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tomurasprincess · 3 years

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Kinktober Day 22: Zombie (Voracious)

Day 22: Zombie Title: Voracious Word Count: 2.6k Warnings: Noncon, necrophilia (cause zombie), predator/prey, biting, marking, blood play, yandere Note: Thank you so much to @thewheezingwyvern who is always down to help me without batting an eye when I go “so, zombie plague...what are some good symptoms? And yes, the zombie is going to fuck you.” Also, for the love of everything that is unholy, please mind the warnings. Do not read the fic and come to me to tell me how disgusting it was. Trust me, I know. :)

Kinktober Masterlist

The country of Japan is dead. Or at least close enough that the distinction doesn’t matter.

Several months ago, an aggressive virus leaked from a quirk research facility and spread through the population like wildfire. Nobody was informed about what was going on, and nobody was warned when the virus first began to hit the cities. Officials kept it as quiet as possible, hoping to contain the spread before it got out of control. And before anyone knew how big of a mistake they had made.

But it was far too late for any sort of containment. The virus already spread fast in a lab environment, and it was even faster as it tore through an unprepared population.

The first sign of contracting the virus is tiredness and body aches. The infected simply thought they caught a minor illness, and they continued their business as usual, expecting it to go away on its own. But as the virus continues to spread through their body, the tissues start to die and they develop intense fevers and headaches. By the time the infection makes its way to the brain, confusion and outright delirium has begun to occur.

The infected are wild by this point, feral to the point of attacking, biting, and eating the uninfected. The ones who were bitten and survived had the site of their wound swell and turn agonizing to the touch, and they would suffer the same progression as the other infected.

The final stage is always the same though. Once the black rot of plague starts appearing on your skin and spreading like the branches of a tree, it’s too late.

The worst part is that the infected still have use of their quirks, and the devastation has been immense. Super powered heroes and villains with their minds rotting and decaying from infection, losing the ability to distinguish friend from foe. In some areas, the casualties were even worse from fighting than they were from the virus itself.

Somehow, you have managed to keep yourself alive and stay away from the worst in-fighting and the areas with the highest concentration of infected. Still though, it is a surprise to you. You’re simply a quirkless nobody with no way to defend yourself.

You have seen so many better, stronger people die right in front of you, leaving you forced to continue on alone.

You sigh as you scavenge through an old building that was once a store, looking for more supplies. Yours are dangerously low, and your dry mouth and grumbling stomach tells you that you need to find something quickly, before you become too weak to continue on.

You practically jump out of your skin when you hear the banging of items hitting the ground from deeper within the store. It might be survivors, or it might be the infected. The thought briefly occurs to you that you need to check to make sure, but you quickly shake it away.

Survivors or not, you didn’t come this far by being careless. But as you inch quietly towards the exit, you see a flash of red eyes from within the darkness as something emerges.

No, not something. Someone.

One of the infected.

It’s clear that he’s in the late stages of infection, the black rot spreading out through his body, but most notably his left leg which he drags limply. He’s wearing what are essentially black rags that flow out from behind him, leaving his chest bare so that you can see more of the black spiderwebs of rot twining outwards.

His eyes zoom in on you, narrowing slightly as you stand there frozen in fear. Neither of you moves for what feels like hours, but is really mere seconds. You break out of your trance first, turning on your heel and running for the door. The infected pursues you instantly, jumping over a table rather than running around it to save time. The move is a sign of intelligence that instantly fills you with dread. By this stage, the infected are usually too confused and delirious to remember such things.

You make it to the door with him hot on your heels. You’ve always considered yourself a fast runner, especially lately, but this is an entirely different story. He’s fast, too fast. The infected are not supposed to be like this, especially not with a bad leg. But yet he is quickly catching up to you as you dart through streets you know so well.

You realize that your only chance is to lose him somehow, as you’re never going to be able to outrun him. Your breath is coming in harsh pants already, a stitch burning in your side as you make a sharp, desperate right turn into an alleyway.

An alleyway with a dead end.

This area was clear just a week ago, but now it looks like an infected hero or villain used their quirk to collapse both buildings in the area, causing massive chunks of cement and debris to block the road out. There is no way to climb over the rubble and no handholds or stairs to use to climb up the buildings. You’re completely trapped.

You whirl around quickly, hoping to get out before the infected catches up with you. But you’re too late. He’s already standing at the entrance of the alley, staring you down with heated red eyes. A sharp burst of awareness fills you as you realize exactly who this is. The leader of the League of Villains, Shigaraki Tomura, whose whereabouts have been speculated on for weeks along with the rest of his villain group.

No wonder he’s so fast and so dangerous. The infected retain some level of awareness and ability from the time before, and Shigaraki was one of the most deadly villains in the country.

And if the way he’s acting towards you is any indication, he still is.

You take a step back. He takes a step forward. Another step back. Another step forward. You scan through your chances of getting out of this alive and uninfected, but your mind comes up with nothing.

Your back hits a wall abruptly, and in your split second distraction, the infected is on you. You’re pulled roughly to the ground, hands barely breaking your fall as you land on your front. This is it, you think to yourself, I’m about to be eaten. All this time of running away, of watching people you care about die, all for nothing.

You can’t stop yourself from trembling as you try to brace for the pain of being devoured. But instead, he leans down and buries his face into your neck, sniffing the skin deeply as he pushes your body further onto the ground. His hips are bucking against the curve of your ass, and with dawning horror, you realize exactly what the hard bulge in his pants is.

He grabs your pants and you watch as decay overtakes them and dissolves them into ash. He decays your shirt and bra next, leaving you bare from the waist up and shivering from the cold of his body pressed against you. You’re too scared to move, too scared to do anything.

But when he reaches for your panties, that’s when your paralysis finally breaks and fear takes over. You try to lift yourself up from the ground to run, only to hear a snarl as teeth sink into the flesh of your neck.

You go limp with a choked sob, losing any and all desire to try and get away. It’s all over now. That one single moment has doomed you to infection and madness. The pain of the bite is nothing compared to the despair you feel.

He lets out a pleased hum at your sudden obedience, pulling your panties aside as you feel something cold and hard prodding at your entrance. You barely have time to comprehend what’s happening before your pussy is filled with one sharp thrust of the creature’s hips. The infected aren’t supposed to do this, aren’t supposed to have these urges, you think wildly to yourself. This can’t be happening, it’s not possible.. But it is happening. You’re being taken by this creature like a wild animal in a back alley.

And then he is moving, hips slapping against your ass as his throbbing length pounds into you. There is no gentleness, no precision, just deep, feral thrusts that have you unwillingly clenching. He’s thicker than you’re used to, and the pain of your muscles stretching around him causes you to whine from the back of your throat.

This shouldn’t feel good. You should be horrified, disgusted. You should be fighting tooth and nail to get away, even though it’s hopeless since you’re already infected. But the cold of his cock pressing against your warm walls has your head spinning from the contrast.

He hits a soft, spongy spot inside of you, and you let out a squeal as your stomach tightens. The teeth are removed from your neck, only to bite down in another spot on the other side. He ruthlessly breaks skin, causing blood to run down your front and drip onto the pavement below.

Your body feels like it’s on fire, everything so overly sensitive as his cock forces your walls to stretch open even further as he gets rougher. The hands gripping your hips feel warmer than they were before, fingers digging hard enough into your skin to create bruises. The grunts and groans leaving his throat are positively lewd, and he takes his mouth away only to bite down in between your shoulder blades.

Your scream echoes through the alley as the teeth penetrate flesh, his tongue lapping at the bite and taking deep swallows of your blood. You try to imagine yourself somewhere else, anywhere else so that you don’t think of the pressure building up inside of you and the pain from the throbbing bites now decorating you.

Your nails dig hard into the cement below you as you try to ground yourself and ignore what’s happening, but Shigaraki doesn’t seem to appreciate that at all. He smacks his hand hard against your ass, keeping his pinky raised delicately off your skin in a way that has you worried about his level of awareness.

Now that your attention is firmly back on him, he bites the back of your neck, and you can’t stop the howl that leaves your throat when you feel your skin break, or the orgasm that wracks your body as you feel blood trail down the column of your neck and down in between your breasts.

Tears run down your face as humiliation burns through you, the shame of cumming around this infected villain’s cock almost too much to bear. Almost worse than the fact that you’ll soon be just like him.

“M-m-m - “

Your eyes widen as you glance behind you, seeing the infected concentrating hard as he tries to get words out. He’s stopped thrusting, as if he’s trying to focus entirely on whatever he wants to say. As he opens his mouth, you see his teeth stained with your blood and the sight shoots straight to your core.

“M-m-mine,” he finally manages to stutter out, “mine.” He forces your head down onto the pavement as he begins to ruthlessly pound into you. The infected don’t speak, they’re not supposed to speak -

“Mine,” he snarls, almost as if he heard your thoughts and is trying to prove you wrong.

You’re oversensitive and wet from your previous orgasm, allowing him to fuck you deeply, hitting your cervix with every thrust. You can feel your pussy dripping your juices all over his cock, and the wet squelching noises that fill the alleyway has you shaking with embarrassment.

“Mine, mine mine,” he chants as he bites again and again, each time pausing long enough to take gulps of your blood. Your head is spinning, lightheadedness from blood loss overtaking you. The ground below you has puddles of your own blood where it drips down, and you briefly think that maybe you really will be eaten right here and now instead of being infected and left to wander.

His hand comes in between your bodies to stroke tight circles against your swollen clit as he chuckles deeply into your ear. “Mine,” he whispers darkly. “Why else would I stumble across the cure for the plague if you weren’t meant to be mine?”

Cure for the plague? That’s not possible, there’s no cure for the plague, and you’re completely quirkless -

He bites down one last time, sinking his teeth into the back of your neck and holding you there like a dog refusing to let go of a bone. You realize why immediately when he groans into your heated skin, warmth spreading through your core as he shoots hot ropes of cum directly against your cervix. The pain of his teeth buried into your flesh has you thrown over the edge as well, legs trembling and eyes rolling into the back of your head.

He removes his teeth from your neck once he’s emptied himself inside of you, letting you go as you collapse onto the ground. You roll over enough to meet his eyes, seeing sharp intelligence and contemplation. The black rot is quickly disappearing, color returning to his skin. Within no time at all, you can no longer tell he was ever infected.

“How - I don’t - I’m quirkless - “

“No, you’re not.” He states it matter of factly, as if it was already known. “You have a quirk, it just didn’t have a purpose until the plague. Your blood carries the cure.”

You consider everything that happened, realizing that the more blood he drank, the more human he seemed. The faster the infection was being cured. He snorts at the look of disbelief and then understanding on your face. “With you on my side, I can remake society exactly the way that I want.”

“I am not on your fucking side! You’re a villain who just - “ You can’t even bring yourself to finish the sentence, but Shigaraki has no issues doing it for you.

“A villain who just fucked you and got you off? Such a dirty girl, getting off around infected cock.”

Your face heats up and you instantly glance away, drawing another chuckle from his throat. “I won’t help you,” you say stubbornly, ignoring his previous words.

“Who said I was giving you a choice?” His fingers dig into your arm as he pulls you off the ground. “You belong to me now, and I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want with you. Just think about the power I have now. I control who stays infected and who gets cured. No more hero society.” His voice has taken on an excited, almost manic tone as he considers the possibilities.

“Are you - are you going to let them do what you just did?” You whisper quietly, a single tear running down your face at being used the same way by other people.

He instantly scowls at you. “Of course not.”

You perk up just a bit, until you hear his next words.

“I’ll let you be a blood bag, but for everything else - you’re mine. And I don’t like to share.” He begins to drag you back the way that you came, walking with purpose.

“Now come along. We have so much work to do.”

✧༝┉┉┉┉┉˚*❋ ❋ ❋*˚┉┉┉┉┉༝✧

Kinktober: @ichor-and-symbiosis, @thewheezingwyvern, @vixen-scribbles, @katsukisprincess, @hisoknen, @trafalgar-temptress, @leeswritingworld, @burnedbyshoto, @bakugotrashpanda, @dee-madwriter, @kittycatkrissa, @reinawritesbnha, @yanderart, @dabilove27, @fae-father, @anxietyplusultra, @flutterfalla, @angmarwitch, @nereida19, @babayaga67, @fromsunnywithlove, @dabis-kitten, @bakugos-cumsock, @yumeneji, @the-grimm-writer, @iwaizumi-chan, @slashersheart, @bunnyywritings, @bakarinnie, @angie-1306, @emplosion22, @lalalemon101, @videogameboiwhowins, @f4nficbaby, @tenkoshimmy, @baroque-baby, @bbyspiiice, @thirstyforthem2dmen, @blissfulignorance2000, @bluecookies02-main

#kinktober 2020 #shigaraki x reader #tomura shigaraki x reader #shigaraki tomura x reader #shigaraki smut #shigaraki #mha x reader #mha smut #yandere mha #bnha x reader #bnha smut #yandere bnha #bnha kinktober #mha kinktober #tw: noncon #tw: necro #tw: blood play

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lubdubsworld · 3 years

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Akrasia.

Happy Birthday To the Golden Maknae.

Here’s a little treat in lieu of Jungkook’s 24th Birthday!!!

Canon Compliant.

Jungkook x OC

Word Count : 10K.

Genre : Mild Angst. ( Happy'Ending) Jungkook X OC

Akrasia (noun)

PHILOSOPHY the state of mind in which someone acts against their better judgement through weakness of will.

Getting involved with someone like Jungkook is a bad idea. Do you even realize who he is? How much he’s worth? He’s easily one of the richest men in the country . He’s loved by everyone.

I wrapped the coat around myself, tighter. Everything that Lee Jiae had said was true. She was a popular idol . Someone who would actually make a good match for the Jeon Jungkook.

But even Jiae balked at the idea of going anywhere near someone like him.

Career suicide, she had said firmly. That would be career suicide, Areum. He has fangirls from all over the world. Billions of them. They will dig so deep into my past, find the most innocent of things and twist and turn it and the next thing I know, I’m being kicked out of my band, out of the company and on the streets. I don’t want that. And neither should you.

I shivered a bit. No, I thought honestly. I didn’t want that either. I was far from successful, just an up and coming soloist , with a very very niche fanbase. I did sell a lot of records and I made enough money to live comfortably but I was not a mainstream celebrity. I didn’t register on people’s radar because I stayed far away from the spotlight.

There was something about social media that made it a terrifying thing to me. It was so abstract and unreal and yet…it seemed almost like a sentient being.

A powerful sentient being that could potentially destroy my whole life.

It scared me.

And while Jungkook and BTS had conquered that particular monster, had leashed and saddled the beast and made it their own personal pet…. I didn’t want anything to do with that.

I don’t want that, I told myself firmly. I really don’t want that. I want to stay this way… make music I love… read the few dozen fan handwritten fan letters I received everyday, make the occasional appearance on a magazine cover and then just quietly retreat into my studio. I want this. And if I go anywhere near Jeon Jungkook, I’ll lose this. I’ll lose all of this.

My phone buzzed and I jumped, glancing around nervously. The late October wind was cold but not biting. Winter would come but not for a while. And yet my skin chilled in apprehension. I always felt guilty, picking up one of his calls in public. It felt like I was being watched, like everyone could hear me, on the phone …Could hear who I was talking to.

“Hello.” I whispered nervously, eyes flitting around to find a secluded spot in the park. It was early in the morning, still an hour away from sunrise and I quickly hopped over a small hedgerow and moved into a wooded area, away from the main path that had the occasional cyclist or jogger.

“You didn’t come.” His voice was honey, the way it dripped into my senses and made my breath catch. And yet it was the undercurrent of disappointment that tugged at my heart. Made guilt churn inside me in rapid little currents.

“Yes. Sorry.” I said quietly, picking my way past a few bushes to a bench a little way into the woods. It was rusty and damp because no one came here , and the darkness was absolute, only faintly broken by the dim glow of the streetlights hundred yards away. I settled into the bench nonetheless.

“Areum…. Don’t do this to me.” Jungkook said brokenly and I exhaled.

“I’m not doing anything. I’m being smart. And you should be too. You’re romanticizing something that was just…it was just a conversation. We had a conversation . That’s all that happened.” I said desperately. It was something I’d told myself over an over, these past few weeks. Weeks of avoiding his texts, of ignoring his calls.

Calls from his hyungdeul.

That had given me a whole heart attack.

“You’re just going to ignore me then? Toss my feelings away like they don’t matter?” He asked quietly and my heart clenched.

“You …” I shook my head.” You need to understand something. I’m not going to do this. I can’t afford to. I told you already Jungkook…we spent one evening talking..that’s it…we’re not dating..we don’t know each other well enough for you to be saying that you have feelings for me-“

“And I told you I don’t fucking care. “ He said sharply. “ One day… One hour…who cares? I believe in soulmates. Call me foolish and dumb but I do and when I saw you I felt that. And I know you felt it too.”

My mind flashed back to that evening. It was a private birthday party for a mutual friend. Barely a dozen of us had attended and Jungkook had been sneaking glances at me all evening, completely oblivious to the ay every woman in the room had their gaze glued on him. The party hadn’t been my thing at all and I’d sneaked away to the private terrace, accessible only through a rickety old fire escape and to my utter shock he had followed me up there.

The stars had been exceptionally bright that night, but with Jungkook sitting on the tiled roof next to me, gazing at me with all that adoration, his doe eyes had seemed to hold more of them than the night sky.

“What do you want, Jungkook?” I asked quietly.

“I want you. I know you want me. We …we understand each other. I want the same things you do. Do you even fucking realize how rare that is? To find someone who shares the same thoughts, the same dreams as you do? Who looks at the world the way you do… I… I am not foolish enough to think that there’s another girl out there who could connect to me the way you do. You call that a conversation…just a conversation…. Did you forget what kind of a conversation it was?”

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Three weeks ago

The party had barely started and I was already itching to run home. There was a particular song lyric , stuck in my head like a loop and I wanted to put it on paper as soon as possible. I had this thing where seeing something on print helped me to elaborate on an idea. Directed my train of thought in that particular direction if you willed.

Mingyu was walking around, talking to his friends and making them laugh with his witty banter but I didn’t miss the way he shot me little glances. I gave him a quick thumbs up though, to let him know I was okay. He was a childhood friend, one of the few people I’d stayed in touch with through the years. And of course, being in the same industry meant a lot of shared interests.

I moved to the side bar with the drinks and appetizers, ordering myself a diet coke before hopping onto one of the stools. I watched the dozen or so people here….His bandmates, some other idols. I recognized Yugyeom from GOT7. They were all dressed in dressy casuals : flashy shirts and tight jeans and racy little dresses and I felt out of place in my long jean skirt and tasseled leather jacket.

Sighing, I turned back to my drink when a commotion near the door made me look up.

I felt my eyes widen when I saw who it was.

The Jeon Jungkook. From BTS.

I stared at him as did pretty much every person in the room. Jungkook was easily one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen in my life, tall and just…big. I stared at the broad shoulders, the huge arms and the taut line of his abdomen, tapering into a narrow waist and long, long legs with muscular thighs. He was wearing a black shirt, unbuttoned all the way to his chest and skinny blue jeans with black boots.

I smiled, genuinely awed. Jungkook looked every bit like the untouchable superstar he was and I considered that the party hadn’t been a waste after all. The chances of me running into someone like that in person were pretty slim.

Almost at once he was surrounded and I watched as his ears turned red, gaze shifting away and an almost soft shyness in the way he bowed politely . A hesitation to be put on the spot but also a need to stay polite , probably. Laughing a bit , I watched him some more and then his gaze lifted to mine. To my surprise, his eyes went wide in what was clearly recognition.

What.

I watched as he quickly bowed and said something to the people around him before picking his way to me. My entire body went taut with surprise.

“Lee Areum ssi…” He stuttered, eyes wide and I could only gape. “ I’m a huge fan.”

I blinked.

What.

“You know who I am?” I asked , mildly horrified and he laughed nervously, shaking his head and rubbing the back of his palm across his nose before laughing a little.

“Your voice is just… something about your songs…they help me sleep when I’m too exhausted to relax.” He said softly and I felt warmth pool inside me.

“Too exhausted too sleep. That doesn’t sounf good...”

Jungkook chuckled.

“Its not. It usually happens when we’re preparing for a comeback. It different with concerts you know…we’re exhausted because we’ve been running around …singing…its all physical…mostly. And that’s easy to brush aside and sleep. But comebacks…there’s that nervousness. The worry that things may not be as good as they were. Constantly having to keep up to standards. “ He shook his head. “ it can get exhausting.”

It was something deep and oddly tragic and I was stunned that he’d shared something so… personal. To a literal stranger. But the urge to soothe..to comfort and reassure him in some way was over powering.

Instinctively, I leaned closer and lightly touched his forearm .

“But you are the standard, now, Jungkook ssi. What BTS has done, others can only dream of reaching. You’ve brought this….utopian idea that you can love yourself just the way you are… and that’s amazing. I understand the need to meet expectation but I think you’ve earned the right to sleep without being burdened by them.”

Jungkook didn’t reply, staring into my eyes and I felt my pulse kick up a notch, my eyes taking in the beautiful features and my throat went dry when his gaze dropped to where my fingers lightly brushed the soft fabric of his shirt sleeve.

“Oppa…Let’s dance.” A shrill voice behind him made us both jump and I quickly pulled my hand away. Panicking, I turned away from him fully, ducking my head so my hair could cover my face. There was a dull roaring in my head, making it hard to hear what he was saying but a second later he moved away from the bar and I exhaled sharply.

Shaking I turned back to my drink.

Another twenty minutes of trying to avoid looking at Jungkook, I gave up. This wasn’t my kind of place at all and after a quick word with Mingyu, I moved to the small balcony in the side, desperate for some fresh air. But the moment I stepped out, my eyes fell on the rickety ladder like stairs, rusty and clearly a death trap. I quickly moved to the ledge and peered up at the roof. It was a little inclined but nothing dangerous. And there was a barricade that would break my fall, just in case I slipped.

Thrilled at the prospect of doing something that was both foolish and fancy free, I quickly, climbed on to the ladder, climbing all the way over to the top and throwing my legs over the iron railing before carefully walking overt to the center of the roof. Grinning to myself, I settled on the slightly damp tiles.

“You’re lucky the ladder didn’t break .” Jungkook’s voice made me yelp and I stared as he quickly jumped over the railing himself, grinning and wiping his hands on his thighs.

“Oh my god, people are going to find us here!” I hissed, terrified and he laughed.

“Don’t worry. I told them I’m going home.”

“You lied?” I shook my head in disbelief and Jungkook hummed.

“Did I?” He pretended to think. “ Doesn’t feel like I did.”

It took me a few seconds for the implication to sink in.

I looked away, blushing a bit.

“Did I come on too strong?” He moved to sit next to me, just a foot away.

I shook my head.

“No. I’m just.. I didn’t expect you to know me. We don’t exactly run in the same circles.”

“There’s a very cliché line in my head about how you’ve been running in circles in my head for a long time but I’ll save that for our first date.” He said with a laugh and I blushed deeper.

“Date?” I shook my head, “ That’s not funny.”

“Good. Because it wasn’t a joke. Let me take you out to dinner sometime.”

I stared at him, trying to look for the punchline because even if he denied it, it was still laughable. The mere idea of it.

“Don’t turn me down Areum ssi.” He said softly and I swallowed.

“I won’t if you take it back.” I said quietly.

He sighed.

“Then…when you sang about wanting to give love a chance…wanting to free fall for once without worrying about the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, wanting to soar into the sky without thinking of the ropes trying to tether you to the ground….were you joking?”

I gaped at him.

“that’s.. those are… Those are lines from before my debut.” I said shakily.

“Like I said… I’ve been a fan for a long time.” Jungkook whispered.

The night was magical. Cool and refreshing and the night sky was resplendent, the lack of clouds offering a stellar view of the stars and yet, I found myself drawn to the galaxies swirling in his doe eyes. The strong nose and the cherry red lips, now being worried between slightly large front teeth as he stared at me with all the nervousness of a young boy.

But he wasn’t a boy. He was a man.

And this wasn’t a love song.

This was real life.

“Free falling is fun when you don’t know what you’re falling into. But when you do know that there’s a lot of pain at the end of the fall, its not something you want to experience.”

“Areum…”

“I’m flattered.” I said quickly. “ Beyond flattered…really. But… I can’t.”

“Okay. But don’t leave. Stay here with me.. for a while. Let’s talk.” He said quickly.

Jungkook was handsome and the night was still young. This maybe the last time I would ever see him and I was honest. It was flattering, receiving attention from someone like that.

I hesitated before sighing and nodding.

“Okay…let’s talk.” I smiled, throwing caution to the winds.

And talk we did. About everything and nothing. As the night grew darker, Jungkook relaxed next to me, laughing as he shared anecdotes about his members, about his family, about his brother. And then naturally about how successful they were these days and Jungkook told me that there was always a downside to fame but he enjoyed the love he received. That he loved his fans for how they treated him and his brothers.

“Fame comes with a price but it’s a small price to pay…being loved for what I do..being accepted the way I am…it feels good.” He said quietly.

“It’s not always that way though.” I pointed out honestly. “ You guys are … I won’t say lucky because you’ve definitely worked hard but you’ve been more fortunate than the rest. Sometimes the spotlight can be a terrifying place to be.”

“you forget that we were once one of the most hated idols in the country..” He laughed. “ Trust me I know.”

“I didn’t know about you guys till you got on the Billboard. And you’re an amazing singer as well.” I said softly.

He grinned , playing with the bracelets on his wrist.

“Thank you.” He said sweetly.

We stayed quiet for a few seconds, staring up at the sky.

“I’ve never been attracted to fame.” I told him honestly.” Of course it holds its charms I suppose but I’ve always preferred the quiet of being obscure, you know. Like this secret that only a few get to learn in their lifetime.” I laughed. “ A hidden treasure maybe? Its why I started a Youtube channel instead of auditioning. Because only people who genuinely liked my music would get more of me. ” I smiled.

Jungkook hummed.

“When you first started singing your own songs on your YouTube channel? It was kind of around the same time we won our first daesang…” He smiled. “ In the MMA.”

“Oh…Really?” I asked surprised. That was nearly five years ago.

“Yeah. And till then..it was just your voice that I got to hear. You talked a bit but mostly it was just you covering someone else’s songs. And well, after we won the daesang I felt …lonely? Kind of? Scared maybe. And then you sang, ‘ White Dove’ a couple of days later and the lyrics…they just resonated with me you know. It made me feel like I knew you… Like you were a friend.”

I swallowed.

“I..thank you.” I whispered quietly, staring at my hands.

“And when you refused to sign with SM or YG. You also refused to monetize your videos on Youtube. You said your voice was your gift and you didn’t want to make money from something you’d received for free yourself. That …I loved that.”

“You’re like that too. You post your covers and songs on soundcloud for free as well.” I said quietly and he smiled.

“Like I said…we have a lot in common.” He smiled.

I smiled, shaking my head.

“I envy you.” He said quietly and I glanced at him.

“Hmm?”

“You’re just… You’re so untouched by all this. By me. It may sound incredibly narcissistic but people swoon when they see me for the first time but…you’re just you…. And that just makes me remember that you’re amazing and beautiful and you have such beautiful mind and you’re just… you’re so far out of my league. You’re so content with what you have and I wish I could be that way….But I …I can’t help but be greedy.”

“Greedy?”

“To do more. To want more. I know I should be happy that I even got to meet you . I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime in these two hours , sitting here talking to you. But I’m still greedy for more.” He stared at me with an intensity that was electric.

“More what?” I laughed.

“More of this. More of you. More of you and me together. More of us.”

“Us?” I laughed, shaking my head. “ There’s no us , Mr. Jungkook . you need to forget about that.”

“ I don’t think I can.” He said suddenly.

I felt the smile fade from my face.

“Jungkook.”

“Your song … Utopia… where you write about your idea of the perfect world. I… I loved it.” He said shakily.

“Jungkook , wait…”

“All of these days, when I listened to your songs, I would make it personal.. It would be about how those words applied to my life but with Utopia… that world you talk about …where you can be yourself, where you can sing whatever you want, be whoever you want…. When I heard that song…it became about you. About us.. I… that world you dream of.. I want to give that to you.”

My jaw dropped and I exhaled in disbelief.

“Do you realize how ridiculous that is? Your fans…our companies… Everyone will lose their minds.” I whispered, horrified.

He nodded.

“I know. I know I shouldn’t ask you this. Because it goes against my better judgement. But I can’t help. I still want to choose this. Choose you. So if there’s a word for that.. That is how I feel.”

“I.. I should go.” I said nervously, making to move but he reached out an gently gripped my wrist.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” He asked quietly and I shook my head.

“No.. I don’t.” I said quietly.

“Good. Because neither do I. But I do believe in people who can understand you better than anyone else can. Just give me a chance. One date.”

I stayed quiet staring at my feet. There was so much to consider but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him and say no. He looked so hopeful.

“I’m busy for a couple of weeks. But there’s a beautiful terrace restaurant in Itaewon that I know. We’ll have complete privacy . I’ll get my chauffeur to pick you up. No one ill know. I just want to spend some time with you over dinner and if you have a good time….. we can meet again.”

And then what?

“I…I’ll try. But I can’t promise anything.“ I said honestly.

“That’s good enough for me. Can I have your number at least?” He asked finally.

I nodded and quietly put it into his phone.

“I’ll make the reservation and send you the details. And Areum?”

I glanced up at him.

“I’ve been free falling since I met you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I closed my eyes, breathing deeply.

“I do.” I said quietly. “ I do remember.”

“I haven’t stopped falling. I keep listening to your songs on loop… Because I can’t bear the thought of being away from you , of not being connected to you in some way…”

“You’re so .. you’re so intense.” I whispered shakily and he laughed.

“I know, baby. I’m sorry. It’s just the way I am… I’m here you know. The restaurant I told you about. And my chauffeur is at your home. But he told me he couldn’t find you. It’s the middle of the night . where are you?”

I sighed.

“In the park opposite my house.”

Jungkook didn’t respond for a second.

“Do you want me to ask him to leave?” He asked quietly.

I took a deep breath.

“ Akrasia. “ I breathed out nervously.

“What…”

“its when someone makes a decision…against their better judgement.” I laughed nervously. “When we had that conversation , you asked me if there was a word for it. For acting against your better judgement. Akrasia is the word you’re looking for .”

He stayed quiet on the other end.

“Okay.” He said finally. “ Well, are you going to be akratic with me?” he said finally.

“Ask your driver to leave for now. And come meet me in my apartment tomorrow. I’ll make you dinner.”

Jungkook didn’t respond.

“That way we’ll have more privacy.” I said softly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dating Jungkook was a lot of pain. Just as I’d anticipated. It was sitting by and watching him work himself down to the bone. It was watching people throw themselves at him and not being able to say a word. To the world he was single. And the number of women who called and hounded him was unnatural.

And he worked so hard that my heart ached for him.

One night, he missed dinner and I couldn’t reach him on the phone. I stayed up , sitting on my bed, waiting.

He came back at exactly at three in the morning. He didn't turn on the light but the moonlight through the window was sufficient to let me know that he looked terrible. i watched him shrug out of his jacket, leaning against the table , long legs crossed and crisp white shirt unbuttoned. He tugged at his tie with a sort of tired , half hearted gesture and i smiled.

i watched him for sometime, seeing him shrug out of his shirt and change into a simple white t shirt. He moved with a sort of graceful strength. Like every single cell of his body had the same confidence that he did.

It was like a dream, i realized as another dull ache of pain twisted my heart. It was like i'd slept and woken up in someone else's dream. A dream where it was okay for me to look at him and feel things for him , without fighting to convince herself that it was dangerous. That it was going to end in heartbreak.

As i watched him prepare for bed, i wondered when I had started falling so hard.

The sound of the door closing, made me look up , shaken out of my thoughts. Jungkook was locking the door behind him.

When he moved to the bed, i decided to let him know that i was awake.

"You're back?" i said softly.

He hesitated, clearly startled , before smiling at me. It was a weak smile, one that practically screamed exhaustion and i sat up straighter, watching as he moved to me side and gently stroked me hair.

"Why aren't you asleep?" He smiled.

"I was waiting for you." i said honestly holding my hand out and he took it, kissing it obediently.

"you'll have to wait longer, I'm afraid. I have a meeting tomorrow morning with PDnim and I still haven't prepped for it. I need to get an hour's sleep and get back to work. " Up close he looked so tired that i felt my heart clench in panic.

"You don't look good." i said, alarmed as i realized that his skin had a distinctively grayish tinge to it.

"Comeback times are always that way. Never good for my health." He said teasingly. He checked his phone messages before turning to me and smiling.

"I see you've been cutting back on the pain killers... are you feeling better than?" He asked. I’d been down with some menstrual cramps earlier and I was touched that he remembered, even in the mess of his schedule.

"I wish you wouldn't change the topic everytime I try to show concern for you." i said , a little bit annoyed. He grinned and touched my cheek with his forefinger.

"Just the fact that you are concerned is enough for me . anything more and I might die of happiness. you don't want that do you?" He winked.

Deciding that it was impossible to talk with the man, i asked him if he wanted something to drink.

He shook his head and climbed in next to me but before laying down, he turned to me.

He hesitated.

"Will you lend me your shoulder for the night?" He said softly , placing his hand there.

i sighed as he leaned against me . His skin felt warm against me, his hair lightly tickling me cheekbones and i threaded me finger through the silky strands.

In just a few seconds, he was fast asleep.

I stayed awake, watching the room grow steadily brighter, the weak winter sun gently finding its way into the room , much like the way the man in my arms was gently finding his way into my heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"We should get a house, don't you think?" i said two months later, sitting up in bed , eating dinner while i watched him work on his files. He'd placed the desk in the far corner of the room, giving me the perfect view. And i was beginning to enjoy it a lot more than the one i could see out the window.

" A house? " Jungkook stopped and looked up. " You want to live with me ? Just the two of us?" He smiled.

Well, when he put it that way. I balked and ducked my head.

"It's too soon isn't it..I'm sorry I don't know why I..."

"What kind of a house would you prefer? Flat? Penthouse? Apartment? Duplex? Tell me....I'll get you the listings and you can pick out the ones you like . When you get better we can go pick one out." He grinned at me and i relaxed against the pillows , while he went back to his files.

"I read something online…” i said casually . He didn't look up, merely humming to acknowledge that he'd heard me.

"Did you date Lee Hyeri ?" i finally said. He stopped and looked at me.

"Yes. Many months ago. I broke up with her because I wasn’t feeling anything serious and I didn’t want to lead her one. She didn’t take it very well. ." He said softly, moving towards the bed and sitting on the edge. As was his habit, he reached for my hand, holding it in his and tracing circles with his thumb.

“She called me.” I said quietly and he stiffened.

“Shit.”

I laughed.

“She wanted to meet me . Wanted to talk about something although I have an idea what. I’m not going to indulge her though.”

“If she calls again, you should tell her that her obsession is bordering on stalking and I’m on the verge of getting a restraining order. She turned up at my studio too. Went on an on about how I broke her heart and cheated on her . ”

i hesitated , looking away from him and smiling.

"I don't know . Should I?" i shook my head. i hesitated, pulling my hand away from him. "What else did she say?" i said suddenly, remembering how angry she had sounded on the phone.

"Nothing, you need to worry about. Are you done with this? Shall I clean it up?" He reached for my dinner tray and i grabbed his wrist.

"where are you going? You should tell me what she said." i protested, but he gently pried my fingers off before dropping a kiss on me forehead .

"And You should tell me when you're going to start staying over at my apartment.. It's going to snow in a few days. Or so they say. I thought you might like to enjoy the first snow with me..." He smiled .

I took the subtle hint to drop the subject.

"You're being too wonderful. It makes my heart ache." i snuggled into my bed and pouted at him. He laughed at that.

"Take rest. I have a meeting right now. I'll be back late so you should sleep."

I watched him leave, feeling oddly bereft. I was growing to love him deeply.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As with every couple in the world, our fights were often over the silliest things.

"You're still angry." I said casually, watching him work on his documents, the low burning desk light setting his features in sharp relief. He looked at me for a second and shook his head.

"I'm not angry , Areum. I'm busy. There is a difference." He said with a sigh, rubbing the heel of his palm into his eye. I watched the gesture and sat up straighter in bed, leaning over the side to stare at the clock there. It read 1.15 Am.

"It's snowing." I said softly, getting one my knees and peering out the windows. Through the haze of moonlight, I watched the small flakes drift down over the neatly cut hedgerows, making each segment of the garden look like neat cut slices of cake with vanilla cream frosting. I grinned at the little wisps of cotton white snow, clinging to each little branch on the trees and felt my heart swell with joy.

"I suppose you're too busy to make good on your promise." I said naughtily, peering over my shoulder to glance at him.

"Promise?"

"That you'll walk with me , in the first snow." I said, turning around and getting out of bed, slipping my feet into my fur slippers. I watched him fight with himself , the emotions warring across his handsome face and held my breath.

finally he sighed and stood up. I tried to keep the triumphant grin off my face and failed miserably. I felt awful, because deep down I had known that no matter how angry or upset he was, Jungkook would never break a promise. And I'd worded my request that way, just to take advantage of that little chink of honor that he always lived by.

"Alright then. Let's go take a walk in the first snow." He said softly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You love snow."

"How did you know that?" I said surprised, lightly grabbing the low lying branch till it showered both of us with soft white flakes.

"You make these little sounds , everytime you see snow. I've noticed it from the time we met." Jungkook grinned .

I laughed and turned away. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a fairytale, the white landscape making me feel like some exotic Ice Queen. I walked ahead of him, running a few steps till I was about ten feet ahead of him. I turned around, facing him as I walked backwards. He laughed at that.

"Be careful. The snow looks soft but the fall will hurt." He warned me, putting his hands in his pockets and narrowing his shoulders to fight the chill. I smiled and shook my head.

"I want to look at you and make sure that you're not angry with me anymore." I said, enjoying the way he rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"I'm not angry. I told you that."

"Yes. You did. But i didn't tell you I'm sorry, did I?" I said softly, stopping in my tracks and watching as he drew closer. Jungkook gave me a curious glance, walking slowly till he was just in front of me.

"I'm sorry I said I'll leave you." I said honestly. He looked surprised but smiled nonetheless.

"Duly noted." He bowed his head, tipping an imaginary hat at me. Smiling, I turned around I ran a few more steps and instinctively knelt on the ground

"Don't ." He said suddenly.

I looked up from where I was gathering a handful of snow. I gave him an innocent smile.

"What?"

"I know what you're thinking. don't do it." He said, taking a step back. I felt a thrill of anticipation shoot through me, realizing that the big bad wolf was actually scared of being hit by a snowball.

"You should know why I like snow so much.." I grinned with mischief and he gave me a look of disbelief.

"I don't think you can hit me. You're forgetting that i'm an expert at taekwondo.”

I held my hand up and threw , cursing when he casually stepped out of the way, laughing at the look on my face.

"You have to concentrate on what you're doing. Anticipate my next move and react accordingly." He advised, bending down to get some snow for himself.

"React to this!!" I grabbed two handfuls of snow and ran straight at him, grinning as I leapt on him.

We landed on the snow, Jungkook on his back and I right on top of him, laughing as I smeared the snow on his face. He spluttered in disbelief and swiftly, threw his weight over, pinning me to the ground and straddling me, fingers swiftly grabbing my wrists and pushing my hands over my head, leaving me vulnerable and helpless, as he shook his head , showering me with ice cold flakes.

I squeaked in surprise and he laughed hard.

Watching him laugh, full and open , I realized that I'd never watched him laugh that way before.

He looked exhilarated.

Yanking my hand out of his grasp, I grabbed his collar, pulling him down for a kiss.

the first touch of his lips to mine, felt like the sweetest, coolest sip of crystal waters after a lifelong thirst .

I sank into the snow, sighing into the sweetness and the gentle pressure of his lips against me, the first touch of his tongue, making heat seep through my body, despite the cold. I curled my fingers into the fur near his neck, smiling into the kiss as he slipped one hand into my hair, gently tilting my head for better access.

He kissed me softly. He kissed me deeply.

He kissed me like that was what he'd been put on the earth to do.

But mostly he kissed me like that was all he wanted .

It was so absurdly romantic that I wanted to laugh .

I could catch whiffs of his scent, even though my eyes were watering and mey nose felt like it was running. Some elusive cologne mixed with the scent of clean male skin . It made me heat up in ways that curled my toes in my fur boots. Each little kiss lasted a little longer than the one before, till I was certain that I was going to melt into the snow. And each little breath felt like a little wisp of my soul leaving my body and mingling with his.

We kissed and kissed and kissed, while the snow fell in white flakes around us .

First Snow. first kiss, I thought happily.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After our little episode in the garden, I found that I felt something akin to desperation everytime I came in contact with Jungkook.

It's not that I woke up one day and realized that something had changed in the way I watched Jungkook.

. That my eyes lingered, not just on his face but on the curve of his lips, the edge of his jaw, the exposed skin of his neck. My fingers wanted to reach out and grip, not just the strength of his shoulders and the slender digits of his hand but also his lean waist.

I began losing my mind, slowly and painfully. Suffocating when Jungkook got too close , choking when he went away too far.

As they spent time together, Jungkook began touching me.

. Not too often and never in an intrusive way , but every time his fingers traced the back of my palm or brushed back my hair, my throat went dry and my heart stopped pumping blood and I felt like like a fool because I had no idea if Jungkook felt half of what I was feeling.

In fact I was certain that Jungkook didn’t feel anything at all.

What I was feeling was painful and confusing and if Jungkook felt any of it, he would be running as far away from me as possible, not moving closer and closer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Why are you so nervous?” Jungkook laughed and I bit my nails nervously, glancing around the reception hesitantly. The workers were all busy, no one spared us so much as a glance but I couldn’t help but feel terrified.

“It’s only us here? For the whole weekend? No one else?” I asked again for the hundredth time.

Jungkook groaned, shaking his head and ignoring me, holding his hand out for the keys to our cottage. I yelped a bit when he began walking away without waiting for me, running to keep up with his long strides.

“Sorry…I just don’t want you to get in trouble.” I said quietly, slipping my hand into his, linking our fingers together and smiling a little.

He squeezed my hand gently before pulling away to wrap me in a one armed huge, pressing a kiss to my neck.

“I booked the entire resort for the weekend. The staff have all signed a confidentiality agreement. No one is going to know we’re here. You can be as loud as you want.” He whispered and I yelped, hitting his chest,” let me finish….” He laughed. “ When you yell at me. You can be as loud as you want when you yell at me.”

“You’re a terrible person.” I whispered , burying my face into his arm in mortification.

Jungkook merely laughed .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You seem tense." He said that evening, as the pair of us sat on the back deck , glasses of bubble tea in hand , watching the waves break out on the rocks. Slow but persistent , gradually breaking the rock's resistance and carving its way into its heart.

"Can we ever …truly be relaxed ?" I asked , a little bit of desperation in my tone. Jungkook didn’t turn to look at me . Instead he took a picture of the rocks and the sea with his phone.

"That's a pretty loaded question. With a lot of answers."

I stared at him, wondering why I was more confused now than before.

"Sometimes I can't understand you at all." I said quietly, shaking my head.

“Do you understand that I love you?” He said softly.

I hesitated before nodding.

“That’s the only thing that matters to me.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The boys dropped by for a visit the next day.

I sat down on the open deck, opposite Namjoon for a game of chess. Jungkook slid into the armchair next to me.

"Are you winning?" Jungkook asked quietly and I shot him a glare, which gets a smile in return promptly. It was like he always knew what to say , how to manipulate my thoughts and emotions, how to make me look and feel a certain way , just so he could steal that part of mr away.

How evil.

At first I didn’t notice that he was sitting a bit too close for comfort, because as such, we've lived on top of each other for quite a while now. But after a while I became aware of the warmth of his thigh, solid and strong against my own, evident even through the layers of jean separating them.

I tried to move away, surreptitiously, but Jungkook only moved closer.

"Try this."

His fingers fluttered over my thigh, intentionally or not I would never know, reaching for my queen and I tried not to jump out of my skin, gritting my teeth as my muscles stiffened, my nerves tingling like electric.

I licked my lips and Jungkook’s eyes flickered up at the movement, a gentle smile tugging at his lips and my gut clenched in embarrassment. But the brunette moved even closer, his bare arm now brushing against mine and I had to swallow the desperate urge to get up and just run.

"Well, this is entertaining." Namjoon said suddenly and i looks at my opponent for the first time since Jungkook’s arrival. Namjoon was leaning back in his armchair, amusement shining out of his eyes .

I scrambled in a bid to put space between Jungkook and I and failed miserably.

"He's just helping me with chess." I said desperately.

"Oh, is that what they call it these days?" Namjoon leaned forward looking very intrigued.

Jungkook reached out and clonked him on the head but his eyes were laughing and I wondered how this was going to end. I wanted it. Wanted to take that final step with Jungkook but I was also so , so scared.

Would it change things. For the better? For worse?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jungkook, I soon realized, took the way I was shying away from him , as some sort of a twisted challenge to get closer than ever. The more I moved away, the closer Jungkook gets , touching me in gentle intimate little touches and every time he did, a slow simmering fire started at the pit of my stomach, reaching out in gentle upward licks , drying my throat and turning my insides into molten goo.

She's almost tempted to ask Jungkook if he feels the same way but she's saved the trouble later that week.

"I want you."

I froze on the spot, fingers stopping in mid air, inches from picking up a slice of apple, neatly placed on the tray. We were in the dining room, Jungkook sitting with a set of files spread out in front of him and me with a knife and a few uncut apples in a basket.

"You..what?" I squeaked.

" I'm attracted to you and I really want to have sex with you." Jungkook said , almost carefully.

Like he was announcing the weather. Like his words weren’t carefully calculated to turn my world upside down.

"Alright. " I whispered, not even sure what else I could say to that.

I stole a glance at Jungkook who was grinning from ear to ear. I felt blush rushing up my body, the blood flooding my face so quick it made me dizzy..

"Don't .. Don't look at me like that." I whispered, mortified to sound like a sixteen year old girl.

"Do you want me to leave now?" Jungkook reached out , placing a soft hand on my palm and it took all my willpower not to grab Jungkook and hug him. Instead I managed a weak smile. My mind was a few seconds away from collapsing in on itself and I was too stunnedto think straight.

So I answered the question at face value.

"No, I don't want you to leave now. "

"Okay. Go ahead, eat your fruit. It's good for you."

Jungkook smiled again, serene and perfectly at peace with the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At eleven thirty on Saturday night, both Jungkook and I sneaked out of the hotel, arms laden with our picnic basket and coats draped over our shoulders. Once we reached large pond in the outer edge of the property, Jungkook made quick work of the blanket, spreading it out on the artificial lawn that surrounded it.

I settled down on it, reaching out and dipping my legs in the water. It's a bit chilly but only for a second. I wriggled my toes playfully and Jungkook slipped a bit closer to me, letting his foot sink in next to mine.

We played around for a while, splashing water on each other and then I pulled my legs out.

"You okay?" Jungkook asked softly and I turned around to stare at him , a little apprehensive. There are so many things wrong with this , a part of me screams. But there's a part of me that longs, so badly , for this simplicity. Longs and has longed, all my life. Just this, the chance to relax and be myself and play around with water in the moonlight.

"I'm not sure." I admitted, honestly.

"Tell me. " Jungkook said and for once his voice isn't relaxed. Instead it's a bit urgent and anxious.

"We're not... I’m so scared that we'll never make it, you know." I sighed, dipping my legs back into the water, just as Jungkook pulled his out.

"Why? Because of the media ?" There’s a hint of bitterness in his voice and I hated myself for bringing this up. We were supposed to be spending time together, enjoying each other’s company. I wasn’t sup[posed to be ruining the mood like this.

"It's nothing. I just.. I don't want you to get hurt." I said honestly.

"Because of you? Because I'm with you?" Jungkook's voice was lot softer now, the bitterness replaced by concern.

"I.. Yes.. I mean... I'm.."

"You're a gorgeous young woman who is intelligent and charming. Why would I ever give you up?" Jungkook asked, reaching out and wrapping an arm around my shoulder but I couldn’t help but sigh.

"That's.. that's not what everyone else thinks." I reminded him. “ And that not what they’ll say, if you ever tell them the truth about us.”

"No it isn't. And I won't say something stupid like , it doesn't matter what others think. Because it does, I know it does. And it's going to hurt. In fact I think it would hurt you a lot more than it would hurt me. But if I don't... If I don't take a chance with us... that's going to hurt me too. So its a choice. I can either choose to get hurt by people I don't give a damn about , and in return I get... get to be with someone I really...like…..

"Or, I give up the woman I love and get hurt by my own decision. " Jungkook finished.

"We hurt either way." I smiled bitterly, Jungkook's words making a lot of sense.

"Yes. All you need to choose is , what's worth the hurt? Being with me, or society's approval?" Jungkook leaned forward slightly and I blinked.

We stayed that way staring at each other for a second and then he pulled away and sighed deeply.

"I've already chosen, I. I'm not pushing you, but I hope you'll pick me." He said quietly.

I stared into the night, thoughtfully. So easy, I told myself. So easy to turn around right now and kiss Jungkook, tell him that I didn’t deserve so much happiness. That my heart was so light, I wanted to spout wings and fly.

So easy but so frightening.

The wind picked up somewhere and somehow a draught found its way inside and I shivered a little, only to have a warm blanket wrapped around my shoulder. Jungkook snuggled in with me and we huddled together

My thoughts tripped over each other and I wanted to run away but I stayed still, letting the gentle lap of the water against my toe, calm my inner turmoil.

"It's just you and me." Jungkook whispered, " Right now. Just you and me. Let's pretend we're the only ones on the planet."

I turned around to the brunette in surprise but Jungkook's looking out into the water, lit by a full moon from the skylight.

"Just you and me. " He said absently and I nodded, looping my fingers with Jungkook's. We sat in silence, pressed against each other and I waited till the moon slipped behind a cloud before turning around, slightly, and pressing my lips against Jungkook's.

It's soft and very short, over before it even begins and Jungkook smiled into the kiss.

Explicit Content :

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jungkook teasingly pushes her back and Areum falls back against the soft mattress, like she's been shoved. She melts into the kiss and then Jungkook’s lips move away, dragging his teeth and tongue over the exposed expanse of her neck, lightly sucking and biting and then soothing with his tongue. Areum gasps and struggles and fights for air, before dragging their lips together again.

Jungkook kisses her until she's splayed flat against the bed, eyes wide and lost and lips parted, blush staining her cheeks and then Jungkook's reaching out to the table and pulling his camera , snapping a picture.

"You're such a weirdo!" Areum laughs , too turned on to be annoyed.

"No, just a man. A man in love." Jungkook leans down, pushing his hips down into hers and she gasps at the friction. They make quick work of their jeans and suddenly its skin on skin and she's not sure if she's doing this right.

"Jungkook.. I..I.."

"Hey, relax. I got you." Jungkook holds her close, just holding her, cradling her almost and the familiar words smooth away her apprehensions and he's moving closer, trying to pull more sounds out of her, his lips tracing the line of her chest, tongue swirling around one nipple before moving down and down, dipping lightly into her belly button.

And then the camera is tossed to the side, Jungkook flipping them over with ease , his lips moving down , tongue dipping into the curve of her waist down and then further down , lightly licking at the sensitive bundle of nerves near her center and Areum's pretty certain she loses her mind at that point.

"You're amazing." He whispers, and she nearly flies off the bed when Jungkook slides a single digit in, slowly , so slowly. She’s wet and ready but her body is still stuck in auto pilot and she wants to close her legs instinctively.

"Relax for me." Jungkook whispers, lips close to her ear, licking and teasing .

"I'll make it good. Just relax for me." Jungkook says again, gently, lapping at her neck and Areum unclenches her thighs letting him work his way in, sighing when the slide becomes a little more easy and a little more familiar.

"So beautiful." Jungkook whispers and Areum laughs, shaking her head.

"It's dark, you can't even see-"

"I can’t see but I can feel you. i can feel you and you’re so fucking gorgeous." He slips another finger in and curls his fingers against the walls of her insides and the gentle press of the pad of his finger is too much and not enough , all at once. Her head falls back into the pillow, all coherency leaving her body in a single whoosh of breath.

"Look at me. Only me." She whispers when Jungkook thrusts into her for the first time and Jungkook nods shakily and he pushes in, leaving her trembling at the ache and the pain and wanting to cry out, but she swallows it all down because she knows it’s going to get better .

"Don't wander off. " Areum whispers, pulling him down for a kiss and Jungkook pushes in deeper, earning a gasp. He wishes he could explain, that he can't ever think of anything but her because she is the perfect dream.

“I love this. I love you. “ she whispered and he had to physically restrain himself from burying himself to the hilt inside her. Her body was still getting used to him. He didn’t want to hurt her but God, she felt so amazing around him. the heat and wetness driving him crazy in a way that couldn’t be explained.

“Hold me tight.”

And she did.

With her arms and her legs and her body and her.....everything.

When she clenched around him, his mind went blissfully blank, her orgasm hitting him like an earth shattering, bone melting , heart stopping explosion of bliss.

He fell against her, careful not to crush her with his weight and rolled to the side gathering her close.

Someday he would hurt her, he was sure of it. He was an idiot after all and he knew he would find a way to muck this up and ruin it for them but for now, he wasn’t going to think about any of that.

For now, he was going to enjoy the intimacy of making love to the woman he loved.

Author’s Note : Hope you guys liked it! it was supposed to be very angsty but its really not lol....

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#bts smut #bts fics #bts fanfics #jungkook smut #jungkook fics

156 notes · View notes

cherienymphe · 4 years

Text

Saving Grace (Alpha!Thor x Omega!Reader)

WARNINGS: NON-CON, Alpha!Thor

summary: when an Avenger literally falls out of the sky and into your life, you take it upon yourself to nurse him back to health. It is easier said than done when you must hide your true nature from the blond god

It was a quiet night. Most nights were, but sometimes you could hear the faint howling of wolves or the scurrying of some smaller animal outside the cottage. The kettle on the stove was starting to let out a soft whistle, and you knew that it would be ready soon. You could hear a faint rumble from outside, but you paid the thunder no mind.

Your garden could use some rain. You started to undress, staring at the clawfoot tub in the corner with longing. You could practically feel the heated water warming your skin as you watched the steam rise from it while nearing it. You sank into it with a soft sigh, closing your eyes and leaning your head back as you relaxed.

You’d spent most of the day outside, planting some more fruits and vegetables that you’d bought from town. You didn’t get done until late, but that was your fault for waking up much later than you had expected. You were still getting used to the time change and lack of technology, despite how long it’d been since you’d moved here.

You swallowed as you thought of your family and friends and the life you’d left behind. The loneliness of your solitude made your heart clench, but you told yourself that it was for the better. It was safer than the alternative, safer than becoming nothing more than a warm body to some chauvinistic alpha who didn’t value you beyond what was in between your legs.

Both of your parents had been betas. They had often told you they’d thought you’d be no different, but they were wrong. You all were. As soon as you had turned 18, you had experienced the worst pain imaginable that came with your first heat. Your parents had been horrified, distraught even. You had always been their little girl, and the thought of you eventually submitting yourself to an alpha was too much for them.

You had been taken out of school halfway through your senior year, homeschooled through the rest. You hadn’t gone to a campus, instead taking your college courses online. You had never left the house. Instead, you had stayed locked away for years per your parents’ orders…and you didn’t mind.

Growing up, not only had you heard the stories of horrid alphas from your parents, but you’d seen some of the behaviors yourself. You saw how they acted, especially around omegas, how they carried themselves, how they took pride in the emotions they evoked from unmated omegas. You would never forget when a girl in your class had presented during junior year at 16 years old, how the few alpha boys who’d presented early had reacted. How one of the teachers had even reacted…

A shiver ran over you as you recalled that day…how scared that girl had been…how completely unrestrained those alphas had acted… It was a miracle that some other teachers and the school nurse had gotten her off the school grounds unscathed. You knew they weren’t all like that. Even if you’d like to believe so, statistically speaking, they couldn’t all be like that. But enough of them were to scare you.

So when your parents had suggested locking you inside the house for God knows how long, you did not oppose. You were all too happy to stay inside…safe and independent as you possibly could be under the circumstances. However, everything changed when your father died.

It had only been a few months after he died when you experienced one of your heats…the worst you’d ever been through. You couldn’t even recall it, blocking most of it out due to the trauma and pain. You did recall how scared your mother had been though. How worried she had been that you would not make it, that what you normally did to get you through your heats was no longer working. Reluctantly, she began to accept that you would need an alpha after all.

You had begged for otherwise, crying even, and she had cried too, but you could see the genuine fear for your life in her eyes. You had brought up the idea of suppressants, but you had known her answer before she even opened her mouth. They had always been adamantly against them due to the side effects, side effects that you had never given a flying hoot about.

She was determined to find you a nice alpha who would treat you right, who could be trusted with your life and care. You had begged her to reconsider, and she had promised to think about it, but deep down, you knew that her mind was made up. It had taken you less than a day to take her card and buy a plane ticket to Norway. Another two to transfer as much money as you could into an account your parents had opened for you forever ago but had never used. The same day you packed a single bag was the same night you had snuck out to catch the flight.

You were in Norway an entire month before finding a man who sold suppressants. You’d bought as many as possible in bulk, fortune enough to get enough to last for half a year. You’d been in Norway for a year and had only ventured out to buy from him twice. He was a beta and American, and you wondered how much business he got. How many omegas had the same idea as you to hide in the rural land of a foreign country?

The thunder outside rumbled louder now, much louder, and you pulled yourself from the tub just as the kettle began to scream inside the house. You wrapped your towel around you before going to turn it off. It was then that the outside was lit up by lightning, but it flashed in such a way that startled you. You turned to look out of the window, the outside so bright that you could’ve mistaken it for day time.

You heard something hit the ground hard, bringing lightning with it as it struck the earth, shaking the cottage. It was dark again, but you could see a rather large shape prone on the ground outside of your cottage. Your brows furrowed, and you hurried to put on a t-shirt and some pajama bottoms. Hesitantly, you went to open the door, and you gasped as you realized the figure was a man.

Confusion tore through you, but you ran outside anyway. It was lightly raining now, dampening your clothes and hair as you neared him. His golden hair haloed around his head, facial hair consistent and tasteful, and for some reason, he was familiar to you in the darkness. You knelt beside him, looking him over. The only light was the faint light from inside your house that stretched from the window and open door.

You couldn’t see much, but he eventually groaned. He started to sit up, and you recoiled a bit, but he groaned in pain as he did so. He was clearly hurt, and considering you were sure he fell from the sky, that didn’t surprise you.

“Can you stand?”

He mumbled something, and you couldn’t make it out, but he attempted to stand anyway. You helped him up, and it was then, when you were so close, that you recognized him. Your eyes widened, and you rushed to get him inside. It was pouring now.

When you both stumbled inside, you were able to see that he was hurt…badly. Blood soaked the front of his shirt, some more on his arms and neck area, but it seemed that his stomach was the worst of it. Miraculously, you were able to help him to your bed, the queen-sized furniture looking much smaller with his large frame on it. He passed out almost as soon as his back hit the mattress.

You blinked, staring at him in both awe and fear. He was as large and imposing as you always thought he’d be, hair golden and features sharp. You reminded yourself that he was injured, and you struggled to get his shirt off. You recalled seeing him on the news a few times before you’d left, fighting alongside other heroes like Captain America and Iron-Man. You also recalled that he was an alpha.

As you cleaned him up, you also reminded yourself that he was a hero. That he was one of the good guys and his presentation did not negate that. The cut on his stomach wasn’t deep, he’d lost more blood than anything, but you still thought it needed to be stitched. The problem with that was you were in a small cottage practically in the middle of nowhere.

You had a first aid kit lying around and was able to stem the bleeding with some bandages. It would have to do until he woke up. It hadn’t fully hit you yet that a superhero, a god, was lying in your bed, injured. You didn’t know if he was hurt anywhere else, but you decided you weren’t going to check. You’d wait for him to wake. You simply stared at him for a while, unsure of what to do before deciding to sit down in the rocking chair in the corner.

Your emotions were at war with themselves, and you didn’t know how to proceed. This man was a stranger, an alpha at that, and that made you nervous. You couldn’t ignore the small twinge of fear you felt at being in his presence. Sure, you had been on suppressants for a year, but your paranoia couldn’t be helped. On the other hand, he was a hero, loved by all. He was meant to protect, and part of you thought you should feel safer with him in your house.

You didn’t know how long you stared at him, tense and afraid and confused, but you eventually felt your head lolling. The rain outside was soothing, and it calmed your nerves, relaxing you. You succumbed to some much-needed sleep.

You woke up to the sound of a loud deep groan. You stirred a bit, back aching as you moved, confusion filling you. You heard the sound again, and when you blinked your eyes open, it took a moment for your memory to return.

You had an Avenger in your bed.

You sat up as he finally stirred, eyes blinking open to stare up at the ceiling. You glanced outside to see that you’d both slept the night through. You were a bit surprised with yourself that you had grown relaxed enough around him to even fall asleep, let alone sleep so soundly. You winced when you stood, and the movement drew his attention to you. You froze when his bright eyes landed on you, but he didn’t look alarmed…or even worried for that matter.

Why would he? You weren’t a threat in the slightest and he clearly knew that.

“Where am I?” he wondered, pushing himself up to a sitting position.

You reached out before pulling your hands back, unsure if you should help him.

“You’re in Norway,” you answered. “Flekkefjord to be exact.”

His gaze descended, and you followed it to his stomach. The bandages you put over his stomach were lightly stained with blood, but you were relieved to see that you were right: the wound wasn’t that bad. He ran his hand over his abdomen before lifting his gaze to you.

“You bandaged me.”

His voice was deep, like it was full of thunder, and the low timber warmed your body in the way a blanket would. It was strange.

“You were bleeding. I didn’t check to see if you were hurt anywhere else,” you gestured to his bottom half. “I would let you do that when you woke up…”

He pressed his hand to his head, groaning again as he moved to stand. You jumped into action, reaching out to see if he needed help, but he gently waved you off. You swallowed as you eyed him, his large build making your already small cottage look miniscule. He looked around with a hum.

“You fell out of the sky,” you quietly began in case he couldn’t remember. “You almost hit my house…”

He looked at you again, face genuinely apologetic.

“I am sorry,” he apologized although there was no need. “I was…”

He trailed off, seeming to be thinking hard before he slowly rested his hands on his waist, letting out a heavy sigh.

“Loki,” he whispered, disdain and disappointment coloring his tone.

That name was not unfamiliar to you. It wasn’t unfamiliar to anyone who lived in New York for a time or kept up with the news. Your eyes widened, and Thor noticed.

“He will not come here,” he hurried to assure you. “I swear it, Lady…”

You blinked before answering him.

“Y/N,” you told him.

He eyed you for a moment, quickly running his eyes over your frame, and you swallowed under the scrutiny. His nostrils flared.

“Lady Y/N,” he eventually said, resting a hand on your shoulder.

A twinge of discomfort registered in your gut before you noticed him sway slightly. You reached out, placing a hand on his arm and the other on his back as you helped him turn around.

“I don’t think you should be standing.”

“Nonsense,” he chuckled, but sat down anyway. “I am feeling a bit faint is all. Loki did more damage than I initially thought he would.”

You helped him lean back against the headboard, ignoring his inquiring gaze.

“I cleaned the wounds, but if you want a proper bath I can leave for a while. I should probably go into town and get some things for you anyway. I don’t know how long it’ll take for you to fully heal, but it shouldn’t take any longer than a week or so.”

He hummed in agreement.

“You do not seem at all bothered that I fell out of the sky and into your lawn,” he acknowledged.

The corner of your lip curved upwards ever so slightly.

“I was more concerned with your wellbeing at first, but once I recognized you it suddenly made a lot more sense,” you replied.

“Yes, I seem to have a habit of falling out of the sky,” he murmured, sounding a bit annoyed by that.

You turned away from him.

“Let me run you a bath,” you said, nearing the tub. “…and then I’ll get some things from town.”

It didn’t take long for hot water to fill the bathtub, and you suddenly wondered how this giant of a god was going to fit inside. You almost wanted to stick around, sure it would be comical to witness, but truth be told you wanted to get away from him for a bit.

You threw on a jacket and some shoes, realizing that you wouldn’t be able to change into something more presentable, not with Thor here. You worriedly eyed him as you neared the door, and he waved you off.

“I will make it in and out of the bath just fine, Lady Y/N,” he told you.

You pursed your lips before nodding and leaving, feeling his inquiring gaze on you until you shut the door behind you.

“Your hands are divinely touched, Lady Y/N,” Thor praised.

You threw him a small smile, embarrassment heating your face at his compliment. You both were seated at the table, eating some soup you’d just made. You made sure it included plenty of meat. The blond Avenger had been recuperating at your house for a few days, and in that time, you’d learned quite a bit about him. Notably, that he loved to eat. Especially meat.

“It’s nothing special,” you quietly replied.

“You do that a lot,” he suddenly said.

You frowned at him, pausing in your movements.

“Do what?” you wondered.

“Downplay your talents. You did it the other day when I complimented you on your help with my wound,” he explained.

You didn’t know what to say to that, unaware that you were even doing it. Part of you recognized why though. His compliments and praises made you preen, the omega qualities in you that you’d suppressed for so long rearing their ugly heads. Aside from high school and the occasional passerby in town, you did not interact with alphas. Ever.

You liked his compliments, but you didn’t at the same time. They spoke to a part of you that you wished didn’t exist. Ever since he’d literally fallen into your life, you’d had to up your suppressant intake. You knew the dangers that lied with that, but you didn’t care. Besides, it wasn’t going to be a long-term thing. Just until he was fully healed…

“I hadn’t noticed,” you honestly told him.

You could feel his gaze on you, and when you looked up, you found his brows furrowed. There was that curiosity again, like he was trying to figure you out, and that put you on edge. It seemed like he was always trying to figure you out, eying you and sniffing around you when he thought you didn’t notice. You didn’t think he meant any harm by it, but it still bothered you. He was an alpha, and he couldn’t pick up a scent from you that told him your presentation. You knew that it put his nerves on edge. He’s a hero, a good guy. You had to remind yourself of that. You could trust him, and in a few days, he’d be gone anyway.

“You are all alone out here. Why? Where is your family?”

You set your spoon down.

“My father died some years ago. My mother and the rest of my relatives are back in the states. I just like the solitude,” you shrugged.

It was a lie, and you hoped that he could not tell. He continued to eye you with a hum.

“…but you are completely alone. Surely you get…lonely…”

Again, you shrugged.

“I like being alone,” you simply told him with a small smile.

He returned it, but it did not reach his eyes.

“I am almost healed. It just pains me to leave a fine lady such as yourself out here all alone,” he said.

“That’s sweet, Thor, but I’ve been here for a year now. I’m perfectly happy…and safe.”

You avoided his eyes as you continued eating. You didn’t like all of this questioning, it made you nervous, made your heart race and blood pump faster.

“How’s your stomach?” you asked him, changing the subject.

His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and you pretended not to notice.

“It is healing well. I shall help you with the bandages tonight,” he answered.

You stood, grabbing your bowl.

“Are you done?”

“I am,” he said with a grin, watching as you cleared his side of the table.

You heard him stand as you set the dishes in the sink.

“I shall step outside for a stroll. Work to get my strength back,” he told you.

“Okay,” you called over your shoulder, relief coursing through you when he exited.

He always stepped outside for a while so you could bathe. You were sure that he did enjoy being outside, exercising a bit to regain his health, but you also figured it was not needed. You were grateful he awarded you the privacy. It was also when you took the time to take your suppressants. You were downing them twice a day since he’d arrived, just to be on the safe side, and where as you would normally just take them in the early hours of the morning, you now had to sneak them in during the evening too.

The steaming water soothed you, took your mind off of your present worries for a while. You reminded yourself that they wouldn’t last for much longer. You also had to keep reminding yourself that Thor was one of the heroes. He wasn’t like the alphas your parents told you about…or those boys in high school… He was one of the good ones.

You didn’t linger in the water, and you quickly dried yourself after stepping out. You hurried to get dressed, rushing to grab your pills before Thor reentered. You had just swallowed it down with a glass of water when the door opened. You were nonchalant as you closed the bottle back, shooting him a small smile as you went to put them back into your cabinet.

“I’m feeling almost as good as new. Healthy as a horse,” he chuckled. “Tony said that once…”

You laughed with him. Despite your paranoia, Thor was very easy to get along with. He had such a kind easygoing nature, and it was why you were so inclined to trust him. You suddenly thought about something, something you hadn’t considered before, and your heart skipped a beat.

“Do you think they’re looking for you?” you kept your tone light.

He talked about the other Avengers quite often, and it definitely seemed like they would be searching for him. You didn’t need anyone else discovering you.

“More than likely,” he answered as you faced him with new bandages. “…but I shall not remain here for much longer. I shall soon be out of your hair, Lady Y/N.”

You threw him a crooked smile before looking away when he removed his shirt, sitting down.

“You can just call me Y/N. I’ve told you that,” you murmured as you approached him.

His chest shook as he laughed, and you swiftly removed the old bandage. You frowned a bit, noticing that he was practically healed. However, you were no doctor. Thor clearly must still be in some sort of pain and discomfort, so you moved to get some cream to rub over his stomach. You could feel his eyes on you.

“Are you ill, Lady Y/N?”

You briefly glanced up at him and found his gaze on you, blue eyes inquiring. There was something else there, hiding within the curiosity that you could not name.

“No, why do you ask?”

“I saw you ingesting some medicine just before I came in. I want to make sure that you are well…”

Your heart skipped a beat, but you kept your face neutral and voice light as you chuckled.

“It’s just for headaches. I get terrible migraines, and a few years ago it became severe enough where I was prescribed medicine for it. Nothing to worry about,” you told him with a soft smile.

He returned it when you caught his gaze, but again, it did not reach his eyes.

“There! All done,” you said.

He stood, and you stumbled back, unsure if you would ever get used to the sheer size of him. You watched as he began grabbing the blankets and some pillows.

“You really should sleep in the bed, you know,” you sighed. “I really don’t mind sleeping on the floor…”

“Nonsense! I am almost well. You are doing much for me already, the least I can do is let you have your bed,” he replied.

It was similar to what he’d said the third night when he insisted you take the bed. You exhaled in defeat, but eventually nodded. It was almost crazy how quickly you’d grown to be comfortable around the blond Avenger. You didn’t think the paranoia would ever go away, a product of your upbringing, but a good portion of you felt safe around him.

You slid into your bed with ease as he made himself comfortable on the floor beside you. The first two nights, you couldn’t even relax enough to go to sleep until he was, but your body sagged with fatigue as soon as you made yourself comfortable. Sleep claimed you almost as soon as your head hit the pillow.

Thor was awake before you when you finally stirred. The smell of bacon and eggs in the air took you by surprise, and you sat up with a confused smile. You didn’t even know he knew how to use the stove, but you were pleasantly surprised, nonetheless.

“Good morning, Lady Y/N,” he boomed.

“Morning,” you mumbled as you got out of bed.

“This is my show of gratitude for being such a hospitable host,” he said as you neared him. “Sit.”

The command shot straight through you, and you frowned at him, only briefly, but eventually you sat. A plate was sat before you not long after, and you eyed the food, stomach growling.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” you told him as he sat down across from you.

He threw you a playful wink, golden locks brushing his shoulders.

“There are a great many things you do not know of me.”

You chuckled before digging in. You glanced out of the window, noticing the clear sky.

“I believe I shall take my leave tomorrow,” he suddenly said.

You returned your gaze to him, somehow simultaneously relieved and disappointed.

“You’re feeling much better then…”

“I am. It is thanks to you,” he sincerely replied. “I would very much like to spend the day helping you. Whether it be going into town or in the garden.”

You smiled at him.

“Okay.”

The rest of breakfast passed in a comfortable silence. You were all too happy to admit that Thor cooked better than you did. It was enjoyable, and yet, you kept feeling like you were forgetting something. When Thor stood to clear the table, he lingered by your chair. You looked up when his hand landed on your shoulder. You tensed, but his thumb brushed over a place where your shoulder met your neck, and you instinctively relaxed.

“So which shall it be first?”

You were momentarily dazed, blinded by his grin before blinking.

“Uh…the m-market. I need more seeds,” you quietly told him.

He nodded and moved away. It took a moment for you to clear your head. Another to realize he’d eventually stepped out to allow you to get dressed. You did so quickly, still feeling a nagging in your mind that was trying to remind you of something very important.

Thor’s “disguise” in town merely consisted of a dark hoodie and some shades. He didn’t stray from you the entire time, and his constant presence brought out conflicting emotions in you. His hovering unnerved you, but something in your stomach fluttered every time his arm brushed along yours or he touched your shoulder with his hand.

He didn’t relent when you made it back to your cottage. His constant touches and praises were making your heart race. Thor was attractive, anyone could see that, and it wasn’t like you hadn’t noticed, but you found yourself eyeing him more than usual. You found yourself inhaling his scent at times. You didn’t understand where this had come from…until you were soaking in the hot water that night.

You sat up with a shock, water splashing as you stared at the wall in front of you with wide eyes. Your heart felt like it was going jump out of your throat as your eyes slowly trailed to your cabinet. Hurriedly you jumped out of the tub, almost tripping in the process. Water splashed everywhere as you wrapped the towel around you and ran to the cabinet.

Everything was suddenly making sense. You normally took them first thing in the morning, before Thor even woke up, but he’d woken up first this morning and it had slipped your mind. You surmised that your double dosages were the only thing keeping your body somewhat under control. You couldn’t believe that you had forgotten to take them this morning. You couldn’t believe that…they weren’t here.

Frantic, you pushed other bottles and glasses around, but your eyes weren’t playing tricks. They were gone. You heard the door open behind you, and your stomach dropped to your stomach. You spun around to find Thor leaning against the doorjamb, your pills in his hand. He turned them over, eyeing them as he let out a low hum.

“Do you know how dangerous these are?”

You didn’t know what to say, mouth opening and closing.

“Do you have any idea what these do to you?”

Anger coated his tone, and you couldn’t hold in the whimper that climbed out of your throat at his ire. His eyes met yours, and your lower back hit the sink.

“Thor,” you quietly pleaded, all of your parents’ warnings hitting you at once.

He stepped inside, and you flinched.

“I won’t expose you,” he murmured, and you didn’t know if you should be relieved or not. “I would never do that.”

His eyes softened, and your shoulders sagged. Your relief was short lived when he marched towards you though. Frightened, you stumbled away from him, only to realize too late what he was actually doing.

“No,” you cried as he poured them down the sink, reaching for his hand.

He caught yours in an iron grip, pulling you against him. Your lip trembled as he looked down his nose at you, inhaling. You felt warm, and you tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let you.

“…but I don’t want you taking those anymore.”

You glared at him, and a low rumble sounded from within his chest, eating away at your annoyance. Your face fell, tears in your eyes before you eventually nodded. He was leaving tomorrow… After that, you could do whatever you want.

“Okay,” you whispered.

His jaw clenched, and one of his hands came up to rest in the crook of your neck, drawing patterns into the skin.

“Promise me…omega,” he softly said.

A shiver ran down your spine at the command…at what he’d called you. No one had ever referred to you as that before, and it made your stomach clench.

“I promise.”

His eyes narrowed, and for some reason he didn’t seem satisfied, but he relented. His hands landed on your bare shoulders, and you found yourself leaning towards him.

“Get dressed, omega, and get some rest.”

You watched as he left the cottage to give you privacy. Shaky, you eventually dressed yourself. No matter how hard you tried, your hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Thor knew…and he’d gotten rid of your suppressants. You were beyond terrified, but Thor said he wouldn’t out you. To be honest, you could get into a lot of trouble for what you had done, so you wanted to believe him.

It was quiet when he returned, the air tense. You nervously eyed him, and Thor noticed. He heaved a sigh, resting his hand on your head, stroking your hair. It was oddly relaxing.

“It is late, and you must rest. You are safe with me…”

His blue eyes met yours as you mulled over his words. In the days you’d known him, he had never once made you feel unsafe. So, against the odd feeling in your gut, you nodded and made your way to your bed. You could hear Thor gathering his own pillows and such as you made yourself comfortable.

It took you forever to fall asleep, heart racing at the knowledge that this alpha had found you out and gotten rid of your suppressants. That you were alone with him. He’s a hero, one of the good guys. You repeated that to yourself over and over again until you finally drifted into sleep.

It was sometime in the night when you were pulled from sleep. You didn’t know why, but you could faintly feel movement, the bed moving with it. You didn’t understand what was happening at first, not until you felt hands on you. You murmured incoherently, stirring, but your own movements were somewhat restricted. A heat surrounded you that wasn’t your own.

You felt…caged in.

You blinked, eyes fluttering open as your blurry vision finally cleared, colors and shapes separating to make up what was before you. You felt hot, much too hot to be considered normal. You moved again, leg dragging along the bed, but something prevented you from moving them completely. Your own eyes focused in on blue ones, and you gasped.

“Thor,” you mumbled, confusion and sleep still fogging your brain. “What…?”

He shushed you, and his lips brushed against your own. You couldn’t comprehend that your mouth was moving against his, tentatively…unsure. His lips were soft, pillowy even, and you absentmindedly wondered if kissing was always like this. It grew heated, his mouth pressing against yours, almost harshly, and that was when reality hit.

With a horrified yelp, you finally moved to shove against him. It was futile, and you knew this. Thor was a god, literally, and he had the physique of one. Tears kissed your eyes as he didn’t move, instead pressing himself against you more firmly. You protested against his lips.

“Thor-! Stop, stop,” you gasped.

His hands kneaded any part of you they could reach. You were crying now as he tore at your clothes, the sound of tearing fabric reaching your ears. This couldn’t be happening. He was one of the good ones…

“You’ve been poisoning yourself for a year,” he murmured, voice deep and pained.

You shivered beneath him when the cold air hit you, but he was quick to envelope you in his arms. It was then that you realized he was naked, had been since before you awoke it seemed. You felt like you were going to be sick, but that primal part of you, the one that your genetic makeup controlled, did not hold the same sentiments.

“I do not even want to imagine what you have done to your body…my little omega,” he whispered into the darkness.

You frantically shook your head at that, hitting against him now.

“Thor, p-please,” you begged, voice horse. “You said…you said I was safe with you.”

Your tone was accusatory, anger at both him and you filling you. Your parents had been right. They had always been right, and you had even seen it for yourself. Why did you allow yourself to trust him?

The moonlight shed some light into the cottage through the window, and you could see a frown on his handsome features.

“You are safe with me. I shall take care of you from now on…like you should have been cared for all this time,” he responded.

“No, no!”

You punched his chest, nails digging into his skin, and he hissed, eyes flashing dangerously. In one swift movement, he’d flipped you, pressing your chest into the mattress. One hand was pushing into your back while the other pinned one of your wrists down.

You cried harder when his legs made a home in between yours, spreading them apart. You could feel him hard and throbbing against the back of your thigh, and you shook beneath him. He gently shushed you, but it did no good.

You were growing hotter by the minute, and even though you hadn’t experienced one in over a year, you knew what was happening to you. You could feel yourself growing slick, your core hot and aching for only what an alpha could give you.

His lips grazed your cheek as he leaned over you, rubbing the tip of his cock against your wet folds. His chest vibrated against your back, soothing sounds leaving his lips, and you fought against the feeling that threatened to wash over you. You opened your mouth to plead with him, but the only thing that escaped your lips was a pained gasp as he thrust into you.

You whimpered, more tears falling over and nails digging into the pillows. You attempted to crawl away from the pain, away from him, but he followed, twitching inside of you as he did so. His blond hair kissed your cheek as he pressed his forearms into the bed beside your head, caging you in.

You couldn’t feel anything but him, smell anything but him. His presence was everywhere, and it was getting harder to resist your own instincts. You whimpered again as he started to move, fresh tears spilling over.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, my sweet omega.”

You shuddered, clenching around him, and he hissed. Your eyelashes fluttered, feeling as if you could feel him in your stomach. His thrusts were slow and purposeful, each pull of his cock pulling a whine from you. You pressed your forehead against the pillow, breath shallow and lips trembling as you fought between what you wanted and what your body wanted.

The bed began to shake as he started to speed up, and the intensity made you flinch, attempting to get away again. His other hand grabbed your other wrist, and he completely fell against you, rendering you immobile as he rutted into you. Unintelligible noises escaped you, and you realized that you could do nothing but lay there and take his cock.

The noises your slick core made in the quiet cottage embarrassed you, heat flooding your cheeks. Thor moaned above you, lost in the feel of your velvet walls clenching around him again and again. It was only when his teeth grazed along your throat did you start to struggle again.

“No, no,” you screamed, attempting to push your elbows against him.

He only shushed you in what was meant to be a soothing tone. Against your will, you could feel yourself beginning to shake, body seizing up in a way you had never experienced. It was in that moment did you feel his teeth sink into the skin of your neck, where it connected with your shoulder. You screamed again, the yell dying down into sobs as you felt a thin line of blood crawl down your skin. Even worse, you could feel him swelling inside of you.

You wanted to try and crawl away again, away from him and the pain, but you knew how stupid that would be with Thor knotted inside of you. You were practically hysterical now, chest heaving and vision blurry as he remained inside of you. He finally pulled his face away, and you couldn’t hold in the whimper. He ran his tongue over your neck, humming.

Sleep crawled along the peripheral of your mind, and you didn’t know whether to fight against it or accept it with open arms. You didn’t know whether you wanted to fight to get away or give up and come to terms with your new harsh reality. The latter was starting to win.

“I shall have to get Bruce to look over you and make sure you did not do permanent damage to yourself,” he murmured against your skin.

You groaned in response, both the physical and mental assault taking a toll on you.

“Your little cottage shall remain here. We can come to visit and vacation from time to time. I shall want to bask in these memories in the future…”

“Thor,” you pleaded, still unable to move with him inside of you.

“…I am your alpha now. No more of that vile poison and no more fending for yourself. You belong to me now.”

You felt yourself drifting, blinking at the wall, and his lips brushed against yours.

“I shall take care of you as you took care of me.”

tags: @nerdygirl8203 @xoxabs88xox @mcudarklibrary @darkficreposter @villanellevi @readermia @notyourtypicalrose @nickyl316h @opheliadawnwalker3 @ne-gans @

#mcudarklibrarykinkmonth #dark!thor #dark!thor x reader #dark fic #marvel fanfiction #a/b/o #A/B/O verse #alpha!thor

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ofendlesswonder · 3 years

Note

Congratulations on the impending release! That's so exciting. Also so excited to see you're taking prompts - 27, if you're so inspired!

27. “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

Cat thinks she’s dreaming, when she sees a cape flutter outside her balcony.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’d dreamt of red and blue and a sunny smile. Probably wouldn’t even be the hundredth, if she counts her daydreams, the one allowance she’d made, for when the itch under her skin, the desire to reach out and touch had almost become too much to bear.

Had become too much to bear, in the end. Had sent her fleeing across the country to another coast entirely, separating herself from any temptations, from blue, blue eyes and the traitorous voice in the back of her head wondering would it really be so bad, if you told her?

Yes, she’d always answered. Yes, because I can’t ruin her, too.

Not like she had every other relationship she’s ever had. Couldn’t bear to see the light in her eyes dim, for her to become bitter and jaded, and look at Cat like she despised her.

That’s something she knew she’d never be able to handle, no matter how many times Kara had pressed close beside her on the couch, staying long after her work hours had ended. No matter how often she’d looked at Cat like she held the world in her hands, her gaze had lingering when Cat had dared to undo an extra button, knowing she was playing a dangerous game.

The cape flutters again, propelling Cat out of bed, feet sinking into the plush carpet of her bedroom. Her new home isn’t quite as nice as the penthouse she’d left behind in National City, but it’s a decent replacement, she thinks. Carter had taken some convincing, but she knows D.C. has grown on him.

“Aren’t you a little far from home?” She asks the superhero slouched over her balcony railing, pushing open the doors with the palm of her hand.

Kara doesn’t move, and Cat thinks something must be deeply wrong. Why else would she be here, after so long? Why else, after years of silence stretched thin, would she have come to her?

“What’s wrong?” She asks, a silence of a different kind pressing into her ears. This high, the city traffic is quiet, the low hum of the people milling on the sidewalks below snatched away by the wind.

Cat grabs her robe off the back of the chair by the door, steps into stupidly fuzzy slippers Carter had bought her last Christmas. The ones she will never, ever publicly admit to owning, but that she adores slipping on at the end of a long day, and joins Kara on the balcony.

She doesn’t move, remains still and silent, and Cat wonders if she’s finally gone mad. If something in her has cracked, and she’s conjured an image of Kara, a ghostly mirage that will disappear as soon as she’s within arms’ reach.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says, when Cat steps close, in a voice suggesting the opposite is true. “Not really.”

“And yet here you are, on my balcony in the middle of the night, for...what? An interview? A catch up? How long has it been, Kara? Four years?”

She doesn’t react to her name, and Cat thinks that might be the most worrying thing of all. A secret she’d guarded so closely, so fiercely, terrified of Cat finding out the truth, and now she doesn’t care? Doesn’t acknowledge it, even?

No, this isn’t the Kara she knows.

But then, it’s been years since Cat last touched her life.

Years, for her to grow and change.

Years, where Cat didn’t know her at all, aside from brief glimpses of news footage, from the articles she’d read, written by Kara’s hand.

The woman standing before her may as well be a stranger.

One she has no idea how to help.

“You were always...like a port in a storm. A safe space to land, a voice of reason when I needed it. You were never afraid of telling me the truth, even if it was painful to hear, and you always knew exactly the right thing to say. And I think I need that, now, because I...I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

She doesn’t look at Cat when she talks, her jaw clenched tight, her fingers wrapped around the bar of Cat’s balcony railing, leaving indents in the metal.

It’s then Cat notices the blood. It’s caked under her nails, smeared across her knuckles, and Cat’s gaze darts over her body, searching for other signs of damage.

Maybe it’s not hers.

Maybe that’s why, when she turns to face Cat, her eyes are dark and haunted, so lost within herself Cat struggles to find a trace of the woman she once knew so well staring back at her.

“Feel what way?” Cat asks, and her voice is hoarse, because, different though she may be, it’s still Kara looking at her for the first time in years, and Cat had known it was naive, moving away to run from her ever-growing feelings, known it was unlikely to work, but it’s only now, four years down the line and feeling like not a single day has passed, that she realises just how naive.

Can Kara hear the uptick in her heartbeat, as their eyes meet? Has she heard it before? Does she have any idea, how a single glance from her can knock Cat breathless?

“Like the weight of the world is on my shoulders.” Her eyes close, and Cat lets her gaze settle on her face, how though she is physically unchanged—something about those Kryptonian genes, she suspects—she looks so much older.

Weary.

Defeated.

“I can’t...I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to. The world needs a hero, but that isn’t me.” She shakes her head so violently she lurches to the side, and Cat steadies her—futile though the gesture may be—with a hand on her elbow, her suit rough beneath her fingertips. “I’m not a leader. I’m not...I’m not cut out for this.”

Cat casts her mind back, tries to remember any mention of Supergirl in the news, recently, that might make her feel this way. Smear campaigns against superheroes are nothing new—Cat could almost understand it, because who was going to stop them if they decided this whole being good thing just wasn’t for them?

But not Kara. Never Kara—red Kryptonite aside.

“They deserve better than me.” She sags when she says it, falling into Cat so suddenly she barely manages to catch her, face pressed into the side of Cat’s neck, and her tears hot on her skin.

“You are the strongest person I know,” Cat says, cheek pressing against Kara’s head, a hand settling at the small of her back, nothing but certainty in her voice, in her gentle grip. “The strongest person I’ve ever met, in fact—and let me tell you, Kara, I have met a lot of people. None of them could hold a candle to you.”

She sobs harder, and Cat breaks, because what is it that’s brought this beautiful, selfless woman to her knees?

“There is no one better than you,” she continues, because she thinks these are words Kara desperately needs to hear. “But you’re right about one thing—they don’t deserve you. And no one is entitled to you. What you do, Kara, putting yourself on the line, day after day, forfeiting your rights to a normal life, risking losing it all every time you charge into battle—that’s incredible. But it’s not sustainable. You keep doing it, and sooner or later, something’s going to break.”

If she’s being honest with herself, Cat is surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. Just goes to show, then, how strong she really is.

“You’ve endured so much. So much pain, so much loss.” The likes of which Cat can’t possibly comprehend, the likes of which she will never even fully know. “It’s okay to have days where you can barely even drag yourself out of the bed in the morning. Hell, I feel like that at least once a month, and I don’t have to cope with anything like you do.” Cat doesn’t know what she’d do, if their situations were reversed. Doesn’t know if she’d be able to cope. “Kara, what...what happened?”

Something triggered this. Something to send Kara flying a thousand miles across the country, to seek out the embrace of a woman she hasn’t spoken to in years. The why, Cat thinks she understands, now. Certainly, there have been a dozen other conversations on a balcony just like this one, though the view had been a little different. And Kara had been different, too, buoyed with the feeling of something new and exciting, invincibility in its most naive form, drawing strength from Cat’s imparted wisdom, which she’d never been truly qualified to give.

She definitely doesn’t feel qualified to deal with this, with Kara breaking in her arms. Doesn’t know what to say to make her feel better, not without all of the pieces of the story.

“There was a fight,” she says, and she doesn’t lift her head, the words muffled against the silk of Cat’s robe. “Nothing special. No really. But he...he was strong, and he tossed a car at me, and I...I pushed it off. Didn’t look where, until...until I heard a scream.”

Kara shifts, leans away, like she thinks Cat is about to be repulsed by her, swipes at damp cheeks with a bloodied sleeve.

“I didn’t notice her.” Kara’s bottom lip wobbles, and Cat has never seen someone look so broken. “I didn’t know she was there, but she...it crushed her.” She clenches her jaw, clenches her fists, like she can change the story by sheer force of will alone. “She’s six years old, and she’ll never walk away.”

“Kara…”

“Don’t,” she says, so viciously Cat flinches. “If you’re about to tell me it’s not my fault, don’t. Because it is. I did that to her, not him.”

“You can’t save them all.”

“She wasn’t even in any danger though, was she?” Kara’s laugh is bitter, and not one Cat has ever heard come from her lips before. “That’s the irony of it. If I’d never been there, she’d have been fine.”

“But someone else might not have been.”

Kara scoffs, takes a step back, and for one horrifying moment, Cat thinks she’s going to launch over the balcony and flee, leave her standing out here with an ache in her heart.

“No one ever talks about the collateral damage,” she says, eyes focused on the horizon. “How many people’s lives have been ruined, because of me? How many buildings destroyed, how many people in hospital?”

“And how many people would be dead, if you’d never started using your powers, hm?” Cat has her counterattack ready, can’t let Kara keep going down this rabbit hole. “Thousands, I’d wager. Or the whole world, perhaps. You stopped Myriad, you stopped an alien invasion. And they’re just the ones I know about.” She steps closer, wraps her fingers around Kara’s wrist, squeezes hard so she feels it. “You will carry this in your heart for a long time, Kara, there’s no way around that. It will hurt, and it will ache, and it will make you not want to carry on, but it doesn’t erase all of the good you’ve done. All the lives you’ve touched, the people you’ve saved.”

“How can you look at me like that, knowing I’m a monster?”

“You are so many things, Kara, but monster isn’t one of them. You’ve made a mistake—a grave one—but it was an accident, and you give up because of it. What you do, is you put on the suit, and you grit your teeth, and you vow to do better next time. You carry on. You persevere.”

“How?” She asks, and her voice breaks over the word, over the plea, and Cat clenches her jaw so she doesn’t cry, because she knows that is the opposite of what Kara needs right now.

She came here because she needs someone to be strong for her, because she needs someone to tell her it’s going to be okay—and mean it.

“Only you can come up with the answer to that,” Cat says, and she wraps her fingers a little tighter around Kara’s wrist. “But I think a good start is, perhaps, a shower. Wash away the bad.” Wash away the blood, staining Kara’s skin. “Come inside.”

Kara digs in her heels. “I-I don’t...you don’t have to do that. I should go.”

“I don’t want you going anywhere like this.” Not on her own, not where there’s no one to keep an eye on her. “Please, Kara. Let me help you. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Why you came here?”

She nods, jerky and quick, and lets Cat pull her into her bedroom, all the fight seeping out of her.

“Wait here.” She leaves her hovering by the end of Cat’s bed, arms wrapped around her torso, and steps into her en-suite.

She turns on the shower, sets it to scalding, and waits until the room is full of steam, until the ends of her hair begins to curl.

When she returns to her bedroom and finds Kara stripped from her suit, she nearly has a heart attack.

“I didn’t want to wear it anymore,” she says, and she’s shivering but Cat doesn’t think it’s from the cold.

“I’ll find you something clean to wear.” Something not stained with dirt and regret. She digs out an old, worn Harvard T-shirt and some shorts, passes them over to Kara and politely averts her gaze as she does so before prodding her toward the bathroom. “Take as much time as you need.”

She folds the suit while she waits, puts it carefully on the chair by the balcony door along with her boots. When it starts buzzing, she jumps, worried she’s inadvertently pressed a button she shouldn’t have. Has she activated a GPS tracker? Self-destruct? Were a team of shady government agents on their way to her apartment to cart her off to a black site?

Thank God Carter is spending the night at his friends house. She has no idea how she’d explain any of this to him.

The buzzing doesn’t stop, so she ventures closer, finds a pocket and a phone with nearly thirty missed calls, and a dozen more texts.

Alex is a name she recognises, but Nia and Brainy are not. Another reminder things have changed, she thinks, setting the phone down on her vanity for when Kara re-emerges. Clearly, she hasn’t told anyone where she is.

“Thank you,” Kara says, when she opens the bathroom door, a cloud of steam enveloping her. On Cat, the shirt is baggy, but it clings to Kara, highlighting the muscle and strength hidden beneath her lithe frame, and Cat chastises herself for staring.

Not what she needs right now.

If Cat had ever had her doubts about Supergirl’s identity, if Kara had tried to argue when Cat had named her earlier, it would have soon come crashing down. Because now, standing in borrowed clothes, damp hair curling around her shoulders, hunched in on herself, the woman staring back at her was entirely Kara Danvers.

Cat can’t believe she’d ever doubted it.

“Kara, does anyone know you’re here?” She asks, makes sure her voice is gentle, and not condescending. The last thing she needs is her feeling attacked.

“Like they’d understand,” she says, voice soft, and that’s true, Cat thinks, because she finds it hard to understand herself. “I don’t want them to.”

“At least let someone know you’re safe? Your sister, perhaps? It’s either that, or toss your phone out of the window.” As if on cue, it begins to vibrate again. “She’s calling for the hundredth time.”

Kara sighs, but takes the call, resignation on her face as she lifts it to her ear. “Alex. I’m fine.”

A lie, Cat knows from one look at her face. She wonders if her sister can tell, too.

“I just needed some space,” Kara says then, and Cat wonders where her sister might think she is. “I’m somewhere safe.” She casts a glance toward Cat, whose heart thuds at the thought that Kara thinks of her as a safe space. Somewhere to land, when she feels like her whole world is falling apart.

Cat wonders when she’d earned the honor.

“I don’t know. Tomorrow, probably. I don’t want to fucking debrief, Alex.” It explodes out of her, so sudden it takes Cat by surprise, her back ramrod straight and her fingers holding the phone so tight it’s a wonder the plastic doesn’t crack. “You saw what happened. Don’t make me relive it.”

Cat crosses the room without thinking, pressing a hand to the small of Kara’s back. The effect is instantaneous, body relaxing beneath Cat’s fingertips, tension leaching out of her with every breath.

This close, Cat can hear Alex’s voice on the other end of the line, tight with worry. “Come home, Kara.”

“Not yet,” she says, her voice shaky. “I...I can’t yet.” She hangs up before Alex can argue, and Cat pretends not to notice her turn the phone off before tossing it onto the chair with her suit. She’d done what Cat asked—and she doesn’t think she wants the sister knowing her apartment is the place Kara chose to land.

Somehow, she doesn’t think that’ll go over well.

“You can stay here tonight, if you want.” Even if she felt about Kara the way she was supposed to—appropriately, for a woman double her age, and a former boss to boot—she wouldn’t have been able to turf her out when she looks so dejected. “You can stay as long as you want, even. If you want a place to hide away from the rest of the world, consider this your sanctuary.”

“Beside the Queen of all Media.”

“There’s a moniker I haven’t heard in a long time.”

“Do you have a new one? Or is it just Press Secretary, now?”

“Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?” If this is what Kara needs, idle small talk in the middle of Cat’s bedroom at a stupid hour in the morning, well.

Cat has never been able to deny her.

“It suits you, though.”

“And reporter suits you, Pulitzer Prize winner.” The flush that stains Kara’s cheeks is expected, but it makes Cat chuckle all the same. “You’ve been doing good work. I knew you had it in you.”

“You always saw the best in me.”

“You say that like it’s difficult to.” Seeing the best in Kara is one of the easiest things Cat has ever done. She’d seen something special in her that first fateful meeting—she’d just no idea how special. How this meek, bespectacled woman with the hideous fashion sense would tip her life on its head. “You should get some rest,” she says, when Kara yawns. “You’ve had a...difficult day.” Something of an understatement. “You can stay in here.”

Kara shakes her head. “I’m not kicking you out of bed, Cat.”

“You’re not—I’m offering it to you.”

“I can take the guest room.”

“There is no guest room.” Cat’s smile is wry when Kara frowns. “Not like I get a lot of visitors. It was three bedrooms, but I turned the third into an office.”

“The couch, then.”

Cat stops her with a hand on her arm when she makes for the door. “Stay here, Kara. It’s fine.”

“Will you...will you stay with me, then?” She asks, in a voice so small Cat feels like her heart is being squeezed in a vice.

“I…” Is there a polite way to say no? To say I can’t think of a more terrible, masochistic idea than that without breaking the poor girl’s spirit?

“Please? I...I don’t want to be alone.” It’s the sheen of tears in her eyes that does it, the wobble of her lip, the desperation in her voice, and Cat tells herself that it’s not specifically her that Kara wants. It’s the comfort, it’s the presence of another warm body, to ward off the chill of loneliness.

And yet, it was her that Kara had sought out.

And that has to mean something, even if it’s not what she so desperately wants to be.

“Okay, I’ll stay,” she says, knowing the memory of Kara wrapped up in her sheets will linger long after they’ve been washed, but knowing, also, that it’s worth it, for the way her face lights up when Cat pulls back the covers and climbs inside.

She has to be up in four hours, she thinks, wincing when she glances at the clock.

Worth it, she thinks, as Kara slips in beside her. Worth it, when she turns to Cat in the dark, and presses into her side, face in the crook of her neck, and tears once again damp on her skin.

Cat holds her, and she doesn’t sleep a wink, even when Kara’s breathing deepens, hot against her skin, fingers twitching where they’re gripping at Cat’s robe, still wrapped around her shoulders.

Cat holds her, and thinks they might not talk about it tomorrow—Kara might, perhaps, wake up mortified in her former boss’ bed, the light of morning bringing with it a sense of clarity that maybe the decision to come here was wrong. Kara might, perhaps, flee without saying goodbye, and Cat may never see her again.

And Cat would accept that decision without question, because for her, this is enough.Stitching the broken parts of Kara back together, being here for her, offering her the comfort she so desperately needed, means more to her than anything else ever could.

#directrix-zelda #thank you 😊#once again...this was supposed to be short #i wrote this entire thing at work today no one tell my boss #supercat #supercat:fanfic

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loadingrat · 3 years

Text

⿻ 𝐬𝐰𝐚𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐤𝐞 → 𝐤. 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐣𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐠

🏻 ⃟⿻ 𝐠 𝐞 𝐧 𝐫 𝐞 → angst; retelling; fantasy

🏼 ⃟⿻ 𝐬 𝐮 𝐦 𝐦 𝐚 𝐫 𝐲 → with the burden of a crown on his head, Hongjoong finds himself forced to get a bride before he turns twenty two, yet he finds himself struck by love with a cursed young woman named Odette, who's body turns to swan at dawn. it all should be as simple as snapping your fingers to break the curse, when all it takes is three little words, yet, when spoken wrongly, they may do more harm then good.

🏽 ⃟⿻ 𝐰 𝐚 𝐫 𝐧 𝐢 𝐧 𝐠 𝐬 → this awfully written i apologise; based off the ballet, so suicide; dark magic; violence; mention of a curse; the usual swearing; hunting; instant love; drowning; overprotective parents and another shitty ass parent if you ask me; forced marriage; the reader is referred to as "Odette"

🏾 ⃟⿻ 𝐰 𝐨 𝐫 𝐝 𝐬 → + 5.5k

🏿 ⃟⿻ 𝐦 𝐚 𝐬 𝐭 𝐞 𝐫 𝐥 𝐢 𝐬 𝐭 𝐬 → main masterlist ⦚ retellings

Hongjoong always enjoyed watching as the wind bent under the will of his arrows, obeying them and letting the weapons find their way right in the middle of the red target. It brought pride in his chest, and helped him feel more like a boy stuck with a crown on his head than a prince stuck with the future of a kingdom on his back. He loved to see how flour would purr out of the sacks full of the snow like powder that stood in the royal yard, and so did his friends, as they always cheered him on, despite getting their expensive clothes all dirtied up.

Saying that Kim Hongjoong's life was anything but exiting would've been the understandment of the year, that only if the words wouldn't have reached his mother's ears. However the queen was always aware of anything and everything going on in her kingdom, as if the old woman with her hair like silver had eyes in every corner of the territory. The prince always disliked that in her as he himself was never allowed to even leave the palace without one of his parents following. Of course, he was grateful that the queen and the king were the most understanding royalties he's ever met, and he got to speak to a lot on a daily, however, when it came to actually understanding him, sadly they were left lacking. The prince hated the way he pictured himself in this situation, but he couldn't do much and just accept that he was like a swan trapped in a dove's cage, and it made him feel completely hopeless.

"You'll try getting out this evening, won't you?" The words slipped prince Wooyoung's lips as if he asked the same thing over and over. The smile on his lips had always faded during previous days, as the answer would've been a sad shake of the head, but the said day it only bloomed as Hongjoong turned his head around, looking at his bow as if it was the most interesting thing he's seen in his lifetime. "Holy shit, he didn't deny it!" Wooyoung spoke, a loud sound like a hyena's laughter ringing from his lungs as he repeatedly slapped his best friend's back. The other prince tried moving away, his abused body protesting with each hit Wooyoung delivered, but deciding that he'd fail anyways, Yeosang resorted to catching the younger's hand and delivering a harsh hit back. "But he did not agree to it either."

It took only two more hours for the man to find himself sitting at a lavish dinner table, all kind of foods placed before them, yet the anxiety growing inside his heart made it easy for his appetite to stray away. "Hongjoong?" His father's voice was harsh as he demanded the prince to give him his attention. His mother's words followed right after, tone dripping with honey and Hongjoong knew something was in her mind. "The date for your birthday ball is approaching." She stated, and the man couldn't help but try to anticipate what she would've said next. "And we thought that it would be a rather perfect time for you to find a bride."

The prince sucked in a hard breath, not trusting his voice to speak up his mind as it could've cracked, and he was not a teenager anymore, so he feared the way it could've made him look weak in front of the King. Hongjoong had met many princesses, duchesses, nobilities of all kinds, even country girls with exceptional talents, but none ever intrigued him and he surely wasn't going to choose a bride just yet. Hongjoong liked to believe he was too you for marriage, but his two friends always nagged that if he'll dare pass twenty five by himself, no princess will ever marry him for his heart, but for his crown instead, to which Hongjoong only scoffed as he dispatched another set of arrows. "I don't think anyone's marrying me for my heart now either."

"So what do you say?" He felt as if his words were stuck in his throat and he was unable to get then out, but even if he would've answered as he truly believed, he knew his pleadings would've fallen on deaf ears. Hongjoong knew this day was going to come sooner or earlier, he just didn't expect it quite yet. "I agree, mother," the prince didn't know what gave him the courage to stretch his words, or to arch his eyebrows upwards, or smile like he did, all the while still looking in his plate. "However i also have a proposal.."

Truly, Hongjoong doesn't know what came over him that evening, yet it was because of his boldness that he found himself mounting one of the finest mares in the stables. The prince had taken care of the horse since it was barely standing, he himself being only a child, enchanted by the pure white little fur on it. He's called her Zoya, a fitting name for a mount like herself, and despite leaving the palace only a couple of times, alongside of his father or mother, he considered the creature loyal enough to not abandon him when he'll most need her.

With his bow resting in at his hip, the prince started following a rather small river, which eventually brought him in town and down the valley the palace rested on. Hongjoong wearily adventured himself in the wide forest that spread before him, the darkness of it making him shiver slightly as his mind finally wrapped around all the danger that could've hid around. Wolves, bears, mountain lions, all kind of creatures lurked in the forest, however the silver haired prince advanced nonetheless, clutching his bow tighter as if it could've made him feel secure once more.

Just as he was about to urge his horse to start running, the sound of rapid wings flapping in the air made his skin crowl and his head shoot back, his eyes snapping rapidly on a flock of birds. Their fathers were as white as you could've imagined and as pure as it could've gotten, their bodies long, majestic and elegant, and Hongjoong couldn't help but let his mouth hang open as he stared at the beautiful swans that took over the sky. Within seconds, the brave prince clutched his bow and aimed skillfully, ready to let his arrow pierce through what he nominated as the prettiest swan, but Hongjoong wasn't as hard hearted as his father believed him to be, his eyes saddening and his chest burning as he asked himself how could he kill such a beautiful creature.

The prince sighed deeply, putting his bow back and giving the horse a gentle nudge as a sign to follow the flock and Zoya took off obediently, rushing Hongjoong through the woods. He enjoyed the way wind blew through his silver locks, caressing his cheeks harshly and he love the adrenaline that came with riding this fast and thinking about how free one could be, thinking about what he's missed his whole life. Hongjoong knew that where there was a smaller river, there had to be a wider water source near by, and the swans that seemed to start heading down only gave him more reasons to believe he was right. The only problem was that he was not expecting the woods to end so quickly, his horse coming to an abrupt halt as it hooves planted in the mud as harsh as it could.

He jumped eagerly from his horse and there, right before him and barely at two steps away from where his horse stopped, a grand body of water spread itself so widely that the other side of the lake was barley visible through the thin mist. The water sparkled in the shy sunlight of the evening, the sound of a small cascade barely audible in the back and the prince felt his jaw drop slightly one more time. If his mother would've been with him, she wouldn't even look at the beauty in front of her, but would scold him about how unmannered he looked and how that wasn't suitable for princes like him, not even in a million years, but as he spotted the swans floating happily around, everything about manners felt long forgotten.

The boy in him had the urgent need to sit down in the slightly damp yet soft grass, eyes wide on the beautiful birds before him, yet the mature side in him wanted to mount back on his horse and move forward. There was so much more to explore and so little time, his mind wrapping around the fact that his father had gave him one single day to ride around the kingdom, with the condition that he'd return the evening before the horologe rang three in the morning. Therefore, the prince clutched on the horse's reins ready to mount, sparing one last glance at the lake, who's water started reflecting the rosy color of the sky.

Hongjoong sucked in his breath, feeling how air left his lungs as he swore he started imagining things. His head whipped back, the forest remaining the only sight for a while, and he took his time thinking about what came into his sight seconds ago. Not long after, he turned around and came to the horrifying conclusion that he was indeed watching as the small bodies of the swans, that now rested calmly on the shore, morphed and twisted, becoming mere humans. Their build was more than just elegant, bodies long and delicate, nothing short of pure beauty. Each wore long gowns, as white and pure as their dazzling wings were, little silver necklaces with one sapphire gem decorating their necks, yet he quickly took notice of the one swan that stood in the middle of them all, sitted on the old trunk of a tree, her eyes glimming with happiness while a silver tiara rested on the top of her head.

The prince watched them with amazement, as if they had put him under a thick spell like sirens would do to the poor sailors adventuring in the deep waters. Yet the more he watched, the more he couldn't help but feel like an intruder. The women danced and laughed when younger swans tried to impress them, then ran quickly to hide under an older swan's wing. The innocence of the moment was making his own heart fill with happiness, lips curling upwards gently and eyes turning in crescents as a squeaky giggle rolled off his throat.

The moment all the laughter stopped and a cutting silence settled in, the prince knew he had done something wrong. He felt the warmth that had built in his chest being stripped away from him, eyes growing wide and startled, just as the swans had became. It didn't take long for Hongjoong to see how every pair of eyes rested on him, making him feel anxious. Should he leave? Or was he supposed to stay now? Either way, the answer would've been to not panic, which he's failed the moment one of the youngest of the creatures approached him, yelling loudly the name of who he supposed was the swan with the tiara.

"Odette! Odette!" The small girl yelled happily, grabbing the prince's hand and jumping up and down while giggling. "It's prince charming! He's come to save us!" At her words, Hongjoong's cheeks started flaring pink, his heart beating faster as each pair of eyes rested on him, and he completely forgot about his tight grip on the bow in his other hand. The mare let out a loud cry, startled by the poor girl before slamming it's hooves harshly in the ground multiple times. In alert, Hongjoong let go of his bow, grabbing the girl's body in his arms and hurrying further away from the horse, who angrily took off back towards the town.

"Yuna, dear!" The swan quickly run to the prince, her hands coming to grip Hongjoong's arms, which were still holding tightly onto her. "Are you alright?" His voice sounded unsure as he let the woman gently take her in her own hold, hand placing the younger's head again her chest. When a little laughter came from Yuna's lips, everyone sighed in relief, smiles painted on the swans' lips when the smaller swan jumped back on the grass and began twirling around the royalty as she giggled loudly. "Yuna, where are your manners?" Another swan called out, her lips pulled in a thin line and her eyebrows furrowed, and she most definetly was the oldest of the group, her aura holding a maturity that amazed Hongjoong, despite her youthful features.

"Don't tense yourself, Yongsun." The youngest girl however rolled her eyes at the authority in Yongsun's voice, her own lips pulled in a pout as she bowed slightly in front of the silver haired man. He gave her a polite smile before bowing right back, sending the women in awe. "Come sit with us." The girl next to him offered, and he couldn't help but let his eyes wander over her striking features. She was an unique type of beauty, something he's never seen in anyone before, not even in all the princesses that's come to court him. He loved her voice as well, her tone being like honey to his ears and he couldn't even bring himself to care about the sudden drop of formalities when his orbs found hers.

"I would hate to make such beautiful ladies uncomfortable with my presence." He acknowledged humbly, felling a shy smile tug at his lips while hearing how the woman, who he assumed was named Odette, let out a wholehearted laugh, her eyes turning to crescents as one of her hands came to hide her mouth. "Bother us? It would be a crime to not enjoy your presence." She assured, nodding her head towards him like encouraging him to take a step forward, and so he did. One step at a time before he found himself sitting in the grass besides a couple of children, who playfully pulled at his clothes and wowed at the fine material.

"What's your name, son?" The oldest inquired, making Hongjoong's cheeks become pinker again, however this time, his eyes fell on the ground, where his ring decorated fingers gently pulled at the damb grass. "Kim Hongjoong." He spoke softly, not expecting any grand reactions form the group, who only nodded their heads in adoration. "We'll would you look at that, it really is prince charming." Another swan laughed, making Hongjoong himself let out a shy giggle, his eyes involuntary traveling to the swan with a tiara. It felt like hours that he stood there and just watched her, her skin bathing in the golden light of the sunset, and her eyes glimmering with love as she looked at each swan, before her eyes settled on him as well.

"Do you like to dance?" One of the younger swans looked at him curiously, her small hand coming to grasp at Hongjoong's with excitement as she awaited a reply, and when the prince nodded his head in agreemen, he girl softly tugged him after her, bringing him to his feet. Together, they marveled at the way the forest started lighting up as soon as the sun went under, mushrooms and strange plants glowing in the dark, along with the moss on the trees, it was absolutely beautiful. However Hongjoong didn't have long to observe the landscape, his attention being brought back to the small girl that began dancing with him as the others started singing along, and it didn't take a while for the swans to join in as well, a chorus of laughter spreading trough the rather dormant forest as they all had their fun.

Yongsun smiled happily as she took Odette's's hand, bringing her closer to the silver haired prince, who bowed deeply and offered his hand, an invitation, the girl concluded as she accepted happily. Perhaps only for tonight, she could forget about her curse, see herself as an actual princess and lose herself in the idea that Hongjoong would be the one to break the curse. However nothing like that happened as they began dancing, a tough wind starting to pull at their bodies, darkness spreading like a plague. The youngest girls found coverage behind the elders, while Hongjoong placed his arms around Odette and brought her closer to his chest, protecting the swan from whatever danger eas awaiting them.

"Well well.." the sharp voice of a girl that came with the calmness of the weather startled the prince, who felt reluctant to let go of the swan in his arms, yet still let go of her and watched as disgust painted over Odette's features and anger over the others. Just on the shore stood another woman, her gown way shorter and messier as well as dotted with darker shades of black. Her features were just as graceful and as striking as the others, her own features making her look like a devine, but something about her tone made the prince feel sure that she wasn't just as beautiful on the inside.

"The swan princess found herself a rescuer." She taunted while getting closer, her thumb and pointer wrapping around Odette's chin and bringing her closer. The princess, as the stranger called her, let out a scoff before pulling away, making the black swan laugh as if she was in hysterics. "Hoping you'll turn human again, little one?" She fumed, letting her eyes fall on Hongjoong, who stood stiff and angered, eyes on her like, if he had his arrows, he wouldn't have hesitated to let one of them pierce her heart.

"It'll never happen, we'll make sure of that, little Odette." The stranger cocked one of her eyebrows while shaking her head and her fingers glazed over the necklace she was proudly wearing. With a last laugh, the black swan took a couple of steps back before her body quickly morphed in the one of a swan, yet her feathers looked disturbed and unhealthy, her body, small, too weak for a creature that was supposed to look as beautiful as a swan.

"Who was that?" Hongjoong found himself asking, his own eyebrows arched upwards in confusion. His hand found Odette's and gripped it lightly a reassuring smile tugging at the girl's lips as she found comfort in the prince, who was still a stranger. "Odile.. Her father tried casting a curse on the town, however it did not go as planned and it ended up backfiring." She began explaining, choosing carefully her words as she took a glance at his chocolate warm eyes. The prince himself let his gaze meet hers, observant eyes curiously investigating her for a while before he spoke out loud. "Then why are you trapped as swans as well?" Silence washed over the group, the tension growing so thick that Hongjoong could've cut it with a knife. "I didn't say that it didn't work."

Not much passed before Hongjoong excused himself, getting up and fetching his bow that stood patiently in the grass. He's dropped it earlier when Zoya took off and completely forgot about it, however, in his favor, his loyal mare had found her way back to the lake, thirst driving it back the way it's come. After the prince found himself back on his mount, thanking all of his lucky stars for bringing it back to him, he finally let his eyes fall on the woman with a little crown on her head. He swore he felt his heart beating faster than ever, swirling with the desire to take her with him and keep her to himself, to make her his, and at that moment he knew that there was no one that could ever become his queen, except her.

"I must head out, however my family is hosting a ball tomorrow, at dusk, in order to find me a bride. It would be a honor to have you as a guest." He spoke softly, taking in the surprise on Odette's face, who only nodded before waving elegantly. With a polite nod from himself, the prince saw himself off as Zoya started galloping as fast as she could towards the palace.

"You must go." a cold and harsh voice spoke, making the girl's shoulders fall, she put so much hope that perhaps this time, she'll be able to find love by herself, and hearing her father speak like that made her whole world shatter. With a long sigh, the girl turned her head around, in order to hide her glassy eyes, telling herself that it all starts being unfair the moment even her father had turned against her. "I shall not, father." Was all Odile said before she lifted her chin high, eyes becoming sharp as she told herself that it was time to pull free from his strings, yet she had a feeling that it will not be as easy as denying his orders.

Rothbart, the black swan's father, smiled triumphally, as if the crown had already been placed on his head. He let himself turn around and face his only daughter and with a hushed voiced he whispered. "You'll go.. oh you'll go." Odile wanted to protest, to yell and say something, but the second her father touched her necklace, the poor girl knew it was too late. It took her a quick moment of thinking, preparing herself for what she might see, before she finally turned to the mirror that stood patiently on a wall. It was then that complete sorrow engulfed her heart, failing to find her own reflection. Instead, a familiar face started back at her, Odette's features looking so beautiful and so graceful, yet so ugly to Odile, as she was left to deal with her pain before she could've stopped it. "You do not have a choice."

"But what should i wear?" Odette sighed, bringing her hands in her lap as she eyed nervously the ground. Her crown was resting on her head, sapphires sparkling in the gentle moonlight. "I cannot show up to a royal ball in this gown.." as much as she loved her dress, it's material softer than silk and whiter than the pearls found in the ocean's depths, she feared it was nothing short of what noblewomen wore to sleep. The more she thought about it, the more Odette found herself trapped between her own thoughts. What if her hair was was not as elegant as the other princesses', what if her little white slippers were to dirty up the expensive carpets around the castle. Worse, despite knowing how to dance, Odette had little knowledge of etiquette, as she's grown up as a simple village girl. She was going to make a fool out of herself and the prince for inviting her.

"Worry not, Odette." A soft voice came from behind her, but before she's gotten the chance to turn around, a pair of cold hands rested on her bare shoulders, making her gasp at the sudden feeling of chilliness. Shivers traveled up and down on her back, eyes becoming wide in surprise as the speed she turned her head around could've given her a whiplash. Yongsun giggled softly, amused by the fact that she actually spooked the younger swan. "You look beautiful, and your gown is magnificent. Made with soft material like your wings, pulled together by a thread of magic. My dear, you look breathtaking."

Odette stood a second just looking at her friend, a long sigh leaving her mouth when she understood that Yongsun was right. All she had to do was to have fun, she'd be dancing and talking to people, nothing she hasn't done before, so why was she worrying now? "You should leave, it's getting late." Was all the older woman said as she bent down to kiss the top of her head like a mother would before sending off her child off. A couple of younger swans insisted of going with her, clinging on her gown and her hands before she agreed in defeat. A chorus of laughter and giggles following her the deeper she walked into the forest and the closer she's gotten to the palace.

Hongjoong stood sitting on the throne, a crown on his head while his parents stood at both of his sides. His rather small body seemed to shrink more and more with every second and with each nod he gave to the young women that would come to bow before him. They were all wearing beautiful gowns, feminine features painted by a thin layer of makeup, jewelries decorating their necks, ears and hair, he had to admit that they were all beautiful, but none of them where Odette. His Odette. He waited patiently for her to make her appearance, eyes running back to the spiral staircase in hopes that he'd spot her, and his observant mother did not take long to notice. "You're waiting for someone." She announced, a hand resting on her son's shoulder in a way of assuring him that it will all be fine.

Hongjoong nodded, his lips parting slightly as he pondered on his thoughts, however, before he's even gotten thr chance to speak, a familiar face made his heart beat like it never has, and his breath got stuck in his throat. A wave of heat crossed his cheeks, feeling as a strong blush took over his face. From one of the corners of the grand ballroom, he noticed Yeosang smirking his way, Wooyoung whispering something to him before they both snickered.

"Your highness.." when she arrived in front of him, Hongjoong quickly has gotten up on his feet, refusing to let her bow before him. One of his hands gently taking one of her own as the other traveled to her side in order to bring her body closer to his own with a shy embrace. At the action, a couple of gasps could be heard throughout the room, everyone surprised at the prince's action, yet he did not care, and it could've been the reason why he completely looked past the vile smile that played on the girl's lips. "Odette.. will you dance with me?"

"We've arrived too late!" One of the little swans warned as she peeked trough the closest window, huffing in defeat at the sight. Odette waisted no time in following her closely, face crumbling in defeat as he watched how her dear Hongjoong waltzed around the room with no one else but Odile. His eyes were so fixed on her that it seemed like she was his whole world, hands gripping her close like she'd parish if he let go, and everyone around them saw it. How in love he was, how much care he put in every step they made together, and that made Odette's stomach churn in pain. Her eyes began watering, heart screaming at her to do something yet her body remained frozen in place.

"Odette..?" The little girl asked, her tone wobbling as her own eyes began to water as she watched the princess of the swans. The young woman's skin began morphing, little fluff and white feathers growing from her arms and shoulders at a slow peace, like she was to turn in swan once more. With each second she spent looking at her beloved dance with another woman, looking so smitten by her, the little sapphires on the crown she wore began to crack more and more, and panic took over the three children when their own necklaces followed closely and as Hongjoong's voice rang trough their ears.

"So, Your Highness, would you say that you love me?" Odile questioned as she made eye contact with the prince, who giggled shyly before sighing deeply. He felt caught red-handed and all he could do now was nod his head slightly before speaking softly. "I love you." Yet something didn't feel right, deead filling his heart as he said his words, like a kid that's done something wrong and waited anxiously for his parents to scold him. It was then that he began to fall out of the spell he had been put under, noticing how the woman in front of him did not wear a crown yet a necklace, amber decorating the gem that rested patiently on her neck. The white gown that the swan once wore was not completed jet black, eyes harsh as a voice so cutting he began feeling dizzy.

"You're not Odette." He stated, stopping from dancing and taking a couple of harsh steps back. The prince's hand flew to his sword, threatening to take it out and use it, yet Odile's smile never faltered. "Even if you harmed me, my mission here had ended." She explained, giggling once more before turning herself in the same swan she morphed in when they first met and before anyone could do anything, she flew past him, soaring trough the open window where four little figures stood at.

"Odette..?" He asked, feeling his hear break as he noticed how heartbroken she looked, how her skin began turning in feathers and how tears cascaded over her cheeks like they couldn't be stopped. "Odette!" He yelled louder, rushing to jump over the window, yet failing to do so in time before the woman began running back towards the forest. "Hongjoong!" His father warned, yet the prince was far gone, already chasing after the swan with unshed tears blurring his own vision.

It didn't take long for the two to reach the lake, scratches from little branches decorating their skin as neither had been careful while running, yet that did not matter to them, the heartache burning every bit of ration they had. "I did not know, Odette!" He tried explaining himself, taking a step forward towards the woman, who only took one back, her feet so close to the shore that it made Hongjoong's heart freeze in place. "I thought it was you.."

Yet what was done was done and both of them knew it, the sapphires finally shuttering as Odette took her crown off, breaking it in two. Without even thinking about the outcome, the swan threw it into the lake, a muffled sob leaving her mouth as she herself took a step closer to the edge. "No! Odette please! I love you!" He shouted, yet it was all in vain as he knew that the curse will get to her before his words will.

The second he noticed what she intended, the prince rushed to her side, gripping her waist tightly and pressing a soft kiss to her lips, eyes deeply staring in her own like their hearts spoke to each other, and it all felt more than ethereal as both of their bodies hit the water, sinking slowly as they held each other like not even death could do them apart.

And perhaps it couldn't, as the second the sun began rising, the women that stood next to the lake and mourned the passing of their princess did not turn back to swans, and their gowns turned back to the clothes they once wore when they were running errands around the village. On the other side of the forest, Rothbart felt his powers leave him, a sudden weakness taking over his body as it slowly began turning to ashes. "No!" He yelled like a mantra, yet it was all in vain as ths moment the shy sunlight peeked trough his window, all that remained of him was an amber ring and his daughter, who only stared at the cracked mirror on the wall, ashamed of herself and mad at the world like never before.

And even years after, deep down, on the bottom of the lake, the two lovers stood embraced, untouched by the time, as if they were simply sleeping. So perhaps, the curse that once plagued the young women became a blessing, as not only has she found peace, but love as well.

#ateez #ateez imagine #ateez imagines #kpop #ateez fluff #ateez scenarios #ateez oneshots #kpop imagine #ateez hongjoong #ateez reaction #ateez retelling #ateez reactions #ateez smut

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moonlightchess · 3 years

Text

a brief interlude in which a young mortician finally meets his patron saint.

(Diaphanous).

Around five years old, when he first started hearing them. Soft, muted weeping echoing lightly through the cavernous halls just beyond his bedroom door, and by ten he was accustomed to sliding out of bed, yawning, padding to his doorway to step out into the endlessly shadowed maw veining through the upstairs of his family’s home. The moaning creak of the floorboards was easily avoidable if you knew where to slide your feet, which by then he did, and he’d whisper into the dark: “You’re okay. It’s all over now, but stay as long as you need to. You’ll be getting along when you’re ready.” And even then, there was something profoundly tender and melancholy wrapping itself around little Theodore like an aura, to which the ghosts usually responded favorably. On occasion, they’d even slip into his bedroom after he climbed back into bed, gently tugging his duvet over him in thanks.

Sixteen, and Pere introduced him to the family business in the most definitive sense yet, bringing him down into the embalming room. There, he was shown how to drain the bodies, to sew their gums securely closed, to carefully apply powders and lotions to suggest sleep despite death. Pere helped him to remove the heart and lungs of a corpse in the preparation process of the old fashion, despite it having fallen out of favor in more recent years. Bellefontaine, Louisiana, lingered a decade or two behind much of the nation, in every way from embalming practices to racial sensitivity, both topics having already been addressed with young Theodore. “A person is a person, deserving of respect and love and dignity regardless of their skin, wealth, or any other such thing that the ignorant might think defines them,” Theodore senior had informed his small son firmly, long ago, meeting his midnight-blue eyes that were so solemn and sympathetic even then. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Pere.” Theodore had not understood, not entirely, back then. But at sixteen, hunched over the dead body of a local bait shop owner whose wife made the softest, sweetest beignets he’d ever tasted, clarity rose sharp and bitter. “Monsieur Dumonde,” had escaped him before he could swallow the words in the interest of professionalism. “I knew him. Used to buy worms from him when the boys wanted to go fishing, but it’s been so long. I didn’t know he was sick.”

“Everyone dies, ti-Theodore,” and he’d been in love with the way his name rolled from his father’s tongue in a thicker cajun accent than his own - tee-tay-oh-doure, Theodore junior. It was enormously soothing, even now as he considered shaving Monsieur Dumonde’s thick mustache away for his funeral - but in the end, he placed the straight razor back onto his father’s table of sharp tools, aware that his decision had been a test. “No. We leave the mustache, he always had one when he was alive. He used to tug on it and laugh at our homemade fishing poles whenever we went into his shop. His mustache was a part of him, and it’s important that we send him to the next with as much of the man he was intact as we can.” He’d been a little nervous, meeting the dusk-colored eyes that he’d inherited from his beloved father, holding his breath.

“Good boy,” and he’d exhaled. “There are many who would have shaved him, cut his hair, put on some strange new clothes he never would have chosen himself. But you, my sweet and quiet boy, you understand.”

Mere had been a dancer, once. Ballet had been her life, her identity, until a careless would-be principal prince had stumbled into her leap - during a rehearsal no less, she’d been denied even the dignity of a grand disaster to end her career in the middle of a soaringly tragic performance - and her ankle had snapped, had never healed properly. She limped a touch even then, bringing sweet tea out to their wraparound porch thick with creeping ivy and heavy flowers bursting open at random, studding the lush green like jewels in a necklace, where her teenage son sat cross-legged on a battered loveseat long since dragged out to face the elements of the swampland. Together, they would count the darting fireflies, tiny pinpricks of golden light waging a valiant war against the encroaching southern dark. “I was beautiful once,” she’d said to him. “They all used to come watch me dance, in the city.”

“You’re still beautiful, Mere.”

She’d only sighed, slipping a hand into the pocket of her pea-green silk skirt to retrieve a shot bottle of bourbon, hoarded from the liquor store in town, and poured it into her tea.

They were both gone now, six, seven years proper. He’d prepared their bodies, and in death all of his mother’s pain and longing had been exposed to him with the first incision into her cold and rigid flesh for the draining, sixty-two years of ballet and resentment filling up the glass reservoir of the tubing’s end, dark red. She’d always done up her soft, honey-colored hair into elaborate braids, draped over one shoulder or both or trailing down her back or even wound up into a twisted crown if she was in a happier mood than usual. Theodore had sat beside her, holding her stiff milky hand with his own and with the other, scrolling through youtube tutorials on how to create the perfect fishtail braid until he was confident.

Pere had gone five years after, the light in him having drained out as clear and real as every fluid in his wife’s body had eventually found its way into the belly of their aspirator in the basement. Pneumonia had taken his mother - she’d always had a poor and fragile immune system - but his father had been just shy of seventy and to this day, at thirty-two years old, Theodore had never been offered a satisfying cause of death for him. “Just his time, sug,” a nurse in powder blue scrubs had tried, patting his hand soothingly and because this was the south, “I’ll be praying for y’all - well, just you I suppose. Oh lord, you’re the only Bissonette left now, ain’tcha?”

He was. They’d left the entire mortuary to him, and with it all the responsibilities of being the local mortician and funeral director at such a tender age, and his head had at first swum dizzily with all the pressure and expectations. Theodore senior and his wife Lisette had been fixtures of their country community, familiar and comforting, always there whenever someone had passed on to arrange flowers and platters of cold cuts, to deliver gentle words to cushion the grief. They’d been known, trusted, but Theodore junior, well. Ti-Theodore Bissonette, so young to be running the whole house himself, and the folk of Bellefontaine just weren’t sure. Until the death of little Suzette Marchande.

Hit by a car, she’d been, some hideous beast driving drunk through the winding access road circling their little cajun town and pointed out toward Nola proper. He was in prison now, but Suzette remained dead, and in his huge, capable hands Theodore had poured every bit of his father’s knowledge and sensitivity into that girl. He’d dressed her in yellow, one of her own dresses supplied by her mother, but he’d also remembered that she’d loved frogs. She’d catch them in the swamp and hold them in both hands, laughing at their croaky sounds, but then she’d carefully deposit them onto some leaf somewhere. “They got big ones, in the jungle. The Amazon,” he remembered her saying when the Bissonettes had run into she and her parents in town once, years ago. “Big as cars, they are. I’m gonna go there someday and study ‘em.”

So he’d bought sparkly little green frog clips for her hair online, pinning it back from her freckled face. Her favorite stuffed froggie, named Monsieur Ourauron, Mister Ribbitt, had been lost in the crash, but he’d found one in the Amazon - or at least on amazon - that looked largely the same. When her parents had seen her during the open-casket service, they’d wept and clutched his hands, thanking him in a babbling blend of French, English and grief. That day had declared the end of one life and the beginning of another, as little Suzette had been delivered unto whatever waited after, but thirty-year-old ti-tay-oh-doure had been manifest and confirmed.

There was something to be said for how tall he was. He would have thought some would find it intimidating, difficult to relate to considering that he was six-seven or perhaps a touch over, impossibly long limbs and a hawkish nose, soft mouth borne of his Mere and his father’s nearly indigo eyes the color of a sky five minutes before the moonrise. His was soft, floppy, peanut-brown hair and a quiet timbre resonating in his voice that was immediately associated with the unthreatening sense of calm authority that his father had once carried around easy as an old sweater. Theodore would take care of everything, Bellefontaine knew. They’d be left free to grieve their lost, because he was here with his huge hands and endless legs and fleeting smile.

He lived alone, now. There had been flings, lovers, Audrey from Nola with her autumn-brown skin and fox-gold eyes, elegant and sure, but she hadn’t stayed long. “This place is charming, but you can’t actually expect to stay here all your life, can you?” she’d told him once, after the sex, the two of them naked and wrapped around each other in his sprawling bed with a gentle breeze from outside floating through his open window. She didn’t understand, and neither did the men, not even sweet Peter with his auburn curls and dimples.

“You’re all alone out here, doesn’t it get boring? Lonely? My god, you live in a mortuary.” His shiver had been all that Theodore had needed to kiss him tenderly and send him on his way. His father had been extraordinarily lucky to find Mere, he knew - so few understood, the nature of a curator of death. The ancient contract they’d signed, the tradition they’d inherited. It was sacred but horrifying to most, because everyone wanted the convenience of their holy order at the end of all things, but no one actually wanted to have to think about dying. About the fact that literally all of them, rich or poor, pious or skeptical, afraid or unafraid, was going to die. The repulsion, he understood, was instinctive, and he’d only made his lovers breakfast in the morning and never called any of them back.

Some of the ghosts never left, as it was, and there were mornings in which he’d make his way into the kitchen to find his black tea already steaming, his chair already pulled away from the table. Some of them had found their peace here with him, and so he’d leave his cello out on occasion so that they could pluck the strings or plink a few keys on his mother’s old baby grand in the living room. He was happy too, his natural introversion leaving him largely content in his solitary life. There were those who sought comfort in his touch after the funerals of their loved ones, holding onto his hands a beat too long as he bade them goodbye, meeting his eyes meaningfully, but he always released them to the hazy swamp air outside. They were hurting, vulnerable, and he was a gentleman.

It rained the night the stranger arrived, or stormed rather - Theodore’s lights had been flickering throughout the manor all night. He’d collected candles and charged his phone, but his power had soldiered on even as the thunder crashed and jagged needles of lightning slashed open the churning charcoal sky outside. He’d yanked open the heavy oak door in response to some insistent knocking, only to find a man roughly his age standing there on the porch. He was oddly untouched by the rain despite no car present behind him, moon-pale, spilled-ink hair thick and soft over limpid, silver-mirror eyes, colorless as a deep-sea creature’s, slicing through the dark.

“Saints alive, are you lost? Are you all right?” The man, he didn’t know personally, but a truth and clarity rolled from him like steam off the swamp, and he felt enormously familiar somehow.

“I wouldn’t say lost, no. May I come in?” His voice, soft and polite, still clear and steady over the storm.

“Yes, forgive me. Please.” He stepped aside, watching him enter, translucent eyes sweeping over the yawning, shadowed maw of the grand old manor’s entryway. “Who are you? I’m sorry, but I’m not taking in any bodies until morning.”

“I understand. Terribly sorry to intrude upon your evening like this, but you and I, we have a matter to discuss.” His accent was not local, nor was it unfamiliar. It felt like a forgotten dream, abruptly remembered, an old song once loved playing on the radio years later.

“I’m afraid I don’t recognize you, Sir. Have you been to one of my funerals?”

“Sweet Theodore, I have been to all of them.”

“I don’t understand.”

The stranger clasped his hands behind his back, idle as a museum patron, gazing thoughtfully up to the enormous and heavily framed oil paintings of Bissonettes past lining the walls of the entryway. “It’s my fault for allowing myself to become so fond of you, but you’ve never really understood just how rare a person you are, have you Theodore? I shouldn’t have come here, but I had no choice. I couldn’t let you leave here tonight, that tree would have rendered your car to a smoking wreck and your body to worse. And you, sweet Theodore, you deserve so much better. After all the respect and care and compassion you have shown so unfailingly to myself and my vocation over the years - I’ve come to love you, and you deserve a soft and quiet end. So much sweeter than the one planned for you, I had to make sure you didn’t die in that crash. I had to come here, on this night. For all your kindness, tonight I will be kind to you.”

Drunk, perhaps. Some sauced-up tourist stumbling through the bayou after a bar crawl, but - this far from the city proper? “I’m afraid that you’re still losing me, will you please tell me who you are?”

He turned then, colorless gaze meeting Theodore’s, an echo of sorrow in his faint smile.

“You know who I am.”

In the end, it was true. He supposed at least a part of him had known from the moment he’d opened the door.

“I do. I didn’t think I’d meet you this young in life, but I’m pleased to find you a gentleman, Sir. I can only hope that in the time you’ve allowed me, I’ve done you proud.”

“You and your whole dear family. You don’t know how much I owe you, all of you. You would have lingered, in pain, on life support, for months. It was unbearable, unacceptable. Not you, not my Theodore who has served me so gently and so diligently for so much of your life.”

“I suppose it’s time, then.” He was not afraid. Death, he knew. He’d existed out here in a kind of stasis for years, honoring his patron saint, the man standing before him in a soft black sweater and reaching out to slip an arm through his.

“It is. But I think the storm is winding to a close, and the mists are always so lovely. Why don’t we go see.”

Nodding, Theodore allowed himself to be led to the door, turning briefly to look back just one last time into his beautiful old house, his shrine to a softer death than most knew existed. He’d always done his best, to make the transition as easy as possible for those on their way to some other place, and now it was time to go.

“Will it hurt?”

“Not for you, no.” The stranger opened the door then, and Theodore couldn’t be sure that the new world laid before him looked the same to both of them, but he smiled at what he saw.

“You were right. It’s beautiful.”

The house and the ghosts left wandering its halls signed in unison with the departure of their beloved Theodore, but the rain had slowed and the moon had risen and they were patient enough to wait a while. Someone would come, someone as warm and bright as him, someone who would take care of them as tenderly as he had, some new Theodore born. In the end, after all, nothing ever really died, and daylight was coming on soon, sure as a promise.

#writeblr #writing #my writing #fantasy #death #louisiana #i'm still feeling shy about my writing but i'm completely obsessed with this character right now #just a little something i hope y'all like it

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duhragonball · 3 years

Text

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 65-66

This is the start of the “Ultimate Warriors from Ancient Times” arc, but I want to focus on these two chapters because they feature Mark. I’ve got a lot to say about Mark under the cut, but the short version is that he’s a lousy Nazi and he deserves everything that happens to him.

A large chunk of Chapter 65 is just Caesar hanging out in Joseph and Speedwagon’s hotel room. They try to play cards, but they’re both cheats. This wouldn’t bother me at all until Speedwagon points out that he’s been here for eight hours, and never bothered to explain why. You’d think Joseph would have demanded an answer a long time ago, since he’s not known for patience.

As it turns out, Caesar’s been waiting for Mark, a buddy of his in the German Army. Stroheim was in the German Army too, and he told Joseph that the Nazis had discovered three other Pillar Men in Rome. That’s why he and Speedwagon came here, after all. Well, Caesar’s an Italian, and Italy and Germany are allies, so Caesar managed to persuade the Germans (through Mark) to let him take a look at the Pillar Men. So in this chapter, Mark rolls up in a car and drives them over to the site.

But we already know what happened at the site in Chapter 64. The Pillar Men have already reawakened, and all the Nazi soldiers stationed there have been slaughtered. When Mark leads our heroes into the catacombs, they find the remains of the Germans, while Mark bumps into the Pillar Men themselves. (Note: the above image is not to scale).

The thing is, bumping into the Pillar Men is hazardous to your health. We saw that vampire grab Santana and large chunks of his body were completely absorbed. The same thing happens to Mark, only faster, because Wamuu doesn’t even slow down as he walks past him. He just walks right through Mark and half of his body is gone.

So when I first watched the JoJo anime, it was right after I watched the Hellsing Ultimate anime, and I got a kick out of seeing two completely different anime takes on vampire lore. Let’s face it, the Pillar Men are presented as something beyond mere vampires, but they’re basically just super-vampires, not so different from Alucard in Hellsing. And both make use of the Nazis, except in Hellsing, the Nazis are the villains, while in Battle Tendency, they’re kinda sorta allies. Stroheim is clearly a bad guy, because he killed his prisoners and tormented Speedwagon, but Mark is presented as a completely sympathetic person. He’s got a sweetheart back home, Caesar’s the one who introduced them, and he’s planning to get married the next time he goes back to Germany. And for his very brief appearance in JJBA, he’s completely friendly and helpful to the heroes. We’re supposed to feel very sorry for him when he gets killed here.

Part 2 is my favorite, but I think this stands out as it’s biggest flaw. I get the idea. Hellsing was dealing with a lot of dark themes, and the protagonists were horrifying in their own right. So Kouta Hirano used the Nazis as villains to humanize his vampire characters. By contrast, Hirohiko Araki seems to be using the Nazis to dehumanize the Pillar Men. They’re so evil that even the Nazis look halfway decent by comparison. At least the Nazis are human, with human loves and fears and honor. The Pillar Men kill Mark without even noticing him, and Speedwagon likens this to a human stepping on an ant. I get what Araki is trying to do here, but it rings hollow. Fuck Mark, and fuck his Nazi fiance. The first time we see him, we get a close up of his Iron Cross medal, with the damn swastika in the middle of it. We’re supposed to buy into the idea that he’s “one of the good Germans”, and it’s 1938, so World War II hasn’t officially started yet, so somehow Mark is supposed to be cool. But no, I don’t buy it.

Let me go off on a little sidebar and try to explain how we got here. Battle Tendency was published in 1988. Back then, Hitler had been dead for decades, and Germany had been partitioned into two countries, East and West Germany. The Nazis seemed to have been consigned to the dustbin of history, and as time passed, pop culture grew more comfortable using the Nazis as historical villains in stories like this one. There was a sense that yeah, the Nazis were really bad, but they were gone now, and they would never come back. I think there was a similar mentality surrounding the Soviet Union after the U.S.S.R. dissolved. By the 2000′s there were all sorts of internet memes about Nazi stuff and Soviet stuff and it was rationalized as harmless envelope-pushing.

The problem is, it doesn’t seem so harmless in 2021, when Russia is a autocracy that meddles in U.S. elections, emboldening white nationalists in the process. The “alt-right” fanatics who marched in Charlottesville in 2017? The rioters who stormed the Capitol building this past January? Those assholes probably wouldn’t call themselves Nazis, but neither did the Nazis. They called themselves “National Socialists”, because they were trying to make their ugly policies sound more legitimate. The same holds true for “alt-right”, “economic nationalist”, “Qanon”, “truther”, and so on. They’re just new labels for the same old horseshit.

I don’t want to judge Battle Tendency too harshly, because it’s the product of a different time, an era when people could at least pretend that Nazism was one of the few problems that we didn’t have to worry about any more. The same mentality can be found in Hellsing. The Nazis in Hellsing are definitely villains, but the conceit is that they’re all immortal vampires or werewolves, because that’s the only way the Nazi menace could possibly exist in 1999. Otherwise, they’d all be dead of old age. Battle Tendency is set in 1938, so it takes the liberty of presenting sympathetic Nazis, because we already know they’ll be defeated in the end, right? We might as well see what makes them tick.

Araki may have thought that using Nazis in a story set in the 1930s would be no different than using Napoleonic French soldiers in a story set in the 1800s. And in the long run, that might be true, but I don’t think we’re there yet. In the here and now, it’s aged rather poorly.

Of course, just because Caesar and Joseph feel bad for Mark doesn’t mean I have to. And Araki may have been more self-aware than I’m giving him credit for. Nazi Germany wanted to set itself up as the Master Race, and in this fictional world, the Pillar Men have come to do the same thing, only they’re much, much further ahead of the game. I think part of the point of Stroheim and Mark was to contrast the Nazis’ supreamcist attitudes with Kars’ ambitions. For all of Stroheim’s boasting, he’s helpless against Kars’ might. But at the same time, for all of Kars’ power and brilliance, he’s ultimately chasing the same pipe dream as Hilter and his followers.

Let’s get back on track. While the good guys react in horror at what happened to Mark, the Pillar Men just stand around nearby and discuss their situation. They completely ignore our heroes, just like they ignored Mark. Kars wants to locate the Red Stone of Aja, because it’s the secret ingredient to the mask he designed that will make them immune to sunlight. Esidisi doesn’t understand how the stone helps their plan, but he’s totally on board. But as they head out, Wamuu suddenly attacks Kars, because Kars stepped in his shadow, and apparently Wamuu just lashes out at anyone who does this, friend or foe.

Wamuu is deeply sorry for this, and begs to be punished, but Kars apologizes instead, because he knows about Wamuu’s whole shadow thing and he feels that he’s the one who made the mistake here. I really love this exchange, because it defines the Pillar Men so well. As indifferent as they are to human lives, they respect one another a great deal. Kars is the leader, but he still treats the other two guys like close associates. He needs Wamuu’s sharp senses and keen warrior instincts. Meanwhile, Wamuu and Eisidisi practically worship Kars like a god. They’ve literally followed him around the world and across thousands of years in pursuit of his vision.

So yeah, if the goal here was to use Mark’s suffering to make me hate the Pillar Men, it doesn’t work. The Pillar Men are evil, sure, but they’re pretty cool bad guys. On the other hand, Mark looks ridiculous here, with Caesar holding and talking to half of his body. This looks like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon.

I mean, let’s set aside the whole Nazi thing for a moment. Why should I feel sorry for Mark? Because he’s in pain? He got cut in half! He should have died instantly! Because he was going to get married? We only met this guy one chapter ago! Because he’s Caesar’s friend? Well Caesar’s kind of a jerk too.

Anyway, Mark begs Caesar to kill him and end his suffering, so Caesar uses the Ripple to stop his heart. Or the half of it that’s still there, I guess.

Okay, so the whole point of Mark’s death is to really get the good guys fired up to battle the Pillar Men, right? Okay, Caesar tries to take them on, and he opens with the Bubble Launcher, the same move he talked about earlier. It didn’t beat Joseph, but Caesar’s Hamon power does hurt Wamuu’s skin, which is more than Joseph managed to do against Santana.

The Bubble Launcher is supposed to surround the opponent with dozens of soap bubbles charged with Hamon energy. Wamuu can’t escape without touching them and getting hurt. But Wamuu just sprouts all these long braids from his head and clothes, and swings them around with superhuman precision to know the bubbles away without hurting himself.

As it turns out, these Pillar Men are familiar with Hamon. Santana was surprised to encounter Joseph Joestar’s powers, but Wamuu and the others have fought Ripple users in the past. And Wamuu’s more intrigued than worried...

Oh, as one final aside, on the car ride to the catacombs, Speedwagon asked Caesar if he tried to use the Ripple to destroy the Pillar Men before they woke up, and Caesar explains that it didn’t work while they were in their dormant state. Remember, at the very start of this story, Speedwagon called Straizo because he wanted someone to use the Ripple to destroy Santana before he could wake up. Now we see that even if Straizo had agreed to his request, it wouldn’t have done any good. Sunlight doesn’t seem to kill the Pillar Men so much as it makes them turn to stone, and the Ripple only hurts them while they’re flesh and blood. So the only way to kill them seems to be by using Hamon in a direct confrontation, and that’s a tall order...

#jojo's bizarre adventure #battle tendency #joseph joestar #caesar zeppeli #robert e o speedwagon #mark #wamuu #kars #esidisi #get wrecked mark

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lesetoilesfous · 4 years

Note

DADWC! 24 or 29 from the dialogue prompts for fenders? 🥺💖

Ahhhhhh I love both of these so much I’m gonna have to do one each :D Here’s the first one! thank you!!!

(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here!)

@dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Anders/Fenris

Characters: Anders, Fenris

Tags: vaguely da2 adjacent wounded coast shenanigans, pre-relationship, graphic depictions of violence, canon typical violence

Rating: Mature

“Mage, leave.” Fenris bites the words through gritted teeth, blood running down his chin and staining the dull blue-white glow of the lyrium on his chin.

Anders’ hands tighten around his staff, and he moves to stand a little more firmly in front of the elf, who is himself half-kneeling in the sand, clutching at a wound in his stomach. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Venhedis.” Fenris spits, coughing around the wound in his side as his blood drips onto the dirt. “They will kill you. Do you not understand?”

Over their heads, uncaring for their plight, the sky flushes pink and violet with the gentle touch of evening. Seagulls wheel through the salty air, and the ocean roars against the cliffs. Anders stands staring at the narrow entrance to the cove in which they find themselves trapped. Desperately, he pulls at his empty mana reserves, clawing at the scarred reaches of his tattered soul and ignoring the bone deep ache it drags up from the base of his spine when he does so. At the back of his skull, Justice is sluggish and quiet.

“Yeah, no, I understand that just fine.” Carefully, ears ringing with the memory of Brosca’s rough voice, Anders lowers his centre of gravity as a rough group of slavers re-enters the half-hidden cavern they’re standing in. A few feet away, the sea laps quietly against the shore.

Fenris stares at him, arm shaking where he’s braced himself in the sand, sword discarded and black with dried blood on the ground beside him. “You cannot seriously mean to fight them unaided.”

Anders scowls, “Do you really think if I had any mana left I wouldn’t have healed you already?”

Fenris is quiet, at that, and Anders has a moment to process the dull horror of the realisation that apparently Fenris does think that before his attention is drawn by one of the slavers pulling a whip from the belt at his hip.

Anders swallows against the rough lump in his throat, and dismisses the worried rumble of Justice in his head, trying to ignore the way the slavers’ eyes drag down his body as they get closer. The wind lashes around his head, dragging with it tattered comments about fucking knife-ears and pretty markings. Behind him, in the sand, Fenris flinches. Anders’ hands tighten so hard around his staff that his knuckles ache.

There’s a skidding hiss of sand as one of the slavers steps forward, and then the crack of a whip slicing through the air towards him. Fortunately, Anders has fought men with whips before. He flings his staff up, catching the leather and letting it wrap tightly around the wood before he yanks back, hard, pulling the whip out of the slaver’s grip. The man shouts, and at his side a woman draws a rusting cutlass and charges, arm swinging wide.

Anders takes half a heartbeat to consider her before he punches sideways with his staff, cracking at the join of her elbow and disabling her arm. The cutlass falls into the sand in a shower of dust, and Anders follows up the blow with a sweeping crack at her head. He doesn’t wait to watch as she topples into the dirt. Instead he steps backward, feeling the beach shift beneath his feet as another slaver rushes forward and manages to sink a knife into his thigh. Anders bites back a scream, buckling and lashing out with his staff. As his attacker falls and he stumbles backwards, he catches the blue glow of a lyrium potion swinging at the gang leader’s hip.

He glances back. Fenris’ skin is grey with blood loss, the lyrium eerily bright as the rest of him fades. His head is hanging low, and blood drips thickly from his lips into the sand beneath him. He’s dying.

Anders takes a deep breath, and feels the old, biting ache of the scar in his chest, and the corresponding pull of the long slice in his back. Then he lifts his head, and charges.

The gang leader punches out blindly, not apparently expecting blind desperation. One of his knives swings wide, but the other carves a deep line across Anders’ collarbone, glancing across his chest and catching in his skin with the tooth of the serrated blade. Anders grunts and ignores it, reaching down for the potion at the man’s belt. Misreading his intent, the man pulls backward, and the weight of the movement is enough to snap the thin rope securing the potion.

Triumphantly, Anders uncorks the bottle, breathing in the acrid sting of lyrium. Over the lip of the bottle, he meets the slaver’s eyes. The man’s face twists, suddenly, in horrified realisation, and when he speaks he does so in a thick Tevene accent. “Oh, shit.”

Anders downs the potion, and feels the sudden rush of power in his veins as if he’d been set alight. Justice roars to waking in his mind, lending him his strength through their shared connection to the Fade. The few slavers left back off as Anders straightens to his full height and gives them his best, brightest, shit-eating grin.

“Suck on a fireball.”

Anders doesn’t wait to see what happens to their corpses. He turns and runs back through the sand, feet sinking too slowly into the soft ground. Fenris has collapsed, and is lying unconscious on the sand, half curled around his stomach, fingers crooked and stained with blood. With his eyes shut and his expression eased in unconsciousness, he looks almost like a child.

The screams of the slavers are a distant accompaniment in another country as Anders falls to his knees, gently pushing Fenris onto his back and blindly pouring raw energy into the wound in his stomach. Fenris’ skin is cold, and Anders tries not to let that frighten him as he searches wildly for any hint of a spark inside of him that can be nursed back to life.

As he works, he feels the rushing roar of Justice’s power running down through his veins, burning in his arms and prickling through his veins and tingling in his fingertips. Anders shuts his eyes. Thank you, old friend.

Justice says nothing, focused on the task at hand. But it’s Anders who finds what’s left of Fenris’ lifeforce, nestled behind a cluster of lyrium in his breastbone. Nearly sobbing in relief, Anders curls forward, cupping his hands around the spot on Fenris’ chest whilst his magic pools in a small lake of light over Fenris’ stomach wound. With tears dripping down his cheeks, Anders breathes magic over the last part of Fenris left alive, cradling it in his hands to stop it being snatched by the wind.

The magic sinks into the dark, battered leather of Fenris’ armour, and spreads leaping across his brown skin. Nothing happens. Above them, the sky is indigo, and from behind Anders the wind brings with it the scent of charred flesh and hot metal. Anders squeezes his eyes shut, and ignores the way they’re burning, and breathes more magic over Fenris’ chest, feeling it tingle between his lips, glowing in the dark like mist at sunrise.

“Come on. Come on, you stupid elf, you can’t die now. Not here. Not yet. I haven’t even -”

“Haven’t what?” Fenris’ voice is rough, and low, and deep as the sea. Anders’ breath catches, and he flinches back, staring down at him. Fenris’ skin is still grey with blood loss, but it’s flushing slowly warmer, and his hair pulls across his forehead as he attempts to sit up. Gently, Anders pushes him back.

“You really shouldn’t move.”

Anders thinks it says something of exactly how hurt Fenris is that he doesn’t argue the point, only falls back into the sand with a thump and a gentle hiss of dust. For a long moment, Fenris stares up at the distant sky, dark and beginning to prickle with faint stars, breathing uneasily whilst Anders’ magic swirls in a slow spiral around the wound that all but killed him.

Then he turns his head, and frowns up at Anders instead. “Are you hurt?”

Anders shakes his head, shrugging, and tries to subtly rubs the tears from his cheeks. “I overexerted myself. That’s all.”

“You’re crying.” Fenris’ voice is soft, and nearly snatched by the sea. Anders laughs, and looks down at the bright light of his own magic, pouring a little more of his life force into it.

“Yeah, well, I’m an emotional idiot. If they could have the Circle would have beaten it out of me. Trust me, they tried.”

For a long moment, Fenris is quiet. Anders is grateful for it as the adrenaline fades from his veins, and he feels the cold of the coming night setting in. His insides feel hollow and shaken. He’s not sure he has the strength to debate the reality of his suffering with Fenris tonight.

Slowly, agonisingly, Fenris’ wound begins to knit itself together. The sea sways gently against the shore as the moon rises above their heads.

When Fenris speaks again, he does so as quietly as he had before. “Thank you.”

Anders startles, distracted for a moment from his spell, looking down to meet Fenris’ eyes. “For what?”

Fenris looks away, jaw working for a moment before he speaks. “You stayed.”

Anders smiles, and speaks with a little more honesty than he means to when he replies. “I couldn’t not.”

Above them, the wind rushing through the reeds on the dunes is as sweet and soft as the gentle sigh of the sea.

#dadwc #simper-fi #fenders #fenris #anders #da2 #my fic

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ophiexb · 3 years

Text

Important Discoveries

There are some pretty major discoveries of some changes to the boys after Julie frees them from Calebs spell. Julie started to agree with Alex, this all should of come with some kind of handbook.

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The changes were both apparent and subtle. Julie could touch them now, the sensation of her skin on theirs was welcomed, but very strange. They weren’t alive - No one could see them, only Julie could touch them still. But they were certainly stronger, they could move things around and touch things with a little more force besides their instruments. They cuddle a lot more with Julie the three of them thoroughly just enjoying even the simplest of touch from someone alive. Her touch doesn’t feel like theirs, it’s warm- it’s more solid and the sensation is wildly different. She actually finds herself loving it a lot. The gentle touch and way they all seemed to relax in different ways as she caught them up on media and shows at night just sprawled in her bed.

That was the most obvious change from whatever it was that happened in the studio that night; that was the only change they thought had happened from Julie freeing them from Caleb. What else could have changed other than being able to touch her and the incredible fact they were free and playing again? Turns out. A lot.

“I think they're asleep…” Julie whispered into the phone slowly walking into the studio. She’d gotten home from a lacrosse game with Flynn a little late; heading straight to the studio to check on the guys before she went to bed. She hadn’t expected the sight she’d caught through the window calling the other girl right away.

“Can...can ghosts sleep?” Flynn replied back as Julie took in the sight of the three boys. They were asleep. Fast asleep. They’d made some kind of makeshift bed on the floor with various old blankets and pillows from around the studio the three of them cuddled together in this little space, Alex is curled up against Luke’s side his head slightly on his chest on one side and Reggie is taking the other side laying out on him.

“These ones are…” She smiled fondly at them for a long moment, they hadn’t slept before. She knows because they’d talked about it-a lot. They couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. So she’d managed to set something up for them at night to catch up on movies, and shows and anything else in the studio every night before she went to bed so they’d have something to do. She knew it helped keep the silence of the night from getting to them-so why suddenly did they need to sleep?

“That’s so weird you think it has to do with the other stuff?” Julie headed inside, a frown on her face as she headed upstairs to her room.

“It’s got to-I mean-suddenly needing sleep? Also I feel so bad I get their ghosts but they're just sleeping on that cement floor...but it’s not like I can ask my Dad to buy some beds for some ghosts.” She huffed already working through some ideas on what to do about that. It wasn’t like she could just put a bed in there either her Dad would find that weird…. But she couldn’t just keep having them sleep on the floor.

“I mean, maybe they like it? You said two of them used to live there right? I’m sure it’s no different.” Flynn tried to reassure her but Julie didn’t feel too reassured at the idea of them having to sleep on the floor, or them pretending they couldn’t sleep at all so she didn’t worry about them sleeping on the floor.

“Maybe…” She said softly, in a tone that spoke that maybe wasn’t at all what she wanted to say. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I've got to finish up these papers before it gets too late.” By paper-she means she’s got to figure out this solution to this issue in her head. She goes through a hundred ideas, a futon, but it’s Luke’s couch and she can’t replace that and two couches would crowd the room. Bunk beds cross her mind but that’s weird, a bunch of cots-but again. Weird and cost money she doesn’t really have and can’t ask for.

It hits her like a sack of bricks and she climbs up-the house is silent and she finds what she’s looking for in their downstairs closet with a huge smile.

An air mattress.

Is it comfortable? Not completely but it’s better than the hard floor and can easily be tucked away and put out every night. It’s got it’s own fan attached with a little switch so they wouldn’t need help getting it together, and she’s got enough sheets and comforters around that it would be a perfect bed. Sure they’d have to share it but after what she saw tonight? She’s not sure they’d really mind.

The guys are surprised, and a little embarrassed when she shows it to them the next day. “How long until you told me you had to sleep now?” She demanded her hands on her hips. “I mean really-the floor? If I knew I would have told you to sleep on the couches in the living room until we figured something out.” She gestured.

“Uh-“ Reggie says softly but the guys shush him and Julie gives them a look. “We tried but your Dad sat on Luke in the morning and it scared all of us to the point we’re too worried to do it again.” He explained and she huffed.

“Then come talk to me! This is all so new you could have told me. I would have helped you-I am helping you.” She gestured to the rolled up air mattress. “You didn’t have to sleep on the floor….is that where you slept when you guys lived out of the studio?” She wondered softly, looking mostly towards Alex and Luke.

“We had this-paper thin mattress up in the loft.” Luke said fondly, smilingly wide like he always did when talking about some of the stuff they used to do. “It was horrible and felt like it might as well be the floor but at the same time it was really awesome to have. We couldn’t find it so we assumed it was one of those things that didn’t make it through the years.”

“In all fairness it smelled horrible.” Alex said softly, smiling at her. She teaches them how to set up the new air mattress and inflate it all. How to take it down while she’s at school and they seem so excited it’s...kind of really cute. She can’t resist checking on them in the late night when she notices it goes dark and still in the studio from her window. She only peeks in case they are still awake but they aren’t. There cuddled together the same way they were the other night. Only there’s more blankets and more limbs tangled and she wishes she could take a photo of them.

She leaves, heading back to her room with the widest smile on her face.

The next change they discover catches them all for a loop. There practicing writing songs, playing a couple chords and just overall having an incredible time making music and laughing together. She loves when Alex plays a little too hard to mess Luke up-Or Reggie goes a little country. “Here I had this idea” Luke goes to flip through with a grin when it drops and he hisses. The band pretty much stops right along Julie as he pulls his hand away. His brow furrows looking at the small red line through his finger and the blood welling up.

“You can bleed?!” She worries grabbing it to look at it.

“We-We haven’t before.” Luke fumbles out with a sharp noise as he looks at it, twisting and turning it to really look at it almost horrified. It’s not like it’s a serious injury, but it’s a sign of what could potentially be one if they aren’t careful.

“It’s got to be related right?” Reggie asks softly as he looks at Luke’s hand and back up at the duo. “I mean, suddenly Julie can touch us, we have to sleep, and now we can bleed?”

“We’re going to have to be more careful.” Alex said nervously. “If we get seriously hurt-there’s no telling what could happen. It’s not like we can go to a hospital or doctor and who knows what happens when a ghost bleeds to death. I’m pretty sure it’s that permanent death thing all over again.” Alex said softly, and Julie patted his back again at the anxiety in his tone. He had a point though, If one of them got seriously hurt there would be nothing they could do.

Julie signs up for the First AID/CPR course her school offers the moment she’s able-usually a lot of the sports kids take it and a few others. But she needed to know some kind of basic first aid. She expands on that by watching way to many videos in her free time on how to treat various wounds. She manages to get a first aid kit well stocked and stored in the garage for them as well. It eases some of the worry in her chest, at least now if something happens she won’t be completely lost.

It at least makes her feel better to know she’ll be able to take care of and help the boys, that they are figuring this out slowly, and together.

None of them had any way of predicting what was going to happen next, if it was over and what little changes they managed to have or massive changes were all that was going to happen or if more were coming. It all felt like They should have expected this though, should have predicted based on everything else going on.

“I...I think I’m hungry?” Reggie said slowly, they’d been in a bit of a funk the last two days, lazing around unsure of why they were all collectively in a strange mood. “I think that’s the feeling.” He touches his stomach with a frown and Luke’s brows furrow looking at him.

“We can’t eat food-You know that.” Luke grumbled tilting his head back.

“We can’t bleed apparently either, or sleep.” Alex countered, looking over at them from where he was laying on the floor. Silence falls on the group.

“You don’t think?” It only takes one shared look for them to appear together in the Molinas kitchen. “The last time we were able to eat was Caleb's club.” Luke mumbled softly looking at the fridge.

“Do you think it’s okay? I mean...should we ask Julie?” Reggie worries as they collectively stare at the fridge.

“I’m sure they're not going to notice if something is missing, plus-We don’t even know if we can eat yet!” Alex protested watching warily as Luke opened up the fridge. He pulled out some containers of old pasta and leftovers and set them on the counter. The trio gathered around it for a long pause before Reggie finally caved.

He took a forkful, and slowly took a bite, his eyes going wide. “We can eat!” The chorus of cheers from the trio was loud as they gladly took the invitation the same way they had at the club only a few months back.

“Wait-” Alex gestured pointing at them with the fork. “We should...tell Julie. Because her Dad is going to notice if a lot of food is missing….”

“What is she going to do? Tell him to buy enough food for his kids and three ghosts?” Luke countered pouting massively when Alex shoved the food back in the fridge. “Weve got to eat! We’re getting hunger pains.” He protested.

“Then we tell her.” Alex said firmly, after the last incident and the bed-Julie wanted to know what was going on, she didn't deserve surprises like this. She wanted to know, she wanted to help. They go back to the studio, anxiously awaiting Julie to get home from school. Now that the hunger has been fed slightly, it feels impossible to ignore and by the time Julie comes home there a little on edge.

“Whats wrong with you guys? Still in that funk?” She pouts slightly putting her hands on her hips as she looks at them. “You gotta snap out of it eventually-we’ve got a lot of work to do before next week.” She waved her hand around at them and Luke shot up slightly still sitting on the couch but giving her a little more of their full attention.

“We….apparently need to eat now too.” He said slowly, processing the emotions across her face. “That’s what’s been going on. We’re...hungry.” He says it slowly, realizing they’ve been hungry for days and just had kept ignoring it. Julie stares at them for a long time.

“Oh my-Wait here.” She says firmly tossing her bag down, luckily her Dad and Carlos still aren’t home yet and she fills a bag with snacks, and various food from the fridge. Anything she can think of that might not go noticed as missing and brings it to the guys passing it out to them. “Thank you for telling me…” She says softly, it's a huge sign of trust on their end. Usually they hide things from her until it becomes a problem.

“W-What do we do now?” Reggie asked, slowly shoving a handful of chips into his mouth. “I mean your Dad’s going to notice if a bunch of food is gone.” He countered and she made a face in disgust before realizing he was right. Three teenage boys would be a noticeable amount of food. Like inexcusable amounts.

“I mean-We could just. Get our own food-We’re ghosts still people can’t see us. If we go at night to stores we can stock up.” Luke shrugged. “Not like anyone’s going to notice.”

“That’s stealing Luke.” Julie said rolling her eyes a bit at him. “You can’t just. Steal food from a store.”

“A major corporation! They waste food anyway!” Luke countered, and Julie frowned slightly crossing her arms with a sigh.

“Listen….how you all….acquire your food then is on you. I’m going to pretend I don’t see any of it deal?” It wasn’t as if they had money to buy food, and until the band was big enough for them to have money to buy food. It wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t feel right, but Luke was kind of right the stores were full of wasted food, stuff they just tossed aside. They wouldn’t notice if just a few things went missing.

So she ignored, as promised, the stacks and various food that appeared in the garage tucked away nicely. They didn’t mention it or ask again, and as long as they cleaned up after themselves she wasn’t going to push it. Though it was certainly weird. She didn’t think it could get any weirder short of them being visible to everyone around them.

They ate, they slept, they could get injured, and she could touch them. What more could possibly happen in response to just a simple hug and a wish?

She never should have even had the thought, because the world sure let her know what else could happen just a few weeks later. It was one of the lazier days they had together, the band had just played another show at a bar and they were riding that incredible energy it gave them. Reggie was jamming with Luke while he worked on the tune to another song, and Julie was finishing up some of her homework for the weekend so she could focus on music with them.

Alex had left hours ago to meet up with Willie, the other had been slowly teaching Alex how to skate, and Julie honestly loved when the two of them hung out. Alex always seemed a little more calmed and centered after their outings.

Which is why she wasn’t expecting the duo to just appear so suddenly and violently, Willie looked scared, almost frantic. His eyes were wide and he was holding Alex, the blonde was curled up laying against his chest, his hands clutching Willie's shirt so hard his fingers were white.

“Alex-” Luke was the first to shoot up, launching over the duo. “Willie what happened?” He demanded shifting the other but the moment he saw Alex’s face his whole face dropped. “No...No no Alex-” He was moving, Reggie coming over to help lay him out better still propping him up against Willie and Julie realized Alex was struggling to breath. His body arching, though every breath was a wheeze, one that only got worse and it seemed like his lips were slowly turning a darker blue. Willie was crying, and Julie realized the other two were as well but the motions they moved through seemed so practiced.

“What’s happening?! Help him.” She said frantically it seemed like they knew what was happening. Her shout seemed to jolt the duo back into action and Luke was moving first.

“Do you still have it?” He said firmly, his hands coming up to cup Alex’s face gently. “Alex, look at me. Please tell me you have it?” He begged almost and Alex’s hand moved slowly and very uncoordinated slapping almost against his chest. Against that black strap and Luke was moving unbuckling the pack and yanking it free from him. He’d dumped the contents and yanked something up before it even had a real chance to clatter against the floor. It was almost a blur of movements. “Hold him.” Was the only warning he gave Willie before he was slamming something down against the others thigh. Alex jerked and the others arms wrapped around him tightly holding him close as he arched and gave a strangled cry.

There was a beat as he slowly sank down, and Luke pulled away breathing hard himself as he stared at Alex for a long moment. The blonde drew one, rough breath before another, and another. The crackle and strain slowly leaving as he sank limply against Willie and only then did the tension slowly leave Luke and the others.

“What was that?” Julie couldn’t wait any more to ask, and watched as Luke’s hand slowly relaxed. The container looked different and it took her a moment before she realized. “An allergic reaction?” She asked and Luke nodded slowly turning to check on Alex.

“Guess we can add that to the list of changes.” Reggie said softly, but his voice was shaky. “It’s...nuts by the way. Tree nuts.” He offered helpfully as Willie rubbed up and down the others arms in a gentle soothing motion.

“I mean it makes sense-you can bleed, you can eat, sleep-nothing to say you don’t have the same conditions alongside it.” Julie said softly. “But now-“

“Another thing to be careful about.” Luke said firmly, packing up the rest of the stuff into Alex’s bag. “He’s going to need more of those-and an inhaler.” He shook up the one from Alex’s bag and shifted closer moving Alex in a familiar movement to give him a few pumps.

“Your….familiar with all this.” Julie observed softly, it was as familiar to him as playing the guitar the motions so practiced and smooth. “You seemed so practiced and quick with it all. How do you not panic?” She couldn’t help but ask, because the whole time she felt like her hands were frozen and she couldn’t move.

Luke rubs over Alex back for a moment smiling slightly at Willie before looking at Julie. “Because if I panic he dies. He’s usually really good about everything, all the labels, everything. But he can’t prevent it a hundred percent of the time. Cross contamination happens and knowing what to do helps…” He finished packing up the others bag, zipping it closed and setting it near him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t know.” Willie said softly. “We just-it was a little date idea we had...since we can eat now and he was so excited. I’d grabbed some food from some place that was supposed to be big around here.”

“It’s okay Willie-Alex probably didn’t even think it’s-it hadn’t been an issue in so long.” Reggie said quickly. “Seriously we just had no way of knowing.”

“Is he going to be okay? Julie worried, Alex hadn’t really moved with the exception of curling onto his side and going limp against Willie once he could breath.

“He’s exhausted, he always is it takes a lot out of him. He’ll be out of it for a day or two….he’ll be okay.” Luke reassured softly his voice gentle as he smiled at the way Willies hands were gentle in the Alex's hair. Giving him comfort the only way he knew how, but it worked, soothing the slight curl of his fingers and edges of tension from the other.

“Well we can’t just leave him here on the floor come on.” She gestured up to the loft where they’d relocated the air mattress and Willie smiled at her, the two of them vanishing but they could see them upstairs moving around slowly and adjusting. “Reggie go grab some water bottles from the house.” She instructed him to be quick and smiled at Luke, rubbing his shoulder a bit before giving him a gentle shove. She’d take care of her boys, always.

#willex #julie and the phantoms #luke patterson #Alex Mercer #julie molina #willie nolastname #willie jatp #reggie peters #jatp

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moonstruckbucky · 5 years

Text

Crown of Thorns (1/?)

Summary: Arranged to be married to the great King Steven, the Reader comes to discover he is not all as she was told. He’s cold and callous and indifferent to their union. Is she really so doomed to live the rest of her life in a loveless marriage?

Pairing: King!Steve Rogers x fem!Reader, King!Steve Rogers x Peggy Carter

Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

The throne room is cold, feels foreign to you despite how much time you spend here, despite the tapestries strung up along the walls to keep the heat in during the colder months. Your dress, made of a beautiful lilac wool, does nothing for the iciness seeping into your veins. Fingers white-knuckled in the skirt of the gown, pulse racing as panic rises within you, your father’s words merely an echo in the hall.

Arranged to be married.

They’re not strange words to you. You’re a princess, and marrying a king is your royal duty. You’ve known this is to be your destiny and yet, the idea of it terrifies you, makes a cold sweat break out on your forehead as your Queen mother sits forward in concern. The notion of marrying a man you’ve never met, never even seen, makes your hands tremble. The prospect of ruling an entire country makes your knees quake, threatens to buckle them under its weight.

With what feels like water—or is that your blood?—in your ears, you realize your father is still awaiting an answer. Swallowing around the dry lump in your throat, you curtsy, just barely.

“Yes, Father. It would be...it would be…” the words are stuck in your throat. A glance at your mother, an understanding nod, and you press on, “It would be an honor to serve my kingdom.”

Your father is no fool; you know he sees right through it, but he says nothing. Dismisses you with a solemn nod of his head, a frown twitching at his mouth. In a flurry of skirts you skitter back to your room - walk, don’t run. Your handmaiden, Wanda, struggles to keep up, and you feel slightly guilty when you close the door to your chambers on her. But, you need time alone, time to think, time to grieve for your soon-to-be-lost freedom, before you’re tied to a man who may very well not be the same kind as your father.

You let loose your panic, your tears, your fears as soon as you hit your feather-bed. The sheets are damp in seconds as you cry, a dark patch in the fabric of your pillow. You hug it tighter to your chest. Soon, you’ll be surrounded by strangers, sleep in a bed that isn’t your own, eat food that tastes odd, learn the alien customs of another nation.

You know it’s your duty, know it would come to this at some point, but you’re still shocked, still rendered terrified over the notion of leaving your country. It’s signing away what little freedom you have left - as a princess, you know certain duties and etiquette are required of you, but overall, you have a fairly decent life. You’re allowed to wander the castle and its surrounding grounds, as well as access to the village as long as you take an escort. A small price, you think, to pay for a day outside the castle walls.

Now, you’re sure you’ll be kept inside, forced to curtsy and sew and gossip with the other ladies of the court. Your wings will be clipped and you’ll be caged, left to simply daydream of feeling the sunshine on your skin. The horrifying question makes your lip wobble: what if, in this new country, there is no sunshine? What if it’s a dark and damp and cruel place to live? A place where all color has been smothered in shades of grey.

That thought terrifies you almost more than that of marrying a complete stranger. A man who, for all you know, is unkind and mean and angry. A man who’ll take from you only what he needs - your body - and will otherwise ignore your existence. At least, if there is color in what is to be your new home, you can find some reprieve, some escape. Perhaps a garden to hide away in, a lake or river to sit by and read, lose yourself in stories of true romance, adventure, fantasy.

Wanda comes by later, a meek, shy smile on her face, to bring you food from the dinner you’d missed. You’d been so wrapped up in your thoughts, your sadness, you completely ignored the pangs of hunger until your belly lurched sharply.

You eat slowly at the insistence of your handmaiden, who meanwhile prepares a hot bath filled with lovely oils and fresh lavender to relax you. The water is steaming as you lower yourself into the tub, hissing as the hot water scalds your skin in the most comforting way. The aroma of oils and lavender eases your mind, relieves the tension in your shoulders as you sink deeper into the water, until only your head from your nose upward is exposed.

Wanda washes you gently, her nails scraping over your scalp as she scrubs your hair. It nearly lulls you to sleep. Eyelids heavy, your head lolls back and forth on your neck as she scrubs.

“Wanda?” you question sleepily, eyes closed.

“Yes, Princess?”

You open one eye and turn your head to pin her with a look. She simpers, corrects herself and uses your given name.

“You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

She doesn’t comment on it, but you know she hears the twinge of fear, of unsureness in your voice behind the sudden exhaustion. Her hands smooth over your hair as she urges you to tilt your head back, allowing her to rinse the suds from your hair. It fans out around you like a halo, the suds providing some mild entertainment for your idle fingers as you wait.

“Nothing could keep me from you, my love,” she assures gently in her pretty accent.

In your sleepy state, it reassures you. At least you won’t be completely alone.

Two weeks later, your belongings are loaded onto the back of a wagon and a pair of ebony horses are hitched the front of your carriage. They prance and snort, eager to be on their way. You, on the other hand, are the complete opposite.

Your feet feel leaden, frozen to the ground just feet away from the carriage. Fists tangled in your skirts, much like the day you’d been sold to another king. No, you think, not sold - your father loves you too much for that. You know if he’d had any power to stop it, he would have. But in order to build an alliance with the bordering country of Mannheim, he’d had no choice. You understand, fault him not for doing his duty to his kingdom.

He smiles solemnly at you now in the courtyard, adorned in the colors of your country - gold on dusty blue, his doublet emblazoned with the golden rose sigil of your house. Your mother wears charcoal grey, the bodice of the gown embroidered with golden vines that twist and turn downward into the skirt. She’s glassy-eyed, rims red, heartbroken over losing her only daughter.

You swallow down the tightness in your throat and are urged forward towards the carriage. The boots on your feet scuff along the path, and if it weren’t such a sad day, you know your mother would have your head. Today, though, she seems to care not for your otherwise poor etiquette. She brushes her hands down the sleeves of your gown, smiling wetly before she urges you into the carriage.

It’s a long ride to Mannheim, and though the carriage is spacious, it’s stifling. You fidget in the seat, hands wringing together, then playing with the end of your hair, then tangled in your skirt again. Your mother’s lips are pursed, no doubt in irritation, and you can tell she wants to say something. However, she remains silent and lets you vent out your nervousness.

The carriage dips and rolls, jostles its passengers as the rolling landscape of your country begins to fade. The vibrant green hills turn quickly to dense forestry, shallow rivers and wooden bridges. In the carriage, it’s quiet, until your father begins to speak.

“We’ll be guests of honor for His Highness, King Steven. At the end of the week, he’ll hopefully have come to a decision.”

You scrunch your eyebrows, tilt your head not unlike a curious puppy. “Decision? What decision?”

“The decision to marry you, my dear,” your mother finishes, though she looks a bit sheepish to admit it. You feel cold all of a sudden, despite the cloying humidity that seeps in from the thick trees.

“What? What do you mean? I-I thought the decision had been made? That I was to be his Queen?”

Your father has the grace to look mildly embarrassed. “Well, there is a courting period. A week, usually, during which you’ll spend time with the King and should he desire you, the ceremony shall be had.”

You’re unsure how this makes you feel. Nervous, surely, for now you need to earn the King’s approval. Underneath though, you swear you feel...giddy. Girlish joy at the thought of actually being courted like in one of your storybooks. The corners of your mouth twitch just a bit in happy anticipation. Your mother attempts a smile but she looks...troubled, almost, not quite as excited for you. Your father merely averts his eyes out the window.

It’s a mostly quiet ride, peppered conversation here and there about Mannheim, and what life there might entail for you. It doesn’t escape you, however, that both of your parents seem reluctant to discuss in detail your potential betrothed, King Steven. While you’re sure your father wouldn’t sell you off to a brute, there’s a stab of trepidation within your chest. Blunt, but it’s there.

At some point, you end up dozing. Light but restful nap that you’re pulled out of when the carriage lurches hard again. Bleary-eyed, you look out the window, see that the landscape has once again changed. Where there used to be dense forest, now is a flat, golden ocean that ebbs and flows with the breeze. It expands as far as you can see, and while it isn’t the lush green of your country, it isn’t exactly terrible.

There are no clouds in the sky, which is a rich, beautiful blue. It blends perfectly with the hue of the grass, a brilliant bronze that rivals the treasure from your novels. Among the grass you can make out shapes - horses, you think, three of them. All deep blue-black under the rays of the sun. One of them lifts its head, its wide neck arching as it looks towards the caravan.

You’re drawn to them, like something the alchemist calls a magnet. The other two have lifted their heads curiously, watching the caravan as it passes, and then the biggest of the three shakes his head, hooves thundering as he leads the small herd down the hill and out of sight, black muscled bodies rippling, legs lifting high as they gallop away.

“Friesians,” your father supplies, seeing the look of wonderment on your face. “Native to this country. Strong as oxen and just as stubborn. But they bond to their masters like no other horses. They possess a loyalty deeper than I’ve ever seen.”

You smile wistfully at him, listen as he goes on to tell you about how the Friesians had first been tamed. It feels like the time goes faster this way, with your father indulging your childhood fantasies of taming wild horses and riding off into the sun.

The next time you peer out the window, you’re surrounded by a small village. Your father informs you you’re just outside the castle walls. All at once your belly is fluttering with nerves, and you even notice your hands shaking just a little. Swallowing heavily, you assess the village and its inhabitants. Men, women, and children alike stop their chores to gawk at the incoming caravan.

The colors of Mannheim are far more dull than those of your home. Where a rainbow of greens, yellows, blues, and purples filled the streets with color, here it is a puddle of browns, greys, and dark greens.

Despite the brightness of the grass and sky surrounding, everything else about Mannheim seems far duller.

Chapter Two

#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x you #steve x you #steve x reader #king!au #king!steve #king!steve x you #king!steve rogers x you #king!steve rogers x reader #medieval au

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crystalgirl259 · 3 years

Text

The Flame and the Dragon Ch1

Chapter 1: The Legend of the Dragon Lord

It was many a year ago, at least by mortal reckoning when a proud and magnificent family ruled the lands from a shining castle of marble and stone. They were both fierce and protective, yet kind and loyal and fair. Their reign was a golden age and the people were eternally grateful to them. It wasn't always like this, however. The royal family had been faced with many foes over the years. The most fierce and dangerous of the enemies came from within their own castle.

The royal family had always had a royal sorcerer to protect and entertain them, but one day, the sorcerer's young, orphan apprentice found him experimenting with dark magic.

He had been planning on overthrowing the royal family for years. The apprentice immediately went to inform the King. The sorcerer was promptly exiled to the farthest mountains and his family name banished from the realm. For her heroic actions, the royal family adopted the apprentice. The townspeople and the country flourished under the peaceful and prosperous reign of the King, Queen, and their son and adopted daughter. The King, known throughout the land as Lou, though had eccentric and unorthodox manners of ruling the kingdom, was an exceptionally good King.

His wife Lily was his equal in every way, an eccentric warrior whose strong spirit and golden heart could not be tamed.

Both loved their people and made the fact known both within and outside the walls of the castle. Many of the castle's servants were wards of the king and queen who were given jobs and treated as if they were their own flesh and blood. But the most beloved of all the royal family was the only son. He was truly a handsome man both externally and within. A proud and stubborn man but with a will as strong as a dragon and a heart brighter than gold, eyes as beautiful and green as a stunning emerald.

Though it was uncommon in that day and age, the royals spent as much time among their citizens as they could.

Even their adopted daughter was loved among them. Among his people, the prince was kind and fair, and among the servants, each one was like a younger sibling to him, but when the people were in danger he defended them with the ferocity and power of a dragon, earning him a nickname. The Dragon Lord. The people loved their rulers and their rulers loved their people, but the dark destiny of all kingdoms would soon doom this peaceful paradise.

Deep in the mountains, the exiled sorcerer swore vengeance upon the royal family for their betrayal and his own thirst for the crown.

Yet above all he despised the prince. Most people believed he hated the prince was because he was jealous and believed the throne that should be his. However, that was only a small part of it. In truth, he envied the prince with all his soul. He hated how the people loved and respected him, how everyone idolized the Dragon Lord instead of him. He hated how the prince commanded the love, respect, and attention of everyone who laid eyes on him without even trying.

But he'd had to perform complex and difficult magical spells to demand their love.

He hated how, while he'd had to struggle and work for every little thing his entire life, the people simply gave the Dragon Lord their love on a silver platter. Yet the prince did nothing with it. Even if the King and Queen were the true rulers, the exiled sorcerer knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was the Dragon Lord who had the kingdom's love and respect. He vowed one day to return and rip away everything the Prince loved and treasured so deeply.

He wanted to do it in the most malicious and unforgiving manner he could concoct.

Banished to the darkest shadows and forced to live a solitary existence of seclusion, his bitterness festered until it consumed his soul. Finally, after years of training in the dark arts, his bitterness, jealousy, and rage transformed him into a more powerful sorcerer. His dark heart had all but consumed him. One dark day, after all, but signing away his soul to the darkness, he unlocked the dark, unforgiving arts of the Cursed Realm. The darkness consumed him, making him a prisoner of his own power yet affording him the ability to control some of the darkest magic.

Only one thing burned within his poisoned mind now.

His never-ending lust for vengeance...

****************

It was a day that should've been a day of great celebration. The Prince's coronation on his 21st birthday, the day he became a man, and the day he would be no longer known as the Dragon Lord, but the King. It was on this day that everything changed. The sorcerer, wearing a mask of glamour to hide his black hair and the wickedness in his eyes with an appearance more commonly seen among the people attended the new king's majesty with a terrible plan.

He was going to make the new king and his family suffer for their crimes against his person.

Only after everyone else had presented their gifts and their best wishes and promises to their beloved prince and soon-to-be king, Lou stood from his throne, holding in his hands a magnificently sculpted crown in the shape of a majestic silver dragon with eyes of emerald and powerful onyx wings. Just as the former king was about to crown his son, the Sorcerer stepped forward and spoke his impossible demands. He commanded that the Dragon Lord relinquish his crown and his throne to him or great doom would befall them all.

He cast aside his glamour as he spoke, eliciting a scream of terror from his former apprentice who was the first to recognize him, and gasps of shock and fear from the townspeople whom he had terrorized.

Naturally, the prince refused, claiming nothing would convince him to relinquish his throne and the lives of his people and loved ones to a madman. He did not fear death or enchantment. The sorcerer's eyes narrowed at the defiant family of royals before a smile struck his face; a smile that sent a shiver of fear down the spines of everyone present, chilling everyone in the room to the bone. Even as the royal guards attacked and the people rushed to escape, the Sorcerer's wicked eyes turned black as shadows and dark purple energy flooded his body like a wispy ghost.

Finally, the sorcerer unleashed a deadly wave of black magic, consuming the entire throne room.

While the townspeople had already escaped, the servants and those loyal to their royals refused to leave and screamed in anguish and fear as their very essences warped to that of the dark master's sick desires. The sorcerer's dark magic ensnared the royals, and all except for the Dragon Lord's vanished before the young king's horrified eyes. But the Sorcerer refused to reveal to the devastated Dragon Lord what had become of his parents and adopted sister.

He then invoked the magic of the Cursed Realm and placed a terrible curse upon the castle and a deadly spell upon the kingdom and all who lived there.

Proclaiming doom on the royal family and all who served them, friends and servants alike, the servants and wards of the castle were stripped of their physical forms and were warped into new ones for their loyalty, ones of creatures from the realm of fantasy. As for the prince himself, the Sorcerer wanted him to suffer the most. He wanted to see him wither away and suffer alone in solitude and anguish just as he had suffered, before extracting the final act of his vengeance.

So he cursed him with the most terrible form of all.

The form of the most magnificent and dangerous creature of myth and legend, once beloved by the royal family and the kingdom, and would now be used to doom the new King. The form of the Dragon. But his form was cursed to be neither monster nor human, but something awful in between. Trapped as a prisoner within his own body, with only his most loyal of followers in bodies no human would dare trust, he was imprisoned within his castle.

To entertain himself, the Sorcerer gave the prince an ultimatum.

The prince would have a century to find his one true love and break the curse. It couldn't just be anyone, however. It had to be a person that could accept the King for the monster he was, else his soul and the souls of all those he held dear would never know peace and would instead be trapped within the dark depths of the Cursed Realm for all eternity. With a maniacal laugh and a haunting scream, he vanished, claiming to return once his time had come, leaving behind a confused and terrified crowd who couldn't recognize themselves in a mirror.

The prince let out a shallow gasp as he collapsed to his knees before he screamed in horror at the body that was no longer his.

Instead of human hands, black claws had replaced his fingers and scaled paws were his hands. Thick scales and black talons adorned his arms. At his feet were the back legs and claws of a dragon. Confused and scared he turned to his servants, each holding a sad expression on their faces, and when a mirror was raised to the prince's face, he screamed. Black scales adorned his body, torso, and chest, a powerful, whip-like tail sprouted from behind him; fin-like appendages grew from his shoulders.

From his shoulder blades sprouted two enormous wings large enough to consume his body, glittering with blood as they ripped from his skin.

But most terrifying of all were his eyes. No longer were they the brilliant green he'd grown up with, nor were they human. Instead, he saw the dark brown eyes and slit-like pupils of a dragon staring back at him in horror and fear. It was just as the sorcerer cursed him. He was neither dragon nor man but something terrible in-between. His servants and friends urged him not to lose hope, that they would find his love, whoever it may be, and rescue his parents and the young princess from wherever the evil Sorcerer sent them.

But it wasn't long before hope began to fade. As the years passed, he fell into despair.

His followers and the people he'd worked so hard to protect refused to leave him or abandon the castle. The rest of the world forgot as the long years of the century rolled by. Alone in the castle, the former King's heir began to chill and stiffen, angered and bitter towards the world that shunned him so cruelly as a horrible monster. As hope became an illusion scorned by the prince, his lonely heart grew cold and desolate. But his servants never lost hope.

They prayed and prayed to the FSM for aid, to save their master from the malicious fate cursed upon him and to help him find his love.

For only the Prince knew about his love and told only a select two and they swore to take the secret to their graves, keeping it from even their most trusted friends and family. They just trusted their Master to find his love, knowing that whoever it may be would have to be a special soul to earn the heart and rescue the soul of their master. Though the secret was safe, it didn't stop the servants from wonder who would lift their curse. They wondered who was the Dragon Lord's one true love...

#ninjago #ninjago zane #ninjago cole #ninjago kai #ninjago lloyd #ninjago nya #ninjago jay #lavashipping #The Flame and the Dragon

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sarah-bae-maas · 4 years

Text

Rowaelin AU!

AU! where the valg wars never happened, but Aelin and Rowan would always have met anyway

Masterlist AO3

***

“Dorian, as nice as this was, you need to leave.” Aelin smirked at the bare body next to hers, admiring the prince.

Dorian reached a hand over, smoothing it down her body and around dangerous places. “Of all the things I could do, why would I do that – Ah! Fuck.”He pulled his hand back, and held it to his chest as it burned. Aelin’s eyes widened, horrified at what she’d done. Before she could apologise for losing control of her magic once again, Dorian huffed and near-fled from the room, slamming the door in his wake. She didn’t even have a chance to apologise to her friend.

She was lucky her room was on the opposite of the castle to her parents, otherwise she’d fear they’d hear her escapades with the prince of Adarlan.

Maybe burning Dorian was a blessing in disguise. She did need to get some sleep – some fancy diplomats from Wendlyn, including some warrior that had been hired to train her, were arriving in the morning. She didn’t know if it would help at all, but she figured it couldn’t hurt. Even at twenty-one, her fire burned in uncontrollable ways. She thought maybe as she aged it might settle down, that somehow she’d magically be able to control it better, but it still flared up at the worst possible times. Like when Dorian tried to touch her. Luckily he was just a bit of fun, or this would be a serious problem.

She sighed, eager for tomorrow but dreading the likely-awful fae that would be her maker for the next few months. She decided that sleep would likely evade her the entire night, so she may as well find something to do with her time.

The halls were silent as she crept through them, her fae senses letting her know what ways to avoid so that she didn’t run into anyone else. Her body, tall and languid, thrived when in her fae form. Her human side was so erased that she’d fooled even the oldest of fae into thinking this was her who she really was.

Although only walking, a bead of sweat started to roll down her back. The air was dry as can be as a sweltering summer rolled in, the earth smelling of dead grass and dust. The back alleys she took to get to her favourite pub forwent pavement and let long-cemented clay guide her feet. The stone homes that lined the alleys were cool to touch, and she let them cool her fingers as she walked to her place.

Shady’s had been there longer than she’d been alive, and had been passed down through the same family like it was a royal crown. Not bustling, but not meagre, it was the perfect place to lose yourself. It also helped that it was smack-bang in the middle of a precinct the wealthy usually avoided. Dorian, for example, would never sully his fine shoes by walking on this dirt. Ha! What prisses. Anyone to scared to walk to Shady’s didn’t deserve it.

A little bell dinged as she entered, but no one looked up at her entrance. She had a hood over her head, or waist-length blonde hair braided back and hidden. Not many people were here at such an hour, only those who really wanted to forget themselves. Aelin ordered a pint and sat at her usual seat, scratching at the table.

Tomorrow will be fine. You can handle some old fae. You can do this! You’ve trained your whole life for this moment! Even if you can’t get grip on this, you’ll still be a Galathynius. Terrasen is your home. They’d never make you leave.

No matter what she told herself, she still felt butterflies roaring in her stomach. It wasn’t so much that she was nervous to meet her alleged mentor, but what would happen if the bastard couldn’t fix her.

It had been only a month ago that she and Aedion had overheard her parents discussing her fate if they couldn’t get her flames under control. Aelin could hear the love they felt for her in their voices, but it didn’t seem to matter as they considered shipping her off to Wendlyn, alone, until she was better. How could they suggest separating her from her family, from her life? Aelin could admit maybe there was someone in the Whitethorn lot who could teach her, but at what cost? To Aelin, spending potentially years away from those she loved simply wasn’t worth it.

Since then, her parents had pulled her aside and told her they were bringing someone to her, but Aelin knew exactly what that meant. This was her chance, and if she fucked it up, she’d be on the next ship out of there.

“You look awfully sad for someone so pretty. Maybe a drink will cheer you up?”

Aelin looked up at the low voice, surprised to see another fae. Although Terrasen was teeming with her kin, Shady’s wasn’t somewhere they frequented. He was tall, alarmingly so, and built like a castle. His skin was bronze and littered with scars, his dark hair pulled back in a messy bun. He was attractive – in the same way sin was.

“I’ve already got one.” Aelin pointed to the half-empty glass in front of her, her answer making the stranger smirk.

He leant in to speak again, but a male at the next table stopped him. “Give it a rest, Lorcan. She’s not interested, and you’re starting to look pathetic.” His voice was deep, the lilt to it making the butterflies in her stomach rest. He had a cloak on, an emerald so dark it was nearly black, and his hair was a neat and short silver, but slightly longer on the top. His skin was creamy but loved by the sun, and his eyes were a startling green. Although sitting, he clearly had some height behind him too, but unlike his friend he was not a castle; he was a palace. Elegant.

“She can answer for herself, stop being so sour,” the man, Lorcan, said.

Aelin was looking at the sitting man as she answered. “Your friend is right, I’m not interested.” She peeked a glance at him, and he smiled.

“Fair enough. And I’m going to consider that my cue.” Lorcan sauntered off to the corner and up the dingy stairs that led to the few rooms Shady’s hired out – usually by the hour.

Feeling intrigued and full of liquid courage, Aelin decided to sit at the table of the elegant fae. He barely glanced at her as she did. She rested her hand on her fist, squinting at him.

“What brings you to Orynth?” she asked.

“I’ve been to most corners of the world, yet Terrasen remained unexplored. The capital seemed like a good place to start.” He took a deep gulp of his drink, his fingers dotted with tattoos written in the old fae language.

Aelin, being a pervert, decided to breath deep, wanting to inhale the scent of the man in front of her. She frowned, the pine and snow from Terrasen too strong to get a read on him, despite winter being long gone.

“Who is your companion?”

“The brute that just left?” Finally, a small smile on those lips. “He’s like a brother. A very annoying, overprotective brother that won’t stop hitting on any woman with a pulse. I don’t imagine you came here to be seduced.”

“It’s not usually on my list of weekday activities. There are plenty of reasons I come here, although I’ll admit love isn’t one of them.”

A laughed lowly, the sound like the rumble of a dragon before it takes flight. “You must be young, talking about love as if it’s real.”

“You must be either old or bitter to believe it’s not. Or just very unlucky.” Must be bitter, there’s no way a male that looked like this had trouble finding women to warm his bed.

“Hm. Maybe.” His drink was empty, but he didn’t move from the table. “You been here your whole life?”

“I’ve been to every country on this damned continent, but this is home, always will be. I have no desire to leave. You make me think you’ve never been anywhere that’s made you want to stay.” She didn’t know what made her say it, but she could somehow feel the truth in her words. He looked at her, his eyes saying how do you know me so well, yet not at all.

“Be careful, soon you’ll know my most intimate secrets,” he playfully warned, a spark lighting his eyes.

“How deep can I go before you’ll stop me?”

“I don’t know, shall we see?”

Aelin grinned at the challenge. “Parents?”

“Dead since I was a child. Next.”

“No siblings then.”

“Took them nearly a thousand years just to have me. You?”

“Destroyed my mother’s uterus. What’s your profession?”

“Soldier, mostly blacksmith. If I were to guess, I’d say you were a handmaiden.”

“Pianist. I play every week at the grand theatre, if I had my way it would be every day. Favourite place you’ve been?”

“To war.”

“How incredibly savage.” She leant closer to him. “There hasn’t been a war in Terrasen for hundreds of years, won’t you get bored being here?”

“Lorcan has forced me to rest, said it’s best for my mental state; I couldn’t disagree more.”

“Do you have a second form?”

“Hawk.”

“What does it feel like to fly?”

He paused, considering his answer. His head tilted to the side, a strand of hair falling onto his face. Aelin resisted the urge to push it back. “Freedom, in its purest form. In the sky, there is everything and nothing all at once. No one to answer to but the wind.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Unfortunately.” He looked at her keenly. “You ever have your heart broken, since you’re such the optimist?”

“I’ve never cared for someone enough to have them hurt me.”

“You’ve been with a human tonight; I can still smell him on you.” From any other mouth, the words would have made her cringe, and then run off to tell Elide so they could laugh together. Instead, they sent a shiver down her spine. Dorian had been forgotten the moment she’d laid eyes on the male in front of her.

“Something tells me you don’t care.”

____

He couldn’t take her to his room since Lorcan was there, so he held her against a wall in a closet. His hands were under her thighs as she wrapped her legs around him, setting her alight. It took every spare thought to keep her fire under control as he kissed her, his tongue an artist as it painted her lips, neck, chest. She moaned as one of his hands wandered up the back of her shirt, her cloak long since dropped to the floor with his.

“You know this place better than me,” he said between kisses. “How likely are we to get caught?”

Aelin growled in response, summoning him closer. His shirt, so pristine for a blacksmith, was in her way. In her haste and forgetting her own strength, she tore it in two, leaving it in shreds in the floor. It only spurred him on, and he turned them around so he could sit her on a bench.

The sex wasn’t graceful, but by the Gods was it good. He had her clothes off in minutes, and she had never felt so aroused in her life. It was like every nerve she had was being played by his magic; like she was the piano and he was the master musician. It was quick, his tempo perfect to hit the exact spot it needed to every time, but he also had a stamina unseen in the human boys she had been with. He was a man; a full-blooded fae male that was biologically engineered to make her moan so hard she forgot her own name. At one point, when the tips of her hair had started to curl with flames, she nearly shoved him away mid-thrust. But as he looked at her fire unfazed, he simply doused them with a pinch of his own magic. Knowing she could truly let loose, she gave all that she had to him.

And by the Gods it was the best she’d ever had.

They were panting on the floor of a broom closet, him big enough that he had to prop his knees up. She was curled into his side, leaving thank you kisses alongside his body. He was puffed, and let out an airy laugh. “You should stop, or I’ll have to take you again.”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t want to go for round, what was it? Six?” To let him know, if it wasn’t already obvious, that she was joking, she left an open mouth kiss to each of his abs. He was the best thing she had ever tasted.

Aelin looked up to the window the size of a plate and groaned. The sky was starting to lighten, and soon the palace would be awake and she’d have to meet the Wendlyn convoy sent by the Whitethorns. “But you’re right. I have to go.”

She stood up, and trying not to step on him, redressed. He eventually did the same, but not after admiring her body greedily.

“Last question, will I see you again?” she asked, not hopeful. Shady’s attracted transients.

“I’m staying here for the next week at the least. Do with that what you will.”

She grinned, kissing him once more before running away from the pub, drunker than any alcohol could make her. It wasn’t until she was back in her room that she remembered she hadn’t asked him the most important question of all – his name.

___

“Elide, I’m serious. It was mind blowing. Like, I could have set that building on literal fire. I nearly did at one stage!” Aelin whispered furiously as she sped-walked to the main hall. She was late, as per usual, but at least she had Elide at her side. It wouldn’t be so awkward with her there.

“Please, pleasestop talking.” And Aedion was there too, and in genuine pain from their conversation.

“Where can I get a man like that? You mentioned he had a brother? I’ll pay you to take me with you tonight.”

“Won’t it seem desperate if I go to find him less than a day after I left him? And I think that’s prostitution.”

“Aelin I do so much for you. The least you can do in return is help me get dicked down to the nth degree.”

“I’m going to impale myself on my sword.”

“Shut up, Aedion!”Elide and Aelin said simultaneously, before giggling to themselves.

She nearly tripped on her gown, the green organza ruffles on her dress a pain in the ass to walk in. She could also feel her crown starting to tip off her head, but Elide quickly grabbed it and pinned it back before it could. The sight of the three of them running towards the hall doors made the sentries guarding it laugh as they put their fingers to their lips, silently shushing them.

“They’re all in there, Princess, they’re just waiting for you.”

Aelin put a fake smile on her face, dreading who she’d find waiting behind that door. She stood herself in front of it, Elide to her right and Aedion to her left. She smoothed down the front of her dress, making sure everything was perfect to give the best, first royal impression she could. She had to impress the old fae that was to train her, lest she be sent to Wendlyn. Her hair was fine, her crown straight. Her dress was fitted in all the right areas but flared out to give the impression of modesty. Her favourite jewels were on, and her shoes – oh fuck, she’d forgotten to put her shoes on.

The sentries opened the door, not giving her a chance to panic.

“Introducing, the crown princess Aelin accompanied by her destined bloodsworn, Prince Aedion Ashryver, and handmaiden Lady Elide Lochan.” The booming voice welcomed her as she walked through the double doors, the people in the room dropping to their knees to meet her. The walls were lined with familiar and unfamiliar faces. All but her parents, sitting on their thrones, and one other stayed standing. A male, tall with silver hair, eyes the colour of evergreens. He was standing on the steps leading to the thrones, clad in armour and navy and black fabrics, clothing fine enough for a king.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

“Princess Aelin, might I please introduce Prince Rowan Whitethorn of Doranelle, your new mentor.”

#rowaelin #elorcan #fanfic #AU!#sjm #throne of glass #kingdom of ash

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tattersofthequeen · 3 years

Text

Buried Treasure: A Love Story

Inspired by the true, hilarious, story of Pharaoh Tutankhamen. I kind of ran out of steam near the end but WHATEVER I’M TIRED OF LOOKING AT IT.

-----

Alisdair Massom wanted to go home.

The wind whined through the trees bordering the oasis. It smelled of baked stone and desiccated plant matter. The desert wasn't all one kind of landscape, instead ranging from stony hills to pure sand. The ground wasn't as pleasant to sit in as one might suppose: since this wasn't dune country, it was hard as rock beneath a layer of sand, dust, and pebbles.

He scrubbed at his nose with his sleeve, trying to stifle another racking sneeze, and only succeeded in smearing more grime across his face. Everything out here was dusty, from the tents to the people, unless it was flooded. His neck itched abominably where it met the collar of his khakis; he suspected he was starting to get a rash.

On paper, the idea had been thrilling: a month-long trip with Cat, excavating the tomb of a long-dead Egyptian king, had set his imagination on fire. He still remembered sneaking into the Cineplex with her as children and huddling in the dark, her warm hand in his, staring wide-eyed up at the midnight showings of The Mummy's Curse, or Antony and Cleopatra. The glow of the screen had made her face look like an illuminated sky.

He wondered if she knew how many of those trips had just been an excuse to spend time with her, braving his worries that somehow they'd be found out. He wondered if they meant as much to her as they had to him.

The fact that their flight left at an unholy hour of the night, and their assigned seats were three rows apart, ought to have tipped him off that the excursion wouldn't measure up quite as well as he hoped. The fact that he had barely been outside of the same area code, much less the country, should have been another. Still, even after the abundance of forms, the interminable waiting for passport clearance, and the mad scramble for the gate (huffing and puffing under the weight of Cat's luggage), his enthusiasm remained undampened. He'd rested his head against the window of the plane for most of the ten-hour flight, picturing golden idols glittering in the dark, his name in the papers over an unprecedented find, Ca'tra flinging herself into his arms in celebration.

The reality -as he discovered almost from the moment their plane hit the tarmac- was less glamorous.

"Having fun yet, bro?" Archi called, his back set nonchalantly against the trunk of a dead tree. He had to shout a little, to be heard over the clinking of chisels and the calls of the archaeologists gathered in the dig site. Unlike Alisdair, he seemed entirely unbothered by the dirt and the relentless heat, idly juggling a handful of dried dates. Not waiting for the answer, he softballed one at Alisdair's face with a jovial cry of 'catch'.

"Oh, yeah." Alisdair rolled his eyes expansively, and tried to fumble the date into his mouth and not the sand. "Between the bugs and the dirt and the saliva, I don't think I'm ever going to want to go back. How are you not dying of heatstroke?"

Archi rolled his head back with a long belly laugh, slapping his hands against his midsection loudly enough to make the camels shift and grumble in complaint. His grin was a half-moon glow of chemical white against dark, tanned skin. "Oh my god, you should have seen your face, man! I don't think I've ever seen that much spit come out of anything!"

Alisdair folded his arms huffily across his midsection, his face warming as he hunched his shoulders. "It's funny when you're not the one who spent all night cleaning mucus out of your hair," he muttered, and cast a baleful eye at the offending camel. It chewed placidly on the missing lower third of his sleeve, and stared unblinkingly back, daring him to provoke a rematch. The blond's frown deepened, and he shuffled another cautious step toward the dig. Just to be safe.

"Have you seen Cat at all?" he asked. Other than shifting the topic away from his recent humiliation, he'd barely seen her at all since they arrived. It seemed like they'd only just gotten through customs before Tenax- before Professor Almaizan had smarmed his way in ahead of him, and chivvied off his 'field assistant' to discuss the itinerary for their trip.

No matter where he turned, it seemed, their chaperone was always there, watching him intently with sharp amber-gold eyes and full lips quirked in what the younger man was sure was contempt. He could barely get a bloody word in edgewise with her, much less an invitation to sit with her at dinner, or maybe to hold her hand- to help her across the street, of course; God knew what these people spent their money on but it clearly wasn't city upkeep. Any time he'd tried to steal his way up to the second floor of the hotel, where the girls were rooming, Tenax had blocked the way with an unctuous smile and a long, elegant, firmly barring leg. "Terms of the contract," Alisdair's ass.

Worse, all she ever seemed to talk about anymore was how excited she was to be working with the creepy old foreign professor, and how much help he'd been with her thesis. She barely even glanced at the blond youth when he'd squawked in pain at the temperature of the Turkish coffee- much less listened to his concerns.

Alisdair kicked at the sand, his lips pursing at the memory. It simply wasn't fair.

Archi shrugged, pulling his attention back to the present as he nodded across the base camp to the foot of the tomb. "Hasn't come out since they started, I guess." He cast a long, sly glance at Alisdair's dissatisfied fidgeting, freeing a tattooed hand to smooth his beard back into shape. "I mean, she's probably having the time of her life, right? Did you know she licks the rocks she digs up?"

"She does not!" Alisdair gasped, scandalized, his eyes wide. He gave the sand pile another kick, for good measure, sending an industrious dung beetle scuttling for cover.

"Oh yeah, bro, she totally does. Rocks. Bones. AND all those little brushes. She just sticks 'em in her mouth." Hand raised, fingers together, Archi moved his chin up and down behind his hand in a slow, wicked nod. "I've seen her do it. Go check if you don't believe me. Bet she's already licked your old man's shaving whisk."

Alisdair thought about the possibility for a moment, toeing at the sand. There was something under there, he thought, shifting under his boot. He hoped it wasn't a scorpion. "Man," he said at last, "it doesn't even matter if she did. It's not like he ever uses it." Despite the gentle nudges he and his mother had given, the senior Kallus' facial topiary continued to grow, and the expensive father's day gift gathered dust in the bathroom cabinet.

"God." Archi's face scrunched like one of the dates he was juggling. "Do you think he's got.... you know, a second sideburn growing on his chest or something? Just.... taking everything over?"

"Oh," Alisdair shuddered, wishing -not for the first time- that his parents had elected to install a second bathroom. "He does, actually. It's a whole thatch. Thanks so much for reminding me."

A date rebounded off his shoulder as Archi missed his toss with a look of horrified glee. "Bro, are you fucking serious? Are there pictures?!" His grin widened until it threatened to eclipse his face, visions of blackmail dancing in his head.

Alisdair rolled his eyes, stooping to retrieve the fruit. It wasn't a conscious decision: years of hearing his mother's vendetta against litter had him moving almost mechanically. He wasn't even sure where to throw it once he had it; it wasn't as if an Egyptian desert had compostables bins lying around. His fingers closed around the date, and brushed against the object he'd felt before, just under the sand.

On a whim, he worked his fingers deeper into the debris. It was hard, flat, and rigid: definitely not a scorpion. It didn't feel like much of anything he recognized.

For a moment -just for a moment- the embers of his fantasy caught light again. He saw himself pulling a jewel-studded length of belt free from the sand, or an ancient scroll containing a map to forgotten treasure. He imagined Cat's eyes widening at the sight of it, her mouth falling open in astonished wonder at his luck and talent, apologizing profusely for not having seen how valuable an addition he was to the team. Yes, that would do nicely.

Rocking back on his heels, he opened his hand, dusting away the last of the grit to discover-

"Izzat a piece of beef jerky?"

Archi leaned over Alisdair's shoulder, squinting down at the object. It was not a Pharaoh's belt. It was not a scroll case, either. Instead, he was holding a coal black, withered stick the length of his hand. His nose crinkled in disappointment and revulsion, hand dropping dejectedly to his side. He nearly dropped the thing into the sand before Archi plucked it away from him, bringing it up to his nose like he might an expensive Cuban cigar.

"Blech! It smells like my Uncle Rau's attic!" His friend jerked his head back, expression curdling, and leaned close to shove the object near Alisdair's face. "I mean, I'd still eat it, though. Bet me twenty bucks?"

"Archi, I don't want your-" Alisdair had only just managed to get his feet underneath him before his nostrils were assaulted by something both acrid and faintly herbal. He retched, slapping his hands over his nose, then retched again as he realized the smell was clinging to his palms. "Oh, god, that's VILE!"

"I know, right?! About that bet...."

Alisdair swiped the jerky from his hand, dropping it into a pocket of his khakis, not so much because he actually wanted the disgusting thing anywhere near him as wanting to keep his friend from following through on the threat. "I'm going to go find Cat before you find anything else to shove into your mouth."

Turning sharply on his heel, ignoring Archi's braying laughter, he lengthened his stride across the hard-packed earth toward the dig. He tried to think of Cat's bright blue eyes, her dark curls flecked with glittering dust, and not early memories of his father or the possibility that Archi's little sister had graduated from licking rocks to sampling the shaving cream.

At one point -back when it was first built, Alisdair supposed- the tomb must have been truly magnificent. Sandstone pillars lined the front entrance, still standing firm despite their age, each section painstakingly hand-shaped and still sporting the chisel marks of the artisans who'd sculpted them.

Cat had tried explaining, over the groaning of the camels, the particular types of pigments that would have once decorated them- but he'd been too focused on keeping the constant sway of the animal beneath him from upsetting the contents of his stomach to listen. Now they were the color of dust, the same as everything else in this wasteland.

Most of the structure was still intact, but the section Professor Almaizan had them working in had been dug out in the past year. The pillars near the opening listed slightly, either displaced during the previous excavations or by age. It made them resemble the bones of some ancient, long dead beast, or the nave of a ruined church, open to the moon. Here and there, colored thread was strung out in careful grids, marking off grids for the researchers to work. Near the northern corner, he could just about glimpse the lean figure of Professor Tenax Almaizan as he inspected their work, his dark shalwar kameez billowing in the hot, dry wind.

Steps had been carved into the excavated stone, or cobbled together from what wood they'd managed to cut, leading down into the guts of the structure perhaps some twenty (steep, gritty) feet. If there was any consolation, he supposed, it was that at least there was shade below the first level. Sweat cooled on his forehead as he passed out of the scorching midmorning sun. The shade smelled of hot bricks and chalk dust.

Steadying himself against the wall with a hand, he tried to picture what it would be like to be the first person to set foot in the burial chamber: torchlight glittering off ancient golden idols, gems the size of his hand, his archaeologist companion pressed close for protection as the withered old pharaoh began to stir-

A hand clamped down on his ankle.

Alisdair's undignified squawk echoed from the walls as gravel crunched under his feet, boots skidding on sand. The attempt to correct his balance, far from serving its intended purpose, nearly sent him over the edge and into the excavation pit. Hands flailing, he grabbed for the scaffolding and dug his heels in, a flush of embarrassment and adrenaline flooding his already heat-blotched face. "Ca'tra," he gasped, voice several octaves higher than he'd intended. "Don't grab me like that!"

Ca'tra Akaata (graduate student, aspiring archaeologist, current leading cause of premature heart attacks) was exactly where Archi had said she'd be: sat in the dirt, having the time of her life. One leg braced beneath her, she stretched the other out as far as it would go, marking her place with her toes as she arched up to grin at him. "Hi, Alisdair! Don't come down, I'm still finishing this section." Her voice was oddly muffled.

Lips twisted into a pout at her clear and total lack of remorse, Alisdair ignored her admonition, edging down the last set of steps- though, as a concession, he was careful to avoid the dig points marked out around her.

As she came into clearer focus, he realized her brother had been correct on another point: The horsehair shaving brush WAS in her mouth. Lengthwise, to be specific, teeth clamped firmly on the mahogany handle. He suppressed a wince at a fleeting image of his father, mouth downturned in a perplexed grimace as he loudly asked where the indentations had come from. Turning her head, she casually spat it into her hand, wiped it clean on a corner of her brightly patterned head scarf, and set it back down in the toolkit. "If you step on anything," she warned, "I won't be held responsible for what the Professor does to you."

Tossing his hair, Alisdair let out what he hoped was a sufficiently dismissive snort. "Oh, what do I care what that musty old pedant says? I was just making sure you didn't need to be rescued from traps or flesh-eating scarabs." Cat blinked at him for a second in mute astonishment, then threw back her head and laughed, dimples forming at the corners of her mouth. The movement revealed a stray, coal-black curl escaping the confines of her hijab. His hand twitched, resisting the urge to tuck it back into place.

"Scarabs don't eat people, Alisdair," she said, once her ebullience had faded enough to talk. "That's just the movies." Her teeth flashed, lower lip pinned in concentration as she picked dirt from a tiny clay figurine. "Then again, they might make an exception for you. Skittering around in the dark, hankering for your succulent flesh." She wiggled her fingers at him. "Skitter skitter."

Alisdair swallowed, hard, and stood up on his toes, shuffling a little further away from the nearby hole in the wall. Not that he believed her teasing, of course, just that he had heard that. Snakes. Liked to hide in holes in the wall. That was it. Just to be safe.

"You are so mean," he huffed. "At least tell me you found old Pharaoh What's His Nuts so we can go back to the hotel and celebrate."

The young archaeologist hummed, gently blowing the last of the dirt free of her figurine, and glanced up at Alisdair with arched brows. "I hate to disappoint you, but old Pharaoh What's His Nuts was excavated years ago, as I told you repeatedly on the way over.” She paused, and hummed thoughtfully, in the back of her throat. “Most of him, anyway."

"What?!" Alisdair gaped down at her. His knees sagged, back dragging over the rough stone as he dropped into an undignified squat at the edge of her workspace. "But I- but you said-" The champagne and press conferences he'd envisioned evaporated like a heat mirage, leaving him suddenly very aware of how hot and dusty and tired he was. "I thought you said this was exclusive!"

Cat rocked back on her heels, resting her forearms on her knees, and gave him a look that might have been pity. "It is exclusive, Alisdair. This is one of the most important digs of the decade. It's a miracle it hasn't been stripped completely bare by looters, or other archaeological teams. It's an amazing opportunity to get hands on experience in the field. I don't know how the Professor pulled it off."

"I think I've had quite enough experience in the field for one lifetime, thank you. I honestly don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't scorpions, or heat rashes, or all this sand. I don't like sand, Ca'tra."

Cat put the toothbrush back down with rather more force than was strictly necessary. "It's a desert, Alisdair. It's going to have sand. If you weren't prepared for some rough conditions, you could have just stayed at the hotel."

"I wanted to come with you!" Alisdair's voice rose, threatening to become a whine. "I know Professor Musty thinks I'm just a glorified pack mule, but I didn't think you agreed with him."

She sighed, expansively, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. "I know you don't like him, but he's really taking a chance with me on this expedition. It's not my fault someone got here before us."

Alisdair knew he couldn't really argue with her reasoning, but it didn't quell the bitter disappointment pooling in his gut. It threatened to rise into his throat and choke him. He stared down at the toes of his boots, hands fisting at his sides, and tried to convince himself the stinging in his eyes was just from heat.

"Oh, your professor's so great all right," he snapped. "He's so great that you've been ignoring me this entire trip and dragged me out here where there are scorpions and snakes and heatstroke and spit, and you and your professor'll go on to become rich and famous, and I'll probably die from the curse and all I found out here was a piece of ancient beef jerky!" Without thinking, he plunged his hand into his pocket, flinging the leather down in the midst of her carefully plotted workspace.

Cat's face flushed with anger, her eyes seeming even more intensely blue against the darkening of her cheeks. Snatching the object from among her grid stakes, she pulled her arm back, clearly intending to hurl it right back at him.

Then, abruptly, she stopped dead. Her arm was still poised, fist wrapped around the leather in preparation to send it back in his face. Slowly, she lowered her hand, staring down at the stick in utter bewilderment. "Beef jerky?" she repeated. Before he could stop her, she raised her hand to her face. He had a nightmarish vision then, of her tongue flicking out, flicking out to taste-

"CAT, NO!" He lunged at her, nearly ploughing into her dig, feet skidding as she shot him a murderous look. He teetered at the edge of the colored twine as she brought her hand up to her face again, sniffing once, and then again, more deeply. The flush faded from her cheeks as her eyes went wide.

"Alisdair," Cat said, her tone slow and deliberate. "Where did you find this?"

His brow furrowed in confusion as she held it out to him. "Lying in the sand, who cares, Cat, it's just a piece of jerky. I was going to throw it away."

"Alisdair." Her expression sharp, she leaned forward across her workspace to lock eyes with him. Her hair had slipped even further from the hijab, shading her eyebrow; he took the jerky from her in bewilderment. "Where EXACTLY. Did you find this."

"The entrance to the tomb, I guess?" Alisdair glanced down at the sad piece of leather and wrinkled his nose in renewed disappointment. "It’s hardly the royal jewels, isn’t it?"

But Ca'tra was looking at him now with an expression of astonishment that didn't look like it was born out of mockery, eyes flicking back and forth at some internal dialogue. "No," she breathed, the hints of a smile beginning to grow on her face. "It's so easy. Oh, my god, that's so stupid, I don't believe it."

"Cat?" Alisdair eyed her, warily, his hand still poised in front of herself. He nearly jumped as she lurched to her feet, crossing the dig in one long bound and reached out to grab his shoulders. Silently, she shook him, her face breaking into a grin to rival Archi's. It scared him more than her anger had. "What are you talking about?"

Cat shook Alisdair again, and grabbed his wrist in excitement, her expression very nearly gleeful. "It's been a mystery for years, Alisdair, ever since the Pharaoh was moved from the burial chamber. All those theories! And it was right here the entire time, I could kiss you!"

Alisdair felt his face heat, his anger and frustration leaving him in a rush. His palms prickled as she threw her arms around his shoulders, almost knocking the jerky from his hand. "Oh, well. Um. You're welcome," he mumbled. "What... um. What is it, then?"

"I said they found most of Pharaoh Khem-Adas. Most of him." Cat pulled back, holding him at arm's length, her eyes twinkling. "You said it yourself, Alisdair. The royal jewels! The royal jewels of Old Pharaoh What's His Nuts!" An hysterical laugh bubbled in the back of her throat. "The embalming, the composition, its size- stay right here, I'm going to go find the professor!"

For an instant, still suffused in rosy warmth as he was, the words failed to sink in. Repeating them back to himself, however, Alisdair felt a trickle of dread coil up his spine. He stared down at the mummified leather in his hand, small and roundish and not altogether unlike the treats he sometimes gave Mrs. Almaizan's pomeranian.

Treats that were made of.... of....

"Cat!" His voice cracked slightly, as his flush was replaced with a sickly greenish pallor. He could feel bile rising in his throat. "Are you saying this is.... that I'm holding a-"

“Don’t worry, Alisdair!” She grinned at him, wide and wild, pausing with her hand on the scaffolding. “I’ll make sure you get your picture in the papers! PROFESSOR ALMAIZAN, GET THE CAMERA!"

For such a small woman, Cat's voice echoed across the tomb- across the entire base camp as her feet pounded up the rest of the steps to the upper levels. As his vision began to tunnel, Alisdair thought they could probably hear her all the way back in Cairo.

"ALISDAIR FOUND PHARAOH KHEM-ADAS' MISSING PENIS!”

#metro writes #not nano 2020 #character: Alisdair Massom #character: Ca'tra #character: Archi Akaata #their banter is so much fun to write

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gaetoeinhaler · 4 years

Text

𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 || chapter 1 : 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

satan x female reader series

1,836 words

________________

"a disease. one that will kill her. it'll be with her for as long as she lives. we're not sure how long she has to live." the doctor said, looking down at his clipboard. "though, we both know that if she doesn't die during her childhood she sure will around her teenage years." the words trailed out of the doctor's mouth, emotionless and as if it was a everyday thing. the (last/name) family was devastated, horrified and worse of all, the two parent's first ever child was going to die who knows when.

"is there anything we can do about it?" luciano asked. luciano was the father of the baby. they still had yet to name her, too. the doctor simply shook his head,"if there was, we'd would've done it. but, there isn't we can do. nothing that can stop this. we're sorry, mr.(l/n) and mrs.(l/n)." luciano looked down at his daughter, wrapped up in a soft little blanket and resting peacefully in his wife's arms. what was he to do, knowing that his own daughter will die? and they can't even do a thing about it.

"we'll be leaving you two alone for awhile. i will be checking up on the baby later. you should get some rest, mrs.(l/n)." the doctor said, the nurse beside him nodding before they both left the room. leaving the family of three to be alone. luciano sighed and shook his head, looking back to his wife. what was he to do?

___________

the two were walking home from school. it was almost around the time for summer break, and asmodeus was non-stop talking about the things he could do. get it on with his boyfriend solomon, go to the mall. stare at himself in the mirror and constantly stare at his beautiful self without interruption. it all excited him, but the male next to him sighed and shook his head. "i've had enough of your plans. i hear the same thing from you everyday." the blonde looked up at his older brother, waiting for him to say something back.

"not my fault. i mean, you can't blame ME for wanting to talk about my plans and the things i want to do. i mean, who wouldn't want to hear my beautiful voice?" asmodeus retorted, making satan sigh and continue walking along the sidewalk. he just looked at the scenery around him. just everyday things he'd normally see. the bushes, flowers, trees, houses. though, a certain moving truck next to the house he lived in caught his attention. he lifted his head up a bit, trying to see what was going on exactly.

"-that's another thing i can give solomon for his birthday. he'd surely love that! oh and al-" asmo was cut off by satan placing a finger to his lips. "quiet." the blonde said, and looked back across the street where he was staring earlier. "hey! what makes you think that you can just touch me whenever you feel like it?" asmo moved away from his younger brother's touch and looked over to see what exactly he was staring at.

across the street, was a girl, around their age. she had (h/l), (h/c) hair, and beautiful (s/c) skin. and from where they were standing, though it was hard to tell, she seemed to have (e/c) eyes as well. asmo looked to his brother, and a smirk appeared on his face. "does she interest you, satan?" asmo asked, watching as satan immediately looked away from the girl and shook his head. "no! we don't even know anything about her yet. so why would i find interest in her so soon?"

asmo shrugged,"just from the way you're looking at her. you should go over there, talk to her, get to know her, y'know." asmo suggested with a close eyed smile. "fine, but you're coming along since you mentioned it." satan replied, already knowing what asmo would do next.

asmodeus sucked in a breathe and shook his head. "can't, solomon called me over to study at his house! and i don't want to leave him alone without my beautiful self there any longer." asmo started walking down the sidewalk more. "have fun, and remember to use a condom!" asmo waved at satan and continued along the concrete path.

satan shook his head and sighed softly. "as if i'd initiate such a thing with someone i barely know." he looked back over at the girl, seeing as she was having some trouble caring in a box. it seemed to be large, a bit too large for her to cary all by herself. "i guess it wouldn't hurt to get to know her a little."

satan looked both ways, making sure no cars would come and run him over. when he was sure of it, he hurriedly crossed the street and walked towards the house next to the one he lived in. there, he saw the girl. the box on the ground, and her arms wrapped tightly around it. "hey, do you need help with that?" satan asked, walking towards her.

the sudden voice the called out made her squeak in surprise and looked up to see who it was. standing in front of her was a tall, blonde haired boy that looked just a bit older than her. his eyebrows were lifted up, and he had his hand held out. she nodded slowly, taking his hand and lifting herself up, with the help of him too. "y-yeah, kinda." she responded, rubbing the back if her neck. "than let me help you." he said, a smile in his face. "thank you very much."

___________

"so, i take it that you're new?" satan asked, watching as the girl he had recently met poured two cups full of tea. she nodded, setting the kettle down and carrying the cups over to the table. "yeah, i guess you can easily tell from the moving van, huh?" she giggled softly, setting a cup in front of him. satan thanked her and blew softly on the tea before taking a sip. "where did you previously come from?" satan asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"oh. i moved from norway to here. kind of weird, huh?" she giggled again, taking a seat across from him, taking a sip of her own cup of tea. satan raised his eyebrows in surprise. "you came from europe?" she nodded a yes, but went on to answer further. "you see, my mom's a translator. she has to go to many different countries, and translate business things between other countries. and so, i have to move around with her. we'd usually stay in an apartment, but she did say she'd be staying here in america longer than the other countries ive been to." she said.

"does that mean you know other languages like her?" satan asked, curious. the girl nodded and cleared her throat. "ich kann deutsch sprechen." even though satan had no idea what she said, he still was a bit taken back. "what did you say exactly?" he asked.

"i said 'i can speak german'. though, i only know a few words in german and can put a few sentences together. i know how to say my name in german too." she said with a small smile, sipping some more of her tea. "really? mind if i hear it?" satan asked. it wasn't everyday you met someone who's been to who knows how many countries. she nodded and started to speak again,"hallo, ich bin (f/n), und ich kommt aus norwegen." she said it as if it was second nature. he was impressed to say the least.

"what did you say?" he asked, curious to hear her translate it for him. "all i said was 'i am (f/n), and i come from norway." she looked down in her cup and set it away. satan assumed she had drank all her tea, and went back to questioning her. "your name is (f/n)?" he asked. she nodded,"yep! (f/n) (l/n)!" he nodded and introduce himself. "well, my name is satan and i live next door, believe it or not." he chuckled softly and pointed at the dark neutral colored house outside the window. "i guess its safe to say we'll be seeing each other more often than, huh?" (y/n) said, making him nod a bit. "i guess so. what school are you going to?"

"oh, i'm homeschooled actually. so, i'm already at school you can say." she chuckled and smiled more. it was a bright and pure smile. and he enjoyed it. a little too much for his liking. "nice to know. do you plan on doing anything else? since all the packages and boxes from the truck." satan asked. he didn't expect to get to this point, if he was honest. if anything, he expected to be left alone and told to fuck off. instead, he had helped his new neighbor get settled in, and he got to know some things about her.

she shrugged and stared at the ceiling,"not really. though, i think my mom will be here soon." she said, looking back towards him. "do you have a dad?" satan cocked his head sideways, watching as (f/n)'s friendly and happy-go-lucky smile was replaced by a sad, grieving frown. only for a little bit, before she changed it back. "my dad's been dead for 9 years now. its just me and my mom." satan's eyes widened and he immediately sputtered out. "oh, i'm sorry! i didn't know." she shook her head and giggled. "its all good! don't worry!"

satan nodded slowly, before pulling out his phone and checking the time. 5:37 p.m. it was getting late, and he needed to be home soon. he still had homework to finish, dinner to eat and a shower to take and a lot of sleeping to do. all to get started on school tomorrow. "i should go now. i don't want my brothers to start worrying about me. thanks for having me in for some tea. i'll see you around, hopefully." he announced, standing up and walking towards the door.

"no problem! see you later, satan!" her voiced filled his head as he started to walk down the sidewalk and back home. his mind wandered to what she had said not too long ago. about her father being dead for nine years. the way she said it, and how she looked as she said it, it told him something was off. her voice turned high pitched when she said that sentence, and her eyes showed and held grief and sadness in them.

he shook his head, trying to rid of the thoughts. "why am i thinking about that? i barely know her, and what happened to her father. i shouldn't be thinking of such things." he whispered to himself. though, that didn't stop the thoughts appearing.

___________

#obey me #satan #satan x reader #female reader insert #female reader #satan x female reader #obey me satan #obey me satan x reader #obey me x reader

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