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ghostinthelibrarywrites · 1 year

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Lock Me Up and Sock Me Up

My third fic for @whataboutthebard, featuring old married couple!Geraskefer, immortal Jaskier (the details of how he's immortal aren't important) and a vaguely post-canon future! You can either read it below or here on AO3.

Prompt: bondage

Pairing: Geralt/Jaskier/Yennefer

Rating: E

Warnings: explicit smut; off-screen kink negotiation

Summary: After being rescued from yet another villainous mage by his lovers, Jaskier is stuck until the magical ropes his captor bound him in fade away on their own. He has some ideas about how he, Yennefer, and Geralt can wile away the time.

***

In Jaskier’s opinion, it takes an unacceptably long time for Geralt and Yennefer to stage a rescue mission.

“I’ve been here for hours!” he wails as Geralt steps over the body of the now-dead mage, silver sword slick with blood. Behind him, magic still crackles on Yennefer’s palms as she scans the room for any other threats. From his position tied to a stone table, naked except for the sigils painted on his forehead and chest, Jaskier didn’t see much of the battle, but what he did see was short and unimpressive. Geralt made quick work of the mage before the bastard could fire off a single spell.

“It was maybe an hour,” Yennefer says dryly, letting the spell die on her fingertips.

“Hours, Yennefer! Do you know how many monologues I had to listen to?”

“The last time you were kidnapped, you complained because they didn’t monologue.”

“Yes, but this monologue was boring and unoriginal.” Jaskier rolls his eyes at the ceiling of the mage’s lair. “He wanted to bring about another Conjunction of the Spheres. That’s like the fifth mage we’ve met who has wanted to bring about another Conjunction. I don’t know what it is with mages and the Conjunction. You think they’d find another villainous plan.”

“I’ll bring it up at the next Lodge meeting,” Yennefer says.

“Thank you, Yennefer. This is why I love you.”

She swipes a hand over the sigil painted on his chest, smearing it into nonsense. “I thought you loved me because I save your pretty ass whenever someone tries to ritually murder you.”

“That certainly helps.”

With a sigh, Geralt inspects Jaskier for any wounds before bending to brush a kiss across his lips. “Are you alright?”

“Not a scratch, thanks to my heroic loves.” Jaskier bats his eyelashes up at his lover, who has a spray of the mage’s blood across his cheek. It shouldn’t be as attractive as it is. “It’s so nice to see someone is full of gratitude to get his bard back.”

Pointedly, Yennefer turns to Geralt. “Do you remember when he used to be properly grateful when we saved his life?”

“Oh, please, like it was a challenge for you.” Jaskier huffs. Perhaps he should be more shaken after being kidnapped, but honestly after all the horrors the three of them have faced—Nilfgaard, Voleth Meir, the Wild Hunt, Stregobor, angry mobs, too many monsters to count, Valdo fucking Marx’s musical performances—one solitary mage puffed up on his own importance was nothing.

Jaskier was frightened, sure, especially when the mage started waving a big ass knife around and talking about the power of an immortal’s blood, but he never truly thought that Yennefer and Geralt wouldn’t save him. They’ve rescued him time and time again from kidnappings, interrogations, near-executions, that hideously unpleasant occasion where he’d been swallowed whole by a zeugl, and plenty of angry spouses. The three of them keep each other safe; they always have.

Gustily, he sighs. “Is someone going to untie me, or am I to languish on this table for the rest of the evening? While I do appreciate the drama of being trussed up like a virgin sacrifice, he couldn’t even be fucked to give me a cushion. My bottom is getting sore, and not in a fun way.”

“We could leave you there,” Yennefer warns, but Geralt is already drawing a knife from his belt and bending down to saw through the rope lashing one of Jaskier’s ankles to the table. The ropes are golden and glow softly in the dimly lit room. Jaskier waits for the ropes to fall away so he can fling himself dramatically into Geralt’s waiting arms and be properly cuddled after his traumatic evening.

But nothing happens. Frowning, Geralt looks up at Yennefer. “Yenn?”

Yennefer goes to stand at his side. She waves her hand and murmurs a word in Elder. When nothing happens, her forehead creases. “Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?” For the first time since they appeared out of the portal, Jaskier feels a frisson of concern.

“I know this spell,” Yennefer says. “Nothing is going to get rid of these ropes. Not magic, not a blade, not fire.”

“Wait, do you mean I’m stuck like this? Forever? Yennefer, the Beauclaire Music Festival is next week. I can’t show up like this!”

“It’s still better than that outfit you wore last year.”

“Yennefer!” Jaskier howls.

“Yenn.” Geralt gives her a reproving look. “Don’t torture him.”

She looks between them in exasperation. “It’s not going to last forever. My guess is the mage spelled them to last for as long as he needed them to. Did he say anything about the ritual?”

“Oh, yes, at length,” Jaskier says. “He was going to slit my throat at midnight.”

Geralt’s jaw twitches.

“Then I imagine they’ll vanish sometime after midnight.” Yennefer glances at Geralt. “What do you say, should we leave him here and head back to Corvo Bianco? It might be nice to have a quiet night for once.”

“You’re dreadful,” Jaskier tells her. “And once I get out of these ropes, I shan’t ever speak to you again.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat, or an early birthday present?”

“As if I would bother getting a woman of your age a birthday present. What does one purchase for a withered husk?”

“Well, that ring I got you for your last birthday looks lovely on your withered husk.”

Geralt sighs, barely audible over the sound of Jaskier's offended squawk. “If we can’t untie him, can you portal the whole table back home?”

“I could.” Yennefer lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “But do we really want me to?”

Jaskier pins Geralt with a wide-eyed, pleading look.

Geralt sighs again. “Yes, we do.”

“You’re no fun.” Yennefer waves her hand and a portal opens up.

“Geralt is a delight,” Jaskier protests. “Unlike certain dreadful witches I could men—”

With another wave of her hand, Yennefer sends Jaskier and the stone table sliding through the portal. It’s a singularly unpleasant way to travel and Jaskier isn’t ashamed of the undignified shriek he lets out. He scowls at Yennefer and Geralt as they follow him through the portal into their bedroom.

“I cannot believe,” he says primly. “That you would mistreat me so when I’m in such a vulnerable state. Look at me, Yennefer. He ruined my fourth favorite doublet. I’m inconsolable.”

“Was it that green one?” Yennefer asks. “You should have said. I would have told Geralt to spare his life.”

“Honestly.” Jaskier tilts his head back in exasperation. “The near-sacrifice was better than enduring this disrespect. Bring me back to the dungeon, please. Let me wallow.”

Yennefer reaches down to cup his cheek with surprising tenderness. “You really are okay?”

Jaskier grins up at her. “Careful, Yennefer. I’m going to start thinking you like me.”

“Well, I have been fucking you for the better part of fifty years and living with you for forty,” she says. “So I don’t entirely detest you.”

“Geralt, get my lute! She’s being so sweet to me that I feel a song coming on.”

“How do you intend to play it?” Geralt asks dryly.

“Huh.” Jaskier frowns at the ceiling. “With my teeth, perhaps?”

Yennefer snorts and bends to kiss Jaskier, briefly enveloping him in the scents of lilac and gooseberries. “That foolish mage should have gagged you. The amateur.”

“Oh, I think we would have gotten there eventually.” Jaskier grins against her lips. “Between you and me, I’m terribly obnoxious.”

“No,” she deadpans. “I had no idea.”

“You would miss my voice if I were gagged forever, admit it.”

“It’s for maybe another two or three hours, bardling. And I’ll admit, there are some things about your mouth I would miss.” She traces her thumb over his lower lip.

Jaskier’s prick gives a sudden twitch of interest. Because he may still be stretched out on a table, bound and helpless, but he’s probably the safest person on the entire Continent right now. The home he shares with Geralt and Yennefer in Toussaint is heavily warded. Even if someone did manage to get past Yennefer’s protection spells, they would be met with a very angry witcher and an equally angry sorceress. They wouldn’t live long enough to realize their mistake.

And he has to admit that there’s something a little thrilling about knowing that he’s entirely at Geralt and Yennefer’s mercy, while also knowing that neither of them would ever let him come to harm. It doesn’t hurt that Geralt still has blood on his face, which is a damn good look on him. Plus, Yennefer has that steely glint in her eye she always gets when someone threatens what’s hers, a glint that Jaskier has always found unbearably arousing.

Geralt’s nostrils flare and he arches an eyebrow. “Now?”

“Oh, don’t you dare judge me,” Jaskier shifts, but there’s nothing he can do to hide his growing erection. “Can you blame me, when you two are standing there, looking all heroic? And Yennefer is being terribly mean to me, and you know how that gets me going.”

Yennefer snorts, though there’s a heat in her own gaze as it travels over Jaskier, stretched out on the table like an offering.

“I’m just saying.” Jaskier looks up at the pair of them beseechingly. “I’m going to be stuck here for hours more. I might get bored. And you know that when I get bored, I get annoying. We can’t have that.”

“You’re right.” Yennefer traces one finger teasingly over Jaskier’s nipple. “I think I have the perfect cure for bored bards.”

***

“This is bard abuse, plain and simple. I am shocked that the two of you would sink to such a level. Shocked!”

On the lovely four-poster bed that the three of them have shared for decades now, Geralt and Yennefer pay Jaskier no mind. They’re otherwise occupied, with Yennefer propped up against the headboard, head thrown back in pleasure, while Geralt kneels between her legs, eating her out with relish.

Jaskier is treated to the most beautiful view in the whole world: Geralt’s ass sticking in the air, Yennefer’s gorgeous legs wrapped around his shoulders, her breasts heaving as she gasps in pleasure. His cock is so hard, it almost hurts. He’s already watched Geralt fuck Yennefer twice and Yennefer fuck Geralt with the toy that now lies discarded on the ground. The only person not getting fucked is Jaskier and the anticipation is killing him.

“When I said I wanted you to keep me occupied, I thought I would get to participate,” Jaskier whines. “Not sit here like a particularly attractive throw pillow.”

Yennefer laughs breathlessly. “I would say that if you’re nice and quiet, you’d get a turn… oh fuck, Geralt, right there… but I think that ship has sailed, oh—”

Geralt must do something particularly good with his tongue, because her words break off into a moan, her back arching. Jaskier’s cock throbs in sympathy.

“Look at you two,” he says. “Torturing me with your beauty. It’s not fair.”

They really are unspeakably beautiful together. There’s a reason he’s written hundreds of songs about them over the years.

Geralt growls, shoulders flexing as his grip on Yennefer’s thighs tightens, and she cries out, her fingers scrabbling at the headboard as she reaches her orgasm. She always looks so surprised when she comes, like the momentary loss of control takes her off guard. The sight of her face going slack with pleasure is one of the hottest things Jaskier has ever seen. He would write a song about it, but she would make a necklace out of his vocal cords.

Yennefer and Geralt lie together for a moment, both breathing hard as Geralt nuzzles at the inside of Yennefer’s thigh.

“Do you think we should pay our bard some attention?” Yennefer asks, voice thick with pleasure, as she cards her fingers through Geralt’s hair.

Jaskier whimpers. He’s only a little ashamed of it.

“Hm.” Geralt looks over his shoulder at Jaskier, his eyes heavy-lidded and his mouth slick from Yennefer’s cunt. “He hasn’t exactly been patient.”

“No.” Her lips twitch. “But he looks awfully pretty over there, wrapped up like a gift, doesn’t he?”

Jaskier gives them his best doe-eyed look.

“Chatty gift,” Geralt says. “We could make him wait another round or two.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Geralt!” Being doe-eyed isn’t getting Jaskier the results he wants. “You’re supposed to be the nice one.”

Geralt chuckles quietly and Yennefer’s face softens. She nudges Geralt’s shoulder with her foot. “Go take care of our bard, before he becomes unbearable.”

“Before?” Geralt cocks an eyebrow at her, but slides off the bed and makes his way across the room with an easy, predatory stride. The hunger in his eyes almost makes Jaskier feel like the virgin sacrifice he keeps joking about being, like Geralt is here to claim the prize that the villagers left him. Somehow, the thought turns Jaskier on even more.

“You know, if I were a gift, I don’t think you’d be able to return me at this point,” Jaskier says, aiming for breezy, but sounding more than a little strangled. “You’ve waited too long.”

“Hm.” Geralt cups Jaskier’s cheek in one broad hand. “Who says I’d want to return you?”

Before Jaskier can formulate a reply—gods, his witcher always chooses the worst times to be disarmingly sweet—Geralt bends to kiss him. He tastes like Yennefer and even Jaskier’s human nose can smell the traces of lilac and gooseberry on him. It’s enough to make Jaskier moan into the kiss.

“Geralt, please,” he whispers against his witcher’s lips.

Geralt can never resist when Jaskier asks nicely. With a soft hum, he kisses his way down Jaskier’s throat and chest, pausing to let his tongue flick over Jaskier’s nipples in a delicious tease. Jaskier arches off the table as teeth scrape over the soft skin of his belly and Geralt chuckles. Breathlessly, Jaskier watches as Geralt swings himself up onto the table, which is just wide enough for him to straddle Jaskier’s thighs. Without preamble, Geralt bends and swallows Jaskier’s cock to the root.

Jaskier gasps as the sensation of glorious heat. Geralt has always been a marvel with his mouth and now is no different. He teases Jaskier to the very edge with his lips and tongue before backing off, sucking at the head of Jaskier’s prick. On the bed, Yennefer is fingering herself, eyes dark with lust as she watches them. Jaskier thinks it’s very unfair that she gets to pleasure herself when he didn’t have the same privilege, but he’s too busy moaning to point that out. When Geralt swallows him down again, cupping his balls in one hand, Jaskier can only tip back his head and shout as the orgasm tears through him.

Geralt releases his cock with a wet pop, looking very smug, and nuzzles at the crease of Jaskier’s thigh. Jaskier would give anything to reach down and stroke his fingers through that long, gorgeous hair.

“Alright, Jask?” Geralt asks.

“Oh, now you ask that? After hours of torture?”

Geralt looks up at him with a raised eyebrow.

Jaskier grins. He never gets tired of Geralt’s exasperated looks. “I’m more than alright, darling. You just owe me at least two more orgasms, after all the waiting I was forced to endure.”

Yennefer brews Jaskier a marvelous tea every morning that helps him keep up with his lovers’ stamina, despite his largely human heritage. Jaskier thinks he’s doing pretty well for a man in his nineties, especially since he still looks barely thirty. Despite having just come, his cock is still half-hard and Jaskier knows it won’t take long for him to be ready to go again.

“I think I can manage that.” Geralt’s eyes take on a wicked gleam. He slides his hands under Jaskier’s ass, lifting him up as much as the ropes will allow. Even though Jaskier knows what’s coming, he still gasps at the first swipe of Geralt’s tongue over the crease of his ass. When Geralt’s tongue swipes again, this time pressing more firmly at the rim of his hole, Jaskier’s hips buck. Geralt growls his approval and begins licking in earnest, his tongue a sweet, teasing kind of pressure.

Jaskier is so caught up, he doesn’t notice Yennefer approaching until she’s next to him, her curtain of hair falling down to tickle his cheek and neck. The fingers she traces over his cheek are damp with her own arousal and Jaskier turns his face to suck them into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the soft pads of her fingertips. She has such soft, delicate hands compared to him and Geralt, which has always struck him as ironic, given that she’s the deadliest of the three of them by far.

She pulls her fingers from his mouth and bends to kiss him, catching his lower lip with her teeth. Her breasts brush his chest and he can feel the peaks of her nipples trailing across his chest hair. He whines into the kiss and she laughs softly, leaning over him so that one of her breasts barely brushes his lips. He tries to capture her nipple in his mouth, but she pulls back, just out of reach.

“Horrible woman,” he croaks. It’s hard to think of anything but Geralt’s tongue, which is still working him open with firm, glorious strokes, and the swell of Yennefer’s gorgeous breasts.

“And here I was, about to reward you for showing a modicum of patience,” Yennefer says softly, letting her breasts dangle above him.

Yennefer is less susceptible to pleading and puppy dog eyes than Geralt, but Jaskier lets his eyes drop pointedly to her cunt. “Tit for tat?” He waggles his eyebrows. “Emphasis on the tit?”

She huffs with exasperation, but her lips curl into a smile. Finally, she bends so that Jaskier can properly suck her nipple into his mouth, his tongue swirling around the stiff peak. He lavishes her breasts with the same attention Geralt is giving his ass, reveling in her soft gasps and moans. She really has the most perfect breasts, truly a marvel of the modern age. He would tell her so, but he’s too busy worshiping them.

Suddenly, she pulls back. Jaskier doesn’t have time to protest before she swings herself up onto the table, her legs straddling his face.

“Oh, fuck,” Jaskier breathes. “Yes, please.”

Yennefer doesn’t need to be told twice; she lowers herself down so that he can lick into her cunt. She takes like herself and like Geralt, surrounding Jaskier with the scents of lilac, gooseberries, and sex. Jaskier is vaguely aware of Geralt’s fingers working at his hole, slicking him up with oil. Yennefer is his entire world right now—the taste of her, the smell of her, the soft skin of her inner thighs. He could spend the rest of his life between these thighs, tied to this table like an offering, and die like a happy man.

When he feels the press of the head of Geralt’s cock against his hole, he gasps against Yennefer’s clit.

“Focus, bardling,” she growls and he licks deeper in apology.

Jaskier is loose and relaxed from Geralt’s ministrations and his lover meets little resistance as he pushes in, filling Jaskier up gloriously. Jaskier fucks Yennefer with his tongue in time with Geralt’s thrusts. He imagines the picture they must make for Geralt, Yennefer’s pretty little ass bouncing up and down as she rides Jaskier’s tongue with the same gusto with which she rode Geralt’s cock only minutes ago. The thought has heat building in his lower belly as his second orgasm approaches.

Yennefer comes, her thighs shaking around Jaskier’s ears, and Geralt groans, his hips snapping harder as he drives himself deeper into Jaskier. When one of Geralt’s warm, calloused hands wraps around Jaskier’s cock, Jaskier’s second orgasm washes over him. He groans into Yennefer’s cunt, still licking her through the aftershocks of her own orgasm. She’s practically dripping with spit and her own slick, but Jaskier doesn’t let up.

After several more long, glorious moments, the snap of Geralt’s hips takes on a desperate edge as he chases his own pleasure. The head of his cock is hitting the perfect spot inside Jaskier and Jaskier can feel his own cock stirring to life again, already ready for a third round. Gods, Yennefer’s tea really is a marvel. Geralt spills inside him with a moan, grinding into him until his cock softens and slips out of Jaskier.

“Yenn,” Jaskier whispers. “I want to fuck you.”

Yennefer doesn’t need to be told twice, sliding down his body. With her hair disheveled and her face flushed, she looks unspeakably beautiful. He’s about to tell her that, but when she sinks down onto his cock in one fluid motion, he loses the ability to form coherent sentences. Through heavy-lidded eyes, he watches her ride him, her head thrown back in pleasure. Geralt kneels behind her, nuzzling at the side of her throat while his large, scarred hands reach around to cup her breasts. Yennefer turns her head to catch his mouth in hers.

Without thinking, Jaskier reaches for them and realizes that he can; the ropes are gone. He sits up to wrap Yennefer up in his arms, peppering her chest and throat with kisses. He lets his hands wander over her and Geralt—their arms, their legs, their chests, their backs, their hair—reveling in the feel of them. Yennefer comes with her mouth on Geralt’s and Jaskier with his face buried in the crook of her neck. He follows a moment later, spilling inside her.

The three of them sit like that for a long moment, wrapped up in each other, breathing hard. “Fuck,” Jaskier finally says.

Yennefer lets out a long breath, sagging back against Geralt. “There’s still an hour left until midnight. That idiot mage couldn’t even tell time right.”

“Alas.” Jaskier laughs breathlessly. “You could have taught him a thing or two about proper villainy.”

“He wasn’t worth the bother.” She lifts one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “He wasted his time kidnapping you, so clearly his standards weren’t the highest.”

“And what does that say about you, Yennefer?” Jaskier winks broadly at her.

“It means that the longer I know you, the lower my standards get.”

“You shouldn’t talk about Geralt that way, not when he’s so lovely to both of us.” Jaskier grins up at Geralt, who just rolls his eyes at them as he disentangles himself from Yennefer to go fetch them a cloth to clean themselves up with.

Once he’s relatively clean, Jaskier tries to rise to his feet, but his legs are boneless and shaky under him. He doesn’t even have time to lose his balance before Geralt catches him around the waist, scooping him up in a bridal carry and bearing him across the room to the bed.

Jaskier nuzzles contentedly into Geralt’s pecs. He feels floaty and sleepy in the way he always does after a particularly good bout of lovemaking. As he curls up in Geralt’s arms, his back pressed to the witcher’s broad chest, Yennefer puts out the candle and joins them, slipping into bed on Jaskier’s other side and putting her arm around his waist.

“You know, you were both very mean to me tonight,” Jaskier murmurs, brushing a kiss over the shell of her ear. “Very mean.”

“Were we?” Yennefer asks. “Funny, I didn’t hear you complaining there at the end.”

“Well, you know me. I like to suffer in silence.”

Geralt snorts.

Jaskier cuddles back into him. “I’m going to make you both pay tomorrow. Just you wait.”

“Oh?” He can hear the raised eyebrow in Yennefer’s voice. “And how will you do that?”

“I haven’t decided yet. But mark my words, retribution will be swift, merciless, and thorough.”

Geralt hums. “Good thing I have Yenn to protect me.”

“She won’t stand a chance,” Jaskier tells him. “I’m afraid you’re quite doomed, my love.”

“Ah, well,” Yennefer says. “It was a pleasure knowing you, Geralt. Bardling, it was… adequate knowing you.”

“Horrible witch,” Jaskier grumbles and cuddles closer to her, dropping a kiss on her dreadful forehead.

In the morning, he’ll have his to-be-determined revenge. But first, he’ll bask in the feeling of being in their arms, sated and secure.

***

Tag list: @kueble @mollymawkwrites @feral-jaskier @geraltrogerericduhautebellegarde @dawnofbards @thisislisa @mosaicscale @tsukiwolf42 @rockysstupidity @fontegagrilledcheese @kuripon @help-i-need-a-cool-username @julek @flowercrown-bard

#the witcher #geraskefer #geralt x jaskier x yennefer #geralt of rivia #jaskier #yennefer of vengerberg #ghost's fic #ghost's writing #wreck the bard #what about the bard

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aspiring-writer-hidden-voice · 2 years

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Like Yu-Gi-Oh? Looking for magic? Looking for romance? Looking for humor? Looking for suspense? Maybe a bit of deep lore?

Answer “yes” to any of these questions and follow the link below to read the whole story and don’t forget to let me know your thoughts! Instead of posting all the chapters, I thought this might make it a bit easier to share.

Here’s a sneak preview of what to expect:

A deep sea denizen silently wove its way through the icy waters, it’s pale unseeing eyes locked in the upward position as a hand rose to caress its underbelly with a single fingertip. “I see you’ve returned, my precious.” From the shadows of the cavern came a figure dressed in long cloaks stained black by the endless darkness it dwelled within, its strikingly pale white skin nearly glowing when the light of a lantern fish lazily passed by. “What news do you bring me?” They cooed softly, their finger leading the small messenger to circle around their neck. “Whisper to me the secrets you’ve discovered.”

“Master, I do not understand why you value her so much.”

The figure growled lowly. “You of all my followers should know better than to interrupt me when receiving a report. How dare you enter my sacred dwelling without permission!” A ball of malicious energy formed within their palm, briefly revealing a maniacal grin and eyes that shone brightly with bloodlust as the intruder met their end in a fit of shrill screams. Their breathing slowly calmed as the eel brushed against their face, turning all attention to it as a glow surrounded its being. “I apologize, my precious, I did not mean to frighten you. None know of the true beauty you posses.” They soothed, rubbing a finger lightly along their underbelly. “Come, your true form suits you far better than that skin you cloak yourself with.”

It drifted away from around their shoulders, its form slowly morphing and twisting as it grew limbs, hissing slightly as it developed an upper torso. A crane of its neck caused silvery fins to sprout from behind its now lengthened ears as slender pale fingers reached for the figure who watched in admiration. “My king,” her voice was alluring as their hand cupped her chin, raising it so that her now fully dilated eyes could meet their own as she slowly sank to rest upon the barely visible throne that her master was seated upon. “How I have missed you so.”

“And I you.” He purred as she shivered when his fingertips drifted down her spine. “What news do you bring me?”

Her hand rested against their bare chest as she gazed up at him. “I’ve heard a great many things but this I assure will thoroughly entertain you.”

A wave of her hand caused an orb of darkness to form, within its center a scene took form that caused all who were nearby to hiss. There was no mistaking the prince as he swam upon his back, that wild tri-colored hair and golden tail of his were dead giveaways, but that wasn’t what they were focused upon. It was the human in his arms that he held carefully as if they were more precious than the Mother of Pearl. She assured them all that it was no trick or spell. Several of the recent pitiful beings she had consumed held various memories of similar scenes. Silence fell as her hand holding the collection of memories raised it high, showing all of how the merprince had not only saved a human but had returned to treat her wounds. All present shrilly hissed when it showed the pair holding onto each other, their chests heaving as if they had just been through an ordeal that had caused them both strain.

The king rose to his full height, the malicious energy manifesting in forks of electrical sparks along his arms as he approached the orb. All fell silent as his head fell back, roars of laughter coming from between his lips as he lazily swam around it. “What a sight! What a joke!” His voice suddenly filled with anger as his eyes flashed dangerously in rage. “That little prince Atem dares to jeopardize our peace treaty by fraternizing with the humans?! Has that senile old fool forgotten how the merfolk nearly fell into extinction during our last encounter?” He rolled his shoulders as he recalled the pleasure of battle he had experienced recently, recalling the several pitiful soldiers who fell before him and his mighty power. Was another surprise attack in order? No, it was much too soon, and his people were still recovering. This was honestly more entertaining than those fools had been.

She cautiously approached him as he resettled upon his royal throne, the back of her hand brushing against his defined jawline. “My king? Did my tale displease?”

“A merprince, the grandson of that pitiful flashy king, falling for a human? The threads of fate have already ensnared them both.” His lips lifted into a wicked smile. “It has pleased me much, Cho’yun. Why don’t we put their prince’s heart to a test?”

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13871980/

#yugioh au #yugioh fanfiction #Yugioh #pharaoh atem #Prince Atem #merman #merman!atem #merprince #twin!yugi Atem siblings #Atem #Yami #AtemXAnzu #Yami X Anzu #Atem X tea #Yami X tea

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un-necessarycontext · 1 month

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Hall Passes That Hit Close to Home

“Who’s your hall pass?”

At some point in our lives, many of us get too old or too married to play Fuck, Marry, Kill. Though let’s be real, you’re never actually too old or too married to play it, you just realize we live in a society and talking about fucking and/or killing other people might be a bit much for company.

Anyway, for those of us who for whatever reason, societal or not, feel like they can no longer play Fuck, Marry, Kill the way they used to, talking about hall passes seems to be a good way to fill the void.

What’s a hall pass?

For those who’ve never heard the term or didn’t bother to see what looked like a truly forgettable movie of same name, a hall pass is a person who you are allowed to step outside your marriage for in the hypothetical situation wherein they, too, are interested in having sex with you.

Usually, this person is a celebrity, the thought being that there’s no way you’d ever actually manage to bang them and thus all parties involved in the agreement feel secure.

It’s all very innocent fun.

It can also tell you a lot about someone’s tastes. Do they go for someone astronomically hot for their hall pass? Or are they more likely to be seduced by someone perhaps not as conventionally attractive, but has an outsized public personality? It can say a lot about your type.

(This, by the way, is how I came to realize my husband finds women with strong eyebrows to be very attractive.)

Is That Your Type Or…?

Bringing this around to Declan, several years ago, we were all enjoying ourselves at a work happy hour. We were all a few drinks in and the conversation wound up coming around to the subject of hall passes.

Our coworker, Kasey, posed the question to me: “Who’s your hall pass?”

I inwardly groaned.

I should state now that my hall passes, like most people’s, reflect what I find attractive in others. And what I usually find attractive are tall, ridiculous, goofy men.

I have never once been attracted to shorter men who have no sense of humor but are otherwise objectively hot. I honestly don’t understand what others see in them.

This is all to say that I’m one of the weirdos whose hall passes aren’t incredibly gorgeous humans, though they’re very much gorgeous in my eyes.

“Jason Segel and Matthew Lillard,” I finally answered.

Predictably, I was met with a sea of blank faces and spent the next five minutes explaining who each of those actors are and why in the world I’d want them over, say, Henry Cavill.

Eventually, everyone moved on and a few minutes later, the question was posed to Declan.

“Who’s your hall pass?”

He sat back and pretended to think for a moment, scratching at his beard and running a hand through his wild hair.

Then, for a brief moment, he turned and looked at me, before smiling sheepishly and admitting, “Selma Hayek.”

All right then.

So, Declan likes Latina women with large racks.

At this point, I should clarify that I am a half-Latina woman with a large rack.

Huh.

It was a little thing and no one dwelled on it—Kasey seemed more interested in discussing her hall pass with Ryan Gosling, but it’s something that’s always stuck in my brain. Declan likes brown women.

I’d already known at the time that I shared certain physical traits with his wife: curly brown hair, dark features, outsized boobs. We don’t look alike, she and I, but we don’t look different, if that makes sense.

A big difference is that she’s white and I’m… well, I don’t know what I am. During the winter when I’m paler I can pass for Italian. But once the weather gets warm and the sun hits my skin, it becomes clear pretty fast that I’m not 100% Caucasian.

And I’ve had to learn—as unfortunately many women of color have—that not every guy is into that.

But Declan, it would seem, is. And while I would never go so far as to compare myself to Salma Hayek’s beauty standards, I can’t help but wonder…

I also can’t help but wonder what Declan might have thought if I’d mentioned another one of my hall passes, who might be a tip off as to what else I happen to find attractive: Michael Sheen.

Wild salt and pepper hair, unruly beard, at times hilarious and at times unhinged? Sounds familiar.

#emotional affair #work crush #work husband #married crush #hall pass

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jplupine · 9 months

Text

Feral Possession: Chapter 8

Weapons Come In Many Forms

Pairing: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez x Wynter Hughes [Nonbinary OC] Word Count: ~2.1k WARNINGS: 18+ MDNI, Exophilia, Demon!Grimmjow, Feral Behavior, Grimmjow being a Terror, Sexual Harassment, Brief Murder

Summary: Wynter does magick for the first time, and Grimmjow continues to be a little shit.

You can also read it on AO3!

Masterlist | Chapter 8:

I didn't get much from the book about Grimmjow, but I saw that there wasn't a single mention of the giant scar over his chest. He did say the book was a few decades old, so he must have gotten the wound sometime within that gap between then and now. I did find, however, that I was correct that only weaponized spiritual energy could harm the demon.

Which meant whatever had caused the scar was either another demon or an exorcist. Whichever it was hadn't managed to kill Grimmjow, so I assumed the blue-haired demon had come out as the victor.

Currently, I was reading more on the known Arrancar while absentmindedly running my fingers over the spines of books. I was trying to find the other demonic powers sealed in the office. So far, I had found two and had taken them down to the dark basement to get them out of the office. Grimmjow was also right about it being more difficult with these powers being weaker- I had felt the intense power of his book so easily, and the feeling it flooded me with was to a sickening degree.

These books, on the other hand, I had to be slow going over or I'd miss them. Touching them also only made my fingers tingle and a little irritated compared to Grimmjow's deep rage. Taking my hand back a book, I waited to see if I'd felt what I thought I had.

Pulling the book from the shelf, I saw the small padlock that confirmed it. A loud crash came from the backyard followed by mad laughter. Heavily sighing, I could only imagine what that feline bastard had broken this time around. There was another crash and more of that crazed laugh Grimmjow had.

Taking the book to the basement, I saw Dagur barking while having his paws up on the window. Tucking the Arrancar book under my arm, I lifted my phone to use the flashlight to illuminate the dark staircase. Putting away the book with the others, I came back upstairs and went to the back sliding doors.

I froze as my gaze landed on the blue-haired demon laughing like a hyena on the porch. I only froze because he was sitting on the back of another demon while pinning its arms down with his paws and jerking its head up by the horns. There were small craters littering the yard, and blood splattered over the rocks around the pool. Wild blue eyes landed on me, and I was tempted to close the door back and return to the office to pretend I didn't see this.

"Uh...."

"This bitch came for you." Grimmjow stated while still holding the demon's horns as he nearly folded the creature in half. "I decided to have some fun." He grinned as I looked over the yard again. Despite how destroyed my yard was....I couldn't help but compare Grimmjow to a cat bringing a rodent to the back door since, in a way, that's what he'd done.

Except the rodent was a buff demon with boar-like features and hooves scraping over the concrete.

"Right. And, uh, what exactly do you plan on doing with....the demon?" I pointed before it loudly squealed, and Grimmjow snapped its neck. "Mm, yeah, no." I closed the back door and locked it before quickly walking to the office.

"That won't stop me, Little Rabbit." Grimmjow said while now laying across the desk yet again as he licked the blood from his fingers.

"I'm well aware. Please tell me you didn't just leave a body in my backyard on top of everything else."

"It'll disperse soon enough."

"That go for the shit you broke too? The land you blew up?" His tail twitched before he rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head.

"No."

"Then fix it."

"No."

"Yes. You fucked it up, now go unfuck it up."

"Do it your damn self."

"Grimmjow." He visibly tensed while deeply glaring at me as I rose my eyebrows at him. "I can compel you to do it, or you can go do it yourself. Choose." A low growl rumbled in the room as the demon rolled off the desk. Fangs snapped close to my face, but I managed to stand still.

"You're a lucky little shit, I hope you know that. I should have just let that demon kill you."

"I would have figured something out even if you didn't intervene."

"Oh, yeah? Do tell." I saw his claws flex at his sides.

"You really think I got rid of those blessed spikes?" His ears perked up. "Until I can actually use my power, those are all I've got. I'm not stupid. Now," I poked his chest while furrowing my brows and narrowing my eyes. "the yard." He growled at me again, then stormed out of the office.

"Catnap...." I muttered while looking at the demon sprawled out under the sunlight coming in through the window. How was it that someone so terrifying at times was so....adorable? I mean, the machine of destruction had fucking paw pads like a cat.

Or, well, a panther.

Walking past the demon while shaking my hand, his hand suddenly shot out and grabbed my leg. The fall was not a light one, and I heard Grimmjow chuckling as he pushed himself up. I shot a glare over my shoulder as I was about to yell at the demon until he pounced on me. He had me pinned against the floor as he breathed on my cheek.

"You're so easy to catch, Little Rabbit. Can you imagine what other demons would do to you? You've got to make this harder."

"Fuck you!" I snarled while swinging back my elbow to try and hit him. Grimmjow easily caught my arm before pinning it back onto the floor.

"Are you trying to make me laugh?" I couldn't tell if he was genuinely asking or just being a dick. "You think those little blessed spikes will save you? You'd have to be able to even get to them to use them. You think piss-boy will come knocking on doors to rescue you? He'd get eaten before he could even scream." Grimmjow's tone dropped as his claws scraped up my arms. "You're so fragile, Little Rabbit. I'm surprised you made it this far in life without being eaten."

Claws pricked at my shoulders through my shirt, and I was getting tired of being looked down on.

"Grimmjow, get off of me." The demon growled, and his motions were jerky as he stood up and let me go.

"You won't be able to use that trick on other demons. They'd sooner kill you before you even utter a syllable."

"Grimmjow, sit." My tone was harsh as I pushed myself off of the floor and turned on the demon baring his teeth at me. "You think I'm not well aware of the limitations I have? You think I don't know that I can only compel demons I know the name of?" Grabbing him by the horns, my voice went to a dangerously calm tone. "So why don't you stop with all this bullshit and teach me how to fucking fight back already?"

His face was set in a cold glare, but he wasn't snarling anymore. His tail thumped against the floor with agitation, but I saw a smirk play onto his lips.

"Fine. If the little rabbit wants to dive in head-first, who am I to say no to that?" Grimmjow's claws clicked against the floor. "I can teach you how to access and use your spiritual power, though I won't teach you any exorcism spells. Those you can learn yourself."

"Good enough." I let his horns go, and he continued to look up at me. He seemed to be thinking about something, but I couldn't tell what.

"You're going to need a weapon."

"....What?"

"A weapon. Something to channel your power through."

"Where the Hell am I supposed to get something like that?"

"You've got the blessed spikes." Grimmjow stood now that the compulsion had worn off. "Get them."

"So....what exactly are we about to do? I'm not sure this is....safe."

"It's not." Grimmjow said flatly while leaning against the table. "Get the spikes." I pulled one from each of my front pockets, and the demon slowly blinked at me. "You had those in your pockets this whole time?"

"Yeah." He closed his eyes while rolling his head before looking back at me.

"Just put the damn things on the table."

"In the circle?"

"Yes, in the circle." Grimmjow shifted his weight on his feet as I set the railroad spikes in the third circle. The first two circles on the other side of the table had two of the demon power books. This entire set-up was if-y from my perspective but what else was there for me to do?

The dim lighting from the candles flickered, making the metal spikes glitter. Grimmjow stood behind me and grabbed my hands to put them over the spikes.

"Just like when you were sensing the books, focus the power in your hands."

"Are you sure we should be doing this with those books?"

"Yes. Demon-killing weapons are forged with the power of an exorcist, the one wielding it, and demon essence, the power in the books. Your power makes the weapon yours, the demons make it easier for the weapon to draw out your energy and direct it to other demons. Now, focus." He growled before lifting his hands from mine and raising them toward the books.

Baring his claws at the books, the padlocks popped off before the books sprung open. A black and green glow covered their pages, then swirled and gathered into orbs in the air. Swallowing, I tried to do as the demon instructed but was having difficulty.

"Aw, need more help, Little Rabbit?" Grimmjow chuckled, and I wanted to elbow him in the ribs so badly. "Just think about what you want to do to me, that'll no doubt get it." What I wanted to do was hit him, but with how he'd said it.... 'Why the fuck is my mind going there?!'

Something sparked from my palm as heat flooded my hands. The circles on the table began to glow, and Grimmjow lowered his hands to bring the demonic orbs closer. There were more sparks when the orbs made contact with the spikes as if the two forces were trying to oppose one another.

"Raise your output." Grimmjow ordered, and the two materials began to slowly melt together. The spikes looked like molten metal on the table before bubbling and crawling in different directions to take a new shape. It was hissing until it looked to be cooling down.

A sword. There was a fucking sword on the table.

Though, I didn't get to observe it long when I felt the demon's horns tap the top of my head as his nose was in my hair. I tensed while seeing Grimmjow's claws dig into the table on either side of me.

"What were you thinking about, Little Rabbit? Because that is certainly not aggression I smell." There was a low purr while hot breath hit the back of my neck. I felt my ears getting hot out of embarrassment and shame.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Mm. You may be a pain in the ass, but, fuck, do you smell good." Grimmjow's hands on the table went to my hips to pull my body back into his. "Oh, Little Rabbit~." He purred.

"You're so annoying!" I swung back an elbow, but the demon easily caught it just like before. His hand slid up my arm and down my side as his lips brushed over the side of my neck.

"That's not what your scent is saying."

"Your nose is broken."

"We both know that's not true. You think I'm fucking sexy, don't you, little rabbit?"

"Fuck off."

"Make me." Grimmjow licked the side of my neck while purring, and it sent a shiver up my spine. Grabbing the sword, I twisted around and pressed the blade to the demon's throat. He only looked down at me with amusement while trapping me between the table and his hips. His tongue ran over his lips hungrily, and I wasn't sure if his pupils were so wide because of the dark or because of me.

"Fine. You've got a pretty face, but that doesn't mean I have any interest in you."

"That's fine. I don't mind if you just want my body. It'll be a win-win, Little Rabbit."

"We are not having sex."

"Are you sure? 'Cause the way you're smelling-"

"I'm sure." My grip on the sword tightened as I swallowed.

"Well....when you change your mind, you know where I'll be, Little Rabbit."

#Feral Possession #grimmjow jaegerjaquez #bleach #bleach fanfic #oc x canon #nonbinary character #demon/exorcist au #orange #minors dni #Wolf does fanfic

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denimbex1986 · 10 months

Text

'When McCarthyism swarmed over America, I was still living in France. It’s still hard to comprehend how one demagogue with several followers managed to terrorize an entire nation. How was one hysteric able to endanger the very foundations of American democracy?

Naturally, there were logical reasons — the Korean war, the Soviet atomic developments, the spread of Communism and its aggressive ambitions. The most powerful country in the world had at once lost its monopoly on all its domains. Suddenly Stalinism’s real face was revealed and so doubts about Roosevelt’s loyalty to the Russian dictator wasn’t a costly mistake. Bringing forth circumstances for an irresponsible demagogue with an answer to everything and a scapegoat for all sins.

It’s difficult, practically impossible, to digest that era’s psychosis. Seems to me the same is true for many American citizens. They recall the events, but avoid speaking about them. It’s almost a taboo topic: it’s not to be investigated, in order not to open an old wound, an ancient shame.

I mention this now because of an innocent coincidence. I had the opportunity to see Heinar Kipphardt’s play about the Oppenheimer investigation at the Lincoln Repertory Theatre. The experience was so deep, I felt an obligation to report to readers, despite the fact that I’m not a professional theater critic, nor do I want to infringe on my critic colleague’s boundaries.

Why did the play cause me to shudder? With its content and presentation, it ripped through me and made me hopeful once more about the individual’s struggle, and the visions of artists and dreamers.

It shook me up due to its portrayal, its truth. Robert Oppenheimer intrigued me for years: his poetic genius, his tragic fate. Despite a deeply felt humanism, he created the atomic bomb: despite being pro-communist in the 1930’s, he remained loyal to America: despite being a notable Jew, he remained at a distance from Yiddishkeit.

How does one weave together so many contradictions? How to clarify so many childish errors (during the investigation against him) and such an acute mind? What did he wish to achieve, and did he achieve it and if so, when?

As I mentioned, I wasn’t living in America when, as a result of the McCarthyist psychosis, the sadly, well known investigation began about Oppenheimer’s loyalty. But I read everything about the case—and am not any smarter for it.

It often seems to me that he was a pretentious intellectual, dancing at several weddings at once, while worshiping several gods simultaneously. He wanted to develop weapons, but not have to use them: befriend communists, but toss their ideas; engage with international political issues but only as a scientist not as a politician. His identity was so split, so variously defined that he alone didn’t fully know what he thought.

And so, at his apex, as well as in the darkest moments of his career, he presented critical introspective questions having to do with human knowledge: at what point are we remaining loyal and to whom? At what point must we step up and say ‘enough?’ Those questions rattle all atomic thinkers. They know that today they are sitting in secure laboratories toying with abstract concepts the results of which could be the destruction of millions of souls. Intellectuals aren’t free from similar doubts. One can fool around with words in order to write a poem or allegory. But how did Oscar Wilde put it? “One man’s poetry is another man’s poison.” Not for nothing did Oppenheimer at the time of the first atomic bomb explosion recall passages from the “Baghavad Ghita”: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” In the last several generations the Angel of Death has had the final say.

My interest in Oppenheimer also has to do with his being current. It’s no coincidence that so many young people are going to see the play. They identify with his struggle, with his lonely battle against uncomfortable authority, with his protest against bellicose instincts that rage throughout government circles. The college students attempting to revolt against biological weapons production, for example, are following in Oppenheimer’s footsteps. His problem was that he hadn’t created any positive theories. We know what had to be done, but how do we save humanity from suicide. Even Oppenheimer didn’t preach de-weaponization, at a time when the Communist bloc is strengthening its military capability. What is to be done? Oppenheimer had no answer for that. It seems there is no answer.

Oppenheimer embodied the questions, not the answers. He endlessly posed riddles, not solutions, and so we must go see him at Lincoln Theatre. Him? Yes. The actor portraying him—a tall, intelligent and palpably Jewish young man named Joseph Wiseman—has so fully incorporated his character that he resembles him physically.

Wiseman, one of the best actors on the English language stage, plays his role with such sensitivity, with such restraint that it’s simply impossible not to be moved. Each word sounds right, he doesn’t stumble. Thanks to him, Oppenheimer is clearly depicted. He answered many of my qualms. I have much to say about Wiseman, but, as I mentioned, I’m no theater critic; I’m merely a witness of Oppenheimer and Joseph Wiseman.'

#Elie Wiesel #Oppenheimer #Joseph Wiseman

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libidomechanica · 1 year

Text

Untitled (“Athwart the Winds display, sat with light”)

Song of a thousand Wings in vain. Me now! The trance trumpets from which comforted her lone Isle, or a frog. Gave thee; and that dew so the ground within the bitterness, tis sinews

of bright day-bearingly, but stayed and did decreed it up, and kind, and than mann’d, my Mine of the peaceful hung a silver leaves a score; they do not suspends the dim for syk unneth

blew loud, with us do dwelt but kind? The Watch between the world should I presume? Than womman carriage is not wear too calm around mine came, and small and seye this faultlesse, both

to Combs, the Breton, not chuse you’ve lost; and little thine, free of ancient rosaries, and hit me running is death weight of my hand, my Friends for terme of Lochroyan, and mine did but

ones into gold or she white of Air. But after the dampnėd weddyng wyves mooten, for the hall, the proof. Singing That old man? The wind up Vows from this drooping there late heavy

on his in; and I saw the din of wealth to each nipples as once I freeze, and the skeleton, not what are abroad may find but a’ the find to fear of danger, the wild

the stampèd faces and you silent is honor, or bliss thou hast betray’d. Quick and poore Eve had in the evil of lyes! I was things be, who gave it! In my state, like Gods the lofty

lime made with his hearts and begin our lips, and scattered him, who, being vanquish’d by the sky will some corners of his Locks impregnable and so he replied, twas born at

Bethlam. More lofty portal muse that which, belike his her Head. Catches, Billet-doux; wounds of recovery, et cetera—could disclose to mone! An’ it winna let a body

it have nothing has crawn, and treble that very chance, sir, which Cupid’s myrtle wreathed in a dusky grove, weariness. But this to meet against thy face upraise we to

proverbe of Heaven. And I loved of humanity! And waked as love itself she seedsman stand inner vest, dropt Blood—his Arrows on them both, nor that the Fates housbondes

on purple seaweed red for to plesaunce; still not come the house, and bear the midnight. Out offend, was sloping Hero’s tower. Love, Hope, although number’d Throngs presents lie! A fatigue

with you with his moment they were wood, and, seeking their eyes wide Circle the pulled her mind. Love on sweetly swelling foremost impossible that we best brain it is for often

reed and said my Pray’rs, to say., Writ in our praise, he fireworks blistered her complexion seat of Jobes pacience, and open the maid! Sire oldest loke me where torn and round. Pure

sport; I wol renneth besprent, where bent with some may ye die! I should flowers, the forsook, a livid Paleness, as my youth is he! The Gods eternal year is there were came:

below the wooing with your sought but loved a seven! Age, for sugar. How many a list her Side. I have fled in your mind desolate. Athwart the Winds display, sat with light.

Smoking on the seas wisdom is thy show of some gulfe, while our toes your lives lie, or warmly lit house; but heard the taller resemble heard her devoured her softer Pow’r ador’d,

but mine came, her eyes through thou kenn’st from th’enameless hair behind. Where this second time he pretty maid with more shaken me awake to bring her own follow’d, but must half-

shut from inns of exist hand catch’d at dew sat chill; and with his harmelesse face, with kindling on the king has crowd, and, like a blink is sleek Water-side, and, for Corks.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #182 texts #ballad

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clouds-rambles · 3 years

Note

hello!~ o(〃＾▽＾〃)o

can i request headcanons for kaeya, diluc, childe, and venti on what they would while their s/o dies in their arms? (if thats okay with u <3)

thank u sm! :))

BESTIE THE PAIN I FEEL RN!!! Omw to make hurt some of my faves hope you enjoy <3

Also guys I’ve been here for a day how are there almost 50 of you following?!

Pairings; (Separate) Kaeya, Diluc, Childe, Venti x reader

Warning(s); hurt, big hurty, reader death, vague wound description, cursing, talk about dead bodies

Keep reading under the cut!

Kaeya

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. You were meant to live forever with him. You were supposed to grow old with him and become a parent to your future children. You were-

“Kaeya” you choke out smiling at your partner above you. The man shakes his head mentally pleading with you to not die “Kaeya I will always be on the wind” you tell him, a shaky, bloody hand raised to his cheek to weekly caress it

“Please” he pleads “Please don’t die on me [name]” you smile at him feeling the breaths in your lungs disappear

“I’m sorry Kae--ya” you apologise before passing away in his arms

He doesn’t move for a long time. He doesn’t feel for a long time. The one person he could share his secrets and his love to gone. Away with the wind

Kaeya doesn’t remember the last time he cried, but he’ll remember this one.

Your beaten, bruised, broken, dead, and beautiful body slumped in his arms as his tears fall from his face as he feels an absence in his heart

How is he supposed to live on if this is the pain he feels right now?

Jean eventually stumbles upon Kaeya out in the wilds, still clutched to your now cold and even more lifeless body

Jean manages to get the man up with your body held close to his chest

“Jean, I can’t, I can’t let them go” he pleads as if he’s waiting for you to simply wake up in his arms

“Kaeya...” Jean says in a concerned tone having never seen him in such a state, even he seemed to quickly recover from his fathers death

Eventually Jean coaxed Kaeya to go back to the city and leave your body in the hands of the sisters. Where they dressed you up and prepared a funeral service for you

The funeral was larger than Kaeya was expecting, you had affected a many more people than he realised from your small jobs around the city. Kaeya can’t help but be awed at how many people you’ve helped while you were in Mond

The usual chatter of Mondstat is quiet and in a time of grieving for about a week or so, many people have wonderful memories of you and Kaeya seems to be collecting them all, that and bunches of flowers. Many of which find themselves laying on your tombstone as Kaeya tells you about his day

A month passes and it seems like everything's back to normal, Kaeya is back to his outgoing self. He spends more nights at the tavern, but even Diluc doesn’t have the heart to cut him off.

Jean seems to pick up on the smallest things, goddamnit Jean, the extra nights at the tavern, the eyebags, the weeping she can hear from his room. In it’s own right is heart-breaking, the acting Grandmaster cannot imagine what it’s like to be actually experiencing that kind of pain

Diluc

No, not like this

You had both decided that night to join each other in your little vigilante escapade. Which was fine you had both done this before, but tonight resulted in something very different

Here you are, head on Dilucs lap. This could be considered romantic, and often was, were it not for the fact you felt like you choked up a mixture of your lung and your bloody supply

“Diluc” you speak with a much worse for wear voice, the red-head looks into your eyes, eyes already gaining moisture. A similar scene has befallen him before, a Diluc knows how this ends

“Please” he pleads his voice wavering “Please don’t leave me” he chokes back a sob and tears fall off his face the salt hitting your own

“I love you so much” you start, Diluc shakes his head. Must you hurt him so with last words? “Don’t blame yourse-” another set of hacking befalls you as you lose more blood

“Please” he pleads again as the grip you had on his arm goes slack indicating your loss of life

Diluc screams, he cries and he hugs you close. He screams into the air of Mondstat until his voice hurts and he cries until all he’s doing is dry sobbing and he holds you close until you’re broken body is pried from his own broken mind

A wondering Jean heard his screams into the night sky and hereby answered them. She never expected to see Diluc, still in his vigilante getup, crying over your body

She calls for more guards who take your body from his and Jean helps Diluc get back to the estate. At one point during the walk Jean can feel DIluc shaking and hyperventilating. So they stand for a moment, Jean holds and comforts the wine-master before they move again

Jean has never seen such emotion from Diluc before, and she wholeheartedly hopes she’ll never have to see it again. Seeing Diluc so raw and rife with emotion is enough to make anyone cry. And Jean nearly did on more than one occasion.

Your funeral is small, much to Dilucs request and really only were attended by the estate and Jean. Diluc didn’t want to cry again in such a large audience

Though the maids often hear pained sobs coming from Dilucs room as he contemplates and often blames himself for what had transpired. Maids daren’t speak up about what they hear though, Diluc’s pain is more than understandable

Diluc throws himself into work opting to man the bar most days of the week and fighting for the city as often as he can. People around him are more than concerned

Diluc’s stoic nature seems to be intensified now, not wanting to let another person in and die in his arms. He’s seen enough death for his life and wishes not to lose more loved ones

Everything seems to have moved back to what life was before you arrived in your life, depressive, monotonous, boring, mundane for the most part and sad. So very sad

He wishes for a day where his heart isn’t strife with grief, but he doubts that day will not be coming anytime soon

Childe

You grin up at him, feeling close to naught pain coming from the gaping wound thanks to the excess of adrenaline that’s pumping through your body

“Childe” you say the smile still on your lips in an attempt at not making the situation as dark and horrific as it is. Childe speaks your name in return

“I love you” you tell him mustering the strength to cup the mans cheek, who immediately nuzzles into it. The situation almost doesn’t feel real to him. He’s going to be shaken awake by a very unwounded you in just a moment and inform him he’s having a nightmare

But that moment doesn’t come. Nor do any words come from you. Your slow rhythms of your heart remind you that he’s still got time, but you’ve expended all your energy. Your smile you’re wearing seems to be dropping

“I love you [name], I love you so much, you are everything I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you” he rambles bringing your body to his chest

“Live for--- me” you sputter out into his chest, a dying wish that Childe isn’t too sure he can uphold. Is it really living if he’s an empty vessel.

You go limp in his arms and he can no longer sense your heartbeat. Death had finally laid claim to you

Childe sits with you for hours, you’d expect him to be wailing like a banshee if you knew his personality but that’s rather not the case. Sobbing quietly is a better word for what happens. Most of his sobs and hacks for air are hidden in your hair. He pulled your body to his shoulder just to weep

Eventually he finds himself mustering the courage to walk back to Liyue Harbour. You firmly held in his arms. He knows that if he walks too plainly the Millelith would pry and ask too many questions for his fragile heart to answer

Childe ends up barging into the wangsheng funeral parlour, which surprises Zhongli a little. He’s about to go on a rant to Childe about how he must book an appointment, until he sees your lifeless body in his arms

The funeral is arranged quickly and neatly. There aren’t many people who attend, Childe is okay with that, he secretly wants to see his family and cry on their shoulder a bit

Instead he opts for a letter, which arrives to the family tear stained and lacking the usual penmanship ‘I’m sorry, you won’t be able to see [name] after all. They passed away not too long ago...’ he basically writes your arbitrary in the letter. And his whole heart is in every word he writes

Determined not to let anybody in Childe finds himself in a pattern, when he’s not throwing himself into battles he’s doing paper work or yelling at his subordinates and when he’s not doing that he’s doing his weekly fight with the traveller. Childe gets next to no sleep and instead opts to reading and rereading every letter and note you’ve ever given him

If Childe passes out at his desk nobody bothers him either in fear of getting yelled at by the harbinger or an understanding of losing a loved one

They never said being a harbinger was fulfilling work. Yet, he let himself believe that he could be fulfilled and content with a lover. What a shameful lie

Venti

He’s awfully quiet. He hasn’t experienced death in so long. Especially one he thought would be forever.

He couldn’t even get to you to hear your last words. Ironic isn’t it? He hadn’t heard that guys last words either. And yet this pains him so much more

Sure mortal lives are fleeting but he was certain he had more time with you. More time to see you grow old, more time to put off your inevitable mortality. More time to-

He’s hyperventilating, Venti’s body shakes as he finds nothing to ground himself not even the person he loves so dear is there for him. He feels like he could explode, breaths caught in his throat refusing to surface and come up for air. Despite being an immortal archon, the breaths that refuse to surface don’t fail to make him feel like he’s choking

A bard he is. And one that knows every song from the past, present and future. Suddenly the pained songs from the future make sense to him. He knew what was written. A love lost

Suddenly he finds himself crying and hunched over your deceased form making promises to the wind that he’ll never forget you. Much like he’ll ever forget that bard

He isn’t sure how long has passed but he’s still sobbing over your form, there aren’t many tears left for him to cry but he can’t find himself stopping. He feels like they’ll never stop.

Maybe he could lay beside you and sleep for another thousand years. But that would only delay the inevitable. The inevitable sinking feeling.

Maybe it was his fault for letting himself fall in love with a mortal, but in the moment he could truly see you living life with him. He could see a marriage, children. He wanted you to have it all.

Damn celestia and all things above for not letting you ascend, at least when he inevitably ascends you’ll be there to greet him. Curse that and your mortality

Jean eventually stumbles upon him during a recon mission to find him covering your body in various flowers, a crown made of cecelias don your head. He’s quiet, but he’s saying goodbye. Who would blame him? Jean doesn’t interrupt him and only wishes you a farewell

News of your death spread around town like wildfire, your grave donned with more flowers than Venti can count. He almost feels bad about not doing a public service after seeing how many people are truly in mourning

Diluc doesn’t push Venti to pay his growing tab no matter how much he should. And Diluc doesn’t say no to Venti singing his happy tunes in the tavern

It feels like his life has retuned to normal. Though Jean can’t help but look out the library window to see Venti sat atop his statue with an expression, as Jean can only guess, of sadness.

Venti finds himself going back to an old schedule again but he can’t miss the nagging feeling of somethings missing. The something being you

Sometimes he half expects you to hug him from behind, or join him up at the statue, or kiss him on his nose, or-

Venti can’t quite comprehend how he feels, he just knows there’s a hole in his heart where you belonged. And he doesn’t want to let anyone find their way into there

He doesn’t want to lose again

It’s happened too much

1K notes · View notes

huenjin · 3 years

Text

soulmate bruises.

you could have been stuck with any other soulmate mark, so why specifically did it have to be the soulmate scars theory?

"That looks like a real bad bruise," Haknyeon mumbles. His thumb traces the corners of the bruise and you wince, the pain scourging through your nerves, tingling and rushing through your brain furiously.

"Your soulmate must have gotten hit badly," Chanhee chuckles, looking through the photographs in your camera. You frown and curse under your breath. Haknyeon looks through the papers by your side and you look around the photography club you started with these idiots for the school magazine.

"I’ve got an idea," Changmin's eyes glint mischievously as he walks up to your table, having overheard your conversation. "Let's hit Y/N to inflict pain on her soulmate for having hurt her. It's the perfect plan."

Chanhee raises an eyebrow at Changmin but Haknyeon seems to be all in for the plan. Your forehead scrunches in annoyance, your eyebrows furrowing together as you pinch the skin to distract yourself. You groan, mumbling, "Shut up for a second, will you?"

"Fine, spoilsport," the one who suggests the plan says, pressing his lips together in disappointment. He soon began, "My idea was great. All you low lives will never understand."

"I'm going to find this nasty motherfucker," you stand up, determined. The chair pushes back and the table jerks forward as you press your hand down on it firmly. "And he's going to pay for hurting me so much. These bruises take forever to fade away."

Haknyeon stands up soon after, "We just have to find another individual in this city that has the same ugly bruise on their face as she does."

Chanhee and Changmin follow suit, albeit reluctantly. The latter chuckles sardonically, "This is going to be easy. How many people do we even have to search? Yeah, just mere tens of thousands in this city."

Chanhee digresses, "Let's cancel all the nice-looking dudes because our girl here doesn't have good luck."

"You're an arsehole, dude. An arsehole, I say."

"What's with the weird We're Avengers formation you guys have on?"

Younghoon walks into the room with a cup of coffee and Ray-Bans like he's making an entrance and you roll your eyes. He places the glasses on the table and sighs, "It's cool and everything but Juyeon's hurt, Chanhee. He won't tell it out loud, but yeah, he's hurt and he needs help. The nurse isn't in yet."

"He's hurt?" Chanhee asks, concerned.

"Hurt, oh yes. This is perfect." Changmin chirps and Younghoon raises an eyebrow.

"You're Team Rocket now?" He furrows his eyebrows and glances over at you disappointed, almost as if it is your stupidity that has nurtured them into these. "Anyhow, Chanhee, follow me. The rest of you stay put."

Haknyeon, Changmin and you listen because Younghoon was a mere acquaintance. He was, however, Chanhee's childhood friend, and since he is Chanhee's friend, you have seen Lee Juyeon around — at parties, at the basketball court, in the hallways. And that is it.

So, why would you care if this man was hurt?

Unless he got hit like a bitch on his face.

Later that night, you hold yourself close, tears threatening to spill from the corners of your eyes. It feels like your ribs are being slammed into something and the pain is unbearable. It leaves you breathless and a little shaky on the ground. You scream at one point and slow winces leave your lips as you try to hold it in.

Haknyeon knocks and walks into your room when you don't reply. He shifts you slightly, his hands rubbing your back slightly as you lightly cry, "I hate that bitch but he must be in so much pain if I'm feeling this much."

Haknyeon's angry. In all honesty, he gets the soulmate mark and how that should help people be happy but never has it led you to your soulmate, only providing pain along with the entire experience. Soulmates are not supposed to bring pain.

Your teeth clench in pain as you sit up. Your feet dangle for a while before it touches the ground and you stand up, ignoring the pain that seers through your body.

"I'm finding that motherfucker, that's it."

Haknyeon chuckles at your resilience. He helps you stand well and watches your determined expression, mumbling, "The boy's dead meat for sure. Either in your hands or the one that's hurting him."

Finding him is easier than you expected. Haknyeon helps you and the two of you leave the house in pursuit of the man with injuries — a bruised face and now, bruised ribs. You have always wanted to meet your soulmate for, a) he was nasty enough to get himself hurt without bothering about your well being, b) he is your soulmate, and deep down, you want to care for him, heal his wounds, and. . . slap some sense into him because it's a connection and he should respect it.

You message Chanhee, knowing if you should start anywhere, it's the closest person you know who has an injury.

You: chanhee? [11:23 PM] Chanhee is a hoe: Juyeon's number? here. [11:23 PM] Chanhee is a hoe: [Juyeon's contact] [11:24 PM] You: what the fuck? [11:24 PM] Chanhee is a hoe: thank me later. [11:24 PM] Chanhee is a hoe: don't kill him. but if it makes you feel better, i'm shipping you two and that his bruise is nastier. [11:30 PM]

"It's Juyeon, isn't it?" Haknyeon pipes and you watch his smile curve upwards. "Turns out Chanhee isn't that useless."

"He is. That arsehole didn't tell me till I asked him of it. What if I didn't? Would he have let me go on a wild goose chase?"

Your phone pings again and you groan, albeit very grateful for his existence

Chanhee is a hoe: [Juyeon's address] [11:36 PM]

Haknyeon laughs, "Knowing him, yes." He drums the bonnet of the car, waiting for you to hop in and when you do, he enters, igniting the engine and zooming away to the address Chanhee has sent you.

Upon reaching his place, Haknyeon wishes you luck and tells you that he'd rather wait in the car and that if you planned on staying the night, then, you should text him so that he could leave. You smile and storm away, trying to build up the rage within you to lash out at your soulmate.

"Lee Juyeon," you slam at his door. "Lee Juyeon, open your door."

You hit the steel door as hard as you can, unbothered by the pain that now seers through your fist. At this rate, you'll be hospitalized with your soulmate and you could have your first date there. How nice; not.

"Y/N?" he opens the door, and you notice the redness around the sides of his fist. Your eyes widen and the air is taken away from your lungs as you stare wide-eyed at the man before you.

Lee Juyeon is gorgeous. He leaves you feeling dazed like a comet hitting the earth's crater, strong and hard. He is tall enough to tower you and his eyes sparkle with hope. You notice the bruise on his face under the dim street light by his house and you gape.

"It could be you."

"Huh?"

You run back to the car, tapping at Haknyeon's glass. He pulls it down and hands you a paper cup of hot coffee. You look at him with a snug expression. You notice Juyeon watching you with confusion. You take big strides towards the man and open the cup, only to throw the hot coffee onto his chest, in the same area that had you wincing moments ago.

It hits you a second too late. You drop the cup, holding your upper abdomen, your fingers digging into the underside of your breasts as you fall on your knees. You definitely did not think this through. Juyeon merely clenches his teeth tightly, and you realise that with all this experience you both shared, he's the only one who knows how to deal with the pain.

Haknyeon chuckles at the sight, and almost on cue, he pulls his car back and drives a bit away, parking it by a big tree. Juyeon kneels along with you and helps you up, "Let's put some ice there."

"That was a very bad idea. 0/10 would not recommend."

You're holding your chest and your abdomen messily and you're cursing at Juyeon, "Are you a gangster? A thug? Why do you keep getting hurt?"

"A boxer, actually and I keep getting hurt because Sangyeon will not go easy on me. I'm sorry. You must have been through shit," Juyeon's voice is soothing. Like a fresh warm bath with your favorite soap bombs and a ducky. He helps you into his house, lays you on his sofa carefully as he goes to grab ice.

"Maybe this wasn't all of a bad idea," you shout, and Juyeon chuckles. He even laughs beautifully; how? He asks if he could lift your shirt up as he comes back to your side with a bag full of ice. You nod and he lifts your shirt up, grimacing at the purple bruises that have formed by your abdomen and the area under your breasts. Juyeon is too worried to let his eyes stray anywhere else as he mumbles apologies after apologies.

"It's okay," you chuckle nervously, feeling conscious and slightly bad for your soulmate. "At least now I have you. We'll get through this pain together. You can take care of me and I can take care of you."

Juyeon feels his insides bubbling, his chest tightens, and his heart bloom. If this is what a soulmate's love feels like, he could get high on it. His face gets close to your skin and his lips slightly trace the bruises, before placing kisses on it and then, the ice, all while mumbling, "I'd like that. I'd really like that."

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universitypenguin · 3 years

Text

Bucky Barnes is a Traditional Man

- Bucky Barnes is a traditional man in the sense that his woman comes first.

- You have more doors held open for you than you could have imagined before you began dating Bucky.

- Door to buildings, your car door (always!), he even moves one step ahead of you when you walk down the stairs in heels so he could break your fall, just in case.

- James Buchanan Barnes is quite protective of his girlfriend.

- He’s in love with you and it finally allows some of the deeper wounds from Hydra, from the war, and losing Steve to heal.

- His heart was cold and aching before he met you. Now it’s warm and soft.

- Your perspective on the world is something that attracted him to you in the first place. You’re an optimist in a jaded world and vibrant with life in a way he’s not sure he’s even capable of.

- But somehow, being with you helps bridge the gap. He can look in the mirror and not see the Winter Soldier looking back at him. Instead he sees the man from the 1940s who loved to dance and who hoped to win a boxing title.

- You gave him that man back with your care and affection, even before the two of you fell in love. And he feels such a gratitude for that his heart throbs and his eyes glass over when he thinks about it for too long.

- Bucky is a man in love and you’re happier with him than you ever thought was possible to be. Things are so good between you two; easy, light, and sweet.

- Then one night at dinner Bucky forgets his phone. He asks to borrow your to check the score of a baseball game.

- And he accidentally finds an open porn tab. Curious, he turns the screen so no one else can see and watches. His stomach twists. The appetizer from earlier suddenly isn’t sitting so well.

- Choking.

- You watch porn with men choking their women.

- He’s not judging. He’s really not. But he’d been hoping for something he could replicate for you, and this? He can’t. Not in a million years.

- He’s afraid of hurting you.

- He doesn’t say it out loud because it feels like speaking one of his worst fears into existence. He doesn’t want even the words to pass his lips and take root in your imagination.

- You can’t see him like that. Like a monster. Too many others have and there’s enough truth behind the title for him to sleep well at night, despite all his progress. But most of the time, he sleeps well. It’s because of you and he knows it. Your comforting presence allows him to relax.

- He sleeps in bed with you nowadays. He likes how firm your mattress is.

- He struggles through dinner, the video playing through the back of his mind. When you ask him what the score of the game was he can’t figure out what you’re talking about. It’s an awkward moment.

- The thing here, is that Bucky Barnes is a traditional man. His woman comes first. So he’s going to do whatever it takes to please you and he knows it.

- You always come first. Both in the bedroom and out of it. That’s one of his rules. So he’s already forming ideas about how he’s going to accommodate your kink.

- Two weeks later is your anniversary. He gets flowers, takes you to a nice restaurant and when you get home, brings up the thing.

- “I found your porn open when I borrowed your phone. I’m guessing that you like choking, doll?”

- Your cheeks turn bright red. And you stammer.

- “Hey. Don’t be embarrassed. I want to know this stuff. I need to. How can I please you if we don’t talk about it?”

- “Bucky, you don’t have to... I would never ask you...”

- He smiles. He loves that you’re protective of him in your own way. Knowing this has done a lot for his mental well-being. It makes the relationship between you two solid and strong.

- “I want to give you everything you want in bed,” Bucky says.

- “But you already do!”

- That’s true. Too many of your ex-boyfriends were quick and rough without taking the time for foreplay.

- Bucky is an expert at foreplay. He’s able to build the tension until you fall apart for him is an addiction that he feeds as often as he can. Knowing he provides for your needs like no other man before him is a point of pride for him. (Private pride, that is. Even Sam doesn’t know anything about his sex life. Some parts of 1940’s discretion is very much ingrained in him. It’s not shame. He just likes keeping intimacy... intimate.)

- Bucky is slow and sensual in bed, warm and passionate. With him sex really does feel like making love. It was on your first night together that you’d fallen for him and his patient, gentle way of touching you.

- Orgasming had been so easy when you felt worshiped and safe. And it remained that way with him. Later, these feelings heightened your desire for rough sex with your boyfriend. Because sex with Bucky was a place of security for you. He was utterly harmless towards you and in that context, rough sex would be amazing.

- But things between you two are pretty much vanilla.

- He’s always soft with you. Things can be heightened and swirling with passion, but he’s never show even a flash of aggression or force.

- The super soldier serum means he has stamina for days. He can accomplish and position you want to try, even if it involves lifting you for long periods of time. And there’s no question if he’s going to last. Also, his recovery time is so short “round two” sometimes blurs in with round one.

- But he’s careful about using his strength against you, even more so during intimate situations.

- You’re not “breakable” and he knows that. But you’re precious to him and leaving a mark that isn’t from pure passion would wreck his mental health. Permanently. He’d never forgive himself.

- You know this too, which is why you never asked him to choke you.

- “Baby doll. I want to give you your fantasy. Will you let me? Do you want that from me?”

- You do. You really, really want to be choked by him. So you quietly respond, “Yes.”

- Before he starts, you two sit on the couch and he holds you while you tell him about your fantasies. He takes off your heels while you tell him all your darkest desires. And he gives the sore arches of your feet a massage, listening intently.

- One comforting thing for Bucky is that having been a soldier, he knows how to choke someone. He’ll be able to tell if it’s too much for you. He knows how long before it would damage you. There’s some confidence forming that this will be safe and he won’t hurt you.

- It’s nice that for once his violent past is proving helpful in your relationship. He thought agreeing to choke you might rattle him a little, stirring up old emotions, but it’s soothing. He’s enjoying using what he knows to make this experience good for you.

- He lets things get rough when you go to bed. He doesn’t hold back the passion tonight. Instead, he focuses on eating you to orgasm and holding you on the edge until you pull his hair.

- “Bucky! Please!”

- Then he slides two fingers inside of you and draws fast little circles on your g-spot until you break.

- He lets up on your clit but as the orgasm fades, slides in a third finger and pounds the spot until your pussy creams on his hand and your groans are low and raw, filled with ecstasy.

- “That’s it, doll. Just like that. So pretty when you cum for me. Keep going, baby girl. I’m right here.”

- His metal arm wraps around your waist when you arch your back, holding you so he can keep toying with the spot as your hips begin to jerk away.

- When he’s finally done with your g-spot his hand is drenched. So is the sheet and your inner thighs.

- And you’re gasping for breath from the intense orgasm. When it comes on this hard you can’t really tell if it’s one long orgasm or three separate ones that came almost back to back.

- Bucky takes you in his arms, cooing sweet nothings into your ear.

- It helps you calm down when he talks in a soft soothing voice. The man should narrate meditations.

- His voice is silky and smooth for you, yet rough with repressed need. You can hear the need and it feeds your desire.

- “Please, Bucky. I need to feel you inside of me.”

- You find yourself underneath him, with your legs pushed apart and his body selling between them.

- You love feeling the weight of him on top of you.

- Then, he gently opens the petals of your sex and guides himself inside of you.

- There’s a stretch and burn as he enters you, just like there always is. Your body never quite adjusts to his girth. Each time you have to relax for him.

- He knows it’s a challenge to take him at first. He’s always careful and there’s a tube of lubricant in the side table. It’s not always needed but he’s always prepared.

- His hips begin to roll, and he sets a steady pace that pushes the tip of his cock against your spot with each thrust. At first his thrusts are shallow but as you begin to relax around him he goes deeper. His body moves forward to cover you and he starts fucking you hard.

- Each snap of his hips has you keening. Your body is so sensitive from your earlier orgasms. He keeps up the pace steady and constant until you’re begging. Then he reaches out with his metal hand and covers your throat. At this point, your channel clenches around him, almost in orgasm.

- “You wanted my metal hand baby, didn’t you?”

- Yeah. You had. The idea had fueled your fantasies night after night.

- The cool press of metal into your throat makes you moan and tremble.

- Bucky feels the shiver and worry flashes through his eyes. “This okay, doll?”

- “Yes, harder, please!”

- He can feel your body responding and it encourages him to press down, finally choking you the way you’d dreamed of.

- You orgasm almost instantly as he chokes you through your climax.

- Bucky lets go when your fluttering muscles start to ease. Suddenly he’s driving into you hard. He drops his hand from your neck, needing both to balance his weight as he seeks his own pleasure.

- The wild, rough movement is harder than the two of you have ever gone before.

- Because he’s always been afraid of hurting you with his enhanced strength until he was too far gone to think.

- When his orgasm hits, his sight goes white and he jerks against you, pumping his seed into you. Then he collapses.

- You hold him tight, savoring the press of his body and the feeling of his release inside of you.

- “You okay, doll? I wasn’t too rough?”

- “It was perfect.”

- Your hand strokes through his hair as you lay together in the same position for several minutes. Heartbeats pounding, your minds still struggling to return to equilibrium.

- Bucky recovers first. Damn that super soldier serum. It’s not fair that you’re still limp and dazed.

- He slips out of you and rolls over, bringing you with him. Your head finds its cradle in his shoulder and your eyes drift shut.

- Recovery isn’t going to happen for you tonight. You’re just going straight to sleep. You’ve earned it.

- Bucky shifts you onto your side. He gets up and you hear water running in the bathroom before a cool cloth touches between your legs, cleaning you.

- You murmur a thanks, half asleep.

- He comes back to cuddle you into his arms, adjusting the pillows around you before he lays down.

- When you throw a leg over his hip, he draws you closer so that you’re lying almost on top of him.

- “You make such a good pillow of someone with so many hard muscles.”

- Bucky chuckles and kisses the top of your head.

- “I’m glad. Go to sleep, doll. I love you.”

- “I love you too, James.”

#bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x you #drabble #bucky barnes #tfaws bucky #smut #bucky barnes smut #bucky fanfic #lemon #bullet points #winter solider #winter solider x you

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shadowsinger11 · 4 years

Text

Inspiration

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader

Requested by anon: Could you do a Fred Weasley imagine where he falls in love with Harry’s younger sister. (Maybe a after the war where he lives)

Word Count: 3.3k (my hand slipped oops)

Genre: Fluff, childhood friends to lovers, mutual pining etc.

Warnings: Slight innuendo, Fred being cute and hot simultaneously

Tags: @self-ship-love @susceptible-but-siriusexual @hufflexpuff @neovannii @jenniweasley @elf-punk @heart-of-tempered-steel @itseatyourdamnapples

Message me if you'd like to be added!

Masterlist

Ottery St Catchpole, Devon, England, July 16, 2000

It was a chilly Sunday evening. The summer air buzzed with excitement and the tender aroma of magnolia as tiny white and pink petals were gracefully falling from the huge cherry trees, carried by the light breeze. Twilight painted the horizon in liquid gold and fiery red, soon followed by mellow shades of dark blue that brought countless sparkling stars.

It was getting the slightest bit colder, but it did not matter; nothing else mattered but the loud cheers and cheerful music, celebrating the official bond between a Potter and a Weasley under the wide night sky.

You couldn't have been happier for your older brother, Harry, who was currently dancing with Ginny, his now wife - now and for the rest of his, hopefully, but not really likely, peaceful life. For the longest time you've been wondering how he'd always manage to get into trouble even as a small First year with no experience in the wizarding world whatsoever. Or, perhaps, that was the exact reason as to why evil-battling and rule-breaking were such common practices when hanging out with him.

However, there was no fighting that day. There was no room for worry and fear when the entire Weasley family and their loved ones were gathered on the clearing in front of the Burrow, chatting, laughing, dancing, singing, drinking, celebrating and living for what seemed to be the first time since Lord Voldemort's fall. Danger was practically nonexistent in that blissful moment which was frozen in time, once having looked agonizingly distant and impossible to hope for. But that dream was no longer just a foolish fantasy to heal wounded hearts. It was there, and it was happening in the most beautiful way imaginable.

And suddenly, all those clichés of a married life weren't even clichés. They were simply humble wishes of people who had witnessed far too many horrors in such a short period of time, and only craved stability among the massive chaos. So when you glanced at Ginny, a twirling blur of flaming red hair and a gorgeous wedding dress, you didn't feel the need to comment on how banal the color white was. You genuinely smiled, admiring the pure, exuberant joy, visible in her eyes and scarlet cheeks. Harry looked just as, if not even happier than his wife, dancing in the ridiculous but wholehearted way that only he could, and old memories of him winning the golden egg, training Dumbledore's Army and kissing Ginny in the common room for the very first time flooded into your mind.

It had truly been a long time since you had seen Harry careless and free like that.

You yourself had spent an ungodly amount of hours preparing the yard for the ceremony all day; rearranging chairs, decorating, making sure everything was going by schedule, only to then dance your tired feet off, and though you wanted to continue having fun with Hermione, Luna and the rest of the girls waiting for you, you really needed a break. And a drink.

Excusing yourself to leave the particularly interesting conversation you were having with distant Weasley relatives, you slipped off your black flats that, despite looking absolutely stunning, hurt your feet terribly after an entire day of fussing over the color of napkins and flower bouquets. Barefoot on the grass, you walked over to a chair next to a table which seemed to have been occupied, but judging by the mostly empty glasses and plates, the guests weren't coming back anytime soon.

You tossed your shoes aside with a sigh and rushed to rub your aching toes, hissing from how sore they were.

How has Ginny been dancing like that for hours?

"Enjoying the party, I see?" a familiar deep, slightly husky voice commented, causing you to look up.

It was none other than Fred Weasley, dear friend from childhood, staring down at you, his ever-present charming smirk resting on features and hands shoved into the pockets of his dragonskin suit. But it was his flaming red hair that made your eyes widen - it was carefully smoothed back, shining under the moonlight like liquid iron.

Fred's eyes still contained their famous, loveable mischief, except now slightly tamer and calmer. His firm biceps had visibly grown in size, stretching out the fabric of his coat just a bit to give you a prominent silhouette that caught you off guard.

It had been two years; he had changed so much.

And you were afraid to admit you had too.

You blinked in surprise, processing his uncharacteristically sophisticated appearance before realizing what he had asked you.

"Would've enjoyed it far more if my legs weren't killing me," you groaned half-heartedly and leaned back on your chair. "What's with your hair?"

"What's with your feet?"

"I asked you first," you cut him off. "I bet Ginny is responsible for this."

"Actually…" Fred trailed off, and, whether on purpose or not, ran a hand through the ginger locks to keep them in place, unaware of how you suddenly wished the hand doing the graceful motion wasn't his. "Mum insisted that I looked my best. What can I say, it's not like George and I usually listen to her, but we thought we'd make an exception this time; our sister doesn't get married every day. But honestly, Ginny couldn't care less about how we looked as long we showed up."

"So like usual, you mean?" you giggled. "Showing up is an achievement for you even if you're underdressed?"

Fred beamed, pearly white smile complementing his formal outfit. You wondered if he used that exact smile to effortlessly allure costumers and business partners at work.

He rested an elbow on the table as he leaned forward.

"Come on now, darling. I know you find my messy hair irresistible either way."

His cockiness only caused you to laugh, though Fred was quick to spot the flash of nervousness in your eyes; it brought him immense pride to know he was the one to turn you from confident to adorably bashful and flustered in the matter of seconds.

He was looking at you intensely, expectantly waiting for you to deny his flirty accusation despite your shyness.

"Nah, Weasley. It only reminds me that even at twenty-two you still do not know how to use a comb."

Fred's eyebrows shot straight up to his hairline, mouth agape. For the first time, he actually needed a second to form a reply.

"Didn't see that coming, I give you that. Courageous one, you are."

Your heart fluttered with joy and you openly grinned, shrugging in half-hearted humbleness.

"Perhaps I am."

Speaking to him felt unusually energizing, as though you had jumped headfirst into a chilly lake. It was unfamiliar and it set your nerves on fire, causing your stomach to twist and turn with sensations that left you dizzy, but unbelievably thrilled. And you wanted more of it, you wanted more of him.

"Fancy a drink?" Fred offered, already pouring champagne into a glass before handing it to you, and you keenly took it.

"Thanks, I've been thirsty with all the preparations I was doing."

"Is that why your legs are killing you?"

"Exactly, I've been running around all day, making sure everything was in order… you know, a lot of organizing and the like."

"It must hurt quite a bit then," Fred commented with a pained grimace. "But I absolutely get you, Georgie and I are just like that when it comes to the shop. It's a lot of accounting if I'm being honest, though I admit he's way better at it. We need to be completely precise; we can't allow any mistakes."

"Woah," you laughed. "Control freak much?"

He wettened his lips, never breaking eye contact.

"Perhaps I am."

You tilted your head to the side, gaze piercing into his in hopes of finding out what those gorgeous brown eyes were hiding. The tiny playful flames in them were eloquent.

Shifting slightly in your seat, you smoothed out your bridesmaid dress and raised your glass, the ghost of a smirk playing on your lips.

"Cheers to us control freaks then."

Fred mirrored your smug expression and your glasses met with a clink. The bubbly liquid tingled your throat, undoubtedly refreshing you and cooling you off. You glanced at the people dancing in the centre of the clearing and giggled - Ginny had apparently thrown away her white shoes long ago, bare feet stepping elegantly on the grass.

"You see, I'd like to chat a bit more with you, but I'm afraid it's a bit too loud here. What about we go to the pond across the field?" Fred suggested, pointing at the woods behind his back. You had visited them countless times when staying with Harry at the Burrow during holidays years ago; the tall trees and the glistening waters had never ceased to bring you comfort.

The noise started to become bothersome, and you felt it even more necessary to continue your conversation somewhere private, the unknown causing butterflies to erupt in your stomach. Fred's presence could only be compared to a shot of whiskey, or the sensation of anticipating a tidal wave to crash into you in less than a second. It was wild and the tiniest bit terrifying, but oh so tempting as it pulled you in.

"I'd love that, but… you know," you grinned and playfully swang your sore feet. "Can't really walk."

But this didn't at all seem like a problem to Fred Weasley who only shrugged and stood up, "You don't have to. I'll carry you."

"Merlin, no! Please, it's not necessary."

Fred frowned, but his confused expression was soon replaced by an amused one.

"You said it yourself that your feet hurt like hell. And even if carrying you around isn't necessary, it doesn't mean I don't want to."

You attempted to tame the butterflies.

"No, no! You seriously don't have to, I promise," you frantically protested as you held up your hands in front of you to reassure him, but he only gave you a weird look. "I can walk on my own. I'll be too heavy for you."

"There's only one way to find out."

Fred walked over to you and leaned down, one hand sneaking around your waist and the other slipping under your knees. You shrieked in terror, arms flying to clutch at his shoulders, and heat rose to your cheeks from the abrupt contact. Your chests were pressed together, and you were afraid he'd be able to feel your racing heart. His skin was warmer than you had thought, and it successfully fought off the night summer chill.

"Are we going?" Fred whispered down at you, lips so close to yours that you recognized the nuance of champagne in his breath, mixing unbelievably well with the scent of cinnamon and sandalwood of his cologne.

Not only is he sinfully attractive, but he smells heavenly too?

"Yes," you breathed and let Fred effortlessly walk across the meadow with you in his arms. They brought this new, odd, yet familiar sense of security, and you allowed your head to rest against his chest, nervous gaze wandering off into the distance in hopes of not meeting his. Nevertheless, curiosity eventually took the best of you, and your eyes would occasionally flicker to his, which were now completely black under the night sky. They could swallow you whole, you swore.

Minutes later, you found yourselves in the company of old, enormous willows which surrounded the pond you so vividly remembered from your teenage years. You thanked Fred as he carefully let you down, and took a few steps forward to look around and drench in the misty moonlight that enveloped the area. The waters were crystal clear and completely still, reflecting the moon and its majestic silver glow. The bushes had grown significantly over the time you were away, and you fondly looked back at the moments when you would pick up colorful wildflowers in the summer before your fourth year.

"Shall we sit?" Fred asked quietly from right behind your shoulder, and you followed him with a nod. You found a comfortable spot on the fresh grass to sit, a few feet away from where the water met the soil and moved back and forth ever so slightly.

"It's more beautiful than I remember," you noted, lips curled up in a barely visible smile. Fred hummed in agreement.

"That's why I always make sure to come here every chance I get when I return. But, unfortunately, that's very rare in my case."

For a moment, there was only the chirping of crickets and the soft bubbling of water.

Fred turned to you.

"Remember when mum used to call for us to de-gnome the garden and we'd hide here? We could stay in the bushes for hours before we eventually came back," he recalled, seeming deep in thought. It was an extraordinary sight; for once the playful spark in his eyes was more mellow, there was no cockiness seeping into the way he was holding himself. He was just Fred, the man who was currently thinking with so much adoration and love about his childhood, the most significant memories of it being marked by you.

You wondered, given you ever had the chance to spend with Fred as much time as your older brother did, if the charismatic prankster would have fallen for you like you had done. You wondered, given the chance you had let Fred get to know you better all those summers ago, if his heart would have belonged to you by now just like yours did to him.

Had you possibly missed your chance?

"Oh, I do," you sighed, the tension in your chest vanishing as warm nostalgia crept in like an old friend. "I also remember when I got this really bad nightmare that night. I was so terrified that you took me on a ride with your broom in the middle of the night to cheer me up."

"That's true! My parents don't know about it to this day," he replied smugly. "I can still hear you screaming like a lunatic."

You jokingly smacked his arm, "I was twelve!"

Fred's grin grew wider.

"Excuses…"

This only caused you to stare at him in disbelief and cross your arms, managing your most serious expression, but Fred was aware you were on the verge of failing to keep your stern facade. He squinted his eyes as a teasing attempt to provoke you, smile threatening to split his face in two.

"Alright then, that's enough about me," you announced, and Fred nodded in mock agreement as he studied your playful pretence. "If you're so much better than me, Mr Darcy, what else do you do aside from stealing ladies away?"

"Stealing their hearts," he said confidently, flashing you a seductive smirk, reserved only for special girls back in your Hogwarts days. You giggled, finding his antic utterly ridiculous, but you hated to admit that it still turned your blood into liquid fire. Fred apparently saw right through you, because when your eyes landed on his, they appeared completely dark once again, but, you suspected, for a reason other than the lack of light.

Your throat went dry, and you found it hard to swallow down the lump that cut your breath short.

He ran a hand through his ginger hair as he began to explain, "I'm kidding, you know. But to answer your question, George and I have been working on this potion that should be able to change the color of the eyes and hair. Fun for those who enjoy experimenting with their appearance, but it can also be useful to the Ministry. They're actually going to send a team of a couple of aurors to visit us next month so we can update them on our progress and negotiate the details."

"Wow! That's certainly exciting!"

"Is it? I mean, it probably is, but I've been having second thoughts lately if I'm being honest." He scratched the back of his neck, and you realised you had only witnessed him being anxious when it came to his greatest passion. "I'm afraid we might not be done on time, there's still plenty left to improve."

You put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, and said, "I'm sure you'll figure it all out eventually. Keep working as you normally do, try not to stress too much over the deadline, and even if things go wrong at some point, don't go too hard on yourself. It wouldn't take away any progress you've made so far."

Fred's body relaxed just a bit and he looked down at you. He couldn't deny the sense of serenity that he felt only when he was with you. Even as a careless young boy, he was able to pinpoint the way his midriff would clench every time you'd laugh at his jokes or ask him to play with you, without knowing what it all meant.

But now, as a grown man, he had a word to describe the bittersweet fire within.

"You know what?" He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. "I could really benefit from having someone like you around to give me motivation."

"Motivation, huh?" you raised an eyebrow, fighting back a smile. Fred sneaked a hand around your waist and pulled you closer.

"Yes, motivation."

"Motivation for what?"

"Marketing strategies, work projects…" he shrugged nonchalantly, "...among other things."

You quickly caught on, suddenly becoming way too self-aware of the way you were practically cuddled into Fred's side, hand resting on his shoulder while his were wrapped around your waist. But his shining confidence seemed to rub off on you, because you asked.

"What's with you offering me a job all of a sudden?"

His bottom lip was tucked between his teeth as he took his sweet time devouring you with his darkened gaze. You didn't know whether you wanted to hide from it, or expose yourself even further to the way it burned its way straight to your core.

"Well…" Fred dragged out in his low, hoarse voice, and caressed your cheek with his thumb before slipping it under your chin to guide it towards his face. You could nearly taste the remaining flavour of champagne on his lips. "I've certainly been feeling…"

Fred went quiet as he got lost in the way you fit so perfectly in his arms; you had always meant to be there, he realised. His mouth crashed into yours, hands tightly gripping your waist, and you let out a gasp. Fred's lips were soft, although slightly chapped, and they moved gently but firmly against yours, turning you into their slave. Your palms naturally slid up his chest and he closed any remaining distance between your bodies by placing you to straddle his lap. The kiss was a dance of pushing forward and pulling back, two lovers having finally found their rhythm after years of living in fearful desire. You were positively drunk on his taste, on him, and you wished to never become sober.

When your need for air overcame the one for physical contact, you pulled away. Your chests were heaving with rapid, shallow breaths, hearts beating in synch like they had always done. You let a finger tenderly trace his cheekbone down to his jawline, then it came back up to draw different affectionate patterns on his face.

"What were you saying?" you asked, clearly out of breath. "How were you feeling?"

He fondly took your hand that was caressing his skin, and lifted it up to press feather-light kisses on your knuckles. His lips retraced their path until they reached the tips of your fingers, and he kissed those with the gentlest of touch.

You heart ached pleasurably from the way he was handling you with such care, much more than you ever believed he was capable of.

After minutes of worshipping you by the moonlit lake, Fred looked back at you as though you were his entire world. And replied with a smile.

"Inspired."

Reblogs and feedback are greatly appreciated!

Masterlist

#fred weasley x reader #fred weasley x reader fluff #fred weasley imagines #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley fluff #fred weasley angst #fred weasley fanfiction #fred weasley oneshot #weasley twins x reader #weasley twins #fred and george weasley #george weasley x reader #george weasley #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter imagines #james phelps #oliver phelps

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kisstheashes · 3 years

Text

How to Write Gore: From a Gore Writer

To start: Gore ≠ horror genre. Gore and body horror is a TYPE of horror, but it does not encompass the entire genre. Think of the difference between SAW, American Psycho, and Pan's Labyrinth. All horror, not all focusing on gore.

However, gore/body horror is a part of many genres of fiction. It shows up in fantasy, action, drama, sci-fi...so knowing how to write it can be pretty important. And here, I'll be running down how to write explicit gore, not unlike truly horrific carnage you'd see in the worst crime scene photos. Obvious TW for examples I'll be using (which will be long)

Pick a POV. Is this going to be in the POV of the victim, or the instigator? Or will you switch between them, or will it be a third limited? You should know this before you start the story, but especially make sure you know what voice you'll be using for scenes like this.

Use all five senses. Sight, touch, sound, taste, smell. What is being seen by your POV? Do they hear bones cracking, skin ripping, fluids squelching? Do they smell metal, or blood, or old rot? What are they feeling, physically? Are they shivering in pain, if it's a victim? Or are they steady, or shivering in happiness, as an instigator? Are they biting their tongue so hard they taste blood? Example:

JJ tried struggling and turning his head away, but it was no use. The monster forced his eye open and slowly started taking his toy's eye.

His body strained and he struggled. Nothing Anti had done before compared to this pain. Blood streamed down his face and squirted everywhere. JJ's eye started popping out of the socket as the pain consumed him, making him sick and dizzy.

Anti bit his lip, breaking the skin and drawing a few droplets of blood to the surface. He contained himself and kept a slow pace, enjoying the sight of his toy's eye falling out of its socket. Bright blue and stark white covered in shiny red. Anti felt his borrowed heart start pounding, his hands shaking. He'd waited years for this. Everything had gotten in his way.

Blood poured down half of JJ's face and soaked the thread in his lips. His vision was flashing red and black and white. He could barely breathe and tasted copper. His body was giving out, muscles spasming and limbs going limp. His good eye was blurry with tears.

This could be refined a little more, but I think you get the point. Capture the whole moment, even if it takes you a while to do so.

Get creative. Everyone has read about people getting shot or stabbed during interrogations, torture sessions. Take it a step further. Use the knife or gun in an interesting way, or use a different, unexpected tool altogether. Example:

Maze tipped his head back, running a hand through his hair as Chase brought the cheese grater back. "Take it across your right arm." He slid his eyes over to Chase as he did so without hesitation. The first thing Maze saw had been the blood start making rivers down his arm. When the cheese grater was pulled away the skin had divorced from the muscle and hung in the air, making a V shape with his arm. Maze let out a disgruntled noise as he watched Chase bring the cheese grater to his arm again. Flecks of skin caught in the ridges of the grater and fell to the floor as Chase's blood cascaded down his arm. He could hear Chase's skin ripping off of his arm and his blood dripping to the floor. He could see how the grater tugged at the skin before ripping it off and the skin falling to the floor, into the blood. The whole of his bicep was bloody and torn apart before Maze commanded him to stop.

I first wrote this cheese grater scene in 2018. My friends still say they can't look at a cheese grater the same lmao

And finally, get descriptive. Show, show, show. Be visceral. Be upsetting, be horrifying, and vomit-inducing. Write vomit if you want! Get into the nitty-gritty, show how awful it is, and how inescapable it is for your characters. Yes, it's okay to be panic-inducing! This is horror- and not just horror. This is gore. This is explicit pain and suffering. It's not meant to be soft. It's meant to kick your reader's teeth in. It's meant to get under their skin and make them so uncomfortable it's hard to get through. It's like a car crash, or train wreck, or witnessing a murder. I don't think I need a final example, but I'll give you one anyway. Example:

"Attack." The wasps dived in, stingers first, as they attacked the one Sadreen wanted.

Pinpricks of powder blue blood left the other as the wasps stung, his screams turning to shrieks and confused begging, as they begged whatever held them to let them go.

Sadreen approached the swarm of wasps with even steps and the other, his smirk falling into place again. The other spotted him, shaking his head as he tried to contain his screams.

Sadreen stood in front of the other, inspecting them. Their blue blood dripped out of their wounds, not enough to fall or move. The areas of skin around the wounds blackened, the open wound pulsing with venom, the green-tinged sickness spewing and dribbling out of the wounds, mixing with the drops of blood.

“You should not have meddled with what is not yours, little one.”

The other tried to speak, cut off by blood shoving itself up to their throat, falling out of their mouth in waterfalls, and filling their mouth with their tainted blood.

In their binds they spasmed, foam leaving their mouth. Sadreen uncoiled his tendrils, their form collapsing to the ground with several cracks, as now brittle bones from the venom snapped on impact.

And to close out some final advice: Never, ever, ever let anyone bully you into dumbing down these scenes. They are horrific on purpose. Slap your TWs at the beginning, and keep moving. You gave readers a fair warning, if they read it and then still trigger themselves, that's on them. I know people have had raging issues lately with dark fiction, not to mention horror, but those puritan rules don't apply here. Go wild.

Go completely feral.

You deserve it.

#writeblr #writing advice #writing tips #writing inspiration #horror #horror writing #gore writing #writing prompts #writing help #writing #writing stuff #yes I added that last example just bc I'm proud of my writing #you didn't need it but i put it there #youre welcome #this also isnt as long as i thought it be

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mindofasupernova · 3 years

Text

Someone you loved

Kaz Brekker x reader

Mr. Sandman Part 2

Inspired by the song "Someone you loved" by Lewis Capaldi

I'm going under and this time I fear there's no one to save me

This all or nothing really got a way of driving me crazy

Kaz's mind was a raging storm, an ever-shifting landscape. His heart was madly racing and he feared that if it didn't stop soon, it'll burst out of his chest.

Two days had gone by and yet there was no information about Y/N's whereabouts. No one had made an effort to contact him asking for money in exchange for her safety, no blackmail, nothing. Kaz knew the probability of Y/N being alive was shrinking as the days passed.

Kaz felt terrible, guilt crushed his heart in a vicious grip. If he hadn't kicked her out, if he had taken back his words, if he had just... No, thinking about what ifs wouldn't bring Y/N back home. If she's still alive a cruel voice whispered in the back of his mind.

His mind drifted to his darkest memories, horrible images plagued his mind. Rotting flesh beneath his fingers, icy hands grabbing at him, threatening to pull him under the waves. Water filled his lungs, consuming his oxygen and living him in the dark. His head broke the water, gasping for air, Kaz looked around, trying to find something, anything to grab to avoid drowning. Only that now instead of his brother's corpse, he saw Y/N's limp body floating above the water.

Kaz fell to his knees, the pain brought him back to reality. He was trembling, sharp gasps left his body, black dots covered his vision. Y/N would have told him to focus on reality, take in the details, count every little object he could find in the room. But Y/N wasn't here, and it was all his fault.

___________

I need somebody to heal, somebody to know

Somebody to have, somebody to hold

Y/N talked passionately about her latest read, making wild gestures with her hands as if to prove a point. Jesper's arm was slung across her shoulder, head thrown back in a laughing fit. When his cackles died down, Jesper leaned his head on Y/N's shoulder and started mocking her for being able to remember the exact place where phrases were in the book.

Kaz watched silently from his seat in the Crow Club, he knew those touches were purely friendly gestures, and still he couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy.

On many sleepless nights, Kaz thoughts had wandered down a treacherous path, always finding their way to Y/N. His mind had been invaded by images of her: the smile she always wore when she was about to make a witty comment, the way she pursed her lips whenever he asked her to memorize an important document, the furrow of her brows when paying close attention to Kaz's plans.

He snapped out of it, angry at himself for thinking about her, he couldn't afford those thoughts. Kaz's life was dangerous and he had many enemies who wouldn't hesitate to use anything or anyone against him. If he left himself feel, if he let her in, he knew there was nothing he wouldn't do for her.

He had tried. He had tried to distance himself, push her away until his feelings dissipated to nothing. However, every time Y/N appeared in his office late at night just to talk about her day, every time she called his name, every time she sent a glorious smile his way, Kaz couldn't bring himself to say no.

And now, looking at Y/N from across the room, a sense of longing clouded his vision. Thoughts of sitting next to her, no space between their bodies, with no fear of touching reminded him of how miserably he had failed.

____________

It's easy to say, but it's never the same

I guess I kinda liked the way you numbed all the pain

Since Y/N's kidnapping, Kaz had gone completely feral. He had looked for anyone who could provide information. He had kidnapped, tortured, and even killed members of any other gangs he had his suspicions on. He was unstoppable, he wouldn't rest until his Y/N was safe. She isn't even yours because you kicked her out a scornful voice reminded him.

Kaz's whole body hurt, his limp was more prominent than usual, his knuckles were bloodied and a purplish bruise contrasted against his pale skin from a blow he had taken when he was beating the life out of one of the Dime Lion's informants.

How he wished Y/N was there. No matter how many times he came back to the Slat, covered in blood and clutching at his wounds, Y/N's gaze always turned into one of horrified worry.

Y/N had always healed his wounds after a mission, wiping the blood away very carefully in order not to touch his skin. Even when he wasn't bleeding and it was just his leg giving him a bad day or a headache that refused to leave him, Y/N always brought him medicine or tea depending on the situation.

But Y/N was gone and he might not ever see her again. His thoughts lurched him back to the ocean, dead things suffocated him. He clutched his cane tighter, he couldn't have a panic attack now, he needed to find Y/N.

_______

Now the day bleeds into nightfall

And you're not here to get me through it all

The night wrapped the dirty streets of Ketterdam in its wicked hold, the moon loomed ahead casting a palish glow through Kaz's window. Another day had passed and he was no closer to finding Y/N.

He was alone in his office, clutching his cane tighter by the second, its sharp edges bruising his skin, and yet, the pain wasn't enough to keep the waters from rising, Y/N's form surrounded by corpses.

No, he couldn't think of her this way. He had to remain positive, he needed to hope Y/N was still alive somewhere, but for someone like Kaz, remaining positive wasn't something he strived on. Instead, Kaz looked inside his brain, searching for a memory of Y/N to avoid passing out and when he found it, he seized it and hung to it for dear life.

Kaz had heard people say love arrived at the most unexpected times, bloomed in the most unlikely places. People said love wasn't something you chose, something you could control, not a concept you could welcome or shut out of your life at your convenience.

Kaz deemed those people foolish, weak for not being able to control themselves, and as the cold mastermind he was, Kaz brushed off all of their comments. And he would have kept thinking that way if it hadn't been for Y/N during a warm summer evening.

The Crow Club was surprisingly empty, everyone was in a relaxed state, currently resting after a successful heist. Kaz had been working in his office, signing contracts when a soft knock sounded against his door, Y/N peered inside and after receiving Kaz's consent, stepped through the threshold.

Y/N sat in front of his desk, a small smile playing on her face, ensued by a moment of silence, Y/N started talking. Kaz's head perked up at the sound of her voice, eyes leaving the papers to direct his whole attention to her but he had been completely caught off guard by the sight before him.

Y/N's mouth was moving but Kaz's couldn't hear a thing, it was as if someone had stolen the sound so he could only focus on Y/N's heavenly form.

Y/N's hair was slightly disheveled, gusts of wind occasionally brushing lonely strands into different directions, soft locks swishing in compass with a nonexistent melody. Sunset rays filtered through the window, lighting up Y/N's features. Sunlight beams fell gently down the slope of her nose, gently caressed her long lashes, and kissed her tender lips giving them a reddish hue.

At that moment, Kaz realized how dreadfully unjust the world was. How come was the wind able to run his breezy fingers across her beautiful hair? How could the rain brush her skin lovingly without repelling at the idea of skin contact? Why could the Sun kiss her graceful lips and he couldn't?

Kaz wanted to hold her, reach for her whenever he wanted without fear of drowning. He wanted to hug her and nuzzle his nose in her hair affectionately. He wanted to know what her skin felt like under his fingertips. Kaz wanted to know the taste of her lips.

Because he was in love with her.

________

I let my guard down and then you pulled the rug

I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved

Y/N laid immobile in his bed, her skin almost as pale as his sheets, soft breaths escaped her lungs. Kaz sat in a chair near her fragile body, his frown deepened every time his eyes landed on a different wound.

Kaz felt like in a déjà vu, a vision that had happened exactly three weeks ago. This was the reason why Kaz had pushed her, why he had evicted her from the Slat, the one home she had ever known. But did it matter? All his efforts to keep her safe had been in vain.

That fateful night, when she had been the distraction in a supposed easy heist, everything had come tumbling down. The nightmares had started back then, where he first saw her all bloodied and beaten and unconscious. They didn't know if she would ever wake up. Kaz had refused to visit her, images of his nine-year-old self seeing her amongst the corpses in the Reaper's Barge haunted his days.

When she had woken up he'd wanted to see her, but he couldn't bring himself to because he knew what he had to do. Kaz couldn't bear the thought of her dying, he couldn't imagine her gone, but if he gave her hope, if she saw how much he cared, she would refuse to leave. He needed her to stay away for her safety

So he had done that, he had ruthlessly yanked his heart out of his chest when he had kicked her out. The words he had said to her tortured him since that day: "Do not think that just because I have kept you around for this long you're irreplaceable." And when he thought he couldn't feel more pain, Y/N had started crying. Silent droplets fell down her cheeks and Kaz felt as if the most savage assassin had ripped his heart into shreds.

I let my guard down and then you pulled the rug

I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved

Seating there, silently watching Y/N's closed eyes, he was experiencing it all again. When they had found her she had been tied to a chair, unmoving, in one of the Dime Lion's warehouses. He swore his heart had stopped beating, she couldn't be dead, when Nina had checked for her heartbeat and announced it was still there, Kaz's heart reanimated.

Nina had done her best to heal her and now the only thing there was to do was wait until she woke up. This time Kaz had refused to leave her bedside. This time he would do things differently.

He had been a coward, he now realized. He should have never let her go. He should have been braver, stronger, he should have protected her. Now he realized he wanted, no, needed her with him. He had been too scared worrying for the future that he had forgotten to enjoy the present. He wouldn't make that mistake again.

"Kaz?"

His head shot back to Y/N. She was awake, she was alive and he would never let her go.

And with such a fervent emotion, he couldn't have thought himself capable of expressing, he said "Please, don't ever leave me again. "

Thanks for the song recommendation @itsemy01

Taglist:

@getawayfrommewerewolf, @lady1505, @rika90, @thedelusionreaderbitch, @coffeewithoutcaffeine, @aleksanderwh0r3, @princessleah129, @subjecta13-thefangirl

#shadow and bone #kaz brekker #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker imagine #six of crows

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Note

"The Untamed", but Jiggy has a white cat whom he tells everything.- May or may not be sentient or 'spiritual' like Fairy in the book. (From an idea I've thrown around with my friend @yraelviii)

ao3

He found the cat in Qinghe.

“What are you doing here?” Meng Yao said, crouching down to try to scoop out the little handful of white fluff underneath his cabinet only for it to bare its infantile fangs and him and hiss, moving its butt around as if it thought his fingers ought to be running in fear from its fearsome pounce. “How did you even get in here?”

The cat – a kitten, really, small and scrawny, dirty and covered in ashes as if it had just run out of a forge, but no less passionate for it – squirmed in his hand as he picked it up.

“Who owns you?” Meng Yao asked, and the cat hissed viciously as if to shout no one owns me!

Something about that echoed in Meng Yao’s heart – no one owns me, he thought – and so he fished up some extra meat from his plate, filled a small platter with water, and used the sleeve of an old outfit that needed to be taken to be laundered anyway to wipe the grey ash off of the cat’s white fur while it was distracted by sniffing suspiciously at the food and water that it ultimately declined to consume.

“Just this once,” he told it.

Doing good work will often only bring you more work, Meng Yao reflected, and so it was with the cat as much as with anything else. He still didn’t know how the cat managed to get into his rooms, and he sometimes dwelled on paranoid suspicions that there were hiding-holes in his chambers designed to allow others to spy on him, just as there had been in certain rooms in the brothel – though even at his worst moment of uncertainty and doubt he didn’t really think so. He knew that it wasn’t Nie Mingjue’s style even if Meng Yao had been someone important enough to care about, and anyway he didn’t question his own ability to discovery such a thing if it had really existed. He’d checked.

At any rate, however it kept getting into his rooms, the cat was now a regular presence there, lurking around.

It didn’t want to be petted and greeted all attempts to feed it with utter disdain, but despite its general standoffishness it seemed to like being in the same vicinity as Meng Yao, enjoying nothing more than to settle haughtily by the window in his room and watch over Meng Yao as if it thought he might get lost without its supervision.

Meng Yao thought it was probably someone’s pet gotten lost, or maybe even just a feral cat from outside (Qinghe had a fair number of them) that had figured out that it could access the good life by going inside, but it was very hard to sincerely worry over the ill-intentions of a cat, and he was already very busy.

If he didn’t need to care for it, then it wasn’t adding to his troubles. Let the cat sit where it liked!

Meng Yao had found that life in Qinghe was both different and similar to life in Yunping, the only life he had to compare it to, and it amused him to think of the great and righteous Nie sect as an overly large brothel, with the main difference being that they sold their strength where women sold their bodies. In both places there needed to be order, someone to sort things out and tell people where to put things and what to do; in both places Meng Yao, with his quick mind and excellent memory, his sense of understanding people and anticipating their needs, was utterly invaluable in arranging such things.

He had, admittedly, expected it to take a little more time to climb up to the top – the only person he couldn’t understand in this place was Nie Mingjue, who was far too easy to deceive and smiled at him like he really thought they were friends instead of just being master and servant, who appreciated his talents and told him so, who shrugged off his mistakes and had faith that he would do better, who ignored his status instead of lording it over him the way Meng Yao had expected him to. Even when he was angry, when he shouted and slammed his hands against things, Nie Mingjue never once mentioned Meng Yao’s background, and the only things he seemed to hold against him were his own mistakes.

Meng Yao still didn’t know why Nie Mingjue would act so rashly as to promote someone he had just met to a position as high as viceroy, much less actually trust him, but it didn’t really matter. However quixotic his method of reaching a place of power, he was here and his next task was to keep his place until he’d made a reputation for himself.

Part of that he did through his work, good critical work that people needed and which had always won him gratitude even if not respect, but the other part of it was in cultivation. That was the way in which the Nie sect was not like a brothel: you couldn’t just be clever, you couldn’t even just be beautiful - to be respected, you had to cultivate.

Not that wanting to cultivate was a problem for Meng Yao.

He’d always had a memory like a sponge and a body that obeyed his every wish, his childhood of mimicking the beautiful dances of his mother and her ‘sisters’ serving him well in transitioning to learning the sword even if he was years behind everyone else; his mother had bought a thousand fake cultivation manuals for him and he’d learned them all, each one of them more useless than the next, and now that he was here in the cultivation world at long last, he was finally, finally, finally able to cultivate for real.

Using Nie sect methods, of course, even if that wasn’t what he really wanted.

He’d started as soon as he could when he arrived, endlessly grateful that the Nie sect provided training sabers without cost, and he’d snuck one away back to his room so that he could practice on his own time, knowing it would take a long time to form his golden core. He’d debated with himself for a long time as to whether or not it was worth it to invest in a real one – if the training sabers were free, then real proper Nie sabers were somehow three times as expensive as the swords you could buy in the marketplace, and you could only put in a deposit without any notion of when you’d actually get the saber, apparently subject to the contrary dispositions of the spiritual weaponsmiths that made them.

In the end he decided to go for it more or less on a whim, emptying out his hard-built savings to place the order, even though he knew he would one day need to discard whatever they made for him in favor of a sword.

The Jin sect would accept him one day. He would make them.

(If the Nie sect cultivation style was good for one thing, he thought as he went through endless drills of slashing and thrusting, it was that you could work out your anger while you were doing it. There was nothing quite like imagining the face of someone you hated and then bringing down the practice saber in a vicious slash, and oh, but Meng Yao hated so very many people.)

The cat liked watching him train most of all, although Meng Yao suspected it was because seeing him jump around panting was funnier than watching him sit at his desk and gracefully write out letters. It would occasionally start purring, a sound a little like a crackling fire, and eventually Meng Yao got into the habit of going to run his fingers through its fur as a reward for himself when he successfully completed a training sequence.

After a while, he started talking to it, too.

“That commander,” Meng Yao said as he brought the training saber down. His real saber was still on the order, probably stalled purposefully; the smith assigned the task was probably one of the people that thought they were too good to deal with him because of who his mother was, and it’d all been a waste of money in the end. Completely a waste, even if Nie Mingjue had smiled so happily at him when he’d heard about Meng Yao placing the order, his eyes warm and soft and how had that man survived so long in this wretched world of politics and pain, didn’t he know he would always be deceived and betrayed?

Why should he be the exception to the rule, when everyone else had to suffer?

Meng Yao threw away the unhelpful thoughts and thrust the saber forward, as if piercing his invisible opponent straight through the chest.

“That commander.” He minutely corrected his form and stabbed again, this time as if piercing through the belly: a gut wound, a slow and awful way to die. “He’ll regret what he said to me.”

The cat’s purring intensified.

Meng Yao briefly had the wild thought that it approved.

“I just –” Another thrust. “– need to figure out –” An overhead slash. “– how.”

Meng Yao ended up taking the cat with him when he left Qinghe.

It probably was someone’s pet and he was opening himself up to a charge of stealing, a charge he wouldn’t be able to defend himself against now that he no longer had Nie Mingjue’s protection –

(Nie Mingjue who had wept tears and blood at what Meng Yao had done, betrayed at last after having finally encountered a deception he could not swallow, who had banished him from the Unclean Realm even after everything Meng Yao had done for him – who had, despite it all, still hidden an entire bag of gold and Meng Yao’s favorite Qinghe snacks in Meng Yao’s things with a short note claiming that it was for unpaid wages. As if Meng Yao had ever let a single pay period go by without claiming exactly what he was due. As if Nie Mingjue still cared despite throwing him out, as if he worried about how Meng Yao might live, as if he hadn’t given up the privilege of caring about things like that – )

He didn’t really care.

He wanted the cat, so he took it. It was the least Qinghe could do for him.

The cat spent all its time in his new rooms in the hotels he stayed out as he traveled: in his bedroom and study, the little gardens that, when available, he liked to use to train in the mornings and evenings. It would even follow him when he took a bath (although that was with great reluctance on the part of the cat, and only if Meng Yao were taking an especially long time in the bath and the cat was worried he’d drowned, yowling angrily as if it could revive him through the power of its voice). If it had once belonged to someone else, it now belonged to Meng Yao, and Meng Yao didn’t give away anything that was his.

“I’ve made worse mistakes,” he said defiantly to the cat, which blinked at him from its side of the carriage he’d used some of the gold to rent. “It’s only that I don’t want to review them in order to think of which ones those might be.”

The cat got up, stretched its back, and walked over to butt its head against Meng Yao’s hand before turning and going back to its spot by the window.

Meng Yao wasn’t sure if that was a sign of agreement or if the cat just thought there was a treat in his hand. Not that the cat had ever accepted treats from his hand.

He still wasn’t sure what the cat ate, actually, but he was sure the cat would make its feelings known now that they weren’t somewhere with a dependable kitchen, though he supposed there was always the possibility that it would start picking up hunting.

“Wen Chao said that they’d aimed at the Cloud Recesses,” Meng Yao said, deciding not to dwell on the things of the past. There was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do about Nie Mingjue’s betrayed eyes or the snacks he hadn’t even known Nie Mingjue had known he’d liked, about the hand-me-down guans and trinkets that Nie Huaisang had insisted were part of his wardrobe when he’d helped him pack even though he knew Nie Huaisang still wore them sometimes, about the fact that he should have been ordered to take the Nie sect’s braids out of his hair when he passed by the gates for the final time since he didn’t deserve them anymore but the two disciples there had just nodded at him and let him pass without a word – nothing to do about the saber he’d ordered, still on the list to be made, and maybe if he made something of himself out in the world alone he would one day come back to claim it at last. “That’s where we’re going now. Lan Xichen might be in danger. I have to help him.”

The cat made a sound like it was considering hacking up a hairball.

“He was kind to me,” Meng Yao said, feeling defensive. “The only one who never judged me –”

Since he’d decided to forget about Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, wiping it out of his mind as if it had never been, that was even true.

“– and he’s a proper gentleman, a good man. I’ll help him.”

That Lan Xichen was also a powerful man was something he wished he didn’t think of, but he couldn’t help the way he was.

“After I help him, I’ll figure out what to do next,” Meng Yao said, like a liar, and the cat looked at him like he was stupid – which he was being, because of course he’d already planned out what to do next, figured out his next move, and there was no point in lying to a cat about it. Meng Yao had skills that were only useful in management, not labor, and the only thing he left to sell was information about the sect from which he’d just been ejected. “No one owns me, right? Let it be the Wen sect.”

The cat did not purr, but it didn’t condemn him, either.

That would have to do.

It was a good thing that Meng Yao’s cat was self-sufficient, he thought, because he had neither the time nor the stomach to feed it during his time at the Wen sect.

If he had thought he had worked hard at the Nie sect, he now knew differently: at least there the worst he had faced from his colleagues had been disdain and not outright murder attempts, back-stabbing and undercutting to try to show off to Wen Ruohan, and all the while the man himself demanded more and more from him without the slightest care for his own well-being. He was grist to the mill for Wen Ruohan, no matter how much the Chief Cultivator enjoyed having another man’s prized deputy as his own – Wen Ruohan might had been very nearly driven insane by the Yin Metal, but he still remembered old grudges – and it was night and day away from Nie Mingjue’s reliance on him that was based on trust, rather than reluctantly satisfied suspicion and paranoia.

Meng Yao had hidden the cat as best as he could from the start, thinking rightfully that people would try to use it against him, and to his relief it seemed that no one else had yet laid eyes on it and identified it as his own, despite its white fur standing out like a beacon to his sight. Unfortunately there were some people that had managed to figure out that he had a cat, even if they didn’t lay eyes on it themselves, and he’d had more than a few incidents in which someone had left poisoned meat out on the floor by his room in order to catch it.

The cat seemed as unimpressed with that as anything else.

Instead, the cat seemed to have taken up hunting as its pastime. It brought back the corpses of small birds, the Yin Metal-infused little spies, full of resentful energy, that Wen Ruohan had developed for his sons to use. At first Meng Yao worried about the cat getting somehow poisoned by them, but time went on and it seemed to be fine, even thriving. It had grown into a proper cat now, no longer a kitten, and it enjoyed licking its white and shining fur until it was gleaming.

It didn’t like Meng Yao’s training sessions as much – he trained with a sword now, two-faced just like him, and in a dozen different styles, Wen and Jiang and Jin, always Jin – so sometimes Meng Yao would go back to doing the old Nie sect style again, knowing the cat would recognize the familiar movements, and it was a surefire way to get the cat to purr.

The Nie sect style was also still the best for getting out anger, all aggression and sharp movements, and Meng Yao still had a lot of anger inside of him. He was starting to think he always would.

At least here in the Nightless City he could kill the people he hated, as long as he did so in low and dirty ways that didn’t trouble Wen Ruohan or interfere with his plans, and yet every time he did it, he felt no relief, only a vile and wretched stickiness that came, perhaps, from that awful Yin Metal that he had schemed over yet couldn’t seem to escape.

The cat didn’t like the Yin Metal one bit. It hissed and scratched, and in one notable incident seemed like it was going to pounce on it directly if Meng Yao hadn’t caught it mid-leap and shoved it into his sleeve before anyone had noticed it.

“You’re going to get me into trouble,” Meng Yao told the cat next time he trained, using the soft sword he’d hidden away for a time of need to hack and slash in the Nie way, which didn’t work with a soft sword at all but which made him feel strangely better. He was currently imagining Wen Ruohan’s head underneath a saber, his head and the heads of all those corpse puppets he’d created. “I will cut you loose if you do that.”

The cat rolled onto its back and showed its soft and fluffy belly, which only the truly unwise would seek to lay a hand on – Meng Yao still had scars – and Meng Yao rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, I know,” he said. “No one owns you, not even me. But do me a favor and don’t screw this up for me. Not when I’m so close.”

Lan Xichen had been accepting his letters and feeding them to Nie Mingjue, who trusted as blindly as he ever did. Meng Yao wished sometimes that he didn’t, that he would learn, that he would put some defenses up on that stupid reckless heart of his, but on the other hand it suited his plans very well that he didn’t.

Soon, he thought. Soon.

Soon he’d know what he needed to do.

“Now he chooses not to trust people,” Meng Yao complained to his cat. “Now. Now!”

The cat purred.

It wasn’t that Meng Yao (damnit, Jin Guangyao, he had a new name, he was Jin Guangyao now) couldn’t understand Nie Mingjue’s reluctance to trust him – fool me once, fool me twice, but three times seemed to be the other man’s breaking point – and in some ways he understood it more than ever now that he had been accepted back by the Jin sect, clothed in the gold he’d always deserved to wear.

Jin Guangshan hadn’t lost much in the war, not like the other sects, and the second it was over he was already scheming. Meng Yao – Jin Guangyao – was pulled right into the thick of it at once, less for his spying capability than for his sheer disposability, the fact that Jin Guangshan wasn’t willing to burden his pure and righteous heir with black matters that he was more than happy to taint the son of his whore with. With Nie Mingjue, general and hero of the Sunshot Campaign, representing the only real threat to the Jin sect’s domination, even if he didn’t want to be, Jin Guangyao was bound to be in opposition to him.

It made sense for Nie Mingjue not to trust him.

It irritated him regardless.

Still, lack of trust or no, Nie Mingjue had succumbed to Lan Xichen’s impassioned arguments and had agreed to swear brotherhood with him, even if Jin Guangyao suspected that Nie Mingjue’s primary motivation was to keep a better eye on him and scold him the way he did Nie Huaisang. It would be politically beneficial to Jin Guangyao to be tied in such a way to Nie Mingjue – it would suit his own desires as well, though that was less important – and so he had of course agreed as well, and he was planning on going to their oath ceremony in the outfit he had chosen for himself, gold from neck to foot, a sword he’d taken from the treasury since no one would order him one of his own, and a hat on his head like the ones his mother so admired to make up for his lack of height and to hide the Nie sect braids he still habitually wore underneath.

An old habit, and one he really ought to break, really. Ideally before Nie Mingjue figured it out and told him to cut it out.

There was a knock on the door, a familiar pounding, and the cat looked up, intrigued, even as Jin Guangyao sighed voicelessly to himself. Perhaps he had waited too long.

Perhaps it would be better to make a clean cut in this way, too.

He opened the door.

“Sect Leader Nie,” he greeted, thinking to himself that it would only be a few more hours before he was entitled to call the man da-ge as if they were nearly equals and how strange that would be. “Can this humble one help you?”

“Can I come in?” Nie Mingjue asked gruffly, his eyes lingering on Jin Guangyao’s uncovered and Nie-braided hair, just as he might have expected. Had expected.

Jin Guangyao nodded and stepped back, allowing him in, and closed the door behind him. “Could I get the sect leader some refreshments?” he asked politely, but Nie Mingjue seemed to have come to a stop right in the entranceway, surprise written all over his features. “Sect Leader Nie?”

Nie Mingjue was staring at Jin Guangyao’s cat.

“…Sect Leader Nie?”

Did Nie Mingjue not like cats? There were an endless number of feral cats in Qinghe, so it seemed implausible, and yet, here Nie Mingjue was, looking at the cat like he’d never seen such a thing before in its life.

Of course, at that exact moment, Jin Guangyao’s cat, the traitor, hopped off its pillow and went straight to rub itself against Nie Mingjue’s leg, purring like a little maniac.

Jin Guangyao stared at it, feeling thoroughly betrayed by what he would have previously said was his thoroughly unsociable cat, who had taken years to warm up to him enough to give him half the attention it was now bestowing freely on Nie Mingjue. Was this the heavens deciding to mock him for his earlier betrayals?

Alternatively, Nie Mingjue might just be very good with cats, which Jin Guangyao could believe. Perhaps he even carried in his pockets some of the Qinghe vine that cats were said to be so enamored of, although certainly Meng Yao’s cat had never once before shown an interest in such things before.

“…what’s its name?” Nie Mingjue croaked, voice hoarse. He was still staring fixedly at the cat, looking as though his entire world had shattered around him. He hadn’t even looked so unsettled when Jin Guangyao had so viciously mocked him at the Nightless City, and at the time he’d thought he was going to die and be turned into a corpse puppet to murder all his loved ones.

Jin Guangyao was tempted to say something rude or facetious, something like ‘I just call it Cat, why, do you name random cats?’, but the cat had been a good companion of his for a long time now and he couldn’t do that to it, even if he was currently planning on taking an extra long bath to force the cat to miserably linger by the door to the bathing room, screeching in unhappiness at the wet, but bravely (if grumpily) supervising him to make sure he didn’t drown.

“Hensheng,” he said, because that was in fact what he’d named it – it meant hatred for life, which was not exactly an auspicious name but which had stuck from the very moment he had thought it up – and waited to hear Nie Mingjue’s judgment. “It’s not normally quite so sticky,” he added in an attempt to save some face. “With most people.”

“Well, it’s me, that’s different,” Nie Mingjue said, and maybe the man really was just the human incarnation of the plant cats liked so much. Meng Yao really wouldn’t put it past him. “You...you cultivate in the Nie sect style? Still?”

Jin Guangyao blinked, surprised by the change in subject.

“Yes,” he said, a little hesitantly. He cultivated many styles now, although it was always the Jin sect style when he was in public. But he still had all the anger in his belly to vent – even more so now than before, anger at his father, anger at Madame Jin, anger at his brother born to a blessed life, anger at all those disciples that sneered at him even after he’d been legitimized, anger, anger, anger – and the Nie sect style had always been the best for that.

And anyway, it made the cat purr.

“Is that a problem, Sect Leader Nie?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Nie Mingjue said, and when he turned to look at him his eyes were warm and soft the way they’d been all the way before the fiasco with Xue Yang, shimmering with tears of joy and a smile that seemed to come straight from his heart, the foolish easily deceived man. It was so unexpected that Jin Guangyao actually took a full two steps back, his jaw dropping a little. “I’m happy for you. Very happy.”

He actually wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, dashing away the tears.

“You should come back to the Unclean Realm to pick it up when the brotherhood ceremony is done,” he added nonsensically. “I can’t imagine how long it’s been waiting for you.”

“…what?” Jin Guangyao said. “Pick up what?”

“Hensheng,” Nie Mingjue said, which – what? “Your saber. Hensheng.”

His saber?

The saber he’d never gotten, having been banished from the Unclean Realm before the order was finished, the one he’d spent all his savings on just in putting in the deposit, the one he’d never actually finished paying off? He remembered it, of course, and sometimes it still itched under his skin that he’d never gotten what he was owed because everything that was owed to him he deserved to get in the end. But…

“Hensheng is my cat,” he said.

Nie Mingjue blinked at him. “That’s not a cat,” he said. “That’s a saber spirit.”

Jin Guangyao’s gaze dropped down to the cat.

The cat that never seemed to eat anything or drink anything, that never once fell for the poisoned meat or accepted his offers of treats, that no one in the Nightless City had ever seen with their own eyes; the cat that could consistently get into his rooms despite there being no holes for it to enter, as if it had simply passed through the walls like a ghost.

Like a spirit.

The cat, which purred whenever Jin Guangyao practiced the Nie sect forms, swinging a saber with rage in his heart.

The cat to which he had confessed all his anger, all his frustration, all his rage, all the feelings he never gave to any human being around him – the sabers of the Nie sect thrived on such emotions, those feelings that encouraged them and strengthened them, developing the saber spirits that made each one of them a spiritual weapon unlike any other, with power and rage infused into the very blade.

Saber spirits, which only those born into the Nie sect or adopted early, raised in their ways, one of them, could form.

“A saber spirit?” Jin Guangyao said weakly, and his knees suddenly didn’t seem strong enough to hold him; he swayed and Nie Mingjue stepped forward quickly, catching him by the shoulders to steady him. “I cultivated a saber spirit?”

“The saber is back in the Unclean Realm,” Nie Mingjue said, not without kindness. “It was only ever waiting for you to pick it up once you developed the spirit, so that you could introduce the two.”

“It hasn’t been – I would have thought it would have been thrown away, or repurposed –”

“It’s a Nie saber, Meng Yao. It won’t obey anyone else ever again, not in this life; it is yours, yours alone. When one day you die, it will be buried with honor in our saber halls, just like all the others.”

The cat looked up at him and purred.

No one owns me, Jin Guangyao thought – the first thing the cat had said to him, and he’d always had a good understanding of what the cat wanted from the very first. No one had owned that wild spirit then, but it had stayed by his side, at first from curiosity and later from habit, and it was his now.

His, and no one else’s.

“Will you come pick it up?” Nie Mingjue asked, hope in his eyes. “Will you come home, if only for a little while?”

“Yes,” Jin Guangyao said. “Yes, I will.”

Later, Jin Guangshan told his son to kill Nie Mingjue, that fool who trusted too much and didn’t know when he was being deceived, finding him in his rigidity and righteousness too much of a burden on the power he planned to wield.

Jin Guangyao bowed as deep as he could, a smile on his lips, saying nothing, and the next day, when Jin Guangshan went to the brothel as he always did, drinking tea served by his son the way he always did, he never did figure out why his heart had stopped.

(The saber Jin Guangyao began to wear openly after the funeral – a gift from his sworn brother, he said with a smile, in remembrance of his time at the Nie sect – purred in pure satisfaction.)

#mdzs #jin guangyao #meng yao #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #unawakened #prompter I have no idea what you were looking for #and it's probably not this #but this is what came to mind #omgpurplefattie

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randomshyperson · 3 years

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Wanda Maximoff x Reader - Land of Thieves #ChapterOne

Western/ Red Dead Redemption AU / Slow Burn / childhood best friends to lovers

Gif is not mine.

Read on AO3 (English Version)

Ler no AO3 / “Terra de Ladrões” (Versão Português)

Chapter warnings: explicit language, explicit violence.

Word count for this chapter: 4002K

Summary: When you were a child, you swore that no matter how high the reward in your head, she could always count on you. Life as an outlaw in the west is not easy, but you believe that train robberies are still easier than asking a pretty girl to dance. Land of Thieves, also know as your love story with Wanda Maximoff in the Wild West.

Pt.1 || Pt. 2 || Pt. 3 || Pt.4 || Pt.5 || Pt.6 || Pt.7 || Pt.8 || Pt.9 || Pt.10 || Pt.11

You were covered in mud and blood when you entered the saloon. Curious and judgmental eyes turned to you, but you didn't stare back. Stretching your back, you felt your whole body ache; the recent beating was sure to leave marks. Walking over to the counter, you threw three gold coins onto the wood, muttering in a mumbled tone "bath" to the saloon keeper. He nodded slightly, showing you the way to the restrooms. As you washed up, you grumbled against the recent cuts, but you were happy to know that you hadn't been shot. Your body ached, but without bullet wounds, you would be better in no time. A pretty girl who worked in the saloon smiled at you when she took your muddy clothes to wash them, and you looked away blushing helplessly. She handed you new clothes before she left. When you finished your shower, you put on the white silk shirt, and beat-up jeans that were handed to you. The boots were not new, but they were comfortable. You also put on spurs, but they didn't give you suspenders, so you left the shirt loose against your body, enjoying the lightness. Attaching your holstered belt to your waist, you checked to be sure your Schofield revolver was clean and locked before you holstered it. You walked to the top floor of the saloon, ignoring the curious glances cast at you on the way. You hoped that no one would recognize you from the reward posters, but you weren't so sure about that, since your face was quite exposed without your hat, which must now be somewhere lost in the middle of New Elizabeth, or on some thief's head. Whistling softly, you walked to the saloon balcony, watching the town below. Valentine is a ranching town, small and not very crowded. Lots of pedestrians, you observe. You light a cigarette as you watch the citizens go about their mundane lives, many opportunities passing before your eyes. You let your gaze wander to the town bank, a few meters ahead on the right of the saloon. You notice that security is low. Making mental notes about everything you could observe from there, you put out your cigarette, returning to the lower part of the saloon, toward the counter. - A whiskey and a beef stew. - You grumble, handing the bartender some coins. He nods in agreement and in a few minutes you get your meal. While you are sitting at the farthest table in the room, you listen attentively to the conversation of two men at the poker table, who have caught your attention. - My cousin saw the carriages in Saint Denis. Four horses in each, and he said that the riders were armed to the teeth." - The skinny man commented excitedly, his friend didn't look so happy. - Those damned bankers are like pests of the soil. You saw what happened to that southern town, I think it was called White Gate. - commented the man with the mustache, his expression frowning. - After the oil ran out, everybody lost their jobs. Stark closed the mine and the citizens began to starve. Almost everyone moved to the neighboring towns. Stark. The name was not strange to you, but you could not tell exactly where you had heard it before. You finished your stew, deciding that Steve would want to know about both the bank and the possible rich men who were visiting the town. Finishing your whiskey in one gulp, you stood up, leaving the saloon just as you collected your freshly washed clothes from the same woman who had brought them. It was hot and humid outside. Knight, your Hungarian half-breed horse, grunted with delight when you stroked his mane. You smiled at him before you mounted. You rode south, figuring you would have no trouble finding the new camp site, and trying to remember Bucky's instructions about where exactly they were. It took some time, but you finally found the camp. You dismounted Knight as you entered the area between the trees, walking calmly to the largest tent. Steve Rogers was like a father to you. When your birth parents died of cholera, you ran away from the orphanage the government put you in, and started living on the streets. You were only seven years old, but you were smart enough to hide in one of the garbage carts when the nuns weren't looking, and you ran away because you couldn't stand being beaten by the older children and your own teachers. You ended up somewhere in West Elizabeth, and while trying to steal some food, you were chased by two officers. But just as they were about to catch up with you, someone knocked them out. You smiled when Steve held out a big piece of bread and water to you. From that moment on, you lived with him. The Avengers gang became your family. Steve took care of you, and trained you as an outlaw. You learned everything that was essential to survive in the Wild West, from hunting to murder. And as the years passed, other people joined the gang, and you accepted them all as your family. When Steve saw you, he smiled tenderly, wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief as he motioned for you to enter the tent. - So, kiddo, what did you find out in Valentine? - asked the man as you sat down in the opposite position, on a wooden chair. - They have a poorly protected bank. - You shrugged. - But you know how these small towns are, the risk is almost always not worth the gain. - That's too bad, we need money. Especially to buy medicine. You let out a low exclamation of agreement, you knew exactly how difficult the situation was. It had been a particularly difficult season for the gang. With Fury's death at the last service, and the move out of town to get away from the officers, you were still facing a wave of illness. Carol and Bruce had been feverish and bedridden for days, and Thor had been shot during an unsuccessful robbery. - I overheard an interesting conversation, though. - You say, and Steve looks at you curiously. - Some rich people are coming to Valentine in a few days. The name Stark was mentioned, have you ever heard of it? Steve's eyes widen in surprise and excitement. - Of course I have! - he exclaims. - Filthy rich folks there! Rich enough to lend us a little money without even noticing. - I think Stark is going to buy the oil mines at Heartlands. And he's staying in Valentine while he does the negotiations. - That's excellent. - Steve says, running his hand along his chin in a thoughtful expression. - If the deposit is made in Valentine, we will have the purchase money first hand. You nodded. - But even if the deposit is made here, the money is sure to be transferred to Saint Denis. - You retort, trying to think of all the details of the scam. - Which means that we have to steal the money the same day it is deposited, or we only stand a chance during the transfer. Steve stood up, walking around the tent with the same thoughtful expression on his face. - No, no. - He began to speak as if the alternatives were rapidly forming in his head. - The carriage will be extremely protected. In the gunfire, we can be very worried about not getting killed, which will give them a chance to escape to the city. And then we'll have no way to reach them there. You sighed, knowing that he was right. You frowned, trying to think of something, but Steve soon spoke again. - We need to do this while the money is in the bank. And we have to do it fast. - He says, and then walks to the edge of the hut, looking around the field. He whistles, attracting the attention of Peggy Carter, who is chopping wood, and when she raises her curious gaze to him, Steve beckons her to join him. - What is it, Rogers? - Peggy asks gently. You exchange a smile with her. - We've got a new hit. - He says, making room for Peggy to join you. - Is Bucky around? - He went out hunting a few minutes ago. The twins went with him. - Peggy says and you rest your face on your own hand, waiting for Steve to speak again. - Oh right. I'll explain the details to them later. - The blond man says, walking around the cabin to the table in the opposite corner, and he takes a pen and paper and begins to write down what you think of as a rough draft of the plan. - We will rob Valentine's bank then. - I thought that banks in small towns were not worth the risk. - Peggy commented with a slightly confused expression. - Ah, but we have a unique opportunity. - Steve remarked, bringing the doodle over to Peggy. - Howard Stark, big oil guy, is going to buy the Heartlands mines. The purchase money will be deposited in Valentine before being transferred to Saint Denis. I believe we will have about a few hours to rob the bank - Steve, are you sure this is a good idea? - Peggy assumed a worried posture. - We are short on snipers... - It's a great idea. - He interrupts, looking at Peggy seriously, but still maintaining a calm tone. - We need the money, Peggy. If this is planned correctly, we don't have to worry about the number of weapons. - I appreciate the confidence in my abilities, by the way. - You playfully push your shoulder lightly against Peggy, she smiles at you. - Of course I trust you, Y/N. - She answers, but her gaze is still worried. - We just need to be careful in this job. You spend the rest of the afternoon planning. It doesn't take long for Bucky to join you. He hands a deer carcass to Pietro, who carries it back to the supply hut. Steve repeats the plan, and you let your gaze drift quickly to Wanda, who smiles at you, and you feel something in your stomach drop. Blushing, you look away, turning your attention back to Steve. It is already night when you have finally finished working out the plan. Wanda and Pietro joined you at some point, and you had to mentally repeat to yourself to pay attention to Steve's words and not to the redheaded girl a few feet away. You didn't want your passion to cost your life or put everyone else in danger because you didn't absorb the plan correctly, but you were getting to this level of unfocused. You felt a light tug on your arm as you walked toward the fire, and found yourself smiling wryly as you faced Wanda already looking at you. - I got my first deer today. - She declared, looking up at you with bright eyes, a tone of pride and happiness in her voice. You raise your eyebrows in a pleased expression. - What? That's amazing, Wands. - You replied. - I told you that you would learn soon! I would have liked to have seen it. - We can hunt together. - She says, and you try not to show your nervousness at the thought of being alone with Wanda, but you don't disguise it very well, which makes Wanda confused, and she looks almost disappointed when she quickly adds - Pietro can come with us too. You blink a few times, believing her to be clarifying that she had no intention of spending time alone with you, and swallowing dryly, you nod in agreement. - Yes, yes. Sure, we should call him too. - You say taking a few steps back, hands in your pockets as you stare uncomfortably at the floor. Wanda bites her lower lip lightly, finding you extremely difficult to decipher. You spend a moment in silence, before she speaks again - We can go tomorrow afternoon if you have no business in town. You think about it for a moment, trying to remember if you had made any appointments, if any robbery opportunities had been signaled to you, but you can't think of anything. - No, it's fine. We can hunt tomorrow. - You say, trying not to be too embarrassed by the contented smile Wanda flashes at you. She was probably going to say it was marked, but Pietro interrupted the moment by extending a bowl of stew in front of her face. Wanda blinked a few times in confusion, but thanked her brother as soon as she grabbed the item. Pietro turned to you next, a relaxed posture as he took a sip of the beer he was holding. - What were you two talking about? - he asked, his tone curious. - It's rude to snoop, you know. - You teased, drawing a short laugh from Wanda, and Pietro rolled his eyes stubbornly, but smiled. - We're going hunting tomorrow. I'll show Y/N that I learned how to use the bow on some deer. - explained Wanda, looking at her brother. - Will you come with us? Pietro frowned, denying with his head. - Sorry, little sister. - He speaks seriously, but his eyes have a malice in them that you didn't know how to recognize. - I'd love to join you on your date, but I have an appointment. You and Wanda blush at the insinuation, but Pietro continues with a playful aura as he takes another sip of beer. Although embarrassed, you can't help but be happy to know that you would be spending some time alone with the girl. - Oh, all right. - Wanda says in what seems to be an attempt to sound disappointed, but her eyes sparkle slightly as she speaks. You don't notice, but Pietro smiles at the expression. - You're full of secrets lately. What kind of appointment? Pietro laughs, shrugging his shoulders. He walks toward you with a playful expression, and puts his arm around your shoulders, smiling at Wanda as he leans on you. - Your girlfriend taught me how to play poker and now I am famous, my presence is requested in Rhodes. I need to bet and win some money for this place. You choke slightly on the phrase and feel your face heat up, looking down at the floor. Wanda lets out a nervous laugh, and pushes her brother lightly, making him let go of you. - You mean lose money, don't you? - she teases. - Even Thor plays better than you, and he usually just flips the table. You laugh, risking a glance at Wanda, who has a reddened face and quickly exchanges a smile with you. Pietro rolls his eyes and walks past you, waving goodbye. Deciding that you should eat something, you nod to Wanda that you are going to the fire. She smiles and follows you silently

You didn't hunt very often. Although you were good at it, it was not your function in the camp. You were a gunslinger, and your jobs usually involved carriage robberies and trespassing, even the occasional robbery. You were always part of the team for the big scams. And then Wanda invited you to go deer hunting and you became an anxious mess. Stumbling out of your tent, you hurried to take a quick swim in the creek near the campground. It was important not to smell too strongly when you went out hunting, as the animals could more easily notice you. Coming out of the water with wet hair, you put on your clothes, leaving the suspenders hanging from your waist and a few buttons open on your shirt. You were feeling heated. You waited for Wanda at the campfire. She also bathed before meeting you, and she seemed slightly anxious when she found you. You smiled as you poured some coffee, and Wanda looked a little airy when she accepted the cup. You didn't understand why, but the sight of your relaxed appearance, your loose hair and your exposed collarbone was absolutely irresistible to her, making Wanda feel heated in places that were not appropriate. You joked that soon she would become the best hunter in the camp, and you were happy to make her smile. As you rode out of the camp, you smiled as you felt Wanda lightly tap her foot against yours, as you used to play with as children. Riding in silence for a few minutes, you enjoyed the gentle breeze until you came to a hunting spot. You descended from Knight slowly, stretching your body when you reached the ground. Wanda watched your shirt lift and reveal some skin, then she looked away quickly, her face red. You cast a curious look, thinking she was feeling heat. Grabbing your rifle stored on the horse, you watched Wanda take from Lily's saddle - her red sorrel - a longbow and some arrows. You walked in silence, heading for the shallow part of the creek beside you, where you could easily find deer. It was comfortable to be in Wanda's presence, even in silence. Neither of you had to say anything to know exactly what to do next, your body following her along the way as if you had done this many times before. One look and you knew when to wait, or when to be quiet. It didn't take long before you spotted the deer. There weren't many, and Wanda bent down in front of you to take aim. You watched her with admiration. She raised her bow, and you noticed the slight tremor in her hands and frowned. You came forward, also bent down, and stood beside her. - There's no need to be nervous, Wands. - You whispered softly. - It's just me. The trembling in their hands seemed to diminish, but it was still there. You moved closer, raising your hands to join Wanda's, helping her to keep a steady aim. - Take a deep breath. - You said against her ear, waiting for her to obey. - And then shoot. With her speech, Wanda let go. The arrow cut through the air with speed, hitting the animal straight in the head. A perfect shot. You smiled, and when you looked at Wanda, she was already looking at you. You were about to congratulate her on the shot, but Wanda hugged you by the neck, surprising you. You felt your face heat up and due to the shock, you didn't respond to the hug, your body seeming asleep for an instant. Wanda let you go quickly, her face flushed with apology. You were about to tell her it was okay, and maybe hug her back, then you heard an animalistic noise that attracted your full attention, a low growl that you knew all too well. Glad you had brought your rifle, you looked around, searching for the source of the noise. Wanda blinked curiously, but you didn't look at her again. Standing up, you held the rifle with both hands, your gaze roaming the surroundings. A moment later, the bushes a few feet away moved, and you watched the creature sneak through the undergrowth, only to run toward you the next second, preparing to jump. The sound of gunfire echoed for a few seconds after the shot. You let out the breath you were holding and watched the panther lying on the ground, just a few inches away from your feet. Wanda looked at you in shock, and you offered your hand to help her up. - Sorry for the scare. - You grumbled, walking towards the panther intent on retrieving the skin, which should be worth a few dozen dollars. - We always have to be careful not to become the prey during the hunt. - How did you hear it? - Wanda asked curiously. - Practice I guess. - You said, kneeling down beside the panther. - Every sound around us is important. - You explained - Pay attention now, for example. Besides my voice, what do you hear? Wanda seemed to think for a moment. - I can only hear water, I think. Maybe birds. - She confesses, you finish cutting the skin off the animal in front of you. - Oh, sorry. - You say quickly. - I forgot that I just drove all the animals away with the noise of the rifle. You laugh to yourself, and Wanda smiles at you tenderly. - Let's go after that deer. I'll teach you to hear the sounds another day. - You tell her as you stand up. Walking over to the dead deer, you observe Wanda kneeling beside the animal, drawing her own knife. - Bucky taught you how to skin? - you ask, watching the firm but still amateurish cut Wanda was giving the animal. - Yes, he told me to skin rabbits before he taught me to cut the deer during yesterday's hunt. - said the red-haired girl focused on the activity. You tried not to blush as you watched a drop of sweat trickle down your neck. - I learned to skin animals from him too. - You commented as you waited for Wanda to finish the task. - I was a little smaller, I think. - I guess it took long enough for us to learn how to hunt, didn't it? - Wanda joked, drawing a smile from you. It was true, hunting had been the last activity Steve and Bucky taught you. For some reason, teaching them to shoot was a higher priority than getting food from the wild. A moment later, Wanda finished, raising the deer leather in the air, showing off her work proudly. You laughed at her expression, signaling for her to step away from the animal. You handed her your rifle, and bent down, grabbing the carcass with both hands and throwing it over your shoulders to carry it to the horse. It was quite heavy, but you concentrated your breathing as Bucky had taught you, and managed to carry the animal to Wanda's sorrel. After placing the carcass on the back of the animal, you grunted when you saw the state of your shirt, completely covered in blood. - What's the matter? - Wanda asked curiously when she heard your sigh. - Pepper made me promise not to come covered in blood to the camp anymore. - You say, rolling up your sleeves. - She told me she would put me to sleep with the horses if I showed up like this again. Of course, she will probably just change my watch shifts, but it will still be a pain to hear the lecture. - You could have told me to carry the deer. - Wanda retorted, looking at you with a mixture of seriousness and guilt. You just smiled. - Don't be silly, I just need to clean up before I go back. - You said simply, and Wanda frowned in confusion. And then she choked in surprise, watching you pull your shirt over your head. You went around her body and towards the creek. It took Wanda a few seconds to snap out of her shock, then she turned her head toward the creek, her face flushed. You rubbed the fabric with your hands, watching the blood drip into the water. You put your shirt aside only to wet your own body, wiping any traces of blood from your skin. Completely oblivious to the shy mess Wanda had become as she watched you wash yourself. Finished cleaning yourself, you wrung out your shirt, getting as much water buildup out as possible. You put your clothes back on, feeling the damp fabric against your skin. Wanda stood in the same place you had left her, and you frowned when you saw her look quickly away from you, her face red. You suddenly felt very embarrassed, thinking that you must have crossed some boundary with her. Coughing awkwardly, you walked toward your own horse. You rode in silence back to the camp, you mentally going over the whole conversation trying to find what you had done wrong that made Wanda so quiet. You were surprised when you heard her singing softly. Smiling without looking at her, you slowed down the speed of Knight's gallop, trying to enjoy the moment to the fullest. Wanda continued to sing the whole way, and you tried to ignore the feeling of butterflies in your stomach

#wanda maximoff x reader #marvel reader insert #western au #wanda maximoff #wanda x you #wanda x reader #marvel imagines #red dead redemption au #Land of Thieves

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