#its a mirror but its also a memory but its also a wet dream | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariasont · 1 month

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Our Minds Entwined-----------------------

ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 5, ch 6, ch 7, ch 8, ch 9, ch 10, ch 11, ch 12

MDNI-----------------------------------------------------------------

pairings: aaron hotchner x oc x spencer reid

summary: in which jason gideon's daughter joins the fbi as the newest, youngest member

warnings: mentions of wet dream, fantasying of 2 guys, oral f receiving, praise, probably more im not sure

A/N: hope you beautiful humans enjoy this as much as i enjoyed writing it <3

also requests are still open for aaron hotchner and spencer reid & i would love love to write more so shoot me something :)

haappppy readingggg!

chapter eleven:

With a weary slump of her shoulders, Evelyn followed in Hotch's wake, her feet dragging the ground as though shacked by invisible weights. Her eyelids were heavy, drooping in a slow cadence, fighting the lull of sleep that beckoned with each laboring blink. Her lips parted in a slow, drawn-out motion that mirrored the sluggishness of her body. The latte sat in her hand, a supposed ally against the drowsiness, but her yawns betrayed its ineffectiveness as her eyes grew heavier still. The trip had been a marathon of activity--packing, the airport, the plane--all leading to a touchdown in Somerville just as the sun began to rise.

On the way over, Hotch had briefed her on the details of the case. A couple weeks ago, a polyamorous couple--two older men, and their shared partner, a younger woman--were found dead. Then, two days ago another household with the same victimology were killed. The coincidence wasn't lost on Evelyn as her mind wandered to that god forsaken dream that had haunted her since.

And on top of that, throughout the trip, Hotch's silence was a wall between them, broken only by the case details. Despite herself, Evelyn tried to profile him knowing it was wrong. Evelyn replayed the hot tub scene in her mind, a pang of guilt twisting in her gut. She couldn't shake the feeling that she'd crossed a line, even if it was unintentional... right? Her head was a battlefield of jumbled thoughts and creeping doubts, all clamoring for attention. She blamed the fog in her brain on the lack of sleep.

Evelyn, under the weight of Hotch's intent gaze, gave way to a yawn so extravagantly drawn out it seemed less a sign of fatigue and more a playful challenge to his enduring patience.

"Stop staring; it's too early for judgment," Evelyn murmured, her eyes slits of defiance as she ambled after him towards the station. "This is just my face before the caffeine kicks in. It gets better, I promise."

Hotch offered no reply, merely casting a glance over his shoulder at her. The warmth of their close encounter in the hot tub enveloped his thoughts, an unwelcome yet intoxicating recollection. He wrestled with the memory, a guilty pleasure, even as he held the door open for her. Yet, he steeled himself, shoving those dangerous reflections to the back of his mind, all too conscious of the professional boundaries that he dared not to cross.

"Okay, Hotch, I get it, we can't all be as chatty as me with zero sleep. But come on, give me a smile, or at least a grunt," Evelyn coaxed, her laughter not quite reaching her eyes. "Anything to show you're still with us."

There was a pause, a look from Hotch that cut through her words, heavy with unvoiced thoughts, before he turned and walked away, his back a silent command to keep up. Evelyn's expression dimmed, her lips curving into a faint frown as she trailed behind him. The team's warm welcomes echoed around them as they entered the conference room. Evelyn's smile spread across her face, skillfully painted on to mask the twinge of disappointment that Hotch had left.

The moment Spencer's eyes found Evelyn, a soft blush bloomed across her face, and she offered him a smile tinged with complicity, which he mirrored back, a small but significant lift to her mood. The brief contact of Spencer's hand grazing her shoulder as she passed was enough to deepen the shade on her cheeks as she fought to maintain composure.

"How was Miami hot stuff?" Morgan questioned, as his arm sling around her shoulder with a teasing squeeze.

"Hot," Evelyn declared, her hand theatrically waving in front of her face in a mock fan, while her elbow lightly collided with Morgan's side. "Nearly had me seeing stars. Poor Hotch was this close to performing CPR," she said, her words a deliberate prod as her eyes sought out Hotch's, hoping for any form of reaction.

"I'd say it was less about the heat and more about you neglecting to eat properly," Hotch commented dryly, his words carrying a hint of reprimand, but hey at least he was talking.

"Well, we really shouldn't dwell on the past," Evelyn said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

"Speaking of meals," JJ added, sliding a blueberry muffin towards her with a knowing smile.

"You're a saint, JJ," Evelyn said, her eyes lighting up at the sight of the food. "I'm this close to giving you a thank-you kiss."

"As tempting as that sounds, you can actually thank Hotch for this one," JJ laughed as she nudged her. "He made it clear--no breakfast for you means a mountain of paperwork duties for us."

Evelyn's tension eased a fraction as she shot Hotch a teasing smile, her heart fluttering at the gesture. "Well, sir, rest assured, I strictly adhere to the 'no kissing the boss' clause. It's somewhere in the fine print, right?"

Evelyn's cheeks took a shade of pink at her own words, hanging in the air, laden with the what-ifs she couldn't quite push aside. Hotch's eyes, sharp and discerning, momentarily betrayed him, darting to her lips before he caught himself.

"Agent," he cautioned, his voice low but clear. Evelyn quickly raised her hands, a silent truce, as Hotch redirected his attention to the team. "What do we have?"

"At this rate, they'll be naming the next HR workshop after you," Morgan murmured, barely containing his amusement.

"What if the unsub is part of a group like this themselves and feels wronged by it?" Rossi muses out loud, his fingers tracing thoughtful patterns against the stubble of his chin as he stands, back pressed against the brick wall.

Reid paced slowly around the table, his fingertips grazing a file as he passed. "It's possible," he began, his voice a soft murmur, eyes narrowing slightly. "The specific targeting and overkill suggest a perceived slight or trauma associated with such relationships."

Prentiss gave a firm nod. "Let's not rule out the possibility of the unsub viewing these groups as a threat to their moral or social beliefs."

"The female-centric dynamic could be important too," Evelyn tossed out, her steps halting beside the pictures of the victims.

As she pondered aloud Spencer found himself focuses intently on her face, her nose scrunching ever so slightly in thought--a gesture that drew a fleeting smile from him as he cast his gaze downwards in hopes no one else noticed how he looked at her.

"Maybe the unsub feels wronged by the idea of a woman being the main focus? Or it could be jealously. Someone who wanted into a group like this but was rejected," Evelyn continued.

"Or the opposite," Hotch contemplates, his brow furrowed in thought. "Someone who was in a group and cast out." He pauses, hands clasped as he leaned forward. "Let's dig into the background of the victims and see if there's a common thread."

The conference room was steeped in the day's fatigue, the air heavy with the tang of frustration and the stale scent of coffee. The team had returned from their respective tasks--interviews, crime scenes, and calls--all roads leading to dead ends.

The room's stillness is shattered by Garcia's voice emanating from the screen. "I've got something," she declares, the pixelated glow casting an ethereal light in the dim room. "Both triads belonged to an ultra-elite society known as 'The Labyrinth.' It's like Fort Knox meets Fight club--no one talks about it, and no one gets in without an invite. I mean, you don't even want to know the lengths I went to find this in the first place."

"I mean, if the society is as exclusive as P says," Evelyn begins, her hand sweeping through her hair in a fluid motion. "Then the unsub is likely also part of it or they have resources that could get them information on it."

Garcia's voice bursts through the speaker. "Prepare to be dazzled," she trills, the clatter of her keystrokes punctuating her excitement. "The Labyrinth is rolling out the red carpet for a gala tomorrow night at the old Whitmore Estate. And you, my darlings, are virtually invited to the ball."

Morgan hunches over the table. "So, we need a cover," he states, "We can't just show up at the doorstep and demand to look around; it'll spook the unsub."

"Evelyn and Reid could blend in," Prentiss nods. "They fit the profile of two of the victims. Maybe they can draw the unsub out." Evelyn's eyes widen as she glances towards Spencer.

JJ chimes in, "And maybe Morgan could--"

But Rossi interrupts, shaking his head. "No, the second male victim's profile is different--older, more experienced. It's more Hotch's profile."

A crease forms between Hotch's eyes, a shadow of concern etching his features as his protective instincts surge to the forefront, coupling with a deep-seated unease about the unfolding plan. A delicate warmth crept up Evelyn's cheeks, her pulse quickening at the thought. The idea of going undercover with Hotch and Reid, a scenario plucked straight from her wet dream, sends a shiver down her spine and her thoughts into a tailspin. She opens her mouth, to joke it off, but it dissolves into a muddled string of half-formed words, leaving her with a bashful silence.

Hotch's words falter, a rare hesitation flickering across his usually impassive features. "I'm not sure if this is the best course of action--,"

Emily interjected swiftly, her words slicing through Hotch's protest. "Hotch, we may not get another shot at this. Using you three as bait isn't ideal, but it might be the only way to corner our unsub."

Hotch's eyes settle on Spencer, who gives a firm nod. His gaze than shifts to Evelyn, and though he resists the urge to analyze, the rosy flush of her skin and the accelerated pace of her breath betray her feelings. It's a jarring contrast to the professional distance he's been striving for. Hotch's nod was there, almost imperceptible, but the frown that follows is deeply etched, a clear sign of his disapproval despite his acceptable.

The room hums with a focused energy as the team pores over digital and paper archives alike, each article detailed events like this and of the couples who frequent. Garcia curates a comprehensive collection of profiles detailing the Labyrinth and its attendees, while JJ and Morgan sift through social media for the gala's guest list. In a corner, Spencer and Rossi huddled over a cluttered desk examining the blueprint of the Whitmore Estate.

Meanwhile, in a makeshift office provided by the local police chief, Hotch and Evelyn are deep in study. The walls, now a gallery of whiteboards, are dense with the scribbled complexities of polyamorous relationships and the backgrounds of the victims.

"I've come across open relationships in case studies, but an entire society? That's a statistical outlier if I ever heard one--Spence would have a field day with those odds." Evelyn says with a soft shake of her head.

A faint arch forms in Hotch's brow, a muted signal of surprise to the informal reference of Reid. Catching the lift of Hotch's brow, Evelyn quickly adds, "You know, Hotch, the silent treatment isn't going to work when we're undercover," she started with a tilt of her head. "You've going to have to convince everyone we're together soon, remember? So, you might want to start practicing liking me now."

"I'm not giving you the silent treatment, Evelyn." Hotch remarks, his countenance flat, eyes reflecting any readability.

"Sure, if you say so," Evelyn replied, her eyes thin slits of skepticism. "But if you're not up for this, Rossi could step in. We need to be believable, or people could get hurt."

"That's not going to happen," Hotch assets, his gaze unwavering, the firm set of his jaw sending a flutter to Evelyn's core. "I've played the part before; I can do it again."

"Then what are you so worried about?"

"I just want you to remember boundaries, Evelyn." Hotch reminds. "The seriousness of this cannot be understated, and I need to know your focus will be on the right aspects of the plan."

Hotch could see the subtle crumble of her face, the faint twitch of hurt that flickered across her features. She masked it swiftly, her voice laced with feigned indifference. "Understood. I'll try to keep my inevitable swooning over your pretend affections to a minimum, sir." The lightness of her words contrasted sharply with the hurt in her eyes, and Hotch felt an immediate ache in his stomach for causing it.

"Evelyn, that's not--" Hotch's voice trailed off, the hardness in his eyes giving way to a rare vulnerability. His fingers twitched with the need to reach out, to smooth away the creases of pain from her expression, but the opportunity slipped away as Rossi emerged at the door.

"Hotch, can I see you for a second?" he asked, gesturing subtly with his head.

Hotch offered a silent nod, his gaze holding Evelyn's for a moment longer than necessary, his eyes etching a mental image of her--the tilt of her head, the unresolved tension in her shoulders, before he reluctantly turned to follow Rossi. Spencer, shadowing Rossi's steps, pauses at the threshold, his gaze fixed on the departing figures. With a soft click of the door closing, he turns, the hush of the room settling around him as he turns to Evelyn.

He steps behind her, his hands coming to rest gently upon her shoulders. Evelyn tips her head back, her eyes lifting to meet his. "You okay?" he asks, his voice low and soothing.

Evelyn's laughter bubbled up, slicing through the heavy air. "Had a moment with Hotch. Pretty sure he was subtly hinting that I keep my feelings in check as if I'm incapable of that."

Spencer's lips curled into a half-smile, amusement flickering in his eyes. "Hotch tends to get a bit tense with these high-stakes operations," he reasoned, his thumbs tracing soothing circles on her shoulders, easing the knots.

Evelyn melts into the warmth of his hands. "That feels good," she sighs, her head gently reclining in contentment. "And tell me about. I'm the one who's going to be all up on my boss and coworker. Talk about awkward."

The thought of sharing Evelyn with Hotch sent an unbidden rush of blood straight to his cock, a visceral response that caught him off caught. He clears his throat, a subtle cover for the fleeting thought that, perhaps, the idea isn't as disconcerting as it should be.

"At least with you I don't have to pretend."

"I don't know, I think additional practice might be beneficial." Reid says, his fingers edging closer to the delicate skin of Evelyn's neck, prompting an involuntary hitch in her breath. "My room tonight? Purely for preparation purposes, of course."

"Dr. Reid, w-what are you suggesting?" Evelyn managed to tease out, despite the gentle pressure of his hand on her pulse point making her senses swim and her focus waver.

He leaned in, his head tilting to plant a gentle kiss in the hollow of her neck. "You're smart enough to deduce it," he murmured softly against her skin, the words almost a sigh, "missed you."

A giggle escaped Evelyn, and she nimbly evaded his grasp. "Spencer, we're practically inviting an audience at this rate."

"Which is precisely why I'm saving it for later, just wanted you to give you a preview, sweetheart."

The remainder of the day unfolded without incident, with Evelyn buried under a towering pile of research papers, its weight causing a dull throb behind her eyes. Every detail was meticulously arranged for tomorrow--the tickets secured, the outfits chose, the escape routes mapped. However, no degree of preparation could quell the fluttering feeling in the pit of her stomach. This is precisely what led Evelyn to Spencer's hotel door, perched anxiously, her knocks rapid and insistent, her gaze sweeping the corridor for onlookers.

The door finally creaked open, and Evelyn breezed inside, her voice a soft tease, "Took you long enough." Spencer, with a quick glance over his shoulder, closed the door with a silent snap.

Spencer's laughter echoed through the room, a carefree sound that made Evelyn pause. "Sorry, I was in the shower," he said, a sheepish grin on his face.

It was then that Evelyn really looked at him--his hair damp and tousled, clinging to his forehead, chest bare, skin dotted with water beads that caught the light, the soft material of his pajama pants hanging from his hips. Her eyes lingered, almost hypnotized by the sight, and rendered mute.

Evelyn's lips parted, ready to unleash a clever comeback, yet only a soft, airy giggle escaped. Without thinking, her arms encircled him, her heart thudding erratically from the sheer nearness of him.

His fingers tenderly framed her face, his laughter a comforting hum. "Evelyn, you're going to get all wet," he teased, thumb softly grazing her cheek.

"That's what I'm counting on," Evelyn replies, a coy smile on her lips as she lets her hands wander down his chest, her fingers flirting with the edge of his pants. "I believe I was promise there would be a rehearsal on the agenda this evening."

"Mmm, is that what you want baby?" He questioned teasingly, his hand guiding her gaze to his with a soft tug at her locks. "Be the good girl I know you are, get undressed, and get on the bed."

Evelyn's eyes sparkled with anticipation, her feet barely touching the ground as she hurried to the bed. Her gaze locked with his and with deliberate care, she pinched the hem of her shirt, swiftly gathering the fabric and sending is flying across the room in a fluid motion before she attended to her pants. His eyes followed her every move as he inhaled a sharp breath, his thumb brushing against his bottom lip. Her gaze followed down to his pajama pants and the tent that was growing within them, excitement growing in her chest.

She carefully turned her back towards him as she hooked her thumbs around her pants and underwear letting them drop to the floor. She crawled on to the bed, arching her back in an exaggerated motion, giving Spencer a full glance at her glistening pussy. She turned quickly, resting on her elbows as she smiled sweetly at Spence who was all but drooling at the sight.

"You're so good sweetheart," Spencer exhaled, each step towards the bed measured, the corners of his mouth lifting at her eagerness, "so pretty."

Evelyn's legs instinctively clasped together in a silent plea for relief as a wave of warmth surged through her cheeks and pussy.

"Take this off, baby," Spencer commanded, the sound of his tongue clicking in disapproval as his fingers drummed a soft rhythm against the material of her bra, "Wanna see all of my beautiful girl."

She quickly complied, sitting up just enough to unclasp the pesky thing. His large hands splayed over the expanse of her thighs, coaxing them open as he settled between them, his gaze penetrating as her tits bounced out of the cups of the bra. "God, you're so pretty sweetheart."

A soft moan escaped Evelyn's lips as she squirmed on the mattress, "Spencer, need you."

Spencer let out a soft chuckle, his hand moving closer to her heat, fingers tracing back and forth in a tantalizing motion. "Gonna take such good care of you baby."

His thumb began to rub slow circles on her swollen clit, Evelyn's breath hitched, her hands frantically searching for something to grasp on to, landing on his wet curls. He teased her slowly, his fingers moving across her soaked folds. Evelyn felt as though she could see stars as she watched Spencer begin to plant soft kisses up her thighs, getting closer and closer to where she wanted him.

She jutted her hips off the mattress, her fingers curling around his hair as if to move him towards her throbbing cunt. "Evelyn, patience teaches us to regulate our emotions. Neurologically speaking, it's linked to serotonin levels in the brain, did you know that pretty girl?"

"Spencer, please, baby put that good mouth to use."

Spencer let out a soft laugh before placing his mouth to her clit, sucking as if it were his full-time job. The moan that released from her was loud and unrestrained, her body thrusting against his mouth. His tongue curled into her, eating her out like it was his last meal on earth.

"Need you to be quiet, baby. Hotch is on the other side of this wall, don't want him hearing you, do you?" Spencer asked, his voice muffled. "Or maybe you do? Is that what you want? You want Hotch to know how I treat this pussy?"

Evelyn's body trembled with pleasure, her hands grasping against the cool sheets as if to steady herself. His hands wrapped around her thighs, pulling her closer as if to suffocate himself between them. "I-I,"

His tongue lapped greedily through Evelyn's folds, her cunt trembling against the pressure as broken moans escaped her lips. He met her eyes, peering up from his position devouring her aching pussy.

"Spencer I-oh, fuck, I'm so close," Evelyn moaned out, her eyes rolling to the back of her head as she humped against his face, his nose brushing against her clit every so often. "I can't, I'm gonna-"

A knock at the door caused Spencer's motion to freeze, a panicked gasp releasing from Evelyn's lips as her orgasm dissipated into thin air.

"Reid, are you up?" Hotch's voice, firm and unexpected, pierced the silence. Evelyn's mind was a whirlwind of foggy thoughts, her body reacting before her brain could catch up. Beside her, Spencer's limbs flailed in a hasty attempt to feign alertness, both like deer caught in headlights.

"Oh my god," Evelyn hissed, her hands flying to shield herself. She leaped from the bed, her eyes darting desperately around the room for her scattered clothes.

"Just a second!" Spencer called to Hotch. Meanwhile, Evelyn snatched the nearest shirt, one of Spencer's and yanked it over her head. It was a clumsy dance, one that nearly ended with her sprawled on the floor, tripping over the bulky obstacle of his go-bag. "Get under the bed."

"Under the bed?" Evelyn's voice was a hushed blend of disbelief and urgency. Spencer returned her gaze with an unwavering stare. "God, you're lucky you're so good with that scholarly mouth of yours."

"Radio waves... they're the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum," Spencer began, his voice a low hum as he paced the confines of the room. "First predicted by Maxwell in 1864," he continued, more to himself than to Evelyn. Her brow furrowed in confusion. "And they--"

He was cut off as Evelyn interjected. "Spencer, why are you giving me a physics lesson right now?"

"I'm trying to, uh... calm down."

Evelyn's gaze traced the path of Spencer's, her eyes light up at the sight of the tent still evident in his pants. A soft giggle escaped her lips, a delicate sound in the quiet room. Their eyes met once more, and she exhaled a prolonged, "Oh," the syllable stretching out as brought a hand to her mouth.

"Just get under the bed."

Evelyn's laughter was a soft echo, quickly muffled as she deftly maneuvered herself under the bed. Her breath caught in her throat, the only sound the creak of the door swinging open.

Spencer was met by Hotch, his figure framed by the hallway's dim light. "Reid, can I come in?"

With a subtle clearing of his throat, Spencer managed a casual tone, "Uh, yeah, sure, of course."

He swung the door fully open, his expression carefully schooled into one of practiced composure. Hotch stepped over the threshold, his eyes sweeping over the room. Spencer's gaze flitted after his, a silent prayer of gratitude that the room bore no trace of Evelyn's clothes.

"I just wanted to talk to you about tomorrow," Hotch stated, his voice betraying none of the scrutiny his eyes had just performed.

"Sure, what's up?" Spencer asked, the words slightly pinched at the edges, his voice climbing a register.

Hotch's arms locked across his chest like a barrier. "This undercover operation is delicate, and we can't afford any... complications."

Spencer swallows hard, his eyes darting to the bed for a fleeting second. "Of course, I understand."

With a casual lean against the desk, Hotch's features relaxed just perceptibly. "I know you understand, but it's not just about the operation. It's about perception too. Evelyn's already under a bit of scrutiny."

An awkward cough escaped Spencer, a clumsy veil over the tension he felt, knowing well that Evelyn hung on every word. "Right," he responded, an unspoken understanding that they were discussing her father.

"Gideon set a high bar, and it's clear Evelyn is rising to meet it," Hotch begins, his voice steady, a tinge of pride in his tone. "She's carved out her own space on this team, a fact we all recognize. But rumors don't always favor the truth, and any suggestion of her involvement with another agent could be damaging..."

"There's nothing unprofessional going on, Hotch," Spencer quickly countered, his voice a swift defense.

Hotch raised a hand, a gesture of pause and consideration. "I'm not accusing you of anything," he clarified, his voice firm yet fair. "I'm just asking you to exercise caution," he articulated. "For her sake. She has a bright future, and it shouldn't be jeopardized by baseless chatter."

Under the bed, Evelyn's brain was in overdrive, dissecting every word, her mouth suddenly dry.

"I understand."

"Good," Hotch affirmed with a supportive squeeze on Spencer's shoulder. "Goodnight, Reid."

"Yeah, you too."

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ponder-the-orb · 2 months

Text

The definition of home

Saw the epilogue where Gale is still 100% down to marry mind flayer Tav. And so THIS was born.

Pairing: Fem (illithid) Tav/Gale

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, post-game (pre-epilogue), Gale would still love you if you were a worm,

Word count: 4.6K

Summary:

“Have you really thought about the things I cannot give you?”

She reaches out and parts the folds of his mind, her own face impassive and wet through his eyes. “This.” She concentrates, projecting the image of her former self, naked and wanting, into his mind. “Or this.” Another image of her elven body, now heavy with his child. “Or this.” She twists the image until it’s the two of them elderly and grey, their withered hands clasped together.

Such pictures are not hard to conjure for her. Once, they were her own wants, the things she’d dreamed about a lifetime ago now. All the things she can’t be.

After the Netherbrain lay in the Chionthar and they’d found one of the city’s unscathed inns, she’d simply sat in the dark as he slept and contemplated just how truly alien she was compared to him. All the parts of her he’d loved, the places he’d whispered his devotion against– they’d gone. There was nothing left that could fit together, not as lovers should.

Read on AO3 or below

***

She had never thought that she’d call a wizard’s tower her home. Before, they’d seemed like such uninviting places: lofty, solitary and always exuding such an obnoxiously foreboding aura — perhaps to match their owners she’d once presumed.

It turns out, she’d been half right as this particular tower very much matched its owner. Gale had not exaggerated when he’d described its comforts. Every single floor was dedicated to either good literature, good food or good rest — and while it was as cluttered as an addled mind when they’d arrived a few days ago, it had been a strange sort of gift to sort through the mess and dig into the person he’d been before.

It had been a greater gift still to see him so at ease for the first time. Every discarded elixir or scribbled note had a story, one told with bright eyes and eager words- free from the poison of that Netherese orb or the expectations that had once festered so cruelly within him.

Tonight, as with most nights since her arrival, she’d retired to her favourite desk in a comfortable corner of the library. It’s a shadowed spot nestled between towering bookshelves, a thousand tomes watching her like a leatherbound forest as she writes. The window is half open in front of her, Waterdeep itself glinting in blue and silver splendour beyond. Her new city. Her new home.

It’s almost strange how that word has evolved almost as much as she has recently. For most of her life, it had meant the bustle of Baldur's Gate. It’s still somewhere she finds herself thinking of often, the wonky streets, the cobalt waters, how there was such a strong scent of ale and stone and smoke wherever she went.

For a while it had also meant a continuously moving campsite, barely a few paces ahead of the Absolute’s horrors. Those memories of dirt and stale bread and shared bedrolls still bring a joy to her, despite the peril that stains them. They’re pieces of her, pieces that slid into place and changed her down the fabric of her soul.

Even now it’s a little difficult to fathom exactly who she’d been before she’d been abducted.

She looks to the small mirror propped up on the desk, really scrutinising the reflection. All the same elven features stare back, from the sharp angles of her face to the points of her ears — yet there are still details that don’t quite seem to fit properly.

More doubts crop up as she takes in every inch of visible skin. Had she always had this many freckles? Are the scars on her shoulders new or old? Are the shadows under her eyes usually this deep?

Was this the face he fell in love with?

“Have you finished your guest list yet?” Gale calls from closer to the hearth. He’s reclined in an armchair, eyes glued to some massive compendium on psionics he’d picked up almost an hour ago. He waves his hand and the fire blooms brighter, perfuming the air with a stronger scent of bark and spices.

The glow illuminates those handsome features in a softer gold. She feels herself warm a little at the sight.

“Yes. Here,” she replies, picking up the paper next to her and floating it over with a flick of her own wrist.

He cocks his head as it lands between the pages of his book. “This is really everyone you wish to attend?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve put Omeluum and Blurg at the top. I am rather curious as to what the Society would consider an appropriate wedding gift.” He smiles and turns back to his reading. “One would hope for a rare magical artefact of some kind but we may have to be content with an exotic selection of mushrooms.”

“Our correspondence has been a great help to me,” she says, turning back to the mirror and concentrating on how her mouth forms the words. “And they said they’d be delighted to attend under the guarantee they will not be attacked the second they enter the city.”

She can understand their worry. It had scarcely been a fortnight since the city had been saved but the illithid invasion is already legendary news across the entirety of the Sword Coast. She’d seen multiple mind flayer corpses kicked into waiting fires, whispers about parts of their bodies being sold for high prices to wizards and alchemists spreading along every single street.

It scarcely mattered. There was never going to be any outrage over that.

They were monsters after all: soulless, mindless, evil creatures, ready to enslave everyone who didn’t fit their image. After such destruction caused by the Absolute, it would be foolish to not be ready to kill one on sight.

She hears him sigh and shut the book in his lap. “There’s really no one else?”

“I’m very sure that is everyone who will want to come.”

There’s a quiet shuffle and his face appears in the reflection behind her head.

“You know, you really don’t have to do that,” he says, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “I know how much effort it is to maintain.”

“I will need to do so for the wedding. It’s practice.”

He squeezes her shoulder gently. It’s a familiar comfort. “It’s just us, my love. You can be yourself.”

She exhales and closes her eyes, finally pulling her illusion out of both their minds. When she opens them again, her true form looks back. All her bright colours have faded, giving way to taut grey skin, a pulsing stretch of pale brain matter on either side of her head and four long tentacles. The textbook image of a freshly birthed mindflayer.

The slick pebbles of her eyes catch his in the mirror, but he doesn’t flinch.

“There you are,” he says, patting her shoulder again. “Was it tiring to hold it for so long?”

She turns in her chair. “It is just you and I in here. When there are others, it will be harder to distort their perceptions of me.”

“You don’t have to do that for the ceremony either if you don’t want to,” he continues softly, sitting on the loveseat opposite her desk. “I’ve already spoken to several clerics and after a lot of explaining a few of them are happy to-”

“It’s easier this way,” she interrupts. Her voice is stronger now that she’s speaking directly into his mind. The lack of vocal cords had taken a few days to get used to when she’d first transformed but now she can scarcely think of another way of communicating.

He leans forward in the chair. “It’s not about what’s easier. It’s about what you want.”

“What I want is for our wedding to not be interrupted by a group of angry citizens, terrified that there is a mind flayer in their city.” She can almost count the people who know of this tower’s new tenant on one hand, only ever leaving under the cover of night and wrapped in several layers of clothing to hide herself.

Despite Gale’s assurances, she knows she’s not ready to fully explore the city yet and neither are her new neighbours.

His small smile doesn’t fade. “No one is going to hurt you. Plus I think you’re more than capable of defending yourself.”

She nods and floats over to the fire, the flames highlighting the deep grey tracks in her hands. “Perhaps it would not be so bad. I heard that it is good luck to have at least one murder at a Waterdavian wedding.”

Gale chuckles. “I think we already have all the luck we need.”

A long beat of silence passes as she faces him again. She can see another thought twisting in the front of his mind, clear as any parasite. It would be no trouble to reach in and find out for herself, but she stops.

Waiting is the human thing to do , she reminds herself.

“Is there something bothering you about the wedding?” he eventually asks.

“Nothing in particular,” she replies and begins to methodically float various piles of books back to their places on the shelves. “Perhaps only that we do not need such a large cake when only one of us can eat it.”

There’s another moment of quiet, a slightly more uncomfortable one this time. She can feel the way his eyes bore into her, even as she avoids his gaze.

“You’re a poor liar, even now,” he says. The chair scrapes behind her and she hears him pad over. “Can you be completely honest with me please? You haven’t seemed overly enthused about any of this.”

She halts her book sorting. “You want this. I want you to have it.”

“I meant what I said before. We do not need such a ceremony if you’d prefer.” His voice drops when she doesn’t answer, gentle as an embrace. “To many it is an unusual situation, but those that matter will understand.”

“That is not what I am concerned about.”

He closes his eyes. “Then tell me. You are not exactly the open book you were before. Forgive the wording but, I have never found reading someone so tricky.”

“Precisely,” she says, turning to him fully.

She takes his hand in hers, so delicate and pale in comparison to each of her long clawed fingers. It would be so easy to break his skin with but a caress, tear all the soft places to ribbons without even meaning to.

“Gale, are you truly sure that this is everything that you desire? What we have can never be any definition of the word traditional or domestic , at least by the standards of Faerûn. What you want is something you envisioned with my previous self and that is not someone I can become again.” She pulls her hand away, something akin to a sigh projecting from her mind. “It is also not a form I ever wish to return to.”

That was her one fear before evolving — the permanence of it. She could save everyone, save him but forever be branded a monster.

That was before the universe opened like a flower before her eyes.

The moment she changed, all that abhorrence dissolved into astral dust. The walls of her mind opened, possibility upon possibility flowing through her until the bounds of space and thought seemed such novel concepts. Gone were her aches, her bruises and the limitations of such a weak shell, replaced with the thrill of being able to bend the world around her with but a thought.

How could she have ever been scared of these gifts? Of such wild beauty?

But elegance to one can so easily be an atrocity to another. It was the first feeling she’d tasted when her mind had opened, as deep and sour as vinegar.

Part of her still wishes she couldn’t have immediately known that reaction belonged to Gale.

He folds his arms at her words. “I know all that.”

“Have you really thought about the things I cannot give you?” She reaches out and parts the folds of his mind, her own face impassive and wet through his eyes. “This.” She concentrates, projecting the image of her former self, naked and wanting, into his mind. “Or this.” Another image of her elven body, now heavy with his child. “Or this.” She twists the image until it’s the two of them elderly and grey, their withered hands clasped together.

Such pictures are not hard to conjure for her. Once, they were her own wants, the things she’d dreamed about a lifetime ago now. All the things she can’t be.

She’d seen it in his dreams that night too: visions of him pressing his lips to the places that were tulip-soft, tonguing the sweetness of her skin, slipping his hands under swathes of white lace to touch her — each beautiful thought piercing like a needle of ice to her mind.

It was the night she’d wondered if such caresses would feel the same now. The same night she’d realised that illithids cannot cry.

The walls of Gale’s mind suddenly slam down like a portcullis.

“Out!” His shout reverberates around the library as he swipes the air in front of him.

She floats backwards, almost pushed by the force of his thoughts.

“Do not do that again.” he whispers, the words breathy and broken like he’s just taken a blow to the stomach.

She turns her face back to the fire, mind burning with regret.

“I am sorry. I only wished to show you the truth.”

“The truth,” he says flatly. “Do you really believe that I didn’t think through our future? Or rather that I was lying to you and myself when I said that I wanted us to stay together. I’m honestly not sure which of those options is more insulting.”

She sighs and wraps herself in a new form— him, from their first meeting.

“It’s a process known as ceremorphosis and it is to be avoided .” She wags her finger as she speaks in a perfect echo of his voice. “Day one, fever and memory loss. Day two-”

He holds up his hand, cutting her off. “I remember what I said.”

“That was only a few weeks ago. Is it surprising for me to wonder why you have had such a sudden change of heart?” she says, fading back to her illithid form.

“Because of you ,” he answers, exasperated. “You chose this and you saved us, saved everyone .”

She shakes her head. She’d never thought that rationalisations could hurt more than an outright rejection.

“Yes, I was instrumental in stopping the Absolute and it may be the greatest thing I will ever achieve. But awe or gratitude are not reasons you have to stay with me.”

“If I recall correctly, I was also fairly instrumental in that.”

“You also offered up every other option to me evolving, even using the orb,” she continues, suddenly finding it hard to keep her voice so even in his mind. “And I am not sure whether your own death being preferable to this or you still hanging on for Mystra’s forgiveness feels worse.”

She immediately tastes his hurt at her words.

Mystra isn’t someone they’ve discussed much since her arrival here, but it is not something she can simply cast a veil over and forget. His previous lover was a Goddess , a being described as more wondrous than the light of the weave itself, beautiful and terrible as a storm.

The very statue of Mystra herself had once sat at the desk she now calls her own, a cruel and shapely reminder of what she has to live up to.

It had tactfully been moved one morning before she could blast it into a thousand pieces.

“Do you really believe that is what I was thinking?” Gale utters after a moment. His expression splinters like glass in front of her, the frustration around him turning colder- hurt.

She immediately wants to take it all back. She wants to lie and say she was angry and jealous and pave over this whole evening with a sweeter candied drawl about the wedding.

She fights it, knowing this conversation is long overdue for them both.

“The more foolish part of me wants to say no. But I cannot,” she says as calmly as her mind will allow.

She holds back her power as much as she can as he silently processes her answer. She can see the feelings churning behind his eyes, but it feels wrong to sip them now. She can handle his anger, his realisation, his wish for her to leave– but not his pain.

“Tell me the truth in its entirety, regardless of what you believe my feelings will be,” she urges gently. “Regret will fester between us otherwise.”

He runs a hand through his hair, closing his eyes. “The only regret I have is not realising sooner that her forgiveness boiled down to me blowing myself up at a more convenient time,” he finally says in a firm whisper. “I didn’t care a jot for it then and I do not now.” When he opens them again, there’s a stronger look set there. It pins her to the spot as he takes a step forward.

“The truth in its entirety, very well. You already know that when we first set out, our main objective was to stop this very thing from happening, so of course I was scared when you chose it. In all my studies on ceremorphosis, the same thing was emphasised repeatedly: that the host is completely destroyed, soul and all. What remains is merely a husk and there is nothing left of the person they were.” He pauses and takes a shakier breath. “Even if it damned the world, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.”

The air feels somehow quieter as his confession hangs between them. She stays silent, waiting for him to gather himself.

“But that didn’t happen,” he continues, his voice a little more resolute. “It took a minute, but after you changed I could see it. You still looked at me the way that you did before. You even made a joke about wanting to taste smoother brains than mine,” his smile softens, eyes glossier the firelight. “Perhaps you are a new kind of illithid, or maybe there is even more we need to learn about them. But I can definitely say that I never thought that a mind flayer could feel ashamed.”

She bristles a little. “I am not ashamed.”

“Then why are you trying so hard to push me away?”

She looks back to her desk, the reflection of their strange pairing shadowed in the mirror. “I will not be the reason you cannot have everything you want.”

He grabs her hands as she begins to float away.

“I have said it before. I am many things, but I’m not coy nor am I a liar. I made a promise that you will always be enough for me. That has not changed and it never will.” He strokes her palms in a familiar pattern and memories of her sitting with him in star-spun visions of the outer planes drift to the front of her mind. She holds onto the image, remembering the warmth on his face when he’d told her the first time, the light and love so clear in his eyes.

It’s the same look he has now, the same feeling unfurling hot and unyielding in the pit of her stomach.

What she’d give to hold onto it forever.

“I doubt this was what you imagined when you made that vow,” she answers quietly. Her tentacles shiver as she moves her head as if to prove her point.

They both look down at their joined hands for a moment, before he brings one to his mouth and presses a long, warm kiss to her wrist. “You can pry into my mind and seek my true feelings on the matter if you wish, but after everything that has happened to us, there are really only two questions I have about your new form.”

He lets go of her hands and lightly cups her shoulders.

“Firstly, do you love me?”

Her head snaps up. “Of course I do.” Her response is immediate, the airiness of her voice almost breaking at such a thought.

After all she’s said tonight, she knows it is not a completely unfair question to ask, but hearing even the tiniest curl of doubt in those words feels like a greatsword carving straight through the space where her heart once lay.

“Before, I always believed that illithids were simply not capable of any type of real emotion, other than mindless obedience I suppose. But I could not have been more wrong.” She looks down at herself as she speaks, taking in everything from her feet hovering a few inches from the ground to the pinkened tips of her tentacles. A monstrosity through and through, but one that she’s proud to be.

“I know it can be hard to see. My face is… grotesque to many and emotions can be difficult to show when you lack even the basic attributes to form a smile. I will never sing nor weep nor kiss again but that does not mean the desire to do so has left me. And the feelings I had for you, they too have evolved with me.” She pauses, trying not to stumble under the intensity of her words. “I did not realise that love could run this deep inside of me. I can remember everything so clearly : the strength of your passions, the beauty of your kindness, all you are, all you have done for me. There is not a second I do not hold dear.” She hesitates as she reaches up, still so keenly aware of the razor-sharp claws protruding from each finger. He meets her halfway instead, leaning in to press his cheek to her palm.

It’s such a simple gesture, one she’d done maybe three dozen times when she was still elven. It’s a stronger feeling now – every sensation against his skin settling firmly into her memory.

“Gale, it is no exaggeration when I say that you are everything .” She traces the familiar trail from his eye to his neck as she speaks, where the edges of the orb had once cracked his lovely face like porcelain.

He leans into the touch, just as he had three dozen times before. “And now that you’ve had time to settle into this body, even with the tentacles and the talons, do you still feel like you ?”

It’s the question she had pondered herself for weeks now, one that she’d already been asked repeatedly by practically everyone… everyone but Gale.

And for the first time, she has a firm answer.

“Yes, I do,” she says, pressing each word clearly into his mind. His face breaks into a wider smile as she looks back up, one that she wants to paint her dreams with should she ever remember how to sleep.

“It is curious in some ways,” she continues, “I do not feel as if anything has been taken from me, rather added– perhaps because I have no higher purpose to serve as the rest of my kind do. I am no slave, no thrall and I have no wish to conquer this world, at least no more than before.” She huffs out a small laugh, the first in what feels like a lifetime. “The desires I had then are still those that I want now.”

“And what are they?” Gale asks, still resting his face against her hand.

She pats his cheek. “ You ,” she gestures around them with her other hand. “This.” She looks to the window, watching the nighttime bustle of Waterdeep gleaming below. “And perhaps more adventuring when the time is right.” When that time may be she isn’t sure, but she knows she wants it – wants it all. She wants to feel every inch of the Sword Coast against her skin, seek new ways to use her mind, love in every physical and abstract way she can fathom until both of them have experienced all joys and pleasures possible between them.

“That sounds perfect to me,” he says, twisting to kiss the palm of her hand.

She sinks into the feeling of his lips for a long, wonderful second before letting go. “You really do not think that you will ever wish for more?”

She already knows his answer. She can taste it in the air between them- rich and sweet like honeyed wine. Perhaps there is still some shred of her old mind that lingers, one that wants to hear him say it one more time.

He hums for a second before gently gripping one of her tentacles.

“You are the person I love. The person I want to be with,” he says, his hand leaving a pleasurable warmth as it slides up the length of her. She doesn’t notice the lower portion reflexively curling around his arm until his face is but a hair’s breadth from hers. “It is true that this has required a bit of an adjustment. Our relationship will be one of the mind for the most part, but there’s more than one way to be a family… and to be intimate.” He bends down, letting his lips follow the trail of his hand until they rest against her forehead.

“I doubt the world will ever fully accept this.” Her voice wavers with an unfamiliar pleasure as he continues his slow exploration of her.

His answering laugh tickles her skin. “As if I give a damn what the world might think. To know that you care for me is the only reassurance I’ll ever need.”

He leaves a lingering kiss between her eyes and the whole room blooms in pink around her.

“Thank you, ” she says as does it again.

“For what, my love?”

She presses her forehead back in her own imitation of a kiss. “For everything. For opening your home to me.”

He looks down with heavy-lidded eyes. “Home is with you: wherever that is, in whatever form that is. And you should never, never doubt that.” He leaves one last kiss against her face before stepping away.

“Plus, I never realised how fascinating the field of psionics could be!” She quickly pulls her tentacles back as he grabs the book he’d been reading. “You are a veritable treasure trove of discovery– that the power of the mind can rival the weave itself in certain ways has made for such an amazing study. Texts on the subject are fairly rare and, as I have come to realise, inaccurate. Not many have had the privilege to see the power up close and I’ve already got several papers planned on the subject.” He turns back to her, his expression softer. “Provided you would be my co-author, of course.”

She drifts over, studying the masses of notes scrawled in the margins of the text. “Dekarios & Dekarios,” she muses. “We would certainly leave quite the author’s note. But I believe it would be best to have the wedding first or I fear you will be too distracted to plan such festivities.”

He chuckles and carefully puts the book down. “True. In that case, I suggest we return to that at once.” He pulls another chair up to her desk, smiling as he gestures to the empty one next to him. “Shall we?”

It quickly becomes an open secret in Waterdeep: the wizard and his illithid companion. Questions fly as to the true nature of their partnership, of the work they do, the ways such a being is kept satiated in the city.

And if they are spotted on the evening streets or in the quieter corners of the Yawning Portal, the same answer is always given by both of them.

Their tower is open to any who seek knowledge. Simply knock and be welcomed into their respite from the bustle of the city.

Their office. Their oasis.

Their home.

***

I take back what I said before, THIS is the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written.

#bg3 #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 gale #my writing #gale #Gale would still love you if you were a worm

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sanjithesimp · 11 months

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♡ video girl ft. jeon jungkook♡

a/n: i’ve been waiting to write for jk for sooo long and until now i had time to write it.

warnings: nsfw (minors DNI).fem reader. pwp. unprotected sex. masturbation. oral sex (f! receiving).creampie. degradation kink. fingering. mirror sex. mention of alcohol.

summary: jungkook being a soft dom? yesss pleaseee

taglist: @sweet-sourhotcoco , @lvrjjoyyy

playlist suggested to listen while you read this <3

you were his favorite of all. he would get so excited whenever he got a notification that his favorite cam girl was live. sometimes he even thought he was falling in love with you. it was just the way you looked so pretty on the screen, he loved the little heart tattoo on your left hip he thought it looked so pretty on you, he dreamed of leaving small kisses on it, your soft moans were music to his ears as you fucked yourself with your fingers.

sometimes he wondered how you would feel on his dick, the mere thought of it made him so hard that it was almost painful. he would fuck his fist until ropes of cum would smear his uncovered abs. never in his life he would expect to have you in his bed, and fuck you until you couldn’t move anymore.

the memory of how you casually met was all blurry, mostly because you both were under the influence of alcohol. you don’t know exactly how you both started dancing but you liked the way his arms held you tight as you moved to the rhythm of the music.

you hadn’t really noticed how hot he was, the way his right arm was covered in tattoos, his raven hair and that lip ring was making you feel heat in between your thighs. and by the way he kept looking at you, he also liked the way you looked.

and in your mind you thanked your friend lisa for lending you her favorite mini dress, it definitely was working its magic.

the alcohol in your system made you bold enough to lean in closer and kiss him, he kissed you back, his hands on your ass and his tongue exploring inside your mouth. you could feel the hunger in both of you, the way his lips would travel to your neck, his teeth grazing your skin.

“by the way, i’m jungkook” he said breathless, a smirk drawn across his face.

“i’m y/n” you replied, also breathless.

“y/n, could i interest you in getting out of here?” he said, and without hesitation you nodded and let him guide you out of the crowded club. you would later explain your friends about your sudden disappearance with a total stranger.

“this is it” he said once you got to an enormous building, it was elegant and modern. he then guided you to the elevator, where he pressed the button with the number 20 in it, and once the doors closed you continued what you had been doing back in the club, one of his hands traveling under the hem of the dress, caressing your clothed cunt, feeling the wetness on your lacy thong.

“fuckkk” he whispered against your skin “this wet and i haven’t really started with you” he snickered. you moaned as his fingers started playing with your clit over the fabric, even though you were worried at any moment anyone could see you.

once you got to the 20th floor, he guided you inside his apartment. it was minimalistic and very bright. the windows covered most of the apartment, the view was amazing, and you thought about how incredible would be to wake up and see the sunrise.

“you like it?” his voice startled you.

“yes, i love it” you said, still mesmerized with the view of the stars shining and the city lights.

“i love it too” he said looking at you, making you feel heat on your cheeks. so you pulled him closer to you.

“then do something about it” you whispered in his ear.

he then held your waist as you wrapped your legs around his waist, he walked to his bedroom and plopped you on the bed with ease. when you turned your head to the left there was a big mirror in front of the bed, you bit your lip.

he got rid of your dress in seconds, leaving you almost naked in front of him, you were only left with the small lacy thong. he then started getting rid of his clothes, revealing the rest of his tattoos and his toned abs that were to die for.

“you’re so fu-” he suddenly recognized the little tattoo on your left hip, the pretty heart tattoo. he suddenly lost his words, was he dreaming? it couldn’t be possible that this was just a coincidence.

“is everything ok?” you furrowed your brows, he was frozen. something was wrong, maybe he realized that you weren’t what he was expecting.

“y-yeah, it’s just that…are you bunnygirl ?? ” you were now surprised, how could he possibly know who you were…was this some kind of joke? your head started spinning.

“i- how do you know that?” you were worried, maybe he was one of those creeps that followed you all around and coincidentally found exactly where you were. “i think i should go…” you said.

“no, no please…i just saw the small heart on your hip, and well that’s how i knew it was you…sorry if i made you think i’m a creep” he replied, suddenly worried and embarrassed.

“its just that i’ve found myself in so many situations where creeps follow me around and sometimes it’s hard to know…” you said.

“it’s ok, look i’m sorry if i made you uncomfortable, i can take you home if you want to.” he said, sitting next to you and giving you back your dress.

“no, i want to stay…i really want to” you said throwing the dress somewhere in the room “i think it’s cute you recognized my tattoo” you smiled and laid back on the bed.

“i got it when i was 18, my mom almost killed me because of it but i thought it was really cute” you added, suddenly forgetting the awkward moment you had a few seconds before.

“i think it looks so pretty on you” he said, rubbing the skin of your hip softly with his thumb. then he removed the last piece of clothing on you, your wet cunt on full display for him. he then kneeled in front of you, he spread your legs and placed his head in between them.

“you’re so fucking wet” he said and started living a trail of kisses on your thigh until he got to your cunt, he then used his fingers to spread your folds apart. he started giving open mouthed kisses to your cunt, his tongue playing with your clit as he tasted your sweet juices. he couldn’t get enough of it, he was addicted, hearing your loud moans as he fucked you with his tongue.

his fingers and tongue worked magic, there were few men that made you cum but no one had ever made you cum this hard, making you squirt all over his mouth, as he kept on rubbing your swollen clit.

“you taste so fucking delicious” jungkook said after cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand, he looked so hot, his hair all messed up, his eyes filled with lust, sweat beads on his forehead. you pulled him close to you, your lips crashing into his and tasting yourself as you melted into each other. his cock felt hard against your belly, he must have been so worked up after eating you out, poor thing, you wanted to do something about it.

you slipped your hand under his boxers and started pumping his cock, from base to tip, precum smearing all over his length. he was big, more than what you expected. you could feel the veins around his cock, he whimpered as you pressed your thumb over his slit, rubbing small circles around it, making you giggle.

“fuck, you’re going to make me cum if you keep doing that” jungkook said in between breaths.

“i’m sorry, am i being a bad girl?” you pouted, teasing him. “are you going to do something about it?” you continued.

“so it’s that how you want to play? you’re going to beg me to stop…” he said and without saying anything else he guided you and pushed you infront of the mirror.

“look at yourself, all messed up and i haven’t even fucked you” he was right, your hair was messy, your makeup was smudged and you were flushed. “now keep your eyes on the mirror, i want you to see for yourself the little whore you are…” he said, you knew he was definitely going to ruin you.

you never thought he would be so cruel like that, but you liked it. you liked how he could be soft and gentle, but also rough and demanding. it turned you on.

he started teasing your entrance with his tip, sliding it all over your folds. you couldn’t wait to feel him inside of you. you clenched on nothing from the anticipation, but he was just playing with you. he had a devilish smile drawn across his face whenever he made you whimper or moan, just by teasing you.

he was right, you were such a whore, thinking about his big cock filling you to the brim, making you moan until every single neighbour could hear you. his rough hands touching you everywhere.

“what are you thinking about, baby?” he whispered in your ear, his lips grazing your earlobe. “are you thinking about my cock?” he said as he pushed his tip slowly inside of you, finally. but suddenly he slipped it out, your eyes closing from frustration.

“what did i say? you have to keep watching” he was enjoying this a little too much, but he also couldn’t wait to feel the warmth of your walls around his cock. he dreamed about this so many times, more than he would like to admit. but he was just enjoying making you beg.

“please…jungkook, fuck me” you begged him.

“that’s all i needed to hear, baby” and with that he slipped his cock inside you, inch by inch, feeling your walls stretch and adjust to his length until he bottomed out. making you both moan.

he then started thrusting in and out of you, his hands on top of yours as you were pressed against the cold mirror. he loved watching his cock disappear inside your cunt, your juices combined with his precum. it was a thousand times better than what he imagined you would feel like. your cunt clenching around him, and how he felt like your cunt was made for him and only him.

your breath ghosting over the mirror as jungkook increased the pace, ripping out the most lewd sounds out of you. he was proud of it, and he was going to make sure that whenever you went live the only thing you would think about was his cock inside you. you felt the coil on your belly tighten as he rubbed his fingers around your neglected clit, sending electricity through your spine and making you arch your back.

“fuck…l-like that, jungkook…” you managed to say, as you watched his fingers move faster. he knew you were close, but wanted it to last just a little bit more. even though he also was close to his orgasm too.

he fucked you into oblivion, making you see stars as he spilled his cum inside your cunt until the last drop. you both were a mess, so after a few minutes, jungkook pulled out his softened cock out of you and carried you to his bathroom. you took a shower together and after putting on some clean clothes you plopped on his bed. and after talking for a bit you felt your eyes heavy and you both dozed off.

#jk smut #jungkook x y/n #jungkook smut #jungkook x fem reader #bts smut #bts x reader

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voxofthevoid · 7 months

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Time Travel Fuck-It Wednesday #5. This thing is now over 43k, and I have half of it left to write. I don't think the word count of the second half will be as high as the first half, assuming the plot doesn't mutate on me again.

It better not mutate on me again.

CWs: References to Getou's death, human remains, murderous thoughts between lovers, Gojou being a bit of a clown, and implied suicidal ideation on Yuuji's end

The rest of December isn’t so pleasant.

As Christmas Eve creeps closer, the household becomes more and more tense. Yuuji spends most of his time with his grandfather, alone now that Kenjaku’s finally gone. Satoru stops taking him out on missions, starts filling up his own days with them.

But he finds he can’t stay away for long, and the boy who comes home to him night after night looks at him with tired, unwavering eyes that say he can’t either.

There’s a finger stashed in the innards of this house, its miasmic aura smothered by three layers of seals.

Satoru’s not waiting for anything anymore, but he’s still waiting. Yuuji simply thinks they haven’t found the final finger, and they don’t really talk about it, but these days, there’s an air of desperation in the way he touches Satoru, pressing bruises into his flesh when they fuck and skimming delicate fingers along his skin in the aftermath, that’s more telling than any kind of fear. It’s no kinder, how he sometimes looks at Satoru with a wide, unblinking stare, like he’s drinking him in by the eyeful.

Satoru tries not to return that desperation in kind, but whenever he reaches for Yuuji, he finds himself gripping too hard and pulling too fast, and after he limits the touches and even the time spent in this house, there are the nights. It’s not just the sex, which is wild and violent but devastating in all the wrong ways. It’s also the way Yuuji stares at him till he falls asleep, a palm splayed on Satoru’s chest or throat. It’s the way he writhes closer and closer in his sleep, body slotting against Satoru’s like it was born to and trembling gently as Yuuji sleeps through dreams that slick his skin and quiver in his throat. It’s the quiet mornings, the silence too heavy for even the wet sounds of their bodies to penetrate.

He can’t fuck Yuuji happy, Satoru knows. But there’s a hunger in his flesh that’s mirrored in Yuuji’s, and no amount of touch will sate it, not with the inevitable hanging over their heads, but they try and try and try, and when daylight comes, they both run away.

It won’t last. It can’t.

Satoru tries not to think of the finger, of what he’s waiting for.

And then it’s the twenty-fourth of December, and they’re both home somehow, but Yuuji’s been holed up in his room—rarely used, more guest room than Yuuji’s ever since he started sleeping with Satoru—since morning, and Satoru’s been alternating between haunting the backyard and stalking around the living room.

He always comes to a stop in front of the shelf, its only significant occupant a small, sparsely decorated urn.

There’s not much in there. It took Satoru a long time to realize that he’d even grabbed a fistful of Suguru’s ashes. When he opened his palm, they were strangely wet. Half, he gave to Shouko. He meant to spread the other half in some river, wash his hands clean in the most literal sense, but he kept putting it off for so long that he had to stop fooling himself and just accept he was keeping this for good—a little part of a piece of his heart, suitably charred and marred.

“Happy anniversary,” Satoru murmurs—to Suguru, to himself, to another version of the boy now avoiding him, to a whole host of ghosts. “I'll keep you waiting a while longer this time. Not that you’d mind. You’re in no hurry to see me, are you?”

The urn, as always, offers no answers.

Satoru stays there anyway, eyes growing unfocused the longer he stares. The elegant patterns on the ceramic fade out of view, replaced by flesh both whole and torn. Satoru’s body doesn’t cling to sense memories as faithfully as his mind stores everything he’s ever gazed at, but just this once, the sticky hot sensation of blood slicking his hands is as vivid, as real, as the images running through his head.

And then they’re gone, the present reasserting itself with a vengeance.

“Good evening, Yuuji,” Satoru greets without turning around. “I was starting to think I wouldn’t see you at all today. What’s the matter—got hungry?”

There are a few seconds of silence, pregnant with a thousand unsaid things.

“Not really,” Yuuji says eventually. Another moment and then— “I was right here.”

“Oh?”

“If you wanted to see me, I was right here.”

“Ah, but I didn’t say I wanted to see you.”

Yuuji says nothing.

Satoru cheats a little, turning the Six Eyes to the view behind himself. Yuuji’s standing at the foot of the stairs, both arms crossed across his chest in a gesture that’s more pitiful than defensive. He looks tired.

The clothes hanging loosely on his body are Satoru’s.

There’s a pang at that, shuddering to death within the insides of his ribs.

Yuuji’s expression doesn’t give much away. His eyes are still and intent, watching Satoru the way he’s taken to recently.

What do you see? Satoru wonders.

Nothing less than what he is, he’s sure. Nothing grander either. But also not all of him. Satoru’s never had that. There was Suguru and Sukuna, but he was only a boy with one and a fool with the other. There’s more than one reason death didn’t bring him peace.

Still, Yuuji’s seen enough that he should be running. Aimless, pointless, but fear and self-preservation are powerful masters.

Yet, here he is—watching Satoru, seeing Satoru.

Wanting Satoru, so badly that it streams out of his pores even now—a pulsing ache that sinks into Satoru’s own skin, burrowing into his bones.

He turns around. Yuuji doesn’t flinch.

Satoru crosses the distance between them, slow enough that Yuuji has plenty of time to retreat. He doesn’t, of course. He doesn’t move at all, not even when Satoru comes to a stop within breathing distance of him. He does tilt his head up, meeting Satoru’s eyes through a few inches of heavy air and thick fabric.

Brave, beautiful fool.

Satoru curls a hand around his throat.

Yuuji still doesn’t flinch.

Under Satoru’s palm, there’s a soft, steady pulse. No fear, no arousal. Only a flesh mirror of the dead-eyed serenity on Yuuji’s face. Satoru tightens his grip, and Yuuji’s eyelids flutter slightly. It’s almost beatific.

Satoru considers it.

The finger is there, waiting, and Yuuji is here, also waiting. Maybe Satoru was also waiting—for this day, this date. There’s a seductive appeal to ending this on the twenty-fourth of December, a day that’s already witnessed so many endings and beginnings. It’d be poetic.

Satoru could confine all his grief to one single day.

Fingers brush the inside of his wrist, the touch unspeakably gentle. It grows bolder, firmer, but Yuuji doesn’t pull Satoru’s hand away from his throat. He only holds it, with a care that says he’s afraid Satoru might be the one to break.

He says, “It’s alright, Satoru.”

Satoru lets him go as if burned.

Yuuji’s expression shifts, but Satoru never sees what it settles into, space twisting around him with a hot, howling violence that lands him a few thousand feet high in the air. It’s enough distance for his house to be a dark speck down below, nearly blending into the dark, damp green of the forested mountains.

And he can’t see Yuuji, ensconced in walls and Satoru’s own seals, but he can sense him—the lashing edges of his cursed energy carefully, resolutely softened.

Yuuji’s pulse was calm under Satoru’s palm, but his is racing in his throat, as wild and vicious as the heart lodged in his throat. Satoru presses his hand to the base of his neck, grinding the heel into flesh and bone until his lungs start to burn.

It doesn’t kill the warmth lingering on his palm, pulsing in the shape of Yuuji’s throat.

Sometimes, Satoru thinks he should never have kissed that boy.

#goyuu #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk snippets #wip wednesday #my fic #fic: everything burned

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thevampirelevi · 6 months

Text

Adventureland | Part I

Masterlist

"Flight of Icarus." (part 1/7)

cw: vampire!eddie x fem!reader, mentions of grief, mentions of blood, introduction; no actual interaction between reader and eddie (yet)

wc: 1041 ☆

After the events of the Upside Down, a confused- albeit somewhat the same - 'Eddie the Banished' crawls his way back to Hawkins and seeks refuge in the now abandoned theme park, where he one day finds an equally confused - albeit somewhat the same - you.

The horizon ahead of you resembled something of an unfinished Michelangelo project with all of its ‘cadmium orange’ and ‘cobalt blue.’ The further south you drove, the more you found evidence of a burning ‘sienna’ in the mix as well, brushed onto that plaster sky still wet from the rain earlier today. You thought if you pushed the gas just a little more, you might soon start to see outlines of God extending his hand to Adam, but you were going 55 now and the only change in scenery was that the clouds were quickly taking on a darker hue.

The sun is setting and you’ve not even touched the asphalt of the fairgrounds yet. Maybe you should have admitted that you were somewhat lost one ‘Sattler Quarry’ ago, but you were too determined to turn back now. You had your mother’s Lou Reed cassette in your car stereo, playing “Perfect Day” from side A. You could sometimes listen to the whole tape without crying, and you had already had your mind set on today being one of those days.

You were also fixed on reliving some of your favorite memories with her, which is what brought you back to good ol’ Hawkins in the first place. Before the days of factory smoke pollution and L trains, you went through a good portion of your growing pains in Roane County. Then your father’s job pulled your family of three to Bloomington, before dreams of your own pulled you out of ‘Indie’ altogether.

But now you’re back, for the first time since the funeral. Has it been a year already? It felt like only yesterday to you, but so did all of your other resurfacing memories at the very moment you drove into your old hometown. Most of which plagued you the second your car neared that playground. You didn’t dare look in the direction of the schools, it took one year in Chicago and a whole other sabbatical year in New York for you to at least try to forget every classroom you’d ever entered since kindergarten. You had to practically reinvent yourself just to be free of any of the names you’d ever been called haunting every mirror you met. You prayed you wouldn’t recognize anyone, and moreover that no one would recognize you, especially those whomst had made you hate this town in the first place.

“You’re going to reap just what you sow,” sings your janky car radio as you cruise down Morehead Street, passing an abandoned house just as the Roane County Fairgrounds come into view.

It had only just now occurred to you to consider whether or not you were dreaming as you silently sat in your car, staring past your rearview mirror and at the broken bulbs of the large and all too familiar ‘Adventureland’ sign. Last time you had caught even a glimpse of this place was in February of 1986, surely it couldn’t have been completely stranded since then?

The flecks of light snow you’d seen giving the place an almost powdered sugar finish last time, were now replaced with heavy and mangled vines, as well as wilder patches of moss. You could see that a bird had made itself a home in the ‘U’ of the buzzing sign, but there was no telling if it had belonged to the murder of crows that quickly flew away from the pavement at the creaky sound of your car door slamming once you stepped out of your station wagon.

It wasn’t the cold suddenly nipping at your nose that made you regret stepping out just as soon as you did, nor the fact that you were seemingly utterly alone. Rather, it was the slight prick of fear at the possibility that you weren’t.

Be it your intuition or not, you pushed that and all of your other worrying thoughts aside. Catching a peek of sunlight dancing on the broken glass of one of the carousel’s mirrors ahead of you, you used what little daylight there was left and the fact that there was still electricity powering the very broken sign as motivation to tread farther and approach the gates for a closer look at least.

Almost as if a sign to continue and no doubt only fueling your curiosity, you found the undone chain hanging from the rusted iron wickets of the gate to clearly have been cut with bolt cutters or something alike, as if anticipating your arrival. Determined to get at least half of what you came here for, and even more determined not to run away and cry at what might arguably be the biggest roadblock to your plans, you made your way inside the at least somewhat abandoned theme park.

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆───── ⋆⋅ᓚᘏᗢ⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

The sound of metal scraping against the gravel of the ground made Eddie’s head snap toward the direction of the park entrance hundreds of feet away. Of course, thanks to his annoyingly heightened senses, he’d heard the sound of slightly balding tires screeching to a halt before that - but that itself wasn’t a rare occurrence here.

Occasionally, someone would journey too far past Forest Hills, only to find a more and more desolate and straight up abandoned version of Hawkins. But, like clockwork, they’d all turn right back around and rejoin the rest of society. This, along with the scavenging raccoons in the trash cans and squirrels climbing up and over the fences, or even the whisperings of things lurking in the woods nearby, were all sounds that Eddie had learned to ignore. In fact, most of his time here was spent trying to ignore all signs of life.

But this rare sound, a sound so rare he’d stopped worrying about locking the gates back up long ago, meant that not only was a human nearby, but now they were coming closer.

So close, in fact, that he could smell the iron in her blood and hear just the faintest ‘thump, thump, thump,’ of her heart synchronizing with the steps she made drawing nearer and nearer to his hiding spot; his favorite ride when both he and Adventureland were alive, ‘Flight of Icarus.’

And man, Icarus sure was flying too close to the sun.

#eddie munson x reader #eddie x reader #x reader #eddie x fem!reader #eddie x female reader #eddie x you #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x fem!reader #vampire!eddie #vampire!eddie x fem!reader #y/n #stranger things #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things eddie #adventureland #flight of icarus

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ehatnow · 6 months

Text

Heres yet another thing ive been thinking abt to much

How did shit go down in the Mirror World:

DL1: Dark found Shadow and just kinda followed him around, helping out where he could. After seeing Shadow beat up Umbra (SDDD), he basically just adopted him. (He had a lot of help from Umbra)

Adventure: Dark Mind comes in, and things get depressing

DL2: Swordsman doesn't fight Shadow, instead the Animal Friends do

Super Star/Ultra: Essentially the same as how it went for Kirby, just Marx is a lot shyer and didn't wish to rule over Popstar. Also Dark didn't try to start a revolution, he gave the Halberd to Mirror Daroach

DL3: Dark Mind's influence starts to grow and Dark gets corrupted??? Mind controlled?? I dunno. Anyways Shadow fights Dark instead of Zero (i misspelled Zero like three times btw)

Crystal Shards: Never met Ribbon, instead went on a mission with Dusk (Mirror Bandee) and whatever I decide to call Mirror Adeleine to fix the Dimensional Mirror. Didn't fight 02

Amazing Mirror: No I'm not explaining this one, nothing would be different

Squeak Squad: Mirror Daroach isn't a thief, so SS could literally never happen.

RTDL/DX: Crown (Mirror Magolor) goes to Shadow and Co. asking them to get his crown back from Landia. Landia is trying to revive Dark Mind. They beat up the dragon, get Crown his crown back (lol) and wet cat redemption arc never happens

TD: Raz (Dark Taranza. Raz is a nickname Dark gave him) plants the Dreamstalk with the help of those weird flower people, and gets Shadow and Co. to help him kill Sectonia. Mirror Sectonia was elected to be president of Floralia and became a dictator. Mirror Sec almost achieved her goal of taking over Popstar, getting closer than her reflection. The only reason she didn't was because Kirby killed Sectonia. Raz then became king of Mirror Floralia.

Robobot: Mir Susie finds Shadow after the Ark does its whole thing, saying that she wants to take down the CEO. Shadow agrees to help her, and Dusk and Umbra tag along. Mir Susie tells them that she learned that Dark got mechanized, and that she would help them find him. When they get to the CEO's office, they fight Max, (Mir Haltmann who still lost his memories. But like. Almost all of them. He forgot that he was the CEO before, he forgot he had a daughter etc etc.) who then goes back to working right after. Mir Susie then reveals that she was actually insane the whole time, pulling out a mechanized Dark and sending him to kill them all. After Dark loses, she willing gives up her soul to Star Dream, and that whole thing happens. Mir Daroach pulls up in the Halberd to help and Mir Susie dies

Star Allies: Literally nothing happened for them

Forgotten Land: Essentially the same as it was for Kirby, just that Dark joined the Beast Pack and Shadow fought him at the end instead of Umbra

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nihils-trolls · 4 months

Text

In Darkness, Wailing

Catill Eidwyn | Wisp's Hollow | Present Night

Dancing lights flick across a pitch-black canvas. Red, yellow, green and white- they swirl in their flight, the light they shed traveling seemingly forever as nothing stands in its path. Suddenly, they separate and disperse into tiny, glittering pieces that scatter across the darkness.

The millions of twinkles hang in intricate patterns, the spaces between them seeming to hold them in their current place.

And yet, something shifts in that emptiness. It writhes in anticipation. In response.

Also sitting amongst the vast nothing, a pure white cat gazes upon the activity taking place just above it. Its four, wide and piercing yellow eyes take in every detail and attempt to process their meaning. It lets out a pained yowl, and begins to bend and contort. Another yowl from somewhere else joins in chorus, and another. And another. They crescendo, becoming discordant as a distinctly different set of screams joins in. Something not like any creature, nor speaking being.

The poor beast’s fur begins falling in clumps, its skin beginning to ripple underneath it all. A black tendril reaches out from nowhere to latch onto the feline-

Catill wakes suddenly, slowly dragging herself to sit up. A decorative, lacquered bowl sits shattered in front of her, and the tablecloth is absolutely soaked with some sort of black fluid. She feels a sharp pang in her stomach, and then in her head and chest as well. Her memory is foggy, and she doesn’t remember how she got here, or what she was doing. But falling asleep at the table doesn’t sound like something she’d do normally.

She attempts to rub the sleep from her eyes, smearing something wet across her face. In fact, her whole face feels weirdly sticky and it makes her want to crawl out of her skin. Catill pauses- resisting the urge- to bring her hand down and look at it. A dark, resinous substance streaks across the back of it. Looks almost black, but fades into murky yellow.

She brings herself to stand. She needs to look at her face, right now.

But standing too fast was a bad idea. Catill’s head starts to spin, and she nearly falls over. Her chest and head throb in pain once again, but she manages to stay upright long enough to get to a decorative mirror hanging in the hall.

Screaming. Gods, the fucking screaming. They ring in her ears again, reminding her of the horrible dream she just had. Catill leans against the wall in an attempt to support herself, panting. Upon gazing at the reflection, her expression twists into a pained grimace.

The same gross fluid stains her entire face. She looks like she hasn’t slept in several nights with the bags under her eyes and wrinkles lining her brow. Her hair is a mess and she’s paler than usual, even.

Something is horribly wrong. The wailing, the feeling horribly ill, the dream- she wasn’t one for divining in that fashion. Dreams were fleeting and there was little chance of remembering details. But clearly, this was a warning. For what, though?

… Her chest feels heavy again, getting another sharp, almost burning pang in the center. It hurts to breathe for a moment, and then it’s gone. It feels almost like-

Mana exhaustion. But that doesn’t make sense, she thinks. She’s barely done anything. The scene at the table suggests she was viewing the stars at some point, but that doesn’t wind her like this.

Catill shambles further down the hall, headed to her bedroom. There’s another familiar feeling to this affliction, one that she hasn’t felt since she was five or six sweeps old. It’s ancient. Musty. Rotting. A tug on her, and an uneasy feeling of being watched. It does nothing to make her feel any better, nor assuage any worries.

She slides open the door, making her way over to collapse into a pile of pillows on the floor. It’s too early in the night to properly sleep, but some rest is definitely in order.

There’s no solving whatever this is on empty energy reserves.

---

The goldblood barely managed to take care of herself. Her body felt heavy, and she just wanted to crawl back to sleep during the whole endeavor. Though, she managed to scrub the guck from her face and find something to eat.

Now all that needed to be cleaned up was the table. Catill finds her way to the kitchen, grabbing another tablecloth from a closet on the way. The bowl was unsalvageable, and the stains on the old cloth were a mix of ink and the same residue from before. Definitely not worth trying to wash out. She wraps everything together and tosses it in the trash.

… Was it always this dark in here? A somewhat unsettling feeling fills the air, and it's noticeably cooler in the room. Catill studies the changes, noticing a shadow swaying back and forth- then it stops. Something is definitely amiss. Catill squints to adjust her vision, focusing her other senses as well. It becomes abundantly clear to her that her hive is inundated with magic- of her own variety.

It's just… strange. Concerning, even. This, combined with the omen, and the reminder of that thing from sweeps past. It's almost as if it's coming to haunt her again.

Maybe she should call someone for help. There aren't many others she keeps close, but there are others more prepared to handle this than she is. Someone like…

Catill's face scrunches at her thought. Absolutely not. Not the fun police. They don't need to be bothering people in the village, and she doesn't want to deal with them.

No, she'll try to figure this out herself for now. If anything, there is one troll she doesn't mind reaching out to. But she hopes it doesn't come to that.

For now, the cat troll shuffles back to her room to try and sleep again. Before nodding off, she sends out a few messages to her quads to let them know she's not feeling well- passing back out shortly after.

#nihil writes #catill eidwyn #a black veil. a countenance fallen.

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theindescribable1 · 9 months

Note

Saw that one anon about a creepy dream a little while ago, and wanted to pitch in with a little retelling of my own, prologued by how the morning afterward went. Sorry if any of it sounds a little off—I’m not exactly an author, but I’ll do my best.

3:19 AM I woke up, slick with sweat. And I’m not talking about wet in the pits or wet in the brow. I’m talking scalp wet, sheet wet, and at that hour, an hour already lost in a new year—shivering wet. I’m so cold my temples hurt but before I can really focus on the question of temperature I realize I’ve remembered my first dream.

Only later after I find some candles, stomp around my room, splash water on the old face, micturate, light a sterno can and put the kettle on, only then can I respond to my cold head and my general physical misery, which I do, relishing every bit of it in fact. Anything is better than that unexpected and awful dream, made all the more unsettling because now for some reason I can recall it. Nor do I have an inkling why. I cannot imagine what has changed in my life to bring this thing to the surface.

My guns sure as hell were useless, instantly confiscated at sleep’s border, even if I did manage to pick up the Weatherby before my credit ran out.

An hour passes. I’m blinking in the light, boiling more water for more coffee, ramming my head into another wool hat, sneezing again though all I can see is the fucking dream, torn straight out of the old raphé nuclei care of the very brainstem I thought had been soundly severed.

This is how it starts:

I’m deep in the hull of some enormous vessel, wandering its narrow passages of black steel and rust. Something tells me I’ve been here a long time, endlessly descending into dead ends, turning around to find other ways which in the end lead only to still more ends. This, however, does not bother me. Memories seem to suggest I’ve at one point lingered in the engine room, the container holds, scrambled up a ladder to find myself alone in a deserted kitchen, the only place still shimmering in the mirror magic of stainless steel. But those visits took place many years ago, and even though I could go back there at any time, I choose instead to wander these cramped routes which in spite of their ability to lose me still retain in every turn an almost indiscreet sense of familiarity. It’s as if I know the way perfectly but I walk them to forget.

And then something changes. Suddenly I sense for the first time ever, the presence of another. I quicken my pace, npt quite running but close. I am either glad, startled or terrified, but before I can figure out which I complete two quick turns and there he is, this drunken frat boy wearing a plum-colored Topha Beta sweatshirt, carrying the lid of a garbage can in his right hand and a large fireman’s ax in his left. I’m scared alright but I’m also confused. “Excuse me, mind explaining why you’re coming after me?” which I actually try to say except the words don’t come out right. More like grunts and clouds, big clouds of steam.

That’s when I notice my hands. They look melted, as if they were made of plastic and had been dipped in boiling oil, only they’re not plastic, they’re the thin effects of skin which have in fact been dipped in boiling oil. I know this and I even know tje story. I’m just unable to resurrect it there in my dream. Stiff hair sprouts up all over the fingers and around the long, yellow fingernails. Even worse, this awful scarring doesn’t end at my wrists, but continues down my arms, making the scars I know I have when I’m not dreaming seem childish in comparison. These ones reach over my shoulders, down my back, extend even across my chest, where I know ribs still protrude like violet bows.

When I touch my face, I can instantly tell there’s something wrong there too. I feel plenty of hair covering strange lumps of flesh on m chin, my nose and along the ridge of my cheeks. On my forehead there’s an enormous bulge harder than stone. And even though I have no idea how I got to be so deformed, I do know. And this knowledge comes suddenly. I’m here because I am deformed, because when I speak my words come out in cracks and groans, and what’s more Ive been put here by an old man, a dead man, by one who called me son even though he was not my father.

Which is when this frat boy, swaying back and forth before me like an idiot, raises his ax even higher above his head. His plan I see is not too complicated: he intends to drive that heavy blade into my skull, across the bridge of my nose, cleave the roof of my mouth, thr core of my brain, split apart the very vertebrae in my neck, and he won’t stop there either. He’ll hack my hands from my wrists, my thighs from my knees, pry out my sternum into tiny fragments. He’ll do the same to my toes and my fingers and he’ll even pop my eyes with the butt of the handle and then with the heal of the blade attempt to crush my teeth, despite the fact that they’re long, serrated and unusually strong. At least in this effort, he will fail; give up finally; collect a few. Where my internal organs are concerned, these too he’ll treat with the same respect, hewing, smashing adn slicing until he’s too tired and covered with blood to finish, even though of course he really finished awhile ago, and then he’ll slouch exhausted, panting like some stupid dog, drunk on his beer, this killing, this victory, while I lie strewn about that bleak place, der absolute Zerrissenheit. I’m awful at German, I don’t know why I bother even putting it here. Anyway back to the dream, me chopped up into tiny pieces, spread and splattered in the bowels of that ship, and all at the hands of a drunken frat boy who upon beholding his heroic deed pukes all over what’s left of me. Except before he achieves any of this, I realize that now, for some reason, for the first time, I have a choice: I don’t have to die, I can kill him instead. Not only are my teeth and nails long, sharp and stromg, I too am strong, remarkably strong and remarkably fast. I can rip that fucking ax out of his hands before he even swings it once, shatter it with one jerk of my wrist, and then I can watch the terror deep into his eyes as I grab him by the throat, carve out his insides and tear him to pieces.

But as I take a step forward, everything changes. The frat boy I realize is not the frat boy anymore but someone else. At first I think it’s my first crush Kyrie, until I realize it’s not Kyrie but Ashley, which is when I realize it’s neither Kyrie or Ashley but Simone, though something tells me that even that’s not exactly right. Either way, her face glows with adoration and warmth and her eyes communicate in a blink an understanding of all the gestures I’ve ever made, all the thoughts I’ve ever had. So extroardinary is this gaze, in fact, that I suddenly realize I’m unable to move. I just stand there, every sinew and nerve easing me into a world of relief, my breath slowing, arms dangling at my sides, my jaw slack, legs melting me into ancient waters, until suddenly my eyes on their own accord, commanded by instincts darker and older than empathy or anything resembling emotional need, dart from her beautiful and strangely familiar face to the ax she still holds, the ax she is now lifting, the smile she is still making even as she starts to shake, suddenly swinging the axe down on me, at my head, though she will miss my head, barely, the ax floating down instead toward my sholder, finally cutting into the bone and lodging there, producing shrieks of blood, so much blood, and pain, so much pain, and instantly I understand Im dying, though I’m not dead yet, even if I am beyond repair, and she has started to cry, even as she dislodges the ax and raises it again, to swing again, again at my head, though she is crying hardwr and she is much weaker than I thought, and she needs more time than I thought, to get ready, to swing again, while I’m bleeding and dying, which now doesn’t compare to the feeling inside, also so familiar, as the atriums of my heart on their own accord suddenly rupture, like my father’s ruptured. So this, I suddenly muse in a peculiarly detatched way, was this how he felt?

I’ve made a terrible mistake, but it’s too late and I’m now full of fury & hate to do anything but look up as the blade slices down with appalling force, this time the right arc, not too far left, not too far right, but right center, descending forever it seems, though it’s not forever, not even close, and I realize with a shade of citric joy, that at least, at last, it will put an end to the far more terrible ache inside me, born decades ago, long before I finally beheld a dream the face and meaning of my horror.

And then, well, I woke up. 3:19 AM, sweaty and cold, yadda yadda yadda. I still think about that night sometimes, housing one of the few dreams I can actually recall with any sense of clarity, though I wish it had been something more pleasant. Though I guess we all wish for that kind of thing, eh?

Ok I'm just gonna say this took so long to read..

I won't spoil this post, its lkke a whole horror movie. No spoilers or a summary, read it yourself guys! HAHA! Pure evil.

#Damn...

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murderous-muse · 6 months

Text

wholesome stuff

The sounds of children giggling echoed in the forest. Kanoa squealed when Briar splashed water onto her, pouting. "Aww, you got my clothes wet! These were my favourite ones too!"

Briar scoffed, hitting Kanoa on the back playfully.

"C'mon, you have twelve of those shirts and thirteen of those sashes. It's not the end of the world."

"Says you. You've hoarded twenty of those long shirts you like to wear."

"Hey! We are not talking about my hoarding problem!" Kanoa rolled her eyes. "Hmph. Let's just go back to the village and eat something."

"Fine. Also, I totally won that fight."

"Did not!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Briar yawned, blinking slowly. Kanoa sat behind him, brushing his hair. "Hey, Bri? Is it just me, or are the village people acting weird?"

Briar hummed. "Think its just you. They seem normal to me." Kanoa shrugged and continued brushing his hair. It was already late. They could see the two moons in the sky already. Kanoa tied the ribbon. One ponytail down, one more to go. "Kan?"

"Hm?"

"You know I love you right? You're the best sister in the world."

Kanoa laughed, smiling at Briar in the mirror.

"Aww, of course I do. Love ya too, Bri."

"Hey!! Only I get to say that! I'll- I'll trip you on the way to the lake if you say it again!"

"Yeah, yeah, sure you will. I love you too, idiot."

Briar huffed, crossing his arms and looking away from the mirror. Kanoa finished tying off the last ribbon. "And... done! Look at how pretty you look!" Briar looked in the mirror. "Eh... I still don't like ponytails." Kanoa put him in a headlock, ruffling his hair affectionately.

"Hey! Stop tha-"

"Nah."

"Stop ittt!"

Their laughter rang throughout the village.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Briar replayed the memory in his head, not bothering to wipe away the tears freely flowing down his face. It was the last memory they had before Kanoa was tricked. Their home was razed to the ground, and every resident was killed. Kanoa was oblivious to everything going on, hidden away somewhere it'd take years for Briar to find.

The image of Esther and Remiel popped up in his mind. Them. Why did they get what he should have? Why did they get to do everything Briar could only dream of doing, all with his sister who didn't even remember who he was and despised him? He should be laughing with Kanoa. He should be causing chaos and mischief with Kanoa.

Maybe that was why he allowed those villains to use his power. To distract himself from reality. "They earned it"? What a bullshit excuse. He was a stupid excuse of a spirit. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He should've just isolated himself in some empty planet far, far away.

Kanoa was better off with Esther and Remiel. At least nobody knew she was related to an asshole who acted high and mighty despite being weaker than everybody else.

Briar wiped his tears away, forcing the same crooked smile he'd worn for years onto his face. He'd better get going. If he didn't show up, Kanoa would think something was wrong because he wasn't bothering her and her friends.

Just smile, and be the person he's made himself to be for the past 200 years.

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kirencer · 2 years

Text

[Hawthorn: Chapter One]

Cedar

Summary: Cedar has always meant strength. Resilience. The ability to stand on your own for forever.

Word count: 2.1k

Relationship: Vampire! Spencer Reid x GN! Reader

Warnings: vampires, slight wet dream mention, abusive/neglectful parent, and “mild” vampire kink. NSFW SERIES 18+ ONLY

A/N: First chapter of a much-needed series. I, Kiram, the vampire Spencer king, present Hawthorn.

Series Masterlist Next Chapter

— — — — —

To say I was excited for the first day of the class would be an understatement. I was practically vibrating in my seat, eyes plastered to the board. Dracula: Intro to Slavic Folklore and Vampires was written in what one might call ‘Chicken Scratch’. It’s a course at UVA, and while it’s been taught by one professor since its start, this year, it’s to be taught by Doctor Spencer Reid.

I had vaguely heard of the name, upon further research I learned that he was an Ex FBI agent with the Behavior Analysis Unit, a genius, and he was hot. Though, from what was written about him, he didn't seem to be the kind of person qualified for teaching about Slavic folklore, an even deeper dive led me to believe that his eidetic memory and IQ alone qualified him for anything.

Plus, vampires just so happen to be my favorite thing ever. So, a pretty face talking about them wouldn't be too bad.

When he walked in, tawny curls floating around his head, shoulders pulled with confidence, and stubble coating his strong, set jaw, I realized that no matter how good of a Professor he was, I would always be unprepared.

See, I had thought that he was attractive at first, yes, but seeing him in person made me realize that the photo truly had no grasp on him. The photo from an article made him seem like … a pretty boy. What I had seen in front of me was a man, with the mirrored nose and eyes and lips of the picture, but set more purposefully. Like Doctor Reid was trying to show everyone how he could be seen; how he wanted to be seen.

What I was truly unprepared for, however, was how his eyes pierced me like a hunter bowing down a deer. My excitement grew as my knees shook instead of my body. For, at that moment, I could swear that the Professor's eyes showed red.

The rest of the hour and a half escaped me, I remember a blur of syllabuses being passed out, Professor Reid’s voice mentioning how the course would be divided into two units “The Lore” and “The Truth”, and also how this wasn’t just a Literature and Folklore class, but a Vampire class.

Before I knew it, I was back in my dorm and looking up everything I could on modern vampires and how they could relate to my Professor. There was something captivating about him - it had to be the subject he was teaching.

After all, I do love vampires. To what my grandmother said was an unhealthy extent. My father raised me as his father had raised him, a Vampire hunter, and had even warned me of them my entire life. Going as far as to train me every day of my life to kill vampires. Instead of fearing the blood-lusting creatures, I went the opposite way.

I fell into the Twilight and the Vampire Diaries frenzy, and my wet dreams very often consisted of teeth grazing my skin and red eyes. Though, this was hidden deep within me. Had my father ever learned of my turn from my training to hate everything no longer living as a human, he would destroy it. And me.

The next few days passed as quickly as the hour and a half and before I knew it, I was back in the classroom. A few minutes passed and I settled in as Professor Reid started his lecture.

“Now, who here has ever consumed any kind of media that had vampires? Or, at the very least, creatures like vampires?”

People around the room tentatively raised their hands, mine shot up as well. I wasn’t ashamed at all in my love - obsession - with vampires. The professor nodded. “Some of you are lying about having not. That's okay! If you’re in this room, you have consumed some kind of media or the other that sparked your interest.”

Oh, no. Oh God, no. Not only was Doctor Reid an attractive professor, but he was also a good one who had captivated me beyond what I deemed capable. When he said the word sparked, his hands pushed away from each other in a little motion as if to simulate an explosion. That little motion enamored me to no end. My brain tickled, as though it was searching for something missing.

“The vampires we will learn about will be associated with slavic lore. Many of these will then tie into how we currently view vampires as a collective culture, specifically within media,” Professor Reid leaned back on his desk with a confident smirk.

“It’s interesting, really, that we typically associate vampires with bats. The reason for that is actually more convoluted than one might think. You see, in Slavic folklore, vampires allegedly possessed the ability to transform into butterflies. Which, if you ignore most anatomical and biological classifications, butterflies and bats are sort of similar, no? One is certainly more ominous than the other, but who is to say which creature would be more appealing to the undead.”

My eyes fluttered as I scrawled down the words that flowed so elegantly from my professors’ lips. Every single word felt chosen with purpose and stride. There was confidence in his knowledge as he went through the first bits of pieces of information most of the people in the room with me would ever learn about the lore of vampires. Biting to change, dual souls (“hearts”), and so much more of the best things. True, a lot of my knowledge was from the militarian-like vampire hunter training my father instilled in me, but the rest was from my own late-night research on secure browsers - hidden from where my dad could find it.

Soon, just like the first: it was over in a flash. The lecture hall was practically empty before I had realized, scrawling down the last of Professor Reid’s notes and then, without my better judgment, decided to walk up to the Professor. He was skillfully and fleetingly moving his things to a brown leather side-satchel type bag. I was planning on waiting patiently for him to notice me, however, he turned around to face me as soon as I made my last step towards him.

There was this look on his face of curiosity, almost a hint of familiarity, and something that I truly could not place. Though the feeling must have been something I had seen before, as it almost made me bristle like a frightened tabby. It wasn't that I was frightened, but rather more so that I was startled. Every cell of my body scrambled for me to run but the small ache that spread from my legs begged me to stay.

“Do you have an urgent question …?” Professor Reid inquired softly, biting into the pillow of his lip before continuing, “Sorry. I do not believe I know your name.”

My mouth fell open and a squeak left it. I wasn’t the kind of person to be hyper aware of other people's teeth. I mean, good dental hygiene and tooth conditions were often highly restricted to higher classes in America, but I couldn’t help but stare at the pristine white that left imprints on his bottom lip for a split second before his tongue swiped over it. What I truly stared at though, were his incisors. They seemed … off .. as if they were a tag longer than what should be normal. It was not unheard of for a human, as I noticed they were not at all long enough to perhaps be the kind of lengths that vampires would have, but they were very noticeable.

“Um … Sorry.” I blurted out. My eyebrows furrowed as I promptly turned around to exit the room. My professor’s voice rang out from behind me.

“I didn’t catch your name!”

Yet I was already too far away, my head enamored with how my professor’s teeth would feel bared against my neck.

(i was lucky that he wasn’t a vampire! my heart sped up and even a civilized one would have pounced at the rush of blood in my veins, as highlighted by my pulse)

⟺

Or, I was the most unlucky person in the world. As I neared my dorm, the first thing my eyes caught onto was the flier taped to it with the word NOTICE plastered in big red font. Sticky dread flowed through my fingertips and into my toes as I skimmed the words.

I should have known. My dad was missing and the college funds he set up for me already drained. When the board fees hit, it didn’t pass through.

I was lucky enough to have a scholarship for my classes but it did not cover room and board. I had three days to either find my funds or move out. Well, with virtually no ability to make even a fraction of the needed amount, I would instead need to find a place to stay and hopefully for cheap - the small part time cafe job I had would be enough for a couple hundred a month of rent and groceries for me to live off of. With tips, I wouldn’t be too bad but it’d be cutting it tighter than I wanted.

I knew how to take care of myself, though. With my fathers profession of monster hunting, he would often disappear for months at a time on a job.

I wasn't able to focus too much on it, though, seeing as I had a shift in an hour and needed to make it to the small bakery and cafe not too far from campus.

Work wasn’t hard, per se, and the regulars were sweet, but it was just exhausting. I have always had a very good worth ethic. I just wasn’t in the proper mood today and the fear of losing my dorm. I don’t know what else I expected. My dad had never been the kind to care for others, especially caring about me. I had learned everything I ever needed. I never had a mom to teach me kindness or what my body was changing into – I had to pull myself up by my bootstraps. A mentality that only ever hurt me with every challenge I ever faced. I never asked for help in school and I never relied on anyone but myself.

Dad said he wouldn’t leave again. He lied, obviously. Lied and took the money we had saved together. Out chasing monsters that sometimes, I didn’t even think existed. Well, ones I wouldn’t think existed, had I not seen one when I was fourteen. My fathers quote unquote arch nemesis. A vampire so cunning that he blended seamlessly into the human world. I had only seen him once. I only remember the way his arms cradled me, his smell, and the red eyes. His smell must have been addictive – he smelt too good for my barely teen mind to comprehend, like sweet incense hinted with woods. Now, I know enough about pretty scents and cologne to know it would be reminiscent of Lavender Cedarwood, my favorite candle. That scent and that grip took over my teenage wet dreams. I could trace back my taste in men and most certainly, my love for vampires to the one specific creature deplored by my father the most.

I don’t remember why he held me – only that the last thing on my mind was fear. It was the first time I had been held in so long that I couldn’t remember the last time I felt safe and protected in another’s arms.

My shift passed quickly with my mind focused on the vampire of my dreams (quite literally) and before I knew it, it was over. I had accumulated a whopping 35 dollars in tips and compared to the impending debt over my head, it was pennies to a hundred bucks.

Then, just as I was passing the communal post board, I saw it. A flier with soft little butterflies.

“Roommate Wanted:

Cheap rent. Possibility for no rent, just provide your own groceries and help with water and gas. Looking for someone to make coming home less lonely.

(p.s. I am a man and I understand that might make some uncomfortable. I am open to you bringing a friend to meet and see the apartment with you. I am also open to first meeting in a common and safe area as well as ample talking on the phone. Comfort is important to me. :] )”

And like that, I had decided to try my luck. I mean, cheap or free rent? Genuinely, it sounded like an old man or someone planning to kidnap me … but desperate times called for desperate measures.

My fingers slid over the paper, snagging one of the perforated number slips at the bottom. For good measure, I snagged all of them. Better for competition!

I stared at the little slip of paper. It was a soft, baby pink. I brought the paper to my nose. I didn't know why. Just … I needed to. And well, there it was.

Sweet cedar.

[TAGLIST: @hotchandspencearedilfs @reidgraygubler]

[join this series taglist!]

#professor spencer reid #spencer reid #vampire spencer reid #kiram loves vampires #hawthorn spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid series #hawthorn series

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underfiends · 6 months

Text

Watch Me Breathe

Posting an actual story for the first time in months. The muses and I have been engaging in extreme combat and we have finally begun peace talks. Next we will band together to torment my friends with more angst. For now, have a fluff fic of yet another batch of D&D characters. Ramal is mine, Val is @hannrenn, and the DM for these two lovely dumpster fires is @peppermintpinklemonade. Hope y'all enjoy!

There’s a chill in the air; the softest of nips on an otherwise gentle breeze. A cloud shifts, golden light chasing away those cold touches, dappling ashen grey skin with a rare brush of colour. Oranges and reds bloom in the dark of closed eyelids, so much softer than the brilliant burn of flame.

A breath in, lungs filled to burst. A breath out, and with it goes a lingering tension through corded muscle. Fingers of warmth run over dark skin and chase the breeze through even darker hair. A puff of hot air against a pointed ear; a soft tap on one arm, then the other; an echo of laughter meant only for one person, only for them, just here in this moment of calm.

When their eyes open, there is only red. A red mirrored by the petals of scarlet catchfly scattered about, bundles of leaves and flowers growing on cracked boulders at the base of a rocky cliff. The hot breath and warm fingers turn into the press of hands on their shoulders, a constant companion showing that she is still here.

The wind picks up, whistling through the trees that have grown and thrived in this deep ravine between two mountains. The cold is more apparent now, raising goosebumps on their arms. They could don their leather armour, cover up to trap the heat against their skin, but it is peaceful here. The presence of an armoured warrior is not needed among the vibrant greens and browns of maple trees and buckthorn. There is no danger beneath the strangling vines twisting over wet earth.

Red eyes drift back to red petals. There is one patch of flowers close enough to touch, close enough to see the sticky hairs all up the stem. A memory floats to the surface, of a roughened voice one hot summer day.

“See those hairs, kid? They’ll sting you if you touch them, and your hand will hurt for days.” They remember Magnus had been crouched down next to a shallow riverbed, the heels of his boots dug firmly into the rocky ground as he pointed out the vibrant red flowers. Then, as if summoned through sheer outrage, a hand had smacked him upside the head.

“You idiot! That’s stinging nettle. They’re completely different, how could you have fucked that up?” Rhetta glared down at the man now rubbing his head, hands posted sharply upon her hips. Suddenly, like the flip of a switch, she looked over at them with soft eyes and a kind smile. She folded herself to hover at their height with her eyes trained on the flower. “This is a fire pink, Ramalek. Also known as a scarlet catchfly. Don’t worry, it’s safe to touch, however the stem is a bit sticky. That’s why people call it ‘catchfly’, because it catches flies on its stem and leaves to protect its nectar.” She reached out to brush against a petal, pulling it back just enough for them to see the sheen of liquid hidden in the flower. Then Magnus had said something–the words lost to time–that had left her sputtering indignantly, and the two bickered all the way back to Magnus’s tavern.

That had been years ago, back before they’d taken their new names by the blood of the slain. Before a ghost from their past had resurfaced, had turned out to be alive. Just the thought has them feeling winded and wrong-footed; as though the world is going to slip from underneath them and they’ll wake up to find it was all a dream. Panic begins to swirl just below their skin, prickling their mind. Their fingers twitch, and then a warm hand intertwines with their own, and heat presses all up their side.

A breath in, until lungs are fit to burst. A breath out, and with it the wave of panic settles.

They know where their travel companion is; the one who is a miracle. When they return, red eyes will fight off a swell of tears. The creature of dark grey skin and black hair will don their leather armour and settle back into the role of a savage beast. But for now, Valentine is off in the distance, crouched beside a small pool of algae-choked water, touching the surface every minute or so to watch the tiny tadpoles scurry away. Ramalavikfeng can stay where they are, and their armour can stay on the ground beside them.

There is no place for anything other than peace and calm here, among the green and brown and red. At the base of a cliff, backed by a forest growing in the ravine between two mountains, looking at a brilliant red flower that is close enough to touch with a sticky stem and leaves. Here, where the wind has eased back down to a gentle breeze.

There is a nip in the air. Summer is fading, and autumn is on its way. Perhaps Valentine would be willing to visit Magnus and Rhetta.

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spines-tvo · 9 months

Note

My guns sure as hell were useless, instantly confiscated at sleep’s border, even if I did manage to pick up the Weatherby before my credit ran out.

This is how it starts:

*_* You said you WEREN'T an author? Geez, that makes my worst dreams sound like a slightly annoying breeze... Uh... I'd need, like, a month to unpack all this. Are you alright?

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astrovagrant · 2 years

Text

layers on layers. senna, a ghost moving through the void, docking to a ship adrift and dying in an area far too close to her own inherited cultural shame for comfort - what will she find? crew dead? crew gone? crew changed, and something terrible left behind after their metamorphosis? she knows how to protect herself from the null, the suggestion, the cleaving (not as in cut. as in... simply fall away from yourself, decohering as the sweet, inaudible waves - music - become all you could want, all you could ever dream of. not that there's a 'you' left to want, anyway)

and yes, there are corpses. some have the usual RCL marks, some with less standard injuries. there is also nearly a corpse, slumped over the pilot's interface, fingers barely cupped around the controls and breath so shallow as to barely stir the curls tumbling over the stranger's face.

are they a stranger, though? more importantly: that jacket. it's littered with patches and flash, locations ranging far and wide, a document and exultation of vagrancy - but the fabric, the color, the shape, which is a bit too big on this person's frame - a woman, now that senna can see the broken shape of them - she knows the jacket. in a rising wave of violent fear, she knows the person, too. she sees a young man in her mind's eye, grinning somewhat slyly at her from the side, blonde curls cut awkwardly short as he leans forward towards a ship's chemical balancing system. the jacket, unadorned, hangs a little loose on him, too, the sleeves shoved up around freckled, wire-corded forearms as he works.

this is not him. but she's... too big. too old. too... senna's disaster response works faster than emotion, a skill honed over more than two decades. she removes the woman (the girl, a missing front tooth with tongue poking through in a cheeky smile, lingers in her mind) from the console, moves her back through the nearly-zero g, pulls her so close so she can brush the hair from her face - a bloody, bruised mirror looks back at her. not the same mirror as senna's twin, lost to her now for over a decade, but a mirror that blooms hard vacuum in her chest all the same.

the jacket belongs, belonged to her love, also lost (or left behind, a sharp part of her reminds). but it seems like it has changed hands to its newest owner, who's bleeding out in her arms past the hastily-applied plast that's beeping urgent medical messages to no one. past the deep, gaping fissure on the front of her skull from which bubbling low-g rivulets of blood float - evidence of some horrible trauma that senna has no context for.

the experience kicks in. hand to side pack, stop the flow, apply pressure, remove bioplast, clear factory settings, apply to visible wound, allow for seal and feedback, clean area- it's routine. it's so practiced as to happen without thought. the freshly-applied bioplast exterior on the woman's chest is wet, suddenly, and it's not blood - distantly, senna realizes she's sobbing, glittering planets of tears congealing around her face and floating away to collide with everything around her.

another bioplast to the skull, the medical alert system going off like a geiger as it grapples with the finer details of brain hemorrhaging. the bleeding is extensive, but the low gravity and some other factor that the system cannot determine has kept most damage at bay. most. senna's body continues basic medical care; her mind is far away, viewing her actions through a dark tunnel. she cannot lose control, now. back to her ship. both of them. the thrust gravity will help the bleeding. then to the nearest station. now. move, now.

her body obeys, hands under the other woman's armpits, effortless movement through the float. the ship is too far gone, but... she will vent it, stow it, mark the location. it may be valuable, later, for someone. the weight of her new patient is nearly nothing as senna tugs her along, and the memory of a life she surrendered rises like bile to her throat. a foot on a bulkhead, and she sails through the duralock tunnel allowing the two ships to share atmosphere. airlock, closed, cycled. woman strapped into the awkward, cupped shape of the medical chair, and senna back to the controls. she has no time to spare, and lets the caravan software form a micronetwork to vent, hide, and mark the dead ship, accepting whatever synchronicity risk comes with her decision.

the other ship dealt with, she pulls away and starts the computer with the navigation to the closest station, then eases into full thrust. anxious, she returns to the medical chair, checks the plast readouts as the patient's blood pressure modifies to the new environs - too low. she needs more. senna sits, inserts a blood cleaner needle into her arm and adds one to her patient's, watches the rich red flow out of her veins and transfer over to the medical chair. the tears fall, now, subject to full gravity, and senna leans forward to sob into her unconscious daughter's bloody chest.

wyn's slack face now so poorly resembles the soft, sleeping look and round cheeks of childhood she had the night senna stepped out the door for the last time - distress and regret and a thousand other colors of loss and longing spill out into the white noise hum of ship systems and regular intervals of the plast beeping as it monitors vitals and the steady transfer of blood. her fingers comb through wyn's bloody curls, and senna leans in again to whisper a solemn promise into wyn's ear - not that she would remember. if she even survives.

after a time, senna pulls herself up and away, removes the needle from her arm. her body continues necessary tasks, mind subsuming to muscle memory. the ship speeds up, pushing the advisable medical boundaries to their limits. but wyn will make it. she must. there is no world senna will live in where her daughter dies before her - she's already lost her once.

#in which senna realizes its wyn first by the jacket which is actually originally nick'a #nick's #and then she knows wyn by the fact that they look very similar #and then senna has a meltdown while still using crisis training bc that's the life she's lived #senna #wyn #fool's gold #sorry i have not written in eons and im at work this is not like. Good

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umbry-fic · 2 years

Text

The Tree Spirit’s Secret

Summary: Martel is overjoyed whenever Lloyd and Colette come to visit her, but it always comes with the risk of a third unwanted visitor. One that continues to try and involve her in his schemes...

Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Characters: Colette Brunel, Lloyd Irving, Summon Spirit Martel, Noishe Relationships: Colette Brunel & Lloyd Irving, Martel & Noishe Rating: G Word Count: 3340 Mirror Link: AO3 Original Post Date: 15/05/2022

Notes: My birthday gift for @likes-words-and-shrimp! The third fic in the "Noishe the Wingdog" series and meant to be at the end, though I might still add more fics if I have more ideas :)

This one is kinda a crack fic :p

Previous fic in the series

~~~

“Martel!”

At the call of her name, Martel rose from where she knelt, tending to the leaves of a sapling. A sapling which at this moment was still small and weak, but carried in every part of it the dream of a future where it could tower over the land, its boughs providing bountiful shade as it gave life to all, funnelling mana into the very earth with its roots.

Two familiar figures burst into the clearing, their arms reaching to push aside the branches that scratched at their faces and open up a passageway for themselves. One following close after the other, hand-in-hand.

“We’re back!” Lloyd yelled, waving enthusiastically as he and Colette pulled closer, a light breeze ruffling their hair and sending the leaves clinging to their clothes towards the sky. On both their faces were bright smiles that attracted the attention of the flowers growing by their feet, turning on their stems to wave their heads at the two.

Held safely in Colette’s arm was a paper bag, that Martel knew would be packed to the brim with goodies. Whether it be the local delights of whatever lands they’d travelled on their hunt for the remaining Exspheres, or souvenirs from the various towns they’d stayed at, capturing the wonderful memories of their journey. Always delightful, no matter the contents.

“It’s good -” she started, heart soaring as she strode forward to join them. She was glad to see them, for they broke the constant monotony of the clearing and her daily routine - wandering, always on alert for a threat. Injecting some much-needed colour into the dullness, and teaching her how to fill the void left behind by missing memories.

That happiness fell to the ground and shattered like glass the instant the third travelling companion leapt through the trees, with a bark that broke the tranquillity like a knife slashing it in half, sending several birds screeching from their nests into the azure sky, raining feathers upon the land.

Please, not Noishe. Anything but Noishe.

“Hi, Martel,” the Protozoan’s voice echoed in her mind as he grinned, confirming her worst nightmares.

~~~

“I’ve tried everything, and nothing has worked! They’re still dancing around each other. I need some better ideas…”

She stewed silently on a tree stump, staring, unimpressed, at the Protozoan before her, wishing she could be anywhere but here. Noishe lounged on the grass, still wet with morning dew, beady black eyes trained on her, tongue lolling from his mouth. To any passersby, and indeed to Lloyd and Colette, she must have looked like she was in an intense staring contest with the giant dog-like creature, raring to win. An extremely silly one, for when did Noishe ever blink?

Tapping her fingers against the hard surface of the bark, she groaned, slumping over. It was bad enough that Noishe had dragged her out into the middle of the forest to listen to his yapping, leaving an extremely confused Lloyd and Colette behind. But to continue involving her, a noble Tree Spirit, in his inane shenanigans? She understood that she could understand him, being a Spirit and all, and was also the only Spirit he could reliably find, but didn’t he have any respect for her? To drone on and on about his insane ideas to get Lloyd and Colette together, never letting her have a moment of peace…

Not that she had anything better to do, or even anything to do at all, but still!

“Oh, oh! Maybe I should try stranding them up on the mountain alone next. Then -”

“Okay, that’s enough out of you,” she snapped, interrupting Noishe before he could cook up another terrible plan. Each one was more extreme than the last, and it wouldn’t be long before he put the two supposed “lovebirds” in mortal danger.

Had Noishe even realised that she hadn’t volunteered a single idea in the year since he’d gotten her involved in his wingmanning? Or, she supposed, his “wingdogging”? All she’d done so far was listen to him talk, his whines invading her ears while his words ricocheted around her mind endlessly. Feeling somewhat pitiful for Lloyd, who had to be at his wit’s end dealing with his dog’s sudden strange behaviour.

She could keep sitting here in silence, doing nothing and simply observing, as was her role. But surely things had gone too far, and it was time to break her silence.

“I’ll go talk to one of them right now, alright? Figure out what’s going on, and nudge them in the right direction if needed. None of this roundabout nonsense you’re doing.” She stood, dusting her lap off and grabbing her staff, resting against the trunk, before stomping off. Fingers gripping the staff tight enough to snap it in half if it wasn’t enchanted, keeping them away from wrapping around Noishe’s neck and wringing the life out of him. That would at least shut him up. “And in case you forgot, they can actually understand me!”

“I’ll leave it to you, then, Martel!” Noishe called after her, before letting his head fall to the ground.

Even if his enthusiasm was a little too fervent, a flame in a lantern that threatened to melt through the glass, she could understand where he was coming from. Lloyd and Colette were sweet to watch, showing how much they cared about each other, in every little action. They were always touching - taking each other’s hands, kissing each other on the cheek or the forehead, enjoying the comfort of each other’s embrace. Always looking out for the other, always sharing their joy and their sadness. Both of them had gone through so much to get to this point. They deserved to find happiness in each other.

After all, if she truly wanted to avoid Noishe, she could simply vanish. Let her physical form fade and hide her essence away in the World Tree, watching in amusement as he ran around in a futile attempt to find her.

Maybe she did enjoy his company, just a little. Even if he was annoying and insufferable, it was nice, to have someone there to fill the silence.

And… Perhaps after so many years of living, of seeing so many come and go, of witnessing all those close to him fall to despair… After all that, all Noishe wanted to see was a happy ending.

She would be willing to help with that.

~~~

Humming, Lloyd pushed the knife into the wood, carving out another letter on the collar he rotated in his hands.

It was always a joy to work in the silence of the clearing, the only sound being the melodic song of the birds, brushing soothingly over him. Taking shelter beneath a large tree, able to sink into complete concentration as he got the work done in record time. Leaves fluttering down from the branches above to cover him with a cloak of green, clinging snugly to his shoulders.

He wondered where Martel had gone. She’d been dragged off by Noishe before he or Colette could get a word in, and the both of them hadn’t been seen since then. Unfortunate, but it was good if the two of them had become friends - Noishe could keep her company when they could not. Maybe this was where he went to whenever he disappeared?

“Lloyd.”

He jumped at the sudden voice, barely keeping a scream down in the safety of his throat. Dropping the collar, his hands closed on grass, pulling up tufts of dirt.

“Oh. It’s just you, Martel. Warn me next time, won’t you?” he muttered, heart returning from its sojourn in the sky as he let the dirt trickle between his fingers back to its rightful place. Standing across from him was Martel, arms crossed over her chest, having appeared out of nowhere.

He swore she had the ability to meld in and out of the forest. It would explain how quickly she could move from location to location within the clearing, all in the blink of an eye, occasionally scaring the life out of him when she arrived without him noticing. Sometimes it felt like she was doing it on purpose. But, surely not.

“What are you doing?” she asked, squatting down next to him, cocking her head as she stared at the collar sitting on the ground.

“Oh, this?” He rescued the collar, a light brown and the sides smoothly filed down, shaking off the dirt that had found its way into the grooves of the letters before proudly showing it off to Martel. “Colette likes naming all the dogs we come across, and I thought I’d make collars with their names on them. Then we could put them on if we ever run across those dogs again.”

After all, Colette gave the best names ever. Any of the dogs they’d met should be able to carry the name she’d given them with pride.

“That’s sweet.” A small smile spread across Martel’s face, her fingers trailing down the side of the collar. Her smile never wavering, her tone never changing, she continued to speak. “So, how do you feel about Colette?”

“What?”

He couldn’t help but blink at the unexpected direction the conversation had swerved in, mouth falling agape. Martel should have been asking about all the dogs they’d seen on their journey, giving him the perfect opportunity to describe everything. The round dogs with pudgy limbs who tottered up to Colette, hampering for her to give them a good rub between the ears. The nimble ones who ran between her legs and in circles around her, yipping. The lazy ones who rolled over onto their backs, awaiting the heavenly sensation of a belly scratch.

And how they all barked in joy whenever Colette gave them a name, her face lighting up as she gave them even more rubs, never satisfied with just the one. Until every dog in the town had gathered around her, burying her in a swarm of fur and wagging tails.

“How do you feel about Colette?” she repeated, emphasising each word, placing her staff in her lap as she settled down cross-legged, eagerly awaiting his answer.

“Um, well…” This was all very strange. But he didn’t feel like lying to Martel, who sounded utterly sincere, even if he was still confused, his hesitation betraying his bewilderment. “She’s… very important to me.”

“Mmhm.”

“I want to ensure she’s happy. This journey is more than just collecting Exspheres. It’s about showing her the world, since she’s seen so little of it.”

His voice grew gradually softer as he went on, the words tumbling out of him without him even having to try, the memories of all that they’d done on their journey clear in his mind. A thousand shards, each warm and glowing in their own colour, every one of them a precious treasure.

A chance to teach Colette that she was allowed to be happy, to help her break out of the once-impenetrable shell she’d built around herself. Every place made all the more beautiful by the genuine smile blooming on her face, the sound of her sweet laughter touching his soul. He would continue to nurture the fragile seed of joy growing in Colette’s heart, watering it every day and doing everything in his power to protect it.

“And does she know about all this?” Martel whispered, green eyes trained on him with an intensity he didn’t expect. Like she was staring straight into the depths of his soul, able to drag every truth contained in his heart out of him.

The answer came to him easily, for it was the truth.

“Yeah, she does.”

“If not, you should - wait, WHAT?!”

Martel jumped to her feet, staff falling abandoned as she began to walk circles around him. So fast that watching her made his head spin, her hair flaring behind her as she only picked up the pace.

“Yeah, I told her everything. Simple as that.” He shrugged, swallowing nervously. Could someone walk fast enough to set fire to the leaves beneath their feet? He might just receive an answer today.

“Where was Noishe during this?” she demanded, pausing her circuit to whirl around and face him, murderous intent clear on her face. Enough to make him shrink back, holding the collar protectively against his chest.

The usually peaceful Tree Spirit, who loved to listen to their tales as she nibbled on snacks, becoming one with the clearing itself as the wind decorated her hair with petals, flowers surrounding her like children would their mother, now looked ready to commit the most unspeakable of crimes.

What in the world was going on? Things had been so strange lately. First Noishe, now Martel…?

“He was… off. Somewhere. Like he usually is,” he said with a voice he could barely keep steady, waving his arms, the immense pressure of Martel’s glare pressing on him.

“So he wasn’t there to listen to any of this?”

“Yes, but… why does that even matter?”

“Oh, but it matters immensely.” A smile began to split across Martel’s face, her fury like that of a volcano, contained for the time being. A bomb waiting for a fire to light its fuse, jumpstarting a spectacular eruption. “Thank you, Lloyd. You’ve been of great assistance to me. I will be off now. I have business to attend to. Urgent business.”

“Um, alright?” He watched her disappear into the shrubbery, the leaves bending around her to give her passage, closing behind her to swallow her whole.

He had a feeling Noishe was not going to have a very good day.

“Lloyd!”

“Gah!” This time, he really did scream, throwing the collar into the air.

Had Martel returned? Was she going to take out her fury on him -

“Lloyd, what’s wrong?” Colette leaned over him, staring down with wide blue eyes filled with concern. The collar held in her right hand, having been caught just in the nick of time, saving it from any further abuse.

“You scared me, is all.” He sighed in relief, his head falling back against the trunk. Hand gripping tight over his heart, which pounded away, showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Was he happy to see Colette. A guardian angel, swooping in to save him, and capable of protecting him against everything. Even the possibility of a rampaging Tree Spirit.

“I just wanted to ask if you’d seen Martel. I haven’t had the chance to give her our presents yet…” Colette pouted, patting him on the shoulder.

“Well, uh -”

He was interrupted by a bone-chilling howl, emanating from the deep centre of the forest. Birds flocked from the trees, flooding the sky with a massive, writing shadow that blotted out the sun, covering the land with a momentary blanket of darkness.

“Oh, was that Noishe? He must be with Martel. They’re such good friends. It’s so sweet!” Colette remarked, settling down next to him and resting her head on his shoulder. Not noticing the sweat rolling down his face as he resisted the shivers that threatened to attack him in the middle of the day. Entirely oblivious to anything that had gone on today.

“Yeah.” Blood running cold, he was glad when Colette threaded their fingers together, providing him with a warmth that could overcome all, melting the dread away. “Yeah, they’re… They’re really good friends.”

All he could do now was pray for Noishe’s safety.

~~~

There was a strange, rather unpleasant smell wafting out from the cottage that Yuan called home now. A place that Martel occasionally stopped by, whether it was to sit in silence, sharing a bottle of wine, or to chat about something mundane, chin resting on her steepled hands. It had stopped hurting as much, the dagger that stabbed his heart every time he saw her. It helped that she no longer reminded him of the wife he dearly missed - she was her own person, complete with her own quirks. The friendship they’d managed to strike up was something he appreciated, in the silence of the clearing.

Wrinkling his nose, he stepped in through the doorway onto shiny wooden tiles, firewood in hand. Martel must have been cooking, a rare occurrence. But he’d best check as to whether or not she was in the process of burning down the whole place. The dark smoke surging out of the chimney, visible from miles away, did not bode well.

“Martel? What are you cooking?” he asked when he reached the kitchen, staring in disbelief at the cauldron sitting on the stove, noxious green liquid boiling within. Tufts of fur floated up to the surface, swirling around as bubbles popped and reformed.

“Protozoan soup,” she said cheerfully, a wide smile inscribed on her face as she stirred the viscous liquid with her ladle. “Would you like to try some?”

“No. No, I’m good.” He took a step back, then another. And another, until he’d backed right out of the kitchen, blocking all view of it behind a wall.

It would be best not to get involved.

He couldn’t help but wonder, however. What had Noishe done this time, to warrant Martel seeking revenge in such a savage manner?

No matter. It was none of his business.

Not if he wanted to keep himself safe from the rage, still coldly burning in the kitchen.

~~~

A bark grabbed Colette’s attention, one she recognised as Noishe’s. He was finally back! She hadn’t seen him since he’d disappeared together with Martel, back at the World Tree, almost a week ago. It was fairly common for him to wander off to locations unknown for up to a month, and then appear at their campsite before daybreak, as if he’d never been gone in the first place.

Still, she missed him every time. Him, and the lovely sensation that came from burying her face in his soft fur, blocking out the world for just a moment. Comfortable enough for her to fall asleep right there and then, until either Noishe moved and made her lose her position, or Lloyd came to shake her awake when it was time to move.

The dog that met her when she turned around wasn’t Noishe, however. It was a similar-looking dog, of a similar-looking size - far larger than the average dog, its back large enough to fit both her and Lloyd - but its coat was a lot thinner. And a lot less colourful, the green spots gone.

“You’re a new good boy,” she exclaimed, dropping to her knees and hugging the dog around the neck. “I’ll have to give you a name, then.”

The sound of snickering floated down to her ears, making her glance up. Lloyd had his hands clapped over his mouth, doing his best to hold back laughter.

“Yeah. Yeah, give him a new name,” he wheezed, doubling over. “I’m sure he’d love that!”

The dog lay its head in her lap, whining as she rubbed behind its ears, which were even the same shape as Noishe’s.

How strange. Maybe this was really Noishe’s long-lost brother? But, oh well. Nothing could hold her back from giving a doggie a name!

“Your name is Bob,” she said cheerfully.

“Bob” thumped its tail against the ground, continuing to whine as Lloyd gave up and practically fell to the ground, overcome with laughter.

“Today has been so strange. Don’t you think so, Bob?” She hummed, giving Bob’s back a nice big rub. That was another familiar sensation.

“Do you want to come with us, Bob?” she asked, standing and patting its head.

“Yeah, Bob.” Lloyd grinned, finally poking his head up again.

After a moment of silence, the dog gave a short bark of assent, taking its position in front of them. It still sounded so sad! And its tail was drooping...

She hoped she’d be able to cheer it up along the way.

“Let’s go, then!” She set off with Bob leading the way, Lloyd following behind her, the occasional snicker from him rising into the air.

“I can’t wait to introduce you to Noishe!”

#fanfiction #one shot #tales of symphonia #colette brunel #lloyd irving #noishe #summon spirit martel #colloyd #(in the background!)

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