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hezzabeth · 5 months

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Next story part of Saying Farewell to Armageddon

A forest had engulfed Baker Street. A romantic, sunlit forest with twisting trees covered in puffy, bright yellow blossoms bursting from upturned cobblestones. Dotted among them were smaller, dark trees heavy with bunches of magenta berries. Two of the feral children had already attacked the berries, their lips a deep purple.

Dityaa stopped helping Revati with the popcorn cart and started skipping towards the children. Revati sneezed loudly as the pollen hit her nose. She hated to admit it, but it was all rather pretty.

A few feet away, Brigadeiro was working outside the greenhouse along with the school students and Dusk. Mrs. Gupta was glaring at them with firm disapproval. “Does that fool have any idea how much water plants use?” She grumbled to Revati, who was pushing the cart towards everyone.

“I told you, Mrs. Gupta, these are all drought-resistant native Australian plants,” Brigadeiro replied as he stooped over an upturned cobblestone, spraying the mud below. There was a faint rustling sound, and a bush burst from the earth. The bush had peculiar finger-like mint-green leaves. Seconds later, it was covered in hot pink fleshy fruit.

“They look like your hair,” Revati remarked, faintly startled by the entire thing. “Here, try one,” Brigadeiro replied, picking a piece of fruit and handing it to Revati.

“I was only gone for less than an hour,” Revati pointed out.

“I know, if I had more time, I would have been able to turn that old fountain into a herb garden,” Brigadeiro said with a small shrug.

A fresh, salty-sweet flavor hit Revati’s tongue, and she swallowed loudly, staring at the fruit with astonishment. “It’s so unusual,” she said after a second of shocked silence.

“Enchylaena tomentosa, otherwise known as Ruby Saltbush; they used to grow wild all over the deserts of Australia,” Brigadeiro said as Revati devoured the rest of the berry.

“Australia? Is that one of the smaller Saturn moons?” Revati asked, and Brigadeiro chuckled.

“No, it’s an ancient old Earth country,” Brigadeiro said. As far as Revati knew, nobody had stepped foot on old Earth in almost a thousand years.

“Don’t laugh at me, you thought a dog was a shoe!” Revati snapped back, tossing the rest of the fruit onto the earth. The bush rustled, and a branch grabbed the bright pink berry, shoving it into the dirt.

“Is it supposed to do that?” Revati asked, faintly horrified.

“Oh yes, it’s just reabsorbing its nutrients! All plants are modified to be self-sustaining,” Brigadeiro said cheerfully, and he reached into his jumpsuit pocket once again. This time he pulled out a tiny, slim plastic box. He held it up to his eye, and it made a clicking sound.

“What’s that?” Revati asked suspiciously.

“Oh this is just my seed vault! I did my master's thesis project on native Australian plants,” he said as he showed Revati the inside of his vault. The inside of the box was filled with tiny balls of clear goo, each with a speck inside.

“Why are you doing this? These seeds would be worth a fortune on the black market,” Revati asked, and Brigadeiro shrugged.

Here's the corrected version of your text:

"The least I can do after you saved my life is to build a self-sustaining garden for your community," he said, plucking one of the gel balls out before closing the ball with a snap. "Besides, it’s fun! Gardening has always been my passion," he added as he walked to the old fountain.

Juniper and Aurora were busy filling the fountain with volcanic Martian dirt. "You agreed to help him on this project? I thought you hated him," Revati whispered to Aurora.

"Shhh! I don’t hate him! I just don’t want you getting into a mess! I’m willing to like anyone who makes us more food," Aurora hissed.

"Miss Juniper! Will you say our prayer before the planting?" Bridgadeiro asked, and Juniper rolled her eyes.

"Fine, O Goup, Divine Goddess of Fertility and Wellness. Bringer of cosmic balance and nurturer of all that grows. We seek Your bountiful grace and nurturing embrace. To foster life’s richness wherever it flows.

In Your lush gardens, where seeds turn to flowers, Grant us the strength to cultivate with care, To nurture each bud and blossom with love, And rejoice in the abundance we share.

May Your fertile essence inspire our lands, With a symphony of life, vibrant and bright, Guiding our steps in the dance of creation, Under Your watchful, life-giving light. Amen." Juniper finished.

"Amen! That was lovely! You could be a high priestess," Bridgadeiro smiled.

"No thanks," Juniper replied as Bridgadeiro pushed the gel ball into the soil. Bridgadeiro then pulled out the bottle of serum, which was now half empty. "Two pumps," Bridgadeiro smiled, pumping the soil. A vine-like plant with sharp leaves sprang out of the fountain, seconds later covered in heavy greenish-yellow vegetables. "Bush banana, very high in protein, but it tastes best cooked," Bridgadeiro smiled, gesturing to the plant.

Bridgadeiro reached for his seed vault again, and Revati grabbed his hand. "No, you've given us more than enough! Stop wasting your serum," she said firmly.

"What the hell is that doing here?" Nanni's voice suddenly screamed. Nanni was standing next to the popcorn cart, pointing at the broken android.

"We found it in the maze, right after I sucked a bunch of black sand out of Queen Victoria’s bosom," remarked Dityaa. Dityaa was sitting on the ground, fashioning a flower crown out of several yellow flower-covered twigs.

"Actually, I found it first. She warned me that something called 'the spider' is coming," Revati explained. Nanni was trembling, shaking her head from side to side.

"You need to burn that thing! The only good thing that came from it was your sister!" Nanni said, and Dityaa glanced up, looking faintly confused.

"I came from that? Didn’t I grow in Anna’s body like Sissy?" Dityaa asked curiously, and Nanni pursed her lips together.

"No, you grew in that maternity droid… lots of babies did before the war," Nanni said evasively.

"I did! Then we should save it, we should dress it up and put it on display," Dityaa smiled. Dityaa slowly got up and then tenderly placed the flower crown on the android's head. "Your mother can't see this! Go make a fire right now," hissed Nanni, ripping the crown off.

"It's made out of solid metal! I can't make a fire hot enough to burn it," Revati pointed out.

"You have no idea! This thing killed over a dozen people! It destroyed ripped their hands off!" Nanni grimaced, kicking it.

"Really? It seemed more interested in saving us," Revati said dubiously.

"It's an empty shell, you can't trust emptiness! It could be filled with anything," Nanny said firmly, and Aurora cleared her throat slightly.

"Mistress?" She asked.

"Hmm," Revati replied.

"We could take the android to the blacksmith forge; they would be able to melt metal," Aurora said with a small shrug.

"The blacksmith forge, the one in the medieval faire? I'm not in the mood to have rancid urine thrown all over me," Revati shuddered.

"They use it to brush their teeth," Dityaa said helpfully.

"I know a back way of getting in, I use it when I visit my girlfriend," Aurora admitted, blushing bright red.

"Girlfriend?" Revati cried with surprise.

"Yes, she's the daughter of the guy who plays the castle's beekeeper," Aurora admitted with a small shy smile.

"Is that where our honey comes from?" Revati asked, and Aurora nodded meekly.

"Well, you are a lady full of surprises!" Revati said, and Aurora looked pleased.

"I always meet her at noon; we have plenty of time to get the android there," Aurora said. Revati glanced up at the sky. "It’s hard to tell what time it is; the trees are blocking the sun," Revati grimaced with annoyance. "It's 10:32 AM circus Martian time," Bridgadeiro said helpfully, flipping over his wrist. A glowing clock had been tattooed onto his skin. Revati flinched, and Bridgadeiro smiled reassuringly.

"Don’t worry! It’s just a standard tattoo clock; it doesn’t think for itself," Bridgadeiro said reassuringly, and Revati sighed with relief.

"Can I come too? I’m dying to see the inside of Medieval faire!" Dityaa remarked.

"Only if you go clean yourself up; you’re starting to smell like a blocked drain," Revati firmly replied.

"I smell like vanilla and fresh flowers!" Dityaa shrieked back before storming off in the direction of their home.

"Medieval Faire. Before the tornado, Revati only ever visited Medieval Faire once a week. Revati would slip her hand into her father's, and together they would head down to trade carrots. Father had at one point asked if they wanted any tomatoes, and Lady Morganna shrieked it was "new world poison." Out of all the actors, the residents of Medieval Faire were the most authentic.

#nanowrimo #nanowrimo2023 #science fiction #life on mars #speculative worldbuilding #speculative fiction #scifi #ya scifi #ya dystopia #writing science fiction #creative writing #writing goals

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forlorn-crows · 1 year

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You want ~ghoul prompts~ you say?

There's been an influx of mean Rain lately (correctly so, we love mean Rain), but how do we feel about mean Aether? Mountain needs to be broken just right, and I bet Aether knows exactly how to do it.

Aether ended up being only a lil bit mean. But we're still breaking Mountain, don't worry.

I recommend listening to Hypnosis by Sleep Token while reading.

Mountain’s head is spinning. He’s been pacing the greenhouse for hours, unable to shake the worry and frustration. There’s no reason for it, just something that visits every so often to haunt his mind. He thought the grueling two hours of rehearsal would beat it out of him, but, in fact, it now burned hotter, seeping deep into his veins. His mind is maddening. Exasperating. And he wants it turned off.

Thankfully, a certain quintessence ghoul has a knack for doing just that.

“Aether,” Mountain says, a little frenzied. He’s decided to burst into Aehter’s room unannounced, unable to take it any longer.

“You okay, Mountain?” He takes in his lanky form, little beads of sweat dotting his forehead, chest heaving, wide, pleading eyes. Shoeless, naturally. Little vines of ivy growing behind his ears where his elemental control waned. “Woah, hey big guy.” His tone is worried, understandably so. But Mountain doesn’t want pity. He wants direction. He wants—needs—an anchor. He wants everything else to fade to a pinpoint, where all he can think is Aether.

He wants him to break him. Fuck his consciousness into tiny little pieces and put him back right and whole again.

“Turn it off,” he rasps.

Aether stands to meet the ghoul in the doorway. Shuffles him inside wordlessly and closes the door. That heinous look is still on his face: searching, worry, confusion. “Mount, what do you need me t—”

“Turn.” Mountain kneels in front of him. “It.” Grabs Aether’s hands. “Off.” Places both of his warm palms to flank the side of his head, just below the horns. His words are demanding and pleading at the same time.

Aether’s expression softens, a knowing smile quirking up the corners of his mouth. “Oh.” His fingers card into those mousy brown locks, lightly scratching at the scalp. Mountain’s hands slide down to his sides as Aether gets the hint, and he sighs, long and drawn out. “Ah, there’s my gentle giant.” Aether pinches off the vines with deft fingers, reaching up to pluck the little brown mushrooms that found their home around his horns, too.

“Please,” he croaks, melting into the touch.

Aether steps closer, hip just inches from the earth ghoul’s cheek. “You’re so polite. Who would I be to deny a ghoul in need?”

Mountain looks up at him. His eyes are already fluttering at the suggestion of magick sparking from Aether’s fingertips, sinking into his skin as one hand caresses the back of his neck, threads into his hair and—

Pulls.

Just like that a shock of quintessence surges through his brain, kicking all the worry and unwanted stress out of his mind and leaving it blissfully and dizzyingly empty. Mountain never takes for granted how his powers could absolutely kill a ghoul—leave him a crumpled, hollow shell of a vessel in an instant and with a simple snap of his fingers.

But he doesn’t. He tows the line between a simple haze and a voided fog, and it makes Mountain fall perfectly every time. Lucid, but just . . . blank. Malleable.

Breakable.

Mountain’s head slumps forward, cheek resting against Aether’s hipbone. Aether huffs out a laugh, running his hands down the curve of Mountain’s neck and onto the tops of his shoulders. “How’s that, pebble?”

Mountain groans. “Don’t wanna think anymore. Need you to tell me,” he slurs.

“Hmm,” he hums. “Bend you, twist you whatever way I want?”

Mountain nods, pants already growing tight. “Anything,” he breathes.

Aether ducks down, lips barely grazing against the pointed ear. He hovers there; doesn’t kiss, doesn’t tease him with any words. It has Mountain leaning further against him, yearning.

Suddenly, he’s thrown off balance as Aether stands up and pulls away from him. He lands on his hands and knees at Aether’s feet.

“Needy,” Aether comments, a little bit of bite in his voice. “Up. I think you’re gonna start by sitting pretty on my cock.”

And he does. Legs trembling as Aether guides him down, stretching him wide.

“Ah fuck, Aethe—” His own cock, rigid and heavy between them, leaks a spurt of precum as he bottoms out. He tosses his head back and forth, sensations made ten times more overwhelming and consuming with quintessence running through him.

“You take so well, pebble. That’s what you want isn’t it; to be tamed?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mountain chants. He grinds down, reveling in the way he’s filled out. Split open. Aether rolls his hips in response, grinning lazily at the gasp it earns him.

“So sensitive. Bet you could come just like this. I’d barely have to do a thing.”

Mountain’s cock kicks in response to his words, because of course it does. He brackets his hands around Aether’s head, gripping the headboard he’s propped them against. He can barely keep his eyes open any more, giving in to the slide of Aether inside him and the warm magick seeping into his bones.

“Aether,” he breathes. “Please.”

The quintessence ghoul grips his hips, nuzzles his head into the crook of his neck. “Yes, darling?”

“Oh,” Mountain moans. “Aethe—I need—” the words die on his tongue as Aether sucks at the junction of his neck and reaches around to stroke at the base of his tail. Mountain’s hips stutter against him, and he’s shaking his head again, trying to get the words to come out.

“Too loud, ‘s still too loud.” He means his thoughts, but it’s all he can muster. Despite the hypnotizing ways Aether is touching him, his mind is starting to cut through the haze again, somehow.

“Mountain,” Aether says deviously, knowing exactly what he means. The desperation is rolling off the earth ghoul, palpable. “Oh, little pebble, you just want to be taken, don’t you?” His mouth creeps up Mountain’s jawline. “Owned.” Darts his tongue out to lick at Mountain’s bottom lip. “Broken.”

Mountain whines, and it’s all the confirmation Aether needs to crash their lips together and roll Mountain to his back before he fucks him with reckless abandon. Thrusts hard and fast, wringing moan after wanton moan out of Mountain’s slack mouth. Mountain takes everything Aether is willing to give.

It’s in the throws of unholy flesh melding together that his mind finally, finally, falls away.

#peep the 'mountain growing mushrooms on his head' part #i just had to #anon #ask #mountain ghoul #aether ghoul #the band ghost #fanfic #ficlet #mountain my love #mounty has crippling anxiety pass it on #no im not projecting what do you mean #no beta we die like men

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the-blue-marshmallow · 7 months

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Wolfstar hand kisses

Here I am again with the worms. Enjoy this thing, whatever this is.

Also, a little competition(?). There is a certain typo in the text that is very much intentiomal and is a result of me and bestie being sleep deprived at like three in the morning. Those, who will find it and comment, get my eternal love (and a cookie).

Remus Lupin would like to call himself a reasonable man. He would also say he had immaculate control of himself, considering his many years spent dealing with his unfortunate lycanthropy. Remus rarely got distracted from his goals, he also wasn't too quick to anger. The teen was usually the brains of their pranks, quick to make up lies to cover their mischief. But so help him god almighty, he would lose his mind tonight.

Sirius Black, the inarguably most desired man of their year, was currently laying on Remus’s bed and twirling his wand between his long and thin fingers. He was reading his herbology book, probably studying for the upcoming test that loomed over the Marauders’ heads.

-Hey, Remy? - his voice was an innocent sing song as the teen pulled Remus’ attention to him. The taller man hummed in response. - Did you know that Asphodel is part of the lily family?

of course he knew. He was already done studying for their test, so it would be obvious to him. That, however, didn’t mean Sirius needed to know that.

-Oh, really? That’s interesting. - Ouch. He sounded tired, more than usually. It was only a few days after the last full moon and his voice was still hoarse.

-Yeah, I know. We should give Lily Asphodels for her next birthday. Maybe she could dry them and use them in her potions. - Sirius’ eyes twinkled prettily in the warm light of their room and for a moment Remus forgot how to make air move into his lungs.

Remus smiled at his dear boyfriend with a gentle look in his eyes.

-Why not. Just remember to order them a couple days before so we won't have to steal them from the greenhouse, okay?

Sirius only nodded with that wide grin he got when he was excited about something and went back to his textbook. He started twirling his wand between his long fingers again. A shiny ring that Remus has never seen before catches his attention.

-Is this one new? - he wrapped his fingers around Sirius’ own and pulled his hand closer. Sirius dropped the wand on the bed and scooted closer, resting his chin in his palm.

-Yup. Pandora made it. She found the rock last Saturday when we went to the lake for a picnic, remember? - Sirius sounded awfully proud of the shiny ring. That wasn't an unusual thing for him. He loved showing off the things his friends made for him or gave him. Sometimes he reminded Remus of a bird, making a little nest on his bed. He would pile all of the shiny things in a very specific spot that would be the same without fail every time it was stocktaking time. He would pull Remus next to the bed and show him every single rock, ring, piece of glass or can tab. Sirius was very fond of stealing the tabs on the cans his friends had. Sometimes he would be so quick with it they wouldn't even notice when he took them.

-Mhm, i do.

Remus gently took the ring off and looked it over, observing every detail. He put it on the bed with the most gentle move he could muster through the shaking of his hands.

He slowly removed every ring from Sirius’ pretty fingers and put them in that spot. He rubbed the spots they revealed. Sirius’ skin was so much softer than his. Where Sirius was all soft lines and thin skin that was awfully smooth (probably from the cherry hand cream he was fond of so much), Remus was rough skin and scars. His hands were bigger, sturdier, more square. Remus’ skin was covered in tiny scratches and scars almost constantly. Sirius would say it was his anemia, Remus would every time try to convince him it was actually just bad luck. Sirius’ fingernails were perfectly manicured almonds with trimmed cuticles and sometimes even a shimmering nail polish. Remus’ nails were more square and rarely kept in a state that maybe stood next to presentable (it was usually when Sirius insisted on doing his nails with him. Remus liked it very much. He would disappear you quicker than James catches a snitch if you ever told anyone that.).

When all the rings from Sirius’ fingers were securely laying in their little spot on his bed (why Sirius always demanded to do the showcasing on Remus’ bed was lost to him (he learned a long time ago to not think about Sirius’ life decisions)) he pulled his hand closer to his face.

-Your hands are really pretty.

Remus’ voice was a soft rumble as he turned his hand this and that way, observing his skin. Sirius smiled and his expression melted instantly. Damn that observant bastard. Maybe Sirius played dumb most of his life to get people to do things for him, but he was far from stupid. He had two perfectly working (and looking) eyes and he knew how to use them. Right now those eyes told him that the cold of the early autumn night got to Remus and his bones were aching. He would probably have to take out his cane soon.

-Are they? - Sirius cooed at him softly. He let Remus have this moment and enjoyed the rare softness his dear boyfriend was showing him right now.

Remus rolled his eyes but smiled nonetheless.

-Yes, they are.

He pressed the softest kiss imaginable to Sirius’ wrist, holding his hand gently in his own trembling grip. He moved up, pressing little kisses higher and higher, over his wrist and palm. He stopped at the spot where his fingers started and turned Sirius’ hand over. He kissed his prettily pink knuckles and moved down. Around his thumb, on the back of his hand, over that one vein that always seemed to be there, nicely protruding from under his thin skin, his lips made their journey already engraved in his soul.

He tried fixing his grip on Sirius’ hand but hissed and let go completely.

-Remy? Are you okay? - Sirius’ awfully sweet voice hit his ears. There were suddenly thin fingers gripping his own in a gentle touch that made him want to weep.

-Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little achy from the cold.

They both knew it wasn't fine. The aching always started in his knuckles and then spread to his wrists, elbows and everywhere. Sirius decided one winter to knit him gloves and then have Lily, the lovely woman that she was, enchant them permanently with a warming spell. Although Remus’ hands got too big for them and the charm faded, he still always kept them in his trunk, safely tucked among his treasures.

-Well, if you say you’re fine, then you’re fine.

Remus knew Sirius wouldn’t drop it. He never did. He would find some sneaky way to make him feel better, just like he always found a way to get Remus to tell him he loved him.

-I think your hands are pretty, too. They’re the prettiest necklaces.

Sirius had a serious (no pun intended) look on his face but broke after only a second under Remus’ gaze and started giggling wildly. The sound tugged on Remus’ heart painfully. Call him a masochist, but he was happy for this pain.

-Okay, okay. But seriously, they are pretty. Because they’re yours.

Sirius started rubbing his knuckles in a completely not suspicious way. He picked up his wand, not suspicious, muttered something, also not suspicious, and tucked the wand into his bun. Remus felt heat spread over his fingers, Sirius’ rubbing only making the heat rise and melt deeper into his aching fingers.

He huffed out a breath but let Sirius do his thing, knowing how important this little ritual was to his dear boyfriend. And okay, maybe having the absolute prettiest person on the planet rubbing his aching knuckles gently while rambling about which crystals were the prettiest wasn't so bad after all. But you wouldn't catch him saying it.

And then, unfortunately for Remus’ poor heart, Sirius leaned down, held his trembling hands in his own and started pressing gentle kisses to every single knuckle on all ten of his fingers. Remus grumbled and tried pulling his hands away.

-No, Remy. Please let me. I wanna do this for you. - Sirius looked at him with the prettiest eyes in the universe and something in Remus crumbled. - If not for you, let me do it for me. I like to keep my jewelry in good shape.

He slowly relaxed his hands and let Sirius do his thing. His touch was gentle, like any pressure would cause him pain (which was actually probable, just not now. It got worse the colder it was, and during winter even holding a pen or squeezing his fingers together was just too much). The warmth seeped into his bones and spread through his body. The stress of the fool moon, annoyance over his slowly slowing down bones and anger over the whole world really, because why were there so many things that annoyed his dear boyfriend and why couldn't he fix them right now, slowly seeped away. His head started dropping and it was hard to keep his attention on Sirius.

-Hey, Remy? Let’s go to sleep. We can shower in the morning.

Remus quickly gathered Sirius into his arms and laid them both under the blankets, securely pushing Sirius’ lean body into his chest and wrapping his own long limbs around him. Right before and right after the fool moon the wolf in him would get possessive of Sirius and the only way Remus could sleep was with his painfully familiar body held in his arms.

He sighed happily into Sirius’ lavender smelling hair (because of course Sirius would give up his painstakingly crafted hair care routine just to use the shampoo that least irritated Remus’ sensitive nose around the full moon) and squeezed him tighter. The warmth of Sirius’ body pressed into his own seemed to soothe his perpetually cold and aching limbs and slowly lulled him to a deep sleep, uninterrupted by pain or nightmares.

#wolfstar #marauders #marauders era #remus lupin #sirius black #remus x sirius #not beta read we die like me rn #this was made for one (1) person

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celestialspecial · 2 years

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Palace of Stars and Shadows (Pt.3)

You woke back in the bedroom, unaware of how you’d gotten up the stairs after your fight with William. You’d only remembered falling asleep from sadness and exhaustion in a heap before the large fireplace, yet here you were, tucked in, warm sunlight pouring through the cracks in the curtains. All you could do was lay there fixated on the light flowing into the room, over your bed. Your bed. This was yours now, wasn’t it?

You’d tried to run like a fool, thinking over and over about William’s words, how dangerous it was to go it alone since he’d made it quite clear he wouldn’t follow or watch for your safety should you choose to leave. Was it even worth it? You’d thought maybe if you got home you could collect what little was left of your belongings and make a mad dash to another village. Start over, find a new home. But maybe this place where you now lay, maybe this was meant to be your new home.

A new dress had been lain on a cushy armchair across from your bed, shimmering threads wove through the fabric, catching the light. It too was a dark navy hue, but a lighter fabric this time, softer, more moveable. You needed to clear your head today, and the gardens seemed so welcoming. The balcony of your bedroom opened out over the expanse of foliage, a maze of plants, some you recognized, others were alien to you.

Pulling on the dress, looking at yourself in the large mirror in the corner of the room as you adjusted the fastens on the side. Sucking in a short breath to get the last stay to shut, well at least some things felt like home. You could see multiple workers filing throughout the castle, cleaning, cooking, planning all sorts of things that you couldn’t quite understand. Some looked like William, essentially human save for their ears, others had skin tones of dark navy like your dress, some had fawns ears and yellow eyes.

A few acknowledged your existence and others just went about their way ignoring you as you made your way through the threshold and out into the gardens. It was quiet, a light hum from the bees and sounds of your feet walking along the gravel pathway. The garden was similar to Tristan’s at the house of Light but here the foliage felt more wild, less preened to perfection. Raspberry bushes were overgrown, wild, fruit trees untamed and rose bushes with fragrant blooms dotted the path you were on.

A large greenhouse loomed ahead of you, silvery plated glass and all matter of plant life growing in and around it. You felt it calling to you, the mysterious beauty inside of it beckoning you closer. Once inside there were bursts of color, flowers the size of your head in deep violet, leaves of every shape and size cascading over one another and a tiny stream trickled throughout the center leading to a large fountain covered in moss. Was everything in fae truly this beautiful?

You’d been told how faeries coveted beautiful things, that when the two worlds split apart they kept all things magical and entrancing while humanity got the crumbs that were left over. Seeing this greenhouse and all the florals and fragrances you had never felt more sure that those stories were true. Your eyes were caught by a small fruit tree off the center behind the fountain. It had spherical fruits hanging on its slim branches, they looked like blueberries from your realm, but larger, the size of your fist.

Purple specks dotted the skin of the fruit and you felt your hand unconsciously reaching out to pluck a piece for yourself. It smelled fantastic and there were no other trees like it in the garden. It felt heavy in your hand, skin velvety smooth and a soft sweet scent. Pulling it to your mouth excited to taste something so different that you’d never seen before.

“I wouldn’t if I were you.” You froze, mouth still open, fruit inches from it. William walked in behind you, he looked refined and polished save for his eyes which seemed weary, as if he hadn’t gotten much rest the night before.

“And why not? If this is to be my home I don’t get to enjoy all its luxuries?” You sounded like a brat, your mother would’ve scolded you if she were still here. He moved alongside you, hand twining around yours that held the fruit, applying pressure and pulling it down from your mouth another few inches.

“Yes you do, but this fruit is…quite potent. Not many humans can handle it.” You frowned at that.

“You don’t believe me capable?” Amusement flashed in his eyes, no smile evident on his face just yet.

“I don’t know if you’d be happy with the repercussions of its effects.” At that you felt your hand drop of its own accord, dread sinking into your belly.

“Is it poisonous for humans?” His other hand stroked up the length of your arm, you shivered at the sensation, warmth sinking into your flesh as his other hand pried open your fist, removing the fruit from your grasp and pocketing it. When he looked back up at you his eyes met yours, you could see now that they were a dark shade of brown, flecks of gold when the light shone right.

“Not always. There are very few of these trees left and they only bear fruit under a full moon then once it’s over they shrink back for however long.” He pats the pocket holding the small sphere. “My castle gets the best direct moonlight in the land which is why they grow more often here.” A smile did finally play upon his lips then, “Tristan HATES it.” You cocked your head to the side, resuming looking at the tree, easing a hand to touch one of the leaves by where you’d plucked the fruit free.

It smelled like honey, closing your eyes you took a deeper inhale. You open your eyes to look back at William puzzled.

“It smells sweet, but also like baked bread, crisp air by the sea and… a sort of musk?” But how? There was no way a plant could smell like all those things, your mind must be playing tricks on you. He noted your confusion stepping towards the tree as well, fingers tracing along another low hanging plump fruit, turning it in his hand but wary to be sure it didn’t break off the stem.

“It smells like whatever you’re most attracted to. It draws you in in that way.” Now you were even more curious, it smelled of home and freedom to you and something else you couldn’t quite place, but the mystery of this new plant intrigued you further.

“Why? What does it smell like to you?” You questioned, eyeing his every movement as he moved away from the tree, gaze returning to yours.

“It smells like a cool breeze at night, crackling fires, fresh fruit and the electricity in the air before a storm.” You felt naked under his unyielding gaze, heat rising in your chest and surely appearing along your neck. He continued then, “it draws you in because it wants you to eat it. So it can serve its purpose.”

“Which is?” The corner of his mouth ticked up ever so slightly.

“It’s a fertility enhancing fruit. Fae use it when they want to…expand their empires as it were.” If you weren’t flushed before you were now, a strange tingling sensation shot through your limbs as you once again looked at the tree, so unassuming, it wasn’t the prettiest shrub by far but perhaps the most powerful.

“How does it work…” you pushed through the embarrassment, your clever and willful mind desiring to know more, to sate the curiosity this entire land seemed to drench you in. William took another step closer to you until his chest was inches from yours, you could see the chocolatey brown of his eyes, the fine lines along his features as he looked down at you and a small beauty mark under his eye that you hadn't noticed before.

“Surely you know how babies are conceived?” He must be jesting with you, you could see the teasing glimmer in his eyes. Defiant you took half a step away from him, needing a brief respite from him, his intense eyes, his smell, his body heat radiating over you.

“Yes o-of course I do. I meant how does the fruits properties take effect?” He gave you an appraising look before removing the fruit from his pocket holding it up between the two of you.

“It’s said to increase ones stamina and virility to the point where conception is almost guaranteed.”

“Almost? So then it’s not worked before.”

“I’ve never heard of it not working. Besides if it for some reason it doesn’t work the first try, well it provides the user the energy that by the 30th try one of those encounters will have taken.” William had always looked almost human to you besides his beauty, but now he looked positively fae. Wickedly handsome and an air of magic to him as he spoke pinning you with an obsidian stare, the seemed to crackle with invisible pin picks of electricity. You clenched your fists to stop yourself from shaking, desperate to move away from this plant that was still trying to take hold of you.

“You mentioned “it’s said”… does that mean you yourself have not partaken?” The feeling you were crossing a boundary was there but pleasantries be damned, if this was to be your new home you decided to toss aside the shyness you had. He placed the fruit back into his pocket before taking your elbow in his hand, guiding you away from the tree and further into the green house. You forced yourself not to look back at it, regardless of how much it felt it was calling out your name, begging you to take just one bite.

“I have not, nor do I have any offspring of my own.” You allowed yourself to relax in his presence, deciding if he could move on past last night then so could you.

“So you haven’t felt tempted enough to eat the fruit?” You jabbed a playful poke into his chest, his other hand surging out to clasp your hand , pulling it flat to his chest. He leaned in closer, mouth a whisper from your ear.

“Believe me I have considered it many a time.” The soft air blowing along the shell of your ear and the scent of him playing by your nose was enough for you to feel yourself clenching at his words. Imagining his hands grazing along your soft pliant body, kissing you senseless, no air left in your lungs to do anything but moan his name into the night. Your wide eyes met his, but then he was pulling you in another direction, towards another fruit bush.

This one looked more familiar to you, blackberries, wild branches sprung out this way and that. His hand pinched one off the stem and popped it into his mouth. You moved forward to do the same, wondering if he’d stop you again but he didn’t, you plucked one as well and admired the fruit. It was indeed a blackberry like you were familiar with but oh so different at the same time. It’s flavor washed over your tongue, sweet and tangy, the texture bursting in your mouth.

Smiling at him you grabbed another and another. Picking a handful into the palm of your hand, enjoying each bite more than the last. He grinned at you, then stilled your hand as it went to grab more.

“I think you need to leave some for me.” He actually let loose a chuckle this time, you loved seeing the lightness on his face and features. You took the berry you’d just picked between your fingers, holding it up to his mouth.

“Here let me make amends.” His eyes never left yours as he slowly opened his mouth for you to place the berry into. You watched him bite down and chew, wondering why it felt so erotic to just watch him.

He glanced over at the bush, picking another large fruit as well, holding it up to your lips as well. He blinked in reassurance as you parted your lips, letting him coax the small fruit into your mouth. Before he could withdraw his fingers you let your tongue graze the pad of his thumb, tasting him, then letting out a low moan when you chewed the blackberry. His eyes widened watching, then he took the same thumb to dot away a droplet of juice that had escaped you lips, bring the digit to his own mouth and sucking the juice off of it.

You were barely thinking anymore feeling yourself leaning in closer to him. William’s one hand rested along your waist, idly moving upwards, bunching up the dress at your side until he reached the stays. His other hand drew up to your jaw, pulling you closer to him until he slotted his lips over yours. You couldn’t suppress the moan you let out on your next breath.

At that he’s gripping you tighter to him, passion igniting on the next press of his lips to yours, tongue tracing the seam of your lips, when you open them fully he plunges in, devouring each moan you make hungrily. The slide of his tongue over yours, you can taste the sweet berries you both consumed greedily, but not as greedy as you felt fisting the fabric of his tunic, lips and tongue and teeth clashing, neediness aching between your legs.

As if he could read your mind his one thigh pushes upwards applying pressure to where you need it most. You rocked against his muscled thigh, gasping at the contact and wincing at the lack of breath you could pull into your lungs. His hands roamed your body, settling along your waist, running up the sides, fingers grazing the sides of your breasts forcing another whine of need from your lips.

He groaned in response, hands working your sides as you surged forward to capture his lips again. You suddenly could breathe deeper, resting your forehead against his, begging to be lost in his depthless eyes. You sucked his bottom lip into your mouth, running your tongue along it dying to taste every inch of him. To lose yourself in the moment, so much so that you didn’t know where you ended and he began. He groaned, a deep low noise at the sensation of your tongue delving into his mouth once more.

He grabbed your one leg pulling it up high, and bent to his side so you could feel the hardness under his trousers pressing insistently to your core. You bucked into the contact and he hissed, gripping you tighter to his body.

“Please. William…” you were flushed and barely able to stand a moment longer, but something snapped inside of him and he set you down, taking a few tentative steps backwards.

“I apologize. I don’t know what came over me.” He took another step back, painfully so. You shook your head, about to respond when he turned away, moving hastily towards the entrance of the green house. “I will see you at dinner.” Was all he said before he was gone from sight. You realized the stays of your corset had been undone and it gaped open at the side, that’s how you were able to breath more fully. What his skillful hands had been occupied with while your lips met again and again.

You touched your lips that still felt like they were buzzing from the contact. You realized then what that other musky scent was, emanating from the fruit tree that you couldn’t quite place at the time. It smelled like William.

The hours ticked by as you wandered the grounds, exploring all that you could until dinner time. Sunsets you decided, we’re different in fae. The colors ebbed slower, the sun slowly dipped down and it felt like it was putting on a show for all to see. You entered through the large carved doors into the main hallway of the castle. Realizing how little you’d explored the many rooms and halls. The dining room was equally as large as sitting room, just slightly smaller than the ballroom.

It made your head dizzy looking up to the ceiling and craning your neck to look at each stained glass window and detailed carving. The table was set with an abundance of food, more than was necessary for only two of you, unless there were guests you were unaware of. Instead of two seats at opposite ends of the long table there was one at the head and another on the right hand side.

Assuming that one was for you, you moved over to take a seat, pulling the chair in. When it slid faster than expected into place you looked up to see William releasing his hands from the back of your chair and moving into his own.

“You never seem to have an issue sneaking up on me.” You noted, he only smirked in response before taking a sip from the goblet in front of him.

Yours hands fisted in your lap, tugging at a loose thread. How were you to continue with dinner without acting like not a few hours prior he had his tongue down your throat. When it seemed he was going to continue ignoring your earlier encounter you decided to let it go…for now.

“What did you do with that fruit you put in your pocket earlier?” William took another sip of wine, eyes narrowing in on you.

“What of it?”

“I’m just curious. If you have no intention of using it-“

“And who said that?” A moments pause then he actually laughed when you realized your expression must’ve shown your intrigue and mild horror. “I intend to repot it and plant it in the greenhouse, hoping it’ll take root and we’ll have two moon fruit trees.”

“Moon fruit? Is that truly what it’s called?”

“It has many different names depending on who you ask but yes, the most common is moon fruit.” You watched as your plate magically filled with decadent treats and morsels from around the table. He nodded towards your plate. “Please. Eat. It’s all safe.”

At that you picked up the fork and knife on either side of your dish and took hearty bites from the meat in front of you as well as a few slices of cheese and figs. You couldn’t believe how delicious everything tasted, how much stronger the flavors were. Taking a long sip from your own wine goblet your eyes widened as it felt like the bubbles burst on your tongue releasing more fizz and fruity aromas. As your eyes darted around to pick out the next thing you’d like to try you realized William was watching you amusement glimmered in his eyes.

“W-what?”

“Nothing. You’re just…entertaining to watch.” You felt heat rise into your cheeks, feeling mildly embarrassed.

“I’m not here solely for your entertainment.” He adjusted himself in his seat.

“No. You’re not. I did not mean it that way. It’s just…I haven’t seen anyone so curious in such a long time. Seeing this world with fresh eyes it’s- not common.” You nodded, but still sheepishly set your fork and knife down to take a breather from your meal.

“Why am I here? You saved my life and for that I’m grateful, but why keep me here if you have no use of me. Return me to my world in a different area?” His dark eyes roved over your body, you felt the heat of his gaze, watching as his eyes lingered on your face, then your chest, before moving downward and returning back to meet your own eyes.

“Who says I have no use of you?”

The words made your heart skip a beat, but also you could feel the color leave your cheeks. Wondering desperately what he could mean by that. As if unaffected by his response he went about plating more fruit onto his own dish, you could only gape until he chewed on a forkful of some bizarre pink fruit that seemed to be covered in honey.

“I do not know what you mean.” Playing dumb might be helpful right now. You were so ignorant in many things fae, never once considering you might be in a plight like this one day. He only pinned you with his darkened eyes before grabbing a decanter to refill his glass.

“Tell me. What do you mortals know of fae?” The question caught you off guard, mind swirling thinking back to all the warnings you’d been told as a child.

“To not go into the forest. To not eat the food. To not engage with any of the fae, or look them in the eyes.” There were others you couldn’t remember. William leaned back in his chair, crossing a long leg over the other, swirling the contents of his goblet before taking another long sip, eyes never leaving yours.

“Well we see how well you listened to all that.” He was right, you’d done everything you’d ever been told not to do, no wonder you were here now, paying the consequences. “There was another thing you should never do.”

You sheepishly looked up at him from your seat, feeling like a child being reprimanded.

“And what is that?”

“You should never give them your name.”

#fae!billyrusso #fae moodboard #billy russo #billy russo fanfic #Billy Russo x Reader #billy russo x female reader #billy Russo edit #punisher fanfiction #marvel the punisher #ben barnes #ben barnes character

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1nm2 · 10 months

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❛ you’ll beg for more. ❜ Professor Pyg (to Poison Ivy) @trashcollected

After the appetisers, I slice and fork up my ribeye cut and cram it into my mouth. My lips crack, getting around the pulsing chunk of steak. Tasty juice from its fat-slugged sides sloshes over the ridges of my teeth. Hot grease and drool sloops around on my tongue.

People who say red meat will kill you, they don’t know the half of it.

Go plant-based, vegan. It makes you feel better, and feeling better is a personal choice, your first choice. Your second, maybe, would be a little black dress for the reason you’ll have nicely shaped tits.

But you don’t have an inkling, do you? You don’t have a first choice, or second. You chose from the choices already given to you. What you know is a drop. What you don’t know is the ocean.

Under the burning sun, Samsung glints into existence. I stare at the screen by the turnstile that recognizes my face and it lets me in. I go to one of the basement floors, and take a long, well-thought-out route to a place not known to most. The choice not given to the rest of the corporation. After the zig-zags, the lights get dimmer. The atmosphere locks loosely around you in an inescapable dream. This is why we have rules and regulations set in place, to maintain order and cleanliness so we can work. People need somebody to send gifts to at Christmas so they stay poor. People need to say no to plastics and use paper so they cut down more trees. People need to send fewer trawler nets to the ocean floor so they change their diets to plant-based foods that openly taste exactly like meat.

I slide past the entrance of my translucent tarp, that looks very much like a greenhouse. All you have to do in The Place is be grateful. I set my bag and scarf down and glove up. I turn on the laminar flow and turn around to get all my tools in order. The woman I go to has eyes that are wide-set, like mine. Her lips, however, are too sharp and masculine, and her nose too big for her face. She looks like Anya Taylor-Joy, but she’s called, F. St. Sigmund, Austria. F for female. St. Sigmund after the region she was found in.

Sorry for the long lunch, I tell her. You’re a hero. A pioneer. I do this with everybody, because they were kidnapped, drawn into this trade by the choices that were given to them, and once they’d found out so much about humanity, about what was really going on, there was no turning back. Backed into the corner, they’d go with what their rest of their failing realities could handle; that this had to happen because we lived in a dying world and we’ve known it for the past decades. This could save lives.

I may not be a doctor, but I can slice and splice. That’s what I’ve done before on plants, insects, rats, other animals, and then humans. With the sharp tip of my scalpel, I make a half-inch horizontal incision on her arm, then two vertical incisions on each side to create a flap. I insert my finger to open it more, and slide the scalpel as best I can to cut out a piece of her. I’m only looking for a compatible additive with living human flesh. The questions have come flooding in. What makes plant-based, artificial meat taste just like beef? The same beef-tasting Hema produced in cows was replicated from soy, but was too carcinogenic for the market. So to not be the aggressive victim, the big professional loser, we pushed real human flesh from the slave trade into the food. Now it tastes too much like meat. It’s raising questions and we have to change the formula again.

If a botanist studied plants, does that make me a humanitarian?

‘ You’ll beg for more. ‘

I stand up in shock at the gravelly voice.

‘ B-beg? ‘ A tiny voice croaks from my throat.

Why is everyone so meeann?

I knew something like this was bound to happen. The stuff we had was too valuable. People would break in if they could and come stealing. It’s so much more value for them than it is yours. It’s so unregulated. It’s not about looking good, at least not on the surface – but you’ll still win when you’re the one with the legal job, holding your assets legally. They come in and try to steal, and hurt you. They want you to be broken and humiliated, like they probably were. Just your whole life, keep telling people, okay, okay, okay. I’m sorry.

I pull out my glock and aim it at him. My bloody glove makes it so slippery to hold on. It suddenly feels so hot I realise I'd been drenched with sweat for awhile.

‘ Get out. ‘

#trashcollected #( voice ). poison ivy

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libraford · 3 years

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I owe you all a story about kittens. But its about... a little more than kittens. It's a long one.

I want to tell you all about the kittens, which took place in 2019. But in order to do so, I have to take you back even further, to March of 2018, and concludes in 2021. Because it's about kittens, but it's also about business and all the things that can go wrong.

In March 2018, tragedy struck. The owner of the flower shop died unexpectedly, leaving the business to four capable managers. One of those managers was the man that had hired me, leaving a power vacuum at our location. Grandpa was not the first choice to take the lead, but she stepped up and she became manager. In my opinion, there was no better person for the role: she had only ever worked in the flower industry (assuming we're not counting the one week in 1976 when she worked at a pizza parlor,) and as such she knew the business inside and out.

Prior to this, she had taught all of the designers and practically ran the place when the boss was out, so it was the next logical step. And it was good.

Of course, we had our ups and downs. What I did not realize when I joined the flower shop is that the flower industry is volatile- there are so many variables that went into the creation of floral pieces and if there is one misstep you can be set back anywhere from a day to several thousand dollars. There are late deliveries, there are frightening brides, there are missing piñatas… van fires, flower snobs, color corrections, failed psychics, friends, enemies…

You can set the bar so very low and yet…

The rise and fall of drama at this particular flower shop could be dictated into hours and minutes because sometimes you need to hire people just to fill that space. Grandpa was on record by saying 'if they can walk, talk, and spell their name, hire them.' Even so, we were critically understaffed most of the time because if you hire anyone you're going to get a lot of quitters.

It's a tough cycle to break, and our power was limited.

And we had bigger fish to fry: we had an average of thirty funerals, two weddings, and well over six hundred deliveries per week. Business was booming and we just had to keep up- if you make it one week after the next it doesn't feel so bad.

By March of the following year, the four owners had whittled down to two: my former boss and the former webmaster. We had a district manager now, some kind of accounts position… things like that. It was kind of astonishing that before this, all the work had been done by a single man. But the secrets to his success had died with him.

Things were looking good, actually: the flower business was full of life! We were doing all kinds of special events, starting contracts with businesses and getting our name out there. Drama still plagued us, but as far as I'm aware, that's par for the course for flower shops.

Then, in May 2019, tragedy struck. A tornado ripped straight down the street of our headquarters, demolishing the greenhouse and the historical building that it all started in. No one was injured, but the damages were devastating. Despite all this, we kept working.

We worked hard. And hard. And hard.

And though the new warehouse wasn't slated to be finished until 2021, we reached an equilibrium where things were okay.

But before I get to that, I made a promise to you.

It was a hot day in August and I was walking into my closing shift at 10am. After two years of working with roughly the same people, you got to learning how to tell when something was happening. I walked in to everyone staring at me and acting 'natural.' It never looks natural.

In the back of the store, there was a box that Cherry was standing very purposely in front of.

"What's in the-"

"Sh!" Grandpa spied through the window in the cooler door as someone swung out with a purchase. "Did you find something you like," she asked the customer, trotting over to help him at the register.

"What's happening," I asked Blue.

"Nothings happening, it just kind of… happened."

"Blue… what does that MEAN?"

"There's a customer here, I can't talk about it."

I am bursting at the seams to know what's going on.

Grandpa fared the customer well and went back to her station behind the computer. "Open the box," she said.

Ominous, but okay. I go over to the box and Cherry steps aside. There's something moving inside the box and I wonder if Pam's daughter had folded herself into a box to ride out a panic attack again. I carefully opened the flaps of the box and accidentally disturbed the sleep of-

Four.

Tiny.

KITTENS!

Oh my god, it was the most adorable thing in the world and the poor things were screaming because they had only known the world for a few weeks and everything was strange and blurry and all they knew to do was cuddle for warmth and scream. The box consisted of two black kittens, one tuxedo kitten, and a white seal-point with terminal eye goop.

They immediately started climbing up my arm.

"Not that I'm not thrilled, but… why?"

"Stray cat left her babies out by my pond and wasn't just gonna leave the little fuckers," Grandpa said. The seal-point made it all the way up my shoulder to scream in my ear and stare at me with one clear blue eye. "That one's name is Pop-eye. He's my favorite."

"Jake doesn't get along with them," I surmised. Jake was Grandpa's Australian Shepherd. He was old, blind, deaf, and losing his sense of smell. And he was ornery.

"First thing he did was sit on Pop-eye. So they're gonna be at the shop during the day until we can get them all homed. Know anyone that needs a kitten?"

So, for awhile, we had shop cats. One of the all black twins had been claimed the very next day, but the rest of them were with us for some time. We got very good at feeding them all every hour on the hour and eventually they settled into accepting that 'mom' was seven different people.

In the meantime, we had to hide the three of them from visiting management.

This was not my first round with cat-related crimes.

The district manager, Puppet, was due to come for a visit any time that week. He was supposed to come once a month for a routine check in, and there were only ten days left in August. Likewise, we had to hide the kittens from the customers on the off chance that one of them was a secret shopper.

Backtracking once more to explain: the company had shelled out money to pay a third party to send secret shoppers to grade us on a rubric and also whatever they thought was appropriate. The grades were cleanliness, customer service, how knowledgeable we were of products, things like that. If we got above 90%, there would be a bonus in our next paycheck.

Sounds great, right?

The spies could decide that anything wasn't up to their standard. One woman went on and on about our 'black wall,' which was the outside of our cooler and I'm sorry but… that's not changing. There was a complaint that the table at the front used to showcase our bridal seemed out of place and odd. There dirt in the flower pots… where dirt goes. Corporate reads those comments.

So keeping the children out of sight of the customers and any visiting management became our priority.

'So just keep them in the break room,' I hear you, the reader, suggest.

If you've never owned cats, it is imperative for you to know that they are mostly comprised of spine, and only the smallest of openings will deter them from squeezing into parts unknown. Cats are semi-solids. Kittens are semi-solids with a sense of adventure and little tiny needles for fingernails.

And you can't just tape the box shut.

So… they got out. Well, two of them got out. The tuxedo awoke to find that her brothers had gone exploring without her and did the sensible thing, which was cry about it.

Mood.

I have named this cat Brood X Cicada. The black one can be named Abyss. I'm great at naming cats.

Lucky for us, they're only a few weeks old and walk kind of like little tin soldiers. It took all of five minutes to pry Pop-eye from a piece of Styrofoam and locate Abyss exploring an old toolbox. However, by the time I'm done cat collecting, Brood X Cicada had toddled off in search of her brothers and I'm out of hands to hold kittens in. I stuffed Abyss into my apron pocket and tried to save X from eating plastic.

It is at this moment that Cherry came in to tell me that Puppet the District Manager was on his way, and saw that I was helplessly juggling kittens. Abyss was climbing out of my pocket, eager to join his siblings in the high and exalted position that was my hands.

"We need these kittens out of here," I said. "Who hasn't been on lunch yet?"

Cherry dodged her head back into the workshop. "Hey Key, you been on lunch?" Pause. "You wanna go now?"

Key came into the back room and I handed her the box of kittens. "Take these, in your car. Go to burger King or something, I don't care. Puppet cannot see these. If anyone asks, you're on a route."

Key held the box and took a moment to appreciate the series of events that lead to her being handed a box of kittens in a 'Take this, don't ask questions' kind of matter.

Puppet was in the front door as Key was out the back and we successfully avoided a serious mistake. His visit was only an hour and she walked back in without anyone the wiser.

We made it through the big challenge, now to continue looking for homes for them. Ms. Crow found a friend of a friend of a friend that was excited to take Abyss from us. After some interrogating my friends, I found someone who knew someone who could take Pop-eye and Brood X Cicada. (They were renamed Hocus and Pocus.)

Grandpa cried for every single one of them that had to go. And I remembered my very first day of working there when she introduced herself as 'The Tinman.' What a liar, the softy.

Our days went on kitten-free, the management none the wiser.

It was December when I got the feeling that I should be taking photos of my work to build a portfolio. Something wasn't right, I felt. I couldn't say what it was that put me on edge, but I could only say that all was not well. I took photos of everything that I was proud of, and I was proud of a lot of things. By February, I had over fifty items that I could show off to a potential studio. And I thought- in March, I should start looking to see if other shops are hiring.

And in March 2020, tragedy struck. Our state went into lockdown on March 13, dictating that all non-essential businesses close and non-essential staff be laid off. There were two days where none of us knew what was happening, if we had jobs or if that job was safe.

They laid off all but three designers and Grandpa but kept most the drivers, changed our hours to 8-5, closed Sundays. Canceled weddings. No walk-ins. The three designers were Blue, Red, and me.

Blue was worried about her children. She resigned.

Red's wife was worried about him and harassed him into quitting.

And then there was one.

There's a series of poems I wrote in my journal about being an essential worker during lockdown. There's adorable little doodles of skeletons around the margins, festooned with flowers. They all go something like this:

We are the Skeleton Crew.

We once were seven but now are two

We don't know what to do

So we just work, work, work.

Many may wonder how a flower shop would be considered an essential business. The answer is funerals. We were allowed to remain open because of our relationship with the funeral industry. And sad to say: the industry was booming.

And I did all of it. I made every spray, every 'get well soon' vase, every 'happy quarantine' bouquet. I called angry brides to see if they could postpone, I dealt with everyone's grief and uncertainty.

All the flowers that arrived at US Customs through Italy were destroyed because we didn't know whether coronavirus was transmitted through physical contact and there's no way to sanitize flowers. Not without killing them.

It was me and Grandpa. That was it. Ten funerals a day, and everything else. Flowers were more important than ever: you couldn't be there, so you sent flowers. And flowers and flowers and flowers…

I couldn't leave now. I was important, I was needed.

The work became overwhelming for both of us and we began hiring back some of our staff. Some came back right away, bored out of their skulls having to spend time at home. Can't relate. Key never responded, Cherry was pregnant and shouldn't be out of the house.

Dandy came back, Kali came back, Astra came back. Eventually, Blue. After a month of just me and Grandpa, there was almost a full crew and it was enough for us to get through an average week. It took us a month on our bare knuckles but we finally weren't shouldering the responsibility of seven people.

But we still didn't know jack shit about the future there.

In May, the 'economy opened up,' which is a strategic way of saying that people got tired of never leaving the house and stores were pressured to open back up again before a vaccine was released under threat of… you know what? This isn't a story about how America responded to the coronavirus poorly and you can probably find a better thinkpiece about it written by someone with facts and feelings if you want to squeeze yourself behind a pay wall.

This is about workers rights and kittens, two things that are far more important than the economy.

We got 'Hero Pay,' which was two dollars extra per hour and damn did I grasp onto that with the tendons in my wrists. I had never been paid $12 an hour for anything in my life. They started talking about permanent raises, and benefits, 401K, pregnancy leave… and I started thinking… maybe I could stay. Maybe I can stay here for awhile and it won't be so bad now that I'm getting paid actual human wages. Maybe it will be okay.

Life returned to an uneasy normal while we navigated mask laws, sanitation regulations, safety screens, and daily temperature checks. There are stories to tell about some less than great customers we'd had as people realized that they weren't coping with the pandemic as well as they thought, but they deserve their own entries.

We had a revolving door of open positions. If it wasn't a designer it was a driver or both. People weren't ready to come back to work yet but we still had a business to run. People asked if they could perform this job remotely. I'm not sure how one does flowers from home.

It was August when we started feeling the roots of our problems seep into the foundation.

Grandpa's pride and joy was her funerals. She had spent thirteen years building a relationship with the funeral homes in the area to make sure they trust us and our work. If anything was wrong, even a hair out of place, they knew they could call us and have it fixed before the visitation.

"We want unity across the board on our products," Puppet said. "If you're doing the sprays one way and others don't look the same, it doesn't look very good for Oldman Funeral Home, which has locations in all our cities, does it?" He swept his bangs out of his eyes, which was strange tell but we weren't sure for what.

"Okay," Grandpa said. "Schedule a time for me to go down and I'll teach them the way we do them."

"Okay, then."

She went down, prepared to show the crew in the warehouse what 40 years in the business was capable of, only to be met with a strange kind of resistance.

Their head designer greeted her and immediately started instructing her on how he makes sprays. Grandpa, confused, blinked at him with no words. When he was finished, she picked up her clippers and began making her own.

"That's not how we do it," he said. She was met with criticism after criticism. "That's not enough flowers, you're putting them in wrong, you're still making it one-sided. Why did you put the bow there, this looks nothing like our products."

She stood back after his barrage of blows to the ego. "I guess I'm a little confused."

"I'll say."

"Am I teaching you or are you teaching me?"

"I'm teaching you," he said. "Since they're going to all be made here from now on, they want me to show you how we make them in case of emergency."

She let that simmer. "That's not what I was told."

"You didn't think you were supposed to show me how you do it, did you? That doesn't make any sense. Why would we want to look like yours?"

"Oh, I dunno… maybe because we've kept up 30 accounts for 13 years and your location just lost your very last one because you can't make their delivery times and they're across the damn street."

This was how we learned that corporate was planning on taking our funerals from us.

Funerals were something I was immensely proud of. My ability to turn out a thousand dollar funeral order with limited stock was a subject of envy. I could take a phone order, make the flowers, and the deliver it all by myself within an hour. I was good. We were all good. And we trained anyone that stayed longer than two months how to do this because we wanted every person to be able to fix any problem.

And they wanted to take that away from us.

And they did. Because who was going to stop them?

'But what does that matter to you,' I hear you, the reader, ask. 'Surely this meant less work for you!'

Ah, but for the sprays to get to us, they had to come on a truck. Making them in-house meant that we knew we had them. We had to put our trust in corporate to deliver the goods to us by 7 am or we would have to make them day of.

There were days when the truck didn't come, or where only half the pieces were delivered, or a spray got left in the workshop an hour away. At least once a week, often more.

But you know… we adapted. You just schedule more openers to make sure no one is doing it alone and hope to God that you have all the flowers you need to make it. Which you could never anticipate how many flowers you would actually need because them taking our funerals was supposed to reduce the amount of stock flowers we got as well.

Mornings were nightmares, but we adapted.

Another visit, Puppet told Grandpa that she should get all weekends off. All the other managers do. He suggested that I learn to run routes so she can have weekends, and I said okay. I'll learn it.

I got real acquainted with the map of Ohio, and I hated it. I was a weekend manager with no real managerial power. If someone needed a refund, I had to write a note for Grandpa to email the accounts manager because she wouldn't take requests from anyone that wasn't a manager. Everything just waited until Monday. What was the point of me? I couldn't design while managing and I couldn't fix what was broken, so why even have a weekend manager? Let the animals loose in the zoo and it probably would have been a better fit.

But I powered through. I adapted.

Throughout all this, spreadsheets. Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets. Completely pointless spreadsheets that we were bound to fill out all day every day. They had simple purposes: inventory. You filled one out to take count of the specials so you knew how many there were. Then you had to count again to put them in the system so that they knew how much we had. Then you had to go back and count them again and put that number in the computer so they knew how much to make and send tomorrow.

I spent an hour each day counting and recounting the flowers in the far-off and futile hope that the counts would remain accurate to the end of the day (which they did not because the call center consistently used the wrong codes) and that the stock would be replenished properly in the morning (it was not.)

An hour was lost each day to this and it accomplished nothing, yet they always yelled at Grandpa if the counts were off or it was late. Why stress a system that does jack shit?

And every time there was a new feature or there was a new… thing, oh look! Another goddamned redundant spreadsheet that served no purpose.

But we adapted. We created a rhythm.

Show up early at 6:30 to make sure everything got in, make everything that didn't, get the drivers routed, pull routes for the third party deliveries, process same-day orders, data entry for the funeral consolidated. Then at 7, when the phones start ringing…

Okay, so before I forget:

Instead of installing a new phone line and hiring a few more call center people like a normal company would, our headquarters decided it would save us money if call overflow rerouted to the next available phone line, regardless of which location the phone was at. So we would get calls for the Kentucky store asking questions about what that store has and for the sake of preserving confidence in our brand we were supposed to pretend that we were the Kentucky store. We're just supposed to know or assume to know what each store had in stock because there's no way that could ever backfire.

It was… another thing to yell at us for. And boy did they, because they were listening in on our calls. Not to like… coach us on how to do better, but to tell us we were wrong. Sometimes they would call one of us on the other line to tell someone currently on the main one that they said something wrong. They also would straight up lie and scold us for calls we didn't take. The phones system, was simply a mess.

...so when the phones started up at 7am, and one person is designing, one person is taking unending phone orders, Grandpa is doing damage control. By 8, we have most of last nights orders figured out and it's time to start on same day orders and tomorrow's orders. It's too early to do inventory now because they'll yell at us for doing it too early.

By 9 we have our second wave of same day orders and next day orders, the rest of the world realizes we're open and starts walking in. That requires the attention of an entire person. We're at this point also taking out trash, breaking down boxes, disinfecting, sweeping the cooler.

Typically, there were only two openers on any given day, which meant most of this was all being handled by Blue or me.

By 10 we've caught up, we can do the inventory now without getting yelled at by the four heads at corporate. We're on route #3 by now and someone probably had to go to the same place twice because the orders came in late.

At 11, a crisis has probably happened. Something dropped, something wilted, something wasn't what they imagined. Someone has to go fix it, and that someone was usually me because I knew my way around town better than the other transplants.

This typically returned me to the shop around 1pm, which meant it was time for lunch, bringing me to 2. 3 o'clock was the cutoff for any next day orders to be sent to corporate, which meant that if there were any funeral orders taken for the morning, they would have to be made in-house. This included sprays, which takes half an hour to an hour depending on how complicated it was and if we had the materials and how much else we needed to make for the next day. Or how busy we were.

There was always something called in at the last minute, taking us to 4 and then 5 o'clock, when the openers went home and the same-day orders were cut off.

But see, that was when we stopped taking orders, not when we stopped processing orders. So if an order was placed for the same day at 4:59, it may not go through until 5:30. And by 5:30, chances are you've sent your drivers home for the day. Which means calling the customer to apologize and explain why something can't be sent out today, and no one wants to hear that they fucked up by sending it out late.

So, on more than one occasion, I had to personally deliver flowers on my way home from work in my personal car, thirty minutes out of my way because if we miss a delivery by God will we hear about it. And it was always some damn $25 arrangement with 'God Loves You' written on the tag, hardly worth the gas to Johnstown.

The irony of it being delivered by the witch was lost on no one.

If that didn't happen and the screen was clear, the night was easy and all we had to do was clean up and watch the door.

Unless a last minute order for the next day came in, which was about half the time. All of this for $11 an hour. (Once they got rid of the Hero Pay, it went back down to $11.)

That was an average, unexciting day for us. You got used to those kinds of stresses, but every day I came home and I was so tired and sore that I couldn't move. I started walking with a cane, had a low-grade fever most days, and my hands looked like I'd taken to them with a cheese grater.

But I powered through. I adapted.

Then it was December. The owners had always been generous with Christmas bonuses, handing everyone an envelope of cash. Mine was $500. This was the largest amount of cash that anyone had ever handed me (feel bad for me later.)

And then it was Grandpa's turn, but there were no envelopes left. It had to be a mistake, she thought. She didn't get paid very much for all the work she put into the shop, so she was counting on that bonus to buy presents for her grandchildren. It… it… had to be a mistake, right?

"I didn't get a bonus," she said. "I thought the accountability didn't take effect until January," she said to Puppet.

Before he opens his mouth again, I have to explain yet another thing.

In September, there was a meeting. Now that we were working on benefits and bonus programs and other things to make sure the staff stays, they needed to put in accountability measures for the managers. Effective January 1, managers are reflected by the income of their store, the number of returns, accidents in company vehicles, and high turnover rates.

Pick one of those attributes and decide its bullshit to begin with, and I'm about to show you the entire steer.

"We had to make an example of someone," he said. "So that the other managers know we're serious."

She was being personally punished for a car wreck that happened in 2019 even though she fired the guy that was in it. We had too many returns, he said, but most of them were sent to us from corporate. She was personally held responsible for the high turnover rate during an economic crisis AND a goddamned pandemic… because they needed to make an example out of someone.

And her grandkids didn't get presents this year because of it.

She cried. The last time I saw her cry was when we were saying goodbye to the kittens. It's not the same.

But she got up every day and listened to them scream at her while we counted and counted and recounted the fucking Christmas specials because the numbers weren't right and we couldn't make them right because someone in the call center couldn't figure out the codes and in their eyes it was our fault, too- we had to be stealing the flowers or something.

"It sucks and then its over," she said. It was how she dealt with holidays: "It sucks and then its over."

We were all angry for her. I got asked to go to the headquarters and help them mass produce more fucking specials and I offered the beat them up for her and she told me not to get involved. Head down, do the work, get it done.

One of the call center girls died of a heart attack a few days before I was due to help them mass. We were supposed to go to her funeral, but we all missed it because there was so much work to do.

Wait, let me back up… again. The company gave us all life insurance. The number we were quoted on our life insurance policy was $10,000, which seems like a lot but in the funeral business it's not. Your average funeral will eat up most of that, if not all. It's very expensive to die right now.

At least… we all thought it was $10k. I was certainly told $10k.

Turns out it was $1k, which isn't enough to buy you a box for your remains. The call center crew ended up crowdsourcing the rest- she didn't have much family.

And none of us could go to the funeral because we were working.

I worked two twelve hour shifts in that warehouse making the same goddamn centerpiece over and over again while a Frenchman in a scarf told me I was doing it wrong, while everyone was grieving on a time crunch.

I really should have beaten them up.

But we got through Christmas, for what it was worth. We found Grandpa some sales that she could get gifts from and we all worked together to make sure we were okay through it. I mean, we weren't- it was blind leading the blind. But we tried.

And then it ended. "It sucks and then its over," she'd always say.

And into January we go and we're back into the stupidity of trying to fight with hq about funerals. I'm constantly told that if we needed certain things we should have ordered them.

I… did. I did. I ordered everything we needed every damn day and it still never came because the left hand and the right hand can't even coordinate enough to pull off a high-five. But it can't be their fault. It has to be Grandpa's somehow.

Now during the week of Christmas, Grandpa had to take an extra day off because she got sick. It wasn't Covid, thank goodness. I can imagine it was a stress-related issue, but it's not my business. Due to the holiday, this put her at under 40 hours for the week.

So they paid her hourly.

...which is extremely illegal to do to a salaried employee, especially one that works way more than 40 hours a week with no overtime.

And then they told her that she'd already lost her quarterly bonus because of a fender-bender that happened on my watch, and because she lost 39 employees last quarter.

I write everything down. I keep a journal. I cannot find 39 employees, even going back the entire year… during a pandemic. They have to be making this up. They have to be because there is no way they can hold the dude that was fired for literally sleeping in the men's room against her.

And I was close to just telling them all that… when my grandma died.

I'm not getting into it, really. Because you know… she was 96 years old and… it happens. It's sad, but it happens. But the relevant point to make is that I was given an… inheritance. It wasn't a lot. Grandma wasn't loaded. But it would be enough for me to keep afloat for awhile if I ever needed to.

When I told my girlfriend, she said: 'you could quit your job.'

And I didn't want to think about that because the flower shop needed me. I was important there. I was special. And Valentine’s Day was just around the corner.

But I was thinking about it. I thought about it every day.

A week before Valentines Day, Grandpa was inconsolable. She had to leave work because her dog, Jake, wouldn't stop bleeding. She needed to get him to the vet.

Two hours pass and Blue gets a message asking her to come help her move the dog. Grandpa lives alone and she's not very strong.

Blue doesn't like dogs. She was bitten by one the first time she ever made a delivery.

And I am known for exceptional physical strength. So I went.

When I arrived, Grandpa was a mess. I had never seen her cry so much, and it wouldn't stop. And I was trying to be strong, but it's hard. Jake was still alive, but bleeding. He was confused and upset, and blind and deaf. He barked, he growled, and he lunged… but always pulled back when his legs buckled from the pain.

I had her grab a blanket and we rolled him onto it, using that to lift him. He thrashed and growled and snapped at me while we walked him towards the door, but he wasn't getting out of the wrap we had him in.

As we're out the door, I noticed a man at the neighboring house. He raised his hand in greeting, but lowered it in confusion.

"Grandpa, is it alright if I get him to come help while you bring the car around?"

The best she could do was nod.

"Yeah, sorry, to bug you but can I ask for a little help here?" He looks at what we're doing and drops his trash can lid to come help. "Yeah, just take that end there and we're gonna ease him into the car when she comes around."

He nodded, took the ends, and we tucked a very confused Jake into the back seat. I thanked the neighbor, Grandpa sped off, and I went back to work feeling extremely odd about it.

That was the first time that I'd ever met the dog: on his way to be put down.

I know it seems weird to tell that story, but there's a reason. Part of it is symbolic. Part of it has to do with kittens. But we're not there just yet.

So now it's February and it is crunch time for Valentine’s Day. We have no earthly idea what this holiday is going to look like because past experiences have us anticipating a large number of walk ins, but state regulations have put a limit of six customers inside the store at any one time. We were never given any… instructions on how to enforce that rule, so we just kind of vaguely set out roles for who has to be the bouncer at the flower shop.

But before all of that, we had to make 275 two-dozen red rose arrangements in bowls. Based on our sales last year and general growth, we were expecting something close to five hundred deliveries on our busiest day. If I wasn't making them, I was counting them. And I was counting, and I was counting, and I was counting… every hour, just like it was at Christmas. We used up every single red rose in the place and came up short.

To which we were scolded: we must have used the roses they sent us for other orders because there was no way the error could have been on their end! Their inventory was impervious to mistakes. Somewhere between the warehouse and our store, twenty-five packs of roses went missing! And why is it only our store that has these problems? Clearly it must be our fault- a store full of thieves and liars and delinquents.

They ended up sending more just because… you know… they care. I guess.

And every hour, they needed a number of something and I counted, and counted and counted…

I think it was February 8 that I started crying every day. When I slept I was stiff as a board because I made so many mistakes throughout the day that the idea of coming to work the next day just to make more mistakes made me lock up entirely. There was no way to relax. There was no winding down from a hard day of work because my body could not move anymore.

I felt like I was made of splintering wood.

I had a dream around this time that I quit my job. I was so happy. I thought about it almost every hour.

So I stayed out of the way at work, picking up cleaning projects because at least there I could be useful and it was dark enough in the cooler that if I started crying no one had to see it.

That cooler was so clean. I wouldn't recommend eating off of it because I used an entire bottle of bleach to clean the floor.

If we're not counting the constant barrage of demands from corporate to count, count, count; Valentine’s Day was worryingly uneventful. Previous holidays were chaotic: filling the requests of the most desperate and clueless men with deep pockets and expensive tastes. Corralling the temporary drivers and make sure no one gets into any crashes or… uh...tries to sell unregulated merchandise from their trunks. Trying to decide what "Malibu Barbie Pink" meant for that one customer who comes in every six months and orders it but has rejected every color pink on the spectrum that our store has ever offered.

On this one… nothing important happened.

We were… slow.

Grandpa started sending people home early because there weren't many orders. We ran out of projects to do.

Sounds great, right?

...heh…

Corporate would like to know why our store is under projected sales by over 200, as if we have any say in how many people buy from us. Like we personally called all our typical customer base and told them not to come to this store. "Yes, hello Mrs. Penderghast? I'm sorry we can't fill your Valentine's Day order this year because we suck balls and don't want your business. Have a nice weekend. Say hi to the grandkids for me."

I don't… fucking KNOW! I don't work in PR! I'd ask the people in that department if they know what happened but… that's the owners. So who really is the fuckup here? Not me, that's for fucking certain! I cleaned the cooler. That's all I did all weekend was clean the Gods damned cooler because there wasn't enough work to go around so I made work for myself.

And then: "Why are the counts off," asked Mt. Rushmore. See, we called them that because between the owners, Puppet, and the head designer we had four white men looking down at us while we did all the work and built their success on the backs of their forefathers. Well… to me it was anyway. To everyone else it was four dudes that looked down on you.

"Why are the counts off?"

Oh, the COUNTS are off? Well, let me just drop everything I'm doing right now and count them for the third time in the past hour because that takes fucking priority.

"There's 95 specials missing from your inventory. Where are they?"

...okay, 95 is a lot. But it was also kind of hard to know how they were 'missing' when we'd sold all of the 275 that we made. How can they be missing if we sold them.

"We need to know where they are."

We don't know where they are. Because we sold all of them. The math didn't add up.

But they hounded us about it like we'd stolen them and resold them on the street corner. Which, to their defense, had happened once (but Sugar stopped doing that when her corner was taken over by the woman who accused Jay of being a demon.) But 95 is a huge number, and these arrangements were a foot wide and two feet tall. Someone would have noticed if a 100x200 foot square opened up in the cooler.

We literally could not know what the fuck they were talking about.

And the truth was extremely stupid: those 95 pieces were redeliveries. When someone has an issue with their order, like it didn't come or it was left out in the snow and got damaged or… someone put the name of their ex on the card instead of their wife… we send a replacement. But depending on who took the phone call, a person might use the wrong code and put it in for 'redeliver' instead- which counts it as another order.

We weren't missing 95 arrangements. We had 95 redeliveries. They hounded us about inventory for two days over a clerical error.

I decided I'd had it. We were going on a full week of crying every time I had a moment alone. They had made us feel like everything that went wrong was our fault: from low turnout to high turnover, missed deliveries and trashed sprays, lost accounts and new grievances…

But did they ever say a Gods damned thing about how hard we worked? How good we were? About how great a team we were under pressure? We once pulled together an entire wedding in fifteen minutes. My ass carried this store through the pandemic. I have done… so much.

So fucking much.

And yet it's our fault.

I had been reasoning with myself that I would stick around for the aftermath when Grandpa was eventually fired: we'd all felt it was coming. But I got that little bit of cash and all my joints were screaming and every time we got negative feedback a part of me died.

The following Tuesday had seen a massive snowstorm. Things that weren't already closed due to the pandemic were closed due to weather.

But we still had to be there. Because someone had to be there to make all the funeral pieces.

Because there wouldn't be a truck the next day, which meant that all of the funeral pieces that we'd sent to the headquarters needed to be made in-house. Which, once again, could have been avoided if we had kept the funeral orders in-house to begin with.

I waited until everyone had cleared out before I said it.

"Grandpa, I have to quit."

I don't think anyone ever looked so disappointed in me in my life.

"Why?"

"The way they treat people here is terrible and I can't see myself doing another Mother's Day for this company. They're so… mean! And for no damn reason! I have cried every day for the past week because I see the way they treat you and I'm… I'm tired."

I thought she was going to cry, but she nodded. "I can't stop you," she said. "I shouldn't stop you. If it's affecting your mental health like this, I'll miss you but its for the best. You know they'll want a written notice."

"And you know I'll tell them the truth," I said.

"...it's not me, is it?"

"If I worked for just you and those fuckers were out of the picture, I would stay. And you can count on me to tell them that."

"Any flower shop you apply to would be lucky to have you."

So I drafted up a resignation letter telling them exactly how I feel: that the way they run this company was asinine and they treated their employees like garbage. They received it on Thursday. Everyone at the shop knew by then. They were upset…

...but they understood.

Puppet did not understand. He emailed Grandpa asking her what she's doing that her people keep leaving.

He didn't see it. He didn't see that he was part of the problem. It always had to be someone else's fault. I explicitly said in my letter whose fault it was and he still didn't take any responsibility.

But suddenly I'm one of their best designers, and he begged me to reconsider, take some time off to think about it. They desperately wanted me to stay and they were willing to bargain, I just needed demands.

No one's ever… begged me before. I don't know if I like that.

This is when it dawned on me that I was next in line. It all made sense now: training me to route, making me do all the extra work, and now they want me to stay?

They were planning on getting rid of Grandpa and promoting me to manager. In a perfect world where Grandpa resigns willingly and I’m promoted on my merits as a designer and the company wasn’t very quickly circling the drain, I would be excited. But I wasn’t. I was frightened. I watched them take a confident, extremely talented woman and turn her into the whipping boy of the flower shop. And if I were in her position, I would have quit. But I don’t have the strength to stand up to the people that are signing my paycheck.

Why… am I at a place where the idea of moving upward makes me more scared than excited?

Flattering, but no. I've seen how you treat your people. My demands are to treat them better.

It was the longest week for me: making lists of pros and cons. I had made a lot of friends there and there's stuff that I will never forget. But the fact that the only people who didn't understand why I was leaving were the people who had the most to lose really hit me in the knees. I could tell them every day for the rest of their lives why they suck and it wouldn't matter because nothing was ever their fault.

And at 7:00 on Friday, I turned in my key.

I didn't have a plan, I didn't have anything lined up. This was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make and I was just kind of… throwing myself at it.

I don't do that. I always have a plan. I look into every possible scenario and I try to make the smart choice. And this time…

I didn't.

It was probably stupid.

But I slept for 12 hours the next night and I could feel my bones settling into their rightful places. I didn't realize how many health problems were caused by standing for 9 hours a day, 11 days a week until I was home all the time to notice them changing. I will always have a limp from trying to pretend I don't have a limp. I'm pretty sure that ulcer is chronic. But my back isn't seizing up and I don't cry every day anymore.

That's something, I think.

About a week after my departure, I got a text from Grandpa that said:

"Hey guess what."

"What," I replied.

The next text was a picture of a week's old seal-point kitten with terminal eye-goo, wrapped in a towel.

"Pop-eye!?"

"I'm keeping this one," she said. The strays had dropped a litter of identical baby kittens by her pond. Two years later, with Jake put down, she could finally have Pop-eye, even if it was version 2.0.

The next text was a few days later. "Puppet fired me."

"What!? Why?"

"Too many accidents, too high turnaround. The new people suck, he says no one wants to work with me."

"Are you okay? How are you doing?"

"I'm okay." She paused and the loading screen did its little dot dance. "I'm playing with my kitten."

#cw #pet death #death #workers rights violations #if you want to know everything #this is everything

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heyiwrotesomethings · 3 years

Text

Winter Sunshine

Haley (Stardew Valley) x They/Them Reader

A/N: As far as warnings go, the only thing that may not be your cup of tea are the suggestive themes in the last bit of the fic like, last couple sentences. Nothing explicit. Hope you enjoy! Also I’m adding word counts now because it's even a surprise to me how much I’m actually writing on the tiny screen of my phone lol. Word Count: 1,672

“This better be worth it.” Haley grumbled to herself as she trudged through the slushy snow. Her arms wrapped tightly around herself did nothing to fight back the bone chilling wind that burned her nose and cheeks, relentlessly blowing her hair into a tangled mess and undoing the hour long efforts to make it look nice for her farmer.

“It’s their fault I’m out here in the first place. If they have a problem with my hair, I’ll tackle them to the ground and give them a whitewashing they’ll never forget,” Haley told herself. In previous winters, nothing could make Haley leave the warmth of the home she shared with her sister. The snow while admittedly charming, somewhat romantic, did not impress Haley at all. Not when it meant she would have to freeze her ass off. There was no beach combing or sunflowers in winter, ice cream lost its appeal, and her photography suffered because again, it was too cold! Mittens made her clumsy, Haley would hate to lose her camera in a snowbank. Even with her mittens, her fingers felt frozen. It simply wasn’t worth it. But for her farmer, she would brave the ice and snow just to see their stupid, cute, face.

It was only five in the evening, but the sun was already good as gone. The faint glow of (Y/n)’s porch light helped guide Haley through the frigid fields, her boots finally clomped onto the the solid steps of the porch. She stomped her feet to kick the snow free from her boots, thuds resonated off of the sturdy wood.

The noise stirred movement from inside the house. The front door swung open revealing the farmer, looking, in Haley’s humble opinion, overly enthusiastic.

“Haley, you made it!” (Y/n) grinned, stepping out of the warm house and closing the door behind them much to Haley’s dismay.

“What are you doing? You aren’t even wearing a coat, it’s freezing!” Haley scolded, wrapping her arms around the farmer for no other reason than to keep them warm. No ulterior motives here.

“Don’t worry. It’ll be plenty warm where we’re going. So, you think you can walk a couple dozen more yards?” (Y/n) asked, fixing a couple of Haley’s stray hairs.

“Ugh, if I must.” Haley groaned.

“You don’t have to. We could just head inside right now and have warm tea and cuddles. Far be it from me to tell you what you have to do,” (Y/n) laughed and Haley rolled her eyes.

“Let’s just go already. If I have to stand here any longer I’m going to lose my finger and toes to frostbite.” Haley bounded off down the steps, nearly falling backwards after she hit a patch of ice. Luckily (Y/n) caught her, smiling down at the blonde in their arms, they helped her regain her footing and took her hand.

“This way,” they said. (Y/n) would have loved to tease Haley with some cheesy line about falling in love and the like, but Haley’s patience was already running thin. Best not to comment on the close call and just take it in stride.

(Y/n) guided Haley to the opposite end of the farm, becoming more excited with every step, earning a look from their companion that was equal parts suspicious and amused.

“Where are we even going?” Haley asked.

“You’ll see. Almost there. If you look ahead, you might see it.”

Haley squinted against the darkness and sure enough, she saw a large building looming just ahead.

“I can’t believe it. Did you commission Robin to build another barn?” Haley asked, incredulously.

“Not quite!” (Y/n) chirped.

“You have wayyy to much free time on your hands now that winter is in full swing. Just what have you been up to?”

(Y/n) didn’t answer, instead picking up the pace and tugging Haley closer. Ignoring Haley’s complaints until they stood in front of the large glass building.

“Whoa,” Haley breathed out once she finally caught her breath. “How did you manage this?” She asked, not disguising the awe in her voice.

“Let’s just say I got a little help from some friends,” They shrugged, “Do you like it?”

“You didn’t just drag me further out in the cold to look at the outside of a greenhouse did you?” Haley asked. “Let me in and I’ll think about giving you an answer.”

“Alright, you drive a hard bargain.” (Y/n) nodded. “But could you do something for me first?”

“You’re stalling. It’s winter and I’m dying of cold, and you’re stalling.” Haley stated dramatically. “Hey!”

(Y/n) laughed and pulled Haley’s knitted hat over her eyes. They took Haley’s hands before she could pull it back up and give (Y/n) a piece of her mind.

“Come on, just for a second, I promise.” (Y/n) swore. Haley scoffed and allowed herself to be tugged forward.

Haley heard the door open and she couldn’t help the relieved sigh that escaped her lips as a humid warmth enveloped her body. (Y/n) led her further into the space, then let go of her. They quickly moved behind Haley to shut the door then came back to hug Haley from behind.

“Okay, you can look now.” (Y/n) said. Haley could detect a slight tremor in their voice as they spoke against her ear. Were they nervous? Why?

Haley pushed her hat back and blinked, rubbing her eyes over the harsh brightness of the lights. (Y/n) must have turned them on. Once she regained her sight, Haley’s eyes blew wide at the sight before her.

“(Y/n), oh my Yoba!” Haley gasped.

“Surprise! Do you like them?” (Y/n) asked, wringing their hands.

Haley turned to look at them, her features painted with ecstatic disbelief. “Are you kidding? I love them!” Haley smiled so brightly (Y/n) couldn’t help but match her enthusiasm full heartedly. “I mean, sunflowers, growing in the dead of winter. It’s amazing!”

Haley turned away from (Y/n) again and walked up to the nearest sunflower, growing just as well as it would have on any normal summer or fall day. She touched its petals gingerly and felt its warmth work its way through her very soul. How had she been so lucky to find someone as attentive and endlessly sweet as the farmer behind her?

She felt the arms snake around her again and she eagerly held them to her stomach, anything to show how much this gesture meant to her.

“I’ve been thinking about you and winter a lot lately. You’re right in saying that the season gives me quite a bit of free time.” (Y/n) spoke in a soft tone resting their chin on Haley’s shoulder. “And I thought that maybe, this could give you something to look forward to when the snow and ice have got you down.”

Haley turned in (Y/n)’s arms and wrapped her own over (Y/n)’s shoulders, clasping her hands behind their neck. “I love it, I really do and I love you too, so much. Yoba, how am I ever going to get you something even close to this!” She whined, burying her face in the farmer’s chest.

“Haley, just having you here to share this with is more than enough for me,” (Y/n)’s voice wavered again and Haley looked into their eyes.

“(Y/n), what’s wrong? Why are you so nervous?”

“I also had another idea of how to make winter special for us. Something that would help you have memories to look back on fondly every winter. I’m just-“ they took a deep breath, “man, I was so ready this morning but now that the time is finally here-“

Haley silenced (Y/n) with a kiss. It was chaste, quick, but it helped (Y/n) ground themself.

“Come on, you’ve fought monsters in the deepest, darkest parts of the mines from here to the Calico Desert. You shouldn’t be scared of your own girlfriend.” Haley giggled good naturedly, earning a chuckle from (Y/n) as well.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” (Y/n) simpered. They stepped out of Haley’s hold and reached into their shirt pocket. Withdrawing their fist, they presented it to Haley who analyzed the closed fingers intently. “Haley, in the dead of winter, where all is cold and dark, will you become my warmth, my light, will you marry me?” (Y/n) opened their clenched fist and Haley’s hands flew to her mouth as the bright blue pendant was revealed.

“(Y/n)!” Haley cried, her voice muffled by her gloved hands. “Yes, I’ll marry you!” She lunged forward, grasping (Y/n)’s back for dear life and buried her face in their neck.

“Really?” (Y/n) sniffled holding Haley just as tightly.

“Of course! Nothing would make me happier!” Haley asserted, pulling away just a hair, “Please help me put it on.” She frantically took off her scarf, mittens, coat, and hat, throwing them off to the side. Then she turned away from (Y/n) and held her tangled hair up, allowing her newly betrothed to slip their hands through her arms and secure the pendant around her neck. Haley turned the shell in her hand and laughed breathlessly. She turned and launched herself back into (Y/n)’s arms for a kiss much more involved than the last.

“I love you,” Haley said again, holding (Y/n)’s face in her hands, a small, mischievous smile gracing her lips. She pulled away from (Y/n) and much to the other’s confusion, she walked backwards into the tall sunflower stalks until (Y/n) couldn’t see her.

“Haley?” (Y/n) called after a moment of silence. Somewhere from the back of the greenhouse, (Y/n) could see a shirt get tossed into the air before fluttering back down into the dense vegetation and they couldn’t help but laugh. “Wouldn’t you rather do this back at the house?”

“We’d have to go outside first, by the time we got back I might not be feeling so generous.” Came the faint reply.

(Y/n) watched as another article of clothing was thrown upward and swallowed thickly. They grabbed Haley’s winter coat from the floor and darted into the crops, following the sound of giggles and rustling leaves.

#Stardew Valley x reader #SV x reader #Stardew Valley oneshots #Haley x reader #SV Haley x reader #stardew valley Haley x reader

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axoxtxhxh · 3 years

Note

Sorry but I need to do this lol

For the headcanons/drabbles prompts I'd like to have "Dirt" with Levihan if you have time, please :')

Thank you so much for the request! ❤️ Sorry this took so long. I've never written anything LeviHan before and I really struggled trying to make it good. I hope you like it!😬

LeviHan – Dirt

It was no surprise that Hange’s favorite part of their house was the large greenhouse in the backyard. When Levi was searching for a new house, he knew this would be their choice. It didn’t matter that the house itself was old and nearly falling apart, once he saw that greenhouse and the look on Hange’s face when they saw it, he knew this was going to be it.

That’s why it was completely expected that Hange would be in the greenhouse the majority of the time, playing around in the dirt. Afternoons and evenings, they would be in there planting new hybrid creations and studying their growth. It actually worked out well considering the state of the main house. Several pipes needed replacing as well as floorboards and nearly all the walls needed to be repainted. With Hange in the greenhouse, it gave Levi the uninterrupted time he needed to complete the work around the house.

He wouldn’t consider himself a handyman and if some of the work was above his capability, he was more than happy to hire someone. Most of it wasn’t too bad and he definitely enjoyed the excited remarks from Hange when they’d come in after a day in the greenhouse to see another part of their home fixed.

“Nice work, shorty!” They would rub his hair and he would back away quickly, holding back a smile. “If you need help, I can help you tomorrow.”

“You’ll only mess it up. You can help when it’s time to paint” He’d respond. While he did enjoy Hange’s company, he enjoyed seeing their face light up while they talked about the new plants they potted or new seedlings that sprouted while they ate dinner together.

Each morning, Levi would wake up and Hange would be in bed. He would get up and move downstairs, put a kettle on and start making breakfast. Hange would come down shortly after and they would eat and chat and quickly start their day, Hange in the greenhouse and Levi in the main house. When it was time for dinner, they would meet back up in the kitchen and talk about their day.

“Cornelia started growing flowers!” They exclaimed, eyes wide with excitement as they sat down. “I’m unsure what the flower color will be since her mom was blue and her dad was yellow. It’s anybody’s guess!”

“Did you even wash your hands?” Levi reached up and wiped the bit of dirt off of Hange’s nose.

Days like this were always nice and it was only a couple days before this became routine. The house was nearly fixed up and Levi started on painting.

“Let’s paint this room yellow.” Hange told.

“Why would this room get color when everything else is white?” Levi questioned.

“I think this one gets nice sunlight. It should have a bright color.” They smiled at Levi, eyes wide and hopeful.

“Yellow walls will look like piss.” He complained, but saw the dejected look slowly grow on Hange’s face and sighed. “We can paint it green.”

“Green is perfect!” They smiled.

The next morning, Levi woke up and Hange wasn’t in bed. He moved downstairs and put on the kettle, heading outside to the greenhouse and seeing them potting a new plant. The greenhouse was full of plants at that point, but that didn’t stop them from planting new ones. He watched them talking to themselves and laughing with the plants and he shook his head, knocking on the window to get their attention.

Hange looked up quickly, seeing Levi and smiling. They removed their gloves and started cleaning up while Levi went back into the kitchen to start breakfast. By the time Hange made it back inside, breakfast was on the table.

“What made you get up so early today?” He asked, wiping the dirt off Hange’s nose.

“Just checking growth.” They smiled, but he knew Hange well enough to know that was a strange answer. Not to mention they were just in the greenhouse last night. How much growth could have honestly happened?

When Hange went up to shower, Levi snuck out to the greenhouse and looked inside. He couldn’t see anything through the window so he opened up the door and went inside. Hange really did have so many plants in there. So many different varieties, different colors, different sizes. They put in so much work and it made Levi smile.

He saw their notebook in the corner on the table and walked over to it. He opened it up and saw the detailed notes taken each day Hange was in there. Little doodles were on the corner of each page. Some of them were plants threatening to eat a person, some of them were pictures of an angry small man that Levi could only assume was himself.

Levi huffed as he closed the notebook and a gust of wind blew the door shut. A tiny plant on the top shelf fell onto the counter in front of him and broke, dirt spreading out in front of him and on the floor. Something that must have been hiding in the pot caught his eye and he looked closer, moving the plant out of the way and picking it up. He brushed away the dirt covering it and his eyes widened in shock.

Inside the main house, Hange sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, trying to warm up after their shower. They noticed Levi stomping his way over from the greenhouse and the backdoor opened up and he stepped inside. As he approached the table, he tossed the small piece of plastic in front of them.

“This is the growth you were checking on?” He complained.

“Ah, so you found it.” Hange rested their chin on their hand, propped on the kitchen table, looking up at Levi with a smile. He moved closer to them, holding their hands.

“When were you going to tell me?”

“I started to yesterday, with the paint colors.” Hange picked up the small piece of plastic and looked at it. The two little lines they saw so clearly that morning were faded, completely unreadable, and their eyes moved to Levi. “Levi, do you know what this is?”

Hange held the plastic to Levi and he looked at it again.

“You need to piss on it.” Hange stood up, putting their hands on Levi’s shoulders.

“I already did piss on it.” They said with a smile and the hardness in Levi’s faded.

“Are you going to tell me what it means?” He swallowed as he waited for Hange to speak.

“Levi?”

“Yes?”

“I’m pregnant.”

There was a moment of pause where Levi stared at Hange unmoving and Hange stared at Levi, waiting for his reaction. The air was so thick that neither one felt like they could breathe while they each let the new information sink in. Levi stepped forward, his hands moving to Hange’s waist.

“Hange?”

“Yes?”

“If you already pissed on that plastic stick, I’m going to need you to get it away from my shoulder.” He eyed the pregnancy test in Hange’s hand, nearly grazing his ear and Hange laughed, pulling him closer and Levi’s hand gently rubbed the tiny little not-quite-there bump of Hange’s stomach.

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hufflepuffsthunderdome · 3 years

Text

First Snow of Winter | D.M

Draco x female!reader

Warnings: none :)

@risingtripletaurus otay so now i have to ask for a draco x reader with draco being all soft for the stereotypical winter things <3 fuck yes I loved writing this! That Remus one you requested will be up soon ;)

Summary: just cute winter Draco being adorable and in love with his girlfriend. Need I say more?

A/N: I’m sorry that the formatting is kinda strange. It could very well just be mine but I have no idea how to fix it.

A soft thud to the side of your head wakes you up with a start, the annoyed groans coming from your roommates and a soft thudding against the dormitory door breaking through the air before you’re eyes have settled to be able to see through the dark. From her bed, your roommate Claire is sitting up her usual smirk plastered on her face, motioning with her hand for the pillow she threw at you.

“Sound’s like lover boy is desperate.”

You look back at her confused, your other two roommates shooting protests her way, clearly annoyed at the disruption of their sleep and her jovial attitude towards it. The soft knocking at the door continues slightly, this time Draco’s quiet whispers sneaking through the cracks in the door, and making your face heat up against the cool night air. You’ve been seeing Draco for over a year now, much to the amazement of everyone around you, including yourselves at times. You were all smiles and helping hands, eager to please everyone around you, to your own detriment at times. And draco. Well Draco wasn’t that. To others, he was gloomy, and moody. A spoiled mummy’s boy who seemed to get everything he wanted at the blink of an eye. But not around you. Around you he was considerate, loving, passionate, even after all this time together, it was the little things he did everyday that made you heart race, that made you fall more and more in love each time you saw him.

The knocking stops, and you can hear the clear dejected sounds of Draco walking away from the door. You’re out of bed as quick as you can, too fast for your body to protest to the cold ground you’re now walking on, away from the barrier of warmth your blanket gave you. Socks, shoes, beanie, gloves, coat, scarf; in that order, all on in a matter of seconds that is honestly impressive the speed you managed, and you’re out the door, creeping down the stairs. You manage to catch Draco, just before he goes to leave the common room and sling your arms around him from behind.

“What are you doing here,” you giggle as he turns around, smattering kisses across your face that leave a soft trail of heat wherever his lips touched. He’s wearing a coat and gloves like you, but has skipped the beanie and scarf. He’s much more equiped for this kind of weather than you’ll ever be, even with your many layers you’re still close to turning to ice.

“I just wanted to see the most gorgeous girl in school,” he smirks, taking your beanie off your head to readjust it properly over your ears, “even when she’s dressed up like a damn marshmallow.”

You both laugh quietly as you embrace in the common room, enjoying the moment of warmth and the heat of the fire. You don’t often get a chance to be alone together, being in different houses, with different friend groups and different responsibilities. It seemed every chance you got to spend a single moment with your loving boyfriend one of you was being whisked away for whatever reason. Honestly if that meant you’d have to wake up in the middle of the night and sneak around just to be able to see each other, neither of you would pass up that opportunity.

“Surely this could’ve waited for tomorrow, it’s freezing and you could’ve gotten caught. I mean how’d you even manage to get up to the dorm? Let me guess, you had your ways?”

Draco lets out a laugh at your comment, you have to put your hand over his mouth so no one possibly wakes up. He takes a hold of your gloved hand loosely, and presses a kiss to the tiny amount of exposed skin at your wrist, “I actually wanted to show you something.”

You walk through the cold halls of Hogwarts wrapped up in each other. Draco has one arm around your shoulder, and the other holding your hand in what he’ll say is an attempt to keep you warm, though he definitely isn’t passing up an opportunity to have you close. He glances down at you, from his tall stature, and cant help the small smile that graces his lips as he listens to you talk. You’re talking about a book you’re reading currently, some muggle book by an author you like that he’s never heard of before, but he cant help but get wrapped up in your passion about it. He’s not good at showing his emotions, to anyone really, but when he’s with you, Draco feels those walls he’s built up slip, and he’s more than willing to let you in.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Your voice teasingly says, breaking him out of his fond thoughts of you as you glance up at him. He feels his heart beat wildly in his chest at the way you look at him. He catches you looking at him like this a lot, like he’s the only thing in the whole world that matters, and each time he does he looses his ability to speak. He can’t even fathom the idea of being loved so much, but the way you talk to him, and look at him, and hold him close, he has no doubt in his mind that you love him just as much as he loves you.

“Just thinking about how much I adore you,” he says softly, stopping walking and pulling you close to him as he kisses you softly, “even when you look like a marshmallow.”

The giddy laugh you let out makes his face flush red, he adores making you laugh more than anything else, knowing he’s the only one who you let see this side of you just as he lets you see the real him makes him pull you into him even closer. “I mean given the time of year wouldn’t snowman be a better fit? It’s gonna start snowing soon after all.”

You look back up and Draco, from where you’re resting against his chest, and see that infamous smirk plastered on his face. “Come on,” he wraps his arms around you again, this time standing behind your body, “your surprise awaits you my love.”

You’re both laughing as you attempt to walk down the hallway in this akward position, your legs bumping into each other, and nearly making you fall over at times, “can I please walk normally?”

Draco’s hand slips up from around your waist to gently place them over your eyes. You wince slightly at his cold hands against your skin, and he laughs softly into your neck, the warm puff of air sending shivers up your spine, “it’ll ruin the surprise my love.”

You don’t know exactly where you are anymore as you continue to let Draco guide you, but you are aware that you are out of the corridors of the castle. You can feel the harsh wip of the air tugging at your clothes as you walk, so you’re fairly certain you’re outside somewhere. Draco’s moves are deliberate, he is guiding you exactly where he wants you and you know he’s definitely hiding something. Draco guides you down a set of stairs, promising he wont let you fall when he sees you tense up at the thought of taking the first step, and you follow his soft hands and calm voice down the flight. You have no idea where you are anymore. You thought you were possibly near the quidditch pitches at first but you know you haven’t walked that far. Draco’s hands guide you to a stop and the air instantly feels 10 times warmer. He pulls his hands away from your face and you gasp at the sight before you.

You’re stood in the back room of the greenhouse, the roof of it open and the doors leading out to the back garden completely open. The plants around you are swaying softly, coated in a small layer of white. It’s only then that you look up and realise it’s in fact snowing. Beyond the slight, glowing orange boarder that is encapsulating the greenhouse, which you’re sure is a charm of some description to make it feel like spring where you’re standing, small, soft specs of white are falling from the sky, seemingly travelling a slow motion as they descend to the ground. Despite the warmth in the greenhouse, the small specs of snow are still able to get inside, landing softly on the ground, and adding to the piles of snow already there, unmelting. There’s a large picnic blanket set up on the floor, and a basket to go with it overflowing with foods and sweets of a wide variety. You gasp and turn to smack your boyfriend in the chest lightly, “I was looking for that basket and blanket the other week.” He gives you a teasing grin back as you poke your tongue out at him; it was about three weeks ago when your friend came looking for you, asking to borrow your picnic things so her and her boyfriend could have lunch near the black lake. Tears start to well up in your eyes at the thought of your boyfriend planning this for that long, and you turn and engulf him in a hug.

“I’m glad you like it,” he gently kisses the top of your head as you stand their embracing one another.

“I can’t believe you did this for me.”

“Well,” he begins, pulling away from you to twirl a piece of your hair in between his fingers, “partly for you. Mostly for the snow.”

You’re mindlessly chatting away with Draco as you’re laid together on the blanket. You’ve eaten more than either of you thought possible, and are enjoying the warmth of the greenhouse and the beauty of the snow around you. Draco is talking about all the constellations you two can see in the stars above, his finger dragging carelessly over your collarbone, “and do you know what that one is?”

You stare up the stars he pointing to, turning your head slightly as you squint to try to make out the shape. “It looks like a kite,” you say without even thinking, and Draco starts to howl with laughter beside you.

“Way to ruin my attempt to be cute,” he chuckles, rolling over so he’s on his elbows above you, glancing down at you, “that’s Delphinus, it’s a dolphin, it means love.”

You lean up and press you lips to his, hand reaching up to gently cup his face as he leans further into the loving kiss. When you pull away he leans further into your palm, eyes still shut, “I appreciate your cuteness but there’s no way in hell that’s a dolphin.” You both start laughing at that, an uncontrollable kind of laughter, at what was barely a joke. You stand up, pulling him up with you and towards the exit of the greenhouse, “let’s go build a snowman.”

What you imagine to be a picture perfect moment, entering the snow with your lover in tow, quickly sours again as the second you leave the warmth of the charm Draco made, a series of gasped ‘fuck, fuck, fuck,” leave your mouth as you remember why you don’t do the cold. “Aww are you cold love?” Draco teasing with that charming smirk on his face. You nod back at him, wrapping yourself up in your arms to attempt to warm your body, “come here love.” You walk into his open arms, enjoying the few seconds of fleeting warmth he gives you before you feel the cold harsh breeze slipping through the back of your coat, and a handful of snow following it.

You gasp, jumping away from Draco as you shake in a poor attempt to rid your body of the cold wet substance that is trapped against your back, “Draco!”

Draco’s bent over with his hands on his knees, wheezing with laughter. Despite your annoyance you yourself have to bite your lip to stop yourself from giggling too, furrowing your brows and sticking your lip out slightly. You huff and turn your attention away from Draco, a sneaky hand movement hidden from his view making a small ball of snow magically form and hide it near your folded arms. “Aww Im sorry baby,” draco mumbles as he walks over to you, “I was just joking.”

You hide the smirk on your face as you turn into his loving embrace, wrapping your arms around him and just as he did to you, tossing a handful of snow down his shirt. He lets out the highest pitched squeal you’ve heard from him, and you’re in a fit of giggles as he too is left shaking his coat. He looks over at you with a challenging stare, and you just poke your tongue out at him through your giggles.

“Oh is that how it’s gonna be huh?” You barely have a chance to move before he’s dashing towards you, chasing you through the snow. In normal circumstances you may have had a chance, but with your heavily layered getup and the thick layer of snow covering the ground, you proved no match for Dracos long legs and he’s scooping you up from the ground. “In normal circumstances I’d be tickling you now, but this,” he says, playing with the button of your coat, “makes that damn impossible.”

“Oh what a shame,” you say, drawing out the syllables as you wiggle around in his grasp, “I’m heartbroken you can’t tickle me.”

“Ooooh,” Draco chides, “the sass is strong today I see.” You giggle lightly as he tightens his grasp on you pulling you in for a soft kiss.

A soft movement below your head, and the warm sunlight streaming in from somewhere to your left woke you from your peaceful slumber. Below you is the unmistakable feeling of Draco’s bed, Draco’s bod below you as his arms are wrapped lazily around you. You don’t remember coming up here last night, the end of your night a slight blur as conversations you were having with Draco drifted back into memory.

The hair around your forehead moves slightly as Draco softly pushes it out of your face. He threads a soft hand through it, and you lean further into his chest, feeling your cheeks warm up as he presses a soft kiss to your head.

“Good morning darling.”

You let out a grumble back, possibly a good morning back, possibly a sound of annoyance at having to wake up; you’re barely sure yourself in your half woken state.

“Did you have fun last night?”

You can hear the nerves creep into his voice, it shakes ever so slightly the way it does when he gets insecure. You wish you could take away his insecurities, but you know no matter how much you tell him you love him that voice will always be there. “Of course I did Draco, it was perfect,” you say back, sincere even in your sleepy state, willing to reassure him as much as he needs, “you’re perfect.”

Draco’s hand stops moving from where it was slightly threading through your hair, moving his hand down towards your chin in a silent question that you move your head up. You do as he wants, facing him and smiling softly at his bed head and red flushed face as you kiss him.

You snuggle back into his chest, “it’s cold, can we stay in bed today?”

“Of course darling.”

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herstroywritten · 3 years

Text

Darn Pigtails

Hello! I genuinely have no excuse for this monstrosity of a piece that I agonized over for the past few days instead of focusing on my uni work. I’ve spent the last month obsessing over Fate and Rivusa (the latter has been a life long obsession and Fate has only added fuel to the fire, with just one scene...). Yes, I am a part of that clown circus and honestly, I’m proud. I’ve always been a writer, but never posted anything but I figure here goes nothing. I was very inspired by some very talented writers in this tiny little club that’s been created on here for this ship (you all know them by now...). I couldn’t resist adding my own (not so) little addition to the collection. I don’t currently have an account on ao3 or anything, so this is just what’s happening. Be warned, it’s long and maybe excessive (8k words, oops). Other than that, enjoy and feel free to let me know your thoughts!

It started with pigtails.

He'd seen Dowling parading her around the square as students fought tooth and nail to kill the fake dummies that seemed to embody their realistic counterparts more than they should have. She's had a raincoat on at the time, not that he would have cared what she was wearing because… how could he notice anything but the pigtails? Fucking pigtails! Long enough to reach her waist, dark enough to have him thinking that the darkest of night skies must have been modeled after that same color, and pin-straight from root to tip. She walked by, lavender sweater and loose jeans, and that's the first thing he noticed. Her pigtails. He felt his tongue move, the tip pressed against the top of his mouth, ready to make a crude comment about how he'd love to tug on those pigtails in more than one scenario because honestly, was he not supposed to with the way that they swung about perfectly matching the sway of her hips? His eyes lit up as he just about let the words tumble out, and then she let her eyes lift to meet his as she made her way through the specialists' training grounds. Brown eyes lingered over his green ones for longer than any normal interaction accounts for, before dropping downward to the rest of his form. His mouth quirked into a smirk.

"Oh," he thought. "So this is how we're going to play this game."

Never let it be said that Riven ever backed down from a game or a challenge. And it just so happened that this particular game, the cat and mouse chase, was one of his favorites. So he figured, if she could stare at him like that, it would only be rude not to return the favor. He turned around, let his eyes fully graze over her whole figure the way he'd been too distracted to do before, and that's when he noted the stick she held. Whatever dumb comment he'd been so eager to make about her pigtails was quickly replaced by, "You like holding that big stick?"

He'd hoped for a reaction. And boy did he get one, a swift and lithe little trick she'd been hiding, seemingly waiting for the chance to pull it out. And even though he'd been training his whole life to defend himself, he just about let her jab his left eye out because he was so very much intrigued by the way her hair swayed to meet her movements and her brown eyes that bore into him with rage. Yeah, this was going to be all kinds of fun.

"I think I just threw up," she said, her face twisting into clear disdain. But her eyes sparkled and he thought maybe her hair is not the only thing the night sky was modeled after. He'd seen her before, somewhere in the background perhaps. Class? No. If she were a specialist and in his classes, there was no way in hell he wouldn't remember her. The cafeteria? Probably, there was only one place to get food in this godforsaken place and he doubted she hadn't made her way down there at least once. The Alfea hallways? Again, not unlikely. And that's when it clicked into place. She was one of the too many to remember (in his opinion) roommates of Sky's new obsession- Bloom. The four, sometimes five, of them were always together, huddled up beside one another in the cafeteria benches or on the way to classes. Honestly, now that he thought about it, was there ever a time when he'd seen those girls- besides Stella- alone? He definitely had never seen her alone. "Well, better take advantage of the chance," he thought. So, he dug into her, asked about her little run around the training grounds with the headmistress. He wanted to see how far he could push her rage, how willing she was to give him a good show. Between comments about dancing and fairies versus specialists, her eyes flashed purple and he soon realized that he'd bit off more than he could chew. As if her natural brown irises weren't alluring enough, the way they looked when he powers took over held a whole other sense of siren's lure within them. It took him a second to realize what was happening, that she was reading him. And he would have let her continue too, if it meant that he could hold her attention just a little while longer and feel whatever kind of electricity was rippling between the two of them for a few more minutes. Too bad she chose that moment to let him know exactly what she was doing, and exactly how he felt.

"You really hate being here, don't you?"

In this school, yes. Here, right now, with her eyes all over him and his hands twitching to edge upwards and brush his hands against those darn pigtails? No. No, he would have loved to stay right here just a little longer. But he was more scared of whatever hell she'd dig up from within him, so instead he told her to stay the fuck out of his head. He caught a glimpse of her prideful smirk, taunting him about this lost battle and her evident win, right before he whirled around and walked his way back to wherever his legs would lead him.

Passing by the guy he'd seen constantly following her around like a lost puppy dog, the one he assumed was her boyfriend, he murmured under his breath something along the lines of "Good luck with that one."

And then he was gone. But not before he remembered that he hadn't caught her name. No matter. As previously mentioned, never let it be said that Riven ever backed down from a challenge. She'd won this battle, but he was going to win the war.

_______________________________________________________________

The next time he found himself in her company only, the world had flipped on its axis.

Dowling and Silva were gone and Harvey had turned into a muted professor, almost never seen anywhere except in the greenhouse when he had classes to run. The new headmistress, Rosalind, ruled with a grip tougher than steel. Andreas was the male version of her, so not any better. Fairies were being forced into combat positions, whether they liked it or not, and upperclassmen specialists were forced into being their mentors, whether they liked it or not. Classes were stricter. You miss one lesson, you make up two class times in personal training with either Andreas or Rosalind herself. At first, everyone'd thought that was a stupid rule. Who doesn’t want a one-on-one with the professors? It took just one dumb third-year specialist missing his first lesson on the first day of the second term for everyone to realize that these training sessions were practically abuse covered with a prettier name.

But the thing that had changed the most, the thing that he couldn't even begin to name, was whatever the hell was happening to his mind. He no longer knew where his day started and where it ended. He knew he must have gotten up every morning and gone to classes and eaten to sustain his body for the brutal training session that followed and delt with whatever else needed dealing with. And yet, he remembered none of it. None of it except the moments spent chasing Sky around (which inevitably meant chasing the Winx suite around), the moments spent training his new fairy mentee- Musa, and the nightly runs to Dowling's- no, Rosalind's- office where he involuntarily spilled every little detail about his day. His mind had become an utter blur, his thoughts were no longer his own. He knew somewhere in his mind that he needed to stop, had tried endlessly to stop, but the more he held back from Rosalind's spell, the faster his words seem to come out. So, he'd stopped trying to fight it.

It was to his horror when he had been assigned Musa for training. He wasn't sure what he had expected. Of course they were going to pair him with a Winx suitemate, he just had expected it to be Bloom. Bloom was who they wanted details on after all. Even Stella would have made more sense, what with her mother being so very controlling. But no. Bloom went to Sky, Stella to some third year specialist, and he got Musa. If guilt wasn't already shredding him to pieces, it would be now.

He tried to console himself with the fact that he was better prepared to handle her this time. He'd spent enough time with Sky and the girls to have picked up the little details about her. She constantly listened to music to block out the world, she liked wearing shorts and miniskirts (a fact he quite enjoyed), she had an unhealthy obsession with bomber jackets (a fact he could do without when she was also wearing lacy silks under those same jackets), she liked pancakes for breakfast (but only when they were drenched with maple syrup), and the list goes on. His personal favorite fact, however, was that her hair was always immaculate and never the same two days in a row.

The point was, he could do this. All he had to do was train her. No talking necessary. She sure as hell was not about to strike up conversation with him if he didn't bother her. So, he'd keep his mouth shut and just teach her what he needed to teach her. Then he'd leave. That way, when his legs would inevitably carry him to Rosalind at midnight on the dot, he'd have nothing to give her but a good rundown of what moves they had practiced.

How wrong he had been.

He had clearly overestimated his ability to not falter in front of her, because the second she walked into the mat, he knew he'd have to say something.

This time, her hair was in tightly wound braids. Two of them, wrapping vertically down her scalp like fine rope. This time, he wants to undo her hair, to tug the black elastic ties out of place and run his fingers through each threaded piece until the strands lay about her shoulders in waves. He'd like to know what she looks like with her hair down, like fully down.

As if the hair wasn’t enough, she was also dressed in the tight female version of the specialist gear. It's all green woven material that crosses her chest, black mesh that lines her sides, and tight leggings that bring an ungodly amount of attention to her ass.

So, he slips up. "If I knew this is what you'd look like in a uniform-" he starts, but never finishes.

"Don't you dare finish that thought," she warns, voice dripping with a no-nonsense attitude.

"What's gotten into you?"

"It has not been my day. Hell, it has not been my week."

"It hasn't been anyone's week," he feels the need to remind her. And when she looks at him with those eyes, he wonders if she can read right through him without having to use her magic.

"Yeah, well. Let's just say I'm having a particularly more-so-than-average-shit day. So I'd appreciate it if you kept the comments to yourself." She's frustrated, he can see it. She's giving him the perfect out of a bad situation. She's begging him not to talk to her and that's exactly what he needs but goddamn it, he can't back away from a challenge even when his mind is in literal hell.

"What, can't handle me?" She scoffs at that.

"I can handle you just fine. I've been handling other's comments and thoughts since my powers started showing up. That's not the problem.

"What is the problem then?" He's digging, searching for something. For what, he's not sure. She's just finished lacing up her boots. She looks at him then, stares him down.

"The problem is I don’t want to handle you right now, Riven." And with that, she shoves past him to the center of the mat. But he's not done yet.

"You sure about that? I've never met a girl who doesn’t want to handle me before…" He wiggled his eyebrows at her, and she chuckles a little at his antics.

"Yeah, no. But even if I did want to, you'd really have to do better than that.

"What, the line wasn't up to your standards?"

"Was it up to yours?"

"Not my best, I'll admit. But I make do. And you can't tell me Harvey Jr. has done any better." Rage flushes through her features at that particular comment. He watches as her cheeks flush bright red and as the flush slowly spreads to her neck and below the rounded collar of her uniform, slowly cursing whoever created the damn thing for not making it a V-neck.

"Ooh, a reaction! Go on, then. Tell me what's going on in that pretty little head of yours."

"None of your fucking business."

"It never is, and yet I'd love to know."

"Seriously, Riven. Let's just not talk." She wound up, ready to burst. Her hands are balled into fists by her side and her back is arched towards him in anger. She's a spring ready to jump, and he wants to see how high she can reach.

He goes for the typical line, "Trouble in paradise, then?"

Turns out she can jump pretty damn high, something he expected. What he didn't expect was for her to jump him. She pushes him with so much force that he barely catches himself before he falls. Tears stream down her face as she punches at his chest (hopelessly, he notes… he's got a lot to teach her). He lets her continue the onslaught on his chest, is impressed by her force and strength and persistence even if the form is all wrong. When she finally stops, the tears do too. All that's left are her hiccups and his eyes following her every movement. He watches her dry her eyes vigorously, hears her curse him and the school and herself… and Sam? He's not sure what's happening right now, not sure why his arms suddenly want to wind around her frame and pull her in, or why his heart clenches at the sight of her tears. He chooses to ignore it all.

They continue the rest of the training session in silence, with him only speaking to direct her movements and point out a thing or two about her form. Later that night, after running through his nightly routine with Rosalind, he finds out from Sky that Bloom was especially distressed today because Musa was especially distressed today because Musa and Sam had decided to call it quits. Riven feels light-headed at that news, and he's still not exactly sure why his body is so adamant about reacting to news involving her.

He rolls into bed, thinking bitterly to himself that he won today. He won this battle. So why does it feel like he lost it?

______________________________________________________________

They continue their training sessions in silence for a while, until eventually a banter sparks between the two of them. He's not quite sure how it happens, just as he's not quite sure how anything happens anymore. He assumes he probably made some joke about how good her legs looked in those damn tights or about how she desperately needed help with her fighting stance. Maybe he just wore her down with his constant questions. He doesn't really care, to be honest. He knows he should care, in the same way that he knows he should actually avoid talking to her instead of showing up every day eager to see her. He just can’t bring himself to do it, not when she shows up in that uniform every day or when she looks at him with so much pride when she finally nails a move they've been working on for so long, and definitely not when she starts to initiate the playful conversations with the same smirk that he would maybe like to kiss off her face. There's so many things he should do at the end of the day, but he does none of them. He just lets whatever happens happen, and it kind of works out for a bit. They tease each other, teeter-tottering somewhere between playful and full on flirting. They fight in close combat corners, sometimes ending up on top of each other. Those days are a personal favorite of Riven's, especially when she's on top of him and he can feel her thighs straining against his waist as she pins his arms above his head. (He may have taught her that one move just for this moment. He felt it was a shame to not put those dance-trained legs of hers to use.)

The perfectly odd tightrope they walk snaps on a Wednesday afternoon, after they've finished training and are walking toward the benches that hold their water bottles. He takes a swing of his water, and then looks up from his seat to see her standing up and chugging her own bottle. A loose droplet slips past her lips and down her uniform's tank top. He follows it with his eyes, not even bothering to hide the very obvious motion even as she finishes her drink, looks at him with a raised eyebrow, and then chuckles at him while rolling her eyes.

"You could be a little less obvious, you know." She calls him out casually. He smirks at the comment before dragging his eyes back up to her brown orbs.

" Subtle isn't really my forte. Besides what fun would it be if you didn't know I was staring at you?"

She rolls her eyes, but her smile gives her away. "You're gonna give some poor girl a heart attack one day if you look at her like that." It's a teasing remark, but he feels his adrenaline hike up at her comment. The game is back on.

"Some poor girl, huh?" He leans into her on the bench, invades her personal space. She blushes, looks directly ahead, and he thinks he's winning another one of the many secret battles they seem to find themselves fighting. Then, she turns to him and looks him dead in the eyes.

"Can I ask you something?" He didn't expect that. Again, he knows he should just leave or say no. Anything to avoid a conversation that could lead to more than just a flirting banter, anything to avoid something that Rosalind may actually be interested in. But she's looking up at him with wide eyes and he's convinced he's become weak and that she's won this battle because he can't bring himself to say no.

"Uh… sure?"

She looks around nervously, as if deciding whether to ask what's on her mind or not. Finally, she leans close to him and asks in a slow and quiet voice, "Where do you sneak off to every night at midnight?" He pulls back from her faster than he thought he would ever be able to pull away from her, blinking down at her now shocked face.

"How-"

"How do I know? You have a roommate, Riven. He hears you leave every night and says nothing about it, but he's been worried about you. He says you've been acting different… For what it's worth, I think he's right. Especially when we're not in training sessions, you're completely out of it. I know this has been a rough mon-"

This is it. She's dug deep enough that she has hit rock bottom, she's found the dead-end at the bottom of his soul. He has to let this banter go now. He can't have her asking questions he'll then have to report back to Rosalind.

"You know nothing." He words are curt and sharp. She flinches at their edge, but doesn’t back down. It's one of his favorite things about her, her persistence.

"You can talk to me if something is wrong, you know? Or to Sky or the girls… you can talk to any of us…" He watches as her eyebrows furrow, traces the line they form down her nose to her lips and then back to her eyes. And that's when he notices that her eyes have changed color to purple. He grabbed her hand quickly and firmly, enough to break her concentration but not enough to hurt her (God, even in his rage, it would never be enough to hurt her).

"I've told you not to do that. Not to use your damn mind powers on me." His voice is strained, laced with anger and something resembling fear.

"I'm trying-"

"I don't care what you're trying. You shouldn’t be in there. You shouldn't be in my brain. There's nothing in there worth your time or energy and there never will be."

And with that he spins on his heel and marches into the forest behind the training grounds. He doesn’t turn around, but if he did, he would have seen Sky moving out of the shadows and heading toward Musa.

"Did you do it?"

It takes her a second to interpret his question. She still staring into the distance as Riven's figure fades out of view, her eyes finally returning to their normal brown color. She continues to stare at the dot in the distance, unwilling to look away as if she's daring him to turn around and spare her one last glance. He doesn't.

"Yeah. Yeah, I did." She finally turns to Sky. "He's completely blocked from my powers. Dowling was right, he's under some sort of mind control."

______________________________________________________________

It’s 2AM by the time Riven finally makes his way to the room he shares with Sky. He's once again not really sure where his day went or what he did after he flipped on Musa and marched his way into the woods after their little spat. He remembers anger, a lot of anger. He's angry at her for trying to dig into his brain when they had already established that he hated it. He was angry at Dowling for dying (at least, he assumes she's dead because where else would she be?) and leaving the school to the psychopath that is Rosalind. He's angry at Rosalind for manipulating him, controlling his mind. He's angry at Beatrix for getting him into this stupid mess. But mostly, he's angry with himself for letting it all happened, for somehow always making the wrong move at the wrong time, for managing to screw up his own life in such a grand manner that it constitutes an award (truly, he's outdone himself this time). He's mad at himself for not being able to control his own mind, for letting Rosalind take up residence in his brain and being able to do nothing about it. He's even angry at himself for not just standing there and letting Musa read his emotions, because maybe if she did then she'd know the hell he was in. His brain was constantly pulling in all different directions, trying desperately to get away from the constraints of Rosalind's spell. Headaches are nonending and thoughts leave as soon as they come. It's like there's two people waging war within him, but one of them brought swords to a gunfight and is losing horribly. But it’s a war he feels he should fight on his own, and maybe that's why he didn't let her read him. As much as he hates to admit it, the mind control and guilt was breaking him but he could handle that. What he couldn't handle, however, was getting her involved in this stupid mess by mistake, which would inevitably lead to Rosalind getting ahold of her as well. God knows there's only so much room left in hell or sins, and he'd be damned if he hadn't already filled all the available spots.

He was glad for the day to finally be over, glad to be heading to bed (not sleep though, sleep did not exist when his mind was in so much pain all the fucking time). It seemed the world had other plans for him, however, because upon opening the door to his dorm, he was met with a sight that he both dreaded and wanted to burn into his memory for the rest of however long he had to live before Rosalind finally took pity on him and bent his brain to death.

Perched on his bed, leaning forward ever so slightly, elbows meeting her knees, and head bend toward the floor was Musa. From his angle, he could only see her side profile, but apparently that's all his body needed to be automatically sent into a frenzy. The first thing he notices was, not to his surprise, the hair. She'd replaced her training braids with buns, big ones that hang precariously form her head as tendrils of her dark hair fell in loose waves and framed her face. He again found himself wondering what she would look like with all of her hair fully down. His fingers itched to burrow into those carefully constructed space buns and pull their pins out of place, just to see if she'd look half as beautiful with her hair down as she did with her hair up.

He stood like that for a while, taking her in and letting her continue to stare at the dark wooden floors with her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. He's not sure when, but eventually she turned toward the door, eyebrows first shooting up when she noticed him staring at her, and then falling back into place as she shot him a shy mile from across the room.

"Hey," came her greeting in a small voice.

"What the hell are you doing here?" His question was harsh, but he knew himself well to know that if he even let just one layer of himself down with her, he may as well just lay down all his defenses. She had a way of getting him to speak and break down and he wasn't about to let himself get her mixed up in whatever evil plan he'd been helping construct against his will.

Too bad for him, because it seemed Musa had been expecting a fight and was ready to fire back his quips with some of her own. She simply rolled her eyes and casually stated, "Well, then, straight to it, are we?"

"If you're looking for Sky or Bloom, they're probably in a dark hallway somewhere snogging each other half to death," he answered. She grimaced at the image.

"Yeah, no. I'm not here for Bloom or Sky."

"Then you're not here for anyone." She gave him a pointed look at that phrase. He wisely chose to ignore it and instead made his way to the couch in the middle of the room, throwing his jacket somewhere on it.

"What, that's all you have today? I'm standing on your bed, we're alone in your bedroom, I'm in a miniskirt… and you're not going to make a comment about showing me a good time? You're losing your touch, Riv." She was teasing him, he could tell by the light tone of her voice. Maybe she liked to see his reactions the way he so enjoyed watching her react to his own snarky comments. Maybe she saw enough into his brain earlier to have dug up some of his fantasies. Damn her, he'd been avoiding looking anywhere but her face since he walked in, and now here she was basically challenging him to do more. Damn him and his inability to back down from a game he was so clearly not apt to win at the moment. He turned around and finally got a good look at her. She was indeed in a miniskirt, under which she had tucked a lacy white top that was very clearly meant to showcase the black bra she wore underneath the pitiful excuse of a shirt. Her signature red bomber jacket hung from her shoulders and the black boots she had on were laced all the way up to her kneecaps.

This must be it, he thought. This must be his punishment for spilling his guts to Rosalind every night. Or maybe, his guilt and the pain throbbing through his veins had finally won out and he was finally cracking under all that pressure. That's fine. He wasn't even surprised this is what his brain chose to tease him with at the brink of destruction. He figured she'd be the one to shatter him, it was only a matter of time.

"Hello? Are you even listening to me?" Her voice broke him out of his trance. Ok, maybe he wasn't imagining her.

He sighed, defeated and broken and just tired. "Why are you here, Musa?"

It’s a staring match now. He watches as her eyes soften and the sarcasm leaves her features.

"I couldn’t read you earlier today. In the training grounds-" No. Anything but this conversation.

"Maybe you should consider working on those powers of yours then. Seems to me like you're the one losing your touch."

"I'm serious, Riven-"

"I am too."

"Jesus, Riven, let me just finish!" Anger sparked in her features. "You're loud, Riven." He scoffed at that. "Your emotions, I mean. They're usually loud… but they're also lively and harmonious, in a weird way that I can't seem to figure out. Lately, however, they've been quiet… as if they don't exist at all. And at first I thought it was me, I thought I was getting better at controlling my powers. But when I tried to read you today, I felt nothing…" There is was, she had figured it out, and now she looked at him as if he was a science experiment she couldn’t quite figure out.

"… Maybe my hearts just finally turned to stone." He tried for a joke. She did not find it amusing.

"I know, Riven." He's not sure what that was supposed to mean. What did she know? That he was a horrible person? That he'd snitched on her and all their friends (were they his friends?) to the queen of evil? Or worse, that his body lit up whenever she was around?

"Cryptic, but ok. I guess between that line and the fact that you somehow snuck into my room, you could make the whole 'good girl turned bad, mysterious girl' vibe work. Honored I'm the first you're trying it out on. If you'd like to take it a step further, the bed's right behind you." She may have the upper hand in this game, but he's still a stubborn ass.

"Seriously, Riven. I'm not kidding." She took a step toward him. Wrong move, angel.

"I know you're not. That shirt doesn't exactly scream 'kidding'. Tell me, did you just choose the first thing you found in your closet to put on?" He took a step forward this time, one long stride before they stood chest to chest and he hooked his finger under her chin. "Or is that shirt part of this whole 'mystery girl' scheme? Because, I won't lie, it's working." He sees her shiver at his words and doesn't bother to hide the smirk that graces his face. Finally, things were getting interesting. "Wonder if it looks half as good on my bedroom floor…" He noticed her eyes flicker downward, to is lips, but they moved back up just as quickly. He stared right back at her, watching as she struggled to make up her mind about where to slap him for that last comment. He didn't have to wait too long for a response.

"I'm sure you do." Her words came as a whisper, and the smirk that followed was just as alluring. He barely had time to process the meaning behind it all, before she crashed her body onto him and her lips found his. Her hands gripped into the sides of his t-shirt, keeping him to her with such force that he vaguely wondered why in the world she felt the need to do that when he wouldn't dream of walking away from this, from her. It's frantic and it's rushed. One of his hands find her waist, pulls her impossibly closer to him. His other hand delves into the hair at the back of her head before sliding to the side and pulling at the pins that hold her right bun in place. It takes him pulling out just one pin and the structure falls apart, her hair tumbling around them and cocooning them in place. He hears her gasp, her hands finally unlatching from his shirt as she splays them apart over his muscles, moves them up to his shoulders.

He's moving backward, whether to ask her if this okay or make a comment about that noise she just made, he's not sure. He never gets the chance. She pulls his to her again, kisses him like she's been starved in a thirsting in wasteland for days and he's the first sign of water she's stumbled upon, bites his lip- fucking bites his lip and sucks on it and pulls it with her teeth… and he thinks that her being here could not have been his punishment. This, right here, her kissing him like this, this is his punishment. This is his pain finally taking over and shattering his soul.

Maybe Rosalind somehow found out about his little crush and is getting payback for the fact that he didn't show up for their nightly midnight story time. Maybe, he's already dead and in hell and some devil out there is playing a cruel, cruel trick on his brain. Maybe that's why his body is shaking, literally shaking, and his mind feels like its tearing apart. He feels Musa's hands on his scalp, her palms splayed out at his temples and fingers tightly wound into his hair. Again, he is surprised at the sheer force she seems to pour into her touch, anchoring him to her as though he could ever want to leave her embrace.

He's so wrapped up in his thoughts and in her touch that he barely hears the whimpers of pain coming from her or feels the tears streaming down her face as she hold him to her. When he finally feels the tears trickle between their lips, be pulls back (genuinely, pulls back because her fingers are still forcing him to her), opens his eyes to find her already looking back at him. But instead of the brown irises she wore when this rough little make out session started, her eyes are now purple. And her face is red. She looks exhausted. He feels exhausted.

He's about to ask her what's wrong, if she's ok, if her powers are going haywire. But he's so dizzy and so tired and suddenly he's leaning on her and she's pulling him onto the bed. She looks down at him, whispers "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over in his ear and he finds himself wondering what she's sorry about and where the pain that haunted him for weeks has gone before he slowly sinks into oblivion.

________________________________________________________________

He wakes up and she's gone.

It's Sky who sits next to him the next day, Sky and Headmistress Dowling of all people. He mumbles something about being dead and hallucinating, but Sky just laughs and tells him he's happy to have him back.

It takes a good few hours to catch him up on all the shit he's missed while he was being controlled by Rosalind. Apparently, Dowling was stuck under a bunch of plants? The girls somehow managed to free her with some potion from a cousin of Terra's. Turns out they've been sneaking out every night, pretending to go to parties and instead heading outside the barrier trying to find clues on what the hell Rosalind is up to. That would explain Musa's choice of clothing the other night.

Sky tells him it was the girls' idea to keep him out of the loop at the beginning, worried that his weird obsession with Beatrix and her even weirder obsession with him would lead to Andreas and Rosalind finding out. Sky swears they were going to tell him eventually, and Riven has to tell him that he's glad they didn't. That's when Sky tells him what he'd already guessed. It was Musa who refused to tell him even after time has passed, sensing that something was wrong in his mind. Her being in their room the other night had been no mistake, but an orchestrated move. She'd practiced with Dowling for weeks, training to unlock his brain, pull it apart so that she could mentally remove Rosalind's control from his brain by sheer willpower and might, and then put it all back together as best she could.

He's instinctively proud of her, she did it. But, he also wishes she'd done it with less kissing and in some less distracting attire, but he probably deserves the type of torture that will surely follow as a result of last night. After they fill him in, Sky throws his gear at him and tells him to get dressed and ready.

"We leave tonight."

"What? Where are we going?"

"That's a bit complicated." It's Dowling who answers this time. "Silva and Professor Harvey will meet us in the woods beyond the barrier. We will lead you the rest of the way. We're going to collect forces. There will be a war, and Rosalind will know that something is wrong when you miss your nightly meeting with her for the second time in a row. The Winx suite is already with Silva and Ben. They're waiting for us."

They leave the dorms using Stella's ring, which she has given to Dowling as a backup to her magic, which Rosalind is be able to track within school grounds. When they arrive to the location in the woods, Riven is only slightly surprised to find Sam among the girls. He's leaning on a tree, talking to Silva and his father, both of which look like they haven't slept for days. The girls are gathered together by a fallen tree. Musa is in the middle of them, huddled into herself, as Terra and a new girl with brown skin and long honey-brown hair rub her back. Stella, Bloom, and Aisha stand back, watching Musa with worry evident in their eyes.

It's Stella who notices them first. She wipes the worry off her face with mastered ease that only comes with practice, straightens up her back, shoots Musa a look and calls loudly, "There you are! Took you guys long enough!"

From then on, it’s a quick fill-in on what the plan is, an awkward introduction to the Harvey cousin whose name he can't remember because his mind was too stuck on the girl whose hair is back in those buns he managed to loosen yesterday, and a small little "welcome back to the good side" before they're trekking their way through the woods.

He stands behind her the whole time. Watches as she follows the professors, but stands at the tail end of the line the girls have formed. She looks tired, the bags under her eyes tell him that the girls have probably been out here all night. He wonders how much of her energy it took to tear and mend his brain, if anyone bothered to let her rest after she did it. He wishes he was braver, wishes he could walk up to her and… what, thank her? Ask her why she did it? Why kiss him and then cure him? She could have just as easily done it while he was asleep. He bides his time, observes as one by one the girls take turns standing next to her, linking their arms with hers, smiling down at her, whispering who knows what in her ear and earning a laugh form her every now and then. He likes her laugh, it's cute.

He's currently watching as Bloom pull Musa to her and makes some joke about chickens, when he feels a punch land on his right arm.

"Are you as stupid as you look?" He turns to find that Stella has somehow walked backwards and is now next to him.

"Missed you too, princess," he mutters back.

"Oh, cut the bullcrap, Riven. You've been staring at her for the last two hours and I told her I wouldn't say anything but honestly, you two are hopeless. I've never met two people so oblivious in my life."

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

"Like shit you don't. If you don't know it yet, figure it out." And just like that she's running ahead and linking her right arm with Musa's as Bloom tries for another joke, this one about pigs that fly.

He tries to ignore Stella's stupid comment. Honestly, he figures it's probably safer to stare at her and look like a total creep than try to talk to her and make sense of his feeling about who the fuck knows what anymore. But Stella's words ring through his mind and he lets himself believe that maybe, just maybe…

In the end, he convinces himself that the reason he walks up to her once Bloom goes to hold Sky's hand and Stella moves in on the new girl to make conversation is because Stella offered him a challenge, and he likes to win at those. (He's heading straight for a loss, he's fully aware of that, but whatever.)

"Long time no see," he jokes when he reaches her side. She cranes her neck up at him, not surprised to see him.

"Thought I heard your loud-ass emotions coming closer."

"Yeah, I've been told they can be quite the riot." He shoots her a smirk and she smiles up at him.

"Who told you that?"

"Oh, you know. Just some girl."

"Some girl, huh?"

"Yeah. Then she gave me a good snogging before tearing my brain to pieces without my knowing it."

"Mmm. She seems like a handful."

"Tell me about it." Her eyes fall downward and he doesn't need to be an empath to see the gears turning in her head.

"I'm sorry," she starts, "About that. I didn't want to do it, I know you have me reading your emotions."

"Yeah, but I hated having them controlled by someone else even more…" There's a pause and he quickly moves to fill it, scared that whatever courage juice that's coursing through his veins will run out soon. "Thank you, by the way." And he means it. He hopes she can sense the sincerity coming from him because he only has so many words in his vocabulary when it comes to her and fears he's already run out of them when she turns to look at him once more.

They've fallen behind the group at this point. He figures he won't get the chance to do this again for a while, so he asks her the question that been running rampant through his mind. It's pathetic, really. They're headed to god knows where to do god knows what and instead of worrying about the fact that war is coming or even being slightly concerned that he's just had his mind abused and prodded around by an evil mastermind, his biggest worry is if this girl really wanted to kiss him or if she just did it for show.

"So, umm, just so we're clear… did you mean it?" If he felt dumb thinking it, he feels like a world-class idiot saying it out loud.

"Mean what?" She stares back at him intensely, and he thinks to himself in an amused manner that they seem to be making a habit of staring at each other for longer than average periods of time. "The part about you being loud? Cuz, yeah, I meant every word. You're a walking catastrophe." She's smirking at him. He rolls his eyes her words.

"Couldn't care less about that. In fact, I'm glad my emotions are as obnoxious as I am- means they've been driving you crazy for a while now." Her smile falters a bit at that line. "What I want to know," he continues. "Is if you kiss everyone whose mind you go digging into like that." He still has not taken his eyes off her, and he's not going to start now, when she blushes and ducks her head under the collar of her red bomber jacket.

"That was a… last minute choice."

"What for?"

"I had to get close enough to you to make contact. I've only been practicing with Dowling for a few weeks and I didn’t want to screw it up. I can't really do the whole mind thing without some sort of contact just yet…" Her words drift off.

"Hand holding didn't cut it? Had to go for a full make-out session, complete with lip biting and everything?" He watches as she shivers into her coat, arms wrapped around herself.

"You would've pushed me away."

"How did you know I wouldn't push you away while kissing me?" She mutters something under her breath. He doesn’t catch it, not between that stupid jacket that she's using to shield her face. He gently takes a step forward, catches her chin between his fingers just as he had done the night before, makes her meet his eyes. "Come again?"

She sucks in a breath, her eyes waver to something behind him when she finally lets it out, "We both know you weren't going to say no to me throwing myself at you."

"And if I did?" He doesn't know who he's kidding, but it’s still a game and he's still playing to… lose?

She's still staring behind him when she frowns and says, "Then we would have seen just how great this shirt would have looked on your bedroom floor, after all."

And goddamn it, her words send his blood boiling. He's about to kiss her senseless, but he refuses to do it if she's not staring at him when he asks one last question.

With his finger still hooked under her chin and them standing mere inches away, he whispered into the air between them, "Look at me, Musa."

Her eyes slowly move to meet his. He gives up his last question, which just so happens to be his first, "Did you mean it?" And when her small "Yes" makes its way through her lips as her steady brown eyes catch his green ones, that's all the confirmation he needs.

His finger leaves her chin and moves to her head and then he's pulling her in, closer and closer and closer until she's all he can feel and smell and see and breathe. And she responds with the same vigor she used last night, wasting no time to wrap her arms around his neck and lock him to her. It's a new kind of game, one where they battle for dominance until they both run out of breath and need to break free. It makes him stronger, it breaks him down, it makes him wonder why the hell he ever wanted to win against her when he could instead let her win and lose himself to her as he is right now. And when his hands pull the pins from both buns from her hair as he kisses down her neck, she groans in half pleasure and half annoyance.

"I'll have to fix them again now," she whines, pouting her bottom lip out, which he takes as an invitation to bite and pull on it.

"You'll manage. Let me just have this now. I've been waiting a while to see you with your hair fully down." She scoffs but lets him stare at her in awe once he finds it in him to pull back from her lips in order to get a view his handiwork.

And to think, it all started with some fucking pigtails.

#rivusa #fate the winx saga #fate the winx club #musa #musa fate #riven #riven fate

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lysmune · 3 years

Text

Promises of

A thousand things that she believes the Demon Prince to be, and a thousand times he proves her wrong.

(Diavolo/F!Reader)

Promises of a painful, slow death is what she believes he’ll give her, but a radiant smile dispels her fears. With liquid ambrosia for eyes and vermillion-struck hair, she’s never seen someone so intimidating, so contrary.

“I hope your year in the Devildom is a great one!” the stranger chirps, loud and booming, and friendly.

“Thank you,” is all she manages.

Promises of a scornful, prideful visage is what she believes is his flair, but he bears no ill-will towards the hubris of humanity. A thousand lights splayed below the balcony, a gaze set onto the distant future, graced by the soft glow of hope, he tells her that he wishes for peace, more than anything.

“Don’t all you demons despise us?” she piques and he laughs deeply, sonorous in the never ending darkness.

“Maybe, but I,” and he turns to look at her with a gentleness that she’s never thought to find in a hell-spawned man, “I find human souls, flawed as they are, beautiful.”

Promises of friendship is what she believes would be the farthest thing possible, but when he calls her in invitation to see the black roses blooming in his greenhouse, she finds that maybe, it isn’t the most far-fetched situation.

“Look!” he exclaims excitedly, pointing towards a small bird, tufted in crimson, its winding onyx tail fluttering as it perches itself on the flower’s stem. “It’s a black-tailed canary. It’s a bird native to the Devildom.”

“How pretty,” she comments, watching the bird fixate its beady eyes on her before it takes off into flight.

Lord Diavolo chuckles beside her. “Seeing such lovely things up close really does lift my spirits,” he murmurs in awe, in wonder, underscored by a melancholia she can’t quite fathom.

In response, she presses her hand on his shoulder, humming in agreement; he simply smiles.

Promises of gold is what she believes would catch his fancy, but his curiosity lies in the fleeting moments caught in polaroids. From swirling pink blossoms to the grin of an aquarium’s beluga, to the cascading reds of a maple autumn and a white winter’s falling snow; he finds joy in all these.

“This is my favourite,” he notes fondly and she leans over to look at the object of his attraction. It is the simple snapshot of a summer daybreak, the first light of dawn. “The sun never rises here in the Devildom, so I’ve always been curious about it. Your world’s truly blessed.”

How the Underworld’s Prince is so much of an optimist, she’d probably never know, but it warms her to see him so full of life.

When he passes the picture back to her, she shakes her head and, with more than a little uncertainty, presses her fingers against his hand.

“Keep it,” she insists. “Consider it a gift for the hospitality you’ve shown me.”

Promises of an uneventful night is a relatively easy feat, she believes, but the seven brothers prove her wrong when she’s crowned the guest of honour. They shower her with neatly wrapped gifts, words of gratitude and a group hug so earnest it moves her to tears.

They take turns dancing with her tonight, seven brothers gliding through seven different musical pieces. Mammon steps up into a bold, thrilling hustle; Leviathan sways with unusual confidence in a jazzy foxtrot; Satan twirls her into a fittingly passionate tango; Asmodeus sweeps her around in an excelsior schottische; Beelzebub rounds a blustering, grinning quickstep; Belphegor drifts into a draping, dreamy carousel and Lucifer, unsurprisingly, leads her gracefully into a viennese waltz.

What does surprise her, however, is when the Prince comes up to her, requesting her for a dance. “If you’re not too tired, of course.”

She smiles and places her hand atop his, letting his fingers curl around hers. “No, it would be my honour,” is all it takes for him to capture her breath in a slow, seamless waltz that lasts a beat longer than it should.

Promises of a shrinking distance isn’t what she foresaw, but he is insistent in having her company, which she, admittedly, isn’t too bothered about. He greets her jovially when he meets her in front of AkuDonald’s, dressed down in a maroon Oxford shirt and beige khakis, a pair of shades completing his look; she wonders if that’s his way of avoiding attention.

As they both stand in line, he strikes up polite conversation, questioning her how she’s been, how her classes are going, how she’s finding RAD and the seven brothers, and she is, quite frankly, genuinely surprised by how much she’s come to enjoy the entire affair. He’s about to answer when they hit the front of the line, a tired looking demon snippily asking for their order.

Like always, she goes for the fried shadow goose AkuBurger, the six-pack AkuGizzards and a blushberry slushie. He takes a little more time deciding, but eventually settles for the Hellfire DoubleAkuBurger and a Blackburn coffee before he insistently pays for their meal. Tipping her head down in thanks, she takes the tray and leads him towards a relatively private corner in the joint where he tucks into his lunch undisturbed.

“Do you come here often?” he prompts and she shrugs, swallowing her food down.

“Enough,” she responds. “The food here is generally safe for me to not die from.”

He chuckles. “Not a fan of Devildom cuisine?”

“Just not nearly as bold to eat something with ‘Double Poison’ tacked onto it,” she explains. Catching him eyeing her gizzards, she picks one up in between her fingers and offers it to him. “They’re good.”

Leaning forward, without so much of a warning, he takes it from her hand with his teeth and she stiffens, embarrassed, unsure if he’s being serious or just messing with her, or if he’s just dense.

“You’re right,” he answers, happily smiling as he licks his lips, “they are.”

She tries not to think about it too hard, simply nodding in agreement before they pass the rest of the time with small-talk, light banter and the never-ending cringe of dad jokes so terrible she has to laugh at each one. Once they’ve finished and exited the premises, he thanks her for her time today, smiling as he always does.

“I had a lot of fun,” she gladly admits, to which he hums, pleased.

“I did, too,” he reciprocates and then, a little less playfully, a little more seriously, “If it’s alright with you, let me walk you home.”

“You don’t -“

“I want to,” he assures, insists. “I enjoy your company and I’d like us to spend more time together.”

She warms at his boldness, more evident today than any other, at the way he tentatively reaches for her hand in consent, in invitation, and she accepts it with a nod. With a smile that crinkles his eyes and a careful hold, he leads her back to the House of Lamentation.

Promises of constant contact is something she’s sure he isn’t one to keep, especially given his consistently packed schedule, but when she’s back in the Human World, her D.D.D rings most often with his name.

He fills her days with updates on work, on Lucifer’s increasingly baggy eyes, lamenting at how much less bright the Devildom is without her.

“You’re being dramatic,” she chuckles as she picks up a carton of eggs. “It’s not that bad.”

“No, it is,” he implores with a huff. “The brothers miss you, including Lucifer, even if he denies it. Teasing him is no fun anymore,” he protests and she clicks her tongue at him. There’s a pause before a sigh, then, “I’m not being honest here.”

“No?”

“No,” he repeats; “I miss spending my time with you, I miss being able to see you, I miss talking to you in person. I miss you; I miss you a lot.”

She runs her fingers through her hair and oh, fuck, he really shouldn’t spring these things onto her. She’s sure he can hear her heart over the phone when it’s this loud.

Tightening her grip on the trolley’s handle, she responds with an, “I miss you, too.”

Promises of staying away are best upheld because they’re the smarter option, the safer option, but when she’s back in the Devildom, she‘s compelled to see him again. Barbatos directs her to his study, knocking on the door before he leaves her by the room just as Lord Diavolo lets her in.

The wind is knocked right out of her chest when he scoops her into a tight hug and she eases into his arms, burying her face into his chest. He smells faintly of warm spice and agarwood, of a familiarity she’s sorely longed for.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he whispers, the hint of a tremble in his voice.

“I am, too.”

Promises of subtlety is a given, she believes, but he hasn’t much thought for it when he clasps a golden bracelet onto her wrist. It is a simple chain, studded with tiny opals, and much too lavish for someone who’s come here as an exchange student.

“This is a little excessive, don’t you think?” she asks, raising a brow as she fiddles with the accessory, to which he frowns.

“Do you not like it?” he inquires and she shakes her head.

“No, I do,” she assures, and she really does. It’s a beautiful piece of jewellery, it’s just that, “I’m not quite sure if I’m so deserving of such things.”

At that, he takes her hand, pulling her a little closer. “You are,” he affirms softly, gently lacing his fingers with hers. “Let me be a little selfish.”

She chuckles. “You’re being selfish by giving me a gift?”

“No,” he replies as he levels her with a crackling, sparking gaze and her heart skips a beat. “I’m being selfish because I want you to myself.”

Promises of indulgence are what she believes to be a demon’s domain, but he simply holds her in his arms most nights, content with the simple pleasure of having her there with him, of talking to her, of hearing her say his name without the formalities.

“You’re not anything like I thought a demon would be,” she muses as he hugs her tighter from behind, letting her head rest on the line of his shoulder.

He chuckles, pressing his lips to hers sweetly, briefly. “No?”

“I expected them to be a little more ...” she trails off in search for a word, then, “churlish.”

“I can be,” he mumbles while he lazily nibbles at her ear, patterns kisses into her jaw and the exposed column of her neck. “I’m just being polite.”

She hums. “Maybe.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No,” she responds with a peck to his cheek, hand coming up to the side of his head, pulling him closer against her. “I think you’re just a touch holy.”

His skims her skin with tongue and teeth, breaths warm, chuckling as he does. “You’re bold to say that to the Prince of Hell.”

Promises of a Lord unshaken is what she believes the demons see, but behind all the closed doors, he bares his vulnerability to her against the starless, perpetual nights.

“Do you want to talk, Diavolo?” she asks. He’s silent for a moment before he offers his hand to her. She takes it and he pulls her to his side, letting his arm drape down to hold her at her waist.

Overlooking the city sprawled under him, he sighs. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing,” he confesses under his breath, the uncertainty wavering his voice. “I want peace between all the realms, but do they? Do my people?”

"You don’t think they want that?”

“We’re demons. War is within our very nature,” he states simply, pressing her a little closer to him. “A few of us are fallen angels, others human, but most demons were born here, and all of us are vengeful, resentful creatures,” he murmurs; she says nothing. “The fallen angels want nothing to do with the Celestial Realm, the human-turned-demons carry over their hate and the rest of us have just always had a taste for destruction.

“For most of us, we’ve always felt like the two worlds looked at us with nothing but contempt. When Heaven smites an angel unruly, they’re punished into being a devil; when humans talk about eternal torture, we’re the very picture of it. Demons are a proud folk, we give back the respect we’ve been shown, but when everyone has only ever hated us, what is there to be but bitter? And the cycle keeps going, it has for the last thousands of centuries.”

“I’m sorry,” is all she can offer and he chuckles.

“Please, it’s alright,” he assures with a smile, though it’s wearied with the burdens of a leader. “I’m just ... wondering.”

She isn’t sure what to say to him, if she can even comfort him. She’s no angel, or demon, and even as a human, she’s never been a particular occult; she’s just an exchange student who lacks understanding of the tension’s nuance.

“Look, hey,” she starts, “I know I’m not the best person to say it, but your people respect you. They might squabble with Heaven or us humans, but they’ve put their trust in you; otherwise, in all honesty, I think they’d have just eaten me and Solomon alive.”

He cracks a small, tiny smile at that.

“You needed mutual agreement between all the realms for this exchange program, and you did it. If that tells me anything, it’s that they’re probably tired of all the fighting, too,” she surmises. He laughs, just barely, before he bends down to kiss her forehead, letting it linger.

When he pulls away, he says, “Thank you, that helped.”

“Did it?”

He hums. “A little,” he responds, loosening his grip on her. “I need to be alone for a while, is that okay?”

“Take all the time,” she answers. Placing a quick kiss onto his cheek, she turns on her heel and walks away. Comforting demon royalty isn’t something she’s good at, and maybe she never will be, but space? Space is something she can give him.

Promises of ‘unto death do us part’ is tradition, the idea of a romance that spans the fire of life until it’s snuffed out by a swing of the scythe, but she believes that mortality is fickle to him. A being of a thousand years that will live on for a thousand more, and she fills in the mere potential century; a year for him is a decade for her.

Yet here he is, knotting the string of his life to her in promise. “Make a pact with me,” he declares, bringing her hand up to his lips, kissing her knuckles as though she were royalty.

Her breath hitches. “Diavolo.”

“Let me be yours,” the demon pleads, yearns, longs and she’s a little taken aback by the openness of it all.

“You don’t have to,” she says but he surges, drawing her in.

“I want to,” he asserts, unyielding, though she’s still unconvinced.

An act of binding. That’s what it means to be tied down to a contract, and she knows full well what the consequences are, for the both of them, should any of them trespass their terms. With the seven brothers, she did as the situation demanded, but with Diavolo, there’s absolutely nothing that warrants it.

He seems to sense her unease, because he squeezes her hand, brings her closer. “It’ll be fine,” he assures; “Let me show you what you mean to me.”

“I know where I stand with you,” she tells him as she raises a hand to cup his cheek.

“Do you?” he asks in rhetoric, pressing his lips against her pulse, eyes locking onto hers. “You needn’t ask and I’d gladly give a century of my life for you, freely offer you my soul, and even if you love me less, leave me for a human, I’d regret none of it.”

She swallows his words when he presses his lips to hers, wholly engulfed by the sincerity of it all. Gentle as always, tender as always, and none of the demon she’d thought he’d be, his hand coming up to caress her face. He leaves her lightheaded, breathless, forehead touching hers, the warmth between them near unbearable.

“I trust you, utterly and entirely; let me show you that I do,” he murmurs and she clasps her hands behind his neck, her lips hovering above his.

“Nothing I say will change your mind, will it?”

He chuckles. “I’m afraid not.”

Promises of sacrifice and loyalty, they aren’t taken lightly by the laws of a contract, but he pledges himself anyway, so readily and so staunchly she almost falters.

In reverence, he traces the mark - his mark - that runs from her shoulder and coils around her arm, marvelling at the sight of it. “Was it painful?” he asks as he glances to her, worry underscoring his words.

She shrugs and offers him a smile in hopes it’ll reassure him. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Leaning in to thumb a kiss to her clavicle, he chuckles low. “Sometimes I forget you’ve made pacts with the seven strongest demons here,” he says and the pride in his voice makes her chest swell.

“Eight,” she corrects while she cards her fingers through his hair, trailing the curl of his horns, eliciting a quiet, pleased hum from him.

“Eight,” he repeats in satisfaction before he lifts his head up to meet her and she, emboldened, enraptured, captures his lips in fervour.

Agarwood and warm spice, she drinks the taste of him, smoky lapsang and carbon ashen. He spills her name into her mouth, once more into the spellbound night when she punctures a soft bite into the juncture of his neck, a hymnic praise that makes her feel nothing less of otherworldly. He almost - almost - whines when she pulls away, chuckling as she does.

Under her, he’s nothing short of breathtaking, with topazes for eyes and vermillion hair, and dark skin marked by black, steeped in gold. Triangular patterns of red hiss around his throat, the newly formed pact pulsing with magic and she trails her fingers across them, enamoured.

“You’re beautiful,” she finds herself professing and he lets out a quiet laugh, Adam’s apple bobbing under her touch, the sound reverberating.

“I’m all yours,” he surrenders and she’s touched, honoured by the sincerity of his proclamation. “I will be until you say I no longer am.”

“And I, yours,” she promises before she laces her fingers with his and kisses him once more.

#swd obey me #obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me diavolo #diavolo x reader #munewrites #f: obey me #ch: diavolo #an: this took so much longer than expected #an: can you tell I have no idea where to take this #an: look i have a LOT OF FEELS for tiddy man diavolo #an: I feel like he'd be the only one out of all the demons to tell mc that hello yes i wanna be yours #an: idk it just seems fitting esp because he really can't spend much time with them #an: ALSO YES for Diavolo the pact is a show of complete loyalty and trust #an: also using holy or divine words to describe the demons is now my favourite thing to do because why nOT #an: Honestly though im p sure diavolo isn't this sweet #an: man probs has ulterior motives #an: gives me those vibes #an: thIS IS TERRIBLE ON THE PHONE #an: tumblr let me have line breaks

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gryffindors-weasley · 3 years

Text

Distractions

Draco Malfoy x Reader

Summary: A rainy Sunday evening is spent with Draco.

Warnings: minor injury, brief mentions of blood, mentions of the dark mark, fluff

(not my gif)

It was a rather dreary Sunday evening, rain pelting fast to the ground as it had done all day. Although it wasn’t the kind of weather you’d want to be caught outside in, it was perfectly ideal for the place you were headed. The greenhouse.

You followed a pace or two behind Draco, his hand enveloping yours and a book held in your other as you walked in comfortable silence. The trip there could be done blindfolded at this point, the same path down the near unfrequented halls every Saturday and Sunday at five o’clock in the evening. It was a routine that first started halfway through fifth year, though his fondness for it dates back farther than that.

Every weekend Draco can be found tending to every plant that resided in the large glass structure, a responsibility Professor Sprout bestowed upon him without reluctance. Granted, he wasn’t very gentle or mindful of the delicate greenery and herbs in his early years, which is something he regrets looking back at it. But when he showed up unannounced outside her classroom door after hours a few years later, she had a sneaking suspicion the Slytherin wasn’t quite as insufferable as he lets on.

Despite his fondness and growing interest in the vast varieties of magical plants and the potions they can be crafted into, it’s a piece of himself he wants to be kept secret. Not that he’s embarrassed of such things, but as time goes on he finds it better to leave things of sentimental value out of the public eye. That being said, should anyone cast a lingering glance his way on his route, he’s quick to shoot them a defensive glare to stave off prying eyes.

Now, in just under a year and a half, he’s become one of the finest caretakers of her beloved plants she’s ever seen.

The moment you stepped into the greenhouse the downpour became more apparent than before, creating a steady tapping against the old glass. Condensation beaded on every windowpane it could access, and the puffy gray clouds were visible at every angle, creating the perfect ambience to read your book.

Draco set off to work almost immediately, shrugging off his robe and handing it to you with a kiss on the cheek before reading over the checklist Professor Sprout had made for him.

He started off with watering the herbs she’d listed, spraying their leaves first before watering at the base. He quickly found that to be a more effective way of doing things, giving the remaining water to the select few that could use more hydration.

It was a trick he’d seen quite a few gardeners use on his mother’s garden at the Manor, and the meticulously placed flowers and shrubbery seemed to respond well to the technique. That amongst many other things were something he observed in his days spent at home on the summer break. The acres of well manicured landscaping providing ample opportunities to escape and spend his time around something other than the four walls of his bedroom.

Once finished, he moved to clean up around the place, giving you a sweet smile any time he passed by you even if you hadn’t seen it. But the times you did catch his eye, the tips of his ears would burn a pale pink.

He picked up a couple pairs of gardening shears left out and a few brooms that lay knocked over from messy second year students, putting miscellaneous dragon-skin gloves back in their rightful cabinet with the others. Some might consider this to be rather boring, especially on a weekend where there were better things to be spent doing on the short break from schoolwork. But the distraction was something Draco needed and it was one he enjoyed, something he found he could use a bit more of lately.

Repotting mandrakes was last on the very brief list. They weren’t used very often anymore, not like they had been in second year. But if the need arised should anyone be petrified, it was good to have a few on hand for potions.

He undid the buttons on the cuffs of his white dress shirt before shoving the slightly wrinkled sleeves up to rest at his elbows. However, he seemed to have briefly forgotten the mark swirling across the pale skin on his forearm, promptly yanking that sleeve back down before grabbing the ceramic pots and a new bag of soil with a frown. He tried not to let it cloud up his train of thought and sour his mood.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to his inner turmoil you had long since made yourself comfortable perched on a vacant spot on one of the old wooden tables, book cracked open in your hands. It hadn’t taken you very long to become immersed in it, as books usually do to its readers. And you could’ve sworn you might’ve heard Draco’s voice, whether or not it was directed at you, you were unsure.

A minute or two later he finished his preparations and glanced over his shoulder at you, sighing at the sight. The earmuffs he’d asked you to put on just moments ago still sat where he’d set them down on your lap, your eyes fixed on your book as his robe sat wrapped around your shoulders to combat the chilly evening weather. He walked the few feet over to you, picking them up.

“Sometimes I think you choose to tune me out, love,” Draco says, placing your earmuffs on your head gently, smiling when you lifted your head from your book. You offer a smile as your cheeks flush a soft pink.

“Sometimes,” you remark with a soft laugh, gaze returning to find the line you left off at. Truthfully you were beginning to lose focus anyway.

He set off to the task at hand with a smile, making short work of it though there’s only so much those earmuffs can do to filter out the shrill cries of these plants. It was a dreaded detail he hadn’t forgotten in his second year, always wondering how such a small creature could produce such a deafeningly fatal sound.

You decided any quality reading wouldn’t be achievable beyond that point, especially not with the humidity curling and warping the pages you tried to read from. It definitely was not because of the blonde who stood paces away from you, the very same humidity turning his once formally styled hair to mussed waves of platinum. Regardless of the reasons or their importance, you closed your book and made your way over to him.

“Do you need a hand with anything?” You ask, looking over the vast array of greenery before looking up at him. He pondered for a moment as he set the scrap piece of parchment down and rubbed his hands together to rid them of dirt.

“Could you take those extra pots to the storage cupboard?” He asks kindly, pointing to the two spares that sat untouched. You nod, grabbing the set from the table. “Thank you, darling.”

The frequently used name had still managed to make your heart flutter, your flustered distraction having you trip on the leg of the table. The pots in your hand were sent flying unceremoniously to the ground with a clatter, cheeks reddening from your blunder as you instinctively grabbed for them. As your finger ran along a sharp edge you quickly recoil with a surprised gasp, Draco tugging you to your feet in concern of the situation before you could fully hit the ground.

“Careful, Love!” He scolds softly, pulling your arm from your chest gently to see just what kind of accident he was dealing with.

Draco was quick to rush off to a cabinet on the far end of the greenhouse, freshly stocked with medicinal potions, some of which he’d gotten to make himself. He returned shortly with a small glass bottle, and he gently blotted at the fairly superficial cut running along the length of your pointer finger.

“What is that?” You ask softly as he gingerly holds your shaky hand, depositing a few drops over it. It stung a bit unexpectedly and your eyes widen a fraction as you watch it quickly heal as if nothing was ever there, curious gaze bouncing up to Draco. You tried not to pay any mind to the blonde strand that stuck adorablely to his forehead and focus on his words.

“It’s Essence of Dittany. I’ve just made this batch last week and it seems to be quite satisfactory,” he says, a small yet proud smile on his lips as he inspects your newly healed finger.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” you say with a soft laugh.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he quips, earning himself a pointed stare as you raised a questioning brow at him. He laughs as he puts the tiny bottle back where he got it, the shards of terra-cotta easily piecing themselves back together with a simple motion of his hand. “I’m only kidding, my love.”

You settle as he pulls you close by a gentle grip on your hands, releasing one to tuck your newly frizzy hair behind your ear. It was true, you were the only person to know most everything about him. Not one person in his social circle, not even his mother, knew his ins and outs like you and the thought both terrified him and comforted him all the same. But he knew you’d never cast an ounce of judgement his way. Not even for the mark ghosting over his arm that haunted his very thoughts the moment it was formed.

His calloused hand came to rest on your cheek, thumb brushing over flushed skin as his gray eyes took in every feature. The freckles that could only been seen in a close proximity, the curve of your lashes, the natural shade of pink coloring your bare lips. Soon he dipped down and kissed you, unable to refrain from doing so a moment longer. He always finds himself unable to resist it. You seem to enchant him, stronger than any love potion or magical spell could ever manage to evoke. And while true love is a scary thought, he doesn’t have it in him fight the very grip it has on his racing heart.

He parted from you reluctantly upon the sound of unfamiliar footfalls approaching, grabbing your hand with a laugh as the two of you run off towards the other exit hand in hand. The forgotten rain came as an icy shock once you ran out into it, but such inconveniences weren’t important when he pulls you in for another rain soaked kiss.

#draco malfoy #draco malfoy fluff #draco malfoy imagine #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy x you #draco malfoy fic #harry potter fic

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watermelonlipstick · 3 years

Text

Dreams, Chapter 16

If you haven’t read this series before, you might want to start on Chapter 1, or check out the Dreams Masterlist! Here’s the series description:

When Dean dies for good leaving Sam and his girlfriend (the reader) behind, they must figure out how to carry on without him. Alone, reeling, and unsure what to do next, trying to honor Dean’s memory and follow their hearts gets even more complicated when their nightmares become dreams that feel a little too real.

Title: Dreams, Chapter 16

Pairing: (past) Dean Winchester x Reader, (eventual) Sam Winchester x Reader

Word Count: 1754

Summary: Some of Sam’s efforts to ‘nest’ in their new life together reveal new possibilities.

Warnings: angst, FLUFF, swearing, s l o w b u r n

Water laps at the weather-beaten wood of the dock underneath you slowly and the rhythm feels like hypnosis with the sun beating down a blanket. You sense Dean at your side without opening your eyes.

“So…was he any good?”

You can’t help but laugh, hearing the echo go out over the small lake, and get up to your elbows. It’s bright enough that you have to squint over at Dean where he lays next to a couple fishing poles and a cooler, t shirt hitched up to show a sliver of his stomach with his arms behind his head. His smile is devilish, made even more smug with eyes closed against the sun so his lashes cast an inch-long shadow on the dusting of freckles across his cheeks. “You can’t ask that!” you giggle.

His lips flatten into a knowing line. “So that’s a no?”

“Jesus Christ, of course it’s not a n—you know what, I’m not talking to you about this,” you smile, laying back down.

“Ooh, so it’s a yes,” he teases as he turns on his side to face you. “Go Sammy. That mean you two are, like, going steady now?”

You let your head loll over to him and roll your eyes. “Are you done?”

“Not yet. Is he going to let you wear his letterman jacket? Take you to junior prom?”

“I’m giving you ten more seconds.”

Dean laughs, free and easy. “Fine, okay, I’m done. Wait—did he wrap it?”

“DEAN!” you yell, covering your face in embarrassment.

“Okay, alright, okay.” He’s still chuckling when you open your eyes to look over at him and reaches over to slip a piece of hair behind your ear. “You, ah, you seem happy.”

You search his eyes for any hidden anger and find only the softness of calm affection with a pinch of solemnity. Where his hand lingers in your hair you turn into it, pressing your lips to Dean’s palm. “I am.”

Dean smiles, straight teeth a perfect row of pearls so white you think for a second they might ‘ding’ with sparkle like a cartoon, and he looks relaxed enough as he puts his hands back behind his head that it calls up images of a kitten falling asleep in a sunny spot like this even as he keeps his eyes on you. “Took you guys long enough.”

“And you’re still okay with this?”

“Yeah, hell yeah. That’s the best I could ever ask for, you two happy. So, what do you say? Want to see if we can catch some fish?”

Spring was a blessing; clean greenness breaking through the grey and white purifying the air and breathing new life into you, Sam, and the community you’d come to be a part of. The cabin was that much nicer with the new hours of sunlight pouring through the windows and all the upgrades you had put into it, to the point that you began to feel truly comfortable there. You even invited the Kaisers over for dinner a few times, feeling more like equal partners in your burgeoning friendship with them.

You started to feel stable enough to get things; picked up a bookshelf at the combination flea/farmer’s market that happened in the K-12 school’s field every Saturday morning and got higher quality spatulas to cook with, the kinds of nonessential stuff you never would’ve bought before knowing you were going to stay in one place long enough to get good use out of them. Sam, in turn, kept building: changing the locks to sturdier ones and erecting a shed big enough to hold a lawn mower.

You’d been cooking on an early Sunday afternoon when Sam came home and crossed the cabin in a few strides, giving you a kiss on the cheek before setting a thick paper bag down on the kitchen counter. “Smells great, what’re you making?”

“Ratatouille!” you buzzed, placing a slice of eggplant carefully into its slot. “I’ve never had it, but I’ve always thought it looks so pretty. Hopefully it’s good. Where were you?”

“Hardware store. I thought maybe I could build a greenhouse; see if we could grow anything. Might be enough to work against the cold.”

You raised your eyebrows in appreciative surprise. “Look at you! What’re you thinking? Poppies? Platinum OG? Purple Haze?”

Setting a box of screws down, Sam rolled his eyes through a smile. “My plan was more along the lines of tomatoes or something, but I’ll, uh, take those suggestions under advisement.” You had a sudden urge to twist a gentle finger into the dimple that stayed on his cheek as he unloaded the rest of his supplies but didn’t want to embarrass him, instead sweeping some garlic skins into your hand to throw into the small bucket Sam kept under the sink to collect scraps for the compost pile. When the bag was empty he refolded it and took off his jacket, passing by you to put it on its hook by the door. “Want any help?” he asked, sounding about as breezy as you’d ever heard him.

“It just has to bake for about an hour. Does a late lunch work with your construction schedule?”

Sam leaned over to slip a hand around your waist and kissed the top of your head before grabbing an armful of stuff to take outside. “Definitely. Just yell when you’re ready for me.”

You giggled and waggled your eyebrows suggestively. “I’m always ready for you.”

He tried his best not to blush but bit his lip in spite of himself, looking up at you with a bashful twinkle in his eye. “I walked into that one, didn’t I?”

In response you held up a spare slice of zucchini that Sam readily accepted, opening his mouth like an obedient puppy and chewing as he went out the back door.

You loved watching Sam work on his greenhouse in the weeks that followed, getting so excited about the tiny shoots sprouting up from the soil that he sometimes woke up early to check on them before starting his day. After a few weeks he woke you up one morning with a cup of coffee, bare-chested under slightly sleep-tangled hair and the hems of his flannel pants sloppily half inside his boots. “I wanna show you something,” he said, throat still gravelly. You accepted the mug and got out of bed, following him drowsily and jamming your feet inside your shoes at the door, too tired to worry about the laces.

He led you into the greenhouse with its clear plastic walls and pointed down at a petite bud on top of a green stalk. It had the telltale waviness of a basil leaf, and when you bent down to look closer at it the plant already smelled herbaceous. “It’s so cute!” you hummed. Sam practically glowed with satisfaction, an unbridled smile the perfect accessory to the broad span of his chest where it was backlit by the fuzzy light through the greenhouse walls. You straightened and rubbed his back in congratulations, staring down at the plant together with your coffees like parents on Christmas morning. Tucked in the corner of the greenhouse behind the basil, a scattering of bitty white flowers caught your eye against the burnt umber soil.

“Wait, you already have stuff flowering in here? What’s that?” you asked, tiptoeing around the wooden stakes in the soil to get closer.

“Oh—I, uh—” he stammered behind you.

At arm’s length the flowers looked vaguely familiar and you stopped short. “Is that—?” You turned back to Sam, who seemed not to be able to come up with anything to say, his face the kind of blank surprise that indicated he didn’t know whether you were about to be upset. “Really? Where’d you even…how did you get some?”

He tucked his hair behind his ears to stall for even a half second. “I—well, I found a guy who got me—got us—some.”

“You still have an African dream root hookup?”

Sam’s lips pressed into a well-practiced silent ‘I guess?’ and he reached back to ruffle the hair at the nape of his neck, the movement stretching his side distractingly enough that if you hadn’t been so startled by the discovery of a plot of dream root literally in your own backyard you might’ve forgotten what you were talking about altogether.

You raised your eyebrows expectantly, waiting for him to explain.

“I made some calls, found someone in Milwaukee who got his hands on some and he mailed it here. I didn’t want to, uh, tell you in case I couldn’t get it to grow.”

All kinds of possibilities and frustrations raced through your head. “So you’ve had this for weeks? That’s why you built the greenhouse?” Sam didn’t answer fast enough. “Never mind, I don’t care,” you found yourself saying, and surprisingly, actually meaning. You took a deep breath to stop the words from jumbling together. “Do you think it’ll work?” you breathed, knowing he would understand the real question: would we be able to see Dean together?

“Only one way to find out.”

For whatever reason you’d gotten freshly showered, made up, and dressed before brewing the tea with Sam on your next day off of work. It felt like there should be some level of pomp and circumstance about it, this giant undertaking that might be able to change your whole life again, even knowing that your prep wouldn’t translate into a dream. You were giddy with anxiety and almost wished you could reasonably put it off, the idea of this new possibility being yet another dead end making you nauseous.

“Your place or mine?” you asked, trying to put a little sheen of humor on your nerves.

Sam chuckled but you could tell he was nervous too, rubbing his palms dry on the knees of his jeans over and over again. “You haven’t done it before, right?”

You shook your head. “Is there a learning curve or something?”

“Honestly it’s been long enough that I don’t really remember. Hold on—hold still.” He reached out and very gingerly swept a finger across your cheekbone, drawing back to show you an eyelash stuck to the whorl of its pad.

You straightened where you sat on the edge of the bed. “That’s as good a sign as any. Cheers, I guess.” Sam dropped the tiny hair into his mug and touched the ceramic to yours, his eyes hopeful and reassuring as you took tandem sips.

And then you were off.

Continue to Dreams, Chapter 17

Thanks again for reading! If you liked it, check out my Masterlist or send me a request!

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marvelfansince08love · 4 years

Text

Small Reminders

Word count: 3306

Pairing: Cordelia Goode x Reader

Warning: Some talk of low self-esteem. Delia being a sweetheart.

Prompts requested: 3 “Just kiss me”, 7 “While they all fall in love with her smile, she waits for one who will fall in love with her scars,”

A/N: Two in one day? What is this madness! Wonderful Anon, enjoy love x

Thanks @imnotasuperhero for editing, boo x

Tags: @waitingfortheendtocome @natasha-danvers @saucy-sapphic @coconutlipss @creepingwolfberry @muted-stoneheart @chewbacca0805 @witchxaf

Prompts 3, 7

Being one of the only mature students at the academy, made you feel very intimidated and insecure about your abilities as a growing witch. Learning the craft at such an older age meant that the other girls at the academy were very wary around you, as if waiting for you to blow over with this built up power that you never had the chance to unlock. It made you fidgety at first, knowing that eyes were constantly staring at you as if you were this unique creature.

“How can you go this long without realising the power you possess,”

“Is she even a witch?”

You’ve come to ignore the blatant stares and the not so subtle comments wanting to harness your powers into something far more interesting, like manipulating Madison into being overly flirtatious with Zoe to confuse the innocent couple knowing from the rumour mill about their past ‘interests’ with Kyle. You smirk, remembering how during a salty argument between the two girls Madison had reached over and kissed Zoe on her cheek before stepping back horrified by the action, while Zoe blushed red in response. You had hid your amusement behind your open book just as Cordelia Goode had walked into the room, her eyes seeking out your own as if already knowing the cause of such awkwardness and if the twitch of her lips were any indication, she also shared in your amusement. You blush slightly, thinking of the certain blonde head witch, your supreme.

Cordelia Goode had seeked you out along with her confidant Myrtle Snow after hearing about your small incident with a fire at your country home. She had such kind eyes, the ones you would seek out when in need of comfort. She whispered soft words of reassurance, letting you know you weren’t going crazy. Her touch was soft against your skin that day, tracing along your cheekbones, the touch grounding you leaning into her offered touch.

“You’re safe now, Y/N. Let us take care of you, darling girl.” She had said, her smile bright and easy that it could single handedly stop any war or conflict. She was the most incredible person you had ever met.

That was over four months ago and you had grown closer to the older woman, seeking out her guidance whenever you were struggling. The others would tease you about your closeness with the supreme but you would argue back that she was just as close to Misty Day as she was you. You would blame it on the similar ages between you three, but you knew that your feelings for the powerful witch were more than just platonic. It only grew with each passing touch on your shoulder, the secret smile and wink she would send to you at the dinner table while the others chatted amongst themselves.

You continued to think about that particular thought as you grinded down the now dried out herbs in the greenhouse. Apart from the library, this was your favourite place to come and unwind, clearing your thoughts as you worked. The sound of the glass door opening startles you from your work, making you drop the mortar onto the floor with a clang.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry! Here, let me get the broom and pan.” Delia’s concerned voice rushes, as she makes her way further into the greenhouse heading for the broom to clean up the now broken mortar. You go to protest, trying to justify that it was your fault as you dropped the damn thing. She shakes her head not wanting to hear it.

“No, it was my fault for startling you while you worked, darling. Let me get this cleaned up and then we can talk.” She informs, making you blush at her pet name for you. You crotch to join her with cleaning up the small broken piece much to her disapproving look. As you pick up the pieces and place them into the dustpan you feel her gaze flickering between your face and the task at hand, sensing her nervousness already.

“Are you okay, Delia? What is it you wanted to talk to me about?” You ask, taking the initiative to start the conversation. Placing the broken pieces in the pan on top of the table, Delia turns towards you and clasps both your hands in between her own, that breathtaking smile appearing onto her soft features.

“I have some good news. How do you feel about teaching a class this afternoon? Just some of the basics. It will show the younger girls just how much you’ve come along. A true inspiration.” She gushes, excitement evident in her big dark eyes as they lock with your own conflicted ones. Her smile falters at your lack of enthusiasm at her proposition. “Or not, that’s okay as well,” she retracts but you can hear the disappointment in her voice.

“I uh, I dunno Cordelia. I um... I don’t think I’m good enough to be teaching these young witches anything.” You confess, uncertainty laced within your voice. Dark brows frown at your words as if trying to understand them.

“Darling girl, you have such a strong power.. I wish you could see just how special you are. I see it within you everyday,” she pauses, removing a hand from around your own to place flat against your heart. Making you inhale deeply at the intimate touch. “I can feel your powers growing stronger every day, Y/N. You have so much to offer, not just to the coven but to yourself.” She finishes, her eyes trying to gaze in your wondering ones not wanting to meet the intensity of her brown eyes.

Keeping your eyes trained to the side you mumble sadly to her. “I wish I could believe that, Miss.Goode. I’m sorry, but I would like to give that a miss but thank you for the opportunity.” You gulp trying to keep the sob from escaping, the negative thoughts about yourself slowly creeping in. You feel her remove her hand from your chest, giving you space to leave knowing you are done with the conversation but ever too polite to say. You bolt out of the room the second she gives you that silent permission.

***

“You just have to be more patient with her Delia. She’s a sensitive soul, my dear.” Myrtle’s raspy voice advises, ever the wise one. Cordelia sits across from her mentor, one of Misty’s herbal teas brewing between her hands as she takes in her words. Her gaze watching the flames flicker from the fireplace within her bedroom.

“I don’t know what else I can do. She thinks so little of herself, I can feel the insecurity and doubt seeping from her like a cry for help.” She shakes her head, unable to process just how little you see yourself.

“She may be able to hide that side of her to the rest of the coven but I can see her, Myrtle.” Her voice trembling, saddened by the fact that you have not been able to make real connections with the rest of the girls.

Myrtle looks at her daughter with understanding, she was there the day you had both met completely engrossed within each other's presence. It was like she just faded into the background, not that she minded of course. Myrtle loved the idea of Cordelia finally finding someone who would treat her like an equal, but who would love her as if she held the clouds above her. That was the look she saw in your eyes that day as Cordelia cradled your face close to her as you came to terms with who you really are.

What Cordelia didn’t know was that the redhead had been keeping a close eye on you, way before the accident at the house. She watched you fight with yourself everyday, trying to push aside that negative energy that kept a tight hold on you, the forced smiles you would pull to the others around, fooling them as you fooled yourself that you were happy and content with yourself. Cordelia hadn’t been stupid when Myrtle finally came to her telling her all about this new witch who could use their guidance, she could see the look in her mentors eyes knowing she was up to something.

As it turned out from the moment that Delia had laid her eyes on you, she knew exactly what she was up to. While Cordelia had healed for the most part from her past traumas, her low self-esteem, never feeling like she could be good enough, could never possibly be up to her mother's high standards. She knew that for you, all those emotions were still new and very raw which was why when she held you that day, she made it her mission to make sure you never were to feel like that again. Myrtle reached across to place her hand on top of Cordelia's free hand and pats in sympathy.

“You know what you have to do, my dear. Think outside the box.”

***

Over the last few days, you’ve become very frustrated. Colourful sticky notes have been left purposefully within your path around the academy, all signed to you. This made you nervous, you wondered if Madison had anything to do with it, maybe even Coco. You had returned from your daily meditation with Queenie and Misty, both trailing in behind you. You groaned as soon as you spotted the bright pink note on your vanity table, already feeling your cheeks heat up. You may be frustrated with this mysterious person and their secret notes but it didn’t mean you have grown fond of finding them throughout your day. Queenie snickers behind you, already knowing about the secret notes that you had quizzed her about late last night as you grabbed hold of the tiny piece of paper.

You are worth so much more than your darkness - Yours X

“Damn girl. This is like what, the seventh one in the last three days?” Queenie comments, peeking over your shoulder at the note as Misty joins her on your other side.

“We have a lil’ sweetheart on our hands,” Misty comments, taking the note and placing it into the small box that keeps the other heartfelt words locked away from prying eyes. You clear your throat feeling an overwhelming lump in your throat, the words effecting you more than you would like to admit.

“I’m sure it’s one of the younger girls playing tricks.” You defend, quickly locking the box and putting away. You hear them both scoff behind you before silence settles among the room making you turn to face them in question, eyebrows raised at the mischievous grins.

“What?” Misty gazes away from you as if faking interest in your hanging plant plot on your wall, while Queenie crosses her arms across her chest looking very smug.

“It’s just that… and correct me if I’m wrong, but that handwritin’ looks awfully familiar to me.” Misty says with indifference, stroking the leaf from your plant. You frown at her riddles, slightly frustrated that they both seem to be on the same page while you appeared to be on a different book entirely.

“Hmm, yeah. Now that you mention it Mist, it looks very familiar to me too,” Queenie plays along, a mischievous glint sparks within her dark eyes as she watches the gears turn in your head.

“Guys seriously, enough with the mind games. Do you know who this is?” You ask tiredly, indicating to the black engraved box on your table. Misty sways slightly towards you, a bright orange note between her fingertips holding the piece of paper between your face and hers allowing you to grab a hold of the note.

“I found this on my side of the room. Clearly whoever left it forgot that I shower wayyyy after you do and I know this ain’t for me.” Misty drawls out, a small smirk on her lips. Keeping your eyes locked with the woman, you take the note from her hands and read the black swirling ink.

While they all fall in love with her smile, she waits for one who will fall in love with her scars.

You may not see it, but I certainly do.

My special darling girl,

Yours X

You re-read the last few lines over and over again, realization dawning upon you as you read the personal nickname that only one certain blonde supreme calls you. Shaking your head, you move to sit onto your bed that lies parallel to Misty’s. The two women sit beside you on the bed as they wait for you patiently to accept who the mysterious person is.

“But I-” A tut from Queenie stops you in your tracks.

“You two are so obvious except to each other. You two lock eyes at dinner and I feel like I need to excuse myself,” Queenie teases, gently shoving her shoulder against yours making you fluster at your poor attempts to act normal around the beautiful blonde.

“I don’t understand.” You mutter, eyes still locked onto the black ink. The two friends lock eyes over your head before they both go to stand. Misty places a comforting hand on your shoulder, squeezing gently as if trying to give you the confidence and strength you need.

“Go talk to Delia, Y/N. She clearly has something to say to you.” Queenie suggests with such kindness that it makes the unshed tears build within your eyes.

“O-okay, I’ll talk to her.”

And you did exactly that.

Later that evening, once the rest of the coven had retreated to their rooms for the night. Queenie and Misty had given you not-so subtle thumbs in as you continued on down the hall towards the supreme’s bedroom where you could see the faint orange light seeping beneath her bedroom door, indicating that she was still in fact awake; much to your relief and dread.

You breathe out slowly as your fist hovers over the wooden door that is currently stopping you from making either the worst or best decision. With a soft knock and a faint ‘come in’ you open the door and peer through the gap tentatively, feeling your breath hitch at the perfect sight in front of you. Sitting with her back against the arm of the long sofa, her knees up towards her chest as an old book lays open upon her thighs as her long satin black dressing gown hangs low just about touching the cream carpet, is Cordelia with her long blonde locks draped towards her breast her signature black rimmed glasses perched on her perfect nose. She looks up at you as you enter fully into her room smiling softly, shuffling slightly, feeling awkward for interrupting her downtime. Knowing she doesn’t get enough of it due to her status within the coven.

“Hey, darling girl. This is a nice surprise.” She comments, placing her book onto the draw next to the sofa. You gulp at hearing the name that has stirred up so many feelings within you, even more so since reading her last note. You smile shyly and head towards her as she indicates for you to take a seat across from her in the single plush chair.

“I’m sorry to disturb you so late into the evening, Cordelia. I um- I,” you stutter, suddenly feeling very foolish for coming here in the first place. Cordelia tilts her head in confusion waiting for you to gather yourself. She leans forward and places her hand on your knee, her thumb stroking calm strokes along your bare knee due to the night clothes you were wearing.

“Darling, what is it?” She asks, her voice awfully soft that you feel your own heart melt by the sound of her tenderness. Instead of answering her you decided to bring forth the note that was read last by magic, watching as her eyes widen momentarily before the corners of her big doe eyes crease due to the knowing smile that appears onto her soft pink lips.

“Ah, so you finally figured it out.” Is all she says as she leans back, crossing one leg over the other. Looking regal as ever and so, so calm. God I hate that she can be like that during these types of conversations.

‘You secretly love it though,’ you remind yourself.

“I just- I just don’t understand why. Why the secret notes? The words used? I don’t understand why you would send them to me of all people.” You admit, dropping your gaze as to not show her just how affected you are by those words.

Cordelia moves from the other side of the sofa and around towards you. Crouching in front of your hunched figure, she grasps your chin between her thumb and index finger forcing you to look at her.

“They are reminders.” You frown at that, still not quite understanding which makes her lips twitch attempting to smile at just how oblivious you were.

“Reminders of just how perfect you really are to me. It’s how I see you, Y/N. I know you have scars that cut deep, maybe even as deep as mine. I get you like no one else does because I’ve been there, my darling. You may be able to hide behind that forced beautiful smile of yours but I can see the sadness in your eyes.” She declares, brushing her thumb across your wet cheeks collecting the fallen tears that roll quietly down your face.

“I don’t deserve your kind words, Delia.” You whisper, unable to make your words clear in fear of breaking down. “I’m just so tired.” You splutter out before dropping your chin down to your chest, unable to keep her gaze. It’s far too understanding and kind towards you, and you aren’t used to having such compassion.

“Shhh shh, it’s okay. It’s okay baby, I’ve got you.” She hushes, standing to allow you to collapse forward burying your face into her stomach as she keeps you close. Once you feel the last remaining tear fall, you exhale deeply trying to compose yourself.

Looking up at the blonde witch you feel that overwhelming sense of love again for her, that contentedness that grounds you whenever you are around her. Something shifts between you in that moment as you lock eyes with the blonde beauty, her hands move from behind your head to cup your jaw prompting you to stand so you are more equal to her. Standing a breath away from her, you take in her features as she does the same, as if silent words are being exchanged.

“This may be a bit forward of me but-”

“Just kiss me, Delia.” You force out, your need evident. As you brush your lips lightly across her own. Hearing the slight intake of breath, indicating just how affected she is by your demand. Pressing hard, you allow yourself to sink into her hold. The feel of her soft full lips finally against your own, you can’t help the satisfying moan that escapes your throat making her moan back in response.

“God, I could kiss you forever and never get tired of it.” She breathes, her voice raspy and desperate.

“Who’s stopping you?” You whisper back. Your eyes hooded with arousal as you take in her swollen lips. At that, Cordelia smashes her lips against your own silencing any more conversation for the rest of the night.

You both knew there was more left unsaid but for right now, you’d show each other just how worthy you are to one another by gentle touches, soft kisses and gentle promises of forever.

#cordelia goode x reader #cordelia goode #cordelia foxx x reader #sarah paulson x reader #sarah paulson #ahs coven #ahs apocalypse

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