street to get some food somewhere before hitting the nightclub, both of you freezing in the night, especially you because, after all, you were using just a dress and a jacket.

“For God’s sake, Y/N, when you and my brother will start to get along?” Con asked and you almost feel bad for him.

“Well, the day he stop being an asshole will be a great day.”

Conor sighed, his life would be so much easier if you two just stopped being little kids who stole each others toys on the playground.

“I thought you guys could, somehow, stop acting like this through the time… I was wrong”

“Yes, you were.” You told, starting to get angry with Con, because by the way he sounded, it seemed you were the villain. Of course, Jack was his perfect little brother.

“I don’t get it.”

“What?”

“Why you and Jack hate each other.”

You automatically responded: “I don’t hate Jack.”

Conor looked at you and frowned.

“Oh, no! That little scene back home was a demonstration of love!”

You rolled your eyes, sometimes Conor’s sarcasm was just annoying.

“Fine.” You grumble. “I hate your little brother.”

“My little brother?” Conor laughed “His older than you.”

“Your little brother still.”

“I never called him little brother.” You raised an eyebrow for him. “Not for real!”

“Whatever, Conor.”

“Honestly, why do you hate Jack?”

It was your turn to laugh: “I’m surprised you don’t know this answer.”

Conor was genuinely confused.

“I should know?”

“You should guessed by now.” You shrugged. “But no one did it yet so you must be alright… Maybe I’m just not good at pointing my reasons for doing the stuff I do.”

“Yeah, you’re not.”

“Shut up, Maynard.” You said. “Let’s grab some food, I’m starving.”

Later that night:

You said to the taxi pull over, it seemed that this building was the one, so you paid the driver and jumped out of the car, receiving the English storm with a grouch.

Oh, Conor was a dead man! Dead man! If he wasn’t dead already, you would kill him! What the hell! This wasn’t what you signed for when you two became friends! And you definitely should revised the terms of this if he thought rescuing him was on your tasks.

The place was brand new. You didn’t know how the heck Conor ended up on an office building, and didn’t know how it was a fancy one, but at least you could congratulate him for that.

You smiled to the blonde receptionist and explained you forgot your laptop on the 32nd floor because that was only one floor away from Conor and it wouldn’t be so suspicious. You thought you must be really chilled and had a really nice face because the woman said you could go without hesitating and let you pass the ratchets. Maybe they should hire someone better, you clearly didn’t work there.

Your high heels echoed on the marble floor and it was really fine, because you never felt more powerful than that, thinking that you could get used to the sound of your shoes on a classy floor. That would be nice in a daily basis, wouldn’t it?

You pressed the elevator’s button and sent a text message to Conor, saying you were almost there to rescue him from his little rendezvous. You must be a really really cool friend to do such a thing.

You heard someone speak to the receptionist, it had a flirtatious tone… A specific flirtatious tone that made you close your eyes and groan. Why? Why, gods? Aren’t you a nice person? The receptionist didn’t even doubt you! You weren’t on dawn trying to save your friend across the city? Why then? Why?

You stared at your phone, seeing the keyboard and thinking the zillion words you could angrily type in and scream at Conor for being such an idiot. Maybe you could even leave him there! But it wouldn’t be a punishment, would it? Because obviously he had another one coming to get him and it meant you took the cab for nothing. You hated Conor even more than you hated his brother in that moment.

“Oh, fuck off.” You heard Jack’s voice grumble.

You raised your eyes from your phone and stared at the person who just got there.

“I’m not happy either, but I guess you can complain about that with your brother later, when I rescue him from this girl and cut him in hundreds of pieces after.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m the one who’s rescuing Conor.”

You rolled your eyes.

“First: Can you stop being such a child? How old are you, 7?” You asked and then continued: “Second: I got here first, so definitely I’m the one who’s on a mission.”

“Your mission is over.” He declared “You were with him and look what happened? I had to leave my date because you couldn’t take care of my moron brother.”

The elevator arrived and you entered in it, being followed by Jack.

“Don’t call Conor a moron, your dumbass. And get your own elevator, please. This one is taken.”

“Oh, who’s acting like a fricking kid now, wise old lady?” Jack asked, pressing the 33rd floor button. “At least, now I can understand why are you so boring.”

“Don’t press the 33rd button, stupid.” You said. “They will realize we are with your brother and the girl.”

“Who will realize that?”

“The owners of the building! We are invading, you know?”

“And, yeah, our bigger problem will be being associated with my brother and the girl who actually have access to this building if we get caught.” Jack rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake, my brother said you were smart, Y/N.”

“Your brother says good things about you all the time to me too, but I think he’s blind.”

“You don’t tell me…”

All the sudden, the lights went off and the elevator made a huge noise before stopped.

“Fuck.” you cursed.

“It can’t be.” Jack complained.

“What the hell?” you started walking across the space, as if it would make some difference.

Jack, after panicking a little, said:

“Relax, baby, there’s a power generator in this kind of building”.

“Call me ‘baby’ again and I will be opening these doors with your teeth, Jack.” You warned. “And it’s the middle of the night in a weekend, we weren’t supposed to be in here, there’s no power generator for us, brainy.”

“Oh.” he realised you were right.

“Yeah, I know, genious.”

“But someone will take us out of here, Kirsten is just downstairs.”

“Who the hell is Kirsten?”

“The recepcionist, of course.”

“Oh, yeah, I supose I should know that.” You rolled your eyes.

“You spoke to her.”

“Yeah, I did, but I’m pretty sure you only know her name because she’s beautiful.”

“Are you jealous, Y/N?”

“Jealous? Oh, gods, someone should analize your mind, Jack, you are pretty damn sure of yourself in an abnormal way.”

“If you say so, honey.”

“I’m serious, Jack.” You angrily told.

“You only said about calling you ‘baby’, honey.”

You gave up, rolling your eyes with the feeling you would do a lot of it that night.

“Try to call Conor.” Jack said.

“Do you even have a brain?” You asked. “It’s an elevator, we don’t have signal.”

Jack lost his words:

“Some elevators do.”

“Right then, try to call your brother, your bloody idiot.”

And Jack actually tried, with no success.

“Dammit.”

“I said to you, dearie.” You stated with a smile bigger than the recommended.

“Shut up, Y/N. If I need to be with you for more than 10 minutes, it would be better if if you just don’t say anything.”

“Shut you up, Jack. You are the one to blame!”

“How the hell I am the problem in here?”

You opened your mouth to speak but a female voice came from the botton of the pit.

“Jack?”

“Kirstie!”

You rolled your eyes, the gods must be kidding with you because worst than being stuck with Jack Maynard was being saved by Jack Maynard’s new girlfriend.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah!”

“The pretty girl are there with you?”

You smiled, “pretty girl”? Okay, you might be okay with the Jack’s new thing.

“Yeah, Y/N is in here too.”

“I will send some help to you, guys!”

“Thank you!”  You both said as one, making faces of disgust for each other.

“Just wait a little and I’ll come back!” Kirstie said, leaving nothing but the silence behind her.

“So I’m the pretty girl, huh?” you teased Jack, calming down now that you two were going to leave that metal box.

“Again: shut up, Y/N.” He sat down on the elevator’s floor.

“Fine, I just find interesting you think I’m attractive.”

“Everybody thinks you are attractive.” Jack rolled his eyes, not really noticing what he told you.

“Everybody?” you were starting to find funny being stuck in there. “It’s really sad that it isn’t mutual.” Althought these were that got out of your mouth, you were bluffing. Since day 1 you thought Jack was handsome, but there wasn’t no way you would tell him that.

“Don’t make this a big deal, Y/N.” Jack argued, one thing was to compliment you to tease you, another thing was let a compliment slip out of his mouth. “And everybody knows you can’t resist me.”

“In your dreams, Maynard.”

“Guys!” Kirstie called and Jack jumped of the floor.

“Hi!” Jack shoulted back.

“I’m so sorry! I can’t get you out of there! Aparently, your names aren’t on the system, so the police is being called!”

“WHAT?” You and Jack screamed. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

“I mean, I said it must be a mistake, but they can’t come here unless I make a complaint and I think you guys don’t want any trouble so…”

You stared Jack, the panic on your face was inevitable.

What are we going to do?  You asked without sounds.

I don’t know! Jack answered.

“Guys?”

Say something! You ordered.

“That’s fine, babe.” Jack told Kirstie at the end. “It won’t be more than a few minutes, me and Y/N can wait. Thanks, Kirstie!”

You sighned, letting yourself fall on the floor as your back slide down the wall, it would be a really long night.

Second part here

[ruffoverthinksthings]

I VERY MUCH ENJOYED YOUR JAY/MAL BIT AND WOULD LOVE TO KNOW MORE! Things like Ben thinking maybe he and Mal weren't an Ever After and how the Jay/Mal relationship develops (for some reason the Natalia Kills line comes to mind: who needs true love, as long as you love me truly. I don't know why.) But yes, more please if you are willing to share!

All of these asks all neatly tie in to more of the events of whatis quickly becoming ahalf-headcanon/half-full-blown-fanfic-in-bit-and-pieces, actually!

As a refresher: Mal and Ben are still officially together, Mal gotwasted at a Big Party with intentionally capitalized letters, Jay tried to do Drunk Patrol, and it ended upwith it looking like they were totally about to get it on in adressing room even though Jay was being a gentleman and refusing totake advantage of Mal, but Mal was emboldened with the strength andcunning of a horny octopus.

(I’m sorry, I’m really proud of that metaphor.)

Auradon blows up in scandal, simultaneously decrying the perceivedinfidelity, lack of morals, and tested loyalties with Mal, Ben, andJay, and tuning in on all the celebrity rags to see all the latestjuicy details, insider stories, and speculation about it. While thethree of them got the situation cleared up, and are cool with eachother because they’re all mature adults like that, the fact remainsthat most of Auradon is convinced that Mal is cheating on Ben withJay, Ben is either tragically oblivious or slowly plotting how toframe Jay in an elaborate revenge ploy, or the three of them arehaving a totally consensual, loving, healthy (but still taboo)polyamorous relationship among other salacious accusations.

(And a large, sudden influx in “real person fanfiction” butthat’s a different topic altogether.)

Neither of them are psychiatrists however, so they deal with itthe only way they know how:

Raising hell and causing mischief.

The two of them rent a car so they won’t get ID’d straight away, buy several boxes of spraypaint, andgo all about the seedier side of Auradon City, the hostess/hostclubs, the authentically shitty dive bars, the districts that thelocal government and their residents mutually agree they shouldforget about trying to renovate and “clean up” every time theannual budget rolls around.

They tag walls and show the new generation of punks (”AVK’sgot nothing on us originals” Mal says as she paints over some OFFENSIVELY mild and not at all rebellious graffiti), they get drunk, they get into places they’renot supposed to just because they can, and they have a blast.

Mal slurs and giggles as she’s walking down a sidewalk with Jay, a LOT drunker than she thought she would be--and a lot deeper inthe crook of his arm than she strictly needs to be to stay upright. “Shit, Jay: I AM SOFUCKING WASTED! Do you know the last time I got THIS messed up?”

“Little less than a week ago, when you were at that... what wasit again?”

Mal scowls. “I dunno. I don’t fucking know what that party wascalled, who we were throwing it for, and why the fuck I decided I’d helphost it--all I care is that I am drunk, I am happy, and I think I amkinda high from all those paint fumes...”

Mal staggers to the side and awkwardly stretches herself out, as if letting aninvisible fae about waist high walk past them without slowing down.Jay keeps her from overbalancing.

“And you know what the best part of this night is?” shecontinues as she returns to their old configuration.

“What?”

“NOBODY FUCKING CARES! I’m drunk, I’m high, and I’m stillterrified of whatever the fuck that thing is that’s beenstaring at us since Merrygold Street, but you know what?” she flipsthe bird at a seemingly random direction. “It doesn’t matter!Because it’s just me and one of my best friends, ever, and there’s no media orwitnesses to see just how much of a hot mess I am right now...”

“And here you were having second thoughts...” Jay chuckles.“Good thing I was there to save you from another boring night!”

“Hell yeah!” Mal says, throwing the Maleficent. (The Horns, to us.)

She slows down, and Jay keeps going for a while until he starts tofeel Mal pulling him back. “Something up, M?” he asks.

“Thanks, Jay,” Mal mutters. “I mean it: thank you. Becauseof you, I’m free. I mean, it’s just for tonight, andtomorrow’s going to fucking suck, there’s no two shitsabout that, but...”

She trails off, and smiles at Jay.And even if she’s got greenpaint all over one side of her face when she got reacquainted withthe right side of the nozzle, her breath reeks like cheap jelloand even cheaper vodka, and her hair’s all frazzled and everywhere,he wants nothing more than to kiss her.

He lets the thought pass, however. Because he knows he reallyshouldn’t, and that for all that’s happened tonight, she’sstill Ben’s.

“Disgusting,” they hear from the side.

The two of them turn their heads and see a little old lady--thekind that refuses to move from her old apartment building that’s asancient as she is, complete with the pillbox hat--looking at themwith a glare that would have been terrifying under very differentcircumstances, but is just funny to them now.

Jay smiles. “Lady, we’re just two friends out having fun,”he says.

“Don’t you lie to me, boy!” the old lady cries, wagging afinger at them. “I can see right through you two--you don’tthink someone like me keeps up with the news? Why, I watch thosefancy ‘live feeds’ like a hawk, I tell you,A HAWK!

“And you! Maleficent Bertha Jr., you should be ashamed ofyourself! Is that any way for a future Queen to act, cavorting abouttown, getting drunk in the arm of a man who isn’t your husband,where anyone can see you?”

Jay rolls his eyes. “Geeze, lady--”

Mal puts a finger to his lips. The two look each other in theeyes, and hatch a plan in an instant.

“Oh no!” Mal says in her most overdramatic voice possible. “Mypristine reputation! My dignity! My pride as a woman, sullied by anight of temptation, vice, and sin!”

“And by the hands of such a handsome, devilish rogue of questionable moralitysuch as myself!” Jay says smugly, twirling an invisible mustache.

What follows next is about the most overblown, melodramatic,clearly faking it unless you’re really, really, really densescene of them making up the most ridiculous, salacious, scandalousimplications they can think of, going through the whole range ofsecret Evil parties in basements, cavorting about with Dionysus’Maenads, both actual fae and the alternative lifestyle community, vague references to body parts and acts with them, allwhile emphasizing the worst, most awful thing about everythingthey’ve “done”:

Jay and Mal aren’t married, and neither is she to Ben!

This poor old woman is just getting redder and redder and frothingat the mouth, waggling her ancient bony finger at them, and Jay andMal are just dying from laughter, they aren’t even trying tohold it back anymore.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit...” Jay is whispering inbetween the actual tears of delight streaming down his face. “Weshould stop--like seriously stop, I think she’s having a heartattack.”

“Gee, ya think?” Mal titters back. “Okay, okay, we really should, but afterone last thing--big finale.”

“Lay it on me.”

“I’m going to kiss you,” Mal says calmly. “But like, just a fake,stage kiss.”

Jay’s laughter stops in an instant.

Mal misinterprets it as his giving her the go ahead.

She kisses him. And through the haze of alcohol, paint fumes, anduncontrollable laughter, she realizes that she’s totally kissinghim in a way that can be interpreted as anything BUT “a fake, stagekiss.”

The old lady sputters angrily, frothing at the mouth, before shesuddenly just keels over. Jay drops Mal in shock, she doesn’t evenfeel her head hitting the sidewalk.

Mostly because she’s too busy processing the fact that A:

They might have actually killed an innocent if severelystuck-up old lady.

And B:

There is totally a crowd that wasn’t there before that’svideotaping the whole thing from every angleon their phones.

Meanwhile, as this is happening...

Ben sighs happily as he settles down into his private study, stilldressed in formal kingly attire from the waist up, and just hisinfamous crown boxers from the waist down. He never really got theappeal of his father going around with no pants if he could help it,until now, when he, too, was king.

He’s about to take the first book from the perennial stack of“To Be Read” books on his desk, when there’s a knocking on thedoor. “Come in!” he calls out.

The door opens, and in walks Lumiere with tray, on it a piping hot potof tea and a freshly poured cup. “Good evening, Master!Compliments of Mrs. Potts,” he says as he walks in and begins toserve it, “a most salacious and frankly ridiculous rumourjust popped up in the internet, and she wished to channel her outrageinto something productive.”

Ben graciously takes the cup into his hands. “Tell her I saidthank you, and please, Lumiere: just call me Ben,” he saysas he takes a sip.

He smiles; he can taste the heat of Mrs. Potts rage, butthe tea leaves make it a soothing sort of warmth that spreads fromhis stomach to the rest of his body.

Lumiere smiles apologetically. “Forgive me, Ben, but won’t youplease let this old servant perform his old tricks? Life is notquite the same, ever since your father and mother permanently movedout.” He pauses. “Especially when you perform much of yourfather’s old habits, this… how do the Americans say it? ‘GoingCommando’?”

Ben chuckles. “That’s going around fully clothed sansunderwear, Lumiere. This is just ‘No Pants Time.’”

“Bah!” Lumiere shakes his head. “I’m getting so old,”he mutters playfully.

“Not that old!” Ben counters.

Lumiere beams, up until he notices the title of book on top of thepile:

“Till It’s Gone: Recognizing the Value Of Your RelationshipsBefore It’s Too Late”

“That is… a rather ominous choice for bedtime reading, Master.”

Ben shrugs. “Never hurts to face the uglier sides of life sometimes,right?”

Lumiere frowns. “Is this about that deluge of scandalous anduntrue accusations that have befallen you, Mademoiselle Mal, andMonsieur Jay?”

Ben nods. “It’s just… I thought I left all of that behind inAuradon Prep, you know? And just... for all of it to come back, along with all of these people talking about when we’re getting married, it’s just...”

Lumiere puts his hand on his shoulder and gives him a loving,paternal squeeze. “Just do what I did, Master: grin, speak with them politely, and waitfor them to get bored and move onto someone else and make ridiculousrumours about them.

“And I should know: I was often an eye witness, ifnot one of the main parties involved!”

Ben laughs. “Dad always did say you had a very… colourfulpast, before you came to work for him.”

Lumiere smirks. “That’s certainly one way to put it. Mypoint still stands, Master: this is all just a natural, inevitablepratfall of being among the aristocracy. Soon enough, this will allblow over, you and Mademoiselle Mal will be back to your normal,loving selves, and all of you—Monsieur Jay included—will belooking back on this incident and laugh.

“Once this media circus packs up for the road, perhaps a vacation to Neverland is in order, with plans of adifferent sort along with it...?” he waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

Ben looks at Lumiere, then back to his stack of books. He smiles,takes “Till It’s Gone,” and places it to the side, cover down.The new top book on the stack:

“How Do You Put A Ring On It?: The Commitment-phobe’sGuide To Going Steady, Proposing, and Staying Happily Married ForeverAfter”

“Thanks, Lumiere,” Ben says. “Could you get Cogsworth onthat?”

Lumiere allows himself a moment on unprofessional behaviour andpumps his fist in the air. “At once, Ben. Shall I also call yourmother and tell her it’s finally time?”

Ben nods, looking at the photo he has on his desk of just him andBelle, recently taken on her birthday earlier that year. “No timelike the present,” he says.

Lumiere pats him on the shoulder once more. “Her ring is goingto look so beautiful on Mal’s hand, Master.”

He lives to regret those words, but to be fair, though, therereally was no way he could have known.