#// just sort of like brushing past each other's shoulders for years or even decades without consciously choosing a significant other before
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Chiming in to ramble about ship bias
Canon-wise, Octatrio will always be my top ship bias for Jade, but on a broader introspection, my favourite ship with Jade will always be Jade and a Situationship regardless of the muse in question.
It's easier to picture shipping Jade with someone he worships, that he admires, or that he adores, but for both personal and impersonal reasons, he doesn't initiate the official relationship or even accept it if he is offered by the person in question. Instead, Jade prefers to live in a parallel reality to this person to whom he's devoted himself, by going to lengths to ensure that their lives will never interact or overlap each other yet always staying close by just an arm's reach away. Even if the person in question got into an official relationship with someone else, it doesn't dissuade Jade from moving on because part of him expects this possibility and it's all within his expectation that the way he lives his life isn't the way everyone else wants to live their lives.
#𖦹 ⋆꙳ ⁄ ooc.#// anyway jade is tough to love regardless of how close of a relationship they have in canon#// most of the time the moment the other side admits to wanting an official relationship it might be over for both of them#// but keeping things within a Situationship works best for Jade because part of the allure is that it keeps both parties guessing#// where they stand with each other#// and that is a directly something that appears attractive to Jade since he's never bored if that's the case#// and usually how I picture it is that jade and his special someone always originate from two very different worlds or realities and most#// the time they have nothing in common or even shared or discussed any future plans at all#// they just sort of exist within each other's circles for years and years until the point that you realize you don't remember a time in#// your life where the other person doesn't exist; which is the same time when all the built-up memories and past hits you and you realize#// that you've known each other since the beginning of time and that they have always been a constant in your life in ways you never even#// realized until this very point and you decide that this is the person who can convince you that 'forever and after' can indeed#// be achieved with them#// just sort of like brushing past each other's shoulders for years or even decades without consciously choosing a significant other before#// you realize that Fate chose Them for You
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I forgot if I sent this request? But Zhongli breeding his bunnyperson lover while they’re in heat?? pleaseee?
Ask and ye shall receive! Yeah, this was the first zhongli breeding request I got so(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
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Dragon at the Top, Rabbit at the Bottom
Summary: The first time you invite Zhongli to join you in your heat, he had ran away, years later him joining you for your heat was something that was established without any need for a contract.
--
As the God of Marriage and Harvest, you had no shortage of followers and worshippers. This abundance had greatly contributed to your survival during the Archon Wars and the subsequent fall out of the Tragedy of Khaenri’ah. Of course, your affair with the God of Contracts and Lord of Geo had contributed to your continued survival as the Ancestor of the Rabbit Clan, and Liyue’s God of Marriage and Harvest.
Though you had no qualms in displaying your indomitable strength to those who would challenge you, your lazy nature and natural rabbit inclinations had led you to be neutral towards worldly affairs. In a sense, you had only interacted with the mortal world and fellow gods on a work basis, in mortal terms you were a workaholic god. Where others would have been dissuaded by your nature, Morax had been enamored.
To him, you were dedicated to your worshippers and followers. Your good work ethic was a reflection of your appreciation for following contracts. Simply put, in Morax’ eyes you had no discernable faults thus you were desirable as a lover.
The memory of him appearing right before you in that bamboo forest was one of your most interesting memories. Primarily because it was the first time you had ever seen a dragon come into a rabbit’s den in the middle of their heat. It had brought you endless amusement, seeing Morax’ calm serene eyes marred with panic once the scent of your head began to permeate the air of your den.
The outer sleeves of your hanfu had slipped over, revealing the smooth expanse of your skin, a solid evidence of your life that was devoid of hardships. At the same time it was an evidence of your strength that no one had ever been able to over power you. Your long silk like hair was spread out on the soft cool wood of your den’s floor.
“To what great pleasure, do I owe the Geo Archon to have come to my abode without any invitation?” You greeted him, eyes half-lidded with lust as you maintained control of your lucidity.
“That-I-” Morax stammered as he tried to look away from your enticing form that was sprawled out elegantly on what he could only surmise as your nest, “I would like to invite you to see the first lantern rite with me...however I had been re-” His words faded as his eyes were drawn to the rustle of clothes.
Your inner sash was untangled causing your inner robe to slip down and reveal the smooth expanse of your chest, twin red peaks perked up as you smiled at him, “You were?”
“I wasn’t aware that it was your heat…” He gulped and averted his eyes, the red tips of his ears were the only indication that he was embarrassed.
“I apologize for the intrusion, I’ll be taking my leave.”
“I would not mind if Lord Morax would stay and...help me out in my heat?” You had teasingly offered him, your red eyeliner and red lips added to your seductive charm, the twitch of your long black ears gave you a playful look.
“...” His eyes widened before he abruptly turned around and left in a hurry.
You blinked, surprised at his action before your loud laughter echoed in your den. You sank in your soft nest and hoped to see that sort of expression on his face once more.
In his abode, Morax tried to calm his racing heart, he could feel the heat on his face and the slight hardness in his dick. It was the first time he had ever been exposed to such a potent scent of heat.
“Things must be done in order…” He reminded himself as he tried to banish away the images of your alluring half-naked body from his mind.
And yet as he uttered those words, Morax could not help but remember your soft teasing voice inviting him to experience worldly pleasures. Your soft laughter and this hidden side of you somehow tickled his heart.
Liyue, 3600 Years Later
The soft moans and distinct sound of flesh slapping could be heard loud and clear within the halls of your residence. You made no effort to stifle the sounds of pleasure that Zhongli easily coaxed from your mouth. Your hair was in disarray, a tangled mess that only served to make your naked body even more erotic in Zhongli’s eyes.
Your nipples were red and wet from Zhongli’s earlier ministrations, he was truly good with using his mouth not only in sharing Liyue’s history but also in his ability to apply the exact amount of pleasure necessary to make you come from his bite alone. The twitch of your black rabbit ears with each hard thrust of Zhongli’s hip made him aware of how much you were feeling.
His thick monstrous cock was scraping the insides of your slutty hole, making you arch your body from the pleasure that emanated from each thrust that hit your sensitive spot. Your nails dragged a long line of scratch on Zhongli’s back as you came from another bout of pleasure, instinct driving you to clamp on Zhongli’s cock to ensure that his seed would be buried deep inside you.
You felt his arms hold you as your body was lifted from the soft floor of your nest. The sudden change in position gave you a micro orgasm as the head of his cock brushed past your sensitive spot.
“Why haven’t you come yet?” You mumbled in his ear, softly whining from the lack of his thick come filling you.
You felt, rather than saw, his smirk as he placed a kiss on your shoulder. His dragon part took over from his human self as he answered, “You know that this year’s heat is more potent than the last, if I spilled all of my seed inside you right now you would definitely end up pregnant, my dear.”
His sharpened nails softly went down your back, before settling on your ass cheeks and spreading it, Zhongli continued speaking, “Or is it that you want to bear my children now? Would you like that, changing from the God of Marriage and Harvest into the God of Marriage and Childbirth?”
His soft sultry voice made your insides twitch in interest, your breathing becoming hard as the next onslaught of heat came again.
“Shut u-!”
Zhongli had lifted you up and slammed you into his dick, causing you to moan and once again sink into the haze of lust. Saliva dripped down the sides of your mouth as Zhongli repeatedly slammed you, in time with him raising his hips, into his cock doubling the pleasure you felt with each thrust that had you moaning lewdly.
Each thrust had you begging him for more, uncaring of the lewd face you were making which was a far cry from your usual composed face. You no longer knew nor cared for what you were asking from Zhongli, your mind was only focused on his thick cock that repeatedly slammed inside you, hitting your sensitive spot again and again, each thrust throwing your mind deeper into the haze of lust.
Zhongli’s grunts and moans mixed with the squelch of your wet hole as his cock impaled you again and again, scraping your insides and making you long for the feeling of his thick seed.
His hand went up to your tail and squeezed it, making you moan louder just as he thrusted into you before letting a thick load of cum inside your hole right as you came. You cried his name, your arms reaching out for him, wanting to be held as you rode out your orgasm.
And Zhongli, the perfect lover that he was, obliged and held you close to his chest. Opting to rest for a moment as he kept his cock sheathed inside you. He kissed you softly on your mouth while his hands wandered through the smooth expanse of your body feeling its softness before it settled in the dip of your waist.
“Mhmm...You’re already loose enough for my next form…” Zhongli told you and you hummed softly, baring your neck as you felt him transform his body to ensure that he would be able to breed you.
Had you been outside your heat, you would have flushed over Zhongli’s handsome form, one he wore in public as Rex Lapis, but with the heat clouding your reason you could only position yourself invitingly to him. Spreading your legs wide and lewdly inviting him to take you, to breed you with all his might.
Gone was the mortal shell he wore, adorned on top of his head were two horns, his pupils had turned into the slits of a dragon, his teeth had gone sharp, his hand up until his forearm had turned into the smooth scale of a dragon.
His dick had grown thicker and longer, split into two and both were leaking thick droplets of cum that had you biting your lips in anticipation.
“Yánwáng Dìjūn” You called him sweetly, arms outstretched for an embrace and Zhongli sank into your wet hole and into your embrace.
He inhaled the scent of your heat and pheromones that smelled like sandalwood, a comforting scent that never went away from the days before the Archon Wars and its aftermath. This was your scent that never failed to bring him peace, an everlasting scent that lingered for decades.
He moaned at the clench of your hole, biting your neck as your sharp nails dragged long lines on his back. He kissed the spot he bit as your legs hugged his waist, the sensation of his two dicks scraping your insides as it gushed out slick only served to fuel your libido.
Each thrust of his hip brought you immense pleasure, hitting your sensitive spots that had you losing yourself to the haze of lust. Everything in you felt on fire as Zhongli gripped your waist, thrusting his two thick and long cocks inside you again and again all the way. His balls slapping your buttocks making obscene sounds as your wet cavern squelched from the combined liquid of your slick and Zhongli’s previous cum. The sudden loss of his cock filling you inside went unnoticed as he turned you around to lay on your stomach, ass up and presenting your wet and loose hole that was dripping his and your cum into the silk sheets of your nest.
“Yánwáng Dìjūn?”
It was all you could say before you moaned loudly from the force of his dicks slamming inside you, making his thick load of cum from earlier spurt out of your hole.
“Fuwaaa~ahn!”Your broken moans only made him grip you tighter as you clung onto to sheets for your dear life, you felt your hole clench just as the comforting weight of his body enveloped your smaller frame.
His hand wandered to your chest, pinching and twisting your glistening and reddened nipples as his cocks repeatedly thrusted into you.
“Inside me-!” You moaned as Zhongli bit you and unloaded his thick white cum inside of you. The rest of his come dribbled down the insides of your things while some fell into a puddle below your hole.
Zhongli’s pants filled your ears as he gripped you into a hug. His hand then reached downwards to your hole, scooping some of his come into his hand and presenting it into your mouth.
You opened your mouth as his fingers went near and moaned as his fingers began fucking your mouth.
“As the new God of Childbirth, you have to lead by example” Zhongli whispered as you tasted his sweet cum in your tongue, he kissed the back of your neck, “Bear my children.”
Your hole twitched in interest, as you swallowed his cum. You reached for his cocks, noting that it was already hard again, perhaps it was the from the orgasm or maybe it was due to your heat but you found yourself uttering words you would never have dared,
“How bold, for a mere element like you that merely ascended by chance to demand such a thing from a God like me.”
Soon you found yourself being fucked once more, harder and faster, feeling Zhongli’s annoyance and even then you knew that he was still holding back. Nothing like the beast that he truly was beneath the years of knowledge he had gained from achieving the pinnacle of cultivation.
He chanted your name as he impaled his cocks in you again and again, making you throw away all your aloof dignity as you moaned and begged him for more, begging him to fill you up with his seed and show his might.
Zhongli didn’t stop thrusting as you came again and again from his cocks, he didn’t stop even when he came losing himself to the thought of breeding you and dominating you.
His cocks didn’t stop filling you and when your hole couldn’t take it anymore, he fucked your mouth, repeatedly thrusting his two cocks and spurting his come down your throat multiple times as your hole twitched from the jade pillar he had plugged it with to keep all his come inside.
Your face was stained with his come, some of it staining your hair. Your belly was filled with his come and Zhongli had shown no signs of stopping anytime soon. As you felt him come for the nth time you slowly felt your consciousness slip away, the edges of your vision darkening as you tasted the familiar sweet taste of his come fill your mouth.
‘Ah~ I really provoked this dragon this time~’ You thought with mild amusement.
You were quite sure that once your heat was over, you would end up pregnant with his child.
When Spring arrived in Liyue, the entirety of Liyue Harbor found the esteemed consultant of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, Zhongli, holding a visibly pregnant lady in his arms. Their belly was large and round, showing despite the considerably loose hanfu they wore but the most eye catching part was the possessive and caring way Mr. Zhongli cared for his pregnant spouse.
From the tips of their inky black hair to the pearls and gems that adorned their rabbit ears, the citizens of Liyue knew that Mr. Zhongli would have a litter of children. He had after all impregnated the most and highly esteemed race descended from Liyue’s God of Harvest and Marriage.
Unbeknownst to the town people, and only known to those who had a sharp sense of smell, the state of your pregnancy did nothing to stop Zhongli from breeding you repeatedly every night, everyday and in every opportunity that was presented to him. Even now as he assisted you in taking your daily walk in the boulevard, Zhongli was pleased by the flush on your cheeks.
It was after all the sign of you feeling the slow drip of his come from him fucking you earlier in one of Liyue’s seedy alley. His adepti powers concealing the act from everyone.
“I can’t wait once you give birth” He whispered into your ear as he hugged you from behind.
Your heat was long over, but the feeling of his cock as he discreetly rubbed it against your ass made you feel like it had returned.
“Mmmm...it’s going to be a long winter then…” You replied absentmindedly as you leaned on his chest. You felt your hole twitch in interest as Zhongli’s hand slipped underneath your skirt, you bit back a moan, pretending that nothing lascivious was happening. Idly, as Zhongli began preparing you for another round of breeding, you remembered that dragons had heats too.
And as you felt his cocks enter you easily, you lost your train of thought and fell into the haze of pleasure as Zhongli fucked you again.
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Should’ve Known Better
Pairing: EB!Frank x Reader
Summary: You should have known better than to sleep with a friend.
Word Count: 3.3k
Warnings: Smut, FWB set-up, a little bit of toxic shit, angst
A/N: Frank got the most votes when I asked which other Seb character I should write for, so here it is! This is very personal to me lmfao it’s somewhat based on my own experience that really fucked me up a couple of years ago aksncajscna no but for real, stay away from the friends with benefits kind of relationship if you can’t keep shit purely sexual lmao also some guys are just fucking assholes even if they’re your friend lol
ALSO, I tagged those who are in my Everything Bucky Tag List. I’m not sure if I’ll write more Frank in the future too so I won’t be creating a separate tag list for him yet.
MAIN MASTERLIST
"Do you love me?"
It was a simple question that was supposed to make you think. Given your experiences and your personality in general, you were supposed to cringe and ignore it. Maybe even make a joke out of it, especially that it was Frank who was asking you this question.
He wasn't supposed to ask it too. He wasn't one to ask such thing, not especially with the relationship that the both of you have. It was clear from the get go that this was nothing serious.
So why was he asking it now?
And why did you respond to it right away, as if you knew your answer even before he asked?
-
"Come on, it'll be fun."
You should've said no. You should have known better.
"I'll make you feel good, you won't regret this."
It did feel good, you were going to give Frank that. Possibly the best, even. But the latter part? You weren't so sure. Were you regretting it? Honestly, no.
Maybe not yet.
You'd rather not think about it for now.
"What's there to lose? We know each other too much to develop feelings anyway, you said so yourself."
Oh there's plenty to lose. Maybe a decade's worth of platonic (was it really platonic from the beginning though?) friendship. Your self-esteem was on the line too, but you didn't know it yet. You'll get there though, whether you like it or not.
"I'm free next Friday, come over. Spend the night with me. What do you say?"
You should've said no. You should have known better.
"Next Friday. I'll see you, okay?"
You should've said no. You should have known better.
"Ugh, fine."
But you said yes because you didn't know any better.
-
That first night with Frank was something else. It was fun and he kept his promise to make you feel good. So, so good. You never thought that sex could be that fucking good. At least, not with your previous partners. Not that you had many in the first place.
But god, Frank knew what he was doing and he loved doing things to you. He loved the entire process of knowing your body, what you liked and what you loved. How you liked to be kissed and touched and fucked.
He studied your body like his fucking life depended on it and you let him. You let him own your body because you needed someone to. You needed to feel something, wanted to have a purpose even for just a short while, even if it meant being someone's fuck buddy.
You felt lost for the longest time, but as you laid on Frank's bed with his tongue lapping up your cunt, you actually felt like you belonged somewhere.
-
You weren't a booty call, definitely not. And when things escalated between the both of you, Frank was already single and had broken off with his recent girlfriend, Daphne. You weren't a doormat nor a side chick. Frank had been your friend for the longest time, one of your closest actually. He knew you the best and not just physically. Frank knew the darkest parts of you the same way you knew him like the back of your hand. He was the most open to you, he said so himself.
"I don't know what I'd do without you." he told you one time.
Frank wasn't afraid to show you his true colors; how he wasn't the kind to settle for one or how he would often end up with someone immature or toxic. He himself was toxic and for the most part, you tolerated him.
That was the mistake on your part.
You let him be himself, that's why you held a special place in his heart. Not even his past girlfriends could get rid of you. You were untouchable.
"Are you sure she's fine with us going out?" you asked Frank one time, as the both of you headed to the movies.
He scoffed, "Yeah, don't worry. I already told her you're my best friend. You're off limits." he chuckled as he placed his hand on the small of your back, guiding you inside the cinema.
"You're fine." he reassured again, this time wrapping his arm around your shoulder and then cradling your head playfully.
-
Looking back, you sometimes ponder whether the friendship was really platonic. You were sure of it when the both of you first became friends; he was a couple of years older than you. You sort of looked up to him like an older brother for the first few years of your relationship. And he was very caring too, always looking out for you.
Your other friends were the first one to notice the closeness. They often told you that Frank seemed to have a thing for you. You brushed it off though, saying that it was impossible.
His girlfriend then was an acquaintance of yours. She was nice and wasn't bothered by how Frank was affectionate towards you.
Indeed, you were untouchable. You were the best friend after all.
-
"We fought again."
You rolled your eyes at Frank as he sat across from you at a local coffee shop near your place. It was your birthday and as always, you spent the most part of it with Frank.
It was like a tradition already, to celebrate your birthday with Frank first before you went out with your friends. Or even family. It was that kind of friendship.
"I'm sorry but who are we talking about again?" you joked.
Frank made a face, "Daphne." he responded. "I just told you about her like, two days ago."
You snickered, "I was kidding. But honestly though, you have to stop flirting with other girls. It's been really difficult for me to keep track of your record, Frank. And are you and Daphne even official?" you asked, taking a sip from your cold brew.
He rubbed his chin and shrugged, "Sorta. Well, we were official two weeks ago. Now though, I'm not so sure. Here's the thing, Daphne can be really..." he said, trying to search for the right words.
You hummed and shook your head, "Immature?" you said and mindlessly scrolled through your phone.
"You should really stop dating girls who are immature, Frank. I swear to god, this is like...I don't know, the fifth time you dated someone like her? Why don't you settle for someone who actually acts her age?" you blurted out.
Frank groaned and transferred to the seat next to you, his body facing yours and his hand landing on your thigh. You didn't mind, didn't think it was too touchy or intimate for someone who was in a relationship. It was pretty common for Frank to be this touchy with you anyway, you never paid much attention to it nor given it any malice.
"We fought because of you actually." Frank admitted with an apologetic smile.
Your head snapped towards him, a scowl etched on your face. "What did I do?!" you asked in defense.
"It was my fault. Daph saw your photo inside my wallet." he said.
"You should really throw away that photo. Jesus, why do you still have it anyway?" you complained.
Frank scoffed, "That's my favorite photo of you. I don't wanna get rid of it."
That was the last day that you considered your friendship with Frank platonic.
-
Come over
I miss u xoxo
Miss eating u out
Miss ur moans, wanna hear them again
You groaned at the continuous notifications that flooded your phone. While you were at work. After that first night with Frank, he had gotten extra clingy. No lies though, it felt nice to be wanted like this.
im free nxt Sat
Yay
Cant wait to see u, missed u a lot
dude, we were at the mall together just last wk
U really dont get attached do u?
Frowning at Frank's reply, you honestly didn't understand what he was implying.
what u mean?
Nothing
Work kept you busy for the entire week, with Frank bombarding you with sweet texts. You've avoided being sweet with him, it felt wrong. You weren't an affectionate person but Frank was, it was sort of one-sided. It wasn't a big deal anyway.
No one from the rest of your friends knew what had become of your friendship with Frank. You just thought it wasn't something that should be revealed. It was like your and Frank's little secret. You had to admit, the thrill only made the sex better.
Whenever the both of you went out with other people, the tension was there and it was fun. It was fun trying to brush off the way Frank's hand would steal touches from your waist, or how he'd subtly squeeze your thigh. The looks you exchanged from across the room; how Frank's "fuck me" eyes were meant for you and only you.
Things like that made you feel a certain type of way. But you never dwelled on it, or at least, you thought you didn't.
-
"Yeah, fuck...just like that, baby."
Frank's fingers dug deeply into the skin of your ass as he guided your hips. You gripped onto the back of the couch as you bounced on his cock, head thrown back from pleasure as Frank suckled one of your nipples. You could feel each of his fingers pressing down against your skin, it's probably going to leave bruises again.
"Frank, shit. I'm close." you panted against the skin of his neck, your arms wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him close.
Frank grunted and took your face in between his palms, forcing you to look at him as he began to thrust his hips upwards, eliciting a high-pitched whimper from you.
"Wanted to see you like this ever since." he breathed out, pressing his lips against your open mouth.
"Wanted you since we met, d'you know that?" he asked, grabbing a fistful of your hair and tugging your head back so he could nibble on your throat.
You shook your head and gripped his shoulders, nails scratching at his skin as you continued to ride his cock, "God, Frank...so close." you moaned.
You felt Frank's lips curl into a smirk against your neck, his fingers gripping your hair to keep you in place as his other hand slipped in between your bodies, finding your clit and rubbing it to help you reach your climax.
Every single time he touched you, you felt like your entire body was on fire. You felt the most alive, the most free whenever Frank fucked you. Maybe because he was truly gifted in bed or maybe he just knew your body and how to make it sing.
Or maybe it was because of the way he looked at you whenever you fall apart for him. Like he only had eyes for you, like it was only you that he could see.
Sweaty bodies and hoarse voices, the smell of smoke and sex lingering in the air. It was such a familiar ambiance by now. You liked how the aftermath of fucking Frank was never awkward, if any, it was a comfortable experience with the both of you just talking casually about how each other's day went.
"So I'm talking to this girl..." Frank said, turning you around so he could spoon you. Oh, the irony of the intimacy and conversation.
"Where'd you meet this girl?" you asked.
"Tinder." Frank snorted before pressing a kiss on your nape. "No, but she's different. I don't know, there's something about her."
You merely hummed in response.
"Think I might ask her out."
The first sting. The first realization. The first denial.
You should've said no. You should've known better.
-
The art exhibit wasn't a flop, but you wouldn't call it a success either. When you got a call from the organizer asking whether they can include your paintings in the exhibit, you said yes instantly. What can you say? You were a struggling artist who was seeking validation.
But now that you stood in front of your works with barely ten people attending the one-day exhibit, you thought that this wasn't a validation. It felt like a wake up call that maybe, art wasn't your calling and that you should probably give up on your dream.
"These are amazing."
You were on the verge of breaking down when you heard his voice. Turning around, you were surprised to see Frank. He was nodding his head as he approached you, his eyes scanning each of your painting.
"What are you doing here? I thought you had work." you asked.
Frank gave you a face, "Did you really think I'd miss out on your first exhibit?" he said and pulled you into a warm embrace.
"I'm proud of you." he whispered before kissing the crown of your head.
One validation from Frank was all it took for the walls to crumble down. He was the one who had been there for you all along and that was why you completely trusted him.
Frank will never hurt you, he'll never bring you down.
Or so you thought.
-
"Do you love me?"
It was a question that was supposed to make you think. But you didn't, because even before Frank decided to ask you that, you already had your answer.
You knew your answer for the longest time now, but decided to lock it into a box that you kept in the deepest part of your heart. It remained there unbothered and almost forgotten, up until this point.
That's why it was so easy for you to respond to it without even batting an eye.
"Yes."
It was too late when you realized that you had just admitted that you were in love with Frank. But you felt like it was the right time for you to bring out the key to that box, open it and just set your truth free.
They said that the truth will set you free, but why does it feel like it only imprisoned you?
"Shit, I was kidding." Frank said, his face panicked and body stiff from your unexpected admission.
Before you could even say something, Frank let out a nervous laugh as he ran his hand through his locks. "Wow, I didn't...are you serious?" he asked again.
It took you everything to brush off the pain, "Yeah, but it's no big deal. Come on." you shook your head and forced out a breathy chuckle.
Frank heaved out a deep sigh, "Fuck, I was messing with you. Are you sure it's fine? I mean, would this change anything?" he asked.
You deadpanned, "No, Frank. It wouldn't change anything. Like I said, get over it. It's not like I'm in love with you. I just love you...if that makes sense? You're my friend." you explained, more like lied.
"Look, it's not like I'm unattracted to you. I like you, I like spending time with you. It's just that I sort of don't see myself committing to you."
It didn't sink in to you immediately, Frank's statement. You didn't pay it any mind because again, you knew Frank. He wasn't one to commit so that was fine, you understand where he was coming from. It's not like you were going to force yourself on him too. But then you accidentally glanced at his phone and saw the messages he'd been exchanging with a certain someone.
When r u coming home?
In a little while, Daph
That night, Frank's statement hit you like a ton of bricks but again, you chose to deny what you actually felt. It's fine.
You're fine.
-
You should've said no. You should've known better.
Those words rang in your ears on the day that you found out. Your body turned cold, your vision blurred and your head spun. You'd never experienced hurt and anger like this, the kind that consumed you.
The kind that made you realized and admit that fuck, you'd truly fallen for Frank only for him to break your heart.
It didn't help that you were having such a terrible day at work. And Frank was so sweet to ask you whether you wanted to meet up with him. Not for sex, but to talk. The sex came rarely recently and was replaced with wholesome trips to the grocery, shit like that.
You knew there was something special going on. Even after he told you that he didn't see himself being with you, there was something.
Apparently, that something was just an assumption. Because when you asked Frank to meet you up that night, he said he couldn't and needed to be somewhere. That he'd meet with you the next day instead, a promise.
But then you saw him post a photo of him and Daphne. And it made your blood boil.
u back together?
No. Not really, been trying to fix it but u know how it is.
if ur trying to fix it with her then im out, frank
Wait what? Hey, are u mad?
r u fucking serious? u knew i love u and u come here parading ur ex, what the fuck is that all abt?
Shit, hey. Look, let's talk later, okay? Im out, will txt u when Im free.
Frank didn't text you back for the rest of the day.
-
You should've said no. You should've known better. But you said yes because you didn't know any better.
Were you regretting it? Yes. Sometimes.
You didn't know which hurt the most, the fact that Frank kept you in the dark while he was trying to patch things up with his ex, or that he considered you his best friend and still chose to break your heart.
He knew you the best, your relationship and trust issues and out of all the people, he really had to be the one to fuck you up the most. You trusted him so much, trusted him not to hurt you. Hell, if he doesn't want to commit then that's fine. But for him to treat you like a second option? Fuck that.
For him to confuse you with his actions, the intimacy...were all of those even real? All the times he came to your support when you had no one, when he was there for you on days you felt alone. What were those? He made you feel so fucking special, like it was possible to actually turn the friendship into something more than just fucking.
All this time you thought it was one-sided because you never actually showed Frank how much you meant to him the same way he did to you. Turned out that it was one-sided, but only because you were the only one who fell.
The following day, you received a voicemail from Frank. You pondered whether you were ready to listen to it but at the same time, you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was pretty stupid, he fucked you up and there was no excuse for that. But the friendship you had with him had a strong hold on you.
"Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. That was my mistake." he started off. "I thought that this was really just sex and having fun, but I want you to know that I like you. I really do, you're special to me. Please give me a chance to make things right. Daph and I...I want to end things with her. Please stay, I don't know what I'd do without you."
“I just didn’t expect that you’d end up falling for me, I mean shit. You know the real me, how fucked up I am when it comes to relationships. Just please...please stay?”
Did you stay? Sort of. But you kept your distance, didn't meet up with Frank after that and only responded to his texts occasionally. Did he end things with Daph?
He didn't.
He said he would but instead, they got back together.
It was fucking selfish of Frank to ask for you to stay only for him to get back together with his ex. It'd be better for him to just slap you in the face then.
Being told that he couldn't see himself committing to you but then going back with his ex was the cherry on top. God, if that didn't mess up with your self-worth.
You totally stopped talking to Frank, ignored his texts and calls. You stayed away from him, tried to get over him and eventually, you did. But you'd be lying if you said that he never left an effect on you. Because he did, Frank did a number on you and it would take you a long fucking time to completely recover from the damage he inflicted on you.
You should've said no. You should've known better. But you said yes because you didn't know any better.
And that's okay, because there's nothing wrong with taking risks and ending up in heartbreak.
You live, you love and you learn.
-
Everything Bucky Tag List:
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Slumbering Hearts (Alcina Dimitrescu/Reader, Soulmate AU) Pt. 2
Fandom: Resident Evil: Village
Rating: T for language
Warnings: None
Summary: In a wicked twist of fate, you find out your soulmate is none other than your employer, Lady Dimitrescu. To your misery, she (at first) seems equally displeased, her heart already belonging to another. But in time, the two of you find yourselves wondering… could the universe be right, after all? Soulmate AU in which every person has a unique “soul mark”, which they share with their soulmate.
Notes: Reader gets a bit of a backstory here, with just enough concrete details to serve the plot in future chapters. Hopefully enough is kept vague for people to enjoy it. Now... Time to meet your new kids-in-law/the gremlins :)
Previous Chapters: 1: In The Shadow Of Giants
2: Uncertain Destinations
“You already know my name, as well as my fate, and I have neither threats nor demands to make of you. I am at your mercy, regrettably, with nothing more to say. Shall we consider ourselves ‘introduced’? Or is there more you wish to ask of me?” You wonder, eying ‘Alcina’ with a bored expression. It felt odd to refer to her that way, even within the confines of your mind. She had been ‘Lady Dimitrescu’ for as long as you could remember; starting with your years in the village, and continuing through your months here at the castle. One day, perhaps, you would grow used to calling her by her first name. For now, you simply hoped to focus on other matters.
“Tell me of yourself, your past. Who were you before you came here?” Alcina asks, surprising you. What did it matter, now that you were stuck here? At first you shrug, avoiding eye contact, not wanting to open yourself up to her. But before long she’s placed a hand on your shoulder, applying just enough pressure to encourage you to speak. You win this round, you think.
“Somehow I doubt you’ll find it terribly interesting. I was born in the outskirts of the village, on a small farm, just like any other. I had a pet dog, went to ‘school’ with my neighbors, and spent my weekends volunteering with the church. The only thing you might not expect is that I lived outside the village for about a decade. Traveled for a while, never really staying anywhere for terribly long. Eventually, I got tired, and so I came back to help my parents with what little property they had left,” you explain, quietly. Being vague had been intentional, considering the nature of a few details. Did she need to know why you had left? Or that you had once revered Mother Miranda?... No, because if she learned that, it would not be long before she learned that you had changed your mind years ago. Something told you that she wouldn’t appreciate your lack of faith in her mistress. “That was six months ago, roughly. Barely got to spend time with my parents before I was ‘donated’ to the staff here.”
“Not many ever leave the village. Those that do rarely, if ever, return. How particular,” Alcina replies, giving a soft hum. There’s something in her expression that tells you she’ll eventually ask you to elaborate. For now, however, she seems content to move on. Internally you sigh in relief. “I suppose this is sufficient to sate my curiosity, for the time being. Now come with me, I’d like to introduce you to my daughters, to ensure that they understand you are… off limits.” With that said she stands, once more reminding you just how small and fragile you are in comparison, before heading towards the exit. You’re nearly forced to jog in order to keep up with her long strides. As she leads you through hallways, down a flight of stairs, and past several nervous looking maidens, she slows down the slightest bit, having eventually noticed your struggle. Admittedly, that’s more kindness than you would have anticipated. Perhaps she was used to adjusting her pace for her daughters?
Whatever the reason, you do appreciate it. Still, by the time you arrive at your destination, the castle’s library, your legs are feeling the smallest bit sore. Brushing off the ache, you follow Alcina inside. Then you’re taking in the sights, having not been here before, admiring the impressive collection. Glad I’m not responsible for cleaning this place, you think as you pass by dozens of filled shelves. Before long you encounter the three daughters. They’re sitting in a semi-circle, each with their own book, though they’re quick to sit up once they spy their mother. One by one they’re smiling up at her, not even sparing you a moment’s glance. Admittedly you’re glad for that. What good could come from their attention, especially when they don’t yet know who you ‘truly’ are?
“I’m glad to see you’re all in one place, my darlings. There has been a… development, of sorts,” Alcina says, speaking in the same tone one might use to address a faculty meeting. In a less intimidating household, it would have been much harder to hold in a laugh. Was this always how she spoke to her children? For their sake, you hoped not (though the concept was amusing). Regardless, it is at this point that the daughters notice you, with one of them looking intrigued enough to send a shiver down your spine. You’re pretty sure her name is Daniela, being the only one you haven’t met before today. A toothy grin spreads on her lips, and once you make eye contact you swear that she winks at you. This literally could not be any worse, you think, unable to stop yourself from frowning.
“Does it have to do with this little thing?” Daniela purrs, taking a step towards you. Instantly both Alcina and yourself are tensing up. While your soulmate shifts in front of you, an incredibly faint rosy tint to her cheeks, all you can do is pinch the bridge of your nose between two fingers.
“This ‘little thing’ is not your newest playtoy, Daniela. Rather, they are my-” she hesitates, disliking the way the word feels in her mouth- “soulmate. I expect the three of you to behave, understood? At the very most, you are allowed to prevent them from leaving the premises, but even then I expect you to remain gentle. Have I made myself clear?” Alcina asks. Now she’s not the only one blushing, as Daniela looks so embarrassed that you wonder if she’ll pass out. Maybe now you’ll think twice about flirting with everyone you meet, you think, remembering the various rumors you’ve heard about her. For a moment, part of you imagines what your relationship with her would look like, were you to continue ‘courting’ her mother. Could this be a moment you could torment her with for life? Get some cheeky revenge for all the maidens who couldn’t risk it? A lovely thought, though one soon interrupted.
“Of course, mother. We will not lay a single finger on them, unless we have no other choice. Right, sisters?” Bela replies, turning to her siblings with an expectant look. Neither of them seem terribly pleased, but they nod, each giving their own verbal affirmations. All three spend a few moments glancing you over, reevaluating you now that they know who you are, appraising your worth. It’s not hard to imagine that they all find you lacking- at least in comparison to their mother. “Are introductions in order? We’ve met before, but I hardly know anything about them. It would be… nice to properly meet the newest edition to our family.” The way Bela says the words makes you nervous, and the way Cassandra grins only worsens the feeling.
“If you desire such, I see no reason to forgo such a thing. Perhaps the three of you could give them a tour? I must return to my duties, and I doubt they have seen much of the castle, given their… former occupation,” Alcina admits, softly. Was this a confirmation that you’d no longer have to spend every day working yourself to the bone? On one hand you were somewhat relieved, but you also regretted the possible loss of your preferred coping method. Worse, were you really going to spend who knows how long with the dreaded Dimitrescu daughters? They were going to rip you to shreds, at least verbally, you were sure of it. How could you ever meet their expectations? If they were anything like their mother, you would never be enough to satisfy them. Or at least that is what you assumed.
“I’ve seen a fair bit,” you interject, awkwardly, hating the way it brings everyone’s gaze back to you. Alcina’s lips twitch, as she fights back a frown. Evidently she didn’t appreciate you countering her suggestion.
“Please, we insist,” Bela fires back, a pleasant tone covering her thinly-veiled animosity. “I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful time getting to know each other. You do want to learn more about your soulmate’s children, don’t you?” Something about the way she speaks makes you want to laugh. When you smile back at her, it’s without a hint of any placating intentions, rather a dewdrop of mischief. Bold of her to assume that you wanted to make her mother happy. After all, it was clear from her phrasing that this was a ‘test’, a ruse to ‘reveal your true colors’ to Alcina. But you were as uneasy about your part in this as Bela was, neither of you finding yourself a suitable match for Alcina. Despite the way she narrows her eyes at you, her mother is smiling again, glad that she had a way to keep you occupied for the time being.
“It’s settled then,” she says, moving to give each of her daughters a kiss on top of their heads. They giggle at the affection, looking rather proud of themselves. Then she turns to you, hesitating, clearly having the instinct to give you a kiss as well. Half of you wants to stand on your tippy-toes, expectantly, wondering if she’d do it (and how flustered it would make her). Instead, you pretend not to notice, accepting the awkward shoulder pat she ends up giving you. “I will see you this evening, for dinner. Do try to enjoy yourself. But don’t forget-” she leans in until her mouth is right next to your ear, breath tickling your neck- “behave yourself. I will not tolerate any tomfoolery, understood?” Alcina does not pull away until you’ve nodded, and you do not relax until the library door has shut behind her.
Except now you’re alone with her daughters. Wonderful.
---------------------------
Dealing with finances was not, to put it simply, Alcina’s ‘favorite’ activity. Although she employed someone to handle the majority of the paperwork, she made sure to go over it herself to ensure accuracy. There were many aspects to her business, being both legitimate and illegitimate, technically. One could never be too careful about their records. After all, failing to file tax returns had taken down Al Capone, of all people. Who was to say that such a mistake, or one in a similar vein, could not damage House Dimitrescu? Certainly it wouldn’t be enough to ruin them entirely, but it could lead to certain ‘nuisances’ bothering the village. At the end of the day, Alcina cared more about the impact it would have on Mother Miranda than anything else, even the possible decline of her household.
A nasty habit, really. Few knew the extent of her self-entitled devotion to the cult leader. The only bond that ran deeper was that she had with her daughters, who meant more to her than she could ever vocalize. Even then, she viewed them as a gift from Miranda, which in turn strengthened her love for the woman. Now that love leaked into everything she did. With a flourish of her pen, she signed away some of this month’s earnings. So what if she already ‘donated’ a large portion of her income to the village and its leader? Certainly this was a way to show the level of her devotion? Certainly Miranda would take notice, eventually? Praise her for it? Take Alcina’s hand in her own, thumb caressing her skin, eyes filled with a long-sought affection?...
The sound of passing footsteps brings her back into the moment, and Alcina stares down at the mountain of paperwork she’d yet to approve. With a deep sigh she readjusts her reading glasses, sets the finished document aside, then gets back to work. A part of her mind soon starts to drift to other subjects. To you, primarily. Would your affection be easier to gain? Steadier?... But could it, in any way, compare to Miranda’s? No matter how she tries to brush the thoughts away, they nip at her heels, circling her head like vultures. Only time would give her the relief she so desperately sought.
---------------------------
“So, don’t tell me you really think you’re my mother’s soulmate, right?” Cassandra says, somewhat grumbling, as you trail behind Bela. It’s less than five minutes into the tour, with the siblings having behaved so far, focused on actually showing you around. At her words, both her sisters started walking slower. Their gazes were still locked ahead of themselves. The way they positioned themselves, however, made it clear that they were listening. “Is it some elaborate scheme, hmm? Did you spend a dozen hours with the other servants, noting every last detail about her soul mark, before copying it? Do you really think that you’ll get away with this?” Well, ‘twas good to know who the most paranoid of the three were.
“Ah, yes, it’s all a great, horrible ruse. You’ve caught me red-handed, I’m afraid,” you chime, sarcastically. A hand goes to your forehead as you fake faintness. “I’m just so desperate to be scrutinized by yourself and your mother, to have my every movement watched, to somehow be less free than I already was. I simply… cannot… believe… that you saw through my bluff.” With that you give a dramatic sigh, pausing in the hallway to give Cassandra a judgemental look. If not for Alcina’s instructions to keep you safe, you’re certain she would have beheaded you on the spot. “I’m not claiming to understand the universe’s decision. But I’m also not giving up immediately, no matter how much the three of you scare me.” At that, Bela stops in her tracks, slowly turning to you. Instinctively you go to take a step backwards, only for Cassandra to catch you, holding you in place. Next thing you know, the oldest daughter is grabbing your head, staring you right in the eyes.
“Answer one question, and maybe I’ll make sure you don’t fall victim to some tragic, unfortunate accident. Can you see yourself loving my mother?” Bela asks, more intense than you’ve ever seen her before. Despite that, you don’t tremble, swallowing your fear long enough to reply.
“Honestly? I don’t know. She’s terrifying… and beautiful. Cruel to some of the maidens I’ve met… and loving to you three. I… I don’t know if I can love her,” you admit, gulping. “But isn’t that part of the point of trying? To find out? I am going to try, for both my sake and hers, to love her. To cherish her. What more would you ask of me? I cannot tell you how the days to come will go, whether or not your mother will enjoy them, or even whether she could love me. This is not a situation you can threaten into resolving the way you want it to. So let me go, finish the tour, and give me a chance. You owe your mother that much, do you not?” Soon enough the hands keeping you in place loosen their grip, and Bela turns away with a scoff. Honestly, you can hardly believe that your little speech worked. You aren’t given much time to celebrate, however, as the sisters quickly resume their walking. Before long, Daniela is speaking up between giggles.
“I like this one already.”
#alcina dimitrescu x reader#lady dimitrescu x reader#alcina dimitrescu#lady dimitrescu#resident evil: village#re8 village#gremlin trio is protective#they're like#you're not cool enough for our mom#hey tumb please stop fucking up the order of my tags#this is the second time you've messed up my attempt at being funny
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you’re someone i just want around: III
“You can have me tonight or never
I thought you understood
Baby, some people are meant to be loved and others just naked
So take what I’m willing to give, love it or hate it.”
—Wrong, Zayn and Kehlani
A/N: alright SO!!!! the original part 3 ended up being at the cusp of 50k words (because i have no self control) and that is a LOT to read in one go so it’s getting split into parts 3 and 4! which means!! double update laidese and germs!!!! part 4 will be posted this SUNDAY, AUGUST 16th at 5PM PST/8PM EST :D we hope you enjoy this chapter, feedback is greatly appreciated, and please please PLEASE!!! if you like it, reblog it!!! and if you want, go nuts in the tags!! every single one is read!!! it keeps content creators motivated 💌leyla @sunflowervolvimp3 took the liberty of making an incredible playlist to go along with our story, so feel free to check it out and see if you can find any clues as to what’s in store for the characters 👀without further delay, here she is...buckle up 👁👁this is gonna be quite the ride
ysijwa masterlist : andrea’s masterlist : leyla’s masterlist : ysijwa playlist
word count: 24.2k
content/warnings: cheeky banter over texts, The Crew dragging Niall to shit, more banter over a glass of cheap wine, vampire!harry showing up to “interior design” sessions looking like a runway model, some fwb smut, degradation kink, very mild mentions of blood, and some ugly tapestries that somehow lead to sexting
///
Y/N definitely puts Harry’s number to good use. Very good use.
In fact, during the span of the next month or so, Harry reckons that she pulls up his contact on her phone so often that she probably has him listed on speed dial. The assumption is dramatic and probably incorrect, on behalf of his arrogance, but with how much time they start spending together, it’s hardly a stretch.
It all begins exactly a week after their first time meeting.
Harry still hates clubs.
He hates them more than he did last week. He hates them more than he did yesterday, more than he did this morning, and even more than he did a minute ago. He fucking despises them.
And yet, as Harry stands here before the mirror in his enormous double-sink bathroom, fiddling with his damp hair as his flouncy dress shirt hangs unbuttoned from his broad shoulders, he’s absolutely positive he has never hated clubs more than right now.
Niall got to pick the venue this time. He’d texted his choice in the groupchat (which is respectfully named Dinner Plans) about four hours ago, making sure to get the word out decently early so that everyone could start making their preparations, all in order for the crew to be on the move by nine P.M.
It’s now nine thirty-seven, and everyone is fully set to leave at the agreed upon hour. Everyone except Harry.
This, however, is not uncommon. He’s always the one that takes the longest to get ready, no matter how soon he starts. No one can remember an instance where Harry has ever been ready on time— which says a lot, considering most of the gang has years of memories from which they can pull. Mitch especially. With almost a century of friendship behind them, not once has the older vampire ever seen Harry stick to a deadline. His flare for being fashionably late is less a flare, and moreso an irritating burn. It always throws off their game a bit, but at this point, everyone has gotten used to the seemingly young vampire’s theatrics.
So on this Friday night, there isn’t much more to do other than mold to his habits; Harry answers to no one except himself and it’s been that way for decades now, for a reason he’d rather not reminisce. He doesn’t owe anything to anyone, especially since he’s the one that always takes charge of getting them where they need to go, as well as getting them inside said destination. Complaining about their leader wouldn’t do the gang any good for a number of reasons, especially because Harry rarely ever listens. It is what it is— he’s just the way he is, and they’ve all learned to live with and respect that.
The funny thing? Harry does it on purpose, though his friends aren’t aware of it. He drags out the process of getting prepared simply so he can put off having to step inside one of those circus acts people refer to as clubs. He goes as slow as possible and does as much as possible, spreading seconds into minutes, and maybe— if he’s insistent enough and feeling particularly pesky— an hour. His record is an hour and twenty-eight minutes, which he wears with pride, much to his group’s unamusement.
Harry knows no one will ever say anything about his annoying tendencies, unless they’re willing to volunteer themselves to take the reins for the night. Vampires are alert and productive, but only when they want to be— which is usually only when it benefits them— and only if they can muster up the patience for it. And frankly, none of the creatures he associates with have the patience required to deal with security, driving, and other obstacles the way Harry does. He’s indispensable, and therefore, everyone puts up with his shit. Quid pro quo has never been more effective.
So here Harry stands, now thirty-eight minutes past the original time sorted for departure, carefully combing volumizing mousse into his slightly wet curls and spinning each ringlet around his index finger to give them the definition and bounce he’s so well-known for. Here he is, finishing up his post-shower routine as all of his friends mill around downstairs in his living room, waiting for him to come down so they can pack into his car and head out for the weekly hunt at whatever establishment has been deemed fit for the night. And here he is, taking his sweet time so he can be the signature pain in the ass that everyone hates to love.
Once Harry has thoroughly coated all of his hair with the fluffy white cream, he pulls out his hair-dryer from the cabinet below his sink, snapping its accompanying diffuser into place and flipping his head upside down. He carefully scrunches his curls to his roots with the attachment, moving in thoughtful circles as he hums to the rhythm of a song he can’t be bothered to remember the name of. Staring down at his polished jet black heeled boots, he absentmindedly taps against the porcelain ground to the beat of the music, sighing wistfully as warm air circulates its way across his scalp.
Harry turns his shoes to the side, admiring the detailing along the back of the heel. Across the curved surface is the word SUCKER, bedazzled onto the article with multicolored jewels, glitzing beautifully under the fluorescent lighting of his bathroom. The shoes had been a gift from a friend with connections in high places; more specifically, connections to the man who sits on the throne of the Gucci brand. Harry hadn’t questioned the present when he’d received it— only an idiot would bat a cautious eye at such a luxury. He’d fallen in love with them the second they landed in his palms, decked out in a gorgeous satin box and wrapped with sparkly black tissue paper. The only words that had dared leave his lips were, “Fuck, I think I just got hard.”
The shoes had fit like a charm, and he had wanted to save them for a special occasion. But given that he has hundreds of years worth of special occasions lined up for his future, he’d shrugged off his pickiness and yanked them out the back of his closet for tonight. What better way to show them off than at an overhyped disco hall?
Harry flips his head right-side up once again, ruffling his fingers through his soft, shiny curls to check for any wet patches or stringiness. He rolls up the wire to his styling tool and puts it back in its designated spot, grabbing his favorite paddle brush and attentively filtering it through his hair until he gets the tousled waves that he’s grown so fond of sporting. He musses them until he’s satisfied with his appearance, nodding at himself casually in the mirror as he proceeds to wrap up the last few necessities he has left.
Harry buttons his blouse, admiring it in the fogged mirror. It’s a flowy sheer black piece with holographic threads sewn through its expanse, the fabric continuously shimmering with every shift of his muscles from underneath. He leaves the last three holes empty to better show off the dark butterfly inking on his lean chest and the swallows suspended in flight along his collarbones. He doesn’t really have to leave the shirt open, given that the material is see-through to the point where it leaves very little to the imagination, obvious in how all the tattoos along his arms are clearly visible. But he does it either way— he likes it when people stare. He’s got the assets, he might as well flaunt them.
Harry loosely tucks the hem of the shirt along the brim of his high-waisted beige slacks, which he’d ironed with precision to an ideal fold. He opts out of a belt tonight, wanting to display the array of elegant buttons that line the front of his pleated trousers. The pants hang slightly flared around his ankles, and if someone’s interests were intent enough, they might catch a glimpse of his favorite socks underneath the cusps, the words FUCK IT printed across the dark cotton fabric. He always makes sure to have an aspect in his outfit that could make for neat conversation.
The vampire pulls out one of his drawers, ghosting his fingers over his collection of jewelry before picking out a pearl necklace and his father’s gold-plated cross necklace, as well as a colorful array of rings. He makes sure to retrieve the most significant two, as always— his lionhead amethyst daylight ring and his mother’s opal. He never goes anywhere without them.
After he’s slipped on those accessories, bending and stretching his fingers for good measure and feeling everything settle into place, he picks out the gold cross earring that matches his necklace. It used to be part of a pair that belonged to his sister. As he watches the gold twinkle in the artificial light, he briefly wonders what happened to its twin, but pushes the thought away before it leads him down a path of pessimistic speculations.
Harry loops the dangly piece through his earlobe, sighing through his nose as his gaze jets around his entire look, searching for any possible faults he could tend to that would prolong the inevitable— another night of drunken morons and thick synthetic smoke.
Harry decides to fold the cuffs of his shirt up to his elbows, knowing that it makes his veiny forearms look appealing. He rummages through his selection of colognes before deciding to go with his trusty Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille, spritzing a bit along specific pressure points on his neck where a pulse would otherwise be present, following along with the insides of his wrists. The scent of cloves, sugar-frosted vanilla, and cedar wood envelope him in a warm ambiance. After that task is complete, he fusses with his necklaces for a minute or so, settling the cross between his pectorals and resting the rosey pearls across his clavicle, fingering at their smooth surface in thought. Much to his defeat, everything seems to be in order, down to his freshly lacquered black nails. It’s not his fault he’s nearly flawless. His long— and unfortunate— extension on life had given him a plethora of years to work himself into a state of physical perfection. There’s only so much one can do to their appearance before it becomes superiorly stagnant.
Harry tunes his heightened hearing for a second, listening in to the conversation his friends are entertaining on the first level of his condo. Niall’s voice is the first one that comes through, unsurprisingly. He’s always the loudest and has zero filter, present in how he’s freely ranting about Harry’s exaggerated mannerisms as he paces back and forth across the floor, footsteps heavy. No one seems to be paying him any mind— As usual, Harry thinks to himself, snorting softly— because everyone appears to be caught up in their own personal lives, too lost in gossip and exchanging opinions to give the Irish vampire any thought.
None of his gang seem bothered by his lack of rush, but Harry knows he can’t keep them waiting forever. Fridays are the day they’d all collectively agreed to hunt together and it had been as so for almost twenty years. Being the leader, Harry can’t let his childish distaste for nightlife get in the way of what’s best for the group. He needs to hunker down on his selfish inclinations and be a responsible friend, or else a human might not be the only person Niall sinks his fangs into tonight.
With one final lingering stare at his reflection, Harry goes to retrieve his phone from its face-down position on the dark marble counter, simultaneously reaching for the light switch to begin powering down his apartment for the next couple of hours until he returns. Hopefully with a pretty girl hanging off his arm and less of a burn in the back of his throat. Although Harry may be cynical, he’s also practical; if he’s going to have to spend eternity on this planet, he may as well try to conserve enough energy to make it bearable. After decades of adjusting to electricity, the last thing Harry wants is to return to candlelit rooms and going to bed in time with the sun.
The sudden chime that shrieks from his device causes him to jump a tad, brows furrowing in mild confusion for a few reasons. First, because it’s such an odd coincidence that right as he went to grasp it, his smartphone had gone off; it’s almost spooky. Second, because anyone who would normally dare message him at this hour is currently sequestered downstairs on the cushions of his sectional sofa, waiting for him to emerge from his room. Who else could possibly need to contact him this late, especially at the beginning of the weekend?
Harry flips his red iPhone curiously (yes, he’d bought it in red for the purpose of irony), peering down at the unknown number shining back up at him from the screen.
The text is simple enough: Hey, accompanied by three disco ball emojis.
After a few seconds of blank blinking and adamantly searching through his mind for a clue as to who this could be, the answer smacks him square between the eyes. The memories come to him in quick flashes.
A bald bouncer with a stupid name. A two-story room with seven foot tall speakers and a bar nuzzled in the corner. A group of loud, tipsy girls in stilettos and glittery dresses. One girl, sitting amidst the ruckus looking alone and indifferent while everyone around her gave into inebriated chaos. Mitch urging him to go talk to her. The overwhelming smell of honey and lavender. Gentle caresses placed across the tattoos painting his arms. Pretty lips the color of fresh blood, drained glasses of liquor, and witty banter exchanged between suggestive glances and cheeky grins. Shouldering through a crowded dance floor with the young woman in tow. Settling her into the passenger’s seat of his Cadillac and feeling heat explode across his cold cheeks when she’d yanked him down by his collar, kissing him like his lips were her only source of air.
A quaint apartment complex, flickering lights in a corridor, and a worn couch. A warm mouth, smudged lipstick, teary eyes, and the gentle, shaky echo of, “I want to make you feel good.” High-waisted silk pants discarded on the floor, a cream lace blouse, and pastel pink lingerie. Thighs squeezing his head as her sweet taste spilled across his tongue. The mortal’s bare back pressed to his chest as he worked his hips roughly into her, mumbling dirty promises against her ear. Sugary whimpers and needy pleads. The warm, tangy flavor of her blood filling his mouth and sedating the burning in his throat. Childish giggles shared in a tiny flat, her warm fingers sewing between his icy own and tugging him into her room. A sleepless night full of steady breaths and only one heartbeat. A stupid tapestry and an ugly popcorn ceiling. A late morning strewn with sarcastic jokes mumbled over the rim of a coffee mug. Pulling his favorite t-shirt over his head and inhaling the sweet smell that had been glued to every thread.
Making a drastic decision and typing his information into her phone.
Harry doesn’t mean to speak aloud, but the name slips down his tongue as easily as he’d drawn moans from hers. “Y/N.”
It’s not like he didn’t remember her, because he did. And it’s not like he hadn’t thought of her since, because he had. But it’d been in passing and barely relevant— faint recollections in the form of fleeting seconds.
He’d thought of her a couple days ago, when he’d been wandering around the mall with his friends. They’d passed by a candle shop where, among all the mixed scents, there had been the unmistakable aroma of lavender and honey somewhere inside, smelling vaguely like her. She’d unwillingly made her way to the forefront of his mind when he’d gone to do laundry, picking out his baby blue Marc Jacobs t-shirt from his hamper and feeling his eyes dilate and fangs protrude— a result of animalistic instinct. As it turns out, she had left a bloodstain along the inside of the yellow collar of his tee. It was dried and crusted over by the time he found it, but the effect it had on him remained the same as the night he’d drawn it fresh from one of her arteries. He’d chucked the garment into the wash carelessly with hardly any hesitation.
The girl had even elbowed into his brain during an important self-care session. He’d been sitting in his glorified bathtub— which, in shallow honesty, is just a jacuzzi— with his cock twitching in his palm while his head hung over the edge, an orgasm teetering along the trench of his stomach as he’d repeatedly thumbed over his tip. When he’d finally coaxed himself into a climax, moans running freely across the empty halls of his home, the image he saw in those short moments of pure bliss was of her. It was Y/N, sitting in front of him with her hands clasped between her bare thighs obediently, his prick running along the length of her warm tongue as her eyes pleaded for him to cum.
But, as he’d stated before, the picture had only lasted a handful of seconds. As soon as his high had died down, it had disintegrated to ash, and he’d been left with a slightly startled mental imprint in its wake, which had faded away within minutes. He hadn’t thought of her since.
That is, until now. Until the surface of his jade eyes are reflecting the message his phone had just received at nearly ten P.M., her identity obvious in her choice of emojis.
A disco ball. The exact same character he’d assigned himself beside his name in her contact list. It was an inside joke; a result of the hatred they both shared for clubs, juxtaposed by the fact that they had met in one. It was a cute determining factor in their minimal acquaintanceship, and he’s always a sucker for a good paradox.
Harry continues to stare down at the text message, trying to conjure up some type of answer. She couldn’t have caught him at a better time, quite literally. She could be his saving grace tonight, if he plays his cards right. Maybe if he swoons her enough, she’ll invite him over again, and he can avoid another night full of shit-faced idiots and blinding strobe lights.
After careful consideration, he swipes open into their new text conversation and taps back a reply he deems appropriate, satisfied with how it shows his personality— the same one the mortal girl had been so taken with upon their first encounter.
Well, this is awkward. I don’t remember giving my number to a disco ball.
The vampire waits idly for a response, watching as the message delivers and is immediately marked by a read receipt. He doesn’t know why, but he likes that she has them on.
A swift pause follows— in which he has no doubt she’s probably attempting to come up with some type of witty remark to his— and then the three grey bouncing bubbles pop up, signifying that she’s typing back. His device bloops with her response, vibrating in his large palms.
Funny as ever, I see. It’s Y/N, from the club last Friday.
Harry’s slightly disappointed by her humor-lacking answer, but he’ll keep the interaction going for curiosity’s sake. Some people are fun in person and just not that bright virtually. Can’t always have it all.
Oh, hey, Y/N! So are you translating on behalf of the disco ball that wanted to talk to me or…?
He can practically see her eye rolling up at the grungy ceiling of her room and that notion makes his lips twitch.
Ha. Ha. Hilarious! But no, I’M the one who wants to talk to you, actually.
Harry can feel her sarcastic tone through this specific message and that gives him hope. Maybe she does have social networking skills.
Oh. Well, give the disco ball my best regards then, will you? Don’t want it to think I’m being rude and casting it aside.
The creature can’t see it, but now Y/N’s lips are the ones jolting as she sits on her bed in nothing but a towel, damp hair beading water down her naked shoulders and back.
How caring of you! I’ll pass on the message.
A full grin begins to edge across Harry’s cheeks as she returns his banter just as easily as she would face to face, dimples threatening to indent into place. That’s more like it.
His fingers poise over the keyboard, mind flicking through the different scenarios he could steer this conversation towards. He has to be perceptive and respectful, but also keep her entertained. He figures asking about her intentions is the best route to take, but he’ll do it subtly. Being too direct could come off pushy.
So...what gives me the honor of basking in your presence tonight, hm?
He adds a thinking face emoji to the end of the text as an afterthought. He rarely uses emoticons, but now is as good a time as any to start, especially because he has to seem like someone who belongs to her generation, rather than a Victorian era immortal.
Well, you said if I wanted more interior design advice to shoot you a text so...here I am, seeking your expertise.
Harry allows himself to break into a wide simper at the shrouded compliment. It goes right to his ego, just as he likes it. She’s smart.
My expertise, huh? I take it that my taste in wallpaper left you pretty satisfied last time, then?
A similar grin buckles Y/N’s face at his playful smugness and she bites into the side of her index finger to try and suppress it. After a moment of thought, she releases her digit from between her teeth and taps back.
Very satisfied, yeah. Your help was greatly appreciated.
Harry scoffs coyly, leaning his shoulder against the lightly fogged black marble wall of his bathroom, his friends and plans for the night all but forgotten. He’s having too much fun flirting to pay anything else much mind.
My pleasure, love. I’d be more than happy to give it again, anytime you need it. Just make sure to fill out the customer service survey my boss emailed you. I’m shooting for a raise and could really use the brownie points.
“Cute.” Y/N murmurs to herself in amusement, her chest fluttering as a result of the pet name, alongside how well they’re getting on. It’s almost like no time has passed at all. Almost as if they’re friends.
She’d been nervous to reach out, fearing that he’d see it and ignore her— or worse, leave her on read. Needless to say, this is going way better than she could’ve hoped
Already filled that out. Gave you five stars and everything. Would’ve given you six if it was allowed.
Harry shifts his weight against the surface he’s using for support, chuckling softly as he gnaws along the inside of his cheek. He feels like a teenager with all of this borderline childish back-and-forth. He’s not mad about it, though. It’s pretty enjoyable.
Thank you so much for your input! It’s taken into deep consideration. VERY deep consideration, if I recall correctly.
Warmth pours into Y/N’s cheeks at his innuendo, and she somewhat hates that he can get her all flustered without actually being present. He’s really good at this. A true lucky strike, to put it in his own words.
I’m glad my standards are held so highly, especially since I’m trying to book another advising appointment with you.
Is that so?
Very much so. How about tonight, if you’re free? I’ve got a dire situation with some wood paneling that I just can’t handle alone.
The vampire’s irises flare crimson red in triumph. It looks like he won't have to put himself through another mortifying ordeal tonight, after all.
I’m on a tight schedule, Y/N. These expertise are highly sought after, yanno?
Y/N snorts at his pompous joke. “Moron.”
Another text comes in from Harry before she can even think of a response.
However, I think I might be able to squeeze you in for a help session today. Say in about 10 to 15 minutes?
With newly brightened eyes, Y/N gives the message five repasses to make sure she’d interpreted it correctly. She can’t believe he’d agreed, especially at an hour when most people already have weekend plans cemented for the night. And by the length of time he’d given her to prepare, she’s extremely thankful she’d decided to shower prior to attempting a booty-call.
Sounds perfect. Do you need me to send you my address or do you remember, by some miracle?
Don’t worry about it, pet. I have a pretty good memory of that night. You made it hard to forget.
Another layer of heat crawls up her neck and into her ears. She knows this is a casual thing, at best, but for some reason, the idea that he had deemed her unforgettable makes her entire body feel like it’s glowing. She tries to brush it off, chalking up his compliment to how they’d seen each other barely a week ago so of course he remembered. It was fairly fresh in both their minds.
But Y/N is from an area where she was just another face in the crowd— another timid girl in an ocean of a hundred small-town carbon copies— and she’d certainly never referred to herself as anything particularly special. To have Harry, who is such a refined and attractive person, who most likely has dozens of hook-ups under his belt, call her that? Of all people? It just hits differently.
She shakes herself out of her head, remembering that a very interesting boy is waiting for a response on the other end of her phone.
Alright, then. See you in 10 to 15 minutes, Mr…?
Y/N comes to the realization that she doesn’t even know his last name. She doesn’t know the last name of the guy she’d let into her house and between her legs. God, if her parents could see her now...They’d blow California into a crater.
The name’s Styles. Harry Styles.
She immediately recognizes the reference, chewing at her bottom lip to keep a tab on a girly giggle. It’s probably not healthy how easily he reduces her into such a dopey puddle.
Alright, then, Mr. Harry Styles. See you soon?
Very soon. Can’t wait to show you the wood samples I just found.
With a sly smirk dimpling his cheeks, Harry pushes off the elegant stone wall of his luxury bathroom, locking his device and absentmindedly tapping it along his palm as he does a quick mind-sweep of the interaction he’d just had. He’s going to get his needs taken care of—both intimate and carnal— by a girl with whom he meshes with so well, no less. This night has taken an unexpected turn for the better, and he’s never been more thankful for making such a rash decision the morning after a one night stand.
The shrill boom of an Irish accent breaks Harry out of his flirty stupor, the sound bounding up the stairs of his flat and echoing off the tiles in his bathroom. “Harry, did you fucking desicate up there, you prick?!”
The vampire’s head snaps to the side towards where the sudden intrusion is originating, clearing his throat softly before answering, mostly to anchor himself back into the present. He’d been too busy floating in a daydream bubble to give his friends any proper attention. “I’m on my way down!”
Harry flicks off the light switch to his master bathroom, heading into his dimly lit bedroom and scooping up his wallet from its usual spot on top of the dresser. He tucks it into the wide front pocket of his slacks along with his cell phone, rounding the king-sized mattress at the center of his space, footsteps muffled by the thick maroon carpeting across the ground. He stops under the doorframe, giving his room one last calculating glance to make sure he isn’t leaving anything important behind. Once the creature is sure he’s set, he reaches over and slides the switch meter all the way down until the hanging lamps on the ceiling fade to black.
Harry clambers down the glass and metal staircase, passing the collection of original paintings organized across the expanse of the largest wall in his home. His friends spot him from the huge couch once he’s halfway down the steps, and of course Niall is the first to make his presence audible.
“Fucking finally.” The blue-eyed vampire groans in exasperation, shooting up from his seat beside Xander, arms falling across his lean chest. “I thought you’d died. Really died.”
Harry dismounts the last stair carefully, heeled boots making a soft clicking sound against the polished light-wash wood of his floorboards. He pushes a few rogue curls out of his eyes, the corners of his mouth jilting upwards teasingly as he regards the fellow immortal. “If I have to keep staring at that shitty paisley button-up you’re wearing, I just might.”
Niall’s irritated expression shatters into one of sheer hurt, hands fumbling with the silk fabric of his shirt, lips melting into a pained pout as he contemplates it sadly. His tone comes out whiney and defensive. “Hey! I really like this one!”
Harry side-steps the boy, giving him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Your fashion sense makes me question my friendship with you.”
Niall’s face pinches with anger, thick brows furrowing as he roughly swats the brunette’s wrist away. “And your dickhead attitude makes me question mine.”
Harry’s jade eyes dance with evil glee as he returns his palm to where it had been resting before to give a curt squeeze, his rings playfully digging into the muscle beneath Niall’s top. “And yet here you are, sitting on my couch, waiting to get into my car. Funny how that works, innit? We benefit from one another. Mutualism at its finest.”
The Irish man shrugs himself free of his friend’s hold once again, glaring at him with darkening eyes, but there’s no true malice behind it. “More like parasitism.”
“So are you two gonna kiss now or what?” Mitch’s soft, mocking voice butts in as he drifts up beside Niall, hands tucked into the pockets of his dark denim straight jeans and his long hair tied back into a low ponytail. He’s wearing a light-wash Rolling Stones t-shirt he’d gotten at a concert he and Harry had attended back in the eighties, along with a pair of scuffed up sneakers. Pretty casual for a club— too casual, in Harry’s opinion. “The sexual tension is killing the audience.”
The green-eyed boy cranes his sight back onto Niall, raising his eyebrows in question and puckering his lips. “What d’you say, Ni? Wanna kiss this little disagreement better? I’m down.”
The pale young man makes a gagging noise, stepping away. “Don’t know where your mouth’s been. But if your bed fellows have anything to say about it, it’s nowhere good. I’m going to respectfully decline.”
“There was absolutely nothing respectful in that response.” Adam chimes in, chuckling as he bumps Niall’s shoulder with his own, hands clasped casually behind his back. “You need to work on your people skills.”
“My people skills are fine.” Niall quips back sarcastically. “Harry just isn’t a person, he’s a demon.”
“Technically, we all are.” The curly-haired vampire points out, walking over to his matte leather couch and retrieving a pin-striped, grey-black fitted blazer from its backrest. He tosses the jacket over his shoulders, shrugging it on and fixing the material over his torso, the curves of the piece accentuating the strong muscles of his back and the dip of his slender waist. “I just don’t care to hide it, really. Especially not when it comes to Niall’s taste in clothes. Which is rubbish, by the way. If that wasn’t clear before.”
“It was.” Niall deadpans, gaze half-lidded and petty.
Harry fixes the sleeves of his coat around his forearms, smoothing out any wrinkles and buttoning the cuffs. He momentarily ducks into the kitchen, his enhanced eyesight spotting the small digital time-stamp of the oven even from across the room. He has less than thirteen minutes before he has to be at Y/N’s flat. He should’ve suggested a longer time span.
Harry turns back around to fully face his crew, situating his collar into place by folding it along the back of his neck, appraising their expectant appearances. They’re all waiting for him. He’s the one driving, after all.
The immortal clears his throat, hands dropping to pat at his blazer pocket, making sure that his keys are in his possession. He sighs lightly through his nose, a knowing grin trying to force its way onto his lips but he keeps it at bay, wanting to maintain a straight expression to garner less backlash for the news he’s about to break.
“I’m not going.”
The pause that fills the atmosphere and the blank faces his friends dote are almost comical. Harry bats his eyelashes at them without a single twitch or jerk of his features. He wants them to understand he’s being serious.
After at least ten heartbeats— a guess, considering no one in the room has one to provide an accurate measurement— a raging exclamation explodes from behind the other three vampires in front of him.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
Harry watches in mild amusement as Xander stomps up from behind the group, shouldering between Mitch and Adam and sticking him with a glower dark enough to instill fear in any living being. But Harry is hardly living, and he’s definitely not scared of a vampire who’s practically a newborn. Xander’s the youngest of them in terms of the immortality scale— he’d transitioned back in nineteen ninety-six when he was thirty, which gives the illusion that he’s older when in reality, he isn’t— so Harry’s strength easily outmatches his. Xander is basically the puppy of the circle, and he’s certainly yappy and annoying enough to support that title. His lack of age and wisdom is also probably why he’s the most explosive.
Harry kinks an eyebrow up at the taller, tanned man, looping only one button through its designated hole in the middle of his jacket. That will allow him to show off what lies beneath it while also making sure the article won’t be a pest in the windy California night. “I’m not kidding. Something else came up that...peaked my interest.”
Xander’s fists momentarily clench by his sides and he then folds his arms across his lightly heaving chest, trying to hide his anger away along the insides of his elbows. He spits his words through gritted teeth, attempting to keep his cadence level. “What could have possibly come up so late that you only let use know after we waited for you for over an hour?”
Harry can’t stop himself from smirking this time around, the corners of his mouth tugging upwards with condescension. The statement that he produces is all too familiar to Xander, given that it mirrors the reply he had used on Harry exactly a week ago, when the leader of the group had asked him what his intentions were once they’d gotten inside their club for the night. “I have a date.”
Xander’s entire face flushes a faint shade of cherry red. His forearms tighten across his body, tone more strained than before as he actively wills himself to remain calm. “A date?”
The shorter vampire smiles at him with fake innocence, working his every nerve like it’s his job. Harry doesn’t know why, but pissing Xander off is always such a delectable pastime. “Yup. With a girl I met last week, actually.”
“You don’t go on dates.” Niall pipes up, looking around at the other men in the room in confusion, almost as if his comment should be obvious. “You rarely even spend the night. Said so yourself.”
Harry shrugs one shoulder indifferently, checking his reflection in the closest section of the glass wall that overlooks the city skyline, the lights of the cars and buildings below twinkling otherworldly. “I guess it’s less a date and more a booty-call, to be honest. I only agreed ‘cause it’s easier than having to drag my ass to that horrid club you chose to spend hours trying to find someone. This meal’s already prim, proper, and served. And I know for a fact I’ll enjoy it, so there’s no real harm.”
He turns back to Xander, the man’s peeved reaction tickling him more than he thought it would. “What was that you said last time, Xanny?”
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
“Oh, yeah! I'm just grabbing a to-go box for my already prepped meal.”
Harry’s friend’s cheeks dye a deeper shade of crimson, dark veins webbing across the iridescent whites of his eyes for a flickering second. “You’re a fucking asshole.”
Harry counters the angry expression with a bright smile, his dialect dripping with arrogance. “Girls dig it. And you seemed to dig it, too, if I recall correctly. Remember? You might not. Post-orgasm amnesia and all that.”
Xander takes a measured inhale, releasing it slowly and allowing his anger to ebb away gradually, ignoring Harry’s blast from the past. His next question is physically directed towards their ex-chauffeur, but is truly aimed at the gang as a whole. “Who’s going to take us, then?”
The curly-haired vampire shrugs his shoulders once again, uninterested in the topic that is quickly growing old. “You could take Niall’s car. Problem solved.”
The whole clique lives in the same condo complex, mostly due to convenience. It’s already tricky for vampires to find others of their kind, so it’s a miracle that they’d all managed to end up together in the first place. And it’s an even bigger miracle that they got along well enough to form a tight-knit coven, which is the closest thing any of them now have to family. Living in close proximity is the ideal way of maintaining that rare bond, plus it allows them to help each other in staying safe and keeping their urges in line.
Since they all live in the same building, Niall’s car is in the garage right beside Harry’s, so transportation shouldn’t be an issue. They just always take his vehicle because he’s the only one that actually enjoys driving.
“Are you mental? Like actually, genuinely insane?” Xander sputters in appalled shock. “Niall drives like a lunatic!”
“Oi, piss off! Maybe you should learn to drive then, huh? Instead of having all those guys you shag take you everywhere.”
Xander ignores Niall’s insult, putting his palms up in disgust, backing away. “I refuse to get in a car with him behind the wheel. Dying once was good enough for me.”
“Did I miss the memo?” Niall snaps, glimpsing around at all the monsters standing around him, attitude tight with annoyance. “Y’know, the one where you all just decided to shit on me tonight?”
Harry bursts into an airy cackle, listing his head to the side as he gives Niall a humorous once-over, his dangly cross earring dabbing across the crisp cut of his coat’s shoulder blade. “You don’t necessarily make it hard, love.”
Niall’s jaw clenches as he narrows his icy blue eyes. “Xander’s right— you are an asshole.”
“Yeah, well, he’s also right about you driving like you’re on tranquilizers.” Adam sighs, running a palm up his face, using his index finger and thumb to massage either of his temples, despite the fact that they lack a pulse. “I guess I could drive? I hate it, but Mitch hates it more, so I’m our best bet. Better than Road Runner over here.”
“Yeah, just keep talking about me like I’m not present. That’s fine. I’m spitting venom in all your drinks tonight.”
“Well,” Harry boasts abruptly, interrupting the game of verbal ping-pong happening in front of him, taking a quick peek at his phone for the time. As much as he loves causing some good-natured chaos between his friends, he has less than ten minutes to make it to Y/N’s apartment on time and traffic’s a bitch at this hour. “I have nothing to do with this anymore, so I’m just gonna take my leave. You lot have fun figuring this out.”
He swivels around on his heel, striding away with his usual haughty air straightening his back, heading towards the corridor that leads to the front entrance of the apartment. The softly lit hallway swallows his silhouette and for the first time since he’d left the secluded confines of his bathroom, he allows a giddy smile of excitement to tweak his lips. Just for a second and not a moment longer. If his friends had seen it, they would’ve taken the piss.
Niall’s accent cuts through the air, prickling at his ears as the glossy, cold doorknob comes into contact with his even colder fingers. “I can’t believe you’d abandon us just to get laid!”
“Lock the door on your way out!”
///
When a sharp knock echoes across Y/N’s flat, she nearly screams.
Her nerves have been on edge since the last text she’d received; only after reading that final cheeky message had the reality of the situation hit.
This isn’t her. This isn’t her at all.
Inviting a total stranger into her home and into her bed was something she’d never experienced before last week. One night stands were very few and very far for her— she could count all the ones she’d had on a single hand, and even then they had been with people she had known to some extent— and it was due to the fact that this type of situation is slathered in mystery and unsureness. Giving herself up in such an intimate manner to someone she wasn’t acquainted to in some shape or form…It comes with a certain amount of risk, both physically and emotionally, which is why she hardly ever engaged in such activities before Harry.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with having that type of exhilarating fun in your life— she praises the women who can go around so confidently and express their sexuality however they please— but she herself had been raised under a roof that was moderate and conservative, and that environment had molded her into the person she had grown up to be. Those traditional concepts ran through the core of her being, and no matter how hard she tried to shake them, they refused to break loose. They weighed on her shoulders, constantly making her second-guess her motives and desires, most of which go against the status quo that had been implemented into her brain from a young age. This— whatever this is— is a huge step for her; it’s the first attempt she’s made to take over her own life and go against the grain she’d been accustomed to her whole existence.
From the second Y/N had arrived here in Los Angeles and set a foot off the plane, she had been alone. Everyone who cared for her was miles and miles away and she was starting a new chapter on a completely blank page, with no one to guide her hand as she wrote. For the two months she’d spent settling in and trying to meld into her new environment, she had gone at it with a sense of emptiness hollowing the pit of her stomach. No one was there to comfort her during the rough patches, and no one cared enough yet to assure her that things would turn out alright. No one had bothered to tell her she was safe and that nothing would hurt her. No one made themselves available the way people did back home.
That is, until she met Harry seven days ago.
Their encounter had been purely for sexual gratification, but during that short time they shared, she vividly remembered him telling her that she could trust him. It was a preposterous statement to make— asking someone to trust you when you didn’t even know their last name— but the gaze in his emerald eyes had seemed so genuine and encouraging, and his voice had been so gentle and soothing, and his touch had been so delicate and consoling...That strange young man— with the pretty curls, intriguing tattoos, and dazzling smile— had somehow managed to untie the knot of unease that had been sitting in her belly for the last couple of weeks. She’s stumped on how he’d managed to wriggle it free; the only thing she can effectively say took a part in it was his eyes. There was just such a glass-like quality to them that reminded her of a mirror. It was like they were reflecting all her emotions back at her, using their familiarity to compel her into a state of mental peace. She’d appreciated it more than she’d let on.
Something tells Y/N that this is the reason she had contacted him. She wanted to feel that safety net he had provided her with once again. She didn’t need an emotional connection from Harry, she just needed a bit of mental relief. She wanted something to take her mind off all her troubles. Something to distract her, even if it was only for a few hours. And with the way Harry had handled her last time, she knows he’s more than capable of helping her reach those goals.
Y/N doesn’t think anyone has ever made her feel how Harry had that semi-drunken Friday night. She’d been with a few other people before, and had even been in a long-term relationship with someone she had once thought would end up being her husband, but none of those men came close to this peculiar stranger.
In the town she was from, it was typical for people to marry their high school sweethearts. It was a small region where everyone either knew one another or knew of one another, so it wasn’t difficult to find someone that could fit into the role that needed to be filled. The person she had found was a boy by the name of Bradley, who she had begun to date their freshman year of high school.
They’d met through mutual friends and he’d invited her to their first ever homecoming dance, where she had felt like everything was falling into place almost like in a movie. He was cute, with hazel eyes, sun-bleached hair, and freckles that jolted every time he laughed. He was polite, funny, and treated her with enough respect and dignity to keep her hooked for a while. Things had gone pretty well the four years they were together in high school; their relationship wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t exciting either. It was just...secure. He was there, and he was willing to give her his attention, and that’s all that really mattered to her at the time. She thought that was all she needed.
Then graduation came and went, and so did Bradley. He left for college, set on the intention that they would make long distance work somehow. To keep a long story short, it hadn’t worked out how they expected. As the months passed, she noticed he started to separate himself from her more and more. The video chats are what disappeared first; what used to be a daily FaceTime call turned into a weekly one and then, if she was lucky, a monthly one. Phone calls followed the same fate. Texting became a chore rather than something to look forward to and she could feel him slipping, which left her feeling helpless because he was in another state, far away and too out of reach to appropriately solve anything. Energized conversations slowly faltered into five-word messages, which eventually teetered into barely any communication at all.
When Y/N heard the news that he’d cheated on her, it didn’t even come from him. It came from his roommate. Things ended swiftly after that, which was the saddest thing of all. Almost five years of her life, completely gone to waste. Handling the pain was a whole other misery she’d had to shoulder, alongside the embarrassment and humiliation, which stemmed from the fact that she was aware her peers had heard about the whole ordeal. With the help of her family and friends, she’d eventually gotten over the heartbreak. The weird thing is, she doesn’t think she loved him. She loved the idea of him— loved that he represented everything she had been raised to seek in a relationship. They’d grown up together, their families knew one another, they shared the same friends, they had common hobbies. It was like a match made in heaven, though after it broke off, she quickly came to the realization that it hadn’t been made in heaven at all. Made in a test tube was a more fitting analogy.
Y/N’s love life after that painfully slow cliche disaster consisted of random boys around town she recognized from school and work. The hook-ups were fleeting and hardly satisfying, but at least they were something. She soon found out that she could do better on her own, but whenever she craved someone else’s touch, she was grateful to have anyone she could get. She’d mainly stuck to the same guys for the sake of consistency; it was easier having people she already knew how to please and vice versa, though she’ll admit it was mostly a one way street. Men can be so clueless sometimes that it’d be funny if it wasn’t so irritating.
Then Y/N had skipped town and closed off sexually for a while. She had stayed shut down until Harry had walked into her life with that stupid sly smirk and his unorthodox— yet surprisingly attractive—fashion sense, sipping straight tequila like a fucking psycho from the cup in his jeweled fingers. He’d waltzed right onto the stool beside her at the bar, right out of the club with her hand in his, and then right past the doorframe of her apartment, kindly gifting her the best sex of her entire life. He’d worked her every desire with a certain skill and awareness she had never experienced (not from any of her past lovers, and definitely not from Bradley’s vanilla tendencies), dismantling her body as if he’d known her for decades, leaving her sore and aching in a way she didn’t know was humanly possible.
And now here Y/N is, pacing back and forth from her small living room to her even smaller kitchen, chewing along the knuckle of her forefinger as she tries to tie down the jitters running amuck in her belly.
She repeatedly smooths down the dress she’s wearing, claiming that it’s to get rid of the wrinkles, but in truth, it’s to wipe the dampness from her palms. The outfit had been a birthday present from her cousin the year before and she’s rarely worn it since the move, which is a direct result of her lack of socializing. She only ever really leaves her home for groceries and to attend work, neither of which call for a pretty sundress and strappy tan sandals. Despite having gone out to the club a few times, the dress doesn’t fit that scene either. LA gets a bit chilly at night and she has yet to grow accustomed to the city’s weather. Wearing this after-hours would surely end with her acquiring a mild case of hypothermia.
The garment is a light blue baby doll design, littered with tiny daffodil prints of varying shapes and colors. It stops about three-fourths down her thigh, fluttering outwards in layered flares, its bandeau-style top held in place by thin straps of the same fabric. She figured she’d deck herself out nicely; from the one interaction she’d had with Harry, she can tell he’s a person of refined taste. It was evident in his expensive clothing and his wide variety of precious rings. She doesn’t know why, but there’s a toiling in the pit of her tummy urging to impress him.
Y/N’s hair has been freshly washed and blow-dried, her legs thoroughly shaved into silk, and she’d applied a light layer of makeup, done in anticipation that anything heavier would likely end up smeared across her face— a result of sweat and Harry’s dominant persona. Simply reflecting on his commanding sensual presence makes her self-pedicured toes curl in her sandals.
Y/N hadn’t been sure on how to prepare for his arrival. She wasn’t versed in advanced hook-up culture— her raunchiest experience was in the backseat of someone's 2004 Toyota Corolla. She doesn’t want to get this wrong. Going overboard would make him feel smothered and awkward, but underselling would give him the impression that she doesn’t have any respect for him, save for what lies between his legs. Those are the last two things she wants him to gather from this.
She’d settled for pulling out a bottle of red wine that had been a house-warming present from the landlord. Not too shabby, but not too loud. And who doesn’t enjoy a cup of half-decent wine on a Friday evening, right?
Y/N had just finished arranging two glasses— which she’d found at the thrift shop down the street for a steal— onto the counter of her kitchen when that swift rapping sound had broken through the tense air of her home, echoing from the front door and causing a yelp to lodge in her throat.
Ice shoots through her veins. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
She takes a handful of penetrating breaths, concentrating on how the cool air feels expanding her lungs. The technique aids in calming some of her nerves, grounding her just enough that she can will herself to move without her knees giving out. Y/N tentatively makes her way down the corridor that leads to her front door, heart hammering against her ribs. She shouldn’t be this riled up— he’s literally already been inside her. There’s pretty much nothing she can hide from him at this point.
On the other side of the door, Harry is blissfully ignorant to the panic attack threatening to overcome Y/N.
The vampire leans his shoulder against the frame of the somewhat raggedy door, arms crossed over his thick chest as his gaze bounces judgmentally around all the patches of peeling paint. He chews at a piece of gum— which he’d popped into his mouth on the drive over to make sure he tastes as delectable as always— in slow, lazy motions, jaw flexing as he unconsciously pops an array of tiny bubbles with his teeth, waiting for Y/N to emerge.
Harry glances up at the flickering light bulb in the hallway of the complex, nose scrunching in distaste at the annoying flashing. She really needs to get a better place, he thinks, reaching up and dragging the pad of his middle finger along the curve of his bottom lip, absentmindedly wiping off a bit of extra chapstick that had colored outside the lines when he’d applied it. He always tries to keep his mouth soft, especially when he knows he’s going to be using it. Plus, the vanilla bean flavor pairs well with mint.
The sound of a seal cracking open yanks his attention, the door before him slowly swinging inwards. Cool air pours from inside, bathing him in a scent that his frenzied instincts had been subconsciously craving the last couple of days. Harry cranes his neck over his shoulder, spitting his gum out and not bothering to watch where it lands. He turns back just as Y/N’s familiar figure comes into view.
The first thing he notices is the dress.
Fuck, the dress.
It’s nothing too fancy, just a casual sundress, but it fits her like it was made specifically for the purpose of testing his restraint. He rakes his gaze up and down her body shamelessly, much like he had on the night they met.
The light blue background and rainbow miniature floral print compliments her skin tone nicely, making it stand out below the dingy light hanging above their heads. The piece lands about halfway down her thigh, fanning around her legs slightly in frilly folds, tempting him with that bit of innocent exposure. An image of him ripping the dress up her thighs races across the forefront of his mind and he can feel his fangs momentarily break through his gums.
As Harry draws his sight upwards, the minimal throbbing between his legs only amplifies. The dress cinches just below her bust, accentuating her chest, and he comes to the painful realization that she’s not wearing a bra underneath; she doesn’t need it due to the bralette-like top. One simple tug of his index finger would leave her completely bare and that conclusion causes a sweltering itch to erupt along the back of his throat.
Harry’s irises finally come to rest on her face, finding that the rest of the human girl’s look appears just as it had last week. Minimal makeup, no accessories, and the smell of chamomile shampoo strung through her hair, though it’s easily smothered by her natural scent of flowers and sugar. He also finds that while he had been blatantly undressing her with his eyes, she had delighted herself in doing the same. Watching her gawk at him hungrily caresses his ego immensely, evident in how the edges of his mouth kink.
Y/N doesn’t mean to ogle, she really doesn’t. But from the instant he’d come into view, standing there propped against her threshold with his ankles crossed and his lean arms folded over his strong chest, she couldn’t control it. He just looks so fucking good— better than last time, which she didn’t think was plausible— and she gets the feeling that he knows he looks borderline godly.
Harry’s clad in what appears to be a sheer mesh flouncy button-up with holographic threads speckled through the material, shimmering under the dim atmosphere of the hallway. The last three holes of the shirt are left open, exposing his tanned pectorals and thoroughly inked chest. Last time they had been together, she’d been too distracted by the aching between her thighs to properly notice the swallow tattoos along his collarbones and the giant butterfly at the crest of his stomach. But now, she stares at them freely as they expand and contract with his easy breaths, her mouth beginning to water.
The blouse is covered by a dark pinstriped blazer, the crisp shoulder blades of the jacket complimenting his broad frame as the curves dip along his waist alluringly. The loose top is tucked in along the brim of yet another pair of high-waisted trousers, though they are creme-colored instead of copper. The ironed pants give way to a pair of glossy black heeled boots, which are bedazzled along the back of the two-inch elevation, the jewels twinkling in the shape of a word that she can’t make out at this angle.
Harry’s collection of luxurious rings and necklaces adorn their usual spots and she gets the impression that he never leaves home without them. His gold cross earring sways back and forth lightly, her warped reflection cast across its surface and staring back at her numbly.
Harry breaks through the haze his physique had cast on her brain.
“Nice to see you again, Disco Ball.”
A shiver slithers down her spine at the deep baritone of his voice, English accent slathered across every syllable and dripping with suggestive teasing. She’d forgotten how sultry he sounds, even when he’s not actively striving for it.
Y/N’s attention jets up from where it had been pasted to his body, the expression across his handsome features one of snarky self-assurance, which tells her she’d been caught. Indents cave into his cheeks, twitching with glee as he bats his lashes slowly, eyes going half-lidded in amusement. He looks so sinful with those shiny ringlets curling around his small ears, framing his sharp jaw and kissing the nape of his neck, alongside those raspberry red lips and the emerald hue sparkling around his pupils. She can’t tear herself away.
After an elongated second of silence on her part, Harry raises one of his sculpted brows expectantly, letting her know he’s waiting for a response. Heat overflows Y/N’s cheeks and buzzes across the shells of her ears.
“H-Hi. Uh— Nice to see you. Too. Nice to see you, too.”
An odd sense of déjà vu flags in the back of her skull and she’s reminded that this is exactly how they’d met the first time around— with her making an utter fool of herself, much to his entertainment.
The crescent above his top lip curves upwards as a result of his grin widening. He taps the tip of his elegant shoe patiently against the cement ground, arms shifting against his chest and she can see the way his biceps strain the fabric of his coat. He’s just so fit.
Harry’s tone comes out playful and lighthearted. He doesn’t need to be invited in again since she’s already explicitly allowed him in before, but he asks anyways, out of courtesy. “Can I come in? Or are you planning on taking me dancing or summat?”
The laugh that escapes Y/N is dense with a nervous edge, but it’s better than a stuttering jumble of incoherent words. She moves out of the way, flushing her back to the wall of the tiny entrance corridor and leaving just enough room for him to squeeze by. “Yes, come on in! Sorry.”
“You’re alright, darling.” The tall vampire steps forward into the mortal’s home, turning sideways as he does so, chest pressing against her own. He glances down at her lips for a flash of a moment, then back to her eyes. “Thank you.”
Y/N’s grip on her doorknob tightens. She looks up at him through her lashes, bottom lip barely trembling. “No problem. Thanks for coming over on such short notice.”
Harry runs his tongue across his teeth, pressing it to the inside of cheek as he absorbs the mildly erotic image of Y/N decked out in a frilly dress, glancing up at him shyly as her chest heaves slightly against his own. “Well, I couldn’t leave you to handle that pesky wood paneling all on your own, now could I?”
A smile ghosts over her delicate lips as she shuts the door and locks it, not breaking eye contact. “How generous of you. My hero.”
Far from it, love.
Y/N slips out from where Harry had wedged her to the wall, beckoning him after her with a gentle turn of her head. The creature tucks his hands into his front pockets, following her down the narrow stretch. They drift past her room (he makes sure not to look in and spare himself the horror of seeing that dumb tapestry) and past her bathroom, into the expanse of her living area. It’s just as small and cozy as he remembers it and he can’t stop himself from scoffing lightly as his sight drifts over the couch. Good memories.
“Would you like some wine?” Y/N’s question carries softly from inside her kitchen. She’s already gripping the glass bottle in her hand, attempting to pull out the cork, and she hadn’t thought of needing a wine-opener until now. Fuck.
Harry makes his way to join her, passing underneath the archway and taking the spot across from the girl. He leans his lower back on the counter, hands remaining perched casually in his slacks. “I’d love some.”
“Great.” She huffs, twisting stubbornly at the spongy cap with all the might she can muster, the rough surface scratching her palm. “Let me just— just get this open.”
Harry’s head lists sideways as he wards off a chuckle. “Want some help?”
Y/N releases an irritated grunt, shoulders slumping a tad as she fails to get the top loose. She holds out the bottle towards her visitor, titling it from side to side in surrender. “Be my guest.”
The immortal pulls his hands out from his pockets, taking the container from her grasp and the human notices how they dwarf the bottle. It shouldn’t be hot, but it is.
Harry wraps his ring-clad digits around the cork, giving it one easy twist and Y/N’s jaw nearly falls off as she hears a pop tinge the air. Harry offers her the wine and cap in return, licking his lips to avoid laughing in her face. Supernatural strength always delivers.
“How…?” Y/N’s owlish eyes flicker back and forth between Harry’s cocky expression and the object in his hands. “How did you even...?”
The brunette gives her a nonchalant shrug. “Guess you loosened it up for me, Thor.”
She gingerly takes the beverage and its accompaniment from his outstretched palms, blinking at him in mild shock. Her slight unease is swiftly phased out, however; a result of his cute banter. It was probably just a lucky coincidence. “I guess so.”
Y/N pours out two glasses of the dark red liquid, handing one to Harry, feeling her heart skip a beat when he wraps his hold around the stout flute and their fingers brush. He stays like that for a heartbeat, with his icy digits sifted between hers, the amber specks in his irises glittering like diamonds. Then, the moment is over and he pulls away slowly, guiding his drink up to his plush lips. She hates how he can leave her so breathless without a single hitch.
The girl watches as Harry takes a leisurely sip of the alcohol, his gaze dancing around her kitchen curiously as she finishes recapping the bottle and scooting it into the corner of the counter.
A thought dawns on her as soon as she focuses back onto the boy before her. Harry looks weird. He looks so weird standing in her small, dingy kitchen with its worn wooden cabinets and fake marble tabletop. He looks so out of place, dressed head to toe in designer brands and fancy fabrics, hands and neck decorated with posh jewelry, and the unmistakable smell of an expensive cologne wafting from his masculine throat. And he most certainly is out of place when it comes to who he’s associating with. He’s out of Y/N’s league, not only physically, but in his behaviors, as well. It’s so obvious it almost hurts.
Yet here Harry is, looking polished and stylish, while she’s sporting a mere sundress that was probably bought off the clearance rack at Kohl’s. It just doesn’t mix, and she finds herself wondering why he’d chosen her in the first place. When she had voiced similar concerns the day they’d slept together, he had told her it was because she was timid and he wanted to see if he could break through that. But Y/N isn’t stupid. There has to be some other reason. Why else would a rich bachelor pay attention to a small-town runaway in a measly floral—
“I like your dress.”
Y/N glances up at Harry from where her mind had fallen, startled by the sudden interference in her dark thoughts. She’d been tracing across the slope of his structured jaw, mesmerized by how it would grow taut every time he swallowed down a gulp of his beverage.
She had ambled so deep in her head, she barely manages to mutter a passable answer. “Oh, thank you! I’ve had it for a bit, but I barely wear it.”
The edges of the vampire’s mouth quirk around the rim of his glass, creases wrinkling along the corners of his bright eyes. “It suits you nicely. A beautiful dress on a beautiful girl.”
Y/N’s belly somersaults, a sheepish giggle running along the undercurrent of her next mumble, so low it’s hardly audible. “Thank you. Again. Thought I’d bring it out for a special occasion.”
Harry’s eyebrows jump upwards at her comment. He draws his wine glass from between his lips, resting it against his hard stomach and gifting the human a cheeky once-over. “So I’m a special occasion, now, am I?”
Y/N looks down at the straps of her sandals, fighting off a grin. She shrugs one shoulder offhandedly, bringing her cup to her mouth and taking a long drag of the sweet liquor, feeling it wash across her tongue and leave a warm glow in her tummy. “Maybe.”
Harry hums teasingly in his throat, tapping his pinky pensively along the bottom of his glass, opal ring clinking against the crystalline surface. The color of his drink makes the black polish on his nails stand out almost artistically. “I’ll take any compliment I can get, especially from those pretty lips.”
Another wave of heat flushes across the apples of Y/N’s cheeks. “You really know how to flatter a girl, don’t you?”
The monster tips back another swig of wine, savoring the notes of wild cherry and pomegranate in its palate. Not bad, especially for what he can tell is a ten dollar bottle.
He cocks his head to the side, irises glitzing knowingly amidst his long lashes. “I think we’re both aware that I most certainly know how to flatter a girl.”
Y/N’s stare snaps up to lock with his, the faintest whimper stringing her vocal chords. If it wasn’t for Harry’s heightened hearing, he would have never known it’d happened. But he does, and he can feel the throb between his thighs spike as a result. The sounds she makes are just as wonderful as he remembers.
The sexual tension suspending in the room is practically palpable. After a bundle of her heartbeats— which is gradually rising in intensity— echo in his ears, he decides to speak up again.
“I’ve been thinking about you.”
The statement can be taken into so many different contexts and that’s why Harry chose it. She could interpret it as innocent admiration on behalf of a smitten lover, or as another layer of sensual praise. It’s versatile, successful either way.
Y/N blinks at him exactly three times in surprise. “You have?”
She’d been thinking about him, too. Non-stop. And now that she knows it’s mutual, she doesn’t feel so nervous anymore. It reassures her that they’re on the same page of this messy novel written about their undefined association. Or that they are at least within the same chapter.
Harry bobs his head in confirmation, indulging another sip of wine, letting it filter through his taste buds slowly. His glass is almost empty. “Mmhm. Walked past this candle store at the mall the other day and they had one burning that smelled just like you.”
His confession is sweet and it makes the tips of her fingers tingle. Y/N copies his action, taking another gulp of her beverage, attitude airy and inquisitive. “Is that so? And what do I smell like?”
Harry’s response is immediate and confident, almost as if he’s spent time thinking on the subject prior to today. “Honey and lavender.”
Y/N nods her head in wonder, laughing gently. “That’s oddly specific.”
Harry feels like he’s been smacked between the eyes with an iron rod. That was an idiot move. Absolutely moronic.
He just now comes to terms with how intimate the comment he’d made had been. It suggests that he’s pondered on this topic, which gives the impression that he could be more interested in her than he actually is. He doesn’t need this loose connection turning into some type of cliche romantic comedy; he doesn’t have the space, patience, or emotional stability for it. And certainly not with someone he’s only fucked once.
The vampire clears his throat, figuring that he can clean up this metaphorical spill by throwing a bit of crudeness at it. “Then yesterday I had a donut, yeah? One of those cream-filled ones. And when I took a bite of it, all the cream just came oozing out and I was like, ‘hm, this reminds me of someone…’”
The slightly endeared expression on Y/N’s face crumbles to dust, voice shrill and indignant at his lewd analogy. “You fucking perv!”
Harry sputters into a round of boyish cackling, nearly wheezing when her foot reaches over and strikes him on the shin. He clasps over his stomach with his free hand, head falling back in glee as her features pinch in embarrassed disgust. He manages to speak between bursts of giggles, water gathering along his tear ducts due to how hard he’s laughing. “I’m just being honest!”
“No, you’re being a gross little fourteen year old asshole!” Y/N exclaims incredulously, but she can’t keep herself from joining in on his boasts of amusement.
His laughter is contagious. It’s loud and unapologetic in a manner she rarely sees in anyone and he just looks really fucking cute with his dimples jolting and smile lines creasing. It’s hard to stay mad at him, though it’s not like she’d truly been upset in the first place.
Harry reigns himself in, inhaling deep breaths and wiping at his tears with the back of his large hand as a joyful groan rumbles in his chest. A few more giggles sneak out when he sees Y/N’s flat expression, but he manages to stifle the rest. His tone is jesting, poking fun. “If it makes you feel any better, I was respectful enough to wipe the donut down with a napkin, as well.”
“Fuck off.”
Harry grins down snidely at the last inch or so of alcohol left in his glass, bringing it to his mouth and downing it all in one go. He places the cup down carefully on the counter behind him, his arms finding their way across his stomach, fingertips momentarily tapping at his elbows. He appraises a playfully grouchy Y/N, pursing his lips to hide a smirk.
He watches as she takes another small taste from her drink, her pulse lulled by its contents. She’s not drunk by any means— not even buzzed— but it had helped calm the tittering in her throat that Harry had been able to detect earlier. She’s relaxed now, all anxiousness washed away by the small serving of liquor and his inappropriate (and extremely funny, if he does say so himself) jokes.
The creature thinks it’s proper time he gets what he came for.
“I really am glad you reached out, though.” Harry starts, an easygoing smile nudging across his alcohol-swollen mouth. “Truly.”
Y/N snorts sarcastically, attempting to hide how his comment had made her pulse sharpen. He’d heard it anyways. “Oh, are you? Truly?”
Harry pushes himself off the edge of the counter, slowly sauntering over to Y/N, who instinctively draws back further against the tabletop behind her. She ogles at him from below heavy lashes, glass still perched between her tinted lips, excited anticipation written all over her body language. He can practically feel the heat radiating off her, rising a few notches the closer he gets.
“Yeah.” Harry’s arms unfold, one stretching over her shoulder to prop his palm against the cupboard behind her head, the other fiddling with the seam of his blazer. He slides his forefinger and thumb along the single buttoned hole, giving it a rough tug and allowing his jacket to spring open. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that much fun interior designing with anyone. Not for a while.”
Y/N glimpses down at where his coat had parted, drinking up the sight of his lean torso behind the see-through material of his shirt. Now that he’s nearly pressed against her, his scent is stronger than before, burying her under smoky notes of vanilla and seasoned firewood. A familiar heat pools between her clasped thighs.
When she pipes up, it’s shaky and whispered, covered in a dreamy undercurrent. “Yeah, me either. It felt...nice.”
Harry’s irises flash crimson for a millisecond, but she’s too occupied gawking at his tight stomach to notice. His dialect takes on a low, seductive twang, the breath of his words fanning across her face. All she can smell is wine, mint, and...vanilla chapstick?
“It felt really nice.”
Y/N’s view drags up to land on his lips. They look as soft and appetizing as last time, tempting her to just drop her flute onto the floor and replace it with his mouth. “Extremely nice.”
An outside force suddenly tips her glass upwards and she realizes it’s Harry’s fingers. He nudges her cup until the liquid inside funnels towards her mouth, his intentions set on helping her finish it off. She drains the wine obediently, staring up at him dazed and moony, feeling a few drops escape along the sides of her mouth and tickle down her chin. The jade-eyed boy then gently pries the glass from her fingertips, reaching over and placing it inside her sink to be handled later.
Y/N’s hands fall flat against his thick chest, feeling it rise and fall steadily below her grasp as he takes a step forward, their bodies completely flushing together. His palm trails up the exposed sliver of her thigh, diving a couple of inches below her dress and giving the outer area a hard squeeze. He doesn’t go any further; he won’t until she explicitly asks for it. He’s a prick about a lot of things, but never consent.
Harry leans down, running the tip of his cold nose along her clenched jaw, his warm tongue peeking out to collect the streams of wine that had dripped out. The contrast in sensations makes her knees buckle and what he murmurs hotly against her skin doesn’t help in calming those motions at all.
“Wouldn’t mind making you feel that nice again.”
Y/N’s mind stalls, overwhelmed by his touch and smell. She can feel him sponging tender kisses at the corner of her mouth, and she can feel the palm of his hand massaging at her thigh needily. She can feel his breaths quickening in pace the longer he’s around her, and she can feel the foundation of a moan building in his lungs in the form of small vibrations, which run across her palms and twitch her fingers. She can feel everything; she’s never been more hyper-aware of her surroundings than now. And all because of this one mysterious young man.
When Y/N finally speaks, Harry feels relief flood his system, though it is swiftly replaced by intense desire.
“I wouldn’t mind it, either.”
That’s full permission if he’s ever heard it.
Harry’s other hand drops from its spot against the cupboard behind her, joining its partner on her opposite thigh. He coasts his palms fully below her flowy dress onto her hips, a lascivious simper crawling across his cheeks at the lack of extra fabric beneath her clothes. “No panties tonight?”
The human swallows heavily, shaking her head as she leans it back against the wooden cabinets, giving him access to her throat. At the sight, the vampire’s fangs protrude, cutting into the inside of his lower lip as venom fills his mouth. He wills himself to maintain control. It’s difficult, considering his sharp eyes can make out the chiseling of her arteries pumping blood just beneath her delicate skin, but he forces composure into his behavior nonetheless. With all of the lights on and Y/N completely sober, he knows he won’t get away with another mid-fuck stunt like the one he pulled last time they were in this position.
Instead, he distracts himself with what he can draw from her at this very moment— another unbelievable orgasm.
“Such a filthy little fucking thing.” Harry growls, smearing his lips down the center of her jugular, nipping love bites into her flesh but making sure not to split it open. “S’that how bad you wanted it when you texted me? So bad that you didn’t even bother to wear anything underneath?”
Y/N whines softly when he passes over a particularly tender spot along her neck, shuttering against his chest. “Y-Yes.”
A low chuckle rolls from Harry’s wandering tongue as he hones in on the area that had coaxed such a delicious reaction. “Fuck, that was such a pretty noise. Are you sensitive here, baby?”
Y/N nods with fervor, running her touch up his pectorals and over his strong shoulders, diving under his coat and fisting at the mesh that strains across his muscular back. Her eyes roll closed, her next confession coming out in the form of a feathery sigh, legs parting wider for him to comfortably fit in between. “I just...I just need you.”
Harry eagerly accepts the invitation, sifting between her thighs and hiking them up onto his hips. The fact that he can suspend her so effortlessly, almost as if she weighs nothing, makes the pit of her tummy boil. “You need me now, d’you? How much, doll? Want you to tell me how much you missed my cock.”
The young woman winces ever so slightly at the crude word and it amuses him to no end. “So fucking much, Harry.”
He can confidently say his name has never sounded sweeter than when it trickles from Y/N’s tongue.
When he speaks, it’s packed with all the pent up turmoil radiating deep in his abdomen. “Did you think about me the way I thought about you?”
Y/N’s reply falls breathily from her mouth without any hesitation. “Y-Yeah. Couldn’t get you out of my head.”
A cocky hum tinges the air on his behalf. “And why’s that?”
“Because…” The girl struggles to swallow, finding it difficult to match how easily brazen he can be. She pushes through. “Because you fucked me better than anyone else ever has.”
The compliment is one Harry gets often, but for some inexplicable reason, it hits so much deeper coming from Y/N. “Mm. Poor baby just needed to get properly rawed, didn’t you?”
“Had no idea how badly I wanted it until you came along.”
A dark chuckle rolls from the creature’s lips at her bluntness. He repeatedly passes his textured tongue over the pressure point on her throat, flames igniting in his chest when she releases another watery, desperate mewl. “God, look at you. Practically already dripping. Like it when I play with you like that?”
“Fuck, y-yes.”
“Want me to keep going?”
“Please.”
And so Harry keeps going, and he doesn’t stop. Not at her neck, and not anywhere else. Not until she begs him to hours later, when he’s whittled three orgasms out of her trembling body, each one more intense than the last.
The first one takes place right there on top of the kitchen counter. He boosts her up onto the table, bunching her pretty sundress around her quivering thighs— as he’d fantasized prior— while she fumbles with his trousers. He tends to her every breathy whimper as she eases him out of his briefs, marking his teeth all over her throat with the assurance that his blood will fade the bruises by morning. He tears his jacket down his broad shoulders, panting into her mouth as she undoes all the buttons that line his elegant iridescent shirt, moaning softly when she breaks their kiss to paint her hot lips down the expanse of his heaving chest and tight stomach. Y/N ducks down as far as her angle will allow, wanting to taste as much of his skin as she can. She wants to memorize its salty smoothness for as long as she lives.
Harry watches her with bliss-drunken fondness twitching his mouth, head falling back to hang between his shoulders as a low, “Such a good girl.” rumbles from his throat. His ring-clad fingers tangle into her locks and scratch at her scalp lightly, strained exhales encouraging her to keep going as she delights herself with tainting love bites all over him. He yanks the girl back up by her roots, grabbing her hips and roughly scooting her forward towards him, clammy foreheads pressing together as he fixes to fill her up for the first time in what feels like eternity.
The monster’s voice is as dominant and thick as she likes it. “Eyes up here. Want to see you come undone while I fuck you.”
The way he spreads Y/N open makes her choke out a scream like nothing else she’s ever heard. Harry simply clamps one of his palms over her mouth, continuing to ram into her at a harsh stride, gasping against her ear with every thrust as she rakes her nails across his back. “Gotta keep that pretty mouth quiet. Thin walls.”
The human feels like her heart is going to break through her ribs and what she doesn’t know is that with every passing beat, Harry feels it tenfold. And it’s driving him fucking insane— she drives him fucking insane. Especially when she looks at him with that glossy, begging gaze, biting into the mound of his hand as he slams his hips inside her so hard, the glasses in her cupboard shake. “Like it when I give it to you rough? Yeah, I thought so. Just like that? Harder? Say please…Christ, you’re a fucking angel.”
Y/N is dirty. So fucking filthy, and Harry loves every second of it. Loves that anything he throws out, she returns with as much enthusiasm, if not more. Loves that she can take his cock as hard as he’s willing to give it, which says a lot, considering his stamina and strength usually surpasses most humans. He’d met very few mortals who can match his sexual prowess and she happens to be one of them. She not only takes it, but pleads for more. She doesn’t just seek her own pleasure, but insists on delivering his own. And though they’re polars opposites at their core— she’s timid, physically standard, and boringly normal, whereas he’s confident, attractive, and unusually superior in every sense of the phrase— they fit together better than he’d ever care to admit. They’re perfectly compatible, down to their personalities and their intimate needs.
As Harry stands there— fingertips leaving welts across her waist as he grunts brokenly against her throat, stretching her out like she was meant to take him this deep, her moans sounding like classical melodies to his ears— he thinks that maybe...maybe he’ll keep her around. A friends with benefits situation would be the most ideal. And to quote his own clever motto from before, it would be mutualism at its finest.
The alliance would be nothing emotional; simply for the sake of providing each other with requited relief, as well as providing Harry with a convenient feeding arrangement. Neither of them would have to submit themselves to going to those terrible clubs, they both already know what the other enjoys, and the banter they share is pretty fulfilling. Plus, her blood is one of the sweetest he’s ever had. Whatever magic lies in her veins tides over his cravings in a fashion he’s never quite experienced. They both get what they want and don’t have to deal with the disasters of real commitment; neither are in a place in their lives where they can shoulder such a big responsibility. Harry is emotionally unavailable, as he has been for the past two centuries and as he intends to be for the next dozen. Y/N has just started anew in a place where she has so little to give and so much to lose, dating is the last thing on her mind. A casual no-strings-attached arrangement would be a perfect gift, bow and all.
And with the way they make each other cum multiple times that night— once on the counter, and twice on that trusty old couch— there’s not a single doubt in Harry’s mind that this is most definitely mutualism at its peak.
///
During the span of the next few weeks, Harry learns a lot about Y/N. It’s surprising how informational someone’s sex habits can be.
The second week after they had met— and the first since their second very heated, very satisfying encounter— she shoots him a text on Wednesday, of all days.
Harry isn’t doing anything particularly interesting when he receives her message. He had gone to see Mitch play at the bar that had recently booked him as a semi-permanent gig, sitting in the booth furthest in the back from all of the ruckus, fingers tapping along the waxed table to his best friend’s skilled jazzy guitar chords. Mitch always teases Harry about how he doesn’t have a job, which the vampire always waves off. Working for money is stupid and unnecessary; any materialistic wants and needs that plague him, he can get with the help of compulsion. Therefore, what’s the use in condemning himself the horrors of customer service or a constricting office cubicle?
His best friend is halfway through his set when Harry’s device vibrates against the sticky surface before him, tittering fingers coming to an abrupt stop. He flips over his iPhone, eyes flickering over the screen, a coy grin spreading its way across his blushed lips. Y/N’s contact beams up at him in return. He’d set her profile as just her name alongside three disco ball emojis, for the sake of their little inside joke.
I’m getting off work a bit earlier than I thought today and was wondering if you wanted to help me with my ceiling fan.
Harry bites into his bottom lip to muffle a chuckle, shaking his head lightly as he stares down at the comical request.
That’s odd. Last time I was there, you didn’t HAVE a ceiling fan.
Y/N sits on her lunch break in the backroom of the cafe where she’s employed, a veggie wrap halfway suspended towards her mouth when Harry’s text bloops in, pointing out her embarrassing mistake. She blinks at his correction blankly, eyes closing in faint humiliation as her true intentions are now painfully clear.
After a second of recollection, she types back some damage control, though it hardly has an impact. Harry’s already chortling to himself just thinking about how contorted her face must look at the moment.
I’m aware, thank you. I meant I wanted help picking one out. I’ve got a few tabs saved as potentials.
He decides to be a little shit about this whole thing, continuing to mock her.
You could just send me the links right now and I can tell you which one I like. You know that, right?
Y/N knows that. She also knows, by the tone and texture of his response, he’d only mentioned that alternative to be annoying. He knows she’s not talking about ceiling fans, and he just wants her to chase after him. Unfortunately enough for Y/N’s pride, she’s more than willing to.
I just think your opinion would be much more valuable and effective in person, since you’d be able to help me search for other ones at the same time. We’d cover more ground. Two heads are better than one!
We do make quite the team, don’t we?
I personally think so. A dynamic duo for the books, honestly.
A soft round of applause cuts through the air around the vampire, signaling the end of Mitch’s performance. Harry glances up to see his best friend mounting his guitar back into its case, smiling bashfully at the crowd and nodding his head in thanks to all their praise. Harry coins his luck; things couldn’t have wrapped up at a better time.
Alright, Watson. What time will you be home?
Y/N stops mid-chew through a bite of her meal, cheeks puffed as the corners of her mouth twitch at his nerdy reference.
I’m off at 6:45. Should be home by 7.
I’ll see you there, then.
See you there. Also, why do YOU get to be Sherlock? Seems a bit sexist.
Harry rolls his eyes at her quip, smirking to himself as he types out his final response.
Well, first and foremost, I’m literally English. Secondly, last time I checked, I’m always the one in control. And frankly, you seem to like it that way. See you at seven, darling.
And at seven on the dot, Harry’s outside her apartment. His friends would be amazed at his punctuality. He only shows it when it’s worth the trouble.
The creature walks up the steps to the mortal’s complex with his Ray-Ban sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose, keychain tucked into the back pocket of his black skinny jeans, and his tan Chelsea boots clicking against the cement ground. A light wind whips his Keith Harrington Safe Sex t-shirt against the broad muscles of his back, drawing a soothed sigh from his lungs. He loves the California weather.
He gives her door three swift knocks with his ring-clad knuckles, stepping back from the entrance and clasping his large hands behind his back as he waits.
When Y/N answers, Harry tilts his chin down a smidge, looking at her over the brim of his chic black glasses with his signature dazzling smile dimpling his cheeks. He lists his head slightly in a formal greeting. “Detective.”
The girl’s irises flit up to the ceiling as amusement twitches her lips. She plays along. “Nice to see you again. Detective.”
She moves off to the side, beckoning him to come in and he gladly takes the offer, striding into the flat and down the narrow corridor he’s grown quite familiar with. Y/N follows him back into her living room, gaze quickly drinking up his appearance. He’s casual today— less jewelry, more comfortable clothes— and he works the normal fit as effortlessly as he works his fancy brands. Especially with those tight dark jeans. They hug his thighs in a fashion that should be illegal.
Harry twists around on his heel to face her, reaching up to remove his sunglasses and tucking them along the collar of his tee. A handful of curls fall across his forehead, framing his face and sculpting his jaw, as usual. A sweep across Y/N’s physique tells him everything he needs to know.
She’s still in her work clothes, clad in a navy blue polo shirt and a pair of dark skinnies similar to his. Her hair is down, though the strands have a dent that suggests she’d been wearing a ponytail. Her mascara is smudged a tad under her seemingly tired eyes, but her attitude is as bright and lively as always. She appears messy, but he likes it. It’s a type of unconventional beauty that’s natural and genuine, which he can appreciate.
He contemplates her with a certain slyness that makes her shift in her socked feet.
“I got a message earlier. Sounded kinda frantic.” He drifts closer to the human, a sultry tension growing taut between them. He glances upward for an instant, as if recalling a thought. “Something about ceiling fans…?”
Y/N chews into her cheek to keep from giggling, allowing him to press his chest to hers. He slowly begins to back her up towards the shabby couch, which has seen this interaction happen one too many times. “Yeah, I’m thinking of getting one. Figured it’d help. It just gets really hot in here sometimes, y’know?”
“Mmm…” Harry thrums in agreement, deep in the back of his throat. His hands crawl onto her hips and grasps them somewhat roughly, index fingers hooking into the belt loops of her jeans as he leans down to brush his soft lips over her own. She’ll never grow tired of the electricity that passes through them every time their mouths touch. It kindles her needs unlike anything else. “It does get pretty hot in here sometimes. Especially if you’re working up a sweat.”
He pushes her further towards the sofa, movements gradual as she drifts backwards, careful not to trip her. She glimpses down at where their lips are flirting, breath hiccuping when he licks his lightly in anticipation, his tongue just barely grazing her Cupid’s bow. “Absolutely. A fan would definitely help relieve some of that stress.”
“Yeah.” Harry nudges the tip of her nose with his own, feeling her grab at his biceps for security as he continues inching her backwards blindly. “It can work wonders for when you’re all pent up, too. Especially when you’re really tight, which I know for a fact you are.”
The backs of the girl’s knees hit the edge of the couch and she topples into its cushions. She sits up onto her elbows, sheer need inking into her irises as he patiently begins to undo his belt. His long, nimble fingers work with ease and he seems to be in no particular rush, which pricks at her nerves because she feels completely the opposite. She’d been thinking about him since Friday night— or rather, Saturday morning, when he had actually stayed for breakfast that time around.
Y/N had sat on top of her small dining table while he took the seat before her shirtless, leaning forward with his arms crossed nonchalantly over her lap as she fed him bites of lemon blueberry pancakes. The pads of his calloused fingers had drawn random shapes across the warm skin of her thighs, attempting to cheekily slip beneath her pajamas shorts and he’d giggle boyishly around mouthfuls of food every time she would swat his hand away. He looked so fucking pretty that morning, with his curls tangled in tuffs and the vague imprint of her teeth scattered across his grinning mouth, angry red scratches decorating his bare shoulders. That wholesome yet dirty image had left her head spinning for days.
The sound of Harry’s zipper ripping open blinks Y/N back into the present and she nearly gawks as he grabs onto the hem of his graphic t-shirt and yanks it over his head, arms crossing as he does so. He tosses it onto her playfully, laughing as she smacks it away from her face and gives him a deadpan look. Harry leans forward, propping his palms on either sides of her head and bracketing her in, the unmissable scent of his delicious cologne invading her senses as his dark tattoos ripple over the lean tendons of his stomach and arms. His strangely cold forehead flushes against hers and he nips at her top lip, tugging it between his teeth and releasing. His voice comes out as deep and hypnotizing as ever.
“Get undressed for me. Want your thighs wrapped around my head.”
Harry comes to find that for such a reserved girl, Y/N has a pretty intriguing sexual mindset. She’s open to a lot of stuff he’d never expect from a rural-town escapee. Her kinks surprise him, but pleasantly so, considering they cross over with a lot of his own. She’s into choking, which he adores. There’s nothing hotter than feeling her pulse slam against the palm of his hand as his array of rings mark into the delicate skin of her throat. She likes being restrained, which translates into Harry pinning her wrists above her head while he slams between her drenched thighs. It’s difficult to achieve that on the sofa, so they end up rolling across the rug on the floor, her legs tangled around his hips like a vine as he pants into her mouth, damp hair flopping over his forehead and tickling her eyelashes. Ideally, he would have used his belt to tie her hands to a headboard. If they were at his place, he would’ve just reached for the metal cuffs he has hanging casually off the railing of his bed, which he keeps there for easy access. But they’re in her living room, so he makes do with what he can.
The vampire doesn’t stay over that night, not because he doesn’t want to, but because he promised Niall he’d help him out with a car issue. Apparently the motor is making a weird noise and Harry isn’t shocked one bit. Niall barely has the brain cells to be alive, much less to handle the upkeep that comes with owning a vintage vehicle. He thanks Y/N for a good time as he slips into his tight jeans and recovers his sunglasses from the floor, pulling his tee over the already fading hickies littering his collarbones, fitting his accessory into his sweaty curls.
Harry leans down to where she lays limply, splayed over the couch where he had placed her after picking her up off the ground (only after he’d made her cum twice). He plants a nonchalant farewell kiss to her parted lips, thumbing over her bruised nipples jestingly and grinning into her mouth when she whimpers. “I’ll see you later, Watson. Let me know which fan you decide to buy.”
Two days later, Harry’s phone chimes again, this time with the unique ringtone he’d assigned just for her.
He’s relaxing in his bathtub, submerged up to his chest in hot water mixed with Epsom salts and jasmine bubble bath, his locks sudsy with shampoo. He’s in the middle of shaving his face, dragging the straight razor (his time in the nineteen thirties made him picky towards any other tool, especially those simpleton plastic ones) down his jaw carefully, making sure not to nick the little moles under the corner of his mouth. When his device goes off, he halts all his motions, glancing over from the hand mirror he’s holding before his face. He’d changed her contact name to Watson as homage to their funny little dynamic, but he’d kept the disco balls in their place. He respects the roots of their acquaintanceship.
Fan came in. Wanna come check it out?
He had a nagging suspicion he’d hear from her today. It’s another Friday night, after all. He’s just happy she’d texted earlier than last time so he can flake on his friends without forcing them to wait for an hour.
Wow, you chose two day shipping? You must be itching to see me.
Don’t let it go to your head. The only thing I’m itching for is your professional opinion.
Right. Well, me and my professional opinion are washing up at the moment so give me thirty minutes and I’ll be there, yeah?
Sounds good to me, Sherlock.
Harry decides on an outfit that falls at the center of his dressing spectrum— something comfortable but not lazy. Something semi-formal. He doesn’t really have to impress her anymore (not that he had to try that hard in the first place) but he wants to look good, either way. There’s nothing wrong with showing off what he has, both physically and wardrobe-wise. He chooses a horizontal-striped fitted tee made of thick cotton, the lines alternating between brown, beige, and a light caramel. He tucks the shirt into a pair of mid-rise corduroy flared pants that are a dark mustard shade, shrugging on an olive green jacket with red and white stitch detailing along the edges, large images of cacti embroidered along its expanse. His pearls, cross necklace, and he opts out of his earring this time. Rings, vanilla chapstick, mint gum. Keys, wallet, starch white Vans.
Before he knows it, he’s being roughly pulled into her home from his spot just outside her threshold, his cherry-lacquer nails carding into the silky hair along the nape of Y/N’s neck as his teeth skim over the hollow of her throat. The human grapples to push his coat off his wide shoulders, backing further down the small hallway of her flat and kicking the door shut. She holds his head firmly to the sensitive spot in her neck that he’d toyed with a week prior, and he can’t resist the way his eyes blink crimson— a hunting impulse, stemming from the sound of her blood rushing through her carotid artery. He hadn’t fed last time— vampires only need to feed once a week to avoid desiccation— so he surely intends to tonight.
Harry’s hands fit perfectly around the dip of her spine, pulling her body tight to his as he paints sloppy kisses over her jugular. He gets his teasing words out in between desperate gasps and breathy chuckles. “And here I thought this was genuinely going to be about the fan.”
“Shut up.”
Y/N makes a sharp turn, tugging him into her room instead of the living room and it dawns on him that this is the first time they’re going to fuck in her actual bed. All those instances of sleeping together and not once had they done anything on the piece of furniture that was intended for that sole purpose. It’s ironically hilarious and he voices that opinion as they stumble onto her mattress.
“You know,” Harry murmurs into her mouth as she shoves him flat onto the rumpled sheets (she hadn’t made her bed this morning and that’s endearing, for some reason), straddling his lap as she hurriedly pulls his t-shirt out from along the waistband of his trousers. “Out of all the times we’ve done this— which is quite a few— we’ve never done anything on your bed other than sleep.”
That’s a lie. He’s never actually slept in her bed. After staring at the ceiling blankly two weeks ago for about eight hours, he had been smart enough to grab his phone from his pants the second time around. He spent that stretch of time playing Mario Kart and watching Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix with the volume down just out of human earshot, so as to not disturb her slumber.
Y/N ducks in order to drag her wet, pillowy lips down the butterfly inking on his tummy and over the spines of the two ferns on his pelvis, licking across his happy trail. He jerks in response, a soft grunt gurgling in his lungs as she uses her index finger to trace the outline of his hardening cock through the velvet fabric of his slacks. Her voice is distant, giggle breathless. “Yeah, you’re right. How counterintuitive.”
Harry swiftly pops the button of his trousers, helping her coax them down his legs, releasing a stuttery moan when she immediately bends down and mouths at his prick over his briefs. The soiled stain forming around the tip of his cock would be embarrassing if he didn’t know she found it hot.
His tone is tight but humorous as she continues licking at him eagerly through his underwear, nails digging into his inner thighs. “Am I your first?”
Confusion flickers in her eyes for a moment before she realizes the joke. He’s referring to if he’s the first person she’s slept with on her new bed in her new home. “Yes, you are, actually.”
Harry’s juts his bottom lip out into an overly-sweet exaggerated pout, talking in a honeyed drawl. “Aw, I get to christen your bed with you? We’re practically married now. When’s the baby due?”
“God, you’re a moron.” Y/N bursts into a fit of laughter as she mounts back onto his lap, pinching at his torso in fake spite and feeling her insides flutter at the airy giggles that escape him. She gnaws on her bottom lip thoughtfully for a second, watching with hunger as he finishes removing his shirt and momentarily sits up to chuck it onto the ground over her shoulder.
Harry falls back onto the mattress, folding his taut arms behind his neck, biceps flexing with the movements as his strong chest and toned stomach look as appealing as ever. She runs her palms over his tanned skin, feeling the sturdy muscle shift beneath her touch. Shit.
The immortal slinks his head to the side, eyes going half-lidded in suggestive mischief as he sees the way she’s objectifying him. He doesn’t mind; he actually lives for it. “Are you just gonna keep staring or are you gonna fuck me?”
His lewd comment washes warmth across Y/N’s ears and spurs her into action. In less than a minute, she’s fully unclothed, bouncing on his cock with a type of need that boils the pit of Harry’s belly. His fingers are digging bruises into her waist, slamming her down onto his prick with enough force to make the old bed creak wildly. She may be on top, but he’s still the one pulling the strings.
Y/N collapses forward, anchoring herself onto her forearms on either sides of his head, burying her face in his auburn ringlets. She bites onto her tongue, trying to keep a tab on the atrociously loud sounds threatening to spill from her mouth. They come out as broken whines instead, which Harry drinks up like a glass of aged bourbon. She fists at his roots, jolting with every thrust he gives upwards, her knees digging into his love handles to keep balanced. At this point, she’s barely riding him at all. He’s just ramming himself into her from below as he guides her hips and she doesn’t have an issue with that at all. She likes when he leads.
His growl comes out low and raspy, riding on a moan, his warm, choppy exhales pebbling her bare nipples. “How’s that, darling? How’s that cock feel?”
Y/N nods her head frantically, not trusting her tongue to form an appropriate response.
“Tell me.” He grits out through bared teeth, back arching a bit as he feels the knot of white hot pleasure in his stomach twist and turn.
“I— I can’t. I’m—”
One of Harry’s hands coasts down the small of her back and onto her ass, giving it a harsh squeeze. She yelps at the new sensation, pain and bliss intermingling. “Yeah, you fucking can. You will. Use your words. Tell me how much you like it.”
A violent shutter runs through Y/N’s limbs and she instinctively pushes back against his palm. Harry’s eyebrows kink in question as he feels her draw her face back from his hair. One look at her eyes tells the entire narrative: She wants him to spank her.
Harry slowly lifts his hand from her skin, brows raising a bit higher for confirmation. Y/N smears his lips against his forehead and left cheekbone, bobbing her head desperately, whispering a tiny, “Yes, please.” that sends smoky tendrils of hot air cascading down his straining neck.
When the vampire’s hand comes down, it’s fast and hard, his cold rings biting into her flesh and leaving welts, the sound echoing off the glossy walls and tall bookshelf in her room. The cry that betrays her could probably be heard down on the main floor of her complex.
The shattered noise makes Harry sanity slip and he’s lucky she’s too lost in her own bliss to see the way his eyes glow dangerously red. “Fuck, you’re such a slut for it.”
Harry suddenly boosts himself forward, toppling Y/N backwards until she’s the one wedged against the bed. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, nestling her face into the crook of his sweaty collarbones, cracked cries pooling into the junction of his clavicle as he hikes her roughly up his thighs. He sinks further between her legs until he bottoms out with a loud garbled groan, pushing so deep she can feel him in the trench of her belly.
“Oh my God, Harry— I— fuck, just—just— oh!”
His pace rises in intensity, strokes messy and unforgivable as he fucks her into the bed, the cracking of the frame warning him that it might give away. “Oh, so you liked that, did you? Like it when I call you a slut and stretch you out like one?”
Harry feels Y/N’s teeth rip into his shoulder in order to evade a scream; a strong shiver pin-balls down his spine as a result. Her voice is absolutely wrecked as she talks over her muffled mouth. “Loved it. Loved it so much. Want—Want more. Please, please, please.”
Harry holds her down firmly to the sheets, pounding into her with a form of unrestrained force he’s never exhibited. She just drives him to the brink like no one else has in nearly twenty decades. “Can you feel me in your tummy, pet? Can you feel how I fill you up?”
“Yes, yes— it’s so good, Harry. You’re incredible.”
“Such a proper little whore.” He has to actively hold back from digging into her throat with his fangs, his eyes screwing shut in concentration as his orgasm begins to burn through his veins. “Begging me to fuck you like one, over and over. You’ve never had it this good, have you?”
“N-No. You’re the only one who makes me feel like this.”
“Hands off.”
“W-What?”
“Hands off.”
Y/N obeys, throwing her arms above her head and letting them hang off the edge of the bed as he’d instructed. It’s not like he wants her to stop scratching down his back, but he knows that if she continues, he’s going to black out. He’s already teetering, obvious in the black webs he can feel materializing over the whites of his eyes.
“Ask for permission.”
The mortal unclamps her teeth from his bruised shoulder and swallows heavily, her words sputtering out from how hard she’s jerking against the bed. “Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please—can I—can I cum?”
“‘May I cum.’” The boy corrects, half because he wants to be a cocky ass, and half because it’s automatic. He was raised during an era where intellectual accuracy was of utmost value in society. It’s hard to leave those lessons behind.
Y/N hiccups another mewl, hands curling into loose fists above her head as he continues to fuck her deliberately into the duvet. She repeats his phrase shakily. “May I cum? Please?”
Harry’s lashes flutter open and as soon as he sees her, all doe-eyed, covered in his love marks, with her bottom lip trembling...It’s like a switch flips. When he speaks, it’s soft and encouraging; a drastic contrast from his mood a few seconds ago. “Yeah...Yeah, baby, go ahead. Cum for me.”
That night, as Harry lays there awake staring at that awful popcorn roof with the taste of her blood fresh on his tongue and her steady heartbeat throbbing in his heightened ears, he catches himself smiling in the dark. It doesn't have to do with emotions or feelings or any of that complicated bullshit. It just has to do with the fact that he found some consistency in his life, as unattached and materialistic as it may be. They don’t have a complex bond or a deeper meaning. They simply just coexist. They provide some common stability to each others’ lives and it helps keep an important balance. Stability is so rare to find, especially for an immortal who is condemned to witness the world constantly evolve around them while they remain frozen in time. Society will change, people change, appearances change, alliances change, and though it can be exhilarating, at times, Harry never truly has a say in it. He’s always just strung along for the ride.
This is different. It’s static, and that’s all he really needs it to be. Sex can be so emotionally messy if lines aren’t drawn and boundaries aren’t set. But with Y/N, it’s like they have a silent understanding— an unspoken agreement signed by both parties. It’s a notion that could have spared Harry his life in the past, and it’s an ideal that— even in death— took him centuries to learn:
Some people are meant to be loved, while others are just meant to be naked.
///
The third week is when things escalate for the better.
Specifically, Tuesday night. That’s when the sexting starts.
It’s a pretty calm evening and Harry finds himself with nothing to do. Mitch is out with Sarah, who had come into town two days ago due to the band she’s touring with being on a three week break. She’d said she wasn’t staying for long— maybe a week, because she has plans to visit some other bloodsucker friends in Canada. Even though Mitch tries to hide it, Harry can tell he’s bummed about Sarah’s short visit. The older vampire is good at hiding his emotions, but Harry’s known him for so long that he could read Mitch’s mood even if he was blindfolded and gagged.
The jade-eyed boy had been honest with his best friend, asking him what the point was in continuing to see someone whose depth of interest in the relationship wasn’t as developed as his own. Mitch had simply shrugged one shoulder and told Harry that he wouldn’t understand. He mentioned something about how eventually, the freshblood high would wear off and Sarah would find herself wanting to settle down somewhere with someone she could trust for the rest of eternity. Mitch explained that he cared for her enough to wait until then.
His best mate had been wrong. Harry does understand. He understands the concept of chasing after someone who, in the end, didn’t want anything to do with him. He understands it a little too well, sadly. He figures that’s the same fate Mitch is bound to suffer, just on a less extreme level.
But then again, Harry’s perception of love is majorly skewed, so who is he to judge?
With Mitch tied up with Sarah (probably literally, though Harry doesn’t dwell on that; it’s none of his business), his options dwindle to the rest of the crew. Niall and Xander had invited him to a concert they were attending, but Harry politely declined the offer. The musicians were some wannabe indie band and Harry would rather swallow a nicotine addict’s blood than listen to a couple of morons sing in cursive. Adam had suggested he tag along with him, Ny-Oh, and Charlotte to a new art exhibit that had opened up in the next town over. It was a thirty minute drive, so it wasn’t that bad, but Harry declined that invitation, as well. He loves art, if the giant collection on his wall has anything to say about it, but he doesn’t get on well with Ny or Charlotte. They say he’s “too much of an arrogant dickhead” to be around for an extended period of time. They’re right, of course, but it still hurts. Plus, Ny has a mullet and Harry knows he wouldn’t be able to withhold from making a Billy Ray joke. It’s best he stay away, lest she end up with an achy-breaky heart.
So that leaves him here, all alone at eight P.M. on a Tuesday, plopped on his couch in nothing but a pair of maroon plaid boxers as Hamilton plays on the ninety inch flatscreen mounted on his glass wall. He had left the curtains open, not really caring that he’s practically naked. The sun’s already set and it’s almost pitch black outside; plus, he lives on the twenty-fourth floor of the condominium complex. The only living being risking an eyeful is a peepy pigeon. Even then, Harry’s more than happy to put on a show. He’s confident enough in himself that nudity is practically second nature. His friends can attest to that.
Harry lays across his leather sofa with a large checkered throw cushion snuggled into his side, one of his hands slung across the backrest of the couch as the other remains submerged wrist-deep in a bag of Veggie Straws. His socked feet are propped up on his round marble coffee table, ankles crossed and posture anything but eloquent. The apartment is silent, except for the musical streaming through the speakers of his television set and the gentle pattering of rain just outside his glorified window pane, accompanied by the faint flickering of the city lights below. The atmosphere of the room is relaxed and cozy and it lulls his soul in a manner he can’t put into words.
Harry has always liked the rain. Ever since he was a child, he would sit by the small round window of the attic room he shared with his older sister, watching it fall from the sky in sheets of glittering sapphires, soaking into the dry ground and turning it into a slush of dirt he would later sneak out to play in. When he got older, he would prop his shoulder against the doorframe at the back of his father’s blacksmith shop and gaze at it, mesmerized by how it would trickle down the streets of the public market, washing away all the grime that came with a bustling city’s reputation. Sometimes he would stand in it, feeling its cool touch run down his arms and soak into the back of his sot-covered work shirt. He enjoyed how it would cleanse the sticky sweat from his face and neck, its gentle nature leaving him feeling like he could float through air. Then his father would call him back into the store and playfully scold him for allowing himself to get drenched, warning that his mother would kill him if he caught a cold.
Harry’s changed a lot since then, he knows that, but it comforts him that his love for rain is the one aspect of his personality that two hundred years of Hell had failed to take from him.
The melodies swimming out of his TV reign him back in from memory lane.
Harry’s not really one to enjoy musicals, but back when Hamilton had first hit Broadway, he’d used his persuasive supernatural abilities to sneak into one of the first showings. He’d been curious as to what all the hype was about, and the play did not disappoint. The songs were catchy, the acting was good, and the characters were brought to life through raw emotion and comedy. He respected that. And the plot of the story itself resonated with him deeply, as well. A protagonist that rose from nothing, fell in love with the wrong woman, and made terrible life choices that seemed correct at the time, which would all eventually lead to his death. It hit a bit too close to home.
If he had a dollar for every time he’s seen it since it had come out on Disney+, he could probably pay rent himself instead of compelling others to do it for him.
The play is halfway through one of its most famous ballads when the monster’s phone dings with a familiar tune. A smirk is already etching itself across his face before he even unlocks his device.
I need interior design advice.
I’m still a little sore from our last help session. How’d you bounce back so quick?
Funny, but I need ACTUAL interior design advice this time.
Harry’s brows furrow in mild confusion and slight disappointment. He draws his hand from the junk food container, dusting off the crumbs. Oh.
Genuinely?
Yup!
He guesses he’ll give it a go. He does have pretty exquisite taste; the modern gothic aesthetic of his condo proves that. It’s not like he has anything better to do.
Alright, shoot.
Y/N releases the breath she’d been holding in. Thank God he’s agreed to help. As much as she’s ashamed to admit it, Harry’s really the only person in LA that she deems relatively close to a friend. She hasn’t managed to mesh well with her coworkers much, despite the fact that she’s been trying extremely hard. She just doesn’t wanna force herself into unfulfilling fake friendships for the sake of having people to flaunt. It’s not right and she knows she’d grow to resent it.
So instead, she’d reached out to the one California resident who doesn’t make her skin crawl.
Whew, okay, thanks in advance! So I went out yesterday and got a new bedspread and I wanted some help choosing a new accessory to go with it, which is going on my wall.
Harry’s ears perk up and his back straightens at her statement. Could she finally, by the grace of fucking God, be getting rid of that shitty tapestry?
Well, let me see it, then. Don’t keep a man waiting, I’m dying to play Property Brothers over here.
A picture comes through of the two new accessories Y/N is referring to and the way Harry’s face drops instantly is almost comical.
Which tapestry fits better? I’m thinking the Van Gogh style painting of a lighthouse. The blue goes well with the dark turquoise of the comforter. But then again, the forest canopy has those pretty exotic flowers that compliment the coral stitching. I can’t decide.
The vampire’s face pinches in disgusted horror as he blinks down numbly at the image on his screen. He’s going to be sick. Those Veggie Straws are about to make a hideous comeback.
…two new tapestries? Did the other one rip or…?
What? No!! I just saw these down at the thrift store and thought they were cute. Why? Are they really that bad??
They’re not just bad, they’re worse. He’s going to ask her to blindfold him next time he visits.
They’re…kinda immature, dove. I just thought you’d go for something cooler this time, like a vintage painting or a couple vinyls to mount on the wall.
Immature?
Oops. He should have picked his words more carefully. Now he’s gone and offended her and she’ll probably bite down the next time he puts his—
Another message interrupts his spiraling negative conclusions.
I know you didn’t just call ME immature when you compared me to a cream-filled donut, Harry.
The playful tone in the text delivers a wave of relief that is almost as pleasurable as what lies between Y/N’s legs.
Can I speak freely for a second? Full disclosure, no consequences?
That preface makes me think you’re about to chew me out.
I’ll be gentle, I promise. I know it’s not our usual dynamic, but I’ll give it a go.
Y/N ignores the bristling across her cheeks.
Alright, go head.
I just think tapestries are kinda stupid. They scream “confused teenager trying to find myself.” But that’s just my opinion. I’m only telling you so you know that I’m probably not the best bloke to go to with tapestry inquiries.
Harry watches as a read receipt stares up at him for a few seconds. Just when he thinks he might have truly upset her this time, her message bubble pops up.
So...the one I’ve had hanging in my room the last three times you’ve been over…
I had to actively restrain the urge to strangle myself with it.
Y/N breaks out into laughter. The image of waking up to Harry laying facedown on her bedroom floor, balls naked and mummified within a sunrise tapestry...It’s sending her.
Well, you know what? That’s not fair! You can’t judge my house when I haven’t even had the chance to judge yours.
Harry nods once to himself in surrender, reaching up to finger-comb a few rebellious curls out of his eyes. She makes a valid play.
Fair enough. You’ll have to come over and give me your opinion sometime.
I’d be honored to. Now, would you be so kind as to put your own personal bias aside this once and help me choose which one to put up. I promise I’ll spare you any more tapestry-related problems in the future. I’ll remove it from my customer contract.
Harry sighs defeatedly. He can’t believe he’s giving up his integrity for sex.
Fine. Send me a picture of both of them up on the wall. It’ll give some perspective.
Y/N giddily obliges, deciding to send a video instead. That way, she can get all of the angles in one go rather than having to send multiple pictures.
Harry waits patiently, shoving another handful of chips into his mouth as he taps his foot against the coffee table to the tune of Wait for It, which is playing in the film that has now become the backdrop of his night. When Y/N’s next message comes through, he’s mildly surprised to find it’s a video. He clicks play, watching intently as she circles the two pinned tapestries slowly, making sure to get a proper view from all sides. By the time the thirty second clip is coming to an end, Harry’s leaning more towards the tropical canopy painting. It’s not as loud and she was right about the flowers matching the stitching on the duvet.
He’s about to tap back “the forest one” when something flashes across the screen that makes him choke on his snack, launching him into a coughing fit.
It’s within the last three seconds of the video and if he had cut it off in order to text back, he would have missed it. But he hadn’t, and now it’s burned into the back of his eyelids, causing a buzzing sensation to string right to the area between his thighs.
The last few frames of the video, Y/N had lowered her phone from the position she’d been suspending it, probably thinking she had already stopped filming. She hadn’t. And because of that, Harry gets a full frontal view of her body, covered in nothing except a pair of lace panties and a mid-thigh oversized Avengers t-shirt. The entire screen fills with bare, silky skin and raunchy lace and he can feel his fangs poke into his tongue.
Harry’s not a pre-teen; he’s not going to drool over seeing a pair of legs. What really gets to him is the fact that it appears Y/N still has a few hickies across the inner area of her thighs, which have failed to fade as quickly as the others. They should be gone, given that anytime Harry feeds (like he had the last time they’d slept together), he always gives her a bit of his blood to heal. Meaning, normal bruises like that should be gone. Maybe he just hadn’t given her a high enough dosage, or maybe he’d marked her more than he remembers, but either way, the stains are there.
The vampire ogles at the paused image with a dry throat and wide eyes. Just seeing her like that, dressed in comfy yet effortlessly sensual attire with no bottoms on whatsoever, freely flaunting his love bites around her apartment, probably looking at them in her mirror, thinking about how his teeth had felt grazing her skin…
It’s enough to pop a stiffy into his briefs.
Harry glimpses over the top of his phone, swallowing thickly at the large bulge beginning to tent his boxers. His socked toes curl as he feels a longing throb begin to swell at the pit of his clenching stomach. Great. This is just fucking perfect.
He attempts to tap back a reply, but his hands have started quivering slightly, clumsy thumbs ruining his message to the point where he has to retype it three times.
The forest one. I agree with what you said about the stitching.
Okay, thank you so much! Your input is highly appreciated, as always.
The immortal finds himself gnawing at the inside of his cheek, weighing on whether he should mention the little softcore porn moment she’d unknowingly shot, or if he should just let it slide and go take care of the issue that is literally weighing on him— he can feel it getting heavy against his thigh.
His fingers seem to take on a mind of their own, printing out a quick sentence and hitting the send button before he can rethink his motives.
Did you watch your video before you sent it?
Uh no...It looked pretty okay to me while I took it. Why, do you need a different one? Was the lighting too dark?
The fact that she sent it by accident only adds to the appeal. She’s such a good girl. So fucking innocent and sweet, she could practically give him a toothache.
Do me a quick favor and rewatch it all the way to the end. I think you’ll be surprised with what you find.
Y/N leans back against her bookshelf wall, chewing on her bottom lip as a sly grin ticks the corners. She doesn’t have to rewatch the video. She’s fully aware of what she had done, which had been completely on purpose. She’s only playing dumb to see his reaction, getting off on how flustered he seems to have become. Yes, her intentions for contacting him had originally been purely for his opinion on decor. But when she saw the chance, she decided to jump headfirst and take it. What are friends with benefits for if not for times like these, when you’re too lazy to come over but need a bit of relief?
The human allows a full thirty seconds to pass, simulating that she’s watching the video, and then thoughtfully taps out her response.
Oh, whoops. Sorry for the indecent exposure.
Harry shifts in exasperation against his sofa, the radiating in his abdomen crawling up to his chest and down to his knees. He needs to take care of himself now.
It’s fine, babe. You just might wanna be more careful, cause this time around you got lucky that it was me and it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Could go south if it were someone else.
Y/N rolls her eyes lightly at his scolding, but continues to play the clueless act, curious to see where it’ll take her.
You’re absolutely right, I’m so sorry.
Harry clears his throat, flinching as he feels a soft twitch run up the length of his cock. He exhales tightly, trying to steer the conversation into a lighter mood. He doesn’t want her to feel bad; it’s not like he’s angry about this. He’s hot and bothered and needy, but not mad.
I just think it’s funny you exposed the fact that you go around your house without pants.
Oh, fuck off! No one ever wears pants around their own house, especially if they’re alone. It’s one of the laws of physics. No human resistance, no pants.
Harry glances down at his body symbolically, where he’s clad in only his underwear, as well.
Touché.
Exactly.
A pause befalls the conversation as both parties fish for something new to say. The situation’s become less lively and more intense now and neither are sure how to navigate without crossing a line. In a surge of courage, Y/N decides to just directly communicate her intentions, praying that he doesn’t take it the wrong way.
I have an idea, just hear me out. For the sake of evening the playing field, I think that since you saw me pantsless, it’s only fair that I see you the same way. It balances out, right?
Harry’s jaw drops in an open-mouthed simper, impressed by her blatant suggestion, but also by how smoothly she had delivered it. He mumbles his next words to himself, voice amused and somewhat awed at how she had managed to spin this to her benefit. “You clever little minx. Bet it wasn’t even an accident.”
You did it on purpose, didn’t you?
Y/N purses her lips, shrugging her brows cheekily.
Maybe.
The vampire scoffs, taken aback not only at the ploy she’d pulled off, but at how unapologetic she is about the whole thing. It’s hot.
Alright, l’ll bite. Tick for tack.
The photo that comes through makes Y/N choke on her spit. It’s not anything too revealing, but it packs a lot. Literally.
It’s a pretty casual picture, and she gets the feeling he took it as so just to be a tease. In the frame, all she sees is a snapshot of Harry’s lap, thighs straining against the flimsy material of a pair of crimson tartan boxers, the large tigerhead tattoo he totes somehow prominent in the low lightning. Of course it stands out, though. That’s to be expected; his thighs are thick in the most satisfying fashion and they’re one of his most defining features. She can also see the bottom half of his lean tummy, the cutoff being the crest of his belly button. His fern inkings are peeking out of from below the waistband of the Calvin Kleins, dark and matte on his lightly bronzed skin, and she spots the nonchalant position of his crossed ankles in the background.
As appetizing as every little detail is, the centerpiece of the portrait is the obvious bulge pressing into the fabric of his briefs. The outline is so prominent, the picture borderlines on graphic. His cock looks pretty as ever, even when it’s covered; the thin underwear leaves very little to the imagination.
Y/N has to bite down on her tongue to keep from making an embarrassing sound.
Wow, okay, well...Your picture was much more explicit than my video. That’s not fair at all. Throws off the equilibrium we were trying to establish.
Harry chuckles aloud, shaking his head in amazement at how well she can bend the game to her will. Three weeks ago, when he’d first laid eyes on that shy girl at the club, he would have never expected her to be so bold. Now, she has him wrapped around her pinky like a string.
You’re absolutely right. My apologies. Maybe you should send one similar so we can even out the stakes.
You read my mind.
Y/N’s next picture causes a hiss to stream through the cracks of Harry’s teeth, eyes glinting red.
It’s a picture taken on top of her bed, the angle set from above. She’s laying on her side, her torso twisted so that her backside is in the shot, her huge tee pulled tight against her waist so it creates an enticing cinching effect. Her thighs are clasped together, the collar of her shirt pulled away just enough that he can see where the valley of her chest begins to curve, and the cheeky lace panties are working utter wonders for her ass. He can’t stop staring. He physically can’t pull himself away, his eyes bouncing across every pixel, attempting to commit the picture to memory to keep it locked in the back of his brain forever.
Y/N awaits anxiously for his reaction, biting into the pad of her thumb as the seconds list by, wondering if he had enjoyed the nude or if he was just sitting there judging all her flaws. It’s been so long since she’s sent a risky photo like that, she can’t help but stress. Sharing your body with someone digitally is almost as intimate as real sex and it comes with similar worries and insecurities. Was the angle good? Are her stretch marks unattractive? Are the dimples along her backside gross? Is he second-guessing their arrangement? Is he wishing they hadn’t met?
She practically drops her phone when it vibrates.
God, you look stunning. Like a proper fucking dream.
All of her concerns immediately disintegrate, replaced by an odd sense of pride. She’s happy that he enjoyed it, and she’s thankful for the caliber of his response. Most men don’t care to comment that nicely, if they comment at all, and Harry’s enthusiasm only excites her further. She wants to keep going.
You look pretty fucking good yourself. Wish I could just kneel between your thighs, take you into my mouth, and make you feel good for hours.
Harry struggles to get saliva down his parched throat, her words bouncing around the inside of his skull, sending a current of bliss directly to where he needs it.
Hours? You want me down your throat for hours?
For hours, Harry. I’d literally just sit between your legs and let you fuck my face again. Let you use me to make yourself cum.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Harry’s broken whine echoes off the tall walls of his home, one of his big hands finding a path to his curls and tugging in desperation. He needs to keep composure.
Harry’s next snapshot comes through and Y/N has to screw her eyes shut for a second to brace the bolt of electricity that zips down to her core.
The boy’s thighs have parted wider, his feet now down from the table, knees hanging off the edge of the sofa. His free hand has delved below his briefs, pulling them up just enough to show a tad of the neatly trimmed area beneath. His fingers are cupped over his cock, hiding it from plain view, but the imprint of his knuckles on the fabric suggest he’s gripping it tightly. The longer she looks, the more she notices— specifically, a dark damp patch spreading at the middle of his boxers and she knows damn well what it is. The fact that she’d got him riled up enough that he’s leaking through like that...She can hardly breathe right.
Shit, you look so good. How do you always look that fucking good? I just want to feel you stretch me out while you moan into my mouth.
Harry slowly starts pumping his palm up and down his cock as he rereads her words, catching his lower lip between his teeth, his naked and flushed chest stuttering. He doesn’t want to be the douche that tells her to send another picture, but he really needs her to. He wants to see what she’s doing, how she’s fairing. Wants to know if he has her as fucked as she has him right now.
It’s almost like they share a telepathic link because not even five seconds later, another beautifully filthy photo is decorating his screen.
This time around, Y/N has decided to fully lay on her back, spreading her legs open and drawing her knees up slightly so that her thighs are not only flexing, but displaying all the love bites he’d left only a few days prior. They’re all different shades of purple and brown, scattered over the satin suppleness of her skin, painting a canvas of the heated night they’d shared. It’s art at its most prestigious, if he’s ever seen it. And she has her hand ducked below her panties, the outline of her fingers situated right over her clit.
Harry’s own hand instinctively tightens around his length, pulling a weak groan from his parted lips. He throws his head back against the backrest of the couch, bucking into his palm and teasing his forefinger over his bubbling tip. He spreads the precum all over the sensitive head, whimpering when the draft from the air conditioning caresses it and sends a quiver toppling over his shoulders.
Fuck, she’s driving him mental. There’s only one way to take care of this effectively, despite their distance.
I’m going to call you.
Y/N gulps heavily, licking over her chapped lips and feeling her pulse jump at the realization that she’ll be getting to hear his throaty voice coax her through an orgasm. Not only that, but she’ll get to hear him cum, too. She’ll get to hear every shattered gasp and needy mewl, almost as if he were pouring all those sounds of pleasure right into her ears in person.
The mortal’s heart hiccups when his contact pops up on the Caller ID, phone vibrating insistently. After a deep breath taken to ground herself, she slides her shaky thumb over the glass, slowly bringing the device up to her ear. Her voice is soft and timid as ever, a tremble running through its undertone. “H-Hello?”
Harry’s words come through the crackling speaker as dark and smoky as whiskey, pouring into her mind and intoxicating her as easily as the real liquor would.
“Flip onto your stomach and take off the lace. Now.”
#harry styles x reader#harry styles x y/n#harry styles x you#harry styles fanfiction#harry styles fic#harry styles smut#smut#harry styles series#vampire!harry#harry styles#1d fanfiction#1d fic#one direction fanfiction#one direction smut#one direction fic#1d smut#ysijwa#harry styles one shot#harry styles dirty one shot#harry styles dirty imagine#harry styles dirty fanfiction#harry styles blurb#harry x y/n#harry x reader#harry styles au#vampire au
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What better way to break in a new blog than by immediately posting fic? In honour of Nightmare of the Wolf, here’s some Vesemir and Filavandrel!
(read on AO3)
M, 2.9K words, no warnings, Vesemir recognizes Jaskier’s lute when he arrives at Kaer Morhen
Vesemir has been expecting this day for decades. It’s rare for witchers to meet a trusted companion out on the Path, and even rarer to find one who wishes to travel alongside them. But the reputation of witchers has changed in recent years, for better or worse. Their focus is no longer on maintaining the traditional practices of their schools, but on protection— of other witchers, and of helpless commoners. Perhaps the humans can sense that change.
More curiously, the folklore surrounding witchers has changed. Vesemir very badly wants to meet the man who has done so much to change the narrative, but years pass and all Geralt brings home every winter are stories. The younger witchers entertain (and tease) him but no one ever asks where the bard goes during the cold months that Geralt spends at Kaer Morhen. Perhaps even Geralt doesn’t know.
Finally, after hundreds of stories of Geralt-and-Dandelion, Vesemir receives a letter one autumn before he himself has even considered the journey home. His chest warms as he reads Geralt’s careful penmanship, noting how the ink blots at the start of each new sentence. The paper and wax are fine, suggesting that Jaskier used his academic connections to perhaps land Geralt a few contracts near Oxenfurt. Geralt’s lettering may be nearly flawless but his message is stilted, reminding Vesemir of when his pups were nervous children. Does Jaskier really make him act this awkward? Their relationship must be serious, then.
I am hoping you will welcome my guest with open arms, or I fear he may freeze over the coming months. Vesemir looks for a signature but there is none, save a very fancy G at the bottom. No returning address has been provided either, and while he could easily pen a missive to Oxenfurt, it’s probably best not to respond. Each day Nilfgaard only grows stronger, and crueler. Perhaps Jaskier has been caught up in their hunger for power. Vesemir folds the letter up and hides it in his saddlebag.
When the frost begins creeping in, the oldest Wolf begins his trek up the mountain. He’s almost always the first one to arrive; Coën had beaten him to it once and apologized for weeks, and Vesemir would do anything to avoid that again. And if he makes an effort to arrive early this year so that he can make the Keep look as important as it is, well… nobody needs to know.
It takes a week and a half before Geralt arrives, Jaskier in tow. Vesemir spends the time flushing out a bat infestation and dealing with the most perishable of his spoils from the past year. The White Wolf seems to bring the cold with him most years but Vesemir, cognizant of Jaskier’s inferior body, made sure to set out enough furs in advance. As soon as he hears Roach’s hooves approaching he starts a roaring fire, and when the inner doors of Kaer Morhen burst open, Vesemir is ready to make a great first impression.
Upon seeing him, Geralt smiles right away, crossing the room to greet him. Vesemir looks him over; no obvious new scars, no missing body parts. Must have been an uneventful year, but… Geralt is here, safe and alive, so Vesemir allows himself some private, selfish, unwitcherly joy. It’s the sort of thing Deglan would have lectured him for. He finds he doesn’t care.
“I got your letter,” he tells Geralt, who nods solemnly. “I thought it best not to reply. Is Nilfgaard on your trail?”
“Our trail,” Geralt sighs, stepping aside so that Vesemir can meet his companion. “Vesemir, this is Jaskier.”
The bard, dwarfed by a large fur coat, moves forward so that Vesemir can properly scrutinize him. He certainly doesn’t look his age, but Vesemir knows he’s travelled as far as any witcher has gone, and seen sights no human should really have witnessed. “Oh, I’ve heard plenty about you, Jaskier. I was wondering when Geralt was finally going to bring you along for the winter!” That makes Jaskier perk up, and Vesemir chuckles. “I promise that no harm will come to you here.”
“Thank you,” Jaskier says. “Geralt doesn’t like sharing much about the other witchers, but I’m sure you must have a wealth of stories for me to hear!” Sure enough, Geralt frowns. “And I don’t know how much help I’ll be with hunting or gathering, but I would be happy to regale you on the coldest nights—”
And before Vesemir can read into that unfortunate phrasing, Jaskier shrugs off his fur coat to produce a lute. He must have been wearing it strapped around his front on the journey through the mountains, not wanting to condemn such a fine instrument to being jostled around in Roach’s saddlebags. Vesemir squints at the red-brown wood and the golden details under the strings. They almost look like a particular elven design.
Oh. Vesemir’s realization nearly bowls him over. Geralt and Jaskier stare at him, respectively concerned and curious, but Vesemir can’t take his eyes off the lute. “My apologies, I… I forgot something in my chamber. Make yourselves at home, and… I’ll leave you to it.” He leaves without any further explanation, hastening to his quarters and abandoning the pair of them to their own devices. He can still feel their gazes drilling into his back but he suddenly feels weaker than usual.
---
“I heard there was a witcher skulking around this forest,” the spy says. Vesemir is almost relieved to hear them speak; he’s been glancing over his shoulder for nearly an hour now to try and reveal an invisible pursuer. He should’ve known he was right. Just because the spy doesn’t lumber like a human or reek of magic like a monster doesn’t mean he won’t be in trouble.
He stops in the middle of the path, still facing forward. He’s got a sneaking suspicion that the second he turns, a very unfriendly knife is going to introduce itself to his ribcage. Or perhaps an arrow, although he hasn’t heard the sound of anything and he’s been listening very closely.
His pursuer approaches. Fuck, they’re light on their feet. If Vesemir was just an average bandit, he’d be done for. He braces himself for an attack, balling his hands up into fists at his sides. The stranger continues, tone still pleasant enough, “Why not stay in town? A warm bed must beat trudging through mud in the early hours of the morning trying to find ground. I’ll give you some advice, witcher; there’s no dry ground. You’re heading towards a swamp.”
“They wouldn’t let me stay in town,” Vesemir admits, already grumpy. He whirls around and sees the stranger; a lean man, just slightly shorter than him. The long hood of their cloak casts a dark shadow over their face, blocking them from view. “If you’re here to rob me, I hate to disappoint, but you’ve followed me all this way for nothing.”
He holds up his empty coinpurse; not to prove himself, just to complain. The stranger titters, a lovely, high-pitched sound like glass clinking against glass, like chimes. Like birdsong. Vesemir’s eyes narrow. “That’s a shame,” they say. “You do love coin.”
There’s something disturbingly familiar about the words. Vesemir decides to gamble with his own life, stalking forward until he’s face to face with the stranger. Up close, his scent is even stronger. Frowning, Vesemir is about to reveal the man’s identity when he does it himself, pushing his hood back. His hair is tied up in complex braids unlike any Vesemir has ever seen, only a few loose strands hanging down over his forehead. But it would take more than a lifetime for Vesemir to forget that face.
“Fil,” he declares, delighted, and doesn’t think twice before crashing into the elf. Filavandrel laughs again and though it makes Vesemir feel a little silly, the sound still fills his heart with joy. He embraces his friend tightly, clinging to him for so long that both their boots sink down into the flooded dark soil of the forest. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s like I told you.” The elf pats the back of Vesemir’s neck, unwittingly sending a shiver down his spine. Vesemir’s grip tightens. “My scouts said I might find a witcher lost in the woods.”
“I’m not lost,” Vesemir grunts, finally pulling away. “I just… don’t know where I’m going.”
“Come to my camp,” suggests Filavandrel. As if he even had to ask.
Unsurprisingly, elves make their camps much differently than witchers do. When they arrive Vesemir doesn’t immediately see any sort of bedroll, and then he feels embarrassed for looking. He never feels this way around anyone else; he can make bawdy jokes with Sven or blatantly hit on Luka, but in the company of Filavandrel aén Fidháil, shame bursts through him so easily.
Maybe he just has a thing for pretty blondes who he leaves behind.
Except Fil is here, smiling indulgently as Vesemir gapes like a fool. “It’s nice,” he finally manages to say. “Want me to set a fire?”
“A campfire, sure. Not a big one,” Filavandrel teases. Swallowing, Vesemir turns to a firepit that the elf must have fashioned himself. He takes a bundle of wood that’s already been cut and easily ignites it, all the while trying to figure out why his heart is pounding so damn loud. Thank fuck that Filavandrel isn’t a witcher.
“Have you eaten?”
“No. You?”
“I was going to have some bread, and go hunting in the morning.” There’s a small noise and when Vesemir turns to look, his friend is holding out a large chunk of bread. It doesn’t even look that stale. Vesemir sees that Filavandrel has taken a much smaller piece for himself and growls about it, but the elf snatches the smaller piece away before Vesemir can lunge for it. “I don’t want to hear any self-sacrificial bullshit about how witchers don’t need to eat. Take the damn bread, Ves.”
“... Fine,” Vesemir relents, cowed. He accepts the bread, fingertips accidentally brushing over Filavandrel’s when he takes it. It’s fucking delicious, melting in his mouth almost instantly. Seeds and herbs have been baked into it too, and Vesemir savours every bite, moaning. “You should quit being a professional elf and start a new life as a baker, fuck.”
“I can do both. It’s an old recipe, needs a stone oven. And what does being a professional elf even mean?” Filavandrel reaches up to shove him, except they aren’t very far away from each other so the push nearly knocks Vesemir off his balance. Before he can tip over onto the grass Filavandrel grabs him by the collar of his gambeson and tugs him back, and, well. Vesemir may be a witcher, but parts of him are still human.
Neither of them has to say a word; he opens for Filavandrel like he’s been thinking of nothing but this since the second they laid eyes on each other. Honestly, he sort of has. Fil runs a hand over the shaved part of his head, pressing his palm against the back of his neck to pull him in closer. Vesemir moans, chasing the taste of something sweet and acidic and magic. It certainly isn’t the fucking bread.
Afterwards they lie together by the smoldering remains of the fire, both too spent to clean themselves or dress. Vesemir glances over at the cinders and thinks about making an exit soon. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to stay with Filavandrel. He’s comfortable here, especially right now, and his friend always makes his heart feel lighter. But the Path calls to him; lying here without his weapons or armour, Vesemir can nearly hear Deglan’s scolding. And that thought is enough to ruin anyone’s afterglow.
Before he can move, Filavandrel sits up, arching his back. Vesemir turns to watch him, nearly salivating at how he looks in the low firelight. His hair is radiant, and his skin isn’t nearly flushed enough. He’s beautiful. Ethereal. Selfishly, Vesemir wishes that he’d left more marks.
Fil climbs to his feet and crosses the campsite to retrieve something out of reach. Vesemir cranes his neck to try and peek, and Filavandrel laughs kindly at him. “I was just thinking that something’s missing.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Vesemir says, lowering his head back down onto the ground. “I should have kissed you more.”
The elf pauses at that before finally demanding, “Kiss me later.” A note resounds through the air, clear and beautiful; then a chord, and another. Very soon their little clearing feels more like a fairy circle than a campground as Filavandrel plays music.
He finally walks into view, still naked, still beautiful. Now holding a lute. Vesemir tries to sit up so that he can properly see the performance but Filavandrel is faster, moving over him and then sitting atop his stomach, resting his back against Vesemir’s thighs. He plays the entire time, fingers moving adeptly over the instrument.
It’s a beautiful lute, probably made of some holy dark red wood. The golden design etched into it is mesmerizing, and the strings could have been plucked from the mane of a unicorn. Vesemir hardly spares it any attention, too wrapped up in the sight of a naked Filavandrel straddling him and singing.
He’ll only realize decades later that the elf was probably trying to court him.
Someone knocks on the door to his chambers and Vesemir jumps to his feet, caught off-guard by the sound that plucked him from his memories. He finds Jaskier waiting outside his room, toying idly with the sleeves of his doublet. Vesemir shakes his head, holding the door open for Jaskier even as he apologizes. “I’m sorry for running out earlier. I meant to give you a tour of the Keep, hopefully Geralt will have stepped up in my absence, but I am sorry—”
“No— please,” Jaskier interrupts. Once more he pulls his lute from around himself, holding it out to Vesemir. “I just… Your countenance changed dramatically upon seeing this, so…”
Fuck. “Yes,” Vesemir sighs, staring at the lute. Jaskier has managed to keep it in good condition after all this time. “I… Filavandrel and I are old friends.”
The bard’s eyes bulge out of his head but he enters Vesemir’s chambers, heading straight to the desk to perch on the edge of the chair. Vesemir finds another chair for himself, moving its previous occupant— a stack of books— onto the floor. In his defence, he hadn’t expected the tour of Kaer Morhen to begin in his personal chambers.
“He didn’t mention knowing any other witchers,” Jaskier hums. “How did you meet him?”
“You’re sure you want to know? It’s sort of a long story.” The bard just nods, eager and polite. Instantly Vesemir can see why Geralt likes him. “Alright,” he obliges, reaching for the bottle of wine on the desk. They’re going to need it. “We met long before you would have been born…”
---
South of Kaedwen, the seasons are more aligned than any other part of the Continent. The winters are crisp, the summers lazy. Filavandrel likes to spend his summers here, where the canopy of trees is thick enough to provide shade but thin enough to provide colour. Everything is verdant, the flowers calling to him as he passes each one. When he was a child he had longed to visit towns and experience human delights like festivals but now he knows better. The elves live off the land well enough anyway.
Some of the younger people in his company these days have that same yearning, and some of them even manage it. One elf who resembles Toruviel always runs off to see some different show, take in some new performance. If Filavandrel thought that she could get away with it, he would pay for her to attend Oxenfurt— she’s very good. And the upside of her risking her life just to listen to music is that she’s got a very good memory, and she always brings the songs back home.
Today she’s singing some new ode to a witcher; not that bigoted anthem of lies that the bastard warbler from Posada somehow spread through the Continent, thank the Gods. This one seems to revolve more around making the right choice, and how a real hero does good deeds not for coin or his own profit, but just to be good. Filavandrel thinks about the few witchers that he’s had the misfortune of contacting over the years, and under his breath he scoffs.
Cheesy chorus aside, the lyrics seem to have some merit. The first verse is all about some terrible monster that was taking young girls, transforming them into half-beasts. The hero witcher’s judgement fails him and he blames himself for years, even losing a lover in the process. Filavandrel scowls; despite his own experiences with witches, he doesn’t want to listen to a song written by yet another prejudiced bard.
Then the third verse lands. The witcher grows old and wise and has children of his own, and he regrets his inaction and he tries to reach out to contact his lover. But at that point his lover, who devoted his life to protecting those in danger, was too busy being King of the Silver Towers. Filavandrel stops dead in his tracks as he realizes which witcher this must have been inspired by.
The elven king huffs, starting to compose a route in his head. He thinks a trip up north is long overdue.
#vesemir#filavandrel#nightmare of the wolf#the witcher nightmare of the wolf#geraskier fic#my writing#hey did anyone else see young vesemir talking to his friend fil in the bath and think we were gonna get a Bath Scene Part Two: The Remix?
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I Will Answer to Knife
Word Count: 3600
Pairings: Gen
Warnings: Post s11 Ice Chapter. PTSD, mentions of blood/murder, Zane isn’t in a good headspace.
Summary: Zane struggles with weapons he isn’t used to. Zane struggles with what he offers.
Wouldbelove, do not think of me as a whetstone
until you hear the whole story:
In it, I’m not the hero, but I’m not the villain either
so let’s say, in the story, I was human
and made of human-things: fear
and hands, underbelly and blade.
He overcompensates, loses his balance and skids across the courtyard. His side takes the brunt of it, and if he were human the bruises would be layered one on top of the other, each time he slips imprinted onto his skin in a motley purple-blue-yellow. He’s not human, so all he has to show for his fumbling is radiating pain not unlike cracked ribs, a dirty gi, and tight-lipped irritation that barely masks shame. The impact sends his shuriken out of his hands, arcing in an unrefined fling that has one stuck out of the gate across the yard and the other lying, like him, in the dirt.
He rolls to a stop, flopping back onto the ache of his shoulder blades to stare up at the sky. Without thinking, he balls his hand into a fist and bangs the side of his palm against the edge of the training mat he can reach. Frustration seeps hot across his throat and down his chest, like blood from a fresh wound. He rolls over on his sore side by mistake but doesn’t dare suck in a hissing breath, not with the others watching so closely, gathering his legs underneath him and rising to his feet.
Kai looks sympathetic from his spot on the blue mat that is not big enough to keep his failure contained, the dirt on his gi proof of his mistakes spilling over. The wooden swords in his hands are awkward and out of place, their weight different from his normal weaponry yet even with this disadvantage, he puts Zane down over and over.
Well, Zane does most of the work for him, really.
Lloyd watches with a pinched expression as Zane dusts himself off, his position at the head of the training session a solid presence, “I think that’s enough for today.” He says, and he almost seems apologetic.
“I can go again.” Zane insists, and refuses to stumble as he collects his discarded weapons, wrenching the edge of his blade out of the gate with his dwindling strength.
He’s exhausted. They’ve been running basic drills, ameatuer hour stuff Zane should have been able to do in his sleep- but it’s been years. Decades upon decades stuck on the throne of the Never Realm, and now he’s out of practice and off balance. Nindroids don't have muscle memory, and his regular memory has been shredded enough that things like this didn’t bother to stick. He can’t get through a single move without losing the dexterity that used to come easy and sending himself to the dirt- Lloyd had gone from advanced moves to novice to beginner slowly throughout the day, yet the result was the same: Zane in the dirt of his own accord, aching and weak.
To add insult to injury, Kai is obviously holding back. Jay had been too, yesterday, Nya the day before. In the span of a week he went from the most formidable man in the realm to an uncoordinated child who needed to be treated delicately. He could barely land a hit on the training dummy, and it didn’t even move.
“Maybe you can try your bow again?” Zane can’t meet Kais eyes, the pity he’s trying to mask making his wires curl.
“We saw how well that went.” Jay mutters not uncharitably, another string of disappointments a few days prior where his aim left much to be desired, and quite nearly took his eye when he’d lost his grip.
The others had been training too, but they’d stopped to watch as Lloyd summoned Kai and Zane to spar.
“We need to assess your skills in combat,” Lloyd had said earlier that day, the so we can make up for your shortcomings going unsaid but heavy all the same. Or maybe Zane is the one being uncharitable- but he’s in pain and tired and his mask of calm is harder to keep a grip on now.
And Kai had hesitated on the edge of the mat, holding the steel of his swords, and with his head down had swapped them for wooden fakes. The insult threatened to make Zanes lip curl, but he’d been forced to concede to his foresight when dull wood blades cracked against the side of his thigh and forced him to the ground, in one of the few times Zane had managed to stay on his feet long enough to be taken down by something other than his own shortcomings. He should have been able to dodge.
The shurikens are so small in his hands, and he hasn’t used them in so so long. He's rusty.
“I can go again.” He insists, stepping back onto the mat. In a real battle, he’d be less than useless. They couldn’t protect him, he had to be able to take care of himself. He had to keep going until he could at least survive. He was good at surviving, he’d spent decades hanging on by a thread- countering a wooden sword shouldn't be so difficult compared to parrying the knives from assassins or the swords of dead men walking. He’s weak.
Lloyd gets that look on his face that he only gets when he has to do something he really doesn’t want to do, mostly when he must flex his status on the others when they're being particularly stubborn. It’s a pained stony sort of expression, “That’s enough for today.” he says more firmly, shoulder squaring. He loses the soft edges of the boy he used to be, Master Lloyd filling in the spaces rigid.
Protest raises on his tongue, “The longer I go at the skill level I am at now, the more dangerous it becomes.” fear, frustration, and desperation simmers below the surface, “I am a liability on the field, I cannot stop until I can hold my own.”
“We can continue training tomorrow.” Lloyd says, unyielding. Green eyes trail down to Zanes' sore side, assessing.
He bristles and tries to tamp it down, “You do not need to go easy on me-” he starts.
Lloyd interrupts him, “Yes we do-” frustration cracking the facade of the master, the others looking on in wide eyed worry.
“Lloyd, Zane, enough.” Wu's voice rings out in sharp tones, his presence slamming the lid on the boiling over pot, “I believe I have a suggestion to solve our problem.”
Problem. Zane tries not to let that sting as he spins to face Master Wu.
The man is descending the stairs of the monastery into the courtyard, the others parting like the red sea, his cape trailing on the edge of the steps as he comes down. In his hand is-
Zanes vision tunnels, Lloyd, Kai, the others all fading away as he takes in the smooth metal, leather bound handle, the wicked curved blade- a piece of him howls, jagged and frozen fingers scrabbling at the corners of his mind, the sight of that staff is like going snowblind. All at once he’s standing in the courtyard amongst his friends and the throne room at the same time, realities overlapping in brutal contrast.
His shuriken bounces off his foot and he is thrust back into his body, his hands empty where he’d dropped his weapons in shock. Wu approaches him with the staff and he takes a shaky step backwards, wiping at his mouth with wobbling hands, half expecting to wipe away spit- salivating at just the sight of it. His wrists and fingers ache, begging him to take it in his hands.
Wu disregards his reaction, walking into his space among the group on the mat. He thunks the staff down in front of Zane, the weight of it digging into blue, like it is the answer.
He’s so spooked he doesn’t dare move, looking at it with wide eyes. Now that he’s more present, he realizes it’s nearly identical to the Staff of Forbidden Spinjitzu, except this one is notably missing the scroll that gave it the corruptive power. It’s just a staff, plain and simple.
No one says a word. Zane stares at it, trembling.
Lloyd is quiet, then, “Are you sure that this is a good idea, Master Wu?”
Wu looks sad but he’s trying to mask it, “You are their teacher, Lloyd. When Zane falters, what do you see?”
Zane is listening, sort of. He’s tracing the edge of the blade with his eyes- sharpened to a fine point, clean and perfect. It looks heavy, the whole thing does, he can nearly taste the weight of it on his tongue. He wants to take it so badly it hurts, and in the same breath he wants to cast it off the side of the mountain or freeze it solid and shatter it against the stone under his feet.
“He’s off balance. He’s compensating for a weight that’s not there.” Lloyd looks like he’s swallowed a lemon, “The shuriken are too small.” He admits.
Wu nods to the weapon in his hand, glancing from Lloyd to pin his eyes on Zane, “You’ve had a lifetime of practice with this weapon. You’ve wielded a staff longer than a shuriken or a bow, perhaps it is time to embrace that.”
Zane doesn’t even look at him. He can almost feel the whisper on the back of his mind- it’s not there, the staff is a replica without the extra power, but Zane can imagine it all the same.
He reaches out and takes it.
The feel of it in his palm is like a starburst of agony, an ice burn that jumps up the metal of his forearm and digs into the plane of his chest. Flickers of memories flash in his mind's eyes all like looking through a pane of frosted ice-glass, cold seeping into his skeleton. A memory rises unbidden, a man he did not freeze, who had been close enough to strike with the blade- red red red
He chucks it across the courtyard without thinking, staggering away from it, “I can’t.” he nearly gags, before darting past Wu and Lloyd and narrowly avoiding Coles worried brush of his fingers. He takes the stairs two at a time, throwing open the front door and not bothering to shut it behind him.
He holes himself away in his room, sitting on the floor next to his bed, trying to hold himself together.
Too much too soon, the staff wrenched memories he’d been ignoring and hiding away free.
He doesn’t want to admit it, wants to choke it down and pretend it didn’t happen, but he can’t deny that- even with the pain and shame and bloody wounded guilt overwhelming him- taking that staff had felt like coming home.
Home was supposed to be Ninjago. Somewhere along the way, it became the throne room, too. He’d been split in half, pieces of him trapped in a realm he could never return to. The closest he’d ever get to sating the pervasive homesick itch is to hold a facsimile of his tool of violence.
Perhaps it is time to embrace that Wu had said, holding out the weapon he’d bloodied his hands with.
Evening comes and goes, and he skips dinner again. He’s crawled into bed at some point, staring up at the ceiling, trying hard not to think. He swallows down the threatening urge to crack under it all. In the darkness, he stares at his palms.
Vex is standing at his side, the throne room an open doorway behind them, and the staff is a curling presence he’s never without. It’s hard to think about these memories because he doesn’t form thoughts like he did when he was broken, the memories jagged and warped. Trying to understand is like catching a blade you’ve dropped- a falling knife has no handle. It hurts.
But in this memory he and Vex are walking through the palace hall. Grand windows might as well be painted white with the snow obscuring the now frozen wasteland, but the Emperor had no desire to see the outside world, or anything at all. This is before he had snuffed out the rising rebellions, this is before he’d flexed his power and made the people afraid, this is before they’d even given him the moniker Ice Emperor. He is nameless now, even Vex only calls him by his title. He doesn’t even know he is missing something so vital.
Vex says, “You don’t need to worry about the inconsequential things,” he’s a step behind Zane, and when his emperor slows he can prod him so he keeps moving, “You are an instrument of power, these things are beneath you. I will handle the day-to-day for you, my Emperor.”
The click of his staff ticks across the hall as they walk, “And what am I to handle?”
“Nothing. Simply keep your hold on our eternal winter, and raise your staff when I ask it of you.”
There's a stirring of thought in the empty caverns of his head and not a hint of it is kind, “I am your attack dog, then.”
To his credit, Vex doesn’t falter, “You are my Emperor.” he says immediately, and then- carefully, and almost genuinely curious, “What do you have to offer other than violence?”
Zane lays in bed and stares at the shapes in the dark that might be his hands. Shurikens don’t fit right any more, his arrows shoot askance. If the next threat arises in the morning, what can he do except cost his friends focus?
He is a bleeding wound. They need to treat him gently and delicately- but life is not gentle and delicate, and perhaps it is time to take a knife over a fire and cauterize the injury.
He slips and goes horizontal and his blood spills across the dirt. It’s metaphorical until it’s not and the newest adversary forgoes fake wooden swords for real ones, sharpened blades sinking home. If he were human he would bleed red blood. He’s not human, so it’s oil and coolant and hydraulic fluid seeping into the soil.
He is a liability. Weak-link. He has to learn to fight again. He has to embrace it, even if it feels like frostbite chipping away at him, even if it hurts. Vex had forged him into a knife, forced him into the shape of a blade and sharpened him with blood instead of water, if he can accept these pieces he can make himself useful once more. It was all he had.
He wants to feel strong again.
Morning comes in slanting lights though his window, the blanket is too hot under them. He hadn’t slept enough but he rolls out of bed and changes into a clean gi anyway and trails out of his room. Conversation falls hushed when he comes into the kitchen, and he eats breakfast despite the way his stomach churns- it tastes like it always tastes, bland and unappetizing. The ache in his side had faded over the night, nearly non-existent. He can spar fresh.
“We didn’t think you’d be joining us today.” Nya tries, smiling over her bagel.
He doesn’t shrug, putting his fork down, “I meant what I said. I cannot stop until I can protect myself.”
Nya’s face grows pinched and worried, “You can, though.” She reaches across the table and sets her hand on top of his, and she doesn’t jolt or comment at all about how cold he is, “You can take a break, Zane.”
Wu had called him a problem. Zane knows that’s not what he meant, but it weighs his shoulders like lead, and he doesn’t respond. He stands up and takes his plate to the sink, and her hands falls flat against the table.
The staff is sitting on the porch, leaned up against the wall. He focuses on it the moment they walk outside, and Jay ducks his head nervously- he was probably supposed to put it away so Zane didn’t see it again, but they thought he was going to skip like he had the first few days after he’d come home. Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today.
They do warm-ups, then Lloyd pairs them up for sparring, and his eyes skate over Zane reluctantly until, “Cole… Zane. Come spar.” The others don’t need for Lloyd to supervise them, or the training mat. Zane needs both.
They both go to the weapons and Cole, like Kai yesterday, avoids his hammer. He reaches for the wooden training swords but Zane catches his wrist.
He looks up, startled, “Zane?” He asks, confused.
He manhandles his hand over to the grip of his hammer, “Do not hold back.” He says firmly, and then jogs up the stairs and wraps his fingers around the staff.
Expecting it this time, he compartmentalizes the memories the instant they surface, shoving them back. In the absence of pain there is comfort, the weight so achingly familiar a hole inside of him he didn’t know he had is filled. Like coming home, he’d felt it yesterday. Confidence pours into his system- he knows how to hold this, to swing this, to fight with this. He picks it up and it’s perfectly balanced, a missing limb reattached.
Carrying it down the stairs, he’s aware of their stares.
Kai and Nya break formation, moving back to give Cole and Zane room. Jay follows their lead, and they settle back to watch.
Cole is holding his hammer and his expression is grim, “Are you sure you can handle this?”
He feels like he’s being filled with ice, chill threatening to frost over his eyes. He’s not sure at all, but he says, “Don’t hold back.” Again anyway.
Shurikens are small. To fight, he has to stand back, give space, evade and dodge. Bow and arrows are much the same. They are largely defensive. Before the Never Realm, he was good at defense.
“Whenever you’re ready.” Lloyd says and Zane carefully tunes out the apprehension in his voice.
Now he is more comfortable on the offense.
He moves.
The Ice Emperor rarely fights in close combat- he rarely fights at all, actually. He waves his staff and freezes, he calls ice and allows that to do the work for him, but when he does face off one on one, he does so as brutally efficiently as he can. He is all offense, blow after blow after unrelenting blow- he pours bone-shattering strength into each strike, driving rebellion leaders to their knees, knocking back a town's most elite soldiers, and if they don’t go down on the first hit he wastes no time lashing out again. He rushes his opponent, he overwhelms them, and he offers not a single second of reprieve.
He hauls back, crossing the mat in half a second, and slices through the air in a clean and powerful swing. The crack of his staff against the handle of Cole's hammer sounds like a gunshot with the terrible force behind it, and before Cole can gather his bearing he swings again.
He beats him back faster than he expected- Cole underestimated him, and it cost him precious ground. He tries to put distance between them to get a moment to make his move, but Zane is with him step for step, suffocating any moves before they can breathe.
To fight with his shuriken or his bow is like oil against his water, they don’t mix now that the staff has imprinted itself onto his mind. He cannot reconcile the difference, not yet. He compensates for the weight of the staff, keeps his balance, and advances on his target with brutal efficiency.
He sweeps his leg out while splitting Cole's attention with a strike intended for his side, and Cole goes down with a startled shout. Zane twists the staff so the flat side of the blade is sitting on his chest- the intent is clear, but there’s no danger he’ll accidentally cut him. It’s over in heartbeats, and Cole looks up at him, astonished.
“Holy moly.” Jay breathes.
Zane moves the blade aside, shifting the staff to hold it upright. He glances over at Lloyd, who looks a shade paler than before the fight, whose eyes are a bit too wide. He was the only one who’d seen the Ice Emperor in action, and the last time he’d held the blade against someone's chest it had been him- sharp side down, the intent had been clear then, too. Zane averts his eyes, guilt threatening the progress he’d made even picking the staff up, and focused on holding out a hand so he could bring Cole back to his feet.
Cole winces as he pulls him up, “Zane…” He says, staggering, “That was like nothing I've ever seen from you.” He flexes his fingers, the blows stinging his hands even now.
He doesn’t flinch or shy away from his friends' looks, “It’s how I fought.” He’s hoping he doesn’t have to put any more context to that sentence, he doesn’t want to say the Never Realms name out loud.
“How?” Nya asks, “You left so many openings, how did you win?”
“Overwhelming force.” Zane says.
“The openings mean nothing if I can’t even swing.” Cole shakes his head.
Master Wu smiles from the doorway, “Very impressive, Zane."
The pieces of himself snapped clean down the middle don’t mend, but they aren’t bleeding anymore either. Satisfaction, purpose, strength floods his system. He is not striped with dirt or bruises, he is no longer a failure- he is formidable, dangerous. He can fight, now.
What does he have to offer other than violence?
Zane cannot be the man he was before, but he can be a weapon. He can't remember any other way to be.
The staff sits comforting in his hand.
I like to call myself wound
but I will answer to knife.
Underbelly by Nicole Homer
#zane julien#lloyd garmadon#wu ninjago#ninjago#ns11#zangst#cole ninjago#kai ninjago#spinchip fic#vex ninjago#ptsd#blood
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Alpha and Omega - Ch 2 / 2
Pairing: Sam x Dean
Rating: 18+
Tags: A/B/O, Darkness magic, Alpha!Dean, Omega!Sam, Dub-Con (biological necessity), little bit of meta (cuz why not), Sam’s a needy mess, Dean is possessive af
Word Count: 4k
Created for: @first-time-wincest-fest - 12x02 Mamma Mia | @spnabobingo - Male Omega |
Summary: Amara wants to thank Dean by giving him the thing he needs most – Sam – but she knows the boys are stubborn, so she’s going to have to be creative. Problem is, she doesn’t tell Dean or Sam what she’s put in motion, and magic can be unpredictable.
Despite the many apparent flaws of these British Men of Letters dicks, at least Mick has the good sense to let Dean and Sam go. He offers to try helping Sam, but he doesn’t have any more ideas about his condition than that blonde bitch does, so Dean declines and gets Sam the hell out of dodge.
The moment they make it over the property line and past the efficacy of the anti-angel warding Cas is by their sides, sliding under Sam’s other arm to help Dean carry him to the Impala.
“Don’t touch him,” Dean growls, startling Cas and himself. Cas raises his hands in a show of good faith.
“I am just trying to help, Dean,” he reassures the hunter, lowly.
“Yeah, um, sorry man,” Dean shakes his head to clear it. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t like the idea of anyone else touching Sam right now but he doesn’t want anyone’s hands on his baby brother. Begrudgingly, he lets Castiel grab Sam’s arm and help them to the car, where they gingerly lay a shivering, and for all intents and purposes unconscious, Sam on the back seat. “Cas, what’s wrong with him?” Dean tries to keep a grip on the panic in his voice but he doesn’t have much luck.
“It’s hard to be sure,” Castiel mutters, laying a hand against Sam’s forehead, which is burning hot. “We need to get him home immediately, this fever is dangerously high.”
Dean rounds the car to root through the first aid pack in the trunk, pulling out a few instant cold packs. “Here,” he cracks one up in his hands and passes it to Cas. “Get in back, try to keep him cool.” Cas slides into the back seat of the Impala, pulling Sam over his lap and pressing the cold pack against the young man’s forehead. Dean drops the spare cold packs beside him as he jumps in behind the wheel and peels out of the dirt road driveway in reverse, gunning them back home towards Kansas.
The use of cold packs and bags of ice they picked up at gas stations along their way get the trio home without Sam’s condition worsening. Dean would send up a thank you to Chuck for that except that he’s nearly positive Chuck’s sister is the reason Sam is in this mess in the first place. I thought she wanted to do something to thank me, not destroy my life. They get Sam into bed without too much trouble, and Castiel suggests stripping Sam out of his clothes to help keep him cool.
“Get away from him,” Dean growls, baring his teeth at his friend. Castiel once again looks at him in confusion, his brow crinkling as he stares hard at Dean.
“I’m going to call Rowena, see if maybe she can help us determine what is wrong with Sam.” Cas backs up cautiously, and Dean is glad to see him go.
Once he’s alone with his brother, he does think that stripping Sam down is a decent idea – at the very least he should change him into some clean pyjamas instead of the bloodied tatters he’s dressed in now. Dean sits on the edge of the bed, gently brushing Sam’s hair away from his eyes. He has the sudden urge to lean down and kiss Sam, so he does – very carefully placing his lips against his little brother’s forehead. It seems to Dean like Sam presses back into the kiss, and when his lips retreat, Sam stretches his neck and turns his head into Dean’s side, almost like he’s burrowing there. The unconscious display of affection brings a surge of warmth to Dean’s chest, though he can’t find it in him to smile with Sam like this.
Gingerly, Dean unbuttons Sam’s shirt and eases it over his shoulders, his fingers tracing over Sam’s muscles on the way down each arm. He hadn’t spent too much time around Sam’s unclothed chest recently and he couldn’t help staring at the contours of his frame. Sometimes he spends so much time thinking about Sam as his little brother, he forgets how much he’d built himself up over the years, forgets about the strength that all those layers of shirts they wear everyday are hiding. Dean has to shake himself in chastisement for staring at Sam’s body and lusting after it like a creep when he’s supposed to be taking care of him. How could he be thinking with his dick, even now, when Sam is deathly ill? But he was thinking with his dick, because even seeing Sam half naked for a matter of thirty seconds seems to be enough to give him a semi. For fuck’s sake, Dean curses himself, and sets about the task of easing Sam out of his torn up jeans.
As he gets Sam’s abnormally long jeans off his abnormally long body, three things strike Dean as odd. The first, that the smell he’d overwhelmingly associated with Sam back at the farmhouse in Missouri all of the sudden permeates the air around him. Sure, he’d been smelling it this whole time – it had been almost unbearably strong on the 6 hour drive back to Kansas – but he figured he must have gotten used to it because it had sort of faded into the background until just now. Secondly, the way Sam’s legs were splayed out across the bed right now gave Dean a view of a dark wet patch on the light grey of Sam’s underwear – gross, Dean thinks to himself, until he realises that the stain isn’t on the front of Sam’s briefs like it would be if he’d pissed himself. That examination leads him to his third odd discovery, which is that Sam has a boner.
“Well, what have we here?” Dean spins to see Rowena standing in the doorway, smirking.
“I’m sorry, Sam’s turned into a what?” Dean blinks incredulously at Rowena, who’s perching on the edge of the table in the kitchen. He turns his head to look at Castiel, who is sitting stoically behind Rowena. The angel shrugs unhelpfully.
“An Omega, dearie,” Rowena enunciates more clearly, like she imagines she’s talking to a four year old.
“Right,” Dean nods, although he doesn’t really understand. “And I’m a–”
“An Alpha, yes,” Rowena reiterates, clearly annoyed Dean isn’t getting this. “Well, Sam’s Alpha, more specifically,” she amends.
“And what exactly does all this mean?” Dean grunts, frustrated.
“It means that you and Samuel are mates,” Rowena elaborates.
“We know that, we saw our shared heaven, like a decade ago. What the hell does it have to do with him being sick?”
“Samuel is sick because he’s an Omega in heat, and he needs his mate.”
“Well if I’m his ‘mate’ and he ‘needs me’ – I’m right here! So why isn’t he better?” Dean growls.
“I believe,” Cas clears his throat, “from what I understand of the traditional elements of this condition, that what Rowena means is that Sam needs you, as his mate, physically.” Cas looks sheepishly at Rowena for confirmation.
“Precisely,” she smiles thankfully at Castiel.
“Physically?” Dean’s not any closer to understanding what’s happening. “So what, I need to go hold his hand until his fever breaks?”
“Well, I’m not surprised that you might want to hold his hand, but it’s going to take a wee bit more than that.”
“Will you just tell me how the hell to cure him?” Dean shouts, accidentally shattering the beer bottle he’s holding. He looks down, surprised at his own strength and at the end of his tether now.
“Sexual intercourse,” Cas answers shortly, his face carefully blank. “Though, again, from my understanding, that will only cure his heat. He will remain an Omega and you will remain an Alpha.”
“What the hell are you talking about ‘from what you understand’?” Dean makes indignant air quotes at Cas.
“When Metatron put all of popular culture into my head it included every story ever written. There are a large number of stories on the internet that incorporate the dynamics of the Alpha/Omega hierarchy. It’s a trope primarily found in something called ‘fanfiction’,” Cas explains. “In fact, there is some ‘fanfiction’ about yourself and Sam if it would help you to understand the mating requirements.” Dean feels like he’s going to be sick.
“Cas, listen to me very carefully: under no circumstances are you to ever tell anyone else that those exist,” Dean groans, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Why is this happening?”
“That’s the part I’ve not got the faintest idea about,” Rowena sighs. “It would take something more than a simple spell to alter your anatomies like this. Not even an angel,” she glances at Castiel quickly to check she’s right in her assumption. “I’ve never heard of something like this actually happening outside of fiction.”
“It was Amara,” Dean sighs. “When she left she told me she was going to give me what I ‘needed most’, but I don’t know why she thought this was it. It just seems like some sick joke.”
“Ah,” Rowena nods sagely like she understands now. “She was giving you Samuel.”
“How is this ‘giving me’ Sam?”
“A physically bonded Alpha and Omega are bonded for life, inseparable. Without the other, they won’t survive their heats – or ruts, in your case.”
“So every time Sam goes into a heat, we need to have sex, or he dies?” Dean can’t believe how fucked up this is.
“You’ll also need to knot him,” Cas adds gravely. Noticing Dean’s look of incredulity, he continues. “The base of your penis will inflate when you ejaculate and lock you and Sam together for a brief time. It’s the knot that Sam needs to relieve the symptoms of his heat.”
“What the fuck?” Dean blanches.
“Not to importune but I do believe Samuel was running out of time when I examined him. You really should get to it, Dean,” Rowena cuts in.
“And how am I supposed to do that, huh? The guy’s unconscious! I can’t just–” Dean’s stomach roiled. The thought of fucking Sam was tempting, amazingly so, but the thought of doing it to Sam, without his knowledge or participation, was sickening.
“I can make him a wee draft to revive him and stave off the fever,” Rowena moves towards one of the cupboards in the kitchen where Sam keeps the common spell ingredients. “Then Castiel and I can make ourselves scarce and leave you two to it,” she smiles.
“And you’re positive this is the only way?” Dean presses desperately.
“That Amara is a crafty woman, she knew what she was doing.” Rowena throws some herbs into a small dish. “She saw that you would never ‘put the moves on Sam’, as you say. This is her way of giving you both that little push.”
“Yeah, well, she’s a bitch,” Dean grumbles, dropping his head in his hands and waiting for Rowena to finish the potion to wake Sam up.
Sam blinks awake wearily, vaguely aware that he’s safe and not being held captive anymore, but he can’t remember much more than snippets of sound and scent. The rumble of an engine, the smell of motor oil; the low tenor of Dean’s voice, and the scent of whiskey, apple pie, and old leather. He can make out all of those scents now, too, swirling around him and pulling him back into consciousness – like smelling salts.
“Hey, there he is,” Dean’s voice says nearby, he’s sitting on the side of Sam’s bed.
Sam nuzzles towards his older brother, inexplicably craving the closeness. “De,” Sam mumbles, still sleepy.
“Yeah, it’s me Sammy,” Dean smiles down at him gently, eyes soft. Sam feels an unusual rush of need wash over him like a heat wave and he presses himself as close to Dean as two bodies can possibly get with a blanket still in between them.
“Wha s’happening?” he grumbles into Dean’s chest, looping his long arms around his brother’s waist.
“Short version?” Dean scoffs, but not unkindly. “Listen man, I’ll explain everything, I promise but – right now I just need to make sure you get outta this in one piece,” Dean sighs, drawing his hand down Sam’s face and holding his cheek. Sam looks up at Dean quizzically, unused to the level of physical affection but finding he was in desperate want of more. He nods at his big brother – whatever’s wrong, he knows Dean will take care of him. “You trust me Sammy?” Dean’s voice is hoarse, and Sam realises he’s scared.
“Yeah, Dean,” Sam breathes quietly into the slowly decreasing space between them. “Course I do,” he confirms again.
“Alright then,” Dean gulps and nods, mostly to himself though, like he’s trying to psych himself up for something. Then without any further warning, Dean’s lips are covering Sam’s and pressing him down onto the bed.
The fire that had been smouldering inside Sam for days now leaps and dances, as if Dean’s kiss is gasoline being thrown across him. Sam clings to Dean as he’s laid back onto the bed, and lets Dean climb into his lap and bury his hands in Sam’s hair. Dean licks across the seam of his lips and Sam parts them willingly, drinking in every bit of Dean that is being offered to him. He can’t remember why he needs Dean like this so badly, or when he started needing him, but now that he has him he couldn’t care less. He knows with certainty that the only thing he needs to be happy for the rest of his life is Dean – Dean loving him, Dean kissing him, Dean inside him. Fuck, he needs Dean inside him right fucking now.
At this realisation, Sam starts tearing into Dean’s clothes, ripping through the thread keeping buttons in their places without a thought. He expects Dean to start doing the same to him, but then realises he’s not wearing anything but his underwear, which suits Sam just fine. Dean has to pull away from him to wriggle out of his jeans, and Sam groans involuntarily at the sight of the bulge Dean reveals when he strips down.
“Someone likes the view, huh?” Dean teases him, voice deep and throaty, but Sam’s too far gone to come up with a bratty retort. All he can focus on is that he wants Dean’s cock – now.
“Shit, you look so big De,” Sam groans, reaching out a hand to cup around Dean’s member, still hidden behind black cotton. The front of the material is wet with precum, Sam can feel it against his fingertips.
“Think you can handle me, little bro?” Dean grabs Sam’s wrist and drags his fingers along the outline of his cock, up to the elastic waist of his boxers, and then inside them. Sam’s fingers curl around Dean and stroke him gently beneath the fabric. “Think you can fit all that inside your tight little ass f’me?” he grunts, thrusting into Sam’s grip.
“Fuck yes,” Sam rasps, and his breath sounds like it’s raking over hot coals in his throat. He pulls back from Dean to shed his own underwear, staring at it puzzledly when it comes away from his body covered in slick. What is that, he wonders as he feels it on his fingers. It doesn't feel like lube… “Dean?” Sam looks to his brother for answers.
“S’okay,” Dean rushes to reassure him, joining his little brother on the bed, both of them now completely bared to the other. “I’ll explain later, yeah? Just let me take care of you right now, okay?” Dean’s eyes are wide and pleading as he looks to Sam, and Sam nods; he trusts Dean. “Just lemme take care a’you,” Dean whispers again as he brushes their lips together, and Sam pulls him in tight for another bruising kiss.
Their bodies twist and tangle easily, Sam just letting Dean put them together however he wanted. The heat of Dean against him is overwhelming, the sweat on their skin mingles and sticks them together, pulling at their nerves every time they part. Sam doesn’t want them to part. He reaches between them, grabbing Dean’s cock in his hand and thrusts his own into the same grip. Their moans ring through each others’ mouths as Sam jerks them against each other, and they take turns fucking into his fist. Before long Dean pulls away from Sam with a groan, probably to stop himself from finishing before he’s had a chance to see what the inside of his brother feels like. Sam is glad of his consideration in this case, because if he ends tonight without Dean locked firmly inside of him, he’s going to feel like he’s missing out. If he was more clear headed, he might question why the phrase ‘locked inside of him’ is the one that came to mind but he’s not thinking too deeply about what he wants right now — he just wants.
“Need you, Dean,” Sam pants, widely, grabbing at Dean, trying to bring their bodies back together. “Need… ne—” Sam’s vocabulary has become shockingly singular, and he doesn’t have the presence of mind to be irritated with his brother when Dean smiles down at him smugly, knowingly.
“I know what you need, Sammy” Dean grins down at his little brother. Having Sam this strung out and desperate for him is like a drug. I could get used to this being a monthly thing, he smirks to himself, reaching his hand down between Sam’s legs and rubbing at his slick entrance. “Need me right here, dontcha Sammy? I can feel how much you need me,” Dean groans as the tip of his finger slips inside of Sam too easily, “fuck, you’re wet. So fucking wet for me, huh Sammy?”
Sam just nods blissfully down at Dean; it seems his vocabulary of one word has now receded to zero.
Cas had warned him about this, that as an Omega, Sam would start leaking like a fire hydrant, but at least it saved him having to hunt around for some kind of lube — he’d never needed to have that on hand before, and if he found any lying around the bunker there’s a decent chance it would be cursed or something. Plus, he bet this made the whole experience way better for Sam, so he was all for it. Dean moves between Sam’s legs and runs the head of his cock over Sam’s twitching entrance. Sammy lets out a weak moan and arches against the pressure, trying to get Dean to slip inside. Dean’s about to oblige when he remembers what Cas said about them getting locked together by the Alpha’s knot once he comes, and he thinks better of their position. It will be easier to roll on to their sides and rest if he does this with Sam on his hands and knees.
He manhandles Sam into position, rolling him over, and when Sam gets the idea and pushes himself onto his hands and knees, arching his back and presenting himself to Dean like some kind of trophy, Dean can’t hold himself back any longer. He pushes his cock inside Sam slowly, agonisingly and torturously slowly. Not because he’s concerned about hurting Sam, who is opening up beneath him like he was born for this — born to take Dean’s cock — but because he knows he wants to savour this moment for the rest of his life. He wants to remember every second of the first time he felt what it was like to truly possess Sam, to be joined so completely to one another that not even their bodies can keep them separate. So Dean goes slow, even though Sam is begging beneath him, asking him to just fuck him already, Dean ignores him, and he drinks the feelings in.
When he’s got himself bottomed out inside of Sam he leans down over his brother and presses a kiss to his shoulder, tenderly, thanking him for what he’s giving Dean right now. “You feel so good Sammy,” Dean moans, and he doesn’t mean for it to sound as sappy as it does but it’s hard to regulate things like that when you feel like you’ve just connected to your soulmate for the first time, so he gives himself a pass.
The next time Sam begs, Dean gives in, snapping his hips back and fucking into him as hard as he can manage. And once he’s started he can’t stop. Every instinct inside of Dean is shouting at him to take, to fuck Sam into the mattress and never let up, which Sam doesn’t seem to mind, because no matter how roughly Dean thrusts into him he keeps shouting for more, faster, harder, please. So Dean, ever the good big brother, gives Sammy what he needs — what they both need.
Dean can feel himself getting closer and closer to his release, and that’s when he notices that he can’t quite pull out as far as before. His knot has begun swelling at the base of his cock, getting ready to pop and bind him and Sam together. The fattening edges catching on Sam’s rim give Dean a kind of friction no sex ever has before and, fucking hell, it feels unbelievably good. He grinds himself harder against Sam, dropping over his back so they can be as close as possible, and bringing his hand up beneath Sam to grasp at his little brother’s dick. It’s the first time he’s properly touched it, felt it in his hand, and shit, it feels even bigger than it looks.
“Oh my god, Dean,” Sam groans, sounding absolutely wrecked, and Dean takes that as a compliment. “Fuck, don’t stop, don’t stop, fuck, please,” Sam is pleading with him so prettily, and Dean wants to cum just as badly as him.
“Not stopping Sammy,” Dean strokes him faster, grinds into him harder, “not stopping until you cum all over my hand baby boy, so c’mon, want you to cum f’me.” Dean thanks God that Sam starts to cum loudly when Dean tells him too, because the second he feels Sam start to convulse around him his knot pops and he’s cumming harder than he ever has in his life. The thought of his seed whitewashing Sam’s insides is sickeningly thrilling and he swears a second, small orgasm rocks through him — and hey, if that’s a perk of being an Alpha, I could get used to this.
When Dean comes back to himself, his breathing finally evening out, he notices Sam slumped beneath him, no longer holding himself up. He quickly checks for a pulse, and relaxes when he finds one – Sam’s just passed out. Fuck, he came so hard he passed out. Dean shudders, feeling another small blurt of cum force itself out of his cock at the thought that he’d fucked Sam so thoroughly. To be honest he was a little proud of himself.
Dean arranges himself on his side on the bed, so he can curl around Sam while he waits for his knot to deflate. He thought he’d be annoyed by having to stay still like this for so long but it’s surprisingly peaceful, laying here with Sam asleep in his arms. He hugs his little brother tighter to him, clasping his hands over Sam’s chest – over his heart – feels the rhythm and reassures himself that Sam is here, and alive, and safe. And his. The realisation hits Dean unexpectedly. Sam is finally his in the most permanent way he can think of, and his heart leaps at the thought. The last thing he thinks before he drops off to sleep too, is that he hopes Sam still wants to be his when he wakes up.
Tags: @vulgar-library @tintentrinkerin @negans-lucille-tblr @fandomfic-galore @petitgateau911 @whoreforackles-deactivated20210 @schaefchenherde @kickingitwithkirk @little-diable @laxe-chester67 @kassyscarlett @akshi8278 @deandreamernp @lyarr24 @lovealways-j @stoneyggirl
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Marriage is a Contract and My Signature is Unreadable
Read on AO3
John’s never seen a bride wear fishnets with their stunning white dress, but Dinah Lance is pulling it off somehow. Admittedly though John hasn’t seen that many brides that weren’t ghosts or the earthly demonic embodiment of some sort of hell beastie so maybe his experience in weddings and bridal wear is a bit skewed.
Of course he’s also a bit skewed because in his eyes no one at this wedding, not even the bride no disrespect to the woman who’s by far one of the few supers he can truly say he likes, is as stunning as his date. Zatanna sits beside him at their table, the reception in full swing now, her legs crossed the deep navy-blue asymmetrical dress she’s wearing showing off a tantalizing bit of her leg. Her tattoo, the twin to his peeks out from the front of the dress right next to the silver lining at the edges where the dress straps around her neck. She’s a fucking vision his Zatanna.
“I can’t believe they finally did it,” Zatanna says gliding her silver French tipped nails with little crescent moons on them along her glass of champagne. “I really thought Lois and Clark would be the only ones to take the plunge.”
Supers aren’t known for tying the knot, their world is so complicated and their relationships so wild they never find the time to actually get around to it. The fact that Dinah and Oliver managed to not only successfully get engaged, but plan a real wedding and have the ceremony without any major incidents happening in the middle is a miracle if John’s ever actually seen one.
“Who do you think’ll be next?” John says surveying the room. Every hero he’s ever met and ever butted heads with is here out of costume and all dressed up to the nines. There’s a congregation of Green Lantern’s by the bar, Superman is on the dance floor poorly attempting to floss as Nightwing laughs his fine ass off at him, the Flash is somehow dancing with his girlfriend and eating every item on the buffet simultaneously. “Seems like two in a row will make a domino effect, yeah?”
Zatanna hums in thought her piercing blue eyes with the glittery navy blue and silver eyeliner around them shimmering in the light as she tilts her head in thought. She carefully scratches at the space beside the cluster of tiny rhinestones artfully placed around her right eyebrow and settles her eyes to a table across the room with a smile.
“Wally and Linda for sure,” she says tilting her head their direction. John swivels to look at them. Unlike Barry who’s still zooming back and forth from Iris to the buffet, Wally is wholly engrossed in every movement Linda makes as she talks rapidly her hands moving all about as she speaks to Mia Dearden on the other side of the table. That is a man wholly in love, enraptured by the woman he gets to call his own. John understands the sentiment as he looks back to Zatanna her dark blue painted lips still resting in a beautiful smile.
“What if it was us?” John asks leaning in closer to her a wicked smile on his face.
Zatanna snorts, a harsh indelicate thing that on anyone else would be unattractive.
“Aww, love you too, Zee,” John says faux offended falling back against his chair. He knew it was an absurd suggestion the moment he said it.
“I’m sorry, you know I love you,” she says holding up a hand attempting to hide her laughter. “It’s just look at us, we’re coming up on our first and only three-year anniversary. We’re not exactly known for being good at this.”
It’s a valid point. Despite the fact they have technically been together for over a decade they’ve gone through their fair share of ups and downs, break ups and make ups and even a few trips to hell and literal deaths. John has screwed up more times than he can count and even Zatanna has bungled it once or twice. Complicated has at almost all times been their relationship status, but the past three years, ever since John got his head out of his ass and finally decided to sort out this one particular aspect of his life they’ve been good, solid.
“Okay, true, but you’re stuck with me and we can’t act like there aren’t benefits to the whole marriage sham,” he says stretching his arms behind his head.
“It’s extremely comforting you called it a sham,” Zatanna says giving him a fondly exasperated look. “But you know maybe you’re right the tax incentives alone are a real benefit.”
“Now, the tax incentives would be appealing if I had ever in my life filed my taxes,” John says with a laugh.
“You’ve never filed taxes?” Zatanna says with a slightly startled look.
John just shrugs tossing back the remainder of his champagne. “It’s not like I’ve ever had any real upstanding type of job that would require me to fill out a W4 or whatever.”
“It’s a W2,” Zatanna corrects. “And John you live with me, our landlord made me put your name on the lease because he saw you there so much. You could totally get caught.”
“Eh, it’ll be fine,” John says with an unconcerned wave of his hand. “The fact that I’m not technically a citizen of this country is probably a bigger issue than the tax thing anyway.”
“John!” Zatanna exclaims with a laugh.
“What? You can’t have thought I actually went to a baseball park and held my hands up and did the national anthem or whatever,” he says kicking his feet up on the empty chair next to him.
“Clearly you haven’t considering that’s not at all how citizenship works,” Zatanna chuckles. “But hey there’s a potential benefit of marriage for us, citizenship.”
“Ah the romance of marrying not for love, but so the government pricks don’t send your ass packing,” John reaches out a hand tangling his fingers with Zatanna’s on the table his thumb running small circles into her hand.
Zatanna hums. “I guess lack of romance aside it wouldn’t matter since I can always just portal you back into the country on a whim anyways.”
John nods in agreement trying to come up with another benefit they might be able to actually take advantage of. “You couldn’t testify against me in court, that could be incredibly useful down the line.”
Zatanna raises one jeweled eyebrow, “Is there a crime you’ve committed lately you’ve neglected to tell me about?”
John thinks for a moment genuinely scanning his memories in case there is something he forgot to tell her about. “No,” he settles on confidently. He’s pretty sure at least. “I’m just thinking in general considering my track record in the past.”
Zatanna pats the top of his hand with a smile. “As if any prison could hold you long enough for me to even be asked a single question.”
John just laughs again, “Alright so maybe there aren’t that many marital benefits for us to take advantage of then.”
“No parents to satisfy,” Zatanna sighs. “And of course making medical decisions for one another doesn’t really matter when you use magic and superhero doctors that definitely don’t accept any sort of co-pay,” she adds on with a contemplative bite of her lip.
“Half your friends hate me,” John says thoughtfully with a chuckle.
“And half your friends are dead,” Zatanna says ruefully tapping a nail to her chin. “The wedding party would be abysmally uneven.”
“I haven’t bought a new tie in years,” John says tugging at the red thing around his neck. He looks hilariously basic compared to Zatanna��s ensemble essentially wearing what he wears any given day of the week the only difference being Zatanna had forced him into a subtly lace patterned black jacket for a change and repainted his chipped nails for the first time in two weeks. “It’d make the pictures look horribly out of place.”
“Plus let’s be real I’m a show woman, I’d probably hate having to share the spotlight with you for one day,” Zatanna smiles teasingly. John smiles back shifting so that he’s scooting his chair closer to hers. He lifts a hand to her face twisting a long dark hair that’s slipped from her twisty updo held in place by two sharp silver hair pins with crescent moons at the end to match her nails and tucking it back behind her ear.
“So, basically there’s not a benefit in this world or a thing that would change if we got married,” John says letting the silky hair go.
“The only thing I can think of is that I like shiny jewelry and you look hot when you wear silver rings,” Zatanna says reaching back and pulling the two pins from her hair letting it all fall across her shoulders, the one stand out streak of navy blue appearing as it falls.
“And we can buy each other jewelry anytime without a reason,” he says brushing the bit of hair that’s fallen into her eyes away.
Zatanna smiles at him once before standing holding out a hand that he instantly takes. She guides him to the dance floor twining her fingers behind his head slowly.
They sway slowly to some sappy love song John vaguely recognizes their eyes locked on one another.
“You know,” she says after a while her fingers pulling through the hair that’s getting a bit too long at the base of his neck. “Just because I don’t want to get married doesn’t mean I don’t want you for as long as I can have you, right?”
He does know that. It’s inexplicable to him why someone as bright and vibrant and good as her wants him, but she does and he intends to keep it that way till the demons or the cigarettes kill him.
“I know. I’m happy how we are, knowing us, and by us I mean me, marriage would end up mucking everything up anyways,” he says pulling her in closer his hands moving from their grip on her waist to the exposed small of her back. “We can just keep going to everyone else’s weddings and raiding their open bars.”
Zatanna laughs then leans up kissing him once soft and slow not even smudging her lipstick in the slightest. She stays close when she pulls back resting her head on his chest as they continue to sway.
“We really need to get your name off of my lease though, I don’t need the government showing up and trying to audit me,” she says softly. “I’d be a nightmare for Mistress of Magic brand.”
John laughs loud and bright leaning his head down to kiss her once atop the head already planning a minor break in to the landlord’s apartment. It’ll be okay if he gets caught, married or not he knows she won’t testify against him.
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The Elf and the Orlan's Wedding
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"Hey. You'll marry me, won't you?"
Aloth had spent the last five years of his life honing his skills and reflexes in his mission to hunt down and destroy one of the most dangerous cults on the face of Eora, but somehow he still couldn't help but be utterly bested by just a few little words. Axa had a way of doing that– cutting past all his pretense and politesse, punching through all his meticulously constructed defenses with just a few simple words, striking at the very heart of him. It was part of why he loved her, and no small part, either.
He pulled her closer as he attempted to sit up in her spacious sleeping berth, struggling to scrape enough of his brain back together from the one-two punch of vigorous, passionate lovemaking followed up by that question to formulate an answer for her. But despite his best efforts, he found that the best he could manage was a feeble, "I beg your pardon?"
She laughed and nuzzled her face into his chest, his bare skin warm against her brow. She'd known the question would shock him, but she also knew that no matter how carefully she phrased it, there really was no way to ask a man like Aloth a question like that without shocking him. "Sorry to surprise you. But it's something I've been thinking about for a while now," she continued. "After we've arrived back in the Dyrwood and settled a few matters, gotten Caed Nua's reconstruction properly underway, taken some time to recover from all this– there'd really be nothing stopping us." She snuggled closer. "And I know the challenges we'll be facing in this new, uncertain world would feel a lot less daunting with you by my side. So... why not get married?"
Axa paused, then, tensed up in Aloth's arms. "That is, if you'd like to." She lifted her head to look at him, her violet eyes soft and glittering in the lamplight. "Would you like to?"
He studied her face, rosy and gorgeous and full of hope. Her proposal wasn't entirely unexpected– after all, it was only natural that she should want to take their relationship further, especially after all they'd been through together in the Deadfire– but it was still a bit overwhelming, actually experiencing such a thing himself instead of merely reading about it in a novel or watching strangers act it out in a stageplay. His head was swimming, his heart was hammering in his chest, his stomach was fluttering madly– but all the same, he couldn't help but smile at her.
"Of course. Of course I would," he murmured at last, brushing a lock of hair from her brow. "I can think of no greater pleasure."
The tears finally came, welled in her eyes as she beamed up at him. "Oh, Aloth," she whispered, pressing her face into his shoulder and squeezing him tight. "You have no idea how happy you've just made me."
"How happy I've made you?" He laughed, surprised to find himself blinking away tears as well. "I'm to be the consort of the Lady of Caed Nua! The brave, kind, beautiful heroine who uncovered the cause of the Hollowborn Crisis and saved the Dyrwood, the indomitable spirit who defies death and deities alike– and of all people, you want to be mine, to be my– my–"
My bride. Axa. My bride, my love, my wife. The reality of it suddenly struck him with its full gravitas, and an indescribable emotion washed over him. "I love you, Axa. Truly."
Giggles mingled with her sobs, and she scrubbed at her wet eyes with a fuzzy fist. "And I love you," she replied softly. She looked up at him again, grinning. "You'll plan everything, right? I was never very good at that sort of thing."
Aloth sighed, slumping back down against the pillows as Axa cackled. "I should have known," he groaned, shaking his head good- naturedly at his newly-betrothed.
"Yes, you should have," she agreed, spreading out on top of him, making herself comfortable. "Planning a fancy formal event– such as, say, the wedding of a landed thaynu who is returning triumphantly from a world-shaking, death-defying mission in the Deadfire– plays much more to your strengths than to mine. Of course, I'll help as much as I'm able. How about I find us an officiant?"
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Xoti, then? Or were you thinking of asking Vatnir?"
She paused for a moment, her brow furrowed in consternation. "Gods, are those two the only priests I know?" she muttered, resting her chin again Aloth's sternum, and she sighed. "Typical of me, I suppose, to shun all clergy but the most death-obsessed misfits. Even my resident cleric at Caed Nua was a morose Berathian."
Was. Axa's smile faltered, and she abruptly went quiet, unfixing her gaze, lowering her eyelids.
"Well, given what we know of the gods, is it any surprise our priestly acquaintances gravitate toward the morbid?" Aloth tucked a lock of her burgundy hair behind her ear, let his hand linger on her cheek. He'd noticed the sudden chill in her demeanor– reminded of Caed Nua, no doubt, of her myriad responsibilities back at home, the dead waiting to be buried– and had hoped he could warm her back up a bit, but it appeared that even his wry musings weren't enough to soothe her melancholia.
"We're going to be alright, aren't we?" Axa's voice was soft and serious, and she reflexively curled in on herself, clinging to her lover as she contemplated the future ahead of them. "Kith, I mean."
He wrapped her in his arms, warm and steady, and let out a shaky sigh. "I don't know. With the Wheel destroyed and the cycle of reincarnation stalled indefinitely, we'll certainly have our work cut out for us. But if there's one thing in common between all peoples and cultures on Eora, I would posit that it is our stubbornness." Aloth smiled, ran a hand through her thick, soft hair. "With people like you working to guide and support us, kith may yet learn to band together and channel that indefatigable will of ours into finding an equitable solution for all this mess. In any case, I can't really see us all just... giving up. Especially not after all we've seen, all we've been through."
The two lay together in silence for a while, his hand in her hair, her ear pressed to his heart. It had always fascinated her, how elf hearts beat so much more slowly than orlans'.
"The Elf and the Orlan's Wedding," she murmured.
"I... do hope you're not intending to have me write that on the invitations." He allowed himself a small smile. When she hadn't responded, he was sure he'd failed to cheer her, but maybe he'd conceded too soon?
"It's a children's song," she laughed, propping herself up a bit, "that I was just now reminded of. It's about an elf and an orlan at their wedding, and everyone in attendance is bemoaning the foolishness of such a union. 'She'll outlive you by two centuries, it's a waste of time for you both'... That sort of sentiment."
"Charming," Aloth deadpanned.
"Oh, yes," she chuckled, "very much so. Of course, by the end, the lyrics reveal that the titular elf and orlan are well aware of the vast disparity in their lifespans, but they've decided they love each other too much to let something like that get in the way of enjoying their time together."
He smiled knowingly. "Sounds familiar."
She smiled back. "The moral of the story, of course, is that one cannot waste one's life worrying about what others think, about the 'proper' ways of going about this or that, and that it's better to live in the moment and enjoy what you have while you have it."
"Sounds very familiar," Aloth sighed. "But if kith spend too much energy on enjoying the present, we won't be able to prepare for the troubles of the future until they're upon us."
"Ah, but that's just another reason the title characters chose to marry," Axa grinned. "It's easy to miss the significance when you're a child, but there are a few lines in the song regarding the orlan's horrible estranged family complaining about how the orlan's assets will now be bequeathed to his elf wife upon his death, thus keeping it out of their greedy paws for at least 200 more years, if not forever."
He cocked an eyebrow. "That's not your reason for proposing, is it?"
"No!" She laughed, lightly swatting at his chest with the back of one hand. "Although it'll be damned funny, I have to admit, sticking it to all the little Dyrwoodan lordlings with their eyes on my land who were just planning on waiting for me to die in a few decades." A wicked grin spread across her little face, and Aloth couldn't help but laugh.
"Pray tell, then," he smiled, running a hand up and down her back, ruffling her fur and smoothing it back down, "what exactly is the point you're trying to make by bringing up this song, my dear?"
Axa toyed with a lock of his hair, biting her lip and staring at nothing in particular, before finally admitting: "You know, I'm not sure. I definitely lost the plot somewhere along the line, there. I suppose I was trying to draw some sort of parallel between The Elf and the Orlan's Wedding, and our wedding, and... and the challenges ahead of us all in regards to repairing the cycle of reincarnation... something about planning for the future while still making sure to enjoy the present..." She scoffed at herself, resting her chin on Aloth's breast again. "Maybe I was simply randomly reminded of a silly song from my youth and I'm trying too hard to stretch it to link it to current events. Or I'm just tired and rambling and not making any sense at all."
"No," Aloth assured her, "you definitely had a reason for bringing it up, even if you can't quite articulate why." He stroked the back of her ear, staring pensively at the ceiling. "I think, perhaps, you wanted to reassure yourself that even if some new version of the Wheel ends up never getting built, even if it turns out that the days of kith are truly numbered and our end is inevitable... that doesn't mean you need to mourn every day yet to come as if it's already been lived in vain. As a Chanter, and given the subject we'd been discussing, it's only natural the realization would come to you in the form of a song about marriage."
She snuggled close to him, sighing contentedly. "You see why I want you to plan the wedding?" she murmured. "You make everything make sense."
"I learned it from you, you know," he replied, nuzzling the top of her head. "Funny how that works, isn't it? Like a two-piece puzzle. We complete each other."
"Thought that advice sounded familiar," Axa giggled. "Should listen to myself– and you– more often."
"That's a given." Aloth went to kiss her forehead, and she surprised him yet again by scooting forward and craning her neck to press her lips to his instead.
"What about Engrim?" she whispered sweetly, her smile still brushing his. "He's a priest of Magran. If we kept the booze away from him until after the ceremony–"
"Absolutely not, my love." His breath tickled her nose. "No wedding of mine will utilize a Magranite ceremony, and certainly not one conducted by a lush."
The little woman laughed, pressing her face to his neck. "Come on, I'm running out of priests!"
"You truly can't think of any others?" He kissed her temple, sighing with a mix of contendedness and exasperation at his little bride.
"Well, I do know a certain Glamfellen who's a priest of Wael, but we're not exactly on speaking terms." She tried a wry grin, but it morphed into a grimace halfway through. "Ugh. Not as funny as I thought it'd be. Sorry."
Aloth chuckled. "It's decided, then. We'll have a secular wedding."
"Sounds good to me, actually," Axa replied. "Never had much need of the gods anyway."
—
#pillars of eternity#watcher axa#aloth#short fic#oneshot#that bitch really called me out in the middle of my own story for losing the plot#...it does kinda meander though doesn't it lmao#not sure what i was really going for in the last third there#anyway it's out of my head now and that's what matters#thanks for reading ♡
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Vesper || jjk
↠ Vesper↞ “There’s a first time for everything.”
Pairing: Jungkook x Reader
Word Count: 2k
Warnings/Genre: doberman hybrid!kook. human reader. explicit language. fluff. PG 13. one shot.
This fic is apart of The Hybrid Collab hosted by @jeonggukkiepabo! A special thank you to Anna for bearing with my idiotic forgetfulness, aka me writing this and then forgetting to post it over my hiatus. 🥴 ᵖˡˢ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʰᵃᵗᵉ ᵐᵉ (also it’s a lot shorter now than it had been when i’d written it bc sfw lol)
All works here are purely fiction. Everything I write is my intellectual property and therefore belongs to me. ©out-of-jams. Do not copy or repost without permission. That is illegal and you are stealing no matter if you give credit or not
Cold – adjective.
Definition: freezing your fucking ass off.
You were well acquainted with the word– all but became one with it– what, with how absolutely balls cold out it was. The line to get into Vesper was stretched all the way down the sidewalk outside of the building, and extended out of sight around the corner. Sounds of city life echoed through the streets, cars zooming in between traffic and music leaking out of the bars.
From the crack in Vesper’s backdoor, the beginning’s of a hip-hop song filtered from the expensive sound system. It was loud, eardrum-rattling so, and you closed your eyes, leaning against the brick wall off to the side. A cloud of white left your parted lips as your warm breath hit the biting chill in the air. It was too bad that you were nowhere near drunk enough for the weather not to bother you.
Why you’d chosen to follow your friends out in sub-freezing temperatures was a mystery. You hated clubs, how packed to the walls they were, filled with writhing bodies so close together like sardines. It made you feel utterly claustrophobic, but it was your friend’s birthday and so you couldn’t opt out of following along with the group’s plans for the night. Not that you were ever able to say no to them when they insisted on dragging you out to the place.
Vesper was a popular club that you were sometimes forced to go to, located in the heart of downtown that catered to not only humans, but hybrids as well. It wasn’t the first establishment to do so, seeing as how hybrids integrated into society more than a decade ago. No longer were they as discriminated against as they once were, back when they first came about.
No one was 100% certain on how they’d even come to be; some sort of radiation exposure. The first hybrids had been humans, before they changed, morphed. Due to some sort of exposure to radiation, their cells had multiplied and transformed over the course of a few weeks until half of their genetic makeup resembled animal genes.
While the blatant racism had died out over the years, some, the more elitist members of society, still discriminated against hybrids. Looked down at them because they were born to be ruled more by their animal instincts than their human counterparts. Treated them as less-than because they weren’t completely human, when they were really just misunderstood.
Because of the fact that they were more tapped into their animal side and therefore behaved that way, hybrids used to be seen as beings who could be let loose into society. Who could not “control themselves.” So they took them as pets, tried to tame and sell them.
Shaking yourself out of your thoughts, you fished a cardboard box from the inside pocket of your coat. The sound of you tapping out a white cigarette was in time with the beat of the song pouring outside, and blended in with the cars honking out past the alleyway. Normally, you weren’t one for smoking. But after the stress of college finals week on top of the feeling of the walls closing in on you back inside Vesper, you’d asked one of your friends for their carton in hopes of calming your racing heart.
“Shit,” you murmured as you scoured your pant pockets for a lighter and then groaned when you failed to find one.
Because of course, your luck was anything but lucky and you really didn’t feel like trying to part the sea of sweaty people back inside in search of one. Pursing your lips, you let your head tip back against the brick wall behind you and let your eyes flit over the light polluted sky like it somehow held the answers to all of your life’s problems.
“Need a light?”
The addition of a new voice had you jumping away from the wall with a startled squeak. Hand pressed to your chest as if that would somehow restart your skipping heart, you whirled around. Standing in the now wide-opened back doorway into Vesper was a familiar face. Well, as familiar as a practical stranger could be.
Beneath the single, flickering light in the alley, his black t-shirt with SECURITY printed in white glowed in the surrounding darkness. It stretched itself over his broad shoulders, the bottom tucked into the slim waist of his pants. Your gaze slowly slid up his tanned neck, past his coral colored, pouty lips, sharp jaw, and the straight bridge of his nose. His wavy, dark hair was parted a little off-center, the sides falling over his forehead until it threatened to hide his stare from your view.
Finally, your eyes met his. Framed by long eyelashes, they were a bright, inhuman shade of lilac. Not all hybrids were equipped with the features of one, like a set of sensitive, animal-like ears or even a tail. If a human and a hybrid got together and had children, those kids would end up possessing more human cells than animal. Therefore, their appearances mirrored that.
But they were never completely indiscernible.
Just like every other time you’d ever laid your sights on him, your pulse skyrocketed and your stomach fell through the floor. And also like every other time, you pushed the feeling away and refused to acknowledge it. Because harboring a crush on a man who you’d only conversed with occasionally was a bad idea.
Especially when they were as handsome as he was.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Jungkook apologized shyly. His voice wasn’t too deep, nor was it high; lying right in the middle. Switzerland
“No, it’s alright.”
It was notalright, if only because the man made you feel flustered.
The only time the two of you really interacted was whenever he’d be scheduled to man security at Vesper’s entrance checking IDs. A small comment about the weather here, a compliment given with a flash of a smile with the reddening of cheeks there. Hell, the only reason you even knew his name was because it was etched onto the heart of his shirt.
“So,” Jungkook began, still standing in the doorway like some kind of club guardian. “Need a light?” He nodded his head at the unlit white stick tucked between your fingers, his parted hair brushing across his eyebrows with the movement.
“Oh. Yeah, you have one,” you asked.
He answered your query by pulling a lighter from the back of his pants pocket and finally slipped away from the door, leaving it open a crack so the two of you wouldn’t get locked out. The music flooding out from inside quieted down to a barely-there whisper. Pressing the cigarette between your lips, you almost faltered when he stepped close to you.
Jungkook’s body heat practically swallowed you whole as he entered your personal space with a cute smile pulling up at the corners of his lips. His two front teeth were a little too big for his mouth and you would’ve suspected his animal counterpart to be a bunny or rabbit of some sort if it wasn’t for his job. The small mammals tended to be pacifists and you doubted working as a security guard counted towards pacifism.
The lighter came to life with a clickand a tiny burst of flame, and you watched from beneath your lashes as he lit the end of your preferred cigarette. As soon as you felt the heat of the smoke sear itself into your lungs, a thought came to you.
“Wait,” you began, lowering the white stick from your lips to dangle from your cold fingers. “Doesn’t the smell bother you?”
Jungkook’s cheeks puffed up beneath the weight of another smile and he stepped back from crowding you to lean a shoulder against the brick wall. “My roommate, Yoongi, smokes. So I’m used to it.” He tapped a finger to his nose.
“If you’re sure,” you said hesitantly.
“I’m sure.”
Humming, you resumed your position of leaning against the brick, your shoulder only a few inches away from his. Hybrid’s tended not to wear perfume or cologne because of their elevated sense of smell, but Jungkook must have been wearing some. Or perhaps it was just the scent of his laundry detergent that drifted from his body like an invisible cloud.
It was comforting. In a way that you couldn’t quite understand.
Glancing at him out of the corner of your eye, you took a slow drag from your cigarette and made care to blow the resulting smoke away from him. “Ditching work?”
He was looking out past the alleyway and towards the busy street beyond. Jungkook’s side profile was stunning even in the near darkness. “Technically, I amworking.”
“Oh?” Your voice was filled with amusement. “Expecting someone to pop out from the darkness like Batman and attack the club?”
He snorted, his tongue darting out to wet his soft looking lips. “Batman would never attack a club.”
“There’s a first time for everything.” Shrugging, you sneaked a peak over at him again to notice him already looking at you. His violet hued eyes glowed brightly as they roved over your features appreciatively.
“How about a first date then?”
You sputtered, choking on nothing except air at his blunt words. “I–what?”
Jungkook broke eye contact for a moment, your reaction coaxing a light shade of pink onto his cheeks. “I like you. And I know we don’t really know each other, but we always end up running into each other, which is why I want to change that.” He looked back at you, expression soft. “If you’re interested, of course.”
“I..,” swallowing, your mouth opened and closed in shock before your tongue finally let the syllables slip. “I would like that very much.”
His answering grin lit up the shadows lingering in the alleyway.
#bts#bts fic#jungkook#Jungkook fic#bangtanarmynet#networkbangtan#magicshopnet#ficswithluv#btsbookclub
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The Crying: Savvie on Trial
CW: Whumper POV, intimate whumper, sadistic whumper, video of whumpee's child, intense child therapy recording, referenced shock collar and past drugging, emotional/physical abuse, trauma response, child re-enacting trauma
Note: CW for whumper’s justifications for their abuse in internal monologue
@comfy-whumpee‘s Jax Gallagher finally escapes Savannah Marcoset’s obsession with him, with two children in tow and nearly a decade of abuse and trauma written in his mind and on his skin.
Determined to ensure his children will be protected from the Marcoset family’s potential revenge, Jax goes to court one more time - taking down Savvie, her uncle Isaac, and most of his children in the process.
Savvie sees the second trial, with its ironclad evidence against her, as Jax’s betrayal of her love for him. When a video of their daughter is shown in court, Savvie and Jax are both surprised - and react in very different ways.
While Savvie does not interact with her children, her thought process is... intense. And so is a brief video depicted in the piece.
---
Even Savvie understands she can't charm her way out of this one.
It was one thing to be in her early twenties and beautiful, full of innocent misunderstandings, to tell anyone and everyone that she hadn't known he wasn't above-board (she had), she had thought she was doing a good thing letting him speak to his father (now that was a mistake), he was her best friend and her rock in the hard days after her parents' loss and she simply couldn't remember life without him (that was never a lie).
The earnest sincerity in her tone as she explained to her prison therapist how hard she was working at understanding the consequences and working to improve herself had simply been more believable then than it could ever be now.
You can’t very well have the love of your life abducted twice without it becoming a very difficult decision to defend.
This time, she understands that batting her eyelashes can't make her seem like simply another victim of all these terrible cruelties of the world. She is not going to leave the walls of prison once she walks inside. Not this time.
After all, the second time, she had had her uncle abduct him out of his own father’s apartment and steal his passport and every other form of ID he might have.
Isaac had drugged him, the Marcoset family employees had stolen his passport and identification, kept him slurred, floppy and hardly conscious on a private plane ride that took just a little less than eight hours, drugged again, and driven to her house to wake up tied to a chair in her practice room, right back where he belonged.
He probably didn’t even enjoy the luxury of the plane. It occurs to Savvie now that she never once asked him if he remembered any of the time he’d spent on the plane with Isaac, if he remembered anything between the men who grabbed him and Savvie bringing her violin up to welcome him home.
You can hardly blame that whole re-abduction thing on being young and foolish, and you definitely can't blame it on the indiscretions of youth when you are thirty years old.
Thirty-seven.
She dismisses the thought.
She is clearly only thirty. She doesn't look a day older, and Jax looks… younger, she thinks, mildly surprised at the realization. Younger, with more weight on him and a set to his jaw that she hasn't seen since… since the first day of his return, when he spit insults at her before she drugged him again, and he was so lax, so pliant, and she had known he would marry her one day from that first moment he curled back up and fell asleep with her hands on him. She just hadn't told him that, at first.
No one here understands how thoroughly Jax belongs to her, not even him, not anymore. He no longer wears his wedding ring, though she thinks there's still a hint of a tan line there. Maybe not. Might just be a scar.
He's changed his pretty platinum piercings out for duller metal, plus added back the ones she'd taken out of him herself. They're defiant, those bits of rebellion she never allowed him put back in place. She pictures when she took them out, the way he kept his eyes down for it, swaying a little from what she'd given him in his water. Felt a thrill run up her spine at the memory, his soft slurred voice murmuring Yes, Miss Savvie, one of her favorite sounds in the world.
He looked better the other way. Her way.
All his scars are definitely still hers, though. He can't forget her. He can wear new rings in his ears and eyebrow and lip and he can dress in grubby low-class clothing that isn't even tailored, but every single scar is a scar she has memorized, and he can’t erase them. They all belong to her, and he knows it, and he knows his body is hers and has been and will always be.
The scars around his neck - her scars, the little circular spots she wants to trace with her fingernails over and over until he begs her to stop, until she forces him to hold his breath, to get that faraway look in his eyes, until he leans in for a carefully cultivated kiss - give too much away. He can't hide them all.
The ones on his hands, too, are hers, although those are mostly accidental. There are some on his back, subtle, hidden by his button-up shirt and suit jacket where he sits, so close to her and impossibly far away.
The back, she did on purpose, dragging nails through his skin until blood welled up, streaks of red that stained her manicured nails, sitting on his lower back leaning over him, her hair a waterfall that brushed his skin. She can remember clearly the way he fought to stay still for her, remembers the pain she gave him with his daughter soft and sweet and so very new in a bassinet only a few feet away, how he'd bled from his palms and stained her sheets in his effort to keep himself quiet enough not to wake the baby.
She's never going to forget that.
Unfortunately... neither will the jury.
He's banking on it, she thinks, throwing everything out there that he might have kept hidden otherwise. Everything she thought he wouldn't want his father to know, or to be televised… he gets up on the stand, or he sits next to his lawyer, and he gives away all of it.
He tells them about the wedding, the judge who knew her family and married them with her uncle Isaac and his family as witnesses and guests. He describes, detached from what clearly horrifies the jury, how during his worst injuries, she made the simple task of giving him the pain medication he needed into a game of how good he could be to earn it. He even tells them, with a strange sort of tone in his voice, about the day she told him she was pregnant with Isabella.
On the stand, he says the day she had him open the box to find the custom cake with CONGRATULATIONS, DADDY written in frosting was the worst day of them all.
And yet… and yet, after sitting up there telling the jury, and the witnesses in the courtroom, and the judge how unhappy he was… still, he won’t let her anywhere near her son and daughter, not even to say goodbye.
He bleeds out all his pain, just to keep her from seeing her own children. Just to keep her from having access to what belongs to her.
Her daughter, her son… him.
Her husband, the love of her life, handing every scar and welt and night they spent together over in his bid to keep her from ever touching him again. It’s cruelty, is what it is. She had never known how cruel he was until he ran away from her.
He had stared at something far away while he related the story of her uncle dislocating his shoulder and breaking his arm (which, that had been a little much, but she’d made sure Isaac never did it again!), his weeks of pure perfect helpless dependence on her.
She had watched him speak, remembering the way he leaned forward those days when she made sure that dinner was soup, taking each bite from the spoon she held in her hand. The thrill of leaving him just a little bit hungry, that much more willing to be sweet the next morning.
He belongs to her, and he is going to take everything away.
His scars, the story written on his body of how she loves him, will be her ruin, this time. Well, that, and the existence of the children he has already turned against her. The children she has already been court-ordered never to see or speak to again. She won't even legally be their mother anymore, he and his devious fucking lawyer are even scheming to take her rights as their mother away. Those children are hers, and how dare he take them, when they were hers first.
He didn't even want them, when they were born - and now he acts like he is the only parent they have.
The worst part, though...
He won't look at her. It's fucking infuriating.
She tries to catch his eye, now and then, and fails. She looks at him with her head tilted to make her hair fall against her cheekbone when he enters the courtroom with his hair all chopped off again.
He ignores her.
She shifts in her elegant, tailored dress - no low neckline or sheer fabric, all sobriety and seriousness to show she will be a model defendant. She wears a silver locket she bought years ago, based on an old Victorian design - a lock of his hair is inside it, curled just so.
He still doesn’t look, even though he knows his hair is in the locket, she showed him when she put it there. She’d cut it while he was sleeping, and showed him when he woke, to see his face go still, his eyes raise to her face only with effort. If she’s honest... she wanted that hesitation, that uncertainty.
In a deep ocean blue, her pale skin and bright, wide blue eyes are set against her dark brown hair, pulled carefully back each day. She looks stylish, and still modest.
She looks innocent.
It just... doesn’t matter anymore how she looks. The problem is that she isn’t innocent, and no amount of cultivating an image can overcome the evidence against her. But at least she’s trying.
Now, Jax… She's pretty sure he wore that same gray suit to her last trial. It had hung on him before, too big for how underweight he was. She had liked the way it sharpened his cheekbones, then. Yes… it's definitely the same suit.
She would remember, of course - she had spent the whole trial, all those years ago, staring at him, wondering if she would ever see him again. He'd mostly looked at the floor, then, but she had gotten his eyes on hers a time or two, seen him stare after her as she was led from the courtroom. She had spent the time mourning his loss, before he ever truly left, and then coming to the certainty that she would never allow him to be taken away from her, not forever. No, they were made for each other, meant to be together forever. She had been convinced his father had tricked in, told him lies about her.
Even after she knew, deep down, that he wanted to stay gone, she knew just as firmly she would never allow that.
Planning to bring him home again, before he ever stepped foot on the plane that carried him across the ocean away from her, had filled all her days and nights. It had made prison seem so short, just a pause before she could bring him home. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
If he would only look at her...
She tries to catch his eye, but he never looks at her once. It rankles, makes her teeth itch, to see him stare straight ahead, look at the judge or his lawyer, and never at her. He's doing it on purpose - he must be. He's messing with her. That son of a bitch is messing with her, while he takes away her marriage, her money, her house, her entire life, her children.
She still loves him, even though he keeps his eyes turned away. She still loves him so much, more than he could ever deserve. She would tell him that, if she could, if they’d just give her a chance. She’ll find a way, somehow. She’ll find a way to remind him that she is never, ever going to let him just walk away. Break his legs, maybe.
The judge says something, and she blinks.
She wasn't paying attention, too busy watching Jax not watch her, and now there is a TV on a stand being wheeled in front of them all. Savvie gives a surreptitious glance around the courtroom, but no one else looks surprised. The jury looks bored, mostly, maybe. Or like they hate her.
It's not as easy to win over the jury now. She’s a woman whose children have been stolen by their vindictive, cruel father, who with his soft sad voice calls himself a captive during his testimony, stammering through the stories that explain all his scars. She’s no longer a violin prodigy in mourning, a young ingenue who just didn't understand what she'd done wrong.
Or who pretended not to, at least.
There were parts she genuinely hadn’t understood, maybe, although she is no longer young enough to want to lie to herself completely. He was never just her best friend, her confidant, the thing she loved most in the world. He was always going to be more than that.
God, he looks good today. Jax shifts in his seat, slight creak of the wood, whispers something to his lawyer. She just sees his eyes, in her general direction but not on her, as he moves. The lawyer whispers back, puts a hand on his shoulder.
He might look confused, as he and the lawyer speak. No, not confused. Troubled? She knows just how to smooth the crease from between his eyebrows, how to lay her hand on his forehead until he gives her a slight soft smile, turns his face to nuzzle against her palm. She knows how to leverage his fear enough to get what she wants from him, again and again and again. The lawyer doesn’t do that.
Jax just speaks, even and strong.
The lawyer doesn’t know what he sounds like when he trembles, has never slid the blindfold over his eyes with a knife in the room, not planning to use it, just wanting him to think she will.
No one will ever, ever, know him the way she does.
Savvie straightens her posture, moves just enough to make her locket glint in the light, hoping it will catch him enough to raise his eyes to hers.
Look at me. Look at me, sweetie. You don't get to stay gone for good, I don't care what you did, look at me. I still love you. Fucking look at me, Jax. Just one look.
He keeps his eyes slightly down as he shifts away and back to look towards the TV, but he's tense. She knows every inch of the muscles under that old gray suit, how they move under his skin. No one, no one, knows that body as well as she does. She made the scar that runs soft as a kiss over a shoulder blade, and she knows he’s nervous about something now. Unhappiness runs under her skin like an electric charge as she understands that what he’s nervous about isn’t her.
She follows his gaze to the rolled-in television, one of the big heavy ones that must be ten years out of date, and she frowns, folding her hands in her lap, as Jax’s lawyer stands and speaks briefly to the judge, and then moves to the TV with something in his hands.
“What is this?” She whispers to her own lawyer, one of her hands sliding up to run over the flowers etched in tiny relief into the surface of the locket.
Her lawyer shakes his head, either he doesn’t know or he won’t explain. He’s doing what he can, she thinks, but of course she was never going to be acquitted. The scars she loves are evidence against her, the children are evidence all their own - he didn’t even want them, she grumbles within herself again. She told Bella that, over and over again, that her father didn’t even want her to be born, that Jax had struggled to even feign happiness, and still the little girl was ripped out of her hands just so he could get his revenge on her. James was just an infant, he wasn’t old enough - but Bella could have come running back in, before Jax walked away.
Bella could have warned her that her father was going to steal their passports and her money and run out of the hotel, get on trains going different directions to throw her off, and finally head back to his fucking father, who she should have killed years ago when she had the chance.
Isabella should have warned her. It’s her fault, really, all of this. It’s her daughter’s fault that she will never see the outside of a prison again.
How many times did she tell her daughter how much her father must hate her for existing? And still… still, the little girl chose him. Savvie’s fingers close over the locket until the point at the bottom of the heart presses painfully into her skin. Her children, her daughter, her son, her husband. Taken from her, and she’s the villain here?
How dare he.
The TV lights up flat blue until the lawyer gets the recording to start playing, and Savvie blinks as it opens on a recorded scene, showcasing a large room with deep green carpet standing in for ‘grass’, the walls painted with a nonstop mural of rolling hills, flowers, trees, blue sky. Daisies dot the wall, flowers made by tiny handprints in bright colors, each fingerprint a petal, with a yellow circle in the center and a green stem. She can see a yellow sun painted in one corner. Shelves line the painted walls, with toys and big blocky board books, stuffed animals spill out of a basket in the corner. There are blocks, faded with time and use of many little hands.
At a small table painted with dancing animals, sitting in a chair, is Savvie’s daughter Isabella.
She sits up, hearing her own chair creak, and glances sidelong to see Jax suddenly stiffen, eyes widening just the smallest bit. He’s surprised, too, she thinks, and then her eyes go to the jury, trying to read them. The twelve of them - eight women and four men - don’t look at her or Jax. Only the television.
This isn’t a new recording - Bella is so young, with her gorgeous brown hair so like her mother’s spilling in an overwhelming heap around her. This must be from six months or less after Jax stole them in the first place. Savvie fiddles with the locket, nervous in a way she can’t explain. Her little girl isn’t even wearing a dress, but instead swings her little feet in sneakers, wearing jeans and a Paw Patrol t-shirt, humming to herself.
On the table sits a dollhouse, one of those elaborate plastic affairs. Savvie can see a small claw-foot bathtub, a big four-poster bed, an overstuffed armchair. All of it faded, patched, or repaired as small hands have broken or torn or played rough.
Bella, though, sits quietly, and she is gentle with the dolls as she moves them through the house. She has in one hand a doll wearing a blouse and skirt and a brown ponytail, and in the other a doll in a suit with a tie.
“What are we pretending, Izzy?” A man’s voice asks, and he comes into view, settling right down next to her. Savvie’s lip curls. Izzy? What an awful nickname for her beautiful delicate pretty little girl. Who would see such a lovely little thing, and hear as gorgeous a name as Isabella, and choose to call her Izzy?
“Mom and Dad,” The little girl answers, faint in the way of a distracted child. “I’m playing Mom and Dad.”
Savvie hasn’t heard her daughter’s voice in… in so long, now. She feels a twist of envy that the sound of that high piping voice has been taken from her, too. Jax is taking everything from her, piece by piece. She glances at him - his gaze is fixed on the television screen, mouth slightly open. Her husband, handsome if rumpled and ruined by changing his hair and his appearance, doesn’t take his eyes off his daughter.
He won’t look at her, no, his wife and the only thing that should matter, but he’ll fucking stare at a recording of his child.
Not her husband anymore, or so he says, and technically he never legally was, but that’s not really important. They’re married for life. It doesn’t matter what Jax thinks. It doesn’t matter what he wants. It doesn’t matter that he took her children and he’s throwing himself in front of them like he thinks Savvie is a moving bus, all to get her locked away. It doesn’t matter.
He still belongs to her.
He does.
He does.
“‘Don’t look at her,’” The little girl says in a voice she deepens a little, looming the Mom doll over the Dad one. “‘Look at me.’”
“Is the Mommy doll saying that to the Daddy doll?” The man in the recording keeps his voice even, and curious. Jax, to her right, shifts in his seat and leans slightly forward. His hands are folded in his lap, closed into fists.
“Yes,” Bella answers, glancing briefly at the man, then going back to her game. “She doesn’t like when the Dad looks at the little girl too much.”
“And why doesn’t she like that?”
“Because everyone is supposed to always look at the Mom.” Bella sets the female doll down briefly and picks up a smaller one, a little girl with pigtails and a pink dress. “The little girl scraped her leg and it is bloody,” She informs the man, very seriously. “She didn’t mean to make her dad look at her.” She has big brown eyes, and Savvie swallows, thinking now she understands why this video is being shown to the court. She remembers this - she doesn’t remember a lot of what Jax would complain to her about, what he kept calling abuse until she shocked him often and severely enough to make him stop, but she… remembers this.
“How did she scrape her leg, Izzy?”
Savvie swallows against a burst of rage. Don’t you dare say it, Bella, don’t you fucking dare.
“Mommy shoved her,” Bella answers, and the courtroom around Savvie is so silent she can hear her own pulse, blood rushing in her ears. “Because she was crying.” Her tiny voice is matter-of-fact, it doesn’t shake with real tears or upset. She simply relates a thing that happened, play-acting it out in her game as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“‘Don’t hurt her,’” Bella says in a low voice, shaking the male doll over the female one. “The Dad says that. He is telling the Mom that the little girl didn’t mean to cry. The little girl says that she will be good and stop crying now, but the Mom doesn’t believe her.”
“Why was the little girl crying?” The man’s voice is so soft and kind. Savvie feels a sudden urge to find him in whatever hellhole office in Britain he works out of and strangle him to death with her bare hands.
“The Mom told her she is a bad girl,” Bella replies, and droops a little, now.
“Why would she say that?”
“Because she is,” Bella says, softer than ever. At his table, next to his lawyer, Jax makes a sound. It’s not a word, it’s not understandable. It’s hardly audible - Savvie thinks even the jury likely didn’t hear it. But she did, and she looks subtly over at him to see his face is pale and his hazel-brown eyes are oddly glittery under the fluorescent lights. “She isn’t very good at being a little girl, she’s so bad. She made noises when the mom didn’t want her to.”
“Izzy-”
“‘Don’t say that,’” Bella makes the dad doll say, shaking him in the air, angry, picking up the mom doll to face off with him, their two plastic carved faces with fake smiles inches apart. “‘Don’t say that, Savvie. She is a good little girl and you are mean to her, you are being a mean mommy.’”
Savvie closes her eyes. Fuck.
“‘How dare you,’” The mom doll says, and Savvie can’t quite force herself to miss how perfectly her daughter can echo her anger, how her voice rises with it. “‘She is mine and I will say whatever I want! She is mine mine mine.’”
Well… she is.
“‘Yes, Savvie,’” The dad doll says, Bella’s little-girl voice feigning depth, and from the corner of her eye she sees Jax shudder, the slightest movement of his body, barely perceptible. “‘But you can’t talk mean to little girls and boys.’”
“‘I am the mom and I can do whatever I want.’” Bella, expression deeply serious, sets the mom doll down and starts fiddling with the dad doll’s legs. She bites down on her lower lip as she works, finally figuring it out and Savvie feels her stomach drop as Bella sets the dad doll up - kneeling on the floor.
“What happens now, Izzy? What are you doing?”
Bella looks up at the doctor, and the grainy video of the recording blurs and lessens the impact, Savvie hopes. She doesn’t dare look at the jury now. Instead, she tries to think of what she’ll say - it’s a lie, Bella was coached, Jax and the lawyer and this Dr. Marty are all teaching Bella to tell lies, he hates her so much he’s poisoning her babies against her. Something, she’ll say something-
“‘Get on your knees for discipline,’” Bella says, in her mom-voice.
Jax, at his table, closes his eyes and leans forward, one hand over his mouth. His shoulders shake, once, and it reminds her of every time she set off his collar, but much too quick for that. She can’t stop watching him - she shouldn’t, it doesn’t look good when a video like this is playing, but she can’t… stop. He looks so fucking good.
There’s a red streak, a flush, in his cheekbone but otherwise his face is nearly white, the piercings standing out even more than before. His hand grips over his mouth, and she thinks about every time she has pressed her own hand there, with a smile, to mute his objections. His eyes open to look back at the screen, not like he wants to but like he can’t stop himself, like he’s drawn to watch against his will.
“How often does that happen?” The man asks, in his casually neutral voice, and Savvie would put a bullet between his eyes if she could. How dare he, this is leading. At the same time, she feels a sudden swell of rage towards the little girl being led. Bella knew how to keep secrets before Jax left, did she forget so soon? He must have told her-... but no, no, he’s as surprised to see this video as Savvie is. No, this little game is entirely Bella’s fault. Savvie takes in a breath, lets the anger sweep through her, loathes her own child, so thoroughly turned against her now.
She can lay all of this at the feet of a four-year-old girl. Well, not four any longer. But four when this happened. Or five. When is Bella’s birthday?
How old is she, now?
Bella only shrugs at the question, lost in her game now. She has the mom doll tell the dad doll to stay quiet - “‘You’ll upset her, honey, you know better than to say no to me’” - and then acts out the dad doll shaking from the shocks, and finally makes him scream, the sound deafening loud in the silent courtroom.
She does a pretty good impression of the way Jax sounds when he’s screaming, actually. If the jury didn’t hate Savvie before, they definitely do now.
The man in the video looks surprised and sits back a little, then asks, almost tentatively, “And what does the little girl do?"
Bella sets the dolls down and picks the little girl one up, frowning at her. “She watches,” She says, voice low and soft.
“Why does the little girl watch?”
“Because it’s her fault.” Bella’s voice trembles. “If she looks away, her mom will make it worse. She can’t-... she can’t help.” She looks at the doctor, something imploring in big brown eyes and her rounded small-child face. “She tries and tries and she can’t keep her dad safe.”
Damn straight it’s your fault. Savvie fights to keep her irritation and annoyance from showing on her face, tries to look sympathetic, maybe even worried. She’s usually good at this, but at the moment, she’s so angry at Bella for repeating this on a video, for giving Jax another tool to hurt her with, that she isn’t quite sure if she pulls off a sad expression at all.
“It’s not a little girl’s job to keep her daddy safe, Izzy,” The man says, softly, soothing. Reassuring.
“It is her job,” Bella says, and shakes her head, looking at the little girl in her hand. “But she’s not good enough at it. She’s too little, she can’t do anything. I hate her!” She throws the doll across the room in a sudden burst of anger - it flies offscreen, but the clatter of it hitting something is audible - then claps her hands over her mouth, staring wide-eyed in horror. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. I’m not angry I’m sorry, I know better, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry-”
The man speaks to her, trying to interrupt the flow of apologies, It’s all right, Izzy, nothing is broken, you are allowed to feel angry, you are allowed to be angry about this, hoping to hold back the waterfall of her sudden fear. The little girl turns her face away from him, pulls her hands down and rubs them compulsively, nervously along the seams of her leggings. She shakes her head at something the man says and looks down at the floor, the green-grass carpet, her own brightly colored tennis shoes.
Her hands close into fists, as tightly as they can, a perfect echo of her father.
Jax’s shoulders shake again, and this time Savvie recognizes the sound, it sings deep down into her soul. It’s a sob, desperately muffled. He’s trying to hide it, but he can’t hide, not from her. She knows all his sounds of pain by heart. He says something to his lawyer, less whispered, less controlled.
She thinks she hears a please, and hates him for giving that word to anyone but her.
The video cuts off, and Jax’s lawyer calls for a recess. Savvie rolls her eyes when the judge grants it - theater, that’s all this is, make Jax look all bothered by a stupid video, so he’s the sad scared little man and she’s the big bad witch. It’s so transparent, really. He does a good job acting, though, his face is reddened and she can see the faintest glimmer of a tear track as his hated awful father stands, from his own spot in the first row, to take him by the arm. Jax leans, just barely, away from him and he never looks up as he’s led down the aisle and out. They’re talking to each other, in voices too low for her to overhear, except to hear Jax’s crack a little.
Oh. Maybe he’s not entirely acting.
Savvie stands as the courtroom erupts into whispers, ignoring the weight of every eye on her and her lawyer’s attempts to get her to sit back down, looking after the two of them, and she wonders what about the video upset him so much.
Maybe it was just the crying.
----
@astrobly @finder-of-rings @burtlederp @wildfaewhump @whumpiary @whump-tr0pes @moose-teeth @orchidscript @sableflynn @pretty-face-breaker @raigash @vickytokio @eatyourdamnpears
#izzy fucking gallagher#whump#intimate whumper#savvie marcoset#creepy whumper#sadistic whumper#child trauma tw#recorded therapy#whumper pov#whumper on trial#captivity#referenced past drugging#referenced shock collar#emotional abuse tw#parental abuse tw#the catharsis of writing this out was immense#digging into savvie's mental space and motivations and also into the darkness that Jax and his kids climb out of#let me tell you I would not have been able to write the new rescues stuff if I wasn't getting a lot out through writing this#there is a reason izzy took me over in january
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with you, i fall
characters: thor and loki
fandom: marvel cinematic universe
rating: general
word count: 1282
summary: Loki lives to be at Thor's side at the battle of Wakanda. Yet, his brother falls. (canon divergent infinity war angst)
(first episode of loki made me miss the brodinsons™️ 10 times more than i already did so i wrote some emo mess at 3am inspired by this stunning art i came across by @blenderx06 !! hope it’s readable or.. something. yeah)
read on ao3
Loki’s seen just about everything Asgard, the universe, and these puny humans have to offer, he’s convinced, but standing amongst Avengers wasn’t in his cards, no, not at all.
He’s fought alongside his brother over and over again, he was prepared to do so from their childhood years. Then he wasn’t. And now he was. He trusted… trusts Thor. Hell, he’d always trusted him with his life, even when he was sick of his face and his words and his selfishness and his love that he gave without himself even realising it.
Thor is so, so stupid. But he follows, why? Because they’re brothers, after all.
And he’s good . But what makes him believe in his brother, rather, might be that Thor believes in him. Still believes in him. For some reason. He hasn’t exactly been giving him many reasons to keep that belief, he’ll admit, yet, here Thor is, never wavering.
That’s what struck Loki on the elevator before they broke into the Grandmaster’s ship and had to fight their genocidal sister- gods, he thought he hated the universe, but that was child’s play compared to her. Good riddance.
And Thor does not waver on the battlefield.
He’s worthy, of course , what else could he expect of him? His annoying perfection and worthiness and optimism, it was quite enough to make his blood boil.
So was the sight of Thanos, betrayal. Avengers, no trust in him. Who could blame them?
And Thor had stopped trusting him decades ago- and really, could anyone trust him, failure after failure, betrayal after betrayal? He can’t find it in himself to blame his brother, not really, deep down.
Then… why is he here?
Why does his brother look at him that way, as if Loki might just be the only thing he has left? He’s an Avenger, that thick-headed doofus.
Thor and Loki, maybe they never worked. Maybe only in their adolescent years, before their differences tore them away from each other. It’s too late for them, he’s been thinking. They’re past redemption, past burying the hatchet and licking their wounds.
Yet, he asks himself those questions when he hears the snap of the titan’s fingers, and a silence settles upon Wakanda. Too quiet, too suspenseful, too… nothing. As if the entire world held their breaths at the same time.
And so, when they breathe out, collectively, it happens, and the moment that Loki shouldn’t care about, because, well, this was what he was supposed to help Thanos with. Not this, not the endgame, but he couldn’t care less what the titan did before, till now.
Somewhere far away, one of those brute Avengers says something, then abruptly goes quiet again.
This is when the panic of the humans settles in.
For Loki, it’s rather a haze. At a distance, not close enough to touch him, he’s a God, he shouldn’t care about these meaningless little lives.
That is to say, it would be a lie. He rather feels particularly weak at this moment. Loki wonders, this sensation, as more words broken off into the wind can be heard, if this is what it feels like to be human.
He can’t imagine the constant stress - to care.
Thor told him, when Loki went against him, their father, a rebellion or rather a fight for the rightful throne, as he called it. Thor told him clearly, “Brother, I love you.”
And the exasperation, the desperation of his answer of, “You do? You did? Was it ever real?” They were both desperate. Thor has never been anything other than honest to his face, he’s quite aware.
And since his brother had too many tears running down his face, visibly struggling to even get one word out, he braced himself, no, he assumed the worst, “It wasn’t real. I'm not your brother.”
Once again, a lie. Loki did it well. He does it well.
Tragically, that silly thing, caring, it only becomes tangible for himself enough to know, to see, to touch, when the sight of his brother is brought upon his eyes once more. His hand is clutching the titan, comically tiny, alike a human, until it isn’t.
This can’t be, surely not? Thor, he- he’s crumbling to dust. His hand disappears into a cloud of dust.
That feeling falls upon Loki as when the Bifrost was broken- loud and explosive and something much akin to pain. This pain, he has rarely felt one as sharp as this one.
Stinging, burning, sneaking up on him. He, the god of Mischief. What a pathetic joke.
Thor’s eyes meet his. This is rare, too, eye contact. They usually avoid silly talks of feelings, of acknowledging them, even. Yet another attribute of the Odinson bloodline, of their father. His father. He is like a stranger to him. To his brother, too, he discovered, not long ago.
Yet, despite the void of feelings, despite the lack of courage to bring them into the open, Loki finds himself doing that very thing - feeling.
One long stride is all it takes him to get closer to his brother, and then, he notices, it falls upon him as well, how Thor looks at him the same way he’s looked at him before. Not in doubt, or betrayal, or disappointment.
In excruciating pain. But shockingly, simultaneously, trust. Utterly loud and clear trust.
Loki thinks he trusts too easily, that stupid brother of his. Only suitable explanation for him to trust Loki himself, after all.
Thor’s grabbed onto his arm, as opposed to the titan, whose plan is being followed to perfection. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Thor is a god. They’re gods. This can’t be.
This cannot be- it can’t.
Yet it seems real.
The void of Thor’s hand grows, taking his arm and shoulder with it, fading into nothingness, a black hole.
“This isn’t real,” Loki can’t stop the words from leaving his mouth.
Another shock, because his brother laughs. Not his stupid happy one, a broken sound, of sorts, “You don’t think so?”
“Brother,” he retaliates, particles of dust rippling off Thor one by one, as if time had slowed down, “This cannot be real.”
In fact, it seems impossibly slow, this pain, and what’s happening in front of him. His brother even has time to look around at his fellow Avengers, disappearing into thin air. Oh, Loki realises. This pain, it comes with fear.
“It seems to be, brother,” Thor then says, righteous voice and all. “Seems to be the end.”
And Loki barely has any words left, in any realm, in any world, in any galaxy. He just feels. But yet his brother continues to crumble, it’s all his senses pick up on.
“Loki,” Thor’s voice shakes, no way fitting for a god, “Brother. I love you.”
What an absolutely unforgiving moment. What a forsaken imbecile of a brother he has. How overwhelmingly and stupidly and tragically right he is. He is no imbecile. He is trusting of everything, but most urgently, he is trusting of him .
“Thor, what in the world-”
“Listen to me.”
A hole is rippling in his brother’s stomach, enlarging. The hand on Loki’s arm becomes lighter, and a speck of dust, a figment of his own brother’s being, wavers through the wind, brushes his cheek. Time seems to suddenly speed up.
Loki tries to get a grip on him, but he slips through his fingers. Is this some sort of poetic irony, really?
“I am listening, what is it-”
“I love you,” Thor repeats. Yet, it somehow seems necessary. It even feels necessary, feels needed. And it only adds more to that stinging pain somewhere in his chest and gut and fingers and throat, “For real.”
#mine#my writing#marveledit#fanfiction#brodinsons#loki tv#mcu#sabrinasfamily#meghansfamily#general rating#marvel fanfiction#angst#infinity war#avengers#loki pov#canon divergence#tw: death#marvel#mcusociety#eloquencenet#brotherly affection#communication issues
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Kalimat/كلمات
Yusuf al-Khaysani/Niccolò di Genova, 3.3k, teen, AO3 LINK
Yusuf translates medical texts for Niccolò from Greek and Persian into Arabic, and Niccolò spots the substratum of the ideas of the classical authors that he had once believed the basis of his own civilisation that he would go to the sword to defend, translated and passed down and sewn into a no longer foreign script. There are words Yusuf does not know how to translate. They will never, ever know all of the words. The prospect is thrilling.
---
It takes Niccolò lifetimes to learn Arabic.
(I've tried pretty hard to make this at least historically feasible but I'm very sure this is just. Jam packed with mistakes. As is the Arabic langauge stuff- I got booted from the class due to dyslexia. I also hope the representation of Islam and Islamic culture is accurate.)
Languages drop from Joe’s lips easily. Nicky struggles with survival phrases in lingua francas- What Hurts in Dari and Can you breath- nod yes in Swahili and How can we help in French, but Joe can easily lose himself in the sea of a new language’s words and come up swimming, not just stringing together sentences but swallowing poetry, drama, and music. In Ughyar, Bosnian, Zapotec, Spanish, Tamil, Sylheti, Albanian. The shelves of his books line their lives. That is important to Joe, that people be seen not just as they always seem to be in western news reports - as the bodies in the ruined city- but as poets. As storytellers. As humans who struck fire with language that will survive and burn anew.
Joe recites Khachatur Abovian to calm the fractured nerves of a former schoolteacher ripped from his home while he and Nicky rush to forge passports and visas for the teacher and his wife and his seven children to make new lives in America. In a post war displaced persons camp he speaks Yiddish, reads Sholem Aleichem and Avrom Sutzkever from paperbacks pulled from the fires and then decades later in the dust of Baghdad, Arabic and al-Sayyab. And he listens, listens even more than he speaks. He listens to stories upon stories of war and loss and human suffering with his ears and his eyes and heart and a clasped hand that says, I do not claim to know your pain but I have felt my own.
Nicky sets arms and delivers babies and administers vaccines and sorts endless boxes of quinine tables and bandages. He speaks with his hands, mainly, and his bedside manner is different from Joe’s. He learned long ago to keep lollipops in the right pocket of his jacket. The first language Nicky learned to speak was the sea and the second was the wind, and spoken words come to him slower, with less agility, blending into occasionally archaic jumbles. He means to ask an assistant for an antiseptic wipe at one point, has to dig through his mind through the piles of once vital vocabulary bleached useless by time, military jargon for battles lost nine hundred years ago and colloquial derja words for plants and crops gone extinct under the tides of modern monocropping, and comes up sputtering, asking if anyone, perchance, has a neckerchief?
The linguistic stumbling of an unlettered genovese sailor versus a middle class trader’s son who learned to love the written world on his mother’s lap.
It took Nicky a human life time to master spoken Arabic, in a few of her many varieties, with her tricky mazes of roots, more decades of listening and stumbling through conversations and gentle corrections than the average human mind could take before his own readujsted to the beauty of a world described through roots with all things connected to each other.
It took him another life time again to master fusHa, the complex turns of phrase and imagery and unwritten short vowells, and a brush and then pen always felt far more alien in his hands than a sword did. (Although the precision of a pen prepares him well for the precision of a scalpel, and that, perhaps, is the instrument with which Nicky writes history.)
A thousand years ago, in the same city who’s people Joe and Nicky will die again and again for to try and pull from the ruin, the man then Yusuf wrapped his hand around the hand of the man then Niccolò and guided him through this mysterious world of written letters. Alif-ba-ta-thaa and then nun-qaf-waw-lam-alif,
اسمي نقولا
For the first time, Niccolò wrote himself down.
The script contained other mysteries and hidden trap doors. The disappearing mem that could get swallowed by lam and alif and the mysterious shape-shifting ta marbouta and the categories of sun and moon letters that lent the marks on a page a tangible quality, the burning Mediterranean sole that Niccolò’s people marked their years by and la luna by which Yusuf’s people knew their own time by.
When they had reached their first truce in the battlefield and had to learn how to say things beyond various threats and claims of the name of God, they’d each had to remake the world in a new image, relabel everything they’d thought they’d known. Shams, the enemy man had said over and over again, pointing up, and Niccolò hadn’t known if he meant “sky” or “blue” or “above” or “God” or the color “blue.” Niccolò had drawn a line in the sand, the past running to the future and tried to map out the different tenses of his own language he didn’t fully understand himself, only knew how he’d use them in a sentence. He’d hatched an x in the middle for now, drawn two little stick figures and two blobby horses, us he’d said in zenaize, then future, right of the men, past, left.
“Ahhh,” the man who Niccolò now knew as Ana Ismee Yusuf, nodded. He stood up and pointed right. “Lelshar’.” To the left. “Lel’arb.” He smiled and Niccolò thought it might be worth dying, just to see again. “Si, si. Io capiscooo.” He stretched his syllables out in a deadpan imitation of a puffed-up Genovese noble, and Niccolò laughed himself.
Several lifetimes later and Niccolò tries to label his world anew again in writing. Yusuf writes out words in large, blocky script on pieces of scap paper, marks the harakat around the words carefully in red ink. He tacks باب to the door and سَرِير to their bed and even أنا to himself. He holds up a piece of paper to the sky outside, the sun blinding their eyes momentarily before they repair. الشَّمس, the first word. Yusuf even attempts to stick قِطّ onto Amira, the sharp eyed street cat who’s wormed her wait into their household. The scratches that earns him heal quickly.
It takes Niccolò far longer than he wants anyone to know before his mind properly started to see a word and see it as a word, something more than a collection of letters but a thing that existed, definitively, in God’s world. بَيْت, what he and Yusuf have now had in Basra, Palermu, Fustat. مُحيط, like the Mare Nostrum. فَتاة, a girl like like the sister he left behind.
And then the door was opened, and Niccolò could read, or at least, understand this process of reading for himself, and more than that, he could see this part of Yusuf, so crucial to the soul he nad come to love and this heart he now held in his own. Yusuf loved words, and books, and writing, he loved his Book as the word of God to his prophet and he loved his books as connection to the mother who had first taught him suras and his father who wrote in three languages, and, he had once gold Niccolò in the quiet safety of their bed, in the night, with the first boy he had ever loved, the other star pupil at their madrassa with whom he would lie composing lines of poetry under a lemon tree.
Niccolò thought of Yusuf reading in the small, cool courtyard of the house in Damascus that would for this lifetime be their home, his mouth moving silently in prayer as his fingers followed reverently over the verses. He thought of Yusuf moving elegantly through the world, his speech dry and witty or educated where his own felt blunt, trading jokes and barbs back and forth in the tea house and the market. But mostly, Niccolò thought of Yusuf writing, face still with all the steady focus and silent reverence of prayer, bent over a carved rosewood writing desk, the sunlight streaming in through the windows setting his curls on fire. And his hands, so strong, so reliable, moving unerringly across the page, line after line of the script that Niccolò once feared and mocked because he feared but which he now knew could contain all the beauty of the world.
He practiced by writing to the those he loved but no longer walked the world.
Oum, today sun bright. I see roses in market. I think of you, when I see roses in market.
Abba, in house of God happy I know you are, happy makes it me.
Maria, to read you will love, i know. Your son man now. Good i know. Peace to you.
Niccolò burned the letters in a fire and hoped God would make it so his 'aa'ila could read them. Yusuf and Niccolò were both young in the business of being immortal. They had not learned to shoulder the pain of it yet, so they faced the loneliness, together and alone. Niccolò thought that he saw the appeal of letter writing, then, imagined a world in which he could have written his family from the Holy Land, told them that no matter how many infidels he killed to cleanse this world for the Cross he felt no closer to holiness himself, told them that the one he killed and killed and killed again he had found holiness in, told his parents that their son died and died and did not die. That he missed home, the rocky shores and fishing villages of Liguria, but that he missed them more, because his family was his home, even if there were things about him that he hid in the darker parts of himself because he knew they would never understand.
His sister’s grandchildren- or maybe her great-grandchildren, he wasn’t quite sure- were still alive, probably, but there wasn’t a way they’d respond well to the idea of a relative who’d have been forty years past death even without war sending them letters written in the alphabet they’d been taught to hate, if they could read at all.
With the ashes of his letters, he lets his family go, and prays God looks kindly upon them, and shows them mercy, and grants them peace and understanding. Every century or so, he’ll check in, he vows, even from afar, because he owes Maria that much. He hopes her son or his son or his son has not wasted his life to die in a war on foreign soil like he did, or that her daughter or her daughter or her daughter has not been left a widow.
Yusuf’s family still lived in Tunis. His sister Maryam took over the trading business after his death and made the al-Khaysani family a great name and funded many hospitals and houses of learning. News of her death reached Palermu weeks after the burial, and it was one of the few times in their long, long lives that Yusuf had to walk for months alone, to process a grief as large as the world. He let the waves of the sea and the sand of the desert swallow him again and again, and when he did not die, he rose and lifted his head to the sky and swore he would make the world as good as she wanted it to be. In every city they go to with a cathedral or even a baked mud church Niccolò lights candles for Maria and for Maryam. Santa Maria, madre de dio, they’ll pick up one day, in a language centuries off from existing. You know she is named more times in our book than yours, Yusuf told him in one one of their many cycles of death and coming back, when Niccolò called out for her, bleeding out on the sand.
When Niccolò found Yusuf again they stood with their hands clasped at her grave outside the medina and then they prayed and set off again. New cities, new tongues, new people. To avoid suspicion, they alter the sounds of their names to match the sounds of the city. Yusuf and Naaqid. Giuseppe and Niccolò. Nikolai and Iosef. Every death is shorter.
Yusuf forges the documents and the names, barters and trades, even makes several seperate respectable fortunes as a merchant of cloth and then spices before even claims of pomegranates doing wonders for one’s health start to wear a bit thin and they have to fake their deaths again. He writes, and though home quickly becomes what they can carry, he keeps sheaths of poetry in tiny, perfect script in his saddlebag, recites long poems as they make camp in the desert. Some were written by and for men like them. Others Yusuf tweaks the gender of, chooses inta over inti. Every time they die they leave a generous waqf behind.
Niccolò takes care of the horses, and then he tries to take care of people. He learns as much of these strange healing arts of the east as he can from Yosef, and then from a doctor in Basra and a Jewish apothecary in the city of Fustat. It is not blasphemy to try to know the body, he is deciding, it is not sacrilige to try as hard as one might to save a life. At some point, the knowledge goes beyond what he can remember or what a diagram can tell him, and so it’s in Damascus that Niccolò decides, even with his previous failed attempts at the aliph-baa, to ask Yusuf to teach him how to read.
And he does. It takes time, years, before he can, before he feels more man than child with a pen in his hand and he does not smear ink across the page. And there are limits. He is never a poet. His language is always more practical than- and this is a word that will not exist for centuries but that colors his memories even still- than romantic. For him heart is a thing of muscles and chords that powers a life. He reads and takes notes on Al Razi far more than Abu Nuwwas or al Muttanabi. Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine astounds him just as Ferdowsi’s perfect schemes of monorhymes entrance Yusuf. His sentences do not flow into rivers like Yusuf’s do. They build squat, strong houses. They encode information that Niccolò can leave behind when he dies, only to return to a century later and find that have been added on to by scholars after him, the foundations for someone else’s palace. Sometimes, the things he thought were true are completely washed away in the flood of some new discovery, and he prays and begs the forgiveness of all those he caused unnecessary pain in his ignorance.
But even in his clumsiness, the power of words surges through. Yusuf’s words and his love of words surges through to Niccolò in the years of learning, until Niccolò loves words too, just as Niccolò’s love of the sea and her many tempestuous moods and promise of infinite freedoms filters through to Yusuf. Yusuf translates texts for Niccolò from Greek and Persian into Arabic, and just as with Mary and Maryam centuries ago on a battlefield, Niccolò spots the substratum of the ideas of the classical authors that he had once believed the basis of his own civilisation that he would go to the sword to defend, translated and passed down and sewn into a no longer foreign script. There are words Yusuf does not know how to translate. They will never, ever know all of the words. The prospect is thrilling.
And Yusuf’s love of words surges up into Niccolò’s love of Yusuf too. It took him about three weeks after their initial truce to realise the man was soft, which then took him a few decades to find more endearing than annoying. That he liked sweet things and flowers and goddamn useless hobbies like calligraphy and drawing complex borders of tulips and interlocking knots along the borders of his writing papers. And he knew he was a good poet, to his own ears, that he fit words together nicely. But being able to read Yusuf’s poems, even the unwritten snippets he leaves scattered around the house, often unfinished, is something else entirely. A glimpse into being seen, by the person who sees him best. But God above, he doesn’t think anyone alive has had their eyes compared to the beauty of the sea after the desert quite so many times, or wrung as many turns of phrase from the has the double meaning of عَيْن.
“The world,” he says one night as they sit and watch night descend softly upon the City of Jasmine. It’s a city to make even the woman who will come knocking at their door in a matter of decades feel young and insignificant, and even the colloquial name suits Yusuf’s pretensions annoyingly well. Steam from cups of tea curls into the evening air. The smells of horse shit and rosewater both on the air. The calm cradle of the evening after the maghrib prayer. “You see it …” He does not know how to end it.
“How, then, do I see the world, hayati?”
“You see the stars above a battlefield. You see the stars and then the fields that will grow again after the ashes are tilled into the soil. You see stars as gems, and the windstorms of the desert is the finest music, if you would believe your poems.
“And you are angry that I have seen the good in the world? I would not call the man who came to a foreign land to kill the infidel and came to spend a hundred years learning best to save their lives a man who does not see beauty in unexpected things either.”
“You are-”
He looks for a word, any word in his mind that has learned so many. Unchanging would not be right for the man who once killed him so many times and learned Greek and Latin to read him the words of the Apostles as they were written, who has accompanied him on pilgrimages to Antioch and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. He has changed as much as Niccolò has. No, it’s something-
“You are looking at me as you look at your patients.” Yusuf reaches out and brushes back Niccolò’s hair. He kisses his forehead. A kiss from Yusuf, no matter how chaste or how many, still sends lightning through his body.
“As if you were ill?”
“No. You look with such focus upon the world, with so much kindness about how to help it heal.�� For a time whose number has since gone beyond count, their hands interlink. “We cannot save the world, but we can save some, and by saving some, we can save the world. We will work to repair what is broken.”
“I have found the cause of your affliction.”
“What do you consider me afflicted by, Doctor Al-Zenowaizi?”
The word romantic is still more than six centuries out, although they’ll soon wander through Europe during the heyday of the romance, and Yusuf will even write a few himself in Occitan and Provençal. For now, though, the word carries the implications of Roma and the waning Basileion Rhomaion to the north, to the al-Rum rite of the Damascene churches he now celebrates the Eucharist in, the river of his faith turned down a different course. For now, though, the word romantic remains firmly in the future. No, it’s something else he thinks of.
“Hope. You have a most serious case of hope.”
“And what do you suggest as remedy, Doctor Al-Zenowaizi?”
Niccolò pulls him in for a proper kiss, long and deep and hot and sweet and bitter from the tea. He loses himself in the warmth of his body, his hands in the curls of his hair, and he thinks how blessed he has been by God that this is the man he has been destined to spend forever with.
“Albi, I do not think there is one. I think you have been cursed with an incurable case of hope.”
#the old guard#joe x nicky#the old guard fic#yusuf x nicolo#yusuf al-kaysani#nicolo di genova#my writings
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gifts - Jaime
Jaime/Brienne + love languages, based off @observedchaos‘ post
For @naomignome and tagging @pretty--thief because this seems like her jam.
*
A few weeks before his wedding, he receives a parcel. His sword, wrapped in a soft cloth and laid in a finely crafted wooden box, and a note from her. He has to brace himself against the desk as he reads her words: May this protect your home and your betrothed.
When they parted, he left Widow’s Wail with her. “I have-” He pressed a finger to her lips to quiet her. Tears pool in her eyes. They are likely to drown him.
The cavern of his chest is ripped open, watching her go, sacrificing love for duty. “Please,” he can scarcely speak as he presses his forehead to hers, his tears landing on her cheek. “May it serve you well, my lady. Protect your home.”
After the war, he returned to Casterly, the Lannister reputation in shambles. It was all he had. He spent a decade rebuilding, returning a sense of justice, decency, and generosity to the family name.
Now he is to be wed, because when he began to rule fairly and display kindness, the people of Lannisport insisted they would not be satisfied until he found his own happiness.
And yet the woman he loves is a continent away.
*
Ten years later
He is watching Willem in the yard when Peck arrives by his side, nearly breathless. “You have a visitor, my lord.”
Jaime frowns, wondering if it is someone from Lannisport coming to air their grievances. He had cleared the day to spend time with his son. “Put them in the blue room and offer them refreshments. I’ll be up in a moment.”
“Ser, I really think you should come now.” He has watched Peck grow from a scrawny teenage boy into a man, happily married and with children of his own, but he’s never seen the man this out of sorts.
“Is the Queen here?” Jaime intones with a rather hollow laugh.
“No, ser,” Peck exhales. “Not the Queen. The Evenstar.”
The Evenstar. The title echoes in his head for a moment, his legs feeling weak. “Willem,” he calls to his son, but the boy is so fiercely attacking one of the straw men in the yard he doesn’t hear him.
“I’ll fetch him.” Peck offers.
“Thank you.” Jaime thinks he manages to say before he brushes past him and slips inside the Rock. His wife has been gone nearly two years now, leaving Willem scarcely older than Jaime had been when his own mother died.
He has heard little of Tarth, as consumed as he was in transforming the reputation of the Lannisters and the Westerlands. Perhaps he has not wanted to hear. But now he wonders if these past twenty years have found her fulfilled, found her happy.
She is standing in the blue room, but the color of the walls are not anything when compared to her eyes. “Brienne.” he whispers from the doorway. She looks as strong as ever, but holds herself differently somehow. Her spine is straight, her shoulders pulled back, proud and dignified.
“Jaime.” she smiles fondly at him, tears pooling in her eyes. He crosses the room to her, pulling her into a hug. He is unable to act like a stranger with her after all these years, not when she remains the one person who knows him so well. “How are you?” she asks.
“I’m well.” He sits, smoothing his hand over his thigh. Years ago, he stopped wearing the golden hand, and simply began having the sleeves of his shirts sewn up. “You’ve traveled a long way. Is everything alright?” Jaime does not voice what they are both thinking. She has never visited here, just as he has never visited Tarth. It would have been too painful.
“I--” she lets out a shaky breath from her seat on the chair across from him. “I’m realizing now this is all a bit foolish.”
He leans forward. “Whatever your reason for being here, I doubt it is foolish.”
Brienne runs a hand across her stomach, a gesture so small he might not have noticed it, except it has been so long since he’s seen her, he wants to soak up every moment in her presence. He recognizes the gesture as the same way his wife used to touch her hand to her stomach when she was pregnant with Willem. “There is a man who claims to be a Tarth heir. A baseborn son of my father.” She presses her hands together in her lap. “Which could be true,” Brienne whispers.
“Are you not older than he?”
“Yes, but I am a woman.” Her gaze flickers up to his and then away. “My father never declared me formally as his heir. That was always Galladon.”
“It was a given.” Jaime says brusquely, offended on her behalf. “You stepped in when Tarth had no leader. You have been through so much.”
She nods and even though she appears as strong as always, he can see how the weight of the years has worn away at her. “I’ve written to Sansa about it and she assures me she will uphold my claim, but I am worried…” She lets out a sigh and stands from the chair, starting to pace around the room.
He has spent the past two decades trying not to get involved in the politics of the kingdom, instead preferring to concentrate on his lands, his people, but he is glad to hear Brienne has a friend in the Queen. “Do you think he will try to claim it by force?”
Brienne dips her chin. “Yes. I am worried about...the children.” She stops her pacing and looks at him then. “I have twins. I do not know if you had heard.”
His voice is hushed when he replies, “I hadn’t.”
“They are almost old enough to defend themselves, but they are still so young. Twelve.” Her hand trails across her stomach. “Their father died a few months ago.”
“Brienne…” he murmurs, uncertain what to say. “I am sorry.”
“It’s alright,” she replies. “I...I am not afraid to take on this man, if need be, but Sansa, the Queen, suggested I might shore up my defenses. If I could find someone who wields enough power to command men, who would be loyal to me, my island.”
Jaime thinks he understands what Brienne is suggesting, but is frozen in shock in his seat. “Are you...asking about a political alliance? With me?”
“I trust you.” Her voice is small, barely above a whisper, and he itches to cross the room and take her in his arms again. “I do not even know if you have men you could send or-”
“I do. I would come myself, too, if you have a need for a battered one-armed knight.” Her gaze is focused on the fireplace, but he waits anxiously for her answer.
“I always have need of you.” She turns towards him, and the familiarity of her, standing before him, flesh and blood after all these years apart stuns him speechless.
He stands then, taking a hesitant step towards her, then another, and even as he is slipping his arms around her, he expects her to draw away from him. “Brienne, are you asking me for more than an alliance?”
She bites her lip. “I would not...except this man and I--” Brienne sucks in a sharp breath as Jaime draws even closer, his nose pressing against the shell of her ear as he places a gentle kiss at her temple. “Jaime…” she murmurs, her eyes filling with tears again.
He did not even realize how much he longed for this moment all these years, dreamt of it. “May I kiss you?”
She cannot answer, only nods through her tears. He presses gentle kisses to each of her cheeks, extra soft over her scar, kissing away her tears before pressing one to her lips. Her mouth is soft and warm and opens eagerly to his and they cannot get enough. Brienne grasps his hand on her cheek and when they stop, breathing hard against each other, Jaime lets out a soft laugh. “There is one other thing,” she tells him, her thumb stroking over his. “I am with child again.”
His eyes widen and a broad grin spreads across his face. “I will swear it is my own if that is what you wish of me.”
“Are you certain?” Her blue eyes blink, momentarily in doubt.
“I have never been as certain about anything else in my life as I am about this, my lady.”
She smiles, and it is as soft as her kisses. “You will have to come to Tarth.”
He laughs again. “I realize that.” Brienne kisses him then, and yes, he would do anything for her.
*
Every anniversary, Jaime teases her about the pretender, saying he should write the man a thank you letter. “Or perhaps it is Sansa who I should thank.” He says, grabbing at the soft flesh of his wife’s side as she passes by. Brienne brushes at his hand ineffectively, landing in his lap even as she tries to push him away.
“It would have been rather impolite to show up on your doorstep and ask you to marry me without a royal decree,” she chides.
“I would have said yes no matter what.” He nudges his nose into her hair, breathing in deeply. “It has all been a gift.” Their marriage allowed him to be a father three times over. First to her twins, Arthur and Alys, then to their daughter, Rosaline. Brienne allowed Willem to drag her out to the yard every morning, laughing when Jaime pretended to take offense that his own son preferred sparring with her.
Their home is alive with the sound of their children’s voices, laughter, even sometimes with a mock swordfight or two, all of it so full of love.
He would gladly do it all again, wait a lifetime for her, if it meant it would earn him all of this.
*
Author’s Note: It might have been less common for women to get pregnant when they were older in the medieval era than it is now, but Brienne is 40/41 here and Jaime is 54/55.
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Hollow - Geralt/Jaskier [G]
[Gif isn’t mine]
Warning: Injury Recovery
Word Count: 4769
Originally posted on my AO3
His lessons in Oxenfurt have become afterimages; faint pictures and muffled sounds, none of which is sturdy enough for him to recall. But he can remember one thing a lecturing poet had said to them. They had been learning about sonnets, about the boring compositions of them and all of that technical nonsense. And Jaskier’s mind was still groggy and addled from a night spent drinking and lounging in another student’s bed. He had just enough wherewithal to grab what clothes he needed for the day and stumble his way down to the lecturing halls, still numbed and stumbling and squinting against the midday sun that was just so damn bright.
‘Tis a Fearful Thing to love what death can touch.
And Jaskier still wishes that he had thought of it. It’s a line that has stayed with him throughout the years that have trudged by. He’s generous with his love – he’s loved a lot of people in all different capacities. He’s loved some for a night, others for years. And then there’s Geralt; luring the kind of love out of him that hurts his heart when he’s with the Witcher and hurts when he isn’t; when he wakes in the soft light of morning to a dozing wolf in his bed, hair askew and all form of his usual frown eased from his brow, his chest tightens and his breath catches, and he reaches out to gently dust the backs of his fingers along the Witcher’s cheek, smiling delighted at the soft snuffling sort of noise that comes out of Geralt.
He loves Geralt so much, his heart might just burst. Where it all changed, he isn’t quite sure. Maybe it was in the cave of Dol Blathanna, hearing the Witcher speak with such reverence to the elves. Maybe it was out on the road where he broke half of his bread loaf to give to a struggling mother and her children, displaced from their home by warring factions to the south. Maybe it just came gradually, like seasons blurring into each other.
Days and nights spent on the road would surely kill them both. Monsters or wayward human bandits could take his Witcher while Jaskier’s heart might just give out from worry. Winters at Kaer Morhen were when he could let his shoulders drop and his breathing steady. A keep of Witchers kept monsters out of the mountain and the forests that wrap around it like a shroud. In those short days and long nights, he keeps his Witcher to his bed and cards his fingers through his hair, murmuring soft praise underneath his breath.
But he’s not a fool – no matter how many times Geralt tells him that he is. He knows what a Witcher’s life is like.
He’s in Oxenfurt when it happens. When word reaches him about the extent of Geralt’s injuries, he just about manages to slump into a waiting chair, rather than collapse on to the floor. The student who brought him the news, a shy teaching aide he’s worked with for the spring, quietly slips out of the room, gently clicking the door shut behind her. Jaskier’s hand trembles as he reaches out for a nearby goblet, knocking back the rest of the wine left inside. It does nothing to dull the sour feeling of panic wringing his throat.
He can’t get the Brokilon Forest quick enough.
Listen, he knows. He knows that Geralt is a Witcher. He’s going to get injured, or even killed. Jaskier has been there to stitch him back together for most of his scars. If Jaskier had any say in it at all, he would want death to come to Geralt when it’s quiet and he’s lived his life as much as he can; when Geralt would be asleep, curled around him, with years of life behind him. And Jaskier would follow, because there’s no life without Geralt.
The dryads that meet him at the outskirts of the forest are kind to him. Either they scent the slight scent of elven blood on him or they understand the panic in his eyes as he scans the forest floor for his Witcher. Eithnė leads him to a pool. Jaskier struggles not to catch his foot and stumble over every tree root breaching the ground, stretching out and entangling with others. Eithnė moves through the forest easily, as if the vines and branches part for her.
By the time they reach the ponds in the inner-most part of the forest, Jaskier’s heart struggles to jump out of his throat. His breath catches at the sight of the Witcher, swaddled between thick, moss-cushioned roots, caught in a deep sleep, but with mumbled nonsense slipping out of numbed lips. Jaskier staggers over to his side.
Eithnė stays away, regarding the two of them with an unreadable expression. ��He came to us screaming,” she says levelly. “I’ve never known a Witcher to be in so much pain.”
Jaskier’s chest tightens. He flattens a hand along Geralt’s cheek, gently brushing his thumb along the ridge of his cheekbone. His murmurings are slurred, nothing at all making sense. Even the words that Jaskier manages to catch mean nothing to him. Memories, maybe. Geralt mutters about towering walls and how they fall, at fire catching in the great hall and how there’s too many of them to hold back. He twitches underneath Jaskier’s touch. “Hush, my darling,” he whispers, “I’m here. You’re alright. You’re safe.”
It does nothing to quell the small frown knitting his eyebrows together. Geralt grunts and huffs out a breath. His eyes dart underneath his lids.
“The waters of our forest aren’t kind to a Witcher’s mind,” Eithnė says, her words managing to break through the rush of blood through Jaskier’s ears. “But they will heal what they can. Once he’s awake, you may go.”
He’s always been careful with how dryads phrase things. It’s a little known fact to be careful with how you speak to a creature of elven blood, and how it speaks to you. Physically, Geralt is healed. Deep injuries that shattered his knee and elbow welded back together again, as did the muscles and skin surrounding them. Apart from the scars that refuse to fade, one wouldn’t notice a thing. On that front, he can thank Eithnė that yes, the waters of her forest healed what they could.
But he’s not cured. The pain stayed. In the contracts taken after, travelling from town to town; in each battle faced because he just wants to protect Ciri from everything out to take her away from him; in the last few years where Geralt came into possession of a villa tucked away in the Toussaint valleys, the pain stayed and festered and crippled him.
When they settle in Toussaint, an estate gifted to Geralt for all he’s done for the kingdom and its people, Jaskier can at least think of somewhere safe he could corral the Witcher should the cramps come back.
On their travels, when they could wander past Nenneke’s temple, she gifted him glass vials and clay pots of all sorts of things; oils and salves to seep through the Witcher’s skin and try and work out the worst of the pain, should it flare up. With all the years that have drifted past, they’ve both learned what can set the pain off. Sometimes it’s random. Sometimes they’ll be strolling around the vineyards or through the streets of a neighbouring town, and it will flare up; a niggling pain at the back of his mind, poking and prodding at him to get his attention. The only thing Jaskier can do is get them both back to the villa as quickly as he can before bones groan and muscles seize.
Jaskier’s ears twitch at the sound of metal clattering to the ground. He pauses, his quill’s tip hovering over the page. Blots of ink fall, staining the paper, but he doesn’t care at all. The house is quiet, just for a moment, before Jaskier hears it. A grunt and a rumbling curse underneath the Witcher’s breath.
His quill and notebook are pushed to the side, entirely forgotten about, as soon as he stands from his desk. The villa itself is sprawling, with more land than they know what to do with. Grapevines occupy most of it, tended to by the staff living down in the main courtyard. The presence of staff, people who bow their heads slightly whenever he passes, and the paved cobblestones that wind through the estate, it all reminds him of home. But this place is nothing like Lettenhove. This place has love and warmth seeping out of the walls.
Jaskier’s office is upstairs, alongside his and Geralt’s bedroom, a guest’s room, and the Witcher’s own study. Jaskier doesn’t have to think about where the Witcher could be – he just follows the sound of grunting curses, all bitten off in an attempt to stay quiet.
He finds Geralt in his study, leaning against a dresser with his good arm braced on it. Two short swords sit sprawled on the ground, long forgotten about. Jaskier doesn’t bother with knocking on the wooden portal of the door. From how pinched the Witcher’s face is, how he’s curled in one himself and his weight is pressed down on one side, he knows exactly what’s wrong.
Winter can crawl in, even this far south. In a place scorched by the sun, where wine flows out of vineyards and the frosty, howling winds of Kaer Morhen are long forgotten about, the weather can still change. Nipping winds can tumble down from the mountains, chilling the valleys and those in them. And with the weather steadily changing in the past couple of weeks, Jaskier spent his days waiting for this to happen.
He clicks his tongue. “Come here,” he says, walking to the Witcher with one hand outstretched to set on his back.
Geralt can’t help the small flinch that darts through him, trying to get away from Jaskier’s touch. Some self-preservation that had been embedded into the Witcher’s bones; something Jaskier still can’t unravel even after decades spent together. He doesn’t think any badly of Geralt for it. He can only imagine the pain that scorches through him.
Geralt’s arm is bent at the elbow, curled in and nestled against his chest. It’s going to take a while to get it relaxed enough to pull away and straighten out. But they have all the time in the world now, nestled away in a place like Corvo Bianco. Jaskier glances down. Geralt’s knee fairs that bit better, though it’s still not great. Even though he can’t see anything, no kneecap swollen or muscles twitching, he can see how Geralt is loath to put any weight on the leg.
Jaskier gentles a hand on to the small of Geralt’s back. The muscle underneath his palm is taught and tight. “Geralt, my love,” he murmurs, “come with me. We’ll get you sorted.”
If he had more time, he might have moved them to their room. He could have peeled Geralt’s loose shirt off and discarded his boots and breeches and lain him down on their bed, and set about his work there. But Geralt’s study will have to do. A room with a desk and chair, bookcases lined with worn-leather tomes, and walls decorated with weapons long retired.
Geralt levels his breathing as much as he can. One golden eye meets his as he looks sideways. His jaw is tight, almost bulging, and he swallows and nods. Jaskier has spent years softening the edges of the Witcher, but being wrung through with pain will only bring back the wolf’s bite.
The desk is nearby, just a few short shuffling steps away. Jaskier nods to the chair. He doesn’t have to say anything, but the order is perched on the tip of his tongue. Sit.
Geralt sighs, knowing that trying to argue with the bard is pointless. Moving is slow and methodical. He drops with the chair with a pained huff, most of the groan swallowed back down as he tries to settle himself. Jaskier won’t touch him just yet, not until he’s relaxed somewhat. But with the ripple of pains tensing and straining through him, he isn’t quite sure how long the bard will wait until he sets his hands on him.
Jaskier leaves him for a moment, darting back to their room to gather a small leather-entombed box. Nenneke’s last gift to them before they dug roots into the estate. Everything they will ever need for Geralt’s pains is in here, alongside Nenneke’s own recipes for more should they run out. Everything is easily available; herbs that Jaskier has seen to growing in one of their gardens. Anything else, like extracts and oils, Yennefer had offered to fetch for them. Being only a portal’s call away, it’s handy. And though she’ll always have an air of being put out by the requests, asking her to halt whatever it is that she’s doing and go and fetch something for them, she’ll always do it.
When Jaskier steps back into the study, he’s met with the sight of Geralt trying, and failing, to pick apart the laces of his shirt. His bad arm is still curled against himself, and his other hand trembles with frustration and pain. The look spread across his face only shows his struggle.
Jaskier’s voice is nothing more than a gentle murmur. “Here,” he says, crossing the room in a matter of strides. He sets the box on the table and sets about deftly undoing the laces.
Geralt glances up. Jaskier stands close by him, with the bard standing in the gap of his spread legs. His fingers twitch. If his hand wasn’t doing such a wonderful job of bracing his own elbow to himself, he would reach out, curl an arm around Jaskier’s waist, and hold him close.
Jaskier arches an eyebrow at him, probably reading everything on the Witcher’s face. “Let’s get this off, hmm?” he rasps. Wrangling the shirt up and over himself takes longer than it should, and some small part of Geralt scoffs at how difficult something like disrobing himself has become. He snaps back at it, a low growl caught in his throat. With the shirt over his head, and his arm freed, Jaskier drops it on to the table. It’s forgotten about as soon as it’s out of sight.
Jaskier will deal with Geralt’s knee later. His elbow seems to be giving him the worst trouble. Nothing needs to be said. Sometimes they’ll talk – though it would be mostly Jaskier, rambling on like always about something or other. On other occasions, like now, silence will settle over them and stay.
Jaskier wets his hands with oil, eyeing where he’ll need to work first. Geralt’s arm is cradled against him, with his elbow and forearm already tight. He breathes for a moment, reaching up to dust his fingers over the round of Geralt’s shoulder. They’ve done this hundreds of times, out on the road and in their home. Geralt knows what to do. He still looks away, his interest caught by some small framed picture of Ciri perched on his desk.
When Jaskier smoothes his palms over Geralt’s muscle, he can feel the Witcher biting down on a groan of pain.
Nenneke gave them everything they could ever need. Pungent, sharp smelling lotions and oils and salves, all of them wrinkling Geralt’s nose. They sour the roof of Jaskier’s mouth, so he can only assume what an onslaught of scent it is to the Witcher. But they work, one way or another. He spends a few minutes slowly working the worst of the tension out of Geralt’s shoulder, just enough to try and pry his elbow away from his chest. Geralt focuses on his breathing, biting down on every whine of pain that threatens to slip out of his throat. It’s just the two of them here. If he wanted to show how cracked and vulnerable he’s become, he would. But the Witcher is a stubborn old bastard and will insist everything is absolutely fine.
Jaskier sets one hand to Geralt’s shoulder while his other catches his forearm, just underneath the point of his elbow. His muscles there are so tight already, trembling in Jaskier’s palm. He levels his breathing with Geralt’s, trying his best to ease the worst of the tension out of him. “I’m going to move it now,” he mumbles, “alright?”
Geralt’s jaw tightens. He nods.
It’s slow, and he doesn’t stretch Geralt’s arm further than it needs to go. But he needs it away from the Witcher’s chest to massage the pain out. Geralt’s breath hitches as Jaskier stretches his arm towards him. Geralt’s other hand, resting on the lacquered surface of his desk, curls into a white-knuckled fist.
Jaskier’s tongue sours. He hates his Witcher being in so much pain. He hates the fact that to ease it, he has to cause him pain. The sharp citrus scent of the oil doesn’t help, but he can already feel it warming underneath his palm. He’ll massage as much as he can out of Geralt’s arm before he brings him to bed.
When he’s pulled the arm away from Geralt’s chest, Jaskier’s hands move. One catches the back of Geralt’s upper arm while the other sets about spilling a sliver of more oil on to his forearm. He knows what to do. Nenneke took him aside and showed him everything she could about how muscles work. The bones themselves were shattered and beyond repair – until the dryads poured forest water on to him, at least. The bones knitted back together, as best as they knew how to, while muscles and skin tried to do the same. The dull ache always remained.
Jaskier catches Geralt’s eye. “I’m sorry,” he breathes, like he always does whenever he’s about to touch the Witcher’s elbow. It’s painful and the sounds that wring out of Geralt’s throat are awful, but it needs to be done.
Geralt grunts, turning away again. Get on with it.
The worst of the tension sits along his upper forearm, where the muscle twitches and bulges in some attempt to keep the worst of the pressure away from his elbow. When Jaskier sets his oil-slickened fingers to the muscle, it tenses underneath him. Geralt’s breath hitches, but he bites down on whatever groan threatened to slip out of his lips. Jaskier glances up at him, frowning at how tightly the Witcher’s brows are pinched together. He hates this. He hates this so much.
Another apology mumbles out of him. It’s entirely lost on Geralt – the Witcher digs himself so far into his own mind, trying to distract himself and dull the pain. But Jaskier has made a habit of it. He apologises for every twinge of pain he causes Geralt in an effort to help him feel better.
His digs his fingers in.
Geralt grunts, sucking in a harsh breath.
Jaskier’s fingers smooth out where he dug in, working the muscles as firmly as he can in some effort to try and get them to relax. It used to take what seemed like hours. He would wince and almost cry at every sound of hurt that choked out of Geralt in those first few days at Nenneke’s tower. The priestess, normally so brash and brave with her words and quips with them both, only encouraged him to keep going. He can’t do this by himself, bard. He can still remember the warm tone she used with him; one that he probably would never hear again, and if he s much as mentioned her softness to him, she would cosh him silly.
Jaskier smoothes his palms up and down Geralt’s forearm. He’ll have to look at the Witcher’s knee at some point. Glancing down at it, he notes how Geralt hasn’t even bent the knee. His leg is splayed out straight in front of him. Jaskier clicks his tongue, but says nothing.
His work is quicker now. He knows what muscles and tendons cause the worst of the pain, and just how stubborn they can be. Pouring a trickle of more oil on to Geralt’s arm, Jaskier digs the heels of his hands into the muscle, working out the last irritating bit of tension.
Geralt’s breathing has levelled out. Jaskier watches him out of the corner of his eye. The worst of his grunting and hitching breath has stopped, thank the gods. Tremors still rattle through him, but he’ll deal with them when he can.
Jaskier hums. “That’s most of it,” he mumbles, mindful of the quiet that has fallen over both of them. He grabs a dry strip of cloth and wipes most of the excess oil off of his hands.
A low rumbling sound slips out of Geralt’s chest. Before Jaskier can glance down, one good arm coils around his waist, drawing him close. Geralt’s head falls forward, his forehead pressed against the middle of Jaskier’s chest.
“Silly man,” the bard admonishes, a small smile tilting the corner of his lip. He bends down, pressing a kiss to the crown of Geralt’s head. He lingers, scenting the faint scent of himself on the Witcher. It’s hard to know where one of them ends and the other begins these days. They wake up and go to sleep entangled in each other, a mess of limbs that neither of them knows how to get out of. Even in the days, when they would pass each other out in the estate’s trails on walks or in their own home, shoulders brush and fingers hook together.
His chest tightens. One last kiss is pressed to Geralt’s head before the bard leans away, reaching to the desk to root through the box. He caps the vials, putting them away and taking a mental note of how much he has left. Maybe enough for two more bouts of pain, but that’s it. He’ll have to take a trip down to the gardens where he can gather more herbs.
He pats Geralt’s good shoulder. “Come on,” he says, “off to bed with you. For an hour, at least.”
Geralt peers up at him. The look the bard levels him with makes his point stand firm. I’m looking after you and you have no say in this whatsoever.
Not that Geralt would argue with the bard anyway. He gathers what he can of his breath.
When he’s ready to move, he nods, sluggish and letting Jaskier help him up from the chair. His knee still twinges and a whorl of pain digs deeper. Jaskier threads Geralt’s good arm over his shoulder, bracing Geralt’s weight on him. “Let’s go,” he mumbles, guiding his Witcher back to their room. It’s not much of a journey. Though the estate sprawls out in all directions, seemingly reaching for the horizon, their house is small. Perched on the biggest hill, it catches the morning and evening sunlight. Glancing outside, Jaskier spots the sun. Some thick, rain-heavy clouds have rolled in from the neighbouring hills, but for the most part, midday sunlight still streams through, desperate to reach the valleys underneath.
Geralt hates wasting daylight. Jaskier could argue with him; he wasn’t going to be much help around the estate anyway with his pain flaring up. And even then, he’s sure that Barnabas and the other tenants would have glowered at him if he tried to set one foot into the vineyard. Either way, Geralt is going to rest.
The Witcher perches at the edge of their bed, huffing out a sharp breath. He reaches out, catching the bottom of Jaskier’s shirt with his good hand. He tugs the bard over. “Stay,” he mumbles, pulling Jaskier until he’s gathered against Geralt again.
Jaskier huffs a short laugh, curling his arms around Geralt’s neck. He’s mindful of the man’s shoulder, giving it as wide of a berth as he can while he’s ensnared. Geralt hugs him to him for a short, quiet moment, letting their breathing and heartbeat match. The quieter moments are Jaskier’s favourites. He can recall most of the nights spent in rowdy taverns, luring smiles out of his Witcher while he leads a chorus of crowing singing, or lain out underneath the stars, huffing short laughs at Geralt’s stories about the constellations, stories he remembered Vesemir telling him when he was a boy. But he’ll take every quiet and still moment he can get with Geralt; swaddled away from the world, gentled in his arms and where Geralt can actually relax.
The Witcher’s stretched out leg catches his eye. “Do you want me to see to your leg?” Jaskier mumbles into Geralt’s hair, kissing where he can.
“Elbow was worse,” Geralt grunts. Sleep starts to tug at him, luring him further down. He’s growing heavy in Jaskier’s arms. He helps the Witcher down on to the pillows. A collection of them are bundled up by the headboard of their bed; Jaskier grabs what he can and makes a support of sorts for Geralt’s arm. Geralt lets him work, keeping his gaze on the rafters above them.
And Jaskier knows what’s swirling around in that head of his.
Before it can fester, Jaskier cuts in. “You were injured,” he says lowly, mindful of the way sleep seems to be stalking in from the shadows, ready to pounce. “A terrible thing happened to you. But your life isn’t over.”
Whispers brush the shell of his ear.
I feel useless.
I can’t do anything anymore.
What’s the point?
You shouldn't have to coddle me.
I'm not made of glass.
Geralt is a stubborn old bastard. Jaskier has watched him clench his jaw and go out on hunts while they were still trekking through the wilds; taking contract after contract while his muscles and joints screech at him to stop. Even when adjustments were made to his armours, metal supports bound to his thigh and arm to stop the strain of swinging a sword around too much. He adjusted everything around the fact that he was hurt. His fighting style had to change. He couldn’t turn and weave through opponents like he used to. But he kept going.
Jaskier thins his lips. The argument already festered between them. It was a long time ago. He couldn’t stand aside and let Geralt’s own mind rip him apart. And while he’s better now, still frustrated but not as angry, he can stumble.
All Jaskier can do is lend support to get him back on his feet.
Geralt watches him, a small smile ghosting his lips. “Thank you,” he mumbles, his eyelids slipping closed. It’s a struggle to try and open them again, but before he can, Jaskier leans over and pecks a kiss to his forehead.
“Get some rest,” he mumbles against Geralt’s skin, palming a gentle hand over Geralt’s chest. Within seconds, the Witcher is gone – lured under by sleep. It’s a strange feeling, being left alone in the room once sleep has claimed the other man. But Jaskier catches the blankets and draws them over Geralt, mindful of his arm. He covers what he can, staving off the worst of the chill that will ultimately try its best to slip through the cracks in the walls. He’ll get B.B to see to the last of the upkeeps before the winds grow too harsh. Too many nights spent in Kaer Morhen’s halls, huddled with a Witcher under the sheets for warmth, have left him with a not so favourable impression of winter. Though maybe, being as far south as they are, the weather might be kinder. He hopes so.
Glancing up at the slumbering Witcher swaddled in a sea of blankets and furs and sheets, Jaskier's chest tightens. He loves Geralt. He loves him so much it hurts. He pads back over to his side of the bed, parting with a gentle kiss to the Witcher's forehead. Geralt barely twitches. Trying to pull himself away is agony. He could call on the staff to pick up his last remaining duties. They would be glad to help the master Witcher and Jaskier in any way that they can - something they keep telling the pair of them. But his mouth sours at the thought. It's midday, leaning more into the afternoon. Geralt will sleep for an hour, or however long he wants to, and then they'll have dinner. The house will be warmed by the hearths and all remnants of pain wringing through the Witcher will hopefully have been wrung away.
Jaskier's chest lightens at the thought.
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