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hoyaanae · 3 years

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The beautiful dialogue of Lovely Us

Ep 01

"Once people become parents, their memory begins to become biased. They always remember they are their children's most reliable parents, but often forget that they are also children loved by their own parents. When they are waiting for their children to come back home, they forget that their own parents are also waiting for their return in a similar mood."

"When I'm absent from the concert, my idol won't know or feel sad. But when I don't go back to accompany my mom to celebrate her birthday, she'll know it. I don't want to make her sad."

Ep 02

"A lot of things are good at hide and seek - the old scarf I bought last year, the new eraser, Mom's favorite sewing needle, and a feeling of heartbeat for someone. We try to find them, but in vain. Then when we give it up, they just appear somewhere unexpected - on the back of the chair, in the book, in the cotton thread, and behind my back.

Human heart beats 60 to 100 times per minute on average. That day, I failed to count my heartbeat per minute. Even the water droplets falling from the umbrella were disrupted together with me. The joy, the thrill and the butterfly in the stomach converged into the restless heartbeats. On this raining day, a girl's heart beat 101 times in a minute."

Ep 03

"Huang Chengzi, why is the starry sky beautiful? Do you think it is because of the brightest star? Of course, everyone might say "Look, the Venus" while pointing at the brightest one. However, for those stars shining together and forming the Big Dipper and Orion, don't they look beautiful? They cannot be described as a foil. Anyway, I think some stars that keep shining might be more beautiful than the brightest one however dark they are."

Ep 07

"The audio frequency of the sound when a snowflake falls on the water surface is over 50,000 Hz. Because it falls beyond human beings' hearing range, this snowy day is still so quiet that it seems I can only hear my own heartbeat and that it seems there is only me and the person in front of me on this planet with a population of 6.6 billion. I hope this world can be noiser so that I can pretend that I've never discovered this secret."

"Do you have such a feeling? People around you always tell you that you are already standing on the top of the mountain, but when clouds and mist scatter, you find there is another higher peak waiting for you. After going out, I've found there are so many people who work harder and are more excellent than me. It's just like in an originally easy marathon race, I suddenly find all the people around are sprinting. So, I must run faster. Otherwise, others will surpass me. I'm a little bit out of breath."

"At the age of 17, we all have our own secrets. We are trying to hide those secrets, but they are still going to be discovered. We are unwilling to admit those secrets, but the more we conceal them, the more conspicuous they become. We are very clear about those secrets, but eventually, we are still willing to turn them into memories. And these secrets that cannot be told, are found so similar to each other after a long time. It turns out they are all about unexpected feelings for someone."

Ep 08

"I've always been content with what I have and I'm in need of nothing. I can remember what I read and I'm surrounded by nice people. My life has always been smooth and I thought the life that had been planned was not bad for me. Just like a sailing ship, with enough food, I didn't look forward to rains and storms. I just wanted to follow the prescribed route and go back fo the safe zone of the harbor in the end. That was my perfect ending. But from the very beginning, you've been determined to brave the storm and to see the bigger world. Wind and rain can't knock you down and the waves can't overturn you. You've shown me a life course that's completely different from mine. So, since her dream is to explore this world, I just can't let her go through it alone. Zhu Jinxiao, I like you."

"At the age of 17, the first habit developed by boys is to hide their affections. They think that the probability is just 0.01, so they put on the emperor's new clothes, trying to hide their affections with magic. But affections are not that easy to hide. Even if the probability is pretty low, it will be revealed at a certain moment. So on that rainy night, while looking at her back, he found that the most obvious evidence of falling in love with her was the feeling of easement in his heart and the smile on his face when he looked at her."

Ep 09

"In the past, we always felt a year with 365 days was exceedingly long, but only when it comes to this moment do we understand that we become one year older all of a sudden. The significance of spending the Spring Festival, extending from ancient times to the present, is shining brightly like fireworks, giving us the courage to heal each other many times. And then we can have a new start. It doesn't matter that you can't eat steaming hot dishes. It doesn't matter that you perhaps don't know the secret hidden in the couplet. It doesn't matter that you listen to your grandma's nagging sometimes. Even if it takes too long on the way back, as long as there are people we care about, we won't be lonely. We will return to the home we are familiar with."

Ep 10

"Actually we never forget the happy hours with our parents in childhood. Maybe the so-called alienation is because we walk so fast while our parents are staying where they are. One meter, a hundred meters, a kilometer. The distance becomes farther and farther until we can't hear them calling us. That's why we mistakenly think love is silent. So while we are confused, our parents feel the same too. They are confused about how they can give us their deep love in a smart manner."

"Those who love hiding their feelings most in this world are fathers. They hide their inarticulate concerns in warm lights. In every precious certificate of merit, they put their unmentionable encouragement. Besides, there are many silent surprises they carefully arrange in every day when we are marching to the future. They firmly care about us with such silent fathers' love, and we firmly love them."

Ep 11

"We think that many things and many people in this world can wait til tomorrow. So when you pause it or when you turn around, you think that everything will still be the same tomorrow, or you won't even realize this hope in your mind, because you think tomorrow should be the same as today. And you think nothing will change as time flies by. But this time, the moment you let go and turned around, some things completely changed. The sun went down and before it rises again, some people will leave you forever. We always thought that there would be a big ceremony to say goodbye, so we keep waiting for a warm hug, a refreshing drink, and a heartfelt goodbye. But in the end, we realized that most goodbyes in our lives are all silent."

Ep 12

"At that silent corner in my mind, there are a number of weird illusions. For example, can I become Alice who enters the wonderland with White Rabbit? For example, can I become the little girl who enters the forest with Totoro? For example, is there some special switch in this box which can teleport me? No, none of them exist. There's no flying dragons or knights, and I'm not the heroine of some comics for girls, either. However, the only thing I'm sure about is that this escape greatly shocks my world. My palms would sweat, and my sight would be indistinct. Then my view becomes narrower and narrower until there's room for only one person in my eyes. After a long time, I know such a moment is named adventure, in which the one in your eyes is irreplaceable."

Ep 13

"In the summer of 2008, in retrospect, the most impressive thing may not be the world-famous Olympic Games, but the silly things we did because we were fearless. What is shining and unexpected is everything that is closely related to friendship. We wanted to pick the brightest stars and make the most beautiful wishes, so we became the bravest boys and girls. While crying and laughing, with the bond between each other, toward the most beautiful end of youth, we keep running all the way and never stop."

"The familiar chirping of cicadas on summer nights, the familiar bear doll who must lean by the lamb, the familiar lovely girl who frowns even when she sleeps, and the 17-year-old time wrapped by the sense of familiarity never seem to have changed. The only difference is that when I look at the familiar him, I feel a flurry and uneasiness that I have never expected."

Ep 14

"That night, it was the first time I found there's magic hidden in my mom's smile. Those feelings between adults and children which I thought are hard to express in words don't have to be spoken out. They can be understood through her smile. Indeed, adults don't often say I love you, and seldom say sorry. But it doesn't matter. Action speaks louder than explanation. There's no need to express deep feelings in words. If you stand there quietly, you can automatically receive all their love for you."

"There are many new days like today. Today, he holds my hand. Today, he holds me in his arms. Today, he carries me on his back and runs in the street in the early morning. Many days with him like today will eventually become my unforgettable past days. I'll remember days like today for a long time."

Ep 15

"In the last hundred days, I heard countless times "Hurry up to walk! Hurry up to eat! Hurry up to take the notes! And hurry up to go to the toilet." But it's strange. When you try to seize time by the forelock, it goes faster. Then after the exams, we graduated."

"I just want to be an ordinary person. I'll live on a small fruit stand in the future or continue your small shop, which makes me happy. This is life. It's my own choice and I will bear the results. Different people have different dreams. Let those extraordinary people be extraordinary. I just want to be a happy and ordinary person."

"Friendship means so much to us. It brings us close, and makes me flinch, so sometimes we just tell ourselves that as long as we're together, I can be just a friend of hers. But the taxi that I failed to catch, the phone calls that have been hung up, the time that's flying and my restless heart are telling me eagerly that in this world, both love and friendship are important. Every detail related to you is reminding me that we can't be just friends. So when it's still not too late, I have to tell you the things that I want to tell you as soon as possible. Huang Chengzi, I like you."

Ep 16

"In this world, it seems like all wishes have a guardian. Wishing wells, shooting stars, the aquarium's white whale. They're all hiding in the corners of the universe caressing the sorrow of loving someone alone. It's just that the god of happiness can't bless everyone out there. They let some people be happy and their wishes come true, and let some be sad, but they can't admit how sad they really are. The feeling of being in love is like a butterfly gently flapping its wings, that stirs up a hurricane in people's hearts. The second you realize it, then there's no escape."

"That's you when you're happy. And that's you when you're mad. Over there is the jealous you, and you when you're being naughty and pretending to cry. I was just going to draw one to start with, but every expression you have is floating around in my head, and I really love every single one of them."

"I've never been afraid of growing up. And I've never worried that growing up would be lonely. Not because I'm so strong, but because I have faith that I will never be alone. The guy who held my hand will continue to grow up closely together with me. The guy who's in my diary and I in his, will exchange even more secrets in the future. All of us have walked together through the years and will continue to walk together farther into the future. This world never lets lovely people down, and we are all lovely."

#如此可爱的我们 #Lovely Us #Lovely Us Cdrama #Cdrama #李明德 #Li Ming De #田曦薇 #Tian Xi Wei #李寅崟 #Li Ying Ying #李明源 #Li Ming Yuan #尤浩然 #You Hao Ran

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poesparakeet-fics · 3 years

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AKA “Yasha The Protector” fic from the prompt poll!

Note: This is basically a SFW fic with a lil NSFW ending. The whole SFW bit is here, so enjoy, and click to AO3 for the sexy bit!

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: The Poly Nein - Relationship, Beauregard Lionette/Caleb Widogast/Yasha, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Poly Nein Characters: Beauregard Lionett, Caleb Widogast, Yasha (Critical Role) Additional Tags: Tickling, Bedtime, gang tickle, Sub Caleb Widogast, Stress Relief, dope monk shit, Nipple Play, Cunnilingus, Polyamory, Group Sex, Threesome - F/F/M Series: Part 1 of The Poly Nein Summary:

Trent Ikithon has been brought back into the Mighty Nein’s orbit, and Yasha’s real mad about it. After Jester take Caleb to her bed to take care of his feelings, Yasha does the same to keep him safe. Beau… helps?

FICThe Empire and the Dynasty needed to figure their stuff out. They needed to take all their stuff, and just... lay it out on the table, measure it, and figure it out. That’s what Yasha thought, anyway. She supposed that these talks might be their way of doing it, but it sure was a bad way. At the very least she wished the Mighty Nein could stop getting mixed up in it.

When Yasha first saw that Trent Ikithon had manipulated his way onto the king’s party, she’d been tempted to bamf out her wings and scream in his face, right then and there. He was old, she suspected she could maybe stop his heart that way. But she’d felt Beau go still next to her, hard and poised like a switch, and paused to match instead.

The last night before their departure they’d set up the mansion in a rented room far from the castle.

Fjord was sure Ikithon had done it to force Caleb to interact with him. Caleb agreed, in that quiet way he did when he was thinking very hard, his eyes cast down.

“We should kill him while we have the chance.” Veth said. She didn’t shriek it like she might have done a year ago, but says it matter-of-factly, in the calm, sweet voice that always meant she was talking to Caleb. They were all talking, but what she said was meant for Caleb.

“No.” He says. “Peace is worth the wait.”

Nobody was willing to argue with him on it, but she could tell Beau and Veth both wanted to. When they all bundled off to bed, Jester intercepted Caleb and pulled him into her and Fjord’s room. Caleb went along numbly, only smiling a little when she insisted that he wouldn’t have nightmares if he slept with them.

Yasha was tense all night, sleeping with Beau weaved around her rigid form like willow reeds.

The talks the next day were very boring. Lots of people she didn’t care about talked. Trent talked occasionally, but only when called upon. Otherwise he would just whisper behind his hand. Fjord talked. Caleb talked. Jester even talked a little, defusing a heated exchange with spun-sugar grace.

Yasha didn’t talk. She stood directly behind Caleb, though, staring down Trent and his molefuckers. Throughout the day she tried to convey three things to them with just her eyes:

She wanted to rip their limbs off.

She was fully capable of ripping their limbs off.

The only reason she was not ripping their limbs off was because Caleb asked her not to.

Beau, on the other hand, roved around the room like a shadow, but her head was always turned in Trent’s direction.

The others seemed happy with how the talks had gone. The fortress they were in had rooms for them, but they all agreed to set up the mansion in one of them as an extra layer of protection. Yasha trotted to catch up with Beau, one hand reaching out to brush her arm.

“Hmm. What? Sorry.”

“That’s OK.” Yasha soothed “It’s been a long day. Um… so... I want Caleb to come sleep with us tonight?”

Beau looked a little surprised. “Uh, sure, but why? I’m not as good at feelings as Jester or Fjord.”

Yasha patted her arm. “You’re getting better. But it’s not about feelings! I want to make sure if some vole-fucker wants to show up next to his bed they get a big raging surprise.”

Beau snickered and Yasha beamed, pleased with the success of her joke.

“God, you’re so cute. Also, uh... very correct. I was worried about that too,” said Beau with a frown, "If they wanna try and take him out, we'll beat them right out of the pocket dimension."

They were all quiet and tired when they stepped into the mansion, Caleb most of all. Yasha wasn’t as persuasive or cajoling as Jester, so she settled for just grabbing Caleb out of the air as they floated up through the tower’s floors and carrying him to their room over her shoulder.

“Oof! Ah, Yasha…?”

“You’re not sleeping alone with him so near. You’re coming with us.”

“Oooh, good idea Yasha!” Jester’s voice carried down to them as she floated past. “Byyye Caleb!”

“Well, ja, alright then.” Caleb sounded too tired to argue.

“We’ll keep you safe.” Yasha assured him quietly as she gave him a pat on the butt. She didn’t put him down until they were in their room and she could dump him directly on the bed. Then she slipped the Magician's Judge underneath the frame.

“I need a bath before bed because I smell! Get comfy though, I’ll join you soon.”

Once she’d stripped down next to the always-steaming copper tub she turned around, surprised to see Caleb sitting on the ground pulling books out of his bag.

“Do you want a bath too Caleb? You can come in with me, you’re just little. Beau fits.”

Caleb gave her a quirk of a smile.

“No, thank-you. I’m just restless. I’ll work for a while before bed, I think.”

“Caleb!” Yasha’s brow furrowed. This was not good. Jester would never allow this, if she was the one taking care of him.

He shrugged. “I’ll stay here, if they attack I’ll be safe. You'll wake.”

“That’s not what she’s worried about, dumbass.” Beau joined them, a wine bottle under her arm and three glasses in her hand. “It’s late, this thing starts early tomorrow, and you’re the Bright Queen’s favorite human. You need to be sharp. You’re drinking this wine with us and you’re going to bed.”

“Verdammt noch mal , I’m manipulating countries by day and being put to bed like a child every night. Would you all let me be?!” Caleb snapped.

Yasha’s hands moved to her hips.

“You don't get put to bed like a child, you get taken care of by people who love you because we can't trust you to take care of yourself! And we’re here to protect you, even if it’s from the stupid part of your brain that’s too smart!” Oh, no, that hadn’t come out the way she wanted.

Caleb’s posture turned surly, but Beau stepped between them.

“Babe, relax, I’ve got this. Take your bath.”

She had him down in a matter of about six seconds.

First she reached out and seemed to only touch him in the centre of his chest. Yasha barely had time to notice that she’d undone the buckle of his holsters before he was being spun around by a steely hand on the back of his coat-collar.

Beau yanked his coat off in on swift movement, her other hand immediately grabbing the back of Caleb’s holsters and yanking them down to his elbows. She tugged the books out and set them aside while twisting the leather straps into a makeshift binding for his arms. She shoved him face-first onto the bed, straddling his thighs.

Yasha clapped when it was finished, having crawled into the hot bath to enjoy the show.

“Beauregard! Let me go. Now.” Caleb snapped

“Nope.” Beau tugged at his holsters until she could roll him onto his side, one clawed hand starting to scrub at his belly without so much as a glance. Caleb’s body spasmed, his breath pitching as he tried to resist laughing and keep a glare on his face. “There’s only three ways this ends for you. One, you give up, have a nice glass of wine and go to bed in the strong goth’s arms with me. Two, you use your safeword so I have to let you go and you can run off into a corner with your books like a pissy little bitch. Three, I personally tickle you until you pass out, which solves my problem anyway. So what’s it gonna be?”

Her hand squeezed his side and started to climb his ribcage, finally breaking the dams of his resistance. His torso was stretched, his ribcage extended by the angle at which the holsters were pinning his arms behind his back, and with Beau’s strong thighs around his center of gravity he couldn’t do much more than squirm. First a smile broke out, then helpless, rumbling laughter.

“FUHUHUCK YOU LIONEHETTE!” He ground out, earning an audience gasp from Yasha.

There was a stubborn, defiant and mouthy side of Caleb that only Beau seemed to be able to bring out. Often shocking, when Caleb was always so deferent to his lovers. But then, Beau’s relationship with the men in their group tended to be more ‘beloved best friends I share lovers with and also occasionally make out with’ than 'lover.'

“Ooh, mouthy! So, that’s how you wanna do it, huh? Huh?”

Beau’s hands started to fly, lightning-fast pinches tweaked Caleb’s ribs, sides, hips, armpits and neck faster than he could react.

“Ah- haha, nein! ” for the first time a little desperation entered Caleb’s voice, his defiance wavering just a little under Beau’s onslaught.

“No? Why? Is the little wizard ready for bed yet? Huh?”

Caleb’s face twisted into a furrowed glare over a helpless smile, and he shook his head from where he was currently muffling his laughter against the bedspread. Beau’s hands jumped to his uppermost ribs on each side, a precision attack that made him start thrashing and shouting in Zemnian. Yasha didn’t know what he was saying, but it didn’t sound complementary.

“How bout now, huh? What if I just do this forever? All ribs, all time! You like that, you smart-ass little shit?”

“No! Nohoho! I will gehehehet you!”

“Pfft. How you gonna do that, huh? You can’t cast your little spells while you’re squealing like a lil bitch…”

Yasha finished towelling herself off and flopped onto the bed next to them, putting her face near where Caleb’s was turned and pressed against the sheets before starting to dance her fingers around his neck and ears.

“Y-Yasha! I- Ah! Hahaha- I don’t- don’t feheeheeheel safe!”

“Oh so now Yasha’s here and you think she’s gonna save you? Nuh-uh. Hey babe, wanna see something cool that Dairon taught me?”

“No!” Caleb yelped, but it was muffled because Beau was already turning him onto his stomach.

“Ooh yes!” Yasha answered, leaning in with her chin on her other hand and continuing to tease the back of Caleb’s neck. Beau’s fingers started to follow the ley-lines of Caleb’s body, applying a poke, a twist or a ground knuckle at the intersections.

Caleb’s laughter petered into giddy giggles as his body trembled under the ministrations. He could clearly feel the effects of Beau’s work, because the steady whine of “nononononononono” became just a little more frantic with each applied touch, his neck and shoulders squirming and scrunching further to avoid Yasha’s teasing.

“We usually use this to make people’s nervous system more sensitive for interrogation,” Beau explained, “so… well, I guess it might work pretty well, huh? Let’s see!”

She didn’t bother to roll Caleb over this time, instead jamming her hands under his arms from behind to get his armpits and ribs. Every part of Caleb’s body started to shake, and his laughter turned into muffled shrieks.

“Nahahahat there!”

“Um, we already talked about this. It’s ALL ribs, ALL the time.” Beau teased, stepping up the rhythm of her fingers and making Caleb’s hysteria kick up with each word . “Yup, that works. How’s that, tough guy? Still wanna fight?”

She turned him on his side so he could talk, one hand still jammed under his arm. Caleb was red in the face, but he still spit out “Fuck you fuHAHAHAck you fuHAHAck youhooHAHAHA!”

“Caleb! That’s so rude!” Yasha admonished. “And you know what? I’m getting a little hungry.”

Caleb’s eyes widened and his thrashing sped up. Beau looked a little confused, but watched the one-sided exchange with an amused smile on her face.

“Remember in Aeor when you were a big spider? Do you think you’re as tasty now?” She pounced face-down on one of his thighs. “Omnomnomnom!”

Caleb’s squeal started before Yasha’s face got anywhere near him. She placed one hand on his knee and the other on his stomach to keep his body from folding up to block her, worrying both places with gently wiggling fingers. Then she nipped up and down the thigh muscle from hip to knee like it was corn on the cob, and Caleb nearly levitated off the bed.

“AAaaiiiiii! YAHAHASHA! AAAH! YAHAHASHAHA PLEAAHEEHEEHESE AAAH! UNCLE! UHAHAHANCLE!"

Yasha paused, peering up at him along the length of his body. Beau's fingers stilled too.

"Are you gonna come to bed?"

"Yehehes,” he wheezed, “yes!"

Yasha backed off. Beau started to, before mischief overcame her and she tweaked Caleb's ribs, making him convulse and scream.

"Hey!" Yasha warned, pointing at Beau. "He gave. My meal of wizard legs was interrupted, but I'll fill up on monk ribs if I have to."

Caleb made a raspberry sound at Beau from his position in a heap on the mattress. Beau held her hands up in surrender. "Alright! I was just teasing him, no need to get aggressive... Hey, you! You still want some wine?"

She untwisted Caleb’s holsters, setting him free.

“Yes pl- *hic* please.” Caleb croaked, still catching his breath.

Beau moved to pour the wine-- white, Caleb didn’t like red-- and they all sipped it as they got ready for bed. Once Caleb had stripped and tucked himself under Yasha’s arm with his head on her shoulder, Beau sat behind him. His spine went rigid.

“Relax.” The monk soothed. “I’m done. It only lasts an hour, but we can get rid of it faster.”

She started to rub Caleb’s back his firm, flat palms, working out muscles, nerves and energy where she had disrupted it to make him more ticklish. Caleb did relax, eyes rolling as his eyes started to flutter closed.

Beau moved to her other side, settling into a position that mirrored Caleb’s. Yasha fell asleep to the sound of their quiet breathing.

#yahsa protects Caleb from the dangers of being a sad wizard.#but also from deadly wizards #she does it all #yasha nydoorin #caleb widogast #tickling #tickle fic #tk fic #critickle role #mine #poes prose

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bakubabes-tatakae · 4 years

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For The Love Of Humanity’s Strongest (Part Two)

Author’s Note: If you want to be added to the taglist let me know! Happy to do it for anyone!

(Levi Ackerman x Reader)

Summary: When all seems lost Y/N knows that she can count on one person to always be there for her brother, Eren Jaeger, and herself. Can humanity’s strongest not only keep Eren in line, but keep his relationship alive as well?

AO3 Link

Part One

Part Two:

Present Day

We all entered through the gates once again. It had been five years since Shiganshina had crumbled. Erwin was now the commander of the scouts, we finally had a better standing with the public, and there was finally praise when we came through. Just like always, my brother stood in the crowd, watching us come through. I sat on the back of Levi’s horse with him and my best friend, Zoe Hange rode next to us. People were definitely warming up to the scouts. “Hey Commander Erwin, did you give those things a thrashing!” Others shouted about their favorite scouts. “Look, it’s Captain Levi! They say he’s like an entire brigade to himself.” I smiled at the sound of praise that he was getting.

Levi scoffed. He had always been rough around the edges. “Spare me.”

Hange looked over at him. “That scowl will crush your fans, not that it’s any of my business but from a public relations standpoint you might want to lighten up.”

I laughed at him and he elbowed me some, scolding Hange as he spoke up. “Shut it four eyes.” I laughed harder and Hange shot me a glare.

She turned before speaking again. “Can you believe what we just saw out there, they’re just so fascinating. I can’t wait until we can capture our next one, maybe we can capture an abnormal.”

Levi cut her off. “We’ve already bagged the most abnormal one there is.”

She got excited. “What? Really? Where?” Her eyes lit up.

Levi put his hand on top of her head and turned her head to look at him. “Hange, I mean you.”

* * * * * *

As we all settled into the barracks to get a bite to eat and sleep some we were hearing some ruckus going on outside. None of us wanted to find out what was going on so we continued to relax. Levi came walking over to where I was standing in the dining area and put his hand on my hip. “So when do you wanna go back to the house and relax? I’m tired of the barracks already.”

I chuckled. “Of course you are. We haven’t even been here ten minutes.”

“There’s better things I’d like to be doing right now.” He winked and pulled me closer to him, kissing right below my ear and whispered. “Wouldn’t you rather be doing them too?”

I looked over at him and smiled. “You mean wouldn’t I rather be doing you?” Levi’s eyes grew wide as he looked at the people standing next to us. He raised a hand to them in an apologizing way and grabbed my hand, dragging me toward the door. Right before we reached the door a member of the garrison burst through, nearly knocking us off our feet along with a few others behind us.

Levi grabbed the garrison member by the front of his shirt and pulled him to him, ready to scold him when the garrison member spoke. “The Titan’s are attacking Wall Rose!”

We all froze and let that sink in. Levi took charge before anyone could speak. “Everyone move out! All hands on deck. Take down as many of them as you can. Stay in your squads and have each other’s backs. Further instructions will come when we find Commander Erwin.” Everyone started running out the doors. He looked to me. “Find the others and meet me at the barn for the horses.”

I nodded and ran off. Levi might be my boyfriend, but he was also my Captain; what he says goes. I ran through the barracks in search of my team when I was stopped by a familiar voice. “Y/N, where’s Captain Levi?” I turned to see my other team members staring at me. Petra, Oluo, Eld, and Gunther, all looked ready and determined.

I starting running. “Levi said to meet him at the barn. Let’s go.”

* * * * * *

As our squads filled the air we all split apart. Levi lead us all just outside the heart of the town. We landed on a rooftop and looked around. There were Titan’s on both sides of us. “Y/N and Petra, tend to our comrade below. Eld, Gunther, take out the Titan to your right. The two on the left belong to me.”

In unison, we all spoke.”Yes sir.”

Petra and I jumped down and ran to the scout member on the ground. I applied pressure to his wounds as Petra looked over the rest of him to see if there was any hope of saving him. He was badly injured, clearly a Titan had gotten ahold of him. Levi jumped down next to us after taking care of the two he was after. I looked up at him as he walked over. “Levi, I can’t stop the bleeding.”

The man tried to speak. “Captain Levi.”

Levi knelt down. “I’m here.”

“Did this make a difference? Was I helpful?” The man reached toward Levi. “Please sir, don’t tell me this was for nothing.”

Levi grabbed his hand. “We’ve made great strides today soldier, and tomorrow, because of you. Your strength wont die with you, the torch will be carried on, by me. This I swear, on my very life, the Titans will be eradicated.”

I spoke up, feeling his heartbeat stop. “Levi, I’m sorry, he’s gone.”

Levi looked at both Petra and I. “Did he hear what I had to say? Any of it?”

Petra smiled a little. “Yes sir, I think he did. As a matter of fact, I think he heard all of it. Look at him. That’s a face at peace.” The man almost looked like he was smiling.

Erwin came up behind us on horseback. “Levi! We’re pulling out.”

“What do you mean? You damn well know that we can push further.” Levi was getting angrier by the second. “My men didn’t die to pave our retreat.”

I grabbed Levi’s arm to stop him from berating the Commander more. “Captain Levi, hear him out.”

“There’s a swarm of Titans heading north. They’re bearing down on the city. It’s just like five years ago. Something tells me this is going to be bad.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This couldn’t be happening again. I couldn’t go through the same torture as last time. The only other two family members I had left we’re in danger again. I wouldn’t let that happen.

Before he could even stop talking I was in the air. I heard Levi hollering to me. “Y/N!” It was then that he came to the realization of why I was moving so fast. Eren and Mikasa were patrolling in the city today.

* * * * * *

I flew through the city with my ODM gear, not even looking back to see if Levi and the other were following me, I didn’t care at this point. I landed on a rooftop where I saw a group of the 104th Cadets, Eren’s group. I stopped and looked over at a familiar girl, I had watched their class learn, and had learned who they were in the process. “You’re Sasha, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. Do you have any idea what’s going on over there?” She pointed to the left of us and I turned toward it. Titan steam was filling the air in an area where we hadn’t even been told there were Titans. “I had no idea.” The group of kids were starting to freak out. I looked around me at all of them. “Buck up and follow me, I might need you guys.”

The bravest of the cadets followed me as I launched my ODM gear and headed toward the steam. When we got to the edge we all watched as the steam started to clear. The skeleton of a Titan was beginning to be visible. There was a squadron on the ground in front of it. He was barking orders. “Keep your distance. Artillery squad, get that cannon reloaded!”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had never seen a Titan look like this before. As we all tried to take in what was going on someone emerged from the steam. The kid looked familiar. As I looked closer I realized who it was... Armin Arlert. If he was around then Eren wasn’t far behind. I jumped down from the building and landed in the middle of the squadron. I didn’t care that I was intruding on someone else’s orders, I had to find Eren. “Armin! Where’s Eren!?”

Before Armin could say anything the Captain started yelling again. “Is this supposed to be your true form monster?” What was he talking about? “I don’t buy it. I’ll give the signal to fire, I mean it!”

Armin started to speak. I had no idea what was going on, but his words made my head spin. “Eren is not a foe of humanity. We’re willing to cooperate with military command and share everything we’ve learned about his powers.”

The Captain of the squad looked at one of the members and nodded toward me, clearly knowing I was about to run over there. Before I could move I was in a headlock with my arms behind my back. What could Armin possibly mean by his powers? “Your pleas fall on deaf ears. He revealed his true form and because of that threat he can not leave here alive. If you insist that he’s not an enemy of ours then show me proof. Otherwise, we’ll blast him back to whatever nightmare he crawled out of.”

I pushed and pushed against the soldier that was holding me. I would never let them hurt my brother. I even tried to bite his arms. “You won’t lay a finger on him. If you do I swear to go it’ll be the last thing that you do. Humanity’s strongest and I will strike you down. Just try me!”

Armin shushed me. “Y/N, stop.” He looked at the Captain. “You don’t need any proof. The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter what we perceive him to be.”

“What?” He was angry now.

“The report says that hundreds of soldiers saw him. And those that were there said they saw him fighting other Titans. And that means they saw him get swarmed by the Titans as well. To put it plainly the Titans saw him as they see each and every human being, as their prey. And it doesn’t matter how else you may look at it, that is an irrefutable fact.”

The soldiers around us were starting to relax. The one that was holding me back loosened his grip. Mumbling started to go around about how Armin might be right. It was now that I wished that Levi would find us and get this goon off of me. The Captain was even more pissed off. “PREPARE TO ATTACK! Don’t let yourself be swayed by his cunning lies. The Titans behavior has always been beyond our comprehension. I wouldn’t put it past them to assume human form.” He looked over at me. “That’s his sister. It could be in their genes. She might be a Titan as well.” The soldiers swarmed me, each of my limbs being held by another person.

I fought as hard as I could again. I managed to get one of my legs free and kicked one of the soldiers in the face. “Go ahead, try it! If you hurt me or my brother, see what Captain Levi does to you!”

“They speak our language in an attempt to deceive us. I refused to let them continue this behavior unchecked!”

Armin’s face was devastated. He turned to Eren and Mikasa who crouched down on one knee behind him and then looked back to me. I stared at him and nodded, I knew he had a plan, and he needed to act fast. I was useless with this many people holding me back, despite the amount of adrenaline pumping through my system. Armin saluted at them and started hollering. “I am a soldier! And I have dedicated my hear to the restoration of humanity, sir! Nothing could make me prouder than dying for such a noble cause!”

The soldiers all stared and the Captain looked shocked that Armin still had the courage to push further. “If we were to use his Titan ability and combine it with the man power we have left, I believe we can do it! We can retake this city! For humanity’s glory, in what little time I have left to live, I will advocate his strategic value!”

The Captain looked at Armin with hatred in his eyes. A soldier behind him spoke. “Captain Woerman, his words are worth considering sir. Maybe we should-”

The Captain cut him off. “QUIET!” The Captain raise his arm to signal the cannon soldiers.

I squirmed more. My brother, and the two I had thought of as siblings my whole life, were in more trouble than they seemed to realize. Where was Levi? I needed someone to help, he needed to be here. As I saw the Captain’s arm start to move downward I flailed. “RUN YOU THREE!” I pleaded with the Captain. “Please don’t do this, they’re all I have!”

Suddenly, an arm reached out, stopping Captain Woerman’s arm from coming down. The man spoke. “That’s enough. You should really do something about your nervous disposition Captain Woerman.”

The Captain looked terrified, he stuttered as he spoke. “C-C-Commander Pyxis.”

The Commander of the Garrison looked over at me, noticing how many people were holding me back. “Let her go.”

The arms released me and I glared at the men who had just been restricting me. “You’re lucky you listened, wait til Captain Levi or Commander Erwin hear about this... they’re going to have fun with all of you.” I chuckled menacingly at them, causing a few of them to step back some. Levi struck fear in most soldiers eyes, something I used to my advantage more than I should.

I hopped off the ledge of the square and ran to Eren. I wrapped my arms around my brother and squeezed, he was a couple inches taller than me, something I had always hated, but in this moment I didn’t. I released him and he held me to his side, staring at the Captain with malice in his eyes. The Commander spoke up. “Can you not see this soldier’s heartfelt salute?” Armin was still standing in front of us with his fist over his heart. “I’ve only just arrived, but I’m quite aware of our situation.” He looked from the four of us to the Captain. “Gather our reinforcements. I think we could at least do these young soldiers the favor of hearing them out.”

Armin dropped to his knees and his eyes welled up with tears. He had done it.

I buried my face into the crevice in Eren’s arm and laughed. Eren looked down at me and laughed as well. “He did it.” My eyes welled up and I let a few tears escape, not tears of sadness, but tears of joy for my brother’s safety.

I let go of Eren and walked to Armin, grabbing onto him and pulling him to me. “Thank you Armin.” I laughed again. “These two idiots would be lost and screwed without you. You’ve saved their asses more times than I can count.”

Armin hugged me back, as tight as he could. I could tell by his grasp that he was still as nervous as I was. “I couldn’t let them hurt him, not with all we’ve gone through in our lives.”

Taglist 💕 @gamegirl23100 @super-peace-fangirl @pjimochi

Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six: *NSFW Ahead!*, Part Seven

Updated: 5/13/2020

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yellowmagicalgirl · 3 years

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Once and Maybe Future Chapter 14: Incognito Patrol

When Nimue sees a girl with far too many hairclips and radiating dark magic, it's up to her and Douxie to save Arcadia.

Heyyy, yes I know it's been over six months since I last updated and this fic is now very much not canon compliant. At least this chapter is half the length of all the previous chapters combined.

Originally this was going to be a single chapter covering the events of both "Night Patroll"/"Terra Incognita II" as well as "So I'm Dating a Sorceress" and "The Exorcism of Claire Nuñez", but due to the length I decided to only have it cover the events of "Night Patroll"/"Terra Incognita II" in this chapter; another chapter is going to finally get around to the Clairegana-and-Douxie confrontation and not just the aftermath.

AO3

FFN

It was a normal day at the Zimue records store.

Which was to say, it was absolutely boring, but there were enough customers around that Nimue couldn’t practice magic… or even really do homework for her independent study courses, considering that her manager was here today.

The door opened and closed with a blast of warm late May air.

Nimue shivered and grabbed the counter as the flashback overtook her.

Nimue-the-first did not leave her lake often. She was busy enough with her forge, and she didn’t care much for most people, especially not in crowds. She frowned as she saw wagon tracks on the road; she was getting close to a village or at least a farm. She preferred for her adopted son and his family to visit her rather than the other way around. They may be royalty, but she was a sorceress and far older. They could show her some respect.

Instead, she’d be paying her last respects to her son and her daughter-in-law.

There was a war outside her lake, and there was dark magic fueling it beyond what the Gumm-Gumms could normally use. It had been a long time since she had last seen Uther’s stepdaughter or her green-eyed gaze, but Nimue-the-first knew that Morgana had corrupted herself and was fueling the war. That, or the war was fueling Morgana; Nimue-the-first could feel it in her bones.

Nimue’s bones ached as she was released from the flashback to her first lifetime. She glanced around, trying to figure out just what had caused the flashback this time. However, there was nothing new in Zimue, nothing that would’ve set her off, and definitely not anything that would’ve caused her to flash back that far. Nimue inhaled deeply, trying to see if maybe Douxie was cooking something up next door, potion or otherwise. That had set her off once. She had been tempted to tell him then and there the truth about why she had magical powers, but she had stopped herself. Wizards were normal. Relatively rare compared to most of humanity, but normal.

Reincarnation, as far as she knew, was not. Heck, every legend about King Arthur returning was propaganda, so it wasn’t like he’d reincarnate, much less anyone else from her first lifetime.

It was kind of lonely, walking around with so many memories of bygone eras, but it had been Nimue’s life since she was twelve. Besides, the magic was more than enough to make up for it.

Then again, Douxie would never practice dark magic, and even if he wanted to surely Archie would stop him. She squeezed her eyes as she manned the register. She felt worse with every customer, though it was possible that she just was getting a headache and mistaking it for dark magic. Dehydration, maybe, as ironic as it was.

A girl stepped to the front of the line, holding the new Papa Skull album. She had a white streak running through her dark hair, with multiple colored hairclips and a matching Papa Skull shirt. She looked a little sick, a little sleep deprived, a little younger than Nimue.

Nimue gulped as the girl placed the album on the counter. The girl smiled shyly before coughing into her elbow, loud and shaking.

Magic radiated off the girl as Nimue rung up the album. It was old, and it was dark.

Perhaps being the only one with magic and memories from bygone eras would have been for the best, as lonely as it was.

The girl walked out, taking most of the dark magic with her. There were some traces of it lying in the air like a miasma.

Nimue quickly swiped her hand over her pocket to make sure her phone was there. She’d ask her manager to let her take a break, text Douxie, and the two of them would go after the girl with the dark magic. Hopefully she was just some kid with latent talent who found a dark magical spell on the internet.

“I’m taking my lunch break,” her manager told her right before she could open her mouth. “Make sure we don’t get robbed.”

Nimue made sure her back was turned to her manager before she grimaced and hoped that she had enough hay fever that it was distorting the amount of dark magic she was sensing.

“Nimue, calm down and talk a little more slowly,” he said. They were both on break, her from her day job and him from band practice with Ash Dispersal pattern. Specifically, Hank and Raoul were off to grab burgers for their lunch.

Nimue took a deep breath. “Look, this girl came into Zimue and there was something bad about her. Like, I could feel the dark magic coming off her in waves.”

Douxie decided not to ask her just how she knew it was dark magic, though he did wonder. For someone who had had no training outside of spell books on the internet and his father’s attempted tutelage of the two of them, she progressed remarkably fast. Douxie hoped that Nimue wouldn’t be able to sense years-old dark magic. “Okay, do you want me to fake being sick and go after her?”

“Uh… she left the shop an hour ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Douxie was secretly glad. Nimue’s reaction to dark magic users scared him.

“Because my manager already doesn’t like me and this was the soonest I could go on break… it could be hay fever, but I made sure to take my allergy meds and I don’t think it is.”

“Okay, okay, well, what does this girl look like?”

“Uh… brown or black hair with a white streak, green, wait, no, brown eyes…” That certainly didn’t narrow down the field that well, but it did help affirm the fact that there was something about the girl Nimue had seen that had her spooked. “Oh, yeah, she was wearing a Papa Skull shirt, and hairclips? Uh, like, two, no, three, no, there might’ve been more… it’d be easier if I could show you.”

“Nimue, we both know that the extent of your drawing abilities are runes and stick figures.”

“No, not a drawing, there’s surveillance video in the store, and she came straight up to the register.”

“Isn’t that illegal? Somehow? We don’t need the law coming in and messing things up somehow.”

“I mean, technically the improvements on your pipes might also be illegal since you didn’t tell your landlord about them and they’re also giving you extra water.”

Douxie grimaced; he still wasn’t entirely sure if one day he’d have to deal with the magically enhanced water turning what was supposed to be his dinner into a potion of some sort.

Zimue closed at 7 PM every day, so at 9:30 PM Nimue snuck out of her house to break in. Her parents thought that she was sleeping after having prepared for finals she’d be taking. She wore a beanie and long sleeves to cover up her dyed hair and magically induced tattoo.

“Douxie, I thought I told you to do something that would make you less recognizable,” she said. He was wearing what he wore every day, except he didn’t roll up his sleeves.

He dramatically placed his hood over his head, and then awkwardly tucked his dyed bangs behind his ears. “Why’d you want the water bottle?” he asked, pulling one out of his pocket.

“For this,” Nimue said, sighing wistfully. She preferred shopping for clothes in the women’s section, but she missed having space in her pockets. She took the water bottle, uncapped it, and then upended it. As she handed the water bottle back to him, she made a swirling motion with her other hand.

Another good reason for wearing long sleeves: her tattoo was probably glowing right now.

A thick fog surrounded the two of them and the storefront.

“Oh. Cool,” Douxie said.

“Wish it could’ve been a smoke bomb instead of a steam bomb, but this is good enough, I guess,” Nimue said. “Besides, we don’t want to set off a smoke alarm.”

Douxie knelt next to the door, pulling out a pair of straightened paperclips. He inserted them into the lock, wiggling them around. His expression grew frustrated, and he closed his eyes. When he stood up once more, he held the lock with one of his hoodie sleeves.

“I thought you could pick locks,” Nimue said. “Well, without magic, anyways.”

“Last time I picked a lock I was in foster care, and before that…” Douxie stared off into the distance, a morose look on his face.

“Before that?”

Douxie blinked and put on an obviously fake smile. “Eh, tragic backstory stuff.”

“That joke stopped being funny halfway through ninth grade.” Nimue pushed past her friend and opened the door. Fog filtered in, covering the cameras. “Okay, so we keep the security footage over this way.”

Douxie closed the door behind him. “You know, I don’t even know if the magic shop has security cameras.”

“Good thing mystery dark magical girl came here, then.” Nimue pulled up the footage. “And good thing my boss showed me how to go through this in case we ever get shoplifted from or anything. Not that we probably will, ever. At least, if we do it’s probably gonna be on my day off. And, there!”

Douxie looked over her shoulder at the slightly grainy video, taking a photo of the girl. “She goes to our school. I saw her outside Mrs. Barros’s office last year. I think she’s a year younger than us?”

Nimue groaned, standing up and beginning to erase the evidence that she and Douxie had broken in. “If she’s a year younger than us, then she might be a member of that stupid pilot program where freshmen could graduate in a year and a half.”

“I can ask the guys; they might know since they still go to actual school.”

“Make sure you get a name; it might make it easier to go after her.”

“Hey, Nimue?” Douxie asked. She threw a glance over her shoulder as she locked up the store.

“Yeah?”

“What are you going to do to her, once we find her?”

“I don’t know exactly, but she’s got dark magic. She’s dangerous, and we’re the only non-dark wizards in Arcadia. We need to stop her.”

Douxie gave her the same sort of faraway, morose look that he did whenever he accidentally shared a detail about his childhood before foster care. Without a word, he turned away and walked to his apartment.

Nimue let the enchanted fog roll away and began to walk home. She tried not to think about Douxie’s question too much. Anyone who used dark magic had to be evil since they’d know better than to use it. They deserved what was coming to them.

“Hey, does this girl still go to our school?” Douxie asked, holding his phone out to the other members of Ash Dispersal Pattern.

“What, do you wanna ask her, wait, no, sorry, forgot you were gay,” Raoul said. Honestly, Douxie was still a little surprised that he had even had to come out to Raoul and the other guys last October. After all, Douxie trying out for Ash Dispersal Pattern had been him trying to confess his crush to Hank back in freshman year. Not that it mattered, anymore, since all the other guys in the band were straight and Douxie had moved on from his crush six months after the band had formed. “Uh, I don’t know?”

“Nimue saw her at the record store, fiddling with a ring, and she dropped it. Nimue found it after she’d left, and she wanted to try to find a way to give it back to the girl. I remembered seeing her outside of Mrs. Barros’s office last year, but I’ve got no idea about if she’s in the year-and-a-half program.”

Hank walked over and squinted at the photo. “She doesn’t go to our school; she transferred to mole high. She’s friends with my ex; the girl’s name’s Claire. Do you want me to go over?”

“Dude, Mary isn’t gonna get back together with you,” Dominic said.

“No, well, I have no idea about Hank’s ex. But no, I’ll go over,” Douxie said.

“Hand out the Battle of the Bands flyers when you get there, will ya?” Douxie took the stack of papers from Dominic. Good, now he actually had a reason to go there.

Multiple female students of Arcadia Oaks High swarmed Douxie, but not as many of them grabbed the flyers he was passing out. None of them were Claire, either. One of them mentioned the nickname that Nimue hated. Personally, Douxie wasn’t sure why it was such a problem; Hank had gone through a phase where he’d called everyone by their first initial, but there were two guys with a name starting with the letter “d” in the band and Dominic was significantly shorter than Douxie. Therefore, “Big D” and “Little D”.

A girl pushed through the crowd and tripped, dropping her books. Douxie knelt next to her helping her grab her books, and then he felt the waves of dark magic coming off of her. Something about them felt familiar, but how? Douxie placed a smile on his face.

“C-Bomb, is it? Consider me blown away, because you are nuclear.” If she knew that he was a wizard, then she would understand that this was a sign of respect. A sign that he recognized her power, but also a sign that he recognized the danger she radiated.

She smiled back but said nothing. Hmm. Maybe Nimue’s theory of Claire being an inexperienced wizard who accidentally cast a dark magic spell was possible, but that powerful without knowing how to sense for magic? That was strange. Perhaps she was goading him?

A boy in blue walked up to them, slinging his arm around Claire’s shoulder. “So, what brings you to our humble school?”

The boy placed a hand on Douxie’s chest, pushing Douxie away as Claire began to cough. That was nice of him. Something about the boy felt oddly familiar, and not just because Douxie remembered seeing him at Benoit’s multiple times. No, Douxie almost felt caught in a feedback loop, like he had sent his own magic outwards and then it got sent back at him. Almost. The magic that got sent back felt purer, less tainted. Innocent, and not yet marred by necromancy.

“The Battle of the Bands is coming up,” Douxie said as he handed a flyer to Claire. “Ash Dispersal Pattern – that’s my band – will be crushing this.” And maybe the hand motion Douxie made was a little too threatening, but there was something odd and Douxie felt like he had to do something to show a little of his strength. Not too much, but enough to make himself seem like he wasn’t a victim. “But, we’re encouraging others to give it a shot.”

Claire coughed again after congratulating Douxie on Ash Dispersal Pattern’s headline performance for Papa Skull last fall. Douxie couldn’t help but wonder if it were a regular cold, or if perhaps the illness were magical in nature. If so, maybe he, Nimue, and his father could find –

No. Douxie would have to help her on his own. Nimue and his father thought that dark magic users were evil and dangerous. They would probably advocate for letting Claire die if the illness caused by her own meddling in dark magic, or perhaps the two of them would grant “mercy” to Claire by killing her. They would probably do the same for Douxie if they ever found out the truth.

Two girls rushed over to Claire, exclaiming that they should be a cover band. Neither of them seemed to have anything magical going on, but Douxie was pretty sure one of them was Hank’s ex.

“I don’t know,” the boy said, pushing Douxie away once more. “We’re pretty busy with our after-school activities.”

Hmm. Were Claire and the boy perhaps trying to learn magic together, much like Douxie and Nimue were?

Claire took the flyer back from the boy and agreed with the girls about starting a band. Douxie glanced to his hands and quickly put them in his pockets. They were empty, and they were trembling. But why? Claire seemed powerful, but not necessarily threatening.

“I look forward to seeing you again, Fair Lady Claire,” Douxie said before walking away. Yes. Perfect. That was exactly the right amount of respect to show to a fellow wizard whose diplomatic position towards you was still unknown but was clearly dangerous due to her clearly dark but hidden power. It was good to know that, after a millennium and a half for everyone else and eight years for himself, his diplomatic training as a prince had finally paid off. If only his parents, Merlin, or Uncle Kay could have been alive and in the right mind to see him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. This whole morning was stupid. Nimue had been so stupid as to tempt fate. She glanced up from the tile she was trying to kill with her eyes when the door opened and closed, and her best friend walked into Zimue Records.

“Everything okay?” Douxie asked.

“We got fucking robbed,” Nimue said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen to me! If this was going to happen, why not on my day off?”

“Well, at least you have security cameras. Was anyone hurt?”

“No, though the shoplifters played dumb like they didn’t know what shoplifting was. Ugh. At least some cop got there so no permanent damage was caused and I didn’t even need security cameras. How’d flyers go?”

“Fine, I found Claire.”

“Okay, and?”

“And what?”

“And what have you done about her? Fireballs? Potions turned Molotov cocktails?”

“What? No! I’m not blowing up our rival school, and neither are you! No, I just got a feel for her, and I treated her with the proper amount of respect.”

“Proper?”

“Yes. Given that she’s powerful, I called her by the term Lady,” Douxie said as Nimue smacked her forehead. “What? There’s no need for her to immediately want to kill us for disrespect!”

“Douxie, this is why people think you’re straight.” She wrinkled her nose. “Please tell me you’re just being cheeky when you call me Lady Nimue and not trying to curry favor.”

“I’m being respectful to you because you’re my friend… but also sometimes it bugs you.”

Nimue rolled her eyes. “Okay, so what are we going to do about Claire? You have any ideas about how to fight a dark wizard?”

The door opened and closed, but no human walked in. “You two won’t be.”

“You told him?” Nimue said.

“No, but he should have,” Archie said. “You two are louder than you think.”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Douxie mumbled.

Archie raised an eyebrow at Douxie. “Between raising you,” he said before turning to Nimue, “and teaching you my fur has gotten plenty grayer without the two of you taking needless risks like tracking down a dark wizard.”

“But she could be hurting people! And we’re the only ones in Arcadia who could save the day! If we pull off some sort of sneak attack – “

“You won’t be,” Archie said. “If the two of you are to be fighting another wizard, which you won’t be, I expect you to fight with honor.”

“She’s a dark wizard. She’s evil.”

“Or she’s young and hasn’t had the training that you have. She might not know the difference between regular magic and dark magic. After all, did you know the difference when your powers first awoke?”

Nimue’s breath caught in her throat. Of course, she did; she knew so many things instinctually from her past lives.

“Or Claire’s desperate,” Douxie mumbled, breaking Nimue from her thoughts. Archie turned to him.

“That’s not an excuse to use dark magic, and it’s especially not an excuse I want to hear coming from your mouth – either of your mouths,” Archie said. “If this girl turns out to be a danger to others, or to be using dark magic while being fully aware of the consequences, then fine. I will guide the two of you in planning an attack. But I do not want either of you getting near this dark wizard without me. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Archie,” the two of them said in unison.

“Good. Now, how is studying for finals going?”

#toa zoe #claire nuñez #hisirdoux casperan #jim lake jr #toa archie #tales of arcadia #trollhunters #3below #once and maybe future #my writing #toa mordred #ash dispersal pattern #tight jeans hank

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my-fanfic-library · 4 years

Text

Something Different {BBC Dracula x Reader} [20]

Masterlist

A/N: I write this as I sit in bed, knowing full well that I should be on the bus right now on my way to my lecture, but that doesn’t matter. Thank you all for your help last night, it truly did help me calm down a lot. Also I’d like to apologise for clearly being over dramatic (but God has punished me because I am actually a little ill now Oof). Anywho, enjoy the chapter and enjoy the gif of Claes which may or may not suggest acts that you shall do to Dracula which most definitley would not be in line with the current traffic laws

Oh, also a warning - there’s quite a few sexual references in this one and also an almost handjob.

~^*^~

Now, while Dracula was the most sophisticated, high maintenance, gentlemanly gentleman that you had ever had the pleasure of meeting, he definitely had some weird quirks. For one, he truly enjoyed showers and baths. He didn’t need them, considering his body didn’t sweat and nor did he reek of death (only to the human nose, apparently - dogs could smell him from miles off). He said that he simply liked the convenience of it. One of humanities greatest inventions, he had proclaimed.

Currently, you were indulging in his most recent quirk. Back pressed against the door of the bathroom, you could hear the shower running and another sound. Music. What you originally would have expected to be beautiful classics like Gymnopedie No. 1, maybe Clair De Lune or something along those lines, was actually...

Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road.

You were in hysterics. Your stomach had knotted with the force of your (almost) silent laughter, tears were threatening the corner of your eyes and your jaw ached. You didn’t have any idea just how Dracula had found it, or why he liked it so very much as to put it on repeat, but listening to him hum along the tune was spiralling you down into painful bouts of laughter every second that you heard it and continued to think about the bizarreness of the entire ordeal.

Maybe you should have laughed a little further away, since a certain male had heard the laughter that you had genuinely tried to conceal. He wanted to catch you off guard for being so inconsiderate to both his wishes to bathe and his music choices.

Back still pressed firmly against the door, you had to lean further into it just to support yourself and when whoosh. Down you went as steam billowed out and onto your back you went. It was Dracula’s turn to laugh now. You scowled, laugh immediately disappearing from your features as you pushed yourself up to look at him. Regret hit you. In just a towel, secured to his waist by his hand, he loomed over you as he continued to chuckle. His other arm extended over your head, holding the door open and holy shit, you didn’t realise the expanse of the muscle he had. Beads of water rolled down his skin, a thin layer of heat steaming off of him, as if to physically scream ‘look at how how I am!’ And you chocked on air. His hair all wet and falling into his face, his chest puffed out as his laughter continued. Dear heavens above, you should have stayed in the bedroom and far, far away from him when he looked like this.

Which one of you was the cannibal again? You couldn’t remember.

“Do you no longer find my taste in music amusing, or is there something suddenly bothering you?” He teased, eyes looking over your form. All that you wore was one of his much too oversized shirts. You had told him that you enjoyed to sleep in it because it was comfortably, but the truth was that it swallowed you with his scent and you loved it. You hadn’t even realised that the music was no longer playing.

“I-“ you were lost for words, gawking at him.

“Oh, you see something you like?”

“No- I- you know what, I think I’m gonna just got for a quick jog to, uh, I don’t know- Scotland. Yes, Scotland.”

“Darling, you would never make it out of this room. I wouldn’t let you.”

“Drac,” you huffed, “please stop doing things that make me feel a burning need to mock you because I don’t like your cockiness when you get me back.”

“Well, how is it fair that you get to have your way with me, but I can’t?”

“Dracula you had your way with me before you,” for the last word of your sentence, you brought up your fingers to use as air quotes, “died.”

“And I hadn’t even started.” He smirked, “now, is there something that you wanted?”

“No, you can return to your shower. Maybe try a different song, though, Old Town Road gets old fast.”

“I think I have an even better idea.” His hand that held the door fell and hooked around your waist, pulling you into the room. You gently yelped in surprise as he pulled your chest flush to his. You could feel the water soaking the shirt immediately and you tried to wiggle your way out of his grasp. The door shut behind you, “stop moving or I’ll drop the towel.” You froze.

“Oh, c‘ mon Drac, Barefoot Contessa was about to start.” You pouted.

“You were very clearly more interested in me than in the television. Now, as you can see, I’ve left the water running.”

“Good for you. Your water bill will be high this month.” You retorted.

“Care to join me?”

“Hah, no.”

He dipped his head down to your mark, which had scarred over nicely. Pushing the hair away from that side of your neck, he pressed a kiss. You shuddered, balling your hands into fists. He wasn’t about to win. You couldn’t afford to let him win again. He pressed a second kiss against it, and when you still showed signs of resilience, his tongue flicked out. Sweet Jesus. A blissful and intense tingle spread through your shoulders and down your back. Your knees buckled and you pressed your hands to his firm chest to keep yourself upright.

“Much better.” He hummed, “have I persuaded you, yet?”

“No.” You breathed.

His mouth began to work against your neck, kisses here and there, his tongue occasionally trailing a quick stripe across your skin. If just his kisses like this drove you haywire, what the fuck would you do in much more intimate circumstances? It became apparent quickly that you wouldn’t be able to stand much more of this abuse and-

“Okay fine! But no funny business. We are meant to be going out today.”

“I won’t promise to keep my hands to myself, but I’ll definitely obey your command, my darling.”

You watched him as he used his fingers to bind the towel to his body. The room was filling with steam once more and you were choking on the humidity. Mostly. His eyes glossed over you, a sheen of something over them. His fingers trailed from your waist, down your hips and to the hem of his your shirt.

“How about we dispose of this for the time being?” His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. Your heart thundered in your chest. This man. He’d certainly be the death of you - figuratively or quite literally, you weren’t sure.

“Alright.” You whispered. Your eyes locked with his and with a slow, yet swift movement, he pulled the material up and over your head. It landed somewhere but he was otherwise occupied now, looking your body over once more.

“You didn’t even wear underwear to bed?” He raised his eyebrow, “my goodness. You minx.”

“What can I say?” You shrugged, “it’s much more freeing.”

He chuckled deeply. A pink tint adorned your face and he knew that you were a little embarrassed to be so bare before him. He hadn’t realised up until this moment when his eyes scanned you that he’d accidentally left a pink blossom on your neck which was beginning to bloom purple. A wicked and smug smile crossed his lips.

“Go and get in,” he whispered the command and you did so, not without trailing your fingers against his torso as you moved past him. He turned, enchanted, taking in the back angles of your body. You truly were a goddess. There was no other explanation that was feasible.

His eyes became greedy, watching the way the glass began to steam once more as hot beads of water began to cascade over you. You sighed at the feeling. Ducking your head under the jet of water, your hair became wet immediately. When you threw your head back with a gasp, Dracula very almost lost all control. The way your hair stuck to you perfectly, strands accentuating the curves of your upper body, water streaming from the ends and washing over every single curve of you.

Your cheeks were now red from the heat of the water and you were tugged backwards suddenly by his hands. Your back became flush with his chest and his lips came down to attack your shoulders. His hands ran against your skin, careful not to touch anywhere he’d know you’d like a little too much. How had he ended up this lucky?

“I didn’t even need a shower today. I had one last night.” You grumbled, but you were savouring his touch.

“You’re keeping me company.” He hummed against your skin.

You turned in his arms, wrapping your own firmly around his neck so that you could stand on your toes with support. You were a little closer his height now. His hands trailed along your back, feeling every inch of skin yet he remained adamant to not touch you where you were beginning to crave it most.

“Maybe I didn’t want to.” You began to press kisses to his collarbones.

“Maybe I didn’t want you to, either, yet here we are.”

He drove you backwards and your back hit the wall, behind where the water was coming from the shower head. The wall was freezing and eased your body where the heat was making it uncomfortably hot. You lowly groaned at the sensation and Dracula began his kisses on your neck, your shoulders, and the first few inches of your chest. Your fingers knitted into his hair, your lips parted slightly and shit, a familiar warmth spread to your gut.

“Drac,” you gasped and he stopped, pressing his body into yours. What kind of game was he playing?

“Yes, [First]?”

“You know, we could totally just...” you trailed off, hoping he’d be able to finish your sentence himself. You bit your lip, anticipating his response.

“Well, we aren’t.” He chuckled lightly, “wasn’t it you that just said no funny business? Look at you now, practically begging for me.”

“You’re the one who started this.” You pouted.

“Actually, you are. Had you not been outside of the bathroom at all, I never would have felt the desire to have you join me. But if you’re going to get greedy and expect more than I’m willing to offer, then I suggest that you go and get yourself ready for our outing.”

“Alright.” You almost pushed past him, stomping out of the shower and plucking up the shirt at you neared the door. If he was going to play games with you, you would finish it. Even if that meant by yourself.

“Oh, and [First],” he called and you snapped your head around to look at him sharply, he was grinning, “don’t do anything that you would prefer me to do. I will know, and there will be consequences.”

~^*^~

An hour later and you were finally ready to leave. You had eaten, and gotten yourself dried and dressed. Due to the intense August heat, you had opted for a sundress that showed off the bottom halves of your legs and exposed your arms and your chest and your back. Dracula liked it very much, but he had put up a fight about you wearing it outside where other men could so freely look at you.

One thing that had genuinely shocked you was Dracula’s newest addition to his résumé - driving. He had surprised you approximately a week ago by picking you up from the gym in a shiny, brand new Jag. Apparently he had felt the need to learn this skill to fit in a little more and to make his way to you when he found out you had gone northward without the papers reporting on a large black beastly hound walking the length of the M1.

He couldn’t have looked more bougie if he tried. His suit, a little more causally worn than usual with the first two buttons undone and exposing his chest just a little, the suit jacket right over the top and open to show no waitcoat like usual. He had opted for some glasses today and had your mouth been open, you’d be drooling all over the centre console.

“Stop looking at me like that, I’m finding it hard to concentrate.” He stated lowly.

“Don’t look so fucking good them.” You crossed your arms and looked ahead instead at the streets of London rushing by.

“I can’t help it. It’s my thing.” You scoffed at his words.

“It is not your thing, you do it on purpose.” You huffed at him.

“I’ve been caught.”

“... why don’t we just pull over for like ten minutes?”

“[First], I am not pulling over.” He told you, “get a grip of yourself, woman.”

He laughed. He was not getting away with toying with you all morning. He had made it his mission when you had woken up to ignite every inch of your skin with his touch, he had hovered his lips over yours, he had done everything in his power to make you feel weak in the knees and you had finally had enough.

Reaching over, your hand came to rest right between his legs and his laughter faded with a soft “ah,” and he couldn’t help the smallest moan that left his lips. His head automatically threw back and he had to will himself to keep his eyes on the road. He spoke your name dangerously. It was a warning to stop. He’d had his fun, it was your turn. You began to slowly and tantalisingly move your hand along his length. He drew in a breath. It had been a very long time since this had occurred and the sudden recollection of the feeling drove him so quickly to the edge of insanity that he thought he would crash the car. A shaky breath left his lips, his eyes fluttered shut and he sucked in his bottom lip between his teeth.

Your smirked proudly. Who knew vampires still worked anatomically? And could still feel the pleasure?

Well, you learnt something new everyday. This was your TIL.

A fire began to burn in the pit of his stomach and he couldn’t concentrate on anything except for the feeling of your hand. He genuinely wanted to cry. Eyes flickering to the rear view mirror, he made sure that there wasn’t a car behind him and slammed on the breaks. Your body became restrained against the seat belt and you knew to take your hand away.

“Do you have a death wish?” He growled, turning to face you. Fuck, how did anger make him even more attractive than to begin with?

“Well, my boyfriend once told me that his dick would kill me, so yes, yes I do.” His face softened. You had never called each other official names yet. It just hadn’t been discussed.

“Your boyfriend?”

“Yeah, I know. He’s a right catch. The only problem with him is that he’s spent all morning riling me up and I’ve had nothing to show for it.” You dramatically sighed.

“He sounds like an arsehole.” Dracula mused, playing along.

“He really is. I still love him, though.”

Before Dracula could lean over and crash his lips to yours like he wanted to, a car behind him honked and he was forced to simply smile and gloat over the fact that you had finally confessed that you loved him, too.

~^*^~

The first half of your outing went swimmingly well. Dracula was all smitten, insistent on holding your hand as you wandered around the shops just looking at everything. You were pulling him around like an excitable puppy, into every store to show off some of the greatest things humanity had created since the 1800s.

When it came to around lunchtime, Dracula inquired into your current hunger status, and you had denied his offer to eat. You hadn’t been shopping in so long and you always found it fun to just see what things were on sale.

It was, however, in the midst of the lunchtime slump as most people made their way to the food court that the worst was destined to happen. His voice had called out to you, as Dracula had his back turned towards you. It didn’t look as though you were together considering the space and the fact that you were looking away from each other. Your head snapped over.

“Hey, what’s a pretty thing like you being out alone? Wouldn’t you prefer some company?” You clutched your bag and you heard the click of Dracula’s shoes as he turned to look at the commotion behind him.

“Actually, I’m uh, I’m-“

“Here, I’ll treat you.” His hand came out and grasped your wrist.

“No, really-“

Dracula’s hand suddenly planted over his and you looked over to see a deadly look on his face. If looks could kill. The eyes of the gentleman currently trying to steal you away from him flashed with fear.

“She isn’t interested.” Dracula spoke very clearly, very slowly and made sure to make himself look as tall as possible. You shrunk down a little.

“Come on, man, don’t get involved.” Clearly whoever this man was, was an idiot.

“Don’t get involved?” Dracula scoffed, “some filthy vermin has its hand on something that belongs to me. So I suggest that you remove it.” With some force, he squeezed and you felt the pressure in your arm. It released as Dracula pulled the man’s hand off of you.

“Fuck this.” He grumbled and slumped away as quickly as he could.

Well, that was the trip ruined. Dracula’s mood had soured. Just as you needed his good mood to help you with your shopping, it had very quickly wilted. It wasn’t going to stop you, however, as you tugged him into the first of many clothing stores. Within minutes, he had almost become your personal shopping cart, carrying all of the things that you wanted to try on. His face was gloomy and blue and you must’ve looked a right sight. A tall and handsome man with the hump and a grumpy face, wrapped around the finger of a cheerful and upbeat girl as he carried all of her goods and let her do as she pleased. Quite the sight, indeed.

In the changing rooms, he became the epitome of boyfriend as he perched on the leather chair that he had picked, waiting for you to do whatever you had to do. Every few minutes or so, you’d pull back the curtains to reveal the clothes you had in and he’d grunt in response or make a blunt remark. His sour mood became old quick and you knew that you were going to have to further piss him off just to make him happier again.

So you bought the clothes that you liked and moved on to the next store, deciding to pick a few more revealing items, more form fitting and lower cut. Every time you moved on to a new store, the amount of ridiculous items began to outnumber the clothes that you’d actually wear. It wasn’t until you drew back the curtain and was standing there in a dress made of fishnet that Dracula snapped. He couldn’t believe you’d stand there in public, your body on display with just your underwear protecting your most intimate features. It accentuated your curves so well and he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else seeing you so revealed. Especially not some lowlife like the man from earlier.

He almost tore your arm off, storming past the cash register as he threw the money down, and then he ripped off his jacket, placing it around you and warning you to do the buttons up. He didn’t speak a word to you in the car.

Holy shit, you were in trouble.

~^taglist^~

@vampiregirl1797 @avalanet @bunnyreese12 @nerdonpluto @teamceleries @grifffins @hitbythunder @winterseoul @mymagicsuitcase @angeli-fucking-cat @benedictethegoddess @bloodhon3yx @nifflersravenclaw @writteninthestars288 @labelladrama @frankcastlesgrunts @angelicdestieldemon @quakerlasss @aliisa-jones @wolverinexmenn @clairedragonessbaker @cryiner @mitsukatsu @piratewhore @your-pixels-are-showing @tardisnesss @ladydovahkiin180 @catwomom @god-of-dramatic-death-scenes @th3rah @viper-queen @mephdcosplay @greghouse7 @faeprinces @kokoro-no-yami @trishaferdream @therealmoni @crazytxgradstudent @sansthelonelypunster @crowley-needs-a-hug @girlonfireice @wasntpriscilla @ivanna6026

#hi welcome to angry drac #booyyyy yall are in troubleeeee #whats he gonna do i wonder ;)#something different #dracula #bbc dracula #netlfix dracula #dracula x reader #bbc dracula x reader #netflix dracula x reader #claes bang #dolly wells

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hcpefulmarshmallow · 3 years

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NSFW Alphabet.

-I started writing this up forever ago because I saw it around, figured I might as well, and then forgot. Pretty sure the original list was made by @/fairy-tail-babes, but do correct me if I’m wrong. Happy Sinday, feel free to steal.

A = Aftercare ---Afterward, Nagito tends to be quite affectionate, if a little lethargic. He'll compliment his partner a lot, and whisper sweet and loving things in a low, soft voice. At times he comes across as a little clingy, even scared that the intimacy will end there and his partner is going to up and leave. But with plenty of cuddling, some softspoken words, and a nap, his partner is going to have one happy marshmallow on their hands.

B = Body part ---He doesn’t really have a favorite part of his own body. Nagito has never thought of himself as especially handsome, or especially hideous. In fact, he’s never thought about his appearance much at all. That said, if he S/O shows a preference for something (usually his hair or his eyes, let’s be real), then he will take better care of that part of him. As for his partner, he often has a strong appreciation for their hands, chest, and neck. He’ll find their hands fascinating because of the wonderful duality about them. Kissing their fingertips can be either the most chaste, adoring act in the world, or the most suggestive, with only the smallest change in technique. He loves that he can hold their hand in public around other people, but also during their most private, intimate moments. He can spend hours just watching his fingers entwine with theirs. As for the chest thing, aside from the obvious, one of his favourite places to kiss his S/O is just above their heart, and likewise, he will probably melt if they did the same to him. He considers his lover’s very life to be an absolute miracle, and the pinnacle of hope, so something symbolic of that - like their heartbeat - is comforting to him, and he adores falling asleep to the sound of it. And finally, aside from finding the curve of their neck very alluring, he likes kissing them there, and also just nuzzling while he holds onto them. It’s a very secure, comfortable place to be. He can hear them breathing, breathe in their scent, and block out the world for a little while.

C = Cum ---Nagito has something of a double standard in this regard. He finds his own viscerally disgusting (along with pretty much everything else about himself), but he’s very comfortable with his partner’s. He will probably go into shock the first time they swallow. He won’t hate it though.

D = Dirty Secret ---The fact that he has a dirty side probably is his secret. He tends to assume that people will assume the worst of him, so if anyone knows he had a horny thought in his life, they’d probably think he’s a pervert, on top of being useless and stupid. Thus, such thoughts tend to come with a lot of shame and frustration for him, as does every desire for anything gratifying that he feels.

E = Experience ---No. Generally, he prefers only to participate in sex with someone he deeply cares for -- a preference he’d rarely ever stray outside of, and only under certain, strenuous circumstances. Between Nagito’s own selectiveness, and tendency to drive people away (either consciously or subconsciously), he doesn’t have many willing suitors. Rest assured, though, he’s very perceptive and a fast learner. It doesn’t take long to figure out what he’s doing.

F = Favourite Position ---Any position that allows for eye contact and plenty of touching. Bonus points if they’re close enough to kiss. He likes to look at his partner while they do the fucc, and marvel at everything about them.

G = Goofy ---At first, a little bit. He’ll laugh a lot as he does when he’s nervous, and may act uncharacteristically clumsy. Once he’s comfortable, it’s more a matter of what kind of what they’re about to do. Though, he’s never too serious to smile for the person he loves.

H = Hair ---The people want to know, and thus, they shall: yes. His hair is the same colour all over. Do with that what you will.

I = Intimacy ---Nagito is the type to go the extra mile to make every time special. It can honestly be a little exhausting, especially if he and his S/O already live busy lives. He spends a lot of time on foreplay, and will pour his whole entire soul into making his partner feel loved and special. Every. Single. Time. So yeah, as with all other aspects of his personality, he can be tiring and painstaking at times; but he’s always worth the extra effort. Every time with him is a whole experience.

J = Jack Off ---Typically, something he does to blow off steam every now and again, with nothing in particular on his mind. When he starts to crush hard on someone, he’s surprised to find himself thinking of them more and more, even during his...private moments. The first time that happens, he’s surprised at how much more intense it makes everything feel, and he has to stop and take a cold shower. In part, because he wasn’t prepared for it; and in part, out of shame alone. Eventually he can’t stop himself and does finish and it’s the most intense orgasm he’s ever given himself -- only to wind up not even looking that person in the eye for a good week. His fantasies while masturbating tend to be rather benign, too. It’s more abstract sensations - like the way a person smells, or the sound of their voice - than anything literal.

K = Kink ---You know, the whole #letnagitogetpegged2kforever thing started as a meme on this blog. It was initially “hey someone be nice to him uwu” and gradually evolved into, “for the love of god rail him please i swear”. In case it isn’t clear, I tend to use these kind of things as shorthand for my many, many rants on how Nagito is a Good Boy and Deserves Love, like the filthy apologist I am. It goes hand-in-hand with the running joke that his kink is love and affection -- though let’s be real, nothing makes him drop his pants faster than being made to feel loved, adored, and safe. Nothing. That said, he will jump at the chance to be f’d in the a’, all the while insisting, “you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to”. Plenty of kisses and kind words, and some light hair pulling, and he will fall to pieces. He also really, really likes going down on his partner. If his S/O is smaller than him, seeing them in his clothing and nothing else does Things he can’t quite explain. If his S/O is stronger than him, he finds he enjoys being manhandled a little or pinned, so long as they’re at a point where he’s totally comfortable with them. He enjoys teasing and being teased, and hearing whatever noises he can elicit from his partner. Praise works so many kinds of wonders. The first person to tell him he’s not actual human garbage for whom death is too good will own his soul, I swear.

L = Location ---Bed. Yeah, I know. But it’s familiar, comfortable, and well-equipped that he can take his time and give his partner his all.

M = Motivation ---It’s really not difficult to get him going. If his S/O makes their intentions clear, all it takes is a few indecent words and well-placed touches, and his interest is piqued. He is very touch-starved, what do you want?

N = NO ---As a general rule, Nagito doesn’t like things that remind him of unpleasant times in his life. Nor would he want anything to depersonalize the experience, undermine his sense of safety, or is likely to go wrong due to his luck. No pain, and as much as he might pretend otherwise, no degrading. If he actively asks to be degraded, it’s a sign that he’s too involved in his self-loathing to be enjoying himself, and it’s probably time to take a break. Nothing unsanitary. Nothing that keeps him from being able to communicate, even if he’s not very good at it. He wants very badly to enjoy being tied up, because the idea of handing over that kind of ultimate trust to his partner is thrilling. However, that’s the kind of thing that needs a lot of working up to. He’s been tied up before in his life. Didn’t go well for him. As an aside, Nagito is, as we all know, very bad at communicating his limits, especially if he feels they aren’t shared. It will likely take some intuiting on the part of his S/O to help suss him out a little. He is how he is. But he’s trying.

O = Oral ---He doesn’t mind receiving, of course, but definitely prefers giving. He’s pretty good at it, too. Sometimes he’ll exhaust his S/O that way, and be quite content even if that’s all they do.

P = Pace ---Left to set the pace himself, Nagito tends to take things slow. Agonizingly so. He likes to make it last. Like I said: every encounter is an Experience.

Q = Quickie ---Quickies don’t work for him as a replacement for sex for all the reasons above - it’s just not enough time to do all the things he wants to do - but for leaving him breathless and wanting more, as a precursor to later on, they’re pretty effective.

R = Risk ---The word “risk” is a strange one for Nagito. Due to his luck, he can get away with a lot more than most people. This has probably lead to a share of escapades with the right adventurous-type S/Os.

S = Stamina ---You know, regrettably, it’s not the best, once the actual fuccing begins. He’s pretty easily overwhelmed. But what he lacks in stamina, he makes up for in every other way. He would never want to leave his partner disappointed.

T = Toy ---Nagito is not opposed to the use of toys, either giving or receiving. Generally speaking, he’s pretty open-minded about trying new things, and if they work out, he’s happy to incorporate them into their regular routine.

U = Unfair ---Yet another long-running joke on his blog is that Nagito doesn’t deserve rights because he is a bottom. And you know what? That’s fair. Most of the time, he will default to - and be comfortable in - a more submissive role. But that isn’t to say he won’t be just as gifted at, and have just as much fun, taking control of things every now and again. And for someone so polite and composed and otherwise relaxed, it’s almost disorienting how easily that switch is flipped. Nagito has a silver tongue and a strong knack for finding peoples’ weak spots. He can tease his partner for hours, and if that wry smile is anything to go by, he really, really enjoys it. What I’m saying is, Top!Nagito is very powerful and should be feared.

V = Volume ---So, you know how it’s physically impossible for him to shut up at any given moment? Yeah. Outside of his usual rambling about how his partner is a perfect, wonderful person who he loves with all his heart, interwoven with other filth not at all for polite company, he moans and whines a lot. Especially as he becomes more and more worked up, and less and less coherent. Sometimes he will try to muffle himself with his hand or a pillow (particularly early on while he’s still self-conscious); most of the time, he won’t bother. At a certain point it may be nearly impossible for him to control the sounds he’s making, so if some quiet is needed, it may be up to his partner to find a way to keep his mouth occupied.

W = Wild Card ---Nagito has an intense fascination with intricate lingerie. You know, the type that has a million straps and pieces and whatnot. Not just for all the obvious reasons -- he really does enjoy trying to figure out how all this complicated clothing works, and can spend ages just tracing it all with his fingers in amazement. RIP to the S/O who was trying to rile him up to make things move faster. What can he say? It’s the puzzle-solver in him.

X = X-Ray ---Slightly above average. He’s not overwhelming, but nowhere near disappointing, either. Once time, an anon submitted a logical deduction that explains this in full. I fucking love this community.

Y = Yearning ---His sex drive isn’t too high, but it’s high-er when he’s alone with his S/O more. In case it isn’t crystal yet, sex is primarily something he uses to express the way he feels about someone, and seek the contact he’s so desperate for. The deeper he’s fallen for someone, the stronger his desires will be -- or at the very least, the more likely he is to honour them, rather than bury his need for love and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Z = ZZZ ---He tries. He really does. But after a long session, he’s probably too tired to stay awake for very long. It seems only appropriate to end this list as it began: with plenty of cuddling, some softspoken words, and a nap, his partner is going to have one happy marshmallow on their hands.

#lemon;#「 report card 」 headcanons #( i am very slowly catching up on all the things i started )

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venusofthehardsells · 4 years

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Dreamgirl [part 4]

ReaderxBucky Barnes [part 3] Summary: Bucky tries to adjust to his new life in the Avengers compound. One day he meets a girl who might be everything he needs in order to move on, but is his past really that far away? Warnings for this chapter: typical self-hate, not much else this time tbh, (general series warnings include noncon, violence, mental illness, feels probably) A/N: I can’t believe I let you wait this long for a chapter with this little content. Ungh. Like I already said, I have nothing to say for myself. My writing process is about as fast the plot. I’ll try harder to update more, and if you’re still following this story, just know it really means a lot to me!

When Bucky wakes up it’s three am and Steve is still there, fast asleep next to him. Steve’s arm is resting protectively over Bucky and both of Bucky’s hands are holding onto Steve’s T-shirt, the fabric close to ripping in his unyielding grip. He soften his hold a little and looks up to study Steve’s face.

Despite the serum keeping him young, there are a few lines adorning the face of America’s golden boy that weren’t there during the war. They’re faint and few but this close there’s no doubt. The worry has managed to leave its mark on him and Bucky feels his stomach clench itself into a hard little ball. How many of those fine lines have he caused?

Then again, how many lines separate this weary ghost from the bright young man he used to be?

Steve’s presence has had a good influence on him. The last few hours of sleep have been quiet and heavy. He can’t remember the last time he slept so soundly, but he’s sure it was one of those other rare occasions when he was so far gone in his nightmares, Steve had slept in his bed too.

Bucky is pried from his sleep-heavy thoughts when his stomach growls painfully and he vaguely realises he hasn’t eaten anything the entire day. Well, he’s paying for it now.

A headache is forming behind his eyes and his chest feels as though it’s going to implode into the void of his empty stomach if he doesn’t get some food in him fast. The way his throat is beginning to constrict is almost nauseating. He’s always had a healthy appetite and has often gone hungry, both in his youth and during HYDRA missions, but whatever Dr Zola did to him made him less affected by such things as hunger when he was the Asset. It was as if his mind didn’t fully acknowledge the needs of his body.

Now, however, the combination of his enhanced biology and not being brainwashed makes the hunger close to crippling.

It feels safe and nice to lie with both of Steve’s arms around him, Bucky realises when he shifts a little, and he almost doesn’t want to leave the bed. Steve mumbles something in his sleep and manages to hug Bucky closer so he’s flush with Steve’s entire body, face squashed against his chest.

“Ftoovh,” he tries and rolls his eyes at the muffled sound that’s all he’s capable of producing without chewing on Steve’s shirt. With a bit more determination, he gets his arms in between them and pushes Steve in the chest, harder than he would a normal person, but not hard enough to hurt.

Apparently, the push is still more powerful than he calculated.

With a yelp, Steve rolls off the bed and crashes into the nightstand that goes tumbling towards the opposite wall. Bucky winces, but is on his feet in a second to get Steve up from the floor.

“Fuck, ‘m sorry, Steve,” he mumbles, feeling his cheeks burn. Steve thankfully looks more shocked than hurt and there’s a redness spreading along his cheekbones, too.

“No, it’s… I’m fine, it’s… everything’s fine, yeah.” He nods as if to accentuate the point and it calms Bucky a bit. Then Steve frowns ever so slightly. “Are you okay?”

Bucky shrugs.

“Just hungry,” he says, trying to sound casual. His stomach betrays him by practically groaning just then and the corners of Steve’s lips twitch. Bucky scoffs. “Fine, starving. Do you think there’s anything left of that dinner I slept through?”

Thinking back on the nightmare, he wishes he had gone down to eat instead. Maybe it wouldn’t have been that bad then. It’s wishful thinking of course, but it helps. Admitting that the nightmares are beyond his control is still too grim a reality.

“Oh, there’s plenty we can reheat. Come on.”

Not long after, they’re both sitting in the empty compound kitchen, steaming dishes of a spicy casserole in front of them. It’s the best thing Bucky can remember eating in a long time and he’s through his second helping by the time Steve finishes up his first, significantly smaller one.

“This is real damn delicious,” Bucky comments, gulping down a glass of water like it’s going out of fashion. He’s only just starting to feel better now that he’s got at least two meals’ worth of warm food in him. “Stark hire a cook or something?”

“No,” Steve smiles and scoops another portion onto Bucky’s plate. “Wanda made it. Traditional Sokovian stew, spent forever on it. She put a ton of spices in I’ve never even heard of, but you gotta admit she knew what she was doing.”

“Sure did.” Bucky is a little hesitant about the next bite. There’s something in the taste that he can’t quite place. A warmth, a lingering feeling of… something.

The spices remind him of when he was on the run, of the place he had settled at in Europe before Steve and that SWAT team had torn it apart. Many times during the evenings, the hot smells of food had drifted through the floor and walls from the other flats around him and made him think of the almost forgotten joy of a home cooked meal.

Homely, he realises. This kind of food tastes of a home, something safe and familiar that he hasn’t had in a very long time.

“It would mean a lot to her if you told her you liked it.” Steve looks intently at him as he says it and Bucky looks down out of reflex. Can’t look Steve in the eyes when he talks like that.

“Okay,” he mumbles with a light shrug of his shoulders, but Steve isn’t done.

“She says you’re avoiding her,” he begins carefully and Bucky sighs, which makes him pause. “What?”

“I’m kinda avoiding everyone in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.” Bucky is staring at him now. Steve’s face is turning slightly pink, but he goes on. “Might be good for you to talk to someone other than me. Not everyone hates you, you know.”

The words feel like a punch to the gut and it takes a second for Bucky to figure out why.

It’s the non-sugar coated truth and Steve hasn’t softened his voice the way he sometimes tend to do when it comes to touchy subjects, hell, the way he did a second ago.

It’s also a surprise.

He has tried over and over to appeal to his logical self with the reasonable assumption that even if Stark and Fury and very likely also Natasha hate him, the others have no reason to. Yet somehow, he realises that he didn’t actually believe it until now. Steve’s words make a splinter of hope ache in his chest.

“You sure?,” he murmurs, raising an eyebrow at his friend who just hums affirmatively and takes another bite of stew.

“Of course I’m sure. There’s still a person behind all that brooding and scowling somewhere. The others know it too. They know it wasn’t your fault.”

“What?”

“Everything that happened to you.” Instead of sending him a pitying look, Steve just shrugs and for a second, Bucky is sure his friend has lost his mind. “Just think about it. I’m not saying you should invite Tony for a fishing trip, just maybe, I don’t know, show up for dinner. Compliment the chef, even if it’s Clint. You know, engage a little more.”

Bucky grinds his teeth behind closed lips.

He engaged with the pretty girl in the coffee shop and now he’s already having bad dreams about her dying. It’s not that he doesn’t want a little more human contact, really. But he wonders if Steve would have suggested it if he knew how many times he had starred in one of Bucky’s bloodcurdling nightmares.

“I’ll try,” he gets out, poking at the remains of stew on his plate with his fork.

“Good.” Steve doesn’t push him further and he’s grateful for it. They finish the meal in silence.

When they get up to put the dishes away and head back to sleep, the soft light of the predawn is beginning to settle outside. Bucky figures he can squeeze in a few hours before heading out for his daily run. He hopes the food and the talk with Steve will make the nightmares stay away for a while.

Otherwise, there’s always the park, and the coffee shop, and the girl…

He finds himself halfway tempted to ask Steve if he wants to go with him for his morning run. They always spar and work out together at nine, but until now, running has been Bucky’s own thing, the only routine he performs in solitude that doesn’t make him feel, well, alone. When he runs, he just exists. No pressure.

Bucky never gets to ask. Steve’s SHIELD pager pings and just like that, the strained tension between them is as thick as it was in the afternoon.

Steve looks at the little device and groans.

“Jesus, Fury…,” he mumbles, rubbing his eyes that have already begun to droop a little again. “Four in the fucking morning.”

“Mission?,” Bucky asks without looking at him.

“Must be. Better be fucking important.” Steve always swears more when he’s tired, slurs the curses into his other words so they’re a part of a sentence-long word and almost not there at all. Bucky hasn’t been on any missions or to any publicity events with Steve since the forties, but he imagines it’s very far from the image everyone is trying to pin on him. It occurs to him not for the first time that his friend is struggling to hold onto his identity just as much as Bucky is. It’s no mean feat considering all the world’s eyes are always on Captain America, the glorified ideal, but hardly ever considers Steve Rogers, the real person wearing the uniform.

“Hey. Watch yourself out there,” Bucky cautions just when Steve is about to leave. He sends a half smile with the warning to make it sound more casual. Steve grins wearily.

“I will. Careful with the sentiment though, people might start to think you care.”

Bucky scuffs and rolls his eyes.

“Don’t worry, pal, I think everyone knows by now I only care about you.” He shrugs and pats Steve on the shoulder. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

He turns and leaves before Steve can come up with some well-meant words of concern to make Bucky feel like even more of a burden than he already does and trudges back to his room.

It takes him a while of tossing and turning to realise that he's not going to get any more sleep now that Steve is gone. The bed doesn't feel comfortable at all, just vast and empty. He tries to fold the scarcely used duvet into a sort of substitute for another body for him to hold onto, but it still doesn't feel right.

Annoyed with himself, he finally gets up and automatically puts on a pair of black sweatpants from his stack of identical black sweatpants, along with a grey T-shirt and a hoodie. Bucky swallows when he looks at himself in the mirror and realises that this has become as much of a uniform as all his heavy tactical HYDRA gear used to be. Dark sweatpants, dark T-shirt, dark hoodie. Nothing to make him stand out in a crowd or mark him as an individual.

It suddenly occurs to him that he has been wearing a uniform practically his entire life. He struggles to recall what it was like to wake up and putting thought into what to wear. He must have done it at some point, he knows that much at least. Back in the thirties, even if his family hadn't had two nickels to rub together on a good day, much less anything near the frankly insane amount of clothes people these days seemed to own, he knows there was at least something vaguely resembling choices. There had been a pair of pants, he remembers after wringing his brain, a pair that had been slightly nicer than his everyday ones and which he only wore on Sundays or when he was taking out a girl. They had belonged to his father before he died and Bucky had naturally inherited them, along with some shirts and a tie he rarely had reason to wear. None of it had been made for him, so his mother had had to adjust the clothes the best she could. The pants had still been a little too tight around his thighs, but they meant he didn't have to wear his often dirty work slacks on dates.

It wasn't much, but it had been different. Hell, everything had been different.

He glances down at his black sweatpants now and bites his lip. He'll have to do something about this feeling somehow. The longer he contemplates this new, unintentional uniform, the clearer the Asset appears in his mind. For a second, he almost swears his dark metal hand looks silver again. Then he blinks and the vibranium fingers are back to normal.

Good lord, he can't wait to get that coffee today.

He runs his usual route in the infant daylight, still trying to shake off the nightmare. It doesn’t feel as bad as it has on other mornings, the food and sleep and the talk with Steve has helped. The coffee will definitely help. And moving his legs, albeit mindlessly, that is helping right now, but what Bucky really wants is to see her. Just to make sure she is okay.

The coffee shop is still closed when he reaches it, so he turns back to do another round in the park. Even though it isn’t physically taxing for him, his heart is thundering a hundred miles a minute. What if she isn’t going to be there?, a little, unwelcome voice whispers in the back of his mind. What if you really killed her?

Bucky almost scoffs at himself. There is no way. It was just a nightmare. One of the worst ones he’s had in a while, yes, but still… If he had somehow brought her into the compound, everyone would know. Steve, Stark, Fury, the entire government probably gets daily reports on what he does. Same thing if he had left to go somewhere else. Besides, he never went anywhere or did anything yesterday after getting back, he’s sure of it. He wasn’t anywhere near her, it was just a dream.

Even so, he can’t stop overthinking every single impossible scenario in which he might have hurt her without being aware of it and his heart is sure as hell not slowing down no matter how many calming breaths he tries to take. He needs to see her.

With his bottom lip caught beneath his teeth, he shoots his watch a look and groans when he realises he's still nearly half an hour early. It's going to be some of the longest minutes of his life. Bucky quickly decides he hasn't got that kind of patience, not with how his stupid heart is trying to beat him into a panic anyway. Instead of waiting, he goes back to the place he first saw her, the park entrance. From there, he tries to remember which direction she came from. If he can just see her on her way to work, he knows he'll feel better.

It doesn't take him long to scour the surrounding streets and eliminate the ones that lead to business and shopping districts. It's a guess, but if she had the money to fund one of the few apartments there, she wouldn't have to work in a café. She must live further away.

For a minute, Bucky considers all the tactical and strategic training he's gone through in his days in captivity with HYDRA, but absolutely nothing that can help him out comes to mind. The park is surrounded by too many tall buildings for him to properly see the streets if he were to seek higher ground and he doesn't have any sort of tech except his phone which won't do him any good.

All he really can do is to keep running and try not to get stuck inside his head. Like yesterday, Bucky tries to focus on the movements of his body and the feeling of muscles clenching and unclenching in his legs with every stride. It's something his therapist has told him to do when he needs to calm down, trying to create more awareness of his body and thereby divert his thoughts from any upsetting or stressful factor. Normally, it's good advice, but right now, his body is a part of the problem.

Before his sweaty palms and too shallow breaths end up filling too much in his mind, Bucky forces himself to observe some other detail, any detail.

He settles for the great, big nothing in front of him.

The air.

It’s not the crisp, crystal clear air he loved about the Wakandan sunrises where he would be the only one up and awake to enjoy the quiet, one deep, fresh breath at a time. But it’s still nicer in here, in the park, than outside on the streets. Bucky is not overly fond of the polluted city. He used to be a city boy, sure enough, but that was a long time ago. Whenever he dares imagine himself somewhere else than the compound these days, it’s almost always some version of the hut he had in Wakanda. Most times, it’s the same hut all the way down to the straw roof and spotted goats. Other times, he imagines a small cabin in the woods next to a lake or a faraway little stone cottage surrounded by grassy hills and sheep.

No matter where he sees himself settle though, it’s always somewhere remote with unspoiled air. Sometimes, Steve is with him, and they both look as if the war never happened, but this morning, it isn’t Steve sitting next to him in front of his little imaginary hut.

It's her.

And she's not wearing her work uniform, but a bright yellow dress that matches her nail polish. She has bare, dirty feet and wild flowers in her hair. She smiles when he approaches. He sits down next to her and kisses her cheek. She offers him a strawberry from the basket next to her, freshly picked from their little garden. He prefers to lick the taste from her lips and mouth instead. It's just the two of them there.

His heart soars at the dreamscape for a moment, but plummets just as far when he involuntarily remembers his nightmare again and suddenly, the scene runs red with blood.

Bucky wills himself back to reality and casts another desperate look at his watch.

Less than three minutes.

He wills himself to take the last part of his route at a slow jog despite every fibre in him screaming that he run like hell. When he once again stands in front of the coffee shop, he's about ready to kick down the doors, but right then, the lock clicks, the handle turns and there she stands. Exactly as beautiful as yesterday, if not more.

She looks up at him in surprise, then a smile spreads on her face.

"James," she says happily and Bucky's heartbeat melts into a rhythm of steady calm.

Tags will be added in reblog

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #marvel fanfic

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brydeswhale · 3 years

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Fic Preview Time!

Bc I might as well tease you guys since I actually haven’t been writing that much lately.

1. Untamed death row exoneration fic

So, I was writing this one before the US government went on it’s little killing spree, but it started to be topical and real, so I put it on a backburner, but I'm getting back to it.

The house wasn’t huge. Wei Ying knew that, intellectually. Compared to the house he’d grown up in, it was modest. Compared to the entire lake that had been in his backyard as a kid, the small pond and five trees in the backyard were cute.

But he couldn’t help it, as soon as A-Yuan left the house, just walking from room to room to room, in and out. He tried to be careful and close the screen door, but sometimes he’d forget and one or two rabbits would hop in and surprise Lan Zhan in his office.

Lan Zhan never scolded him for it. He’d just pick the rabbit up and put it in his lap.

“You’ve got to go to therapy,” Jack came by with a bottle of wine the first day, patted A-Yuan on the head, and let his wife give Lan Zhan a salad with nuts and artichoke hearts. “I’m going to give you this right now, and that’s all the booze you get until you send me a picture of the appointment.”

“I can buy my own alcohol,” Wei Ying laughed at him.

Jack just smiled indulgently at him.

“Trust me,” he said, gently. “You want to do this. For your kid.”

So he had an appointment on Friday, and until then he was walking the house the same way he’d paced his cell.

Wen Ning was in his room, working on something A-Yuan had asked him to do. Qing-jie was working on finding whatever job a woman who was snatched from the gentle grip of a first year med school could get.

Wei Ying tried to lie down at the edge of the pond. Several goldfish swirled around, looking at him expectantly, and he waved apologetically.

“Lan Zhan told me you guys are on a diet,” he pointed out. The fish, disgruntled, fluttered their fins, and drifted away.

The sun went behind a cloud. The lilies floated in the wind.

He slept.

The sun shone off the wine bottle, still unopened, on the kitchen windowsill.

So it’s not really about the death penalty, per se, it’s more about exoneration and also humans and trauma and stuff. Really heavy and it makes me sad.

2. Unnamed Teen Wolf vampire fic

So this isn’t REALLY a Vampire The Masquerade crossover, but it kind of IS, because I played that LARP for ten years and I still don’t understand(because I’m stupid) so it incorporated a lot of their brokenness, lol. Basically, it’s Scott getting kidnapped by vampires, who then decide to keep him and won’t give him back based on him being their precious darling.

A hunter came up behind him, but Scott felt, smelled, heard him, and, with a twist, threw him into the lights. They smashed, and several of them died, much to the delight of the captive. Her grin, briefly delightful, suddenly terrifying as two delicate fangs appeared, brought a cry of terror from the hunter as she dragged him up, and Scott found himself stepping forward, hands outstretched helplessly.

“Don’t kill him!”

She paused, and her pout returned.

“But I’m hungry,” she complained. “And he’s not exactly a good guy, wolf, he steals kids.”

“Just,” Scott wanted to agree with her, wanted, suddenly, to just leave the bastard there. She was right. He was a kidnapper and probably a murderer.

(“Some of us are human!”)

“Just, please,” he begged. “Just leave him. Help me save Siobhan.”

She looked him in the eyes, hesitating, then bent her head and sank her teeth into the hunter’s neck.

Scott felt himself drop a little. That was that. He didn’t know why he’d expected to persuade her otherwise.

“Fine,” she stood up, letting the hunter fall into the broken glass of the lights, blood dripping down her face. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You could turn a cat from a mouse with those eyes. He’ll live, he just needs some juice.”

...

Maybe it wasn’t the shadows that had taken his breath from him. She’d thought the blood was someone else’s, but she could see it seeping out from under his fingers.

“Are you okay, wolf?”

“Scott,” he reached for a shirt, and pulled it on with jerking, shaking fingers.

“My name’s Scott McCall,” he clarified for her raised eyebrows, then collapsed in a heap beside a pile of laundry.

She let a note behind. It was what you did, right?

She wrote it out on thin, lined paper, and pinned it to the fridge under a cute, pig shaped magnet. Then she picked him up, and stepped into the darkness.

...

“You’re awake!” The girl walked in carelessly. She wore draping scarves over a loose, not very long dress, and long, flashy necklaces. Her curls didn’t quite seem to match. “Took you long enough.”

“I can’t- I can’t stay here,” he was trying to get up, and he realized that someone had taken off his jeans and replaced them with loose, soft pyjamas. He was wearing a matching shirt.

“You took my pants?” He held himself up with one hand, and noted, as if from far away, that it was shaking.

“Don’t worry about your maidenly modesty,” she pulled out her phone and used the camera to reapply lipstick in a bruised purple. “Seamus wanted you to be more comfortable. That’s all.”

“I have to go,” he shook his head. “I have to- How long have I been here?”

“Almost four days now,” she said, pushing him back into bed. “Stop that. You nearly died about five times.”

“My friends,” he tried to move, but she was stronger than she looked. Her hands were cold, and she smelled strange. Dull, and still.

“I left a note,” she seemed utterly unconcerned. “I put it on your fridge. Cute magnets, by the way.”

“I’m Jewel,” she told him, clambering up to sit cross legged on the bed beside him. “Jewel Cleary.”

“Scott-“ she interrupted him carelessly.

“I know, Scott McCall, you told it to me while you were dying.”

That explained it. They didn’t know he was an alpha.

“I wasn’t dying,” he tried to explain. “I’m an alpha. I would have been fine, you didn’t have to bring me here.”

“You nearly died three times in this very bed, boyo,” a huge, decaying mountain of a man, whose bulk spoke of power beginning to fade, and who had laugh lines at every corner of his face, came in with a steaming tray. “And now you’ll stay in it and eat your dinner and rest until you look a bit less of a corpse.”

“I’m Seamus,” the man handed the food to Jewel, then helped him sit up. “Tho most call me Shea, on the belief that my true name will call all manner of calamities down upon us. You’re Scott McCall, who saved our Jewel, and it’s a pleasure, indeed it is, Mr. McCall.”

He was saved from replying by Jewel putting the tray under his nose and both of them beaming expectantly over a bowl of stew and a cup of something dark and hot.

It was… very good. And he fell asleep again as soon as he finished.

3. Another Chapter In Mysterious Fathoms Below

So this fic is actually stalled because I’m writing Uma giving a Ted Talk style speech on what it was actually like growing up in a concentration camp run by a totalitarian dictatorship and I’m stumped on it, also the mystical stuff that's coming in. But I'm back on track soon, so hopefully this will come out soon.

“Davy Jones’ Locker!”

“Don’t curse, dear,” Merryweather had scolded absently, trying to clear up supper dishes.

“Don’t-What? Merryweather, look at the bloody stars!”

Harry grabbed her arm, pushing her to look up at the sky. It was just past dusk, soft and velvety blue, with early stars cheerfully popping into place. She followed Harry’s finger.

There should have been two stars there. One was newer, and that one had taken its place, although it’s bright shimmer was somewhat reduced.

Where the other should have been, there was black emptiness. Somehow, the sky looked cold and empty without it, and its mate seemed to shiver in the blackness.

“The second star,” she whispered. “Oh, Harry, what’s going on?”

…

“I was born in a prison, and on that day, from the moment I came screaming and bloody into this world, I was sentenced to life without parole. Like everyone born on the Isle Of The Lost, all my friends and my enemies, I was born to starve, suffer, and die, for the crime of being born to the losing side.”

“My first memory is of vomit. I was sick, because the food that came to the Isle came off garbage skows. Now, I don’t mean that the ships that transported the food were garbage skows, repurposed for bringing food to our prison, I mean it was garbage. The leftovers, the trash, rags and rot. Every bite we took was Russian roulette, and that day, I guess I lost.”

She smiled, and turned slightly again. She had never managed to stay still, even when she slept, she kicked and pushed out against the world. She had crawled early and walked early, she had swum from the moment of her birth.

“I don’t mean for you to think this was some kind of unusual event. I had food poisoning several times a year. The alternative was to not eat. There were no gardens, no farms. The ground was rocky and hard, and even if we’d managed to till it, the earth was leeched of life, to keep the barrier going. It was fed from the very island.”

From something more than the island. From something that had been since long before the Beast and his doll had been even thought of, something that had reigned before princes and queens.

Ursula drank her daughter’s face in. Sweet and pretty, crowned and gowned, just as she should have been. She traced the curve of her cheek, and pretended that this was something else, something from another world, where Uma was all that she appeared, and pure, and soft.

…

They were making their way through grey fog, as fast as pixy dust could swing them. The Pan stood at the bow, staring into the mist. When Harry approached, he turned, eyes glowing with a terrible fire.

“It’s begun, impossible child,” he said, cheerfully.

Harry swore at him, savagely, and sat on the rail, listening for the sounds of planes and guns.

…

“Look how she lights up the sky,” she could hear Naveen singing, singing somewhere far away.

She stumbled out of bed. He must have been singing to Jimmy, and Jimmy was probably missing her.

But when she got to the nursery doorway, it was gone.

The air was rich and humid, sweet with flower and sour with decay. Dragonflies hummed, their jewel-like bodies gleaming in the last of the sunlight as they danced over the glimmering water. She took one step, and another, the ground not giving way, but welcoming her in, wrapping water and earth around each foot. The trees swayed overhead, moss waving in the wind.

A place of death. A place of life.

3. The next chapter in Five Wolves Sansa Never Had

So this was a fic that stemmed from my irritation that Sansa lost her puppy. This chapter is called “Ned, you fucked up big time” and its about Ned trying to replace Lady with a sickly puppy who actually IS a dire wolf. Knowing what I know about dire wolves now, this is HILARIOUS.

He almost bought a doll, but Jory had shaken his head furiously, and he’d stepped past the toy shop, to a man selling what he called “exotic beasts, fit for the King’s own menagerie”.

Of course, the quiet little pup certainly wasn’t the dire wolf the man advertised him to be, but something in his golden eyes and quiet nature had reminded him of Lady, and he’d paid far too much for the little creature.

Far, far too much, it seemed now.

Sansa hadn’t been grateful. She’d sullenly put it in her lap, and told him he couldn’t replace Lady, and needn’t have tried. Then she’d gone to her chambers, ignoring Arya, who wanted to play with the little creature.

At first he’d thought it was simply a quiet pup, like Lady had been. It had had little appetite, and messed in Sansa’s chambers, but she had been used to that from Lady’s infancy and hadn’t complained. He’d heard it when he accidentally eavesdropped on Jeyne’s complaints to another maid.

But after some days it had become clear that the little beast was dying. Food and water ran through it, ending in messes on the floor, it slept for hours, and when it woke, it cried weakly. It couldn’t walk, and Sansa would carry it out to the gardens, lay it on a blanket, and sit and embroider, only getting up to change the linens under the poor thing, or to persuade it to take a sip of water or a bite of food.

Ned tried to broach the facts of the matter with Sansa, but she had only glared stoney-faced at him, until he found himself faltering and retreating. He’d thought of sneaking in at night and smothering the creature, but it felt too much like murder, and he finally gave up, leaving the little creature alone to die in peace.

The one good thing about the matter, which was the rift between Sansa and Joffrey. The Prince found the puppy disgusting and wasn’t quiet about it, and Sansa found his rudeness distasteful, and tactfully avoided the boy. By the time he was able to put them on a ship, sickly pup and all, she was distant enough from Joffrey that her protests were only quiet, pointed remarks about how he had made her fit to be a princess, and now didn’t find the price she brought him high enough.

It reminded him, chillingly, of how Lyanna had argued with his father, and he found himself unable to embrace her when she left.

…

Stark had sent one of his daughters with a Braavosi swords master and the other with a sickly puppy, as if he thought that Stannis hadn’t enough to do, and would appreciate some further inconveniences.

The younger daughter had no idea how to behave, and put the entire castle into uproar after uproar. But if he had hoped that the eldest daughter, who had lived up to her reputation as far as being a pretty child, who curtsied precisely the right depth, would balance the little urchin by behaving and staying in her place, he was, well, mildly disappointed.

“The dog will be placed in the kennels,” he told them on the arrival.

The girl shook her head.

“No, my lord.”

He had paused, and the entire parade of noblewomen, septas and servants had stumbled in its tracks.

“No, Lady Sansa?”

She met his eyes, and he was reminded, uncomfortably, of her father.

“No, my lord,” she reiterated. “He shall not go to the kennels. He is the symbol of my house and he will remain with me.”

“It’ll probably die soon, anyhow,” the younger girl told him. “It’s been dying since father bought it, it’s an ugly little thing.”

For a moment, Lady Sansa was unable to school her expression to proper demureness, and a cold rage turned her eyes from sky on sea blue to springtime ice as she glanced at her sister. It only lasted for a heartbeat, then she was back to cold courtesy.

Stannis ignored their silent squabble, and looked more closely at the creature. It lay limply in her arms, eyes unfocused, and breaths shallow.

“At the very least,” he allowed. “We ought not to bring whatever sickness that is amongst the dogs.”

Later, he found the girl seated by her hearth, trying to feed the little creature a soup of broth and bones, while her ancient septa slept in the window seat. The pup ate but little, and the girl rubbed a hand over her eyes before she saw him and stood to curtsey again.

“Forgive me, my lord, I did not see you.”

“I brought this,” he held up a small pot. “I purchased it for a sick hound, once, and it brought the creature strength enough to heal.”

She thanked him very prettily, and he mixed a spoonful with the broth she was trying to feed the pup, showing her the portions carefully and appreciating her careful attention. Between them, they got the poor thing to finish the broth and eat a little meat, before it fell asleep in a rabbit fur lined basket.

“Thank you, my lord.”

He took a closer look at the child. He’d never thought much about the girl who would marry his goodsister’s bastard, but he could see now that she had bright, intelligent eyes, despite her clear exhaustion, and that she carried herself very well.

“It must have been a shock,” he said, abrupt in his discomfort. “When your father told you why he had to break your betrothal.”

She hesitated.

“My father,” her voice was very soft, and uncertain. “My father has not-“

He stared at her, irritable and disbelieving.

“Did your father not tell you why you were being sent here?”

He knew he sounded skeptical, but the idea that Eddard Stark would not have told his eldest child why her very excellent marriage pact was being broken seemed truly ludicrous. Stark wasn’t stupid, and he was a man of honour. It would only serve him well to keep his eldest daughter in his confidence.

The girl blushed in embarrassment.

“He-He told Arya,” she said, slowly. “That is, I believe he told her. She hasn’t said anything. To me. But he speaks to her. He likes her.”

Stannis frowned.

There had been another father, once upon a time, that father had made sure there was a space in his mews for a crippled bird, and as much fresh and good food for her as any flighted creature, all because his son had hoped she might fly again. Even if that son was not as handsome, or charming, or bright as his brother.

“Your father has been foolish,” he told her, coldly. He had not the talent to speak to children, but she seemed to understand that he meant no harm to her. “He may as well have sent you riding an aurochs blindfolded.”

“No matter,” he continued, and sat down in a chair by the hearth, motioning her to the opposite seat. “Listen to me. It’s a very long story.”

…

“…His Grace, the King, has explained all to me, my Lord Father.

I am very glad to hear that you have escaped your confinement. Perhaps we shall see each other again soon.

Your Obedient Daughter,

Sansa Stark, lately of Dragonstone”

There was something cold about the letter, Ned thought, running a hand through his hair, for all that it was prettily written, with no ink blotches or crossed words, but he couldn’t quite tell what made him think so. He set it aside, with a group of others he planned to answer later, including word from White Harbour and the Wall.

Stannis had overstepped, he thought. Sansa was too young to know the truth of her betrothal, that her former betrothed was a bastard born of incest, that Jon Arryn had been murdered. But Stannis had never been known for tact.

His son had become a king. The Riverlands and the North called him so. So did some among the Vale. Word had come to the Stormlands, just as he managed to convince Renly to wait for the proper order of succession.

He put it aside for now. Robb was a boy, he could be persuaded to see sense.

“Sansa has chainjed her hair again. She just brayds it and pins it back under a hood like the new Queen does except she hardly spends any time with the queen. She and Stannis are always together with the Prinsess. All they do is play kivuss, and talk over maps and books.

“I found a secret passij in the cellar of the kassle. It goes to the dungeon.

“Are you alright, Father? I herd one of the men say you lost your leg. I miss you very much.”

He smiled fondly over the mis-spelled words, imagining Arya roaming a new castle, learning all the new haunts and secrets.

“My Dearest Arya,

“I have not lost my leg, but it was very badly infected. I hope you are well, and you are behaving for your hosts…”

…

The black wolf didn’t die, to everyone’s surprise. To their further astonishment, he thrived, with an ever-growing appetite and a newfound strength to match. He began to grow, and developed a certain cool dignity, to match his mistress’ adolescent gentility. She named him “Prince” and embroidered a collar in silver-grey thread and white shell beads.

Stannis wasn’t, precisely, surprised to find that the elder of his new wards was quick and clever, or that she knew already the names and banners of nearly every house in the Seven Kingdoms, and the relevant histories of said houses. His wife was pleased with her sewing and manners, and engaged a musician to teach her and Shireen the high harp and the lute. The girl’s septa kindly took Shireen under her wing, along with the younger Stark girl(when she wasn’t playing at swords with her water dancing master or dragging Shireen and Patchface into trouble) and their maid. She couldn’t really do much more than teach them etiquette and sewing, but she meant well, and she was too old to do anything else, so Stannis allowed it.

Sansa and Melisandre had begun a polite war. Word had been that the girl prayed as much in the sept as her father’s godswood, but she was little interested in opening her faiths any further, and clearly disliked the Red God’s followers for their fanatic disavowal of the older faiths. The small folk had been afraid that she was a witch, with her black wolf as a familiar, but when she proved kind and generous, they apparently decided that she was a good lady, whose wolf was a sign of favour by either the old gods, or the new.

#disney descendants fic #disney descendants #teen wolf #teen wolf fic #a game of thrones #a game of thrones fic #asoiaf #asoiaf fic

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stetervault · 4 years

Note

Any historical aus you can recommend?

There is a serious lack of these in the Steter fandom imo, especially ones that aren’t regency/royalty, but thankfully they do exist:

Steam Rises from the Body by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids)

Peter and Stiles are surgeons in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital near the front line of the Korean War.

Hooverville by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids)

Town to town, train to train, tent to tent.

By 1932, the dust had begun to blow and the jobs were gone.

Anonymity was a byproduct of looking for work, which made it both necessary and convenient.

Stiles had enough secrets of his own to know to look the other way when he saw something that shouldn’t be possible.

The ghost of a tail giving enough balance to disembark a moving train.

Near silent Latin whispered on the edge of a tent encampment.

A flash of burning eyes.

He had more than enough to worry about without adding the oddities of others, and besides- having unusually sharp teeth certainly didn’t make a man worse than the ones running from the wife and kids they couldn’t feed.

So Stiles kept his observations to himself. He kept his everything to himself.

Until he met a man. One with eyes so blue they seemed to glow- and then they did.

Stiles tried to look away, but for the first time he was stopped.

“Don’t be like that sweetheart. Aren’t you curious?”

Orbital Distance by neglectedtuesday

Artemis, the capital city of the Moon, where movies are born and stars are made. The crown jewel of American cinema and simultaneously Hollywood’s biggest rival. The money may be dollars, it may be counted as the 51st state but the studios run this city, making cinema and waging war. No real bloodshed but equally cutthroat in its own way. Peter has devoured article after article about the industry, from in-depth journalism to gossip rags, desperate for every detail, every scandal, every glorious moon moment.

Wild Creatures by neglectedtuesday

The treaty is signed while Stiles is being laced into his wedding corset. Ink splatters parchment as a maid pulls the ribbons, tighter and tighter. Stiles’ breath and future are taken away, all to save a village. He is a sacrifice more than a bride. The maid assists in fixing a choker around Stiles throat. Her hands are cold despite the roaring fire in the grate. The choker is a string of blood red rubies, they reflect the firelight with a wet shine like an open wound.

Out Of The East, Never See The Sun Rise by neglectedtuesday

In the beginning, there are three absolutes.

One. Stiles is a god, forged of starlight and collapsing galaxies and he is eternal.

Two. Peter is human, fragile bone and viscous blood and he is temporary.

Three. Stiles and Peter are in love; love that claws its way inside one’s heart like fish hooks; all encompassing love that is beautiful but dangerous.

Stiles is a god. Peter is human. They love each other.

Three absolutes.

Viking Wolves do it Better by MaroonDragon

Stiles is the omega witch in the village he was born in. A gift that had been passed to him from his mother. A curse that left him an outcast amongst the people he helped heal. Until one day he no longer is. Kidnapped by the Viking Wolves of the North, he suddenly finds himself a human amongst wolves. There is one wolf in particular who is intent to woo him into staying. Stiles is really only indulging Peter until he can make his escape. There is nothing remotely interesting about the other man. Not a single thing.

Utterly Appropriate by wynnebat

There’s only one person whom Stiles would marry, and whoever has asked for her hand isn’t on that list.

Duty by ChloeWeird

A petrified omega. An ambitious alpha. A wedding night four years in the making.

Bound Fast With Love by Diablerie

It started when his grandfather assigned him to attend to the visiting professor, Peter Hale.

“Be his shadow, my boy. Take care of his smallest need before he has an opportunity to notice. It would be quite the feather in our cap if we can steal him away.”

Somehow, that brought him here: bound to a table and about to be spanked for his shoddy recitation of ancient poetry.

Bittersweet Creek by Guede

When Stiles finally steps off the westward trail to California, he’s the last of his pack. He starts building a den, but then he finds a dying man next to a burnt-down house and it turns out he’s not really much of a settler, after all.

Wolf Ranch by Guede (Poly - Stiles/Lydia/Peter/Derek/Chris)

At first glance, Beacon Hills seems like a terrible place to settle. Ruled by alpha werewolves and surrounded by a haunted forest filled with outlaws, it’s not very friendly to Eastern greenhorns. So Stiles and Lydia should fit right in.

Intemperance by Guede (Poly - Stiles/Peter/Derek/Chris/Laura)

Stiles is the one who gets pulled back to Beacon Hills by a murder.

Moonshine by Udunie

Deucalion was sitting in the corner that was reserved for special guests, with his henchmen - a pair of twins - guarding the table. He was just putting his stetson down, eyes catching Peter and widening just a fraction when he noticed Stiles. He was a good guy though, and quickly got his pokerface back in place. Nobody came to the Moonshine and insulted Peter.

“Deucalion, nice to see you,” he greeted, not acknowledging the goons who were giving Stiles the side eye. He knew they probably wanted a piece of his kitten, but thankfully were not foolish enough to try.

May the Mighty Fall by Udunie

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” Matt sneered, looking at Stiles with derision. “One day, the popular, orphaned son of a beloved consul, and the next a traitor to the Emperor and an enemy of Cantalupo…”

Stiles didn’t move a muscle, even though all he wanted was to leash out, to reach between the bars of his cell and strangle that little, creepy shit. He could have said a lot of things, he could have told Matt’s pompous, patrician ass that he was - in fact - not an orphan. And seriously, from where he was standing, he wasn’t even really a traitor.

Well, yes, he wanted the death of the Emperor, but he wanted the best for Cantalupo - the return of the Lupa Maxima, the city’s rightful ruler and with her, the revival of the principate.

Of course, his reasons were far from being completely patriotic.

Gerard Argent tried to have his father killed, he lived in outrageous luxury while some of his subjects starved. He didn’t give a shit about the plebs…But. Stiles couldn’t say any of that. It wasn’t the time. Not yet.

A Matter of Chance by 1001cranes (WIP)

“I’m going to offer for the Stilinski boy,” Peter announces at breakfast one morning.

Greenberg drops the entire pot of hot chocolate.

A welcome arrow by 1001cranes

The wedding is small and grim, because Stiles is being carted off to parts unknown, married to a thirty-something year old dude who wants to marry a seventeen year old dude - totally not creepy at all.

my very soul demands you by veterization

Orphan Stiles Stilinski seeks work at Hale House, an enormous, foreboding mansion in Beacon Hills run by Mr. Peter Hale, who employs him as a butler. Or: Stiles is Jane Eyre, and Peter is Mr. Rochester.

Royal A/B/O Au by charlottecjhlvr

When his father’s Kingdom and the Hale Kingdom make a treaty, Stiles is the one who has to make it work.

In Sheep’s Clothing by Twisted_Mind

“The problem is Derek,” he began.

At this, Cora merely snorted in a particularly unladylike fashion. “When isn’t it?”

Alas, it was not so simple a matter as the scrapes of the child he had once been—would that it were! “Unfortunately, in this case, Derek has engineered hardship for not only our family, but the young Miss Stilinski also.”

At the sound of the young gentlewoman’s name, Cora’s features sharpened; she leaned forward and rested one hand tenderly on Peter’s knee as she asked, “Speak plainly—what’s he done, and what must now be done to rectify the situation?”

Peter took her hand in appreciation and followed her example, without any further prevarication. “He bedded his intended, and if he had merely done so, we’d have precious little trouble on our hands, for he’s hardly the first to take his wife-to-be to bed before their union was formalized, however much you will hear other preach otherwise.”

Cora interrupted, then, as she gripped her uncle’s hand tightly. “I’m not going to enjoy what I hear next, am I?”

Temporary Claim by sunrise_and_death

Some, of course, are off limits. Queen Talia and her husband have their special favorites who join their marriage bed from time to time. Laura has several young strapping men that are hers and hers alone. Even Derek has a few favorites—the quiet ones, the sweet ones.

Peter? The Duke only has one.

Sacrificial Lamb by Bunnywest

The Alpha has a scruffy beard, unkempt hair and dazzling blue eyes. The scar on his face is raised, running down his cheek like a twisting, gnarled rope. Stiles knows that it came from the blade of Kate Argent herself, and that the Alpha got it fighting in the battle where Kate killed his lover, cutting his head clean from his neck, if the stories are to be believed.

The Alpha lets Stiles look his fill, before indicating that Stiles should take the other couch, and Stiles does so, his father’s words echoing in his ears. He can do this, can be pleasant and amenable. The lives of his people may depend on it. The Alpha spends long moments surveying him, before saying, “I like you, Stiles.”

You don’t know me, Stiles wants to blurt out, but he bites his tongue.

Goddess Below by Unloyal_Olio

Peter sneaks into the vestal temple looking for a virgin. He finds Stiles.

#teen wolf #steter #fanfic rec #rec list #historical au #ask #anonymous

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sadoeuphemist · 4 years

Text

This one is dedicated to all the Brits out there.

So, there’s a man crawling through the arctic.

He was on a trip around the world, had been, for years. In his jacket, coiled up next to his breast, was a rattlesnake named Sammy, and as one last favour to a friend he was showing Sammy all there was to see in the big wide world. They’d been to every country. Dived beneath the sea, spelunked deep beneath the earth. And now, they were touring through the arctic. They’d witnessed dazzling white glaciers against a sea that shone a sapphire blue, they’d stood beneath the dancing of the Northern Lights, they’d trekked across the endless plains of snow in what seemed an eternal sunset, the world frozen in all the facets of its beauty.

And now they were alone, and stranded, and it was very cold, and it seemed like they were both going to die.

They’d gone off the beaten path, rented a specialized 4x4 and stocked up on supplies and driven off into the tundra on their own. They’d been going fine. The man, Jack, was real careful at the wheel, having learned from hard experience. Then, clean out of nowhere, a storm had kicked up, howling and sleeting snow across the windshield. Jack had slowed to a near-crawl, squinting to try and see anything through that wall of white, and then something massive had ploughed into the side of the truck.

The 4x4 had been flung end over end, Jack and Sammy and all their supplies rattling around inside, and the thing outside was shrieking malevolently, its howls mixing with the wind, something rending at the metal. Jack had clutched Sammy to his chest, from his cramped position managed to kick open the door, and clambered out into the raging snow. He’d crawled, on hands and knees, stumbled, looked behind him, scooted backwards on his butt, almost frozen in horror.

The thing that had attacked them hadn’t come out of the storm. It was the storm. They could barely make out the outline of the thing, all ice and shards and howls and loathing, a miserable grey creature maybe eight feet tall and pummelling at the overturned truck with two massive lumpy arms. Clouds of smoke or steam were billowing from the truck’s hood, and Jack could see flickers of flame rising from the metal - the gas tank, or maybe the portable stove they had been carrying. The creature seemed to love the flame, curling itself around it possessively, and through the smoke and snow Jack could see that flickering orange glow that sent an odd surge of pity through him, that tiny spot of warmth and light gasping and dying out and struggling futilely to survive.

Sammy spoke up, shivering from inside the parka so that his rattles sounded. “I - I think we should get going while it’s distracted.”

“R-right,” mumbled Jack, and stumbled to his feet and ran.

He ran like mad, feet flying over the permafrost, watching his breath fog up in front of his face in great clouds. When he finally stumbled, he looked behind him and the truck and the monster were nowhere to be seen. All around them stretched an undifferentiated expanse of white.

Jack felt his parka pockets. “Fuck. All the equipment - it’s back at the truck.” He looked up into the melancholy twilight and felt helpless laughter overtake him. It was all so familiar, this situation, except now he was even less equipped than before. “Shoulda seen it coming. Hahaha! Figures, right?”

“It’s not so bad,” Sammy said. “You still know the direction the truck’s in, right? All we need to do is -” Sammy shuddered in what seemed like a yawn. “Sorry. It’s just so cold out here. Hard to - hard to think ... “

“That’s right, you’re cold-blooded, aren’t you?” Jack tightened his arms over his parka, pressing Sammy closer to him. “It’ll be all right.” He took a breath, letting the hysteria ebb away. All they needed to do was circle back around, make sure that the whatever it was had left. They had a radio back at the truck, they could call for help, and...

He felt his blood run cold. There, on the horizon, he could see the first few flurries of snow drifting across an otherwise calm plain. In the perpetual dim twilight of the Arctic Circle he felt he could see it almost perfectly. It wasn’t a thing, so much as a silhouette, the shadow where a thing should have been. Eight feet of greyness, of misery, of numbing empty hopelessness that ate all warmth, all light. It shambled. It shrieked. And it was moving inerrantly towards them.

“Jack?” Sammy mumbled sleepily.

“We have to keep moving,” Jack said.

The thing hounded them, harried them across the snowy tundra. It was not fast, but it was implacable. Every time Jack tried to stop a moment to catch his breath, he would feel the tendrils of it nipping at the exposed flesh of his nose, trying to freeze the fluid in his eyes. And God, it was cold. He could feel the great clouds of his breath crystallizing on his eyelashes. His face was numb. His fingers. His toes. He felt like he was stumbling along on wooden feet. Inside his parka he was sweating, he felt like the inside of his coat was a sauna from his exertions, and then the sweat touched the cold air and froze, biting into him, until he might as well have been in an ice bath. With each step he watched, as if in slow motion, the fall of countless glittering shards of ice.

“I’m suh-s-s-sorry,” he gasped out, on his hands and knees now, all too aware of the coiled body next to his heart. His body had been altered, long ago, to be in perpetual perfect health, but even the perfect human form could not withstand the brutality of the elements, woefully underprepared, in a desperate chase for his life. He thought of the desert, of the old rattler who would never see their return, of the promise he had not been able to keep, of all the obligations and responsibilities and burdens tying people to one another, to their lives, of the endless chain of promises that would die here with them, remain forever unfulfilled. “I - I f-f-f-failed,” he said. “So s-s-sorry.” He could feel the tears freezing on his cheeks. “I j-just wish I - I c-c-could have - k-kept you suh-s-safe ...”

And then there were two pinpricks next to his heart, and Jack felt a sudden warmth flow through him, and he was on his feet again, the sensation returning in a rush to his numbed fingers and toes. “Sammy?” he said.

“I - A little natural antifreeze for your blood,” Sammy said weakly. Jack could feel him withdrawing his fangs, the miraculous venom administered. “Little - little trick dad taught me.”

“Oh, my God,” Jack gasped, cupping his arm around his chest. “Sammy, you - How did you - I didn’t know you could -”

“F-first one’s free, remember?” Sammy said.

Jack burst out into laughter. He felt warm now, a delicious warmth radiating out of him, the bite marks on his chest burning like hot coals. He brushed the ice crystals off his face, watched them melt on him like dew. “You clever little bastard! I had no idea! All this time you could -”

“Don’t - don’t get used to it,” Sammy cut in. “Not sure how long that’s going to last. Just enough to keep us going. A little while longer. It’s all I could - I could manage ...”

“Oh.” Jack surveyed their surroundings. The creature was nowhere to be seen. They had lost it, perhaps, or it had given up the chase as his body heat had been leached away by the cold. His newfound warmth suddenly felt reckless on him, like a delicious bit of prey wafting off its scent. Who knew what would come hunting. He had completely lost track of the location of their truck by now, and all the snowy landscape was unfamiliar. “So. We’re utterly lost, stranded out in the arctic, no supplies other than what I had in my pockets, and there’s this crazy snowbeast out there hunting for us. What now?”

He felt something smooth wriggle up against him, and then Sammy’s small scaly head peek out from his parka, eyes turned upward to the perpetual twilight of the sky. “We keep going where we were headed before, I guess,” he said in his small voice.

“We follow the stars.”

They trudged along, the supernatural heat of the venom still coursing through Jack’s veins. The magic seemed to have taken a lot out of Sammy, and despite Jack’s warmth he was still sluggish, and had little to offer. Jack navigated for the both of them. Already he could feel the numbness creeping back into his extremities, prodding into him, looking for the path of least resistance, and he furiously clenched his fingers into fists to try and keep the sensation in them. He tried to remember the desert, all those years ago, the wandering path he had taken, and looking up at the sky he felt that old hallucinatory atmosphere descend on him, walking the thin line between life and death, between abandonment and survival. He imagined a dark plinth, and in his mind imbued it with a spiritual magnetism. Compass north, leading him blindly through the dark.

“God loves children and drunkards and fools,” he said to himself, and in his mouth it came out as prayer.

He walked, the cold creeping in, his feet growing numb again. He had to beat the sensation back into his cheeks, slap his gloved fingers against his thigh just to feel a jolt of sensation. Up he hiked a snow bank to get a better view, and in the distance the sky seemed to be reflected in the ground. Jack squinted, trying to get a better view, and ahead he seemed to see ice, or not ice but crystal, jutting out blackly from the snow. He started running, half-running, stumbling. “Sammy!” he whispered, patting himself in the chest. “Sammy! Look! Do you see it?”

Sammy only gave a low moan and shifted weakly, and did not respond.

Jack kept running, almost tilting unbalanced through the snow, and the snow gave out from under him and he fell, rolling down the hill, the sky and the snow and the sky and the snow again, black - white - black - white, until the two seemed to meld together indistinguishably. He rolled to a stop and tried to get up, and could not tell up from down. He was so terribly cold again, or perhaps warm, and after a while he stopped trying to get up and just flopped down where the snow took him. It did not matter, he thought dreamily. The black caverns of ice were a hallucination. Or, if they were not, perhaps the snow and the cold were the hallucination. Perhaps he was still in that desert. Perhaps he had never left. Perhaps the last few years had been nothing but the hallucination of a man baking to death under the desert sun. He smiled at that with cracked lips. At least then he would be warm, so terribly, wonderfully warm....

And then the sky above him blazed, and even against his breast Sammy writhed to life, and Jack found himself staring into the burning eye of God.

He screamed, tried futilely to shield himself from the light. No, it was burning, burning! All around him the snow sizzled and melted away. And this was real heat as opposed to the warmth of Sammy’s venom, an awful flame that sparked the nerves in his fingers and toes to life and made them cry out in agony. It was the sun, forged like a blade, a burning sword, the edge of a wheel that rolled through the sky and cut through the day, and Jack found himself hauled to his feet.

“As always,” came a resounding voice. “God has provided.” And then, as if speaking straight to him, in a lower register, burnished with a false compassion: “You are fortunate in this. Your death shall serve a higher duty.”

The awful flame was lowered and quenched, and Jack blinked back the whiteness. No, the flame was gone, the licking tongues of heat were gone, and yet the radiance remained. He was staring at a winged thing, at eyes that stared back, at a face that was many faces, at wheels within wheels.

He was looking at an angel.

The angel ducked underneath, carried him under one arm (wing?) into the icy caverns, great black walls that watched him in reflection. “H - hey!” Jack gasped out, trying to regain his senses. The sudden burst of flame had seared but hardly thawed him, and all his nerves sang in the agony between extremes. “You - you’re an angel! And we - we came here because -” Because what? Because what?! He forced himself to think, brought the thought up from the bottom of a deep dark chasm. “The lever! We know about the lever!”

The angel barely responded, shifted in a small movement that might have been irritation. “You are not the first to know,” it said at last, eyes glancing down. “And if you came here knowingly, then God has provided. And you are a willing sacrifice in this.”

“S-sacrifice?” Jack made a spasmodic attempt at freedom in the angel’s grip. His limbs were all clumsy, puppeted wooden limbs, if wood could somehow feel agony. “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about! We - we came here to see! To see if there was anyone else!” A great rush of emotion overtook him. “You’re not alone! You don’t have to be alone!”

He felt the weight of the angel’s scorn. “You are delusional,” it said. “Your journey here has left you bereft of your senses.”

“No! No, I know about everything! We can help you! We can help!”

The black walls gleamed ichor-slick, hungry. The passages down the cavern seemed narrower and narrower, and an awful energy pulsed through them, as if they were descending into the bowels of some dark rapacious thing. “You know nothing,” the angel intoned. “You speak of ‘we’, and yet you have come alone.” It regarded him coldly with dozens of pairs of eyes. “Who is this ‘we’, hmm? Who is this companion you imagine with you? Do you imagine yourself wiser than me?” It laughed cruelly. “Do you imagine yourself spoken to by God?”

Jack tried to speak, and felt something near his heart uncoil, ease past the lump in his throat, and then Sammy’s head slithered out of his parka, tongue flickering to taste the air. “Oh, hey,” Sammy said, looking up at the angel.

The angel blinked with dozens of eyes. “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” it said. “Nate had a kid?”

The angel - whose name was Uriel - took them to a little cavern off the side of one of the passages, where Jack told the whole story. About how he had met Nate the Snake and become bound to him, about how Nate had grown old and finally wanted to die, about how Sammy was to serve as his replacement, and how he was taking the kid on a tour of the world before Sammy would be bound to his duty forever. “So, Nate’s finally found a way out,” muttered Uriel, glancing over at the young snake. “He’d been so long at it, I wouldn’t have thought such a thing was possible.”

“So ... how did you know my father?” Sammy asked meekly. “He - he never mentioned you.”

“He didn’t, did he?” Uriel mused. “Of course not. How long’s it been? In the end, he’s only a snake, after all, crawling on his belly through the dust. It wears away at a soul, that sort of mortal existence, while I remain divine. No surprise he’s gone senile, barely able to remember a thing.”

Sammy hesitated, a dozen questions flickering on the tip of his tongue, and then he shrank back into his coils again, cowed by Uriel’s easy dismissiveness.

Jack looked over at him, concerned. Sammy had chimed in now and again in the telling of the story, but had otherwise stayed quiet. Jack clenched his fingers again. The sensation had gradually returned with a prickling discomfort - he was sure he could feel ice crystals slowly dissolving in his flesh - but his fingers showed no signs of frostbite, perhaps thanks to the power of Sammy’s venom. The cavern was much warmer than the outside, but it wasn’t quite warm - there was an uneasy chill set through it, just like the light. There was no visible source of light that he could see, but the ice walls themselves seemed to be painted with a grudging, just-barely adequate illumination.

“Hey!” Jack cut in. “You think you could -” He glanced down at the scabbard by the angel’s side. “That was a flaming sword you were waving around out there, right?” Uriel gave a curt nod. “Yeah, I get the reference. My little buddy here’s cold-blooded, so not exactly an inviting atmosphere in here. You think you could take that sword of yours out, maybe warm us up a bit?” And get a fire roaring, he thought to himself, anything to drive away the gloom.

Uriel shook his heads, a silent chorus of disapproval. “I’d rather not. The heat of the flame, if left exposed for too long - well, it tends to attract things in here. And I doubt you’d like what it calls down.”

“The - the whatever it was that attacked us,” Sammy said, nudging Jack in the side. “It was eating the fire!”

“Yeah! Big guy, eight feet tall, the feeling of that awful sapping deathly cold like you’re never going to be warm again?” Uriel nodded. Jack clutched his arms around himself instinctively and shivered. “What was that thing, anyway?”

Uriel shrugged, which with all those heads was a small upheaval. “It is The Cold. I know no other name for it.”

“But what is it?” Jack insisted. “Where’d it come from?”

“It is one of God’s creations, like all things,” Uriel replied. “Where does anything come from? It roams in these icy wastes, comes in drifts and drafts inside these caverns...” He waved a hand. “It doesn’t bother me. I don’t have the sort of animal heat it’s after. But taking out this flame for anything more than a few seconds, it’ll come loping along hungry and - trust me, it’s not worth it.”

“So what, that’s your answer?” Jack said. He wasn’t even that cold anymore, but Uriel’s nonchalance irritated him nonetheless. “God? God wills it? Why would God ever create something as horrible as that?”

“It may not have been horrible at the moment of its creation,” said Uriel. Distantly, his eyes rose up to gaze at the black ice. Or, not black itself, Jack realized, staring upwards, but reflecting something black in its core. “But sometimes things grow bitter in their abandonment. It is no danger to me. Nothing in the world can harm me. I vanquish it, drive it off. But it reforms itself, returns, lies in wait. Why take the trouble?” He snapped back to attention, eyes focusing like sunlight through a lens. “But back to your story. You said you had come to see me, that you knew about the lever.”

“Oh yeah, right,” mumbled Jack, fumbling in one of his pockets for the pictures he had taken. “We were traveling the world, right? And then in Greenland we came across this account by this woman, Elizabeth Hortense Bittle. An American explorer and theosophist.” He held his phone out to Uriel. Of course, it was useless for communication way up here, but he’d kept his phone with him as a recording of everything they’d experienced on their travels.

An old picture of Elizabeth Bittle looked out of the phone, a woman with quaint little gold-rimmed glasses and her hair pulled pack into a bun. Uriel regarded the glowing screen without curiosity. Jack swiped to the next picture, pictures they’d taken of the little leather-bound notebook in the museum, in her neat little script. “She’d collected a bunch of stories about a mystical lever that lay somewhere in the Arctic Circle.” He exchanged glances with Sammy. “A lever that could destroy the world.”

“I wasn’t sure about it,” Sammy said quietly. “Like, maybe she was just confused? I mean, I’d seen the world, I wanted to go back home and take up my duty already - “

“A worthy cause,” Uriel interjected quietly.

“- but Jack convinced me that if it did exist, if there was a second lever, then maybe we could - we could learn something, maybe there was another way, so that no one would have to be bound ...”

“It had to be a second lever,” Jack cut in, “because Elizabeth Bittle also wrote about ours!” He swiped to a different page of the notebook. “See? ‘... I have heard tell of a second lever, somewhere in the desert’! So she’d heard of ours, but unlike this one, she never got a clear idea of where it was supposed to be located. Rumours passed around by an esoteric Kabbalist sect.” He flicked through the various pages for a minute. “I’m not sure how she heard about ours to begin with, Nate made me swear that whole secrecy oath ... Although maybe the reason it was so comprehensive was that someone, years and years before, had let something slip ...?

“Anyway.” He shook his head. “Bittle gets really into the idea of these magical levers all across the world, right? She - You know the saying, Give me a lever and somewhere to stand, and I will move the world? She thought, why stop at one? In her notebooks she develops this whole mystical system where the world is moved by a series of levers - one for Good, one for Evil, one for Peace, one for War ... the whole world, balanced around a system of leverages. And if you could just pull the right lever, suddenly, the world makes sense! Everything’s perfected, just shifted ever so slightly in one direction! Everything falls right into place!”

He paused, looking up for a reaction, and was met only with the wall of Uriel’s impassive gaze. “And, uh, that’s all we know about it,” he finished lamely. “Bittle set out on an expedition, searching for this lever at the North Pole, but the expedition never returned. She was presumed dead ...” He petered off. “I, uh, I don’t suppose you ever met her?”

“Oh,” said Uriel. “I have.”

“Oh!” said Jack.

“But she was quite wrong,” Uriel said softly, and this time his voice seemed to reverberate around the cavern walls. Jack and Sammy glanced around. The blackness seemed to be trembling, keening. “There is no great system of levers scattered around the world. Only ours two. Only ever two.”

“Two?” said Jack. He blinked hard. The eerie atmosphere of the cave system was getting to him. He could look down at his fingers in front of him and then they would blur around the edges and then he wasn’t sure how well he had seen them at all. He had the sudden irrational sensation that there was not actually warmth in the cave, or light - it had just shaped itself to pacify him, lure him into a false sense of safety as he wandered deeper into the cold and into the dark.

“Wait a minute,” he said, trying to think. “We came from Eden. And if you’re the -” He nodded at the scabbard by Uriel’s side. “The angel guarding the entrance, Mister flaming sword. So how are there two of them.” He narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing all the way up here?”

“Ah, the garden,” Uriel sighed. “What a short-sighted, mortal way of imagining it, that old, dead Eden must be bound to a single spot on the surface of the world.” The eyes glinted with amusement. “What did you do, to find old Nate, crawling out in that desert? What did you do, to get here?”

“I ...” Jack looked down at hands that should’ve been blackened and rotting, lying dark in the grave. “I ...”

“Let paradise wither and die,” said Uriel. “The husk of the birthplace that you came from. Your heritage, denied. What’s left?”

“I … I died,” Jack said softly.

Uriel made a velvet sound in his many throats, like a purr.

“What’s going on?” Jack said. He felt unsteady. The ground seemed to be swaying under him, liquid, and the ice seemed to be calling out, vibrating at a frequency to raise gooseflesh on skin. He looked up at Uriel. “What’s going on here?”

“What happened to Miss Bittle?” Sammy said softly. “What did you do to her?”

“Two levers,” Uriel said, ignoring them both. “One at the beginning of Creation. And one at its End.”

He rose, wings spreading, countless countless eyes staring, shifting, tremoring like the ice, almost imperceptible vibrations shifting through the angel’s body like foreshocks, portending a great upheaval. His voice dropped to match the hum of the ice, the hungry keening call of it, and both Jack and Sammy shrank away. “You’ve told me all about your lever. Now, would you like to see mine?”

The path down to the lever was precarious, an ice-slick descent that Jack had to navigate inch by inch, his boots slanted sideways to better grip the ice, Sammy coiled around his neck. He kept glancing up at Uriel, who floated just ahead of them on his many wings, heedless of them. They inched down, down, lower down, into a pit that seemed to recede into the depths of the earth. High above, stalactites glinted like the knifepoints of stars. And at the bottom of the pit a long thin rod jutted out of the ground.

It was a gleaming black in contrast to Nate’s plain white, a slick jet black that seemed hungry, greedy, soaking in the light. On the plinth, instead of a tree there was carved a rune that neither Jack nor Sammy recognized, sloping, curving gutters cut into the stone that seemed to all flow to its centre, to the base of the lever itself.

“It’s like a labyrinth,” Sammy whispered. Jack slid down the last few feet, caught himself, finally stood again on level ground.

“The End of the World,” Uriel said, floating to move behind the angle of his lever. In the dim light it seemed to dance and twitch, seeming to lunge forward of its own account half an inch, and Jack started as if to grab it. “Oh, it does that,” Uriel said, smiling. “Nasty little thing. Almost has a mind of its own.”

“No ...” Jack muttered. The pit walls towered up above them. “No, this isn’t right ...”

“Why not?” said Uriel pleasantly. “Are you privy to the mind of God? Did you set the stars in their places in the heavens? Have you tamed Behemoth, put a hook through Leviathan’s lip? Hm? Hmmm? You think you know what it’s like, guarding your precious little lever! Oh boo-hoo, poor you, you’ve been so isolated and alone!” His mocking voice echoed. “No one but an endless stream of co-guardians to keep Old Nate company!” His voice sharpened into a scream. “You know what I’ve had to do?! Do you know what MY duty is?!”

The black lever gave a growl, its gears interlocking beneath the surface. It was the jutting angle of the hand of a clock.

“It’s moving on its own,” Jack said.

“Oh, yes,” Uriel said. “It wants to be pulled. Of course it does. End of the world, generations and generations overdue. Inches forward, ticking down inevitably towards the end of everything! Oh, I’ve tried! I’ve tried to hold it back! I’ve piled rocks, tried to bury it, tried to chain it back -”

“And by the next day, all of that would disappear,” Jack said.

“But of course, there’s only ever one thing that works,” said Uriel, his voice suddenly a deadly calm. “Only one thing that can convince God to stave off the end of the world just for a little while longer.”

“Sacrifice,” whispered Sammy. His eyes darted down to the runes, to the gutters etched into the stone. “Blood.”

Uriel moved aside, and in a corner of the chamber they saw bones, clothes, scraps of fur preserved by the cold, and atop the pile the glint of a pair of quaint little gold-rimmed glasses.

“Blood,” Uriel said.

“No, no, no -” Jack stammered, backing away. “This is crazy! You didn’t need to kill her! You could’ve - She could have helped you! Got you more animals! Fresh meat!”

“Oh, but you haven’t been listening,” Uriel said silkily. His hand came out to stroke the black sheen of the lever and it responded to his touch, like a slavering beast anticipating a meal. Its invisible gears whined. “We don’t work by the same rules! I’m not permitted confidants! You understand, don’t you? Don’t you!” His eyes honed in on Sammy, and then flickered briefly back to Jack. “Humans can’t save the world! They can only help destroy it!”

“I - I - My dad said something about this, maybe,” Sammy whimpered, anxiety growing in his lidless eyes. “About levers. I - I don’t know! I was just a little kid! He never expected me to be here!”

“And they are destroying it,” Uriel went on. “For centuries, for millennia, my duty was easy. Oh, yes, for millennia the lever called to me and cursed at me and whispered to me in the dark, oh yeessss, it told me it was the fulfilment of all things! But the game was plentiful, and the hunting was easy, and even in my small sphere of influence I could bring back plenty of sacrifices to sate its endless thirst for blood! But it has grown warmer! And the game has grown scarce! And in the bits and whispers I can scrounge up at this forsaken corner of the world I know the truth!”

The wings all fanned out, an inverted panopticon of eyes. His voice dropped to a hiss. “Humans have failed their role as stewards. For all the blood I have shed here, for all the countless, countless deaths. And yet they bring it on. And yet they are hastening it to an end.”

Jack took another step back, glancing back up the perilous slope, and beyond that the maze of twisting turning passages Uriel had led them down, jagged and black and hungry like knives.

“Oh, don’t try to run,” Uriel said calmly. “I’m an angel! I can fly! And whatever Nate might have done to you, you’re still only human. Human, at best.”

“Okay,” Jack said evenly, holding up his hands. He couldn’t take his eyes off the surface of the plinth, the black floor of an abattoir. “But it wasn’t Miss Bittle that did that. People that come all the way up to the North Pole, they’re the people that actually appreciate it, you know that! She just wanted to make the world a better place, in her own fantastical way! She didn’t deserve to die!”

“It’s not about deserves!” Uriel shrieked, and this time the cavern shrieked with him, the blackness of the lever reflected endlessly through it. “Haven’t I told you that?! It’s about the lever! It’s about holding back the end of an unworthy world for just one day longer!” All of a sudden the eyes were brimming with tears, like stars poised above the Earth. “What would you have me do? Let the lever be pulled? Let all of Creation die?”

The echoes of his outburst sank into the room and quietly died. In the awful ensuing silence, Sammy spoke.

“But we’re here now,” he offered, his voice trembling first and then growing more urgent as he talked. “That’s why we came! Because - because it doesn’t matter what rules you have, or who you’re allowed to trust! Because me and my dad and Jack here were a thousand miles away, just as alone, not being able to trust anyone else! And guess what? We found each other!”

“We can help you,” Jack said. “We can. Look, you don’t know what I’ve done for Nate. There’s the internet, there’s a whole world I can help you communicate with! And I can arrange for more animals, more sacrifices, anything. Whatever you want -”

“No,” said Uriel in a trembling voice. “No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I -“

“Not anymore!” Uriel screamed, and the black lever growled out its chorus. “I told you. It’s too late! The animals have all run off and died. The hunting’s been scarce for decades. The lever hasn’t been fed in months! Time’s up! Time’s up, and you were sent here by God. As providence. Because we’re here on the brink of the end of the world and I can’t wait for you to go out and stumblingly hunt, can’t wait for your arrangements, can’t wait for you to get everything in order! I can’t let you leave and wait until your return, can’t wait for another day to pass!”

The multiple eyes blinked like suns going out. “There must be a sacrifice, now, to keep the world going. It’s been too long. It’s much too late. If you want to save the world, one of you has to die.”

Jack felt a lump rise in his throat. He’d been counting on compassion, on breaking through Uriel’s isolation with the offer of their help, and now he felt themselves faced instead with a cold equation, as unfeeling as stone. “You can’t kill either of us,” he said, trying his best to keep his voice even. “Sammy needs to take his father’s place. If you kill him here - all you’ll be doing is trading one lever for another, leaving the white one without its guardian. And if you kill me, then it adds up to the same thing! Sammy will be stranded here! He can’t get back without me! The cold will get him!”

Uriel hesitated for a second, barely a movement of feathers, and then shook off Jack’s argument. “Then Nate will simply have to live a little longer. Sad for him, perhaps, but he understands the necessities of our work.”

“No!” Jack could hear the blood rushing in his ears, felt himself rushing on in a suicidal attempt. “I’m the Judge, you hear me? I’m the judge of humanity!” In the back of his mind he was aware of what a pitiful, futile threat this was – of course, Uriel could just kill him here, feed his blood to the black lever - but the adrenaline surging through his body would not let him back down. “You kill him here, and I swear to God I’ll go back to Eden and pull my lever! I’ll undo everything you’ve ever done! All your centuries of duty! I’ll kill us all, I swear it! You piece of shit!”

“Jack,” Sammy said gently, and that single word cut through his rage. Sammy was still draped around his neck, nosing next to his ear. “It’s okay. Let him take me. It amounts to the same thing.”

Jack looked at him in shock. “Sammy -!”

“You heard him,” said Sammy, his thin reedy voice gathering up inevitability as he talked, like a pebble starting an avalanche down a hill. “Someone needs to die. And it can’t be you, because someone - someone warm-blooded - needs to make their way back and tell my dad what happened.”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “No, no, there’s got to be a way –“

“And -” Sammy swallowed. “Listen to me, Jack. What do I have to live for, anyway? What’s waiting for me when I go back? An eternity of guarding a lever? To end up like my dad, waiting for you to come back with a sword so you can finally end his life?” Sammy’s eyes flicked up to Uriel. “To end up like him?”

“Sammy, no,” Jack insisted. “You’re young! You have … Look, your dad couldn’t even have imagined the internet, that laptop I built for him, and who knows what else the future has for you? That isn’t - it isn’t a life sentence! Or even if it is, at least you’ll be alive! To see what happens next!”

“Hollow words,” said Uriel, who had been watching in a sepulchral satisfaction. “The young one knows. He knows what fate awaits him.”

“You shut up!” Jack screamed, whirling around on Uriel. There were tears streaming from his eyes. “He’s a kid! He doesn’t know any better! He hasn’t - he hasn’t even seen the world yet! He doesn’t know anything!”

“Jack!” Sammy pleaded. “I have. You know I have. You’ve done everything for me. You’ve shown me the world, more of it than I could have ever imagined. And -”

“No. No no no no no no -”

“And you’ve known,” Sammy insisted. “All this while you’ve known. What would happen at the end of the trip.” He looked up at Jack with a childlike calm. “That you wouldn’t just be ending one life, but both of them.”

“No!” Jack said. “You -” He could feel the blood rushing through his brain, and in one last desperate gambit he turned to appeal to Uriel. “Listen, okay, the kid didn’t want to do this, I didn’t want to drag anyone else into this, but you want a sacrifice?” He bared his teeth. “I’ll get you a sacrifice. Get me up to the surface. We had a convoy traveling with us. They escorted us out here and we did the last leg on our own, to keep this place a secret. They’ll be searching for us. It’s been too long since last contact. You get us back up there, I’ll lure one of them in.”

“J-Jack?” Sammy said, looking over at him confused. “What ...?”

“I know!” Jack said, speaking over him quickly. “You’re scared of what comes next. You think you have to do this all on your own. You think this is the easy way out.” He looked back up to Uriel. “But you know it’s not that easy. We all have our duty to do. So c’mon!” His voice rose into a challenging crescendo. “Let’s do it!”

Uriel regarded him dubiously. “And why should I believe you? You never mentioned any companions before.” He gestured towards the hungry black surface of the lever. “Why should I not fulfil my duty, right here, right now?”

“Because,” Jack said. “Because we’re all already connected. Because Nate’s back in Eden, and he’s dying. Whether you believe it or not, he’s dying. He’s lived too long, and if neither of us go back to him then who knows what he’ll do, and what good’s killing a fucking kid to keep the world going if everything’s just going to go to hell a few weeks later?” He jutted his jaw out at Uriel, and saw the angel yield, by just an inch. “And if you kill me too then Nate’s all alone and lapses into despair and – and I don’t like to think what happens next! And if you leave me alive, I swear I’m going back, and I’m pulling that damn lever myself!”

He took a step forward, bringing both hands loudly down on his thighs. “We got our duty to do! We’re keeping the world from dying! And there’s a bunch of fresh meat up there ready for sacrifice, so let’s get up there and fucking do it!”

Sammy had shrank back, cowed into silence. Uriel was staring at him stunned. “But we -” Uriel started. All the eyes shifted in different directions. “No, no, you are delaying for time -”

“And you got time!” Jack shot back. “You listened to me tell that whole damn story! You’ve got - the end of the day, right? Till the end of the day, right? So let’s go up there, and give it a shot, and if no one comes you’ve still got us, right?” He prodded Uriel in the chest with a finger. “So let’s get up there, and you do your fucking job!”

Their march back through the maze of passageways was silent. Sammy hung limply on Jack’s shoulders, all the fight gone out of him. I didn’t mean it, Jack wanted to tell him, you don’t have your dad’s whole life resting on you, but Uriel floated behind them grimly, and the words didn’t seem to come. It was a relief to emerge into the open air again, to behold the dark of twilight instead of an unnatural ever-present light, to feel the gust of cold air on his cheeks instead of that warmthless warmth. They stood outside the entrance to the cavern, looking out at an unbroken landscape of snow. “I see nothing,” Uriel said.

“Yeah, well.” His breath came out in puffs. “You got to signal them. We left the flares back in the truck, I told you that.” He gave a nod to Uriel’s waist. “Use that goddamn sword of yours. Wave it around. They’ve gotta be searching for us by now. Get some attention.”

Uriel narrowed his eyes at him.

“What?” said Jack. “What’s the worst thing that could happen? You attract the - the whaddyacallit, The Cold? You said you could fight it off, if it came to that. Big deal! Let’s get some light and heat up here! It’s kind of what attracts living creatures, you know!”

Uriel let out a long sigh. “I don’t know how Nate put up with you,” he said, and unsheathed the sun.

Even through his bravado, Jack cringed away at the arc of the flame cutting through the cold and dark. The snow around Uriel hissed into steam. Jack felt the hairs on his skin singe. “Oh huuuumans,” Uriel crooned out, waving his sword through the air. “Humans that are no doubt out there. Come, come and save your friends!”

Jack found himself staring out into the dark, half expecting in the delirious heat of Uriel’s flame for a rescue party to materialize, walking towards them with open arms. Perhaps a minute passed, and then another, Uriel’s motions becoming more theatrical, more flamboyant, almost mocking their last vestige of hope.

And then, from the gathering flurries of snow, came was the ravenous starving howl.

“Well, who could have foreseen this would happen,” Uriel muttered grimly, turning to face the beast materializing out of the darkness. It did not have the slow implacable pace as before, but was almost bounding towards them now in its whirling eddies, like a wolf scenting a steak, maddened by the heat of the open flame. “I do hope you’re happy,” he started to say, “one of you really is going to have to be the sacrifice now -”

He looked back to see Jack already running away from the cavern at full speed.

“You little fool!” Uriel snarled, and swung his sword in a great circle over his head, and all at once a ring of flame sprouted out from the snow, the sudden rush of heat knocking Jack back on his bum. “You think you could escape me? ME? An angel of God?” Uriel screamed, and then cried out in a grunt of pain as with a lunge The Cold buried its icy talons into his side. “Ungrateful little shits!” He plunged the flaming sword down and The Cold opened up its gullet to devour it, and there was a great rush of steam, the sound of the ground shattering apart.

“B-back into the caves!” Sammy gasped.

“What?!” Jack roared, still shielding his eyes from the wall of flame.

“We’re surrounded by fire! There’s nowhere else! Maybe we can lose him in the caverns!”

Jack gave a quick nod and veered around back into the caverns. From behind them were the sounds of glaciers cleaving apart, the sizzling of the sun, hot and cold locked together in a deathless match. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I can’t believe you did that,” Sammy moaned. “We can’t - He knows these caves better than we do! What was I thinking?”

“It’s fine,” Jack said, with a confidence he didn’t feel. “He - Look, he needs to come in here after us, right? He needs to make the sacrifice in time. And we can - All we need to do is avoid him, lose him in the passages, stay out of his way -”

“Until what, Jack?” Sammy demanded. “Until it’s too late? Until it’s the end of the world?”

The black ice watched them hungrily as they descended deeper into the caves, pulsing against its confines, countless open black mouths trying to draw them in. “We -” Jack wiped sweat from his brow. “Look, we’ll think of something.”

“The lever,” Sammy said, and swallowed. “We have to go back to the lever. It always comes back to that.” He shook his head, contorting as if to twist himself into knots. “I don’t know what to do, Jack! I thought I was doing the right thing, offering myself up to Uriel to sacrifice. But - but this isn’t right! I feel like my dad told me something about, like he knew! If only he was here! But he’s not! I don’t know –” He burst out into a wail. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without him!”

“Sammy.” Jack paused for a moment to catch his breath, still flushed from the heat and the exertion. “Listen, I know it’s scary, and I know it’s not fair, everything that’s expected of you, but -”

A sluice of cold air cut him off, a bladed tongue flickering across his cheek, and Jack looked up to see, walking as if hunched in the low passageways, a great grey ugly thing that was the absence of all light, the absence of all warmth, advancing upon them.

“What,” he breathed, and looked back the way they had come. Even from the entrance way, they could still hear echoing the sounds of battle, Uriel’s grunts, and flame hissing against ice.

“Oh my God,” said Jack. “There’s more than one of them.”

They were running again, The Cold behind them, the slanted passageways of the caverns narrowing in on them, herding them, black and glistening like a long dark throat. In the depths of the earth they felt a shift, the ticking of a great clock. Doom, it said. Doom, doom, doom.

“Jack. We have to,” Sammy moaned. “It’s the end of the world otherwise. The end of the world!”

Jack ran, his feet pounding against the ground. He could almost see the black lever, visible through the false light, calling to him, pulling at him. Magnetic north. And then another sudden draft of cold air, and there was the Cold seeping through the invisible crevasses in the ice, the one chasing him, or maybe yet another, re-forming in front of them as a great grey swirling cloud, raising its massive fists.

“Oh God,” muttered Jack, skidding to a halt. He could feel the lever pulling magnetic at his blood, yanking him closer in great cravings and throes. He wanted to laugh. They were trapped in a no-win situation, only trying to die, and now even that was impossible. “We can -” He looked helplessly behind him. “There’s got to be another way around -”

Sammy uncoiled from his neck and slithered down onto the ground, away from him. “Jack,” he said. “Lead it away.”

Jack gaped. “What?”

“Lead it away! It’ll go after you! You’re warm-blooded, and then I can get past!” Sammy was already wriggling himself into a small crack in the wall. “Jack! It’s the only way! Please!”

“No. No, no, no.” Already he was coming back to his senses, the awful Cold advancing on him. “What are you going to do? You can’t sacrifice yourself!”

“I’ll throw myself down. It’s high enough.” Jack stood frozen in shock, the Cold advancing on him, Sammy curled up almost comically in that little crack. All he had to do was stand here, he told himself. The Cold would fall upon him and devour him, eat up every last spot of warmth in his blood, and Sammy would be trapped in there until it left. Until it was too late to do anything. Until...

“Please!” Sammy begged. “Help me save you! I don’t want you to die!”

Jack came to life and ran.

He did not know where he was going. There were tears streaming down his face, and all the icy walls had turned against him, like teeth arrayed backwards in a gullet, trying to keep the food from coming back up. “C’mon!” he screamed behind him, his voice echoing hysterically through the empty chambers. “You big dumb thing! I’m right here! Keep up!” The Cold’s icy breath hissed down his spine and Jack ran, ran, ran, as if he could lead death itself far away from Sammy, lead it to the ends of the Earth, where no one might ever be hurt again. “Follow the leader!”

He ran, the path narrowing and narrowing until he was at a dead end, nowhere left to go. Jack sank to his knees, pressing his forehead against the ice. He could hear the Cold coming, and closed his eyes. “Sammy,” he said. “Sammy, I’m so sorry.”

The Cold first bit into his calf, shards of ice that froze his blood and nearly stopped his heart, and then he felt its awful weight on him spreading across his body almost intimate, like a lover, and he thought, if this is death then maybe Sammy was right, maybe there were worse things than this.

The sun, when it appeared, was no less terrifying from having experienced it twice before.

Uriel grunted as he shoved the flaming sword through the Cold’s chest, only lightly crisping Jack’s skin. Jack gasped and convulsed as Uriel fished the icy corpse off him, his limbs not obeying, and then then Uriel had hauled him into the air. I’m dead, Jack thought, This is Heaven, or Hell, and then he realized that it was the air in front of him that had coagulated into darkness, pulsed with the beat of a dying world.

“Where is the little snake?” Uriel was screaming at him, impatiently sheathing his sword. “You fool! We’re out of time! You understand that? We’re out of time!”

“I -” Jack tried to gesture jerkily to whatever remained of the Cold. “He told me to lead it away. So that he could - could get to the lever, could -” He broke off.

“Well, you had better hope this little plan succeeded,” Uriel snarled. “Otherwise, congratulations.” He looked up into the darkness. “You’re responsible for the end of the world.”

They stood in the lightless air, listening. The world ticked down, the vibrations of the lever running through the earth, counting towards zero. Jack felt himself shift in Uriel’s grip, one last great convulsion, the lever shifting in its axis -

And then nothing.

Jack slowly opened his eyes, seeing nothing but more darkness. He counted internally to ten, and then brought his hand up to his face and touched his left cheek, his upper lip, before finally touching the tip of his nose. “Hey,” he said. “I’m still alive.”

“Yes,” Uriel said in the darkness. “As am I.”

The sword came out again, and Jack winced and shielded his eyes, but it was dimmed this time, Uriel raising it like a torch. All around them was the ice - but only ice, slowly relaxing into water where Uriel’s sword pointed, rivulets running down and joining in their paths. Ice that caught the reflection of the flame, and was clear, showing no taint of black.

“He did it,” mumbled Jack, and then wanted to weep. He imagined Sammy, his little body sprawled out on that black altar. “He did it.”

“He did ... something,” Uriel cautiously said.

Jack clung to Uriel, the angel carrying him down the passageways, flaming sword raised to make a thousand candle flames warped through glass. Jack felt like they were walking through a church, candles lit in prayer as the wax ran and wept to make crooked cheerful shapes as all the candles bowed and guttered out. Uriel flew them into the central chamber, and far below they could see the dim outline of the plinth and its lever, unmoved. It was black, still, but all the malevolence of its blackness seemed to have gone out of it, and now it was soft as shadow.

“This is... How did this happen?” Uriel said. Jack looked up at him, uncomprehending. “It ... It ...”

And then, a small voice chimed out from the ground below them. “H-hey, could you - could you move that fire a little closer? S-some of us are c-cold-blooded, you know.”

“Oh my God!” cried Jack. “Sammy?”

Sammy was lying limply at the edge of the precipice, stirring to life as Uriel brought the flame closer. “Hey, guys,” he said, and stretched out at the warmth. “Thanks. I needed that.”

“But -” Uriel was gawking, countless eyes wide in disbelief. “What - what happened? What did you do?”

“Oh, that,” said Sammy, and glanced down at the lever. “Nothing.”

Uriel stared at him stunned.

Sammy raised his head in a smile. “Absolutely nothing. It was feeding on blood, obviously. And it hadn’t been fed in quite a while. Practically starving to death. So it was really throwing a tantrum, screaming out with all it had left to be fed. But it could only keep that up for so long, and if you just keep on not feeding it, well ...” He managed with a twist of his body what might pass as a shrug. “It’s done. It’s dead.”

“But -” Uriel stammered. “But all this time, all the sacrifices -”

“Yup,” said Sammy, nodding wearily. “It got into your head. I – I don’t blame you, having to live with a thing like this. It was blackmailing you the whole time, threatening to pull itself, threatening to take the choice out of your hands, when really…” He chuckled. “It’s a tool, you know? It could threaten, it could manipulate - but it would take someone else to use it.”

“Oh, Sammy!” Jack cried, and squeezed out of Uriel’s slack grip. The angel seemed completely at a loss, floating numbly in mid-air without a word. Jack bent over the snake and scooped him up. “I thought – oh God, I thought you were going to kill yourself.”

“Yeah,” murmured Sammy, coiling loosely around Jack’s wrist again. “I did too. It gets to the point where you ... where you think that’s maybe the only option. But I was right there, on the brink, the lever calling out to me, and all I could think about was you, and I ...” He smiled weakly. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Jack.”

“Yeah?” Jack said, wiping away a tear.

“Yeah,” said Sammy. He relaxed, laying his head against Jack’s arm. “You, me, and some wisdom from dear old dad. It took me a while, but I finally remembered his advice.” He raised his head, mimicking old Nate’s voice. “’You’ve got to lead a Cold, starve a lever.’”

#fiction #tw: suicide

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