#Ezra (prospect) x oc
Text
Starlight, Chapter One:
pairing: fae!ezra prospect x princess!oc (Marigold)
rating: M (series is 18+ only, arranged marriage, fantasy elements, talks of potential violence, vague and brief mentions of su!c!de, Ezra is a charmer and definitely written OOC to suit my fantasy needs but there are canon elements incorporated)
wc: 7k
series masterlist
I arrived in Nox, the land of eternal midnight, one week after climbing into my father’s gold-plated carriage.
The ride was long and grueling, my back and rear feeling the brunt of the effects of such a rough journey. But even in my soreness and desperation for my plush mattress back home and the smell of gardenia wafting in through my open windows, I refused to complain to my father’s guards for a break. In fact, I refused to utter a single word as we rolled through the snowy forest just north of Heims and just south of Nox. The darkness had already begun to creep upon us, so slowly I hadn’t even noticed until it was pitch black outside.
“Welcome to Nox, Princess,” one my father’s guards announced with a sly smirk, his eyes fixed on my profile as I pressed my face to the window of the carriage, my eyes wide and jaw slack as I watched the forest around us clear little by little until there was nothing but open, dark sky over top. “Amazing isn’t it?”
Whatever I had imagined stars to look like before that moment seemed insulting in comparison to its reality. Tiny little white, blue, and yellow dots of light shone like diamonds and crystals against the blue-black void around them, my heart aching in my chest at the simple beauty of it all.
“To your left is the moon,” the guard offered, drawing my attention to him for a split second before I was sliding across the carriage bench to peer out the other side. As soon as I looked up, I saw it.
It hung in the sky like a cosmic ornament, it’s gray so bland it should have bored me, but there was something about that round beacon of light that called to me. I couldn’t help the gasp that slipped past my lips as I looked to the tiny flecks of light beside it for only a split second before returning my attention to the main attraction. It seemed to calm my nerves the same way the sun did, just without the warmth.
Perhaps different didn’t always mean worse. Perhaps this new world around me—one of darkness and covered in a soft blanket of snow—would surprise me and kick dirt in the face of all of my fears.
I could only hope.
I couldn’t be certain of what time of day it was given the constant state of darkness around me, but as we rolled up to the front of the giant castle—it’s black stone and gothic design such a stark contrast from my home in Solis—I reasoned it must have been around dawn judging by the soldiers training in the east courtyard.
I watched the man supervising, his midnight blue tunic beneath a plate of black armor making him look like an imposing sight in contrast to the blanket of stark white beneath his feet. As I climbed out of the carriage with the help of one of my father’s guards, I locked eyes with the assumed-General across the hundred yards that separated us. He seemed to remember something, abruptly shouting a command at his soldiers to finish their training without him before turning on his heels to head towards the side of the castle.
I shivered at the authority in his voice, in the quickness in which he strode across the field. As if it were mere feet instead of hundreds of them.
“Welcome, Princess Marigold,” a sentry standing in front of the dark stone doors called down the brick stairs separating us, drawing my attention away from the soldiers who carried on as though the General’s eyes were still upon them.
What cruel punishments had they experienced at his hand for refusing to follow his commands?
“The King is eagerly awaiting your presence,” the sentry carried on, his eyes glancing at the guards behind me. “I’m afraid your men will have to bid you farewell here.”
I turned to the men who I’d known since I was a child, but whose names I hadn’t the slightest idea of. Still, they were people of Solis. The last I’d see for…ever, possibly.
I gave the men a bow of my head, not trusting my voice to remain strong as I wished them farewell, in turn wishing my old life farewell, too. All I could manage was, “Thank you.”
“Come, Princess,” the sentry called, growing impatient with my goodbyes, or perhaps he was just anxious over what might happen to both of us if I were to keep the King waiting too long.
The thought alone was enough to set my feet in motion.
After being led through the large entrance hall, the walls a bleak pewter stone that matched the ceiling and floor, I was led into the large throne room where the King sat waiting on his black, imposing throne upon an equally imposing dais. I took him in, his black hair perfectly quaffed, his stone gray eyes piercing me from yards away. His bone structure was impossibly sharp and symmetrical, and I couldn't help but wonder how someone so beautiful could possibly exist without the help of magic.
How stunning must his parents have been to create such a handsome, broad, masculine looking man?
I tore my eyes from him to save myself golden skin from turning pink, my focus fixing on his left.
There was a smaller, more feminine looking throne beside him that sat empty except for a midnight blue velvet pillow and a diamond crown that looked as if it was made from some of those tiny flecks in the sky.
This was to be my future seat, my crown. My stomach turned at the thought until my eyes focused on the person standing to the right of the King.
There, beside my soon-to-be husband, stood the General. With light brown skin, dark chocolate eyes, and a blonde streak in his dark, wavy head of hair, he was alarmingly handsome, even in comparison to the impossible beauty of King Kaius. But there was something other about him, something unlike myself or any person I’d ever met. I couldn’t quite tell what his position was amongst the ranks here, General or advisor, but judging by his armor and the blade he wore at his side, I decided I didn’t want to risk pissing him off to find out.
As if he could sense my curiosity, his brown eyes glowed amber and a bouquet of Marigolds appeared in his hand only to be given over to the King. Magic? He…
Fae.
My father liked to tell me frightening stories when I was a girl about a time in his own youth where the Fae ruled over the mortal lands. He told me of their cunning, their silver tongues, and most importantly, their wicked magic that had the power to wipe out entire kingdoms.
But after the revolution, a bloody war waged against the Fae in which Kaius’ bloodline and my own defeated them and ascended to their respective thrones, the fae were largely driven elsewhere. They fled overseas, in an unnamed land no mortal dared to even think about, let alone attempt to visit. And as far as my father was concerned, that was the end of their story.
But now…now I could see just how little he knew about anything.
Suddenly, I felt whatever hope I carried that perhaps my fate—my new life—wouldn’t be as awful as I imagined dying out like the last ember in a pile of ash.
A new world. A stranger as my husband. A faerie as his….
“Princess Marigold,” the sentry bellowed into the chamber, his voice echoing against the walls. “You have the honor of standing in the presence of King of Nox, and the King’s Hand.”
The King’s Hand. My new King—my future husband—had enlisted the council of a faerie? The species that attempted to enslave my own?
The ember fighting to stay alive inside of me died completely.
“I do hope your journey was smooth,” Kaius said, throwing the flowers at the sentry standing beside me, the petals half-crushed by the time the bouquet was in my shaking hands. His voice was velvet smooth, as if it were made of the same darkness and night outside of these walls. He cracked a smile at my quietness. “For what it’s worth, you look wonderful. Far lovelier than your father let on.”
I forced myself to reply. “Thank you, my King.”
He seemed to approve of the use of the title, his head nodding subtly.
“I will have my Hand show you to your quarters,” he announced, snapping his finger before waving it in my direction.
His arrogance was odorous. I couldn’t bear to be in his presence for another moment, and yet…
“Surely you have a handmaid—“
“There are no women on the grounds,” he announced, indifference bordering on agitation in his tone. “Until now, that is.”
No women, no…
Who was to help me bathe? If I were to fall pregnant, who would help me give birth?
I could have fainted there in the center of that too-large throne room if it hadn’t been for a sudden calm that washed over me when the King’s Hand stepped closer, his eyes glowing again.
“Please, allow me, Princess,” he bowed, holding out his bent arm to me. I accepted it only to repay him for whatever magic he worked on me to save myself from the embarrassment of passing out.
“There will be a ball this evening to welcome you to your new home,” Kaius called after us. “Please see to it that she bathes. I can smell her from here.”
Well, I suppose he said I looked wonderful—not that I smelled that way.
“You smell fine,” the Hand assured quietly as we exited the chamber. I didn’t miss the glare he shot over his shoulder at the King or the icy warning in it. Bold, even for a Fae.
His eyes caught mine as he turned forward again, witnessing the way my eyes narrowed at the sight of him. Of what I remembered from my father’s stories.
“I am not a monster and I am not out to kill you, Princess,” he assured with a slight smirk. I couldn’t explain why, but I could feel the centuries it must have taken for him to master such a look. Dangerous and not, all at the same time.
“Can you read my thoughts?” I snapped, suddenly conscious of his power.
“No,” he said, calm and amused. “Only your feelings, Your Highness. ”
“Well, stop,” I said, turning my eyes away from his as he led me up a grand, winding staircase made of the same dark brick the rest of the castle was built from.
“It isn’t something within my control,” he said. “But I’ll stop intruding.”
I nodded and tried to will a cold, hard exterior to mask my softness. I couldn’t begin to imagine what these people, cruel and calculated, would do with it.
After a beat of silence, I found myself speaking again.
“Why—“ I started, but quickly gained control of myself. I had no idea what this fae was capable of, let alone his motives. He quirked an eyebrow at me, his eyes scanning my face as he silently assessed me.
“I told you,” he spoke cautiously, as if he were talking to a wild beast he feared but desperately needed to tame. “You needn’t be afraid of me, Princess. Ask your question. I can feel the way it’s eating you up inside.”
I ignored the way his voice fell into something lower, something far too intimate for my taste.
“Why would the King appoint a fae as his Hand?” I asked against better judgment. He smiled slightly at me as we paused at the top of the stairs, his hand raising to halt the guards that I wasn’t even aware were trailing us. The men obeyed, stopping at the bottom of the stairs while he led me down another long, dark hallway.
“The King does many things I do not understand,” he said, his voice a trained whisper. “My existence is bound to his. He saved my life—“ The Hand held up his right hand, or more accurately, the ornate, solid gold prosthetic in its place. I wondered if he could feel my shock, but if he had, it didn’t show. “So, here I am.”
I ignored the urge to question him further on that specific subject. Perhaps another time.
“Do you enjoy it? Being here?” He must’ve been able to sense me feeling him out, that flicker of a smile vanishing into thin air.
“Not often,” he replied. At least he told the truth. “I find Court in all its pomp and frill to be incredibly isolating. But, on the other hand, it provides. I am free—to an extent. Just as you’ll be.”
“To an extent,” I repeated with a scoff. “Why are there no women around?”
“There are, just not in the castle. The rest of our court prefers their own manors to living on the grounds,” he said, turning another sharp corner. “And as for your personal servants, I’m meeting with potential handmaids this afternoon. If you’d like, you can come along and select them for yourself.”
“Yes, that would be…fine,” I said. “You’re awfully…friendly. For a Hand. I expect you’re taking note of every single thing I say to report back to the King.”
“I’m not taking any more note of you than you are of me,” he winked, unlocking a chamber that felt cold even with the two large, stone doors closed. “If you expect that I am a spy sent to observe and report, I must disappoint you.”
“What are you then? An ally?” I asked, quirking a brow at him.
I couldn’t help but feel torn between the image of a faerie that my father had painted for me—the very same father that cruelly sent me to this dark, awful, cold place—and the picture in front of me of an honest, warm man.
“I could be a friend,” he said. “But at the very least, I am here to make your life easier. Whatever you need, send for me and I will do everything in my power to make it happen.”
“I always thought it would be my husband doting on me like that,” I joked, shaking my head at the childish imagining. “Speaking of. What is he like? What might I expect? Is he a romantic? A brute?”
The Hand seemed to think hard for a moment. I could see him retreating into his own mind, as if it were a real place and not just something inside of him. When he came back to the moment, I suspected he’d have masterfully worded his response to avoid any missteps.
How long had it taken to learn such a skill?
“The King is what he is. He can be a very good man, and he can be…a very good King. I have a feeling you understand the need for the distinction,” he said, his eyes scanning my face again. “I wouldn’t pry. He’s generally better left to himself and his own doings.”
“I’m perfectly fine with keeping my distance,” I returned, rolling my eyes at the reality of my new life before gesturing at the door. “Well, if this is to be the start of my prison sentence, don’t let me delay you any longer.”
“Your Highness,” he sighed, leveling his eyes with mine in a way that no one ever had, as if he were talking to an equal. “This place is only a prison if you let it be. There’s plenty to see, to do, to busy yourself with. Don’t lock yourself away and let this grief eat you whole.” His eyes softened as they combed over my face. I wondered how pitiful I must’ve looked to earn such a stare. “Friend or ally, it is my pleasure to serve you, Princess.”
I didn’t say anything, only giving him a single nod before entering my chamber and closing the door.
In between quick, panicked breaths, I surveyed the suite around me. It looked nothing like my chamber back at home.
It was an absurdly large, two-story suite fit for a Queen—though, I remembered it made sense given that I would be one soon enough. On the first floor, there was the foyer I stood in, its dark stone walls, matching charcoal curtains, and velvet black furnishing reminding me of a very posh dungeon. Beyond a set of black, paneled ,double-doors was a less intimidating sitting room with a black-brick hearth that reached up to the high ceiling. On either side of the sitting room sat a dining room and a study that matched the current gothic aesthetic. I only briefly scanned the wall-to-wall bookshelves in my new study before venturing upstairs to my main chamber, a large dressing and bathing suite attached on either side.
I couldn’t stop my throat from swelling as I took in my new surroundings. This was nothing like home to me.
Instead of the sheer yellow curtains that flowed in the open breeze in my old bedroom, there were dark blue velvet curtains drawn over the large floor-to-ceiling windows to keep out the cold. Instead of my white linen comforter and canopy bed, there only sat a large, gothic style four-poster bed with a velvet, onyx-colored blanket tucked in neatly.
There was no lightness in this castle, but I foolishly expected that perhaps my room would, at least, be an inviting space for me to lock myself away in, as the Hand said.
Perhaps he could remedy the decor and furnishings for me if I asked nicely.
I ignored the idea and headed into the large bathing room on the right side of my bedroom, its giant windows overlooking the snowy grounds of the castle. At least this room seemed to hold some beauty.
Between the large windows showcasing the dark winter wonderland outside, the stars I was only just becoming familiar with shining so brightly overhead, and the giant pool in place of a normal bathtub, I couldn’t find myself to hate this space. This, for now, would be my haven.
Shedding my overcoat, I suddenly realized that no bath had been drawn for me, and seeing as how I had never drawn my own or watched it be done—what a clueless and pampered girl—I started to panic.
What would the punishment be if I showed up to the ball still smelling of my travels?
I didn’t have a minute to consider it before the pool started to fill with steaming water, the room scented with ylang ylang and gardenia.
The Hand’s doing, no doubt.
I sighed away the rest of the shiver I still had from being outside, and stripped down to nothing before stepping into the perfectly hot water, every ache in my body fading instantly.
So, this was to be my life. I’d tend to my husband’s urges, attend gatherings, and sit here in this bathtub trying to convince myself not to throw myself through the window.
A fitting punishment for the least loved daughter of five.
After a long struggle of trying and failing to fashion my corset by myself—I wasn’t going to ask The King’s Hand to help me into my dress, even if I was entirely certain he’d agree—I opted for a looser gown that buttoned at the front of the bodice.
Though I wasn’t used to this darker, cooler color palette, I couldn’t help but admire the fine fabrics filling my armoire. The one I’d chosen for this afternoon—if you could call it that—was made of the smoothest silk I’d ever touched, even smoother than the luxurious fabrics my sister came back from Florere with during her last visit. Its color was just as dark as the night sky around me. On the shoulders, there were beaded black rosettes that sparkled even in the dull light coming in through the window. Covering my arms was a sheer black mesh that glittered as if it was made of starlight. I couldn’t find a reason to fault it.
A knock at the stone door on the lower level of my suite tore me away from the full length mirror in my dressing room. I slowly made my way down the stone staircase to the foyer, my heart racing with fear at the thought of Kaius waiting behind the door instead of a sentry or The Hand.
I wasn’t sure what that told me about my future marriage, but I could only assume it wasn’t a promising start.
Thankfully, I was only met with the sight of The Hand, his smile turning into something more indulgent as he took in the sight of me in my new gown.
“A lovely choice for this afternoon, Princess,” he said, finally meeting my eyes. “The violet brings out the brown in your eyes.”
I didn’t know what to say or if I wanted to accept the compliment. Still, it was smart to be polite.
“Thank you,” I managed. “Shall we go?”
He let out a breath of a chuckle and nodded, holding his arm out for me.
“Is that necessary?” I asked, staring at him and his arm that remained held out for me.
“Does my chivalry bother you?” he teased, lifting an eyebrow as I continued staring blankly at him until he finally let his arm fall to his side. “I was under the impression Princesses enjoyed good manners.”
It took everything in me not to scoff in his face.
“I enjoy good manners that don’t involve me hanging on the arm of a man I do not know, all to be seen as a trophy—a prize that you’d do well to remember is not yours,” I snapped, some of that Solis heat boiling in my veins. He only looked pleased by my response.
“You are certainly not what I imagined,” he said, shaking his head at me with that stupid smile on his face. “That’s not to say I’m disappointed.”
“I don’t suppose it matters whether or not I am what you imagined, does it?” I returned.
“I suppose,” he agreed before waving his hand down the hallway. “Shall we?”
“I suppose,” I echoed, my voice sharp with irritation.
We made our way from the east wing of the castle to the main reception room on the first floor in mutually agreed upon silence. I didn’t want to hear any more of his quips nor did I imagine he wanted to hear any more of my snide retorts. And instead of conversation, I busied myself with mapping out the castle.
If I were going to spend the rest of my days here, I thought it best to get well acquainted with my surroundings, but it seemed the castle was built purposefully to confuse its residents. With all the dark stone and torchlight, I couldn’t tell which way was where. The only markers were the staircases, each one fashioned with a slightly different shade of charcoal to distinguish their location.
I quickly made a mental note to establish my bearings based on this knowledge later.
As we entered the reception room, I took note of the guards posted along the walls and at every entrance and exit. It must have looked terrifying to the sixteen women who stood in a neat line in front of a smaller dais than the one in the throne room. It looked terrifying to me, and I was here as the future Queen Consort.
“Introducing The King’s Hand and the future Queen, Princess Marigold!”
I hoped there would be a way to convince Kaius to cut this bellowing out of my entrances. It seemed ridiculous to have a sentry squawk out my name every time I entered a room, especially once I became Queen and everyone knew who I was.
“Your choice, Princess,” he said, gesturing at the two chairs on the dais. I wondered if there was any significance in him offering me to choose my seat, but decided that if there was, I wouldn’t bother searching for it. I sat down in the seat on the right and nearly gasped at the plushness of the throne.
Was everything here made this well?
“Thank you all for coming,” he began, his voice more commanding than it had been just a second ago when he was speaking to me. “I do ask that in the future, you bow in the presence of your new Queen.”
I wanted to slap him for speaking for me. I didn’t think these women should have to bow before anyone considering half of them were old enough to be my grandmother.
“Your new Queen asks that you do not bow to me unless you feel called to do so,” I cut in, surprising The Hand as he opened his mouth to speak again. “Bowing only means anything if it’s done with the right heart.”
He seemed to find my outburst intriguing, or perhaps infuriating given the way his jaw tightened as he turned from me back to the women.
“As the Princess wishes,” he managed. Pointing at the first woman in the line up, he spoke again. “Come.”
“Must you be so demanding,” I whispered to him, earning only a glance in my direction.
A young looking girl approached the dais, her pale skin and tangled white-blonde hair bringing a soft frown to my face.
“What is your name?”
“Drusilla, Your Highness,” she said, bowing low enough to sweep the floor.
“Age?”
“Sixteen.”
Gods. She was hardly more than a child. Even I still felt like one and I was a decade older.
“She’s a child,” I whispered, appalled that his people would even bring her before me.
She’s an orphan.
I heard his voice in my head as clear as if he had spoken right in my ear. I contained my gasp as he turned to me for a moment, his eyes still glowing.
It was either offering servitude or leaving her to starve.
I swallowed the lump in my throat at his show of power and nodded, turning to the girl.
“Have you any training? Any expertise?” I asked, hoping that the softness in my voice could quell some of her trembling fear as she fought not to look me in the eye.
“No, Your Highness,” she said, her voice weak and frail as her frame. She looked near death, as if it was a miracle she was still standing.
“Drusilla,” I called, forcing her eyes to meet mine. “Have you eaten today?”
She shook her head. I didn’t think she’d eaten in a week judging by her frailness.
I turned to The Hand and nodded, hoping he understood me even if I couldn’t get in his head like he did mine.
“Take her to eat then show her to her quarters,” he commanded. I watched as not a second passed before the sentries were doing as they were told. “If any one of you attempts to lay a hand on her…”. His power surged around us enough to darken the already dreary room. “You lose that hand. And that is only a taste of what else might be lost if anyone disobeys my command.”
The men bowed, silently pledging their honor, before leaving the room with a still trembling Drusilla. I made a mental note to visit her as soon as I could to try and calm some of her fears the way my elder sister did with me during my departure.
“Are all Hands this powerful?” I asked, lacing my voice with mockery to disguise my intimidation.
The Hand didn’t answer.
“Next,” he demanded, waving at the second woman in line.
She was older than the rest of the candidates by far, though I had no clue of how old she was exactly. I took in her raven black hair, the lines etched on her sickly pale, almost gray skin, and finally met the endless black void of her eyes. I knew at the first glance that something was off about her. Something I didn’t want near me.
“Your name,” he inquired. The older woman grinned widely enough to bare her rotted teeth, forcing my stomach to flip with both fear and disgust.
“I have no name,” she replied, her voice shrill and scratchy like claws raking over stone.
I’d only ever met one of the Cursed—a wicked group of witches that dabbled only in the dark side of magic--before, after she was brought before my father to be tried. That witch looked slightly younger and more refreshed than the one in front of me, but there was no mistaking their identical set of onyx eyes.
“You’re one of the Cursed,” I accused, shocking myself along with the rest of the room. The Hand whipped his attention towards me for a moment before turning back to the woman at my feet.
He took a few moments to inspect her using some sort of magic, at least judging by the way his eyes seemed to glow that shade of gilded bronze again. Whatever he must have discovered, it was enough to force his face into a stern scowl as his eyes faded back to their normal dark brown.
“Do you deny practicing the dark arts?” he asked through clenched teeth, his hand moving to rest on the hilt of his dagger. “High Priestess?”
The wicked old woman grinned at the use of her title.
“Do you?” she purred, her wicked tongue laced with venom. “You’ve got more darkness in you than me and all my sisters combined.”
“Take her away,” he ordered. Six guards surrounded the witch and seized her, though she certainly didn’t make it easy with all her hissing and thrashing about. “Lock her in the Dark Cell. Since she loves the darkness so much.”
“Hypocrite!” she screamed, shrieking like a witch. “What a foul hypocrite of a Faerie! The darkness will come for you too!”
“What is she—“
“Have the witch taken to the dungeon before I cut her head off and have it mounted in the throne room,” he ordered, leaving no room for questioning in the harshness of his voice. As the guards carried the still-shrieking witch away, I stared at him with wide eyes, fearing the glimpse of darkness—the same darkness the witch accused him of harboring inside—I just saw in his eyes. Sensing my frightened stare, he softened himself with a sigh and turned to me. “I apologize, Princess. Clearly my men are not as trained to spot evil as you seem to be.”
I couldn’t stop looking at him. I wanted to tear his mind apart and lay its contents out on a table to carefully study one by one. He seemed entirely unreadable.
“I’d like to go back to my chamber,” I whispered, voice small with fear. “Please.”
Studying me for a moment with what looked to be concern mixed with guilt, he nodded, turning back to the guards waiting behind the remaining women who stood trembling with fear.
“Take the rest away,” he ordered with a wave of his hand. He waited until there was not a single soul in the room before turning back to me. “I apologize if the witch’s outburst frightened you. I can assure you, it is rare that one of the Cursed gathers the courage to make an appearance, and even rarer that they cause any harm. They’re simply old Crones who like to waste away worshiping at the feet of Death.”
“She said that you…have darkness in you, too,” I replied, my voice hardly above a whisper as I tracked his every move. Hesighed, lifting a hand to rub over the coarse hair covering his chin.
“Yes,” he admitted, though it looked as though it pained him to do so. “All Fae carry both light and dark inside of them. We are made of it. Not equal parts, necessarily.”
“So you’re made up of…more darkness than light?”
“She seems to think so,” he said, dropping his eyes to my lips before bringing them back to mine. “What do you think? Do you see any resemblance between me and that old witch?”
“Not physically, no,” I let out a huff of amusement.
“And how about the way I make you feel?” he asked, the corner of his mouth twitching as if he was fighting off a smirk. “You knew the moment you saw her for what she was. Yet, you have yet to hurl an accusation like that at me.”
“Would you like me to?” I asked, finally earning a laugh from him. I found myself smiling, too. It seemed The Hand had a knack for putting me at ease.
“Would you still like to return to your chambers?” he asked, standing up and walking over to where I remained sitting.
“Yes, I think some rest will do me well,” I said, standing up with the help of his hand. “It’s been an exciting morning.”
“I believe this evening will be just as eventful given that this court hasn’t seen a new member in years,” he said, walking with me down the steps of the dais before leading us out into the corridor. “A word of caution, if I may.”
“You may,” I said, glancing over at him just to admire the way the torchlight lit up his face. A face I had no business admiring.
“Don’t let yourself be alone with anyone at the ball, Marigold,” he said, meeting my eyes as we walked. “They’ll either try to seduce you, exploit you, or kill you.”
“Gods,” I choked, shaking my head. “Court in Solis was so boring compared to this. The only torture to be found there was having to listen to my father’s speeches.”
The Hand chuckled. “Kaius isn’t much of a public speaker, so at least you’re clear on that front.”
“When am I to officially marry him?” I asked, that fearsome pit in my stomach growing at the mere thought of marrying a man I didn’t know.
“Tonight,” he said, sympathy filling his eyes as he watched me shudder. “If…if you’re comfortable, I can ease some of your fear.”
“No amount of kind words—“
“I meant with my magic,” he smiled. “I can take it away for a while. Help with the nausea.”
I sighed. I shouldn’t have to need magic in order to not be sickened by my fate.
“What if I were to accidentally trip down a staircase? Fall from a ledge?” I joked. Mostly.
He clearly found no amusement in it as he stopped us abruptly, his eyes boring into mine.
“Please try not to make those kinds of jokes,” he said, his tone both stern and gentle. “Kaius’s mother…she—“
“Oh, Gods,” I gasped, covering my mouth as my heart dropped into my gut. “I am—Gods, I had no idea.”
“Kaius would be very quick to…react if you said anything like that around him,” he warned, making my skin pimple as I thought about the ways Kaius could possibly react. I didn’t want to find out. “So, please try to save your dark humor just for me.”
I ignored the idea of saving anything “just for him” and continued walking, feeling his presence looming behind me in thick but not unwelcome silence.
“How are you liking your suite?” he asked as we neared my chamber.
“It’s…dark,” I replied, unsure of whether or not he’d take offense given that he, apparently, was dark, too. “But I do love the bathing room and its windows.”
“I thought you might,” he said, a content sound to his voice.
“How?” I wondered if perhaps he’d done some spying on me before I came, either with or without my father’s knowledge. Though, it made sense that the King’s Hand would want to know what kind of person they were getting for their new Queen Consort.
“Not you, specifically,” he assured, turning to me as we stood in front of the giant stone door to my suite. “I just figured that whoever ended up here would enjoy a good view of their new environment without having to…interact with anyone. Though, there are certainly better views of the stars elsewhere on the grounds.”
“Like where?” I asked, more out of politeness than anything else.
“There’s a conservatory in the East Wing with a library,” he said, his voice soft with reverence. “The roof is made of glass, so there are no obstructions. Just the stars.”
“You sound quite fond of it, I wouldn’t want to steal your hiding place,” I joked, finding it oddly easy to do with him even with all my distrust.
“I’ve been too busy to spend any time there in a while, so feel free to borrow it. Or steal it. Whichever pleases Your Highness,” he smiled, something hinting and playful in it that made my chest buzz the way it did with my first childhood crush.
“I’ll consider it,” I said, biting back a smile before gesturing at my door. “I should rest.”
He nodded, reaching for the steel handle and pressing the door open. “Would you like me to ensure you get a peaceful rest?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Is that a threat?”
“With magic, I mean,” he chuckled.
“How does it work?” I tilted my head, studying his irises. How was it possible for them to look so ordinary most of the time only to…
His irises turned golden again, his stare unwavering and focused. “I essentially convince your mind that you are at peace, content. Your body reacts to the signals, and it washes away the effects of all of those nasty worries and fears.”
A wave of calm washed over me, just like it had earlier in the throne room when I nearly vomited out of sheer nerves.
“Do most people here know that you…can do this? Can read their emotions?”
“No,” he said, those glowing eyes fading into something far less supernatural. “Just Kaius, my generals, a few trusted members at court, and…you.”
“Can all Fae do this?”
“Magic, yes. Sensing emotions, no.”
I nodded, suddenly feeling so content that I considered curling up right there on the cold stone floor of my doorway.
“Rest,” he ordered softly, his voice a whisper. “I’ll send your new handmaid to you an hour before the ball.”
“You’re only giving me an hour to get ready for my wedding?” I asked, giving him a half-smile as I crossed my arms around my body, already trying to get cozy.
“Can I tell you a secret?” I nodded and he smiled. “You could show up in a burlap sack with your hair in tangles and still be the most beautiful person in the room.”
“I doubt that,” I chuckled, fighting a blush from appearing on my olive cheeks.
“I mean it,” he insisted with an amused grin. “Our court is a dark, dreary gray, and you are…a golden ray of light. They won’t know what to do with themselves when they get a look at you.”
“Is it custom for the Hand to spoil their guest with so many kind words?” I teased.
“Not a guest, no. But for my future Queen?” His eyes danced across my features, the sight clearly pleasing him as his smile spread even wider. “My Queen might do well with getting used to being spoiled.”
“Are you going to refer to me as that after tonight?” I asked, the heaviness of my eyelids causing them to bat in a way that likely sent the wrong message. Or perhaps it sent the right one given the way my chest still buzzed with excitement. “My Queen?”
“It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?” His voice had lowered in a way that made me feel dizzy and drunk, my feet stepping closer by sheer instinct. His head bowed from our height difference as he kept his eyes locked on mine. “But it is quite boring. I’ll have to think up something more fitting.”
“And what do I call you, Your Highness?” I purred, suddenly finding it hard to stop myself from closing the foot of distance between us.
“Ezra,” he replied, low and warm and much too intimate.
My breathing halted as he lifted his hand up as though he were about to cup the side of my face with it, but he stopped himself, letting it fall back to his side.
“Sleep well, Your Highness,” he murmured, bowing just enough for me to realize it before he vanished into thin air, leaving a waft of his scent--smoke, moss, cedar, and some spice I couldn’t name--in his wake. I kept myself from fainting by dragging my feet into my chamber and slamming the door shut.
Was I truly allowing myself to develop a crush on not only my soon-to-be husband’s second in command, but a Fae? The scary monster from all my father’s bedtime stories?
But he didn’t feel like a monster. He felt like a friend, or at the very least, someone from back home. I couldn’t help but gauge people based on what my mother would have thought of them. When she didn’t like someone, she never let it show. Instead, she’d give me knowing glances during conversation, each widening or narrowing of her caramel eyes telling me exactly what she refrained from saying.
How dull.
What a narcissist.
He’s so stuffy he makes your father look humble.
I couldn’t imagine her speaking to Ezra and finding him boring, or vain, or snobbish. The only glances I’d receive would be ones that told a different story.
Look at those eyes.
He’s annoyingly considerate.
Now this, Mari, is a man.
But it didn’t matter what my dead mother thought of him, or even what I think. Kaius could have both of our heads on spikes if he found out and became jealous. I’d learn exactly how he’d react when provoked, and I had no interest in that sort of pain. I wanted peace, even in my prison sentence. I’d keep Ezra as a friend, and nothing more.
For as long as I could bare it.
#pedro pascal#pedro pascal fic#pedro pascal fanfiction#pedro pascal fluff#ezra prospect#ezra prospect x oc#ezra x oc#starlight
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hi hi lj! congrats again on your follower count 💖🎊 for your celebration i'd love to see you write ezra x reader with the theme of immortality 👀👀👀👀
Lissie my love! Thank you for always being such a ray of sunshine on this site, and for all of your wonderful encouragement. This one got very introspective, but also allowed me to explore Ezra's voice in another unique way.
In Print
Pairing: Ezra & GN!Reader, no specific pairing
Summary: A book found on the Green tells you a story of a man fighting for his life.
Word Count: 3.1k
Warnings: T, angst, mentions of contemplating suicide, a tiny little bit of flirting if you squint. While this story is not explicit, my blog and the content shared on it is 18+ MINORS DNI.
Notes: What better way to be immortalized than in writing? I think Ezra would agree. There isn't a true pairing, but I've written this with a F!Reader perspective.
It's funny, just as I'm posting this today another layer of meaning came to light, and it really resonated with me. So to all of my lovelies - the things you do matter. The journeys you go on, and the things that make you happy all matter. Even if you fail, or things change, that doesn't lessen their importance. Thank you for coming on this journey with me.
Edit: my beloved @beecastle shared this absolutely stunning moodboard for this story, and I need everyone to see it and send her love for being amazing.
The books are almost unrecognizable, a thick layer of dust covering the red and black covers. You plucked them from the soft folds of the rotting bed, turning one, then the other over in your hands as silt poured from thin leaves. Opening to the first page of the red one, you’re met with scrawling letters, not typed.
“Time to head back,” your colleague says as he pokes his head past the sagging tent frame. You nod and slip the books into hazmat bags, sealing them for decontamination. “Anything useful?” he asks as you tuck them away.
“Maybe some diaries. Could give insight, but not much else,” you say, lifting from your knees and dusting off.
“Silky,” he replies, hitching his pack further up on his shoulder. “Let’s head back for decon. I don’t like this nasty on me, even if we are sealed.” You nod and follow, the infamous dust that plagues the Green floating by your ankles with each step. A deadly planet now stripped of its riches. Prospectors had made the dangerous journey for years, but since ships stopped coming out this way it had been quiet. That is, until word of the Queen’s Lair perked the ears of mining companies and a few quiet trips strip-mined the planet of any remaining aurelac.
Your party was not of that same mind. The Green has many fascinating properties, the greatest being the creation of aurelac, but the second being the dust that fills the atmosphere. You’d seen something similar - another spore-based aerial pathogen on Rekun - be used to administer widespread antivirals. Your proposal to the university - an expedition to study the dust - was swept under more lucrative applications. So instead, you took the last of your grant money and shopped for safe passage for you and a small crew.
Not many ships were keen to return to the Green, far out of their way now that the aurelac trade was depleted. It was a lucky break, a letter that captured the attention of a wealthy benefactor with a mysterious fortune, that finally gave you a chance. A single trip, leaving shockingly soon, with enough seats and cargo space for your group of five. A single request attached: the benefactor did not wish to be involved, or mentioned in your research. Their original trip was meant to be done quietly. Your presence would now act as a cover, and you were not one to argue with the fortune being bestowed.
There was a small crew to greet you, and as you expected, no sign of your savior. Instead you were tasked with a long journey in tight quarters, the two crews amicable but mostly keeping to themselves. Your mind was preoccupied with the steps you now took, the possibilities that your studies might bring.
Taking wide strides across the mossy landscape, the book beats a quiet song against your thigh.
It isn’t until late in the evening that you get a chance to peruse the books. Semi-porous materials like leather and paper take extra care for cleaning, and you had to decontaminate each individual page before you could bring it into your small tent. Starting with the red-covered one, you caught words and loops of the pen as you carefully cleaned and irradiated each leaf. Finally, you held a handful of pages. The cover wasn’t salvageable.
Mornings came early and brutal on the Green, and you rarely stayed up late, but tonight you save a half hour to peruse the first entry. Leaning back in your desk chair, you hold the pages between gloved hands.
“Writing was never my strong suit. I prefer the company of words from other minds than my own. But I’ll admit that my time on the Green has become lonesome, and the words that once imparted comfort have become dull and irksome. So I am driven to create new prose of my own, if only to occupy my mind in the quiet moments between harvesting and sleep.
It has been three weeks since my crew abandoned me to my fate.”
Your lips part, reading through the account of a disagreement, deadly in its outcome, and the writer’s exile as his crew left him to die on the uninhabitable planet. There is certainly some omission and hyperbole; you can’t imagine that a simple disagreement would cause metal to fly so carelessly. The narrator may be your only glimpse in, but you’ve always had a keen eye for analyzing texts. You can spot a lie sprawled in ink.
“Now I must travel, a spiral of despair from my camp as I search for other prospectors to come to my aid. I may be in luck soon enough. A brute of a suit lumbered just past my reach, and should I come across him again tomorrow we shall forge an alliance. My filter is close to the end, and while I have not fallen ill yet I can feel the deep wheeze of a cough at the bottom of my lungs. If nothing more, I may be offered the element of surprise and a filter of my own.”
The entry ends there, a cool blade dragging down your spine. A glimpse into the Green indeed. This writer knew how to survive on the planet, by any means possible.
The next night you indulge in another entry, and another the following eve. Your days are long and arduous, collecting samples and testing them in the medical tent. Work proves fruitless so far, the dust only existing as a pathogen deadly to the human form. A protection for this planet. The nights, however, are spent with a man you only know through his own view.
“I dare say, Number 2 might be the most pleasant partner I have had in ages. Doesn’t talk much, but then again I have always been told I am the loquacious one. And he has not tried to slaughter me in my sleep yet, so I would call this a success.”
“One deposit found. Another small harvest. Enough to get me off this Kevva-damned planet should I ever find a ship to take me.”
The despair starts to creep in after a week of entries.
“Caught a whisper of a transmission from a sling freighter. There’s only one more ship coming this way. Narrow window. Then nothing more.”
That’s the entire entry, and you have to flip to the next page for a continuation.
“I watch the sky for my salvation.”
The entries get longer and more introspective.
“I’m glad my brother is not here to witness my descent into despair. Not that he would have kind words or gentle reassurances. I do not believe he would hold out the same as I. But to have a friend at the end would be a kindness. I wish I could explain what drives me to stand every day as the freighter draws nearer. If I had any sense I would put a bolt in my brain and end my suffering. But something pulls at me to remain. I do not know what.”
“Number 2 has still said nothing. Does he understand the grave we both stand in? I asked if he had a ship and by the slap of his two hands together I came to understand that he was no better off than I. The window is closing, a steady squeak of hinges until I can no longer guess at my fate. My tiniest hope is for one last fool to come this way searching for glory. May he be plodding and unobservant. Weak. May he go quietly. I will use my teeth if need be. I will not die on this Kevva-forsaken planet.”
You stop watching the clock most evenings, finishing your work as quickly as possible to take more time with the diary. The mission is turning on you, annoyances at each other and the lack of anything useful making tempers short. Someone on your benefactor’s crew suggests selling the dust as a bioweapon. Your colleague splits the man’s lip with barely-contained rage. His wife died from the inside out in the Terran wars. The rustle of your pages was all you could hear for the remainder of the night.
Your window is also closing, solar storms making the timeline more condensed than you hoped. There is no word if the mission your benefactor is on is progressing. You’ve seen him a handful of times, walking alone from the shuttle into the Green.
“He doesn’t take security?” you ask one of his crew, who spend most days playing cards and patrolling for threats. The split-lip one shakes his head.
“Says it’s a mission only he can complete.”
Your nights have become more restless, despair for the writer growing until a few pages are left in your hand. The next entry is penned in messier script.
“My salvation has finally arrived. I do not know which prayer it’s answering, but a lone ship landed in the early hours. I’ve woken Number 2 and we’re making our way to intercept its crew. With any luck we can talk our way on. If not, we will take it.
Kevva protect me and absolve me of what I must do.”
A burst of elation takes over your chest, putting down the pages and clasping your hands over your mouth. Suddenly you’re crying, tears snaking from the corners of your eyes into your hairline as you stifle sobs. Was it the parallels of your own entrapment, or the glimmer of hope when your research had none? It makes you turn to the next entry quickly, pulling in a cathartic breath.
There is only one line, scrawled messily as if a child had written it.
“The Green took my arm.”
You stare at the page, all warmth draining out of you like a squeezed-out sponge. You read it again, and again, try to comprehend it but it’s deadly simple. The Green took his arm, and doomed him. All this planet does is take.
Stumbling out of your tent into cloying blackness you begin to walk. You’d numbly donned your suit, barely registering the procedure you knew well enough to dream. With every bump and hitch of the ground your weight pulls deeper, as if gravity can sense all you want is to be swallowed up.
The futility of it all feels thick in your lungs. What’s the point? What are you doing on this planet? What discovery do you hope to uncover that no one else unearthed decades before? The one precious resource gone, the dust an unthinking asphyxiation. What hubris you have, to think you could be one of the lucky to bring hope back from this planet?
Your helmet turned down, you collide with a figure, also apparently on a walk of his own. You exchange apologies, meaning to keep walking when he speaks.
“Another lonely traveler of the night. Mind keeping me company for a little while?” he asks, and the weight in his voice matches your own. The benefactor, on another of his odd walkabouts. You recognize the suit, older than the rest of the crew but well maintained.
Pleasantries and decorum should be maintained - after all, his generosity is what allowed you to come on this fool’s errand - but your tongue is leaden in your mouth. Instead you nod, following him as he weaves through the trees to a cliff face not far from the campsite. Your thighs burn at the climb, but once at the top you view the inky vista of hills, slight shades of black and gray delineating the horizon. If you keep turning your head you can almost believe the hills and the sky are one, stretching around you like the center of an onyx marble. A little of the weight lifts.
“Couldn’t sleep,” your benefactor says, his voice a hoarse whisper. There’s divinity in the dark.
“What troubles you?” you ask, his form melting forward from the darkness. His helmet is a firefly, one small speck that highlights the lines around his brow and mouth.
“Same thing troubling you, I imagine. If this is all for nothing.” You nod and hum, toeing the decaying underbrush. Fighting for the words you want to speak, he beats you to it.
“It’s not. There’s value in discovery, even if all we discover is nothing. There is never a true absence when we fail. We learn that we were wrong. Or almost wrong. But we learn.” You shake your head tiredly.
“There’s nothing here. All that work, all that money and we’re coming back empty-handed. My research will lose its funding, most of the crew will have to go back to worse jobs. Failure isn’t free.” Your benefactor nods, crouching down to run his fingers through the bobble-headed ferns by his feet.
“You are right. Failure certainly isn’t free. But we take risks for the privilege of traveling across the stars. We are a curious race, and our payment for our roaming ways is to better the universe as we pass through. I’ve not always been the best man to do that, but in recent years it’s become a mission I’m more than happy to assume. So don’t fret about the cost, or the research, or what may come of this. It was meant to fulfill a promise to a dear one, and I’ve done that now. And you were meant to fulfill your own promise, even if only to admit defeat. No one could do it but you.”
His words sink into your bones, allowing for a gentler weight to ground you. It’s not what you hoped for, but it’s what you’ll get. You can learn to live with that.
The walk back to camp is quiet, your twin gaits rustling through the Green. As the camp comes into view, twinkles of light in a perfect line, you realize how little you desire to be alone.
“Have a drink with me?” you ask, the words tumbling out before the impropriety flashes across your face. Your benefactor cocks his eyebrow, dare you say rakishly, with a smile.
“Lead the way,” is his subdued reply. Entering your tent, you both begin the intimate process of shucking off your suits. You always run hot under them, wearing little more than a light thermal and leggings to keep your skin off the suit’s coarse interior. Fixing two short glasses of whiskey - meant for celebration, but now will do - you move to your cot, the final page of the diary placed face-down on the mattress. Sitting beside it, your fingers worry at the edge of the leaf. What more is there to tell? A letter to a loved one saying goodbye? A final will and testament? You flip the page, unfamiliar feminine handwriting an unexpected discovery.
“By Kevva’s name,” your benefactor says, and when you look up he’s tracing his finger along the pages piled on your desk. In the weak light of your tent his skin glows, the lamp catching a shock of blond by his temple. His eyes roam the page, brow furrowed and mouth downturned.
“What?” you ask, before your mouth dries out.
His arm.
You’d only seen him in his suit. It looked normal enough. But now stripped before you, sleeve rolled up to his elbow, you can compare the difference between skin and synthetics. His prosthetic fingers, as dexterous as his birth-give ones, lift a few pages closer to the light. The downturn of his mouth parts, the wrinkle between his brows smoothing out.
“I do believe you found my journal,” he says, turning to look at your face. He gives you an awed half-smile. “I thought it would have rotted away by now. But here you’ve kept it like a little gem of your own.”
All you can muster is a shaky breath, parted lips, stillness. He looks back at your desk and his whole face lightens, lifting the second book into his grasp. With the wrinkles smoothing out, replaced by a smile that wars with headier emotions in your chest, he laughs.
“And you found hers. My daughter Cee’s.” He smooths his hand over the plastic-wrapped cover. “She never stopped talking about it, not even when I enrolled her in a school just like the one she lectured me about. I had to endeavor to find her stories.” He finally looks up, and his mission accomplished before your eyes, your hand in it unwitting, washes you with emotion. You can’t help the welling in your throat, the cut-off wail that tries to escape.
“You survived,” you croak, standing up and moving towards him. His face flashes concern before he steps to meet you and pulls you into his chest. The overwhelming scent of sweat and plastic fills your nostrils, but you swear underneath is stardust.
“Oh, my dear, you’ve been suffering through my story all by your lonesome?” he asks, and you nod into his chest. He tugs you back, cupping your cheek with a knowing smile.
“We always persevere.”
My name is Cee. The man who wrote this journal is Ezra. We are trying to leave the Green, but my ship was damaged upon landing. Tomorrow we set out to meet with mercenaries at the Queen’s Lair, and if what my father said was true, we will leave rich enough to never have to step foot on this planet, or any other mine, again.
I’m writing this to let you know that we are going to make it. Don’t tell me how I know, but I do. The odds have been against us, and still are. Ezra without his right arm will cause problems, but I can harvest, and I’m not letting us die on this planet.
I should be more afraid of him. He killed my father after all. But what he lacks in civility, or the ability to shut up, he makes up for in a dedication I’ve never seen before. He’s kind with me, in a way my father never was. I’m not sure what he wants, or what he’s hoping for in our partnership, but I am at least grateful for his protection.
Tomorrow is the last day we can make the freighter before it flies too far out of orbit. If we do not leave rich we will at least leave. He asked me if I’m a killer and I think I may have it in me to save myself from this world.
To whoever reads this, I want you to know that we make it. It’s not like you’ll be able to find out. So believe that we make it. If we are to only be immortalized by these words on a page, let us be successful, safe, and happy. Remember us as survivors.
We make it.
END
#lj's 500 follower celebration#ezra prospect fic#ezra prospect fanfiction#ezra prospect x reader#ezra prospect x oc#prolix fics
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For Keeps
Ezra (Prospect) x OC (Tess Stone)
Gotta post this quick, while everyone's distracted...
Okay, so I wrote this a few weeks ago, but I've been dragging my feet about posting it here because it's definitely the steamiest thing I've ever written and I feel. weird about that. But uhh despite its adult content I am still quite proud of the writing I've done here, and I think some folks here might uhh enjoy it as well, so here ya go!
Takes place immediately following the fade-to-black in Chapter 6 of To Build Something New, so this is Ezra and Tess's first time together—probably helps to have read that first, but it's almost entirely smut so I doubt much context is necessary 😅
This is for 18+ readers ONLY. Contains sexually explicit content, oral sex, fingering, a very quick handjob, a bit more size kink than I intended (sorry Sam), lots of swearing, a truly excessive amount of italics and em dashes (fight me), and Ezra being Ezra.
Word count: 3.6k
“Why don’t we...start with tonight, and see where that leads us?”
“That sounds good to me.”
His kiss leaves her breathless, stunned. Ezra loves her, wants her, she can feel it in the grip of his big hands on her waist, in the heat behind his glittering dark eyes. She thinks of trailing fingers through melted candle-wax—just shy of too hot to touch, pliant and cooling against her skin, peeling away and leaving her smoother than before. “Ezra,” she gasps, and he buries a hand in her hair and draws her in for another scorching kiss, breathing her own name into her.
“Tess—”
His mouth is a furnace—she would let him melt her down, mold her into whatever he wanted her to be. But he wants her as he is, loves her as she is, and for that—for that—gods, for that she’ll give him anything.
“Fuck,” she gasps into his mouth, pants for breath against his chin, begs without an ounce of shame, “fuck me.”
He looses his breath like she’s struck him, rocks his hips up into her, slips his hand more securely across her back and cradles her head in his hand and calls her, “Wanton thing...” And then he lifts up and turns and lowers her to the couch, drawing her under him, sheltering her in beneath the breadth and strength and solidity of his body.
There’s nowhere in all the galaxy she’d rather be.
She wets her lips and heaves a breath and meets his eyes. “Please?”
“Fu-uck,” he groans, rolling his hips and pressing his hard, hot length against her in a way that makes her heart and eyelids flutter. He tucks the prosthesis beside her hip to prop himself up, lowers his open mouth and slick tongue to suck and nip at her collarbone, trails his other hand—hot and calloused skin, firm and gentle grasp—around the dip of her waist and over the soft swell of her tummy. “Gotta be patient with me, pretty girl,” he rasps, voice rough in his throat. “Ain’t done this since I lost the arm. —Need to get it right.”
She drags a hand through his hair, scoffs at even the suggestion that he could get it wrong—and then his fingers dip beneath the waistband of her shorts; he grunts in surprise to find nothing but her skin beneath them, his thumb seeking lower, gliding between her lips and skimming over her clit and delving into her wet folds—and the scoff gets caught in her throat, escapes as a desperate whine.
“Oh, shit,” he breathes, and starts to push away from her. She cries out, makes a grab for him, but he catches her hand and shakes his head, drops a swift and soothing kiss to her ribcage, and clenches his fingers in the fabric of her shorts. “Shh, I know, I just—you gotta let me— Need to know what Kevva tastes like, Kyrie.”
She hasn’t even come yet; he’s scarcely even touched her. Already, he’s ruined her for all others.
“Ezra.” She hitches her hips as he drops to his knees beside the couch, letting him drag her shorts down as he goes.
He’s to impatient to pull them all the way off, so the elastic stretches to its limit across her right thigh and left calf as he wedges his chest between her legs and smothers his own face in her cunt. He is ravenous, insatiable, eating her out and drinking her down like she’s the last glass of water he thinks he’ll ever see, like he doesn’t want to waste a drop.
With anyone else, she’d be embarrassed by the slick, sloppy sounds he makes and the pathetic little noises she can’t rein in—but they seem to spur him on instead, both hands gripping her ass and tugging her closer with each desperate keen and—yes, wanton cry. He rubs his nose against her clit, licks and sucks at her wetness, scrapes the edges of his teeth against her sensitive folds to hear her gasp, thrusts his tongue inside to taste her deeper, lets her feel the rumble of his every contented sigh and satisfied hum as she buries her fingers in his hair and calls out “Yes,” and “Please,” and “Ezra…”
“That’s it,” he murmurs, words muffled in her flesh. “Need you to come, baby, so I can—fuckin’ think straight. C’mon, sweet girl. Let me have it.”
She comes in a cascade of pleasure, every sensation of lips and tongue and teeth and hands building off of the other, core throbbing and stars bursting behind her eyelids, pulse thudding in her ears, and the soothing comfort of Ezra’s voice behind it all, purring, “Yeah, yeah, just like that, oh Tess…”
The couch beneath her feels like a dream, a cloud, letting her drift back slowly to terra firma and her tingling, loose-limbed body. She remembers the day she found it, walking home from a long but satisfying shift at the clinic, spotting the bulky piece of furniture on the other side of the street, jogging across to read the note pinned to its cushion—free to a good home. She remembers that sudden, striking epiphany—that she had one of those now; that she could be one, even. She remembers comming the man she was falling for, remembers the glee in his voice at the prospect of a tiny bit of mischief in service of helping her haul this thing back to her place, remembers sitting there waiting for him to come—remembers daydreaming about what it might be like, perhaps, someday, to fuck Ezra Sky on this couch.
“If I’ve found my way, at last, to Kevva’s gates,” he murmurs softly, resting his forehead against her hipbone and speaking the words into the dark, damp curls between her legs, “I most humbly beg your mercy.”
He certainly hadn’t been the first of her patients to recite the old Prospector’s Prayer at the first sight of her. She’s pretty sure he’s the first to ever repeat it, now knowing better and being neither dead nor dying. She knows without a doubt that he’s the only one to ever have spoken it like this—as though he’s worried more for her opinion than his own fate—as though she is, and could ever be, worthy of praying to.
From any other person, the idea would make her recoil. From him, it makes her want to return the favor.
She rests her hand at his nape, holding him to her protectively, possessively. “They can’t have you yet,” she tells him. A promise. A threat, in case any gods out there think they might try to swoop in and snatch him away before she’s done with him.
He lifts his head to meet her eyes, his crooked grin and heated gaze striking her breathless, even now. “No, they can’t,” he drawls. “I’m yours, Tess.”
She smiles at him, tracing her fingers through the soft curls at the back of his neck, relishing in the way it makes his eyelids flutter and his head cant into her touch. “Then will you please just fuck me already?”
He chokes on a laugh, drops his face into the crook of her hip. “I, uh—didn’t bring anything with me. Protection, I mean. But I can—I’ll give you my fingers, sweet girl, if that’ll take the edge off? Or I guess I could run to the store; be back in a tick, if you can be patient?”
Tess cocks her head to the side and frowns down at him, confused. “Sorry, do you think I wouldn’t be up to date on my bots?”
His head snaps back up, eyes wide with surprise. “Your..? I… Fuck,” he gasps, shaking his head with a sheepish, sideways smile. “I have got to start rememberin’ I ain’t in the fuckin’ wilderness no more.”
She can’t quite stifle a laugh, too amused by the embarrassment that is such a rare sight on his gorgeous face. She cups his chin in her hand so he can’t hide that face again, strokes his cheek with her thumb, and says, “I’ll remind you anytime you need it, baby.”
“...Yeah?” he asks, and the look he gives her is one she’s seen from him before, one she’s sure she reflected back just as often, but one she’s never been brave or reckless enough to give a name to. But she can’t deny it now—he looks lovestruck.
She’s sure she looks the same.
“Yeah,” she promises, and pushes up on her elbows to lean into him, and he lifts up from his knees and meets her halfway, lips crushing against hers and his tongue in her mouth as she throws and arm around his neck to hold him close.
He tastes and smells like her, the reminder of the pleasure he’d just wrung out of her setting her body alight, and she squirms to kick her shorts off the rest of the way and starts tugging at his shirt. His chest and back and arms she’s seen before, but she wants to see them again—see all of him—like this, with better lighting and better circumstances and all the time she needs to see her fill and the right to touch him all she wants. She wants to see as much of him as he’ll let her, for as long as he’ll let her. She can’t imagine ever growing weary of the sight.
“Gods, Tess,” he groans, drawing back and lifting his arms so she can pull the shirt over his head and toss it away. “I should—do this properly. Should carry you to bed, or somethin’.”
“Later,” she huffs, the word and the promise it holds echoing around in her own head as she slips out of her sweater and reaches for the hem of her tank top, starting to lift that off as well. “I need you now.”
Ezra curses under his breath and fumbles to help her, hands trailing against her skin as the last of her clothing is lifted up and tossed away.
He stares down at her slack-jawed, panting, his gaze hot and heavy and seemingly tangible as it traces over her, leaving her skin flushed in its wake. “Oh,” he breathes, the word leaving his mouth with a shudder. “Oh, Kevva has nothin’ on you, Tess. How—how are you so beautiful? How could you...want me?”
“You’re all I want, Ez,” she admits, grabbing his left hand and dragging it between her legs, letting him feel how wet she is for him, again, already. He seems dazed, stunned, but his fingers know what to do, sliding against her in a way that makes her chest heave, a moan hitching in her throat. And he watches her react to his touch, swallows hard, leans in and rests his forehead against hers, screwing his eyes closed and taking a deep, steadying breath—still stroking her.
So she slips a hand between them, skimming across his hipbone, cupping the hard ridge through his pants as his breath catches, hips rutting softly into her touch. “Ezra,” she breathes, trying to draw him back to her��but he responds with a low whine that makes her bite back a moan, his hips pressing into her hand more intently, fingers slipping lower, the thick, blunt tips of the first two just beginning to press into her.
“I know,” he says, still not opening his eyes. “I know I said we’d just start with tonight. But I’m not—I can’t… If you let me do this, Tess, it’s for keeps. I’ll be good, I promise I’ll try to be good for you. I’ll give you space, or time, or whatever you need, anything you need. But you—you make me feel adrift, Tess—like the only thing keeping me tethered is you and your voice and your smile, and, Tess, if you give me this, too, I’m done for. I’m all—all yours.”
“Yes,” she gasps, rolling her hips to take his fingers deeper, stroking him faster through his pants. “That’s what I want, Ezra. You’re what I want.”
“Shit.” He opens his eyes again, and his gaze is molten as it traces from her eyes to her lips and down her neck and over her breasts and along her stomach and down to her cunt where his fingers are now buried inside her, stroking deeper than her own reach, pulling slick sounds and breathy gasps from her.
“Fuck, Tess, I should—I should be better for you,” he mutters, distractedly, sitting up and fumbling at his belt with the prosthesis, kicking off his shoes, curling his fingers inside her in a way that makes her back arch, makes her swallow a desperate cry. “But I will—I promise I’ll give you my best.”
She’s pretty sure his best would wreck her.
She’s certain it will, once he gets his pants undone and pushes them down with a little hop, his cock jutting free, dark and weeping and bobbing against the soft swell of his belly, thicker than anything she’s ever had before.
“Oh,” she moans, incapable of anything more intelligent, grabbing his left wrist with one hand so she can pull herself toward him and reach desperately with the other.
He spits out a curse and shoves his pants and briefs to the ground and lurches toward her, sliding his hot and twitching length into her eager palm. It’s so much, too thick for her fingers to wrap around and meet her thumb, but not for lack of trying. She strokes him only once and earns a litany of curses and a cry of her name from his lips and a drizzle of precum on her forearm for her efforts.
“Ezra. Ezra, Ezra, Ezra, please, Ezra,” she begs, and he nods his head jerkily and pulls back from her with a groan. She makes a pitiful sound as he drags his fingers out of her, but he’s quick to soothe with feather-light caresses of his prosthetic hand against her inner thigh, the polished polymer smoothness a grounding comfort as she bites her lip and watches him smear his cock with her slick.
“I know, baby, I know you need it,” he murmurs, dipping his fingers back inside for a little more, sloppily coating himself with her. “I’ve got you, Tess, I’ll be good for you. Just—just—just give me a second.”
She’ll give him anything he asks for, give him every star in the sky if he wants ‘em, as he slides his hand along her thigh and around her knee, lifting her leg to wrap around him and spreading her open, nocking his tip against her entrance. She lifts her hands to his chest, aching to touch him, needing something to hold onto, feeling his muscles flex, his pulse thumping against her palm, racing in time with her own—as he presses into her.
She’s been so wet this whole time, this whole night, practically from the moment she’d opened her door to find him standing there with a bottle in his hands, concern and sympathy in his eyes. But still, he’s so big, trying to take it slow, take it easy on her, stretching her so deep it forces the breath from her lungs, pinning her hips to the cushions with both his hands to keep her from squirming or driving herself on him too quick.
“Fuck, Tess, you’re so—so tight,” he grits out, as if she’s somehow the issue here, bottoming out before she can mount any kind of coherent defense, his pelvis resting against her aching clit and leaving her breathless, speechless, incapable of anything more sensate than throwing her arms around his neck and dragging his lips down to hers. He groans into her mouth, filling her with his breath as much as all the rest. It’s a messy kiss, all tongues and teeth and gasping, and it may be the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
“Ezra,” she pants into him, trying to roll her hips but unable to with his weight on her. “Ezra, please, I need—I need you.”
He nods his head, dragging his open mouth against her neck, hot and wet, teeth barely nipping at her skin as he pulls out halfway—then just drops back into her.
She gasps, digging her fingers into the solid muscle of his back. “Ezra!”
He laves his tongue against her neck in apology, then lifts up on his elbows and gazes down at her, panting mouth and sweat-slick skin and eyes blown pitch black, endlessly dark. He pulls out for real this time with a cant of his hips, rolls back into her, sliding deep—then does it again. And again, and again, settling into a steady, eager rhythm that has her rocking up to meet him with every stroke.
“Tess—sweetheart—baby, you feel—too good,” he groans, shaking his head. “And it’s… It’s been a while, Tess, and I—I can’t—can’t last as long as you deserve, sweet girl.”
“Close,” she gasps, chest heaving, gripping his hand tight, dragging his fingers to her needy clit. She’s too keyed up—from the prior orgasm, and the way his fingers had worked her over, and the heft and weight and heat of him filling her again and again. “I’m close, please.”
He growls, nodding frantically, rolling her clit between two fingers—her back lurches up off the cushions, and he swipes his other arm under her ass, bracing himself on his knees and the back of the couch, angling her hips up and snapping his down into her. “Next time,” he babbles, “next time. Promise you. Tess—Tess, where—? Where can I—?”
She clenches trembling thighs around him, just in case—barely manages to meet his wild eyes and grit out, “Inside.”
Then the orgasm consumes her, every nerve ending sparking white-hot, the pleasure overwhelming, all-encompassing, filling her up and flooding out all else but itself and the throbbing of her cunt and the feeling of Ezra spilling inside her with a desperate, broken cry of her name—and then the sweat-slick heat of his skin against hers, the weight of him pressing her into the couch cushions as he all but collapses on top of her.
Somewhere in all of that, his mouth finds her, and he drags a line of wet kisses along her collarbone and up into the crook of her neck. She runs a shaky hand up the broad pane of his back and down again, relishing in the feeling of firm, strong muscle fully relaxed beneath her touch.
“Ezra,” she says—just to appreciate the sensation of his name in her mouth.
“Mnh?” His response is little more than a low, sleepy breath. She shakes her head anyway, not wanting to disturb this afterglow, not wanting to speak because anything she could say in this moment would be irrevocably, embarrassingly lovesick.
But he is, as always, ill content to linger in silence. With a groan, he shifts the bulk of his weight off her and props himself on his side to look at his handiwork, at the mess he’s made of her. The creases are deep at the corners of his smiling eyes as he lifts his hand to her cheek, smooths a dark coil of hair out of her face.
She hadn’t had time to style or fully dry it after her shower, with his unexpected arrival, and she doesn’t even want to imagine what kind of bird’s nest it’s become after all...this. But Ezra doesn’t seem to notice, tracing his fingers down her cheek with a slow, easy smile. “You’re so beautiful, Tess,” he breathes.
And because it’s Ezra—because he’s never lied to her about anything that matters—she can’t help but believe him.
And her eyes well with tears.
“Hey, hey—” His voice is a soft rasp, his brow wrinkling in concern as he brushes an escaping tear away. “Baby?”
“Sorry,” she gasps, shaking her head. “Sorry. I’m alright.”
“Are you..?” He slides his dick free of her and cranes his neck to look, checking for any sign of blood. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she hurries to reassure, lifting a hand to his chin, guiding him back to her. “No, I’m just… Today was just—intense.”
He hums softly, keeping close, sort of hovering worriedly. “Was this...too much?”
She’s still crying a little, but manages to grin, leaning in and resting her forehead against his cheek. “No, this was...good. This was so good.”
He hums again, thoughtfully, trailing gentle, calloused fingers against her skin. There’s a warm, lilting tease in his voice, as he asks, “Only good?”
She huffs a watery laugh, laying her hand over his, keeping his palm against her cheek so he can feel her smiling. “Don’t wanna set the bar too high. I was promised a next time.”
“You were indeed,” he assures her, seriously, a little breathlessly. “And I do aim to deliver.”
“I know,” she says, pulling back to meet his eyes again, tracing her finger along the curve of scar tissue in his cheek. Fell out of a tree, she thinks. Not going anywhere. He promised.
“For keeps, right?” she asks, her smile fading, needing to hear him say it again, needing to be certain.
He cups the back of her head and draws in close—close enough for the tip of his nose to rest against hers, close enough that all she can see are his warm, dark eyes and the love and honesty and certainty in them. “For keeps,” he promises, his breath warm and welcome against her skin.
And because it’s Ezra, she believes him.
#ezra prospect x oc#ezra prospect#to build something new#oc tess stone#my writing#thanks queenie for kicking the bucket so when this gets like a total of 2 notes i can blame you and not my awful tagging/promo skills#anyway. anyway anyway. i gotta stop looking at this so up it goes#horrible fishbowl husband#god the search function on this site is really the pits huh#thanks st*ff for keeping me in unsearchable limbo for hours lmao#i seem to have actually made it into the tag finally so hopefully someone might actually read it now#-_-
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commission ezra x oc
#fanart#artists on tumblr#digital art#drawing#illustration#my art#art#artwork#digital drawing#pedro pascal#ezra prospect#ezra x oc#not my oc#drawing commisions#art commisions#commission
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Taking Root
A/N: This was supposed to be a micro-fic based off of a prompt sent to me when I was trying to kickstart the creative juices again, and it just... didn’t want to stay short. Which is just fine with me. This takes place roughly two years after Point of No Return (and the still upcoming epilogue/sequel Petrichor- I dropped a few hints about what to expect in that series here). It could probably be read as a standalone story, but it really should be read along with the main story for that universe. Huge thank you to @valkblue who sent the prompt that sparked this one shot!! Thanks, Angie!! <3
Word Count: 2.6k
Warnings: none at all. this is very very soft.
Prompt: One character ruffling the other’s hair
Summary: After everything that Clara has done for Ezra and Cee, the two of them team up to make sure that her birthday is a special one.
“Are you sure she won’t be back before we’re done?”
Cee asked the question as she dropped a stack of wooden slats next to the porch steps. They landed with a soft clanking thud in the spongy grass near the toolbox Ezra had just set down. Up on the porch, Number Four jumped at the sudden sound, her stubby legs splayed in different directions as she toppled to her side. Abe, on the other hand, remained curled up on the doormat in the shape of a plump honey loaf, one orange ear twitching towards the source of the noise and deeming it nothing worth waking over. The smaller gray and white cat scrambled to her feet, letting out a tiny mewling yell as she tottered over to Abe’s side and tucked herself under his tail.
Brushing her palms together, Cee glanced over her shoulder at the long gravel driveway, as though expecting to see puffs of pinkish dust kicking up under the crunch of tires. Finding it empty, she turned back to face him, her lopsided frown almost comical to Ezra. No reason to fret, we have plenty of time.
“Of course I’m sure, Birdie.” He shifted his weight and tilted his head, left hip jutting out for his hand to rest on. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”
With a roll of her eyes, the girl snorted. “How about last week? When you told me to turn right on Plox Street instead of left, and then we ended up on the other side of town, three zones from where we were supposed to-”
“I did not intend for you to take that question so literally,” he responded through a smirk, eyes narrowed in faux irritation. “Besides, we did eventually end up in the correct location, and in doing so we discovered a new route to the Med Center.” Arching one eyebrow, he held up his pointer finger. “One that is much more scenic, I might add.”
Cee tilted her head to one side and then the other. “Yeah, yeah.” Her frown finally faded into a smile that brightened her whole face. Though he wouldn’t know it for months after they came to be one another’s family, the girl’s smile - when it was genuine, when she was actually happy and it wasn’t forced or unsure - was infectious in the best way. As soon as he saw it, Ezra’s own cheeks pulled up in a grin. Because I am not immune to its shine. “It was a nicer ride.”
Beginning as soon as her second rainy season at the farm came to an end, Ezra had been teaching Cee to drive Clara’s truck. And she is taking to it like a lakefowl to water. Not that I am the least bit shocked there. Their lessons had started small, not leaving the property until she was comfortable with the pedals and controls. Once she was, Ezra let her drive short distances into town, always in the passenger seat giving calm encouragement, directing her on when to use signals, and reminding her to keep an eye on the power gauge. When trips to the butcher and the farm supply became simple enough for her, Clara suggested that Cee be the one to drive Ezra to his appointments at the Med Center, where he was being fitted for his prosthetic.
Finally.
After just over two years of fighting, frustration, failed muscle matter scans, grueling physical therapy exercises and an endless regimen of pharmaceuticals, he had been approved to receive a fully integrated mechanical arm to replace the one he’d lost on the Green.
Finally. I… I miss it.
He was still a few weeks away from the surgical procedure to attach it, but he had already been fitted with the brace mechanism that his new right arm would connect to - a series of metal fasteners that had been surgically fused to the bones of his shoulder and humerus. Shrugging his right shoulder, he rolled it backwards and felt as the material of his t-shirt skated over the fasteners. It was an odd sensation, and an even odder thing to think about how the six knob-like devices were embedded into his skeletal structure. Soon they would be covered not by his clothing, but by his arm.
And then I will be able to do things that I have not done in far too long.
A flood of ideas crashed through his mind then. Holding Clara closer and more tightly than he had in seven years was, of course, at the forefront. But it was followed by much simpler things. Like regaining his penmanship, lacing his boots without the use of a hook, peeling potatoes or chopping leeks in the kitchen, helping in the Thulian fields, having a catch with Siggi - and now Cee - at the end of harvest feast. They were things he was so ready for that the excitement kept him up at night, the phantom nerves of his lost limb itching with how close they were to feeling again.
But first there was a project to finish.
On Kamrea, and in the farmlands specifically, it was tradition to give handmade gifts to celebrate birthdays, and Clara’s was fast approaching. The previous year had been consumed by Ezra’s return and recovery, getting Cee settled into her new life, and planning and hosting Sig and Runa’s wedding. With so many moving parts and all at once, birthday gifting had taken a backseat.
Clara still made sure to have something for Cee, though.
He recalled the gobsmacked look of surprise on the newly turned 15 year old’s face as Clara handed her a small, brightly wrapped package after dinner, the look transforming into one of pure delight as she slid one finger between the paper to open it, revealing a hand painted photo frame. In it was a picture Siggi had snapped of Cee with Ezra and Clara at the Harvest feast a few months prior. There had been tears then, the girl flinging her scrawny arms around Clara’s neck in thanks.
That memory warmed his chest as much as the midday starshine warmed his skin.
Oh, Huckleberry, Birdie and I are both so lucky to have you. And I’m the luckiest of us three, for I have you both.
Now that things had more or less calmed down for the three of them, Ezra had been eager to get back to the tradition. He had always put thought and effort into the things he chose to make for Clara, often using his time away on the Green to brainstorm ideas. It helped keep him from feeling too homesick, thinking of ways to make the woman he loved smile. Because that smile is still the most glorious sight these eyes have ever seen. It always will be. Past gifts had included the swing hanging from the crater-oak beside the creek as well as the windchimes that graced the front porch of the house. The fact that both of those objects remained in place even through his absence from the farm was not lost on him, and he looked forward to giving her something else that would become a part of their home.
And this time he had an accomplice in Cee, the girl just as excited to have the chance to give Clara a gift as Ezra was. In fact, what they were currently in the process of building had been Cee’s idea.
And it was a perfect one.
In addition to learning how to drive and finding her feet within the Kamrean school system, Cee had also spent much of the last year and a half learning about Thulian - and plants in general - from Siggi. She’d seen the harvest right away, and after that, the preparations for the rains. But it was what she learned when the planting season came around again that seemed to strike a chord with her, the care and tending that went into helping things grow. Coming in from the fields one day while Clara was in town, her light hair stained pink with pollen powder and an enthusiastic shine in her eyes, she had informed Ezra that she knew what she wanted to make as a gift.
“But I’ll need your help,” she’d told him, biting her lower lip. “I’ve never built anything before. I’ve fixed things, like my headphones but- ” Her forehead creased as she shrugged. “But that’s electrical stuff. Wiring. I… I wouldn’t know where to start when I comes to wood and-“
Ezra chuckled. “Well, you can start by telling me what it is that you would like to construct, Birdie.” Reaching forward, he brought his hand up to the top of her head, brushing the Thulian powder from her hair and tousling the strands. Cee clicked her tongue in what Ezra knew to be false annoyance, the girl only half able to pull off a very unconvincing frown. The look only made Ezra’s smile lift higher. “If it is something I can assist you with then I promise that I will.” He arched one eyebrow, tilting his head towards his right shoulder. “Do, however, keep in mind that my carpentry abilities have been somewhat limited since the last time I took up a hammer.”
Cee shook her head, her now powderless hair swaying around her shoulders with the motion. “I just need you to tell me what to do and… make sure I don’t muck it up.”
“Well then I’ll have an easy job, Cee. I have yet to witness you do a single task poorly.” Ezra brought his hand to his hip, shifting his weight to one leg. “Now, will you tell me what it is you want to build? Or should I venture a guess?”
It was her turn to let a small amused huff slip through a smirk. “I could make you guess, but the idea is to have it finished before Clara’s birthday.”
That made him laugh, this one more full. “Alright then, Little Bird.” He dipped his chin, making sure to keep his eyes on hers. “Let’s hear it.”
She told him that she wanted to design and build a trellis for the front porch. Siggi had shown her how they were used in last season’s fallow field to help the newly planted Thulian stalks grow while they were still establishing roots. “It’s, well the porch is where we all spend a lot of time and-” She paused, taking a breath and not at all trying to hide the slight shake in it. “And a trellis is like… it’s like what Clara - and you - have done for me. Are doing for me. And I-”
Ezra reached for her then, not to ruffle her hair this time, but to pull her into a hug. Her arms - still thin but now noticeably stronger as a result of farmwork and full meals - wound immediately around his torso. She gave a small squeeze that he returned, along with a quick peck to the top of her head. “It’s perfect, Cee.” He released her, pulling back to look at the girl who had become such an important part of his life. “Clara is going to love it.” Just like she loves you. Just like I do.
“Okay, but seriously.” Cee bent down to pick up one of the wooden pieces, using it to gesticulate at the porch steps and snapping Ezra out of his daydream. He followed where she had indicated, his eyes landing on the framework for an arched trellis that was partially in place. “We’ve been working on this for two days already. Are you sure we’re going to finish in time?”
Ezra stooped down with a grunt to open the tool box. “I am, Little Bird.” He handed her a hammer, her fingers wrapping surely around the grip. “The Kamrean Agricultural Authority’s annual convention is a seven cycle affair. Clara and Sig will not be back for another few days, which gives us plenty of time to finish constructing the trellis and to plant the seedlings.” Pulling a handful of nails from the box, he jumbled them around in his palm before selecting one to pass to her, pinching it between his thumb and pointer finger while the rest curled inward to keep the other nails from spilling into the grass. “You worry too much, you know that, right? We are making good time. In fact I would dare to say that we’ll have this finished by supper.”
She lined the piece in her hand up to the framework, matching the pre-drilled holes to the markings that Ezra had shown her how to measure out. Letting out a sigh, she waited for him to replace her hand on the slat with his own, holding it still so she could drive the nail to attach it. “If you say so.” She set the nail, pinching it carefully as she readied the hammer. “Did you decide what we were planting in it?”
Waiting until after she’d finished with that slat, Ezra nodded, handing her another piece of wood from the pile. “That I did, and I think you’ll be happy with my choice, too.” In fact I know you will. I have heard you talk about wanting to see these blossoms extensively.
Cee scrunched her nose, taking the piece from him and repeating the process. “Me? This is a gift for Clara.”
Again he waited until she’d whacked the nail, all the while watching to be sure that she wasn’t about to smash her own hand. But she didn’t. See? Like a lakefowl to water. Anything she sets her mind to, this one. “It is a gift for Clara, but it was you who pointed out that we all spend time together on the porch, was it not”
“Yeah, but…” She trailed off, taking the next board that was handed to her. “Well, are you going to tell me, Ezra? Or am I going to have to guess?”
He laughed, the sound carrying up onto the porch and again startling Number Four but going unnoticed by Abe. “Actually I am quite confident that you would be able to guess. I’ll even give you a hint.”
Cee narrowed her eyes and pushed her lips to one side. “Fine. What’s my hint?” She continued on with her task of securing the slats that would act as a ladder for the vines of the climbing flowers Ezra had selected.
“They can be found in your favorite bo-”
He didn’t get a chance to finish the hint, though, Cee’s eyes widening with wonder. “Novalilies?! Ezra? Are… Did you… Are we planting Novalilies?”
“We are indeed, Birdie.” He grinned. “I knew you’d guess it.”
Novalilies were the flowering vines that grew over the great archway leading to the Bowsum Conservatory - a place that Ezra had taken Clara so many years ago, and one that Cee had read about so many times that he knew that she could see it in her mind without ever having set foot there. They grew quickly and blossomed into soft white flowers that hung down like trumpets. But the real splendor came at night, when the petals, having soaked up the daylight, twinkled like stars against the dark.
“I…” She blinked, a smile spreading across her face. “I didn’t know they could grow anywhere but in the Ephrate.”
“All kinds of things can grow on Kamrea,” he told her. “Thulian, Crater-apples, Novalilies.” With a wink, he passed her the last slat for the side that they were currently working on, lifting his hand up to tousle her hair. “Even skinny little birds.”
.
.
.
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tags: @something-tofightfor @alraedesigns @pheedraws @shoopidly @fific7 @valkblue @a-court-of-feysand-and-elorcan @cannedsoupsucks @tobealostwanderer @paracosmenthusiast @gracie7209 @dihra-vesa @marauderskeeper @disgruntledspacedad @novemberrain221 @littlemisspascal @mishasminion360 @stevie75 @nyctophiliiiiaaa @practicalghost @tanzthompson @harriedandharassed @woodlandmouth @swtaura @thescarletfangirl @trickstersp8 @princessxkenobi @imtryingmybeskar @wildmoonflower @mswarriorbabe80 @theredwritingwitch @silverstarsandsuns @pedro-pedrito-pascalito
#ezra (prospect)#ezra (prospect) x oc#ezra (prospect) x oc clara#cee (prospect)#ezra (prospect) fic#ezra x clara#point of no return#PoNR#writing prompt#ezra prospect fanfiction#prospect fic#pedro pascal character#pedrostories
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Therapy - Chapter I
drug dealer!Ezra x afab&fem!OC (Charlie)
Eventual smut in later chapters! 18+ if you plan to keep reading.
word count: 3377
Warnings: adult themes, read at your own risk! mention of SA (her mind goes into the gutter for a second, nothing actually happens.) drugs and descriptions of drug use, Ezra and Charlie are both way too hot (my fellow bi and pan sluts are very welcome) he's kind of insane probably?? in later chapters.
The first time she saw Ezra was thanks to her anxiety disorder rearing its ugly head after a particularly bad period of work related stress.
Charlie had tried everything.
Nothing was helping and she refused to have some high caliber addictive medication prescribed. Her sleep was irregular and light and she frequently woke from vivid nightmares.
She needed something to at least take the edge off by day and preferably help her sleep as well. Ezra was a friend of her friend Tati, who’d given her the number after a brief correspondence with him, and said he could help.
So there she was, texting him at nine in the evening to ask if she could “leave some dollars with him”.
Ezra: Yes, come over. I’ll send the address. But hurry up.
She was put off by the tone, the lack of a greeting, and the way he made her even more anxious with the request at the end. Now it really felt like a mistake, but she couldn’t back out anymore, the need for relief too strong. Grabbing her keys and wallet, making sure she had enough cash on hand, she slipped into her shoes and left her apartment.
The address he’d sent was basically around the corner, just a seven minute walk away. Charlie wasn’t comfortable walking in the dark, alone, but what other choice did she have? The choice to call the whole thing off and just go home? That now seemed to come with the risk of annoying a stranger - and her anxiety would rather have her robbed and murdered in the street than inconveniencing somebody she didn’t even know.
Once she was walking, the cool air pleasantly blowing her hair out of her face, the roads being completely void of other people, it was easier to calm her breathing and focus on the task at hand without getting dizzy from the nerves. One, two, one, two, she counted her steps and watched her feet on the pavement. Rounding the corner into the road Ezra lived on, she looked at the GPS map on her phone leading her to his house. Just a few dozen more yards and she arrived at the apartment block, which looked very similar to her own.
There were so many names, none of them containing a full first name, so she just texted him.
Charlie: I’m downstairs
Looking up and taking in the tall building, Charlie checked for movement through the windows and neat balconies in the front. But a moment later, he just buzzed her in and she had to leap forward to the door to push it open in time. Inside, she listened - still not knowing where to go. A few levels above her, a door was unlocked and opened, quick steps approached the stairwells, and then somebody’s face came into view. A messy head of dark brown hair, she could make out a stubbled chin and two large hands gripping the railing.
“Fourth floor, there’s an elevator behind the stairs in front of you if you need it. I’ll wait!” he said, echoing, and his head disappeared.
Charlie did not want to get up there even remotely out of breath, how embarrassing that would be, so she cautiously went ahead and found the tall metal doors of an elevator tucked into the wall around the corner. The doors opened with an ominous creak, another source of fresh fuel for her general discomfort as she stepped inside and punched the button with the number four on it.
The ride up was unnerving, but finally, after what felt like an eternity in the tiny confines of the metal box, the doors opened and she stepped out. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath, huffing awkwardly when she laid eyes on Ezra in front of her. He was, unfortunately, handsome as fuck.
There was a little blond streak in the mess of thick brown hair at his right temple, he was tall, broad shoulders, fairly big arms and the beginnings of toned shoulders peeking out of the hand cropped sleeves of a worn and torn Led Zeppelin shirt, a single dimple on his right cheek half hidden in his patchy mess of a trimmed beard - Charlie swallowed dryly.
Why was he smiling? She’d assumed he was going to be apathetic or even a little mean, judging from his text. “Hi!” he said, still smiling brightly, “come in, please.” He led her inside the apartment right by the elevator, shutting the door behind her.
To Charlie’s delight, a Golden Retriever was suddenly all over her, wagging his tail and sniffing, whining excitedly as she leaned down to pet him. “Hey, oh my gosh, who are you?” she cooed, scratching a floppy ear and squatting down to let the dog greet her properly.
Ezra chuckled, standing in a door in front of her, leaning against the frame. There was music playing somewhere, and she heard laughter - a girl. “That’s Jim. It’s short for Jimothy.” Ezra said, and Charlie cackled, looking up at him as the dog attempted to lick her face. “Really?” she asked. “Yes, really. He’s not mine though, so you better get all the head pats in now in case he won’t be around the next time you come over.” The next time? He was already on board with helping her out regularly?
“Whose is he?” Charlie asked. Ezra responded by gesturing for her to follow him into what looked to be his living room, where a petite blonde girl was sprawled on the couch just finishing a tray of nachos. The whole place smelled like weed. “Hey” the girl said, licking some cheese dip off her fingers and nodding at Charlie. “Hi” Charlie squeaked, and Ezra plopped down onto the couch next to the blonde. “This is Cee, Jim is hers” he introduced her, “and that’s Charlie. A new client.” The word client seemed foreign and wrong in this context, but Charlie shrugged it off with an awkward chuckle. Ezra pointed at an armchair to his left, “Sit down if you want. Actually, I would prefer it if you sat down, because it makes me nervous the way you’re standing there.”
Charlie obliged, sinking into the comfortable seat, such a stark contrast to how she was feeling on the inside. He looked at Cee now, furrowing his brows at the full glass ashtray on the coffee table. “You better empty this before you go home to your poor sweet girlfriend all stoned. I’m not cleaning up after you again.” he said, and he sounded like he was joking, not really mad. For some reason his demeanor set Charlie at ease; his voice was rich and warm, like he could make a fortune dubbing Dad characters in cartoons or recording audio books. Cee rolled her eyes but stood up from the couch, gathering an arm full of trash off the table and grabbing the ashtray on her way out the door.
Ezra took a kitchen scale out of a plastic container under the table along with a roll of aluminum foil. “So, I heard you have trouble sleeping, you’re nervous and shit? Anxiety?” he asked, folding his hands as he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. Charlie nodded. Ezra smiled, pulling out another big plastic box from where he’d gotten the scale and the foil. “I’ve got a few different strains you could try…” Charlie’s eyes widened when she saw how full of freezer bags filled with sticky purplish green buds the box was. The bags were all labeled with what she assumed were the market names of the strains and Hybrid, Indica or Sativa respectively. “How much money do you have on your person?” Ezra asked, fishing out a few of the bags and laying them out in front of him. “Uhm, I have like a hundred with me. I don’t know if the rates have changed at all since the last time I bought weed.” Charlie said, pulling her wallet out of her pocket. “Alright, a hundred will do, I can put something together. You know how to roll, or do you have a bong or something like that?” “I can roll, yeah.”
Charlie was calming down rapidly now, maybe it was the second hand smoke wafting through the living room, maybe it was the presence of a dog - maybe it was Ezra.
She watched him take various small pristine buds out of their bags, all kinds of pretty shades of purple and green, and place them on the scale one by one. Behind Charlie, Cee opened the apartment door. “I’m out, bye Ez!” “Bye! Say hi to Zara from me!” When he was done, he plucked all the buds off the scale and dropped them on a flat sheet of aluminum foil, neatly folding it up and sealing it at the edges. “There you go” he said, handing the package to her and holding out his other hand to accept the money, “and I’ll give you an herbal blend you can use instead of tobacco for rolling, it’s healthier, and some papers on the house. Pretty girl discount.”
The first time he saw Charlie, his expectations were neutral, just another contact in his phone.
Ezra didn’t expect to see a girl this pretty that evening; actually he’d expected a guy. He was about to send Cee home and call it a night, tired, when Tati had texted him to ask if he still had room in his contacts for her friend Charlie. “Sure” he’d replied, happy to gain another customer; it would help pay the rent. But when he looked down over the railing of the stairs in his apartment building, he spotted a young woman, and when she stepped out of the elevator, he could see she was fucking beautiful. She had wavy light brown hair, wearing it down past her shoulders with a middle part. Her face was freckled and pretty in an interesting way; an adorable nose, pouty mouth, long lashes the same shade as her hair and bright green eyes. He hoped she wasn’t just here as a one-off, wanted to see her again.
The second time she saw Ezra, her nerves were in much better shape.
Not only had her workload drastically reduced in the meantime due to word about her business having finally spread around town enough so she wouldn’t need to constantly hustle for customers anymore, the weed also helped tremendously. Charlie was still busy enough in her studio, taking portraits and driver’s license headshots during the day, and wedding and graduation photos in the evenings, but the advertising was the most stressful part, and there wasn’t a need for a lot of that anymore. It was easy not to fall into unhealthy smoking habits this way, only able to light up at night after coming home and kicking off shoes and jeans, and it worked wonders. She still had nightmares, but she’d had those ever since she was little. They weren’t as unnerving anymore and at least she could sleep at all. The general anxiety had mostly subsided too in the weeks since she’d started smoking again. When she’d called Tati and thanked her for referring her to Ezra, her friend had been overjoyed to hear she was doing much better.
That day, she was almost out of weed. A twinge, a remnant, of the anxiety she’d felt about it last time swelled up in her chest when she hovered her thumb over the call button on her phone. Maybe she should just text him - but he’d asked her to call, and earlier too. So she sat on the steps in front of her apartment building and took a deep breath before finally getting over the inhibition and calling Ezra. It rang five times before he picked up.
“Hello?” he sounded sleepy, and the sound of his low voice distorted through the phone made her heart skip, for whatever reason. Stupid, she scolded herself internally. “Hey, it’s Charlie. Can I come over?” she asked, fidgeting with the zipper of her jacket. There was rustling at the other end of the line, she assumed he was sitting up, maybe in bed or on his couch. “What time is it?” he yawned. “It’s almost seven. I just came home from work. Couldn’t do any earlier, sorry” she said. “Oh, you’re fine. Sure, I’ve got time, come on over!”
He was waiting for her at the elevator doors again, smiling, just like the first time, wearing a denim jacket over a Misfits shirt that was equally as worn as the Led Zeppelin shirt, and a pair of jeans that fit him just right… God damn it, she needed to get a hold of herself. “Hi” he beamed as he led her inside. The smell of the smoke hit her nose and she followed him into his living room where they both sat on the couch this time. It was, without question, one of the most comfortable couches she’d ever had the privilege of sitting on. Thick upholstery that just slightly budged under her weight invited her to lean back and linger, and so she did.
“So how’d you like what I gave you?” he inquired, looking at her over his shoulder as he pulled up the scale and the box of weed again. “I loved it. It’s honestly helping me so much, I cannot thank you enough.” she chuckled nervously, shifting a little in her seat. He smiled brightly, the lines framing his eyes getting more visible, his dimple prominent and his soft looking lips revealing a neat row of teeth. “Good! That’s what I like to hear. So, same strains as last time?” he asked. She nodded, gave him a soft smile, and didn’t know what it was doing to him - but she could swear he glanced at her mouth for just a split second before focusing on bagging up some of his product for her.
He worked quietly, then they exchanged the goods and the money, and she was ready to be walked out the door again, when he cleared his throat. “Hey, uh. I was actually gonna roll one for myself to smoke on the balcony just now, wanna join me?” She looked at him with wide eyes and she could fucking feel herself get flushed red. “Uhm… uhh” she stammered, fucking embarrassing. “You can say no, it’s no big deal. Just didn’t feel like smoking alone.” he continued, and she swallowed dryly. “Y-yeah, why not?” she squeaked, completely messing up trying to play it cool; and of course he noticed! He filed it away, dug his claws into her reaction and refused to let it go. He was going to have so much fun unwinding this pretty girl, and he could already tell it was going to be easy.
They sat on two wicker chairs on his balcony off his living room and had a pretty nice view of the neighborhood from up there. The roads were lined with small trees, the buildings weren’t ugly, and it was a beautiful late summer evening when Ezra lit the joint and leaned back in his seat, Charlie watching him in her peripheral. Fuck, he looked hot, greedily sucking on the joint and inhaling the smoke with a furrowed brow. He shrugged off his denim jacket and revealed those fucking arms and shoulders to her. She thought about how effortlessly he’d be able to just pin her down then and there and take her. And she wouldn’t even be able to defend herself. The thought was kind of fucked up, but it made her wet nonetheless. Just thinking about how strong he looked, how much taller he was than her, and her eyes wandered down over his chest and stomach. She spotted a slightly pudgy roll under the shirt there and her mouth watered. He looked hard and soft at the same time, and he smelled so good, and it was torture to be so close to him. Giving up trying to suppress these thoughts, she just decided to indulge. Maybe the weed would help - but it didn't; in fact, it made everything worse. He started talking to her after they’d passed the joint back and forth two times, and she felt light headed already.
“What do you do for work?” he asked. She took a long drag and passed the joint back to him before she replied. “I’m a photographer. I have my own studio, right down the road. Maybe you’ve passed it. The one next to the tattoo studio. Haven’t been there long, but I’m starting to get some traffic, finally.” she rambled, and she felt awkward for giving him such an unnecessarily detailed answer. “Damn, sounds cool. And you can live off of that?” Why was he so interested in her life all of a sudden? The pretty girl discount comment from last time returned to her thoughts as a fresh memory and suddenly her mouth felt dry. Reaching for the bottle of water he’d handed her and unscrewing the cap, she took a sip and nodded when he looked right at her, expecting another response. “Yeah, I’m very lucky.” she smiled.
She thought about asking him something too, but couldn’t come up with a good question. What do you ask your drug dealer about himself? “Do you have like an actual job?” she blurted out, and immediately regretted it. Ezra laughed, with his lungs full of smoke, so he started coughing and reached for her bottle of water. “Oh, shit, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that!” she said, handing him the bottle and watching him drink. He sat there, bright red, and tried to swallow those violent coughs - and even that was hot to her. Jesus H. Christ. Was there anything he wasn’t able to turn into a fetish for her on the spot?
Once he recovered, he kept laughing but passed her the joint for now. “Holy shit, that’s hilarious” he said, beaming at her, so finally she realized he wasn’t even slightly hurt by her question and giggled too. “I’m sorry, I meant to phrase that differently.” she began, “I meant to ask if selling weed is your only source of income, and if that’s a comfortable living.” He just grinned at her. “Sure. Yeah, it pays the bills and then some. I’m not a nine to five kinda guy” he said, taking back the joint and watching her blow out the smoke in his direction. She nodded, understanding completely. If she was still employed with somebody else or hell, even working in retail or service, she’d lose her mind too. “I don’t just sell weed, you know. I have other stuff, too. Just for your information, in case you’re interested in boosting my income with something more expensive” he winked, and she cocked a brow. “Like what?” He cleared his throat, still burning a little bit from the smoke making it into his vocal chords. “Well, right now I have ecstasy pills. I usually have a decent amount of mushrooms growing in my broom closet, too. Sometimes I get a vial of LSD and make my own chews and blotters.” he elaborated, and her eyes widened. “You know how to dose it correctly and shit?” she inquired, and he nodded. “Yeah, I went to college for chemistry. Got my diploma just to become a drug dealer, I guess.” Charlie laughed, and he smiled. “So, if you’re interested in anything, let me know and I’ll hook you up. We’ll make it work.” he said, so assuredly and confidently, like they were talking about anything other than illegal street drugs.
“I’ve never done shrooms,” Charlie said, taking another drag off the joint and leaving the rest for Ezra to finish. “Oh, you have to.” he said, “Let me indulge you some time. You can bring Tati if you want. We’ll have a good time up here.” Charlie gave him a shy smile. “I dunno,” she said, considering it for a while, weighing her options and ultimately coming to the conclusion that trying everything at least once had really been her philosophy throughout her whole life, so why stop now? “It would have to be a free weekend for me.” “Deal.”
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The Architecture of Murder - a prologue
pairing: Ezra x blackfem!OC Beatrice Chola (royal AU)
rating: T for Teen
word count: 712
warnings: royalty au, murder mystery au, familial angst.
a/n: well. I’ve been telling myself I’ve been wanting to rewrite this for the longest but instead of making a reader insert, I decided to write this as I always imagined it. I understand that reader inserts aren’t “popular” and I know that makes a reader who is explicitly black a target of sorts. I owe it to myself though. This was the first fully fledged piece of fictional work I put a lot of thought into. I hope y’all enjoy it. Credits to the gif maker.
Beatrice Chola spent her life learning to become a princess, not a murderer.
Tunes of nostalgia bounce off the walls as a rather content maid, Claire, walks briskly towards the princesses chambers. She possessed a few bundles of fresh linens, hoping to replace them as quickly as she could, as the cook was making a specialty soup Claire could not miss. Entering the room, Claire makes haste by throwing the pillows off and stripping the bed of the used sheets.
She ignores the crumpled form sprawled across the chaise, raising an eyebrow just a hair.
The form belonged to Beatrice, no doubt, dress wrinkled and hair messy. Her left hand draped across her forehead, right hand lightly gripping the knife wedged into her abdomen. Crimson stains pool around the wound, knife sticking out at an odd angle.
Claire continues her work, her humming remaining steady and upbeat. She finishes quickly, many years of tending to the Chola’s and cleaning up their messes being put to use. Claire gathers up the dirty linens from the floor, balling it together to make it easier to maneuver while walking, turning to Beatrice before departing.
“Your mother requests your presence. It seems that your sister has returned home. She will have a fit if you are not proper and late. I suggest you do us both a favor and use a sharper knife or prepare yourself, lest you want both of us to be under the guillotine.”
With that, Claire exits the chambers.
Beatrice brunches up her gown in her hands, sprinting as fast as her lanky legs would carry her. She dodges through the court, screaming apologies after bumping into a few of them. Beatrice finally approaches the drawing room, skirting to a stop just shy of the door, calming her breathing. Standing tall, Beatrice holds her head high and pushes the doors back to enter.
“You’re late.” The queen chides. Beatrice sighs heavily, being careful not to roll her eyes because she knew her mothers eyes were still trained on her figure. The young princess could barely turn her attention away from her mother before the shrill sound of a squeal causes her to grit her teeth. The second eldest of the Chola sisters, Millicent, all but leaps into Beatrice’s arms.
“Sister! It has been so long, have you gotten bigger?” Millie asks, eyes skimming Beatrice’s body from top to bottom.
“My tits have.” This earns Beatrice a snippy hiss from her mother and an arm slap from her sister.
“I have missed your jokes, I must admit. Time does make the heart grow fonder indeed.” Millie smiles at her youthful sister, a slight strain behind the glow of her eyes.
Beatrice could not lie, she missed her sister as well. Partly because she remained the buffer between her and the eldest child, Althea. Without Millie, the two would rip each other to shreds.
“Ah, so she returns! Millicent, my darling. I have missed you.” Althea embraces Millie tightly. “Where is that husband of yours? Is he well?”
Beatrice slinks back as her sisters greet each other, never sure on how to present herself whenever Althea was around. It seems like no matter what she did, Althea would never approve of her. Given the age difference between the two, it made sense that Millie and Althea were closer.
Demi throws a quick look at Millie upon hearing the mention of husband. Millicent avoids the gaze.
“Cal is wandering around somewhere, I am sure.”
“Hopefully I will run into him by the day’s end.” Althea replies. She barely turns her head towards Beatrice, name tumbling out of her mouth like poison. Beatrice only nods, any insults forming getting stuck in the back of her throat.
A knock sounds from the door before it opens, a footman staggering in. He assumes his position, announcing the guest who saunters in shortly behind.
“May I present to you, Sir Ezra, your majesty.”
Echoes of footsteps can be heard throughout the room as seemingly everyone holds their breath. There had been talk of a new court advisor floating about the halls, much of it you assumed to be rumors. People loved to talk.
Ezra was definitely going to give them something to talk about.
#ezra prospect#ezra x ofc#Ezra x blackfem!OC#fic: the architecture of murder#murder mystery#original fiction
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Fortunes of the Green
Moodboards pt 2
Coming to A03 September 2022
A03 link
Moodboards pt 1 | Moodboards pt 3
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Ezra is my number one man.
you know Ezra is chatty and noisy in bed. he's well-read so he will also be well-versed in all the filthy things his partner wants to hear. he's also well-traveled in the Fringes. think of all the things he and his colleagues would get up to during long journeys away from port. Shyness goes out the window in tight quarters during lengthy contracts. I don't see him restricting himself to any particular gender, either.
Drabble Below: Ezra x M!OC (amab), fleshlight usage. 18+ only, please and thank you.
He brings a flesh-light on one particular journey. tucks away into a room with a friend to show him how it works, how to use it. He brings lube, too, of course. Pours a healthy dollop on the tip of the toy's opening and slides his finger into it to spread it around the insides. Makes his friend slide a finger in, too.
They sit side by side on a big plastic crate and with one hand Ezra is squeezing his cohort's thigh. the other hand is wrapped tight around his toy as he strokes himself, describing how good it feels. the tight wet suction. the smooth glide. the way his whole body heats up. the way his hips react on instinct to curl and jump.
all while his friend just watches, dumb-founded, growing hard in his own pants but too mesmerized to do anything about it.
Then once Ezra's done and spilt in the toy, he crowds his friend and convinces him to try it out for himself. Doesn't even clean it first, just slides it on his friend's cock and strokes him. makes him feel the mess Ezra's made inside it. makes him hear the loud squelch over and over. all the while talking filth in his ear--sharing old stories of other wet cunts and tight holes he's fucked (whether true or simply for illustrative purposes), maybe even surmising what his cohort's own hole would feel or taste like.
Then, when his friend has been worked up to his own release and floods the toy, causing their shared spend to spill over the edges and all over his friend's pants. He sits back proudly, pats his friend on the cheek and says, "Til next time" with glittering eyes and leaves.
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Request Status: Open (Selective)
Pedro Pascal Characters I Write: Din Djarin , Joel Miller, Javier Peña, Oberyn Martell, Javi Gutierrez, Ezra (Prospect), Frankie Morales, Comandante Veracruz, Jack ‘Whiskey’ Daniels.
Gabriel Luna Characters I Write: Tommy Miller, Boro Polonia.
Be My Future - Din x Reader (Breeding Kink)
Possessive!Din
Touch Starved Din
Teaching Din To Eat You Out
Take It - Dom! Din x Reader (Breeding Kink)
Over Eager, Inexperienced Din
Din Spanks You With His Belt
Din When You're Pregnant
What's In A Name? - Din Djarin x Named OC (SFW)
Din As A Girl Dad (SFW)
Domestic!Din x Teacher!Reader (SFW)
"I'm Not Wearing Underwear" - Prompt
Headcanons
Jealousy, Jealousy - Jealous!Reader x Joel / Jealous!Reader x Tommy (Most Popular Fic!)
Jealousy, Jealousy (Part Two) - Jealous!Reader x Joel
Joel's Kinks
That's My Girl - Jealous, Possessive Joel x Reader
Differences Between Game!Joel & Show!Joel
Playing Rough - Joel x Reader (ft spanking & the knife handle).
Mine - Possessive!Reader x Joel
DBF! Joel Catching You Staring At His Arms
'Accidentally' Getting Joel A Shirt That's Too Small
DBF! Joel Has Enough Of Your Teasing
DBF! Joel With A Bratty Reader
Joel Sees Your Scars (SFW)
Seducing Joel
Joel Wants You In Sub Space
Oblivion - Joel x Reader (Established Consent / DubCon CW)
Breathe Through It - Joel x Anxious!Reader (SFW)
Pre Game - DBF!Joel x Confident!Reader
Plus Size Reader Is Reassured By Joel (SFW)
“We Have To Make This Quick” - Prompt
Joel When You’re Sick (Headcanons)
Heat - Ezra x F!Reader
Taste - Ezra x F!Reader, short continuation of Heat
Ache - Ezra x AFAB Reader (Sex Pollen Fic)
Jealousy, Jealousy (Alt Version)
Bedside Manner (TLOU2 Spoilers!)
Taboo
Part One (SFW)
Part Two (SFW)
Tennessee Nights (Part One)
Tennessee Nights (Part Two)
Fall In Love In A Single Touch - modern!Oberyn (fluff & hurt/comfort)
A Breath Of Fresh Air - (Dubcon Smut)
#masterlist#my writing#rues fics#pedro pascal#pedro pascal character fic#joel miller#joel miller smut#joel miller x reader#tommy miller#din djarin#din djarin smut#javier pena#the last of us#the mandalorian#ko fi link#ezra prospect#comandante veracruz#Frankie Morales#fic requests#Oberyn Martell#Jack Whiskey Daniels#gabriel luna#tommy miller x reader#boro polonia#tommy miller smut
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Starlight, Chapter Three:
pairing: fae!ezra prospect x princess!oc (Marigold)
rating: M (my blog is 18+ only, minors dni, dual/alternating POV, depression, magic/fantasy elements, ezra's got a plan but mari's got no fuckin clue)
wc: 5.2k
series masterlist
EZRA
Though I awoke most mornings to a familiar bit of shame blossoming inside my chest like a rotted flower straight from Hel, this morning was accompanied by a horrible guilt that only took two seconds of consciousness to place.
Marigold.
Thinking of her face—her perfect, heartbreaking, soul-consuming face—when she came down the staircase after…
I didn’t want to think of what she must’ve endured at the hands of her new husband. Another thing to repent for. But it was more than that that plagued me, forcing me into sending a very angry and jealous Emita away last night. It was the look of betrayal written in Mari’s eyes as she saw Emita and I together, as if it had been the final straw to break her.
I wanted to console her, to assure her that what Emita and I shared was nothing more than a friendly service to one another—at least on my part—but she wouldn’t let me. I didn’t blame her then and I don’t blame her now as I lay in my all-too cold bed, staring up at the dark green curtains draped above the four-poster frame. The only thing to remind me of home, of my purpose for being here.
It had been my fault—all of it. I was the one who selfishly arranged all of this. The one who had secrets to hide. The one to ignore all of my well thought out plans in favor of more time with her, more of her trust, more of that sunbaked light that would have radiated from her even if I wasn’t born to spot it.
The light to my dark. The reason this all started, and the reason it all could come crumbling down before me.
MARIGOLD
I didn’t leave my suite for three days following my wedding night.
I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Kaius, and it seemed he felt the same way about me. I hadn’t received any visits from guards informing me that the King requested my presence, and though I felt relieved at the thought of not having to lay beneath him again, I couldn’t shake the feeling of insecurity that followed.
I longed to have some older, seasoned, trustworthy woman around me to offer advice, to rid me of my insecurity and assure me that I’d done nothing wrong. But all I had was Drusilla, and she was only a girl. It didn’t feel right placing my adult issues on her shoulders, and so, I kept to myself.
She only visited twice a day, once in the morning to dress me and style my hair, and once in the evening to bathe and dress me for bed. I urged her to talk, even when I kept silent, just to hear her voice that sounded so much like my eldest sister’s did when I was just a little girl and she was Drusilla’s age. Drusilla didn’t seem to mind, even though her eyes told me she yearned to hear me speak instead, if only just to be sure I was still capable.
Tonight, I was more quiet than usual as I sat in the front of the fireplace in my suite’s sitting room, staring at myself in the reflection of the large window leading out into pure blank night. My golden brown skin had faded into dullness even with the glow of the fire, my eyes both swollen and darkened by my tears and lack of sleep. My lips were cracked, my cheeks hollow. I looked nothing like myself and exactly like I felt.
Knocks rang on the main door, but I didn’t welcome anyone in. I couldn’t. My voice wouldn’t come even if I tried to muster the energy to speak. My guest must’ve either realized that or disregarded their manners entirely because within a minute, the door opened and two sets of footsteps along with the squeak of a rolling cart began to fill the crushing silence all around me.
“Mari,” Drusilla’s young voice sounded, a warm and familiar balm to the icy ache in my chest. “I’ve brought your dinner.”
I turned, planning to give her a nod and the closest thing to a smile I could muster, but Ezra’s presence behind her wiped all tenderness from me. I gave him a disapproving look that I hope conveyed my disinterest in his company before turning back to the fire.
“We thought we’d eat with you,” Drusilla persisted, the clatter of plates being laid on the table in the dining room beside me forcing my eyes to close in defeat. “The Great Hall is packed with soldiers and noblemen. Not exactly the place for a girl. At least this girl.”
I made myself nod, my head slightly turning in the direction of the armchair beside the one I was seated in. Ezra’s presence was unbearable. Suffocating. Yet still as intoxicating as it had been before my world shifted on its axis when I caught him and Lady Emita in the hall.
“I wanted to check in on you,” he began, his voice low enough that Drusilla wouldn’t overhear it in the next room. “And I apologize for it taking so long for me to do so. I’ve been…occupied.”
“There was no need.” I surprised myself with my own voice after not hearing it for so long.
“Regardless,” he managed, though I could see he was struggling with his own shock. “It’s my duty to ensure your welfare.”
I scoffed—or perhaps it was more of a laugh—and shook my head.
“I’m perfectly well,” I assured, however much of a lie it had been.
“You don’t look well,” he noted, his eyes darting across each of my dull, lifeless features. “You look…broken.”
I didn’t mask my rage, those same features sharpening as I stood up and faced him. He looked rattled, perhaps even a bit fearful, but remained seated.
“I wasn’t his to break and I am not yours to fix,” I seethed. “Find somewhere else to eat your dinner.”
“Marigold,” he pleaded, soft and gentle, but no less desperate.
“Leave me.” I ordered him away like a peasant, causing his eyes to sharpen a bit. “I am your Queen, and I am ordering you to leave me. So leave.”
Ezra stood, his jaw settling with a grind that told me he had many things he wished to say in retort but refrained. I watched him walk away with a look of pure hatred while fighting the feeling of pure longing swelling inside me, ready to suffocate me.
“Mari,” Drusilla scolded, her purple eyes fixing on mine as she lingered in the archway of the dining room. “I like the Hand. He’s kind.”
“Kind men don’t work for men like Kaius,” I replied, dry and cold. The tone shocked her into silence, and I immediately felt sick with regret.
She deserved none of my anger, and yet, here I was doling it out.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed, crumbling back into my chair. “I’m just…tired.”
“You’ve been tired ever since your wedding,” she noted, quietly creeping into the spot Ezra had sat in just moments before. “It’s worrying, not only to me but…the Hand. The two of you seemed to behave like friends before. What happened?”
“Adult things, Dru,” I managed. “Things that I don’t want you having to shoulder.”
“Did he…did he hurt you?” she asked, careful but concerned. I turned to her, my eyes softened.
“The Hand did not physically hurt me,” I replied, my words chosen carefully.
No, he didn’t physically hurt me, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover from the wounds caused by the sight of him with another woman. No, he didn’t hurt me, but wasn’t it worth mentioning that I hadn’t once thought of what Kaius did to me? That the thought of Ezra with another person took precedence over that?
“Then why—“
“The food is getting cold,” I said, deciding that even though the thought of eating with this pit inside my chest made my stomach turn, I would do it just to avoid more questions.
Drusilla took the seat beside me at the table and eagerly began on her plate, the silence pouring over us more comfortable than all the questions for the time being. But given the curious and persistent young woman she was, it didn’t last long.
“I know you hate him, but I like him,” she offered in between bites. “And I trust him.”
“Why?” I didn’t know why I asked, or why it was so important to me that he’d earned her trust. Trust that was not easily given over given her background.
“He could have thrown me into a room no bigger than a dungeon like all the other servants, but he didn’t. He set me up in a real bedroom, with a giant bed and books to read. When I made a comment about the lack of female servants and the unease I felt because of the male servant’s gazes, he could have ignored me, or told me to get over it, but he didn’t. He went out and hired a whole team of women from the shelters in town, and then he went and got rid of all the men I’d said had lingering eyes.” I focused my eyes on my plate, pushing around peas to arrange them into different shapes. Anything to distract myself from the fact that Ezra, however uninterested in me, might actually be a decent man. “And with you—“ My eyes shot to hers. A warning, and an invitation. “I’m no expert when it comes to royal protocol, but I can’t imagine it’s customary for the King’s Hand to take such care of his Queen. He has duties, an entire army to oversee, and yet, he’s stopped me in the halls morning, noon, and night to ask about you. To ask if you’re eating, to ask if you’re sleeping, to…ask. He cares for you, Mari, in a way I’m not quite capable of understanding yet. But even in my inexperience and naivety, I can see that you care too.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes, my shoulders shrugging instead.
“I don’t care, and neither does he,” I managed, soft but firm. “That is how it’s supposed to be and how it will remain.”
“Mari—“
“Finish your sprouts,” I scolded, tapping the rim of her plate with my fork. She gave me a look that screamed pure adolescent disdain, but obeyed, stabbing into the sprout like she had a vendetta. I watched as she lifted it to her mouth and made a face as she chewed, a smile creeping its way onto my face at the simplicity of this moment.
No awful husbands, no infuriating Hand’s, just two girls having a meal together, doing all they can to make the other feel better.
“I’m sorry for my mood lately,” I said, helping her clear the table after our dinner was finished. “I’m still adjusting to this new life, but…having you in it has been a bright light to all this darkness. I just needed you to know that.”
Drusilla frowned, but there was no sadness in her eyes. Instead, she looked…well, she looked happy. As if she had been waiting for this reassurance.
“Sisters,” she smiled, offering me her pinky. I chuckled, once again shocked at the sound, and coiled my own pinky around hers. A promise, one that neither of us took lightly.
“Sisters.”
After two more days of total isolation, I began to go stir crazy. I read myself into slump of boredom, then played the pianoforte until the music began to sound like nails raking across stone, before finally resorting to a bit of physical labor by rearranging my sitting room not once, not twice, but three times until Drusilla was begging me to go out and expel some of my energy on Ezra’s soldiers. That I declined, but agreed to give her some reprieve from my company by going for a long, hopefully draining, walk.
I decided to stay in the castle to avoid unnecessary stares from the men training out in the snowy courtyard, even if these stone walls reminded me of my helplessness. My prison sentence.
Kaius’s quarters took up the entirety of the West Wing of the castle, all five floors reserved for him and whoever was unfortunate enough to be invited. I had no interest in exploring his multiple council rooms, private suites, and torture chambers anyway.
As I walked through the first floor of the East Wing, I managed to lose all sense of direction, the dark, lamplit stone walls all blending in together until I found myself in a narrow corridor, lit by only a few torches. The hair on my arms stood, a sense of dread and unease curdling my stomach until I was sure my lunch would find its way onto the stone beneath my slippers.
I reached a corner in the hall, the corridor to my left shrouded in darkness so black I swore I had stumbled upon hell itself, but it was the giant stone door on my right that wrought the most fear. It wasn’t particularly menacing, it’s stone the same as the one leading into my suite, but it was the lock hanging by the doorknob that startled me.
What was so dangerous in this castle that it had to be locked inside? And more importantly, who held the key to unlocking this monster?
“I wouldn’t go adventuring in there,” a familiar voice, Ezra’s voice, spoke from around the shadowy corner. I gasped, clutching my chest to soothe the hard thump of my heart. When the fear subsided and irritation set in, I glared at him, watching as he came closer into the faint torchlight. He was dressed in his leathers—he must have been outside training with his men.
“Do you just stand and wait in the shadows praying that you’ll stumble across someone you can pester?” I spat, not failing to notice the slight lift of one of his brows.
“No,” he said, fighting back a smirk. “Just you, Your Majesty.”
I didn’t bother fighting back an eye roll.
“What’s in there?” I finally caved, pointing at the door to my right.
“I’d tell you, but I doubt you’ll be able to sleep knowing what lies under the same roof as you,” he said, sincerity thick in his tone. I shivered and took him for his word. “If you’re looking to explore, though, I could show you other, less haunting parts of the estate.”
I fought a sneer away at his offer. Given the way my heart still pounded in his presence, I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with him for an entire afternoon.
“I’m sure I can see myself around,” I said, trying to be as polite as I could, all things considered. “Is it just the one dungeon, then?”
Ezra laughed. Something small and airy, but a laugh.
“Perhaps I should draw you a map,” he said, not fighting his smile any longer. “Err on the side of caution.”
I gave him a condescending smile and said, “Perhaps.”
“I can see you’re still angry with me,” he said, following me down the hall as I made my way back from where I came.
“I feel nothing towards you,” I spat, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Have you forgotten my gift?” he said, and though I couldn’t see his face, I could hear his amusement. It was enough to earn him a glare from over my shoulder. “You’re angry, and you’re…I don’t know what it is. But it’s heavy. It’s…raw.”
“Irritation, likely,” I chided, reaching a dead end in the corridor. “Since you insist on joining me, can you please be of some use and guide me out of this awful maze of a prison.”
“I can be useful in many ways,” he returned, his eyes locked on mine as I turned to him. “Ways I’d love to show you one day.”
I gave him another roll of my eyes, an exasperated chuckle slipping from my lips as I shook my head and gestured at the stone wall in front of us. “Let’s start with getting out of this maze first, perhaps?”
Ezra didn’t seem to take my tone or scowl to heart—he actually seemed to rather enjoy the look of me rolling my eyes given the wide grin he wore as he lifted his palm flat to the stone. My gaze flickered between his good hand pressed against the wall and the golden glow of his irises, so molten I was sure if I looked too long at them I’d start to melt.
“Wh—“
“I’m trying to focus on building a portal for you, Your Majesty,” Ezra cut in, though no true frustration could be found in his tone. “Or would you rather we exit through one of those dark corridors you nearly sprinted past?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, half tempted to overcome my fear of the dark—or rather, what lurked in it—and leave him here just to prove him wrong.
But that would only end up with my lost down another corridor, wishing I’d set my pride aside and let him work. So, I did.
It only took a minute longer for the stone to fade into sheer darkness, a black so black my eyes almost couldn’t process the color. I stumbled back, though instinct told me there was no reason to worry—my instinct, it seemed, was a fan of the man beside me, smirking proudly.
“See what a little ounce of patience can achieve, my dear Mari?” he tipped his chin towards the void in front of me, distracting me from bringing up the fact that he’d used a nickname that only the closest to me used. I couldn’t deny that it sounded good coming from his lips. “It’s only dark for a moment.”
“Where does it lead?” I prodded, my tone still sharp from fear.
“That depends,” he shrugged. “Where would you like it to lead?”
“That seems like something one might have considered before opening a portal,” I chided.
“It leads anywhere,” he corrected. “Anywhere your heart desires. Although, I wouldn’t venture too far without a way back.”
“Meaning, if I were to choose to run back home, or to my sisters, I’d have to bring you to ensure—“
“To ensure your husband doesn’t come hunting after you like one of his poor beasts,” he cut in, his tone dry and serious despite his previously light mood.
“Worry not, dear Hand, I have no intentions of making a great escape. I doubt my father would welcome me back in Solis even if I tried.”
Ezra’s eyes softened, his jaw ticking as he continued to stare at me as I continued to stare at the void, neither one of us willing to break first.
“Do you trust me?” he spoke after a beat of tense silence, my eyes gliding over to meet his as my brows furrowed with confusion.
“Today?” He gave me an unimpressed look. “Yes, Ezra, I trust you. Mostly.”
“Then take my hand,” he said, his voice low and raw and…desperate? What reason did he have to be so desperate for my trust? For my touch?
“Where?” I asked, hovering my hand above his.
“My favorite place in the entire world,” he smiled. “Where it’s green and happy, where there are no worries. Only nature. Only peace.”
I swallowed, suddenly aware that taking this step was pushing the line I had drawn between us. I’d learn more about him, what makes him happy, what makes him feel at ease. He and I would go off together without a single person aware that we were even missing. The possibilities of stupidity had multiplied in the mere seconds it took for him to make the offer.
“I…”
My hand trembled as I tugged it back to my side, reason winning out over curiosity. This time, at least.
“I think I’ll just head back to my suite,” I said hurriedly, lifting the hem of my dress as I approached the void. I swore I could hear a sigh slip from his lips as I took the first step into the portal, though that could have been the sound of me gasping for air as the darkness washed over me.
It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, being in the space between all things, however fleeting it was. One second I was nowhere, darkness and nothingness threatening to consume my very soul, and the next I was tripping over the rug in my sitting room, my knees screaming at me as I hit the hard floor with a yelp. My head whipped around, desperate to shout at Ezra for my own clumsiness, but there was no more portal, and certainly no Ezra.
I was surprised by the guilt that rotted my stomach as I sat on the floor in the middle of the room, knees scraped and head aching. He’d offered up a piece of himself with me to share, something I was sure not just anyone received, and I turned him down without so much as a thank you.
I hadn’t even looked him in the eye.
EZRA
An entire day had passed since the interaction in the corridor. Since Mari drew a clear line right between where she and I stood. Though the rejection stung, I couldn’t find it in myself to blame her for it. I was not a part of her plan—a plan I had carefully conceived and executed without her knowledge. All to get her here. To use her for her light, for the half of me that was missing. The half that would give me enough power to set things right in this Kingdom and give retribution to my people.
But that plan was cracking under the weight of my feelings for her, feelings I knew were born not out of something as temporary as lust or love, but belonging. She was the missing part of my soul that I was meant to find by birth, destined to fit together like the final pieces of a puzzle. And she had no clue.
“Is there any particular reason you called for this little meeting, Your Highness?” Emita purred at me, half-bent over my desk in the conservatory above my suite. The entirety of both rooms were warded with magic, hiding everything spoken, everything done inside these walls from the likes of Kaius and his crones.
“That’s all over, Emita,” I sighed, rubbing my temples. “This is a business matter.”
“Which explains why I got an invite.”
My eyes lifted to my dearest friend since childhood, a Fae noble serving as a Captain of Kaius’s army, Cassander. Standing half an inch taller than me—a fact he loved to throw in my face—with golden, shoulder length waves, and dark blue eyes, he was always what I imagined a King to be. His temperament was fair and light, and yet his determination and loyalty was as fierce as a lion, a balance that is not often stumbled upon.
“Hello, lovely Emita,” he purred, smirking at her as she stomped away from my desk to her favorite chair overlooking the dark, snowy grounds. “In a mood again?”
“I’m always in a mood when you’re around, loathsome Cassander,” she retorted, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Children,” I sighed, gesturing at the seat next to where Cassander stood, urging him to sit and listen rather than continue to pick on Emita. “We need a new plan.”
“No, we don’t,” Emita hissed. “The plan was perfect—“
“The plan requires us to take a woman hostage and possibly incapacitate her by literally pulling the light out of her,” Cassander interjected. “I’ve always been against the plan.”
“There’s no other way to set things right without that power, Ez,” Emita persisted. “I’d like for my Kingdom to not turn into ice. I’d like this Kingdom to not succumb to the dark. I’d like—“
“There’s another way,” I cut in, rubbing two fingers along the hair on my jawline.
“Oh, Gods,” Cass smirked. “The way I originally suggested, you mean?”
Emita jumped to her feet and bounded over to where I sat, still calmly stroking my chin.
“Please tell me how you plan to seduce and mate with a woman who’s already married? A human, might I add.” My eyes slowly lifted to meet hers, taking in the equal amounts of shock, disbelief, and betrayal hidden in her stare. “You cannot fool the Gods, Ezra. They know what’s true and what’s a fallacy—“
“There is no fallacy,” I said, my voice low even with the wards in place. I had no desire for anyone to overhear the words that came out of my mouth next. “It’s true, Mari and I, and the Gods will agree.”
She stumbled back as if I had struck her. The look in her eyes was enough to make me feel as guilty as if I had.
“How can you be sure?” Cass chimed in, ever the levelheaded one.
“I can feel it in my bones. In my soul,” I said, standing from my chair. “She is the light to my dark, and I—whether she realizes it or not—am the dark to her light. It calls to me every time I see her. That taunting glow. My shadows sing for her when she’s near, as if they…as if they’ve found home after a long journey.”
“I might cry,” Cass teased, earning an eye roll as I seated myself on the edge of my desk, still lost in thought.
“That still does not promise a single thing,” Emita spoke through clenched teeth. “She could fall in love with her husband, or she could betray us, or she could refuse the power exchange altogether.”
“She won’t fall in love with her husband, she won’t betray us, but you’re right,” I nodded. “There’s no way of knowing whether she’ll agree to the exchange. But seeing as the alternative means that I will have to kidnap, imprison, and possibly kill her, I’ll take my chances.”
“Ezra, do you have any idea—“
“Oh, shut up, Emita,” Cass groaned, rolling his eyes. “You’re just upset because this means no more secret visits to the conservatory.”
“Cass,” I warned, glaring at him. “This isn’t about us, it never has been—“
“Until you found your mate, right?” Emita spat. “Then it became about what you want. If it was about the greater good, about our cause, you would do what we agreed on. But you want this. Selfishly, you want her.”
“So what if I do?” I hissed back, stepping towards where she stood without a trace of fear on her face. “This is the new plan. You can either get on board or find another Fae Prince to align yourself with. But I am not going to hurt her if I do not have to. More than that, I want what’s promised to me. All of it.”
“And you’re going to get all of us killed in the process, Your Highness,” she spat back before turning away, her heels clicking on the stone floor as she stomped her way to the door and saw herself out.
“Well, I’m happy for you, Ez,” Cass smiled, standing up and walking over to give me a squeeze on the shoulder. “Even if it means the lovely Lady Emita will no longer be a member of ours.”
“She will,” I insisted. “She wants her husband dead too much to give up now.”
“Such pure intentions,” he chided, making himself comfortable at my desk as I remained standing in the center of the room, staring out of the floor-to-ceiling windows to the night sky. “When can I meet your mate?”
“You haven’t yet?” I asked half heartedly, turning away from the sky that had an alarmingly fewer amount of stars in it. Soon, there would be none. Just complete darkness to rule over the land of Nox.
“As if you don’t already know that,” he chuckled. “C’mon, I’ll be on my best behavior.”
“Why do you want to meet her?” I prodded, that biological instinct to protect my mate taking over all reason. Cassander was the most trustworthy man I’d ever known, far more so than myself.
“I’m curious,” he shrugged. “It’s not often that someone comes along and changes the entire world.”
I leveled a disbelieving look at him, making him laugh.
“Does she have a sister?”
“And there it is,” I laughed despite the stress weighing down my shoulders. “They’re all spoken for, I believe.”
“Back to pining for Emita it is,” he sighed. “Don’t you think our testy back and forth would make for a passionate coupling?”
“I think she’d kill you in your sleep,” I returned with a half smile. “And that would make me inconsolable, seeing as you’re the closest thing to family I have anymore.”
“You’d still have Gail,” he shrugged, though I knew the thought of leaving his younger brother behind in this world plagued him each and every day.
“Speaking of,” I smiled. “I happen to know a lovely girl who’d do well with a friend.”
“Are you trying to set my brother up with Emita? He’s only sixteen!”
“I meant a girl his age,” I replied. “Drusilla, she’s the handmaiden for Mari.”
“Mari,” he teased, and I chose to ignore it.
“She’s become something like a sister to Marigold,” I gave him a pointed glare. “I doubt she’ll leave her behind, nor should she. Perhaps if she becomes attached to Gail, it would help convince Marigold to join us when we finally make our move.”
“You mean to use my brother as a tool?” he asked, his voice flattening into something resembling anger, though I couldn’t be sure as I’d never actually seen Cass angry.
“I mean to introduce Gail to a new friend,” I shrugged. “The result of that friendship is just a bonus.”
“Is the girl kind, at least? Smart?”
“She’s exceptionally bright,” I declared. “She’s visited me a few times to use the telescope and borrow books on astronomy, which Gail has an affinity for. And yes, she is kind. Nothing like the world she was born into.”
Cass seemed to deliberate, his knee bouncing as he sat in my chair with his hands folded over his lap.
“Fine, arrange a meeting,” he conceded. “But I will be there as a chaperone.”
“As will Mari, no doubt,” I added. “Try not to scare her off, will you?”
“I’m not the one you need to worry about,” he assured. “Emita is likely working on acquiring some sort of poison to slip into her meal as we speak.”
“If she’s to poison anyone, it’ll be you and I, dear brother.”
At least, I hoped it would.
#pedro pascal#pedro pascal fic#pedro pascal fanfiction#ezra x oc#ezra prospect#ezra prospect x oc#starlight#ezra prospect angst#ezra prospect fluff
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hey sweeties!! kel and i put a list together of all the submissions we got for our event and split them into two masterlists of fics for you all to read and enjoy! this is my part of the list, so if you don't see yours give @beskarandblasters 's list >here< a look and see if that's where your fic/submission ended up!
we can't thank you enough for submitting and helping us give a voice to the smaller writers of the fandom ♥ oh, and for any multi chapter fics/series, we only read the first chapters to make it fair!
please make sure to read each fic's warnings carefully and happy reading! ♥
@iamskyereads - Compulsion (Ezra x ofc!Beatrice)
i can't even begin to describe how much i love this fic already. it's so smart and the worldbuilding?? incredible!! it feels like a sequel to the film, or like it could easily take place in the same universe. just brilliant. and ezra's voice is so clear here, i could hear him saying every word. and the oc, beatrice, is fascinating already, i can't wait to see where it goes!
@all-the-way-down-here - This Is Why We Fight (Dieter x nb!oc!Bell)
i love the start of this. both dieter and bell have excellent characterization and the conversations being had by every character feel so real and are so important. bell's group of friends all sound like friends i would have, and i would love to hang out with them. i love the direction this is going!
@linzels-blog - Delta Palms Tropical Resort (Frankie x f!reader)
ahh what a delightful little fic! it feels very much like an early 2000s rom com and i mean that in the best way! very cute and i love the vibes. everyone's characterization is great and i can't wait to sink my teeth into the rest of it!
@elvenmother - Context and Perspective (Marcus M x f!reader)
completely obsessed with this concept. i love a good enemies to lovers and this is such an awesome way to do it! i always see marcus m fics featuring someone without superpowers, but to have a character that's just as powerful as him? sign me up!
@kedsandtubesocks - In the Dead of the Night (Din x f!reader)
one of my absolute favorite din fics. the worldbuilding and din's creature form is incredible. i love a horror au that's flipped on its head. i also love the "creature is also the hunter" trope and this does that incredibly well. the atmosphere is off the charts.
@ghostofaboy - Rock Bottom (Frankie x original male characters)
god, i don't even know where to begin with this story. it's so raw and visceral and i can't say enough how much i enjoy it. i love reading something new and especially if it's coming from a male perspective. this is, unfortunately, something i could see frankie getting up to. frankie is such a deeply tragic character and this fic does that justice in a dark, but really intriguing way.
@ishabull - The Way We Were Drawn (Marcus P x f!reader)
ohh this is such a sweet fic. i love the imagery painted and the dynamic between marcus and reader is so sweet!
@secretelephanttattoo - Headshots (Marcus P x f!reader)
this fic is beyond sweet and so dreamy. the ideal scenario for anyone, in my humble opinion. who wouldn't want to take pictures of handsome fbi agents and then fall in love with said agent?
@lesbianhotch - you walk by and i fall to pieces (Frankie x f!reader)
THIS WAS THE CUTEST DAMN THING. i love me a nervous frankie (hello, have you read my fic lmao) and this was by far one of the cutest. i'm obsessed with reader's confidence and i just know those two are gonna be menaces once they're together. throw in some patsy cline and i am a goner. this is going on the reread list for sure.
@insomniamamma - Remain Nameless (Ezra & Cee w/ gn!reader)
ok, this one actually made me cry. i'm not sure if it's my own sleep-deprived ass that caused it but this is probably one of the most beautiful but sad fics i've read in a long time. i mean all of this in the best way because i don't normally get emotional from fics. prospect as a movie makes me emotional, though, so it doesn't surprise me that this did as well. it's such an incredible missing scene that i can, unfortunately, see absolutely happening. have some tissues nearby.
@sweetercalypso - Unlikely Friends (Joel x gn!reader)
this fic is one of my absolute favorite fics for joel. a big reason for that is i have a cat named tilly. and imagining joel reluctantly and grumpily cuddling with my tilly makes me emotional, ok??
@softstarlite - The Casualty of Love (Javi P x f!reader)
very cute! i love the awkward tension around not seeing someone for so long and there being a huge glow up maturity-wise from one of them! seeing someone in a new light is always a strange thing and i love the start to these two and their journey!
@julesonrecord - Shots (Jack x f!reader/oc)
probably one of the best post-movie fics i've ever read for jack. the way jack's trauma and therapy is handled is so fucking brilliant and tonic is one of the best fucking characters, god. eva is written so well and i just. i can't recommend this fic enough. if you like jack, hell even if you don't, give this fic a shot. i promise you'll come out of it liking it.
@coulsons-fullmetal-cellist - The Audition (Dieter x f!reader)
goddd this was so cute! dieter's insecurities don't come up very often and i absolutely love what a match he and reader make. she's so sweet with him and takes such good care of him. and he loves her so much and i love them ok
@max--phillips - A Little Lipstick Never Hurts (Max P x f!reader)
this is one of the best explorations into kink that i've ever read. it's so respectful and hot as fuck. completely obsessed with this take on max as a character and i can't get enough of the dynamic between him, reader, (and eventually dieter). it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but i highly encourage you to give it a try. max gets some well deserved lessons taught, and who doesn't love that?
@coastielaceispunk - The Gift of Lingerie (Max L x f!reader)
god, this was so fucking hot. i'm so here for a mentally healed maxwell in a healthy marriage with a fulfilling sex life lol the little bit of teasing on both their parts was beyond sexy and i loved how equal everything felt. ugh, will be rereading this one for sure.
@lotrefcp - Hidden Away (Javi P x f!reader)
i'm obsessed with a no nonsense reader with just as much attitude/sass as javi does lol i just kept reading going GET HIS ASS. an excellent start to a universe i'm excited to sink my teeth into!
@beefrobeefcal - On the Waterfront (Frankie x f!reader)
oh, this is dark. i love the vibes immediately. i've had a weird fascination with the mafia for most of my life and this has that air about it. a dark, chubby mob boss!frankie is right up my alley for sure. i love that he's still frankie tho. sensible, practical, but with an edge. mind the warnings.
@flightlessangelwings - La Estrella de Mi Vida (Javi G x f!reader)
ahhh so romantic and so tragic!! i swear, it's impossible to make javi unappealing but this fic is just so sweet and manages to make me love him even more (somehow). but i love the added drama and tension from outside forces!! i need to read the rest of it asap!
@littlemisspascal - Rockford & Roan (Tim x f!reader)
my god, i love this?? i'm not usually one for superpowers/soulmate au's but i'm in love with the practicality of this? it feels otherworldly without being too much and it's very grounded. i love the reader and the way tim is written is so believable. i love that we as a fandom have created such a visceral image of this character from only a minute's worth of footage!
@something-tofightfor & @the-blind-assassin-12 - Aphelion (Oberyn x Ellaria & f!reader)
goddd the imagery painted in this one. so heartbreaking. absolutely breathtaking. i'm a slut for vampires and i'm a slut for oberyn/ellaria. this is absolutely something i will be reading the rest of lol
@bluestar22x - The Rockford Files (Tim x f!reader)
ok this is insanely good. one of my favorite books of all time is "red dragon" by thomas harris and i felt like i was reading that again while i read this. the details of the case and the cadence of everything was top notch. obsessed with the psychic element thrown in there and i'm beyond excited to see where tim and psy end up next!
bonus:
@sweetenerobert - Fiction vs Reality (Tommy Miller x m!reader)
ohhhh my god. you give me a bisexual tattoo artist tommy miller with stretched ears and i'm supposed to be normal about it??? UNLIKELY. i am extremely tempted to edit this into reality ngl but my god. this was so fucking hot lmao
#pedro pascal character fanfiction#pedro pascal characters#pedro pascal cinematic universe#ezra prospect fanfiction#frankie morales fanfiction#dieter bravo fanfiction#marcus moreno fanfiction#joel miller fanfiction#javier pena fanfiction#marcus pike fanfiction#tim rockford fanfiction#din djarin fanfiction#maxwell lord fanfiction#max lord fanfiction#javi gutierrez fanfiction#oberyn martell fanfiction#tommy miller fanfiction#swfe#recs#fics
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Oneshots
Phantom: Ezra x Original Female Character
In Print: Ezra & F!Reader
#fanfic masterlist#ezra prospect x oc#ezra prospect x reader#ezra prospect fic#ezra x f oc#ezra x f!reader#ezra x you#ezra x reader#ezra x female reader#ezra prospect x f!reader#ezra prospect fanfiction#prospect fanfiction
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old habits
A/N: Sometimes you sit down to write, and you’ve got a plot, and ideas, and you know exactly where things are headed. And sometimes you sit down to write and you think you have those things, and your characters tap you on the shoulder and shake their heads no, and then they take things over from there. This was decidedly the latter. Which is also how it managed to sprawl out to just shy of 4k words whoops.
Set sometime between chapters 6 and 7 of my larger story, To Build Something New—so we’ve got some established relationship fluff, and a heaping helping of angst, but I like to think it’s worth it.
Rated T for a brief drug mention, some mental health concerns (anxiety, depression, night terrors, insomnia some day these two are gonna get a good night’s sleep and then it’s over for you hoes), an excess of commas I refuse to edit out, and Ezra being Ezra.
Tess sits hunched over the little metal table on her balcony, drumming cold fingers against the cooling mug in her hands, trying her best to ignore the clock hovering at the edge of her vision and not count the seconds as they tick by.
It had rained all day and well into the evening in New Amphora, clearing out about an hour or so ago, a little while after Cee had headed off to bed and just shortly before Tess had sauntered out here alone to wait. Something about the cool, cloudy night, and the trickle of music occasionally making its way to her ears from some neighbor’s open window, and the wet, green smells drifting to her on the breeze from the little park down the street, keeps reminding her of her college days.
More than that, it’s making her crave a smoke like nobody's business. A cigarette, or a joint, or, Kevva, two sticks to rub together at this point. Anything to fill her lungs and take the edge off.
It’s been a long tenday, and a quiet one, even with work giving her grief and Cee taking up residence in the guest room and Niamh taking pity on eir gloomy friends and dropping by for an impromptu movie night two nights ago.
It was all due to the increased solar radiation on Stenno, the extra shielding they’d outfitted the shuttle with to compensate, the reason no comms could get through. He’d managed to send a handful of pings from the embassy, short bursts of text confirming that everything was going alright and he was safe and still on schedule—two days out, a standard week planetside, then one day to get back to Aphelia—and that he missed the sound of her voice at least as much as she’d been missing his.
Good money, he’d said. And no one else willing to go. And he’d been gone for longer before, gone for times when she was overloaded with patients or their schedules just didn’t match up or life just got in the way and they’d been unable to chat for nearly as long as this.
It turns out there’s a difference between not having the time to talk to her partner, and not having the option to.
She lifts the mug to her lips and takes a slow sip of lukewarm tea, holding the rooibos in her mouth for a moment and letting the flavor go bitter on her tongue in hopes of it drowning out her more unsavory of cravings.
It’s then that her ears pick up the telltale scuff of heavy boots on the metal flooring downstairs. She gulps, sets the mug down, hops to her feet and leans over the railing, trying to see. “Ezra?”
The footsteps still.
“...Baby?” The surprise in his voice makes her laugh, and when he leans out from below, twisting at the waist to peer up at her, he’s grinning, too.
The new billboard across the street has been a growing annoyance for weeks now, casting a glare through her front windows and polluting her view of the night sky above, but she’s blissfully grateful for its light right now, illuminating her Ezra in green and gold. Tired and haggard and scruffy, but beaming up at her with delight.
“For half an instant there, I thought that was Kevva callin’ me home,” he drawls, tossing his bag to the ground and reaching up to hook his fingers on the edge of the floor beneath her.
“Just me,” she assures, resting her chin on the railing and letting her arms drape over the edge, not remotely close enough to reach him but worth the stretch. “They can’t have you yet.”
“No, ma’am.”
“You coming up? Just gonna stay down there all night?”
His grin melts into a slow and easy smile. “Just allow me a moment longer, darling Tess, to let these weary eyes drink their fill of you.”
“If you get up here,” she reminds, waggling her fingers at him, “I can get my hands on you.”
His eyebrows shoot up in surprise like he hadn’t even thought of this, head canting to the side, considering. “A compelling argument, as always,” he declares—and then he’s gone from her line of sight, brisk footsteps ringing from below.
With another bright laugh, she whirls from the railing and hurries over to the rampway. He’s already halfway up, dropping his poor bag to the floor once more as he rushes into her arms. His body is warm and solid and as whole as he comes, leaning into her heavily, hand cupping the back of her head and holding her tight against him as she buries her face in the crook of his neck. He smells like ozone and camphor and the clean sweat of a decent walk from the closest late-night shuttle station, and she wishes she could bottle up this part of him and carry it with her always.
“Aw, Tess...” he sighs, smoothing his hand over her hair. “Was I gone too long?”
“No,” she murmurs, peeling herself away to meet his pretty, dark eyes, relinquishing her hold just enough to lift a hand to his cheek and trace the curving scar there with her thumb. “I’m just glad you’re home.”
He smiles and sags into her, kissing her slow and unhurried, reacquainting his mouth with hers, familiar and cherished and so, so good. Ezra’s home. Everything’s okay.
“Missed you, pretty girl,” he groans, peppering her face with light kisses while she catches her breath and drags her fingers through his hair. “Thought I’d be alright without the tether of your voice to hold me steady, what with the ambassador keepin’ me busy and all. But it was...a lonesome affair without you.”
There’s an edge of sorrow to his voice, a hint of the dark depression that sometimes overtakes him, and she grips his shoulder tight and holds him closer. “I missed you too, Ez. Can you...stay a couple days? I don’t work tomorrow or the day after. I’d like to have you here. Make up for lost time.”
“I will gladly stay for as long as you’ll have me, Kyrie.”
“Then you’ll never be free of me.”
He closes his eyes, leaning his head a little heavily against her hand. “I can envision no finer thing.”
The words are sweet but his attitude is worrisome, and though she regrets the distance as soon as she steps back from him, it feels important to look him over, check for any sign of injury, any pain her skill could soothe away. But there’s nothing new that she can see. It’s just Ezra, a little faded but not much worse for wear, watching her with a half-hearted smile and a strange tension around his eyes that she doesn’t much care for.
She steps close again, lifting her hands to his cheeks and cradling his face between them. “Was Stenno as bad as all that?”
His breath leaves him in a long, low sigh, and he drops the smile and his gaze alike—doesn’t wanna talk about it, but he’s never dishonest with her. “It was...hot,” he huffs. “Couldn’t leave my suit. Couldn’t talk to you. Plenty work to be done, but also, somehow...too much downtime, just rattlin’ around in my own skull. Locals were an odd bunch, I don’t mind tellin’ you, and not very favorably inclined toward us offworlders. I get why we were there, but... Well, I get why no one else was jumpin’ at the chance, neither.”
She hums softly, rubbing the pads of her fingers against his warm skin. “Do you have to go back?”
“I could. Offer’s still on the table.”
“Do you want to?”
He lifts his eyes to her again, tells her evenly, “No.”
“Then don’t go,” she says. “MT’s orders.”
A corner of his mouth twitches up. He turns his head, nips lightly at the skin at the base of her thumb then immediately soothes it with a soft kiss. “Yes, ma'am.”
She snorts a laugh. The man is easily as stubborn as she is; if he decides later on that he wants to go back there’s hardly a thing she could say to sway him, and for all that he calls her bossy she really has no desire to tell him how to live his life or stop him from going where he pleases. But usually when he comes home from these long routes, he comes home happy to be here but also energized and sparkling, eager to share tales about his journey and reminisce about the things he saw there. She doesn’t like him coming home so quiet and overburdened; she hopes, at least this once, that he’ll do as she says.
He lifts his own hand to her cheek, now, and closes the distance between them for another kiss, deep and lingering, his mouth taking its time with her, his breath filling her with a sense of calm, of certainty. Ezra’s home. Everything will be okay.
“How’s the kid?” he asks a moment later, panting against her skin, and Tess coughs on a laugh at the sudden change of pace.
“She’s—good,” she gasps, shaking her head against the force of his teasing grin. “She’ll be glad to have you back. Tried to wait up with me, but she couldn’t quite make it.”
He hmms thoughtfully, nodding his head and dropping his hand to her hip. “School night, ain’t it?”
“It is.”
Another hmm.
“It’s been raining a lot, while you were gone,” she tells him, not sure what more he’s looking for. “I think we’ve both been going a little stir crazy.”
“Ahh... Is that so?” Oh, there it is, the wicked gleam in his eye that she’s missed so much. “We’ll need to find something to do, to keep you occupied.”
She drapes her arms around his neck and leans into him. “I can think of a few things.”
“Can you now, clever girl?” he asks, slipping his hand beneath the hem of her shirt, skimming along her skin up to her waist, making her shiver. “Why don’t we head inside, and you can tell me all about these ideas of yours, hm?”
Hours later, she isn’t sure what wakes her—movement of the mattress, maybe, or the cessation of Ezra’s steady, raspy snores. He never cries out in his night terrors, and it isn’t until she hears his sharp gasp and feels the thump of his hand against her back that she realizes that’s what this is.
She grins up at him, cocks her head, bites her lip. “I was thinking I could show you.”
That’s when the epinephrine kicks in; she flings off the covers and bolts upright and turns to find him thrashing in the bed beside her, jaw clenched, muscles straining. She strips him of the sheet he’s tangled up in and catches his flailing hand and straddles his waist, pinning him with her weight and her free hand planted on his right shoulder. “Ezra. Ezra.”
The whine that scrapes past his gritted teeth is a torment, the sort of sound that haunts her own bad dreams of late.
“Ezra, baby, you’re dreaming. Come on, wake up for me, Ez.” His eyes open, wide and wild and searching. “That’s it, honey. Ezra, sweetheart, wake up.”
He pries his jaw open and drags in a ragged breath, chest heaving as his body finally goes limp beneath her, and he croaks out, “Tess..?”
“That’s right,” she gasps, easing her tight hold on his hand and prying his fingers loose to slip her own between them; he grips her back, desperate. “I’m here, Ezra. You’re alright.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“No, not at all.” It’s the same question he asks every time, and it never fails to make her still-pounding heart throb with affection—even disoriented and little more than half awake, it is always his first concern.
Almost always followed by this next one; he swallows hard, neck flexing, and cocks his jaw a tick to the right. “Arm still gone?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“...Okay,” he sighs, eyes drifting closed again, his accent stretching the word into something strangely sweet despite the pain etched into every line of his face. “You promise I didn’t hurt you?”
She aches to kiss him, but knows that isn’t what he needs right now. “I promise,” she says instead, gliding her hand along his shoulder and up his neck, caressing his cheek for a moment before slipping up to brush his hair back from his forehead. He’s overheated, coated in sweat, dark and light and graying curls sticking to his skin alike.
He licks his lips and blinks his eyes open and looks up at her, watching her watch him, still gripping her hand tight in his as they both wait out their nervous systems, breaths lengthening, heart rates slowing, metabolizing the rush of hormones. Long moments pass in the dark bedroom with nothing to measure them by but their shared panting, and the occasional hiccup from Ezra.
Even like this—brow creased, hair mussed, sweaty and ragged with deep lines and dark shadows beneath his eyes—he is beautiful. She wonders if she should tell him so, wonders if it would be inappropriate to say at a time like this; and then his teeth chatter, the sudden shiver taking them both by surprise.
They’d ticked the thermostat a couple degrees lower than she prefers it, after his time on Stenno, and now that his skin is starting to cool, it’s catching up to him. “I, uh—” he croaks, and clears his throat, his grip on her hand suddenly releasing. “I should shower.”
“Okay,” she says, and eases off of him, back to her side of the bed.
It takes him a moment, and several deep breaths, and she knows he won’t want her help but still it hurts not to offer as he rolls away from her and heaves himself up to standing. His gait’s a little unsteady as he moves around the bed, but he takes a detour anyway on his route to the bathroom to come up beside her and lean in and press a kiss to her temple.
“Thank you for waking me, Kyrie,” he murmurs against her skin, and she closes her eyes and leans into him for the span of a breath, heart aching too much to let her speak.
Another feather-light kiss, and then he straightens and turns and heads for the shower, peeling his thin sleep shirt away from clammy skin as he goes.
She waits until she hears water running, then sighs and stands up, too. A glance at the clock in the corner of her eye confirms that it’s still nowhere near morning, so she clicks on the nightlight on her bedside table. Usually it’s for the nights when he’s not here and her own anxiety is keeping her awake, but she’s sure he won’t mind it now. Reaching across the bed confirms that his side is damp with sweat; she strips the sheets and his pillowcase with practiced ease and swiftness, one of the more mundane of strange skills her day job has saddled her with.
Still, despite her best efforts, she’s scarcely able to get the sheets dumped in the hamper, grab a fresh set from the closet, get the bed remade and herself settling back in it before the water switches off again. He’s always damnably quick in the shower, the result of many years spent rationing clean water down to the spoonful, whereas the necessity of her work and the hygiene it requires has long afforded her a surplus. Even with Cee’s additional showers over the past tenday while he was gone, he could stay in there till morning if he needed to without putting much of a dent in her supply.
But she understands, perhaps better than most, how hard old habits are to break.
He steps out of the bathroom stark naked, toweling off his hair, and she sits up in bed and watches as he crosses the room to retrieve a pair of underwear from his drawers in her dresser. His breathing seems even again, his balance steady as he steps into the boxer briefs, showing little sign of the distress that woke them both tonight. But he scrubs the towel through his hair once more and moves to drop it in the hamper, and she catches the way his shoulders slump with a sigh at the sheets already bunched inside it.
Even so, he doesn't speak as he comes to rejoin her in bed, so neither does she as she lays down too, turning on her side to keep her eyes on him. He settles on his back, eyes closing with another sigh, hand coming to rest on his bare chest, fingers tracing the faint scar at its center. It is her favorite of his scars, a mark of her proudest achievement, the small part she’d played in keeping him alive long enough to find in him the love of her life. But she never knows what he thinks of when he fusses with it—whether it reminds him of her, or of the events that produced it, or some combination of both—she’s never been brave enough to ask.
Seemingly of its own volition, her hand drifts across to span the narrow gap between them. She has no desire to intrude on his space or his thoughts while he’s busy processing whatever’s going on inside his head, but she only has so much willpower and she hopes he won’t fault her for brushing the pads of her fingers through the thicker patch of scruff at the very corner of his jaw.
Ezra’s eyes open again and his gaze is soft as he turns to look at her, head lolling enough for her to spread her fingers open and let him nestle his jaw in the cradle of her palm. The smile he offers her tugs at only one corner of his mouth, obviously a strain, and all the sweeter for it. “Hi, you,” he whispers.
“Hi, you,” she answers, and even though her heart aches for him and all he’s been through, she can’t suppress her own smile in return. She just...likes him, so much. It still manages to take her by surprise, at the oddest of moments.
His eyes search her face, thoughtful and uncertain—backlit as she is by the nightlight, she’s not sure what he sees—then his glance skitters away. But he doesn’t turn his face from her, doesn’t pull back, even as he admits, in a voice no more than a breath, “I’m sorry, Tess.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, Ezra.” She traces her thumb along his cheekbone, and scoots a little closer to him. “You hear me?”
He licks his lip, sucks in a breath, hesitates. His nod is shallow, short—he doesn’t quite believe her. But she will keep telling him, however many times it takes, as often as he needs to hear it.
His brow quirks, his lips purse, and then he fixes her with an odd look, the shyness and sheepishness settling in strangely on his features. “When you were, uh—” he clears his throat, manages a crooked smirk. “When you were sittin’ on me. That, uh... Well, it felt sorta nice.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mmhm.”
He isn’t going for lewdness—she knows his face well enough by now, knows this isn’t his see-if-Tess-is-in-the-mood smirk, can recognize his genuine plaintiveness. So she pushes back the covers and pushes up to her knees, and once again moves to settle her hips over his. He finally peels his hand away from his scar, reaching for her instead, and she follows him down, laying along his broad, long torso and resting her head against his sternum, tucked carefully, reverently beneath his chin.
“Something like this?” she asks, shifting a bit to get comfortable, keeping her knees folded under her to refrain from dropping her entire bodyweight onto his ribcage, and is rewarded with the feeling of his bone-deep sigh shuddering beneath her.
“You’re too good to me, Starlight,” he murmurs, pulling the covers back over them both, then catching up the bulk of her hair and tugging it clear from her shoulders and neck to splay out beside them with slow, gentle strokes of his strong and careful fingers.
“I’m not,” she tells him, shaking her head. His skin smells like her soap—the good, soothing, botanical stuff she gets shipped in from the core worlds, and she’s not sure whether the choice was simply a byproduct of his hurry or because he finds the scent as comforting as she does, but either way she adores it on him. “I’m just in love with you.”
His chest lurches beneath her, a huff of breath that is almost but not quite laughter. “My point exactly.”
“Ezra...” she begins, raising up on her elbows to frown down at him. He stares back at her, his eyes haunted, tired, pleading.
She does not ask him about the dream—not because she thinks he won’t tell her, but because she knows he will, because he’s still too raw and the telling will make him live it again. Maybe in the morning, when the pain isn’t so fresh, after they’ve woken and seen Cee off to school, after breakfast, over coffee, she’ll ask and he’ll tell and she’ll comfort and he’ll reassure. She’ll have all day to help him banish whatever demons came calling tonight, to put the fear of her in them, to make certain they won’t be so bold as to risk a repeat visit for a while.
In the meantime, though, she can make an educated guess.
“Do you think,” she begins instead, altering her trajectory, “Cee knows how grateful I am?”
He blinks up at her, brow drawing together with confusion. “For what, Tess?”
“For everything,” she says, dropping her head back down to his chest. “For saving you.”
“Oh...” Ezra’s voice trails off; she feels him take a breath to speak, but the words are not forthcoming. His hand comes to rest on the back of her neck, then creeps up higher, fingers burying themselves in her hair and rubbing soothing circles against her scalp.
“I was so—so lonely,” she admits, her voice breaking over the words, over the memories the past tenday had dredged up. “All the time. All my life, it seemed. I had people I cared about, but no one I could trust. Not after everything. And I thought... I thought that was just me, just who I was. Who I’d always be.”
“Tess...”
“Then I met you, and all of that changed. And now I have you, and I have Cee, and I have...more love than I know what to do with sometimes. And I just— I hope she knows.”
Ezra clears his throat; she can just about hear him thinking, can feel his jaw move as he opens his mouth to speak, once, twice, three times before saying, “Our Cee is...a nimble-minded creature. I’m sure she knows.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” His hand in her hair goes still, holding her close. “Tess, you’ve got...a heart the size of a galaxy. And I think it’s a goddamn tragedy that nobody ever let you know it. But if someone had to, well... I’m just glad it got to be me.”
She blinks her eyes against the prickle of tears forming there, and grins even though he can’t see it. Her legs are both asleep by now, her hip starting to ache from being flexed at this angle for so long, and she would stay just like this forever if he asked her to. She turns her head, presses her lips against his skin.
“I’m glad it was you, too.”
#ezra prospect x oc#ezra prospect#to build something new#oc Tess Stone#oh....i have missed them#thanks for bearing with me friends i know its been a minute#ive been hard at work on some original stuff for a while that im very excited about but needed to step back from for a bit#and nothing cleanses my palate quite like that good good ezra/tess#little spoon!Ezra#(yet again not *technically* but. he's the little spoon in spirit here. baby boy just wants to be held)#(and in that vein--listen i KNOW night terrors are varied and complicated and often waking someone from them is a bad idea)#(this is not the first time its happened for these two and theyve established this is what he prefers and tess is a literal professional)#(please do not @ me)#okay i think thats it for now love you bye#my writing#horrible fishbowl husband
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Ooh, could I read a little more about Petrichor? I love that word.
Hi! Thank you for asking, you absolutely can read more about Petrichor!! (I love that word, too. And the feeling. And the smell.)
So Petrichor is the short epilogue series (that I've put off far too long) to Point of No Return - an Ezra story with a female OC named Clara who I basically want to be. The main story follows Ezra and Cee after the events of the movie, back to a place - and a person - that Ezra once called home. It takes place on my version of Kamrea, specifically on a Thulian Grass farm (think tall pink wheat stalks but fluffier like muhly grass). I've gone a little nuts with the lore/details/background of Kamrea as a planet in this series, but one of the main things that is referenced multiple times is the Rain Season (4 to 6 weeks of - guess what - rain) which comes at the end of the harvest. Petrichor will take place during that time, and it will tie up some loose threads from the main story. That's all I can say without spoiling either PoNR or Petrichor, but here's a small snippet that doesn't give too much away:
It was unlike anything she had experienced before.
Ezra and Clara had both talked about the rains that would come to wash over the world and how long they would last. They told her how it would start in drips and trickles, drizzling on and off for a few days as though announcing what was to come, letting everyone know that the monsoon was about to let loose. She heard about and tried to picture the way the streams would rise and spill over their banks, the clear water flooding the forest floor. But until she saw it running down the window panes, pooling in puddles on the lawn and turning the pressed dirt driveway to mud, Cee had no real context for the magnitude of Kamrea’s storm season.
This is more water than I’ve ever seen.
Leaning her temple against the cool glass, she looked out and up at the sky, at the endless churning of slate gray and deep purple clouds. The occasional rumble of thunder tumbled down as one cluster crashed into another. Sometimes it was low and distant, drumming out a slow beat. Other times it sounded like it was right over their heads, shaking the walls and rattling things on shelves. The first truly loud boom had made her jump and gasp, her eyes widening before they rushed to find Ezra’s across the table, frightened for a second that the roof might cave in or the ground would collapse.
“Not to worry, little bird.” He’d said it with a wink. “We’re safe and sound in here, I guarantee it.”
--
ask me about my many wips!
#thanks for asking!#maggiemayhemnj#wip game#petrichor#point of no return#ezra (prospect) x oc clara#ezra and clara forever honestly#i'm so excited to get back to them#and cee#and abe of course
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spotlight on the OFC
(fanfiction recommendations) :)
the reader insert, the second person, the y/l/n convention (which, for me, can disrupt the text and i haven’t gotten used to it - not criticizing those who do it - i'm the problem, it’s me 🤪) are all the rage in fanfiction. i get the immersive appeal, and many of the fics i love and enjoy employ the second person.
richly drawn original characters draw me in and capture my attention. I appreciate how creative folks get with their OFCs, the headcanons, and how they have fun showing off these OFC’s quirks and strengths and interior lives and histories. it’s a joy to read.
here are a few great OFCs in the Pedro Pascal Character universe. the stories are engaging and this is a fairly diverse list of OFCs (by that I mean race/ethnicity, life experience, nationality, disability). as always, each author issues their own warnings.
listed in alphabetical order by writer:
@iamskyereads - Ezra (Prospect) x OFC Beatrice
ongoing series (Compulsion). love the sci-fi world-building in the first chapter. Beatrice is a sharp and compelling protagonist who’s suffered a traumatic brain injury and has PTSD.
@intheorangebedroom - Frankie (Triple Frontier) x OFC Gabrielle
complete series (Pleased to Meet You). angsty intercontinental love story between everyone’s favorite pilot and a cool French woman. the descriptions of different cities are vivid.
@jazzelsaur - Frankie (Triple Frontier) x OFC Ellie
complete series (Between the Raindrops). the slow burn here is a smolder in the best sense. Elliot (Ellie) is a widow who lives next door to Frankie. the weight of grief and angst in this series is remarkable.
@jomiddlemarch - Joel (The Last of Us) x OFC Grace
loose-fit series (On Call for the Apocalypse). crossover with Ted Lasso. set in Jackson WY between seasons 1 and 2, Grace is a snarky doctor (scratch a cynic, find a romantic) hanging out with Joel and Ellie (format better on AO3)
@julesonrecord and @lunapascal ( @stardustandskycrystals) - Dieter (the Bubble) x OFC Andie
ongoing series (Curls). we’re rooting for Dieter and Andie amid all the drama and shenanigans surrounding a pregnancy and a wedding. this reads like a novel you finish in one sitting.
@ladamedusoif - Mr Ben (SNL) x OFC Lydia
ongoing series (Visiting). Lydia is a European art historian who goes to teach at an East Coast liberal arts college and meets the dashing Mr Ben. delightful and smart (and I'm not just describing Mr Ben).
@radiowallet - Marcus (We Can Be Heroes) x OFC Amy
ongoing series (Eyes Open). Single parents Marcus and Amy find love in the workplace, HR be damned. Amy contains multitudes and the portrait of her as a mother is especially real and sweet.
@whatsnewalycat - Din (Mandalorian) x OFC Charlie
ongoing series (Passenger). Gritty, dark, cool AU where Din Djarin is a trucker/bounty hunter and Charlie is making her way west. this fic has a lot of postmodern energy.
@yespolkadotkitty - Pero (Great Wall) x OFC Jade
complete series (Fighting Blind). Fun, winsome adventure between a museum curator and our favorite Spanish warrior. Love the time-travel element, the nod to the Asian diaspora, and the rich world-building. This series is stay-up-past-your-bedtime reading.
feel free to share your fic recs and favorite OCs/OFCs (your own and/or others)! ❤️
#fic rec#pedro pascal character fanfic#pedro pascal character fanfiction#frankie morales x ofc#ezra x ofc#dieter bravo x ofc#mr ben x ofc#joel miller x ofc#marcus moreno x ofc#din djarin x ofc#pero tovar x ofc#frankie morales fanfiction#frankie morales#ezra prospect fan#ezra prospect#dieter bravo#mr ben snl#mr ben snl fanfiction#joel miller#joel miller fanfiction#marcus moreno#marcus moreno fanfiction#din djarin#din djarin fanfiction#pero tovar#pero tovar fanfiction#yay for OFCs#trying to get better at reblogging#dieter bravo fanfiction#read these fics
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