#The worst part is that the fight takes place in the Depths | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ohbother2 · 3 months

Note

Tha hazbin hotel brainrot is so strong, your writing is so good im kicking feet hsujsjsn

May i request a Lucifer X reader where they are pining so badly for each other and ends up in a situation where they are very close to one another? Like the classic " oh shit we're stuck in a small space together and so close" or "whoops tripped and fell now I'm pinning you down and panicking" kind of thing but it's really all up to you <3 and then they end up just full on making out lol, cause yearning,,

(I simply need making out fics with the short king he's taking over my brain😭)

Thanks for requesting!! I had a lot of fun with this one :) Hope you enjoy! Also, I only realised when I went to post this that this ask didn't specify a f!reader, but I thought it did so just a warning for you guys. It's not too specific but... not entirely gender neutral.

This probably borderlines smut, so... minors DNI.

Lucifer x f!reader

PART II

You had been Lucifer's secretary for many years now, joining him just after the disappearance of his ex-wife Lilith when he had decided he needed more help with his duties. You had been there for some of the worst years of his life, assisting him through the highs and lows of being the King of Hell, had seen him at his worst, and at his best. You had helped guide him from the deepest depths of depression, and for that he was eternally grateful, batting away the darkness with a smile enchanting enough to light up the dingiest corners of Hell. He truly didn't know what he would do without you, and today that was evermore apparent.

It had been a long day, and Lucifer found himself sat at his large desk, dark bags sitting heavy underneath his tired and bloodshot eyes, jacket and hat discarded and head resting in his hands as he tried to focus on the mountains of paperwork scattered along his ornate desk. He had been stuck in this position for hours, and he could feel his back creak and something in his neck twinge whenever he shifted. He truly desired nothing more than to crawl into bed, but he had duties that he couldn't just abandon.

A soft knock at his door signals your presence, and only his gaze lifts when you enter, tray in hand and that familiar comforting smile adorned on your rosy lips. Your smile morphs into something more fond as you approach the hunched man, who runs his hands through his disheveled locks and leans back in his plush chair, hands rubbing at the tiredness of his eyes and dragging down his cheeks. He looked tired, he looked weary, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his shirt wrinkled and rolled to his elbows, blonde locks falling across his forehead. You always loved when he looked a little disheveled, appreciating his strong forearms that flexed as he clenched his hands into his hair. It was more rugged than he ever let himself look in any other situation, and you couldn't get enough. You had to fight a frown at seeing how utterly exhausted he was, however, not enjoying the darkness encircling his bright eyes. He didn't hide these things from you, he had no need to; you wouldn't threaten his power at seeing this display of weakness, you would just smile and offer reassurance, appearing with a cup of steaming tea to quell his nerves.

"Good evening, sir." You place the tray against the edge of the desk, trying not to disturb any of the numerous documents that lay strewn about, though you doubted there was any system to the disarray.

"'Evening." He leans further back in his chair, watching you tiredly as you shuffle some of his papers to the side. "How many times do I need to tell you not to call me that? We're good friends, 'Your Royal Highness' is more than fine.''

"Apologies, 'Your Majesty'." You attempt a curtsy, though that was hard with the tight pencil skirt you had chosen to wear today. He laughs at your efforts, taking the steaming tea from your hands with a grateful nod, sighing as the scolding liquid reaches his lips.

"You're marvellous, you know? I don't know what I'd do without you."

"I brought you some tea." You back-hand his compliment away, as you always did, gaze turning to try and decipher some of his scrawling writing. You always found it easier to fight away the blush rising to your cheeks by confusing yourself with his work, that method hadn't failed you yet.

"You're here on a Friday night, looking after some tired old sod, when I'm sure you had many potential plans to go to." His gaze travels up from your hip that you had propped against the desk to tidy some books, up past the curve of your waist, the swell of your chest, gaze lingering a little too long on the collarbone that peaked from beneath your blouse, before finally resting on your face. He stares again, sipping slowly from his cup, far too long for a boss to appreciate an employee, mapping the curve of your brows, the light downturn of your lips as you tried to read something on the desk, the way your hair cascaded around your features. He was tired, he usually controlled himself better. "I wish you'd take a weekend off some time."

Your gaze finally returns to him, satisfied with the state of his desk and you lean back, both hands gripping the desk ledge. "Hypocritical coming from you, don't you think? When did you last have a weekend off?"

"Hmm," He hums, finishing his drink and placing it onto his desk. He rolls his neck in an effort to rid of the crick that was increasingly bothering him. You notice, you frown. "If I am nothing else, call me a hypocrite. You should be out - I don't want to see you here tomorrow night, I want to see you on Sunday morning with a horrendous hangover and stories to tell me."

You laugh, the King of Hell instructing you to go and shirk off your responsibilities and get smashed? Only Lucifer would tell an employee that.

"We both know that won't happen." You grin, taking the opportunity to reach forward and push some of his blonde locks back from his forehead, attempting to push them back into their usual immaculate style. He swallows tightly as you do, having to fight himself from leaning into your touch. You were so gentle, and that fond smile remained etched onto your face as you did so, and God he wanted you to keep caressing his face until he fell asleep right then and there. "Come on now Luci, this place would fall apart without me."

"I can cope one day without you." He bluffs, leaning heavily onto his right armrest and closer to you, legs crossing as he fully relaxes - work didn't matter right now, you did.

"You're so sure?" You shift your stance, and he notices in his peripheral how your tight skirt lifted slightly, exposing more of your milky thigh.

"Not at all." His confidence in the statement has you laughing lightly, the King of Hell grinning up at you and admitting how royally screwed he would be without you. "In fact, I'd probably be dead the next time you walked into work. But wouldn't that be a fun story?"

"I would much rather you be alive." You slowly leave your position leant against the desk, deciding enough was enough as he winces again and rubs at a sore spot in his neck. "I do quite enjoy your company, you know."

Your hands suddenly fall against his shoulders, and he lurches in his seat, shrinking away from the cold pads of your fingers that pressed delicately against either of his shoulder blades.

"Uh-" His voice is uncharacteristically high pitched, and he has to clear his throat to stop it from breaking embarrassingly. "Y/N, what are you-" His fingers grip at his thighs as your fingers move, pressing firmly against his worn muscles. Oh heavens, that felt good.

"You've been rubbing your neck since I walked through the door." You explain, completely focussed on your task at hand and unaware of the red hue that was steadily growing on Lucifer's rosy cheeks. "You need to give yourself a break."

This was rather a bold move from yourself, but you were nothing if not opportunistic. That's how you landed this job in the first place. Your hands work steadily, finally reaching the centre of his back and gliding your thumbs up his spine, up the centre of his neck, and directly into the base of his skull. His head rocks forward lightly at the movement and he groans at the action. You continue to work at his neck, and he remains sat, eyes closed tightly, clawed hands nearly tearing through his own trousers, bruising his own thighs, feeling as though he were back in Heaven. He could feel how close you were, the heat of your body wafting across his neck and shoulders as you worked, and he had to concentrate immensely to control the sounds that wanted to escape his throat. He had nearly combusted on the spot when he had audibly groaned, but you hadn't commented on it, for which he was eternally grateful.

After several minutes, that both felt like an eternity of torture and mere seconds of bliss for Lucifer, you pull your hands back, finishing with one final carding of your fingers through the short tufts of hair at his nape. His eyes open blearily at the loss of contact, blinking heavily as he watches you gather the tray into your arms, adorning his empty cup, and a stack of paperwork.

"Y/N what are you- absolutely not, leave those here." He reaches for the papers now stacked on your tray, and you lift it higher out of his reach unless he stood. He realises his dilemma, firmly rooted into his seat unless he wanted to make an incredibly embarrassing and inappropriate reveal.

"It's only the menial stuff I do sometimes." You step away from the desk slowly, heels clicking as you go. "Besides, it's barely made a dent. I'll have them finished and with you tomorrow morning."

"You should be sleeping." He warns, leaning his elbows against his desk and watching you leave.

"No no." You mock, pausing with a hand on the handle to the door. "We should be up and having fun, making embarrassing stories to share tomorrow. I, for one, can't wait to hear about the hilarious tales of Lucifer and his mountains of paperwork. I'll make sure my story is juicy, these accounting papers are always full of gossip." You lie plainly, and Lucifer shakes his head with a grin.

"Thank you." He calls as you open the door. "I mean it."

"I always have you to thank for a wild Friday night." You grin, finally leaving through the door you had entered from with a bow of your head.

Lucifer sinks into his seat, sighing heavily as the room plunges into silence once again. He stares at the papers that still littered his desk - you had lied, you had taken a sizeable amount. Your presence had helped, and your fingers had fully relaxed the tight muscles in his back and neck, and he felt immensely better than he had mere minutes before. However, you had created an entirely new problem. He shifts at the uncomfortable tightness to his trousers, hands dragging through his hair as he thought, hard. There was no point sitting here if he wasn't able to focus. He raises from his seat, cursing his inability to man up and just tell you how he felt.

Bathroom first, and then he would focus on his paperwork.

---

A month later, Lucifer had been in charge of organising a fancy ball with some incredibly important guests - the 7 Sins of Hell and a smattering of other Royal households, as well as general persons of influence from all 7 rings. The event was to be held in the Pride ring, and as soon as it had been organised he had practically pleaded with you to attend. You hadn't been able to go to the previous events, being stuck in the Pride ring due to your human-soul. Lucifer had been ecstatic when he realised you could attend, and had nearly cried when you had agreed to go with him. Not as a date, no, definitely not, but as friends.

"We're late!" Your voice shouts as you hurry through the door to Lucifer's office, heels in one hand and your purse in the other. Your eyes land on Lucifer, who was stood fiddling with his tie in front of a mirror on the wall, forked tongue stuck out as he concentrated. "Luci, the driver's outside."

"I know, I know." He stresses, finishing off his tie and attempting to smooth down the lapels of his jacket, finally turning towards you as he arranged his cuff sleeves. "It's fine, he'll w-wait-" He stutters as his eyes finally land on you, pupils widening significantly as he forces out "for us."

You never really dolled yourself up that much, usually wearing typical office attire, and sometimes even wearing casual clothes if you were in the office particularly late. Tonight, you had gone full out - you pretended it was because of the nerves about being around such powerful figures in Hell, in reality, you wanted to impress Lucifer, you likely wouldn't get another opportunity to doll yourself up so much again, and you wanted to make the most of it. Even if nothing happened, you wanted to prove you could be just as beautiful as the Overlords and Royalty he frequented.

As you stand, hesitantly, reapplying your rouge lipstick with your small compact mirror and fluffing your hair, Lucifer stands star-struck, eyes glued to your figure. You wore an elegant black velvet dress that clasped around the back of your neck. The elegant midnight coloured dress hugged your torso tightly, and Lucifer's gaze hovered heavily. The fabric was tight and emphasised your curves, with the neckline dipping down sinfully low and exposing the rivulet between your breasts, a beautiful ruby jewel hanging from a silver chain right between the valley of your breasts, the dress cinched tightly at your waist and fell elegantly from your hips. He could see one of your smooth legs from a slit in the side of the dress. You close the mirror and pop it back into your silver purse, smiling brightly at the stunned man.

"My- Y/N you look stunning." Lucifer compliments, leaning back against his desk as he finishes clasping his cuff links. "A vision. Dare I say, I'll be having to fight away the suitors all evening."

You blush furiously, thankful for the makeup that covered your cheeks. He pauses, swallowing thickly as you bend down to begin fastening your shoes.

"Please stay away from Asmodeus."

You laugh as you continue to fiddle with your shoes, glancing up at him as you tie the clasp. "You flatterer. Should I expect to see you pulling these moves on all the girls there tonight?"

You jest, but Lucifer is so enraptured by you he cannot help but feel insulted you would even think he would entertain the notion of other women. He speaks quietly, watching you struggle to gain your balance as you try and put on the other heel. "Not at all."

He didn't know what compelled him to do it, maybe it was the way you wobbled as you tried to get into your second shoe, likely it was the fact he'd already had two glasses of wine to quell his nerves, but before he realises it he's kneeling in front of you and grasping your ankle in a feather-light grip.

You freeze as his hands replace your own, sliding your foot easily into your heel as your hand comes to rest on his shoulder to regain your balance. He works slowly, gently fixing the clasp of your elegant heel, head turning up towards you and smiling up at you. Your breath catches in your throat, Lucifers hands resting against your ankle and calf, disarming you with a charming smile and lidded eyes, and kneeling directly in front of you. His hand slides up your calf as he lets you go, standing back to his full height easily, now a little shorter than you with your heels properly on.

"T-Thank you." You breathe, fixing the slit of your dress that had become creased. Your own hands reach forward, straightening his tie and smoothing down his collar. "You look very handsome yourself."

He smiles, self-satisfied, as you fix his collar, and then immediately schools his expression to hide his awe-struck grin when he realises you were actually looking at him. "Thank you, thank you." He chirps, cane materialising in his left hand and twirling it, trying to distract himself from how close you were, and how absolutely beautiful you looked. "I think we'll make quite an entrance. Don't you?" He offers you his right arm, and you take it with a grateful nod as you both leave the office and head towards the taxi. "That is, if you manage to walk down all those stairs with those stilts under your feet."

"I'm excellent in heels." You defend, rather enjoying the way your arm brushes against his chest as you walk, the smell of his expensive cologne reaching your nose. "We'll have a problem if you start drinking, you can barely stand straight after a bottle of wine, and I certainly can't carry you home in these heels."

"Oh? You're insulting my drinking skills? What about the time I had to come and collect you from a party I wasn't even invited to, to teleport you home? I could barely understand you through the phone." He clears his throat, raising his voice high and slurring his words mockingly. "Luci- I-I'm not drunk, BUT-"

You whack his shoulder, remembering the night perfectly, and utterly mortified he had had to guide you home after you'd had a few too many. "Shut up, you're no better at holding your drink."

He laughs, and you feel the rumble of his chest against your forearm. "I suppose we'll have to wait and see."

---

It had been several months since the party, and Lucifer was growing increasingly frustrated at his inability to make any sort of move on you. Hell, he hadn't even kissed your hand, which was something he had had to do to more people than he could count. He was desperate to make his feelings known, and yet was utterly paralysed whenever the opportunity arose for him to express them. It didn't help that ever since his stunt with your heel, you had become more emboldened with your flirting attempts, but he always doubted whether your words and actions were actually meant flirtatiously, or if he was just romanticising all of your interactions in his own head.

The party had been... uneventful. True to his predictions, Lucifer had been having to whisk you away from attempted suitors all night, and at one point had grown so irate at a particular demon's attempts he had placed a hand at the small of your back and refused to remove it until the demon had thoroughly gotten the point and left the conversation. The event had only made him realise his feelings more for you, being positively furious that he couldn't just tell the other demon's you were his, and to piss off back to whatever Ring they had come from. The next passing months had been nothing short of torture as he grappled with whether to confess, or not.

Despite his wishes, things had carried on as normal, and it was absolutely maddening. He had even spoken to Charlie about his dilemma, but she hadn't been much help, just shrieking at him excitedly through the phone. He had been so desperate he had nearly asked Asmodeus for help, but he had quickly decided against that after remembering some of the stunts he had pulled in their younger years.

Now, he sat back at his desk at 2am, frowning after realising he didn't have all the documents he needed. His hat and jacket were once again discarded, and his sleeves pushed up to his elbows in his signature 'I am having a bad day' fashion.

"Y/N!" He calls, and your head pokes out from a filing cupboard you had been tasked with organising. He smiles at you, a hand running through his hair as he sits back. "Can you please find me the letter we got from Wrath about the expenses for that new armament shop? I think it was sent by a Mr. Pennine."

"Yep!" You chirp, disappearing back into the cupboard with the sounds of shuffling papers increasing. Lucifer scans the document in his hands, patiently awaiting the file.

He hears a thump, and a groan, and he straightens in his chair, trying to see what you were doing.

"I've found it." You emerge, rubbing the base of your spine with a wince. An airy laugh falls form his lips.

"What did you do?"

"It's on a high shelf that I can't reach - I fell trying to climb and get it."

Lucifer laughs properly this time, already beginning to stand from his seat and head towards you, shoulders shaking as he does.

"It's not funny."

"I think you'll find it's hilarious." He grins, walking past you and into the small storage cupboard. "Right, where is it?" He glances around the cupboard with an eyebrow raised. He hated this kind of menial work, and was frankly terrible at locating things within this jumbled mess. "I have no clue how this system works."

"Hmm, filing has never been your strong suit." You hum, appearing behind him, having to press close in the small space. A hand appears in his peripheral, motioning over his shoulder to a shelf even he would have to climb to reach. He sighs, releasing a breath as he places a foot against an unsteady shelving unit.

"Yes, another one of my many limitations. Thankfully you're so good at finding things for me." He grins over his shoulder at you, hauling himself up until he's at eye level with the correct shelf. You stand beneath him, arms outstretched tentatively, just in case.

"If I fall, I fully expect you to save me." He comments, brows furrowed as he sifts through the files, looking for a 'Mr Pennine' to catch his eye. When he does find it, he wafts the document about his head, calling down to your worried expression. "Seems I'm doing a better job than my own assistant."

You cock your head at him, taking a small step back as he readies to climb down. "Truly, don't even know why I'm here sometimes-"

You hear a worrying creak as his foot lands on the next shelf down, and his gaze locks with yours for a mere moment before the shelf breaks and he plummets to the ground. He lands on you with a yell, flattening you against the floor and opposite wall and sprawled across your lap in a heap. The whole cupboard shakes with the fall, and the door slams shut with surprising force, plunging the room into darkness.

Lucifer groans, pushing himself back up onto his knees, rubbing an elbow tenderly as he attempts to stand, back smacking into another shelf as he tries to back up. You groan as well, hunched against the wall and thoroughly winded, not entirely sure what had happened.

"Y/N! I'm so sorry, are you alright?!" Lucifer attempts to bend down to reach you, glowing eyes staring at you through the darkness, but his back smacks against another shelf. He stands there, half-hunched, useless as you try and push yourself to your feet, clinging onto a shelf to haul you upright. He can feel you moving against his legs, the cupboard really not meant to house two bodies, and when you finally stand your body presses far too close to his for comfort. He smacks the cupboard door harshly, hoping that the lock hadn't fully sealed from the outside, but the hinges remain firm. "Oh, fuck." He groans, leaning back against a shelf and staring down at you, one hand still pressed pathetically against the door. "Looks like we're trapped."

You, on the other hand, are unable to see anything except the glowing pair of amber and ruby eyes staring down at you, not possessing the enhanced vision Lucifer did. Your hands search the walls aimlessly, and you attempt to press yourself back into the opposite wall to try and create some space. Despite both of your best efforts, you can still feel the heat emanating from his body, barely inches of space between you. "Can you portal us out?" You question desperately, blinking furiously to try and see more of your surroundings.

"There isn't enough room."

You both plunge into silence, and you wring your hands together nervously. Who would find you? When was the next person scheduled to meet Lucifer? It was 2am, who else would be awake at this time? God, he was so close, you could feel his breath fanning across your forehead and hair. You rub at a saw spot near your temple, having smacked into a shelf during Lucifer's rapid decent.

A hand lands against the side of your face without warning, and you jerk at the unexpected contact in the darkness.

"Sorry!" Lucifer draws his hand back as quickly as he had placed it, returning it to his side and flexing his fingers. "I forget you can't see as well." His hand approaches much more slowly, fingers carding your hair away from your face. "I was just trying to check your head, you hit it pretty hard when I fell on you. When I said I expected you to save me, I didn't mean to sacrifice yourself as my landing pad."

"That's what I'm here for." You joke, missing the contact as he withdraws his hand, satisfied that the skin hadn't broken. "I'm fine, don't worry." You smile despite the darkness, knowing he could see.

"We'll be fine." He assures, though he wasn't sure if he was talking to you or himself, he laughs to himself, trying to dispel the anxiety in his chest. "Someone will find us soon."

You hum, doubting him very much. All you could do was wait.

God-knows how long you had spent in that closet, but it didn't take long before you were unbuttoning the first few buttons of your blouse and complaining about the heat. Lucifer hadn't been his normal chatty self, and instead leant heavily against the shelves behind him, hands gripping at the shelves that ran along either wall to prevent himself from reaching out towards you. You were so close, so warm and smelling so sweat pressed against him, all it would take was an inch of moment, barely a lift of a finger, and he'd be able to pull you close, to draw you towards his chest just like he had dreamed about for years now. It didn't help that you kept shifting your weight from foot to foot, feet aching from the amount of time you had just had to stand still, seemingly completely unaware of the way it made your hip rub against his pelvis.

He was a sweating, panicking mess, and he had twisted his torso uncomfortably, back hunched, to prevent the effects of your movements on him pressing against you. He could see your innocent expression through the darkness, the way your eyes searched blindly in the cramped space, and he wanted nothing more than to reach forward and press his lips against your neck, and not stop until someone found you the next morning.

But, he was a gentleman, and he had control, despite what his body was doing of its own accord, and so he gripped the shelving either side of your head and tried desperately to think about other things.

That was until you tried to lean against the shelf to your left, causing your thigh to rub the slowly growing bulge he had been desperately trying to hide. Lucifer's breath hitches in the darkness.

"Are you okay?" You ask, having picked up on his quickened breathing. You couldn't see him at all despite the amber eyes that flicked around the room incessantly, but you could feel his legs pressing against yours, and you could faintly feel the presence of an arm close to your head. When his amber irises land on you, you have a perfect view of the way they dilate, and you furrow your brows. "Is there something wrong?"

"God, would you stop moving." His voice was tight, straining in his throat as he tried his best to remain composed. He was fully aware you weren't even doing anything, but a love-sick pining man pressed so close up against his crush for so long? Who could blame a man for growing flustered.

You shift, attempting to lean towards him to see what was wrong, but two hands are suddenly on your hips and pushing you away from him and back into the shelf behind you, grip vice-like over the fabric of your trousers. You can feel his ragged breath against your forehead. "Heaven, please stop."

"What are you-" You go to argue, but the way his grip tightens against your hips has you halting. You stare for a moment, and it takes you far too long to put the pieces together in your mind: the dilated pupils, the shaky breaths, the way he pushes you away from his hips. Oh.

"Sir, it's okay-"

"Please stop talking." He practically begs, face a fiery red and really wishing for death right about now. "I'm sorry. It's inappropriate. You keep moving and you're so close. You don't have to work for me again after this, I'll understand-"

"Lucifer," You interrupt his rambling, hands coming to rest atop his own on your hips, sliding them up his forearms and resting atop the junction of his elbow. "you know you're the densest man I've ever met."

No response greets you for a moment.

"I said I'm sorry, you don't have to insult me too."

The hurt in his voice has your face twisting into a sympathetic smile. He really was oblivious.

"I'm insulting you, because there's an opportunity right in front of you, and you're not taking it."

You can hear the way his breathing deepens. "What do you-"

You lean forward, impossibly closer, chest pressing against his own. You can feel the way he gasps at the contact. He still has a hold of your hips, pining them away from him like a man burned.

"I'm going to die." He suddenly blurts, his breaths short and panting. His composure was slipping. "You're going to kill me if you keep doing that."

"I'd much prefer it if you didn't die." One of your hands slides up from his arm to his shoulder, burrowing into the fabric there. A high sound catches in Lucifer's throat, and you grin. "In fact, I'd prefer it if you kissed me like I've been inviting you to for the past few years."

His mind runs blank, nothing but the sound of his heart beat ricocheting between his ears. You wanted this? You wanted him?

"I don't think you understand." He stutters out, arms beginning to end their fight and allowing you to inch closer to him. "I don't want this, I want you. D-Dates-" He falters as your hand travels up his neck to the tufts of hair at the back of his head, gently scratching at his scalp. "and cheesy stuff, not just... filing cupboards."

He'd die if he got to have you only for a few hours, and then had to live the rest of his life returning to mere friendship. He would starve to death.

"It's about time you asked."

"You really want this?" He asks, voice small. His breathing was getting harder.

"Yes." You breathe. "I have for a long time."

That was all the indication he needed, and his lips crashed against yours as his hands enveloped your waist and dragged you flush against him. You gasped at the suddenness, enjoying the feeling of his soft lips atop yours in a delicate, passionate, kiss. One of his large hands remains at the small of your back, keeping you pressed against him as the other travelled up your spine, cradling the back of your head and holding you steady as he presses into you. He groans as your fingers tighten in his hair, both of your hands winding around his neck as you push up into him.

He pulls away for breath, his hot breath fanning your cheeks as he pants. You can see his eyes, half-lidded but impossibly bright, pupils the largest you had ever seen them, staring directly into your own. "Do you have any idea how crazy you've driven me over the past years?" He asks rhetorically, voice low and husky. You don't have a chance to answer before he's kissing you again, a hand gripping at your jaw and neck as he tilts his head, his brows furrowing as he pours all his concentration into the kiss. He kisses like a man starved, like a man who depended on your lungs for oxygen, like a man who would die if he separated for a moment too long. His forked tongue slides against your bottom lip and you open your mouth without question. He licks into your mouth with giddy enthusiasm, groaning into you as his tongue finally slips into your mouth, groaning louder as you submit, tugging at his hair and allowing him to push you back into the door with a thud.

His hand falls from your neck, resuming its place against your hip, thumbs pressing dangerously into your hip bones and pinning you against the wall. You gasp against him as his fingers inch their way beneath the bottom of your blouse, pressing harshly into your supple skin as he sucks the air from your lungs.

You feel dizzy when he pulls away again, and as you catch your haggard breath he ducks his head to graze his lips against your throat. He peppers kisses beneath your ear as a hand slides down to grasp the curve of your ass, the other continuing to pin your hips against the door as he presses his hips flush against your own, rolling his hips lightly. He delves down lower, tongue snaking its way down towards the junction between your neck and shoulder, his fangs nipping at your skin as he presses hot open-mouthed kisses against your pulse point.

"Oh-" You gasp, hands clinging onto his broad shoulders as he corrals you against the doorframe. You tilt your head up and to the side, exposing your neck to him as he hums happily. He finds the spot he wants and presses his teeth harshly against your skin, suckling hungrily and lapping at the bruising skin with his tongue. You groan, a hand gripping his hair as he rolls his hips up, biting into your shoulder as he moans. He grinds against you, continuing to lavish your throat with his eyes closed happily, moaning and groaning into your skin. His breath catches when you roll your hips down to meet his thrusts, and he whimpers when you tug at his hair painfully when he abuses one spot on your neck too much.

"Sir-" You gasp, and suddenly his lips are withdrawn from your neck, and his wide lidded eyes are staring directly into your own. Both of your breathing is ragged as you anticipate his next move, heart in your throat.

"How many times have I told you to stop calling me that?" His hips still against your own, and you whine trying to rub against him, but he pins you in place and rests his lips against your ear, whispering, begging, against your ear. "How many more times do I need to?"

You shudder at his hot breath, hands uselessly clinging to the collar of his ruffled shirt. "Just once more."

"Say," A kiss, pressed heavily against the underside of your jaw. "my" Another kiss, hot against the column of your throat. "name." Another, lavished between your collarbones right at the hollow of your throat. You gasp at the staggering sensation, his tongue wet and hot across your collarbone.

"Lucifer." You gasp, voice high and airy. He rewards you with a grin and a fierce kiss against your lips, pressing your head back into the doorframe. You moan his name again, and his hips rock up into yours involuntarily.

"It's unfair, the effect you have." Lucifer whispers, hands sliding up your sides and beginning to unbutton your blouse. He presses a kiss at the corner of your lips as you help him with the unbuttoning. "That massage you gave me?" You can feel his breath against your lips, and you have to fight not to lean forward into him as he gently pushes your blouse from your shoulders, warm hands sliding down your arms and the fabric bunching at your elbows, not quite falling all the way. "I had to take care of myself afterwards." He tuts against your lips, each purse of his lips pressing a ghost of a kiss to your own, but not quite giving what you wanted. A knee presses between your legs as he delves his tongue into your mouth, and you're too distracted to notice until he rolls his hips into your leg and pushes his thigh up against you. His claws dig at the tender flesh of your sides, leaving light scratches as he returns to your lips, grinning against you as you gasp and whine.

"You're not so innocent." You gasp as he leaves your bruising lips to return to his path down your neck, know able to reach your shoulders and chest, which he takes full advantage of. A hand grasps your thigh firmly and hikes your leg up and around his waist. "You constantly unbutton your shirts around me, stare at me with those eyes, leave your hand on me the entire ball and don't do anything about it. How could I resist?"

"Well, I'm doing something about it now." His voice was infuriatingly giddy, his hand grabs at your thigh through the fabric of your trousers, and he internally wishes you had chosen to wear one of your skirts today. His hips roll into yours at the new angle, and he stutters at the pleasure.

"The ball was not my fault." He presses a bruising kiss against your lips, biting down gently as he pulls away. Murmuring against your ear, you can feel the smile on his lips as he talks. "You have no idea what was going through my head that night. If I had my way, I wouldn't have gotten up from my knees for hours."

The way his silky voice hissed at the last word was downright sinful, and you're too distracted by your own thoughts to realise he had ducked his head back down to your chest.

"Luci." You gasp as he travels lower, peppering kisses down the valley of your breasts, murmuring against your skin, hands sliding lower and lower and tongue chasing them down to your naval. A finger pulls playfully at the front of your bra. Oh no, he couldn't win the upper hand that easily.

Gaining confidence, and determined not to let him be his usual cocksure self, you grasp him by the collar of his shirt. "Don't be unfair." You reprimand. He doesn't protest when you lower yourself to the floor, pulling him beneath you and straddling his hips. The cupboard was just big enough for him to lay down if he bent his knees, and you grin down at him as his hands grip your thighs tightly.

Your hands rest against his chest, and you can feel the heavy rise and fall of his chest as he stares up at you, his fingers flexing against your thighs when you refuse to move. He tries to roll his hips up into you, but you lift yourself just out of his reach.

"Don't do this." He whines, but you only grin down at him, leaning impossibly closer until your chest presses against his. You wish you could see the blush to his cheeks, the parting of his mouth around those little gaps, but instead you settle for staring into his blown pupils.

"Whatever do you mean?" You feign ignorance, shifting lightly and revelling in the way his eyes widened and his claws dug painfully into your skin. You press a kiss against his forehead, his cheek, the corner of his mouth.

A noise traps itself in his throat, you kiss against his jaw, his chin, the other corner of his mouth.

"Sweetheart," He moans, trying to tilt his head to catch your lips with his own. You roll your hips to distract him, and he hisses unhappily. He stares up at you with big puppy-dog eyes, a world away from the confidence he had felt at having his way with you earlier. "please."

"Good." You purr, and he whines when you finally kiss him properly, hips lowering onto him and palms sliding up his chest. You pull away and immediately begin kissing at the underside of his jaw, leaving your own trail of hickeys down the column of his throat. He squirms beneath you, breathing heavy and voice high-pitched as you kiss down his chest, pulling his collar to the side and grazing your teeth along the top of his peck.

One of his hands guide your hips against him, and he jerks his hips, the buckle of his belt biting cooly into the hot skin of your stomach. The other hand lies flat against your back, caressing your spine and sides and pulling you closer, trying to guide you back towards his lips.

He had thought he was in heaven before, but with you above him, he could barely contain himself.

Your hands pull at his hair, tugging at his scalp as you bite into the tense muscle of his shoulder. He closes his eyes painfully tight, muttering incoherently as his fingers flex against you. Your pace was beginning to quicken, and you moan against his shoulder as he whimpers and whines.

"Ngh- wait, stop." His voice breaks around the syllables. He grasps your hips tightly, knuckles white as his claws dig dangerously into the skin at your hips. "Not too fast."

"Another one of your many limitations?" You grin against his neck, feeling the way his chest heaved beneath your hands.

"Hmm," He hums, bleary eyed and uncomfortably hot, warm hand cupping your jaw and bringing your face up to meet his. "You have a way of exposing those."

You give in to what he wants, allowing him to slip his tongue back into your mouth, a hand cupping the back of your head and tangling into your hair, pulling you close and making sure you couldn't get away. You rest against him, revelling in the moment, losing your breath and humming against one another's lips.

Just as you go to move your hips, a hand planting itself against his chest to help your movement, light spills into the cupboard, and you freeze, lips detaching and staring wide-eyed at the shadowy figure stood in the cupboard doorway. You blink furiously, trying to readjust to the harsh light, but Lucifer is quicker to recover and pulls you flush against his chest, attempting to hide your bra from view.

He glares at the worker who remains standing dumbly with a hand on the door handle. Lucifer's hair was a mess, sticking out in every conceivable direction, his cheeks flushed a flaming red, shirt tugged halfway down his chest, with a smattering of lipstick across his lips and jaw, and blossoming bruises dancing across his neck and chest. You weren't in a much better state.

His eyes blaze red.

"Come back in an hour. Close the door."

The worker immediately slams the door shut, plunging the cupboard back into darkness.

Your shoulders begin to shake, laughter bubbling from your throat as you tuck your head into Lucifer's chest. He sighs, resting his head back against the floor and eyes returning to their normal complexion. When you finally compose yourself, you push yourself up with your elbows, grinning down at Lucifer with a cheeky smile.

"Maybe I was too harsh." He mutters, a hand coming up to cup your jaw. He grins cheekily, eyes shining in the darkness. "Where were we?"

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel Lucifer x reader #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin hotel x reader #smut #hazbin hotel x reader smut #Lucifer x reader smut #x reader #lucifer x reader #lucifer #lucifer morningstar

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rubysunnday · 8 months

Text

make a deal with the saints

summary: the water was pulling her down into its depths, into the darkness of death, and nothing Y/N did would let her rise to the surface. Nikolai, however, isn't ready to let her go yet.

a/n: this has been sat in the drafts for months, waiting for me to write it and tada

It was one of the worst storms Nikolai had been caught in. They usually managed to direct a storm around them with their Squallers and Tidemakers, but this time things had turned so fast there was nothing they could do.

If they’d had an army of Squallers and Tidemakers then maybe it would be possible. But they didn’t. The sailors were trying their best to keep the sails up and to tie ropes down. The Squaller’s were trying their best to keep the ship going but it was a losing battle.

Nikolai was gripping the wheel tightly, fighting against it as it tried to turn and spin out of control. His clothes were soaked through – he’d abandoned his coat down below, knowing the weight would only hold him back. Adrenaline was thrumming through his body.

He looked around the ship, eyes searching for a familiar sight. Nikolai felt panic claw at his throat for a moment. Then, he saw her. She was helping Tamar tie ropes down to the deck, ducking when yet another wave crashed over the side of the ship, drenching them all once again.

Y/N Orlova had joined his crew in Os Kervo, wanting to escape from the claustrophobic world of the Little Palace and learn more about her Squaller abilities. She’d been stuck driving the skiffs for months and yearned to see more of the world and to use her powers outside of the Fold.

She’d been with them for six months, now. Nikolai often wondered what he’d done before she’d arrived. She kept him grounded and calm even when things went out of control. He needed her more than he wanted to admit.

“The storm is moving on!” One of the Squallers yelled.

Which meant they’d soon be out the other side of it. Hopefully none the worse for wear.

Someone tapped his shoulder and he let them take over the wheel. He headed down to the main deck, struggling to maintain his balance as the ship tilted to the side.

Y/N seemed to sense his approach. She turned around, hair plastered to her head and smiled at him.

“How can you be smiling in this?” Nikolai yelled, almost falling forward to her.

Y/N shrugged. “I would rather this than the Fold!”

Nikolai couldn’t help but laugh. Despite the rain stinging his skin and the lighting forking above, he felt a spark of joy through him.

It was a spark that only Y/N could bring out. Her mere presence made life better for Nikolai. He laughed more when she was around, and he found himself gravitating towards her presence when they spent evenings below deck playing cards.

Whatever had been growing inside him over the last few months had begun to sprout. His heart was growing bigger and it hurt to know that, one day, it would inevitably have to end.

Y/N placed a hand over his and squeezed. “Are you okay?”

Nikolai blinked. He looked at her, slowly realising that she’d spoken. “Yeah, yeah,” he said quickly. “Just thinking.”

“Watch out!”

A rope had come loose from its cleat. Both Y/N and Nikolai ran forward, stopping the snaking rope before it tangled around someone’s ankle and dragged them into the water. Nikolai dragged it back up to the cleat and wrapped it around in a figure of eight until he was certain it wasn’t going to come lose again.

Nikolai stood and let out a breathy laugh as he glanced over at Y/N. She was panting, bent over with her hands on her knees. She straightened and smoothed her hair back again.

He met her gaze and smiled. It slowly fell as Y/N stared back at him, her eyes widening. Nikolai looked behind him and felt his heart stutter.

The wooden beam that was a part of one of the masts was swinging around toward them. Nikolai was shoved to the ground and, as he landed, he saw the mast hit Y/N and push her over the side of the boat and into the water.

Hitting the water felt like thousands of needles pricking her skin at once. Y/N couldn’t see anything. She didn’t know what was up or what was down. The force of the mast hitting her stomach had winded her. She was already struggling to breathe yet, now, in the depths of the ocean, the air wouldn’t come at all.

Her lungs were burning, her eyes were burning.

Y/N felt the waves toss her about, throwing her side to side, up and down. She felt her lungs tighten; her mind was screaming at her to breathe. There was nothing left. It was as if she was being crushed. The urge to exhale and inhale was overwhelming. Her chest was tight, demanding air be let in.

She obeyed.

The air gushed out, bubbles rising all around her. As soon as it gushed out, the water gushed in. It burnt her throat, her lungs. She was choking on the endless water pouring into her.

Until she wasn’t.

Calm swept over her. Even in the storm waters. Y/N looked up and, through the haze of the water and the blackness creeping in, she felt calm. Even as her body sunk lower, nothing could reach her but the calm.

Her eyes drifted closed, and bubbles escaped her lips and then… nothing.

His feet slipped on the deck as he scrambled to the side of the boat, leaning over, and staring into the water. His heart was pounding. His hands were shaking.

“Nikolai!” Tolya yelled, yanking him back from the side of the boat. He put a hand on the back of his neck and forced him to look at him. “You can’t go in there, not like this.”

Nikolai shoved him. “She’s drowning –“

“And so will you!” Tolya yelled, pushing him back.

Tamar appeared next to them, holding a coil of rope. “Here, tie this around your waist. We’ll haul you back in.”

Nikolai’s hands shook as he tried to tie the knot. Tolya silently took the rope from him and finished the knot, pulling it tight around his waist. Nikolai climbed up the side of the boat until he was standing on the very edge. He didn’t even hesitate before he jumped in.

He surfaced a wave instantly crashed over his head. For a moment, he struggled to fight against the water. Then, it calmed. Nikolai glanced up and saw one of his Tidemaker’s fighting with the waves, trying to calm it enough for him.

Nikolai took a deep breath in and dived below the water, eyes wide open, searching for Y/N. It probably would’ve made more sense to send Tamar or Tolya down – but his heart had taken over and he hadn’t thought.

The water calmed for a moment and in that precious moment, he saw her. Her body drifted in the water, completely at the mercy of the current. Nikolai grabbed her arm and pulled her body towards him. Once she was close enough, he wrapped his arm around her waist, holding on to her as tight as he dared.

Nikolai gasped as he surfaced, water dripping into his eyes. He didn’t remember how they got Y/N back onto the boat. One moment he was clutching on to her in the water and the next he was handing her body over to Tolya and falling over the side of the boat into a wet, heaving puddle.

Their healer, Iva, was instantly at Y/N’s side. A healer was invaluable to a certain extent. If their patient stopped breathing, or their heart stopped, their powers became useless. They could men bones and healing wounds – but getting a heart to start again? That was a Heartrender’s job.

“Tamar,” Iva called, searching the crowd for the woman.

Tamar appeared and rushed over, falling to her knees beside Y/N. “What do you need me to do?”

Iva glanced up at Nikolai for a moment. They looked back down at Y/N. “Get her heart going,” they replied.

Tamar put the first two fingers of her right hand over her left and held them above Y/N’s chest, concentration clear on her face. She pushed down, pressing against Y/N’s chest.

Nikolai hadn’t even realised Tolya was trying to calm his heart down until he put a hand on his chest. He looked up at Tolya, the tears running down his face mixing with the saltwater dripping from his hair.

Tolya grasped the back of his neck and lowered his forehead to Nikolai’s. No words needed to be spoken – they both knew what the other was feeling. Nikolai wasn’t even bothering to hide his emotions for Y/N.

Nikolai turned his head toward her. She was still lying on the deck. Her chest was still unmoving.

Deep down, a seed of doubt had begun to bloom. Doubt about whether she’d come back and, if she did, if there’d be irreparable damage. He was trying not to let the seed grow and burst into his heart but as he stared at her body – skin lacking colour, eyes closed, chest still – it was beginning to invade.

Then, Nikolai heard a groan. He turned his head sharply, relief setting in as Y/N coughed, water spilling over her lips. Tamar rolled her onto her side and rubbed her back gently. She glanced up at Nikolai and Tolya, a relieved smile on her face.

Nikolai slumped into Tolya, relief overwhelming him. Through the exhaustion seeping into his bones, Nikolai looked down at Y/N and caught her gaze. They looked at one another, silent. Y/N blinked slowly, and it was all Nikolai needed to know she was okay.

The sleeping quarters below deck were quiet. Most people were asleep whilst some remained awake, taking shifts to watch the ocean and horizon, keeping them on the right path.

Nikolai walked down the steps from the upper deck to down below and poked his head in the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the candlelit darkness. He walked forward, his footsteps as quiet as he could make them against the floor.

Tamar looked up from her book as he approached. She gave him a tired smile, marking her place before closing the book.

“How are you?” Nikolai asked softly.

Tamar nodded. “Tired,” she admitted. Carefully, she reached out and threaded her fingers through Nikolai’s. She squeezed. “How are you?”

At the question, Nikolai allowed himself to look over to the bunk where Y/N lay asleep. She was buried under blankets but there was colour on her face again. Even under the mounds of wool and cotton, he could see her chest moving.

“Fine now,” Nikolai whispered, his voice breaking slightly. Tamar ran her thumb along the back of his hand. His breath shuddered as he inhaled. “I thought I’d lost her.”

With one tug, Tamar pulled him down onto the crate next to her. She put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him as close as she could.

“But you didn’t,” she said firmly. “She is still here. She is still alive. As are you, Nik.” Tamar pressed a kiss to his temple. “You need to tell her the truth about your emotions. Now you know, now you have felt the fear – don’t wait.” She smiled at him. “Don’t hide from your feelings, Nikolai. They are what set you apart from anyone else I know.”

Tamar stood up, squeezing his hand once more before letting go. She walked out the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

Nikolai took her seat, moving as close to the bunk as he could. Y/N’s hand was just poking out from under the blankets. Nikolai reached forward and took it in his, holding it as if it were the most precious gem he’d ever seen.

Y/N shifted on the bunk, rolling further over onto her side. Slowly, her eyes opened, and she squinted slightly at the light as she looked up at Nikolai.

“Hi,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and quiet.

“Hey.” Nikolai leant forward. He brushed her hair back from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear. There was an unusual gentleness to his actions – they’d been this affectionate before but… this time it was different.

“Are you okay?”

Nikolai blinked. He laughed softly. “You drowned and almost died, yet you’re asking me how I am?” He sighed, letting his thumb brush across her cheekbone. “I’m fine, darling. How are you?”

“I’m cold still,” Y/N replied. She snuggled further down into the blankets. “My throat hurts as does my chest but… I’m alive.” She fell quiet for a moment, gazing up at Nikolai. “You look like shit, Lanstov.”

Nikolai burst out laughing. He shook his head as the laughter faded, the smile remaining. “You scared me, Y/N. Truly scared me. I’m so used to having you around that suddenly imagining life without you…” His smile faded slightly.

“I am a good friend,” Y/N said, nodding, her tone semi-sarcastic. “You’ve trained me well. I can imagine how difficult it would be to train a new friend again.” Y/N frowned at the silence that followed. Nikolai lowered his gaze. “Nik?”

“It wasn’t just that,” Nikolai replied. He closed his eyes for a moment. “Since we met, I’ve felt this… pull to you.”

“Nik, you’re sounding like Tolya.”

Nikolai snorted. “Yeah, I’m not great at this.” He sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to say this.”

“Okay,” Y/N curled closer to him, “just… splurge. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense.”

And that was it. Nikolai knew, then, that it was her calmness, her ability to see through the haze of his mind and just know what he wanted to say or do. He could be spiralling out of control and Y/N would be the one thing keeping him on the ground.

That was why he loved her.

“I can’t live my life without you,” Nikolai said abruptly. “You ground me in ways no one else can. The entire world could be spiralling out of control, but you’ll be the calm in the storm.” He chuckled. “I remember when I had a bad night a few months ago. I’d tossed and turned and then given up, going up on to deck to watch the stars. Everything was haunting me – the crown, my people, my family. You found me on deck and just talked at me for an hour, distracting me from my thoughts until I’d calmed down.

“When I pulled you from the water, I was terrified that… that I’d pulled your body out but not your soul. That it was still in the water, sinking further and further down. The world stopped as I watched Tamar and Iva work. I think Tolya was worried I’d collapse on him. But the moment you opened your eyes and looked at me, my world started moving again. And I realised that… I love you in so many ways, I can’t put them all into words.”

If Y/N was taken aback by the abrupt revelation, she didn’t show it. Her face was calm, betraying nothing.

Nikolai laughed softly, shaking his head. “I know I am a prince, Y/N. I know there are rules and laws. I know that one day I will be king. Loving me isn’t easy, I know. Being with me isn’t easy. But… I just…”

Nikolai trailed off, words failing him.

Y/N propped herself up onto her elbow, dislodging the blankets around her. She took both of Nikolai’s hands with hers, running her thumbs along the back of them. Nikolai looked at her. Her gaze was intense. It was warm. It was understanding.

“I knew who I was becoming friends with, Nik,” Y/N said gently. “Prince Nikolai Lanstov – heir to the Ravkan throne. I knew what it would come with and how hard it will be. And I know loving you will be even harder.” Nikolai couldn’t breathe. Y/N squeezed his hands. “Yet I will gladly fight the battles if it means I get to wake up next to you in the morning. I will stand behind you if it means I can hold your hand in the shadows. I will be your consort if it means I can love you for however long we live for.”

Nikolai stared at her. Everything he’d wanted to say, she’d said perfectly. Everything he’d thought, he’d felt – she’d spoken it aloud.

“I know who I fell in love with, Nikolai,” Y/N said, watching him intently. She smiled, placing a hand on the side of his face. “I wanted to say something but… I thought it best if I waited for you. In case it wasn’t reciprocated. In case it wasn’t what you wanted.”

It was hard to confess your love. It was even harder when it was a prince. Nikolai knew this. He knew that whoever he fell in love with, would have to sacrifice everything to be with him. Yet here was Y/N, opening her heart whilst fully understanding the consequences.

“Are you going to kiss me now, princeling?”

Nikolai laughed and leant forward, capturing her lips with his. She kissed him back, pressing into him, her hand wrapping around the back of his neck and holding him. They broke apart, resting their foreheads together, breathing heavily.

“Queen Y/N and King Nikolai does have a ring to it,” Y/N whispered into his ear.

Nikolai pulled back, his brow furrowing even as he smiled. “Why are you first? Surely it should be King Nikolai and Queen Y/N.”

“Because.” She pressed her lips to his again, smiling. “I want it that way.”

#nikolai lantsov #nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai lantsov x female reader #shadow and bone fic #shadow and bone #shadow and bone imagine #shadow and bone x reader #fic #fanfic #nikolai lantsov imagine

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ellieslaces · 2 months

Text

CAN’T CATCH ME NOW. (prologue)

presenting: Umbrella’s Hunger Games

featuring: leon kennedy x fem!reader

synopsis: the Hunger Games, an annual show of brutal control the Capitol has over each of the twelve Districts. the Games’ number one sponsor: Umbrella Corporation, the creator of the Games’ most horrific torture strategies and nightmare inducing deaths. these games have always been cautionary, always a far away but constant threat — until you find yourself Reaped and thrown into an area full of your worst fears with 23 other Tributes, all out for blood.

content warnings (future): harsh language; heavy violence; gore; torture; heavy themes of murder; infanticide; social injustice; class discrimination; brief mention of suicidal thoughts; angst; character death; eventual smut; enemies to lovers

notes: this is inspired by the Hunger Games (no 1) and takes place in the universe; if topics such as violence murder infanticide etc trigger you, skip this series; the reader is said to be a Career Tribute

Chloe talks: posting a my prologue for my new Leon Hunger Games series before the next strike tomorrow! please enjoy, I’m convinced this will be my magnum opus :)

word count: 768 (it’s a prologue, so it’s short)

now playing: can’t catch me now ; olivia rodrigo

how you can help Palestine! 🇵🇸

Images of dark alleys, of scorching hot deserts, of raging icy tundras, of sickly beautiful yet dangerous forests haunted each child’s dreams. Not for any reason in particular other than the fact that the images were fed to them since birth. Spoon fed into their heads — the showings of each years annual Hunger Games.

Decades upon decades ago, the ocean swallowed nearly half the continent in a devastating and unprecedented tsunami. States and even smaller countries were lost to the depths of the sea, leaving the remaining forty percent of the country overflowed with a surplus of population.

Women, men, and children with nowhere to go, now crowded the north part of what once was the United States. Now twenty of the fifty states remained, thousands upon thousands of casualties, leaving too many for the forty percent of the country to support.

The government handled it with the worst of ideas, their support was lost, their lack of understanding and empathy led to an inevitable uprising. People stormed the gates of the White House, threatened to kill — and did kill — senators, and representatives, and judges, and even their families.

This uprising nearly destroyed the country as a whole. Thousands were slaughtered, bloodlines were destroyed, families killed by the rebels. Until a group of unknown power that had been hiding behind the scenes for decades stepped forward, taking control of the people. This led to a bloodbath of violence, political control, and the people finally were forced to accept their defeat.

From then, the country was divided into thirteen Districts, each with its own purpose of serving the new country’s Capitol. This new country — Panem — was run with a ruthless government, a controlling President with no mercy and a clever mind. He was cruel, and heartless, and as dangerous as he was calm.

No one dared to object him, no one dared to take his power for fear of the consequences. So, for decades, President Ozwell E. Spencer ran the country. His company — one he started long before he was elected as President — Umbrella was the sole sponsor and creator of the annual Hunger Games.

Where each spring, twenty four children between the ages of twelve and nineteen were picked at random by pairs to represent their District in a fight to the death.

One boy, one girl from each District, chosen by random to be plucked, and bathed, and painted, and paraded, and eventually murdered for the sake of entertainment. Once, these Games were a reminder of what revolution could do, how it could crumble a nation. But that notion was long gone, all that now remained was the entertainment value of their deaths. Deaths none of them deserved. Deaths you never imagined you’d actually witness, much less cause yourself.

The intricacies of these Games were lost upon you, all you knew was to survive. Despite being a so called ‘Career’ and had as close to luxury as you could for someone from one of the Districts, you hardly had the stomach to commit things such as murder. Much less upon other children, people your age.

District One, luxury items, riches, and favor of the Capitol itself. Careers, the title of the Tributes that were put into the Games each year. These Tributes were raised with advantage, raised with early training available to them. Available to you.

For the majority of your life, since you were able to understand what the Games meant, you’d been trained by Victors, the Redfield siblings. Chris and his sister, Claire, were once Tributes themselves, in consecutive years.

Chris Redfield won at nineteen with pure brutality, physical strength and power, partaking in the bloodbath and taking out a good majority of the other Tributes in the beginning. Chris’s Games lasted a mere week.

While Claire Redfield managed to outsmart each and every other Tribute in her arena, successfully becoming the Victor by simply waiting for them all to die by natural causes, or killing themselves with their own stupidity. Her Games lasted three, the ending of said Games pushed quickly to be brought to a conclusion. Leading the girl to become Victor at a mere thirteen.

So, despite the fact that you weren’t technically supposed to be trained by Mentors unless Reaped, the Redfield siblings trained you behind the curtain. They prepared you for the possibility of you being Reaped, of being subjected to the horrors they’d seen. To the murder they had to commit to stay alive. They wanted you to win, to have a chance of survival.

But, maybe they should have just let you die. Maybe they shouldn’t have taken you under their wing when they found you shivering in the rain after a school bully had taken your pack and shoes and jacket.

Maybe they should have just let you be killed. Then you wouldn’t have to live with the memory of him.

#can’t catch me now.#re2 leon #Leon Kennedy #leon kennedy x y/n #leon kennedy x you #leon kennedy x fem reader #Leon Kennedy x reader #leon kennedy fanfic #Leon Kennedy fanfiction #hunger games #the hunger games #the hunger games au #resident evil 2 remake #resident evil au

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sailoryooons · 9 months

Note

okay, Yoongi rec time. I am prepared for you to ruin my life, lessgo~~~

Gimme feelings and vibes, babe!!!! These two understand each other, they are the safe space for one another, their quiet compatibility is god tier.

Premise: Yoongi is 'the one that got away' to you. When you're unexpectedly thrown into each other's worlds again, every old feeling you had takes over like he never left - and it's clear that it's mutual. Problem... Yoongi has a girlfriend.

(Prefer no infidelity, just Yoongi having to make a hard choice, realizing the depth of what he had/and could have again now with reader is more substantial. And reader not being completely sure (maybe from miscommunication or lack of it) what his choice will be.)

honestly idc how smutty you make it, if you want to throw me a bone (huhuhu) and have some spice you know i'm not complaining :)

❀ Pairing: Yoongi x f. reader

❀ Summary: Unresolved feelings lead to nothing but heartache when you run into Yoongi at a wedding five years after breaking up. Especially when you realize that despite Yoongi have feelings for you, there is still another woman on his arm.

❀ Word Count: 3,641

❀ Genre: Angst, exes to lovers, smut

❀ Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately.

❀ Warnings: STUPID PINNING!!!! LIKE JUST TWO IDIOTS WHO NEED TO GET OVER THEIR PRIDE AND GET BACK TOGETHER!!!!!! Angst, a lot of internal pondering on relationships and life, Yoongi is honestly a terrible boyfriend to his current girlfriend (he is in love with reader and it’s very obvious) bickering about relationships, Hyori seems like a bitch but tbh she is in the worst situation lmao, depiction of a breakup, a lot of aching and being wistfully sad, explicit language, sexua content including vaginal fingering, light nipple play, unprotected vaginal sex, some cum and fluids idk they’re sweaty, this is more of an emotional/prosey smut scene than filth, FeElInGs

❀ Published: August 1, 2023

❀ A/N: JO IT TOOK ME A YEAR TO FILL THIS REQUEST FOR YOU BUT GOD DAMMIT I LOVE YOU AND I LOVE THIS REQUEST. I HOPE THAT THIS FITS THE VIBE OF WHAT YOU WERE THINKING AFTER WAITING FOR ME TO FUCKING WRITE IT FOR LITERALLY 365 DAYS. I LOVE YOU SO SO SO MUCH AND THIS IS UNEDITED OKAY. HERE'S TO HALI'S HAPPY AGUST'S FIRST REQUEST DROP!

❀ Disclaimer: All members of BTS are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios.

| Masterlist | Ask | Song Inspiration | Hali's Happy Agust

“Is that her?” Yoongi doesn’t have to turn to look at who Hyori is talking about. Her tone, tightening grip on his arm, and the way she stiffens says all that he needs to know. “Well? Is it?”

Yoongi doesn’t want to turn around and look. His back and shoulders hurt from sleeping on the hotel couch, his eyes burn from being unable to sleep after staying up most of the night fighting with Hyori, and he knows that Hyori knows what you look like. As if she has not spent hours scrutinizing every part of your life on social media.

Perhaps it’s Yoongi’s fault. He thinks of all the things he’s done for the last two years. Or better - he thinks of all the things that he hasn’t done that have landed him here at this wedding with Hyori seething at your very presence in the same room.

It’s only partially Hyori’s fault. Yoongi could have done better to make her feel secure, to ensure that she felt like he was in this relationship without thoughts of you, to make her feel like he would always be about her and not you.

Yoongi loves quietly, though. Too quietly for a bright, burning star like Hyori, who has turned into a flaring nova over the last year, burning Yoongi when he dares to get too close but freezing him out when he gets too far.

He doesn’t know what to do, so Yoongi does what Hyori wants him to do. He turns and looks over his shoulder, eyes scanning the entrance to the garden that Seokjin and his fiance have selected for their reception.

When he sees you, Yoongi swears he could die. His heart squeezes, his stomach flips. He keeps his features schooled as much as he can, knowing that his girlfriend is watching his every movement, waiting for another reason to dig her nails in deeper, waiting to say I told you so.

“Yeah,” he mumbles and turns back around without looking back again. “That’s her.”

Hyori hums, seemingly satisfied with Yoongi’s lack of interest in you. Her grip softens and she melts into him a little. He fights the urge to lean away, the sudden sight of you making him want to put distance between himself and Hyori.

She did tell me so, he thinks when he realizes that his first instinct of being in the same room with you again is to be away from anyone else. Fuck.

“I don’t like her dress.”

Yoongi hums in agreement, but he couldn’t disagree more. He thinks you look stunning in your silk, sky blue gown. It glows against your skin and Yoongi already knows you’ll smell like vanilla with a hint of cherries, a scent that used to drive him wild. He knows you taste as sweet as you smell, skin warm and soft and-

“Are you listening?” Hyori asks, voice ringing with annoyance.

He wasn’t. “Sorry, I was wondering how many people they invited.”

“Looks like a hundred or so. Did you see who Taehyung brought?”

Hyori launches into assessing the dates brought to the wedding as people are seated for the ceremony. Yoongi hums and nods when appropriate, but his thoughts are miles away from petty conversations with his girlfriend.

Instead, he’s focused on you. Three rows up and on the other side of the aisle, sitting next to Hoseok. You laugh and Yoongi begins to bleed at the seams, all of his wounds that he’s spent the last five years trying to heal opening up for him to drip with pain.

It’s stupid, this endless longing for you. You’d broke it off with him because it was getting too complicated and because Yoongi had missed every opportunity to give you reasons to stay. He knows that you’re happy and he loves seeing you happy, knows that you have no ill will toward him. You wish each other happy birthday, and he texted you when a mutual friend passed away.

So why is it so painful? Yoongi was happy with Hyori at first. She is everything he is not: bright, outspoken, full of energy, adventurous and social. He liked the way that she compliments him, where she makes up for where he lacks. But now, all of those differences have become obstacles, and what they had once admired one another for has become irritations.

When the ceremony starts, Yoongi knows he’s supposed to look back at the bride and watch her enter. Knows that she will be beautiful and it is her day and she is owed all of the attention in the world. But it’s you he watches, waiting with his breath held as you turn, eyes sweeping to watch the bride enter.

And then you’re looking at him and Yoongi breaks. A single look in five years and he knows with sudden, lightning-strike clarity that he cannot do this anymore. The stab of longing is far greater than looking at you from a distance, the weight of your gaze crushing.

Yoongi realizes that there is nothing worse than watching two people proclaim their love in front of their family and friends while the love of his life is sitting three rows, and an aisle away.

Letting out a shaky breath, you bring the flute of champagne to your lips, knocking back the entire thing. It burns on the way down and the carbonation fluxes, making you cough as a sudden burning sensation singes your nose, making you choke.

You set the glass down quickly, coughing your way through swallowing the alcohol the wrong way. Hoseok appears, patting your back and asking, “Shit, you okay?”

“Wrong pipe.”

“Maybe don’t chug your champagne like you’re using a beer bong in college.”

“Well maybe I need stronger champagne,” you shoot back. You immediately wince at your tone, Hoseok raising his brows. “Sorry. Very on edge. I knew seeing him would suck but I didn’t expect to feel like my rib cage would crack open.”

“By the looks of it, you’re not the only one.”

Gritting your teeth, you follow Hoseok’s gaze, glancing over your shoulder toward the far end of the reception room. Yoongi is leaning back in his seat, slouched slightly in his chair and staring off into the distance unseeing. Next to him, his girlfriend Hyori giggles with the woman next to her at their table, either unaware of her boyfriend disassociating or over it.

The worst part about Hoseok’s comment is that it’s true. Seeing Yoongi’s face during the ceremony was all you needed to see to know that it isn’t just you being burned by the fire. You aren’t alone in your pain, but you're not the one in a committed relationship. You’re not the one who has sat passively and let the world and love pass you by.

It’s knowing that hurts so much, you think. Knowing that you love Yoongi more than anyone else in the room. Knowing that maybe walking away because you were too young to understand his love language or how he could do better for you was a mistake.

Five years has given you a lot to think about. You don’t move through the world the same way, and you have a better understanding of the way that people pour love into relationships. You can’t help but wonder what it would be like now that distance has made you understand Yoongi more. You cannot help but ache over imagining that he has fixed all the things about himself you struggled with for another.

“He loves her,” Hoseok murmurs, speaking your thoughts. “But not… like he loves you.”

“Well, that’s his problem.” You pick at a stray hair on your dress. “I admit I was immature and impatient and didn’t give him the chances to be what I needed, but… if he wants me and won’t take me, isn’t that why I left in the first place?”

Hoseok hums his agreement with an undercurrent of sadness. “Come on, let’s dance. Weddings are for celebrating love, not watching it die.”

Hand in Hoseok’s, you let him lead you out onto the floor, spinning you wildly until you’re crashing into Jungkook and Taehyung’s arms, laughing and letting the music sweep you up and away from the hurt. The pain of knowing Yoongi is right there dulls a little.

Being with your friends helps. It takes your thoughts away from thinking of all the things that you did wrong, like ignoring the ways Yoongi was silently telling you that he loved you, like getting mad for not seeing what he was saying in his own, quiet way.

Yoongi isn’t faultless but neither are you blameless, which is perhaps why it hurts so much when you catch glances of him on the other side of the room. His hair is longer than it’s ever been and you wonder if it’s just as soft as it used to be. His face is just as round and soft, and yet he looks older somehow, more mature.

It’s hard not to wonder what it would be like if you’d just given him the chance to be better for you. What it would be like if you had been more patient and understanding of him.

Yoongi does not love loud. He does not exist brightly splashed across paper the way that you do. He loves gently, with your cup of coffee waiting and ready for you every morning, and the oil in your car changed, and the broken shelf in your library mended. He is a soft shadow, the gentle hand on your back at an art gallery you wanted to visit and a held hand at a show he didn’t like but you did.

Sweat lines your forehead and sticks to your arms from dancing. You excuse yourself to take a break and freshen up in the bathroom, the cool air of the venu making you shiver as you wend through candle-lit tables filled with sleeping elders and children stealing wedding cake.

In the hall, you teeter toward the bathroom. After being plied with champagne and some tequila from Taehyung to loosen you up, you feel a little too loose, like you might melt on the floor if you don’t get some water and a seat somewhere underneath an air vent.

“Fuck you,” someone hisses, their voice loud enough to stop you from turning the corner of where the bathrooms are. This section of the hotel is empty, reserved only for events and Seokjin’s wedding is the only event for the evening. “Why did you fucking bring me, then? I told you it would be just like this.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You will be. I have tried, Yoongi. I have tried for a year now, and nothing I do matters. No matter how hard I love you, you still love her. It isn’t fair and it’s cruel.”

Your heart speeds up when you realize it’s Hyori’s hissing voice you hear and Yoongi’s soft baritone. You chew your bottom lip, turning to look at the empty hall behind you. There’s no one around, the wedding working into the late hours of the evening. There doesn’t seem to be another set of bathrooms, and you can’t imagine trying to walk past Hyori and Yoongi in the middle of this.

“You’re right,” Yoongi sighs. You know that sound. Defeated. Sad.

“That’s all you have to say? That I’m right?”

“I don’t know what else to say. You are right. You don’t deserve the effort that I’ve given you, I have been incredibly unfair, and though I love you, it doesn’t erase what I feel for her. It is the worst kind of cruelty I can think of, and I thought I’d get over it. I didn’t.”

“You are the worst kind of person.”

Before you can get yourself together at the sound of Hyori’s clicking heels, she’s turning the corner and nearly slamming into you. She takes a few steps back, eyes wide and blinking in surprise. When she realizes it's you, her face twists into something cruel and venomous.

Instead of saying anything, Hyori rushes by you, shoulder smacking yours. You teeter but don’t stumble, staring at the empty space where she was moments ago. You’re not sure you deserve her wrath, but you understand it. You don’t blame her for it. There is no happiness at her pain, no twist of pride at winning. Knowing that her pain is because it’s still about you. Always has been.

Licking your lips, you take a shaky breath and peek around the corner. Yoongi is standing in the empty hall with his head tilted back toward the ceiling, eyes closed. His long hair falls to his shoulders around him. He looks so beautiful in a suit and bowtie, a picture perfect groom if you thought about it long enough.

Tears sparkle in the corner of his eyes before tracking down his face. His pain is tangible, and before you know what it is you’re doing, you’re walking toward him. He either doesn’t hear you coming or doesn’t care that there is someone to see him cry, because he doesn’t look down at you until your hand is in his and you’re squeezing.

Warmth blooms between your palms. His are rough and calloused like you remember, all from playing guitar and taking the woodshop classes he loves so much. He still smells like cedar and sage, hypnotizing and dark in a way that makes you want to fall into him each time you inhale.

Yoongi’s eyes open, lined in silver-tears. He looks so in pain and so beautiful, this soft boy who is now a man. Different but familiar. A burn and a balm.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, quick to speak first. Your hand squeezes his more as Yoongi opens up in front of you on command. As if he only has a moment to correct all of his mistakes in a single breath. “I get it now,” he whispers, voice cracking. “I do, and I’m sorry. And you look beautiful, and happy and I am so happy for you.”

“I know.” You feel a burn in your eyes and realize there are tears threatening to break free. “I- me too. Can we just?”

You don’t have to say what you mean. Yoongi gets it - has always gotten it. From the beginning, to the end. Even when he’s confused, he figures it out. Knows how to put the pieces of your puzzle together for the full image.

Just a tiny exchange leads you to a twist of muttered words, spilled tears and Yoongi’s mouth on yours. You don’t know when he kisses you first or if it was you, but you know that his mouth is on yours and he is warm warm warm and his mouth tastes like whiskey. You breathe him in, fingers pulling at the lapels of his jacket. You want more more more - you always do with him.

Yoongi is a giver. He never takes. He lets you take from him. He crushes you with the weight of his love on the bed, hands feverish and hungry as he pulls your legs up to wrap around his waist. You moan as his rough palms skate up your exposed thigh, lighting a fight as he strokes your skin.

It feels like you might suffocate. The air between you is static as Yoongi sucks your tongue into his mouth, making you shiver. Kissing him has always been your greatest weakness and you forget the way he breaks you apart with gentle swipes of his tongue, the soft nibbling of your bottom lip between his teeth.

You feel like an exposed wire, sparking under Yoongi’s touch. He pulls the dress from your overwhelmed skin, your nipples pebbling in the cold air as his mouth moves from your tips, to your jaw, to your throat. Your pulse beats wildly under the careful touch of his teeth against your skin, the sting of his bites soothed by a swipe of his tongue.

Trembling and panting, you pull at his pants. Yoongi’s skin is hot to the touch, firm in places you don’t remember and soft in places that you do. Your fingers trace his lines and curves, remembering, discovering. You want to learn all of the new things about him and recall the things you already knew.

“Fuck,” you gasp as Yoongi’s wet mouth wraps around a pert nipple. He hums and gives a vicious suck, making your back arch off of the bed. His tongue flicks across your hardened bud a few times, making you twitch under him. “Yoongi.”

He lets go with a pop, a string of spit connecting his mouth and your skin. “Say it again,” he whispers, voice ragged. “Missed hearing you say it.”

“Yoongi,” you say again.

You don’t stop saying his name - can’t stop saying his name. Not when he slides his hands between your legs, fingers trailing through your soaking cunt. Not when he circles those nimble fingers around your clit, sparking pleasure deep inside of you.

It feels like you’re on the edge of madness. Years of want and hurt and desire come bursting to the surface all at once. Your hands slide through Yoongi’s hair, just as soft as you remember it being. You tug hard on the locks, making him moan deeply into your shoulder. His breath is hot against your skin as he teases you, fingers tracing your entrance but doing nothing.

“Please,” you whisper. “Don’t.”

“Just wanted to see if you still get all worked up.” His laugh turns into a groan when you pull his hair harder. You feel his cock straining against your thigh, sticky tip tacky against your skin. “You still do.”

“You have some nerve saying that like your cocks not drooling on my thigh, Yoongi.”

“Fuck, I know.” He slowly slides a finger into your dripping heat. You curse, arching up into him. It isn’t enough. “Could bust just fingering this tight fucking pussy.”

“More.”

“Yeah?” Yoongi inserts another finger and you feel fuller, better. You nod, eyes fluttering shut as he sets a gentle pace, fucking his fingers into you at an angle to press up against that soft spot inside of you that makes you whine. “I still got it.”

“Shut up.”

Yoongi has a right to be smug. It feels like you’re going to shatter, your hips coming off the bed to meet his thrusting hand. Your mouths smash together, teeth and tongues colliding. It’s messy and wet but Yoongi is yours again - maybe not forever, but he is in this moment and it's all you want. All that matters.

Dizzy and drunk on him, you let him work you toward your high, the wet-smack of his fingers between your thighs bracketing the high-pitched sounds escaping you. He attaches his mouth to the sensitive spot beneath your ear, licking and sucking until you’re trembling under him, hands shooting to his arms and legs squeezing his hips as you come apart around his fingers, walls squeezing him tight.

Curses drip from his mouth as he shifts forward, pressing you further into the mattress, thrusting his fingers harder. Your orgasm reaches a peak and your mind is near breaking, ears ringing as he drags it out. You try to move away from him but pull him with you, reaching over stimulation but wanting more.

Yoongi drives you mad. Has always driven you mad. You crave him even more as he pulls his fingers from your fluttering cunt, smearing your slick down your thigh as he gets up on his knees. Your legs fall open for him, butterflied as he strokes his heavy cock in his hand, watching you catch your breath.

Sweat sticks to your skin, the sheets clinging to you. Your thighs protest as Yoongi presses you open and slides his cock along your sticky folds. You twitch when his tip catches your clit, little shockwaves pulsing through you from the stimulation.

Biting his bottom lip, Yoongi angles his hips to push in on his next teasing upstroke and you gasp. The stretch is painful and good, the pressure mounting as he pries you open. You feel yourself drift a little, lost in the feeling as he presses into the hilt, stopping to let your walls flutter around him.

“So fucking tight,” he mutters, falling forward to cage you in with his arms. “Fuck.”

“So fucking big,” you shoot back. “Not my fucking fauuult.”

Your words turn into a mewl as he pulls out and slams back in, hips smacking with bruising force against yours. Yoongi’s laughter is dark against your mouth as he presses his lips to yours. You breathe hard against one another, sharing breath as he fucks you hard and deep.

Sliding your hands along his back, you grab him and pull him closer. Press your fingers into his shoulder blades, grip sliding with the sweat on his back. He works you so easily that within a few moments you’re delirious, babbling under him and near tears that finally - finally - you have him again. Something you’d never thought you’d get.

Apologies spill from his mouth. Yoongi tells you everything he always meant to say. Everything you always wanted from him. You mutter it back, pull sweet words from his tongue, claw him open and make him shudder at your touch.

Forehead pressed to yours, dark eyes burning, Yoongi brings you back to the precipice again. This time when you come, it’s together, your body squeezing tight, muscles spasming. Yoongi kisses you then, shaking above you as you ride it out together, unable to think of anything else but Yoongi.

Later, when he’s asleep next to you and you’re wreathed in the warm cage of his arms, you think never again. Never again will you risk this heartache and let him go.

#yoongi smut #suga smut #min yoongi smut #yoongi fanfic #yoongi x reader #bts suga #bts fanfic #minors do not interact #minors dni #bts suga smut #yoongi angst #halis happy agust

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vaxieth · 8 months

Text

because something really did ask, have a much too long post about my thoughts on laudna’s individual dynamics with the rest of bells hells.

under the cut because it’s almost 3000 words.

laudna/imogen

i struggle to find something to say about imogen and laudna that hasn’t already been said a million times before. the core concept—the thesis—of their arcs, together and separately, is choice. so much of their backstories are defined by helplessness. laudna was chosen and killed because she happened to look like someone else, she was resurrected because she happened to be there. imogen’s mother left, she was burdened with powers she didn’t understand and meant constant pain and isolation. so, they make sure to constantly emphasize that the other person has a choice in everything. imogen tells laudna she only has to come back if she wants to, even though it would have devastated her to lose laudna forever. laudna tells imogen that the gods can’t control her, that no matter what her “destiny” is, if she wants, they can leave and live in a little cottage and raise horses together. the way they love each other unconditionally is all the more incredible given how cruel the world was to them for so long. laudna’s “you make me better” is true for both of them. they give each other a place to be vulnerable and feel all their messiest, worst feelings because they know the other one won’t judge them. they’ll support each other no matter the choices they make.

something i’ve mentioned quite a few times but never gone in depth about is that imogen and laudna do have a fairly significant age difference, and i do think that affects their dynamic. on the one hand, they both have a bit of arrested development—imogen due to her isolation from the rest of gelvaan from 18-26, laudna because she died at 20. on the other, laudna has so much more life experience than imogen. she spent almost 30 years traveling and interacting with the world even if was mostly people trying to kill her, maybe even because of that. the “laudna is imogen’s aunt/mother/older sister” takes were obviously ridiculous, but laudna does canonically look at imogen and see someone young who she wants to protect in a way she never was. she said as much to fcg after the gnarlrock fight. laudna acts as imogen’s rock, her tether if you will, a lot of the time, and part of the reason she can counterbalance imogen’s anxiety is because of the experience that comes with age. for example, during their conversation in episode 49, laudna is able to stay more “rational” and level-headed even when imogen is scared and overwhelmed.

one of my other favorite things about them, specifically from laudna’s point of view, is that with a few exceptions (the gnarlrock fight, her jealousy of frida), she doesn’t seem insecure about their relationship. again, during episode 49, laudna mentions that she knows they haven’t talked in a while, but she didn’t worry because they “transcend words.” she didn’t need outside assurance from imogen because she felt confident in their love for each other. something i love about that episode 39-49 period is that they didn’t interact a lot, but when they did, they slipped right about in the same kind of intimacy they’d always had—imogen holding launda’s hand when they went into her dream together, laudna’s protectiveness of imogen after she interacted with ludinus. but anyway—that confidence is why i believe the transition from friends to lovers was so easy for laudna. laudna’s unsure of herself, of delilah and what she might do, but she’s absolutely not unsure of the love between her and imogen. that’s why as soon as imogen tells her she’s not a bad person, that she wants to be with laudna in that way, she lets herself embrace it entirely.

in conclusion: they invented romance, they’re the best canon pairing critical role has ever had and one of the best dynamics in general, etc., etc.

laudna/orym

oh my god, WHERE to begin? i feel like my take on their dynamic is slightly controversial. at the very least, i get more push back from people when i post about it than anything else, so let me start with this: orym cares deeply about laudna, i will never dispute that. however, orym is uncomfortable with laudna and has been since the very beginning of the campaign. she’s his friend and he recognizes her beautiful heart and resilient spirit, but he’s uncomfortable with her appearance and her messages in his head, with her macabre humor and her deadness. he can’t reconcile that laudna his friend and laudna the dead woman can’t be separated. laudna’s deadness is a part of her, one laudna embraces. orym, for better or worse, is “normal.” he grew up with a loving family and he had a husband and a career. will and derrig’s deaths were an unbelievable tragedy but one that never challenged his place within the status quo. (sidenote: i’ve always wondered if part of orym’s discomfort with laudna come from the fact that her proximity to death is a reminder of the resurrections will and derrig never got.) he sees himself as a follower, someone that doesn’t stand out, then there’s laudna, who does nothing but stand out.

something i find fascinating is that orym is the first person to find out laudna’s backstory, and it affects him so much he can’t sleep that night and takes a point of exhaustion. he even explicitly recognizes the dehumanization she’s gone through and how laudna’s relationship with puppets like pate and sashimi mirror that. yet, he still never apologizes for trying to disguise her appearance, something without even asking. yes, i get it’s tactical and for “safety” (though that argument falls a bit flat for me when there’s also a glowing rock person and a fully conscious automaton in the group, but whatever), but it still hurts laudna. even beyond that, orym always qualifies his friendship with laudna to other person, making some mention of how she’s dead-looking and isn’t that crazy, wow, almost as if he wants some validation that it—laudna—is weird (one he, interestingly, rarely ever gets, given how enraptured most of the other pcs, including guests, and even some npcs, are with her). he does this even in situations he absolutely doesn’t need to like, for example, when maeve says laudna “looks cooler than i thought.” all this just sucks. it’s not that the love isn’t there, it is. it just isn’t unconditional, and laudna deserves better than that.

finally: the delilah in the room. no, it isn’t orym’s “fault” delilah is back. yes, he was also having an extremely bad time during the bor’dor fight and it wasn’t his “responsibility” to save laudna from herself, but laudna is orym’s friend. he listened to laudna tell him the trauma delilah put her through, he fought through hell to save laudna from her, and still nodded because part of him thought maybe delilah could help him and that was selfish. the fight against ludinus is important to of the bells, but for orym, it’s personal. it’s been his mission for six years. meanwhile, laudna is the one with the least enthusiasm about this. she has no connection to the gods. in fact, she actively thinks they dislike her, but he’s willing to sacrifice not just his safety, but the safety of her and all his friends for a cause they never set out to fight for.

in conclusion: i want to put them in a salad mixer together and watch them go around and around and around and around and around, then let them out to scream at each other a little.

laudna/ashton

if i had to explain laudna and ashton’s dynamic in one word, it would be “projection.” i adore their relationship, it’s one of my top 5 c3 dynamics, but oh my god, so much projection, and it’s so interesting because of that. ashton thinks he understands laudna, but in reality, he doesn’t at all. i’m an absolute sucker for characters that look very different on the surface but in reality are much more similar than they know, and ashton and laudna are that to a tee. they are very much narrative parallels especially regarding their feelings of “brokenness” and how their traumas are physical, visual parts of themselves, but the ways they diverge are almost more interesting.

certain people have said that her conversations with ashton are the only time laudna is “honest” or that, at the very least, she’s more honest with him than she is with anyone else, and i couldn’t disagree more. laudna can be a joyful, optimistic person and deeply traumatized with a core anger she hasn’t truly processed. laudna is a high-charisma character, and in my opinion, part of how that manifests is her ability to adapt her demeanor to the person she’s talking to. she speaks gently to imogen the same way she matches chetney’s hyperactive energy when they go sky-sailing. of course when she’s with ashton, who makes no effort to hide his anger and bitterness and doesn’t want her to be soft, she isn’t. none of these laudnas are more “real” than the others, they’re all laudna. what those people, and ironically, ashton themself, don’t get, or won’t let himself get, is that all those things can be true at once.

with ashton specifically, i don’t think they want to believe that because then they’d have to admit that growth and healing is a real possibility because anger is so much easier to deal with. people talk most about orym’s choices during the bor’dor fight most, but i’m fascinated by ashton’s as well. i wouldn’t be surprised if there was a part, no matter how small, that wanted laudna to break, to prove to himself that he was right and laudna was just as broken and fucked-up as them. so, laudna killing bor’dor was almost vindication, evidenced by their “what have i done?” “nothing i haven’t done.” exchange afterwards.

i don’t want this to sound like ashton doesn’t care about launda, they do. ashton cares about her so much, and besides imogen and fearne, is the most unabashedly into laudna’s aesthetic. i love how much they love all the weird shit she does. i love how protective ashton is of laudna, especially during battles and their willingness to go above and beyond for her—he carried laudna when she was dead despite his chronic pain without complaining once and were willing to make a deal with hexum after going through an entire museum heist to repay their debt. i love the moments when ashton sees how much laudna is struggling and tells her, as gently as he can, to take a moment and do what she can to ground herself. i love that when laudna way too dramatically assumes they kidnapped imogen, their response is “that’s very fair.” it’s all wonderful, and i love them.

in conclusion: I LOVE THEM SO MUCH AND I WANT TO LOCK THEM IN A ROOM AND FORCE THEM TO TALK ABOUT THEIR FEELINGS FOR HOURS.

laudna/fcg

laudna and fcg have been getting more attention in the past few days for obvious reasons and that has me rubbing my hands together maniacally because even though they have very little actual interaction, the subtext is delicious.

besides ashton, fcg might be the character laudna parallels the most, especially their struggle with their humanity (if they’re even human at all), which isn’t helped by the constant dehumanization they face from outsiders, including the almost continuous comments they get when they meet someone new. people look at launda and see a horror while they look at fcg and see a novelty (he’s a robot with personality??), and those both suck. i think, for fcg, laudna is an uncomfortable reflection of himself because everything they’re afraid is true about themself is true about laudna. finding out they had a soul was such an important moment for his character (also remember his early campaign habit of calling other people “soul-touched folks”). as a hollow one, who knows if laudna even has a soul. if i’m honest, fcg seems to think less of laudna than the rest of the party (see: him calling her a “former person,” his speech before casting turn undead including, “no offense to laudna but can you please shine your light and wipe these evil, dead souls off the face of this flat planet?”) and that’s probably why. they have such strict ideas about “good,” which has become “godly,” and “wrong,” (“ungodly”), and within that framework, everything seemed to point to laudna as “ungodly,” which is why their empathy towards her is lacking.

the biggest conflict between fcg and laudna right now is obviously their feelings on the gods. the changebringer brought fcg purpose and tangibly helps them on a daily basis. of course they want to share this incredible thing with everyone they meet, especially his friends. yet, time-and-time again, the world has shown laudna the gods don’t seem to care about her. before someone says anything, pike resurrecting laudna doesn’t automatically mean she has to trust the gods. clerics and paladins spent 30 years running her out of towns for existing and trying to kill her in the name of their gods. if the circumstances were different, there’s a good chance fcg could have been one of those people. for fcg, the world is black-and-white. for laudna, it’s all gray. laudna was able to have a conversation with imogen about the ruby vanguard’s message and the purpose of the gods because she understands the need to question things and thinks that’s a good thing even if she doesn’t agree with the conclusions. fcg’s not there yet, and until he is, their friendship with laudna will never be able to progress past where it is now.

in conclusion: please have a conversation, maybe even two or three. it’d be so good for fcg to learn the world’s incredible nuances and for laudna to see how faith in the gods can be an empowering force for good, not just something beyond her grasp.

laudna/fearne

out of all launda’s dynamics, this is the one i desperately want more of. we’ve gotten so little! almost all their moments are interactions between the three witches that tend to center imogen (making the red-string friendship bracelets and comforting imogen after she talked with relvin come to mind) OR center imogen and fearne’s mutual appreciation for laudna’s… everything. one of my favorite about fearne is that, like imogen, she doesn’t think laudna is gross and creepy, she thinks laudna is gorgeous and charming without any caveats. even ashton, who also loves laudna’s laudnaness, tends more towards “yeah, you’re disgusting and THAT’S why it’s great.”

the other main part of their dynamic i want to sink my teeth into is the coin-toss, more specifically fearne’s guilt over the coin toss. regardless of whether you think fearne lied (i personally find that headcanon FASCINATING but to each their own), she clearly feels so many emotions about having to pick whether to save laudna and orym that she hasn’t even begun to unpack. one of the few sole moments we’ve gotten of them was in episode 42 when laudna asked fearne to help teach her to cast fireball, and in it, fearne, unprompted, blurts out, “how’s it feel being alive again?” almost immediately. she also apologizes to laudna, says they’ll fight any piece of delilah that’s still in there, and tells her, “i missed you terribly for that moment in time.” even when laudna gives her the chance to make the conversation light-hearted, fearne stays so genuine, which is all the more-noteworthy because she’s usually so flippant and almost always keeps her real feelings close to her chest.

some other examples of fearne’s guilt include: the 4sd where ashley said part of why she was so protective over imogen during their separation arc was that she couldn’t bear having to tell laudna anything happened to her and just this past episode when fearne’s protectiveness after laudna made her only cast first-level cure wounds on fcg after they cast turn undead.

in conclusion: PLEASE LET THEM INTERACT MORE. THERE’S SO MUCH JUICY POTENTIAL AND I WANT TO SEE IT EXPLORED.

laudna/chetney

i don’t have that much to say about them except that their dynamic is absolutely delightful. i love that we’ve gotten to see more of it in recent episodes, and i hope that continues.

chetney exists at an interesting place between orym’s genuine discomfort and fearne and imogen’s complete enchantment with laudna’s undeadness. he is sometimes grossed out, but he also seems to accept it as a thing about laudna without too much judgment, or at least, that “judgment” is light-hearted in a way orym’s or even fcg’s isn’t.

i love that they’re the characters with the most life experience (even if laudna is technically the fourth oldest, fcg only has two years of memory and fearne is a 100+ but spent 99% of that time in one place) but also embrace being “childish” and silly together, like the entire sky-sail sequence!

in conclusion: *gently holds* i just think they’re neat!

that’s all! if you read this whole thing, you get my eternal love and gratitude. thank you.

#laudna #imodna #laudmoore #orym #fresh cut grass #fearne calloway #chetney pock o'pea #bells hells #critical role #my posts #textpost #i’m weirdly more nervous about posting this on here than on twitter #but i spent like three hours writing and am pretty proud of the result #in case it isn’t clear i want to reiterate that i love ALL these characters #including orym and fcg #but they aren’t perfect #that’s what makes their dynamics so interesting!

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adoregojo · 3 months

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1967 ➡︎ isagi.y x reader

IM ALIVE!! YAHOOOOO!! btw i have an exam in a few hours, and here where my sudden passion for writing comes back. anyone enjoy this isagi x reader fic here. btw readers gender is unmentioned.

something was always missing from isagi yoichi's life.

the symbolizes dull blue man remains in his place, examining the disgustingly rich guests passing him with the priceless cologne reeking to his lungs and everywhere making it impossible to ignore and trying to not block his nose holes was a challenge itself.

it was in the fact that he didn't want to be here, the urge to isolate himself eventually loses against his duty. being a man, a soldier who was protecting nothing but the greediest class poor excuse of a human beings.

Isagi would've like to say he was one of hundreds who excepted this job, but he wasn't unfortunately. more like he was pushed into it so his so called comrades could take a free ride out of their job.

he let out a breath, it was just to guard the gate until the show ends, right? he'll just go with the flow for now. like he always does.

half of the shows were ridiculous if you ask him, what was so funny about a man beaming his loathing into dark jokes, isagi could never get the rich humor, not like he ever wanted to. he was sure half of these laughs were focused on and he couldn't find it in himself to even spare a smile.

the other display was a musical performance, a tribute by a group of people spreading imitation melody his ears were abhorrent by. this song was so dusty he couldn't believe that some actually clapped for that. affluent were easy to impress, he guessed.

and for the end and final play was about to begin, and finally he'll be done with this crap and leave this stump of a place. go to the bar and have a drink or two will do that,,

there he could see a somone who was he could guess in is age on the stag peeking nervously behind the curtain, clung to it for your dear life. he couldn't get a good picture out of you nor your face before the show started,,

you took a deep breath in and out, something you do every time to keep yourself at bare minimum of sanity. peeping through wouldn't hurt, but it hits so hard how countless of people were there caused you sudden stomach aches.

the worst part that all of them came out obviously disinterested! not even paring down a glance to the stag you were gonna stand up at in the next six minutes. you were in you twenties and feeling this anxious should've been in the past, well guess old habits die hard.

you told yourself that your were here to give off a show that non of these cheap moneybags that'll never escape one's mind.

even if you felt your soul leaving your body as you step out to everyone's eyes judging from your body to your face and appearance whole, fighting the urge to melt out of humiliation was strong yet you were far capable.

it was now or never.

a dose of confidence washed over you as the music played, it was meant to be a soothing melody that made the audience feel the pure emotion out of every movement you made.

this was your life, to dance. not for others, but for yourself. humans were nothing but just the witnesses to your purpose of existence. this is where you felt alive, closing your eyes to the endless void that grasped you tightly than any other creature could.

guiding the tips of your feet in it meant placement of the dance, where the gravity is losing against you and floating was viable. where no one could tell you what to do with the occult place you rot into.

let them see since that'll be the only thing they can do.

this wasn't like anything isagi saw.

it was not about the music, the audience, it was about the person who managed to take his heart and soul to their performances. every movement made his heart swirling in endless fondness.

he couldn't take his overset eyes off, he couldn't find it in his heart to even blink 'cause if he did so he'll miss it and it'll end before he knows. the depths of his obscure soul felt pure something you only feel when you watch people on the big screen yet it lifted your heart to it.

isagi's mind doesn't process the fact that the melody was long gone and echoing sounds of clapping and cheering were unheard, this is where the world, the universe itself were at a halt.

you raised up from your bowed state. something called, it was begging you to turn around and spare it a glance. and you did unintentionally, there you were meet by the most beautiful set of an eyes adoring you ceaselessly.

you were sweaty and definitely had a few flying out of place locks, but that man tenderly gaze embracing you says otherwise. out of all those people, out of them all he outshined them.

yet the locked eye contact doesn't last, it had to end before you had any chance to talk to him. to even approach him before being dragged out.

well, isagi did end up at the bar he wanted to be in. and it didn't feel this empty before. caressing the glass of hallway wine with his thumb, until he sees his sad reflection on then persuades to hide his face in his arm's elbow. he looked like an old man grieving over his youth. and most of all he felt hopeless.

isagi was mostly selfless, putting others needs over his. but this one time he felt like this is what he needed the most, what his heart yearns for and you were taken away from him in a brief second.

maybe if he wasn't so damn busy memorized he would've managed to move his legs instead of rotting in his place while watching you go.

and what the worst of this all was the so little chance of meeting you again was making him go insane! and above all you were gifted and so, so dazzling and isagi was just.. him. a guy that was way beyond where you stood, just watching you should be a blessing itself.

but that wasn't it, this feeling of deep despair all he wanted was to run back to the stage and look for you. this weirdly strange passionate about someone he just saw was foreign.

all this thinking was making him a madman, ruffling his hair in frustration.

"need a company? looking a bit lonely."

a bit taken aback, isagi's shifted towards the voice. oh, oh. oh fuck, it was you.

he could faint right here and now.

you could faint right here and now.

shit- you couldn't get a grip on approaching the guy, the same guy that you kept thinking about all day living in your head rent free. you were real smooth with your words, weren't?

to be surprise, the man was quite popular. being one of the famous men in his squad, and basically a man of a noble while you were just you, a dancer who travels around the world to achieve your dream.

you figured his name was isagi, isagi yoichi. you burned that name over your head. trying not to call him by his name, to try it out sliding down your mouth. but he would definitely see you as a creep, especially for looking around asking about him.

meeting him again had to be a miracle itself, at first you didn't even want to take a step towards his path. but seeing his drink his sadness away, and deep down you felt if you don't take a step he'll float away forever.

and now he was was sitting there while staring at you aimlessly, did you say something? a bit seconds before he finally spoke. "oh- yeah, i mean sure if y'know, you wanted to. no pressure." isagi stuttered.

you sent him a pleasant smile before taking a seat beside him, as you asked for a cocktail. the heavy feelings of the isagi's eyes pouring on you like he could believe you were actually there. you were glad that the man wasn't drunk yet.

"drinking a lot tonight, huh?" you said, dragging him back out of whatever dreamy place he was in. just then he quickly fixed his posture, it was cute, you thought. he looked like a dork as he cleared his throat.

"i think this is my last one." isagi says, pushing away the glass to get potty over you instead. "um, your performance. it was.. amazing."

"glad you like it, you also did a good job in guarding me." you laughed a bit, it a nervous one since this man words held so much more of a meaning in them you just couldn't handle such words as a little of red creeped into your cheeks.

"psh, it was nothing worth mentioning. i was just standing there while you were, just so breathtaking."

"really?"

"really, really. I couldn't stop staring." isagi cooed, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully. his eyes remained away from you as he said these words, he really hoped they sounded genuine as he felt and not come out as a creep. to his surprise he heard you chuckling, and if it wasn't the loveliest thing his ears are hearing.

"you're just so charming aren't you, isagi?" you didn't even realise the name slipping out, it felt so natural like you were the innate one to chime it.

isagi eyes widen, your rhythmical voice flow which captivate his emphasis of a soul over you. this spark swirling around his entrails making his breaths at halt. when did he become such a nervous wreck? yesterday it was isagi history of spurning the slightest hints of getting in a relationship, due for him finding it difficult to let his feelings flow freely. and the missing flicker was now found by someone who spoke his name once, and he couldn't find his heart to stop pounding so rapidly.

"you know my name?" he somehow managed to let out despite the regarding fact the air ran out from his lungs, yet it came out breathlessly.

you rolled your eyes playfully, "you're kind of popular around here so it wasn't so difficult to find out." said you, twirling the straw of your decayed cocktail, you glance back to see the man huffing a small laugh. he utterly and completely handsome with that carefree smile that you felt like a teenager girl with her silly crush.

"and it's, yn. if you were interested." you added.

if he was interested? like hell he is, the man was down on his knees if that meant getting to know you. fuck, he was so interested that he could drain his soul for you to tell him everything you please. but truthfully, putting a name to such a pretty face felt like a piece of puzzle was getting connected to it perfect place.

"interested? i am honoured i must say, miss yn." isagi had no idea he had this kind of sappy side within him, especially when he made you giggle coyly, and all he can feel is his heart racing. what was he? a teenage boy going all giddy with his crush? he blamed you for making him feel this young again, and damn if it didn't feel good to feel this bloom once again.

and before you even realise it, it was time to end this bright moment. peeking at the clock, you had another show tomorrow and it hits you like a rock. isagi had his own magic to make time go by the blue. standing up slowly you faced the face of a confused man, "i must take my leave. i have a show tomorrow night, and it was lovely talking to you isagi yoichi."

part of you felt dumb, the man was probably just lonely and he'll soon forget about by the day. as much as loving you felt next to him, you were no mind reader to see how he truly felt. you wished you weren't so bad with these things, especially when the wave was telling you that the man ahead of you was a man of a name. how could all your confidence wash away with a small tear of thought.

you could feel the disappointment taking over the soldier's face, as if his face was begging you to stay longer even for a brief second. you were gonna give in, but honestly, would he have approached you if the roles were reversed?

you didn't even let the man finish his sentence before walking fast out of the bar, suddenly the air was suffocating and you took a deep breath. and here it was again, the black void sky hinted by the stars with the moon outshining it. a wave of air hits you making you shrivel, perhaps it was the cold, perhaps it was the shallow you felt.

you wished would turn around and see him, running after you. but what did you expect from this, were your standards truly that high? you were a traveler, you shouldn't connect your heart with anyone's. soon you'll be leaving and be left heartbroken just like every other person did.

what now? you were just standing in the middle of a bar, cold and shivering. that was stupid, you should just go home and get drunk to sleep.

"wait! lady yn!"

you falter at the voice of isagi, did he actually came? were you imagining this? turning around, and in fact you weren't imagining a thing. it was actually isagi huffing and puffing for air, he actually ran all the way here, he ran after you. with his hands on his knees. a last breath before he met your eyes, and all you could think was how his eyes could take over the sky itself.

for a while he just stood there awkwardly, like he doesn't even know why he ran here. before he took off his black coat, taking a hesitation steps towards you. gently warping it around your body, the man handled you so steadily like a you were made of glass he could break by any wrong move.

you grip on the warm fabric, it was slightly bigger than you and so, so balmy. it felt like a hug. you glance back at the man who was staring instantly at you, you felt hot under his strange gaze, like he was eating you whole. you couldn't help but shrinking yourself. quickly he jolted back to his usual self, coughing there and there trying to hide his embarrassment.

"it's cold outside, take this to keep you warm." said isagi, avoiding your face with all costs. you nodded your head. trying to calm your raging heart.

you watch as isagi take a final breath, like he finally decided to what to say next. "um, if you like. i could be your guardian at your next show. whatever it is, I'll be there by your side." he spoke firmly, this time he stood bravely. like a boy confessing his feelings.

you don't know why but you found yourself laughing, laughing so hard you had to cover your mouth. this is what you wished for, the one you waited to follow you whatever you go is standing right in there. a one that'll held on to you for the everlasting. your wish to perform with your most loved one by your side was no longer a beyond reach dream but a meant destiny.

"you have to take me out to dinner first, mister isagi yoichi."

you see as a beam draw it way to isagi's face, you spoke the words he couldn't. he took your hand in his gloved once, it was a perception fit, the missing piece of puzzle, pressing his lips lovingly against your cold knuckles, "only if you wouldn't run away this time, miss yn ln." he chuckled.

and here where your life was completed

have a nice day everyone! wish me luck for my exam ;)

#blue lock x reader #bllk x reader #blue lock #isagi x reader #isagi yoichi x reader #yoichi x reader #isagi x you #isagi x y/n #isagi yoichi x you

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meowmeowmeowmeow4x · 21 days

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Dark Blue Moon and the Suffering Sun Part 7

reblog and comment plz <3 i read every one of them and love them all

also here's the masterpost

Damian knew Phantom used echolocation to locate this ravine in the first place, but the question was whether Damian could try the same thing. Damian hugged the walls of the cliff face, keeping his body flush against the surface, and lurking around corners and behind obstacles. The coast was clear.

Clearing his throat, he let out a high-pitched click, projecting it as far as his voice could carry. Immediately, his sensitive ears picked up the echoes coming back in layers. While the sound he sent was singular, the echoes came back in staggered waves, with layers of different pitches and tones and brief silent spells over the course of a millisecond.

This echolocation was useless!

Damian weighed his options. He could approach the surface, but there was no telling if Skulker had a vessel nearby where he could lick his wounds. The worst thing he could do was just hand himself on a silver platter to the creep. On the other hand, he doubted a flashlight would be very useful at the very depths of the ocean.

He still had to try.

Damian’s backside tingled with a light pressure, a feeling he’d come to associate with his lateral line. He armed the wrist ray on his left hand, and grabbed the Anti-Creep Stick with the other. Scanning the ravine revealed no other sirens or fish, but a slight stirring caught his eye.

Damian squinted at the crevice on the opposite side of the bark, not quite sure of what he was supposed to be looking at, until his nose caught the smell. There was definitely something there, but it didn’t smell like another siren the way Phantom and the teenage girls did.

An octopus then?

Octopodes were intelligent creatures, beautiful examples of the ocean’s biodiversity.

But Phantom needed sustenance, and he couldn’t afford for Damian to be picky. However, he put away the bat regardless. He wasn’t so cruel as to bash its head in to death. No, he would make it quick.

Damian unsheathed his claws, and coiled up his tail. Hopefully it wasn’t one of the poisonous varieties. He truly did not want to test Phantom’s immunities at the moment. Like a tiger waiting to leap, Damian kept his body still, and scrutinised the rock for the slightest deviation in colour…

There! Damian pounced. The octopus’s colour returned to its natural yellow pallor. His hands wrapped around its bulbous head. Score! Now to kill it. Sorry octopus, your sacrifice will not be in vain.

However, the mollusk was not about to give up without a fight. Suckered tentacles slapped at Damian’s face. The slimy skin of its head allowed it to slip out of its grasp. As Damian went to activate the wrist ray, a cloud of ink spurted right into his face, and he lost track of it.

Dammit! Damian let out some uncouth words under his breath, and banged his hand on the rock.

Hunting for food was difficult. Theoretically it should’ve been simple. Find something edible, kill it, bring it back, but everything Damian found was either too small to be worth the effort, or too big to risk his life. Multiple times Damian was forced to dive around corners or into claustrophobic cracks as ocean behemoths crossed his path. He couldn’t even find a patch of seaweed or algae this deep into the trench.

He was running out of options as the sun began to set above. Damian was starving himself, and it was getting frustrating. His body was not adapted to thrive in these waters, or maybe it was, and he just didn’t know how.

Either way, the exhaustion of the hunt began to take its toll on him. Far from providing for Phantom’s recovery, he had only wasted his own energy for nothing. Each failed kill, each accumulated bruise left him more and more anxious. That was why when he spotted a lone anglerfish creeping up from the depths, Damian decided to challenge it.

She, for male anglerfish were absolutely tiny satellites to the females, drifted into the twilight zone where Damian caught sight of her. She was almost half his size, and her teeth seemed as big as his fingers Her lure glowed brightly against the darkness of the deep ocean, as little fish wandered closer to the ‘sun’ and got chomped for their troubles. She was truly beautiful.

Hiding behind a small shelf, Damian aimed the wrist ray. The gills should allow him to subdue her quickly. Then securing the kill should be easy.

Damian waited. Just a little closer…

Then he fired.

The light of the shot was almost blinding. When the glare faded, Damian saw not a dead anglerfish, but a very much alive one dashing away. No! Damian sprung into a sprint after her. This may well be his last chance to get anything edible. He had to give chase.

Thankfully he’d gotten a lot of practice the last few others. As the anglerfish tried to round a corner, Damian grabbed its tailfin with his claws, digging in to try and slow it down.

Instead, the angler swerved to the side. Its powerful muscles slammed Damian against the rocky wall. Damian cried out in pain, and his grip loosened enough for the angler to get away.

Damian groaned. Not another one.

Damian lay there, dizzy from pain and exhaustion, watching morosely as the scraped scales healed themselves before his eyes, taking up valuable energy that he did not have to spare. Night fell. Without light, the next few quarries would be even more difficult, if not impossible. What he would do for Alfred’s cooking right about now. He would never make trouble at the dinner table again, if he ever got out of this alive.

His lateral line spiked up again, but Damian just felt tired. Sighing, he readied himself for another beating. How the might have fallen…

He noticed a beam of light shining from around a corner. Hushed voices followed. They were speaking Atlantean! Damian’s heart soared. He didn’t know they were this close to Aquaman’s territory! He knew there were a small number of settlements in the Pacific, but he never expected to stumble into one of them!

“Over here, I require assistance!” He called out.

The whispers rose into rushed conversation he couldn’t make out. Soon he found a light being shined on him, and two Atlantean soldiers, a man and a woman, pointing their spears at him. What?

“State your business here, siren.” The venom in the woman’s voice was palpable. Belatedly, Damian realised it was hasty of him to assume good relations between the two ocean peoples. However, this was his last shot.

“Please, my companion is injured and requires medical assistance. I swear on my name that we do not mean you harm.” Damian pleaded, with complete earnestness. He even added a whimper at the end to make himself look more vulnerable, more childlike and unthreatening, even if it was beneath him.

The man laughed. “Hah! I’ve heard that one before, punk. But if you think you’re gonna pull one over us easily, you’re shit outa luck. Your kind’s not welcome in these waters, now scram.”

Damian’s mouth gaped open. Did these people have not the slightest compassion? He often criticised his father’s habit of picking up strays, but deep down he knew that that trait was a quality of his character, and not a flaw. These Atlanteans could not even be bothered to spare him a glance outside of telling him to leave. Their eyes did not hold compassion, or sympathy, or even pity, only hardened wariness, and contempt.

“Please, I beg of you.”

The soldiers bared their spears at him. “I said scram, siren! Go back to your pod and stay there.”

Damian gave them his best glare as he turned tail and swam.

Only, he stopped once he turned a corner, but was still in earshot.

“Damn sirens, sinking to new lows. What next, a baby?” The male soldier muttered, his voice trailing off as the two returned to their patrol.

Patrolling soldiers meant an outpost, maybe even a settlement. And that meant food, medical supplies, and weapons. Damian knew a golden opportunity when he saw one. If these miscreants would not grant him the aid requested, then who was Damian to decide he didn’t need permission?

And so Damian stalked them closely. He trailed behind the duo of soldiers a dozen or so metres away, using his lateral line and nose to keep close track of their movements. A sense of calm quelled the ever present instinctual fear of being out in the open, as the familiarity of stalking targets washed over him. He almost didn’t have to try, with how terrible their situational awareness. If he were in king of the ocean’s shoes, he’d be very disappointed with his underlings’ performance.

Perhaps he’d have to snitch on them to Aquaman once this was all over. That would be suitable revenge.

The soldiers unwittingly guided him through the ravine, finally ascending. Above the cliff shelf, about two hundred metres away, stood an Atlantean settlement. Looks like he managed to catch them at the end of their route. Excellent.

Damian estimated the town’s circumference to be around ten kilometres, judging by parallax. He could just spot scores of Atlanteans going about their day, kicking their legs about to swim in a way that seemed so clumsy after seeing Phantom zip through the waves. The buildings stretched out from the flat sandy planes to jutting out from the sides of cliffs.

What was more important was the fields. Huge fields full of leafy plants he had never seen before. Along the cliff face, vines weaved between stone supports bearing strange fruits.

Damian grinned.

Now, all he needed to do was infiltrate.

#merman #dpxdc #danny fenton #damian wayne #dcxdp #merboy #angst #mermaid au #transformation angst #mermaid instincts #animal instincts #lateral lines #atlanteans #atlantis #it's a colony lmao

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captainkirkk · 4 months

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✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.

ATLA

all my skeletons out for the taking by 136108

Azula wins the Agni Kai, and the playing field shifts.

The Owl House

Grom Knight by ObabScribbler

Belos is dead. The Collector is defeated. The portal door is working again and everyone now just has to move on with their lives and rebuild normality as best they can. This is easier for some than for others.

When Willow invites Hunter to Grom, he assumes it is so that he, as a non-student of Hexside, can still be there to help Skara in her duties as Grom Queen. Emerald Entrails stick together, after all. Clearly there could be no other reason for Willow to invite him. This is all set to be a simple, friendly combined dance and fight with a demonic entity that reads minds and conjures your worst fears into reality. No biggie.

Except with Boscha and her crew of bullies around and feeling braver than ever, this Grom might not be as simple as they all hoped. Especially when Hunter discovers that being the reincarnated container of hundreds of years of Golden Guards' fears is a bad thing to be around a fear demon.

Clone Wars

and through the spaces of the dark by blackkat (+ podfic)

Jon's attempts to avoid a war he wants no part in are ended when Dark Woman drags him to Coruscant and straight to a posting with the Guard. He intends to keep his head down and do his work, but the mysteries around the Guard - and Fox - immediately have him in out of his depth and on uncertain ground.

Nine Worlds / The Lays of the Hearth Series

Friday Keeps Coming Next by rattyjol

Cliopher's first morning with the Sun-on-Earth was everything he could have dreamed of, until it wasn’t.

or: Cliopher and his Radiancy break time. Again.

soon, they said, if not today by Ariaste

Cliopher passes the Imperial exams on the first try.

It changes everything.

one for sorrow, two for joy by Ariaste

The Emperors of Astandalas did not have daemons.

Cliopher knew this could not, technically, be true. Thinking this thought, even in the quietest whisper in his deepest heart of hearts, was undeniably treason, but…. facts were facts: The Emperors of Astandalas, though worshipped as gods on earth, were each of them born a human being before they were apotheosized by the crown and by law and custom. Every human being had a soul; therefore, every human being had a daemon.

So the Emperors of Astandalas must have had daemons.

But by tradition and ritual and magic and taboo: The Emperors of Astandalas did not have daemons.

you laugh and you gleam with that roguish air by lindsayraindrops

Notorious rebel-poet Fitzroy Angursell is captured and brought to the Palace of Stars. Cliopher... copes.

(A reunion.)

with a winged heart by celebros

"Cliopher. Cliopher. Cliopher."

I blink. It's Conju, standing with his hands on my shoulders, and I go to answer him and realize that I am already speaking, babbling, and Franzel is behind him, wringing his hands and looking near tears. I try to focus on what I'm saying, but it's like a stream, light and splashing past me, too quick to hold, not enough to catch, somehow, somehow –

(A few weeks before the start of the viceroyship ceremonies, Kip finds himself the unwitting recipient of a truth serum)

The Virtue of Being True by electropeach

"You're under an enchantment, Cliopher. The good news is that the protections his Radiancy has placed on you have shielded you; the bad news is that the protections that block the spell are also reflecting it, meaning that instead of you it affects everyone who comes near you. You may have noticed an unusual propensity for candor in your vicinity today?"

A reverse truth serum plot leads to Cliopher having a very strange day.

even a cat may look at a king. by mage-pie (looselipssinksubs) (Note: This fic is marked as abandoned, but it has some really great scenes that it's still worth a read imo)

"Hello, hello, hello!” said his Radiancy’s serval. She said it, in words, in Shaian, in a pleasant voice that came from her little snout quite naturally. “Good morning!” “Good…morning…?” said Cliopher, too shocked to control his voice. His mongoose got out of his bag and scrambled up onto his shoulder with an excited little squeak, her claws prickling through the tunic. “I have good news and bad news!” the serval continued happily. “Don’t you want to know what it is?” Cliopher could only stare. “Good news, I’ve figured out how to talk!” She lashed her tail excitedly, and finished with her voice full of enormous glee, “Bad news… I’ve figured out how to talk.”

The entire city of Solaara wakes up one day attached to magical animals that display each person’s innermost self with no regard for court protocol or even basic manners. It’s pure chaos… and that’s before the Emperor accidentally gives the soul-animals the power of speech.

#this round up is cramped full of nine worlds fic to the surprise of no one #hopefully the people i convinced to read hote now feel well fed #my posts #fic recs #weekly fic round up #sw recs #atla recs #toh recs #nine worlds recs

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storiesbyrhi · 8 months

Text

Witch!Reader x Bat/Vampire!Eddie Munson Series Masterlist The Grimoire The Timeline

Warnings: canon typical violence, horror genre typical violence/some infrequent gore, swearing, animal death, no beta, warnings updated each chapter.

Synopsis: No witch has stepped foot in Hawkins since 1845, but when Vecna opens the ground and poisons the town, a voice begins to call to you. Have you been brought back to this cursed place to heal the townspeople’s wounds, to save a hexed bat that always finds its way to you, or to redefine your history with a reunion 150 years in the making?

Chapter Summary: We are our memories. 3294 words.

1836

Everything felt surreal and agonisingly heavy. It wasn’t just you. Eddie was all sharp edges, his lips parted enough that his teeth were distinct. Fern held your hand in a grip so tight you were both losing sensation. And for their part, Penelope and Gillian felt sick too.

It was Sally that most resembled a loose canon though. While the rest of you stood in place, she paced the same track around the hut that Eddie had earlier.

In the moments before the witches’ verdict was delivered, you still had hope. Then-

“This comes with warning, Amabel. What you have done is beyond comprehension and reason. You are escaping due punishment. This is mercy at best. Nepotism at worst,” Penelope said, shooting a look at your mother. “The creature will be taken now and you will not see it again,”

“Wait. No. Slow down. What do you mean taken? Where are you taking him?” The panic in your voice put everyone on edge, closer and closer to falling into chaos.

“Please,” your mother begged, walking to you and taking your hands in hers. “Let him go,”

“No. Where is he going?! What are- What will- You can’t. You can’t hurt him. You can’t practice witchfire and spells on him. He’s not like the others!” You stepped away from your coven and backed into Eddie.

Eddie had already tried to leave but the binding spell was still in effect. He’d moved with his invisible speed and none of you were the wiser. So, the look on his face was one of resignation.

“Please,” Sally repeated.

“No. No. Please. Please don’t do this.” You had started to sob, small at first but it was rapidly tumbling towards hysterics. You wrapped your arms around Eddie’s waist and held onto him like it was the only position that would allow your lungs to draw breath. “We can- We can go. I’ll go. I’ll renounce all magic. I’ll give up immortality. I’ll go. We’ll go. Please. He won’t- He won’t hurt anyone-”

As stoic as Gillian had always been, even she was shocked to silence by the depth of your love and terror. Sally had taken Fern in her arms and held her as they both cried.

Penelope tried to calm you. “Sister-”

“I am not your sister,” you hissed.

Eddie had never had someone fight for him. Not in his human life, a memory so old he could hardly bring it to mind, and certainly not in his undead life. He kept his grip on you while he whispered your name.

“No,” you yelled, looking up at him. “I know what you are going to say and I will not listen to it,”

“My little witch-”

“I said no!”

Eddie let you go only briefly; his hands cupped your face in milliseconds. “I would suffer this end in payment of our time together again and again,”

“Stop,” you whimpered, face a mess of tears and snot.

“And if it means you find a way to end us all and free yourself from an eternity of war, then that is as noble thing I could do.”

You frowned so hard it looked like you were going to turn on him too, then you took a deep breath in and faced the witches. “I have lived each of my lives in service of this violent cause.” Although it shook, there was a resolute fierceness in your voice. “I have given everything. If you do this- If you take him, I will come undone. I will leave and I will find the dark witches. I will read their grimoires. I will practice the darkness. And I will return and I will take him from you, as you dare to take him from me now.”

If secret rendezvous with a vampire warranted excommunication or even death, threatening the coven with black magic could bring a curse that imprisoned your soul in eternal hellfire until the end of time itself. It was not just heresy against the coven, but rebellion against the natural laws of magic and earth.

It meant something that you would even think it, let alone speak it into existence. It meant you were indeed young, despite your many lifetimes, and so full of righteousness that you were a dangerous thing. It also meant that you believed with every molecule and shimmer of magic in you that Eddie was redeemable, that he did not belong in a demon’s cage.

“This is your choice, Penelope,” you aimed squarely at the one calling the shots.

“I will not let that happen. You know that,”

“Yes. So, by your hand he is taken and I die on this night, or you let us go and free yourself of this burden.” Taking Eddie’s hand, you stood tall and sure of yourself, indignation coursing through your veins.

While Gillian was still in her state of shock, Penelope’s choice to talk to you was not lost on your mother. Sally knew the conversation was hesitation. It meant there was some small sliver of the witch that felt they had not made the right decision. Sally pounced on the opportunity.

“There’s another way!”

All eyes were on her. She squeezed Fern tighter in her arms, needing the warmth of another to keep her grounded. Her sister used to be that, but Gillian had lost her soft edges somewhere along the way. Sally didn’t want that for you too.

“Transformation,” Sally said, nodding to herself. “A transformation curse.”

The coven rarely completed transformations. Whenever one seemed appropriate, there were almost always better options. If they went wrong, they could be cruel. More cruel, even, than a witch’s punishment. They also wasted resources. In 1836, the things needed to practice the craft were hard to come by.

Yet, Gillian nor Penelope could think of a justification for not cursing Eddie to another form. He would become harmless, and if it got you to calm down, then the next stage of their plan would be made all the more easy.

You did not want Eddie to be hexed into beast. However, you were impressed at yourself for seeing a way forward the others had not. Let them curse him. Let things return to normal. After biding your time, you would quite simply go to him and unhex him. Although you didn’t know a lot about undoing magic, you would learn.

Before anyone had a chance to argue Sally’s suggestion, you looked at Eddie and nodded. He frowned, concerned that your desperation was blinding you to a bigger picture forming. Regardless, he nodded back.

“I accept the transformation curse,” Eddie announced to the room, eyes still on you.

“As do I. I will not fight it,” you added.

And so the magic began.

“I’ll wait for you,” Fern murmured as she hugged you tightly. She was sent back to the village, feeling both the relief of lack of punishment and an uneasiness at the same thing.

You did not want to play a role in the transformation but knew the more you learned of the curse, the easier it would be to undo it later in time. After sitting Eddie by the fire and pressing a kiss to his temple, you shadowed Penelope and Gillian as they gathered tools.

Sally was as useful as a ghost. She floated from place to place, never offering more than whispered words and sad looks. You watched as she approached the fireplace, studying Eddie’s face. Her brows came together as if she was reading a complex piece of text. She was trying to see what you saw, you figured.

“We will make for the stream,” Penelope declared, letting down the binding so you and Eddie could follow the line of witches out into the very late hour of the night.

“Will this hurt?” Eddie asked you as you stomped through grass and forest.

“We cannot know. It will not compared to the alternative,” you answered solemnly. Anger at him for not leaving the flatlands still lingered in you.

“I never meant for this, little witch. I should have left you alone after that first night,”

“Why didn’t you? Why did you seek me out?”

“You know why. The same reason you went out into the darkness over and over again until I was there,” he replied, not unkindly.

“You were watching me?”

“You knew that too.”

From the very start, the intensity you had for each other was matched in absolute. Eddie never would have left you alone after that first night and you never would have stopped wandering the flatlands by moonlight in search of him. Everything happened as it was always going to.

You couldn’t say out loud your plan, but Eddie wasn’t worried about it. In fact, it almost seemed like a good thing. It would be easier to be some sort of animal with no emotions and no sentience, than to be tortured to death or to live a life without you. He absolutely knew your coven wasn’t going to let you out of this entirely unscathed, but he saw in your mother’s eyes that she would protect you even after this transgression of the most magnificent proportions.

It was a cool night, winter certainly more than a promise but a certainty, but Eddie wasn’t going to let a little thing like a transformation curse ruin it. He had you by his side, and after all, that was his singular care and focus.

A potion of black-eyed Susan, tansy, elecampane, yellow carnation, cyclamen, and Penelope’s blood was burned up using witchfire. When all that remained was ash, you were told it was time.

“Blood of my blood,” you recited to Eddie, pressed together in an embrace you refused to think of as the last. In that moment, you needed to taste blood more than Eddie ever had in his vampire life. He kissed you and bit down, mixing saliva and gore in a scene that should have made the other witches sick.

It should have. But it didn’t.

Eddie took his shirt off and stood in front of Penelope. She held so much power over him but didn’t feel powerful. He was the only thing that could kill her but she didn’t feel afraid.

The list of dissonances was growing but none of them listened to it.

Penelope wiped her fingers through the potion, then reached a hand out to Eddie. In ash, she drew the coven’s sigil for transformation. Gillian repeated the motion, drawing the sigil on his back, then your mother drew on his left palm. Finally, it was your turn. In gentle movements, you marked his forehead.

After a beat of silence, Eddie grinned. “Is the choice of beast up for discussion?”

Despite herself, Gillian laughed.

“The spell decides,” Penelope told him.

“Of course,” he replied, a respectful nod to her. Blood. It flashed behind his eyes for only a second. An image of the witches torn down, torn apart. Their blood seeping into the stream’s muddy embankment. Would you scream? Would you fall out of love in a moment too quick for even him to see? Or would it free you from the moral prison witchcraft placed you in, leaving you to run away with him and create a new type of life?

“It’s time.”

Eddie turned from the world and waded out into the nearly still stream. He lowered himself in and floated on his back. He closed his eyes and listened.

Like the marking of the sigil, you each took your turn. Penelope began,

“A creature of blood bound by the night,

Has uncloaked itself to witch’s sight.”

Gillian next.

“Now we call upon an Ancient power,

To take this body,

And form it new.”

Your mother.

“To bind him in time,

No memory, nor day to rue.”

When it was your turn, Eddie smiled at your voice. It was the last thing he heard.

“By the grace of Proteus and the craft of witch,

Through creation and change, we ask for a body switch.”

Eddie was pulled beneath the surface of the water. It still almost immediately, supernaturally. You let out a squeak of fear, pulling in a shallow breath and holding.

Holding.

The bat screeched his way out of the water and straight up into the sky. He flew so high you lost sight of him for a moment before he swooped down and disappeared into the forest. Then he was gone.

Sally turned to you but before she could utter a word, you bolted.

“Let her go,” Gillian said, reaching out to stop her sister from following. “She’ll go to Fern. She’ll be safe.”

Penelope took the first steps. “We will see to their memories tomorrow,” she promised, leaving the sisters by the stream to hold each other in hope that the justice they dealt was truly that.

Fern was waiting for you. The room had been dark when she returned home, but by the time you arrived, sobbing so hard your nose was bleeding, the first light of morning cast everything in a romantic pink. She held you for hours until you both fell asleep.

…

It was Sisyphean work. Eddie’s body was laid out on a bed of flowers and you cut a deep and long Y-shape into his chest, cracking open his ribs, and pulling out the gore. Frantically, you hunted for the evil. Squeezing organs into pulp. Shoving fingers through heart valves and thick veins. Get it out. Get it out of him. If you could just find that jewel-like thing, that shiny piece of evil that once removed, would make Eddie Good again… you could save him. But as quickly as you could unspool his large intestines, his bones snapped back together. His skin stitches itself up. Your hands were clean.

Again. You cut a deep and long Y-shape into Eddie’s chest, cracking his ribs open. Find it, find it.

And again. And again, until you woke up wet from tears and sweat. You choked out Fern’s name, but she wasn’t in the bed with you. She wasn’t at the stove brewing morning tea, nor reading the Divine Comedy, her favourite book.

Stumbling out into the day, you first found Hannah hanging washed clothing to dry. “Hannah, have you seen Fern this morning?”

“Aye. She took fresh milk to Penelope out the ways,”

“Is that not Nora’s duty?”

Hannah nodded. “Aye, but Nora is needed elsewhere,”

“Elsewhere? Says who?”

“Your aunt.”

It didn’t feel right. You tried to keep calm, weaving through the village at the most normal pace you could keep. As you rounded a corner, you slammed into a body.

“Mother,”

“Amabel, I’ve been-”

“Where’s Fern?”

For her part, she feigned confusion well. You grabbed her by the wrist and studied her expression with intensity. The smallest of cracks, as thin as a cat’s whisker. You bolted from Sally, through the village, and out to Penelope’s hut.

As you burst through the door, the women inside all flinched. They were silent, all sitting by the fireplace drinking from porcelain cups. Gillian and Penelope didn’t seem surprised to see you. Fern, however, did. Her face lit up in delight, a smile like a Christmas miracle.

“Ammy! Where have you been? Join us for tea!”

You frowned at the levity in her tone. “Where have I been?”

Fern nodded.

“I… I woke and you weren’t there.”

Her confusion, unlike Sally’s, was real.

It dawned on you and before you could back out the hut, your mother appeared behind you, closing the door, and binding you back to that dreadful place.

“Fern, you may head back to the village now. Thank you for the milk,” Penelope said, her stern eyes on you in a warning. “See that Nora is attending to her new duties.”

You stepped out of the way and watched Fern leave. Rubbing your eyes and blinking away tears, you turned to the witches. “You took her memory.” It wasn’t a question, nor statement. An accusation.

“It is better this way. She’ll find it easier to fight them, less she thinks they’re redeemable,” Gillian told you.

“By this new benediction we live? That everything we do is to make us better soldiers? More capable of violence?” you spat.

“We are at war-”

“And if we weren’t? You’d have me believe that in another time this could be different?”

“In another time, you were different,” Gillian said. “You have changed, child. I do not recognise my niece, my coven sister,”

“Yes. Yes, I am different. I have loved and been loved. My assumptions and my philosophy have been challenged. And is that not good? Is that not what witches want? To learn and grow with the world around us? To admit when we are mistaken? To set right those wrongs? Or would you have me as I was?”

“Were you not happy before?” asked your mother.

You turned to her and softened your expression. “I was, like a fish in a bowl. All I have done, I have done in love and in honesty and in honour of the craft. But how am I expected to remain the same when I know him?”

“You are not,” Penelope said, her words short. “There is little use in this discourse, like there is little doubt that you believe you have found a part of your soul in him. It would be cruel to expect you to grow in reverse, to be who you used to be,”

“Taking my memories is not an act of mercy,” you growled.

“Mercy is whatever our will is, or need you be reminded that death is the alternative?”

There was no way out of the fate the witches had assigned you. Still, you would not go easy. “We are our memories. To shape them with magic is to ruin me. And that will be with you every time you look at me. As a sister. A niece… A daughter.” The last word was a weapon you wielded at your mother with precision. Sally’s eyes dropped, and she couldn’t look at you any longer.

They didn’t need to say it – you were a price they were willing to pay for the coven. Their own conscience was a price they were willing to pay.

“Let this be on your own terms,” Penelope said too softly; you didn’t want her kindness.

A potion was poured from a teapot into a porcelain cup. Penelope held it out to you. Tears began to roll down your face, ushering in sad cries.

“I don’t want to forget him.” You hadn’t meant to say it, and if you had, you would not have wanted it to come out sounding so childish. The misery was overwhelming. “Please… Mother… Mommy… I don’t want to forget him. I can- I can be transformed too. Make me a bat. Let me go. Let me be…” But the sentence died on your tongue.

Penelope took your hands and made you hold the cup. You looked down into the liquid as it shimmered unnaturally.

“I’d chose death… over this…” you whispered to them all and to no one. “I’d chose death,”

“I cannot let you choose,” Sally told you, placing her hands over yours. She moved for you, lifting the cup to your lips. “Let us take this pain from you.”

Your mother tipped the potion between your lips. As you swallowed, your eyes closed, losing consciousness. The spell was done quickly and efficiently and when you woke, you were simply sitting by the fire in Penelope’s hut, helping her to go through borrowed Grimoires. There was nothing left of Eddie in your mind, only a vague sense of déjà vu to shake free from and a burning need to kill a colony of vampires.

End Note: WELL NOW YOU KNOW! I hope you have SO many feelings and thoughts. PLEASE share them with me. I have been waiting to give you this chapter for so fucking long.

Shoutout to my girl @courtingchaos for helping with this chapter.

We haven't had new entries in The Grimoire for a few chapters, so it feels nice to add to it! Please check it out!

While I have you, please go read Sea Foam // Sharp Teeth by my IRL BFF @kookygranger.

Lots of love, Rhi.

Fic Taglist: @paranoidmunson @idkidknemore @paprikaquinn @stardustworlds @loz-brooke @wyverntatty @vintagehellfire @dark-academia-slut @scarletwitchwhore @becks1002 @mrsdollardog @heyndrix @luceneraium @rosaline-black @devilinthepalemoonlite @goldencherriess @iamwhisperingstars @wiltedwonderland @blueywrites @breezybeesposts @jadehowlettthewolf @spikesvamp79 @foreveranexpatsposts @tortoiseshellspells @wingedpeachjudgegiant @stardustmunson @live-love-be-unique @fangirling-4-ever @reanimated-alice @b-irock @gh0stlybunnie @myown-worstenemy-2003 @woozzz @cyberxlust @hiscrimsonangel @buckysbarne @m00nlight101 @word-wytch @spicysix @briasnow-blog @goth-cowgirl-03

All Eddie Taglist: @solomons-finest-rum @ruinedbythehobbit @sweetpeapod @thorfemmes @corrodedhawkins @grungegrrrl @lilzabob @averagemisfit03 @ches-86 @ilovecupcakesandtea @onehotgreasymechanic @hazydespair @mel-the-fangirl @eddies-hid3out @siren-lungs @aheadfullofsteverogers @hiscrimsonangel

#Mine #Burning Yarrow #Eddie Munson #Eddie Munson/Reader #Eddie Munson/You #Eddie Munson x You #Eddie Munson x Reader #Vampire!Eddie Munson

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timeskip · 23 days

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Thinking about Kite's thought that Gon is a real Hunter because of his connection to animals and to Killua, and how Gon ends up twisting this idea by the end of the series. Throughout all of chimera ant arc he's chasing after this ideal of who Kite is and how strong he is!! And Ging too as an extension of Kite, but so much of what makes Gon himself comes from the influence of Kite...

As a side note, I personally kind of hate how 2011 attributed the "Hunters are well liked by animals" line to Ging. While I do understand this from an adaptation perspective, since the viewer doesn't know Kite but DOES know Ging, it also undermines a lot of what makes Gon's relationship with Kite so important IN CONTRAST to his relationship with Ging. The ways Gon was inspired by Kite and Ging are similar, but VERY distinct, and though Kite doesn't mention the friendship part of it out loud, it's still deeply important to who Gon has become since the last time he met Kite!!

And also, just a chapter before this callback, Ging was saying how he wouldn't meet with Gon if he had friends with him (a sad comparison with how Gon wanted to introduce Killua to him) !!!

Of course, this is partially because Ging just doesn't want to meet Gon specifically (because he feels awkward) but I think it also shows how Ging's belief of what makes himself a Hunter is EXTREMELY solitary, meant to drift from place to place and hunt what he doesn't have. While I do genuinely believe he cares about people like the Greed Island game masters, his insistence on not meeting Gon paints a very different picture of what "being a Hunter" means to him.

The version of "being a Hunter" that Gon has learned is instead more similar to Kite's idea, with him having inspired Gon to become one directly: Kite fights and kills if he has to but hates it, especially when it comes to the animals he wants to take care of. And obviously he cares deeply for the people he brings with him, leading to a self sacrificial moment in how he protects Gon and Killua from Pitou, which Gon emulates at the end of the arc when he loses his arm, semi-intentionally.

This idea of Gon becoming a Hunter is connected to the people he looks up to from the beginning! And with what Kite thinks about having good friends at the start of the chimera ant arc, there's also this strong idea that he should seek out friends and allies (which he did! He's been blessed with good friends!!) and keep being good and kind :')

When Kite died and Gon fell into his grief, Gon's ability to look at the world from Kite's point of view and rely on his friends also fell apart:

But isn't it interesting that at the end of things Gon is still trying to emulate Kite? But not with this idea of having good friends and relying on them. Only with the worst things that happened to him, losing an arm or imitating the impression that was made on him of Kite killing an animal because that's what has to be done.

Yes, this is a reference to Kite making sure Gon killed the chimera ants properly when they were fighting the less powerful ones. But it's also so integral to who Gon is in that moment in the depth of his grief, a brutality that wasn't part of him before. Gon learned a lot about the cruelty of the world around him through the chimera ant arc, but he already KNEW that Kite was willing to kill an animal if that's what had to be done. Except that when he was a younger child, he rejected that. He took care of Kon and didn't let Kite kill him.

This is who Gon was, and it's still a part of him, but his admiration of Kite has twisted!! His optimism that everything would work out brought him down!!! Gon has so much kindness, but in the moment he fights Pitou he's stopped caring about that. And to a degree, yes, it has to be done--but finishing off Pitou like Kite taught him isn't the way he should have done it.

Because he's not asking for Killua's help. Doing it all alone, because that's what Gon thinks it means to be strong--and though Gon was unaware of this, Kite's ideals went against this. But Gon was simply trying to be who he thought Kite and Ging would want him to be! He's lost sight of what Kite actually wanted for him!!! It's another layer to the tragedy!!!

#hunter x hunter #hxh #gon freecss #kite hxh #hxh spoilers #can you believe this post started with me getting upset at 2011 attributing the quote to ging hfhfdjklgd #it's a minor change in the grand scheme of things but the NARRATIVE LAYERSSS #long post

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girl-next-door-writes · 6 months

Text

You Matter To Me

Characters: Steve Harington x reader

Summary: A shared moment before heading into the Upside Down where you and Steve both reflect on what is important.

Word Count: 1000 words

Prompt: You Matter To Me

A/N: I have been going through some ‘real world’ stuff recently and this song showed up on my radar again and despite the million fics I have to write I felt this needed to be written. It isn’t perfect, I couldn’t find all the words, but if you are reading this then I want you to know that you matter.

Nobody should have this much pressure placed on them, and yet he had taken it almost willingly. The role of leader, of protector, it weighed heavy on his shoulders, and although he hid it well, there were flashes of the truth hidden in those beautiful, soulful eyes; eyes you could happily get lost in, even on the worst days, perhaps especially on the worst days. Their warm richness comforting, even though the slivers of profound sadness swam in their depths. Each horror he had witnessed haunted him, words left unsaid and yet screaming as the two of you looked at each other. Insecurity, doubt, the fragility of his carefully crafted self-confident persona swam in those sad eyes, shattering your heart into a million pieces.

There were no words. The painful realization that nothing said could make things any better, caused a deep ache in your soul. Taking a seat beside him, you simply shuffled closer, tucking yourself into his side and slipping your hand into his. Interlacing your fingers, you looked down at your hands, silently vowing to stay right there by his side for as long as he would let you.

This beautiful boy had gotten under your skin, and although your emotions for him were largely undefined, he mattered to you. He was important. He was…irrevocably connected to you. How do you even begin to tell someone that? It isn’t as simple as those three overused words, and it was deeper than a romantic desire. You saw him, just as he truly was, and knew that he was enough, that your life was infinitely improved by his existence. Did he know that? Was he aware of how he touched everyone’s life? You felt an almost overwhelming desire to grip him by the shoulders and shake him until he understood that he was so much more than he believed; that he truly did matter. But instead, the two of you sat in silence, holding hands and watching the others preparing.

Steve stole a glance at you, allowing himself a moment to just be a nineteen-year-old boy, sitting holding hands with someone he cared about. It was a little addictive spending time with you. There was just something about the way you listened to him, like you heard all the parts he didn’t say out loud, and you didn’t think he was stupid or broken.

He had a close friendship with Robin, he adored his best friend, and then there were the ‘kids’, and Nancy; well, the Nancy thing was complicated. Now he also had Eddie… All these people depending on him, needing him to step up and take the lead. There was a part of him that wanted to run, to just get in his car and drive away from this hellhole and start over. If he’d gone to college then he wouldn’t be here for this shit, this would be someone else’s problem. The guilt of that thought gnawed at him and he subconsciously squeezed your hand. He was scared, but he knew he couldn’t turn his back, he would never forgive himself.

There was something different about this fight, a shadow in the back of his mind that said they might not all make it. Looking around at his friends, he felt his heart clench. They all mattered. Dustin would probably go on to cure some deadly disease or figure out a way for everyone to live on the moon or some shit. Lucas, he had a shot at becoming a pro athlete, if he focused. Nancy had a bright future as a journalist maybe, blowing the lid off government corruption and saving people… Each and every one of them had such potential to make a real difference in the world. The only person he could even consider disposable in the grand scheme of things, was himself. This might be the one thing, the moment where he might be of some importance, making sure the rest of them got through.

He was brought out of his thoughts by your head resting on his shoulder. It was such a small gesture but it grounded him, and he found himself leaning down, his cheek pressing against your hair as he closed his eyes.

“Steve?” Your voice was so quiet that he could easily have imagined that you had spoken.

“Yeah?”

“You matter to me. More than all this. More than most people.” Your words hung in the air between the two of you and he felt a tear roll down his cheek.

“Thanks.”

“I mean it. Don’t go doing anything ‘heroic’, because if something happens to you then I’m just gonna have to make a deal with the devil, or bring you back as a zombie or something, and then you’ll be screwed. You will feel my wrath.”

“Your wrath?” he chuckled, an eyebrow raising in amusement as he opened his eyes again.

“Yes, my wrath. I will be incredibly pissed at you for doing something so stupid, and for leaving me, and then making me learn voodoo so I can bring you back to yell at you.”

“Yeah, that does seem like it might be a bit of a hassle.”

“A major one. So, just promise me you will try your best to see me on the other side of all this because, for some fucked up reason Harrington, you really matter to me.”

“Okay.” He said softly, his fingers playing with yours as he took your words to heart. Turning his head slightly, he placed a gentle kiss to the top of your head and let out a deep sigh. “And, for the record, you matter to me too.”

You didn’t reply, you didn’t have to. It was obvious that the feelings between the two of you were simultaneously infinitely complex and so simple. Hopefully there would be time to explore each and every nuance of what it meant to matter to each other, but for now, Steve was content to just sit beside you and feel.

#Steve Harrington #Steve Harrington x reader #gndw fic

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h4arts · 9 months

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Hi! I saw that you've opened your requests for s&b sooo can I request a Nikolai x reader where they're in an arranged marriage and they're distant with each other but one day they get ambushed and she's the one who saves Nikolai (like she can fight and she's good at it) and Nikolai is surprised and he starts seeing her differently and they start spending time together and confess? Angst to fluff kind of thing 👉🏻👈🏻

pearls to opals, nikolai lantsov -synopsis: your new husband takes a liking to make small aspects of your new life miserable. it isn't until a close call in an ambush that he truly sees you for who you are, not as your parents painted you to appear. -warnings: injuries, fighting, me not knowing a thing about boats, def not proofread and a bit rushed (i'm so sorry)

Pearls glinted in the dim lighting, reflecting off your mirror as you stare at your reflection. You didn't want pearls, you hated them actually, yet you had to suffer through an entire wedding and celebration with their weight setting into your collarbones. That wasn't even the worst of it.

This wedding was yours, to a man you knew nothing about besides his name. Everything felt wrong, like you were in someone else's skin, taking someone else's place. And in a way, you supposed you were. A soft knock on the door breaks your mind from wandering too far, and at your permission, your mother enters the room, glittering from head to toe in blue velvets and shimmering sapphires. You wondered how she managed to pull off so much blue.

"Feeling alright?" She asks, sitting on the open end of the stool you sat upon.

"Just fine." No, not at all. This whole thing had been arranged, for the better future of Ravka. That's what your father had told you the day you found out of this predicament. A few choice words had slipped past your lips that evening, angering your father, but you didn't care, this was your life, not his. Your anger had been brushed off though, and this was where it led you, a dim room in the palace you were to be married in in mere minutes.

"Good. You look wonderful, the pearls look wonderful on you. Excellent choice on my behalf." The words made your stomach churn with sickness. The pearls didn't belong to you, and even if they had, you would have thrown them into the depths of the sea before ever wearing them. "Come, it's time."

───☆───

That had been months ago, and you had been living comfortably yet miserably since then. Your new husband, Nikolai, had been relentless in his remarks against you during the first weeks of the marriage, but in the last two months, he'd hardly spoken a word to you. You'd sleep in the same bed but on opposite ends, never touching in between. You'd sit beside each other at meals, but only spoke when asking for something closer to the other.

It was constant working around each other, you were hardly in the same room during the waking hours of the day. Keeping this in mind, you weren't sure why your feet carried you towards the harbor Nikolai's returning ship would soon be docked on. He hadn't been there for you, why are you going for him?

The question plagued your mind as you sat on a bench, watching as part of the ship's crew jumped onto the dock, securing the boat to ensure it wouldn't drift away with the tide. Finally, the ramp was set in place and the crew on the docks rushed aboard the ship while others carried crates of various sizes off, a few nodding to you in acknowledgement, which you returned.

A boy slightly younger than you came running off the ship, weaving between the people surrounding him, the unmistakable shout of Nikolai's voice sounding after the boy. He ran right at you, dropping something into the palm of your hand as he passed. You squint after him in confusion, his broad shoulders crashing into the people lining the streets as his long legs carried him away from the docks at a quick pace. Looking back towards the ship, you stifle a laugh and the glare Nikolai sent to the back of the boy's head from over the railing. You quickly turn your head when his gaze turns to you, but you didn't miss the frown that turned almost deeper at the sight of you.

The feel of something in your hand became apparent as you remembered it, but at the sight of it, you wished you hadn't looked. A pearl bracelet with a golden clasp rested in your palm, suddenly feeling heavier that it was. Pushing through the wave of the crew with crates adorning the tops of their shoulders, you climbed the ramp to the boat, weaving your way to Nikolai, who stood surrounded by three other men and women. With a sigh, he waved them away, promising to meet them later, and you took that as a sign to approach the man.

"These wouldn't be of any importance to you, would they?" You hold your hand out, revealing the set of pearls that was currently weighing down your hand with vicious yet imaginary weight.

"Are they not to you? I was under the impression that a girl like you would swoon over such a thing." Nikolai responded dryly, taking the bracelet from your hold.

"Well you're wrong. I prefer diamonds. Pearls are for women like my mother." Nikolai let out a laugh at that, though he was anything but amused by the comment.

"Of course you would prefer the expensive alternative." He was wrong, though. You didn't hate diamonds, but they were better than pearls in your eyes. Anything was, really. Pearls were not yours, they never had been and never would be, but Nikolai couldn't have been more oblivious to the fact as he wrapped them in a soft cloth and returned them to an open crate nearby, presumably where the running boy had taken them from to begin with.

Before you could question why the boy had taken them to begin with, a loud noise echoed through the harbor, followed by the unmistakable sound of gunfire.

"What is going on?" Nikolai didn't get an answer, as you had shoved him aside. One of the attackers swung himself onto the ship, rifle firing at where the two of you had just been standing.

"What does it look like." you frown, breaking off a stick of wood from a barrel that had been broken by the gunfire.

"What are you-" Once again, Nikolai receives no answer his mouth being covered by your free hand, eyes peering around the crates the two of you were hid behind. A creak in the boards sounds from behind, making Nikolai turn to look, but when his eyes returned to your spot, you were gone. Though he had no time to wonder where you had gone before the barrel of a pistol was pointed right at him. Slowly, Nikolai raised his hands, uncurling his legs from beneath him even slower as to not alarm the raider.

"Where are those pearls? I know you've got 'em." Nikolai chooses not to respond as he tries to form a plan of attack. You however, seemed to have beat him to it. With a loud crack, the attacker is sent falling forwards, Nikolai quickly scrambling to the side to avoid being crushed under the other man's weight. You stood before Nikolai now, the stick from the crate held tightly in your hand.

"Well, I guess we both have a reason to hate pearls now." With a disinterested glare, you turn your back to him and race off the boat to the docks where the rest of Nikolai's crew was fending off the others who attempted to attack the ship. He quickly regains a hold of the situation, running behind you to fight as well.

Half distracted, Nikolai fights alongside his crew, still sparing a few too many glances at you. Maybe, he thought, he'd been wrong about you. Or he had just overlooked the obvious. You had held yourself as more of a fighter than a diplomat, someone who was shoved into a role they did not want to play, he knew that feeling too well and wondered if it was too late to fix what shouldn't have happened to begin with.

───☆───

Returning home was not something you looked forward to, anticipating a lecture of some sort. Accompanied by more silence and a continuance of glances that were gone before you could tell if they were real or not. The thought of being ignored by your own husband in a home that was not yours was terrifying, and you hated every moment of it. However, Nikolai spent the journey planning how to change that, how to start over all the things he should have done sooner.

The dirt path came in to view just outside the harbor town. It was a view you'd seen only a few times since your arrival in Ravka, but you'd always wondered what the path looked like from the road travelling through it rather than around it.

"What's caught your eye out there?" Nikolai had been observing your tense posture since the carriage doors opened and he'd sat across from you.

"Nothing. Just looking." You respond. Maybe one day you could come back and travel it yourself. Then, you'd have all the time in the world. He nodded, dropping the subject though he knew it wasn't true.

Once you'd arrived back, you were quick to make a move back to your room, but a hand on your wrist gently pulled you back. Nikolai's hand.

"I need to say something before you go running off again," He sucked in a sharp breath, eyes staring deep into your own, like he was just seeing you for the first time. "I want to start over."

"What?" You were nothing but confused and tired and there was probably an injury somewhere that you needed to take care of.

"This marriage is not what it should be, I know that. And, I apologize it's taken me so long to realize that it was not your fault, but mine." The tension in your shoulders seemed to match his now, this wasn't the conversation you'd imagined would take place. "I've misjudged you, and I've not even given you the time you deserve. If you'd like to leave this place, me, I couldn't rightfully stop you. But if you stayed, this time I'd give you more than just a crown or a spared glance, I can promise that fully to you right now."

This was the promise you'd been waiting for, but it didn't feel right. Not after everything you'd been put through this far.

"I won't leave." The tension in Nikolai's face slowly loosened up. "But it will take time to fix what was broken to begin with."

"Of course. I wouldn't expect anything else."

───☆───

Two months later, your relationship with Nikolai had mended. You were closer than ever, and even the air around the two of you seemed lighter than after the marriage.

One morning when you had been awoken and told to meet Nikolai in the garden, you hadn't been expecting him to take you on the path you'd stared at on the night of the ambush. It was even better than you'd imagined. It was lush and green and the sunlight cast an ethereal glow through the leaved and branches hanging above your heads.

"It's beautiful out here."

"Not as beautiful as you." Nikolai grinned, that stupid grin that made your heart flutter.

"Oh, please." You turn away from him, instead kneeling by a bush blooming with pink and yellow flowers.

"I'm serious," He starts, kneeling beside you and picking a pink one, tucking it gently behind your ear. "Before I forget, I've got something for you." You watch as he pulls something from his pocket and holds it out to you. It was a thinly wired gold ring with an opal stone. It was simple, but it was the prettiest ring you'd ever seen.

"I know you could care less for diamonds, truly. I thought it might suit you." He takes your hand, sliding the ring onto your finger. It glinted in the sunlight, reflecting sparkles in your eyes as you admired it.

"I love it, thank you." Lifting your eyes to meet his, he's already looking at you, a soft look like he'd give you everything, and he would.

"Anything for you."

#nikolai lanstov x reader #nikolai lantsov #nikolai lantsov x you #shadow and bone x reader

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kairiscorner · 9 months

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(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)

nah, but i can't be the only one who craves for this shit

vilomah. — miguel o'hara x reader angst (fem!reader)

summary: vilomah (n.): refers "going against a natural order," that natural order being he should've lived longer than you, but you survived, and he didn't. and miguel knows your pain, grieving, suffering and regret all too well. word count: 1,586

content warnings! mentions of death, survivor's guilt, and self-deprecation up ahead. if you are uncomfortable with these themes, please don't read any further beyond the cut ^^

life is supposed to follow a natural order; children must outlive their parents, it is only natural, it is only right. then how come life's natural flow abandoned you, stealing your child from you in the cold depths of the night?

you could remember seeing the unresponsive, sleeping face of your child. he was your only child, your only and dearest child. in that very hospital bed where he called home after not having seen the four walls of his own room for almost a whole year, he breathed your name as he held you close. tubes filled every airway on his face, he was getting thinner, almost unrecognizable to the energetic, cheery young man you knew and gave birth to, raised and loved all on your own.

"mom... i'm hurting..."

those three words, those last three words he uttered with a wince as he tried to face you, as if he were dying after a long battle and came home as a wounded soldier to the sole woman who watched him fight from afar and wished with every fiber of her being that she could just eliminate all his pains, all his burdens, all this hurting that made him want to give up.

and he did.

he left you, all alone, as a mother who nobody could call 'mother' anymore.

your son's voice haunts you every night when you resign to sleep, when you try your hardest to pry yourself from your loss, from your only reason to keep going, to keep living. ironic, is it not? to give him life and to hope he lives it wisely just to... to watch it fade from his eyes like a candle that went out too soon. maybe you could've met his partner in the future, attended his graduation, comforted him as he freaks out over a job interview, be there to witness his wedding, hold his firstborn, and hold his hand and tell him you love him before your flame is extinguished from the world.

but no, the world never gave you that.

the world took him away from you too early, and you could never hate yourself any more for being around longer than he was. the worst part is, you became a superhero not long after he died. you developed powers that were akin to a stealthy, predatory spider; one that takes lives instead of giving it, one that consumes to prolong its own life without regarding other creatures that it feeds upon.

you became anybody but the mother of a child, you were indistinguishable.

years passed after his death, and you separated yourself from your loved ones and friends. you got a new place the next town over, it was smaller than your old home, it had a whole new scent, a whole new appearance; it never reminded you of your son. this was good, wasn't it? you could... you could live. but why could you live, and not him?

why did you keep running around in that makeshift halloween costume your son drew for you, the one you made to match him, the only thing you have left that reminded you of him? why? why did you go around saving people when they never ask for it, why do you go about doing the job of thousands of other people all on your own? why do you think you can save other people when you couldn't even save your own son? "pathetic," you muttered to yourself as you tried to ball up the costume, tried to throw it away, tried to push all the memories and experiences you've had in the back of your mind--but who was really pathetic here? who was really the one needing saving here?

an alert came up from your watch that you set down on the coffee table, and you addressed it. it was a call from miguel, a hero like you--well, to call him a 'hero' was pushing it. he came on the other end without his mask on, and he was going to ask you on an update on the situation in your dimension, but he paused when he noticed you looked redder than usual in the eyes, and had your lips pursed. "...is now a bad time?" he asked you with a tone of concern as you responded nonchalantly. "it's good a time as any." and with that, the first drops of tears fell down and stained your pants as you sat down.

"i really doubt that." miguel responded as you sighed. "there's no update on anything, it's the same always, same petty crimes and same offenders. it's fine." you tried to explain as miguel looked at you with a... softer look. "are you... are you thinking about him again?" miguel asked you with faint voice as you place a hand over your eyes as you felt them grow heavier out of the downpour of tears you were going to release again. "no." you said sternly, but it came off so subdued that it sounded like a small cry.

silence filled the room, everything that went unsaid in that exchange had bottled up in you and was released through the tears you shed and never stopped shedding every night you dreamt of holding and seeing your son again. miguel sighed as he looked at you with sympathy filling his face. "i won't pretend i know any better and i... i won't pretend that i feel your pain exactly as how you're feeling it right now, but know that if... you want to talk about it, let it out, i'll always be here for you." he said in a stifled voice as you removed your hand from your eyes to look at him on the other side.

you sniffled and nodded. "th-thank you." you uttered as miguel nodded back. "you can... talk to me now if you want. forget the update, forget those lousy crooks right now. tell me everything you want to say." he said as you looked back at your mask, that very mask criminals see before they're beaten to a pulp and is the face of justice in this city--the very mask your son drew out for you so you two could match on halloween, that mask you wear to keep his memory alive.

you smiled as you reached out for the mask and held it, feeling over it as you chuckled lightly, thinking of how messy your son was with the glue, how he said it had too much of a certain color when he was just jealous it looked slightly better than his costume, all the scary faces you two would make when going door-to-door for halloween...

"he was an angel..." you muttered as tears fell on your mask now. miguel's mouth curved into a small smile. "go on, what, uh... what did he like?" "firetrucks and trains..." you went on as miguel entertained you, being amazed at how well you remembered everything your son was like and what he loved. you shared stories with him, you shared the drawings he made with you when he was still around--you cried, you laughed, you got a little angry at a few things he used to do, but ultimately, you forgave him for everything, because that's the natural order of things.

a kid is supposed to be naughty, nosy, a little ignorant and selfish--and your son was all of that, but he had a heart, a heart that loved you so, loved you dearly, and missed you every day you were away from him. "...i miss him..." you muttered as tears filled your eyes, and surprisingly, so did miguel's. he sniffed back a few tears and swallowed the sadness rising in his throat as he looked up at you again. "i know... but you are so strong for living out the life he couldn't live, never stopping at your new responsibility as a hero. you may be spider woman, you may be my colleague and my friend, but most of all, you were a mother. and that side of you... i can never begin to describe, you are phenomenal." he said with a slight warmth filling his chest, replacing the tide of secondhand and familiar sadness he was experiencing.

"please, if you give up now... if you give up now, he'll be gone forever. please, keep going, let it all out on me if you have to. just please, keep going, and don't let him die a second time." he pleaded with you as you paused and felt like a small hand was on top of yours for a split second, a hand on top of yours that clutched your mask. you turned around, but there was nobody, at least, not physically. you nodded and rubbed at your eyes as you muttered, "okay... okay."

maybe you were never going to be okay, no matter how many times you save somebody or remind yourself he's gone, but maybe... maybe even if you're not okay, no, even if you're not okay, you do deserve to live. you deserve to be happy, to continue living despite outliving your son, and you deserve to be at peace. you may be empty, but empty spaces can always be filled up again; maybe not quite as full as you were before then, but that space in your heart could be filled with some joy, and you know... you know your son would want you to be happy, even if he could only watch over you from now on.

a/n: i'm not crying, you are.

tags !! @miguelswifey04 @binibinileonara @fiannee @fictarian @yuridopted0 @jrrantss @arachnoia @melovetitties

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dairy-farmer · 6 months

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Jason/Red Hood rescues Hybrid Tim from a breeding ring. Unknown to him, Tim was already pregnant at the time of the rescue and due to his hybrid nature, starts showing a few days later with a huge litter. Jason takes care of him as best as he can but as soon Tim has whelped, he’s inconsolable, wanting and needing to be bred again. Jason can’t do it. Won’t do it. Resolves to ask Bruce for help, regretfully giving Tim to his dad but knowing Bruce will find a good place for Tim and let him live a good life where he won’t be forced to be bred again and again and again. Instead Bruce takes Tim in. And breeds him. Again and again. Jason find outs a few months later when visiting Bruce and a tearful yet happy Tim thanks him for bringing him to Bruce. Jason feels sick.

👀👀👀👀👀YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!! jason doesn't normally break up hybrid breeding rings- that's more damian and selina's territory. so the breeding ring he came across was more accidental but jason doesn't take it any less seriously than a human trafficking ring when he sees the state some of the bitches are in.

they're dirty, bruised, there's welts on their skin from kneeling on wire cage floors and many look like they're battling infections. worse is that many look dead in their cages. it's definitely a shitty operation. sloppy and dirty. which are the worst kinds of breeding rings.

but the worst part- the worst part of it is how many of them have healed or infected scars running horizontal on their throats, all barely an inch long. the goddamn ring runners had sliced their vocal cords.

of all the bitches he frees jason finds one in a not-so-bad state. the bitch is heavily pregnant which might explain his better treatment but he also seems like a new addition given that his knees and injuries aren't as bad. he's the healthiest of the bunch. but that's not saying much.

out of the nine hybrids in the facility jason uncovers, four succumb to their infections. two more are put down as a mercy. and the last two are stuck fighting for their lives in a state run hybrid shelter. if they're not adopted out in a year they'lll likely be put down to make room in the already overflowing shelters. it's a shitty fucking existence. jason is pretty iffy about the ethics of owning a hybrid, he knows a lot of activists argue about how hybrids and their close resemblance, their ability to speak to humans should earn them the same liberties, but just as many activists argue against it, insisting they're still pets and deserve humane treatment but they're hardly people, at most they're just glorified parrots.

jason isn't like damian or selina. he doesn't have the in depth knowledge or the contacts to non profits or charities to best help the little bundle of hybrids he uncovers. he's also not on very good terms with either of them and has no way of getting in touch with them. by the time he manages to get one of them on the phone six of the nine hybrids are already dead.

and jason...god. he's not some bleeding heart animal lover but even his stomach churns at the inhumanity of it all.

so jason sticks around, watching as the police assists the humane society, sticking his nose in the operation and beating few names out of some of the ring runners.

in the end only one hybrid has the highest chance of being fully rehabilitated and adopted. the others have wounds that will likely scar which will lower the likelihood of anyone wanting them. after all most people only wanted a hybrid because of their beauty. healthiest hybrid is named tim and jason....grows attached.

the state is only willing to offer so many resources for rescues and tim is pregnant which will make the cost of caring for him and his pups even higher. jason hears that and...he doesn't want to see another poor hybrid from that shitty operation die so he makes a decision. the animal welfare group that assisted in the rescue are more than grateful to hand tim over to jason and allow him to pay for the care and rehabilitation. that on top of a heft donation lets jason get tim and the pups in his belly looked over by a vet within hours of his rescue.

tim is a sweet hybrid despite what he's gone through. he's young and cute. he must be having his first litter because his tits are still tiny.

he warms up to jason quickly, often rubbing against jason in affection when he returns home because all the shelters were full and also because jason didn't feel....comfortable letting tim out of his sight so soon. tim's a sweet hybrid. he's obedient and good-tempered, and affectionate. the vet had even noted there were no great problems with tim's teeth or other extremities. which was great news. a healthy hybrid meant a higher chance of getting adopted even though jason wasn't too sure about why the thought made him uneasy.

jason often had the tv running in the background while he worked and cleaned. one time the annual hybrid shows had been on. all pretty, skinny, and perfectly polished hybrids and their equally as polished owners had shown off their lithe and athletic bodies and finely groomed manes. tim would've made a killing at those shows with his long, dark hair, bright blue eyes, cute triangle ears, and long sleek tail. he's really a gorgeous hybrid.

jason does his best to care for tim as his womb swells with a litter of pups. he spends a lot of time of the computer looking up the care of hybrids and calling and emailing various sanctuaries to take tim. but days pass doing that, then weeks. and jason is still trying and doing his best to care for tim.

then, early one saturday, jason walks into his living room to the sight of cushions, blankets, pillows, kitchen towels, and just about every other linen in the apartment that wasn't nailed down piled behind the couch where tim had decided to nest and have his pups.

the pups are tiny- barely handfuls of mewling baby with tiny ears and tails, blindly searching for their mama and his little tits full of milk. they make indignant squeaking noises when jason picks one up and lays them on their cooing mother's belly. the sight has jason....fuck alright he blinks back a few tears at how proudly tim purrs under his palm as he strokes a hand through his sweaty hair and murmurs comforts.

jason takes them all to the vet to be checked over and cares for them all for another two months before a spot opens in one of the sanctuaries damian has a contact with. it's relieving. a godsend. jason is already woefully under prepared for caring for a hybrid. he's gone too much in the day, he's had to limit the times he leaves gotham. he'll admit...he'll miss tim. the company was nice and tim has a way of melting away all of jason's tension and anger at the world.

but then he reads the fine print of the sanctuary.

they don't take breeding mothers. they're not going to take tim.

but they'll accept the pups. pups adopt easier than sexually matured hybrids like tim and the sanctuary just does not have the facilities, space, or manpower for a pupped hybrid.

tim cries when the sanctuary sends people to pick up his litter. the gloved and masked volunteers coo over tim, comforting him, offering him treats as they remove his mewling babies one by one.

jason knows it was the right decision but he can't help but feel like an asshole when tim whines and whimpers for days afterwards, searching for his pups, nosing through his nest and making a heartbreaking noise when he can't find hide nor hair of his babies.

a week later tim seems to be back to himself and jason breathes a sigh of relief.

but then tim tries presenting to him. jason had read about it before. about how sometimes hybrids bonded to their owner and started seeing them as members of their species by attempting to groom and mate with them. jason had known that but he just hadn't thought tim would have also developed those affections.

jason is met with tim bending over and revealing a puffy, pink slit that's glistening with wetness to him. tim whimpers and whines for jason's attention, rocking his hips, scenting jason aggressively on the couch, pawing for his crotch. jason wakes up to tim on top of him, wetly grinding his pink pussy over jason's mound and asking to be bred, telling jason he needs another litter in him- he needs it jason!

there's a reason that hybrids rescued from breeding rings are hard to adopt out and rehabilitate. once a hybrid is successfully bred the hormones from each successive breeding remains in their system. it's why many owners opt to neuter before their hybrid reaches sexual maturity and why many show hybrids have twin scars on their bellies or on their testicles showing where their tubes have been tied.

tim is no exception. the desire to be bred again and again and again that his original captors had locked him into a cage to do is still there and jason is sickened at the thought of sweet tim being made into...into a broodmare.

neither selina nor damian know any sanctuaries with open spots for bred bitches and without a certificate of ownership jason can't take tim to get fixed and even if he did jason has heard...things about what fixing a bred hybrid will do. they become moody, aggressive, depressed, they become shells of their former selves.

jason can't keep tim.

not only because he can feel his control slipping because tim really is a beautiful hybrid and that horrifies jason- but also because jason's cramped apartment is no place for a hybrid like tim. one of those sanctuary workers had mentioned it when they came to take tim's pups, asking about how he managed to get tim enough exercise in an apartment. after that it didn't escape jason's notice how tim was often glued to the windows, staring out at the streets below, the cars and the people all going by.

tim had already spent enough time in a cage.

and jason....jason just wants what's best for tim.

so...with few other options....jason drives tim over to the manor.

the manor sits on acres of woodland and open gardens. there are streams that jason used to hunt for frogs cutting through the property. it's open and isolated enough that tim doesn't have to worry about being hit by a car.

bruce has the money and connections to ensure tim can have an incredible life. one that isn't wrought with being bred every waking moment of the day or stuck in a tiny apartment in the city.

bruce is surprised when jason brings tim along with tim's toys, bed, and various half empty bags of treats. he tells bruce the situation and how he found tim, he tells bruce about how tim has nowhere else to go and deserves better and that jason is asking for his help.

because jason leaves tim alone in that apartment for hours at a time, sometimes he needs to leave gotham for months and he can't do that with tim and tim...tim has become more than he can handle (jason decides not to mention his...feelings about tim presenting and attempting to breed with him.)

bruce is hesitant. he's never had a hybrid before though he knows his father had owned a beautiful one in his youth that was buried in the family plot with the inscription of 'daffodil-beloved pet of thomas wayne'.

tim does not take long to convince him. he's affectionate and eager to know this new person, he makes curious sounds and asks bruce what his name is while climbing around him and tugging at bruce's clothes.

bruce is besotted by the end of the visit and jason feels a little more secure about having to leave gotham soon to follow up on some tips for other rings connected to the one he'd rescued tim from.

jason is secure in his decision to give tim to bruce who will either find a suitable home or give tim the life he deserves.

sometimes bruce sends him pictures of tim rolling in alfred's begonias and others of him napping in the sunbeam of one of the reading rooms.

tim looks full cheeked and pudgier in the photos, his body showing all the signs of indulgence a hybrid like him deserves.

its a few months later that jason gets a chance to visit the manor. he's eager to see tim and how he's doing.

he doesn't tell bruce he's coming.

that's probably why he's able to catch bruce in an unbuttoned shirt and loose-fitting slacks, pushed down to his thighs, eyes closed and brow furrowed in concentration while deeply fucking his cock into tim while out in the garden on a picnic blanket.

jason literally catches bruce with his pants down when he presses a gun to his cheek and demands an explanation to know what the fuck bruce thinks he's doing fucking a hybrid that had been rescued from a fucking breeding ring.

bruce is annoyingly calm and its only tim's whimpering that gets him to put the strap away.

inside the manor tim is rolling on the couch and trying to get comfortable on bruce's lap. jason can see that tim's a little pudgy but there's a familiar firmness on his abdomen that lets jason know tim is pregnant. at least a month.

bruce explains. slowly. about how bred hybrids like tim can't just...stop being bred. tim was so well-adjusted and his attempts at initiating breeding seemed to indicate that whatever experiences he may have had- they didn't appear to form firm objections in his mind.

so....bruce did what any good owner did. he bred a sweet little hybrid that begged their master for pups and a womb full of a new litter.

tim is throughly scenting bruce and pressing close, every inch of his body indicating affection.

but jason...jason can't help but feel....disgusted.

he'd trusted bruce. trusted bruce to not put tim into a life where he'd be bred again and again and again. bruce hadn't been there when tim lost his first litter! he hadn't seen how depressed tim got!!!

was he really ready to put tim through that kind of pain again and again?

bruce frowned at that, saying of course he wouldn't! that's why he was going to be keeping all the litters he fathered with tim.

bruce was taking tim's needs into account- like he promised jason.

bruce wanted to give tim a good life in wayne manor.

jason isn't placated.

this isn't what he'd meant. it isn't what he'd wanted.

the only thing that makes it worse is tim piping up. he's speaking lowly and purring and thanking jason for bringing him to his new master, for giving him a home with a kind master that kept his womb full and let him keep all his little pups.

tim thanks jason for giving him to bruce with so much tearful adoration and thanks that jason can't even form an argument to bruce about it.

bruce has bred the hybrid jason gave him. bruce is planning to continue to breed the hybrid. and there's nothing jason can do about it.

#answered asks #asks #anonymous #brutim #jaytim

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