#book lovers scrabble
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𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 | 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐨𝐧
You want to see the floating lights. Steve wants his satchel back. You come to an arrangement that is mutually beneficial… sorta. tangled!au
10k words, reader insert, fem!reader, medieval times (ish!), begrudging allies, fake dating/marriage, lots of changes from tangled movie but it’s got the spirit, I tried to be inclusive of all hair types but it is magical and floor length nonetheless, magical realism, TW for abusive mother + narcissism, mother is awful, steve is gonna show her the world is a good place!! allies to friends to lovers, pining
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Steve's hands are bleeding by the time he works his way into the tower, raw from the rough grit of old hewn stone. He hisses with every handhold he finds, adrenaline staving off the worst of the pain as his eyes scrabble for the next ledge.
Five feet, three. His hand slaps into the dark wood of a window ledge and he heaves himself up, the joints of his arms screaming in protest. Were it not for the rumbling of horse hooves like an earthquake outside of the grotto he might've given up, hoped for a soft landing.
The threat of being caught propels him forward.
He lands on the tiled flooring of the main atrium of the tower with an audible plop of fabric, his satchel clunking hard by his hip.
"Stars," he says. He breathes hard, trying and failing to slow his heart now he's found sanctuary.
He lifts his cheek from the mosaic beneath and peers around the room. He gawps.
It's mostly dark, and still he can make out the intricate, masterful artwork decorating the curved wall. Flowers made up of a thousand colours, petals dripping with dew, their anthers heavy with pollen. A field of every flower he's ever seen and a hundred others he's not familiar with. He has really, truly, never seen anything like it. Not even the spectacle of the Palace could hold a candle to what he sees before him. No books he'd read growing up had ever conjured an image as sharply magical as this.
He pushes up onto his elbows. Sunlight drips into the room from the wooden shutters he’d crawled through, illuminating the feet of each cabinet, a washing basin, and the brick oven under a staircase that ascends into the tower. He sniffs and finds the stick of coal dust heavy in the air; somebody lives here.
Steve's quickly proven right when you swing from behind an alcove near the kitchenette.
He startles backward and away from you as you advance, a cast iron pan held aloft in delicate hands and wielded with an intimidating confidence.
"Holy- Wait! Wait, please," he cries, holding his hands palm out in surrender.
Steve doesn't suppose you'd been expecting such a feeble intruder. He'd feel a strike against his dignity if it hadn't worked — you slow in the centre of the room, your breath coming in quick pants as the iron pan in your grip shakes.
You're scared.
You're beautiful.
"What do you want?" you ask, a pleading sort of twist to your question. "I don't have anything. I don't have anything worth taking."
"Please," he says loudly. "I don't want anything. Sanctuary for the night, nothing else."
Your chest rises. Steve feels smarmy, but he finds his eyes drawn to the valley of your chest, the bodice of your dress. A soft and buttery orange sewn with the palest pink and lilac embroidery. It's a gorgeous piece of craftsmanship, lovely enough that he wonders briefly if you're of royal descent, but the dress itself is a peasant's gown.
His eyes rise back to your unhappy face. Your brows are pulled up at the starts, a delicate display that betrays your fear.
You glare at him.
"You can't stay here," you assert.
"One night." Steve pulls his satchel into his lap to procure a small coin purse. He'd love to say it was his coin purse. He cannot. "I have silvers. I can pay you."
He will not be paying you anything. He won't rob you, though. He's not a total miscreant.
"You can't stay," you say again, raising your iron pan higher above your shoulder. He sees a flash of something at your hip. "My mother–"
"Holy stars, is that your hair?"
You seize up, making an almost inaudible sound of dejection. "No."
"Are you sure? It looks very much like hair."
Steve anchors his hand to the floor and leans downward to get a better look. You turn with him, attempting to shield your long hair from view and only helping him along. It sways with your movements, the ends near long enough to dance over the floor.
"You have to leave. Leave!"
Steve bites the inside of his lip. A rainbow of light arcs through the air and caresses your cheek, and the wind chime hanging in the window tinkles softly with a warm summer breeze. The tower echoes with your huffing breath. The pan is too heavy for you to hold any longer and you let it drop with a wrist-tugging defeat.
"I'm not trying to scare you. But I really can't leave. I won't harm a hair on your head," he adds with a smile, eyebrows slightly raised in wait of your laughter.
You don't laugh, nor do you smile.
"My mother, she'll come home any minute now," you say unconvincingly.
He tips his head to one side. "Then I'll speak with your mother and get her permission to stay."
"She won't give it."
You're really too handsome to be frowning as you are. Steve wants to do as he does with all pretty people and make you smile, but the task feels insurmountable. You want him to leave. He can't.
"If I leave, I'll be killed," he says. While it's not a lie in its entirety, neither is it a truth.
Your grip tightens around the handle of your pan. "What?" you ask worriedly.
He feels guilty for garnering your concern though it's exactly what he'd been aiming for, nodding his head gravely.
"I'm being pursued by ruffians. For days now. I only need to hide here for the night while they clear the forest. They'll look for me elsewhere, after."
His storytelling voice is clear. Admittedly much too dramatic and yet you eat it up like a child devours spun sugar. Your hands press to your chest, frying pan held in your palm like the pommel of a sword.
"Ruffians?" you repeat.
He swoops in. "Not to worry. They didn't see me scale the tower, or even enter the valley." He gives you a commending smile. "You're very well hidden."
"Not well enough, clearly."
"I got lucky."
You back away from him. You don't turn your back to him, smart girl, only widen the gap between your two bodies with a fluttering unease.
"I wish I could help you," you whisper urgently, "I wish I could. But my mother, if she finds you here, I- I'm not sure what she'll do."
Steve blinks dazedly. "She would kill me?"
"No! Of course not."
"Then whatever it is will be a kinder fate."
That shatters the very last of your resolve. You visually err on what to do next, how to handle his being here. Steve’s head races with thoughts of the palace guards, of Thomas and Carol, and of you — your skin lit by the sun, and your long, long hair.
"Do you want some water?" you ask quietly.
The relief he conjures is as authentic as it comes. "Yes. More than anything."
—
Your mysterious stranger sits at one end of the table in Mother's seat while you sit across from him, a small clay drinking cup encapsulated by his large hand. You're making no effort to hide how closely you're watching him, though if he's under the impression it's for safety's sake then that's best.
He's very, very fine.
You haven't seen a man in person before, and if they all look like this you might wish you'd ventured out of the tower sooner. He wears a worn brown tunic that shows evidence of numerous careful darnings, its top button popped open to reveal a tiniest hint of curled hair disappearing downward.
The hair on his head and tucked behind his ears is comely as corn silk but much darker. It shines in the descending sunlight now flooding the room. There's a golden tinge to everything at this time that leaves no inch of his person unscathed; his eyes glow with it, his irises a melting brown that reminds you of rare, thick honey.
"The flowers," he says after an aching pause. "Are they painted? They must have been a huge expense."
You follow his gaze, surprised at his question in two ways. That he would ask, and that he would think somebody else did them.
"They're how I spend my summers."
"Looking at them?"
You laugh from the pure joy of the complement he's implying, unused to his awed reaction. Mother usually nods or hums at a new unveiling, and one time you'd earned a, "That's wonderful, darling."
You're not sure she'd actually been looking at the time.
"I painted them myself."
The stranger's jaw drops. "A little thing like you?" he asks.
"I'm hardly little," you deny, neither of stature nor burden.
"You're young, aren't you? You can't be more than twenty summers."
"What a funny way of speaking," you murmur, more to yourself than him. "I'm twenty. I'll be one and twenty, in a few days."
His eyes narrow. "Well, what's wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with me?"
"You aren't married?"
You try not to be offended and fail spectacularly. "Most don't get married until they're nearing five and twenty!"
"Most," he agrees. "But a girl as pretty as you? Who can paint like this? Don't tell me you've been hiding from every man in the kingdom."
You turn your face from him in case he can tell how flustered you are. Two complements in one day is unprecedented. Your heart bump-bump-bumps.
"Are you married?" you ask swiftly, hoping to redirect this line of conversation away from something as treacherous as your own isolation. Any answer would expose you.
"I am, actually. She has the most gorgeous shine to her face, and her laugh is melodic and sweet as anything, a tinkling sound. She's bronze-skinned, a slight thing, but she's worth her weight in gold."
He grins. You can't help but smile in response, infected by his endearing affection.
"What's her name?" you ask, voice near a coo.
"Argento."
You stare at him. His smile gets so big it looks like it could bruise his cheeks.
"You're talking about money."
"She's a brilliant bedfellow, isn't she? She keeps me warm and fed every night. She's a good girl." He sighs and crosses his arms behind his head. His attempt at nonchalance is ruined when he cringes in pain and drops them gracelessly back into his lap.
You cover your mouth and laugh. He's funny. Mother doesn't make half as many jokes.
Mother. As if the mere thought of her is enough to summon her presence, a shrill call echoes from the bottom of the tower.
"Y/N, darling, throw down the rope for your mother!"
You jump to your feet, slippers sliding against the mosaic floor in a hurried scratch. "You have to hide," you whisper harshly.
The stranger pouts at you. "Seriously, let me talk to her, I–"
You shake your head voraciously at his loud volume and press your finger to your lips, eyes begging with him to be quiet.
"Please," you whisper, "hide. I'll hide you 'til tomorrow, when she leaves in the morning."
He doesn't move.
"Y/N? I don't have all day!" The irritation in her voice is obvious.
"Please," you whisper again.
He gets up with a mild eye roll. You rush to the window and look down at your mother where she stands at the bottom, looking impossibly small.
"There you are! What are you waiting for? I'm not very happy with you, darling."
You lick your lips. "Sorry!" you call, turning to the rope spooled to the right of the window. You throw the rope over the hook at the top of the frame, pausing when you see the stranger lingering in your peripheral vision at the top of the stairs.
"What are you doing? Go!" you whisper.
He nods toward your hands. "Couldn't have thrown that down to me, could you?"
You shoo him away, his easy laughter doing nothing to assuage your racing heart as you drop the length of looped rope down to your mother. You wait until she's secured her foot in the loop before you start to walk backwards, lifting her weight.
It doesn't get any less laborious as you grow up. By the time she's reached the top of the tower you can hardly breathe. You cough so hard you feel nauseous.
"Holy stars, you sound ghastly. And it's completely unbecoming to cough like that without covering your mouth. You know that."
"Sorry, mother."
She hums. You can't decipher what it means, but it likely isn't something forgiving.
"I hope you had some time to think about our argument."
You hold your clasped hands behind your back, hair tickling your knuckles. "I did… I'm sorry, mother."
She stares at you for a moment from under dark eyebrows before her face lifts, the wrinkles in her soft forehead appearing more prominently as she says, "Darling, why do you do this? Why do you insist on making me angry?" She raises her hands to your neck, long fingernails weaving seamlessly into the mass of hair she finds there. "You know I'm only trying to protect you."
"I know," you say, tears burning hot behind your eyes. You will them away. Crying will make it worse, it always does.
She toys with your hair, eyes on your shoulder. You have the peculiar feeling that though she's looking at you she isn't truly looking at you, but through you. Her eyes are distant, unfocused.
Her finger wraps into your hair, twisting a strand behind your ear over, and over, and over. You shift uncomfortably at the tugging feeling at the back of your scalp but don't protest to her touches — any touch at all feels like a gift. Mother isn't generous with her affections.
"Maybe I've been too hard on you," she murmurs.
You loose a pained breath as she takes her hand from your hair and brings it to your face instead. She draws a line from the corner of your eye outwards, a kind, soft petting that gives you goosebumps.
"No, mother. I'm grateful for everything I have. I was being unreasonable, I don't need anything else. I… shouldn't have asked about the stars."
"No, you shouldn't have."
She moves from you to hang her robe up on the hanger. You tamp down your frowning because mother hates when you make her feel guilty and try to decide how it is you're going to escape to your bedroom for the night. You have lots of questions you want to ask the stranger.
You spot something out of the corner of your eye as your mother flits to the kitchen. There, on the table, sits two clay cups half empty and at opposite ends. You side eye your mother and find she's distracted herself with putting a wooden log into the oven's belly, grumbling about how you've neglected your afternoon chores.
You throw yourself in front of the table with a thud.
"What are you doing?" Mother asks, disgruntled.
"Nothing! I mean, I'm cleaning up. I forgot to empty these cups of paint after I finished."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
The thing about mother is that most of the things she says are neutral. Anybody else might think she was being light-hearted or blasé. She phrases everything so meticulously.
But she is not kind.
You laugh breathily and turn to the cups. Your heart leaps into your throat when you find the cup isn't the worst of what might give you away. Hooked over the back of the chair is the stranger's leather satchel, a ratty old thing sagging with the weight of its contents.
You take it. The zipper snags and the cause of the weight reveals itself in a clinking upheaval, a flash of light across the floor. You throw yourself over the chair to grab for it, a mindless scrambling, silver and gems cool and sharp under your hand. You shove it back in the satchel, no clue what it is. You've never seen anything like it.
"What are you doing?" Mother asks, her voice occluded by the soft bubbling of the cooking pot.
"It's dusty down here!" you call.
"Yes, well… it's to be expected when all you do is paint all day, darling."
"You're right," you say quietly. "Of course you are, mother."
-
Steve hadn't suspected your room would look as plain as it does. You've a simple bed with a modest quilt and one tired looking pillow, though it's been made with neat folded corners. A stuffed rabbit sits at the bottom, lavender velveteen with a pink button nose. He doesn't touch it, though he'd like to. He's not sure he's ever touched a stuffed animal before.
He can hear you talking to your mother, or rather your mother talking at you. He must say, she doesn't sound like the easiest woman to get along with. But Steve's never had a mother, so maybe that's just what they're like.
You have a small table to one corner covered in small trinkets. Shells, stones, papers loose and bound. He flips open the soft cover of a book and finds it filled with pencil sketches, corner to corner of every page.
You've drawn the most mundane things in remarkable colour and detail. The cooking pot over the stove top, the washing basin, the wooden table. Your slippers, your hair brush. Ordinary things in extraordinary detail, and extraordinary colour.
He pauses at a loose leaf of brown paper tucked toward the end of the book. It's a bird on the window ledge, a fruit dove. The face and beak are in great detail, white feathers made corporeal by the smudge of hard pastel. The wings are rough, white and pale pinks and greens unrendered.
Footsteps sound up the stairs.
Shit, Steve thinks. They're a hurried sound. He's been sussed. He turns on his heel to find a place to hide.
"Shit," he says, climbing the circular platform that holds your bed and collapsing to the floor, wriggling on his back until he's hidden underneath the bed and sheets completely.
He holds his breath as the door creaks open.
"Um… mister… uh, stranger man?"
He waves his hand from under the bed.
"Oh, right. Move over," you say, and then you're getting under the bed to join him.
Steve moves over and suddenly you're there beside him, the two of you pressed arm to arm under your bed. Your smell is impossible to ignore, the fruity fragrance of jasmine and milk-soap. He stares at your face as you settle, your eyelashes fluttering, your subtle smile.
You turn your head to his. The two of you flinch in tandem, eyes flying away from each other to the underside of the bed.
Oh, Steve thinks. Holy stars.
You've painted lanterns on every slat. Purple paper lanterns that glow orange and yellow in their centres, tens of them in different sizes. It's as breathtaking as your field of flowers downstairs despite the major decrease in scale.
"Wow," he says, on impulse, "these are amazing."
You inhale happily. "Thank you. The floating lights are my favourite thing. They always come out-" You cut yourself off with a cough. "Well. I love them."
"'Floating lights,'" he quotes. You're strange.
"I wanted to go see them, but…"
"But mother said no?"
"No," you murmur weakly. He takes it for yes. "She doesn't believe they're not stars."
He can hear each individual breath you take this close and suspects that you can hear his own. It's a funny thing to be this close to you when he doesn't know you beyond your painting and your too-long hair. He can see a lot more of your details, your tiny bumps and fine hairs.
"What's your name?" he asks quietly.
"I'm Y/N." You lay your ear against the wooden floor to look at him. "What's your name?"
"Steven. Steve will do just fine."
"Steve," you say, like you're testing it out. "Steve, you lied to me."
His eyes widen.
"Did I?" he asks, trying to disarm you with a smile and failing yet again.
"You lied," you whisper. "What's in the satchel, Steve?"
"It's not what you think."
"I think it's exactly what I think."
You're giving him a hard stare. He smiles and smiles and smiles, his facade cracking the longer you look at him. His breath all falls out in a rush, blowing the hair from his eyes as he sighs. "Alright, fine. I lied about the ruffians. In my defence, there isn't a big difference between those fools from the palace and true ruffians."
You sit up and wack your head on the bed slats above. Steve reaches out to help though there's nothing to do.
You push his hand away. "Palace guards?" you ask in an urgent whisper, hand held to the top of your head.
"Obviously. They don't just let you walk out of there without a fight… Wait, why are you surprised?" He measures your sheepish face. "You conniving, deceitful gir!"
"I might not know what it is, but I can tell it's not the kind of thing someone like you would have on his person," you say, grumbling at his insults.
His injustice at having been tricked drops away. "You don't know what it is? You've never seen a tiara?”
Your embarrassment is adorable. You change the subject deftly. “You lied to me, let’s not forget. You’re in danger because of the consequences of your own actions. Can’t believe I fell for your sob story. I should tell my mother exactly what kind of man I have hiding under my bed.”
“Who you’re hiding under your bed with.”
You climb out from under the bed with an irritated harrumph. Steve untangles a length of your hair that’s gotten wrapped around one of the beds feet before you can yank your own head back and follows you out.
“Don’t be mad,” he says.
“You’re a criminal,” you say angrily.
“Nobody’s perfect.”
Your furious whispers pause when your mother starts to sing downstairs. Steve can see the debate on your face. Yes, he’s a liar, yes, he’s a criminal, and yes, you should churn him back out into the valley. Send his untrustworthy self on his sorry way and wipe your hands of him entirely.
To do so would mean admitting to your mother that he’s here.
“Just… don’t talk to me. And don’t steal anything.”
He grins. “As you wish, my lady.”
—
“Y/N?” a voice asks in the dark.
It’s impossible to relax with him here. You’re worried he’s going to slit your throat while you sleep. You’re doubly worried he’ll see your unattractive resting face. Warped priorities aside, you can’t make yourself sleep.
“Yeah?” you whisper.
“The floating lights?”
Your eyes fly open. You get the disorienting feeling of blindness and blink in the dark until you can make out the faintest glow of moonlight under the door. “Yeah?”
“Those are called lanterns.”
You swallow a rough breath. “Lanterns.”
“Mm-hm. They’re made of paper. You light them and send them up with the breeze. The ones you’ve been seeing, they’re probably for the lost princess.”
“The lost princess?”
“Yeah. The entire kingdom floods into the town and each person lights a lantern for her. It’s more of a festival these days, but… They're supposed to help her find her way home. If she’s really lost, that is.”
You hum something, an attempt to reply, but you're too distracted to say anything else. Floating paper. A lost princess. You close your eyes and clouds of purple, pink and orange burn against your eyelids.
—
"You want me to what?"
"I want you to take me to see the lanterns."
Steve's back aches from sleeping flat on the floor all night long, and his shoulders scream every time he moves from climbing, and his hands are gross and sore with scabs, and he truthfully doesn't have the patience for this conversation.
"No."
"Fine. Don't take me, and I will keep the tiara as an innkeeper's fee."
"There's usually breakfast at an inn," he says.
You slap a steaming hot bowl of porridge in front of him. You've drizzled the surface with honey and placed red berries over the top to form a smiling face. The heat of the porridge has melted the berries into blobs that break from their skin when he pokes them with a spoon.
"Oh," he says. Nice.
He looks up to find you dressed in a different gown than yesterday, this one made up of a green bodice with white sleeves and a white skirt. The bottom hem is sewn with dainty yellow flowers, the bodice with vines in a darker shade of green. It's a very sweet dress on an otherwise sweet looking girl, if you ignore the formidable twist of your brow.
Fine, he'll bite. Your frown is sweet too.
"I'm not taking you anywhere," he says, about to scoop up a bite of porridge. He's starving.
You pull the bowl away from him, his spoon diving straight into the gnarled wooden table.
"You'll take me, or I'll tell the first palacemen that I find who you are and where you were."
"This isn't how you negotiate."
"Good thing I'm not negotiating."
He tries to intimidate you. Steve is not very intimidating. He frowns and he looks unhappy rather than angry, the worst he dips into is a pestered annoyance. His stomach gurgles in the ensuing silence.
"Why do you need someone to take you? Your mother left just this morning by herself."
You raise your eyebrows.
Steve sighs. "And if I did take you… then what? I suppose you'll want safe passage home, as well?"
You slide his porridge a little bit closer to his outstretched hand.
"You'll be coming back this way anyhow."
Well, yeah. He didn't know you knew that. Steve sighs, the most pained and inconvenienced groan he can muster because everything is awful and he's hurting in six different places. You don’t budge.
"Fine. Fine! I'll take you into the city to see the lanterns, and I'll bring you home. And you will give me back my satchel and my- uh, findings."
You push the porridge toward him. "That was easier than I expected."
Steve wishes he could pretend your smugness wasn't sweet, either. Because he isn't going to make this easy for you, not one bit.
He watches you pack your bag from the table and feels very, very sorry for you. For starters, you don't really have a bag, only a sack for potatoes now emptied. You take two clean dresses down from the clothesline they'd been hanging on and fold them before putting them at the bottom of the sack carefully, and then you're clueless.
"It'll be five or six days," he says, "now I've lost my horse."
Lost isn't the right word. His stolen horse had sprinted off into the forest and left him stranded. Another ailment to add to his list — thrown bodily off of a stallion.
"Do you have any better shoes?"
You look down at your pretty slippers and grimace. "No."
"You don't get out much, do you?"
You ignore him and pull a case of things out from under the small counter in the alcove of your kitchen. You drop a roll of linen bandages into the sack and shove the case back under the counter with your foot as you bring out a block of cheese and a box of matches.
Poor girl, he thinks.
"Don't worry too much about it."
"I'm not worried," you say, topping your provisions off with a punnet of fruit and the last of your fresh flatbread covered in a beeswax wrapping. "This will be fun."
—
You're scared enough to feel tears welling in your eyes.
Steve walks ahead of you, shoes hidden by lush green grass as he makes his way toward the valley's exit. You're not sure he's realised you're not behind him, or maybe he has and he refuses to wait. You've finished bricking the secondary entrance to the tower closed again, and while it seems obviously disturbed you have no choice but to hope mother doesn't steer around the back anytime soon.
Your adrenaline has been pumping ever since you jimmied the tile and unlocked the trap door. Your chest physically aches with anxiety, and your breath has begun to feel short and shallow.
"Are you coming?" Steve calls.
You heave the potato sack over your shoulder and take a step forward.
The earth is soft and hard underfoot, an impossible sensation. You rock your heel back and forth and test the uneven ground for purchase. The temptation to reach down and touch it for the first time is high but Steve's still watching you, so you hurry toward him and try not to fall over. You take a huge, calming breath.
It smells gorgeous out here. Despite keeping the window cracked and the tower clean, there's a lived-in smell that can't be escaped. Out here, you can practically taste the earth. The crisp air burns your nose.
Steve keeps a fast pace and neither of you talk. Your companion isn't happy about his predicament and you can't blame him, you've practically taken him hostage. He isn't a poor sport either, and he hasn't been cruel. Quiet, he parts the ivy covering the valley exit and lets you pass.
The world is even bigger from there.
"Stay close, okay? I don't know what kind of vagrants we'll come across this far from town."
You swallow a lump in your throat. "Uh-huh."
You stay likely too close, your arm gracing his own every now and then. Each time you pull away and each time you end up drifting back toward him. The quiet is impenetrable. You don't know what to say to a man. To anybody. Mother's usually the guiding force of every conversation, and her insistence has left you poorly equipped.
Steve seems content to languish in silence.
You walk. You watch the sun move, heat burning your skin by midday. You're not used to walking such long distances or being so exposed to the elements, and by evening you hurt everywhere. Your face shines with perspiration and your shoes chafe your ankles raw, each step a barb.
As if things couldn't get worse, guilt grabs and holds you. Guilt and fear. What will mother think if she finds out you've left? What would she say? How ridiculously naive, darling. I told you, you aren't to leave the tower. Do you seriously think you know better than I do? Do you think I'm stupid? I'm hurt. I'm hurting that you'd think so low of me.
You try to shake the thoughts away. A shiver rushes down your spine.
Steve holds a hand over his eyes, turning his head to the West where the sun approaches the horizon.
"It'll be dark in a few hours,” he says.
You nibble the inside of your cheek, voice hoarse and throat dry from your lack of conversation. "Will we camp for the night?"
He shakes his head, the sun climbing up his neck to paint his brown hair blonde. "If memory serves, there's an inn not far from here." He smiles. "You'll like it."
"Oh. That's good."
"Yeah."
You kick a small stone. "How do you know where we're going?" You'd been on a dirt path now for an hour or two, or rather two dirt paths, worn by carriage wheels. "Everything looks the same."
"I'm an excellent navigator."
Sure enough, he navigates the two of you toward a pretty little inn snugly hidden between a crop of towering, leafy trees, a shock of beige and brown in an overwhelmingly green landscape.
"Le Vilain Caneton," you read off of the sign, giving him a bright smile. "That sounds nice."
"What did I tell you? You're gonna love this."
—
Steve doesn't feel bad, at first.
He throws open the door. The handle slams hard enough into the wood behind it that he's surprised there isn't a cracking sound. He ushers you inside, finding that the handle hasn't broken a hole in the wall because there's already one there.
It's sleazy, all things considered. Steve has avoided this place pretty much his entire adult life after a trade gone wrong, and while he feels his appearance has changed enough to spare him a skirmish he affects the Steven Harrington manner. Two-timing baby Stevie is nowhere to be seen.
He's still a two-timer. Case in point.
"Isn't it charming?" he murmurs to you, hand held aloft behind your back. Not touching but ready to if you step back.
"Yeah," you say weakly. "Really cute."
Adorable.
Steve takes a step that encourages you forward into the main area of the room. The smell of cheap ale blooms and the floor is sticky with it. He regrets how it will likely ruin your pretty slippers but he isn't a coward, walking you right up to the bar where a scary looking guy stands wiping glasses with a dirty rag.
"Are you the innkeeper?" he asks jovially. "We'd like a room."
Scary guy squints, looks between you and Steve with apprehension.
Steve's trying to scare you, not get caught. He throws his arm over your shoulders. You shrink under his touch. It's too late for him to pull away, guilt softening the grasp he has on your shoulder as he lays down a thick facade.
"My wife's tired as a lamb from walking all day, could we get a hot bath drawn with that?"
Scary guy spits into the cup with a scoff. "Judy?" he calls out gruffly.
Steve beams. You curl into him slowly, a flower turning to the sun, hiding from the cold. You still smell of jasmine milk soap after all these hours of walking, but he doesn't miss how the lengths of your hair have grown dishevelled with sweat and wind. He wonders how long it might take you to brush free the knots and tangles. He wonders if you do it in the bath.
You turn to him with your face shining with a trust he doesn't deserve, like you're seeking his protection.
"Steve, I don't have any money," you whisper.
His hand rests in the nook of your neck. "That's alright. Consider it part of your innkeeper's fee."
"Does this come with breakfast, too?" you ask genuinely.
Judy, a tall, lithely woman who can't be more than thirty takes her station behind the bar and smiles at you before her eyes follow Steve's arm to his body. He freezes at the calculating tilt of her head, the subtle but not invisible squint.
"Breakfast is an additional two silvers."
"And for the room and bath?"
"Ten for the room, five for the bath, two for breakfast." Judy grins. Her hair is like copper, shifting around sharp cheekbones. "Seventeen silvers all together."
Steve frowns but hands over the money.
Judy takes you up the first flight of rickety stairs to your room, and nods toward the bathing room as you pass it. She shows you where you'll be spending the night, a ramshackle room with a bed made of what Steve suspects to be more straw than padding. He's relieved at the thick quilt set and folded at the bottom. It looks clean enough.
"I'll knock when the bath is drawn. Will that be for both of you?"
And so. Steve had feared this, feared the bath in general, and had forgotten to explain this fear to you.
"Both of us," he says, nodding.
You're thankfully smart enough to keep any grievances you have at that to yourself. At least, until the door closes, and you pin him with a look that's a mixture of betrayed and furious. Your eyebrows pinch together.
"Why did you say that?"
"It's what's expected of us."
"By who?" you ask, near belligerent.
He shushes you, a frown of his own taking form. "By everybody. It's what married couples do, they share the water when travelling. And it wouldn't be proper for you to be in the bathing room by yourself, how could your husband protect your honour?"
"You're not my husband."
He shushes you again, this time with a severe expression that finally has you giving pause. Your eyes flash with fear and quickly clear. You take a step back.
He holds a hand out toward you amicably. "Sorry. But it will be much safer for both of us if we can keep our ruse alive. Someone as handsome as you, it isn't right for your reputation to be travelling with me while you're still unmarried, you know? And for me…" He doesn't want to explain the horrible truth to you. If Steve refuses to leave you, to share you, to let men do what men would like to do to you, that might invite a riot.
"I don't have a reputation," you say.
He shrugs. "It is safer for us to be married." He hesitates, remembering why he'd brought you here in the first place. The horrible truth may be unseemly, but it could be enough to get you to bow out. "If we aren't married… Well, it doesn't bear saying."
"What?" you ask, a curious thing. He loves it, and not only because it works to his advantage.
"Men will take anything they find beautiful. And without care."
Your fingers tighten around the mouth of your potato sack bag.
"I see," you say. "Of course. I knew that, mother always says, but."
He winces at the reminder of your cruel mother. He feels cruel himself, suddenly, for scaring you on purpose as your mother likely does, for being another member of the opposition in your life. All you want is to see the Princess' lanterns, so much so you've hidden under your bed and painted their colours painstakingly onto each slat of supporting wood. A hidden wish, and one you'd deigned to share with him. He starts to think, Maybe I should just take her. How much could it possibly cost me?
But Steve's from nothing. He was born from nothing, he grew up with nothing. He is, in the grand scheme of the universe and its many, many stars, nothing. Another orphaned boy destined to waste his life stealing coppers from coin purses and sleeping in doorways.
The sooner he gets that tiara, the better. No more sleeping outside. No more staring up at the wine dark sky and wondering if any of those blistering stars can hear him.
If they can, they aren't listening.
You put your bag down on the floor. It thunks.
"What have you piled in there, sweetness? A mountain?" he asks, momentarily distracted.
"Nothing!" you rush to say, standing in front of your bag like it might hide it from his view.
The door knocks before he can question you further. "The bath!" comes Judy's solid tone.
"Thank you," Steve says, "we'll be right out." He nods at you. "Your change of clothes?"
You search through your bag with your shoulders to him, hunched to shield the mystery.
"You can keep your secrets," he teases lightly. The stars know he keeps his own.
Through the hallway to the bathing room, Judy kicks open the door, points to the bath as though he might not see it otherwise, and then the small weight by the doorway to keep the door closed. There's no steam to the water.
"How conning," Steve mutters, closing the door after Judy's departure.
"What?" you ask, your voice curiously strung.
"The water’s barely hot."
"I've never had a hot bath before."
He looks at you through the corner of his eye. "Never?"
"Sometimes mother would pour warm water through my hair, but no. Does it hurt, when it's too hot?"
He can't help grinning at you. "Some of the time," he concedes. "It's a nice kind of hurting, though, do you know what I mean? You'll feel much better after." He chuckles, sticking his finger into the water. It isn't not hot, but it could be better considering its cost. "Not that this could ever hurt you."
"A nice kind of hurting," you mumble.
"Mm. You should try to be quick, they might want the bath for someone else soon."
You nod, eyes darkening with your remembered predicament. You hug your clean dress to your chest. He thinks, suddenly, that your hair looks very heavy, and that it must hurt your neck.
"I won't look," he says, voice soft with sincerity.
Your shoulders relax.
He sits with his legs stretched out and shoes pressed to the door to stop a potential intruder, listening, trying not to listen, as you peel out of your clothes. Your bare feet sound strange over the wooden floor, a shushing sound. Your dress and corset fall in rustling waves.
You gasp as you step into the water. "Oh," you say, the small sound imbued with a simple, common pleasure.
He feels the tension like fog over the kingdom waters in summer, when the heat is tangible and the nights are short. You look so soft in your clothes. Outside of them, Steve can only imagine.
He tries very hard to push it from his mind, feeling an unwelcome heat rise anyhow. He blames it on the humidity of the room.
You pitter for a moment, in awe of the heat.
"How–" His voice gets caught. He clears his throat, tries a second time, "How do you wash your hair?"
"I lather the soap in my hands and–" You seem to be victim of the same affliction as he is. "Steve, could you pass me my soap? I'm sorry, I've left it on the vanity with my dress."
"If you want me to help you, you need only ask. I've been said to have very hard-working hands."
"I thought you were a thief?"
Steve stands up grudgingly. He usually has much better luck with the ladies, yet all his joking flirtation soars straight over your head. Not that he actually wants it to land, nor does he think he could handle your attention.
He doesn't look at you as he grabs your bar of soap. He unwraps its beeswax covering and hands it to you, looking decidedly at the damp wall opposite. He feels your wet hand touch his. Your skin is so hot it startles him, and the bar of soap slips between your outstretched fingers, slamming and sliding somewhere unknown.
"Shit," he says. "Alright, best cover yourself."
He hears quick movements in the water as he turns to you, throwing his gaze to the floor, only a split flash of your naked skin to be seen. Your soap has rounded the corner of the wooden tub, lying behind your straight back. He kneels to pick it up, scowling at the scum sticking to its underside, and nearly headbutts your forehead as he stands.
He springs back, and he stares. You have water running in rivers down your face, your wet hair framing your shining cheeks, pooling down. It covers the swell of your chest so precisely that Steve bites his tongue, forcing his eyeline back to your waiting face. You have water in your eyes like tears, their lashes turned to triangles, clinging to one another.
You look like one of the women from his storybook. A water nymph. A siren. The room is warm with steam, and his cheeks, hot to begin with, emanate enough heat to warm your tub again as he makes the comparison. Your looks alone might draw him to drowning.
"Steve?" you ask, holding out your hand.
Hair shifts over your body like a dancing shadow, or a beaming light. He isn't sure. There's something about it that feels extraordinary, not just in the length of it.
He passes you your soap. Ridiculous, he thinks. Imbecilic. Your hair is hair and nothing more. While you're achingly pretty and you have a fine hand, that is where your remarkability ends.
"Could you turn around again?" you ask, flustered.
He turns around.
—
"You brought your pan?" Steve asks you, bewildered. He's standing by the small, thin window, metal-wrought panes that filter the last of the sun's rays.
You stand shivering by your potato sack and frown at him, setting the pan on the sheets. "I think we might have a more pressing issue."
"We don't have anything." He seems to appraise your condition. "How do you usually dry your hair?"
"You wouldn't believe me."
"How cryptic! I'm afraid you're destined to freeze here, my heart. Or we could take you home, where you may comfortably perform whatever ritual it is that you perform and dry your hair."
"Wasn't there a fireplace downstairs?"
"We aren't going back down there."
"We aren't," you say in agreement, turning his distaste of the collective pronoun back on him. "I'll go by myself."
"That is a horrible, terrible, awful idea."
"I'm not going home. I want to– I’m going to see the paper lanterns."
Steve sighs. After your bath, he'd taken the smaller basin of clean water and washed up, now standing in front of you in his only change of clothes, a darker, navy tunic buttoned to the throat and simple slacks. His shoes are tightly laced even at this hour. You look down at your bare feet and feel majorly abashed by their new blisters and haphazard bandaging. You can't make yourself put your slippers back on.
He continues his sighing as he crosses the room. He's still grumbling when he opens the door.
"Well?" he asks, holding it open.
You pat his arm gently as you pass. "Thank you."
You trek down the stairs, careful with each footstep that you aren't trodding on a misplaced nail or scary splinter. Wood changes to stone flooring, tiles of a terracotta colour that are large and misshapen. You keep your eyes on them as you cross the room to its only source of heat, a blistering hearth just shy of the room's stage and piano. Somebody sits behind it on the piano bench, though they aren't playing the piano at all, but a great wooden instrument you've never seen.
"What is that?" you ask Steve.
He doesn't bend under your attention. He frowns ever so slightly. "What?"
You point to the instrument as conspicuously as you can.
Steve takes your shoulder into his hand and guides you toward the fireplace without malice. He's prompting you along, as you've stopped in the middle of the room.
"You've never seen one of those?" he asks.
"Not in any of my books."
"I guess they're still new. That's a vihuela. It's a… it's a nice sound."
You nod appreciatively, and feel much happier as Steve pulls a nearby chair as close to the hearth as he can without garnering any disgruntled looks from the other patrons. You sneak a peek at their faces. Most are naturally intimidating; there are men with weathered, unkind faces lining the walls with tankards of ale in hand; there are travellers such as yourselves, though they look hardened, sharper than you ever could, coin purses on tables as if daring you to try lifting them; there are women, sparsely, who are sharper in a different way. They remind you of a summer rose, darkly red, a gorgeous head of petals distracting from a thorny stem.
You sit down in your chair and feel the heat of the fireplace greet your chilled skin, and your soaked back. Your dress has soaked up much of your hairs dripping, the kind of unfortunate happenstance that might spiral into your hypothermic death. Steve puts his chair beside yours and turns his entire body toward yours. You like it. It's like he's hiding you from everybody else, replacing their sneering gazes with his fed-up acceptance. You find extreme comfort in this feeling, as though Steve is the only person in the room with you.
"Turn to me."
"What if my hair catches?"
"You aren't close enough for that."
You turn to Steve completely. You look like lovers, you must, worse when he takes your slippers and holds them on top of one of his thighs. He has wide thighs, and they make you feel a feeling you don't understand. Everything you know about men has come from Mother or books. Mother claims them to be evil in their entirety. Of the few books you have, and fewer that talk of men beyond the factual, none have ever mentioned why their legs look like that, and why it will make you feel like you've swallowed something much too hot.
"I'll make sure your hair doesn't go up in flames," he promises grandly, unnecessarily, "consider it one of my guidely duties."
A shy, pleased smile takes your lips. "Thank you."
"Yeah, you're welcome." He closes his eyes and tips his head back. "Stars, I'm hungry."
"I have–"
"We'll buy dinner. They have hunter's stew here, have you ever tried that?"
"No."
He laughs, crossing his arms across his chest. "Of course not. Alright, this will sound gross, but it's really old stew. Years old, maybe decades. They keep adding and adding to the pot with whatever’s in season."
You don't know everything, or anything, really, but you know that sounds like food poisoning in a bowl. "How doesn't it kill you?"
"They keep it really, really hot, all day long."
You like the way he says it, even if he's maybe making fun. He almost sings each word, a melodic cadence to his pronunciation that endears you further.
"And you've had it? What does it taste like?"
"See, you'd think it tastes a bit muddled, right? But it's good. You'll like it."
He makes no move to get up and get the aforementioned soup. You aren't particularly hungry, leaning back just a little so the brutal heat of the flames can warm your damp shoulder. The wetness of your dress is fading, warmed but still undeniably wet, and you wonder if the heat is hurting your hair. Mother always says to keep your hair as far from the hearth as you can at all times, and gets angry when you sit too close.
The soot, darling. The soot will cling to your hair and ruin it. It is, in Mother's opinion, the most beautiful thing about you.
Mother. She shouldn't be back home for days now, and still you're worrying. Mostly about being caught. But if you're caught, and she knows you left…
You have a strange love for your mother. The kind that makes you feel sick in intensity. You want, at all times, to please her. And you know this isn't something she would approve of, Stars, she'd be so disappointed in you for taking this risk.
You stare up at a wooden beam past Steve's head and try not to tear up. Anxiety eats at you until there's nothing left but your skin, your insides a tangled dark whorl of misery. She must know you've left home. She must know how terribly ungrateful you are for everything she's sacrificed. She must know–
"Are you okay?"
You blink hurriedly and face Steve, hoping this will dispel the quick-welling tears clouding your vision. It doesn't work: blinking can’t erase years of pent up worry. You wipe your eyes before they can roll down your cheeks and humiliate you further.
"I'm okay," you say.
Steve frowns again. He's a frowny guy.
"What's wrong?" He takes your elbow into his hand.
"Nothing. Uh…" You smile through your embarrassment. "We don't light the hearth at home, often, and uh, I think the smoke is irritating my eyes." You nod for emphasis.
Steve does not believe you, clearly, but he squeezes your elbow and nods back.
He looks at your face until you're uneasy.
"I'll go get that stew,” he says, patting your arm.
You feel strange once he’s gone. It's nice to be by yourself for a moment. You've spent the majority of your adult life alone while mother goes here, there, and everywhere. You're never allowed to go with her, too stupid for the outside world and all its challenges.
You look around the room now and wonder if this is really the world she means. Sure, it's foreign, and it's unsettling, and without Steve by your side you might not be left alone as you have been, but you'd expected more. Where are all the insects that make you sick, and the men with cutlasses and shackles?
Your eyes drift to the vihuela player. He's moved to sit at the opposite side of the fire. He strums lackadaisically at his instrument, his shoulders against the wall and a cup of mead at his feet. It's obvious nobody's given him any coin in a while.
Behind him sits the piano, glimmering with the flickering firelight. You've read about them, you've even seen drawings of harpsichords, but never heard one played. You wonder what it sounds like. Any music at all is amazing to you. All you've ever heard is singing. One song.
Steve returns with two bowls of hunter's stew. You're scared to try it but horrified that you might look like a coward in front of him. Again. Your tears had been bad enough.
You swallow a spoonful and your eyes water unbidden. "Oh, wow."
"Good, huh?"
You try not to cough. "It's rich."
"I guess you haven't had stuff like this before, huh?" He forks through his bowl and pulls out a big pale vegetable roughly cubed. "You like potato?"
"Yeah," you say, and before you've finished he's pushing the potato against the lip of your bowl and pulling the tines of his fork free. It falls into your stew with a small splash. "Oh. Thank you."
You try to eat as much of it as you can but start to feel sick somewhere in the middle. You set your bowl aside and Steve, bowl emptied, drops his next to it, wiping his hands together and standing.
You look up, puzzled.
"Come on."
Your hair isn't quite dry, a tugging weight for your neck as Steve slides his hand over your warm shoulder. You worry it might never full dry again, not without a helping hand.
He leads you up the small platform to the piano.
You look to him inquisitively.
"It's alright. I asked them if you could try it. Just try not to play too loudly and disrupt the bard."
"How do you adjust how loud it is?"
He pushes down on your shoulders until you're sitting on the bench. "You play softly. It's going to be a little loud no matter what. Don't smash the keys."
"Are they fragile?" you ask worriedly, holding your tensed fingertips above the white and pitch keys.
"No," he says, laughing without any judgement, "move over, I'll show you."
He sits on the bench beside you. There's not a whole lot of room, and his arm presses hot to yours. He places his hand above the keys like he knows what he's doing, and presses down. He plays a line of notes, the sounds a plinking rising melody that has you gasping in awe.
"Don't," —he presses down a huge chunk of keys, and the sound is awful— "do this."
You look up to see if anybody's glaring. Then you burst into giggles, face pressed to his shoulder on automatic as you try to smother the sound. He laughs warmly near your ear.
You probe curiously at the keys and try to make a song. You don't know how, don't know one note from another, you can't fathom how someone might make this into anything more than the bard's lazy fingerings.
"Do you know anything?" Steve asks.
Do you know anything? Mother demands. Darling, I've told you a million times…
"No. Sorry," you say.
His voice is sincerely sweet, like he's confused you'd ever be sorry, "For what? I can play you something. Choose a song."
"I only know the one."
He blinks at you. You shrink into yourself as he averts his gaze, knowing what he's thinking. How useless you are.
The song starts slowly. Steve taps one key, and then another. It lends and lists into music suddenly, the repetition of a simple melody. He doesn't sing, just speaks the words as he plays.
"She sends me a flower to hold me," he says, an echo of song in his tone. "She sends me a flower to– night." He moves his hands up to a higher sound. "She loves me too much, so she's told me. But if she loved me, oh loved me, she might… Come to see me, oh sweetheart, come to see me, oh lover, come to see me, oh darling." He smiles at you. "Come to see me to– night." He clears his throat, hand stilling. "You'd sing the bridge again, but I think I'll spare your ears."
"Is that yours?" you ask him.
He drops his hand into his lap. "No. Steve Harrington doesn't pen love poems, I'm afraid."
"Only plays them."
His smile turns to a smirk, so sticky it's catching.
"You're not the mouse I'd thought you were," he says.
"Was this realisation before or after I tried to maim you with a cast iron pan?"
He's about to answer, a spark behind his eyes, when the door opens wide enough to split its hinges. The origin of the hole in the wall is clear, and he waltzes in with a band of men behind him, grinning.
"Oh, for Stars’ sake," Steve mutters.
"What?" you ask.
The man at the front of the group of men — or, as they step into the light and reveal themselves, boys — sets his one un-patched eye on you and Steve, smiles like the devil, and croons, "Stevie!"
Steve's smile is gone.
"Eddie," he says tiredly.
"You're back!" Eddie looks you up and down, and his expression turns to one of complete surprise. "With a wife? My, my, we have been busy."
Steve stands, and Eddie, in all his darkness, dark hair and eyes and tunic, his grin turns mean. You hide behind one of Steve's thighs, hesitant. He drops his hand against the top of your head.
"Why's it matter?" Steve asks.
"It doesn't." This Eddie sounds all too cheerful. "What does matter, I'm afraid, is the debt between us."
"I don't owe you anything."
You watch with widened eyes as Eddie unsheathes his sword. The scabbard has a mottling of shiny reds and blacks, and the blade glows silver to white in the light. It's sharp.
Steve pulls a small knife from his hip. You hadn't realised he was carrying a weapon.
Eddie takes a step forward, his shoes like a thunderclap across the wooden floor.
"I'm afraid my Sweetheart here doesn't agree."
˗ˋˏ ☆ ˎˊ˗
eddie isn’t a bad guy he’s just confrontational <3 thank you so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed, and if you did, please consider reblogging i promise it makes a huge difference <3
#steve harrington x reader#steve harrington x you#steve harrington x y/n#steve harrington#stranger things x reader#stranger things fic#steve harrington imagine#steve harrington fanfic#steve harrington fanfiction#stranger things#stranger things 4#tangled!au
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just get to me in time, okay?
a/n: just reminiscing about 2019 when I was in my hardcore frank era...
warnings: frank castle x nurse!reader, friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, fluff, patching up frank's wounds, blood and gore, kissing, reader has a cat
word count: 1660
∼ gentle reminder that feedback, but especially reblogs are the way you support writers on here ∽
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As your cat suddenly jumped off his comfy spot on your belly with his head smooshed beneath the cliche romance novel you were unwinding with this evening, his sudden alertness and the loud meows that accompanied it caused you to put your book down, “hey, what’s up, baby?” you slowly got up from the couch and followed after him though the dim apartment, “we talked about this, Cosmo,” you gently warned the loud exclamations that he released in one of the shadowy corners of your living room, “you talking to the air just makes me think there are ghosts here.”
When he then began to purr, the soothing sound emanating from the darkness was accompanied by a familiar voice, “sorry to interrupt your thrilling Friday night, Y/n.”
“Jesus christ, Frank!” you exclaimed, nearly jumping out of your skin, “you almost gave me a heart attack! Don’t you know how to knock? Or even just use the front door?”
“Sorry,” he stepped into the light, supporting some of his weight on one of your dining room chairs as Cosmo happily rubbed his fluffy body against his heavy boots.
As the soft light emanating from the tall lamp in the corner illuminated your friend's form, the blood soaking his dark clothes and the bruises across his cheekbone made his intentions for this late-night visit crystal clear, the smile fell from your lips at once.
“And here I was hoping you just felt lonely,” you joked, trying to hide your heavy sigh, “wanted to come by for a game of scrabbled or something,” your feet already carrying you towards your kitchen, you called over your shoulder, “I’ll go get the first aid kit, you know where the bathroom is,” a sentence you had probably said to him about a dozen times by now.
After retrieving the first aid kit, or more like first aid box with the way you had expanded the contents out of precaution after you began to help Frank, it now no longer fit in the small neat cross marked container, but a bigger clear plastic box you used to store old mementoes in, one that conveniently didn’t fit under your bathroom sink anymore.
“So, what is it tonight, huh?” you sat it down on the edge of the sink and glanced over at your wounded friend, now situated on the side of the tub.
Your cat still glued to his side, one of his hands tangled in the soft grey fur behind Cosmo’s ears as the other one worked at shredding his black jacket, “just some idiot with a knife that got a bit lucky,” his breathing got heavy as he struggled with the other sleeve.
Kneeling down in front of him, you swiftly took over his actions, removing his outerwear the rest of the way for him, “where?”
“Shoulder and a few down here,” he motioned towards the large red stain on his midsection, his fingers already beginning to lift up his t-shirt.
“Don’t,” you swatted his hand away and lifted yourself up enough to fish a pair of scissors out of the box.
“Oh, come on,” his head tilted to the side as he tried to argue, “I am barely hurt, I can take my shirt off just fine.”
“I know you can,” your face stayed stony, “you can do so many very impressive things, just not right now, tough guy,” as you from the bottom hem began to cut open the black cotton that clung to his skin, “besides, I got you some spare clothes just in case.”
“You didn’t have to do that-”
“Frank, just say thanks,” you sighed, taking the last snip on your journey from the bottom up to the collar, “I basically got them for free anyway with how cheap they were.”
Lifting yourself up more, being momentarily at eye level with him as he watched you slice open the shoulders and peel the fabric off, “thank you, ma'am.”
After thoroughly washing your hands and sliding on a pair of gloves, you took a closer look at his gnarly cuts, gently inspecting his bruised cheek as well to make sure it wasn’t anything else.
“I don’t have any more of the fun stuff,” you spoke as you fished out the rest of the supplies needed, “but I can offer you some aspirin if you want.”
“Nah,” his low voice rumbled as you wetted a cotton ball with some saline, “just do it.”
“Alright,” you exhaled and began to dap and clean his wounds, the only indication of pain you received being the uncontrollable twitch his eyes occasionally did as they tracked your movements, washing over his tender flesh and wiping the crimson away.
“I see this one’s healing quite nicely,” you commented as you caught sight of the newly scabbed over bullet wound that you’d patched up not too long ago, “at least you didn’t go and get yourself shot again, so that’s always something,” you tossed the last of the stained cotton rounds into the sink as your gloved fingers then began to thread the curved needle already clasped in the cold metal of your forceps.
“Wasn’t hard to mess it up when you patched it up so good,” he watched you, both of his hands now simply resting on the porcelain of the tub, his novelty haven worn off slightly, so Cosmo had freed his good hand and moved on to curling up on the bathmat by the door.
“You ready?” you asked out of habit before you let the needle pierce his flesh.
“Yep,” he replied, a series of heavy breaths and low grunts followed suit as you closed up the cuts tainting his already scared abdomen, the muscles tensing slightly underneath your fingers as you did.
Stoic as ever, Frank took every stitch like the brick wall that he was, not complaining once as his wounds one by one got closed up and then covered with large white bandages.
As you worked on the last one that luckily missed his collarbone, your sutures slowed down as the storm within your mind grew. Now situated beside him on the edge of the bathtub, it was hard for him not to notice how your bottom lip had begun to tremble.
“Please don’t-…” he spoke, averting his usually unwavering gaze as you tied off the last knot and cut the thread, “you already know that you can’t tell me anything that will make me stop, so please don’t ask me.”
“Frank, I would never-…” you set the tools down and blinked back at him, honestly slightly offended that he’d even ask you after all of this time, “you know me well enough to be certain that I’d never ask you to change, to stop before-…” shutting your eyes a second, you said, “look, I can do a lot, but I can’t do everything. What happens the day when you stumble in here with something that I can’t just fix, that I don’t have the right means to-…” you let your head momentarily slumped down against the mass of his shoulder, “and if you refuse to let me call an ambulance? Or even worse, if you don’t get here in time, if you don’t get to me, if you go and die on me in some ally somewhere, I just-…” your voice broke as your forehead softly collided with his own, “just get to me in time, okay?” you felt sharp tears sting the corners of your eyes, “come to me even if it’s just a scratch, because as brilliant as you are, I don’t trust those crappy first aid skills of yours one bit,” the essence of a smile accompanied that teasing comment as you blinked up at him once more with glossy eyes, “come to me, because if you don’t, if you get hurt, if you die, and I could have prevented that, then I don’t know how-… how-…”
Your broken words trailed off as your eyes unintentionally flickered down towards his full lips and before you had time to think, you’d leaned in and crashed your lips against his own.
He still tasted of blood, though that fact didn’t bother you as much as you’d imagined it would. You felt one of his large palms find the side of your face as his mind eventually caught up and he began to reciprocate the unexpected kiss. As you realised what you were doing, your anxious mind feared the worst and you swiftly tried to back up to apologise for your sudden actions, though the fingers that had travelled to the back of your head and kept you there long enough to let his lightened pecks upon your lips be enough of an answer to soothe your worries.
“So,” his fingers lingered in your hair a moment longer as you parted ways, “I’m guessing that might have something to do with why you don’t want me dying in an ally somewhere, huh?”
“Why?” you breathed, biting down on the soft smile that bloomed, “you got a problem with it?”
Disappearing completely in your eyes, he simply shook his head, beaming back at you as if he hadn’t just been through a meat grinder earlier tonight.
“You know,” you eventually opened your mouth again as his intense gaze sent a shy tingle down your spine, “some patient's mom dropped off a bunch of cookies today,” you stared down at your nervous fingers as they fiddled with the fabric of one of the bulky pockets on the leg of his dark pants, “they were like insanely good, so I kinda smuggled a bunch of them home with me…”
“Oh, yeah?” a small chuckle bubbled within his throat.
“Yeah…” you kept your gaze away from his as your thumb nervously drummed against his meaty thigh, “just thought that maybe you would like one, just since, you know, you had kinda a rough night, so it only seems fair for you to get a cookie…”
© 2023 thyme-in-a-bubble
#lea’s writing#frank castle x you#frank castle x y/n#frank castle x reader#frank castle x female reader#frank castle x fem!reader#frank castle x f!reader#frank castle fic#the punisher fic#frank castle imagine#frank castle fluff#frank castle hurt/comfort#frank castle fanfiction#frank castle angst#nurse!reader ᰔ
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July Kinkfest Days 4 & 5
The Sandman || Dreamling (Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling) || Rated E || 939 words
Prompts: Possessive Sex | Body Worship | “I had a dream about you.” - Exhibitionism | Aftercare | “I’ve always wanted to try this.”
Warnings (in addition to the prompts above): getting together, jealous Dream, rough sex, biting and other post-sex superficial injuries
Author's Notes: Two days combo platter! Five out of six prompts! Whoo!
As his lover dozes, Dream traces the marks left on Hob’s skin. Not the scars, but the recent ones, bruises and welts and scrapes, left not so long ago by Dream’s fingers and lips and teeth. And as he touches each one he checks that it is superficial, urges each gently into healing, and memories float to the surface.
It started with one of the New Inn’s regulars, Eliot Sutton, a New Yorker at the end of two years of post-doctoral work in astrophysics and cosmology, who had sought work abroad as he was fleeing his broken engagement and family strife. Dream knows these details immediately upon looking at the man, but what actually matters is that he and Hob are in the back of the pub, sharing a table and a pint, papers and books spread out before them, working in a familiar and companionable silence.
On Hob’s hip, long finger-shaped bruises are starting to purple. Dream can hear the echo of Hob’s sob of pleasure, of relief, as Dream finally sinks his cock into his loosened, slick hole. “Yes! Sweetchristyes!”
As Dream gets closer to the table he learns more: Eliot Sutton has a black cat back at his apartment that he adopted from a local shelter because she was twelve and looked like she needed a friend. He has a collection of old manuscripts on Babylonian astronomy that probably should be in a museum. The man reaches to take a sip of his ale and spends a moment staring at Hob. Dream picks up the edges of an erotic daydream, no the memory of a dr-
“I had a dream about you last night.” The man interrupts Dream’s thoughts as much as Hob’s work and both stop mid-movement.
Long red welts along Hob’s back are receding, no longer as sharp-edged and raised as when Dream’s nails made them, scrabbling for purchase as Hob bent the Dreamlord in half as he fucked him with deep, rolling thrusts. “Let him see. Fuck, invite the entire college, the entire city… let them all see how I lose myself in you. Only you.”
“Did you now?” Hob takes his own pint in hand, downing a large swallow. “Let me guess, a nightmare about me, a lowly history professor, grading your uni papers?”
Eliot very clearly lets his gaze get dark, his voice suggestive. “Not quite. Although it did involve a desk.”
Hob blushes. “El…”
More nail marks, clear crescents in sets of four, overlap each other across Hob’s shoulders, a few crusted with dry blood. Dream cleans them with a careful touch and hears his own growls in his ears as Hob drops to his knees in front of him. “Is this how the most devoted priests feel when faced with their god?” He nuzzles into the base of Dream’s leaking cock, licks tentatively, making them both shudder. “Willing to exalt, to glorify, to praise, with mouth and tongue, with words and breath, with body and soul…” He presses the flat of his tongue to the underside, making Dream gasp and claw into his shoulders as he licks a line up to the tip. When next Hob speaks his lips brush the head with each word. “I would worship you, my Dream.”
Any further answer is interrupted when Hob catches sight of Dream in his peripheral vision and his face breaks into a smile wider than any he has seen directed at Eliot. “My friend!” Hob stands to greet him, to bring him to the table with a hand on his shoulder. “It has been less than a week since we last met! I was not expecting to see you so soon! Not that I am complaining, mind you – I welcome your presence, day or night.” Hob turns to his table-mate. “Eliot! This is my oldest and dearest friend D-”
“Morpheus.” Dream interrupts, putting out a hand to shake as is current custom. Hob blinks at Dream, confusion passing across his face for only the slightest moment, before he motions for Dream to sit with him in his side of the booth.
Eliot shakes Dream’s hand amiably enough, but his eyes narrow at how close Dream slides in next to Hob.
Smaller bruises litter the top of Hob’s shoulders, his collarbones, underneath his jaw. Dream touches each one and remembers its unique taste, remembers making them with his hungry mouth as he unbuttons Hob’s shirt. They are barely inside his flat, crowded into the corner behind the shut front door. “Oh fuck,” Hob moans, arching into Dream’s touch, tugging at Dream’s hair. “If only I had known, love… I would have ventured to make you jealous sooner!”
Eliot leaves not ten minutes later and Hob gives Dream a pointed look. “Was that really necessary?”
Dream stares right back. “He dreams of having you. Not just carnally. Intimate in all senses of the word.”
One of Hob’s eyebrows makes a break for his hairline. “And that is a problem because…?” But he must see something in Dream’s expression, because Hob leans in. “Does that make you…” Hob licks his lips and Dream’s eyes follow the motion of their own volition. “... are you jealous, Dream?”
The last bruise is a nebula of colors along the side of Hob’s nape, created through repeated attention from Dream’s mouth as he fucks Hob through another of his own orgasms. Hob’s cock has long since been exhausted, but still he pleads for Dream to take him, to fill him, to use him. Still he wishes only to be a vessel for Dream’s pleasure. So as Dream drifts downward, finally sated, he purrs into Hob’s ear. “Mine.”
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When people remain so hard on Gale for 'still talking' about Mystra, it's just.....ohhh boy. Of all the main cast, Gale's definitely one (alongside Wyll) whose relationship with their authority figure, abuser, manipulator, keeper, however you want to call them, is routinely discredited. Their abuses aren't digestible enough. Isn't 'sympathetic' enough. Shadowheart and Astarion have clear overbearing abusers with exceedingly evil personalities. It's apparently 'easier' for some people to show compassion to a victim's hurts if they've the physical scars to prove it, if their abuser fits every bill of a sadist without any effort to hide said sadism. But show Gale, a man who looks older than essentially the whole party, who was with Mystra who appears younger, speaks in a polite/levelled tone, who was 'simply upset' with Gale for 'disrespecting her boundaries', and Gale just becomes...the hung up ex who fumbled a baddie. Y'know, barring the fact that she knew of him and very likely kept eyes on him as a boy, had never actually told Gale the book he was looking for was Karsite in nature, left him to die alone, then came back and said, 'hey, I'll forgive you if you literally blow yourself up by SINKING A DAGGER STRAIGHT INTO YOUR CHEST when I have every ability to remove the orb myself.' Barring, too, that beyond his lover, she was his GODDESS, a goddess who controlled his fealty and commanded his utmost devotion, he being Gale Dekarios, a mortal, human man who was undoubtedly manipulated. Being with someone like that will destroy anyone's reality. He scrabbled for any sort of approval from a far more powerful figure. Many victims of abuse do.
But hey. And don't get me started on Wyll. Man literally made a pact to save others, sacrificed his freedom for the benefit of all, and ended up hard leashed by a literal devil. A devil! Goddddd. Also iffy that Wyll had no agency to make his decision with his pact in act 3 while barely having any lines to speak of, and how Gale is encouraged to apologize and make amends with Mystra for his character arc. Hmm.
#OOC.#TBD.#My monthly rant and how I do not trust Gale in some ppl's hands#goes to sleep. 💤#personally i feel gale should never apologize. i feel gale should be petty and ruin mystras day.#i personally feel all vicfims of abuse should stick it to em. this whole 'healing is forgiving' arc is so LMAOAOA.#nooooo thank you. forgive never.#the narrative ppl push saying not only was gale not abused but HE was the abuser is so :))))#some ppl have never been in a deeply traumatic relationship before. and it shows! good for them tbh#but fucking have some compassion and critical thinking skills.
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i love your writing ❤❤
if youre able could you maybe write larissa with a normie reader who is new to jericho amd works at a bookstore? with some mutual pining friends to lovers type feels?
thank you and happy new year :)
Thank you! I genuinely loved writing this one. I hope you like it.
The little bell above the door jingled. You looked up, finger marking the page you’d been reading as you shifted a smile onto your face. Catching sight of the woman walking towards you, your smile settled into something more natural.
“Larissa.” The feel of her name on your tongue always felt decadent, like rich chocolate.
“Hello, love.”
The way she looked at you was heady, intoxicating, and you knew it wasn’t intentional. The warm light was like a halo behind her, making it seem as if she’d just stepped out of a dream. Her beautiful blue eyes were bight, practically sparkling as the corners crinkled with her smile.
“Back already?” you asked, going for teasing.
She chuckled, placing those gloved hands down on the counter in front of you. Such long fingers, so elegant, so enticing. You coughed, dragging your eyes away from them, trying to stop the heat rising in your cheeks. You didn’t need her catching you staring at her hands.
“What can I say? I can’t stay away,” she said, red lips curling up in a smile.
You let out a little breathless laugh, sure she had no idea what that sentiment did to you. She tilted her chin down, eyes demur as she looked down at her hands. You closed your book, pushing it to the side to give her your full attention. As if this woman didn’t always have your full attention.
“Were you looking for something specific or do you want some recommendations?” you asked.
“You know I love your recommendations,” she said, looking up at you from under lowered lashes. You felt your heart skip a beat.
“Do you want a ghost story?” you asked, waggling your eyebrows at her.
She laughed, head tilting back, and you had to swallow down the groan at the sight of the long arch of her neck. You felt a soft expression settle on your face and you had to wipe it away before she looked back to you. Busying yourself, you strode around the counter, eyes scanning over the shelves.
You could feel her following you as you wound further through the shop, heading towards the back, in a shadowy corner far from the prying eyes of the window. The boss had told you it was for atmosphere. You thought it was due to paranoia regarding the supernatural and wanting to keep those kinds of books far from searching eyes. Moralistic bullshit you weren’t used to before moving to Jericho. The entire town had such an odd relationship with the supernatural, as if they took it all too seriously.
Looking up, you saw the book you wanted for her. Rising up on tip toes, you reached for it, fingers scrabbling to make contact. You turned, hoping to find the little stool you usually used in these moments, only to catch a soft look on Larissa’s face as she watched you. She blinked, dragging her eyes away from you, cheeks flushing prettily under your gaze.
“Could you…” you asked, knowing she’d be able to reach it.
She stepped forward, not giving you time to move away from the bookcase. Her hand raised above your head, bringing her body close to yours, until it was almost brushing against yours. Your breath caught, looking up at her with wide eyes and open mouth. She was looking down at you too, eyes turning molten. It was like she was caging you against the shelves, pinning you there, making you feel hot all over.
“This one?” she asked, voice turning husky.
You glanced up, scared to keep looking at her in case you did something you’d regret. Her fingers were resting against the spine of The Turn of The Screw.
“Uh, yeah, that one,” you replied.
You watched her fingers pluck it from the shelf, still not able to face her yet, while so close. You followed it through the air, dragging your eyes up to her face. She was still watching you and you caught your lower lip between teeth to keep from ruining the moment. You watched as her eyes flicked down to it, darkening.
Maybe you weren’t as alone in your feelings as you thought.
“You think I’ll like this one?” she asked, whisper soft.
“I do,” you breathed.
“I trust you,” she said.
Was she getting closer? It felt like she was getting closer.
“You’ve never recommended something bad yet,” she murmured.
She was all around you, her scent surrounding you. Her heat was seeping into you, and her breath was stirring the hair against your neck. You shivered.
“Can I make a recommendation?” she asked.
All you could do was nod.
“I think you should kiss me now.”
You didn’t need to be told twice. You lifted onto your toes, hand landing on the side of her neck, thumb brushing against her racing pulse. The first brush of lips was sweet, soft, taking your breath away.
She pressed you against the shelving, her kisses turning hungry as she practically devoured you. You moaned into her mouth, tugging her closer, wondering if you could ignore the rest of your shift. She was making you want to.
“Fuck,” you groaned as she drew back, lipstick smudged, eyes smouldering.
“A good recommendation?” she asked.
“The best,” you sighed.
She lent forward, pressing a chaste kiss to your lips, and you smiled into it. The best recommendation for sure.
#larissa weems x reader#larissa weems imagine#larissa weems#principal weems x reader#principal weems imagine
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short & fluffy drabble request: lestat and armand cheer louis up from one of his morose moods by having a cozy night in and doing exactly what louis wants to do ❤️
I swear this started off more sweet and less silly but honestly the more I write Louis Grumpy Pants de Pointe du Lac, the less I'm able to take him seriously. Sometimes it's less about what Louis wants and more about what he needs.
"We cannot go to both," Armand follows Lestat around the room like a little duckling, quacking incessantly as he ruffs Lestat’s feathers.
"Sure we can," Lestat refuses to meet Armand's eyes even as he peers into the vanity mirror. He pops his collar, sliding a sleek black bow tie around the crisp white linen. "We all know how La Traviata ends. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter what time you pop into any of Beckett's plays— they're all nonsense, anyway. Delightful nonsense! We'll leave the opera and head over to the theater at the intermission."
"What an imbecilic idea," Armand scoffs. "The only way to ensure we enjoy neither performance."
"Give the opera tickets to Sybelle, then! It runs another week, we'll see it some other time. It’s opening night at the playhouse, and you know they need support this season, anyway— we can sneak into the donor lounge with that cute usher if you get bored."
"I don't get bored," Armand retorts with a slight pout in his features. "And we cannot go to the opera another night— Louis and I leave tomorrow!"
"Let Louis pick then!" Lestat throws up his hands, kicks impatiently at the leg of the nearby dresser as he spins to face the bed in the centre of the room, all riled and gnashing and wide-eyed on account of Armand's needling. “Come now, Louis, what will it be? Community theatre or opera? Your idiot lover double booked us.”
“I’m not your secretary, Lestat.”
“And thank god for that!” Lestat smiles a wolfish smile, hooks one arm around Armand’s waist and tugs him close. “Although I wouldn’t be opposed to getting you behind my desk. What do you think, Louis?”
They will always look to Louis in moments like this— Louis the tie-breaker, Louis the voice of reason amongst the bickering and squabbling...Louis, who is currently swaddled in bed, sheets up to his chin, playing scrabble on his phone held only inches away from his face.
"...I'm not going,” he mumbles, and immediately the tempest of hot air seems to deflate, and the room feels unnervingly still.
There is no other explanation needed after that; the sight of Louis alone is enough to strike away the prickly exteriors and paw at the tender, sensitive core in both of his lovers. These moods are more of a rare spell and less of an overall temperament these days, but when they come along, they come on strong and leave him feeling sour and hopeless and utterly resentful towards just about anything. He doesn’t dare look away from his phone, though he can feel both sets of eyes on him, and it only makes him want to burrow further beneath the covers and cocoon himself in the warm safety of their bed until the world feels a little less daunting.
A silent breath passes through the three of them, but Armand is the first to move. Still trapped under Lestat’s embrace, he reaches up, nimble fingers working with precision to untie the bow, then undo each button before he’s able to shed the finely tailored dress shirt to the ground and reach, instead, for the wrinkled old t-shirt draped on the back of a nearby chair.
There’s no protest from Lestat as he slips out of his Opening Night attire and grabs his sweatpants back up off the floor. Armand moves in tandem, shrugging off his velvet blazer in favor of one of Louis’ well-worn sweatshirts. And there’s nothing more to say, really, as they each crawl into bed, despite Louis’ groan of protest. There’s a softness, in fact, in Lestat’s eyes, that seems rare and beautiful to Armand.
Lestat peels back the covers just enough to kiss at Louis’ temple, and for some reason that alone makes Armand’s chest ache.
Come, says Lestat, in that voice Louis will never be able to hear, He needs us both.
“I don’t need your pity.” Louis whines as Lestat shimmies under the blankets to his right while Armand joins on the left. “Go see the opera, or the play. Leave me alone. I’m serious.”
His hair musses like a great lion’s mane against the pillows as he turns his head from side to side to glower at the two of them.
“Fresh out of pity, I’m afraid,” Lestat sighs. “Only love.”
“Disgusting,” Louis frowns.
“What would you like to do, Louis?” Armand smoothes his hand up Louis’ arm, presses a gentle kiss to the edge of his shoulder.
“Nothing.” Louis grabs at his phone once more, lets the bright colors illuminate his pallid skin as he holds it obstinately right in front of his nose. “I don’t want to do anything. I’m going to waste the evening just like this, thank you very much.”
“Very well, then.” Lestat can’t help but laugh at the cartoonish scowl across Louis’ face. He never was as expressive as Lestat, though on rare occasions he does a fine job of projecting his emotions as a means to ward off unwanted confrontation. The only thing missing, it seems, is a little rain cloud to hover above his head.
But Armand and Lestat understand, they always do. And so they sit in silence, holding one another, counting the slow rise and fall of Louis’ chest between them. The Opera would have started five minutes ago. The playhouse would have been opening the house.
But still they sit.
And still Louis does not budge.
Until about three hours in when, like a child exhausted by their own tantrum, Louis heaves a heavy sigh, throws his dead phone into the sheets at the foot of the bed, and grabs the pillow from behind him and smashes it back down on his face.
A minute goes by in absolute silence. Then another. And then, just as Louis inhales another deep sigh, the pillow is lifted from his face. Above him, Armand stares down, brow cocked and head tilted ever so slightly to the side. He’s contemplating something, but before Louis has the opportunity to ask, the pillow comes right back down on his face with a satisfying TWACK!
“Armand!”
Louis grapples at the pillow, stunned and floundering like a fish out of water to the tune of Lestat’s hyena-cackles. But as soon as he’s recovered from the attack, there is that sharpness in his eyes once more as he grips the pillow in anticipation. He flies at Armand first, of course, but suddenly there’s another SMACK against the back of his head, and he finds himself blindly whirling around to lob a hit right over top of those pretty blond curls.
It’s beautiful chaos for one glorious minute. A searing blaze of limbs and pillows, feathers and sheets, laughter and screeches, shallow breath and beating hearts. And when it’s over, Armand and Lestat lie side by side, on their stomachs, pinned beneath their victor.
“Much better,” Armand laughs, and Louis can feel it shake the bed.
“If we leave now, we can make it to the Opening Night afterparty.” Lestat jokes, to which Louis responds with a swift smack of a pillow and a long, crushing embrace.
“Don’t even think about it.”
#my writing#drabble#drabbles#loustat#loumand#louis has two hands#<- my louis/armand/lestat tag <3#THANK YOU FOR THIS LMAO I LOVE THEMMMMMMM
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Garthaglir, beloved😭😭😭. I love how he's living a peaceful life (but don't test him) and I adore headcanons about orcs who aren't dehumanized (good job!). Does he have any family? Siblings, parents, lovers, friends? I want him to be happy 😭😭😭.
Thanks for the ask, I'm so glad that people like Garthaglir! He has parents, and a twin brother– though unfortunately, he hasn't seen them since coming to Rivendell. He does hope that eventually they'll be together again though, even if it takes until Sauron falls.
He does have plenty of friends in Rivendell. As I said before, he's close to Elrond and Erestor, who also spend a lot of time in Rivendell's library and archives; they have a monthly book club and play some very intense games of Quenya scrabble.
He's also close with a lot of the other orcs living in Rivendell. This includes Glamour (an orcish guard who's lived in Rivendell since its founding) and Kemendil (former drill sergeant and current head cook).
He also has Mittens, of course.
He is very happy in Rivendell, rest assured. He works in the library and has plenty of time to relax, or work on his own projects. One of those projects is an appeal he plans to present to the Valar about why orcs should be allowed in Valinor.
But that's probably also a subject for another post.
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taylor swift asks!
i made this in lover era but adding a couple new ones/made adjustments for newer days. enjoy!
debut: when did you find out your life’s passion?
fearless: what is one thing you did that scared you but you did it anyway?
speak now: what is something you did by yourself that you are most proud of?
red: what life event put through through hell but you ended up better for it?
1989: what makes you feel most free/at ease?
reputation: have you ever had a bunch of people believe a lie about you? how did you deal with it?
lover: what type of love means the most to you right now?
folklore: have you ever shocked the people around you with a surprise project/life event?
evermore: what was your lockdown escapism?
taylor's version: which taylor's version do you like the most/are you looking forward to most?
i'd lie: if you know the unreleased songs, which do you hope taylor releases from the vault?
beautiful eyes: what cheesy/lame thing gives you joy?
the holiday collection: what is your favorite holiday?
meredith, olivia & benjamin: do you have a pet?
13: what superstition do you hold on to the most?
polaroids: what retro/vintage thing do you particularly enjoy?
hot glue gun scar: what is the funniest injury you ever got?
mean or shake it off: do you like to stand up for yourself to people who are rude to you or do you just move on from them?
b-stage: what acoustic/lowkey song gives you the most comfort?
sparkly dresses: what is your favorite unconventional clothing in your wardrobe?
baking: what is your favorite food to make? includes drinks, food, dessert, etc.
grammys: what is your biggest achievement?
tim mcgraw: what old work of yours are you still proud of to this day? it can be a poem, an edit, a painting, an essay, an award you won in elementary school!
love story: what classic tale would you want to change? fairytales, plays, movies, etc!
long live: do you have someone who has been your rock for many years? the answer can be your mom, your cat, your best friend, even you!
all too well: what do you remember like it was yesterday?
clean: have you struggled with letting something/someone go? how did you get out? or how do you plan on letting go?
i did something bad: what is something you did that people told you you shouldn’t have but you nonetheless enjoyed it?
a girl called girl: what did you create when you were young that you are surprised by today?
jersey shore: did you have any summer traditions with your family or friends growing up?
christmas tree farm: how did where you grew up shape you into who you are?
human-sized bird cage: do you have decor that is a little (or a lotta) out of the ordinary? what is it?
scrabble: favourite board game?
wonderstruck: what ~fancy~ word do you like the most?
wonderstruck enchanted: what is your go-to perfume?
taylor: how do you reference Taylor Swift to your friends/family? first-name basis? her full name?
secret messages: what does no one know about you? this can be lighthearted!
F. Scott Fitzgerald: favourite author?
the story’s got dust on every page: what is your favourite book or short story?
red lipstick: what style choice does everyone know you for?
so overnight you look like a sixties' queen: which taylor album aesthetic do you like the most?
sharpie eyeliner: what beauty faux pas have you made?
candid: favourite candid?
superstar: favourite red carpet look?
old fashioned: (if you have had alcohol before) favourite cocktail? if not, favourite soda/carbonated beverage?
drinking beer out of plastic cups: (if you have had alcohol before) favourite beer? if not, favourite juice?
i'm spilling wine in the bathtub: (if you have had alcohol before) favourite wine? if not, tea or coffee?
chicken tenders: what could you eat everyday?
cheesecake: favourite food?
love actually: favourite movie?
little mermaid: childhood hero?
12/13/89: what is your birthday? bonus for telling us your astrological sign!
country accent: what old habit did you have makes you cringe now?
chai tea eggnog cookies: favorite dessert?
double jointed elbows: what is your “party trick” or just a weird thing you can do/your body does?
teffy: what weird nickname do you have/have you had?
got a long list starbucks lovers: what is your starbucks order?
track 5: favourite track 5?
f.r.i.e.n.d.s: favourite TV show?
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THT : A Gothic Fairy tale Pt 2
THT is a bloodthirsty gothic fairy tale made flesh. Last time we discussed our classic fairy tale opener and the cursed kingdom that is Gilead, today it’s our villains.
We last left our protagonist languishing in her tower alone, no books, no music, no 5G…..nothing. Her jailers: Fred and Serena, are for all intents and purposes your basic Evil King and Queen.
The character of the Evil King is generally cold, distant, selfish and greedy…..everyone please say hello to Fred Waterford. Our resident Evil King is kept busy, for the most part, with day to day Kingly duties such as paperwork, meetings, diplomacy and general maintenance of the iron fist that governs his kingdom. He’s not overly concerned with the various maneuverings that occur under his own roof, so long as they don’t cause a scandal or endanger the throne.
Fred allows Serena to run the household, but takes her finger the second she oversteps outside the family “castle” and causes a ruckus.
He’s the one who carries the keys, he determines who gets to taste freedom in however many increments, as demonstrated by his nightly scrabble tournaments and jaunts to Jezebels. These dominant evil characters always have an achilles heel, a weakness that serves as a kind of karmic retribution in the end, and for Fred it’s June.
By S3 he’s lost all control, his obsession has made him reckless and blind, consequently the forbidden lovers have now made off with the keys and gone full Prison Break.
Serena is our Evil Queen, this job description entails kidnapping, imprisonment, torture and general plotting. All of this is usually as a result of insecurity, vanity or just your run of the mill greed, and as season 1 - 4 clearly demonstrates, Serena is an absolute rockstar at it.
The very first thing Serena does is assert her dominance and threaten severe repercussions if she’s not entirely satisfied with every little thing.
Our Serena may not have had a magic mirror to cackle madly into, but she does spend a good deal of time playing “who’s the fairest?”, only to be bitterly disappointed when Fred’s male gaze repeatedly tells her it is June. To add insult to injury by the end of season 1, the fair maiden has stolen her loyal knights fealty and try as she might, it seems there is absolutely NOTHING she can do to get it back.
There’s a tradition of these villainous characters wanting to deceitfully acquire something that the innocent protagonist rightfully possesses. Kiddy napping sits comfortably in the top five evil acts of any plot line playbook and lo and behold here we have Serena’s endless battle to wrestle Nicole from June’s vice like grip. This is where Serena enlists the assistance of our resident “witch in the woods”, Aunt Lydia and her dubious coven.
It was interesting to note that Serena’s endeavours to acquire Nicole for herself ceased in S5 just as the writers sought to gradually redeem her character. Unfortunately I can’t forget that this is the same woman who used our protagonist as a breeding mare, held her down to be violently raped while heavily pregnant and threatened to put a ring in her mouth.
Things don’t generally end well for these power drunk machiavellian characters, they’re usually killed or suffer great misfortune. In some tales we see them serving out a life of servitude to the ones they have mistreated, so while Fred was rightfully murdered, Serena may be spared to live a life of sacrifice and service to June.
Next time I’ll be discussing the “hero” and the quest.
#june osborne#june x nick#nick x june#hulu streaming#osblaine#max minghella#nick blaine#serena joy#the handmaid's tale#elisabeth moss#bruce miller#tv series#hulu series#villain#brothers grimm#fairy tale vibes#fairy tale aesthetic#handmaid's tale#handmaid's on hulu#hulu tv
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Run Away
This is an ask from someone that requested to remain anonymous! Jin chases after a run-away Emma. I've placed this story after the dramatic end of Jin's route, so if you haven't read it there could be spoilers! Approx. 2500 words of angst and fluff.
Jin met with his border-spy over drinks. He preferred to get reports outside the palace, safe from Sariel’s prying eyes. Most of the information was troubling. It seemed that Obsidian was in the midst of another drought and that meant more raiding parties and refugees.
“Did you have a chance to stop and check on Emma and her library?” Jin swirled the whiskey in his cup, ignoring the loneliness that welled up in his chest at her absence.
The agent grinned widely. “I did! She wasn’t there though. Looked like she went on some kinda trip.”
Jin felt the blood drain from his face. “What?” The question sounded like it came from someone else, someone a thousand miles away.
“The place was all closed up. Locked tighter than a nun’s - ah, anyway, no one was around. You didn’t know she was going someplace?” The spy blinked in confusion.
“Where-” Jin cleared his throat, scrabbling for a hold on his emotions. “Where do you think she went? Any sign”
“Umm, boss?” He looked more confused than ever, but shrugged and continued. “I’d say if there was some clue. She didn’t leave a sign, if that’s what you’re asking.” He set his drink down and leaned forward. “You didn’t know?”
The prince smiled, trusting his mischievous grin to hide his turmoil. “Of course I knew. Just wasn’t sure if she was back yet.” He cleared his throat. “So, anything else to report?”
“Nope. That’s about it. You want me to head back out again?”
Jin shook his head. “Take a week off in town. You’ve earned it.”
The agent grinned. “Thanks boss! I’ll do that. And hey, I’m sure she’ll be back soon!”
It took every ounce of control Jin had to nod and smile. Once the agent was out of sight, he slumped in his chair. She left? She hadn’t said a word! And she wrote him letters every week. She told him about the kids that came to learn how to read and the book merchants she knew, and even about new food she tried. There hadn’t been a whisper about a trip anywhere.
He tried to count back to his last visit. It had been right at the start of summer, almost a month ago now. They spent two whole weeks making love. Late mornings lazing with her in bed. Bathtimes that were as dirty as clean. Bedtime where sleep came only after they did, more than once preferably. She hadn’t been unhappy then, had she?
He tried to remember if there was any sign. The possibilities tore at him. She might have been kidnapped. Or maybe she was tired of being the secret lover of a prince. Or perhaps the rumors and gossip finally got to her . . .
Jin left the tavern and hurried back to the palace. There was only one choice for him now. He had to find her. His hands shook and his chest felt tight as he made his way home.
It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t be gone. He imagined her as she always was when he made time to see her. Though it was childish, Jin felt as if Emma would be waiting for him - all he had to do was ride out to her house. And if she wasn’t there . . . no, he would find her, he told himself.
He went straight to the palace stables and began to ready his horse. The grooms tried to argue with him, telling him it was too late to go riding, he was too drunk, and so on. Jin ignored them right up until Leon pulled him away from the tack room.
“What are you doing, Jin? It’s the middle of the night!”
Jin pushed Leon away and tried to get back to the saddles. He needed one. To ride out to Emma. He must have been saying his thoughts aloud, because Leon laughed.
“Missing your girl? I’m not surprised. I couldn’t have stayed away so long. But you need to wait for morning. You won’t do her any good if you break your neck riding in the dark.” Leon tried to guide him out of the stables.
“No, no - I - Leon, I have to go. She’s . . . she’s missing.” Jin’s voice cracked on the last word, as if he had to force it out.
Leon stopped. “Are you serious? Did someone take her? We have to get her back! Jin . . .”
“I know. I know!” Jin fell to his knees. Shame choked him. And worry. “I should have been there. I should have brought her here. She was alone and - and vulnerable and now something has happened.”
Leon pulled Jin to his feet. “We’re going out there and bringing her back to the palace. Come on.”
Jin nodded, too numb for words. The two of them saddled horses and together with their personal guards, they rode out to the border town. Even traveling the main roads, it was slow going in the dark. The prince had plenty of time to drown in the mire of his own thoughts.
This was his fault. He hadn’t been cautious. He let himself fall in love with a common girl. He was a coward, too afraid to keep his lover at court. The guilt and shame weighed on his heart, pulling him deep. Jin felt as if he were suffocating. His chest hurt like someone punched him.
And the question that spun round and round his mind, what would he do about it now that she was gone?
They arrived at the bordertown library by midmorning. The library looked closed, the doors and windows shut tight. Jin leapt off his horse and hurried to the door. Leon and the soldiers stayed back to give him some privacy.
Jin unlocked the door and stepped inside. The faint smell of beeswax and dusty pages greeted his nose. The shelves were largely empty, only a few volumes lay scattered around. Last time he’d been here, the shelves were full to bursting with books. His belly tightened in sudden fear.
He ran up the steps to the private rooms on the top floor and flung open the door. Dim light shone through the cracks of the closed shutters. The sitting room furniture looked dusty and unused. Jin nearly tripped in his haste to check the bedroom. If she wasn’t up, she would be there.
“Emma?” His voice shook as he called her name, then he pushed open the door to her room. Their room.
The bed was bare of sheets. A heavy comforter lay folded beside the footboard. A cold lantern sat on the bedside table and the doors of armoire hung open. There was no one here. It looked as if no one had been here for awhile. But there was something. An envelope.
Jin stared at it as if it were a snake. The ink on the front of the envelope swam in his vision, resolving into his name. The handwriting was neat, careful down to the little curlicue on the ‘J’. He reached for it and in a moment of courage, tore it open.
The letter inside was brief, the few words a bare cover to the despair beneath them. Jin took a strangled breath as he read. ‘Dearest Jin, I will miss you more than there are words to say. I am sorry for the hurt this will cause you but it will be worse if I don’t go. Please don’t follow. I love you and always will.’ Her signature was perfect save for the stain of a tear drop.
She hadn’t said anything about why she left. Part of him wondered if it wouldn’t be better to respect her request. To let her go as she asked. Don’t follow me, the letter said. But he couldn’t do it. He needed to see her as much as he needed to breathe.
“So she ran,” Leon said matter of factly when Jin came out alone. “That girl is something else.” He shook his head. “Where do you think she went?”
“A sensible person would go to Jadeite from here but -”
“But we both know Emma isn’t a sensible girl.” Leon gave a small smile. “Let’s split. I’ll head south along the border and look for her. You head west into Obsidian and see if anyone has seen her. I’ll send word here if I find her.”
It was a good plan, good as anything. “She couldn’t have gotten far. My agent was here a few days ago.” Jin motioned to his guards. “Let’s go.”
He and his soldiers packed away their armor and covered the emblems of their rank and service. Two men stayed back, to receive and send messages should either prince find her - or find themselves in trouble. For the rest, they were just travelers now- travelers looking to meet a friend that went ahead of them. They had to hope the story would hold as they ventured into enemy territory.
A few hours into Obsidian and Jin knew he was on the right path. Several people recalled seeing a lovely girl heading west, traveling alone. She had a cart and a mule, which meant she couldn’t be moving as fast as the prince on horseback.
Normally, the prince would halt every few hours to stretch their legs and walk the horses, but today, he barely noticed the discomfort of a long ride. He had one goal and it burned in his heart, a beacon that drew him forward. He had to find her.
They traveled like that for weeks, and the weeks turned into months. Evading Obsidianite patrols, questioning villagers and others on the road. Some people remembered her. The girl with a cart full of books. Jin felt as if he were close some days, and others he despaired of ever seeing her again.
The soldiers pulled to a halt as the sun set on another day of hard riding. Another cold night on the hard ground. Jin passed around a flask, something to warm their insides if nothing else. As they settled in to sleep for the night, he caught sight of a campfire not too distant.
A lonely point of flickering light in the vast emptiness of night on the road.
Jin went to check it out. He knew it was her. He could feel it in the way his breath trembled, the weakness in his knees at each step closer. He stopped just beyond the ring of light.
The donkey was tied to the cart and cropping at the sad, wilted grass beside the road. Emma sat on a small crate, holding a bowl of something that smelled delicious. She wasn’t eating, just holding it and staring into the fire. She wore a voluminous traveler’s coat, at least two sizes too big for her, and it swallowed her small frame. She looked warm and comfortable, if not happy.
“I can hear you, Jin Grandet. Are you going to come sit down or should I stand?” She didn’t look over at him.
He came and sat down a little ways from her. His throat felt tight and hot, and his eyes stung. Anger boiled in his chest, trying to replace the hurt there. “Why did you leave me?” The question tore from his throat, gravelly and raw.
She still didn’t look at him. “I had to. I didn’t want -” she swallowed, “I didn’t want to hurt you. I still don’t.” She finally turned her head, but her gaze was distant as if fixed on some far point.
Jin didn’t know what to say. “I don’t understand.”
She shifted on her seat, letting the coat fall open. Under the heavy fabric, he could see the firm roundness of her belly straining beneath her dress. A low-slung bump that wasn’t there when he’d last seen her.
“Is that - are you -” The words felt stuck in his throat. His vision narrowed to a dark tunnel, and Emma was the light at the end. He reached for her, his hands shaking.
Emma finally looked at him, really seeing him for the first time since he found her. “I am. I realized I was pregnant and,” she took a trembling breath, “I decided this was for the best. I don’t want to go through what your mother did. To suffer that, to make you go through it too. I thought if I left, you would never know and everything - everything would be ok.” She wiped at her eyes, making sure she did not cry.
She was right, of course. Court gossip was vicious and it had very real consequences. But seeing her like this, so close, but out of reach, he suddenly did not care. “Let them talk,” he said softly, still finding certainty. “Let them talk.” His voice firmed. “I don’t care what they say. I want you at my side. I want to be there for - for -” His eyes fell to her swollen belly, still unable to process the fact that he would be a father.
“Are you crazy? What’s to stop them from pulling us apart, like they did with the king and your mother?”
“Me.” He leaned forward and took her hand in his. “I’ve lived my life terrified of what might happen. Afraid of love, commitment, of having a family. But you make me brave. Let me protect you.”
“You aren’t scared now?”
“I’m more afraid than I’ve ever been,” Jin admitted. “But the thing that frightens me most is losing you.”
She bowed her head, hair falling in her face. “Jin, I’ll never be good enough for you. Why won’t you let me go? You can find someone better. With the right blood. Someone worthy.” The tears fell. “I tried so hard . . . but - but all I’m worth is being y-your mistress. I c-can’t . . . anymore . . .”
Jin closed the distance between them, taking her into his arms. “You are the best person I know, common blood be damned. I am trying to be worthy of you.” He kissed her cheeks, her forehead, tasting the salt of her tears and sweat.
She buried her face in his shoulder, shaking with the force of her tears.
“Give me the chance to make this right? To be a husband to you? A father?” His voice broke at the last, and he felt his own tears well up. Those words still made him feel weak, made him want to run, but he could do anything, he thought, with Emma at his side.
Her reply was muffled by his shoulder, rendered meaningless.
He pulled back enough to see her expression, afraid of what he might find there. She had every reason to be upset, he saw that now. Promising his love these past years, but too afraid to make it public. He’d let her think she wasn’t good enough. That the opinion of nobles mattered more than her heart. Jin knew he was wrong and this was his last chance to make it right. “No more hiding, Emma. Will you come back to the palace with me?”
“Yes.”
He kissed her. She kissed him. Their lips met with all the longing that months apart left in two young lovers. With all the passion that followed after coming so close to losing one another. The kiss was a promise. A beginning. A future neither imagined for themselves, but one they would meet together no matter the consequences.
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Just read your head canon for Regency Elvis and I’m absolutely intrigued as to why he’d be from Yorkshire (as someone who was born and bred there). Please, please explain your thinking behind this? (FYI, it’s the greatest county in all of England, but still ;) )
Ooooh my, you’ve fully opened the nerd gates wide with this one, my dear, prepare thyself for an onslaught of nonsensical ramblings. Btw, I it’s beyond neat that you’re native to the coolest county in England. I’m chuffed just to be talking with you.
Opening arguments: stereotypes, that’s what I have to offer, but they’re decent and rather sexy ones so bear with me.
I’ve been fascinated by Yorkshire for much of my reading-life and it started with being an unapologetic fan of the Yorkist Dynasty, then an avid researcher into the notorious Percy family of the north east, a dive into Northumbrian history in general and ultimately latching onto the Brontë lore of the last few centuries. All suggest Yorkshire produces badasss troublemakers of the best sort. I love it. And Elvis fits right in with that.
But two more things.
I once did a rather deep dive into the folkways and immigration patterns of certain areas in Great Britain coming to America and the results were fascinating. Much of British aristocracy, along with Huguenots from France, established our Southern American gentry. Predominately these British aristocrats migrated in the first wave during the Virginia Plantation of the 1600’s and settled the affluent Tidewater regions, as well as the coastal Carolina’s. That left our southern backwoods such as inland Carolina’s, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc. to be colonized by the second wave that were predominantly hard scrabble, hard working, hard loving commoners from the north of England, Scotland and Ireland.
So, y’all’s north settled our south -or the south as most of us would have known it in the 1800’s, only 1% being aristocratic or owning slaves, living the genteel lifestyle that’s now so typified. So in that way the Presley’s fit into northern England due to roots and culture if not much else.
But lastly, allow me to gush about accents for a moment. Yorkshire accents I once heard a professor say don’t so much have a brogue as they have a drawl. Perhaps the only drawl in all of Britain, and any bit of research proves this with the way y’all elongate your speech and round your sentences compared to the rest of the country. If I had to choose between listening to Sean Bean or Alex Turner talk verses the poshest heartthrob from Surrey -I’d chose the north any day. Y’all have the same gritty, earthy sweetness that a true southern drawl has, and in fact, we owe our drawl to ya.
Please feel free to ask more or add your own insights as this is coming from a southern girl who only ever got to drive through yorkshire while booking it up to Scotland. You’re the expert here.
While we’re at it…here’s a poll for the period drama lovers:
#regency Elvis#period drama#POLL#brontë sisters#jane eyre#Heathcliff#wuthering heights#Yorkshire#elvis fanfiction#interactions#elvis presley#asks#elvis imagine#north and south#elizabeth gaskell#folkways
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Time for me to rate different popular book tropes on a scale of 1-10 ✨
Y'all are free to agree or disagree.
The Chosen One: Eh, I mean, there are good books/TV shows/movies using this trope, but why does it always have to be a teenager or somebody really young? /rh. Give me a middle-aged woman or something [6.5/10]
Enemies to Lovers: I personally only like it when there are queer undertones (or overtones) to it because if I wanted to see straight couples argue and insult each other and then forget about it seconds later in real time, I'd go to my parents' house /hj. Don't get me started on Booktok (they are literally incapable of doing this trope well). [Hetero- 2.5/10; Queer- 7.5/10]
Lovers to Enemies: The drama. The heartbreak. Scrabbling for what is left before it slips away and it's too late to save it... Look, I'm not normally one for romance--- HOWEVER, this always gets me (especially if done well). [9/10]
Love Triangles: Kill it with fire. [1/10]
Redemption Arc: We've all seen Zuko's character arc--- need I say anything more? But seriously, this trope has real potential to be amazing in the right hands. Not all antagonists deserve redemption, but if you have a strong arc, I can be convinced to ignore the batshit evil they've probably done. /hj. [8/10]
Found Family: Oh, I love me some found family--- with or without a happy ending. People of different backgrounds come together after getting over their differences and realize that the bonds they've created are stronger than what anyone else could give them?? I eat that shit up. [8/10]
Main Character Having Obvious Plot Armor: Look, this may not be a specific trope, but we've seen/read what it is so we know. I get it--- the main character needs some level of plot armor to get through the story (that is if you don't plan on killing them off), but you cannot sit there and tell me that the protagonist managed to get away from 10 people shooting at them unscathed /nbh. Make it excusable/believable. [Overall, 4.5/10]
Unlikely Allies: Literally enemies to lovers minus the lovers part and now the 'hero' and the 'villain' are confused about why they're friends now. Seriously though, I really enjoy seeing people with contrasting personalities or motives being brought together by outside forces to work together to a 'common goal'. It doesn't even require for it to be romantic--- which I really like. It's great. [7/10]
Unreliable Narrator: Being gaslit by a book? Honestly? I like it. [7.5/10]
The Red Herring: If done well, this trope keeps me hooked. I particularly like this in thrillers and horror novels. However, if you just have a red herring just to throw people off and never bring it up again or it has no ties to the rest of the story, then why? (If that makes sense) Anyways, shout out to Beyond Evil for making my brain mush with the amount of plot twists and red herrings it contains. [Overall, 5.5/10]
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Audrey’s 2022 Favorites
There were so many books I loved in 2022, and it was quite the task to narrow it down. After much pondering, I settled on four books to for my favorites list:
Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf
Salaam Reads || Audrey's Review
CATALYST
13 points
noun: a person or thing that precipitates an event or change
When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend’s death, it’s with the intention to heal and move on with her life. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to choose the very same competition where said best friend, Trina Low, died. It might be even though Najwa’s trying to change, she’s not ready to give up Trina just yet.
But the same can’t be said for all the other competitors. With Trina, the Scrabble Queen herself, gone, the throne is empty, and her friends are eager to be the next reigning champion. All’s fair in love and Scrabble, but all bets are off when Trina’s formerly inactive Instagram starts posting again, with cryptic messages suggesting that maybe Trina’s death wasn’t as straightforward as everyone thought. And maybe someone at the competition had something to do with it.
As secrets are revealed and the true colors of her friends are shown, it’s up to Najwa to find out who’s behind these mysterious posts—not just to save Trina’s memory, but to save herself.
The Undead Truth of Us by Britney S. Lewis
Disney-Hyperion || Audrey's Review
Death was everywhere. They all stared at me, bumping into one another and slowly coming forward.
Sixteen-year-old Zharie Young is absolutely certain her mother morphed into a zombie before her untimely death, but she can't seem to figure out why. Why her mother died, why her aunt doesn't want her around, why all her dreams seem suddenly, hopelessly out of reach. And why, ever since that day, she's been seeing zombies everywhere.
Then Bo moves into her apartment building―tall, skateboard in hand, freckles like stars, and an undeniable charm. Z wants nothing to do with him, but when he transforms into a half zombie right before her eyes, something feels different. He contradicts everything she thought she knew about monsters, and she can't help but wonder if getting to know him might unlock the answers to her mother's death.
As Zharie sifts through what's real and what's magic, she discovers a new truth about the world: Love can literally change you―for good or for dead.
In this surrealist journey of grief, fear, and hope, Britney S. Lewis's debut novel explores love, zombies, and everything in between in an intoxicating amalgam of the real and the fantastic.
Our Shadows Have Claws: 15 Latin American Monster Stories edited by Yamile Saied Méndez & Amparo Ortiz
Algonquin Young Readers || Audrey's Review
Fifteen original short stories from YA superstars, featuring Latine mythology’s most memorable monsters
From zombies to cannibals to death incarnate, this cross-genre anthology offers something for every monster lover. In Our Shadows Have Claws, bloodthirsty vampires are hunted by a quick-witted slayer; children are stolen from their beds by “el viejo de la bolsa” while a military dictatorship steals their parents; and anyone you love, absolutely anyone, might be a shapeshifter waiting to hunt.
The worlds of these stories are dark but also magical ones, where a ghost-witch can make your cheating boyfriend pay, bullies are brought to their knees by vicious wolf-gods, a jar of fireflies can protect you from the reality-warping magic of a bruja—and maybe you’ll even live long enough to tell the tale. Set across Latin America and its diaspora, this collection offers bold, imaginative stories of oppression, grief, sisterhood, first love, and empowerment.
Strike the Zither by Joan He
Roaring Brook Press || Audrey's Review
The year is 414 of the Xin Dynasty, and chaos abounds. A puppet empress is on the throne. The realm has fractured into three factions and three warlordesses hoping to claim the continent for themselves.
But Zephyr knows it’s no contest.
Orphaned at a young age, Zephyr took control of her fate by becoming the best strategist of the land and serving under Xin Ren, a warlordess whose loyalty to the empress is double-edged—while Ren’s honor draws Zephyr to her cause, it also jeopardizes their survival in a war where one must betray or be betrayed. When Zephyr is forced to infiltrate an enemy camp to keep Ren’s followers from being slaughtered, she encounters the enigmatic Crow, an opposing strategist who is finally her match. But there are more enemies than one—and not all of them are human.
#queen of the tiles#the undead truth of us#our shadows have claws#strike the zither#weneeddiversebooks#book lists
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😸anon here! Had a Reo thought out of nowhere:
I imagine him him to be a clingy, almost obsessive type of lover (even when he’s not yan). And definitely the type to show you off and super into pda.
What about you?
I think of Reo as a secure lover. Conversations that seem boring - like you could be explaining a non fiction book to him and he would be invested in it. Discussion about what’s happening to companies, business model ideas- those are the things that interest him. But he also likes mediocre things like playing scrabble or Pictionary on evenings with you by a lamplight on the carpet or discussions about anything and everything.
He’s adjustable that way, and I think of him as an old school lover; he falls once and he falls hard. It’s difficult for him to love again.
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FFXIV Write: Day 12, Miss the Boat
Took the prompt very literally. Thancred x Urianger, explicit, set in post-EW vagueness.
Thancred threw back his head and gasped as Urianger pushed into him, forceful, intent, one thrust and he was losing his mind. And his lover didn’t let him rest before driving into him with such a sharp movement Thancred’s legs almost slipped from where they crossed behind the elezen’s hips. Pressed up against a wall in a nook not far from the docks, killing time before their ship to the next adventure. Urianger had been frisky all morning, perhaps no more than usual but a sudden problem when they had places to be, pressing kisses to Thancred’s bare shoulders as he brushed his teeth and washed his face, crowding him against the door when they were supposed to leave to get breakfast, and making them both late for every appointment that morning as they prepared to leave on the next phase of their travels by stealing kisses whenever he could. And Thancred had never been one to deny him.
Not when he’d found himself scrabbling against the crates that made their secret hideyhole, tugging Urianger’s hair as the astrologian ruined the knees of his robes sucking him until he had to beg him to stop or that would be it for this encounter. And, oh, he was still sore from the night before, still walking cautiously and blushing when anyone looked at him too long because he knew they knew that Urianger had tumbled him hard the night before, and now those long, deft fingers were inside him again, and Thancred buried his face in Urianger’s chest and felt a greater sense of clarity of character and purpose than he had even meeting Hydaelyn, knowing that he could have this every night he chose to spend with Urianger, forever, and not just the nights. The many strange spots across the world where they’d desperately rutted against each other with no time to spare, and yet finding it impossible to move until they’d sated the ravenous hunger they set off in each other.
Sometimes Thancred couldn’t take his hands off Urianger, teasing his fingers along the edges of his jewellery, running his fingers up and down his back and dipping them beneath the fabric to explore hidden spaces. Sometimes, like this morning, it was Urianger who seemed unable to move more than a few yalms away before returning to touch Thancred, gentle brushes of the back of his hand across his cheek and a look that melted all his resistance in moments, sometimes needy, desperate touches, insistent that nothing would do at all until they had fallen into bed together. And when he’d gotten better at stifling his own moans and cries, not even beds but any space where they might swive uninterrupted, the world moving on around them but they were cocooned in each other.
Here on the docks they had arrived with almost enough time to spare, the ship captain telling them they left with the tide when they’d booked passage, and the inlets of the harbour had still been exposed shingles, the sea withdrawn from the beaches. They could have bought coffee, they could have gone for a nice walk to the colossus of the Scholar to reminisce on times gone by and walked back in time for final boarding.
Instead Urianger had hooked a finger into Thancred’s collar and given him a gentle tug in the direction of the stacks of crates the gleaners were now moving with rather less frenetic activity and not at all this early in the morning, and Thancred had followed him feeling the blood sink down in his body until his trousers we too tight to bear and his hands were shaking with want to touch Urianger. To hike up his skirts and kiss his arms and his neck and finally his beautiful smug face, so pleased with himself for spotting a deserted location to kiss and – well, it was never just going to be a few kisses, Thancred realised, grinding his hips down on Urianger until he saw stars and Urianger breathed out a curse to the Twelves in foul (for him) words that only Thancred got to hear, his sign he’s done all the right things to Urianger.
This secluded spot beyond the docks had a view of one of the small harbours that lead down to Labyrinthos, currently with a few empty boats bobbing in it. As the one being pushed against the wall, it was Thancred’s duty to at least occasionally look past Urianger’s sweat-sheen shoulders to see if anyone was nearby, but the quiet lapping of the tamed sea is the only noise back there. That and the obscene sounds they’re making, rocking together and kissing, groaning and whispering.
Enjoying being lifted up, he closed his lips around the tip of Urianger’s long ear, grazed his teeth and pulled, and the shudder Urianger responded with let him know exactly how close he was. He didn’t hold back after that, gathering pace and forcing Urianger to rock back into him with ever more intensity, he had the presence of mind to catch his own spend in a handkerchief, as Urianger trembled and huffed and emptied into him. They caught their breath for a long while, breathing in sync, still locked together, moving in small sympathetic motions as they let the high pass and slowly came back to themselves.
Urianger kissed Thancred again, contemplative, long, stroking his hair like he was a stray creature that needed gentle taming touches. Thancred broke the kiss and looked into his startling gold eyes and felt his breath knocked right back out of him at the love he saw there, the gentle passion now that the urgency had faded from their encounter, that feeling that they could stare at each other all day and that was all that mattered. He felt like he could swive him again in minutes if Urianger was up for it.
He carefully disentangled himself from Urianger and they did their best to clean up, greatly assisted by the magic of a scholar too lazy to do his own laundry when a spell might whisk filth away. And gods knew how much filth they’d created in the last… However long they had been here.
Time slowly began to creep back to Thancred, and his gaze alighted once more on the small boats in the harbour, floating at full tide, their mooring ropes slack and the water beneath them a deep clear blue, two yalms deep. Timings like that, especially for one who had Limsa’s tides ingrained in his mind from birth, stuck out.
“Seven hells, it’s almost mid-morning. We’ve missed the ship by over a bell.”
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Best Bosses: Belial, the Pale Kiss.
Archdevil of adultery, deception, and desire.
Source: The Book of The Damned
Image source: The Book of The Damned, pg. 35.
“Do what you will: such is all that impassioned Belial demands of their followers. Along with the titles given them by mortals— the Pale Kiss, Thorned Caress, Duke of Many Forms— the Lord of the Fourth goes by a number of aliases, but Their variety of names merely suggests the diversity of their form, as few beings in the multiverse can match Belial as a seducer, creator, and deceiver.”
In antiquity, the forces of Hell, headed by Asmodeus, sought to create a being so beautiful it could outshine all others in existence. The first draft of this being was gifted perfect malleability of form, and would constantly shift to meet the desires of whoever beheld it.
The result of this experiment was a horrific mass of ever-changing flesh and radiance. This monstrosity was quickly locked away, and the project began again. This time, not only was the being gifted shapeshifting prowess and control over its form, but a silver tongue and charismatic mind so it could root out the desires of those is encountered.
This being became known as Belial, and rose to power as the Archdevil of the Fourth layer of Hell.
Manipulative and Imaginitive. The Pale Kiss one of the most creative beings in Hell, commanding endless respect through manipulation and intrigue. Belial possesses an undeniable dramatic streak, which reflects in their machinations, yet they do not care much for anything they create.
Infernal Creator. Many inventions in hell can be traced back to The Lord of The Fourth. Perverse magics, deadly weaponry, and powerful half-breeds alike are all left in Their wake. They serve as forgemaster of Phlegthon, although they care little for such coarse work, preferring to let their agents and slaves bring their designs to fruition. Recently, they have become curious about their own genesis, looking to somehow create a being of a similar nature to themself, despite these experiments being forbidden by the Lord of Hell.
Desire Incarnate. Fittingly for their design, Belial is a being of unending carnality. They are obsessed with aesthetics, constantly shifting their form to fit whatever whims they have at the moment. They constantly seek out beings to entice and manipulate, and have sired the most half-fiends out of every devil in Hell.
Hedonistic Cult. The Thorned Caress is worshipped by all manner of beings; Jilted lovers, forlorn artists, the ugly and beautiful alike vie for Their blessing. Lonely worshippers pray for inspiration, while aging mortals curse the young and gorgeous in Belial’s name.
Phlegethon, the Fourth Layer of Hell:
The fourth layer of Hell, Phlegethon, mimics the battles between Heaven and Hell through its extremes. It is a massive open mine clawing through a mountain expanse stretching the entirety of the plane. The entirety of this layer slopes downwards, with the Archdevil Belial’s golden palace rising up from the crater in the center.
Flensing Cliffs. Every step in Phlegethon is a risk. Attempting to claw up the mountainsides risks punishment from Belial’s taskmasters, and descent can send one tumbling onto the jagged peaks and rusted spikes sticking out from the mines below. At the Avis of the plane, the forges of Hell rise up like massive screws stabbing into the ground below. Golden bridges and citadels, larger than any mortal kingdom, span the gaps between these towers, like the webs of giant leaden spiders. From these intimidating spires rings the sounds of cruel weaponry being forged and the Archdevil’s playthings being tortured.
Betrayer’s Hell. All throughout the slopes of Phlegethon, the souls of hedonists, deceivers, and the spiteful scrape away at the earth with raw fingers, constantly scrabbling to dig up metals and jewels for their devil overlords. The useless scraps most souls find and sent in a flensing rain to the bottom of the cliffs, tormenting those below. Scattered throughout the rocky planes are massive stone castles, the homes of infernal dukes serving Belial.
Idolisque. This gorgeous golden citadel rings out with the screams of Belial’s victims and lovers, although none can tell the difference between either. The Archdevil’s slothful agents look down on the plane from on high, and attend the Pale Kiss’ courts, harems, and fleshwarping experiments excitedly. Occasionally, they will offer the souls below a chance to serve as the Archdevil’s plaything; this offer, which many souls think is a respite from their torments, turns out to be a new Hell with no other offers of escape.
Ideas for using Belial in your campaign:
Local beauties are turning up aged, fleshwarped, and insane. A nearby duchess has turned to worshipping Belial, and is calling upon Them to steal youth from rivals, sending them back out into the world as twisted monstrosities.
If any member of the party is of fiendish descent, Belial could be involved in their genesis. The Thorned Caress always seeks to spawn new and interesting half-breeds.
A member of the party wakes from a long rest with a strange cosmetic mutation. They have been marked by a cultist of Belial, who aims to “perfect” them through fleshwarping.
The Lord of The Fourth is one of the most unique Archdevils, both in terms of Their creation and their machinations on the material plane.
Aside from the power and status that comes from ruling one of the layers of Hell, Belial is blessed with one of the strongest and most creative imaginations in Hell. They are constantly thinking up new designs for weapons and schemes for their agents to bring into being.
Along with their inventions, Belial is well-known for leaving whole bloodlines of half-fiends, tieflings, and Cambions in their wake. Due to their incredible flexibility of form, they can spawn a myriad of beings into existence, which serves as a boon for the forces of Hell.
Always be aware of The Pale Kiss’ machinations. Their worshippers are beauty-obsessed sadists hellbent on their own perfection and pleasure.
- A Weird Warlock.
#wowieweirdwarlock#pathfinder#ttrpg#pathfinder lore#belial#pathfinder belial#pathfinder Archdevil#WWW: Best Bosses
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