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ceilidho · 5 months

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prompt: IKEA soap/reader fic. PART 4. (read 1, 2, 3) tags: dubcon; nsfw

You only realize after the fact that you may have miscalculated in thinking that this could be a one-time thing between the two of you.

After listening to Johnny bitch and moan during the Christmas party about having to take time off work to spend the holidays with his very religious family, you delude yourself into thinking you’ll finally be able to have some peace and quiet around the store. Not literally, of course. Working during the holidays is always a recipe for exhaustion—parents coming in at the last minute to demand toys that have long since sold out, fights breaking out in every other aisle as customers fight for the last palatable set of Christmas ornaments and boxed fruit cake.

You’re not delusional enough to think that work will be a piece of cake, but you are selfishly a little happy that you’ll finally get some time to breathe without Johnny hovering over your shoulder at all hours of your shift. Seasonal shoppers are as exhausting as always, but you get to sit alone in the breakroom with a cup of coffee in the morning right before your shift without someone staring at you or breathing into your personal bubble.

Johnny spends his entire time off blowing up your phone, sending you pictures of his childhood home, calling you during your breaks, and sending you weird videos that seem to have been filmed entirely in the dark where you can’t see or hear anything apart from some weird squeaks and one loud grunt at the very end of the video that sounds kind of like—you close the video.

You spend the first few days of January dreading his return. The day of is like a shock to your nervous system, the whole morning spent pouring coffee with a trembling hand.

“Hiya gorgeous,” he purrs when you clock in for your shift. You’re somewhat used to Johnny sneaking up behind you, so you don’t flinch this time when you feel the length of his body press up against you at the time clock.

“Johnny, it’s seven in the morning,” you mutter out through pursed lips, shoulders stiff when he puts his hands on them and digs his thumbs into the tender points of your back. You bite back a moan.

“Missed ye, kitten. Cannae believe I went a whole week without hearing you purr.”

He could’ve phrased that a thousand other ways, but he just had to choose the one that would make you wince. He digs his thumbs in again, trying to push the moan out of you, but you tamp it down. You hold back a shudder when he plants his nose onto the crown of your head and inhales, drawing your scent into his lungs.

“Where’ye assigned ta today? Jeff owes me a favour—gonna ask him if I can spend the day with ye so we can catch up.”

You go still when he drops a firm kiss to the side of your head. “I’m…not sure. I haven’t checked the schedule yet.” It’s a half-lie. You may not have checked the schedule yet, but you know from having briefly chatted with your manager this morning in the parking lot where you’ll be spending most of your day.

Still, it means that you get to shake off Johnny for a bit. “Lemme go check for ye, okay, hen? Stay here, a’right?”

You watch him jog off down the hall to the breakroom before finally leaving. It’ll be better for you if you’re gone before he comes back.

The first hour of your day is spent on softlines until Priya in jewellery randomly comes down with a chill and gets sent home early, forcing you to cover her section. Usually that wouldn’t be such a bad deal—it means you get to spend your shift helping people try on bracelets and rings, restocking the earring display, and leaning against the counter for hours at a time. It’s not a particularly busy station.

While you're assigned to the jewellery section though, Johnny pops out of nowhere as you're helping a customer contemplating a birthday ring for his fiancé. With the kind of confidence that you’ve come to expect from Johnny, he uses your hand to model some of the rings, but this time it feels oddly weirdly intense. When he slides the first ring onto your finger, you can feel the way he holds his breath, even shudders a bit. He presses himself right up against you behind the display counter, hardness pressing against your hip.

It doesn’t take long for your customer to leave. Johnny’s demeanour is off-putting, concerning even. You can’t fault the guy for being rightfully repulsed by the way Johnny crowds up against you like you’re alone together.

“What are you doing?” you hiss through your teeth.

“Cannae help it, hen. I ken ye wanna wait, but it jus’ makes me a bit emotional seein’ my girl wearing a ring I put on.”

He blinks down at you with big, blue eyes, the picture of innocence. You should’ve anticipated there being a danger in letting Johnny stew over that on his own. Of course he’d come to his own conclusions, even one as deranged as thinking of your hook up as a step towards dating. You can’t help but side eye him.

“We—we’re not a couple, Johnny.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Ye just let anybody eat you out in the supply closet then? S’that right?” It’s said rhetorically, like he knows the answer already. You flinch at the slight though.

“That was—” you cut yourself off to take a breath, an ache growing behind your forehead, “—that was a…it was a one-time thing. You can’t just act like we’re dating.”

His lips turn down in a pout, displeasure rippling across his face. You brace yourself for the inevitable argument, for shit to hit the fan, because obviously that’s what’s brewing under the surface. You brace yourself for worse too because when you happen to glance around, you realize how few people are actually milling around in the area.

Then, instead of losing his temper, Johnny’s eyes grow smoky, heavy-lidded, and the pout lifts into a lazy, playful grin. “A’right, kitty, no’ dating then. That’s fine wi’ me.”

This time it’s you that frowns, staring up at him dubiously. “…Really?” It feels too sudden, quicksilver. Johnny’s fiery by nature, short tempered on his best days and more likely to grit his teeth and bear the displeasure of not getting his way than happily giving into it. His sudden smile is at odds with the version of him that exists in your mind, furious at you for denying him.

Maybe you’ve got him all wrong.

The gleam in his eye betrays nothing, however. “I swear.” He leans closer to you then, fingers fiddling with the name tag pinned over your chest on your work vest, straightening it. “Doesnae mean we have ta give the rest up though. Ye liked what we did in the closet, right, hen?”

It feels like he’s sucked the air out of the room, as big as it is. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about that.”

“Och, c’mon, kitty,” Johnny breathes, hunching just a little over and into your space, making the moment feel private, just the two of you. “Had to talk about it eventually. Did ye just expect that everything would go back to normal after ye let me eat ye out? Hey—” he catches you when you try to make a move to step away from him, wrapping a big hand around your wrist and tugging you closer to him, “—listen, kitty—it doesnae have to be anything serious, right? That’s what’s making ye all jumpy and nervous? I’ll lick your pussy, free of charge. Dinnae need any labels. How’s that sound, kitty? Dick on demand?”

It should repulse you. The way he speaks to you is crass, crude. His voice is hushed, haggard, fur stretched taut over stone—and yet, your hands tremble, just a little. It tempts you. Purring Scottish burr, lapis lazuli eyes, bristle cheeks that you still remember scraping up your inner thighs. He’s a package you can’t imagine sending back.

“You won’t get…you promise not to get weird about it?” you ask.

His smile curls up, impish. “Cross my heart, kitten.”

Maybe you’re delusional enough to think that you can have your cake and eat it too. There’s a voice in your head telling you to face the facts, but you disregard it as if you haven’t been working with Johnny for months. As if you aren’t aware of his penchant for saying or doing anything to get his way. It’s maybe naive of you.

All you know is that he smothers a laugh when you tell him you’ll think about it. Knows he’s got you right where he wants.

You don’t fight when he drags you into the single-stall bathroom towards the end of your shift, letting him position you in front of the mirror before sinking to his knees behind you. Forces you to watch the way you come apart on his tongue, not giving you his fingers until you beg him to, the whispered plea a hairsbreadth away from becoming a scream.

“Oh, did she miss me?” Johnny breathes, a happy laugh in his voice when he runs the broad side of his tongue over your entrance from the back. “Fuck, look at that. Winked at me ‘n everythin’. Hi darling, missed ye too.”

You don’t think you’ll ever be the same after hearing that come out of his mouth. You go hot all over again when you clench involuntarily, equal parts turned on and horrified. He sniggers before trying to cram his whole tongue up into you.

There’s a moment of panic when Johnny draws up behind you after making you come and you hear him undo his pants. There’s nowhere for you to go with your pants still looped around your ankles, underwear pulled all the way down as well. You hear yourself hiss a startled Johnny when he slots a fat cock between your thighs, staring dumbly at the reflection of him behind you. At your back, he seems massive, lean and trim but towering over you, broad.

He shushes you. “Dinnae be selfish, hen—gotta get mine too. Jus’ gonna fuck your thighs, dinnae fret.”

You squeak when he pushes your thighs together forcefully, dragging his cock over your folds to wet himself. Watching Johnny fuck is nothing like staring down at him when he eats you out. He pants harsh and ragged into the side of your head, nips at your ear. The glint in his eyes goes animalistic, vacant. Human desire recedes, subsumed into the animal part of his brain with the single-minded need to fuck.

The only thing keeping him from driving up into you, accidentally or not, is the way you keep your thighs pressed together. A warm, tight channel for him to push his cock into. Thick fingers dig into your waist, sure to leave bruises. You wince when lean hips pound against your backside, growing frantic as need overtakes him. You flirt at the edge of panic, certain that at any second, he’ll pull your thighs apart and nudge the head of his cock up into you.

“Jus’ like that, fuck,” he grunts. “Be a good little fuckin’ girl and jus’ let me—”

His tongue lolls out on a particularly rough thrust, hands groping over your belly and up to your chest, slipping his hand under your shirt and bra to pinch your nipple. He twists it mean, nasty, until you have no choice but to grunt through grit teeth, eyes watering. You feel like a doll meant for his pleasure, no choice but to grip the sides of the sink and let Johnny use you until he comes.

“Fuck,” Johnny groans, eyes going half-lidded. “Love makin’ this pussy come. Love gettin’ her all messy and wet. Lettin’ me between your thighs even when I make ye nervous—fuck, ‘m gonna come, ‘m gonna—fuck, fuck, fuck—”

White come stripes the sink in front of you, thick and viscous. Paints the inside of your thighs as well when he drags his hips back until just the head of his cock sits nestled up against your sex. Hyperconscious of where it tags your inner lips, that there’s no barrier between the two of you, just come and skin.

The full body shake shocks you, a ripple from your heels to the top of your head.

His free hand grasps you by the hair when you try to slip away. “Ye gonna clean up your mess, baby?”

You glance back up at his reflection in the mirror, trying to suss him out. Shark-like eyes meet yours. Something you’ve seen in glances before finally staring back at you with full force. You reach for the paper towel dispenser with a shaking hand.

“Nah,” Johnny scolds, giving you a shake. “With your mouth.”

The command hangs in the air, no joke or laugh to undercut it. His eyes read serious to you, still dark. No leniency present in the blue.

You stare down at his come on the sink, slack-jawed. “You don’t seriously mean—”

“Jus’ kidding, silly,” he chuckles, giving a teasing bite to your earlobe and tugging. The tension in the air disperses. “Got ye, huh?”

You force a laugh. “Yeah…got me.”

#i cant believe this shit is at 10k and i still have another part to write #ceil writing #cod mw2 #cod x reader #soap x reader #soap mactavish #john soap mactavish #soap mw2 #soap cod #soap x you #soap/reader #ikea soap

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fluffyartbl0g · 1 year

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Redraw of the panels that SHATTERED MY HEART o(；△；)o!!! OG panels + Opinions on the Luffy separation arc under read more

Okay let me just go on a tangent about my feelings about the post-series Luffy separation arc, cause I think it gets way too much hate when it’s such a heartbreaking and well executed deviation from oda’s standard formula!!! I know that we all love monkey d. luffy and he’s LITERALLY the main character of the series, but it was also really nice to get more time to focus on the rest of the crew. But here’s the thing, even when Luffy wasn’t here, he was still here. And I’m not talking about the so called ‘blessings’ or whatever that kept SUSPICIOUSLY popping up around the crew when Luffy disappeared, I’m talking about the consequences that arised from him disappearing. We truly got to see how grand the effect luffy has had on the world around him, and how many lives he was able to touch ; - ; So even though luffy physically wasn’t present (I mean KIND OF but you know what I mean), this was still VERY MUCH a luffy arc imo.

Oh man but I think Oda wrote luffy’s disappearance so well,,, I was sobbing for like 80 percent of this arc. Like just gradually seeing the crew’s deterioration as time passes by,,, but everyone has such unwavering faith in their captain, he HAS to come back cause Luffy always comes back. But here’s the thing, Luffy didn’t know what was happening to him when he started disappearing. But what he DID know is that he wasn’t sure if he was gonna be able to come back or not. And Luffy hates breaking promises- he’d never make a promise if he didn’t plan to keep it, and he’s not an idiot either, so when he just felt himself disappearing and saw zoro nearby... Instead of saying something like “I’ll be back!” and potentially making his crewmates wait for him forever, he tells zoro to “take care of the crew”... SOBBING AND CRYING T - T. So YES. the crew has unwavering faith in their captain. But. Luffy didnt say that he’d be coming back or anything. So what are they supposed to do really.

And it’s really hard to read at some parts, like it never loses the goofy tone that has been there throughout all of one piece and it’s really sweet to see everyone rely on each other to keep one another afloat, but the slight tension that keeps building up over the months while they keep looking for clues and answers... And how each lead keeps becoming a dead end... When it builds up and Usopp finally voices the thing that’s on everyone’s mind.

Oh man. I started crying so hard. It took 6 month for any one of them to say something. Like this is One piece. Of course Luffy is gonna come back eventually, it would be waay too dark otherwise... But Idk man, even I started to doubt that :((( But luckily. THIS IS ONE PIECE. So right after everyone started,,, well not exactly losing hope or anything (maybe a bit)? but going BATSHIT INSANE FROM THE REALITY THAT THEIR CAPTAIN MIGHT BE GONE FOR GOOD, they finally got a solid actual clue of what might’ve happened to luffy!!! And I’m SO GLADDDD!!!!

Omg and when they tracked down the pray-pray no mi user and finally got some answers out of him. OMG WAIT A MOMENT I REALLY LIKED IS WHEN PRIEST GUY IS LIKE “urerheg without luffy up there as a god the entire world may very well be destroyed cause the sun has been super unstable for centuries blah blah” and then Nami freaking PUMMELED THE GUY AND SHOVED HIM DOWN WITH HER STAFF AND

SOBBING CRYING SOBBING. THEY WOULD POTENTIALLY BLOW UP THE ENTIRE WORLD IF IT MEANT THAT THEIR CAPTAIN WOULDNT HAVE TO BE LONELY ; - ; KILL ME.

URGH I was really hoping that Luffy would return right once they beat him up cause I really really missed my boy, but honestly I think the final method of getting Luffy to return was super clever and absolutely worth the extra 3 weeks of waiting!!! I know that it was foreshadowed across the whole West Blue Saga and everything but I honestly had no clue it would end like that, DONT MAKE FUN OF ME :(((

When the crew finally got their captain back after 8 months of waiting... I mean they’ve been separated before for even longer periods of time, but they always knew that they’d be back together. This time they didn’t know. BUT AREHAHRGE ALL THE PAIN AND SUFFERING WAS SO WORTHIT WHEN THEY ALL FINALLY REUNITED T - T!!!!!! UWAHHWHAHWUAAGGHA!!! AND SEEING ALL THEIR ALLIES AND FRIENDS THEYVE MADE JUST CHEER AND CRY WHEN THEY HEAR THE NEWS!!!! I WOULD CHUCK ALL THE PANELS HERE IF I COULD BUT ID JUS T REACH THE IMAGE LIMIT BECAUSE ALL OF THEM MADE ME CRY ; - ;!!! Literally just read those 5 chapters in the arc finale cause,,,, man so good T - T

Anyways TLDR: The post-series luffy seperation arc is NOT BAD and you guys are JUST COWARDS AND LIARS!!!!

#tw unreality #post-series #one piece #op fanart #monkey d. luffy #roronoa zoro #zolu #nami #usopp #straw hat pirates #gear 5 luffy #op spoilers #one piece spoilers #wano spoilers #please dni if ur a post-series one piece hater >:(#this is a post-series POSITIVE post only!!! Feel free to gush about other post-series arcs that you like on this post :D!!!#(for that person i scared: i put tw unreality higher just 4 u :3)

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nerdpoe · 1 year

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TWINcognito mode (Tim and Danny Pretend to be Twins AU)

AO3, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Danny was floating in contaminated ectoplasm, which was absolutely fucking disgusting. If this was Beelzebub’s idea of a prank, then Danny was going to fill his precious lava lake with jello.

‘Come with me,’ he’d said, ‘We’ll go spy on the living for some fun,’ he’d said.

Then the stupid Demon had knocked him out and now Danny was suspended in the equivalent of sewage.

But something wasn’t right; he had memories that weren’t his and a fighting style that itched under his skin, and his sense of self was muted in a way that only the living felt.

Then the ectoplasm drained, and-

-Danny stood at attention in front of a strange man who was giving off serious stranger danger vibes, bewildered, as said man droned on and on about how he may be another version of Timothy but he would be just as formidable-

-Danny was standing on top of a building, and by this point he was pretty sure that he’d been brainwashed. He needed to find his progenitor, Tim would know how to overcome-

-He was staring at himself, and the self he was staring at stared back in turn.

“Ra’s?” He asked.

“Ra’s.” He answered.

“Brainwashing?” He asked, tilting his head.

“Yes,” he answered, holding his arms out to allow the hit he knew was coming, “Can you undo it?”

His other self smirked.

“I know better than anyone what I’m capable of; of course.”

Red Robin swung out his arm, Danny felt a prick in his neck, and he fell-

-Danny woke up, and for the first time in who knew how long (he knew, it’d been roughly a month of not being himself and also being himself, removed but there), he felt like he was actually present. He could hear Tim rummaging around the kitchen, hear the distant sounds of the city, and started taking stock.

His wrists and ankles hurt, as did his neck. His muscles were sore, like he’d been thrashing around or fighting back. Given the state his progenitor must have dragged him back in, both were likely. He’d likely need further work with an actual therapist to undo the rest, but his head actually felt pretty clear. There were some lingering traces, and he was sure he’d hesitate if he heard a certain phrase or eight from Ra’s, but those could probably be slowly worked out of his system.

Sure, he could just die and go back to being a nearly all-powerful god thing, but…he’d kinda missed being alive. Plus, it wasn’t like he’d completely lost his powers. He could still feel them, they were just muted.

He knew he could fly, had a bit of supernatural strength, could still toss energy bolts and create a shield, but the other powers? Locked away and sealed into his incorporeal form. The powers he just intimately knew he had were the only ones that his current moral body could handle.

So at least he still had a piece of his original self; it would help differentiate him from Tim. A whole person he hadn't known, but now knew better than he’d ever known Jazz. It was weird to think about. At least when Dani had been made, she hadn’t been forced to take reconstructed versions of his memories.

Slowly, he sat up; wincing as the electrodes on his skin fell off. He felt shaky, strained, and…wait.

“Did you just…shock the brainwashing out of me?” he asked, watching as Tim rounded the corner and handed him a cup of coffee.

The laugh that Tim let out was just short of unhinged; a memory that Ra’s hadn’t known to replicate then.

“If electroshock was good enough to turn me into JJ, then theoretically it should be good enough to train my brain away from League brainwashing,” Tim snorted, and Danny was suddenly very sure he Didn’t Want To Know, “We’ll have to keep an eye on you to make sure though. Probably set you up with a therapist or eight.”

“I’m sure the Justice League would have some good suggestions,” Danny agreed mildly, sipping his coffee, “We just need to follow proper protocol for finding a clone that isn’t brainwashed or needs assistance overcoming brainwashing.”

Tim sipped his coffee.

Danny sipped his coffee.

“But we don’t want to do that, of course.”

“Oh no, no we do not. It’s been too long since we’ve had fun, I think.”

“And wouldn’t you know it; I thought of something funny. Wanna do it?”

~~~~~~~

It was funny.

For them, anyway.

The overall gist was; Danny would go to Dinah for therapy, and they’d have to trust in her professionalism to keep his existence secret until he was ready.

Ready for Danny meant, of course, when he and Tim finally got made by the rest of the Batclan.

They were going to play it off that Tim had always had a twin. Daniel Janus Drake-Wayne had always been there, pushed into the background because his parents didn’t want an accident with his powers to get out to the press.

And hadn’t that been a shock for Tim, to learn that his clone-twin had powers?

They’d managed to work it in, though.

So the plan was to make it seem like they’d never hidden that Tim was a twin, doctor literally every single piece of evidence they could electronically to show that Tim had a twin, and work in shifts to drive the family up a wall. All photos had been doctored, signatures had been forged, they’d even forged Bruce’s signature on some doctored adoption papers.

“Oh, I’m emancipated. Do you want to be?”

“Nah, it’d be even funnier if they thought they’d pushed the one still under his guardianship out of the manor.”

“A bit cruel, but yeah that’d really make them scramble. Perfect.”

They would, eventually, start dropping hints that they weren’t there for XYZ meeting, etc.

The family had pushed Tim to the side, and like, sure, it wasn’t really a big deal. But it was super inconsiderate and by proxy they’d also pushed Danny to the side as well, so payback was a bitch and payback was making the entire batfamily question their abilities as detectives and good family members.

“We should get Kon and Bart in on it. Cassie as well, we’ll never sell it without her.”

Tim nodded, already sending out a coded text to his friends. They’d arrive in two hours, when they could make enough excuses to leave without getting caught or raising suspicion.

“I think we should divide up the time they’ve seen us and say that some of that time, for the more public appearances, it wasn’t me.”

“Ohhhh, try to remember the ones you were super uncomfortable at and we’ll say that was me.”

Danny and Tim grinned at each other.

The prank was way too involved, way too intricate, and they were having way too much fun planning it to stop and think about potential consequences.

“Currently I’m trying to break open a pretty big case, I need you to fill in for me at family brunch in a week. Then there’s an extended training exercise in the woods for a week immediately afterwards; all of us are to attend. Substitute heroes have already been selected for our territories. Is that doable?”

“Sure, I’ll get started on freaking them out. Nothing too obvious, but I’ll have to target Bruce a bit differently if I want to avoid confrontation.”

“Of course.”

“I think I like puns. I’ll start with those.”

“Practice now and perfect it; that way it doesn’t seem like you’re new to them.”

“Of course, I’m practice-ly a natural.”

The dead eyed stare that Danny got was worth it.

~~~~~~

Danny stared at his new drivers license; it was designed to look a bit roughed up and older. It was almost identical to Tim’s, picturewise.

He hadn’t really been thinking about it, but he was kind of starting to really like the idea of having an identical twin. He was still hashing out his personality versus the one that Ra’s had tried to install in him, but he felt like having someone to call family, even as a prank, would help him figure it out.

He could still feel echoes of his family bonds, and there was a tentative new one between him and his…twin. He needed to think of himself as that to prevent referring to himself incorrectly in the future.

There were the faint bonds to his parents and his sisters, back in the Infinite Realms, and even fainter ones going to who he assumes were the ‘batfamily’. He hadn’t told Tim, and he was pretty sure he didn’t need to, but he was grateful to get to know them outside of the designation of ‘that clone that got dropped on us’.

And there were Tim’s friends; they’d dropped by, oohed and ahhed, and declared Danny their friend as well. Danny wasn’t sure if the friendship would last, but again; the more family or friends he had, the more secure he felt about himself.

So even if they were on loan from Tim, Danny was grateful for them.

Also they had been 100% on board with gaslighting the batclan and seeing who would notice. From Danny’s memories he had based from Tim’s, he was certain Cass would find out first.

He was pretty sure she’d go along with it.

Danny knocked his forehead on the window as the Uber came to a sudden stop, and the driver nervously looked back.

“Uh, here we are Mr. Drake-Wayne,” the poor man looked like he was terrified to be parked in front of the gates to the Manor, “I can assure you of Uber’s ability to keep customer IDs secure though, there really wasn’t a need for a fake-”

“It isn’t, thanks,” Danny said quietly, letting himself out and walking towards the gates.

This place…was so much bigger than his generated memories recalled.

He heard the Uber tear away, and focused on trying to muster up the courage to walk through the gate. He’d gone over it with Tim, it would be easy. All he had to do was just go in there and socialize.

Was the anxiety he was feeling a Danny trait or a Tim trait? Shit, did one of them have anxiety? Did both of them?

He could almost hear Jazz berating him in the back of his mind, going on and on about taking his mental health seriously. He would have to tell Dinah and talk about feelings.

Gross. He wasn’t looking forward to-

-A car horn blared behind him, almost causing him to give up the game early as he spun around and glared at Jason, a hand behind his back and ready to summon a ball of ecto-plasmic energy.

Jason glared right back.

“Come on shitstain, did you forget how a fucking gate works?”

Danny frowned. What would Tim do?

Another car directly behind Jason’s honked its horn in response.

“Don’t be rude, Jason!” Ah, Dick. A…A witness. Danny had himself a witness.

Ah.

Aha!

That was what Tim would do.

Danny smiled serenely, taking great pleasure at the sudden paranoia and confusion that flashed over his older brother’s face.

“Don’t,” Jason warned softly, grip on the steering wheel tightening.

Danny moved towards the car.

“Timberly I swear to god-”

Danny walked to the car-a classic 1970 mustang, nice-and gently ran his hand along the hood.

Jason snarled and tapped the gas, clearly only intending to spook Danny away from the car.

But Danny stepped forward and into the giant, mostly steel vehicle’s momentum. He made sure to use a little extra strength to dent the front, certain that his mortal body would bruise, and dramatically dropped down.

“What the fuck-” “Tim!” The scream Dick let out was nothing short of guttural, and Danny realized he may have forgotten to take into account the possible PTSD of both siblings.

The door to Dick’s car slammed open and the eldest of them bolted around Jason’s car towards Danny, only for the footfalls to pause long enough for Dick to deck Jason in the face. Perfect. Yes, yes this would do.

Danny grinned as he picked himself up off the ground, quickly wiping it off his face before Dick could notice it.

Jason saw it.

Jason’s glare intensified as Dick hurried towards Danny.

Danny allowed himself to be dragged away from the front of the Mustang and turned his head just enough to stick his tongue out at Jason, safely where Dick couldn’t see.

The blackening eye really did suit the man, Danny thought to himself as he was bundled into the back of Dick’s car. But it was as the Ancients said; talk shit, get hit.

~~~~~~

Cass had frozen at the top of the steps and just stared at Danny as Dick fretted over him.

Danny stared up at her and smiled, allowing his giddyness at the prank to show in his body language for a half a second.

Cass smiled back, letting out a short laugh before she descended the stairs. She made a point to glare at Jason and protectively put a hand on Danny’s shoulder.

Jason spluttered, gesturing violently towards her and then towards Danny. The third oldest snarled when Cass very obviously turned her head away from him, before finally scoffing and storming into the dining room.

“You’re all fucking against me! I’m gonna remember this you little asshole, you better be prepared!”

Danny snickered and stepped out of Dick’s hold.

“I really am fine, you can stop-”

“Tim, I know you and Jason don’t get along but please don’t ever make him hit you with his car again. What if it had been serious?”

Danny flushed, averting his gaze. Damn, he thought he’d done a really good job of acting too.

“Look at this!” Fingers brushed his hair out of his face, focusing on poking at a small bruise on his forehead from the Uber window, “This bruise is gonna be awful, what were you thinking?”

“If you knew, then why did you punch him?” Danny grumbled, the flush increasing as Cass started tousling his hair.

Dick snorted.

“He shouldn’t have made the threat to begin with; we all know you don’t handle threats well or normally.”

Danny opened his mouth to defend himself, but was stopped by a large hand resting on his shoulder.

“Tim, what’s this about Jason hitting you with his car?” Bruce asked, concern managing to worm its way into his voice.

“I’m fine-”

“Tim, your version of ‘fine’ is two days of no sleep and a broken arm,” Dick interrupted, sounding very much like a tired father himself.

“Well, they said ‘break a leg’ but I needed those.”

Dick and Bruce froze, both turning an evaluating gaze on Danny.

“Oh no,” Bruce sighed, reaching out to trace the bruise on Danny’s forehead, “He’s got brain damage.”

“Hey Tim, nice to see you,” A voice loudly interrupted. The voice that said it, for how bright it was, sounded downright cold.

The group froze, all heads turning as one towards Barbara. She was smiling, but it wasn’t a nice smile, and any who knew her (or knew of her well enough to probably know her) knew better than to think she was actually happy.

“I can run the equipment downstairs to make sure he isn’t brain damaged, no need to bother Leslie. Besides, we need to have a little talk.”

~~~~~~

Danny sat on the medical cot.

Bruce and Dick had run to the dining room as soon as they could, the cowards.

Barbara sat in front of him, her fingers steepled as she waited for her own tech to outdo the Bats.

Her phone let out a small ding, and she finally nodded. All recording devices except hers were active. Tapping at her phone, she held it in front of her as his own voice echoed through the speaker.

“Ra’s?”

“Ra’s.”

Man, their voices sounded almost identical. The only real difference was the inflection used.

“Brainwashing?”

“Yes, can you undo it?”

It really sounded like he was just having a conversation with himself.

“I know better than anyone what I’m capable of; of course.”

The recording stopped. Barbara set the phone back down on her lap.

“So. I could swear that you weren’t on any records at all prior to two weeks ago, Daniel. Mind explaining how that happened?”

Danny did mind. The prank had seemed like such a good idea in the beginning, but actually explaining it made it seem dumb in hindsight, and Barbara was scary and reminding him of Jazz-

“The only reason I didn’t rat you out and set the Bats on you is because Cass didn’t say you were a threat. Where’s Tim, Daniel?” Her words were sweet, but Danny knew better.

The time for games was suspended, and he needed to rat out his twin.

“Uh, he’s in the Nest. There’s a meta-trafficking ring, and he’s been trying to find out who the leaders are for like, a month.”

Barbara groaned, reaching up to rub her temples.

“What, so he decided to trade places with his ‘twin’ at the last minute to avoid brunch?”

“And training.”

“Of course he did. I’m assuming he’s also largely responsible for all the documents detailing that you’ve existed forever. What are your thoughts on all of this?”

Danny shifted, uncomfortable with being forced to consider his own feelings on the matter when he was still trying to figure himself out as a person. What he did know, however, was that he was very much okay with this.

Maybe a carefully political answer would appease her?

“It’s a nice, slow way to introduce me to this family without the stigma of being a, ah…’twin’. I’m still recovering from my time with Ra’s, so something like this is just a fun way to get to know everyone. Secretly.”

Barbara’s stare, much like her, was not impressed.

Okay, fine.

“Alright; it may be payback for being assholes to Tim when Bruce was gone and we may want to mess with them. Nothing big, just see how long it takes them to notice? We already have something to hold over them since they didn't realize right away. We’re treating it like a training exercise as well. Pretty much only you and Cass passed.”

Now she looked mildly intrigued.

“...Do you wanna be a part of the test?”

Barbara sighed and threw her hands up.

“Sure, why not. I’ll play along. I do have a condition, though.”

Danny nodded, staying exactly where he was and trying not to vibrate in place.

“I want to use your ‘past’ to teach Bruce about the importance of communication.”

Danny had no idea how she would do that, but sure. As long as he got to fuck with these people, he was fine with whatever she did with his doctored history.

“Yeah, sure, sounds good.”

~~~~~~

Brunch was…an affair.

Damian tried to poison him, Jason kept kicking him under the table, and Dick kept trying to put more food on his plate.

So, Danny stared Jason dead in the eye as he reeled his foot back and kicked with enough force to shove Jason’s chair back a good foot.

Then, turning his attention to Damian, he held the little shit’s stare as he picked up the toast that had been tainted, slowly lifted his hand, and shoved it into Dick’s mouth without looking.

“Thank you Dick, but you should toast-ally have some.”

He felt Dick smile delightedly against his hand.

“Richard, do not swallow that! Spit it out!”

“No Dick, eat it; teach the little demon that there’s consequences to his actions.”

“Did you just try to tip my chair? You little shit-”

“I have the antidote, Big Brother.”

“Thanks Cass! Dami, we’ve talked about this-”

“Master Damian, there will be no poison at the table.”

“Tim, why would you put poisoned toast in Dick’s mouth?”

“Guys why is Tim weird-”

“He’s always weird Duke, I’ve seen him stay up for seventy-two hours just to prove a point.”

“No but there’s something really, really weird about-”

“I’m fine Duke, it’s just a little side effect from the Lazarus water.”

“Wait, the what?”

“The what?” Bruce’s voice ripped through the air, silencing everyone.

Danny frowned. This wasn’t technically something he was supposed to do, but…as the younger twin, he felt it was his responsibility to also inconvenience Tim. His job description was to be a sibling of this family, and a younger sibling he would be. He’d been a little brother once before, and he’d gladly do it again. To the fullest extent of his abilities.

Also he felt like Tim should have asked for help regarding his stalker problem ages ago.

“Well, Ra’s keeps trying to woo me and chases me around Gotham. I was bound to get dosed at some point, it’s not my fault.”

The chaos that ensued after that statement did Danny’s heart some serious good. Yes, this was perfect.

~~~~~~~~~

The batplane was a fun experience. Genuinely; Danny hadn’t gotten to enjoy the flight over to Gotham, and flying was fun no matter the form it took.

“Drake.”

Oh, Danny had been looking forward to this one.

“Wayne.” Danny responded, fighting to keep the joy out of his mouth.

He got to be the big brother this time. Him! Damian was a tiny terror, but he had nothing on the chaos gremlin that was Dani. There was only one thing Danny could do here; destroy Damian’s composure.

“Good, you know my name-”

“Yet you don’t seem to know mine,” Danny sighed, putting on his best disappointed face, “You keep saying Drake but never the full thing; Drake-Wayne.”

Behind Damian Dick was mouthing words at Danny. Probably such words that would tell Danny to behave.

What a pity that ‘Big Brother’ did not mean ‘Parent’, then. Not that Danny had such a good reputation for listening to his parents, and Tim never listened to Bruce anyways.

“I refuse to call you a name that you do not deserve-”

“Hey Bruce, did I trick you into signing my adoption papers?” Danny called out over Damian, drawing Bruce’s attention away from talking to Jason, allowing a shit-eating grin to stretch out over his face.

“No, Tim.”

“Hey Bruce, am I still adopted?”

“Yes, Tim.”

“Hey Bruce, are you gonna send me back-”

“Tim, we’ve been over this. There is nothing you could do that would make me overturn my decision. You are a part of this family, emancipated or not, and there is no escape.”

Huh. While that answer had been a bit more passionate than Danny had expected, it still worked.

“Sounds like I earned the name, Dami.”

Damian’s face was growing red with rage. Luckily, Danny knew just what to do to make it worse; by layering on sarcasm.

“But don’t worry, as your big brother I understand that it is my duty to lead by example. So I forgive you, el-witwaat, for your mistakes. Maybe when you’re older, you won’t make such obvious oversi-”

Danny jerked to the side, dodging the knife and breaking out into slightly hysterical laughter.

“I will find you this week,” Damian hissed, his arms restrained by Dick, “And I will kill you.”

“Timothy, stop antagonizing Damian. Damian, stop threatening Tim.” Bruce sounded every bit the tired dad he was.

“But he-!”

“What was that name you called him?” Duke interrupted, turning his seat. Damian let out a wordless cry of rage, struggling with Dick to get out of the chair so he could presumably stab Danny into silence.

“Oh, what name?” Danny asked, resting his chin in his hand and watching Damian with a wide smile. “Do you mean Dami? That’s the nickname that Dick gave him. Or-oh, wait; did you mean el-witwaat?”

“Cease this at once! Richard let me go-!”

“Sorry Duke, it’s a nickname that only I get to use on him.”

Damian froze, narrowing his eyes at Danny suspiciously. Good. He was right to be suspicious, because Danny wasn’t done.

“But it means the sound that a bat wing makes when it’s flapping. It basically means flip-flap.”

“That’s adorable,” Dick breathed, accidentally letting go of their youngest.

Bruce had to put the plane on autopilot to wrangle Damian and force their youngest to calm down.

~~~~~

The week of training was largely uneventful. For Danny, at least.

Danny found out he could still turn invisible and density shift, and promptly spent the entire time reenacting the poltergeist movie on his new siblings.

Jason kept waking up in entirely different parts of the forest they’d chosen, miles away from the checkpoints. Jason had opted to not sleep, which was doing wonders for the ‘ragged and deranged’ look he was going for.

Danny’s personal favorite moment was pretending to walk into a clearing just as Jason was waking up, surrounded by sticks, and idly commenting “Wow Jason, it looks like you’re in a…sticky situation.”

The wordless screech of rage had been music to Danny’s ears.

Damian was driving himself into the ground trying to hunt down Danny, who just maintained invisibility and density shifting to keep just out of Damians reach for literal hours each day before leaving to mess with the others.

Danny took great pride in that he managed to tuck Damian in every night without waking him up, thoroughly confusing the little demon just as much as he was bruising the kid’s ego.

Duke was left alone. Not because Danny thought he should be spared from their sibling bonding exercise, but because he’d see Danny coming thanks to his powers. There was literally no way for Danny to sneak up on him, and he was pretty sure Duke had clocked him as Not Tim anyways.

Dick lost his socks. All of them. Even the ones on his feet. Then Dick lost his sleeping bag. Finally, Danny collected as many spiders as he could and tucked them away, all neat and tidy, into Dick’s bag.

Dick had been an asshole, and justice needed to be served.

Danny did not feel satisfied or vindicated, however, as when Dick opened his bag and was met with the spiders, all he did was nod and step back to allow them to escape, only saying “Yeah, I deserved that. Good job Tim, I didn’t see you at all!”

Danny retreated. He’d have to have a planning session with Tim to plan a way to get back at Dick properly, then.

Cass was spared out of fear.

Bruce, though. Bruce was approached differently.

If Danny used his powers, there was a chance that the Detective would pin Danny as Not Tim, and with insufficient evidence there was a risk of being seen as a threat. Danny very much wanted to avoid an interrogation.

So Danny had opted to leave his new-old drivers license on the plane as the group was dropped off at various points; he knew the Bat as well as Tim. He knew that Bruce would find the ID, knew he would search it, and knew he wouldn’t say a word until he was sure about something.

And Danny, thanks to Tim’s memories in his mind, also knew that Bruce would never admit to a mistake as big as missing the fact that your adopted son was a twin. Bruce would try to guess who was who, and pretend like he’d known the entire time.

When Danny had stopped by the Base Camp to check in, Bruce had three tablets in front of him, all with information on Danny, and was cradling his head in his hands.

The only thing he heard Bruce say was something about possible brain damage, dimension travel, and messing up the time stream.

Then Bruce had frozen and scrambled for one of the tablets.

Danny decided he’d seen enough, and he was missing out on Damian time.

By the time the week was up, Cass and Duke looked refreshed, Danny accomplished but exhausted, and Dick, Jason, and Damian nearly crawled their way into Base Camp.

And Bruce?

Bruce refused to meet Danny’s eyes, and tried every way possible to avoid saying the name ‘Tim’, but also avoided saying ‘Danny’. Good. He wasn’t sure which one Danny was.

The groundwork had been laid.

Danny felt like patting himself on the back; this was a job well-done.

~~~~~~

Upon Danny’s return to the Nest, he and Tim compared notes about everything that had happened over a nice cup of coffee.

“Oh, also I’m pretty sure Bruce thinks that he fucked up the time line when he was trapped, and that that’s why he doesn’t remember me.”

“Oh! That’s perfect! Yes, that’ll stop him from mentioning it to anyone else. We’re in the clear to proceed as normal.”

The future was bright, and the road to happiness was paved with their family’s confusion.

@terzatheunderscorerima @darkbiscuitvoidstudent @akikkobara @reach-for-the-horizon @bitter-coffeecup @moodycow210 @kisatamao @thefantasmarex

#dcxdp #dpxdc #tim and danny pretend to be twins au #phanfic #TWINcognito mode

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writingonleaves · 21 days

Text

were you sent by someone who wanted me dead? (did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?) - jeremy swayman

pairing: jeremy swayman x original female character

warnings: swearing, pretty angsty. hopeful ish ending because i can't do sad endings, very personal but i think many can relate in their own way, cliche ish, barely proofread

inspired by + title: "the smallest man who ever lived" by taylor swift

word count: 5.6k

author's note: i'd argue almost every piece any author writes is personal, because it has their life interspersed through the words. but this one really is, because a majority of this is the exact same words i wrote years ago after a break-up. heard the bridge to this song and immediately knew i had to write something inspired by it. also trying a new format of sorts (maybe a bit meta??), so i hope you enjoy and lmk what you think!!

~*~*~

When Noelle Betsko walked away from Jeremy Swayman, holding back tears until the call dropped, she knew it was going to be a tough time for the foreseeable future.

It didn’t matter that the pandemic had forced them apart. She knew she would still feel him for months to come.

She did the only thing she knows how to do when trying to deal with things. The one thing she always resorts to as an aspiring novelist. Sometimes on her laptop when the words were spilling out too quickly for her brain to catch up, tears littering the keyboard. Usually in her old beat-up journal, scribbling in the cursive that Jeremy claimed he always loved (“It makes your handwriting unique”) with the pens he had gifted her just a few months prior.

At the age of 21, Noelle got her heart broken for the first time. At the age of 26, she’s about to publish her first poetry collection of sorts, all of the poems modeled after journal entries written throughout her life. So not really poetry, though her mother would say otherwise.

She swallows as she thumbs through the middle part of the first known and binded copy of “miscellaneous.” There are only eight entries in the whole collection that are taken verbatim from her past writing. These are the eight.

May 13, 2020 (three days post-breakup, crying in my childhood bedroom)

I don’t even recognize who I was and who you were in those writings before these pages filled with love and hope and happiness. I can’t even summon up those feelings anymore that I knew existed at one point. Those feelings of complete bliss and love for someone so deep you can’t explain it.

I’m mad at myself for not being able to conjure those feelings, because at one point, I did love you. How could something that was part of my daily life for over two years just disappear so quickly?

But now, I’m not mad at myself. I’m mad, but I don’t know where to direct that anger to. I feel a bit empty sometimes, but then frustrated the next. Sometimes I get sad, but not so much compared to the other feelings. I spent enough time being sad during our relationship.

When we broke up, on an annoyingly beautiful Tuesday in May — over the damn phone, mind you, which whatever, it’s COVID. Fine — You told me you felt like you had been putting more effort into us.

At the time, I didn’t react, but I’ve been thinking about how angry that statement made me. Makes me, actually. I was always very open with how much I gave to that relationship. How much it meant to me. How much it affected me. But I understand that with some people, sharing everything too much equates to things not meaning anything anymore. But you out of all people should’ve known that I mean everything I say.

I felt like I gave so much. I know I gave so much. When I told you I loved you, I always meant it. Every single time. When I told you I missed you, I always meant it. I wished you were right next to me at that moment. I mentally gave so much, because to me, I wanted to. You were always on my mind, always high up on my list of priorities. I never took us for granted.

I’ve been questioning if that was the same for you. Did you start becoming complacent?

The second thing you said that day that hasn’t left my head is that you knew me pretty well. And initially, I remember not thinking much of it. So I don’t doubt that; you always knew right when I was about to cry, even over the phone. You often knew when I was mad or upset, but when I look back now, you never pushed. Which is a good thing, to an extent. But it was a bad thing sometimes too. I knew you often wanted to give me space, but sometimes I didn’t want space. I wanted you to push. To try to understand. Maybe that’s unfair of me; it probably is. I should just say I want to talk about it more, right?

But if you genuinely knew me, you would’ve known.

After two years, seven months and 12 days, I still feel like I didn’t know you. Did I ever know you at all?

When people talked shit about you, I always defended you. And I still would defend you now. But lately, I've questioned what I’m even defending. All those good qualities that I thought you had, were they even real? Of course, I know some of them were, to a certain extent. But as I look back on us, there’s a lot of doubt about whether I even knew the person I called my boyfriend for so long. I know there was a point where you cared about me, but I can’t remember when.

I often felt like I was letting you know so much about my life, but you didn’t do the same. I get that sometimes a person just wants to forget about the bad and focus on the good with a person you like for awhile. I get that. But once that was happening every damn time? That should’ve been a red flag.

June 7, 2020 (twenty eight days post break-up, outside my childhood room on the deck)

I don’t understand how you can give so much to something or someone and have it not be recognized or appreciated or enough. If I wasn’t enough for you, how will I be enough for anyone?

I hope one day you’ll truly understand how much this hurt. Not just the breakup, but feeling like I was always being pulled in a direction I didn’t always want to be pulled in. Feeling I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and never ever being able to win. I hate that I settled so much in the last year. Because I should’ve demanded more, even though deep down I knew you were never going to be able to give it to me.

I think back to our past daily texts, and I just don’t get it. At one point, we both meant the things we said to each other.

Yet we still hurt each other.

This fucking hurts.

You’ve hurt me so much, but most of it wasn’t intentional, which I think is somewhat even worse. Because I’m not totally mad at you for causing the pain. You never did anything outright to cause me pain, but I still feel like you did.

Unintentional pain almost stings more than intentional.

When I asked you out that night after we were both on an emotional high, I took a chance. For once in my life, I took the leap, knowing that I could get humiliated or hurt or just straight up shot down.

Where did it all go wrong? Or, more realistically, how did we think that we could go through the wrong when it was there at the start?

I’m trying not to blame myself too much. Trying not to tell myself that I should’ve known better.

All those times, especially at the start, when I would ask you if you genuinely liked me, you always thought I was just trying to be annoying. But you never understood that I genuinely thought that way. My self confidence from the start was lacking, and you didn’t try to understand that, because I come across to everyone as confident and self-assured.

It hurt, when you would brush things off like that. I felt like you didn’t care.

And then, it got to the point where I stopped asking that question. Part of that is because I did become more confident and you did show that you cared, and part of that was because I knew it would piss you off.

The amount of things I was scared to talk about with you because I knew it would piss you off? I don’t wish that feeling on anybody.

I shouldn’t have been scared. I shouldn’t have been uncomfortable. But I was. And if you did notice like sometimes you claimed to, why didn’t you make it more comfortable for me? Was that too much to ask for?

So larger than life that at the end, you faded into just the smallest man who ever lived. Fuck you.

Was it too much to ask for when I just wanted to know why you were upset? You didn’t have to ever tell me the full story (lord knows there were times I didn’t), but was it too much to ask for something? You told me once that I’m the person you’ve told the most to. How? You barely told me anything. And when I wanted to talk to you, whether it was about growing up in Alaska or why you were in a bad mood last night, you always brushed it off. Always.

So I don’t feel so bad about feeling like I gave more effort. I gave so much of myself to you. If you really cared about me like you claimed you did, why couldn’t you show even just 1% of that care back? Or just meet me in the middle?

I could’ve tried harder to meet you in the middle, I’ll admit that. But you didn’t even give me a map or a clue how to.

I felt so fucking left in the dark. I felt left in the dark about my own fucking relationship, something that I should be completely sure about. If you really love someone and care about them, how can you leave them in the dark? How could you not even see that I was struggling to find a flashlight?

You did care about me. I know that. To some extent and at some point in time, you did care about me. But caring about someone and their well-being isn’t always enough.

Why couldn’t you have worked with me? When I was extending my hand out, why didn’t you reach for it? How can someone just be so blind? I mean, I’m practically always spelling it out for you.

Maybe I am being selfish. But fuck, I just wanted to be happy. At some point, you made me happy. When did I start making you feel like I wasn’t enough? Why wasn’t I enough for you?

It’s useless, in a way, to keep going about this. Because I know I deserve better. And we’ll both find people who are better for us. We just couldn’t be that person to each other.

I fucking loved you.

I wish it ended differently.

July 8, 2020 (fifty nine days post-breakup, in front of the lake)

I really really fucking miss you.

I do.

I miss being able to text you that i love you and not necessarily expecting a response until the next morning. I miss knowing that as soon as you wake up, you’ll text me back and assure me that yeah, you love me too.

I’m left feeling bittersweet as I look back on memories that are just splashes and not definite strokes on the canvas that used to be us.

I miss having you as a friend.

I’ve been having more urges lately to want to text you. And it isn’t even anything important. Just moments I experience throughout the day.

Do you get the urge to do the same?

July 19, 2020 (seventy days post-breakup, still in the same damn house)

It’s hard. It really is. And it kinda just hits you at random parts of the day. Sometimes I wake up from a dream that you were in and have to remind myself that it didn’t happen.

Sometimes it physically aches when I realize that you won’t ever help me put on my jacket again, or complain that my hair is in your face when we’re lying on the couch watching Brooklyn Nine Nine, or groan when I drag you up to dance with me (which you never improved on, no matter how many times I tried to teach you basic rhythm). I can’t view our song the same way anymore, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to.

The other day, I read some simple thing on Twitter. I don’t even remember what it was, but I do remember that for a split second, I could see your smile in my mind. But it wasn’t just any smile. It was the smile you gave me when you took me ice skating that first time. I remember asking you what you were smiling at, and you said that you just were taking in this moment. I don’t know if you took a mental picture that day, but I know I did. That day seems so long ago now.

In almost anything I do, you somehow pop into my mind or into the conversation. And it’s not even in a harmful way either. It’s because you were part of my life for so long. I see a dog on the street, and it reminds me of how you always stopped to pet every single one we’s see I write something in my messy handwriting, and I remember how you always used to complain that you couldn’t read the notes I’d occasionally leave around your place when you went away. I went to the doctor’s the other day, and they said I was 5 feet and 3 inches, which is just definitely not true, and I almost reached for my phone to text you, because you would’ve cackled and insisted that no, I’m 5 feet 2 inches and it wouldn’t even matter because I’ll always be shorter than you. It’s simple and minute things that make me miss you that much more.

I still can’t listen to some songs the same way anymore, but I can at least listen to them now, which is a feat in itself. I was unpacking from college and found the teddy bear you sent me the first extended time we had to be apart and had to immediately put that out of my sight. From those boxes also came photos that I had decorated my dorm room with, and to be honest, I’m glad now that I let you keep our best one. I deal with all my emotions, besides writing, by making Spotify playlists, and I made a new one earlier this week. I think it’s helping. It’s a slow process, this whole moving on thing, but it’s one that I’m trying to be grateful for, because like most things in life, you just don’t truly know until you go through it.

Sometimes, I find myself wondering how you are and how you’re healing. But, even though we’ve both changed since the day we met, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you’re incredibly strong and stubborn. I hope that you’re finding some growth in this process too.

October 17, 2020 (one hundred fifty seven days post-break up, apartment in orono)

It’s been almost 5 months, and you still cross my mind everyday.

Why wasn’t I enough for you? Why didn’t you fucking tell me what you were thinking? Why was I the one who had to approach you just because I was just so done with the silent treatment?

But I’m not mad at you. Not anymore. The mad phase passed ages ago.

Closure is a fake word. Even a breakup as mutual and smooth as ours was still left me with so many questions that will probably never be answered.

Any breakup fucks you up to some extent. I knew it was going to mess me up even back when we were together. But not like this. Never like this.

But like anything in life, I guess you can never really prepare for what you think you might feel, because most of the time, you discover a whole new side of you that you never thought existed.

I don’t miss you. I don’t. I don’t feel that love in any way anymore.

But I did once.

You did too, right?

November 15, 2020 (one hundred eighty six days post break-up, fogler library)

I hate Halloween.

Though, it did bring me to you three years ago. I’m pretty sure I fell in love with you right then and there.

Three years later, you texted me on Halloween, five months after our breakup. The universe really, really wanted to fuck with me.

It was a tough night for you. I knew that. Because I know how you are after losing a game you should’ve won. But that didn’t mean that I owed you anything and had to respond.

We agreed on no contact if we ever wanted to stay friends. Clearly, friends is out of the picture now, but come on. A vulnerable text after a bad night because you know I would feel bad for you?

Fuck, you know how much I would hate that. You had to have known.

Just because we’re not dating anymore doesn’t mean that everything about you just disappears. I still know your tendencies. I still know exactly how my head burrows into your chest during a hug. I still know the actions I used to do that would be followed by you attacking me with a hug. I still could point you out in a crowd.

I looked for you in every crowd for years.

That stuff doesn’t just go away, no matter how much I want it to. But fuck. Fuck. Why did you text me?

I don’t regret how I handled it. I probably would’ve responded months ago. But just like you, I’ve grown these last couple of months.

It was comforting, for a split second, to know that maybe, just maybe, these past couple of months have been hard for you too. It makes me feel human. It makes me feel like I’m not crazy.

I’m glad you texted me. You gave me another level of closure I hadn’t known that I needed until then.

But fuck, dude. You know me better than that. You should know me better than that.

I hate Halloween.

November 26, 2020 (one hundred ninety seven days, at the coffee shop i brought you to when you came home with me two years ago)

I don’t regret loving you, but I hate you for what you did to me.

Or maybe not.

I hate knowing that even though we haven’t been in a relationship in a bit, it feels like sometimes, you’re on my mind the exact same amount when we were dating. I hate knowing that I gave so much of myself and my love to you, and it always felt unrecognized.

Fuck, will it ever stop hurting? Will I ever be able to have to stop myself from thinking about you? Will it ever stop?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Happy birthday. I hope you enjoy it.

June 12, 2021 (three hundred ninety five days post-break up, in boston, visiting a friend)

Tonight, when a friend asked me about you and how I felt about how we ended, I was able to articulate my thoughts clearly. I’m really proud of myself for getting to a point where I can take the lessons I learned the few months after we broke up and acknowledge them in a succinct way without breaking down into tears. Just watery eyes and the occasional voice crack

I’m also proud that I can say that when we were dating, I lost a bit of myself. For months, it was really hard to admit out loud.

I’m proud of how far I’ve come. Sometimes, I wish I could call or text you about it, because I think you’d be proud too. And I know I’d be proud of you. I am, to be honest. I do break resolve once in awhile and check on you through various avenues.

I still haven’t seen you in person since the last time COVID made us say goodbye. Maybe I never will again. But day by day, I’m starting to accept that and be okay with it. I’m accepting that memories that used to be so painted in my mind are blurry or almost completely erased now. But that’s okay. Honestly, it’s probably for the best.

I wonder, when you think about it, if you think about different moments that I do. That’s the thing when something ends. You have to be okay with letting go of those moments and realizing that just because you forget them, doesn’t mean they weren’t important.

I don’t think I miss you. I hesitate in saying that. Because I’ve moved on and handled the aftermath of it better than I think both of us ever thought I could. When you hung up the phone for the last time, I proved to myself again that I’m stronger than I give myself credit for. I think we all are. But we don’t realize it until we’re thrown into a situation that we think we’ll never be able to overcome.

But we do. Whether it’s because we’re forced to because there’s no other option, it doesn’t matter. Because we get through. We move on.

I hope you're moving on.

And then it goes into other topics, graduating during a pandemic specifically and losing what’s supposed to be your last year of no responsibilities before adulthood. There are other poems in here that reference a past relationship, but not as much as these eight.

If there’s one thing that Noelle did change, it was taking out the details. Jeremy may have hurt her, but he doesn’t deserve someone possibly making a connection between these poems and their shared background. She’s not a famous author by any means, but she wanted to be careful.

Not that she makes that part of her life publicly known. People don’t need to know that her brother was Jeremy’s captain for two years at Maine and that’s how they met.

Noelle grew up going to rinks. She hasn’t gone to one since they broke up.

But also, what the fuck? It’s been five years since she’s dated the guy. She really is over it by now, even if his rise to stardom in the Bruins flittering on her social media feeds still sometimes has her swallowing a bit before she can continue with her day.

Brooklyn is far enough from Boston. But sometimes it feels like it’s right outside her door.

She’s proud of her first published work. She really is. People believed in her and after numerous notes swapped back and forth with her editor, she did it. She always knew she wanted to work in publishing. She never knew she herself would publish anything.

And here she is now, two weeks after the book release, in Boston, about to do a q&a and a signing. Apparently, “miscellaneous” has been on top of numerous lists and it’s flying off the shelves. Noelle can’t really believe it and tries not to think about it too much, trusting her agent with all of that.

She’s happy to talk about her work and process though. That she can handle. And she’s grateful for all the love.

After a signing at a local bookstore, she decides to walk the 20 minutes home in the Boston fall. It’s a bit brisk, but she doesn’t mind and she just wanders, belly filled with delicious sushi she inhaled for dinner with an old friend.

Of course it happens the one time during her walk when she doesn’t avoid eye contact with someone. The song playing in her earbuds fade out of her focus and she almost stumbles.

Jeremy’s eyes were always Noelle’s favorite thing about him. She thought she would’ve forgotten what they looked like by now. But clearly she hasn’t.

Her eyes quickly cast to the person next to him. It’s definitely a girl. They’re a bit too far away for Noelle to pick out details. But it’s enough. He’s walking on the side closest to the street. It’s a Friday Night in a bustling part of the city.

It hurts. She wishes it didn’t.

Even from far away, she sees his eyes blink in recognition. Noelle puts her head back down and walks faster.

(She cries in the shower when she gets back to the hotel. She had debated feeling super sorry for herself and going to the hotel bar but refrained)

She has a few free days in Boston before flying back to New York. When she wakes up the next morning, she debates on going home early. But no, she won’t let a three second glance at someone ruin her time here. She used to occasionally come here during her college days. She loves this city.

The city may be Jeremy’s, but she can make space for herself here too.

She takes her time at a cafe, people watching and eating some breakfast. As she takes her coffee to-go, she looks out the window at the bookstore she was in the night before for the signing. She almost drops her coffee.

Jeremy walks into the book store.

Now, Noelle is debating her options. What she should do is continue with her day and walk in the opposite direction. But she’s always been too nosy for her own good. And maybe a bit self destructive. She decides to leave the cafe and cross the street immediately, so impatient to where she’s almost tapping her foot as the pedestrian signal stays red.

As a writer, she’s no stranger to movie moments. The scenes written in books or movies where the timing is too accurate to be real. The situation too good to be true. But after a car speeds through an orange and she can finally walk, she stops in her tracks instead, feet glued down to the sidewalk.

Because Jeremy is right in front of her on the other side of the street. Her book in his hand. And he’s looking right at her.

The first feeling she can recognize in herself is anger. Anger at the way their relationship panned out. Anger at the way they ended. Anger at the radio silence the years following. Anger at him for everything. Angry at herself for everything.

The second feeling is, weirdly, shame, which she’s embarrassed by. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. But she feels it anyways.

The third, and perhaps the most prominent, is emptiness. Five fucking years later, and she’s brought back to the emptiness she felt immediately after they broke up. The emptiness that the person you loved isn’t yours anymore — who maybe wasn’t ever yours to begin with.

Before she can run, he’s already crossed the street to her. He looks naturally different as someone who you haven’t seen in five years would. But he also heartbreakingly looks the same.

“We should get out of people’s way,” Noelle manages to chokes out.

Jeremy laughs a bit. Her heart lurches. “Yeah.” He starts walking and she follows him wordlessly. This is his city after all.

He leads them to a bench under a tree with beautiful fall foliage. She puts at least a foot between them as they both sit down, staring out at the people passing. She can’t take the silence.

“I see you bought my book.”

“I did,” he replies evenly. “Congratulations. I always knew you would do it.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. Maybe if she squeezes hard enough she’ll forget when she originally pitched Jeremy the bare bones idea of the exact same book that’s currently in his hand. “Thank you. Congratulations to you too. On everything.”

“You’ve been watching?”

She shakes her head. “No. But, you know Seth and…yeah. It comes up during family calls sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you say hi last night?”

She looks pointedly at a couple walking their dog. “You seemed busy.”

“She wasn’t-that-it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh. Because that makes me feel so much better,” she spits out, before taking a deep breath. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. We broke up ages ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she gives him a look and is slightly proud of how he seems to shrink into himself a bit. “I-I know it’s five years too late. I know I didn’t handle it as well as I should’ve. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

The thing is, Noelle always thought that maybe hearing an apology someday would make her feel better. But now that’s heard it, she’s not sure she does.

She swallows. “I appreciate that.”

“I’ve already read it, you know.”

“Read what?”

Jeremy runs a hand through his hair. “Your book. One of my teammate’s girlfriend recommended it and I asked to borrow it. It’s fantastic,” He looks down at the book in his hand. It’s like the cover is taunting her. “I wanted my own copy.”

“Oh.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For letting me off the hook with the poems I know were about me,” he scoffs, shaking his head at himself. “You could’ve written way worse.”

She can’t help but let out a chuckle. “I thought I was pretty mean.”

“Your definition of ‘pretty mean’ is tame compared to a lot of people,” he says, mindlessly flipping through the pages of the book. “You were always the kindest person, even when you shouldn’t have been..”

He puts his hand out in her direction, the hand with the book in it. She furrows her eyebrows. “What-”

“Could I get a signed copy?”

“Jeremy. What do you want from me?”

He sighs, taking his hand back. “A chance to apologize?”

“You’ve already done that.”

“Not in the way I want to and what you deserve.”

She lets out a sigh, turning to face him fully. “I don’t know if that would be worth my time or yours. I know the book just came out, but that was five years ago. I’m over it. Forgive and forget, right?”

“But do you?” Jeremy counters back. “Clearly, you don’t forget, which I deserve. But forgive?”

“We’re just going in circles now.”

“No we’re not,” he says firmly. “You’re just shutting me down because you don’t want to talk about it. I’ve had five years to prepare what I would say to you if I saw you again. You’re telling me you haven’t?”

“Of course I have,” Noelle tips her head back. “But also, what’s the point?”

“The point, is that I still love you.”

“Fuck you,” she says in a strained voice. “You can’t just-you can’t just throw that shit out there. Fuck you.”

He bites his lip, and to her annoyance, he laughs. But she listens more carefully, and it sounds very self deprecating. “I deserved that.”

“Yeah,” Noelle looks down at her feet. “So…what? You still love me?”

“I do.”

“And what are you going to do about that?”

“What are you going to let me do?”

“I live in Brooklyn.”

“I know,” she whips her head up. Jeremy looks sheepish, which she didn’t even think was something he knew how to do. “Seth mentioned it when we caught up a bit ago. I also still follow you on Instagram.”

She tries again. “It’s been five years.”

“And I’m here sitting with you and still feel the exact same way I did back then. Even more, to be honest.” He eyes her pointedly. “Any more excuses?”

Her voice softens. “You really hurt me.”

“I know. And I’m so sorry, Noelle.”

“I hurt you too.”

He shrugs. “We were young and stupid.”

“And we’re still not?” Noelle says with a snort before swallowing. “I’m not the same person you fell in love with.”

“I’m sure I’m not either. But I don’t know if there’s a world where I don’t love every version of you.”

“Even after reading the book?”

“Especially after reading the book,” he sighs. “Noelle, I know this is unfair of me. All of this. And I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to reach out. But I always intended to. And then you’re here? And I see you twice in two days? I’d be an idiot to not try. More of an idiot than I am, anyways.”

“Try for what?”

“A second chance? To be friends? Whatever you want.” He suddenly deflates. “Even if you don’t want anything to do with me. At least I’ll know.”

“Why did you never text me?”

“I thought about it a lot,” he admits. “I tried once, actually, after the high of a really good win. But it didn’t go through. I got the message.”

“The message?”

“You blocked me, right?”

Oh. “Yeah,” she lies. “I did.” She reaches into her bag for a pen and gestures for the book, which he gives to her, a curious gleam in his eyes. “I’m in Boston for two more days, including today.”

He takes the hint immediately. Eagerly. “I have a game tonight, but I’m free tomorrow.”

“Who are you guys playing?”

“Toronto. And I’m starting. Should be a good one.”

She hums non-committedly, scribbling on the inside of the front cover. She hands it back to him with a small, close-lipped smile. She nods at him to read the message.

to my first fan,

i still love you too.

xxx-xxx-xxxx

yours,

noelle

He looks up, eyes shining but a bit confused.

“I never blocked you. I just changed my number.”

“Oh.”

“And even if I still love you, I’m still mad at you.”

“I know. I’d be more surprised if you weren’t.”

She stands up, adjusting the bag on her shoulder and putting her sunglasses on. “Text me?”

His mouth splits wide into a grin. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

She backs away with one last attempt at a smile before turning down the street.

#k writes #hockey fanfiction #nhl #nhl fanfiction #nhl fanfic #nhl writing #hockey blurb #hockey writing #boston bruins #jeremy swayman #jeremy swayman blurb #jeremy swayman writing #jeremy swayman fic #jeremy swayman fanfiction #jeremy swayman x ofc #jeremy swayman x oc #jeremy swayman x reader

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ghosttownwherenoonegoes · 2 years

Text

Imagine being insecure about your relationship with Eddie (GN!reader).

Tw; insecure reader, swearing, Eddie maybe has a rough approach to this? Basically forces reader to tell him what’s wrong, negativity, one sentence implies Eddie wants to vomit out of anxiety but it's entirely metaphorical and so quick you might miss it, this is a comfort piece…. Inspired by my own feelings tonight.

The GIF is how I imagine him looking at reader as they spill their feelings.

Tagging people I think may enjoy - @hersweetrevenge @eddiebunson @dreaming-of-fictional-characters @seidenbros let me know if you want to be removed from this post!!!

Word count: 1, 605.

For a while, you sit on it. You chew on your lip, clench your fists, keep your thoughts locked between your teeth. Eddie lets you have your space, he lets you seek comfort from him and even though the questions burn him, he keeps them inside.

You’ll come to him when you’re ready and not a moment before.

Except this time, you don’t.

Days pass and your mood worsens and Eddie’s not sure if you know that you’ve started to pull away from him, emotionally and physically. You’re hugging him, kissing him, but you’re also not there with him. It gets to the point where Eddie would straight up just rather not be affectionate with you, as opposed to being hugged by you but feeling like it’s an echo of what he knows you normally give him. He's always been all or nothing. It’s torture, watching you hurting right beside him but feeling like there's a wall between you, it is, and he’s worried and frustrated and you’re stood right there but he misses you.

Eddie tried patience. He gave you space. It got worse. So then he steps in. Enough's enough.

“All right, sweetheart, what’s biting at you?”

“Nothing, Eddie, I’m fi - “

Eddie snaps.

“Don’t bullshit me! You’re eating yourself alive, have been for days, and I wanna know why!” Eddie takes a deep breath. He sees the way you shrink into yourself and in an attempt to calm himself, he goes back to his trail mix, angrily nibbling on a pretzel as he looks up at you. Despite how rough he's being, you know it's worry. For you.

Your insecurities aren't just affecting you anymore. They are now taking chomps out of Eddie, too. You never wanted it to go this far.

Time to let it all out.

“I just…” you inhale, exhale. Again. Close your eyes. Inhale, exhale, aaaaand, “I don’t think I’m… I don’t feel like you and me, like we…” Eddie’s breathing has gotten deeper, he’s trying so so hard to be patient, to not jump the gun. Just like when Dustin has to go through a paragraph for what is effectively one sentence (and fuck, Eddie loves that little shrimp), Eddie gives you that same space to reach your own conclusion, even with his anxiety rising so strongly that he feels sick. He shoves his trail mix away. It never tastes good the second time. “I don’t think I’m the right person for you.”

“Why?” A bullet out of a gun,or a whip crack. Sharp. No messing around. Eddie wants his answers now.

Your forehead grows hot from the inside but still, you push on. You’ve been sat on this for so long that it’s been driving you crazy and you want to tell Eddie, you have this entire time, but how?

Like a bandaid. One, two -

You tell Eddie everything. You leave no stone unturned, no ugly thought unvoiced, and Eddie sits in silence the whole time, his dark eyes fixed on your face. He sees every hitched breath, every hard swallow, every hand tremble, every shaky attempt to stop yourself from totally breaking… Eddie sees you and it threatens to shatter him where he sits. His breathing is deep now, visibly trying to keep himself calm.

Finally, Eddie says, “you done?” In a totally dead tone of voice. It’s so flat that your eyes shoot up to meet his for the first time since you started to vent, and the look on his face knocks all the breath out of your lungs. You knew he’d be upset and that was a large part of why you hadn’t wanted to tell him anything about how you were feeling.

“Yeah, I… that’s all.”

“That’s all?” He sasses you with a tilt of his head, his dark curls brushing across his shoulders, “that’s all?”

You nod, eyeing him carefully.

“If I ever - “ he gestures at you with a pretzel held between two fingers like his beloved guitar picks, “and I mean ever,” his eyes become glassy with tears, “hear you talk so cruelly about my Y/N again, I’m gonna kick your ass, ‘kay?” He shuffles forward, hands hovering in the air in the space between you. An invitation. Your heart bleeds - you miss him so much - and you allow him to lace your fingers together. Eddie squeezes around your grip like it’s his last lifeline and his chocolate eyes practically beg you to listen to him. To listen. “‘Cause here’s the thing, sweetheart,” a wry smile, “all that stuff you said there? Total fucking bullshit.” Eddie narrows his eyes. “I’m gonna be totally straight with you, and I need you to hear me out. I've listened to you and now you're gonna listen to me." You haven't seen Eddie so serious for a while - not since the last campaign and certainly never directed at you - and it's dizzying.

You nod your consent so now it’s Eddie’s turn to vent. Every insult you voiced? Was digested and now Eddie gives you the same thought but reframed in a positive light. He has something positive to say for everything negative you said, he covers all his bases, uses everything he knows about you to touch your soul, wipes the tar away from your heart with a careful hand. Every insult you threw at him is thrown back as a compliment; your own words used against you. Eddie knows he can’t eradicate the insecurities but he’ll be damned if he lets you sit with them alone.

As quickly as his tone got rough, it mellows right out again.

“Bottom line, sweetheart, is that I love you. So, so much, for so many things. But mostly ‘cause you’re you, and I wouldn’t want you any other fucking way. Because then you’d be someone else, and they’re all taken. I don't want to be with anyone else. I just. Want. You.”

Eddie's voice trembles somewhat and what you perceive to be pain only makes your own that much more obvious. Finally, those tears which had been in his eyes began to spill over, making his chocolate eyes look that much more devastating, and the anger's gone. Anger is a secondary emotion anyway and it usually hides fear or sorrow.

In this moment, Eddie is both as he shifts in his seat, opening his arms up to you and offering you a place on his denim throne - his lap.

You go to him, no hesitation, like a string existed between your bodies, after days of pulling away, and Eddie practically moans when you slide into his lap. Locking your arms and legs around him. You've always wanted to climb Eddie like a tree, so that makes you a koala, right? Well, maybe not. Maybe Eddie is the koala, because he latches onto you too, burrows his face into the crook of your neck, and holds onto you so tightly that you almost have to concentrate just on breathing.

You run your hands up and down Eddie's back, comforting him as much as he is comforting you. Kisses are pressed all over his head, shoulders, anywhere you can reach, and your neck receives similar treatment from Eddie. His lips are slightly chapped, warm and dry, his nose pressing against your skin. Two tried and tired people coming back together, reaffirming their love for one another.

"I thought you were gonna leave me." A small, broken voice, confesses to your skin. Eyes shut tight, Eddie's voice breaks in multiple places. "Thought you were breaking up with me when you started finally talking to me. Got so scared, sweetheart."

The intensity when you first spoke to Eddie about all of this makes even more sense now. It wasn't anger... it was fear.

"Oh, Eddie, no," Tears drip into his hair as you cry, relief and worry and guilt and anxiety and love, and he pulls away from the embrace just enough to be able to cup your face in his hands, wiping your tears away. You do the same for him, forehead kisses and soft, sad smiles exchanged between you. "Honey, I'm sorry. How could I ever leave you? I love you. Just got all up in my head, I just... I look at you and how wonderful you are and then I look at me and I just... it doesn't make sense."

Eddie shakes his head fiercely, his hands tightening on your face. Tears drip faster for the both of you. "It doesn't have to make sense, Y/N. Just feel it. I love you for you, 'kay? Don't want anyone else." He hasn't been loving you right, not if you've been feeling like this. Neither of you know it, but you both feel as sick as the other person, desperate to make things better, using the love you felt to push through the barrier in your path.

You open your mouth to speak but then closed it again. What more was there to say?

How long you both sit there, exchanging kisses and soft sad smiles, reassuring touches, neither of you know, but the aches in your souls are soothed by it, by each other, and isn't that what truly matters when it comes down to it?

Two people so right together could never be wrong and if sometimes you can't see or feel that, it's okay. Eddie will feel it enough for the both of you, and lord knows he has just as many insecurities as you do. But together you work through it every time, because neither of you will accept anything else.

Together.

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson comfort #eddie munson drabble #stranger things 4 x reader

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tinydeskwriter · 1 year

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Buzzfeed:The 10 Times Harry Styles and Y/n Y/l/n Made Us Believe in Love

A/n: I have been working in this for some time, I was pretty much inspired by my Jack Harlow piece, someone send a ask about doing one for Harry, and it’s just fluff💗 all the pictures are just illustrative, there is no face-claim, nothing, it’s just o ‘illustrate’ the article (?)

The 10 Times Harry Styles and Y/n Y/l/n Made Us Believe in Love

10. They Have Known Each Other for Years Before They (Finally) Started to Date

When it comes to famous couple we hardly ever know how they met, but not with this hot couple. It was Stevie Nicks who first spilled the beans:superstar Harry Styles and nepotism babe Y/n Y/l/n met back in May 2015 at the backstage of a Fleetwood Mac concert in London, while attending with mutual friends and Mr.Styles took her out for a bite afterwards. According to rumours Styles and Miss Y/n were seen out and about around London during the month of May and she was photographed in a One Direct concert in Wales, and then Harry reportedly dated a string of Victoria Secret models and Camilla Rowe…

Asked about it in a interview with Vanity Fair, Y/l/n said:”I was very young back then, just seventeen, still a little green and naive in this whole ‘love game’, we liked each other very much, but at that time we would have just… crashed and burned. Feelings were hurt, but it’s safe to say we’ve kept special places for each other in our hearts, and when we met again at Shangri-La we just fitted together…”

A Bonus: While promoting her new movie with Julia Roberts, Y/n Y/l/n was asked by James Corden about the rumor that her famous mom ‘just loves to public embarrasses her’, to which Y/n gave us a funny story: ‘So, as a teen I just loved Harry Styles, you know: the hair, the eyes, the dimples… I was like: we are soulmates, we are destined for each other. I had a framed poster of him in my bedroom. So… we are traveling from London to LA, my mom had just finished a movie, we are at the airport, and a few foot away, handsome as ever is Harry Styles, and his whole boyband… my mom recognized him from my posters and basically all my gadgets background, and she goes: excuse me… hi, Harry, my name is Y/m/n Y/l/n, my daughter just loves you… and she wouldn’t stop… let’s just say I spent a long time hiding in the ladies restroom’ Y/l/n added: ‘Harry actually finds the story funny and always tells all of our friends’.

There it goes: Y/n Y/l/n is jus like every other teenage with a Harry Styles crush.

9. They Rekindled Their Romance at the 2019 Met Gala

Harry co-chaired the event. Y/n made her solo debut—this is her third year attending the gala, but the first time without either her famous parents—, she attended as a guest of Gucci, dressed in a green-glittered-feathered gown custom designed for her by Alessandro Michele. The twenty four years old singer and the twenty years old actress were pictured in he pink carpet and, I mean, just the way they looked at each other screams volumes.

We may not know what happened inside the gala, but we can have a idea by the after party picture, and let’s just say:you can manage to see a photo of either of them where the other isn’t by their side or the background.

Dating rumors started after pictures were published of Harry and Y/n leaving the after-after party in the same car with Styles gentlemanly carrying Y/l/n red gown’s train.

The same month ‘sources close to the couple’ reported that Harry and Y/n actually met months in advance to the gala ‘Y/n was working with Mark Ronson at Shangri-La in Malibu, her and H stared as friends, just going out and spending time together, things changed in Italy in early 2019 when they decided to go together for fittings with Alessandro’.

When questioned about the young couple went with the standard: We’re just friends.

8. Their Romance is Packed With PDA

Though they keep their ‘Just Friends’ answers, the couple haven’t shied away from some good old Public Displays of Affection. And this says something when we’re talking about Harry Styles.

And they’re cutie.

7. We Got a Glimpse of Their Romance in August 2019 When Photos of Y/n Got Shared in The Internet

O-kay, it’s totally not okay for someone close to you—someone you clearly trust— to leak private pictures of your private instagram to the world. Y/n private IG account went from 167 followers o 165 after pictures the actress posted on her profile were printed and leaked.

That being said… We can’t deny Y/n and Harry are a cute and romantic couple:

I mean: she even uses his picture as a book-marker, this is pure fluff

6. Fans Noted This Little Detail in Paps Photos

The couple has a matching tattoo, and we’re dying. Nothing screams ‘Love’ like a matching tattoo.

5. That Lego Bouquet

Y/n was there for her man during SNL, as Harry was both host and musical guest. And she got him a bouquet… of Legos.

Sources said ‘Y/n has been here with Styles all week, Harry, surprisingly is a very shy guy, so she was always keeping him calm and relaxed, helping him with his anxiety, and just being a helping hand, they keep in their own bubble but are very approachable’.

4. December Was a Emotional Month For Harry and Y/n ‘s Fans

Little Women was released and our girl slayed as Jo March in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation. During promotion Y/l/n was paired with Pugh and Chalamet, and those tree were the trio of BFF’s we needed. Y/l/n and Chalamet chemistry—this is their second movie together— generated a few rumors of troubles in paradise.

But it was all just rumors, as Y/n was photographed at Styles one-night-only show at The Forum in Los Angeles,

She was once again by his side in London.

The bomb that broke millions of hearts came in 28 December.

In a joined statement was released by Styles and Y/l/n teams… After Academy Award winner filmmaker and producer, Y/f/n Y/l/n, communicated to the world in his official website that his wife and him ‘are happy to announce the marriage of their youngest daughter to Mr. Harry E. Styles’ all very formal like Y/f/n usually is.

The couple got married in 18 December at Hampstead Town Hall in London, both their families were in attendance. The couple asked for respect of their privacy, and announced that they would continue to live bi-continental.

3. Harry Styles Music Videos and… Surprises.

We hoped, but we weren’t sure, that we would see Y/n in Styles Music Videos, I mean, isn’t a rule somewhere that if you got a gorgeous, Academy nominated actress for a WIFE, you must put her in your MV’s? No?

Harry didn’t disappoint us. The singer and his wife frolicking by the beach, feeding each other fruits is a state of mind.

It also marks the debut of Y/n in Styles public feed.

Styles was praised by models in his video for asking for consent to touch them while filming, it was also said that the couple is very much in love and still in their honeymoon phase, just enjoying being together with one saying ‘when they looked at each other, you sometimes felt like you’re invading a private moment, Harry wouldn’t stop gushing over Y/n and how she inspired his more soft romanic songs’ and ‘they are just so nice to everyone’.

The surprise came months later during the release of ‘Golden’. The song is said to be about Y/l/n, with fans nothing that the actress and our favorite nepo babe has ‘you’re so golden’ tattooed in her ribs since 2017.

The video was filmed in the Amalfi Coast, with Styles running and driving around, Y/l/n doesn’t show up until the end, looking very gorgeous in white… and sporting a small baby bump. Yep, the couple probably had the best pregnancy announcement of 2020.

2. Harry Styles Being a Supportive Husband

2021 was a great year for Y/n Y/l/n, and no one can deny.

The actress welcomed her first child in early February. She went on to own a Golden Globe and a Emmy for her Netflix Miniseries.

The couple had their red carpet debut while attending the Grammys, with Styles proudly showing off his wife, the actress got candid while admitting that it was her first time going out without the baby, and though the child was with ‘grannie Anne’ the new mom still felt anxious.

In a interview with Kelly Clarkson while talking about parenthood Y/n said ‘It’s a crazy rollercoaster, they grow so fast! We decided, for now, not to have a nanny, we just want to enjoy all those little moments that we can, so it is being kinda of nuts, but we have a great team and a very supportive family. Harry is great, he aced the nappy game and night feeding, he’s a amazing daddy, we often joked that H had amazing fun uncle potential, but he’s positively surprising us all, he just goes beyond, the best parenthood partner a girl could ask for. Definitely my favorite dilf.’

1.Harry’s House.

Months before the ‘Adore You’ crooner announced his new album, Styles shared a candid picture of himself, his wife Y/n and their babygirl Delilah, with the caption: Home.

In early April the lyrics of ‘As It Was’ confounded fans a little, until four months later the couple announced the birth of their second daughter, Talulah, and their relocation to England in a more permanent scale. The couple not only has been living in London since mid 2021, they also acquired two homes in Styles motherland. Styles in a interview with Apple Music, said about his move: ‘A lot has change in my life the last few years, my home are now three amazing girls, my gorgeous wife and our two baby-daughters, but England is my comfortable place, initially we moved because I was going to film a movie, Y/l was still pregnant with Talulah, one night I come home after shooting and my wife goes: what do you think about moving here for real? And she goes on: I just spent an afternoon at a public park with Lilah without men with cameras following us around. It was a no brainer decision, we’re very happy, Lulah was born in London, my mum and sister are always around, I’ve never been happier’.

#harry styles imagines #harry styles imagine #harry styles blurbs #harry style blurb #harry styles #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x you #harry styles x reader #harry styles x actress!yn #harry styles fluff #harry styles social media

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redditpinterest · 4 months

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the grudge | conrad fisher

conrad fisher x female mc

summary: sometimes the person you love most can be the one who cuts you the deepest. for delaney and conrad, they haven't talked in years. not since that night. not since delaney had confessed to her best friend that she was in love with him.

word count: 3k

warning: mdni, sexual content

author's note: this is a little angsty but also cute ig

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

They say a friendship breakup feels a thousand times worse than a romantic one. Losing that person that feels like your other half, the one you could get stranded on an island with and still find something to laugh about. I suppose that it's true. Losing my best friend feels like a piece of my heart has been ripped out, thrown to the side as though it were perfectly disposable.

I hate Conrad Fisher. I hate him for making me love him. Everyday, I think about that Friday in May. That phone call, the malice in his voice. Everyday I think about it. And most of all, I hate that I made him hate me too.

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Nicole had dragged me to this party, demanding for me to get my ass out of the house. I had spent all summer pent up in my room doing online classes to get a head start before starting at Stanford this year. Plus, I didn't want to risk seeing him. Knowing what he said to me. So I had let summer pass me by, not stopping to admire the feeling of the sun gracing my skin or spending all day basking in salt water. I hadn't felt the satisfying pain of a sunburn from spending the whole day outside, despite reapplying sunscreen each hour.

I guess I figured that if I could distract myself, I wouldn't have to think about what existed outside of my room. The reality that Conrad Fisher hates me, and I hate him too. It wasn't always like that. We had grown up quite the pair. I remember days where he would spin me around the kitchen of his house next door, the sweet melodies of Billy Joel filling our souls. But something so perfect can't last forever, and it's my fault for ruining it.

With Nicole's hand in mine, we step through the cream threshold of the house. I believe that it's Gigi's and her parents are gone for the weekend. The smell of alcohol immediately fills my senses, making my stomach churn, along with the blasting house music.

When Gigi spots me, she throws her arms in the air, squealing with delight.

"Look who finally decided to join us!"

She sloppily encases me with a hug, throwing her arms around my shoulders. I smile against her, missing the feeling of being around my friends.

"I've just been busy with school Gig. You know I would never purposefully miss hanging out with you."

She pulls back, rolling her eyes playfully and making Nicole hug her next.

"Yeah, right, Stanford."

We both giggle as she pours me a beer, and I take it gratefully. Though my senses prick when I feel somebody else walk in the room. I know who it is immediately, not bothering to turn around and deal with him.

Holding my cup in my hand, I smile tightly at Gigi and Nicole.

"I'm gonna go use the bathroom. Don't have too much fun without me."

Turning on my heel, I keep my head down, beelining for the bathroom. The stairs feel a mile long as the ache in my chest begins to build, each step seeming to grow double in front of me. I finally make it to the bathroom, shutting the door quickly behind me and holding my hands on the counter for support. I squeeze my eyes shut to try to relieve some of the pain, but it's no use.

I should be over this by now, it's been two years since it happened. Somebody is knocking on the door, probably some drunk girl needing to go pee, but it all sounds muffled.

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Nerves eat at my stomach as I walk with Conrad on the beach. I don't know exactly when I fell in love with him, it's not like it happened suddenly. But recently it's been so overwhelming that my heart seems to ache every time I'm away from him, and on the verge of bursting when I'm near him.

He's talking about football right now, the camp that his dad's sending him to at the end of the summer. The end of May lingers like perfume, the final days of school transitioning to the beginning of summer. I can't seem to find it in me to pay attention to what he's saying, knowing that what I'm about to do will change our friendship forever. For however terrified of losing him I am, I am equally as sure that I need to tell him.

"Conrad." I say softly, my voice shaky.

He doesn't hear me, continuing to talk about dreading the drills and the shallowness of the team. I shake my head, urging myself for confidence.

"Conrad." I say, slightly louder.

This time he pauses, his head turning toward mine as I halt in the sand. My sandals feel heavy in my hand, the midday sun blazing onto my shoulders. Conrad is standing in front of me now, with his hair blowing into the coastal wind.

"What's up?" His brows are furrowed, as if confused by my demeanor.

I think my heart might actually beat out of my chest.

"I-" I start, "I've known you for like my whole life and you're my best friend."

He nods reluctantly, eyes holding mine.

"And you're mine. What's going on?"

I close my eyes, taking a deep breath in through my nose.

"I think I love you, Conrad."

When he doesn't say anything for a moment, I open my eyes. But he's not standing in front of me anymore. Conrad Fisher is walking away from me, about twenty feet up the beach. I told Conrad I loved him, and he walked away. My brain tells me to follow him, to take it back, to have never risked losing my best friend at all. But he's walking away, and my feet seem to be sinking into the sand, where I will stay until the tide washes me away.

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

The door of the bathroom creaks open, forcing my eyes to shoot to the intruder.

"Sorry, I was knocking but you weren't answering and I wasn't sure if you were okay-"

"Leave, Conrad."

I look at my reflection in the mirror, the yellowed light tanning my skin while I avoid connecting my gaze with him. Conrad doesn't leave. I need him to leave. Instead, he closes the door, enclosing us in the guest bathroom.

"Delaney-"

I whip around to face him, anger building in my core at his concerned tone.

"No! You don't get to say my name like that, Conrad. Not after everything."

Tears build in my eyes, two years of resentment boiling to the surface.

"We both said things we regret that night." His voice is low, dipping his head to catch my eyes.

"Yes, Conrad, we both drew blood. But you and I both know that those cuts were never equal. You ended our friendship over the fucking phone. You called me unlovable-"

My voice breaks, tears streaming down my cheeks at this point. Conrad's shaking his head like trying to forget the bad memory.

"I didn't mean it, Delaney. I didn't mean it. I was scared, and I had just ended things with Aubrey. Our friendship meant so much to me, and I was so scared of losing it." He pleads with me.

"That's exactly what you did though! I know that I started it Conrad, and I will regret that every day for the rest of my life. But I loved you, and you couldn't handle that, so you turned me into this villain."

"No, no," he shakes his head again, "you were never the villain, Delaney. I was scared because I loved you too."

The bathroom is quiet, not even our breaths daring to break the fragile atmosphere. Voices and music are muffled behind the door, and Conrad is looking at me so intensely that I swear I might have something on my face.

Conrad Fisher was my first love. They say that never really leaves you, it sticks like pollen to a hummingbird. Falling in love with him wasn't grueling, it just kind of snuck up on me. It was like I woke up one morning and realized that I had loved him this whole time. I loved the way that he snort-laughed when we would watch South Park on the couch and the way that he went to every one of my track meets. I loved the way that his hair never seemed quite put together and the way that he smelled in the morning when he picked me up for school. I was intwined with Conrad Fisher the way the moon is intwined with the tide.

"Two years-" I start, "You didn't talk to me for two years after that night."

"Because I couldn't find the words to say how sorry I was. I'd tried, Delaney. I spent months trying to figure our how to apologize. But then you got together with Braedon, and I thought that it was over, that nothing I could say would ever be enough to make you believe that if I could take back every word, I would. I never expect you to forgive me, but I need you to know that I did love you."

He pauses, looking at the mirror behind me before looking back at me. His chest rises and falls at a steady pace, in sync with mine. My eyes soften involuntarily with his confession. I'm not sure that I forgive Conrad yet. But right here, in this bathroom, it feels like two years has been nothing more than a few days. I'll be going to Stanford in a couple weeks, leaving behind my life on the east coast, at Cousins Beach. Though it feels as though we're sixteen again, stressing over driving school rather than college. I know that we've both changed so much while we were apart, but at the same time it feels natural to be with him, even if we're arguing.

Conrad's gaze is heavy on mine and I feel my heart in my throat. Without thinking too much about it, I grab the back of his neck, pulling his lips onto mine. I think that I've made a mistake when Conrad pulls back startled, face inches from mine.

But after a second, his hand comes up to my face, lips dipping to meet mine more fervently than before. Our kiss is heated, Conrad's palm heavy against my skin, the feeling of his touch both familiar and foreign. It's strange to think that he's the Conrad that I've known my entire life, yet at the same time, not.

My arms are wrapped around his neck, and his hands come to the backs of my thighs, lifting me onto the bathroom counter. I quickly wrap my legs around his waist while his hands continue to hold my thighs. My sundress sits high on my hips from the position.

"You're so fucking stunning, D."

Conrad pulls back to run his gaze over me, his pupils blown out. I take the time to do the same, glancing over his worn t-shirt, jeans, and sun kissed cheeks. Conrad's head dips down to meet my neck, his hair tickling my jawline. He sucks at my skin, finding the sweet spot just under my ear and eliciting a soft moan.

"Don't leave a mark, Connie." I breath out as my hands tangle into his hair and pull slightly.

He nips slightly at the spot, the sting causing heat to explode throughout my body before running his tongue over it artfully.

"God, you don't know how long I've waited to do this with you."

"Bite me?" I laugh out, his hands holding onto my waist.

Conrad laughs too, before shaking his head.

"No, just touch you."

My breath catches in my throat at his words, the heat of his hands on my waist burning me. He moves them up, eyes on mine before twiddling the straps of my dress between his fingers.

"It is impossible to not want you, Delaney."

His voice is low, and he brings his forehead to connect with mine. Our breaths are intertwined, the feeling of his hair between my fingers as though I were home. Back to my Conrad. Our mouths touch briefly before we both give in again. Conrad pulls me flush against him, no space between our chests. I open my mouth, allowing his tongue to slip in, tangling with mine. The sound of his moan vibrates through me, every inch of us connected.

Conrad's fingertips dig into my thighs, rubbing them up and down while we fight for dominance. When one of his hands disappears under the hem of my dress, he pulls away slightly to look at me.

"Is this okay?"

We're both breathing heavily, and I can feel my cheeks flush.

"Of course."

Conrad looks down, watching as he bunches the floral fabric higher on my hips, revealing my light pink thong. He takes his time exploring my skin, hands groping at my bare ass, running his palm against my inner thigh. I just watch him, not daring to break the moment. And Conrad watches me, as though memorizing every piece that he touches.

When he dips down onto his knees, I feel my breath catch immediately. He looks heavenly down there, blue eyes heavy on mine as he plants a kiss onto my thigh. One kiss. Another. Each one higher up my thigh, his gaze never leaving mine as my breathing picks up. The feeling of his lips on my skin feels both right and wrong, paradoxical in the best way possible.

Conrad pauses, looking up at me from the floor.

"I need to taste you, D."

I nod, not letting myself look away.

"Words, baby."

My heart lurches at the name.

"Yes." I manage to get out.

He wastes no time, pulling the thong down my thighs and stuffing it into his back pocket. His hands pull my legs around his shoulders, and his head dips dangerously close to my core. I shudder at the feeling of his warm breath against my cunt, him still holding my thighs for support.

Conrad presses his tongue flat against me and I'm already soaking for him. I try to stifle my moans as he begins to work my clit, hands shooting out to grip his hair. When I pull a little, Conrad grunts against me, the sound filling my whole body.

My back arches with the pleasure of him this close to me, with his tongue exploring the most intimate part of me. He circles my clit some more, pleasure instantly building as I my hips involuntarily attempt to grind against him.

"Patience, baby." Conrad grips my hips and I feel him smile against me.

"Stop smiling down there, Connie. This isn't funny."

He laughs softly before dipping his tongue into my cunt, the feeling immediately halting our bickering. The pleasure is unlike anything else, especially when his fingers begin to rub at my clit, working both of them at the same time. My breathing picks up, the pressure of an orgasm building low in my stomach.

When I feel myself getting close, I pull Conrad away.

"I need you."

He stands, his body in between my legs. With him close to me, my fingers toy with the hem of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head. I'd been around Conrad shirtless lots of times growing up. But it was never like this, never where I would touch him. Football had toned his body, and I take a moment to admire him.

"Done staring?"

I roll my eyes, reaching forward to cup his dick over his jeans, making his breath catch.

"Shut up Conrad."

"Mhm." He whimpers, rolling his hips into my hand.

Conrad holds his body up with one arm on the wall behind me, the other gripping my hip as if I could disappear any second. Despite him dry-humping my hand, I can't help but think that he's never looked this beautiful in our entire lives.

Needing him as soon as possible, my fingers fumble at his belt, pulling his jeans down. He takes initiative, sliding his dick out of his boxers and grabbing a condom from the pocket of his jeans. Fuck, he's big. I tentatively meet his hand, the feeling of his cock in my palm making me want him even more.

"Please." I practically beg.

His gaze his heavy on mine as my hand pumps his dick.

"Such a good girl for me, begging for my dick."

Conrad's hand comes to rest around my throat, and my thighs clench at the thought of him choking me. I nod at him, urging him to squeeze. When he does, I can't help the load moan that comes from me.

"Oh my god." He breathes out as I line his dick up with my entrance, the tip brushing against my folds.

"Are you sure?" Conrad asks as we both prepare to have him inside me.

"Always."

He pushes forward, his dick filling me up immediately, my eyes screwing shut from the feeling. He waits a second, allow both of us to adjust before he begins to move. I know that I won't last long, especially from coming so close when he was eating me out.

With him pumping in and out of me and his hand on my throat, Conrad dips his head to kiss me again. It's slow in contrast to his dick, feeling much more intimate than anything else we've done.

"You're it for me, Delaney."

When we both finish, Conrad slumps against me, face nuzzled into my neck. My arms are wrapped around his back, mine resting against the mirror.

'I've missed you." I hear him say, voice muffled as he strokes my hair.

"Yeah, me too. I feel like I got a piece of me back."

Conrad smiles at this, both of us not knowing what the future holds for us. All I know is I still love him as much as I did two years ago, when I confessed at the beach.

"Please don't walk away from me again."

"Never, baby."

#conrad fisher #the summer i turned pretty #conrad x reader #jeremiah fisher #tsitp #Spotify #tsitp conrad #team conrad #belly conklin

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cloud-somersault · 6 months

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(sits down opposite you in a booth at a ice cream parlor) i think a really important point of shadowpeach after reconciliation is the interweaving of all facets of their relationship and them struggling to meld those into some kind of cohesive "friendship" or whatever

and what I mean is that, like, there's always going to be some underlying resentment because wukong did a murder. so on Macaque's part, there's always going to be this anger and resentment and this hate that he has to deal with while also trying to piece their relationship into something that fits.

there's always going to be some guilt on wukong's part because he did a murder. there's going to be some guilt and an understanding that if Macaque, at any point, doesn't want to be friends, wukong understands why because of what happened between them. so he's saddened by the fact that things could end at any point and he doesn't have the right to try and fight for their relationship. i don't think that would stop him, but he'd be aware of it.

and then there's always going to be these echoes of their past haunting them. of what they were. because on some level, they're both still grieving that. they both miss that time in their lives, and that leads to anger, especially on macaque's part, because he lost something he coveted and treasured. and wukong also, because even if he killed macaque accidentally, he's allowed to miss that time also. because he wishes with all his heart that they can return to that past where none of the bad shit happened.

and then there's the threat of what they are now. broken and shattered people, jaded and knowledgeable of the world, they see these crumbled pieces and the feelings dwelling within themselves and look to each other and say, "Hey, can we really fix this? Can this really turn into something tangible and discernible?"

because the whole point -- (moves and sits beside you in the booth) the whole point is that they look at that scattered mess and decide yes, it's a broken mess that can become something worthy of being looked at. and though it's going to take time to put the pieces together and, in so doing, it's possible that we mishandle the pieces and they break further or the glue we're using doesn't work. and one of us may give up for a while, but we have to keep going.

the process of piecing their relationship together is difficult. they can cut themselves, hurt themselves or each other intentionally or unintentionally. it's a messy process. it's tricky and annoying and frustrating but, despite that, they both decide to keep working on it together.

and that's the reconciliation process. because we get to see that ugliness. it's not this pretty thing. it's not perfect and not everything it solved. it's only the beginning because, in reconciling, they both looked at that mess of pieces on the floor and then looked to each other and said, "Yeah, we can fix this."

but the thing also is -- this is wukong and macaque. and they're a little stupid. and they're prone to mistakes. so whatever they make at the end, whatever they piece together...

chances are it's not going to be beautiful at all.

#constellations fic #idk do you guys ever lie awake at night thinking about this kind of stuff #i think the inherent thought of “wukong and macaque will create something beautiful together” is fundamentally flawed #beauty is what they were in the past. and even then it was an imperfect lie. they didn't know each other. not truly #now that they're here #they get to see the ugly truths of themselves. and while looking at that #they can't help but make something fucked up. just like they are #but maybe. to them. that is beautiful #constellations shadowpeach

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minweber · 26 days

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Musings on Custodes: Aging and Generational Divide

How many living custodians who remember the Emperor in the flesh are there? The precise answer doesn't matter quite as much as the existence of the question.

Custodians got their shit rocked pretty hard during the War Within the Webway at the end of the Horus Heresy. As traditional for warhammer there is some numbers fuckery going on: it is unclear how many custodians there even was initially, the famous monicker of "The Ten Thousand" possibly being intentionally misleading, and there is no precise information about how many of them were committed to the Webway, and therefore what percentage of the total number did their losses there make, and what then were their losses during the Siege of Terra... But once again, the specifics aren't that important here. What's important is the idea that after the dust had settled, Horus lay slain and the Emperor entombed - Custodes stood as a pale shadow of their former might, their numbers seemingly reduced to a fraction of the original.

What became of these veterans then? It is presumed that by the 42nd millennium Custodes numbers were generally replenished (just in time to get their teeth massively kicked in at the Battle of the Lion's Gate) - though we also don't know to what extent. Do those few-hundreds-to-a-thousand original Custodians still stand among them? Custodians supposedly don't age, and no upper limit to their natural lifespans is known, but there is the whole The Eyes of the Emperor retirement plan for them. Custodians who have, after aeons of service, their reflexes slow down even by a ridiculous degree of a millisecond, supposedly lay down their armor and go out into the galaxy to play spies. So time does affect them? Or is it something else that eventually slows down their bodies? Just how universal is this process for them? Because surely if it's caused by passage of time and at least one of them has gone this road over the last ten thousand years, then most, if not all, of the old guard must either have done so too or be on their way out?

Whatever the answer, the implications for Adeptus Custodes dynamics as a group and organization are fascinating. Because what does it even mean to become a Custodian after the Emperor's "death"? The shame of the failure you never partook in? The hole where the maypole of your entire identity should be? The expectation of being one of humanity's last links to some glorious past which was over thousands of years before you were even born? The Emperor sought counsel of his custodians from time to time, and supposedly made them specifically so that they would be able to give it - do the "young ones" feel the pull of this duty they can never fulfill?

And there are different potential flavors of delicious tragedy here.

If there are none or next to none original guardians left, then it kinda uproots the whole image of Adeptus Custodes, doesn’t it? The mysterious golden demigods are just as lost as anyone else. They may be thousands of years old, but none of them were there. None of them spoke to him, none of them bear any sacral foundational truths of humanity, or even of just the Imperium. All of their deeds and even they themselves are a desperate attempt to recapture something lost, not a defiant effort to carry something forward.

And if the old guard remains as a sizeable minority, then there must be an unseen divide between them and the new generations, right? With the Emperor being so integral to their identity and purpose, surely there was something important that they gained from interacting with him? Can they now pass this something down? Is it even physically possible? Can you truly be a custodian without it? Imagine looking at the new generation of, essentially, your people and realizing that there is a critical piece of your group's identity that they, through no fault of their own, will always be missing. That something important has been irrevocably lost, and they will never even truly now that it had been there? That's chilling stuff. Any real-world analogies for it that I can think of feel like they would be in poor taste to bring up in a rant about warhammer lore. Do they - consciously or not - hold it against them? Do they separate themselves physically and organizationally? Can one who has never seen the living light of the Emperor lead those who have? Are there enough heroic deeds in the galaxy to make up for not being there in time?

The theme of degradation and things being lost to the passage of time is very prominent in warhammer lore. In 40k, the small cadre of characters who physically bridge the divide between 31st and 42nd millennium have always been awarded with a certain aura of awe, but Custodes get to enjoy this situation from the position of someone for whom time itself should never have been a problem. It doesn't really matter how many of the "original" custodians are left - what will forever hang above them is that there even are the "original" ones.

#musings on custodes #adeptus custodes #warhammer 40000

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inafieldofdaisies · 1 month

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15 Lines of Dialogue Tag | Tagged by @la-grosse-patate @g0dspeeed @direwombat @aceghosts @sofrosine @nightbloodbix @kyber-infinitygems @corvosattano @voidika @thesingularityseries

Deputy Sabrina Donovan | WIPs: In Hope of Tomorrow / A Trial of Errors (AU; Lines 9-15)

1. "Who the fuck ties a person to a chair on wheels. Did they rob an office?"

2. Sabrina narrowed her eyes, the corners of her mouth twitching, "Did someone try to drown you, Seed?"

3. "Yep. I'm still here, didn't teleport through the steel walls, ain't going anywhere, so you can fuck right off." She waited for his footsteps to recede, but they never did, "Like seriously, you're now gonna watch me while I sleep? Fucking creepy."

4. "It was either the radio or I start singing off-key, and I doubt you'd like that."

5. "I will have you know I've been throwing knives since I was 15,", she nodded towards the knife block at the counter, "keep talking and you would find out my actual aim."

6. "Your face is kind of hard to forget." "Was that a compliment, Deputy?" Sabrina rolled her eyes, "You wish."

7. "Are you taking us there?", she repeated, her voice taking an edge, "You have to know, I won't let you take HER."

8. "Didn't strike me as a lace type of girl, Deputy. Are you taking that one, too?", he cocked his head, eyes darkening as he examined the piece. "Oh, you know, I have to win the Miss Universe competition somehow."

9. Her hazel eyes shone as she let out a laugh, "If I had to bet, I'd say you'd be the one getting cold, Mr. Duncan, stolen clothes and all that. I feel like I can skip on asking to see what you're wearing." "Ouch.", he rubbed at his chest at the jab, "That one hurt." "Too soon?"

10. "And you're alone?" "No. A whole harem of guys is keeping me company, actually. They're currently fighting who will be sleeping on my tiny bed, and who's taking the ground, pillowless. A true form of punishment, I tell you."

11. "I'm dealing with a… situation." Her expression was unreadable, "I can see that." "Roughly estimated, how much did my chances sunk with?", [John] asked, flipping back to the view of his face. "Who says they did?"

12. "There's a bat.", he whispered like the creature would hear him and put an end to his game of hiding. "A rat?", she echoed incorrectly. "Sure, Detective,", he hated how his voice shook even as he spoke quietly, "but the type with fucking wings."

13. "Soo..", she began slowly, "why are you without pants? Don't tell me they got stolen while you slept… was it the bat? Should I call Stockton? Though, I think crimes committed by animals are out of his jurisdiction, you can probably vouch for that."

14. "What were you doing up so late?" "A girl has to have some secrets, John."

15. "You could always march over there and threaten to sue them for harassment… Your poor ears would thank you." "Don't tempt me. Because we might end up with a different situation on our hands." She raised an eyebrow, "Them asking you to join?", all he could do was blink as she laughed quietly, "Kidding. Oliver isn't rubbing off on me, I promise."

Deputy Calahan Hartley | WIP: In Hope of Tomorrow

1."I WILL GIVE YOU PURGE, YOU FUCKERS! What timing to be out of dynamite."

2. ["You ready to work?"] "As ready as I can be after crash-landing, almost drowning and getting shot at. Just another Monday, really."

3. "I'm not a leader, chief, hell, it's a miracle I'm still a Deputy. Fuck. Am I even one anymore?"

4. "Zorro will be on his best behavior, I promise. You won't even notice he's around. Plus… he gives mean foot rubs." "Rookie.", disbelief seeped into [Mary May's] tone. "Fine. The foot rubs were a lie. Though, I can take up on that task." "You ain't coming anywhere near my feet, Rookie."

5. "I couldn't leave him behind, gorgeous. He's my son." A huff escaped her, probably at the pout he followed his words with, "He's a raccoon."

6. "One day, you're gonna realize what you're missing, gorgeous. And I won't be looking for payback for these insults. Too much."

7. "Your plan.", Leslie corrected him, "That you devised after getting drunk yesterday." "Most of my plans are conconted that way, chief."

8. "Oh, Leslie, bold and brave, agree to march over to Johnny's GATEEEE…", Hartley sang over the usual lyrics, meeting Zorro's dark gaze, "He looks like John, right, my boy? Even the universe agrees, Parish."

9. "Good old Joseph, oh, how he'd lose his mind if he learns 'God' has been showing visions of his brother fornicating to someone else, he'd probably die from the shock before I have the chance to kill him."

10. "I'm having the worst time of my life here. Humor is what keeps me going, besides Mary May's hidden stash… and well, my anger."

11. "You have the hots for [John], and me… I want to turn him into a human creme bruleee. Two types of people, Gray."

12. "[John]'s been calling me daily, I'm leaving him some friendly notes in return. The start of a beautiful friendship."

13. "Hope you don't mind sitting in the back. Zorro loves riding shotgun."

14. "Go meet your God, tell Him I will send Joseph soon, too."

15. "You're in a bar in Montana.", Mary May rolled her eyes and set a new empty glass in front of [Sébastien], "Closest you'd get to me making you tea, even at lunch is serving you lukewarm water with some of my spit in it. Organic. So count yourself lucky." Calahan leaned in, whispering loudly, "Also known as blatant disrespect. Which I would advise against. Though, I'd take her spitting in my drink anyday."

Tagging, @socially-awkward-skeleton @strangefable @strafethesesinners @purplehairsecretlair @finding-comfort-in-rain @dumbassdep @josephslittledeputy @marivenah @josephseedismyfather @trench-rot @simonxriley @wrathfulrook @shellibisshe @gearvmac @amalkavian @cassietrn @carlosoliveiraa @simplegenius042 @onehornedbeast @theelderhazelnut @katsigian and anyone that would like to do the tag <3

#so many gems in one <3 #and ofc more gifs to set the atmosphere <3 #tagged <3 #oc: sabrina donovan #oc: calahan hartley #john x sabrina #wip: in hope of tomorrow #wip: a trial of errors #tag games #15 lines of dialogue tag #ocs #fc5 deputy #fc5 ocs #far cry 5 deputy #far cry 5 oc #mygifs #wip snippet #character reference #character dialogue

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kaija-rayne-author · 10 months

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Wow. So much dislike about elves generally preferring to be barefoot in the Dragon Age world.

Y'all.

Why elves not wearing shoes in Dragon Age is completely logical.

Okay, so it’s not a huge secret that I grew up poor. We're talking hardscrabble poor. The kind of poor most people don't think even exists in the western world anymore (I guarantee it does).

To someone with very little ability to buy things, shoes just aren't the priority everyone seems to think they are. City elves are poor in most depictions.

The Dalish would likely feel they'd rather use the materials for something else. They may not be as poor as city elves, but they likely wouldn't be wasteful either. Depending on where they wintered, they might not even use them then. I go out barefoot in light snow and frost, you do actually get used to it.

Fenris is a former slave with lyrium tattoos on his feet. The tattoos cause him pain when touched. Of course he doesn't wear shoes.

I never had shoes in the spring/summer/fall. They just did not exist in my understanding of the world. There was no need to buy and ruin a pair of shoes when feet toughen up just fine.

I grew up in the Adirondack Mountains, by the way. There are a lot of bloody rocks there. You can't dig very far down before you hit bedrock up there.

We had horses and dogs too, (yes, I'm aware of the crappy juxtaposition of parents who pay for horses but not shoes) so it's not like we're talking a pristine woodland.

I'd get a pair of sneakers/runners before school started (usually second hand) and a pair of boots in the winter. I remember having to wear bread bags around my feet inside my boots to keep them dry and whole. Less likely to get frostbite that way.

I distinctly remember my first brand new pair of shoes. I remember my second and third pairs too.

Even now, when I have far too many shoes, more than I could ever need, (I've got a thing for boots, my kids tell me my collection is 'extra'. They're right ��) I still prefer to go barefoot. From around April to November, I just don't wear shoes unless I have to. Like, to go into a store or public area; I'll reluctantly wear proper footwear to hike in (and even then they usually wind up over my shoulder instead of where they belong) shoes just aren't the absolute necessity so many folks act like.

I'm aware of what Gaider said about it, that he blamed (unfairly) the art team. It's the director's job to approve things like that, so, uh, bad form.

Still.

It is very possible to have a strong preference for no shoes. You don't really miss what you never had. And to me, it feels like y'all wearing shoes all the time is weird and likely unhealthy. In fact, it kinda is.

"Walking barefoot helps to improve circulation which increases the nourishment of nerves, muscles, and bone of the foot and helps minimize swelling of the lower extremities. Walking barefoot may also help improve the strength and flexibility of the muscles and ligaments of the foot which improves the function of the foot, reducing injuries of the foot, and improving posture and balance of the body."

At most, for just every day, I'll wear a pair of flops if I think the terrain is dangerous enough to warrant it. That's very rarely. I do have a habit of watching where I step though.

In spring, I go out on the tarmacadam to intentionally toughen my feet up. And no, my feet aren't calloused monstrosities.

It's just kinda mind-blowing to me how essential so many people seem to feel shoes are. They just aren't.

To me, it makes perfect sense that the elves, a historically repressed and abused people (sort of like a lot of my ancestors) don't feel they're necessary.

In a medivalish world like Dragon Age, where blights or false gods or wars keep tearing civilization to pieces, shoes would be ridiculously expensive. I mean, soldiers didn't take boots because they thought they were cool. They did it for resale value.

And cobblering is incredibly skilled labour. I was lucky enough to find someone who still knew how to keep my favourite boots alive longer. That guy could make those boots look almost brand new.

But in that world, poor elves would absolutely not be likely to wear shoes.

Shoes feel incredibly confining to someone who didn't grow up wearing them. I utterly loathe the way shoes feel.

I've also been a dancer and martial artist for a large portion of my life. Two groups of people you'll frequently find barefoot.

The way you walk in shoes is completely different from how you walk barefoot.

It's also an incredibly privileged viewpoint to utterly insist shoes are necessary and that elves in a video game should absolutely have to have them.

The only thing I'm annoyed about is that the armours often include boots, which my elves just wouldn't wear. I should have a barefoot option.

It may not be strictly cannon, for the whys behind barefoot elves, but it makes complete sense.

The only elf I'll say it doesn't make sense for is Solas. Why he doesn't wear shoes could just be a big commitment to his cover of elven apostate hobo.

Or perhaps his culture didn't think shoes necessary any more than I do. That would also explain why elves could have a preference for no shoes, it could be a holdover tradition because they all descend from the Elvhen.

It's true that you develop a sense for the earth, or trees, or whatever you're walking on if you don't wear shoes. I spent a lot of time with a book in trees, because few people would climb as high as me so I was safe there. It could easily be that elves wouldn't want to lose that sense, too.

You can learn a lot about an area by what the surface feels like under your feet. If you're a hunter, it's sometimes easier to track if you know your quarry prefers a certain type of terrain. You don't need to look down if you can feel the ground.

In fact, despite what people may think, my feet are incredibly sensitive. Tough, yes, but still very 'feely'.

Point made, I'll stop blathering now 😅.

If you like my content, please consider a tip or becoming a patron. My work of words is my only income and we're living well under the poverty line right now.

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#dragon age series #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #solas #DAO #da origins #dragon age elves #DA2 #Dragon Age 2 #dragon age meta #Fenris

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mystique-6 · 3 months

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Kinktober (It's really Whumptober) Day 7: Spanking

Summary: Ailis' unresolved trauma is triggered and she takes her feelings of guilt and remorse out on her companions. Astarion makes her pay a price for it.

Hello! My hyperfixation on Astarion has got me in the writing mood so I will be participating in Kinktober using @flightlessangelwings Kinktober list. The pieces may be part of a bigger fic(s). I have started the fic. If you like this please consider checking out my main fic, This is Me Trying. (Can you tell I like Taylor Swift?) Either way, I hope you enjoy. I do plan on completing the 31 prompts though it will take me past October. I also have the fic posted on AO3.

Warning: Anyone under 18 do not interact. Please pay attention to the tag warnings below.

Tag Warnings: Spanking, Light BDSM, Safe, Sane and Consensual, Un-Resoled Trauma, Guilt, Survivor's Guilt, Nudity, Snuggling & Cuddling, Aftercare, Whump, No Sex, NSFW

Additional Note: This fic involves Spawn Astarion. I have stated that some of these prompts will be used in my main BG3 fic, This is Me Trying. This one definitely will be. This is actually a very important chapter for my OC and I saw an opportunity to have a practice run of the chapter. I'm glad I did it because I know now for sure that a flashback chapter will be needed. This ended up being too much exposition. Still, I hope there will be some people who enjoy this fic. If you are reading This is Me Trying and don't want spoilers though, you may want to skip this one.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from BG3.

Ailis felt her headache growing as her group argued over how to rescue the tieflings…again. Two days ago, they’d entered the Shadow-Cursed lands. Earlier this day they’d met a group of Harpers and had helped them in a battle against a batch of shadow monsters. This had gotten them an invite to the Last Light Inn, the final sanctuary left in these lands.

Once there, they’d been revealed as true souls. The leader of this faction of Harpers, Jaheira, had made to attack her group, but thankfully the tiefling child, Mol, had convinced the woman to give them a chance. It was clear now, though, that Jaheira just saw her group as a tactical maneuver. She wanted them to use their status as true souls to infiltrate Moonrise Towers and find a way to kill Kethric Thorm; the person who had taken over these lands.

She didn’t necessarily oppose to looking into Kethric Thorm. He seemed to be involved with the Absolute Cult and they were in desperate need of answers about their tadpoles. Looking into Thorm and getting information on the Absolute and their tadpoles aligned with each other. However, Jaheira also wanted them to go on a rescue mission.

While her team had scouted around the inn on their arrival, they found some of the tieflings they’d helped at the grove. About half of the group was missing. It turned out that the road they had intended to follow to Baldur’s Gate had been destroyed. They had opted to travel above land through all the Shadow-Curse instead of cutting out most of it by going through the Underdark. The group had been attacked by Absolute cultists. Many had been killed or captured, but the rest had found their way here.

Ailis was sympathetic to their plight. She could feel the hopelessness, grief, and guilt from those who remained. She couldn’t stop Rolan’s angry words towards her earlier in the day from playing on repeat in her head. But they had their own problems. They needed to start putting their whole attention on getting rid of these tadpoles.

“This arguing is ridiculous!” Wyll’s shout caught her attention. He made eye contact with her. “Chief, tell this lot we need to save the tieflings first. Thorm can wait.”

“If we go in and bust their prisoners out, we’ll make the cultists hostile towards us and we won’t be able to get the information we need,” Shadowheart protested. “The tieflings have to wait.”

“There are ways around that,” Gale said. “We could use confusion spells or disguise spells. Or we could make it look like the prisoners broke out themselves.”

“That seems like a lot of effort when we can just rescue them after we take care of Thorm,” Shadowheart said.

“I agree with Shadowheart,” Lae’zel said. “Though it pains me to say it.”

“This is getting ridiculous,” Wyll sighed. “Ailis, come on. Set this lot straight.” She felt a surge of anger course through her. She always had to be the one to solve all their problems or play mediator. It was growing tiresome. It was draining her. It was too big of a job with this crew. She could feel her skin crawl with anxiety over the overwhelming job of managing all their egos. Her nerves prickled at their expectant stares.

“Ailis…”

“We don’t have time to be wasting on the tieflings again,” she snapped as her emotions boiled over. A part of her was horrified at what had just spewed from her mouth and her gut roiled with guilt from the shocked and dismayed looks on Karlach’s and Wyll’s faces.

“I’m surprised to hear you say that,” Gale said in a saddened tone.

“As am I,” Lae’zel agreed. “I didn’t think you had it in you to ignore people in need.”

“Oh please,” she said. “I’m hardly a hero.”

“You are to these tieflings,” Karlach stated.

She ignored a fresh stab of guilt and shook her head. “We need to focus on these tadpoles,” she said. “We don’t have time to spend on a group of people who are clearly doomed.”

“Wow,” Shadowheart said. “I would expect that level of callousness from Astarion, but not you.”

“Well, that’s rather rude,” Astarion whined. “I probably would have kept that thought to myself. Probably.”

Ailis sighed. “Look, what happened to the tieflings is tragic, but we need to focus on our own problem,” she said.

“Then it’s settled. We’ll investigate Thorm, and then we can free the tieflings,” Shadowheart said sounding pleased.

“Well, that depends on what we find out about these tadpoles while looking into Thorm,” Ailis replied. “Don’t forget these parasites are time sensitive. At some point we will transform into mindflayers. If we discover that’s going to be sooner rather than later, we won’t have time for the tieflings.”

“You’re seriously saying you don’t want to help the tieflings at all?!” Karlach cried angrily.

“I’m saying, that our tadpole problem is more important right now,” she said.

“I suppose if we take out Thorm, that would make it possible for the Harpers to help the tieflings,” Gale cut in. The wizard was always trying to find the middle ground. He wanted so desperately to be liked. She usually found this endearing, but right now it only fueled her anger.

“I suppose that’s an option if we need to take out Thorm at all,” she muttered. More incredulous looks greeted her.

“If we need to take out Thorm?” Wyll repeated, astonished. “Ailis, have you not paid attention to these realms? Look what the man has done!”

“What he’s done doesn’t concern us,” she argued. “Our focus is getting rid of these tadpoles and if we can do that without spending time killing Thorm, then that’s what we’ll do. End of discussion.”

“I think there’s a lot more to discuss,” Karlach snapped. The floor around her began growing scorch marks.

“Easy now,” Wyll soothed. “There’s no need to get worked up. This is just a disagreement.”

“One that we’ll all work out,” Shadowheart added. Ailis snorted and the cleric glared at her. “And what did that mean?”

“Oh, I just thought what you said was amusing,” Ailis replied. “‘We’ll work it out’ Ha!”

“What are you getting at, Ailis?” Shadowheart snapped.

“I just think it’s cute that you think you all will figure it out,” she replied. “What you really mean is I will figure it out because I am always the one to figure out what we’re doing. I am always the one who manages everyone’s opinions to come up with a solution. I am the one who manages everyone’s ginormous egos!”

“Now, that’s not really being fair,” Gale tried to intervene.

“Fair?” she shrieked. “No! What’s not fair is dumping all your trauma on me and expecting me to deal with it for you.”

“Darling, I think you…”

“Don’t ‘darling’ me,” she snapped at Astarion. “I have to do everything for everyone! And no one ever helps me. No one ever checks in on me to see how I’m doing. So the only one whose opinion matters here is mine. We need to learn about these tadpoles. If that leads us to needing to take out Thorm fine, but if not, our next step is whatever gets rid of these parasites.”

“You’re out of line, Ailis,” Shadowheart growled.

“Now, hold on,” Wyll intervened. “Ailis did make some fair points. We could put more effort into controlling our emotions and…egos. However, Ailis, you are the leader of this group and it’s your job to…”

“Yes, I am the leader and I’m doing my job,” she cut him off. “I’ve told you what we’re going to do. That’s the end of the discussion.”

“So, we just have to do what you say now? Our opinions don’t matter?” Shadowheart scoffed.

“That’s exactly, right,” Ailis replied coolly.

“And if we’re not willing to go along with that?” Shadowheart asked through gritted teeth.

“Then you can leave,” Ailis said. She knew she was going too far, but she couldn’t stop herself. She couldn’t bring herself to back down. The frustration of the last few weeks was bubbling over. Still, her guilt increased at the look of hurt on her companions’ faces.

“You’d really kick out any who disagreed with you?” Lae’zel asked in a tone of surprise.

“Don’t tell me you suddenly disagree with that philosophy,” Ailis replied. “You’d have had me kick out most of this group a few weeks ago.”

“I…”

“You know what? I’m done with this,” Ailis cried. “Whoever decides to join me, meet back here in the morning.” She turned and stormed out of the building. She stalked angrily down to camp and began pacing the rocky shores of the lake nearby. As she paced, she could feel her anger and anxiety turn inwards. She shouldn’t have yelled at them. They didn’t deserve that. She just couldn’t stop thinking of Rolan’s words from earlier that day. He was right.

“You’re going to burn a hole in the ground if you keep pacing like that,” Astarion’s snide voice called out.

Ailis glanced up at him and scowled. “Go away, Astarion,” she said. “I don’t want to talk right now.”

“Yes, I gathered that,” he replied sitting down on a large boulder. “Still, someone needed to check on you.”

“And they decided to send you?” she asked.

“I sent myself,” he replied sounding a little annoyed. A stern look crossed his face when he noticed her look of disbelief. “I’m not completely callous to your well-being, Ailis. I care that something is clearly upsetting you. Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

“You don’t want to know,” Ailis replied bitterly.

“Ah, but I do,” he said. “It must be something big to make you go off like that. Now go on and tell me. It will make you feel better.” She began to pace again.

“You just want me to go back to being complacent,” she grumbled. “You don’t care. You just don’t like it when I’m a bitch, but it’s not my…” She cut off when he stepped in front of her to stop her pacing, and gripped onto her shoulders.

“You’re not a bitch, Ailis. You’re just upset. And yes, I do care,” he said. “If you talk to me about whatever has you so upset, maybe you’ll feel better.”

“I…I can’t,” she replied.

“Yes, you can, darling,” he said. “Just tell me what has you upset. It was what Rolan said, wasn’t it? You’ve looked agitated since that conversation.”

“I can’t tell you. You’ll leave if I tell you. You all will,” she cried, tearing herself out of his grip. She began pacing anxiously again. This time, he didn’t try to stop her.

“No one’s leaving, darling,” he said.

“You would if you knew,” she said. “You’d have never agreed to travel with me if you knew.”

“Well, now I think I have to know,” he said, trying to teaser her to a lighter mood.

“I’m serious, Astarion,” she replied, though she did stop pacing.

Astarion nodded. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “Still, I think you better tell me. I think it will help.” She sighed and closed her eyes. She opened them when she felt his arm wrap around her waist, and he led her over to the boulder he’d sat on before. “Here. Sit down here and we’ll talk.” She gathered herself for a moment and stared out at the still water of the lake.

“This isn’t my first time leading a group of people,” she said slowly.

“I gathered that,” Astarion replied. “You lead troops in the Espax War, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and I have plenty of guilt over that, but that’s not what’s bothering me now,” she said, and then glanced up at him. “How much do you know about the Espax War?”

Astarion shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied. “I’d get bits of news when hunting targets, but that’s it. Espax is a long way from Baldur’s Gate.”

Ailis nodded. “The war started as a rebellion against Espax’s government,” she began to explain. “By all accounts, Espax had an incredibly corrupt government. There were two factions running the rebellion. Both wanted to take out the existing government, but their ideas for the future government differed.”

“A recipe for disaster,” Astarion commented.

“Exactly,” she said. “The factions managed to overthrow the original government, but they couldn’t agree with each other enough to build a new one. They began fighting and it turned into a full out war. Both sides began recruiting soldiers, originally from their own people. However, one faction was more popular than the other amongst Espax’s citizens and most went to fight for them.”

“So, the faction you fought under had to resort to other methods of recruitment,” Astarion said.

“By the time I was press-ganged into service most of the people fighting were doing so unwillingly,” Ailis replied. “Even those who had originally joined freely had turned against this faction by that point. They committed horrendous atrocities. Many even said they’d rather have the old government back than continue to support this one.”

“And you led people in attempts to escape?” he asked. “Or overthrow?”

“Escape,” she answered. “When I first got there, I tried to escape on my own. When that didn’t work, I started recruiting others who wanted to leave. There were a few of these attempts. They all ended with many of my group dead or tortured as punishment.” Her hand came up to her face to worry at the deep scar running down her cheek to her jaw. She had a smaller one below her right eye.

Astarion gently moved her hand away from the scar and rested their intwined hands on his lap. “Is that how you got those scars?” he asked. “Trying to escape?”

“Helping someone else to escape,” she said and then smiled bitterly at his incredulous expression. “I had given up trying to escape by the time I got these scars.”

“But you were still helping others to escape?” he questioned.

“Not at first. For a while I just gave up and did what they wanted me to,” she said. “I’d accepted it as a just punishment for my previous crimes. I proved to be a good soldier. After a while they trusted me with training new recruits and then leading small groups in battle. Eventually, I began to form friendships with others there. The two relevant to this story were Nash and Marissa and her three kids…”

“Kids?” Astarion said. He looked surprised.

She nodded. “They recruited anyone they could,” she said. “They’d take criminals being transported to the gallows like I was to travelers just passing through. Many of the travelers had children.”

“Is that what happened to your friend?” he asked.

“No,” she replied. “Marissa was in the war almost from the beginning. Her husband was part of the rebellion and was a supporter of this faction. Marissa had no idea until after he was killed in one of the first skirmishes. The faction blamed her husband for the loss of so many lives in that skirmish and so did a lot of the dead’s’ families. The faction told her if she worked for them, they’d forgive her husband’s failure and keep her and her children safe.

“There was no choice for her. She agreed. She mostly did secretarial work for them. She wasn’t thrown into battle until the last few years when things were growing increasingly desperate,” she explained.

“They started putting the kids into battle, didn’t they?” Astarion guessed.

Ailis nodded. “When I first arrived, all children stayed in camp,” she said. “The older kids kept the barracks in order and watched their younger siblings. But the war wasn’t going well and they couldn’t get enough soldiers. In the penultimate year of the war, they decreed sons that were fourteen or older would be put into battles. They would ‘try and keep them off the frontlines’ they said, but we all knew they’d end up there eventually.

“Marissa was beside herself with worry. Her oldest son was nine months off from fourteen,” she continued. “We all saw the war would be ending soon, but not soon enough for her son. On a night off, me and our other friend, Nash, took her out for drinks to let her vent her worries. She kept repeating that she had to do something. That she couldn’t let this happen to her son.”

Ailis closed her eyes and sighed. “I was the one who suggested escaping,” she said. “Marissa was hesitant about it at first. Punishment for runaways by this point in the war was almost always death, and if they didn’t kill you, they’d make you wish they had.” She worried at her scar again.

“You got her to agree to the attempt though, didn’t you?” Astarion said.

“She came around to the idea,” Ailis said. “She didn’t like it though. It didn’t sit well with her. She didn’t think it was fair that just she and her kids would get out.”

“Why would she care about that?” Astarion asked perplexed. “She should have just worried for herself…and her kids, I guess.” Exasperation and amusement settled across her expression. The vampire spawn’s lack of empathy tended to reveal itself in inopportune times. There was no point admonishing him, though. She’d accepted by this point there were some things Astarion would just never truly understand.

“Marissa wanted to get more people out,” she continued. “After some convincing she got me and Nash on board. Well, she got me on board. Nash only agreed to it because I was going to be involved.”

“You and him were involved?” Astarion asked. She could see he was trying to just sound curious, but she heard a jealous note in his tone.

“We had an arrangement. Like ours, really,” she admitted. “There weren’t any deep feelings. We both got what we wanted out of the other. And Nash wasn’t exactly hard to look at.”

Astarion snorted. “So, did it work?” he asked. “Whatever plan you concocted to free people.”

“For a time,” Ailis said, “but after six or seven months they were cracking down. Nash insisted we had to stop, at least for some time. But Marissa’s son would be turning fourteen in just over a month and there was already talk of lowering the age to thirteen. I insisted that we do one last escape to get Marissa and her kids out.

“Nash didn’t like it but he agreed if it was just Marissa and her kids I led out. The night started like every other escape night, but…it all went wrong,” she said, closing her eyes against the painful memory.

“Nash betrayed you,” Astarion said.

“No. Not Nash,” Ailis said. “The night guard he bribed to ignore anyone he saw escaping. He might not have done so willingly. I’ll never know. They killed him. Guns went off when we breached the camp. We ran off into the woods, but they knew our routes. Marissa and I tried to gather the kids together and come up with an alternate route, but a soldier shot off a gun near us and her little girl ran off frightened right into the open and they…they shot her.”

“Ailis…”

“We went back with them after that,” she continued through her tears. “They brought us to the General’s tent to interrogate us. They wanted to know everyone who was involved in the operation. We did our best to conceal who’d been involved, but in doing so, Marissa incriminated herself by admitting it had been her idea to help families escape. I tried to intervene; to convince them it was all on me. I had the history of escape attempts, not Marissa. All my attempts got me was a knife to the face. They then forced me to watch as they killed Marissa. They killed my friend right in front of me and her remaining children. That was my punishment. They wouldn’t kill me. I was too useful to them.”

“What happened to her two sons?” Astarion asked.

“Nash got them out,” she replied woodenly. “He was high ranking in the army. One of the lead officers had a niece who couldn’t have children. They lived away from the fighting. They weren’t involved at all. They were willing to take them in.”

“Nash couldn’t have done anything for you or Marissa when you were captured?” he asked. She could tell he was judging her old friend.

“No,” she replied, harshly. “He made it very clear from the beginning when we were planning the operation he wouldn’t lose his position for something he thought was foolish. He did what he could for us when we were captured and that’s it. What happened to Marissa and her daughter wasn’t his fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault either, Ailis,” Astarion said. “None of what you’ve just told me was your fault.”

“It was though,” she insisted. “If I hadn’t planted the idea of escape in her mind, Marissa wouldn’t have thought to include other people in it. I should have insisted that night that we would only get her and her kids out. Or I should have caved and agreed with Nash. He had high rank. There were things he could have done to keep her son safe.

“I got Marissa killed. I got her daughter killed. I got all the people from my original escape attempts killed,” she said. “I can’t help the tieflings. I’ll get them killed. I’m going to get everyone killed!”

“Ailis, darling, look at me. Look at me!” he repeated when she turned her face away. She reluctantly turned and met his gaze. He looked very concerned. “Ailis, what happened to your friend and the others was not your fault.”

“It was. I…”

“Did you force them to try and escape?” he asked.

“What?” she cried, confused.

“Did you force them to try and escape?” he repeated. “Did you threaten pain or death if they didn’t follow you? Did you blackmail them into joining you?”

“No!” she cried, appalled. “Of course not!”

“Were they aware of the risks they were taking when they agreed to join you?” he grilled. “Did you tell them the potential consequences?”

“Yes. I drilled it into them what could happen if we failed,” she replied. “Astarion, why…”

“I’m asking you, darling, because I’m trying to understand why you think you’re at fault,” he said. “Based on everything you’re telling me, you only gave everyone an option to join you. You didn’t force them. You let them know the risks so they made informed decisions. I’m failing to see how you bare any responsibility for what happened.”

“I led the attempts. I was responsible for all their lives. I am responsible for their deaths,” she said. “You should leave. You should let the others know what a failure I am and leave. Nothing good will come of following me.”

“I’m not leaving, Ailis,” Astarion said. “And neither is anyone else. If you told the others what you just told me they’d tell you the same thing I am. What happened was not your fault.”

“I was responsible for all of them. That makes it…”

“That does not make it your fault,” he said firmly. He gave her a soft expression and gently wiped tears from her face. “The burden of the failures may be ours, but what happened to those people…that’s not your fault.”

“You’ll feel differently when I get you and our companions killed,” she whispered.

“You’re not going to get us killed, Ailis,” he said. “We’re all getting out of this alive. We’re not like your previous groups. You have a group of skilled individuals with you. You’re not alone in defending everyone. You have us to reply on. Everything is going to be fine.”

“You don’t know that,” she said.

“No, but I have a feeling,” he replied with a smile. She said nothing in return. She just sat there and stared out at the calm waters. He began to massage her scalp, probably hoping to help her relax, but she couldn’t let her failures go.

“Sometimes I think it would have been better if that wagon had reached the gallows,” she said. His hand stopped moving through her hair.

“You really think it would have been better if you had died?” he asked.

“A lot of people would still be alive right now,” she replied.

“You don’t know that,” Astarion said. “They could have died later in the war. They most likely would have.”

“They’re not the only lives I’m responsible for losing,” she said. “Trust me, Astarion. I deserved to be brought to the gallows.”

“You don’t think four years forced into a war that wasn’t yours was punishment enough?” he questioned. “You don’t think your guilt is punishment enough?” She shook her head. “Well, I do.” He stood up and she felt her mood plummet even further. She had wanted to be alone when she came down here, but now it was the last thing she wanted. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to get away from her though. She’d just encouraged him to do exactly that.

He didn’t walk away, though. Instead, he turned back towards her and held out a hand for her to take. “I think I know a way to help ease your guilt,” he said giving her a smile. “Do you trust me enough to give it a try?”

When they’d first met a few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have agreed to anything he proposed. At least not without a detailed breakdown of what he intended. Now though, she took his hand and let him lead her through their camp. She was relieved to find it was still empty. She didn’t want to face her companions yet.

Astarion led her through camp to the abandoned building they’d found. There had been a squabble over it as most of the group had wanted to take up residence there as it had a bed. It was decided that no one would set up permanent camp there. They would use it for group meetings or personal time only. She guessed the latter was what he had in mind now as she looked at the clean sheets that had been put on the bed. She felt a spark of irritation. She should have realized he thought sex would make her feel better. It was the last thing she wanted right now.

Still, she would go along with it. It would be easier than trying to explain why his action was insensitive to her feelings and the argument that would ensue. It wouldn’t be the first time she endured sex to please a man’s ego and it most likely wouldn’t be the last. And Astarion was very skilled in bed. Maybe it would prove a good distraction from her thoughts. As they approached the bed he let go of her hand and then sat down on the edge of it with his feet shoulder length apart. He looked at her with a serious expression.

“Remove your pants and undergarment, Ailis. They get over my lap,” he ordered.

Ailis blinked and stared at him dumbly for a moment. This wasn’t how they usually did this. “I…what?” she said confused.

“You wanted to be punished, didn’t you?” he questioned and her face flushed a hot red as she realized what he intended to do. He smiled wickedly at the sight of her blush. “I do love it when you blush. It’s such a rare occasion.”

“I…I’m not a child,” she protested, though that statement certainly made her feel like one.

“Only children can be spanked?” Astarion replied with a widening grin.

“I…I’ve never…”

“You’ve never received a spanking before?” he questioned, surprised. “Your mother never had you over her knee?”

“My mother didn’t believe in hitting children,” she replied, defensively

“Well, as you’ve just pointed out, you’re not a child,” he said.

“I…” She didn’t finish her statement. She didn’t know what her statement was. She squirmed where she stood and stared at the floor, trying to come up with something to say. Astarion’s feet suddenly came into view, and then she felt his cook fingers caress her chin as he lifted her face so she was looking at him. He brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ears.

“You’re rarely this flustered,” he murmured softly. “What has you concerned?”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting to get out of this,” she said.

“He frowned, puzzled. “Get out of this?” he repeated.

She flushed. “I know some people do this for fun,” she said.

He nodded. “Yes, and you may find you enjoy this, but that’s not the intended purpose of tonight,” he said.

“Then what are you getting out of this?” she persisted. “My pain?”

His eyes widened. “Your pain?” he said shocked. “Ailis, how hard do you think I’m going to hit you?”

“I don’t know!” she cried. “I’ve never done anything like this, except for that Loviatar priest. I don’t know how this works. I know you enjoyed watching that priest strike me.” She expected him to get mad, but he just stared at her thoughtfully for a moment.

“Hold out your wrist, Ailis,” he ordered. Confused, she did as he asked, holding her arm out in front of her with her palm up. His own hand struck her wrist before she even saw it coming. She hissed and drew her arm back, cradling her wrist to her chest. She gazed at him with a shocked expression. His own was perfectly neutral. “Did that hurt?”

“Yes,” she replied in a tone that made it clear she thought he was crazy for asking.

“Is the pain unbearable?” he asked in the same neutral tone.

“No,” she answered, eyebrows furrowed.

“That’s as hard as I intend to spank you, give or take a little,” Astarion said. “I’m not going to beat you black and blue. You’ll be able to sit down tomorrow.”

“But when the priest…”

“I didn’t know you very well when you let the priest beat you. I hadn’t fully decided I trusted you. I thought you must have been into that sort of thing and responded accordingly. I was surprised you never asked me to do anything similar when we began having sex.

“You’re not wrong that I get off on others pain. I’m not going to lie about that,” he said. “But the purpose tonight isn’t the pain. You carry a lot of guilt over your past. I just want to try to help you release some of it. As for what I get out of it, well, control. We don’t have to do this, though, Ailis. I’m not going to do anything to you that you don’t want.” She believed him. Even before she really began to tryst him, she’d trusted him to stop if she asked. He was always attentive of any boundaries set during sex.

“Okay,” she finally agreed. “What do I say if I need you to stop, though?”

“Just say stop,” he told her moving back to his previous position on the bed. She didn’t follow yet.

“Don’t people use specific words for this sort of thing, though” she questioned, “because they might say stop on instinct?”

“Yes. A safe word is usually put in place for that reason. However, due to our personal histories if you say stop, I’m going to take that at face value,” he said. “So don’t tell me to stop, Ailis, unless you really want or need me to, okay?”

She nodded. “Okay,” she agreed.

“All right then. Remove your pants and undergarment and come here,” he ordered pointing to a spot right next to him rather than demanding she get over his lap right away like he had originally. She moved slowly as she completed his orders. A nervous anticipation had her heart racing, and she couldn’t help trembling a little. Astarion noticed and took her hand in his, gently massaging her knuckles with his thumb.

“Are you all right, darling?” he asked, giving her a soft look. “We can stop.”

“No, I’m all right,” she said.

He nodded and his expression turned stern. “Do you understand why you’re being punished?” he asked.

“For failing to save…”

“No,” Astarion said and she gave him a puzzled look.

“You said this was to try to relieve my guilt,” she said.

“It is, but I’m not going to punish you for something that wasn’t your fault or something you already received punishment for,” he said. “Pick something else. Something more recent.”

“I shouldn’t have yelled at our companions,” she said after a moment. “I was being unfair.”

“You certainly were,” he said. “You shouldn’t have taken your problems out on them.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I know you are. Still, you need to receive punishment for your actions,” he said. “How many times should I spank you? How many have you earned?”

“I…I don’t…” she looked at him helplessly. She had no basis for this. She felt completely lost in the moment. Luckily, he seemed to understand. He gently squeezed her hand in reassurance.

“How about I give you two options, and you choose what works best for you?” he suggested and she nodded her agreement. “Option one: I give you ten harder strikes. Option two: I give you twenty with fifteen being the same strength I slapped your wrist earlier, and the last five a bit harder. Either way, you’re going to be able to sit tomorrow, Ailis.”

Ailis thought about it for a moment. Ten sounded more appealing than twenty. She wouldn’t have to be in an embarrassing position for as long. However, the slap he’d given to her wrist earlier had stung and the skin was still a little pink. The skin on her ass would be even more sensitive. She’d never done this and she wasn’t sure she was comfortable having him hit her any harder. Getting through five hard strikes seemed better than ten and if she couldn’t handle it and had to tell him to stop, she’d have already taken at least sixteen. She’d be able to say she gave it a fair chance.

“Twenty,” she said quietly. He nodded and gave her hand a final squeeze before letting go.

“All right then, darling,” he said. “Get over my lap.” She awkwardly positioned herself over his lap. He helped her maneuver so his one leg helped support her upper torso even as her head hung down just below his knee. She held onto his one knee with one hand and the sheets on the bed with the other. Her ass was completely exposed to him, and she trembled with nerves. She jumped when he placed a hand on the center of her back.

“Try to relax, darling. You’re safe,” he soothed, rubbing her back a little. She took a few deep breaths and slowly felt her muscles relax. “That’s it. Are you ready for me to begin?”

“Y-Yes,” she said. “Do I count them out loud?”

“Hmm, that is an appealing thought,” he said in a teasing tone before growing serious again, “but not tonight. We can examine that possibility another night if you decide you like this or find it helpful. I don’t want to push limits tonight. Now, take one last deep breath for me before I begin.” She did as he said, and the first stroke came as she let the breath out.

She let out a startled squeak. It hurt. It felt worse than the strike to her wrist had. Still, it was not unbearable. She hadn’t quite processed it, when the second strike hit, and then she stopped thinking as he continued to land blow after blow. By the time he struck her ten times she realized she’d made a mistake in choosing twenty strikes. Her skin where he’d hit her felt like it was on fire and the pain was increasing with each strike even though the strike’s strength hadn’t changed yet. When he reached the fifteenth strike her tears finally spilled over and down her cheeks.

He stopped after the fifteenth strike for a moment, but any relief she might have felt vanished when he shifted his leg so the seat of her ass raised to a higher position. She whimpered as she thought of where the last five, harder blows were going to land. He hushed her and comfortingly stroked her back.

“It’s just five more, darling, and then you’ll be done,” he assured her. “Do you think you’re ready to apologize now?”

“Y-Yes. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she cried. “I didn’t mean to act like that. I couldn’t stop myself. I…I…I…”

“Shhh. Shh, darling,” he soothed. “Breathe for me.” She tried to do as he said and took big gulps of air in until her breathing found a rhythm again. “Good girl. I’m going to give you the last five strikes now. I want you to try and release your guilt with them, all right?”

She nodded and then the first blow hit and any thought of trying not to cry anymore escaped her. She started sobbing and it took everything in her to not ask him to stop as the next blow hit. She had felt worse pain before than this, but this just felt so intimate. She wanted to bare it for him. Right now, she would do anything for him, so at the last strike, she tried to release some of her guilt.

Astarion helped move her into a sitting position on his lap. He managed to adjust her so her ass was mostly between his thighs so nothing rubbed against her reddened skin. She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed ash she clutched to him like her life depended on it. She stroked her back and hair and pressed a kiss on the top of her head.

“Shh. It’s all right now, darling. All is forgiven. You’re all right,” he soothed. He repeated a variation of these words until her sobs turned to cries and then to whimpers until finally, she ran out of tears. She rested, slumped against him, feeling more exhausted than she had in her whole life. They sat like that for a few minutes and then she felt his hand slide between her legs and a cool finger split hear seam, running the length of it before brushing over her clit. She let out a shaky gasp.

“What do you think, darling? Based on how wet you are, you seemed to enjoy that. Should we move on to more enjoyable activities?” he asked. She thought about it for a moment. She was surprised to find she had evidence of arousal, but in the back of her mind she’d been aware of a stirring of heat between her legs that was different from the heat on her ass from the spanking.

Still, she shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t feel up to it,” she said, her resolve to endure it from earlier cracking. She knew he wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. “I’m sorry. I know you were planning on having sex tonight, but…”

“It’s all right, Ailis,” he cut her off. “Don’t apologize. We both have to want it, remember?” She smiled and nodded. He moved his hand back to a more acceptable spot on her thigh. “So, what do you want, darling? How are we spending our time tonight?” She opened her mouth with an immediate response but then just as quickly clamped her mouth shut and looked down at her lap. “What’s wrong, Ailis.”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just, what I want…you won’t like it. I’m trying to think of something else.”

“Ailis, darling, look at me,” he ordered and she raised her face to meet his eyes. “You’re just tried something very new to you that had you completely out of your element tonight. You’re going to get whatever you want.” He grinned. “Within reason of course. So, tell me, what do you want.”

“I just want to naked cuddle,” she said. “And I want you to stay with me all night.”

Astarion nodded. “Very reasonable,” he said and kissed her forehead. He slid her to sit on the mattress. Her full weight was on her ass though and she felt the skin burn as it brushed against the sheets. She jumped up from the bed and clutched her ass. Astarion laughed and she gave him a hurt look.

“I’m sorry, darling,” he said as he stood up. “The look on your face was just funny, that’s all. Here.” He helped slide her shirt and upper garment off. “Stand there for a moment while I undress and then we’ll get you on the bed comfortably.” He kissed her forehead again and she stood waiting as he quickly undressed. When he was naked, he sat down on the bed and then moved until he was lying down on his back in the middle. He held out his arms for her. “Come here, darling.”

She climbed onto the bed and crawled over to him. He pulled her down so she rested mostly on top of him. Her head rested on his shoulder. She hissed when he pulled the top sheet over them, but the sting only last for a minute. He stroked her back and left gentle kisses to her forehead every few minutes. Her eyelids grew heavy and she felt sleep trying to claim her. She tried to fight it, but Astarion wasn’t having it.

“Go to sleep, darling,” he ordered her gently. “You need to rest.”

“I want you to stay,” she murmured through a yawn. “I’m not going anywhere, Ailis,” he promised. “I’ll be here when you wake up.” She smiled sleepily as he pressed another kiss to her forehead. It was the last thing she felt before sleep finally claimed her.

#bg3 #astarion #astarion ancunin #bg3 astarion #bg3 tav

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