#love me a crag
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I'll Find My Way Back to You
(Can't find source of pic if it's yours let me know)
Astarion x GN!Reader
Prompt: A century after Tav passes Astarion comes across an artist who is oddly familiar and paints moments that seemed to be pulled straight from Astarion's life.
Thank you to @justporo for letting me use their idea. Go show them some love.
Warnings: Tav's death, brief mention of s*icide, angst with a happy ending
Word Count: 4.6k (Oops kinda went overboard)
Masterlist
“There’s no world I wish to live in without you,”
“My dear Astarion, we will find our way back to each other. This is not the end.”
Over a century has passed—a long, lonely century without Tav by his side. Astarion doesn’t understand how he’s endured, not with the void in his chest that appeared the moment he laid them to rest. The absence of his person, his love, his Tav, has left Astarion once again alone.
For nearly a decade, he found himself trapped in a state of near-catatonia, a prisoner of time within their empty home. He wasted away, the days blending into one another, each marked by a silent ache in his chest—the void left by Tav’s departure. Tears soaked into the earth of the carefully tended grave, adorned with vibrant flowers from Tav’s garden. He often contemplated surrendering to the sun’s embrace, letting its rays turn his existence to ash for a semblance of peace.
He yearned to end the pain, yet he refrained. He made a promise whispered with heavy hearts and painful sobs—a promise that forced them to confront the harsh reality that Tav would always leave first. Instead of embracing the end, Astarion wasted away, a ghost of his former self, yearning for the return of his love. Change arrived when Tav visited him in a dream; the details were blurry, but Tav’s beautiful smile was etched in memory. The sweet words in that dream eluded him, yet upon waking, a faint lightness settled within him. Astarion graced the night with a flicker of energy for the first time since Tav’s passing.
Tav would have wished for him to move on. They would have wanted him to live. The stagnant life he clung to wasn’t what Tav would want for him. So that day, Astarion gathered his essentials into a bag and set forth as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon. Only momentarily stopping to bid his love a final, tearful farewell. Since that moment, he hasn’t stopped moving.
Astarion believed Tav would take pride in the life he’s built—the good he’s accomplished over the many years. He traversed all over Faerun, from Waterdeep to Skull Crag, never lingering in one place for too long. He wasn’t the hero Tav was, but he aided towns against monsters, dispatched goblins, and took odd jobs to help however he could. Throughout his travels, he dedicated most of his time to sharing stories of Tav, ensuring their memory lived on. When he first heard the bards’ songs recounting the Hero of Baldur’s Gate, he knew he had succeeded. Now, you can’t sit in a tavern without hearing tales and melodies about Tav.
Every day, he longed for Tav to be by his side. He yearned to feel their soft skin, experience their tender kisses, and sense their warm arms encircling his waist—the echo of their laughter dancing in his ears. He missed every aspect of Tav and would do anything to see them again. Yet, the world ran out of miracles for him. Instead, he learned with time to cope, to come to terms with their absence, and keep them close to his heart.
***
Astarion traverses the dusty cobblestone of Wyrm’s Crossing and finds himself back in the heart of Baldur’s Gate—a city he’s consciously avoided for most of the century. It’s a place drenched in memories from his past life with Cazador, but mostly, the streets seem to be haunted by the presence of Tav.
His return to Baldur’s Gate remains shrouded in mystery. All he can discern is that he awoke one day in Daggerford, gripped by an inexplicable yearning to revisit the city. A compelling force tugging him down the Sword Coast, Astarion initially dismissed it as mere homesickness, scoffing at the notion. Yet, the persistent thought lingered, infesting his mind until he could no longer ignore the instinct to return.
The city remains strikingly unaltered despite the passage of time and the trials it endured. The same piss-stained cobblestone, alleyways cluttered with remnants of urban life, and a diverse array of inhabitants navigating the night. It’s an unsettling constant, especially juxtaposed against the transformation of Astarion’s existence.
Wandering through the back alleys and side streets, Astarion meanders aimlessly. Occasionally, a sight triggers memories, evoking a lump in his throat. The Elfsong Tavern, once familiar, now bears a different name and identity, a formal establishment concealing the echoes of nights spent in Tav’s comforting embrace. Bloomride Park, the graveyard, and the docks—all weave together, painting a vivid tapestry of Tav’s omnipresence.
Amidst the tumult of emotions, Astarion grapples with why he subjected himself to this emotional turmoil. The urge to retreat, to flee Baldur’s Gate before the dawn breaks, lingers within him. Yet, the itch persists, buried deep within his bones, propelling him forward. He silently promises himself the night to wander the city, and by this time tomorrow, he will be on his way to another town for another adventure.
Venturing into a dim, isolated street, Astarion observes a solitary lamplight spilling its soft glow from a store window. Peering through, he discovers a small art studio. Within, a graceful elf seems to dance with a paintbrush, each stroke deliberate yet flowing. Like a harpie song, Astarion is mesmerized and utterly captivated. He watches on silently, observing the elves happily consumed with their work. It gives him a wave of nostalgia, moments of watching Tav as they painted, unaware he was watching from the door. Astarion could almost hear the sweet hums that filled the room between brush strokes.
Then he freezes, gaze snapping to the paintings that adorn the studio, scattered reflections of his life. Images of Karlach, Shadowheart, and all the others grace the space. However, it’s the depictions of himself that seize his breath. Compelled by an unseen force, Astarion walks right into the studio. In a far corner, he sees an intimate portrayal—an embrace that resonates with familiarity.
The bell rings, and you break from your artistic trance. Startled, you look up, and there stands the pale elf in the doorway—the hero of Baldur’s Gate, Astarion—the man who has clouded your dreams for as long as memory serves. Startled, you look up, and there stands a pale elf in the doorway—the hero of Baldur’s Gate, Astarion—the man who has clouded your dreams for as long as memory serves.
The dreams began as mere fragments—white curls, sharp teeth, delicate hands. Gradually, they evolved into more vivid scenes—muffled conversations by a campfire, laughter and gentle shoves, and stolen kisses between bed sheets—private moments of a stranger, a byproduct of an active imagination intertwined with an elven crush. Or at least that was what your mother would say. Now, the subject of those dreams stands before you.
Astarion, surrounded by the art that mirrors his life, fixates on a miniature portrait. The details are hazy, yet he recalls the campfire, the desperation in his gaze, and a significant confession followed by an embrace.
You pick up a fallen brush with a trembling hand, placing it in a water cup. Asterion was just as breathtakingly beautiful as your dream portrayed, but to see him in person has your heart hammering in your chest and your breath quickening with nerves. Wiping paint-covered hands on your smock, you took a deep breath and gathered the courage to approach Astarion.
Staring at the portrait, you utter quietly, “This one’s my favorite. Though I wish I could have captured the others’ images better.”
“Tav.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The person you painted. My partner Tav, they used to paint too,” Astarion’s voice carries the weight of unspoken emotions.
“Oh, yes. They were the leader of your group, if I remember correctly. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Astarion remains silent, the canvas now a source of unbearable memories. He moves through the studio, examining the art up close. It’s weird to have your muse perusing around your gallery. It’s embarrassing to have Astarion see just how many pieces have been dedicated to him. What do you do at this point? Should you follow him, tell him about each piece and the dreams behind them? No, that seems pretentious, so you retreat to the canvas you’ve been working on for the better part of the week.
This piece was different—a symbol rather than a person or scene. Rings of unknown runes fan out in jagged edges, evoking a sense of beauty tinged with profound sadness. It disturbed you to your core, but you needed to paint it. It’s how it always goes. Once a dream pops into your head, whether it’s a scene, a person, or a symbol, it refuses to leave until you’ve laid it on a canvas. Picking up the brush, you dip it back into the red paint and continue to bolden the lines.
“Who are you?” Astarion’s voice is right behind you; you jump, knocking a pot of paint over. Cursing softly, you quickly right the pot, attempting to salvage the spilled paint. Paint isn’t cheap, and in your non-upper-class circumstances, every drop is precious.
“Oh, I’m sorry; I have been very rude,” you offer your name. “I, of course, already know you, Astarion. It’s hard not to come across the tales of the heroes of Baldur’s Gate, but I guess—” Your rambling trails off pathetically as something changes in Astarion. There’s tension in his shoulders, a coldness in his eyes. Nibbling on your bottom lip, you nervously play with a loose thread on the smock.
Astarion scrutinizes you with a piercing gaze, his eyes lingering on your face as if searching for hidden truths. The air becomes taut, charged with an almost palpable intensity. Then, as if propelled by an unseen force, he reacts like a tightly wound rubber band snapping. Reaching out, he harshly pulls you to him, bearing his teeth at you. Your stomach drops, shocked by the aggression.
“Have you been following me? Stalking me?” His voice carries a storm of anger, his grip on your shoulders unyielding, the coldness of his touch akin to ice piercing through the fabric of your being. “Don’t lie to me because I’ve shown one person that fucking scar, and I buried them.”
Your heart races, fear coursing through your veins as you whimper a response, tears welling up in your eyes. “I-I don’t know, I’m sorry,”
“Don’t lie!”
“Please, I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know; I have dreams; I don’t know why, b-but I dream of you,” your voice falters, and your vulnerability is laid bare. “I dream of you, your friends, and places I’ve never been. I’m sorry, I’ll stop, I promise.”
As abruptly as his hands seized you, they vanished, leaving you stumbling to your knees, unable to contain the torrent of tears streaming down your face. Curling in on yourself, you can’t stop the cries of apologies and promises of never picking up a brush again, of burning every last piece in the room.
Astarion looks down at you, his expression shifting from anger to a complex amalgamation of horror and something else—perhaps realization. Stepping away, he leaves you rooted to the spot. Your gaze fixed blankly out the window. Odd and conflicting emotions swirl within you—fear, confusion, longing?—all clashing fiercely. Amidst the tumult, one thought emerges with undeniable clarity—this won’t be the last time you see Astarion.
*
Astarion’s breaths come in ragged gasps as he runs through the barren streets, escaping the grasp of the haunting memories that threaten to consume him. His thoughts are a raging storm, and he pays no heed to the bewildered faces of those he rudely pushes past. The town of Rivington is a blur as he sprints through it, a desperate escape, picking a direction and refusing to stop until his body aches, halting only when the sun begins its ascent above the horizon.
In his frantic need to run, there was no consideration for shelter from the sun’s relentless rays. Mercifully, he stumbles upon an abandoned cave. Dry, dusty, and shrouded in darkness, it becomes his refuge. In a corner, he sinks slowly against the cool, rough wall to the ground, seeking solace in the obscurity.
Astarion pulls his knee to his chest, pressing his forehead against his crossed arms. Shaking and shivering, a stark contrast to the bitter summer heat enveloping the cave, he clings to his vulnerability. Eyes shut tight, jaw clenched, fingernails dig deep into his arms as if attempting to anchor himself in the reality that threatens to crumble around him.
Desperation claws at him, and he yearns for Tav. The desire to feel Tav’s warm embrace, hands crossing over his chest, pulling him close, torments him. He longs for the soft whispers of love and the gentle press of lips. Astarion can’t navigate this without Tav. He’s a mess, barely holding on, living each agonizing day, acutely aware that the best part of him is gone, and he can do nothing to reclaim it.
The cruelty of encountering such intimate moments from his past life with Tav wounds him deeply. These were moments meant for him and Tav alone. Realizing that a stranger could capture those cherished memories intended for one person alone turns his stomach.
Anger becomes a conduit for his overwhelming emotions, and the terrified look on the artist’s face is etched in his mind, an indelible scar on his conscience. Shame burns within him, a searing reminder of the boundaries he violated. Physically assaulting someone in their own space—what would Tav think of him now?
The artist adds another layer to Astarion’s confusion. The familiarity is uncanny—the excited calf raises, the almost-stumbles afterward, the nervous lip biting, puffed cheeks during deep concentration, and the mindless dancing when no one is watching. Every little thing the artist did mirrored Tav, and with all his memories physically displayed, Asterion finds himself lost in a sea of confusion. Why does this stranger resemble his love so deeply?
The bards’ tales of soulmates and reincarnation, once dismissed as mere children’s stories and fiction, now claw at the edges of Astarion’s consciousness. What if? What if Tav found their way back to him? Weirder things have happened in his long life, and the possibility plants a seed of hope within him.
Yet, he forcefully suppresses that hope. It won’t serve him, not now. Instead, he resolves to learn more. By nightfall, he returns to the city, catching the first boat to Waterdeep. After a day and some change, he stands outside the Wizards’ tower, resentment simmering as he contemplates turning to Gale, his best chance at answers.
A groan escapes Astarion as he hangs his head, and a series of knocks echo on the thick wooden door. “This better be worth it…”
The door swings open on its own into a dimly lit foyer. Astarion follows a familiar path, the cool air and faint scent of ancient tomes embracing him. He ascends the staircase with nostalgia and reluctance, each step echoing the countless times Tav and himself sought knowledge and assistance within these walls.
As he pushes open the study door, a scene unfolds before him. Gale is hunched over a worn scroll, graying hair ruffled, and a small pair of reading glasses set on the tip of his nose. The room is bathed in the soft glow of candlelight, creating an intimate ambiance. Notes adorn the margins, evidence of Gale’s ceaseless quest for understanding.
Gale looks up, a broad, warm smile gracing his features, and Astarion is momentarily transported back to the times when this sage was only a joke he poked fun at across camp. Removing his reading glasses, Gale pushes up from his desk, an air of welcoming familiarity enveloping the room.
“Well, look who the tressym dragged in. How are you, Astarion?”
Astarion stiffens as he is pulled into a spontaneous hug by Gale. The embrace is both unexpected and oddly comforting, a physical manifestation of the genuine camaraderie they’ve shared through the years. Astarion, unaccustomed to such displays of affection, awkwardly pats Gale’s back before gently pulling away.
“I’m afraid I’ve been better.”
Gale’s eyes convey concern and understanding as he gestures for Astarion to sit. The worn chair creaks under the weight of memories and the weightier burden of Astarion’s troubled soul.
“Then sit down, my friend, and tell me how I can help.”
***
Days of tireless research and a network of favors exchanged between magical acquaintances have led them to a glimmer of hope. Though not expansive, the discovery hints at the possibility that souls entwined so tightly may have a magnetic pull toward each other. A pull is so strong that souls can find each other in different lifetimes. Tales have described soulmates experiencing memories from previous lifetimes together, but they were vague at best. The specific remains elusive, shrouded in mystery, yet it’s enough to kindle a spark of hope within Astarion’s lonely heart.
Gale, ever the bore, offers a gentle reminder, “Now, just remember, if you try to force feelings before—”
“I would never!” Astarion’s retort carries a venomous edge, an unspoken warning to watch his following words carefully. Gale raises his hands in defense.
“My point is the brain is a prickly thing. It’s best not to rush anything it’s not ready for.”
“Yes, yes, you have said this five times already. Would you please activate the portal? I have an apology to make.”
Anticipation hums in the air, a palpable energy that courses through Astarion. A fleeting smile graces his lips, and for a moment, the weight of his grief is replaced by a glimmer of life.
Looking at Astarion with a fondness born of shared trials, Gale responds, “Of course, Astarion.”
With a confident shake of his wrist, he activates the magical circle, and the room is bathed in a radiant glow of bright runes, their purple luminescence dancing in the semi-darkness.
Astarion steps toward the portal, his heart pulsating with trepidation and newfound hope. However, before crossing the threshold, he turns around to face Gale, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Thank you, Gale. I will not forget this.”
“It was my pleasure. Now, I expect to meet this lovely artist sooner rather than later.” Gale’s parting words hang in the air, infused with the hope of rekindling a connection beyond the realms of understanding.
*
Back in the heart of Baldur’s Gate, Astarion swiftly navigated the bustling streets, an air of anticipation accompanying him. His purpose was clear—to reach your studio and beg for your forgiveness. A brief pause along the way allowed him to acquire a small bundle of daisies, a spontaneous choice fueled by the memory of Tav’s fondness for these delicate blooms.
As Astarion approached the studio, a surge of uncertainty clawed at him. Hesitation gripped his every step, the shadow of fear etched across his features. The fear in your eyes during the last encounter was seared into his memory. Had his previous outburst irreparably damaged any chance of reconciliation? The conflicting forces of his desire to see you again and the instinct to flee wrestled within him. Yet, he pressed forward, forcing himself down the street, and there you stood.
The scene that greeted him was a chaotic masterpiece of colors. Paint adorned your cheeks and arms, a testament to the artistic fervor that consumed you. Your hair, a cascade of untamed strands, framed a face that mirrored both exhaustion and creative passion. Astarion had a sudden urge to brush the strands away and press a soft kiss to your cheek, something he often did with Tav.
Your weariness was palpable—shoulders slumped, eyes half-lidded. Perhaps, he pondered, he should postpone this encounter, allowing you the reprieve of rest. The realization that he might be the last person you wanted to see compelled Astarion to take a step back, an unspoken retreat.
But just as he moved to leave, your eyes jumped up to meet his, you froze mid-stroke, and Astarion couldn’t read your expression. He should go. Why did he think this was a good idea? He’s just about to run when you nod for him to come in. Obliging, Astarion found himself standing awkwardly within the studio; you went back to painting. Your brush danced across the canvas, applying a vibrant shade of blue in deliberate strokes. Astarion’s attempts to break the silence faltered, his words dissolving into the room’s stillness.
“What are you doing here, Astarion?” The steadiness in your voice pierced the calm. You tried to hold on to your anger for the man all week. But upon seeing him standing so lost on the street had your resolve crumbling. You can’t deny the mild excitement that fluttered through your veins upon seeing him again.
His voice, momentarily lost, found its way back. “I-I came here to apologize for last week. My behavior was deplorable, and I wish to make things right.”
A wry amusement flickered in your eyes as you evaluated the bouquet, now slightly worse for wear under his tight grip. “And you believe a bundle of broken daisies would win you my forgiveness?”
Astarion, caught off guard, looked down at the bruised bouquet. “Um…well, I was hoping for roses, but they were fresh out.”
A snort escaped you as you put down your paintbrush and approached him. A tentative touch on his forearm transferred the flowers from his grasp to yours, eliciting a shiver down his spine. The longing to reach out is strong, but Astarion holds still as you retreat.
Intently studying the daisies, you began to divide the bundle into two piles. Astarion watched silently, recognizing echoes of Tav’s essence reflected in your actions. While understanding that you were not Tav, the profound sorrow gripping his heart seemed to ease in your presence.
“Half,” you declared suddenly.
“Pardon?”
“Half of the daisies survived.”
“And where does that leave us?”
With a theatrical flair, you pondered the question, pacing the room. “That, good sir, is the question. What is my forgiveness worth? I did luck out; daisies are my favorite, so you’re a step farther than roses would have gotten you.”
Astarion, grasping the playful undertone, decided to play along. With a hand on his hips and a wicked smirk, he responded, “Well, I am a pretty lucky man. Now, please, I beg, what more can I do to gain your forgiveness?”
You hummed softly, tapping your chin. You keep Astarion in suspense for a moment before you suddenly turn to the man. “How about…I get dressed, you take me out to dinner, and we’ll go from there?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” The agreement hung in the air, a hope for something more lingering.
***
The dinner evolved into an evening stroll, a seamless transition from pleasant chatter to playful banter. It was an unexpected evening, but the time spent with Astarion was so easy, so familiar you didn’t want it to end. Reading about the saviors of Baldur’s Gate was intriguing, and dreaming of a vampiric elf held its allure, but nothing compared to the tangible presence of the real Astarion.
Astarion embodied the epitome of perfection – handsome, intelligent, and endowed with a wit that had you giggling all night. He was the quintessential gentleman, the embodiment of every mother’s hopeful wish for their child.
What started as a single date quickly snowballed into a series of enchanting encounters – one date led to two, then five, until you found yourself drawn into his orbit every week. The pace was exhilarating, and being around Astarion felt like being charged with an electric current. It was not just addictive; it was a whirlwind of happiness, and you couldn’t help but revel in it.
If one indulged in whimsical tales, the idea that Astarion might be your soulmate would have crossed your mind. His ability to read you so intimately sometimes felt like he delved into the depths of your mind.
The dreams persisted, evolving into a kaleidoscope of memories that intertwined your moments with Astarion and a phantom era where someone else shared his company. Astarion, at times, would cast glances at you as you transferred another dream to canvas, an anticipation lingering in his eyes. Despite his attempts, he couldn’t veil the disappointment when the visions resulted in nothing more than another painting adorning the wall.
Then, it occurred on a serene spring day, three years since Astarion first entered your studio. The sun had yet to set, and you found solace curled up with Astarion. Limbs tangled, chests pressed together, hands intertwined – a tableau of intimate connection. His cold nose nestled against the crook of your neck, his white curls playfully tickling your nose.
Behind your closed eyelids, soft images of a forest clearing unfolded – Astarion shirtless, beckoning you towards him. Something clicked, and suddenly, the foreign memories that greeted you each night became a mosaic of your own experiences. The floodgates opened, overwhelming you with a lifetime of moments – kisses beneath the stars, laughter resonating around a campfire, and heart-stopping close calls with death.
Astarion often spoke of Tav, a robust and kind soul who played a pivotal role in shaping him. He wouldn’t be who he is today without them. You now knew a bit better; yes, you had nudged him along the way, but his growth was his own, and you couldn’t be more proud. To think of the years he spent without you, the grief he must have had to push through. If the roles were reversed, you don’t believe you would have been strong enough to keep going.
Startled from his slumber, Astarion found your body descending upon his, your hand meeting his chest with firm slaps. “Stop you, little gremlin.” Groggily, he attempted to restrain you in a tender embrace. He was met with your swift departure from his lap. He heard the patter of your feet retreating from the bed.
“You are a bastard, Astarion!”
Fully alert and by your side instantly, “What did I do, my sweet?”
Worry etched into every crease of his face as he cupped your jaw, looking frantically into your eyes. You intertwined your fingers with his, your other hand reaching out to caress the skin of his hip. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Your voice is barely above a whisper.
Astarion scrutinized your face, his eyes delving deep into yours. The faintest furrow of his brows betrayed his thoughts. As if following an unspoken script, he pulled you in by the waist, foreheads gently meeting.
Glistening with unshed tears, Astarion whispered, “You remember?” His voice trembled.
“Yes… maybe it’s all still tangled. But yes, I remember Tav – well, I remember us.”
Astarion’s smile widened, his fangs peeking out, and his lips met yours in a heated kiss spinning the two of you around the room. It was a slow dance of lips as if Astarion had all the time in the cosmos to savor this moment. While you could quickly lose yourself in the embrace, you were privy to all his subtle tricks. You turned your face when he attempted to draw you back into the kiss.
“Gods, Astarion, for three years, you knew and never said anything. I’ve painted you for almost as long as I could wield a brush, and for three years, you knew why!” Another slap graced his chest, and tears trickled down your cheeks, eagerly wiped away by his thumbs.
“I wanted to, my love. The moment I realized I wanted to. But this couldn’t be rushed; you can’t rush the mind.”
“Star, I’m so sorry I took so long,”
“No, stop; you took as long as you needed to return to me.” His forehead rests against yours once more, and the room stands still for a moment. “What matters is you’re here, in my arms, and I’m not letting go anytime soon.”
A choked sob mingled with a chuckle, and you nuzzled closer into Astarion, hiding your face into his neck. “Gods, I love you, Astarion.”
“And I love you.”
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Okay loves, let me know what you think. I've been working on this for over a week and still find some sections I'm not all that happy with, but I want to move on to other pieces. Any and every interaction makes my day.
Taglist: heartfully10, ayselluna
#astarion x reader#astarion x tav#bg3#reader insert#astarion imagine#bg3 astarion#astarion ancunin#astarion#fanfic#writing#soulmates#soulmate au#reincarnation#frantic fiction
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Sanji With A Clingy Reader Would Include...
Request: OH BABY telling about one piece is like unlocking a whole second heart of mine i have fully for that anime and manga and live action. and so, if you ever decided of course, you writing something similar to something you did on marvel once and sanji with reader that has no personal space and is touchy would be amazing. but also... kissing zoro is great to, if you ever decided? anyway! HOPE YOU LOVE IT (one piece i mean), and if not ignore me UwU
Ooh yess babes this is so SWEET!! :3 I LOVED IT omg hello to my latest obsession not me ordering the first collection of the manga
This was really sweet and fun to do, but I did stay up all night writing it so all comments are much appreciated!
Warning: slightly spicy, some mentions of fighting!
(I do not own One Piece or its characters, all rights go to creators. Gif credit goes to @fanpageknight.)
☆.。.:・°☆.。.:・°
Look at this man. Seriously, look at this man with his little bottom lip bite and eyes like the sun shines heavily out of them and tell me he would be anything less than absolutely madly, heart wrenchingly, soul crushingly enthralled with a clingy reader??? That's right you can't take the l on this one.
It all started that day when the three of you ended up shipwrecked on that sad sack excuse of a rock. When you and Sanji huddled on one side of the forsaken isle to stay away from the terrifying Pirate Zeff. His hands had shaken as he drew them up to his chest, but he mustered the nerves to string open the sack Zeff had thrown at his feet. Once he had counted out the cans, he offered all the food to you.
He wanted you to stay alive far more than himself. Ever since you had landed on his ship he had been smitten, and his weary heart would beat its last under this smothering sun as long as you would live on for the both of them.
To keep him calm: to stop his gasping, tortured heaves as he tried his best not to writhe in panic at the thought of never stepping back on safe land again, you would spent most of those 85 days sitting over the cragged edges. Sanji couldn't tear his eyes away from peering down at the gushing shards of stone below that seemed to rip up in tides and tear for his swinging feet; to try and distract him from sniffling any longer, your hand would tentatively creep over the rock until it landed flatly, and unceremoniously on top of his own. His fingers flexed beneath your own, but he didn't pull away. Instead, he folded them upwards, giving your hand a shaking squeeze: a dutiful promise, a flitting confession of love, that you just happened not to feel in your ruminations of the circumstances.
In fact, he asked you that night, in an uncharacteristically quiet and bashful voice, if you would keep his nightmares away by holding him like his mother used to. You felt terrible: you were so stunned that for a moment you stood with the last piece of mouldy bread you had in your hand in shocked silence. Poor Sanji thought you were about to reject him outright: throw what little he had left of his heart - that he had so carefully lifted out and placed in his hands to offer to you, only to have it thrown back to his feet in the usual ridicule he got for his love. His bottom lip began to tremble, until you nearly knocked him onto his bottom with how fast you dropped everything and flew over to lock him in a tight hug, not minding the fact that your shoulder was growing wetter and wetter despite the brewing rain each time Sanji buried his snivelling head against it.
So you would let him rest safely in the bracket of your arms: his left cheek resting in the warm stretch between your collar bone and your neck, his right hand draped leisurely around your waist as you told him stories of pirates and treasure: of the Deep Blue and tropical fish that shone like bursts of fragmented starlight every time their fins graced the water. Although he would groan any time you removed your hand from where you were stroking the wet strands of his hair back from his forehead, it was quickly replaced with wonderment as you would point up at a cluster of stars and whisper excitedly: 'look, there's some now!'
He had never been afraid of nights ever since that moment, not when the stars were still out and he could trace with the butt of his cigarettes the fish you had drawn specially for him in the skies. It was like a secret message: a lover's reminder that he was never alone. That you were always with him. That your beauty - your light, it shone everywhere, no matter where he was.
It was the first time he had kissed you, two forgotten children lost underneath the dripping crevice of your little hideaway. As your belly began to rise and fall underneath his elbow, and he believed you had exhausted yourself out after trying to make him feel better, he dared to dart up from your shoulder and press his lips firmly against your cheek. It had been quick, almost gliding past time like a dolphin leaping up out of the water, but it had meant so much to him that he curled up into a ball in your side and flushed a bright cerise, having to shove his fist into his mouth to stop his manic giggling from waking you up.
But you weren't asleep, and as Sanji settled back into your neck with a smile bright enough to rival the shine of buttercup petals, you swore as he began to drift off in the first peaceful dream he had had in years that one day you would return the favour, but in full.
The two of you were thick as thieves growing up, to the point where Zeff became so distracted by your antics that he often tried to separate the two of you by making you work the floor and Sanji either in the kitchens, or off fishing at the docks. Ten seconds later though, he'd be kicking through the kitchen doors again to find you leaning on the kitchen counter next to an eager faced Sanji, whose to busy to register Zeff's shouting. Instead he places the spoon to your lips, having spent half of lunch service prep cooking you a brand new recipe he had spent the whole night creating out of a medley of your favourite foods. He subconsciously licks his bottom lip, the tension in the room felt by the other chefs who try to carry on washing pans and cutting vegetables enough to put everyone on edge as Sanji refused to look anywhere but your lips. Holding his hand under your chin, his dipped eyes were broken by a sudden grin as a loud 'mmhhh' left your mouth and you chewed in sweet bliss.
Still ignoring Zeff's increasingly erratic rant, as Sanji goes to start cleaning up his pan you slide down to stand behind him, wrapping your arms tightly around your back and jutting your chin into his shoulder blade like a baby koala. You can tell he's laughing silently by the way his shoulders shake against you, but all he does is pull up your hand from his belly button to press sweet, dainty kisses up and down the lengths of your fingers, before dropping it down to press your palm flatly against his heart.
'I think that might be your greatest dish yet, buttercup!'
'From you, that means everything my precious heart.'
'Why do you call me that?', you murmur, refusing to lift your lips from his shirt.
'Well my sweet love, why do you call me buttercup? I mean, I always know I smell of butter and the likes-'.
He's distracted by your snort against the side of his neck, but the two of you are too love-strikingly embarrassed to say anything again. Even if neither of you could see the warm peach rushing up both your cheeks, Zeff could. He could also hear the padding thuds of Sanji's heart as he gripped his fingers that almost imperceptibly bit tighter around your hand, and he found himself sighing at how oblivious you two idiots were.
Sanji is definitely just as clingy as you, if not more so. You've definitely met your match in this man. I mean, any time you're out on the floor, handing out bread to tables and scanning the room to check if there were any patrons you may have to throw out by the scuff of their collars later, his eyes are trained on yours. He leans against the banisters, not even trying to remotely hide how obviously he's tracing your path with a dumbstruck, lit up smile. If you're in the kitchens, desperately trying to bite your tongue and not tear Zeff a new one as he chops his hands together and rushes you to plate up? He's sliding up to your side in an instant, throwing scathing looks at the man while trying to help you spoon thyme onto your bass, nuzzling the side of his head into yours encouragingly. If you have any free time at all? Sanji is fast on your heels, darting after you like someone's firing shots at his dress shoes, as if you have his heart tied to a string on your wrist as he seeks out whatever nook you're going to relax in. It doesn't matter if you're at the bar, watching the docks, or trying to hide from Zeff in one of the cupboards in the pantry: Sanji is squatting down and grunting as he shoves himself in right next to you. He sits criss cross, only satisfied when at least one of his knees is resting heavily over yours, and he has full access to watch what you're reading over the side of your neck.
He only fully settles, though, if you touch him in some way. He genuinely will begin mewling once your hand reaches over to brush your knuckles over his jawline, or your hand finds itself guided to bunch itself up in his hair. One time, he guided your hand into his lap, and you began to absentmindedly stroke your pointer finger along the seam of his inner thigh. Thank goodness you had your head buried in a book one of the pirate crews had come to swap some dried meats with you for, because it took every muscle in Sanji's body twitching: every finger clenching and unclenching into his knee until he drew blood not to knock you flat right there and then and kiss you like there was no tomorrow.
He gets a MASSIVE nosebleed - so gushing, in fact, that he tries to reassure you he's fine as you hold him by the elbows and lead his tilted back head and pinched nose down to Zeff for some help.
It becomes a very major recurring issue every time he looks at you. He makes sure to carry a handkerchief in his breast pocket from then on.
God, if he didn't love you more than anything in all the seas. If you weren't the only one that he let see past his charming nature: if you weren't the only person left in his life that truly could recognise the young boy left in his eyes, in his gait, in his smile, in his dreams. That little kid on that great big ship, the one who had found you stowed away behind one of the barrels of rum, and instead of calling for the crew had taken your trembling hand and led you into the kitchens, introducing you as his newest sous chef. That same kid, who stood beside you and held your hand so gently, so heartbreakingly gently under his as he guided you through lessons of chopping onions and sautéing garlic, breaking out into long strings of rushed, praising French every time you got it right. The same one, who would frown as if he were the one who had been hurt any time you burnt your hands or sliced your fingers. Who would unravel the knot at the back of his apron, and tug it over his head to carefully place it over yours.
'This always brings me luck', he would say as his fingers daintily tucked the strings underneath your shirt collar. 'But I don't need it anymore, because you've brought me all the luck and happiness a man could ever dream of, my cherie.'
The same kid who would tip toe out of his bed to sneak down to your hammock, crawling in and burying himself underneath your blankets where you slept in the brig, telling you fantastical stories about his mother until you fell sound asleep. He would watch you from where he lay on his side, hands folded by your head, as if you had hung every star in the wide skies. He would brush his fingers over the edge of your cheek and curl up beside you, wishing that every minute of every day of the rest of his life could be spent with you.
Yeah, smitten wasn't enough to cover it. Only destiny could be raw enough to draw the two of you to each other, Sanji always thought.
As teenagers, you would end every shift outside, sitting on the wonky boards of one of the jutted docks. Just sitting side by side, as you always wanted to be, pretending you weren't playing a game of chicken as the two of you teased and pressed and glanced your fingers over each other's, leaning back and looking up at the stars. Sanji always appreciated the better chance it gave him: shrouded in naught by wisps of moonlight and the rare flashing neon of ship string lights, to take you in as much as he could. You didn't mind the fact that he spent the whole time staring over at you. In fact, if you hadn't been so lovestruck, you might have found the courage to tear your head away from the horizon to meet the look of gut-wrenching devotion that always seemed to pour out of his eyes and beam only on you. It always felt like warm sunlight, sitting next to him, and so you finally dared a chance at grabbing his fingers and intertwining them between your own, pretending it was because of the sea chill spraying a fine mist over your legs.
Again, the squeeze he gave your hand was almost, almost imperceptible, but you felt it this time. And you could feel the look of enduring devotion he pierced into your skin, a warm tingle washing like a spring tide through your tired body.
He always knew. He always knew that if he had stayed on that rock, he would have been content to. Happy, even. Because he would have been with you.
'I love you', he said without words. He gave your hand another squeeze. 'I'm going to love you forever. No matter how many lifetimes. No matter who I am. I'm always going to find you, and I'm always going to love you.'
His voice nearly made you jump, surprising you at how it started with his usual buttery smoothness, before cracking with a thick gulp as his words trailed of. 'Never leave without me.'
'I promise, as long as you don't leave without me.'
He shakes his head. 'You never leave me. Not even for a moment.'
Sometimes, when the two of you are older, he still comes stealing into your room at night, wiping his nose with the back of his hand as his lips wobble into a frightened frown. Turns out, as he draws the covers back and comes reaching in for you, he had another nightmare that pirates had come to steal you away from him again. With an aching sigh for how stricken he looked, how desolate, you let him claw at your shirt and bury his head into the side of your neck until the rest of the world melted away.
He kissed you again, that night. When the feel of his legs strewn familiarly between your own began to burn against his skin, and the weight of hand perched over his thrumming heart became too heavy to bear in secret. With nothing but the light streaming like shards of pearly stars through the porthole to betray a moment so special, so longed for, Sanji let his eyelashes flutter close as he slowly... slowly pressed his lips against your cheek again.
This time, his eyes widened in shock as the feeling of your hand gripping at his jaw and turning his face straight on to your own. Before he can even open his mouth in confusion, the sweet pressure of your lips pressed against his top one. For a moment, Sanji doesn't move an inch: doesn't even breath, not even processing that the thing he’s spent every moment of his waking and sleeping life wishing for ever since he found you on that boat was actually happening, right here right now. He tries really hard to stop his whole body from shaking, as his silky lashes finally falter shut against the top of your cheeks and he tries to focus his whole attention on the way your plush lip seems to press so perfectly against his own.
When he finally pulls away, he lets out a loud 'OW' as he pinches his arm.
'What did you do that for!?'
'I had to double check this wasn't a dream, my sweets!'
And then he's on you again, like a ravished man gasping for air. God, he wasn't sure if soulmates were real, but when your top lip pulled down against his, and he could feel the thud of your heart synch against his own beneath the tips of his fingers, if he didn't know that he was yours.
He stays in your room a lot more often after that, using it as an excuse for you to help him button up his shirt during sleepy mornings, smiling at the feel of your fingers as they knocked against the muscles of his chest. It was also his favourite part of the day - the good morning kiss the two of you shared before you raced down to be at your shifts before Zeff decided to knock your heads together.
One time you forgot to give him one, too distracted by one of the sous chefs busting into your room with a bloodied nose and a chipped front tooth, whistling through the gap as he begged you to come down to the main foyer and help him break out a fist fight that had started between two gangs of rival pirates. The pout on Sanji's face that day was enough to make even the most bounty-heavy pirate's knees tremble. Every other chef steered way clear of his station, watching the arch of his back and the jaw in his muscle jump as he busied himself by frying his steak of tuna, so gutted at the loss of just one kiss. Not angry, no: just grief stricken, because this man seriously just adores you that much.
When you finally get your lunch break, the first thing you do is throw your napkin down on the kitchen ground and grab Sanji by his suit collar, enjoying the surprise tilt of his head as he drops his spoon onto his serving tray and allows you to lead his feet backwards to the fire exit. As soon as he's outside, you slam him gently against the wooden beams of the Baratie restaurant, and kissed him silly to make up for it. His look of trusting confusion suddenly melt into jumping heart eyes when your knee slides up between his thighs to try and pin him in place. His breathing comes out in harsh, shallow gasps between ferocious kisses, and you have to press him back against the wall every time he comes arching forward to follow your head for even more kisses. No, this was about you making him feel good. And by goodness, as your tongue pressed against the seam of his lips and tentatively ran over his front teeth, if he wasn't two seconds away from falling to his knees right there and then.
When you let him go, he slides down the wall like putty until he's sitting with legs stretched out and both his suit and hair a ruffled mess. He's literally never been more deliriously happy in his whole life.
Your favourite time of the day is when the restaurant closes, and the two of you finally have the kitchens to yourselves. Once you've tossed your aprons back onto the rack with a tired sigh, the only thing that can cheer you up is the sound of Sanji kicking his chair back with the toe of his shoe, and the sight of him beckoning you over to him with that tilted head and pearly beam of his. Mmh, how safe you feel, how loved as you collapse down to sit on his knees, and he tucks you in between the brackets of his arms in a vice so tight it could match any Marine knot.
You take one of his hands off the pen he was holding, turning his palm round to face you so you could fiddle with the rings he was wearing. You draw one up, curling his finger before your eyes, before slotting one off and sliding it onto your own ring finger. It was the one his father had given him: one he so loathed to wear, and yet felt guilt bore down too heavily on his conscious to ever take it off. You turned the one on top of it, one you know Zeff had given him after his first day working at the Baratie, and you smiled at the memory.
'You know', you start, still fiddling with his hand, feeling him shift his thighs as you pressed a gentle kiss on the pointer finger you were currently grasping onto. 'I may just have to keep this one.'
'Oh yeah?', he says dreamily, and you could feel his grin growing as he hid his burning face in the nape of your neck. 'Don't worry sweetheart. One day, once I find the perfect one, I'll give you a ring of your own.'
The two of you sneak out and share cigarettes out the back door a lot, where Sanji steps forward and kisses you like a man possessed every time you pinch the stub from out of his mouth and draw it along your bottom lip teasingly. When you try to get him to go back in, he just wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you up, spinning you around to stop you from leaving him alone. Laughing, you try to shove him off, swatting at the hands that form a tight clasp over your belly button, until his large fingers finally slide down to hold your waist. You glance behind you, smirking at the way his eyes are tightly shut in euphoria as ducks down, chest nearly enveloping in his desperation to reach your face again. His kisses become sloppier: smoke stained as they leave wet trails up your jaw, before he finally gives in and tries to make you laugh one last time by nibbling at the lobe of your ear.
Whenever he has a fight with Zeff, you have to hold him afterwards. The feel of your fingers curling the hair at the nape of his neck, or rubbing soothing circles into the sore muscles of his shoulders stops the furious darts of air from flaring his nostrils almost immediately.
Man has blaring heart eyes 100% whenever he's in a fight with rowdy customers, and you get to kick the flashy knife out of the last one's hand before the pirate could launch straight for Sanji's neck. He tilts his head at you with those amazed eyes, a gentle smile growing almost shyly on his face like a secret wink, before he throws his now empty plate at the pirate trying to sneak up behind your back. The crash echoes out through the booth area, a cry so furious: so full of rage that anyone would try and dare hurt you, that it makes all the remaining pirate crews crawl out towards the door on their hands and knees.
Stitching each other up afterwards is a motherfcking mess though, that Zeff straight up just abandons all hope of being able to use his kitchen. With a defeated rub of his pounding temples, he lets the door slam shut on his heel because he just can't deal with the two of you. He'd much rather pick up a brush and start sweeping bits of crushed and splattered asparagus off the floors than have to watch you to battle it out in a stiff competition of who could be more sickeningly, maddingly in love with the other. Between you standing between Sanji's entrapping thighs, closing you in tighter so you could have full access to kiss his bobbing Adam's apple as you use a rag to swipe bits of dry sauce off his neck, and him throwing his head back and whimpering, Zeff was going to go insane. Even worse, as soon as you're finished, Sanji's reaching between your fingers to lick split consomme off your nose.
The two of you are literally insufferable, and if every one apart from Zeff doesn't find it the cutest thing I-
When Luffy comes and wrangles Sanji into joining his crew, the chef's first thought is to be distraught. He seeks you out straight away, nearly breaking some poor fisherman's pole as he tries to hurdle over it and grip onto your shoulders, making you drop the barrel of dried meats you were carrying from Luffy onto the planks and watching Luffy nearly dangle off the edge of his ship to stop it from rolling into the ocean.
'Y/n- I- I can't go!'
'You're hardly scared!'
'I'm not scared of going, I'm terrified of going without you!'
You let him pour his heart out for a moment, before stopping his rambling, near sobbing mess of a sentence by bopping the tip of his nose. You giggle, swiping some hair from his forehead. 'Sanji, Luffy asked me to come first. I promised I wouldn't go without you, and I meant it.'
You manage to unlatch his twitching hand from your left shoulder, and give it an almost imperceptible squeeze. The tears that threatened to fall from his eyes finally cascade down, although he's so relieved that he's smiling through the blurriness. You swipe them away with your free thumb, finally, after all these years, feeling the squeeze of your hand that Sanji gives you back, before he envelops you in a breath taking hug.
'Awww, you guys are so sweet!', Luffy calls out from where he's hanging by his sandal off the railing of his ship. 'But could someone give me a hand before my hat falls into the waves? That would not be very cool.'
The first thing the two of you do once you're on The Going Merry is to find your bunk. Sanji isn't very subtle when he kicks your door shut with his heel, and comes scampering towards you like an upended sand crab, pinching for you until he's hefted you up over his shoulder and has unceremoniously landed you in your shared hammock. He's quick to jump in, straddling you as the hammock sways back and forth with the commotion.
He nearly starts crying again when he sees a flash of silver poke out from underneath your neckline; he grazes his hand over the chain, recognising it as his father's ring you had taken months ago. The one he had hated so much. The one you had tried to save him from. A small piece of him. A weight you tried to bear for him. A reminder of how much he was loved.
A confused Zoro, not realising there are new crew members on board, follows the sound of Sanji's voice crooning out how much he adores you, and how he loves you more than every star in the sky, down past the window on your bedroom door. Let's just say, he's not very impressed when he catches sight of the hammock swinging wildly from side to side, and an array of clothes thrown out and discarded in a mess around it.
#one piece#sanji#one piece imagine#sanji imagine#sanji x reader#sanji headcanons#opla#monkey d luffy#zoro#vinsmoke sanji#vinsmoke sanji imagine#vinsmoke sanji x reader#vinsmoke sanji headcanons
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“All Vim and Vigor, dearest…” a soft, nsfw Vampire Rogue Astarion update for “Bites in the Night:”
Astarion x F!Reader | E | 4K wound tending sex
Summary: the aftermath of a battle, and one companion is missing. Astarion. You race to find him, pulling him the the grip of death.. true death. Your tender, loving care can restore him. After all, you have to make sure all his vim and vigor is returned to him. Entirely.
CW: Blood, near death experience, healing, wound cleaning, flirtation, awkward Karlach interrupting growing intimacy, blow jobs and mutual hand jobs and fingering, just too be sure everything is… healed.
For @genesis-6666 💌
Read here if you prefer on AO3
Find him, save him…
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The dead lay around you. Goblins. An ambush. You bend over, hands on your knees, panting to catch your breath. Your wounds are minimal, and already Shadowheart has run to find the rest of your party, healing… or reviving… when needed. She looks up from over Gale’s body, his chest finally breathing again. But her eyes look worried. You scan the area, seeing everyone staggering between the trees. Almost all, you realize as your thumping heart stills. There is one of you missing. And your stomach twirls in knots as you realize just who.
You spin your head, looking. “Where is he?” you call to her. “Where’s Astarion?”
She shakes her head. “I thought he was with you, on the high ground,” she pants. “He was up there last I saw.” Her lithe hand points into the crags of rock and mountain that line the canyon.
It had been quick, sudden, and brutal. The ambush of Goblins swallowing you up. Last you remember, he had stared at you. Excitement, surprise, the thrill of bloodlust and eagerness in his eyes, as the goblin ranks kept coming and coming down from those ridges. One last fang-flashing smirk before he ran into the shadows, skirting up to their source. Your fearless, reckless, stupid rogue.
You hurry, scrambling up the trail, swerving past the thicker pools of goblin blood, leaping over their bodies. You see them scattered all over, dagger stab wounds and slashes.
Signs that he was here.
It’s carnage that you push past. Climbing higher until you reach a plateau, empty, the end of the trail, where you expect to see your vampire, your rogue, your… your love. But there is… nothing. Not a body. No enemies. No Astarion.
Panic fills you, heart rapping in your chest, breath growing short. But you force yourself forward. You make your eyes scan the ground for any clues. His blood. Or signs of his capture. You make your lungs fill, you shout his name…
Then, you hold your breath.
A faint groan comes from the distance, somewhere near the sheer rock face that pierces the sky, from the dense shrubs that line it. You race after it, feet almost skittering as you stumble in that direction. Your hands pushing into the brambles, catching sight of pale skin. Covered in blood.
You reach for his body. His skin is cold, waxy, and tight. You find one arm and pull. He groans as you tug, you grab his second arm, freeing him from the brambles, even as your lungs ease to see his face again.
But your hope fades to agony, his face is bruised and beaten, black and blue and shadowed more than his undead charisma. His breathing is quick and shallow, his eyes nearly swollen shut from whatever beating he took up here. You finally slide him free, his clothing is torn, almost every inch of the skin you see is darkened with bruises.
His voice shakes as he tries to catch a breath, eyes forcing themselves open to look at you. “You’re here,” he manages to rasp out. “I knew you would find me. You always find me.”
“Shhh,” you run your hand through his hair, his brow damp with sweat, his eyes losing focus as his head begins to loll. “It’s going to be alright.”
“At least I got to see you once more…” his voice grates against his throat, breath growing ragged.
You hand digs into your pocket, pulling out your last vial of healing potion. You pull the cork and press it instantly to his lips. The liquid flows into those pale lips, and you can only kneel and pray it’s enough. His breath begins to ease instead of rattle, his face beginning to heal, his pallor returning, the traces of blue-black death fading.
His mouth twitches trying to talk. But you shush him softly, “I’m here, Astarion, it’s alright.”
“F-far from,” he ekes out as his eyes flutter open slightly, the swelling abating just enough for you to see both crimson eyes again.
“I’ll get you back to the others,” you look around, sizing up his lean body, running a hand through his hair before you brace behind his shoulders to get him to sit upright. He groans, limp in your arm. He can be so strong and swift, but it’s only now you also notice how lithe he is. How lean. But still, he’s too great a weight for you to bear alone.
That’s when the running of heavier feet makes your lungs fill fully and your heart leap in hope. “You found him, good for you, soldier!” Karlach trods right up next to you, barely out of breath. “Shadowheart said you would hopefully have found him, I’m to help you back where we are making camp.” Her thick tiefling arms pick him up, none too gently, and you hiss in worry to see him pulled to his feet so quickly.
“I swear, if you throw me around like that, I would puke on you if I had anything left in me…” he snipes as Karlach takes him by one arm, shaking her fiery head at his sass with a smile and waiting for you to take the other.
You snigger. He must be on the mend if he is throwing those barbs out again. But he falls silent again, head hanging low. You shoulder his body as best you can, bracing one hand on his bare chest, wishing for once he had a living heart that beat so you knew he was alive. “Stay with me,” you grunt, shoving your mouth into his long, pointed ear. “I’ll kill you if you die, you know.”
“I know… my sweet,” he manages to rasp, a slight turn of his head to throw you a feeble smirk. Karlach is definitely bearing most of him, but she doesn’t complain, not as you finally make it down the ridges and back to the main road.
“Not too much further,” Karlach heaves more of him on her shoulder, “Gale should have the tents up by now so he can rest.”
You three round a bend, the flickering of a fire and the spattered sight of tents warms your heart. You made it. Even the rose and burgundy canvas of Astarion’s tent is set to perfection. You’ll have to remember to thank Gale later, once your rogue is through the worst of it.
Into the warm dark you go, setting Astarion out on his bedroll, propping him cautiously on a stack of pillows.
“Water, clothes, and another potion,” Karlach points to the supplies placed tidily within reach. “I’ll be back, just shout if you need anything.”
And then she steps away, taking her warmth and her glowing presence back through the flaps of his tent.
You look after her, another friend you’ll have to thank.
Something hard and cold grips around your hand from where it rests on the ground. He’s clutching you, making sure he’s not alone.
“I’ve got you,” you whisper, giving his hand a gentle squeeze before you rest it on his own stomach. “Let me get you cleaned up,” you look into his face, his eyes still shut, face still and unmoving. “Is that alright?”
“More than alright,” he speaks quietly, “the sooner you get rid of this stinking goblin blood off me, the sooner I can just savor that delicious fragrance of yours…” he hisses in pain before the last word is completely off his tongue. Your hand ghosts over the still-sprawling bruisers that run along his side. He tries so hard to be the usually suave, charismatic charmer, but something still troubles him.
Your hand hovers between the cloth and the potion, unsure what to do first. Then you hear it, a wracking cough, one that shakes his frame, bringing blood to his lips.
His blood.
You quickly uncork the second bottle, fairly shoving it in his mouth. “What did they do to you?” You barely get the question out your mouth as he sighs from swallowing the healing mix down.
“Thrashed me an inch from life… or an inch from undeath I suppose…” He forces a blithe smile, his giggle is slick with his own blood, but at least you can hear his lungs filling. More fully than before. The potion working to heal whatever internal damage he must have had.
You eye the red around his lips, pausing for a second. It was a common sight, his bloodied lips, but… never his own blood.
You wonder, for a moment, how does he taste?
You know the salt of his sweat, the bitter tang of his cum, why not? Why not see what his blood tastes of, for once…
“Gods below,” he throws you a mischievous smirk. “You’re wanting to taste my blood now, aren’t you?” You feel your surprise lifting your face, and he only sucks his teeth, shaking his head in feigned disbelief. “Tch, I don’t need a spell to read your dirty thoughts, darling…”
Your eyes dart to his conceited, smirking mouth. You hold your breath… until you close your hand around the towel and soak it in the soapy water. “Don’t be ridiculous, Astarion…” you huff, starting to bring the cloth to his face.
His hand grips the back of your neck, clutching you against his mouth for a wet and bloodied kiss. It tastes… ancient, refined and heady. Rich in a way that coats your tongue, even as his own delves in to tangle with yours. You swallow, sucking on his lips for more. He laughs, lightly, hiding a groan, “If you’re planning on more rigorous pursuits, I’d say I need bathing and tending first, darling.”
You pull away, shocked at yourself, so aroused with him only moments ago near-death. Your cheeks flush, white hot as you begin to clean him. He closes his eyes, propped up as he is on pillows. Lounging, relishing your full attention.
You wash and rinse, wash and rinse. It’s hard not to stare at his beauty, at the hard edges of his cheeks and jaw, the little lines about his eyes that crinkle when he smirks or laughs. He locks those piercing eyes on you as you dip the rag back and wring it out. He stalks every movement you make, washing his body lower and lower, inspecting his bruises as they slowly fade with the healing magic.
You finish his chest, forcing your breath to steady as you wash that rising and falling belly of his.
“Are you sure I don’t need tending any lower…?” he purrs.
You narrow your eyes at him. “Perhaps you rest first before you insist on everything checked for being in good working order, hmm?”
He rolls his eyes back in his head, a sigh of total emphatic drama. “Doctor’s orders…” he grumbles, lounging back against the throws, but not before he gives a little thrust of his hips, a clench of his belly under your hand where it rests on him still.
“Sleep, you scoundrel,” you chide, reaching to dry off his now clean skin, savoring the fresh scent in the air from the soap. You feel his body, still tense under your touch, wound tight and stiff that isn’t the result of his charming flirtation or dirty, lustful thoughts. You look at him, staring at his face, worry furrowing your brows. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes flicker over you, bright with mischief, half-lidded with flirtation. “Vampires don’t require… sleep. Not much. Not as much as… well… other things…”
You look into that beautiful face. He’s gaunt. Pale, well more than usual. Rings line his eyes, cradling that crimson glare in shadow. His lips twitch, fighting the urge to bare those glistening and pointed fangs.
“Oh, gods, now?” you breathe, heart racing.
He waves a hand dismissively, a sharp edge to his voice. Hungry. Annoyed. “Well, if you don’t want your strong, well-fed vampire to heal completely, then by all means…”
“No,” you almost leap next to his face, those smirking eyes scan over you, dilating in his hunger, fixating on the rapid pulse you know must be just throbbing under your skin for him to salivate over. But his hand grips yours, raising it to his lips. Kissing your fingers so softly, your stomach drops and your throat tightens. Slowly, he turns your hand over in his, raising your tingling inner wrist to his nose. You feel his breath, cold and quick, as he inhales your scent. Probably already savoring the scent of your blood rushing just beneath your skin.
“So then, I may?” his voice almost fails to reach your ears, you hear it more from the little tickles his breath makes across your skin, the gentle flutters of his lips over the nerves of your wrist. Like lighting in the air, his breath ripples in pinpricks on your skin.
“Yes,” you sigh, lungs burning as you hold your breath until he bites thos razor-sharp fangs into your tender flesh. Gasping, you hold your wrist to his mouth, every drop of your blood that leaves you, you can almost feel, almost sense, how it makes him stronger again. Empowered again. Hungry again for more.
It just feels so good, even as he feasts on you, as you savor that strange sensation that follows every time he feeds, that union of your bodies, your blood sating his hunger, beginning to course in his veins. A small, strangled moan escapes your lips, your eyes fixated on the way his mouth sucks on your wrist. You’ve never seen it before, never been able to watch his consuming of you, as he drinks from your neck. The little ways his tongue laps at your skin, the small bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he swallows you down. A different sort of pleasure denied you when he drinks in the middle of the night. Your stomach churns, your thighs burning hot as you can’t look away.
A slight, definitely insufferable smile tugs at the corner of his lip as he sets your wrist back in your lap. “Liked what you saw?” he preens, so proud as he dabs a single finger at the bloodied corner of his mouth. “Or just thankful I’m still here to have my fill of you?”
“Both,” you reply before even a second thought crosses you mind. Your sight lowers to his mouth, you can almost feel those lips on yours, the way the twitch ever so slightly, the little tweaks that lift them to show those pointed fangs you love to have catch your flesh and nip at you when he kisses….
So close, you feel him closing that distance, his breath rushing into you, filling your lungs, your soul, ice cold and tangible.
“Hope you like rabbit, Gale’s got stew nearly done for…” Karlach sticks her flaming, sparking scarlet head into your tent then she strides all the way in. Those glowing eyes go wide. You’re so close, even as you turn your head, you can hear Astarion’s laugh tickle the creases of your ear.
You go flush, and not just because he insists on still giving your cheek a lingering kiss.
“Feeling better, is he?” Karlach laughs, a bit forced. A bit uncomfortable.
“Clearly,” you huff, sliding slightly from his side. But he only leans all the closer.
His eyes rake over you. You can feel it. You can almost see it in the way Karlach sifts from foot to foot. He chuckles, low and slow, “Yes, all vim and vigor, dearest. We were just about to discuss how I was going to make it up to her for all that attentive care and healing I required to pull me back from the brink of death…”
Your eyes flicker to Karlach, who would be blushing beet red now if she weren’t already so scarlet. “Ahem,” she clears her voice and stands quickly, “that’ll be my cue. I’ll leave you two to it..:”
“No it’s okay… the stew...” you begin but she’s already gone and yelling on the other side of the tent.
“Oi, Gale, keep it warm…” a long pause follows, a deep voice muted in the distance. Then Karlach guffaws with gusto. “Yeah, they’ll be fucking for hours most likely… she might not even be hungry once he stuffs her again…” the tiefling’s boisterous laugh fades as she trods away.
Your face goes hotter than an inferno, but that only makes his cold fingers sear all the more as he caresses your cheek. A single finger lifts your chin, turning your face towards that rakish, sultry smirk. “I thought she’d never leave. Now,” he hovers his mouth right over yours, “where were we?”
“We…” you clear your throat, “we were just making sure you were healed…”
“Mmmm, I’m pretty sure you’ve inspected me thoroughly everywhere but one place, darling,” he rasps, catching your lips in a commanding, languorous kiss.
“You almost died, Astarion,” you hiss between his teeth, fighting the way your folds are burning up, the way his other hand begins to slink over the buckskin of your breeches. “Should you really risk so much exertion?” Your body is tensing, your mind remembering the way he rattled as he struggled for air on the mountain, the way his flesh was blackened and sickly. Dead, almost truely dead.
His chuckle, that low-throated giggle, pulls you out of those macabre imaginings. “Well, I'd be more than happy to simply lay back and let you do all the hard work, if that’s what your concern is…”
You give him a mocking smile, “Oh yes, I’m very certain you are only doing this for my sake, love. Making sure I feel good after pulling you back from near death to life… well to undeath…” You give a sheepish grin, relieved that your humor only adds to the mischievous glint in his crimson eyes.
“You know me, the image of selflessness. I’m doing you a favor. If you left now…” his smirk widened, deliciously, wickedly, “…you’d be thinking about it all night.” His hand weaves into the little hairs at the nape of your neck, twirling them in the way he knows drives you crazy.
“Well, I suppose I can be persuaded… just to make sure you’re all vim and vigor.” You laugh as his hand is already loosening the laces of his breeches. “But,” you place one of yours to stay him a moment. Gods, you can already feel his cock, hard and pushing his way out for pleasure. You swallow, making yourself look in his eyes. At how they swirl with his lust, glassy with his need. “But you tell me the moment it’s too much, you promise?”
“If you wanted me to just be more vocal during our couplings, you had only to ask, darling…” he purrs, forcing his fingers loose under your palm to continue unlacing.
You grab them in yours. “I mean it,” you insist, hard in tone, commanding in just three words.
“I promise, I’ll say when, my dear,” he laughs, finally freeing himself from the confines of his breeches. You look down at him, his devious pleasure of just watching you crawling between his thighs.
You give his cock a good, long lick from base to tip, his groan of approval sending shivers between your own thighs. But you force a dispassionate hum as you wrap your lips around his twitching head. “Seems in good working order,” you whisper.
“I think it needs a little more.. attentive care, darling…” he groans, very loudly as you wrap your mouth all the way around him, taking him in deeply over your tongue. You roll your eyes, unsurprised at how he gives a moan with each suck you make, each lap of your tongue running up his length.
More vocal indeed.
You bob up and down, your lover relaxing back against his pillows, fingers toying languorously through your hair. Your own hand pumps over the rest of him that just can’t fit inside your lips. He feels so good, so hard and strong and full of life. And he seems to be getting louder… his moans increasing. “So good for me, darling…” he starts to praise. “Always so attentive and eager… and…”
You pop off him, meeting that insufferable smirk and quirked brows. “You want them to know, don’t you?”
“Me? Wanting to draw some attention to our lustful pursuits?” He casts that look at you that makes every nerve in your body flame with unbridled desire for him. “I just want them to make sure you care of me is certainly thorough,” he grins, “I’m just so… thankful… it’s hard to keep it in. After all you do… so much for me, darling…”
“Be a dear and shut up,” you purr, giving one more swirl around that ridge of his tip.
“Make me,” he growls, flashing that roguish smirk down at you, licking his lips.
You pounce, flooded with relief that he is alive... that he’s filled with all that vim and vigor and irascible, irritating sass. You’re brimming with the need to feel him, for all his taunting and flirtation, all his lust and passion, you’re just… happy he is here. To kiss, to fuck, to banter with. And you do make him shut up, your lips on his, your teeth sinking playfully into his lower lip, sucking it with a tug. You keep one hand on his cock, riding it, pumping it, keeping time with the way his tongue darts in and out of your mouth. Something cold slips under your shirt, his fingers skating into the band of your breeches.
You keep your mouth fixed on his, making certain he’s far too busy for any noises you can’t muffle. But as his fingers slip between your thighs, an unbidden cry rips from your throat.
“Who’s the loud mouth now?” He chides, sucking his teeth at you, even with your lips coupled as they are. He laughs again, his fingers catching on your clit just right as he rides up and down your seam. “Don’t cease your own task at hand on my account,” he sniggers, his cold fingers lacing around his shaft, interweaving with yours.
His breath sucks in yours. His fingers playing in you, teasing so much wetness from your folds, you wish you had just taken your pants off when you had the chance. Now it was too late. Now, you’d be sticky from your own arousal, probably covered in his cum too as you leave his tent.
The thought makes your cheeks burn but not in shame. In a searing wave of desire. Your hand works up and down, catching that thick, blunt tip with your thumb in the way that makes him groan. His kisses deepen, hungry and feral, the same he’s stoked in you with the little ways his fangs catch on the inside of your lips. He’s losing that refined control he keeps. Pushed past the calculating movements as you stroke him in your fist and lick his tongue with your own.
“Gods,” he growls, his cock so hard, his fingers inside you working at a fevered pace. “You’ll come for me too, darling. My recompense for your care.”
“Yes,” you moan, his fingers diving deep into your cunt, crooking on that sweet spot he knows well.
You clench, shaking as he pummels inside you, your own hand struggling to work on his cock with how hard he is. How thick he is. But the instant you drench his fingers and fill his palm as you climax, he follows you into that messy, groaning bliss. Hot cum drips down your arm, spattered on your sleeve, on the belly of your shirt.
He’s gasping into your mouth, his lips pulled back wide in a genuine smile. His forehead presses against yours as he catches his breath, stealing your own from your lips. “Well,” he pants, “am I fully recovered?”
“All vim… and vigor…” you heave, moaning as he slips his fingers from your thighs.
“Hmm,” he hums against your lips, trapping them in his own with a slight nip. “Are you sure you’re satisfied with my performance?”
You laugh, giving a little shove against his chest. “For now,” you tease, “but it seems another round of cleaning is in order.” Your hand reaches for the rag, wiping his juices from your hand, your arm. Only to hear him sucking on his own fingers.
His brow arched wryly as you turn to watch. Those two long fingers that still drip with your cum are shoved far back in his mouth, his tongue swirling over every inch. “What?” he smirks, “why waste something so delicious…”
You shake your head, lovingly irritated at his cheekiness, but already your body is already aching for more. “Perhaps,” you clear your throat, heart pounding as you watch him sliding those already drenched fingers over his tongue. “Perhaps you do need a little more inspection, just to be sure…”
“Thought so,” he sniffs, that insufferable smirk widening to show his teeth. “Best be sure… just in case…”
✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨
Read more “Bites in the Night:”
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Read Ascended Astarion in “The Rogue You Were:”
🩸Part 1 🩸 Part 2 🩸Part 3 🩸 Part 4🩸
Read my Drabbles
“Just a Drop…” Astarion as Tav turns
“Beg me…” A highly NSFW Ascended Astarion x reader
“Your Reward:” Ascended Astarion Dark!Fic
#astarion romance#astarion my beloved#astarion smut#vampire rogue#healing trope#wound tending#astarion x female reader#astarion x tav#astarion x you#astarion x mc#astarion x reader#astarion x f!tav#astarion x female tav#astarion x f!reader#astarion baldurs gate#baldurs gate astarion#baldur’s gate astarion#baldur's gate 3 astarion#bg3 astarion#astarion bg3#astarion#astarion ancunin#baldursgate3#baldur’s gate iii#baldurs gate smut#baldur’s gate 3#baldur's gate#baldur's gate 3#astarion fanfic#astarion fic
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Hi! I'm not sure if you take requests so if you don't, please ignore this and I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.
I just read your Astarion X Tav fanfic where Astarion proposes. It is said that the ring he got glows whenever Astarion thinks of Tav. I was just wondering if you could write a slice of life about the ring glowing at the most random times. Maybe during a stealth mission where Tav has to stay hidden or when he is smiling in his sleep and the ring glows. I just thought it would be cute and fun to write about. You can get creative with it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, whether you end up doing this request or not. I hope you had an amazing Christmas and I hope you will have an amazing New Year's!
Hi Anon! I don’t think this is quite what you were asking for but… this is what came out! 🤷♀️ The smut gods blessed me and I cannot deny their gifts. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Smut below the cut.
If you haven’t read my other work and would like context, Anon is referencing a two part mini story I wrote. Click here for part 1, and click here for part 2.
Warnings/Tags: 18+ only please, smut, masturbation, sex pollen, swearing/cursing, game spoilers
Word Count: 1.5K
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“I think we’re just… a bit out of practice, darling. It has been nearly a year since we were down here last, you know.” Astarion whispers, crouched next to you behind a Funguswood tree. He’s wiping bits of dirt, twigs, and mushroom pollen off himself with a handkerchief.
“Admit it, Astarion. You just weren’t fast enough.” You respond with a small, teasing poke of your tongue as you rearrange your weaponry and count your arrows.
The pale elf finishes wiping off the debris, and you return your attentions to the mission. You’d been contracted to scout out the vampire stronghold in the Underdark and report your findings back to Wyll and the Flaming Fists. Rumor was that the vampire hoard had wreaked absolute havoc on the Underdark; the city feared the creatures would soon return to the surface if they could not find sustenance here.
“Would you have preferred I let that wild Rothé ram you into those mushrooms in my stead?!” Astarion hisses in return while rubbing his hand over his arm, which now felt unbelievably tingly and was starting to radiate significant warmth, “Hells, what mushrooms were those, anyway?!”
You stifle a chuckle, knowing your fiancé is already past his limits of patience. You two need to get to the scouting point, set up camp, and hunker down for a few days… all while avoiding detection from the vampires or any other nefarious creatures in the Underdark. Best to do it without an ornery Astarion by your side.
“I don’t know what mushrooms those were. I’ve never seen them before.” You admit with a small shrug, “Come on my love, not much further now and then we can get you properly cleaned up.”
Astarion follows behind you in silence, apart from the occasional cursing and swiping at his skin. Gods, the heat had spread up his entire arm now. The scratching seemed to make it worse, but by the hells, he couldn’t stop no matter how much he wanted to. The two of you finally got to the cragged rock that led to a small cave where you would make camp, and he never felt more relieved in his life. He couldn’t wait to clean himself properly and be done with this burning sensation.
You glance at him briefly and then begin climbing the rock. Astarion remains below to keep you covered in case anything decides to attack while you’re left defenseless. He looks up to watch your progress and cannot help but to notice the overwhelmingly attractive curve of your bottom. It was always attractive, of course, but something about it in this moment was entirely… irresistible. Had you been working out recently in preparation for the wedding?
You’re halfway through climbing the rock when your engagement ring bursts into a spray of light. It often glows significantly at the surface, but in the blackness of the Underdark, you’re practically a beacon. Your stomach drops. Gods, how had you forgotten to take it off?
“Astarion!” You hiss in a panicked whisper, “Cut it out! Every being in all of the Underdark will know our position.”
Astarion had realized the issue as soon as the light had flared, of course. He was trying desperately to avoid thinking of you and all the delicious things he wanted to do when you two made camp, but gods he couldn’t control it. What in the hells was wrong with him? He wanted to stop, to ensure your safety, but your plump, perfect ass was practically calling his name, begging for his attention, and he wanted nothing more than to bend you over and—
He shakes his head, trying to rattle the lewd fantasies from his psyche, “I’m trying, my love! I don’t know what’s come over me I just—“
Hags. Hideous shoes. Ghouls. Manual labor. Gale.
The pale elf tries to think of all the most grotesque, unsexy things he can and push you entirely from his mind. You continue to climb, hoping to quickly reach the top and take off your ring as soon as possible. The ring is still glowing like a single star in the blackest night.
Ogres. The smell of Araj’s blood. Rats. Gale.
Gods, it was useless.
Finally, you reach the top. You rip the ring off your finger and shove it in your pack as soon as your limbs land on the surface of the cave. Astarion quickly scales the rock behind you, and when he reaches the top, you’re positively glaring at him.
“Darling, I’m sorry! I really tried. It’s just— gods damn these mushrooms!” The vampire is ripping off his shirt and scratching at his skin as the two of you walk into the little cave. Before long he’s down to his knickers and cursing as he rubs desperately at his flesh.
You’re trying to ignore your fiancé and quickly pitch the tent so you can handle whatever the hells is going on with him. A sideways glance to your pack reveals that the ring is still glowing quite intensely… perhaps more than it ever has before. Was that even possible? At any rate, you can’t get closer to the stronghold with it glowing like that.
“Astarion, I don’t know what—“ You spin around, and you’re surprised to see the elf fully nude on his blanket, doing perhaps the most provocative thing you’ve ever witnessed.
Astarion is beaded in sweat by now, and his hands are wandering over himself, chasing the burning tingle as it travels through his body. Gods, the feeling was becoming absolutely unbearable. He kept seeing visions of you and him in the throes of passion in his mind.
He couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. Did he want to stop? He couldn’t decide. All he knew was the intense tingling and burning coursing through his veins and the wonderful fantasies filling his brain. He needed release from this torture; his limbs were on fire and the sensation was spreading to his groin.
The elf knows by the throbbing pulse in his cock that his erection is at full capacity, and he feels the dribbles of precum slowly sliding from the head, down the shaft. Astarion is, admittedly embarrassed knowing you are mere feet away and witnessing such an erratic show, but he grabs his own cock regardless— gods, it felt like being possessed. He needed release and he needed it now.
As his fingers wrap around his shaft, a burst of relief travels through his body. The tingling ceases for a moment. But then, it flares again and he’s consumed by the burning feeling and vulgar thoughts of the two of you once more. He pumps his hand a few times, bucking into the sensation, and once again the torturous tingle halts.
What in the hells?
Astarion is now rolling his hips towards his own hand, groaning in pure ecstasy at the relief from the burn as well as the delicious sensation of his hands stroking his uncharacteristically sensitive member. His eyes are clasped closed, and his other hand is still wandering over his torso, chasing that burning itch.
Through panting, shaking breaths he murmurs, “Darling, is it— oh gods, is possible that those— fuck — mushrooms contained sex pollen? I’ve never— mmh, fuck.”
You’d been so enraptured by the vision of your lover touching himself in such an uninhibited display of lust that you almost didn’t hear what Astarion asked. The slickness of your arousal was starting to become apparent as you instinctively squeezed your thighs together.
“I’m… I’m not sure, my love. I’ve read of such things but I’ve never come across it… until, perhaps, now I suppose.”
Astarion isn’t really listening. Instead, he’s bucking wildly into his own hand, chasing his own release. He falls apart in front of you, with his limbs tensed and mouth agape in pure, unadulterated pleasure, clasping tightly onto his own length. The gasping, strangled moan of relief that escapes him as he reaches his climax and shoots sticky streams of hot white seed onto his abdomen ignites a fire in your groin. He’s shuddering with the rippling aftershocks of his orgasm and you feel yourself dripping with arousal as you rub your thighs together once more. This display was entirely feral.
For a few moments the vampire is breathing contentedly, eyes still shut. He’s still holding his cock, which continues to twitch insistently despite its significant spend. Your lover brings his unoccupied hand to his hair and rakes it through his disheveled, sweaty curls.
You flick your gaze to your pack and notice that it’s no longer emitting that ethereal glow. But then Astarion groans in dismay and you see light flare from your bag again. When your attention returns back to your fiancé, he’s already grasping wantonly at a second rapidly growing erection.
“Darling, I can smell you,” He hisses desperately, now slathering his own milky juices around the swollen, reddened tip of his thick cock. The veins in his arm and on his shaft are pulsing as he begins to stroke himself again, “Don’t be coy just— come over here and help me with this. Please.”
And by the gods, he asked so nicely, how could you say no?
#astarion x tav#astarion fanfic#astarion fic#baulders gate 3#baulders gate astarion#bg3 fanfiction#baulders gate tav#bg3 fanfic idea#astarion x reader#astarion smut#astarion x female tav#astarion x you#astarion x female reader#bg3 smut#prompt request#prompt response#astarion prompts#smut
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the secrets that you keep | for @steddiemicrofic's April prompt: Fool AND for my submission to this month's @steddiesongfics, Talking In Your Sleep by the Romantics!
pairing: steddie (duh) | word count: 454 | rated: M | on AO3
Eddie Munson isn't an idiot.
You can't fool, trick, or cajole him into believing the impossible.
And what he and Steve are doing, have been doing, it's impossible.
Okay, not impossible, seeing as how they have been and it’s been nothing short of amazing. Steve's almost unbearably sweet, the sex is indescribable... but it can't last. No matter what Eddie's feelings are on the matter.
He's known from the beginning that he's nothing but an experiment for the younger man,
“Mhm... Eddie..”
He knows where he stands in the general hierarchy of life, and it ain't higher than his knee.
“....More... please.”
Even now, as he listens to Steve's soft moans and mumbles of some dream he’d be loathe to interrupt and it turns into his usual mumbled nonsense from beside him in bed,
“..Eds…”
Eddie knows that in the end, he'll force his way too big feelings for the pseudo Adonis next to him into the lockbox in the back of his brain,
“..I love you..”
And never think about them again after Steve gets sick of hi—
..what.
Eddie blinks down at Steve's sleeping face. “Steve?”
The golden sun come to Earth has the nerve to smile all soft and syrupy, quirk his lips up on one side, and mumble out another “I love you, Eddie.” clear as fuckin’ day.
Eddies heart is in his throat, its deep in the pit of his stomach, its impaled on the icy crags in his heels
“Steve?”
"...waffles.."
"Steve?!"
His last cry finally wakes the other man, the comforter whisking off Eddie's naked lower half as Steve whirls off the mattress, his bat at the ready.
Stark naked himself, standing firm between Eddie and the bedroom door with his head on a swivel, Steve slurs out a still sleepy "What happened, what'd you hear, what's wrong?”
Eddie's traitorous heart makes it hard to say anything, but he manages to whisper, “You love me?”
It takes him a handful of seconds, but eventually Steve turns back to face the bed, much more awake than he had been.
“I do?” Eddie’s face must’ve twisted up at the questioning tone because he corrects course, “I mean, I do.. but how’d you know that? Did Robin say something?”
He starts to pace; quite the sight, him being bare as the day he was born with his bat still hanging from his fist, “I knew I shouldn’t’ve told her something that big (“Steve..”), but how could I not? I tell her everything (“Steve.”). But she promised not to say anything to you and now–
“Steve!”
Steve finally stops pacing, though he’s still avoiding Eddie’s gaze.
“Look at me.” and when he does, Eddie smiles and says, “I love you too.”
#steddie microfic#steddie#steve harrington#eddie munson#steve harrington x eddie munson#eddie munson x steve harrington#eddeve#steveddie#st#st ficlet#steddie ficlet#stranger things#noelle writes
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These Destined Ends
Part Twelve
Summary: Jessica fulfilled the wishes of the Bene Gesserits to produce a daughter. You’re now burdened with the task of not only marrying the na-Baron, but also bearing his child — the Kwisatz Haderach. Will you take your fate into your own hands? Or will it always belong to those who control you?
Pairings: Feyd-Rautha x F!Reader
Word Count: 3.5k
Warnings: goodbye to Giedi Prime, no foreplay, fucking with ✨a view✨
A/N: I was planning on making this a long(er) installment but my monkey brain needs the instant gratification of updating the story😂 Hopefully Part Thirteen will be up soon, too. Thank you for being patient with me!
Amongst the hustle and bustle of moving, servants rushing in and out with your belongings and Feyd barking out orders, you kneel down next to the synthetic plant. You check twice that no one is paying attention to you before reaching inside, running your fingers along the inner lip of the pot and past clumps of fake dirt. Finally you connect with something and a triumphant fissure erupts in you at the sight of the fertility necklace.
You clutch it in your hand.
While you don’t intend to use it, it’s the last link to your mother that you have. You can’t believe you almost forgot it — it seems like a small eternity since your wedding. You had almost completely wiped it from your memory since you hid it, remembering only because Jessica and the Bene Gesserits were at the forefront of your mind.
You drop the necklace into a pocket of your dress before anyone sees it.
“Do you know what today is, wife?”
You catch Feyd loping towards you, seemingly having forfeited his supervising responsibilities.
“Mm, the day we get a lovely chat with the Reverend Mother?” You ask, distracted by the weight of the necklace.
“Surely you haven’t forgotten.”
You blink, then center your focus on him, on the fleeting look of smugness he has. “It’s today.”
Feyd’s eyes glint. He pounds his fist to his chest three times, drawing the attention of the servants who stop what they’re doing and straighten in response. You wave them away, grabbing your husband by the crook of his elbow and pulling him into the corner.
“Must you insist on doing that so often?” You chide him. “We would already be on Arrakis if they didn’t have to keep pausing for you.”
The grin on his face tells you that he is not even the slightest bit apologetic. “Can I not dedicate servitude to my wife on our anniversary?”
“Our anniversary of one month,” you remind him.
“A perfect opportunity to laud you.”
“You can laud yourself over there to help that poor man.” You indicate a servant struggling with a particularly heavy trunk of belongings.
Feyd narrows his eyes. “He’s fine.”
“Feyd-Rautha.”
Your husband considers your tone, then turns and delivers another three-strike salute to his chest. He’s darting away before you can reprimand him for it, snarling for a second servant to help with the heavy lifting instead of himself.
Shaking your head, you can’t but smile privately. It warms you to see Feyd like this, the charismatic, alluring side of him that you so rarely glimpse. He usually deploys it in political situations, a switch that he can flick on at will, but it seems genuine today. Perhaps the anniversary of your wedding has lifted his mood in light of his brother’s engagement.
Either that, or the fact that the first step of your plan would be initiated today.
You liked to believe it was the latter.
It’s midday before you’re called to receive the Reverend Mother, and sweat beads between your shoulder blades. To calm your pounding heart, you think of Caladan: the spray of the sea against the rocky crags, the rare peal of your mother’s laughter, and how it all had been stolen from you by those like the Baron and the Reverend Mother. People who thought their agenda more important than the lives of those carrying it out for them.
Your vengeance keeps you sharp, your smile like a knife as you approach the Reverend Mother.
“Thank you for meeting with me earlier than we planned,” you greet her.
She replies, “You said it was urgent, though I sense that, once again, your womb is empty.”
“Yes,” you say, stifling the urge to choke her with those stupid chains. Hopefully the saccharine tone of your voice does not betray your inner thoughts. “I called you here for a related reason.”
“And what might that be?”
“You were wrong about Feyd-Rautha.”
The Reverend Mother visibly recoils. “Tell me what’s on your mind now, girl, I do not have the time for your vague accusations.”
“How do you truly know that he’s destined to sire the Kwisatz Haderach? He is…unpredictable,” you say. “Perhaps your calculations are wrong. It could explain why I am not yet pregnant.”
“Does he know you voice this concerns?” The Reverend Mother asks with a sniff.
Your lips press together. “Of course not.”
“Keep it that way. Feyd-Rautha is just as destined to sure the Kwisatz Haderach as you are to bear it from your womb.” You can feel her scrutiny from under her decorated veil. “You were defiant before about your arrangement. Why are you questioning his authenticity now?”
“As you remember, you assessed me under the Gom Jabbar. Feyd-Rautha has had no such assessment. What if he were to fail?”
The Reverend Mother considers this. “You suggest that we test him.”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe him likely to succumb?”
“I don’t know what I believe,” you reply, “only that his capabilities have not been proven by your standards.”
“You speak as if this is an oversight on our part,” the Reverend Mother says, rising to her feet. A bolt of uncertainty shoots through you.
“I mean no offense. I am simply voicing my concerns, as you said.”
“You leave soon for Arrakis?”
“In a few hours.” You try to look sheepish. “You can see why I demanded urgency.”
The Reverend Mother doesn’t immediately reply. You’re not sure what she sees when she gazes upon you. When she finally does speak, her voice is begrudging: “I shall see that Feyd-Rautha is tested by the Gom Jabbar, though I hardly think it necessary to facilitate now.”
“But what if he fails? I am wasting my time with him,” you counter, perhaps too quickly.
The Reverend Mother must mistake the haste in your voice for panic. “I will visit you on Arrakis in one week. We shall test him then.”
You dip your chin, acquiescent. “Thank you, Reverend Mother.”
The Reverend Mother has no sooner left before Asha scurries to you, her eyes wide. “I overheard everything. It won’t be ready by then.”
“It has to be.”
After your disconcerting dinner with the Baron, you made it your top priority to mend things with Asha. Albeit, less messy than your reunion with Feyd. Asha was only too quick to forgive you and gush her own apologies, which you reassured were not necessary. You had explained to her the plan you created with your husband that very night, while lying side by side in bed, voices whispered, his fingers dragging across your skin.
You had uttered plans to destroy his family like they were sonnets of a poem, threaded with love and unwavering devotion.
Asha, of course, eagerly agreed to assist you with the plan.
“These things, it takes time, and without having an actual reference —”
You lower your voice as not to be heard by anyone lingering nearby. “Tell them I will double their pay. It must be delivered to me on Arrakis in a week’s time.”
“Okay.” Asha hardly looks convinced.
“The promise of coin is an excellent tonic for idleness,” you say. You allow a small smile. “I wish it would change your mind.”
You had invited Asha to join you on Arrakis but she had swiftly declined, ever after you swore a higher salary. You would do anything to guarantee her company.
“I belong here, Y/N,” Asha says, “I know it must be difficult to believe. I imagine you felt the same about Caladan.”
You stiffen slowly. Oh, how lovely it must be to make your own decisions and live where you choose. Subconsciously, you know you could order her to join you and she would have no choice but to say yes. But you would not sacrifice her happiness for your own. “I understand.”
“Are you…disappointed?”
Feyd glances at you. You both stand in the whirl of a thopter’s wings, the force of it billowing your skirts and the red scarf you’ve draped over your head and shoulders in preparation for Arrakis. Your hand sits on your forehead like a shield for the sun — the last time you would see it, a dark, unblinking eye in the white sky.
The light casts Feyd in sharp contrast.
“What do you mean?” He asks.
“This…is your home,” you say, “will you not miss it?”
As if prompted by your question, he surveys the barren landscape, factories belching smoke in the distance as servants finish preparing your things for space flight. You think that he might not answer when he eventually says, “This place has always been more prison than home. I will be glad to rid myself of it.”
You want to reach out and grab his hand, but it feels wrong in this instance, when you wear your mantles of na-Baron and na-Baroness like armor.
Instead, you take to inspecting the same land that your husband does. You can’t even imagine the horrors he’s experienced here. And, unlike you, with your life scattered across several planets, Feyd had only known Giedi Prime — its cruelty and hardships and penchant for violence.
Though Arrakis is hardly a paradise, you hope he will find reprieve there.
“I can’t believe I’m going back,” you mutter. Your throat thickens. “And my parents won’t be there. I…I didn’t imagine it would be like this.”
“A soldier who dies in battle holding a weapon is guaranteed a place in the Heavens. If they were anything like you, they died fighting.”
You smile, blinking appreciatively at him. “I didn’t know you were religious, Feyd-Rautha.”
“I have little care for the Orange Catholic Bible. But there is comfort in knowing that there might be sanctuary for those who have spent their lives in battle.”
“Like you?”
You’re not sure what prompts you to ask it, but he turns sharply to regard you. His eyes scan your face, then the slightest of smiles graces his lips. “I’m afraid that there is no sanctuary for someone like me, jewel, but you’ve certainly ruined me by giving me a taste.”
Your chest tightens with emotion. You want to respond but it’s then that you’re beckoned over to the thopter. Feyd’s gaze flickers behind you and the moment is lost. “Be quick, wife.”
Be quick?
A pair of arms circle around you, making stumble. You automatically lean into their embrace while Feyd retreats to give you time to say goodbye, though you hardly notice with the tears springing to your eyes and blurring your vision.
You’re loathe to leave Asha here. She clings to you tightly, and you know that she wishes it could be different.
“You will come visit,” you tell her fiercely.
Asha withdraws an inch. “Of course.”
“And you will send me monthly — no, weekly updates.” You give her a stern look. “You will spare no details. I command you as your na-Baroness.”
“I suppose I have no choice then.”
You grin at her. “No you do not.”
Asha draws you in again, then whispers, “Your promise of coin worked.” She recovers, saying louder, “Now go. The na-Baron looks anxious for you to join him.”
“Thank you, Asha. For everything. You are my dearest friend.”
Asha offers you one last smile then bows to you. Aware that half of the fortress is watching, you spin on your heel and make your way to the thopter, to your na-Baron, and to your uncertain future.
“I can’t say it’s good to be back,” you report dryly as the heighliner descends. The expanse of desert stretches out before you, Arrakeen, shield wall visible just on the horizon. It shimmers slightly in the low lighting, duel suns casting a glow as they prepare for nighttime.
You’re escorted by a horde of Harkonnen soldiers in their all-black armor through a crowd of Arrakis natives. The handful of Fremen are easy enough to spot with their blue-on-blue eyes — you think them to be hostile of you, considering your Harkonnen marriage, but most regard you with curiosity. As you pass, you hear a rumbling in the crowd that you catch snippets of:
“…the Holy Mother of the Kwisatz Haderach…”
“I hear she’s no Bene Gesserit witch as they claim.”
“…does she already look pregnant to you?”
It displeases you, these vast speculations, but do your best not to reveal it. The truth of your education is not widely known. You were a shameful blot on the tapestry the Bene Gessrits have woven, and instructed by your mother upon first arrival on Arrakis not to tell anyone.
The prophecy foretold you to be part of the sisterhood, so that was the facade you upheld.
A Fremen woman twists free from the crowd. You’re too stunned to push her away before she lays a hand on your lower abdomen. Her blue-on-blue eyes shine vibrantly.
“I have touched the womb of the Holy Mother,” the woman says in a tremulous voice, “the womb which will bear our sacred Messiah.”
You stare, open-mouthed, as two Harkonnen soldiers grab under her arms and drag her away, still spouting heretics about your womb. The last you see of her is her feet dragging in the sand as she’s sucked into the crowd. Unease travels across your skin like goosebumps despite the stifling heat; you’re grateful to have worn the headscarf, as it hopefully masks your alarm.
“I should’ve had her hands removed for daring to touch you,” Feyd hisses under his breath.
He glowers the remaining way to the Arrakeen palace. It’s difficult to say if any of the remaining Fremen are eager to replicate the scene, but they’re surely discouraged now by your husband.
“That would’ve reflected poorly on us,” you say.
“I don’t care.”
You bump arms with him, stepping closer as not to be overheard. “You cannot blame them for their exuberance. They have been manipulated by the Bene Gesserits for centuries now. They believe our child to be their savior.”
A look of discomfort crosses Feyd’s face but he elects not to respond. Together you’re admitted through the airtight entrance into the palace, which is promptly sealed again. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust but when they do, you’re rooted to the spot by confusion.
The palace is exactly the same. You’ve memorized it from your long days stuck inside, but the decor and furniture are completely different. You suppose you expected to see it mostly the same, perhaps ransacked or destroyed, a standing tomb from the life before — not this, a space crafted entirely new.
The Harkonnen soldiers dispatch, probably to sweep for spies, leaving you alone with Feyd for the first time since your exchange with the Baron.
Your brows furrow as you say, “I don’t understand.”
“I hope it’s to your approval.”
“You did this?”
“I thought it would make the transition…easier,” he tells you. “Everything that was salvageable has been taken to a storage vault for safe keeping in case you later feel so inclined to see it.”
Gratitude swells inside you. “The entire palace?”
Feyd indicates for you to continue onward. He trails after you as you explore the halls, amusement etched on his face as he observes you peeking into each room for confirmation. It’s only once you’ve reached the bedroom meant for the man and lady of the house that he stops you.
“I’ve deigned to move our personal belongings to the next biggest suite,” he says, “this room is considered off limits.”
Relief washes over you — you won’t have to stay where your parents slept, where your mother would venture nightly from her quarters to slip under the covers with your father. Your throat thickens. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say nothing.”
His gesture moves you deeply, but it’s hard to miss the streaks of residual lasgun burn marks on the walls, the unfamiliar servants now in your employ. And you’re not sure if it’s your imagination or not but you sense a heaviness within the palace as if the weight of the deaths press on you from all sides.
The intricate care taken to packing your belongings is now undone over the next few hours. At least here everything is in color and there’s a human warmth that was always lacking on Giedi Prime. You sneak glances at Feyd on occasion to gauge his reaction, but he maintains his casual indifference to it all.
It would be impossible to tell if he’s masked his feelings or if he really doesn’t care. Either way, relief loosens your mind when night descends and the servants are sent away to rest, leaving you alone with Feyd. There are no pretenses you need to hold — not that it would matter if you tried. His attention is already fastened to you, analyzing.
“Let me help you out of your dress,” he offers in his rasping voice.
You obey, turning your back to him so that he may untie the laces running up your spine. You suspect that he would normally make quick work of such a task, it’s not like he’s unfamiliar with the process, but his fingers are clumsy, grazing. Feyd crowds close to you, his mouth hovering over the shell of your ear.
“Did everything go as planned?”
You nod, humming. It’s hard not to get distracted with him near you like this. “Yes. She will be here next week to assess you.”
“Perfect.”
“It truly could not have gone better,” you admit to him with a splash of self-satisfaction.
He drops a kiss to your bare shoulder as he eases the dress down over it. “I was talking about you, jewel.”
Twisting, you meet his mouth with yours. Feyd’s hands instantly grab at your waist and spins you the rest of the way until you’re pressed together. You allow the dress to slide down and pool at your feet, which you step out of as Feyd pedals backward, taking you with him. His kiss grows deeper. Attempting to take the lead, you tug him towards the bed, but Feyd has other ideas.
“No, no, come here,” he rasps. Like the tide eroding the sand, you let him guide you to the floor-length window. The glass against your skin is still warm from the twin suns.
“Here?” You gasp into him.
Feyd is too busy discarding his own clothes to answer immediately. “Let all of Arrakis see their na-Baroness,” he murmurs, mouth reuniting with yours with renewed passion.
His touch coasts down your side to your thighs, lifting you so that you can settle your legs around his waist. The vantage point giving your center access to his hardened length. Your body bows in response to him, ribbons of desire reaching out to capture you, binding you to him.
It’s without warning that Feyd drives inside you. He grunts as his cock splits your cunt, walls protesting at his size, the force of his intrusion. You bite down on his shoulder as pain intertwines with pleasure, muffling your cries until his thrusts have thoroughly slickened you. And Feyd never relents, bucking his hips into you with wild enthusiasm.
You’re not sure how it’s possible but every touch — every thrust, every kiss — catapults you to the edge of a precipe from which you willingly step over, languishing in the free fall. Someday you might hit the ground, but that doesn’t frighten you as it should. You would do it over and over again as long as he was the one to bring you there. All things considered, it was his hands pushing you off the ledge, prompting you to fall, to spiral down into the chasm he created — and his hands who ultimately catch you.
Feyd eventually lets you back down on your feet only to twirl you around again. His arms snake around you, hands cupping your breast. You moan as he pinches your nipples, rolls them between his fingers, his breath hot on the side of your neck. Feyd wastes no time returning his cock to your weeping cunt, using his knee to spread apart your legs.
It feels as if you can see all of Arrakis from here as Feyd pummels into you: the cresting desert beyond the city, the shield wall, lights flickering in the distance. You wonder if anyone can see you now, make out your blurred shape high above them getting properly fucked by the man who rules over them. The thought fills you with molten heat, pulsing over you in waves of pleasure as you imagine an audience to your fucking.
Feyd laughs like he knows this. “What shall we say when our people discover their na-Baroness is a whore?”
“It doesn’t matter,” you pant, “you’d kill anyone who even hints at it.”
He snaps his hip to you, grunting in approval.
It’s not long after that he coaxes your final orgasm from you, coming himself soon after. The lights of Arrakeen merge, brighten, as you unravel beneath him; the subsequent bliss of him coating you with his seed. Once he’s wrung his pleasure from you, he pulls you against him, your back flush with his chest. You stay like that for quite some time as you both catch your breath, looking out over the planet you inherited together.
“It’s all ours,” Feyd rasps.
“What an anniversary gift,” you reply, grinning as you watch him in the reflection of the glass.
“If you asked of it I would gift you the entire Known Universe.”
“I know,” you tell him. “Maybe next month.”
Part Thirteen
Taglist:
@moonsoulk @heartarianagran @torchbearerkyle @unicoreads @taleah @mamawiggers1980 @jovialeggsbailiffsoul @harkonnin @avidreader73 @unicorntrooper @beebeechaos @kamcrazy123 @wo-ming-bai @m-indkiller @kpopnstarwars @dacreshoney @stopeatread @the-na-baroness @therealslimshady-1 @unnisumi
#feyd rautha#feyd x reader#dune#feyd x you#fanfic writing#feyd rautha harkonnen#feyd smut#writers on tumblr#writing#fanfic#these destined ends
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My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...
In 2001 I was commissioned by the Creswell Crags Visitor Centre to create a series of paintings illustrating the gorge at different times in the past. These pictures look pretty rudimentary now (I was still learning to paint) but I loved this project so much! Visiting the caves and reconstructing these scenes confirmed to me that this was how I wanted to make my living.
Here are the two pictures from 12,000 years ago...
#Art#Painting#PaleoArt#PalaeoArt#SciArt#SciComm#DigitalArt#Illustration#Dinosaurs#Birds#Reptiles#Palaeontology#Paleontology#JOINED
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Part III: I meant to say, that I love you, or maybe, fear like a flame, what's happening to me.
- The Power.
Part III : Just tonight, maybe I'll rest in peace
Tags: angst, fluff, sadness, angst, fluff, then maybe eventually smut because I do love that
Part I. Crowned light moon of mine - I found you too soon
Part II : Lace your heart with mine Let your sleeping soul take flight
Part IV : There is much to do and I still want to live
Part V: our futures bound, our bodies known
Part VI : these ain't my sins, I broke my chains
Part VII: You are not mine and am I truly yours
Part VIII: your blood like wine, invites me in
Part IX: I'll welcome my sentence and give you my penance
Part X : I can't go yet...don't let me die
------------
Another day, another battle. You shut out Shadowheart's physical closeness and familiarity with Astarion out of your peripheral vision. Because you like her. And this wasn't her fault. You don't want to hate her. But something strange would happen every now and again. Walking along with everyone, during the day, you trying to keep your distance from the two, trailing behind a bit... Astarion would turn back and look at you a few times. Catching you off guard. He would smile if he caught you looking at him sometimes.
What is he playing at.
It's not like we are friends. Not like that....I help him... And we fight together. And then you almost slipped on a cliff trying to go down a cragged rock, he stayed behind a bit, and held his hand out for you. You had to hold it or you would have fallen on your face. Embarrassing. And awkward.
He was happy. Smiling.
Dealing a lot of damage. Energized. His happiness energized you too. You were glad. If being his friend meant such warmth, you would take it. Remember what you want to be. You want to serve and protect. Even those that are too proud to ask for it. Or too lost to hope.
That night at camp was a celebration. You cannot remember why. But a bard was singing. Everyone sat around the fire. Laughing, singing. Drinking. Halsin was throwing someone in the air. Laezel was lecturing Gale on the merits of working out your body as much as the mind.
Once again you were lonely in a crowd.
It's not that you were'nt surrounded by people you loved who loved you back. But, that you sat opposite him. Across the fire. Him next to shadowheart. You between wyll and karlach. Shadowheart was telling him something pouring wine for him. He was laughing at what she said, happy. What a smile. He should smile more. Though he might accidentally show his fangs. You didn't realize you were inadvertently staring at his face. He locked eyes with you. You jolted and looked away.
Dammit.
It's embarrassing as it is, you keep his secret and let him drink you. This ...this is crossing the line even for you. While you looked away from him, your face solemn, between two happy people, Astarion couldn't help but notice. He felt sad. For you. You had helped him so much. Yet you were so sad yourself. He felt powerless. He resolved to come talk to you when he could tear himself away.
You didn't want to linger.
You got up. Took your sword. A bottle. And sulked into the darkness. Away from the merriment. Guilty of leaving those having fun. But you needed to channel your energy. You swing your weapon at a tree a few times, then practiced some moves by yourself. The noise fades away. Your mind quietened. You stopped to catch your breath. To take in the view.
It was breathtaking.
As you were lost taking in the river gleaning in the moonlight in the valley down the cliff, you heard someone approach.
"I saw you leave. I got you some wine". Astarion's smiling face appeared from the shadows. He handed you the bottle. You gratefully accepted. "it's beautiful out here".
Yes it was.
"shall we? :) Everyone is happy back at camp. Come join them" he beckoned. As if he had sought you out just to escort you back. You obliged. Walking back, he expressed his gratitude, and asked if he could come visit you again. That familiar feeling of being used...
But you couldn't say no.
After the merriment of the night, you went back to your tent. Dreading the encounter. Your heart was beating so fast in anticipation of this secret rendezvous. Why did it feel so wrong, yet so exciting. Images of his eyes, his face close to you, bent on your hand, flashed across. The alcohol must be getting to you. You paced around the tent. Shortly after, you heard him approach.
Your heart almost stopped.
He stumbled in. Had he been drinking so much? Shadowheart did make him drink a lot, but still. He ran his fingers through his hair. Smiled his charming smile and came inside. "Are you ready, darling? I can't wait, I'm positively famished" he said reeking of alcohol.
Ugh. Whatever. He is not even in his senses.
What was I expecting. You went to him, half expecting having to support him, but he just plopped down on your pillows. On his back. He beckoned you to come near him. Clearly lacking any energy to sit up. So you sat next to him. Extending your left arm to him. He held it, then smelled your arm. Taking you in.
Weird. You thought.
He then playfully licked your hand, while looking at you. Entwined his fingers with yours, and kissed them again. You could sense your heat rising in you. Your heart pounding, feeling warm down there. What a tease. Just get on with it and be done.
He did something very unusual.
He continued to kiss the back of your hand, trailing up ever so slightly, then licked your hands up and then slowly down a bit back to your fingertips. He then turned your hand over and kissed your palm. He was on his back the whole time.
Does he think you are her?
What is he doing? You were getting flustered, humiliated...but you didn't want him to stop. You were greedy. Just when you were about to ask him, he bit you. The sharp pang was surprising this time. He wasn't being gentle, you let out a little moan, looking away, then dropping down next to him. You felt drained. The feelings were too much to handle.
Principles be damned.
You want to savor the moment. The man you yearn for, right next to you. Your shoulders touching. Lying on your back, next to each other, hearing each other's breath. His face so close to you, with your hand on his lips. His thighs next to yours. You want to touch him...
But can you?
You shouldn't. Must not. Maintain your dignity. You urged yourself. Please. You don't want to stoop so low. He let go... With another kiss on your hand, he licked the droplets, then turned to look at you. You could smell the alcohol again. His eyes were happy, he was smiling. He looked nothing like the deceptive manipulative rogue you think he is, at that time. Just someone, very happy, very safe, very content.
Isn't shadowheart waiting?
You wanted to ask. But it wasn't your place. So you let him be. He held your hand in his. Entwined your fingers. And he showed no signs of getting up. Much to your panic. Is he going to be here all night? He can't be planning to? You propped yourself up on your elbows. To get a look at his face. But he was already asleep!
This....son of a gun!! He was passed right out.
Part IV : There is much to do and I still want to live
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of songbirds, swords, and spice (4)
pairing: Opla!Zoro x Opla!Sanji x Fem! Reader (no use of Y/N or L/N)
tw/cw: violence, blood, spider-creatures, see master post for complete tags
🏴☠️ read on AO3 🏴☠️
(masterpost)
<- (previous chapter)
Zoro stretched his legs out and folded his hands behind his head. Finally, some peace and quiet. Or however much quiet he could get on the Going Merry anyway. He shut his eyes, preparing to get a few hours of sleep before they arrived in Raven’s Crag.
“Mrrow!” Four paws landed on his thigh.
“What the hell?”
The black cat?! Zoro picked the cat up by the scruff and it narrowed its large, yellow eyes at him. A stowaway.
“Aren’t these things bad luck?” He said to no one before moving the fluffy creature off his lap. The cat, who was undeterred and stupidly stubborn, jumped onto his lap again the second he closed his eyes. “Knock it off.”
Zoro scooped it up this time and carried it to the other end of the room, setting it down on a crate, before he returned to his napping spot. The cat swished its tail, watching him, but didn’t move from its new perch.
“Stay over there,” he said. The ocean waves crashed and lapped against the hull of the Going Merry in swelling, gentle surges. He found the sound of the ocean soothing. He could sleep anywhere, it’s true, but there was something about sleeping near water. The crash and surge, the pull and push, the saltwater tinge to the air, and rush of the wind snapping the sails. It created a natural lullaby.
He sighed, tilting his head back, and listening to the waves rather than the cacophony of voices above. Usually, he didn’t have trouble falling asleep, but your voice was new and unfamiliar. He wasn’t sure why the old lady requested that you come along. You were a performer—not a fighter. Just because you managed one battle without vomiting at the sight of a dismembered arm didn’t make you a warrior. Zoro’s eyebrow twitched. What’s her deal anyway? He rolled his shoulders, struggling to get comfortable.
A soft paw batted the side of his head near his earlobe. What the--! The cat’s paw remained aloft – ready to smack his earring again.
Zoro narrowed his eyes. “You again?”
The cat lowered its paw and yawned, showcasing its large canine teeth and angling its ears back. Zoro wasn’t intimidated if that’s what the creature was trying to do. He had a sword. That was more impressive than two big teeth and some claws.
“What do they call you?” He lifted the charm on the cat’s collar. “Mimi?”
The cat gave no indication that it recognized its name.
“You really are bad luck,” he grumbled, “I never have trouble sleeping.” He got to his feet and stretched his arms over his head. “Stay,” he told the cat before ascending the steps to the main deck.
The sunlight refracted across the rolling blue waves and Zoro lifted his arm to block the harsh light.
“Can you sing a sea shanty?” Luffy asked you.
“Can you write a song about me?” Usopp asked, looking hopeful. Zoro rolled his eyes...These kids.
Sanji said, “What about a love ballad?”
You crossed your arms and pressed your lips into a line. This silence didn’t deter them. The trio of Luffy, Sanji, and Usopp requested different songs simultaneously.
“Would you guys cut it out!” Nami yelled over them, “She already said she doesn’t want to!”
Zoro rested his wrist on Wado Ichimonji and decided he might as well ask the question that’s been eating at him since the night you met.
“Why do the waiters at your grandmother’s bar wear earplugs?” he asked.
Everyone fell silent. Their attention left Zoro and moved toward you, expecting and awaiting your answer. You narrowed your eyes slightly at him. The sails overhead ballooned with a fresh gust of wind and the ropes swung in the breeze casting shadows like long, wiggling snakes on the main deck.
You said, “You noticed that, huh?”
“It was hard to miss.” Zoro deadpanned.
Your smile tugged at your mouth. “And yet I recall having your complete attention.”
Zoro stepped forward. “That’s what I’m still trying to figure out,” he said, “so what’s your deal?”
You shrugged, graceful and casual, like you two were discussing sword forms and not the mystery of your grandmother’s bar.
“The bar gets rowdy,” you replied.
“That’s what I said,” Luffy said, his tone was bright.
The bar gets rowdy? Yeah, right. Zoro stared down at you. The sunlight burned radiance across the planes and slopes of your face. She’s lying. You had to be. Your explanation was lukewarm and it didn’t account for the strange, solitary sensations that consumed him during your performance. Your performance and the earplugs had to be related somehow. He just couldn’t figure out how.
Usopp glanced between you and Zoro.
“Come on, guys,” Usopp said, “let’s stay focused. We’re finding a mysterious lost treasure for someone.”
“I’ll make lunch,” Sanji suggested, before saying your name and adding, “I’d love your help in the kitchen.”
“No thanks. I’m gonna stretch my legs,” you announced and offered Usopp and Sanji a smile. “I’ve gotta get used to being out on the sea again.”
Zoro watched you walk to the other end of the ship. She’s not getting off that easily. He waited about three seconds before following after you.
“Hey,” he began, narrowing his eyes at your back. You sighed, leaning against the railing, but didn’t turn around to face him. “If you double cross our crew…”
You looked over your shoulder. “You’re gonna slice me in half?”
Zoro scoffed. “I was thinking in quarters.”
You turned to face him, though your elbows remained on the railing, your pose was relaxed and wholly nonthreatening. Zoro’s pulse throbbed in his neck.
“You have nothing to worry about, Roronoa Zoro.” The salty air played with the collar of your shirt and Zoro looked away, clenching his jaw. “This crew saved the golden cupid...and if we manage to find Pandora’s puzzle box...then there will always be a warm meal and a cold drink for you at Estella’s.”
He glanced at you from the corner of his eye. Maybe he was being paranoid after their run-in with the Black Cat pirates or their altercation with Arlo’s gang after Nami’s abrupt betrayal. He didn’t want to get double-crossed, although he couldn’t see the benefit of you – or the old hag – trying to betray them.
“Fine,” he said flatly.
Maybe now I can get some shut-eye…The thought reminded him of the cat, Mimi, stalking around in his room.
“By the way,” he said, “that cat is onboard.”
You laughed. “Oh, of course she is.” You shook your head, “I’ll let Sanji know. Maybe he can make her some tuna.”
“Feeding your cat isn’t part of this deal,” he grumbled, annoyed. First, the cat took over his nap spot and ruined his afternoon and now she’d eat some of their supplies? What sort of bullshit was this?
“One,” you said holding up a finger, “she’s Estella’s cat. Two.” You held up a second finger. “It’s not really up to you, is it? I think I’ll take it up with the chef and see what he says.”
Zoro didn’t have a good argument against you, so he settled on rolling his eyes and returning to his bunk to get some well-deserved rest before the Merry reached Raven’s Crag.
The dingy swayed as it pushed through the shallow waves and your stomach followed the roiling, uncertain motions of the waters below. Something didn’t feel right. You would normally chalk it up to your baseline paranoia around strangers—but...your unease went deeper. Maybe all the stories about Raven’s Crag were getting to you. Everyone on the island said Raven’s Crag was dangerous, some even went so far as to call it cursed. ‘That’s why no one lives there’, they’d say before ordering another drink from the bar. What if something happened to Estella back home? Was paranoia or intuition that twisted your stomach into sailor’s knots? You shook your head and tried to clear your mind. One thing at a time...
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Sanji said, sitting beside you and looking pointedly at your bouncing knee. “We’ll find it.”
“If it exists,” you said.
“Madame Estella seemed certain it was here,” he said.
“Yes.” You sighed. “Yes, I know.”
Estella left a rather important detail from her story when she told the Straw Hats about Pandora’s treasure. Over the past five years, it had been you who helped her to find and collect the other boxes. The jade box had been the first and the easiest. You used your devil fruit powers, beguiling the previous owner, and tricking him into giving it to Estella. The onyx box, however, was kept on a marine base within the evidence room under lock and key. You and Estella spent nine months on that island, working your way into the upper echelon of society until General Samuel Bellamy invited several wealthy citizens for brunch. You and Estella had barely made it out after accidentally triggering the alarm when removing Pandora’s box. The last box in her collection, the one made of lapis lazuli, had been underwater in a shipwreck.
Truly, it was a miracle that Estella knew about any of their locations, but that one was especially surprising. You were useless since the ocean sapped all of your strength, but Estella had smiled at you before diving into the waters. Your hands curled into fists on your lap. The current had been strong that day...a storm was on the horizon and the ocean was restless, hungry.
Sanji muttered your name. His gaze burned into your cheek.
“We made it,” Nami announced, shaking you from your reverie.
The tepid saltwater and sand rushed into your shoes and clung to your shins as you leaped from the dingy and helped push the boat onto the shore as best as you could. The palm trees rustled loudly overhead. Your foot snagged against the dry, powdery white sand.
“What’s—” Zoro began one hand on his sword hilt.
“Wait,” you said, snapping your attention from the boat’s edge in your hands and toward the beautiful blue sky. “That’s not—”
Your words were cut off as a hundred screeching calls filled the air and their enormous black wings flapped, upset the palm leaves, and stirred the dry brush at the beachhead. Roughly a dozen, giant ravens descended upon the crew, their beaks open wide to reveal rows of tiny teeth, and their eyes glossy and bright and murderous.
You reached for your kusarigama—a sickle attached to a metal chain with an iron weight at the end — attached to your hip. You hadn’t used the weapon since settling on Nightingale, but you practiced the motions and your continued diligence paid off as you slid into a stance and spun the end of the chain.
A raven opened its’ beak and lunged for Nami, and you launched the weighted end toward the raven. The chain spun around the raven’s beak, closing it, and you tugged—the metal biting into the flesh of your fingers—forcing the beast to bow its head. Nami’s staff cracked the side of the bird’s head and you tugged the chain free, pulling up the slack, after the creature dropped. You could hardly keep track of everyone’s movements through the chaos of undulating black wings and sharp, curved black beaks and curled talons.
Zoro’s sword flashed beneath the sunlight, blood, and dark feathers followed.
Your body ached, familiar with the movements ingrained into the grooves of your muscles, but unfamiliar with fighting things that fought back (your usual enemies were coconut trees and bamboo). You jumped backward through the powdery sand, avoiding a strike of dangerous talons, and you crashed into the hard and warm muscled plane of Zoro’s back.
“Watch where you’re going,” he growled before pivoting on his heel and using his sword to deflect the beak strike coming toward you.
“I was.”
“Didn’t look like it.”
“How” – your fingers tightened around the kusarigama’s grip– “do you manage to fight with that sword shoved so far up your—”
Luffy yelled, “Gum Gum Punch!” His fist launched through the air and landed squarely into the raven’s rib cage sending the bird sprawling into the sand.
“I had it!” You and Zoro shouted simultaneously at Luffy.
“Sorry,” Luffy said, smiling before he turned his attention to a different raven. “Hey, Sanji!” The captain called out to him, “Do you think we could eat these?”
“You’re seriously thinking about food at a time like this?” Nami asked.
You shook your head and were unable to ignore the smile tugging at your lips. This crew is so fucking weird, you thought with a foreign flutter of affection. You brought another raven to eye-level by trapping its beak with your chain and Sanji roundhouse kicked it, knocking your chain free, where it seemed to float in the air for a second before you yanked it back toward you.
The final two ravens squawked, and took flight in a blur of sand and wings, leaving their fallen on the beach scattered among the crew. You wrapped the chain, secured your kusarigama at your hip, and flexed your sore, unpracticed fingers. You scanned the beach and pointed at an outcropping of gray rocks.
“That’s the crag,” you said. You looked at their sweaty faces and bit your lip. “Estella could be wrong,” you warned, “the box might not be there.” She had never been wrong before, but they didn’t need to know that.
“We won’t know until we get there,” said Luffy, walking toward the crag. You wiped the sweat from your face and sighed. There is no swaying Luffy from his destined path, is there? You almost admired his bullheaded tenacity. Almost.
Your hands pulsed, your blood throbbing, your knuckles scraped raw, and nails blunted from climbing up onto the crag. You pulled yourself up the final ledge, each breath laborious, and laid yourself flat against the hot stone. Your salivating mouth tasted metallic and unpleasant. Sanji squatted next to you, and his shadow spilled across your face and blocked the sun.
“Here,” he said, offering you a small flask.
“Water or booze?” you asked.
His lips quirked. “Water.”
“Shame.”
You took a small sip of the water before holding it out to him.
Sanji lifted his hand. “Keep it.”
You raised an eyebrow and bit your tongue to stop yourself from questioning or quipping at him. You were starting to understand that Sanji enjoyed providing for others. He cooked because he believed no one should go hungry, but he also had a true and burning passion for it. He gave you water because you needed it. There was no ulterior motive. No secret to unravel. He was just providing for you as he would provide for anyone on the crew. Not that I’m part of this crew, but the sentiment still counts.
“Thanks,” you finally said, standing.
Luffy stood before the great, black maw of a cave’s entrance with his hands on his hips.
“This is the place, right?” he asked, looking over his shoulder toward you.
“I think so,” you said. In your experience, Pandora’s treasure box locations increased in difficulty over time: a marine base, a shipwreck, and now deep within a cavernous network. You looked at this crew of oddballs, at the scuffs, bruises, and blood they spilled fighting the ravens and climbing the cliffside. I can do it alone. The warm breeze kissed your skin and the bright blue ocean crested with tiny, white waves along the shore below. I’m the one who Estella trusts. They got me here, but they don’t need to see this through.
“We’ve made it this far together, but you can turn back now,” you said, “I don’t want anyone dying for this.”
Luffy frowned. “Only you?”
Your heart dropped. His stark, honest words had momentarily stunned you.
“What?” you breathed.
“Don’t be stupid,” Zoro muttered, “we just fought a bunch of demon birds. There’s no way we’re turning back now.”
“I think she’s got a point,” Usopp said, “one of us should really be waiting on the ship. I volunteer.”
“It’s dangerous,” Luffy continued as if the others hadn’t spoken, “so you’d rather go in there alone and die alone?”
“It’s a wild goose chase, Luffy.” You crossed your arms.
“It’s her dream!” he said, “don’t you have a dream you want to accomplish?”
“My dream is impossible.” You bristled. Your dream wasn’t a treasure hunt, nor was it to become the best of something or the queen of the pirates. Your dream was a fantasy you repeated to keep your nightmares quiet. Your dream would never see fruition. It just couldn’t.
“There’s no such thing,” Luffy said while approaching you. His hand lifted, palm dropping toward your shoulder, and you moved out of the way at the last second. Luffy stumbled at the sudden lack of counter-balance and you grimaced.
You said, “I don’t like being touched.”
Sanji tilted his head to the side.
“Oh, sorry.” Luffy’s tone was earnest. “Whatever your dream is, I think you should go after it.”
You squinted at him rather than answer his statement.
You said, “You’re coming, aren’t you?”
“Yup.” Luffy nodded.
“Me and Nami will guard the entrance in case any more of those birds come back,” Usopp held his slingshot aloft. “We’ll shout if anything happens.”
“Shout loud,” Zoro said as he passed Usopp and entered the cave.
The cave’s cool air was a blessing against your sweaty, sticky skin. You led the crew, even though you didn’t have a map or idea of where the box might be. Estella said ‘Trusting one’s self is the greatest gift’ and you didn’t know if that applied to treasure-hunting, but you decided there was no time like the present to try.
“These caves are odd,” Sanji said, gesturing to the glowing greenish crystals that were embedded into the dark rocks above. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s something with the moon,” you said, watching your shadows play against the stone and crystal walls. “The full moon helps charge them...or so Estella says. She has a book about the caves on Nightingale Island.”
Zoro dug his fingers around one of the lower crystals, yanked it free and it continued to glow in his large hand. He swept his arm across the cavern floor, shining more light on the bits of rubble and dirt, but no treasure box lay waiting for you. His hair brightened beneath the crystals and gave it an almost illusory neon effect.
The cavern curved left, but remained a single, narrow pathway, without any divergences. As odd as that was, since caverns like these usually spilled like a network of threads, you were grateful. You didn’t want to add ‘getting lost in the crystal caves’ to your list of travesties.
“Where’d you learn to fight?” Luffy asked.
“Here and there,” you replied, “Estella needs me to protect her.”
“Did she teach you how to use that chain thing?” He mimed spinning it over his head, as you had done at one point during the battle like the chain was a lasso rope.
You laughed lightly.
“No,” you said, “we spent about nine months on this one island, seeking Pandora’s onyx box, and during that time I trained with a woman named Camilla.”
Luffy’s eyes lit up, emboldened by the viridescent glow of the crystals, and he said, “Cool!” His voice echoed strangely and you stopped suddenly.
“We’re close to something,” you said.
“How do you know?” asked Sanji.
“Our voices sound different here,” Zoro said, sounding bored.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Sanji said, rolling his eyes.
You peered through the muddled darkness tinted by a glowing light. Your heart skipped. Could Estella be right? Was the final box of Pandora’s treasure here? You quickened your pace and followed the path with one hand on your weapon. The crystals sparkled above and mirrored your reflections on their glossy, green surface.
The pathway opened into a cistern with tall glistening edges of slick cave walls, dripping and glowing crystal stalagmites, and shocks of white, thick spider webs running through gaps. Does something live here? You scanned the space.
“Holy shit,” you gasped. At the center of the room was a natural conglomeration of crystals and a bone-white puzzle box nestled at the center, glimmering like a beacon beneath the luminescent light.
You ran forward, kicking aside a bleached-white bone where it went clack-clack-clack into some rocks, and jostled loose golden berry lying around on the ground.
Something grumbled beneath you. No. That wasn’t right. The solid ground gave way, crumbling like a sandcastle devoured by the incoming tide, and your arms windmilled—your scream caught in your throat. The rocks beneath your feet fell to a nest of large, white ropes, and your body tensed—awaiting the inevitable crash and broken bones.
Luffy grabbed your wrist. He pitched into you, the ground unstable, and this time—your scream released—and gravity twisted your body so your spine was to the painful ground below.
“Luffy!” Zoro shouted.
Luffy stretched like saltwater taffy, he clung to your wrists, and both of you dangled above death trap of sharp rocks and rubble. Above, at the very ledge, Zoro’s muscles bulged as he held onto Luffy’s ankles. How is he holding both of us?!
“Climb up,” Luffy said, “climb over me like I’m a rope.” He smiled like this was an ordinary occurrence and you both weren’t a few hundred feet away from certain death.
“I’ll drop,” you said, “I’m closer to the ground. I’ll survive it.”
You glanced at your feet swinging through the empty, dark air. You actually couldn’t tell how close the ground was. The strange, white ropes glowed eerily beneath the muted crystal light, and pockets of it were disturbed and quivering from the fallen rocks. Is that--? Your brow furrowed.
“I can pull you both up,” Zoro announced, his face pinched tight with effort. “Just – just hold on.”
“I already am.” Luffy tightened his grip around your wrists and a wave of nausea coursed through you. Your skin prickled with a clammy, uncomfortable sensation. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, you reminded yourself, using every ounce of self-control not to vomit.
Zoro pulled, grunting as he did, and Luffy’s legs disappeared over the ledge.
Although you couldn’t see Zoro, you heard him shout; “I don’t need your help, stupid cook!”
“I’m not trusting an idiot swordsman with her life,” Sanji yelled, “or with Luffy’s.”
You clenched your eyes shut, squeezing Luffy’s thin wrists, feeling his rapid pulse beneath your fingertips as your heartbeat rushed in your ears and your mouth filled with saliva.
Luffy said your name and your eyes re-opened, “I’m not going to drop you,” he said softly.
He said these words like a stalwart, unwavering promise. He said them in the same way he said ‘I’m going to be king of the pirates’ and despite your past, your ingrained paranoia, and your reasons to distrust him—you believed him, and something sharp prickled behind your eyes.
Luffy’s midsection was yanked over the ledge and Zoro finished pulling the both of you onto the overhanging ledge. As you brushed the cave dirt from your legs, Sanji hunched his shoulders and met your gaze.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Fine.” You looked toward the chasm that separated Pandora’s box from you. You hadn’t brought rope or grappling hooks and you were ill-prepared to vault or climb onto the other side. “How are we going to get over there?”
Zoro pointed and said, “Hug the wall and maneuver around the chasm.”
Your mouth opened to tell him about the risk, but a sudden scuttling noise drew everyone’s attention to the ceiling.
“My web caught a tasty treat,” it said before lowering itself, a web attached to the crystals hung from its spinnerets. The creature was a human from the waist up, her breasts pale and nippleless, and her straight, long, black hair framed her pale face and six, red slit eyes.
Sanji blanched.
“This is your cavern?” You said. You knew grabbing the box wouldn’t be easy, but a giant spider-woman was extreme.
“My cavern,” she said, tilting her head, “and my food.” She clicked the mandibles on the sides of her jaw.
“Luffy, can you reach the box?” You unclasped your kusarigama and extended the chain between your hands.
Luffy cracked his knuckles. “I want to fight this thing.”
“I’ll get the box,” Sanji said, “I don’t fight women.”
He inched closer to the walls which had narrow ledges to precariously climb across. Your heart fell into your shoes. Sanji...You recalled the smiling, overjoyed faces of the children from the orphanage after Sanji made them breakfast, his fond and thoughtful expression when he talked about Zeff, his kindness in the kitchen, and his concerned gaze when Zoro pulled you and Luffy from the ledge. You couldn’t let him risk his life for Estella’s dream. You couldn’t. He’s going to fall if he tries to get it.
Zoro scoffed. “She’s not a woman.”
“I am Arachne,” the creature said.
“Sanji, wait—” you said.
The Arachne swung from her webbing towards the group. A warm, large muscled body collided with yours, sending you sideways into rubble and rock. Your skin smarted and burned where it hit the stones and jagged crystals. You blinked, stunned, as your mind lagged to piece together the details.
Zoro rolled off of you, blade drawn, and jumped to his feet. He saved me? You understood his earlier rescue because Luffy had been involved. He wouldn’t let his captain die—he was protective of him, cared about him even. But saving you didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense. Pirates weren’t loyal to people who weren’t their crew. You shook your head. Roronoa Zoro had saved your life twice. You adjusted your grip on the hilt of your kusarigama.
Time to repay the favor, you thought before charging the Arachne. You slid on your knees, ignoring the pain as the tiny rocks dug into your skin, and ducked beneath the creature’s large, hairy legs. Your chain whipped out, wrapping one leg at the joint before you rolled out from beneath her and jerked the chain over your shoulder for leverage.
The Arachne screeched in indignation, wobbling, although she remained steady on her other legs.
“Hold it steady,” Zoro shouted as his sword flashed in a quick, upward arc as he ran beneath the tied-up leg.
You stumbled forward as the leg was dismembered from its body and flung off in another direction.
The Arachne hissed, scrambling up the wall, and toward the ceiling. You spun your kusarigama, feeling safer with the weight in your hands, and the glowing steel beneath the crystalline fragments.
“Hey!” Luffy yelled, “where are you going?”
You spared a glance to Sanji. He was about halfway, his arms spread akimbo, his back to the wall and his feet crossing carefully over the ridge.
Luffy’s hands shot toward the Arachne and grabbed its rear legs, pulling her back, and the Arachne fired several sticky ropes of webbing at Luffy. He jumped, dodging the first splatter of webbing with impressive speed, and used his momentum to launch himself toward the Arachne.
Luffy landed on her back. They were halfway up the wall, closer to the ceiling than the floor, and your palms dampened as your adrenaline transmuted to fear. What if he falls? You weren’t sure if his Gum-Gum powers made him invincible to gravity and you didn’t want to find out.
You shouted, “Luffy, be careful!”
It’s part human, you worried your lip between your teeth, by that logic, my devil fruit powers should work on it. However, Sanji, Luffy, and Zoro weren’t safe. They didn’t have earplugs or headphones. You couldn’t risk using your voice on the Arachne and hurting them and you didn’t want to distract Sanji from his treacherous and focused climb to Pandora’s box.
Luffy wrestled with the creature, his legs were wrapped around the Arachne’s torso, and his fists moved too fast for your eyes to follow.
Zoro snapped your name and followed with, “Give me a boost.” His eyes were above, focused on Luffy, his green hair hidden by a black bandanna.
“You can’t reach him,” you said, interlacing your fingers, lowering yourself into a crouch, and bracing your back against the cavern’s wall.
Zoro said nothing and smirked. He ran toward you, planting his foot in your cupped hands, before launching himself up towards Arachne and Luffy. His boot scuffed against the wall and he grabbed the hanging webbing that swung from the Arachne. The creature slid downward but remained on the vertical wall. Her balance was affected by Luffy’s attacks and the weight of Zoro on her ‘tail’.
His muscles strained as he climbed the web, shedding pieces of webbing that fell like strange, spindly fluffs of white.
Sanji called your name and you looked. He held the box above his head, victorious and smiling, and your heart swelled. All this trouble for such a small thing, you thought.
“That’s mine!” The Arachne hissed, her face gushed blood, and half of her eyes were swollen shut from Luffy’s onslaught.
She reared back, bucking Luffy from her, and scuttled downward carrying Zoro with her. Luffy landed as a heap of limbs next to you, but his head popped back up, a little dazed but otherwise okay.
The Arachne’s intention was clear. She meant to attack Sanji—to punish him for stealing. Well, you weren’t going to let that happen. You planted your feet, your eyes narrowed and focused on the angles, the speed of her long, spider-legs, and the shape of her long, pale neck.
Kusarigama flew from your hand, its’ sickle-side cut through the air, and the cold chain unraveled through your fingers. The sickle zipped past her head and you tugged the chain, quick and forced, and the blade reversed direction and its’ curved edge sliced clean through her neck. A second passed. The Arachne’s head seemed to float through the air as it was rendered from her body with an arching spray of crimson that appeared black in the verdant pale light of the cave.
Her head hit the ground with a soft and rolling ‘thump’.
“That went well,” you said, breaking the silence, and a hysteric smile threatened to take hold of your lips. None of the children are going to believe this.
“Do you think anyone will believe that we fought a giant spider-lady?” asked Luffy.
Sanji said, “It’s no less believable than defeating Arlong’s crew.”
Your eyebrows raised. “You beat Arlong?” You thought Usopp had been lying when he shared that story.
Zoro sheathed his sword. “It was easy.”
“We make a pretty good team, don’t we?” Luffy said before smiling, though you assumed the question was rhetorical and didn’t answer him. You nudged the Arachne’s head with your foot and it rolled off the ledge and into the darkness below. It was eerie how easily you slipped into this crew’s dynamic. You didn’t fit in with them—you didn’t, but you could. And that was the scary part. However, you wouldn’t entertain ideas or dreams of leaving Nightingale Island. Your place was next to Estella and your future and fate were tied to hers.
You owed her after everything she did for you, after everything you’ve gone through together. No matter how easy it was to fight alongside the Straw Hats—you had your place in this world and it wasn’t with these pirates.
(author's note:
I'm sorry this took a while to post. I hope the length makes up for it <3 also happy belated birthday to Sanji !! xoxo )
#one piece fanfiction#reader insert#zoro x reader#zoro roronoa x reader#zoro x you#sanji x reader#sanji x you#vinsmoke sanji x reader#zoro x sanji#sanzoro#zoro x sanji x reader#zoro x sanji x you#sanji x zoro x reader#ot3#opla fanfic#one piece live action fanfic#wip
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Do you have any pirate sans x siren reader story ideas that you don't want/ Don't mind being converted into a story?
OOOOOOOOO! Pirate Sans x Siren Reader! You are in luck, my friend. I have had a few ideas I will most likely never fully get around to. If you would like to use any of them, be my guest~ If you do, please make sure to send me a link so I can read!!!
~~~ (1)
Sans is betrayed by someone on his ship resulting in the death of his brother and most of the crew. He manages to escape but is gravely injured. Running from his enemies, he stumbles upon a cave. Inside is a pool with a certain imprisoned siren. It is both lucky but unfortunate in his eyes.
Sirens/mermaids were stuff of myths and legends said to have the ability to grant those that catch them any wish they so desired. The stronger the siren, the more wishes they could grant. However, if you failed to catch or angered them, they would take your soul or lure you with their song to your death.
Fortunately, neither of them is strong enough to hurt the other, so a deal is made. You are strong enough to grant Sans the “Eye of the Judge” and “Karmic Retribution” in exchange for freedom. However, it is quickly deduced that that alone wasn’t enough. (Everyone was still dead, Sans was still dusting, and you were now weak enough that you wouldn’t be able to save yourself even free.) In conclusion, to save both parties, you propose one last final deal.
If Sans allows you to lure/drown him and take his soul, you would be able to turn back time exactly one year. He would maintain his new abilities to then protect his family and crew from whatever threat had almost dusted him. In return, he would come back and release you from your prison and keep you safe while you recovered.
Agreements are made with binding magic, soul consumed, and time reversed. (maybe with a side effect of now both souls being slightly bonded to each other) Sans finds you again as soon as he can and wa-la! Adventure time! Revenge against those who harmed Sans’ crew along with those who imprisoned you? Maybe! Simply avoiding danger and keeping everyone safe? absolutely! It could also be how you two slowly come to love each other or form a kind of familial bond.
~~~ (2)
You guide ships of your choosing through Death Pass. You keep other nasties away and show them how to navigate many days inside the perilous rocks and crags. All this for a price of course~ Anyone unwilling to pay can either turn back or inevitably get eaten by you or others. (After sinking of course… ha ha…)
There may be a certain pirate that catches your attention. One that brings you nice things and tells you the most entertaining stories. One that makes you want to go on adventures too…
It could be how you become fond of him and his crew through work. You could eventually help him through without payment to save him from those giving chase. You could ask for payment to be him taking you with him on his journeys…
~~~ (3)
Sans rescues you from the black market. Naturally, honor binds you to him now even though he let you go and left. You spend your time following him, getting closer, and sneaking on board.
(You are quite terrible at using legs at first, but you manage somehow. Even if people look at you weird. Customs are also different...)
You may be good at sneaking around and watching/helping. It could also be you only think you are sneaky. haha
#laylakaia#my writing#ideas#asks#undertale#undertale fanfiction#sans#siren reader#sans x reader#piratetale#feel free to use!#please share so I can read!#happy writing!!!
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headcanons or one-shot (pick your poison!) of astarion and gn!tav celebrating midwinter/winter solstice together? technically, it does exist as a holiday in the forgotten realms! blessed yule as well! :D
I suppose this prompt can't wait forever so here we are. A short fluffy drabble.
Prompt ✶New Beginnings✶ for BG3 Winter Holiday Challenge
Thanks @bhaalbaaby for beta-reading! Especially for re-writing some sentences!
I fucked a bit and didn't notice the requester asked specifically for gn!reader and did f!reader as usual. So, this one is f!reader and I will do gn! later
Winter Solstice
Synopsis: Astarion and Tav spend Winter Solstice in the northern town of Firesheer, and the subject of marriage comes up.
Tags: fluff, comfort
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Headcanons
You are freezing.
You've never been so far to the north, and you have never understood why people were afraid of winters.
Now, you do.
It's Nightal, 20. The longest night of the year. And probably the coldest, because the only thing you can think of, is how to get inside the inn and hide under fur blankets.
Till snow melts.
You look around. People of Firesheer are festive as if the cold doesn't bother them. They sing and dance, resting after months of hard work in the mines.
You put your hand inside the pockets of your traveler fur coat, golden coins jingling in the pockets. The only redeemable quality about this frozen hell is the danger always lurking. The city is always under attack: orcs, crag cats, giants. Though citizens have their army, they don't mind paying adventurers rather than risking their own people.
"Bracelets! Rings! Necklaces! All of the finest copper and silver!" A dwarf shows you his goods, "Take a look, traveler!"
You look disinterested as you take a look at the jewelry, shrugging at the selection.. You can wear silver things, but Astarion won't talk to you anymore if you put on something like that. Meanwhile copper... He would find it dull.
"No, not interested."
"This is copper of the best quality! Will last for generations!"
You chuckle. There is a very popular joke about things made by dwarves. They think humans are dumb to buy something that lasts only for four generations. Forgetting that the human generation lasts less than a century.
"Look at these bronze rings. They are engraved with protective runes!"
The ring is simple. but there is something elegant, something powerful about it. You look at the runes - "protection", "love", and "safety".
"I will take this one", you say.
"Oh no," the dwarf laughs. "This is a wedding ring, you need two. Unless there are more people involved."
And before you manage to object, both rings are placed in your palm.
And why in nine hells did you decide to buy them?
You've never discussed marriage with Astarion. Boundaries? Traumas? Feelings? Yes. Sometimes, you talk about the future. But such things as marriage never came to your mind.
You have no idea what he thinks about it. You have no idea what you think about it.
But now you have two wedding rings in your pocket. Dwarven bronze will last for centuries.
You look around, trying to notice the familiar silver curls. Astarion has gone to see the ocean at sunset, and you agreed to meet in the city at midnight.
“Darling, there is something utterly nightmarish about a dark cold ocean."
You refused to go. Astarion is already dead - he can even swim there if he desires (the ocean isn't running water, so he will be fine). You, on the other hand, want to keep this heart beating.
Suddenly, a drunk man blocks your way.
"Leave me alone," you mutter, putting a hand on your dagger hidden below the cloak.
"Why is a beautiful woman alone? It's a sin to be on your own at the Winter Solstice."
You step back. The man is much bigger than you, but he can barely stand on his feet. If you were out of the city, you could snatch your dagger - but within the walls, fighting isn't wise.
"So, what d'ya think, pretty girl?" he reaches out for your chin, but before his dirty hand touches your skin, the man is pulled away from you.
"Hands away from my wife", Astarion hisses. "Or I will turn you inside out and feed the crag cats!"
The man recoils. "I-I beg your pardon, didn't know she is... taken."
"Fuck off," Astarion is quiet, but you know - one false move and the vampire will rip his throat.
The man stumbles and walks away as fast as he can. “Thanks”, you mutter, still feeling scared. "How was the ocean?"
"Dark. Cold. Frightening," He wraps his hand around your waist and tugs you closer. There is something possessive in this gesture. You don't mind. "Come on, we have the longest night ahead!"
You shiver. Night plans are set in stone. Astarion cherishes the nights when he can walk freely and see the world not hiding in shadows, and he rarely wants to walk alone. Besides, you already abandoned him when he went to the seashore. You can't leave him alone again for the rest of the night.
You walk through the city square. The songs are loud and lively, and the festive mood warms you up. Or maybe this is Astarion's presence. You plant a kiss on his cheek and notice he stiffens.
"Let's go somewhere less crowded," you suggest.
Maybe he is afraid people will notice he is a vampire. Maybe big crowds remind him of his hunting spots - who knows how many drunk idiots he would drag to their deaths during the same festivals.
You walk together in silence until the houses disappear. The winds howl like hungry wolves. The snow reaches up to your ankles.
Astarion kneels and you notice he tries to make a snowball but the snow crumbles in his hands.
"I see what you are doing," You say, "Don't you dare"
"I was just touching snow," He smiles innocently.
You put your hands deeper into the pockets and feel the bronze rings. Wedding rings.
"When that man approached me, you called me your wife."
Astarion turns away as if trying to see something in the distance. "Never mind, just slipped off my tongue."
"Why did you call me that?"
"I am sorry to have offended you with such vulgar words."
"That’s not what I mean. Just weird, considering we have never officiated anything."
"Do you want me to kidnap a cleric and make him marry us? I don't know... I just... " he sighs. "We sleep together. You care about me, and I care about you. I want to be with you until your mortal days are over or until I am killed by some monster hunter."
"And how long have you seen me as your wife?"
He shrugs. "The night in the graveyard, when I realized I'd never truly experienced real lovemaking? When you found me in that cellar, hiding from the sun, and kissed away my fears and pain? One of those nights when I woke you up, screaming, and you held me until the nightmare finally let me go? What about you? Have you ever thought about me as your husband?"
"I mentally married you when you tried to slice my throat. But, I realized you were mine when I noticed you standing between me and danger for the first time,” You say, stepping closer to your love.
“So, what now?" he asks.
You grin, playfully pushing Astarion into the snow. He either expects that or simply decides to play along.
You straddle Astarion, taking in his expression. He smiles - a very rare joyful smile when he doesn't try to pretend or to laugh things away. It's the real him you saw for the first time on his grave. It's the real him you see in the darkness of the tent when he thinks you are still asleep. The real him who somehow survived his own death.
"What are you up to, little pet?" he grins.
You snatch the rings from your pocket, quickly taking his left hand.
"Will you marry me?"
You wait for his reaction. Sometimes even the most sincere forms of affection cause him mental pain, and he locks himself inside the shell. Once, he couldn't bring himself to talk to you because you tried to force him to stay inside the tent during a snowstorm.
Maybe it's too much, you think, ready to let him go. It's not like he doesn't like being dominated by you, but it depends on his mood.
"How could I say no?" He grins, allowing you to put the ring on.
You giggle like a little girl, leaning down to kiss him.
"There is supposed to be a second one," He notices when you pull away.
You give him the other ring, and he graciously takes your hand. Before putting the ring on it, he kisses your wrist and pierces it a bit with his fangs.
You sit like that for a while, looking at each other. Gods, does he even know how truly beautiful he is?
Your love. Your man. Your husband.
The winds howl again, and you shiver.
"Seldarine. Why didn't you tell me you are so cold?"
"Didn't want to ruin the longest night for you."
"Really? So you decided to ruin the next two weeks for me because you will get sick, and I will have to take care of you?” he chuckles. “Besides, we are married now, and I don't have any excuse to leave you!"
"Oh, I would never think I was such a burden to my husband!" you pout.
The next moment you are in his hands. You love being carried like that, especially knowing you are weightless to him.
"You are the most insufferable sweet burden I've ever wished to have, my little wife," he kisses you. "I suggest we return to the inn and consummate our marriage."
You giggle again and wrap your hands around his neck.
"As long as you offer me a hot bath as a wedding gift."
"It absolutely can be arranged, my dear!"
--
Nightal ("The Drowing Dawn") - the last month of the year. Winter Soltice is celebrated on Nightal, 20.
Firesheer - a mining city in the Frozenfar in northwest Faerûn
Seldarine (Elven) - Gods
--
Tag list
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Enver Gortash HEADCANONS
NSFW at the bottom, below the ()()()
+18 MDNI SEXUAL CONTENT
CONTENT WARNING: relationship headcanons, arranged marriage in some, manipulation, established relationship.
*Orange means that particular sentence/piece is CANON but the rest is a headcanon.
ᏵꝊ𐌓𐌕𐌀𐌔𐋅ᏵꝊ𐌓𐌕𐌀𐌔𐋅ᏵꝊ𐌓𐌕𐌀𐌔𐋅ᏵꝊ𐌓𐌕𐌀𐌔𐋅ᏵꝊ𐌓𐌕𐌀𐌔𐋅
Gortash definitely doesn’t mind being a shit bag. But I think if he took a partner, he would just be manipulative emotionally but not physical. Like he chose a partnership and you just have to put up with some dumb fucking consequences of being in love, that's just how it is. I don’t think he’d shower you in gifts if he loved you but when he gave you something to cherish, it’d be personal, solemn, beautiful. Like him.
If it was arranged, he wouldn’t bat an eye, status is status. He’d only see you as an arm piece. He’d take you to dinner occasionally to check up on you. He would shower you in gifts at the wedding ceremony. For show of course, so your family, friends, patrons, and acquaintances knew you were in cushy hands.
I think Enver’s hands would always been warm. They’re calloused, warm, thicker, comforting when they held your face or braced your thighs. You would put lotion on his hands every night before bed because, you know, you care about him.
He is the man to take the same soap bar he uses on his body for his face, but this is medieval so him washing his face is high maintenance, comparatively. You only suggest he use rose water after he shaves as not to leave irritating skin patches. It makes him smell very sweet.
You are as soft as butter and he is a large man with a delicate hobby like baking, figuratively. His brutish in personality, is shrouded in fancy clothes and ugly ass shoes. But he can talk as calmly as a lake, and comfort you with honeyed words. You are capable of finding solace in him sometimes, if he lets you unburden yourself.
If it’s an arranged marriage, he will listen to your sorrows and complaints when he has time. Other times he’ll say “my dearest, I have not the time for your tears today.” Which breaks your heart. He's yours potentially forever, and he won't carry your burdens like you attempt to with his.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
NSFW HEADCANONS
He gives me very much the same energy as Raphael. Complete bottom. Probably not that good at fucking but he’s got some girth. Girth matters more than length, pls be honest with yourselves.
Not usually on top unless he’s teasing you a lot beforehand. He fucks loud too, verbally and from your bodies crashing over and over against each other.
Like Raphael has Harleep bc he’s a narcissist and they’re sent there by Mephestopheles to distract him. Gortash has you because you’re capable and seen as an equal. Whether you’re the nicest person on earth or the crudest bitch. If you can swindle like him, he sees something beautiful in that.
I think he’s loud and unapologetic during sex. He knows what he wants too and can voice is. He’s the “oh great heavens!” Type too.
Sometimes is a quickie-person, when he yearns for better company at night he removes himself from his workshop and walks to his room to have honey-sweet love, not fuck.
If you’re arranged marriage melds into more, I think he could be fixed. Very. Very. Slowly. You like to walk to the deep cragged shore of Wyrm’s Rock and watch the ocean and pet the moss. He doesn’t get it even if you have a reason to love being by yourself. You ponder harder about the timelessness of nature and the ebb and flow.
He fucks you soft and slow next time, taking the time like you do. He wants to know his partner, he really does. He uses it to stare into your eyes as they flutter from pleasure, he wants what you have. A soul so malleable yet it always know what it is deep down. It’s always whole.
ⓖⓞⓡⓣⓐⓢⓗⓖⓞⓡⓣⓐⓢⓗⓖⓞⓡⓣⓐⓢⓗⓖⓞⓡⓣⓐⓢⓗⓖⓞⓡ
Thank you for reading!! I have more headcanons on my pinned masterlist <3
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Distraction / Dracule Mihawk Imagine
Request: Hello! I was wondering if I could request a Mihawk x Reader that’s kinda enemies to lovers. I’m super in love with the whole ‘they hate each other but their constant bickering is bordering on blatant flirting’. Thank you so much ^~^
Babes you are so right!! This is so sweet oh my goodness!! :) Sorry if this is really OOC, its my first time writing for Mihawk!
This was fun to write, but it took me a while - so if you liked it, or if you want a follow on, please leave a comment!
Warning: a little strong language, mentions of knives!
(I do not own One Piece or its characters, all rights go to creators. Gif credit goes to @bangnyfes.)
☆.。.:・°☆.。.:・°
The exhale that left your nose at the sound of his voice would have been squally enough to shatter stone.
It had only been a meagre three days of uninterrupted peace before the cursed Dracule Mihawk arrived. Three. Days. True, your Captain and your fellow Red Haired Pirates had spent most of the hours here celebrating: emptying your dwindling crate supplies of poor Lucky Roux's lamb legs, unloading all the bottles of sweet liquor graciously donated to Shanks (or wily guerdoned by a female admirer off the coast of Syrup Village), and dripping every bottle dry until half the crew was splayed out on hammocks, and the other half was link-armed dancing underneath the endless ocean of drifting stars.
'For someone who's supposed to be a lookout, your observational skills are... well, decidedly more lacking than a sea cow's.'
As much as you loved Shanks, sometimes you wanted to grab his shoulders and give him a hard shake, trying to wipe that shrewd smile off his face. You hadn't even been granted any time to properly wake up; you had flung your arm over your squinting eyes, desperately trying to figure out why there was a looming shadow growing on the edge of your vision. Turned out, that as soon as that blasted coffin-shaped cruiser had come cruising past the white shores of Shank's base island, the man had nearly tripped over his feet to come leer over you like a grinning meerkat.
Look out duty? He had put you on look out duty!? With the brutish, blazing sun scorching across your bedraggled head? With the salty spray of the spring sea stretching its foamy fingers up across the shore and chilling your feet on this dusty, forgotten pocket of the East Blue? With the infuriating, pestering, testing, teasing Dracule Mihawk? Part of you was exasperated: you had been hoping for at least a week of recuperation before Shanks sailed off again for Yukiryu Island. Another part of you was dissatisfied that it had taken the swordsman so long to show up.
You hum in response as Mihawk's lengthening shadow shudders across your eyelids; feeling the cool chill that followed the flick of his coat around his boots, you don't even bother to open your eye and glare at the man. Instead, you dig your heels further down into the wet grains: legs stretched out and arms crossed tightly around your chest, lounging against the cragged edge of mossy crevice behind your back.
'I noticed you', you reply after a moment of pregnant silence. You fidget, trying your best not to give away the fact that your back was starting to ache from staying so *nonchalantly* perched in this position; to not give the man any ammunition. It really, really did not help your pride that his piercing eyes seemed to be mocking you with the way they glance obviously down the curved outline of your spine. Casting it away as vicarious embarrassment, Mihawk is almost ashamed with the burning realisation that his eyes had been trained over the years to be almost painfully conscious of your every miniscule mannerism.
'I just didn't think it was the effort to open my eyes', you sigh, tilting your head back towards the sun-strengthened field of bright blue swaying across the far yonder. 'There's no threat nearby. Unless-', you beckon your hand out towards the tapering shoreline, 'you count some of the cockles Beckman might stand on with his bare feet.'
'That's why the Captain's always wearing sandals!', you hear echo out from the mouth of the cave looming to your right, followed by the teetering sound of uproarious laughter. Despite the noise of your rancorous crewmates, Mihaw's golden eyes never waver: their piercing intensity focused solely on the edge of your irises as you finally, with a displeased twist of your lips, blink your gaze over to settle firmly on his own.
'I passed at least three Marine vessels during my jaunt over to your little...shack.' The swordsman's head cocks in your direction: his voice is low. Guarded. Unwavering. But you're getting to him. You know you're getting to him. Trying to wash down the waves of heat that begin to flood your vexed cheeks, you curse yourself for being able to read even his most minute idiosyncracies: the way his left eyebrow raises almost a tenth of an inch when he's struck by mild amusement.
'Shack? Shack!' You kick your bare foot off the slippery edge of the lapped rock and take a step out onto the gorge of beach stretching between you and Mihawk, swinging your arms out by your sides. 'Why Dracule, can't you see this is the last refuge of the East Blue - you dare scorn an abode teeming with luxury, good-will, and free booze!'
Another exuberant cheer rings out from Lucky Roux, as the unmistakable sound of two tankards slamming together, followed by a faint slosh and cry of outrage from Yasopp follow in quick procession.
The only hint that Mihawk has heard them is the slight narrowing of his eyes.
'It's not your fault, Hawk-Eyes.' You try to stifle your facetious smirk, instead placing your back against the rock again and fidgeting as if settling back for another snooze. Tipping the edge of your straw hat down to cover your eyes, you duck your chin into your neck and close your eyes, knowing the blatant disregard for Dracule would drive him mad.
'Suppose your eye sight isn't quite what it used to be, considering your advanced age and all.'
The clamour of your crew drowns in your ears by the pause that follows; too obdurate to flick an eye open and observe Mihawk's indignant reaction, you instead allow the sound of out-of-tune shanty singing to be replaced with the almost still whisper of the waves. Of the slight hiss of the balled sun, as it throws down its rays and coats you in nothing but the icy tendrils of Mihawk's obstinate silhouette. Of his sharp suspire twanging in your ear, as his pointed footsteps shift the earthen grains guarding you from his propinquity.
Of his gravelly voice, nearly making you knock the hat off your head as it suddenly flows past your ear.
The sunlight floods your eyes when they finally open, until you can barely see Mihawk: just the flaxen outline of his being as he comes floating up towards you: phantom like, and yet more imposing and colossal than the threat of a thousand Marine ships protruding their helms your way.
'Enough with the pleasantries. I believe I have something that may be of interest to you.'
He reaches into the inner lining of his coat, withdrawing a rolled up piece of parchment. Although you're intrigued, all you dare to do is look inquisitively between Mihawk's outreaching hand, and distrustfully back to his unwavering stare.
Wow, he really was close. You could almost see your reflection in the immaculately polished glaze of Yoru, still strapped on his back; as it turned out, that back just happened to be jutting your way. Mihawk's spine is almost completely arching over your reclining torso, almost blotting out the fringes of the sun, his head bowing as if observing rather flighty prey. Realising you're still stubborn as always: far too headstrong to trust him, or to place your fingers anywhere that could cause you to come into contact with his skin, he sighs and unrolls the treasure map with a flick of his wrist.
You did your best to hold back your snort. Really, you did.
'What, exactly, do you think the Captain will want with a scrappy looking, filth covered, mud covered, blood covered-'
'I didn't say Shanks. I said you. Although your Captain may have been a valiant opponent many years ago, he's now half the man he used to be. '
You chew the inside of your lip, finally rolling on the balls of your feet and coming to a full stand in front of the swordsman; Mihawk, almost unconsciously, straightens his own spine in return.
'You find me valiant, ey?'
He pierces you with the most grating stare he can muster.
'I find you wanting.'
The tang of salt seething off the bubbling sea could do nothing to burn away the fizzling want and joint annoyance banging against your ribcage, nor could the cool pinch of the jagged stone distract you from how restless you were feeling with Mihawk leaning so close.
'I bet I could find this treasure before you with my eyes blindfolded and my hands tied behind my back.'
The tangy breeze curls the strands of hair loosened behind his right ear, and by all the wishes in the world did you want so badly to tuck it back into place.
'Careful now, turtle.' He takes another step forward, effectively pinning you between the cove wall and his rigid chest. For the first time since your injudicious acquaintance with the warlord, you could feel it beat... no, feel it slam almost erratically. It seemed to jolt so ferociously against his pec, if he weren't restraining himself from taking another step forward and diminishing you completely, you would have been able to feel it against the unbuttoned cotton of your shirt. 'You've been spending far too much time around Shanks. We wouldn't want to step on that shell and have it crack.'
'You want to go out searching for treasure... you? With a map that looks like it's been pulled out of a goldfish's behind.'
He takes that final step forward, and as the buckle of his belt hits against the top of your groin, you find your obstinate bearing falter far faster than you were proud to admit.
'I find myself bored, and you may provide a fleeting distraction.'
The trimmed hair coating his jaw feels warm as it glides across the side of your cheek, but you still can't help but tremble. His voice: gruff and warm as it rumbles a devastating gale across the side of your nose nearly makes your breath hitch. Nearly. But just the mere thought: the mere tremble of your pulse point as you tried to swallow back down your pride as its slippery tendrils latched and slithered its way up the back of your throat was enough to give the game away.
Your thighs tremble as his leg slid up against between your calves, and you gave yourself away completely.
Mihawk's lips turn up at the edges, and the bastard had the audacity to pin your chin between his thumb and pointer finger. Imperturbed, as if unsnarling a feeble swallow's wings clipped by a wild springe, the man looming over your torso raises your face. Closer and closer and closer: his unbreaking gaze almost unnerving. Almost. If it hadn't been for that glint of delight festering in the corner of his swirls.
'Why bother, then?', you swallow thickly. 'If it's not a challenge.'
'I may find it fun.' His hand drops down to your collar bone: his grip firm, resolute, surprisingly warm as his fingertips constrict at the feel of your bare skin.
'No, really', you manage to pant out between laboured breaths, shaking your head out to try and stop yourself from becoming distracted by the racy feeling beginning to ball in the pit of your stomach.
He was playing you, you thought, biting down on your tongue and pretending the pressure of his thumb pad faintly pressing down on the strip of skin just above your left breast wasn't making you go lightheaded. He was toying with you. Snap out of it!
'Tell me the truth, and I'll do it. Why are you really here?'
'Perhaps I just like to see you squirm, like a little rabbit...', his hand rises from his side to slide up the inside of your wrist almost painstakingly slowly, his words dying out once he's encircled the bone with his vice-like grip. The next utterance is caught only by your ear as a whisper in the wind. 'Caught in my snare.'
Although he doesn't cut off your airway - he would never do anything to outright cause you physical harm - the finger still resting on collar bone crawls across your throat. His finger nails scratch like pinpricks from sharpened knives as he claws over your pulse point, before running the side of his finger back underneath your chin.
He looks almost... contemplative, as his eyes dart furtively down to linger over the top seam of your lip.
It's the first time, during all your years of solicitous enmity, that you had ever seen him distracted.
Using the opportunity, you manage to break free of his trance - of his hold on you. Grabbing onto his sleeve, you tug him towards you with all the force shaking through your burning body, appreciating the slight widening of his eyes in surprise as you slam his back against the wall of rock. You press yourself against the taut, constricting muscles of his abdomen, holding one hand firmly against his waist. The other snakes around to pin his wrist against the scrap of trouser by his hip, every cell in your bodies ablaze as he flexes his fingers. They curl into a ball over his fist, dangerously close to brushing across the back of your hand.
He could move you, of course. If he wanted to, he could flick you off him like a stray piece of sand, dusting you off as if you weighed as much as a handful of pebbles.
But he gave it away. God, how hard he had been trying not to: how hard he was trying to stop his body from flushing an increasingly paler shade of white at how mortified he was. How infuriated he was. How ensnared he was.
He didn't move. He gave himself away completely.
All he did was tilt his head back, and half-smiled expectantly at the sound of your dagger being sheathed from its thigh-scabbard; he was intrigued by the way you jutted its tip just below his Adam's apple, tilting his face to meet the steel.
'Don't forget, I still owe you for that time on the Nammu Isles.'
He tuts, eyes shining dangerously in the glare. 'Are you talking about the time I saved your pathetic life?'
You jut your chin forward, imposing your face against his own. 'I mean the time you took my bounty. You better stop talking, oh mighty warlord of the sea, before I shave that pretty little moustache off hair by hair.'
For a moment, there's nothing but the rhythmic brush of his breath against the pursed lines of your full lips: the odd jolt of the tip of his nose hitting against your own as he observes like with the intensity and rigidness of a man possessed.
Without breaking eye contact, he makes as if to lean forward and kiss you, but instead butts his elbow into your stomach and uses your doubled-over state to swipe the knife out of your fingers.
'You may have that back, if you win.' He toys with it, almost looking teasing as he tucks the small blade into his breast pocket.
'I'll take your sword, too.' You wipe your hand across your mouth before placing your palms on your knees, smiling up at the swordsman. You would be damned, if after all this time, you would give him the satisfaction of seeing how flustered he made you.
He bows his head, trying in vain to hide his amusement. He does, however, slap at the hand that's tentatively reaching behind his back, subtly trying to latch on to the hilt of jaded Yoru.
'Of course, if you win. Such a shame that you never stood a chance.'
'I look forward to wielding that sword', you hum in a sing-song tone as you creak your back up again, placing one hand on your hip and your other pointer finger ostentatiously on your chin. Raising your eyes to the sky, you pretend to think deeply as watch two seagulls squawk, stream and tumble past each other, darting through the streaming white clouds. 'I bet I could make some delicious Aburaage with it.'
'And if I win, I look forward to taking that awful hat from you.'
Looking on in disbelief, Shanks shakes his head and tilts back to face the rest of his slack-jaw, gobsmacked crew.
'Right, bets on boys. Which of our beloved numbskulls will be the first to make a move?'
'I mean, he couldn't be more obvious!', Yasopp chimes in, fiddling some loose berries out of his trouser pockets and slamming down into his Captain's awaiting hands. 'I bet he drew that map himself!'
Benn Beckman rolls his eyes, but joins in with the circling chorus of laughter as Shanks slaps his arm against his back. 'It is the fourth time this month he's shown up with a map for Y/n.'
'Well, no matter what happens-', Shanks replies, squatting down onto his hammock again and distractedly counting through the coins he's collected, 'we have to be thankful to Y/n! After all, all proceeds and winnings will be going towards restocking our drink supplies!'
#one piece#one piece imagine#mihawk#mihawk imagine#mihawk x reader#dracule mihawk#dracule mihawk imagine#dracule mihawk x reader#opla#shanks#red haired shanks#shanks imagine#opla imagine
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So I just started playing In Stars and Time because I got curious about the sad little blorbo you occasionally post about and afshdjdkrn
I just. Wanna hug them. So badly 😭
Siffrin isat my everything my cinnamon fucking apple WKDNWKDNEKEKSK HE IS SOOOOO SQUISHABLE...... THEY NEED A HUG SO BAD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH
Incredibly pleased im helping spread the isat propaganda like the dev rlly just Made a whump fic in video game format huh....... for tumblr girlies by a tumblr girlie.... my gods we respect the grind as if i could EVER be normal abt that
I'll be so real ive already written little tidbits for a longer au oneshot i want to write in between chapters of hunger au, and the exercise in 2nd person pov is SO MUCH FUN im enjoying myself immensely :] here, a snippet for both fun and profit (and more fun):
"Siffrin...." Odile says, and it strikes a sour chord, a ripple of dissonance that screws rivets around your chest and tightens. She shouldn't have to say your name like that, with that kind of weight— as if all the Craft in the world isn't enough to carry it. Pure reflex ducks your chin into the collar of your cloak; you avert your gaze back to the rubble-littered floor of the tunnel, tracing dark crags in the stone where sputtering torchlight fails to reach.
There you go again, stardust. Loop's voice is an ephemeral echo in your ears, a byproduct of months, years worth of past loops gone by. It isn't real. Gone and made yourself another person's problem.
It isn't real.
"— need you to start taking this more seriously." Odile bites out each word with the same deportment of a dog tearing off chunks of meat, clipped and cutting. Her brows knit together, mouth pulling down in a sharp curve; the lines around her eyes are tight, carved from the knife's edge of her own disappointment.
Her disappointment in you.
You almost miss the next sentence as well. "I have no way of helping you if you don't speak to me," she says. "And when you minimize these things you went through— you realize that's going back on your word, yes? Gems alive, Siffrin. We want to help."
You speak before your mind has caught up with your mouth, hundreds of loops sanding down the words into something practiced, rote. "But there's nothing to help me w—"
"Stop lying to me." Odile snaps, and your jaw shuts so fast you miss biting your tongue by a mere hair's-breadth. Your lungs threaten to buckle— inhale. Exhale. Come on, stardust, Loop's imaginary voice sneers, can't you do something as simple as breathe? Or are you just that blinding useless?
... Shut up.
Odile's eyes slip shut. She raises a hand to meet them, kneading at the soft skin between her brows. "I'm... sorry, Siffrin," she says, halting, stilted. "I shouldn't— that wasn't productive. I apologize."
Tentatively, you say: "You don't have to."
"Yes, I do." Odile straightens once again, tucking a strand of sweat-slicked hair back behind her ear with a grimace. "It's not... conversations like these are... hard. Yelling is pointless for both of us. I'm sorry."
"But you didn't—"
"Siffrin," she says, and this time the syllables of your name twist, a rise and fall that cracks wryly in the middle. One sharp eyebrow arches up into the canopy of her hairline. "You're supposed to say you accept the apology."
You stare. She stares right back.
Oh. She's serious.
"I..." you look down. "Um. Accept?"
"Excellent," Odile says brusquely, and bends to peer at an invisible speck of dirt clinging to her forearm. She brushes at it with absent, studious flicks, the epitome of single-minded focus. "Then now we can move on with our lives."
#shouting speaks#asks#isat#isat siffrin#siffrin#odile#isat odile#isat spoilers#SORT OF. I DONT THINK THEYRE EGREGIOUS BUT IM TAGGING JUST IN CASE#isat fic#yuor honor. im kinda insane abt the odile and siffrin relationship i wont lie#they are SOOOOOO.. THEY JUST DO COCOMELON SHIT TO MY HEAD OKAY I ADORE THEM#love meemaw's pride issues quite frankly. odile i love u..... i love how ur so bad at emotions but my gods u try#i could go on and on abt how i think she feels incredibly responsible for what happens to the party#if i get my way this fic is gonna be like a 20k character and relationship study between the two of them SJDBSJDNJSDJDJ#my snippets#txt
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Dark Knowledge: Part One
Miraak x Hermaeus Mora x Female Dragonborn Reader
Chapter Specific Warnings (per the warnings MDNI): canon-typical swearing, canon-typical violence, brief blood, horror elements, tentacles
Word Count: 4k
A/N: Part One of Dark Knowledge
The Dragonborn opens up a Black Book and steps into the realm of Hermaeus Mora.
Part Two
ao3 // taglist // main masterlist // dark knowledge masterlist
On the island of Solstheim, deep within a cave, is a book.
Before you, the book rests upon an intricately carved pedestal large enough to hold the massive tome. The walls and floor around it are tentacles sculpted from stone. They form a tangled mural behind the pedestal and book.
It is a Black Book. A tome of esoteric knowledge. A Daedric artifact attributed to Hermaeus Mora, the Prince of knowledge, memory, and Fate. You’ve heard the tales—mostly from one of Master Neloth’s wayward stories. With your reputation, Neloth asked you to retrieve a Black Book, giving you its precise location.
Maneuvering through the cave was the easy part. Now that you stand before the massive tome, your feet have turned to solid steel. The book is bound in a black cover that appears soft to the touch as if it’s a living thing and not just Daedric reading material. On the cover is the symbol of Hermaeus Mora. Between the pages, a black mist leaks out and surrounds the book in its immediate vicinity. That doesn’t account for the oddly pulsing air, as if the book is vibrating, disturbing the space around it.
You do not move closer. You do not approach. You stand near the base of the stairs that you just descended. There is no eagerness in you to take a closer look.
“So. This is what Master Neloth wanted us to retrieve?” asks Teldryn Sero. The Dunmer mercenary stands directly behind you and to the right of your shoulder. He crosses his arms and also keeps a decent distance away. “Looks foul. I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”
Without looking away from the Black Book, you answer him. “Sounds like you’re starting to care about me, Teldryn.”
Teldryn snorts and leans in, his helmeted head appearing next to your face. “You pay me to care. Therefore, I shall. I like the coin. Keeps my pockets full.”
“Ever the poet, Teldryn.”
“Naturally.”
The good humor is just a front. This…thing is repulsive, and you’re not sure you want to touch it, let alone open it.
Master Neloth isn’t the only reason you’re after this thing. Back on Skyrim, during a visit to the town of Riverwood, a trio of cultist attacked you. Before they lashed out, they mentioned someone named “Miraak.” From there, you came to Solstheim, only to find parts of the local population seeking out stone pillars. There they toiled, repeating a mantra that made no sense.
It all led to Skaal Village where the shaman, Storn Crag-Strider, diverted you to Saering’s Watch to learn a Word of Power. The All-Maker stones, as Storn called them, are all cleansed. But it only pushed you deeper into this twisted treachery. Storn was adamant about not turning to Hermaeus Mora for assistance in defeating Miraak, but did mention Black Books and who would know more.
Master Neloth was that person.
Now, you’re here, staring at the thing everyone’s been talking about, and you’re not entirely sure who to trust.
As if drawn by an invisible tether, your left foot slides forward toward the Black Book. Your mind registers it only when Teldryn reaches out and grabs your shoulder.
“What are you doing?” he asks with a whispered sharpness. Teldryn pushes you up against the stair’s central support pillar. “You are not touching that.”
“How else are we supposed to get it to Neloth?” you snap.
“We don’t,” replies Teldryn. “I love gold but I’m not stupid. We don’t need to do this. There are plenty of other jobs out there for us to do that don’t involve anything like that.” Teldryn emphasizes his distaste by pointing at the Black Book.
“But I’m the Dragonborn. I have to do this.”
“Do you? Do you really?”
You square your shoulders and stare Teldryn down. “Yes. That’s my destiny as—”
“Is that what those old loons up on the mountain told you?” interrupts Teldryn. “That you have to solve all of Tamriel’s problems?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing. You are not beholden to anyone but yourself.” Teldryn pauses a moment and then inclines his head. “Except me. Still owe me from that bet we made in Windhelm.”
“If I pay up, will you stop talking?”
Teldryn considers. “No,” he says after a few long seconds.
The two of you turn your heads in the direction of the Black Book. The black mist around it appears thicker, and distantly, you hear voices whispering. Yet this inaudible chorus seems miles away, their voices just existing at the edges of your hearing. Teldryn is Mer, and his ears are sharper than your human ones.
“Teldryn?” you ask softly. “Do you hear that?”
His head tilts to the right an inch. “Hear what?”
You focus in on the sound, pushing all your attention into deciphering the message. It is a chorus, a resounding force of voices all harmonizing together, but every time you try to pick a word out, the understanding slips and you’re left with nothing.
“Voices,” you murmur. “Do you not hear them?”
Teldryn shakes his head and then slowly pivots to face the dark tome. You take a step closer and Teldryn blocks your path.
“How can you not hear it?” You’re not speaking to Teldryn but to the air, thinking out loud rather than seeking an answer.
Teldryn is no barrier. You push past him and make it five full steps before Teldryn is able to cut you off. He places his hands on your shoulders, halting your forward momentum.
“The Black Book is speaking to you. Hermaeus Mora is calling you to him,” says Teldryn, shaking your shoulders.
Your nostrils flare and you smell ink. It is thick and viscous. “I should open it.” The words fall from your lips easily, as if you are one of the possessed and hearing Miraak’s mantra.
“This is insanity,” hisses Teldryn. “You’re not risking your life like this.”
The voices strengthen, and between each intake of breath, you hear their song. It is not one language but many, and they all speak in unison, their words matching up in syllable and pitch. Some of the voices sound entirely mortal. Others are odd. Primordial. You do not understand them and their strangeness batters away at your brain.
Something wet drips onto your upper lip. You don’t wipe it away.
“Your nose is bleeding,” murmurs Teldryn. Behind the Chitin helmet, all you can see are the Dunmer’s eyes. But they speak volumes. His concern is evident.
The tug to open the book is unyieldingly powerful. There is no part of your body that isn’t sizzling with the need to touch the fleshy cover and reveal the secrets inside. In the end, you will have to open a Black Book. In the end, you will have to involve yourself. All roads lead there. You know this in your marrow.
“They’ll never stop coming,” you say, and each word is laced with sadness.
This is your purpose. This is the life placed before you. The gift of the Voice is not one you asked for. It is not something you ever wished upon yourself. But there is no way to give it back. Time and Fate will eventually catch up to you.
Better to face it all now.
“You owe no one nothing.” Teldryn is not a liar. At least, not to you. He respects you even when he disagrees.
“I know.” The admission is painful.
“I can’t protect you once you open that book. We don’t know what will happen.”
You shake your head. “Miraak’s temple is too heavily guarded. I cannot seek answers there.”
“We cannot seek answers there,” corrects Teldryn, his voice breaking slightly. “Where you go, I go.”
“You only say that because I pay you well.”
Teldryn gently rests his helmet against your forehead. “You pay me shit.”
The bit of blood on your lip rolls down to your chin. “Don’t wait for me,” you whisper. “Whatever you do, Teldryn. Don’t. Wait.”
Teldryn’s chest heaves with a great sigh. “I get your homestead in Falkreath.”
“Deal,” you laugh as another wet drop falls onto your upper lip. Teldryn loves that house, and it’s been nothing but trouble for you.
With a final squeeze of your shoulders, Teldryn pulls away, moving out of your path, revealing the Black Book. What dwells inside the book is the unknown factor. You could go mad. You could experience visions. You could simply disappear from this plane. There is no telling what might happen.
The harmonious voices strengthen as you stride closer. On the cover, the symbol of Hermaeus Mora begins to glow a sickly green. Around the book, the black mist thickens. In its foggy depths, the shadows of tentacles unfurl. They are transparent. Faint, dark whisps. The tentacles venture outwards, reaching as if seeking an embrace.
Another step. Another. Another still and then you’re right there, staring down at the thing that won’t stop talking.
Neloth will have his book, but you need this to end.
The tips of your fingers brush against the edge of the Black Book’s cover. It is not fleshy as you expect it to be. It is coarse, but not sharp or scratchy. Slowly, your fingers curl around the edge. There is a hesitation just before you start to open the cover. Moving with you, the pages follow the cover, and then the yellowed papers inside present themselves.
At first, there is nothing. The pages you stare at are blank. In the next second, all sound disappears as if the room is frozen in time. It is followed by a soft pop, and the world comes hurtling forward.
The blank pages begin to fill in archaic, living writing. The unknown words and symbols move across the page in systematic lines and circles. Some are large and easy to see while others are so tiny they float around in the background in faint swirls.
Between the pages is a void. It emerges from the binding, moving outward over the pages. It is an abyss, and its emptiness drags you forward, your boots lifting off the floor until you’re on your toes.
Tentacles burst forth from the darkness. These are not the misty tendrils from earlier but real, tangible limbs that slide over and around you. They wrap around your arms and shoulders. They suction to your face and neck. They probe and push even as you thrash about, trying to break free.
Escape is impossible. You’re hauled forward, tipping down into the abyss, delving into the darkness. There is a loud roaring and then your feet are on solid ground.
The abyss is gone, and instead…
You’re not entirely sure where you are.
Around you is an alcove made of black metal. Attached to it is an archway made of books that connect to a long hallway. The books within the archway are stacked on top of each other, almost seeming to melt together near the center curve of the arch. Beneath your feet is stone. Some of it is gray like the rock on the side of mountain. Other chunks of stone are black and dull. There are pages from books scattered all over the ground but they aren’t moving. They simply rest where they lay.
You bend at the knees and reach out, sliding a fingernail under the corner of the nearest page. Its only lifts an inch or so, and with it comes something syrupy and sticky. You immediately retract your arm and stand, wiping away the reside on your leather pants.
Slowly, you rotate, surveying your surroundings. It’s only when you turn around that you notice the Black Book. The symbol of Hermaeus Mora does not glow. There is no black mist or odd whispering.
Without second guessing the choice, you grab the cover and open the book, expecting to find what you did just seconds ago.
Nothing.
The pages are blank.
You flip the page. Nothing. Flip again. Still blank.
You go to the beginning, examining every inch of paper. No living words or symbols appear. The book is dead. Silent.
Frowning, you spin around and stare down the long hallway. The air is stale and absent of wind. Glancing up, you peer through the small holes in the black metal. A glowing, green sky greets you. There are streaks in the sky that move like clouds but their radiance is more like lightning. Shifting on your feet, you change perspective, and discover a black abyss cutting through the green sky.
Is that what you fell through?
As you watch the portal, black tentacles drop from its darkness and sway as if caught on a breeze. But you feel no wind against your skin. Then again, you don’t sense a temperature either. You’re not cold but you’re not warm, as if the very atmosphere is adjusting to your body temperature, making the stale air around you feel like absolutely nothing.
Wherever you are, it is an atrocity.
Without a way to go back, the only path is forward.
With overly slow movements, you unsheathe the sword at your waist. The hallway isn’t well lit, but there is enough light to see by. Crouching slightly, you move on silent feet, keeping close to the wall without touching it.
The stone floor gives way to twisted metal, and the walls are nothing but books. You do not stop to peer at any of them. This place is dangerous, and you need to be alert at all times. Survival is essential. Information is important. Any clues that you can take back to Neloth or Storn might help in unveiling the mystery behind this stranger known as Miraak.
Hermaeus Mora is not unknown to you. You grew up on stories about Aedra and Daedra. They were standard tales, but when you were a child, those beings seemed far from the reality of your life.
It is so very different now.
Neloth did not shy away from talking about the Daedric Prince. It was Miraak that the Dunmer dismissed, seeming more concerned with Mora and the Black Books.
What was it that Neloth said about Mora’s permanent influence? Madness. Loss of self-awareness. Black spots in the whites of the eyes. There are no mirrors and you cannot see your reflection in your sword. You’re not mad, but for a brief moment you thought you were when Teldryn couldn’t hear the voices. Your self-awareness is intact. At least, for now.
Storn called Mora the Skaal’s enemy, and spoke of hidden Skaal knowledge that Mora wishes to obtain only for the sheer pleasure of possessing it. But Storn did not say more, merely focusing on the destruction of Miraak’s influence.
As you round a corner, you arrive at an open platform. Instead of approaching, you hang back, observing your newly unobstructed view of the environment. From here, the glowing sky and black portals are in clear view. Various structures dot the landscape, and it stretches in all directions.
But there is no landscape. There are no trees or blades of grass. What should be the ground isn’t rock or dirt but a dark liquid that resembles black water. It is as dark as parchment ink, and the surface of it ripples slightly as if something moves beneath it. You have zero desire to know if its as fluid as an ocean or thick like honey.
The platform itself is rounded and juts out slightly from the opening. As you step closer, the platform shifts and fans upward, extending like the wings of a dragonfly. Another appears from above, connecting to it to form a bridge.
There is a tower there, the outside of the structure nothing but pillars of books. Your gaze sweeps across it and the surrounding area. Nothing jumps out at you except the strangeness of the place. Nothing and no one lurk nearby.
Cautiously, you step out onto the bridge. Still, there is no wind. The air is still. With silent steps, you creep to the next platform. When you crest the small curve in the bridge just before the landing, you come to a stop and immediately drop to your stomach.
A strange creature hovers just inside the archway. It has four arms, two of which hold books while the others rest against its sides. Its head is squid-like with two thin eyes and no eyelids. Hanging from its shoulders are rags of some kind, but at this distance, it might also be fur.
It has not noticed you, and you use this to your advantage. Silently, you set your sword next to you, and remove your ebony bow from your back along with an arrow. Easing up to a low crouch, you pull back on the bowstring, aiming the pointed tip of the arrow at the head of the bizarre creature.
With a book in hand, it seems such a gentle creature. It’s head tentacles flare as it reads as if the words on the page are amusing. A brief moment of hesitation stays your hand. Then you remember the voices and mist, of how blood dripped from your nose from the brawling nature of it all.
Your finger slips from the bowstring.
The arrow whistles.
It lifts its head in curiosity.
Making contact, the arrow slides between the creature’s eyes.
There is no noise or cry of pain. It vanishes in a brief vibration of mist. The rags it wore and the books it held hang suspended in the air before falling to the ground. The books hit hard. The rags drift slowly.
Before the rags touch the ground, you’re up and moving, returning your blade to its scabbard. You remove another arrow from the quiver. In this moment, you are a stealthy killer, a being of darkness in a place made for it.
Your humanity will not pause your hand. The answers you seek go beyond that. You are in Hermaeus Mora’s realm. You are alone. Teldryn is not here to help you. Everything going forward must be done with only yourself in mind.
As you step off the bridge, the dragonfly-like structures break apart. You glance back and meet open air.
A howl reaches your ears. It bites and claws, sounding of blood-filled lungs. All the hair on your arms stand on end, and your skin prickles with awareness. The awful sound comes again. It’s closer. Moving in. Trapping you against a threat of falling.
There is a ripple. A change that you sense. Of a predator seeking its prey.
You drop to your knees as a ball of vibrating air launches over your head. Spinning toward your assailant, you release the notched arrow. It strikes true, hitting another one of those creatures.
This one shrieks. Then doubles. A replicate appearing beside it.
With quick fingers, you release two more, sending the tentacle twins vanishing into puffs of mist.
It is clear that your presence has been detected. Stealth will be of little use if the beings of this realm are actively seeking you out.
Charging down the hall only proves what you expect. More of these creatures lurk nearby, actively waiting for you to make an appearance. These are not visible. They are beings of mist, and they solidify with a blink, popping up from nowhere before your very eyes.
The first surprises, nearly knocking you down.
The second almost grabs you. It’s clawed hand just grazing your leather armor.
The third hurtles into you, but you manage to roll into the fall, getting back on your feet with ease.
The bow is useless. They are too close, disappearing then reappearing in rapid succession. Your blade is sharp, and you are eager for a bit of blood.
The steel blade rings loudly and the first swing strikes true.
“Fus!” The power of your Voice slams into one of the tentacled creatures. It flinches back. Recoils from your blow. It is enough for you to drive forward.
You duck and weave, slicing through the air and dispatching your assailants with the skill that has made hundreds tremble.
But there is no blood. These creatures do not bleed. They simply vanish into mist.
Chest heaving, you finally have a moment to gauge your new surroundings. It’s a massive circular room. There are several large, metal double doors scattered throughout the room but the doors are shut, barring entry.
All expect one.
With resolve in every step, you march forward toward the open gate, passing rotting stacks of books and floating eyes with tiny tentacles. They look like horrific stars. They even blink, following you for a few strides before drifting off to move about the room.
You ascend the raised dais, pass through the doors, and up another flight of stairs before you’re spit out onto another platform.
Unlike the previous platforms, this one is already attached to a bridge. It spans a great expanse of black water, connecting to another tower. But there is too much open space between the towers, and there is zero cover. You would need to sprint, or use a Shout to speedily propel yourself across.
A roar from behind you stirs your feet.
“Wuld Nah!” In seconds, you’re halfway across the bridge, already sprinting to the other side, your arms and legs pumping with every step.
“Dovahkiin!”
The primordial voice is an anchor tied to your feet and you are in deep water. Sinking. You are sinking. The bridge beneath you is melting, sucking and solidifying around your boots.
With a cry, you reach down and try to lift your leg. Nothing. You are rooted to the spot.
A shadow falls across the bridge. A deep, unsettling, slimy sensation slithers up your spine and wraps around your throat. Your eyes are fixed to your submerged boots.
“Fate has led you here, to my realm, as I knew it would.” Your fingers tremble and you refuse to look up. “All seekers of knowledge come to my realm, sooner or later. That is what you are after, isn’t it? Knowledge. That is why you answered my call so willingly.”
No forms on your tongue. You did not come willingly. Or did you? Yes, the pull was there but you intended to open up the Black Book. Didn’t you?
You’re…certain?
A lone black tentacles drifts in front of your face. It wiggles slightly, moving toward your nose. It retreats slightly, and then with an odd gentleness, curls under your chin, lifting your face to the Daedric Prince floating in the sky.
Hermaeus Mora is a grotesque abomination. He is a green and black mass, a void of tentacles and eyes. His entire being pulsates, expanding and retracting as he…breathes? Do Daedric Lords need to breath? Or is this just a formality to make you more comfortable?
If it’s intentional on Mora’s part, it’s creepy, only adding to his aura. Hermaeus Mora is large, taking up so much space he’s all you can see. While he hovers in the air, Mora is not far from you. In fact, if you lift your hand and extend your arm, you’d easily touch him.
The large eye in the center of it all blinks slowly in observation. “Is the Last Dragonborn a fool? Speak, mortal. Why did you come to me?”
Deep in the recesses of your soul, a stubbornness blooms. Your mouth does not form the answer he’s seeking. Instead, your lips pull back, and you bare your teeth like a feral animal.
“If you are the Prince of Fate, surely you can answer such a simple question. All this knowledge around you, and yet you cannot form your own answer. I expected more.”
Hermaeus Mora bristles, his form expanding in size as his tentacles vibrate with irritation. “Be warned. Many have sought my halls. I have broken them all. You cannot evade me. You cannot resist.”
The bridge rumbles. Hermaeus Mora’s massive eye slides up to watch a point over your shoulder. Slowly, you turn, finding yet another abomination. This one is incredibly tall, almost amphibious and slightly humanoid. Each of its footsteps shake the bridge.
Mora is calm. Serene. The creature moves closer, each shattering step a threat.
“You are in my realm now, Dragonborn. Apocrypha will be your home. You will converse with me and I cannot wait to know your secrets.”
From the monster’s open mouth emerge a wave of tentacles. They wrap around your body. They cover your face and slide into your mouth, reaching toward your lungs.
“Sleep,” hums Hermaeus Mora as your consciousness begins to slip. “And then we shall talk.”
Part Two
taglist:
@glassgulls @km-ffluv @singleteapot @tiredmetalenthusiast @childofyuggoth @coffeecaketornado
#hermaeus mora#hermaeus mora fanfiction#herma mora#hermaeus mora fanfic#hermaeus mora smut#miraak#hermaeus mora x reader#hermaeus mora x dragonborn#miraak x ldb#miraak x dragonborn#miraak skyrim#miraak x reader#miraak smut#miraak fanfiction#miraak fic#miraak fanfic#apocrypha#solstheim#teldryn sero#teldryn sero fanfiction#skyrim smut#skyrim fanfiction#the elder scrolls smut#the elder scrolls fanfiction#the elder scrolls fanfic#the elder scrolls fic#tentacles#tentacle monster#eldrich horror
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The Exception to the Rule
Synopsis: How far do you bend your morals for someone you love?
Notes:
This is definitely a turning point to the story and is a little jump ahead of everything so far.
From here on out, there will be two different types of oneshot, flashback oneshots which happen either in Heaven or in Eden, and present day oneshots which are primarily in Hell.
This also adds a new epithet to Adams repertoire! Technically.
There are OC’s in this one, I can’t avoid it.
Heaven politics! Theres a lot going on in heaven I can’t talk about because nobody in hell knows about it, but I can finally start talking!
I listened to More than Anything, Connor’s Main Theme, and Gladiator while writing this.
In exchange for starting the extermination early, the one after would take 18 months as opposed to 12.
I have named over 60 exorcists. If you see a reference no you don’t.
Vaggie wasn’t the first angel to show mercy to a sinner.
I drop so much fucking lore in this jesus fuck.
This one shot was supposed to come so much later.
Shit
SO, MICHAEL’S INVOLVED NOW!
Hey uh, you know how I said I can’t write stupid characters? Yeah… Adam can act and think like a damn general now ig.
Adams over 6,000 years old he knows how to move quickly.
... I really like my BAMF characters huh.
Word Count: 1862
Fic under cut!
“Adam?”
“Over here Luci,” The first man replied easily, looking towards where the angel had entered the wastelands.
Well… wastelands was a bit of a stretch now.
Once he was able to improve the soil, grass was able to finally start growing and…
The oak tree Adam was taking a break under was a testament to his labour. It was still growing and would probably take another year or so with the help of Lucifer’s magic before it’d resemble the mighty trees most people knew.
It didn’t make Adam any less proud of it.
The fallen angel got up and stretched his wings as Lucifer rounded a crag and came into view.
One of Adams wings hiked up before he could shove the instinct down, it was just Lucifer.
“Charlie wanted to know if you wanted to come up for lunch or if you’re fine down here,” The devil started, “She and Maggie are making pastries from the pear’s you dropped off yesterday.”
“Vaggies baking? Better hope your daughters good then, Vaggie’s got a tendency to burn whatever she touches.”
Regardless, Adam started making his way towards the hotel, completely disregarding the unspoken offer to just teleport there.
Lucifer just laughed and unfurled his wings as Adam began the trek up the stairs, flying up beside the man.
“I doubt you have room to talk about when it comes to cooking.”
“I helped Eve cook you know,” Adam scoffed, “I had a few specialties of my own.”
“And yet Maggie can’t cook.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, plenty of my daughters can cook! Lux is extremely good at dessert foods and Needle can make some great fucking lunches.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes really! It’s Mari you have to look out for. The presentation of her food? Stunning, beautiful, gourmet even. The taste? I thought I was going to die a second time over the toilet.”
Lucifer cackled and a light chuckle escaped Adams lips as the angel almost fell out of the sky at the mental image.
“Shut up! I’m serious I thought I caught some sort of illness! They don’t even have illnesses in heaven!”
“I would pay to see that!”
“I bet you would be you sick fuck.”
“Hey! I-”
Lucifer went dead silent, and Adam almost asked what was wrong before he heard it too.
Shouting.
He didn’t even glance at his friend as they were both caught in Lucifer’s magic, bringing them both to the hotel lobby.
“I’ll stop the fight.”
“I’ll grab my fucking axe,” Adam headed down the hallways until he found the gym, carefully taking his axe off the wall and slinging it over his back before booking it to the hotel exit.
“If you’d just give me a minute-!”
“Your majesty-”
“Alastor.”
“Mom!”
“Oh for fucks sake!”
Adam slammed open the doors and jumped the stairs, “What the fuck is going on-!”
Adams brain short circuited immediately after taking in the situation.
Lucifer was frozen stiff with his wings spread wide, his head whipping around to stare open mouthed at Adam. Alastor and Lilith’s glaring contest was broken as they also stared at the first man. The princess and Vaggie were holding hands and Charlies demonic traits receded at Adams arrival.
The other residents were also still at the first mans arrival, nervousness and surprise evident in everyone expressions, even Nifty stopped moving. Under normal circumstances Adam’s gut would have twisted from all the attention.
That usual knee jerk response was completely crushed under the weight of the other three present.
Adam was barely aware of the fact that he’d dropped his axe as he took in the maskless faces of three of his exorcists.
Echo almost dropped her scimitars; her hair was undone from it’s usual bun to brush against her shoulders. She almost stepped back from him before a wing from her sisters steadied her.
Delta was much more graceful, sheathing her rapier and swallowing thickly; Adam understood how she felt. She’d recently had a haircut, her undercut looking crisper than the last time he saw her.
Nina’s war pick clattered to the ground as she brought her hands to her mouth, tears cropping up in the corners of her eyes as she took in his ruined form. In contrast to Delta, her hair had grown out; the normal buzz cut fading.
Adam stood in the silence, wings slowly folding in from where he had mantled them prior. He didn’t know what to do. These were his girls, and they were here and fuck, they were outnumbered. But… shit they were here to kill him weren’t they.
“…Sir?”
Fuck it.
The first man sprinted forward; wings spread wide as he reached out for the three of them. Weapons hit the ground as he pulled his kids into a hug.
If he was going to die, he’d like to die hugging his girls.
Adam didn’t expect the three of them to hug back. His shoulder grew wet as Nina’s tears started to fall; Echo made a soft noise as she buried her head in the feathers of his good wing. Delta’s wings were touching the tips of his own as she all but collapsed into the huddle.
Huh, seems like they were all mad here.
Adam didn’t give a fuck; he was hugging his exorcists and that was enough for him at the moment.
“So… we’re good?”
Moment over.
Adam pulled away to glare at Lucifer, “Do you fucking mind?”
“Sorry sorry! I’ll shut up now!”
“No, you’ve ruined it. Moments gone and done thanks to you,” Adam huffed, regretfully stepping away from his girls even as he kept his good wing extended to the three exorcists, guiding them by the wing towards the hotel.
“Come on, I have a feeling you three aren’t here just for show.”
- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -
Adam blew lightly on his tea before sipping it, leaning forward to pour the exorcists some tea as he worked to calm his still slightly frayed nerves.
He’d managed to move the girls into a private room before unceremoniously kicking everyone else out, if anything happened Lucifer would break into the room in a flash, so it wasn’t like he was in any real danger.
Besides, they were his girls, it’d be fine.
“So,” Adam swallowed, before “What brings you three to this side of the pentagram? The hunts not on for another eight months.”
Echo swallowed thickly and Nina bowed her head, it was Delta who answered.
“I- Netto discovered that heaven knew you were alive, sir. Lute wanted to come down immediately but the rest of us were able to convince her otherwise.”
“She’s too far in the eyes of the high seraphim, if she disappeared they’d know.”
“So, we decided to go instead,” Nina finished for her sisters.
Adam stared at the three of them, horrified, “What?”
“What Nina’s saying is… we’re staying here.”
“Why the fuck would you three do that!” Adam hissed, feathers bristling at the implications, “You all have so much to lose-”
“We don’t,” Delta asserted, scowling at the window, “You know damn well what hells denizens took from us.”
Adam froze as the image flashed into the forefront of his mind.
Charlie. Echo and Delta’s missing piece to their trio. They were best friends even beyond the bonds of sisterhood. Where one was the other two were close by. Charlie was the sunshine to their storm, always taking time out of her own day to brighten up the other exorcists. She preferred to use a crossbow to keep away from sinners, something Adam was always grateful for.
Charlie’s body was missing several ribs and most of her organs, looking every part like it had been ravaged by monsters. It took effort Adam didn’t have every day to not go to cannibal town and raze it to the ground. For Charlie, for Zirco, for Steel, for Feather and Annie and every exorcist he failed.
Even-
A scream, a plea as Adam struggled against divine magic nononono please stOP PLEASE-
Wasp
Adam whole body tensed up. Fuck, Wasp. He hadn’t- shit he’d almost managed to convince himself that that had never-
Fuck.
The girls were looking at him now, Nina reaching out a hand to him.
“And you?”
The hand pulled away, “What?”
“Nina, why did you decide to come down here,” Adam rasped, “You- fuck you were planning on proposing to your girlfriend why-”
“Because your our leader,” Nina answered quietly, like she wasn’t taking Adams breath away with a single sentence, “And Regina understood, she agreed with me.”
Nina held up her phone with a sad smile, “Besides, at least this way it’s easier for me to watch out for her dad.”
Adam wanted to send the three of them back to heaven immediately, this was no place for angels. Vaggie was lucky she found Charlie immediately.
But Delta and Echo had backbones of steel, and once Nina set her mind to something there was no stopping her.
Shit, Netto and Lute were smart to send them.
Wait-
“What did you mean when you said heaven knew I fell Delta,” Adam whispered, “I should have fucking died. How did Netto find out I fell.”
Delta sighed and gazed tiredly at him, “Same way she always finds things out, she got it straight from Michaels lips.”
Adams blood froze before his mind caught up with him. Michael was involved with this. Fuck of course he was it was Michael, and if he was involved… then it stands to reason the rest of the ancient archangels had something to do with all of this too.
The first man stood up before pausing, if his gut was right, this wasn’t just about his fall. For the ancient archangels to be aware of his fall and do nothing for ten months… there was something he was missing.
He’d need to wait, maybe even bring Lucifer and the others in on this. But first…
“I’m in room 2101, Lucifer’s wing. 2100 is taken by the king of hell himself and his wife but the rest of the floor is empty,” the three exorcists perked up at Adams commanding tone, “Get set up and get settled in. Echo, send a message to the others and tell them I’m okay.”
“Already done.”
“Love that, Delta how is training looking?”
“Lute’s leading the effort sir, we’ve been working hard to fix our holes.”
“Great, get back in contact with Lute. I have a few techniques that can help. And for fucks sake tell her to use whatever prosthetic she has to her advantage; I fucking know she’s not.”
“Yes sir!”
“Nina, keep an ear out. Both for anything Netto has for us and for anything in hell. Carmilla Carmine, and the Vees are important. Especially Carmine, she’s the one with the angelic steel. Do not engage.”
“Go it sir.”
“Good, I’ll get you three for dinner. Remember, stay sharp, stay armed, and whatever you do. Don’t fucking trust the Radio Demon. He’ll kill everyone in this hotel the moment he’s off his fucking leash.”
The leader of the exorcists watched the three of them head down the hallway towards the front desk before turning and heading for the stairwell.
He had a lot to think about, and from the looks of things he still had an extermination to plan.
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