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misiwrites · 11 months

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Mayblade Day 13

proceed to pretend it hasn't been 2 weeks without updates

CHAPTER 13 prompt: royalty characters: hiromi, emily, giancarlo, ralf, johnny, olivier, king, queen, brooklyn, yuriy + barthez soldat pairings: olivier/giancarlo

One day while looking for the oddly covert entry to the school kitchens during helper duty, Hiromi discovered a strange door in one of the basement floor corridors. It was fancy, a robust oak door with paneling and a golden handle, an elaborate carving in the middle in the shape of a knight, the chess piece. She tried the handle on a whim only to find the door locked.

“That’s the chess club,” Emily told her afterwards. “But they’re weird. I don’t recommend trying that one out.”

But, as usual, Hiromi’s curiosity had already been awakened. Besides, she had always enjoyed strategy games like chess, go, and mahjong and wasn’t about to pass the opportunity to check out something she actually was interested in, as opposed to all this other gunk she wasn’t, like tennis and circus.

So she headed over once classes were done with. Maybe she’d get lucky and find someone at the club room. Finding the strange door again took a while, but eventually she raised a hand to knock on the fanciful oak paneling.

To her surprise, it soon opened – an inch, anyway. Someone glanced at her through the slim crack of the door; it was an old man, peering down at her from above. Her eyes got stuck in the silvery moustache leering over her as she looked back at him.

“Entry is forbidden from non-members,” the man said and promptly slammed the door on her face.

Hiromi stood frozen in place, staring. Wait, what? What was this old man doing at the school? He’d appeared to have been wearing a suit, though she didn’t get a good look on such short notice.

She knocked again. This time the door remained shut. Not a peep from inside. A minute later, she backed away in resignation.

But someone was approaching the scene down the corridor. Hiromi turned to see – not Max this time, which would have been notably strange in this situation, but another chaotic blue-eyed, fair-haired blond she’d come across recently. It was the Casanova, strolling at a leisurely pace towards the door with his hands in his pockets.

Hiromi had no time to think. She stooped on a level any self-respecting girl never ought to and assumed the demeanor of a damsel in distress. She laced her fingers together and hoped to be making a decently Bambi-eyed impression as she turned to face Giancarlo. Good thing she’d chosen to wear a short skirt today.

As she batted her eyelashes at Giancarlo who’d only just noticed her, he gave her a face of slight alarm, perhaps due to the odd nature of their previous encounter.

“Heeey,” she chirped. “So glad to see you. I’m in a bit of trouble here…”

“Oh!” He lowered his shoulders, dropping the wary act at once. It took him approximately half a second to switch gears to his usual flirty self. “Yeah, I am. What are you looking for, little lamb?”

“I wanted to check out the chess club, but some horrible old man told me to get lost.” She brushed a subtle finger by the corner of her eye, lower lip twitching. “It was s-so rude. All I wanted was to see what the club is like because I like chess. I got scared…”

Giancarlo was exactly as simple a guy as he appeared to be: he was in chivalry mode immediately. “Oh, I’m so sorry – that must have been our butler, he can be such a jerk. Of course you can check out the club if you want to. Come on, let’s go together.”

Hiromi swallowed her urge to retch at Giancarlo placing a hand on her waist and guiding her back towards the dark and dramatic door. And why the fuck would a chess club have a butler?

Giancarlo had a key to the door and opened it with perfect ease. The first thing he did was scold the old man standing by the door in his tuxedo. “Johann, I heard you were rude to this young lady who only wished to come see how our honorable club operates! That was shameful of you. The lady is my guest and welcome here any time.”

Hiromi wasn’t listening to his cheesy mumbo jumbo. She eyed the strange room unlike anything she’d seen elsewhere at the school; it had the appearance of a classic Victorian study. Lots of dramatic dark wood, a fireplace, large paintings on the walls. A dark red carpet covered the entire floor. Several wooden tables were scattered here and there, equipped with expensive-looking chess sets, most sitting vacantly atop the round tables. Only two of the tables were occupied, both of which had two players sitting opposite each other on dark leather seats, and a third person observing on the side. The ones closer to the door, Hiromi recognized: one of the players was Johnny McGregor, the student council member, and the other a guy whom she knew to work in the school library often and, for all she could recall, now saw outside the library for the first time. The third wheel scrutinizing their game from a sofa with a hand raised to his chin was Olivier.

The other pair of players in the back of the room, Hiromi didn’t know. But the third person following their game, sitting with his back towards her, was none other than Brooklyn. This trio paid no attention to her and Giancarlo entering the room.

The other three, however, did. They all turned to stare at them with unmasked contempt.

“What the hell?” asked Johnny, scoffing. “What’s this random lass doing here?”

“I literally just said she’s my guest,” Giancarlo said, scoffing. “You wanker. What’s so bad about having more girls interested in our club?”

“Bollocks. More like more girls interested in you. Who's the wanker here?”

It wasn’t Johnny, though, who looked the iffiest man present. Hiromi was immediately aware of how Olivier was positively glaring daggers at her across the room.

Giancarlo was obviously unbothered by Johnny’s remarks. One filthy hand still on her, he waved the other around to show off the room. “Welcome to our private club! Only the most special people in this school get to ever see it, so consider yourself lucky, Miss… uh…”

“Tachibana,” she uttered.

“Yes.” Making no effort to repeat or learn her name, he then introduced the other members present. Apparently it was Ralf Jürgens, the librarian (who, after an initial foul look her way, remained focused on the game throughout this exchange), who had arranged this old storage room to be renovated for the club’s use. The two people she didn’t yet know, Giancarlo introduced as King and Queen from 2-A. She did wonder how and why they would be called like this, as they obviously weren’t their real names, but didn’t have enough interest to follow up by asking about it. Perhaps it was some kind of strange chess-themed live roleplay they had going on here.

After the introductions, what mild attention was paid to Hiromi evaporated completely. Giancarlo finally withdrew his hand and moved over to sit next to Olivier on the sofa, casually throwing that same hand over his shoulder instead. Olivier made a point to cast Hiromi a smug look while pulling the other guy’s hand tighter around himself, as if she in any shape or form gave a shit about this.

Everyone present seemed like a jerk, perhaps with the exception of Brooklyn. Not that she knew him much either. Why was he here, anyway? Hadn’t he just been at the circus club? And the wushu club as well. Had she seen him at the kendo club too...?

For whatever reason that she couldn’t justify to herself, Hiromi remained watching Ralf and Johnny’s chess match, which turned out to be more of a sitting match. Ralf had been pondering his next move ever since she entered the room and had yet to decide it at this point. Giancarlo and Olivier were nested on the sofa, apparently so engrossed in each other that Giancarlo no longer remembered the existence of his “guest”; whatever this weird dynamic between the two guys was, Hiromi couldn’t wrap her poor brain around it. And Johnny, who sat lazily back in his leather armchair, one leg crossed over the other, appeared perpetually distracted by the pair at the other end of the room and didn’t give a rat’s ass about Ralf taking his sweet time.

Hiromi glanced over at the table occupied by King, Queen, and Brooklyn. The regally named couple was the opposite of Ralf and Johnny: their game was fast-paced and timed with both slapping a clock set next to the checkered board in turns. They were dressed in identical white uniforms and bore some uncanny likeness to each other; if it weren’t for the fact that King was black and Queen white (on the board they played the opposite), they could have been twins. Playing this high-paced game of chess in complete silence and perfect sync, it was another strange duo to add to Hiromi's school findings.

About five minutes later, Ralf finally made his move on the board. He switched the positions of his black queen and rook. And Johnny didn’t even notice it, eyes still glued to the other table across the room.

Ralf, who sat back and folded his arms over his chest, turned to look at Hiromi. He frowned.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

She decided to take her leave.

Hiromi paced a strip of bright green, impeccably mowed grass of the Bey High sports grounds back and forth. Emily was taking longer than usual with tennis practice, and she was getting hungry. They had plans to go grab some early dinner together and maybe do a little card reading on the side, as it had been a while since their last session together. Besides, Hiromi was dying to complain about the chess club to Emily; she’d been waiting for so long by now, her thoughts were inevitably starting to circle around speculating what the bizarre relationship between Olivier Bohringer and Giancarlo Tornatore was, despite repeatedly telling herself she couldn’t have cared less about these rich boys and their odd relations and chocolate bar rituals.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she mumbled under her breath.

“Come on! Come on!” a voice echoed – one that, to her confusion, was not her own.

Hiromi stopped pacing and turned to look out into the stadium. There was a small group of people practicing sprinting. It must have been the track & field club, she thought first – but could have been other students training for the upcoming sports day, too. Hiromi didn’t have enough motivation to do so herself despite the fact that, with a bit of training, she might have done decently in a couple of sports. Knowing how many students were involved in the insanely competitive clubs, her “decent” wouldn’t carry far in the sports day qualifiers.

There was a band of five people repeatedly sprinting down a 100-meter strip of the track. After observing two iterations of this, she could already tell that two of them were far ahead of the pack speed-wise. Both had wild hair sticking up like a pair of demon horns, one a redhead, the other with a blend of blonde and brunette hair.

Then, while watching the other three make their way to the goal line, she realized that one of them was Brooklyn. Whom she’d not too long ago seen at the chess club. Hiromi knit her brows together, staring at his tracksuit-clad figure now slowing down to catch his breath at the end of the track. When had he ever had the time to get here? Hiromi hadn't seen him leave with her.

While Brooklyn and the redhead remained solitary after the performane, the other three quickly gathered together and moved over to the side of the track. Only then Hiromi noticed a sole spectator they now collectively approached, it was Mathilda holding out bottles of water for them. Perhaps she was there timing their runs, a team manager of sorts.

That was when Emily startled the life out of Hiromi by slamming a hand on her shoulder from behind. “Boo!”

“Oh, my fucking god. Don’t do that ever again or I’ll give you a right hook next time. And what took you so long? It’s almost half past already.”

“We had a, well, thing for the enhancement program. Didn’t I tell you?”

No, Emily had not mentioned anything such. “Do you know who those people flocking to Mathilda over there are?” Hiromi then asked, pointing at the track where said scene was still playing out.

After a brief observation pause, Emily told her they were Mathilda’s classmates. “Ah, the weirdo battalion. That’s Claude, Aaron, and Miguel. Totally insufferable. They worship the ground under her feet – they seem to think she’s their princess, or something equally dumb.”

“What, really? Three guys simultaneously?” Mathilda never seemed like the type wooing guys left and right.

“Yeah, I know. Some people are too popular for their own good. And that one,” Emily suddenly pointed at the redhead on the track, “is the Blitzkrieg Boys boss. Or I think he’s the boss.”

Hiromi turned to look at the boy who, rightfully so, was currently standing with his hands on his hips and evidently glaring at the three chivalrous knights still too busy pampering Mathilda to get on with the practice once more. The guy looked unassuming enough from far away. “He looks kind of normal.”

“But is another nutcase. I heard he got suspended on the first week of his first year for bringing a gun to class. Anyway, let’s get going – I need a burger or several.”

“Is that appropriate for your diet?”

“It is today. I’m starving.”

#mayblade #mayblade 2023 #my writing #fic update

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whispermask · 1 year

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gasoline in your heart ch.6/10 | soap/ghost/könig

read on ao3 | first ~ previous | ch wc: 3.6k, total: 34k | completed

tags: smut, eventual ot3, fwbs to lovers, porn with feelings, jealous!ghost

dead dove time: this fic as a whole features a brief mention of a past suicide attempt, briefly graphic past child abuse (not CSA), past abuse of alcohol and present alcohol use, and at times dubious consent (consuming alcohol and engaging in sexual activities; dubcon voyeurism; dubcon sexting)

summary: soap and ghost start hooking up; soap and könig have apparently been hooking up; ghost doesn't know how to deal with it (eventual polycule)

preview: “We should talk–” Soap starts. “That’s the last thing we should be doing right now,” Simon says.

They reach for each other at the same time.

“Hey,” Soap says, voice hushed. “What are you doing?”

Simon’s just closed the door of Soap’s flat and toed off his boots, turning to find arched ceilings and wall-length windows behind him. It’s more of a warehouse space really, but it’s been converted into some kind of industrial-chic studio flat, with a spiral metal staircase that leads to a platform above the main unit where the kitchen and living space are located, half of a second floor. Soap’s draped large swaths of Afghan fabrics over the black-paned windows, his sparse brightly patterned furniture gives the place a sense of warmth and nostalgia.

Beyond the living room in the shadow of the second floor is an art studio. Simon had known that Soap liked to sketch, had seen him with his tongue poking out while he dragged graphites over the pages of his notebook, shading and smudging with the pad of his finger when he wasn’t using the charcoal or a pencil. This is on a whole different level entirely.

He’s got three easels staged in a half circle so that his back would be to the window while he works on the canvases. The concrete floor is covered in paint splatters, countless sheets of sketch paper littering the area around the easels. Two rolling carts sit nearby, piled full with brushes in mason jars, tubes of acrylic paint, and various other tools. Soap’s covered the large canvases resting on the easels with opaque nylon sheets.

“Mirin your place,” Simon says, turning to look at Soap where he stands with his hip leaned against the counter of his kitchen island.

“I’ll give you the tour,” Soap says. He comes around the island to stand beside Simon, hooks his fingers beneath the strap of the duffle bag and lifts it from his shoulder and over his head to drop it at their feet. Soap gestures to pocket door on the kitchen wall to their right. “The toilet’s through there, and a walk-in shower. I put out clean towels for you if you need them,” he says, inching closer to Simon’s side as he talks, placing a hand on his arm to direct his eyes.

“Over there’s my art studio and above it’s the bedroom and a second toilet. Once I knew I wanted to set up an art studio, I opted to renovate, create more space,” he finishes.

“It’s very stylish,” Simon says.

“It’s my pride and joy, arsehole,” Soap says, and shoves Simon’s shoulder. Simon laughs, falls quiet, turns his back on the flat and looks at Soap, haloed in the light from the kitchen behind him.

“We should talk–” Soap starts.

“That’s the last thing we should be doing right now,” Simon says.

They reach for each other at the same time.

Simon goes for Soap’s waist while Soap’s hands come up to frame his face and pull him into a desperate kiss. The press of their mouths is not frantic like it’s been every other time, no threat in Soap’s touch, but it still burns through Simon like molten gold in his veins. Their lips drag against each other wet with spit, teeth catching and tongues swiping, kitten licks that turn filthy. Soap drags his cheek against Simon’s bearded face, sighs on a moan as he reaches between them to cup Simon through his jeans. “Impatient,” Simon says.

“Like you aren’t,” Soap replies.

Simon sucks in a sharp breath when Soap squeezes his shaft lightly and rubs the heel of his palm against the sensitive head through his clothes. Soap smells leather and petrol, a hint of bergamot, familiar yet new. Beneath that, his own musk mingling with Soap’s. Their arousal becomes tangible, a thing with claws that’s been lying in wait, long grown tired of waiting.

He backs Soap up against the island, sudden and startling, places his hands on the counter behind him, cages him in. Soap catches on soon enough, winds his arms around Simon’s neck as his hips jerk up against Simon’s.

“I smell like stale sweat and motor oil,” Simon says, breaking their kiss.

“Yeah,” Soap exhales, lowering his arms to grab Simon’s hands, like before on the motorcycle, and drags them from where they hold his waist to cup his ass. “I like it.”

“You like the way I smell?”

“Always,” Soap says and bites his lower lip between his teeth, looking up at him from under his lashes.

“You right little tart,” Simon says, and pulls Soap against him from where his hands are digging into the flesh of his ass, brushes his fingertips along the tops of his thighs as he teases the inseam there.

“You have no idea, do you,” Soap says, arms coming up to brace against Simon’s wide chest. He bunches his hand in Simon’s shirt and yanks Simon down until they’re nose to nose.

“I stole one of your shirts in Chicago. Touched myself every night for a week with my nose pressed against it facedown in my bed,” he whispers, and kisses Simon sweet as syrup.

“Do you still have it?” Simon asks against his lips.

”The shirt? Yeah.”

”I’ll suck you off in it later,” he says.

Soap moans low in the back of his throat, eyes closed and forehead pressed against Simon’s. He leans forward to nuzzle Simon’s neck, sniffing unashamedly. He pulls the collar of Simon’s shirt aside to mouth the place where the bite mark he had left in the hotel room in Istanbul has mostly faded into the vague shape of his teeth.

Simon can’t help his soft moan at that. “Fucking hell, yes,” he growls, cupping the back of Soap’s head and tipping his own to the side to give him better access.

Soap laughs into his skin and brings their mouths together again, pressing into him hard. Simon goes boneless when Soap shuffles back to hop onto the island countertop, wrapping his legs around Simon’s hips to drag him closer.

He’s just beginning to grind his dick in wicked little circles against Soap’s through their pants when he catches another whiff of his sweat and pulls away.

“Can I fuck you in the shower?”

“Steamin’ bloody Jesus, do you even need to ask?” Soap pushes against his chest to put some space between them, unzipping his leather riding jacket and dropping it to the floor, white T-shirt not far behind. Soap’s hands are going for the zipper of his dark jeans when Simon sees something metal catch the light on Soap’s chest. Before he can stop himself, he reaches out thumb the piercing through Soap’s nipple.

“Oi!” Soap exclaims.

“How long have you had these,” Simon asks, incredulous. He reaches out to cup Soap’s other peck, giving it the same treatment.

“Few years.” Soap shrugs.

“How come I’ve never seen them before,” Simon asks, eyes finding Soap’s face.

“I take them out during the day when I’m deployed, put them back in at night before bed to prevent them closing. I’ve been hurt too many times wearing them while sparring.” Simon nods dumbly, like he knows what Soap’s talking about.

He stoops to pull Soap’s right nipple into his mouth, using his hand to pinch the fat there and give him a decent bite. He pinches and pulls Soap’s other nipple, flicking it lightly, careful not to be too rough with the metal bar through the tender skin. Soap moans and pushes his chest out, grabs the back of Simon’s head to hold him where he’s latched while he suckles and lathes his tongue in long, wet stripes. He uses the tip of his tongue to lightly scoop the piercing in a flicking motion, which causes Soap’s hips to thrust forward so that he almost slips from the counter. As he pulls away, he drags his bearded cheek against Soap’s nipple and watches a wet spot darken the cotton of his briefs where his dick is poking nearly out of the waistband, hard and insistent.

Simon pulls him down suddenly from the island to turn him around and grab Soap’s hands, placing them flat, palm-down, on the marble countertop, trying to temper his strength so he doesn’t hurt Soap. He pulls Soap’s briefs down his thighs with a deep rumbling groan, licking his way up from the inside of Soap’s thigh as the muscle jumps at the sensation of his tongue.

When he gets to the cleft of Soap’s ass, Simon spreads him wide, ogles the twitching furl of him, and spits on his hole. Soap cries out, nearly a scream, legs trembling, supported by Simon’s hands and pinned by his gaze. He pulls away, stands up and turns Soap to face him again, cock jutting out from the nest of dark wiry hair that starts from his navel and trails down to frame his gorgeous cock, thick at the base and tapering slightly towards the tip. When Simon looks in his eyes, there’s only a thin ring of blue.

“That was worth the wait,” Simon says. “But if we don’t get in the shower, I’m going to eat you out right here in your kitchen.”

“You could,” Soap says. “I would let you.”

“I know,” Simon says, and shoves Soap towards the door of the bathroom. Soap reaches for the hem of his shirt, pushes him out of his jacket and yanks it over his head, runs his hands over Simon’s pecs, brushing against his nipples and grips his chest hair to pull him along until he’s got Soap caged against the pocket door. Simon reaches behind Soap’s head and slides it open, careful not to topple Soap as he backs him into the bathroom, looming, not breaking eye contact. He flicks the light on.

The bathroom is all luminescent white and teal tiles and concrete facades, with a walk in shower enclosed in glass in the far corner. A double vanity and wall-length mirror are next to the toilet, adjacent to the shower and across from the bathroom door. The overhead lights are low and cool and the shower is swathed in dark blue shadows.

Soap pulls away and goes to turn on the water. Steam begins to fill the room as Soap holds his hand under the spray to test the temperature. Simon watches him, ogles openly at the cut of his calves and thighs and the pert ass atop them. He takes the opportunity to strip out of his jeans and pull his socks off. He’s stepping out of his briefs when Soap turns to look at him. He glances up to meet Soap’s eyes and sees Soap’s lips parted on an ‘O’ as he watched Simon, eyes dark and intent.

Soap pulls him under the spray, tries dropping to his knees in front of Simon, but Simon grabs him by the elbow, turns him around to push him face-first against the glass, kneeling behind Soap with the water at his back. Soap’s hands come up to brace himself, smearing handprints in the steam. Simon runs his fingers up and down the inside of Soap’s legs, spurred by the breathy gasps and soft moans he hears above him. Simon bends to kiss the back of one knee and hears Soap’s forehead thud against the glass.

“Christ,” Soap groans. He shoves his hips back in a gentle rocking motion, doesn’t even seem to realize he’s doing it.

“Not quite,” Simon says and spreads him open, dropping kisses and bites from the cleft of his thigh, into the meet of his ass, until he’s almost nipping at the center of him, lips and whisper-light against his skin. Thinks, he’s going to be covered in beard burn by the end of this.

“Ghost,” Soap whines.

“Try again,” comes Simon’s reply. He swipes his thumb over Soap, feels the twitch of the tight furl pull at the pad of his finger.

“Simon,” Soap cries.

He’s a mess before Simon’s even gotten his mouth on him, legs shaking with each touch and pass of his thumb. He bites down on the curve of Soap’s ass, hard, just to make him shout, “Simon!” again, trembling and shocked.

“Sorry,” Simon whispers.

“No you’re not,” Soap says, straining, like he’ll fall to pieces at any moment.

“You’re right, I’m not,” he says.

Simon kisses the skin just next to his hole again, using his thumbs to hold him open. Soap reaches behind to put his hand on the back of Simon’s head, threads his fingers into the short hair there.

“Don’t stop,” he says. Simon doesn’t even pause to tease him any longer, just nips at the core of him, followed by a long, wet swipe of his tongue from just behind Soap’s balls up to his hole. He moves back down to suckle his perineum, licks back up and sucks at the sensitive pink skin there, wet with his drool.

He eats Soap out like he’s been starving for it, lapping and flicking, pulling away to spit on his hole again and push it inside, hooking his thumb just past the tight ring of muscle to pry him open and slip his tongue in too. Soap writhes on his face, shoving his hips back as he pulls Simon’s hair, forcing his tongue deeper.

“I think you can make me come like this,” Soap moans. “Oh fuck that feels incredible.” Simon reaches around to encircle the base of his cock between his thumb and forefinger, a poor man’s cockring. He pulls away and stands, still holding Soap’s prick firmly in his hand. He strokes Soap from base to tip, tortuously slowly.

“We need a condom,” Simon says, dragging a hand up Soap's side and around to his nipple left nipple, then his right, fingering the piercings, then trailing his hand to Soap’s chin. He tips Soap's head to the side so that he can crane for a dirty open-mouthed kiss. “Be right back.”

“No,” Soap choked out. “We don’t need it.” He’s searching Simon’s eyes.

“You test recently?” Simon asks, rutting against the cleft of Soap’s ass, his prick rock hard and leaking, still stroking Soap’s dick so, so slowly. “Has he?” he adds after a beat.

Soap nods furiously. “The first day I got back to the RAF Station after Turkey, König dragged me to the clinic. We’re both clean. I can show you the letters, they’re in my nightstand–”

“I trust you,” Simon says, shocked by the truth of those words which extend far beyond this moment here between them.

“Unless you want to,” Soap offers.

Simon shakes his head. “There’s been nobody else,” he says.

“Nobody? As in–”

“Just you in the last handful of years. Got tested maybe four years back, after a one night stand in SoHo. That was the last time, and I was clean, but I don’t have any proof of that with me.”

“I trust you,” Soap repeats.

Soap’s put a bottle of silicone lube in the shower caddy, always prepared like any soldier worth his salt. He retrieves it and squirts some on his fingers before tossing it to Simon, leaning forwards against the tile wall and reaching behind himself to put on a good show as he works one, then two fingers inside his body.

“Was doing this before I picked you up,” he says, watching Simon slick his own cock with the lube. Simon crowds in close, slips a finger in alongside Soap’s. He’s hot and silky, tight as he clenches down.

“All right,” Soap says, pulling his fingers free and reaching for Simon to pull his hips flush against his ass.

“I want it known,” Simon says, practically humping Soap, bowed over his back to speak into his ear, “that you asked for this.”

“Yes,” Soap moans. “Please, I’m asking for it, yes, yes.”

Simon abruptly knocks his legs open wider and digs the fingers of his right hand into Soap’s hip hard enough to leave finger shaped bruises. He uses his left hand to clutch the base of his cock, slapping it once, twice, three times against Soap’s hole before he starts to push in, the resistance giving way to slick, silky heat.

Soap arches, head hanging between his shoulders as he moans, trying to hold himself up and push his ass back onto Simon’s cock at the same time. Simon moves until he’s flush against Soap’s ass, buried to the hilt.

“Fuck, that’s deep,” Soap says, face scrunched at the feel of him, raising his hips to get Simon as close as possible.

“Fuck back on me, that’s it,” Simon says, not thrusting yet but letting Soap grind his hips in little circles, the skin of his hole stretched tight and pink around his shaft and pulling obscenely with each movement of his hips. Soap looks over his shoulder at him, eyes wild, lips red and parted, expression pleading.

Simon’s control falters and he snaps his hips forward, does it again in short, powerful bursts that have Soap rocking up onto his toes. His finesse devolves from there, becoming something brutal and animal, the room filling with the wet slap of their bodies as Soap keens from pleasure and Simon grunts, inhuman, from the force of his own thrusts.

Soap’s arms give out and Simon takes the opportunity to shove him face first against the shower wall. Soap shoves back on to his cock even as Simon’s hips snap against his ass impossibly hard. Simon can hear Soap’s ragged breaths, punched out of him each time Simon thrusts all the way in, grinding against his prostate as best he can. He’s fucking Soap mercilessly, staking some type of claim, consumed by it, mindless in his pleasure seeking. His cock is so hard inside of Soap, the hot line of it spearing in and out in a blur of motion.

He feels Soap tighten around him, muscles squeezing to hold him in place on the next series of grinding thrusts, something about the angle lighting him up and making him wild. He tosses his head against the tile, and Simon reaches around to find his leaking prick. Soap stops him with a hand.

“Like this, I can like this,” he gasps, tightening. So Simon slides his hand up to Soap's nipple, fondles his tit, rubbing the pad of his finger against the puffy skin of his nipple, nail catching on the bar of the piercing on a flick. In the next instant, he feels and hears rather than sees Soap come on a shout that reverberates off the tile and concrete, shakes the glass.

The clench of Soap’s muscles around his cock as his ass throbs in time with the pulses of come Simon imagines shooting from his bobbing cock onto the shower tiles is bordering on painful, and yet Simon can’t help but chase that edge. Soap’s still coming around him when Simon’s thrusts grow tense and slow, devastating in their brutality. The fire burning in his gut goes supernova and he feels his cock start to pulse in Soap’s ass, come slicking the way and making his thrusts slide home that much deeper. His movements become sloppy, his faculties destroyed.

Over the roar in his ears, he hears Soap moan.

“Fucking come in me, yeah that’s it. Give it to me. Jesus Christ, Simon.” The words send a primal rush of satisfaction zinging down his spinal cord, and out through the head of his cock

The supernova ebbs into an overwhelming rush of pure feeling; a bonfire of love and wild joy that temporarily lowers his inhibitions. He feels as though he’s about to cry, completely open to Soap then. Would tell him anything, leans forward and bites Soap’s shoulder to keep the confession on his lips inside.

Simon holds Soap close while they catch their breath. His softening dick slips out of Soap, but he doesn’t move away. The storm of endorphins is starting to abate but the pleasure remains. Simon feels liquid and brainless as Soap turns to face him, placing his hands on Simon’s waist and tilting his face up for a kiss. In Soap’s arms, Simon realizes he’s trembling. He clings to Soap’s shoulders and kisses him so long it feels like hours have passed, the shower water now lukewarm.

“Are you okay?” Soap whispers against his ear. He nods, but doesn’t move. “I think we should get out now.” Soap continues.

“I s’pose,” Simon mumbles into Soap’s neck.

“Do you want me to clean you up?” Soap asks, voice low and gentle. Simon knows without being told that it’s something Soap wants–something he maybe thought he’d never get. But right now Simon wants that too, and he nods.

Soap lathers him with his own shampoo and body wash in the spray of the tepid water; even washes his face and feet, while Simon watches in sleepy amusement.

“You’re good at that,” Simon says when Soap has finished. He’s swiping the same washrag he had used to clean Simon down his own chest now.

Soap just hums, smiling up at Simon almost shyly. Simon crowds in close, hand drifting down to Soap’s ass, fingers pressing between his cheeks and against his slick hole.

“Allow me,” he says, and takes the washrag.

Later, when they’re under the covers of the massive plush bed upstairs, Soap's wearing nothing but the shirt he stole from Simon, who’s only in a pair of black briefs where he lays between Soap’s spread knees.

He gets Soap hard again and sucks him off. It’s slow and dirty, drool catching in his beard and dripping from his chin as he takes Soap down to the root. Soap braces his feet against the sheets and thrusts into his mouth, chases his own pleasure, careless of Simon’s for once. After Soap comes on his mouth and chin with Simon’s hand stroking him through it, Soap lays on his side with Simon spooned up behind him, thighs clamped tight and as smooth as velvet around Simon’s cock.

Simon bunches the fabric of the shirt in one fist and uses it to rock against Soap, the soft, lightly furred skin between his legs growing slick with sweat and precome. He pulls away suddenly to wank himself off, coming on Soap’s ass with a growl behind his bared teeth. He smears it into Soap’s skin with the head of his cock gripped tight in his fist. When he's done marking Soap, he cleans them up with the stolen shirt. Makes Soap put it back on when he’s done.

Soap falls asleep first, almost immediately after Simon had finished wiping him down, limbs loose and pliant. His head’s pillowed on Simon’s chest where he snores softly, arm slung over his stomach and holding him close. Simon stares at the ceiling, mind racing but feeling a bone-deep ache of satisfaction. His arm tightens around Soap almost without thought.

He hears a phone buzz on the nightstand next to him. On reflex, he reaches for it with his free hand.

It’s Soap’s phone, lit up with a message from König.

"I just really miss you.” the message preview reads.

Guilt lances through his chest. He’d forgotten about König, or had foregone thinking about him so he could instead focus on what he'd wanted, which was Soap all to himself. The idea König has maybe given up spending time with Soap so Simon could take his place, that Soap had been forced to choose between the two of them, sits heavy in the pit of his stomach. Trying not to overthink it, Simon opens the camera of Soap’s phone, snaps a selfie that’s mostly Soap’s face where it’s pressed into his side and the corner of his own jaw and cheek. He opens König's message to Soap, tries not to read any other texts in their chat history. This time, he knows who he's texting and what he's going to say.

He sends the picture to König with the caption “You should be here. -ghost ”

König responds a moment later. “With Johnny?”

Simon replies, “With us both.”

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just-another-blog-of-fluff · 3 years

Text

An Unfortunate Predicament

Warnings: tickling, fluff, maybe a little bit of reader crushing on a certain Asgardian

Word count: 2600

Honestly not sure where this came from, but I've dumped this silly idea out of my head and into this fic. Hopefully you find it amusing.

* * *

For the life of you, you don’t know how you ended up in this position.

Well, you do know how you got up here, at least. Tony had announced that he had a ropes course installed in the tower (for ‘additional training opportunities’ he insisted, although you all knew he just wanted an excuse to watch you all fall flat on your faces when you missed a step). Many of the Avengers were eager to try it out, especially Thor and Peter, who had giddily shoved their way to the front of the line to be the first to attempt the course.

You, on the other hand, had hung back from the group. You were afraid of heights, and while this ropes course wasn’t more than 6 or 7 feet off the ground, and there were soft rubbery mats underneath to break your fall should you slip, you couldn’t bring yourself to try it. Especially not in front of your teammates. No one knew about this little fear of yours, and you preferred to keep it that way to avoid being teased for being the only Avenger afraid of heights.

After a week or so, once the novelty had worn off for the rest of the team, you started to consider if maybe practicing on the course might help you to learn to get past this silly phobia. On a few occasions, you had casually made your way down to the gym where the ropes course was housed under the pretense of looking for someone, when really you were scoping it out to see if the room was unoccupied. Every time you tried, though, there was inevitably someone either practicing on the course or otherwise using some of the other gym equipment in the room. You much preferred that no one was there to witness you attempt it for the first time just in case you started to panic when you started to climb up that first rope ladder.

This morning, the other Avengers had disembarked on a mission before you had woken up for the day. This particular mission had no requirement for your talents, so you were able to stay behind and take a much-needed day to yourself. After lounging in bed for much of the morning, the notion crossed your mind that the gym would be completely and definitively empty for the afternoon.

And so, you made your way down to the gym and started slowly climbing up the ladder to the first platform. Once you reached the top and stood up, you looked down at the floor and felt your stomach drop just a bit. However, you steeled yourself and continued on across the swinging rope bridge in front of you. After a few obstacles, you had finally started to feel your fear start to ebb away as you became accustomed to the view. You started moving more quickly across the obstacles, now trying to see how fast you could get through the entire course.

Unfortunately, your rushing ended up being your downfall. You were crawling across a rope net to get to the next platform when suddenly you felt the net start to tip to the side. Normally, the purpose of the obstacle would have been to continue climbing upside down until you reached the other side. However, you had panicked at the sudden motion, stiffening as the net rolled over. Your leg slipped through one of the holes of the net, and somehow it twisted around your ankle enough to hold it in place while the rest of your body continued to flip over.

And now, here you were, hanging upside-down from this ropes course with your leg tangled in the net, blood rushing to your head as you tried to process what just happened. Your head was much closer to the ground now, at least, but it wasn’t quite close enough for you to reach the floor with your hands to try to gain leverage to untangle yourself. You tried to lift your upper body up in a sort of 180-degree sit-up to attempt to untangle your ankle from the net, but the rope was too taut for you to loosen it enough to pull your leg out. Frustrated, you relaxed your aching abdominal muscles and let yourself hang there, realizing with dread in the pit of your stomach that there was no one else in the compound to come help you escape.

Figuring you would have better luck getting yourself unhooked if you allowed yourself some time to rest, you let yourself just hang there and took a few deep breaths. Just as you were mustering up the strength to try again, a voice from the doorway caused you to jump in surprise.

“Well now. What an unfortunate predicament you’ve gotten yourself into.”

No. Oh no. Literally anyone else could have walked in and you’d have felt some relief, that someone was going to help you get down from this trap. Why did it have to be Loki?

“Shut up,” you muttered, folding your arms across your chest in an attempt to look annoyed despite your inverted position. “You could just help me down from here, you know.”

“I certainly could. But where would be the fun in that?” Loki strolled into the room, coming to a stop just a foot away from you. From this angle, you had to look down (or, rather, up) slightly to see his face, as your head hung at just about his shoulder level.

“What’s so fun about standing here and watching me hang upside-down?” you retorted. “Suppose I enjoy this?”

“If you did, you wouldn’t have just asked me to help you down, now would you?” Loki started to pace in a slow circle around you, forcing you to twist your neck and torso to be able to keep an eye on him. You knew better than to turn your back on the trickster by now. “Besides – if I recall, it was you who stole all of my books last week and hid them throughout the tower, hmm?”

You snickered at that. It was totally worth it to watch Loki storming around the tower, grumbling as he emptied drawers and crawled on the floor to look under furniture in hopes he would find his books. Honestly, you were surprised he hadn’t tried to prank you in return yet, but you had a feeling it was coming. Although, it seemed you had put yourself in just the position for him to exact his revenge without having to think of a prank.

“Oh yes, I’m sure you thought it was amusing then,” he growled, pacing back around in front of you and leaning down so his face was inches from yours as he glared at you. “You realize, I hope, that the others will not be back for at least another four hours?”

“What? I thought they were supposed to be home in an hour!” you exclaimed. Loki smirked.

“They are running a bit late. Ran into some minor complications during the mission. They should be leaving to head home in about an hour.”

You groaned at this revelation. You knew they were a three-hour plane ride away, and so if Loki was telling the truth, you would be dangling upside down for quite some time unless you convinced him to help you. Taking a deep breath, you swallowed your pride and started to plead.

“Loki… I’m sorry about your books, really. Please, could you help me get down?” you begged. His smirk only grew wider at this.

“You must be truly desperate, darling, to already be begging for me to help you,” he chuckled. You felt heat prickle in your cheeks, partially from embarrassment at having gotten yourself into this situation and partially from the unexpected thrill that rushed through your chest at the slow, smooth tone of his voice as he taunted you.

“If I admit it, will you finally help me get down?” you bartered, ready for this interaction to end so you could go hide in your room for the rest of the night in complete humiliation.

“Hmm. That certainly would help your case, but I’ll need a bit more than that,” he countered.

“Ugh, like what?” Loki thought for a moment, touching a finger to his chin.

“Admit that I am the superior prankster in the tower,” he demanded, “and that you never stood a chance against the all-mighty god of mischief. AND-“ he added, cutting you off as you opened your mouth to protest, “you have to say this to all of the Avengers when they return.”

“Ok, first of all, you know they’ll know you’re making me say it, so where’s the fun in it for you?” you quipped.

“I know. I also know how much embarrassment it will still cause you to have to say it out loud.” His smirk was practically wicked by this point.

“Alright, but suppose it does embarrass me that much - even if I agree to it, how do you know I won’t just go back on my word once you get me down?” you retorted.

“If you do, I will put you right back where I found you, and someone else will have to get you down,” he opposed. Your eyes widened, then narrowed indignantly.

“You wouldn’t.”

“We both know you know I would.”

“You are insufferable, you know that?” you muttered, pinching the bridge of your nose in frustration. “Fine. I’ll do it. Just get me down.”

“A wise decision,” he declared. Loki stepped underneath the net and inspected the rope wrapped around your ankle. He reached up and tugged on it a bit to test how much give it would provide. “The rope is wound too tightly for me to unwind it,” he observed.

“Well, can’t you get me down some other way then?”

“I think if I lift you up enough that your weight isn’t holding the rope taut, you should be able to slip out of it,” he suggested. You nodded, willing to try anything at this point. He reached up and grabbed hold of your waist just above your hips, causing you to jerk involuntarily and let out a high-pitched squeak. You felt your stomach drop again, the same way it had when you’d first climbed up onto the ropes course, when you saw Loki’s expression morph from confusion to pure mischief.

“Wh-what are you giving me that look for?” you asked hesitantly, reaching up absentmindedly to pull your shirt down where a sliver of skin had been showing.

“Because I just learned something new about you, and I don’t think I’m quite ready to help you down just yet,” he explained, his tone ominous.

“Don’t… you… dare,” you growled.

“Darling, I don’t believe you’re in a position to be making threats,” he retorted, starting to pace around you again.

“Loki! Get back here where I can see yOU!” Your voice pitched up an octave as you felt him tweak your side. “I swear to god, Loki, I will hold you down and beat you senselehehehess!” You lost your composure as you felt ten slender fingers gently scratching at your sides just below your ribcage.

“You don’t sound very threatening, love,” Loki teased, working his torturous fingers up between your lower ribs. You couldn’t respond coherently anymore, batting at his hands and twisting around violently trying to escape his touch. “Maybe you should try again, but this time with a bit more malice in your tone.”

“I will kihihihill you!” you shrieked, uncontrollable giggles spilling from your mouth as his fingers traveled to your belly, his thumbs digging into your sides. Being upside-down, in addition to not being able to see his face with him standing behind you, made you feel incredibly exposed. You reached down and grasped both of his wrists, tugging as hard as you could to pull his hands away from your ticklish torso to no avail.

Loki thankfully paced back around in front of you, continuing to tickle you with one hand as he walked. You realized this was actually probably worse than when he was behind you because now you could see his amused expression, and you knew he could see the flustered flushing of your face. You tried your hardest to shoot him a menacing glare, which only succeeded in drawing a laugh from him as he latched both hands onto your upper ribs and continued to tickle you with renewed vigor.

“OK! OK! WAIHIHIT LOKI! I CAHAHAN’T!” you pleaded as he slipped his thumbs under your arms, his fingers wrapped around the back of your uppermost ribs and digging into your skin in the most agonizing way. You were thrashing violently now trying to evade his fingers, not noticing the rope looped around your ankle slipping.

The next thing you knew, your ankle slid out of the rope net above you, and you came crashing to the floor. Or, rather, you came crashing down onto Loki, who then crashed to the floor under the impact.

Relieved that at least he was no longer tickling you, you gasped for breath and pushed yourself up onto your hands. You heart skipped when you realized that your nose was practically touching his, but the shock caused your muscles to freeze. For a moment, Loki didn’t move either, looking straight into your eyes.

You finally regained your composure, deciding to play it off as if you’d found a way to beat him at his own game to hide the fact that your heart was pounding in your throat at the close contact. You grinned wickedly down at him.

“Looks like I got myself down, didn’t I?” you quipped. “Guess I don’t have to lie and say you’re the best prankster after all.”

Loki narrowed his eyes at you for a moment, which should have been your cue to get up, but before you realized it he had grabbed your arms and flipped you so he was now hovering over you. You looked up at him, bewildered, as he smirked evilly back at you.

“Oh darling, that was a mistake.” You jolted as his fingers once again made contact with your ribcage, unable to control the hysterical laughter bubbling from your chest as he dug his fingertips into every ticklish spot he could find. You kicked and scrambled to try to scoot away from him without success, his hands darting rapidly between your sides, belly, underarms, ribs, back to your belly…

“ALRIGHT! W-WAIT! S-STOP! I’LL SAY IT!” you begged, your muscles so weak from laughter now you could no longer fight back, lying there on the floor as he drove you into madness. At long last, he finally released you, moving away to kneel on the floor beside you. “Jeez, Loki… that was… that was evil,” you huffed, still breathless from his malicious attack.

“Maybe next time you’ll know not to mess with the god of mischief,” he warned, offering you a hand to help you sit up. “After all – now I know your weakness.” You blushed furiously, wrapping your arms subconsciously around your ribs as he deviously wiggled his fingers at you. Ready to finally go hide in your room, you picked yourself off the ground and started walking toward the door. “Don’t forget! I expect to see you in the common room when the others arrive home this evening!” he called after you. You turned and shot him one last glare before leaving the room.

You couldn’t make any promises that you’d actually show up. And if that meant he would come find you and torment you some more… well, you supposed you maybe wouldn’t mind.

Read part 2

#loki tickle #loki x reader #marvel tickle #ticklish!reader #tickle fic #tickle fluff

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lemonpeter · 3 years

Text

🧡Day 2: Public S*x🧡

I literally could only think of Harry x Peter scenarios for this fic (I’m seriously fixated I’m sorry) but finally shook this little thing out of my brain lol I hope y’all enjoy 🧡

Warnings: nff, 6 9, public s*x

***

“You’re a menace, you know that?” Tony shook his head. “I’m supposed to be on right now.”

Stark Expo. He hadn’t hosted one in over a decade, since the whole Hammer/Vanko incident, but he’d decided to try and revive it again. He had hope for it.

Of course, things were made exceptionally difficult when his boyfriend couldn’t keep it in his pants.

Peter grinned down at him with his mask pulled halfway up his face, dropped down from the ceiling on a web. He tried to go on patrol, just so that he could stay away so Tony could work, but he just couldn’t help himself. There was something about the whole thing that got him so damn worked up. “I know, I know. But we can be fast.”

“That’s what you said the other…what, four times today? I don’t know that you’re going to get anything else out of me, honey. I’m not young and superpowered like you.”

The younger man pouted, leaning in for a kiss. “Mmmm, but you’re sexy and powerful and I-“

Tony quickly put a hand over his mouth when he heard voices close by.

Peter got a flash of ice water in his veins when he heard, but it heated quickly. People could find them at any moment.

That was so fucking hot.

He moved Tony’s hand away, biting his lip. “Let’s do this,” he whispered.

Tony laughed softly, smiling fondly. “I say again, you’re a menace. But what do you have in mind?”

Peter grinned at him. “Let’s sixty-nine like this.”

“Like this?” The older man looked at how Peter was suspended from the ceiling, raising an eyebrow. “Will you be able to stay steady?”

“Maybe! Pleeeeeease, baby, it’ll be so much fun.” And risky. Which just turned him on that much more.

Tony’s tongue slid over his bottom lip as he thought about it. “What if someone comes over here? It’s kinda hard to ignore the bright red and blue.” Maybe he needed to work on the color scheme some.

Peter leaned in again, lips brushing against his partner’s ear. “Let them see.”

He wasn’t sure where the confidence came from. But he wasn’t going to take it back. Maybe he’d be embarrassed later, but for now it was only fueling the situation.

The older man leaned against the wall, nodding. “You’re…mmm, you’ve gotten bolder,” he murmured.

Peter smiled a little, slowly lowering himself until he was eye level with Tony’s zipper. “Maybe I have. Do you like it?”

“I love it, baby.” He slid his hands over the younger man’s hips, finding the hidden seam and slipping his fingers between the two pieces of the suit. “There we go. I knew this was a good idea.”

He pushed at the tight bottom piece, getting it just over Peter’s hips and barely under his cock before it wouldn’t budge anymore. “I guess this is how we’re doing this. Your position makes this difficult,” he mumbled.

“We can make it work.” Peter undid Tony’s slacks and pushed them down to his thighs, not wasting any time in getting his boxers down too. They really didn’t have much time, he could hear confusion from the other room about where the host was. It was only a matter of time before people came to look for Tony. And found them.

His dick must have done something upon him having the thought, because he heard a soft laugh above him.

“I’ll never get tired of how eager you are.” Tony used one hand to hold onto his boyfriend’s cock, gently rubbing his thumb over the head.

Peter moaned, getting momentarily distracted by the feeling. Tony always knew exactly which buttons to press. But he kept going, gently taking the man’s cock in one hand and stroking him slowly.

He knew that Tony didn’t have nearly the same stamina that he did. He couldn’t go as many times. But that didn’t mean that Peter wouldn’t try.

And slowly but surely the cock started filling out in his hand and he smirked. “Knew you could do it.”

Tony’s hips rocked slightly and he groaned. “Yeah, yeah. You have that effect on me. Now hurry up, we- fuck.”

At “hurry up”, Peter wrapped his lips around the tip and sucked, just the amount of pressure that he knew drove Tony crazy. He didn’t need to be told twice.

He stayed there for a moment, enjoying the sounds that it got from the man above him. But he started taking down more inch by inch once he remembered how little time they really had.

Tony seemed to snap back into it too. He placed kisses from the base of Peter’s dick all the way to the tip, being tender the whole time. Then he wriggled his tongue back and forth gently once he got to the sensitive spot just underneath.

He was rewarded with a barely-hushed moan around his cock and a weak thrust of Peter’s hips.

He chuckled, tongue still rubbing over the spot. If he kept up like that then he could probably get Peter to cum pretty quickly. But he knew that it could get overwhelming, so he started jerking him off with one hand while taking the tip into his mouth.

They both started out keeping vigilant in case they heard someone coming, but the effort was quickly lost as they each got lost in the sensations.

Aliens could have attacked the expo and neither of them would have noticed. For those few minutes they were in their own world.

But soon, Peter knew that Tony was getting close and that brought him back to reality, out of his pleased trance.

Tony’s free hand was gripping his hip, loosening and tightening rhythmically as Peter kept moving. It was just one of his tells.

Another tell - although this one wasn’t exclusive to Tony - was how the cock on his tongue got impossibly harder and throbbed just before he came.

Peter didn’t stop, taking him down further and making sure that even the last few moments were as good as possible.

“Peter,” Tony moaned, his head hitting the wall behind him gently as he felt himself getting right to the edge of his release. His hips twitched forward ever so slightly as he toed the line before slipping over the edge. “Fuck, honey….”

The younger man moaned around him, eagerly swallowing everything that he was given.

It was difficult for Tony to keep up his own work while he rode out his high, but he kept jerking Peter off as best he could. It was uncoordinated and completely lost its rhythm, but it was still getting him there.

“Tony,” Peter warned, hips rocking weakly. It was difficult with the angle, but he didn’t care. Now he just needed to cum.

“Hmm?” The older man leaned up to lick over him again. Although he was still dazed.

“I’m close, Tony, I don’t want any to get on your suit.” Even though he was almost useless when he was that close to an orgasm, he at least could think that part through.

Coming out late with a cum stained suit probably wouldn’t be the best look for Tony. But possibly not his worst, either.

Tony nodded, coming back enough to take the head of Peter’s cock into his mouth when he realized what he meant.

He bobbed his head slightly, sucking mildly harsher than he had before. All while using one hand to jerk him off.

Peter moaned, resting his forehead against Tony’s hip as he thrust slowly. “That’s it…I’m gonna cum, fuck.”

Tony groaned softly when he felt the salty fluid spreading across his tongue, not pulling off.

He helped Peter ride it out, closing his eyes and swallowing.

After a moment he pulled off, a little dripping from the tip onto Tony’s lip.

Tony just laughed, licking it away. “Thanks. As soon as I think you’re done, there’s more.”

Peter grinned shyly up at him. “Sorry.” He slowly started getting upright, lowering himself until he could stand on the floor.

He fixed his suit while Tony tucked himself back into his pants, both of them straightening themselves out in order to be presentable.

“I love you.” Tony kissed his partner gently before helping him pull his mask down.

“I love you too.” Peter smiled a little. “Okay, I really think I’ve kept you too long. Sorry.” He grinned.

“You come first, baby. Even if it’s just for something like this. Now you go patrol, I shouldn’t be too late.”

Peter made his way outside and swung away, Tony making his way onto the stage where everyone cheered.

“Hope no one missed me too much,” He commented cockily to the crowd.

One hand came up to his mouth quickly to wipe the corner. Maybe no one else would notice it. Everyone was far enough away that the small drip of cum that remained there couldn’t be seen, he hoped.

But Peter saw before he left. And he swung away from the expo with a smirk, thinking through how he’d surprise Tony when he got home that night.

#starker #peter parker #tony stark #tony x peter #tony stark x peter parker #my writing #bri’s kinktober 2021 #nff starker

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hisoknen · 4 years

Text

kinktober day 6: praise warnings: smut, rope bondage, suffering, breathplay wc: 2.9k

a/n: hi hello reader!! super excited to share this one as a rope fanatic! however, this is NOT a guide/blueprint to any kind of play you want to try. thank you so much to @10millionyearsdungeon for beta reading and giving me amazing feedback! this is a softer more sensual kinktober day i hope you enjoy!

“And your safewords, kitten?” Aizawa secured the hardpoint, doing a few more checks to the bamboo before coming down to your level. His hand reached out to cup your cheek, waiting patiently for your reply.

After discussing the scene he had in mind, it was time to begin. He was crouching down in front of you while you were kneeling at his command. Dressed in only a pair of silk panties, you could feel the air in the room kissing your naked flesh.

“Red stop, yellow check-in slow down and green good.” You breathed, he was lightly pinching at your cheeks, your eyes threatening to shut and absorb the feeling of him caressing your skin. Your heart was racing, mind and body hungry for anything he was ready to give you.

“And if something's your mouth?” he presses a small ball into your palm, a little bell jingled inside of it as he wrapped his yours to close it.

“Drop the ball, red. Uh, uh uh, is yellow, and for green, nod.”

“Good girl,” he sits down, “turn around.” You do as you’re told, untucking your knees and turning your back on him. Your body sinks into his hold, his thighs on each side, trapping you in place. He begins littering kisses on your neck and shoulders, calming your racing mind with soft words and chuckles.

Ever since you found your way into Aizawa’s arms, you’d experienced more than you could list in one sitting. Together you slowly explored your boundaries, trying new things out and pushing each other to grow. You had a genuine and deep submission. It was the heartfelt kind that came from trust, respect, lust, emotional connection.

You’d always found a strange comfort in suffering. Nothing aroused you more than suffering for someone you loved and having them look into your pleading eyes and offer you their tender violence in return.

When you could do something that made your partner feel good, you felt the world around you bathe you in warmth. You found catharsis erotic—a harmonious battle between instincts and surrender.

But this desire always seemed to put you into sticky situations. You’d find partners who didn’t care for your soul or body. They wanted your suffering for their pleasure and theirs alone, treating you as though you were disposable. Broken people sought out broken people, or so you thought.

Aizawa was different. It was an exploration for both of you, an equal exchange. He cared for your mind as much as he desired your body. He treated you like an invaluable treasure. It always felt so safe being wrapped in his ropes, no matter the sadistic ideas he would bring to fruition.

Trailing his fingers up your shoulders, kneading softly at the muscles. He leaned in, placing a kiss at your neck's junction right behind your ear. Your mind is already spinning from the small ministration. His breath tickled the spot he knew sent spots to your vision.

"Are you ready, kitten?" He purred against your ear. Without even brushing his fingers against the aching spot between your legs he already had you dripping and feverish.

Nodding, you turn your neck to the side to give him more access. He nips at the skin, slowly bringing your arms behind you, hands rubbing up and down, easing your shoulders back.

Dragging the rope slowly a few inches above your wrist, he ties a single column securing your wrists together, pulling the tension up. Aizawa wraps two bands around your front above your breasts, over your other arm to the right. Skimming his fingers against your chest, he looks into your eyes, silently asking if everything feels right.

Lazily smiling up at him, you rub your middle finger against the thumb's padding to check, nodding. You feel the tug as he drags the ends through where the initial rope went from your wrist to the arm, reversing the tension and locking it off. The push and pull were like a lullaby rocking you to sleep.

There was a tug when he secured a knot in the back, his fingers feeding between the rope and your arms and where the jute is placed, fixing the tension evenly. He continued to the left, wrapping two more bands a few inches below the first, trapping your breasts in between.

After months of playing with Aizawa, you had his movements memorized, it was like dancing. Each time he moved, your body followed obediently as he secured the stem, feeding rope into the harness.

Pushing your body forward, his warmth leaves you. He brings the rope over the bamboo, pulling your body up in the slightest. Reaching down, he takes it through the bite created on the stem pulling it taut.

“It’s been a long week, hasn’t it? Not enough time to play. I hope you’re not upset, kitten,” his husky voice sinks into your ears. It’s smooth like honey, and the tender promise it leaves has your skin prickling. His foot pushes against your shoulder, body leaning to the side just enough to feel the tension applied.

“I’ll make it up to you. I promise.” He steps away, pulling the rope on the upline. The tug has you on your knees once more, slowly getting onto your legs as he aids you with a steady pull. Once both of your feet are flat on the ground, he secures the upline stepping out of your line of vision.

He lightly taps your ass, and you quiver at the touch. Crouching down, he wraps two bands around your ankle, securing a single column and capture loop. His hand grasping the pit of your knee, hoisting it up.

You stare in awe at each movement he makes, watching his fingers work rapidly. Balancing on one leg you search his eyes as he pulls your leg up, tossing the ends of the rope over the bar. He brings the working ends into the bite and back over the bar to secure the knot.

The shift in weight adds pressure to your hips and gut. Your knee is at the same height as your hips, restricting your breathing slightly. While it’s nothing crazy, it does spike your interest. He was being far too gentle. You don’t notice that he’s untied the line to your harness, jerking it up in one swift motion.

A yelp resounds throughout the room, your entire body weight now depending on your ability to hold yourself up by your toes. There is tension on your arms and leg in the air but nothing compared to what it will be if you happen to falter.

Your breath hitches and you start to relax your body, checking your thumb once again to see if it’s numb. Your head is bowed, watching the shake in your legs as Aizawa circles around you. He pulls your chin up roughly, his eyes dark scanning your features.

That was the look you were waiting for. He presses a fervent kiss against your lips, fingers flicking across the heat he’s left behind.

His other hand comes up, waiting at the entrance of your mouth. Licking your lips you open wide. Slowly he eases his fingers in, circling the pad of your tongue, edging closer and closer to the back and gagging you. Your throat convulses around him, only prompting him to go back even further fingers tickling the back of your tongue.

He lets out a muffled groan pulling his fingers out, gliding the slick digits down your neck to your breasts, swirling around your nipple and pulling.

Your eyes are fixed on him as he moves the rope holding your leg further from your body, setting your body off balance. Breathing through your nose you hop, trying to reset your toes on the wood.

"Tongue out, kitten." You obediently loll it out from your mouth. His hands disappear to his back, bringing out a clothespin. He opens its teeth and clamps it down onto your muscle. Wincing and letting out a pained groan, you look up at him with pitiful eyes filled with affection and adoration.

Grabbing another rope, he wraps it around your waist tightly, pushing out your breath. He connects it to the bamboo, leaving you sputtering around the wood, pulling desperately for the room's air to trickle into your lungs.

Aizawa drops down, settling onto the floor. Grabbing your shaking leg, he rubs the skin and leaves lingering kisses, taking a final rope from his side. Trailing his fingers sensually up your calf, he sets the jute below the bend of your knee, pulling it through and trapping your calf into place.

Your eyes widen in horror at the realization of what he's about to do. He pulls the rope tight, pain shooting up your leg and straight to your center. A strangled gasp ripples past your open lips, saliva beginning to drip from your tongue onto the floor slowly.

“Already?” His lips are parted, watching you intently through hooded eyes. He runs his hands through his hair, gazing up at you hungrily.

“We just started, kitten.” He holds the rope tight, tying it around your trapped muscle, each one tighter than the last until he reaches right above your ankle. The dull ache of the clothespin is nothing compared to what awaits you.

“Are you ready to breathe again?” You hadn’t even noticed that you’d stopped, too busy imagining what he was about to do. Taking a deep breath through your nose, you hold it nodding down at him.

“1, 2-” you breathe out the second he gets to two, knowing he never waits until three. Your gut tightens as he crosses over the rope the opposite way, constricting your calf more than before, creating spaces where the rope touches and the muscle remaining is pushed tight against the confines, pulsing.

A single poke of his finger will have tears surfacing in your eyes. But maybe he wouldn’t press on it this time. He forces his finger underneath the rope to lock it off, sending waves of agony course through you.

You rip your leg away from him, bringing it to your chest to relieve the pressure, but the moment you do, all of the weight shifts to your chest, arms and the opposite leg. A frustrated grunt leaving your wet mouth. It was as if he had woven the rope around your body with a banner that said, choose your preferred method of suffering.

Landing your foot back gently back onto the ground, you look down at him with pleading eyes. With the weight of your body resting on one painfully constricted leg, your muscle tries to escape the confines, pulsing against the rope and radiating up your side.

“Whas dah for?” Aizawa pulls a metal rod from his pocket. He grabs onto your leg, pressing the metal into your constricted flesh, a shriek leaves your lips and you strain. While the tension in a section lessens at the push, another side begins to ache and throb. That was the game. Your body and bottom leg are aligned, but the leg in the air is forward, hips sinking along with your chest. More pressure. Less air.

“Can you take a little more for me?” He looks up at you with admiration and lust, chest rising and falling heavily. A sob wracks through your body, your instincts tell you to scream no, but your body wants more. You had your safewords. Aizawa would listen to you if you needed to stop. Shaking your head, you try desperately to hold onto each gulp of air, remembering to check your fingers.

You nod down at him as he presses down again. The more your breathing falters, the less you can manage the pain and hold your body up. Your leg is trembling, threatening to lose its hold on the ground. You can hear Aizawa’s breath falter as he takes in your cries and plea’s. His pupils are lust blown with a devious glimmer.

Standing up, he comes to face level, pressing down on the pin and releasing the pressure. The moment it’s removed, the ache comes back tenfold, blood returning to where it was restricted. Sucking in the droll on your lips, you stare up at him defiantly.

“Sick fuck,” you spit out. You want to scream and lash out at him. Rake your fingernails down his back and draw blood.

“‘Sick fuck’ is not your safeword.” The moment the words leave his mouth, tears of frustration bubble into vision.

“Use your words.”

“It hurts Shouta-” you blubber through quivering lips.

“I know.” He purrs, stroking your face with fingers wet from your tears. He understood that you were suffering. That this was painful and frustrating for you. But most of all, he understood that you were suffering for him.

“Good girl, I’m so proud of you.” You smile, shivering at the warmth of his praise. He kisses your nose, bending down to untie the binds on your leg. Wincing at each shift you moan at the release.

Aizawa’s fingers stroke the imprints left behind fingers kissing your sensitive flesh. You glance down seeing his cock straining against his pants, a damp patch showing just how much he was enjoying this.

“Please,” you whisper, pulling against your restraints. He follows your eyes, running his hands along the length of his covered cock, squeezing. It’s been so long since you had tasted him, felt him.

“What is it, kitten?”

“I want to touch you,” he chuckles, lying on the ground to watch you, hair pooling around his head as he looks up. Your chest is rising quickly and heavily. Looking into your eyes, he waits. You nod to signal green, and he presses his foot into your stomach, absorbing the choked cries you let out while you struggle to take breaths in.

Your only comfort and control are swept away from you as your leg is lifted off the ground. Your tears land onto his face, one at the corner of his lips. He dips his tongue out, pulling it into his mouth.

“You look so pretty like this, kitten.” He pushes himself off the ground with his elbows. The pain was distressing, bleeding into your veins, but he continues to praise you for taking it. Your head is spinning, and your cunt is dripping, the pain and pleasure rolling off one another.

He stands in front of you, fingers dipping down to push your panties to the side. His fingertips brush against your soaking core, body still shaking with sobs.

“If it hurts, why are you so wet, Y/n?” You look up at him shamefully, his voice is condescending, head tilted and eyebrows quirked. His fingers glide over your sensitive clit, slowly circling over it. You bite your lip to hold back a needy moan. Aizawa’s fingers plunge into your cunt, curling his fingers immediately, ripping the cry from you.

He starts roughly jerking his hand, pounding his fingers against your g-spot. You let out whimpers and grunts as he rubs at your insides. The pressure from the waist rope increases and floods your cunt as your leg begins to give out.

“Shouta plea-” you hiccup, begging for more. With one hand reaching out to hold onto your raised thigh the other continues to search the depths of your pussy for the orgasm you owed him.

The insistent squelch coming from you is pathetic; the pain of the rope and the brutality of his ministrations begin bleeding together. Looking down, you can see your arousal spilling out from your cunt all over his hand.

He breathes heavily against your ear. “You’re so good to me, kitten. Suffering so beautifully for me.” Mewling between sobs, you want to ask for more. You can feel that you’re about to cum, your cunt squeezing around him desperately.

Your leg loses its strength below you, the pressure of the rope squeezing your waist, pushing you even closer to the edge. But he pulls away at the last second, leaving you clenching pathetically around nothing.

You let out a silent scream, frustration, and desire filling you, thick tears falling from your eyes. Your breath is faltering, mind hazy and racing.

“Such a needy little slut.” Aizawa walks behind you, untying your leg from the rig, holding it as he places it on the ground. The waist rope is next to loosen and fall to the ground. He welcomes your body tightly against his own, as he lowers the final upline until you are both on the floor.

Your body feels like jelly, thoroughly spent, head leaned back against his chest while you breathe in the sweet air, filling your lungs. Bringing your legs up to your chest.

Small whimpers still fall from your lips when your legs are torn apart, his fingers plugging back into your abused hole. You can feel his erection prodding against your back. You pant, grabbing onto his wrist to anchor yourself. He holds your limp body against his solid chest.

“You did so well for me today," his fingers explore you, setting flame to the dwindling embers. Kind words and praise in tune with the thrusts of his fingers, your vision flickers.

"Cum for me," the soft commanding words are all it takes to send you over the edge, the pressure of your orgasm pushing out his fingers as you soak the floor. Rubbing at your clit he helps you ride out your orgasm.

You can hear Aizawa sucking on his fingers between closed eyes, tasting the mess you made before kissing the top of your head. Your body is spent, shivering and aching, a soothing hum of satisfaction riddling your veins.

He is caressing your arms' marks, memorizing what is left of the memory of you in his ropes. He pulls the blanket over to your sniffling body, holding you tightly.

"Thank you, kitten." he hums as darkness takes over.

—

kinktober masterlist

tags <3 @thewheezingwyvern @linestrider @idratherliveinbooks @mx-minxx @kenmasmyvibe @leeswritingworld @katsukis-sad-angel @trafalgar-temptress @dabis-kitten @stainedglass-wings @thirsthourdemon @zyrielwolf @shadowmountain @secondhand-trash @tomurasprincess

#aizawa x reader smut #aizawa smut #tw overstim #bnha x reader smut #bnha smut

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plainlo-inthemorning · 3 years

Text

Shine a Light, part 6

A Loki series/Lokane fic. Rating T.

Previously: Part 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

He is already spinning around and bracing himself as his boots touch the concrete, half expecting to see the beast come tumbling towards him.

But the air is mercifully still where the door has snapped shut.

The evening sky above him is heavy with clouds, and a light mist of cool rain touches his face.

Cool.

He looks down at his hands. They are still shaking from the adrenaline, but no longer blue. Nor do his clothes feel rough against his skin.

Did he consciously change back to his Asgardian form as he went through the door? He is not sure. Whatever the shape or shade, his body feels oddly disconnected from his brain and Loki idly wonders if using the tempad so much within a short time span might be affecting him on a cellular level.

Then again, if that was the case would the Minute Men and analysts at the TVA not have been suffering from chronic time travel fatigue?

Who knows, perhaps they did. A number of them certainly looked worn out.

Tempad “jetlag” (an apt mortal word) or not, unwillingly running into variants upon variants of old enemies on this treacherous timeline coupled with the incessant longing for her has caused Loki’s grip on reality to slip ever more from one destination to the next.

What reality? a mocking voice in his head whispers, sounding maddingly similar to the little devil clock.

You have no idea where you are, who you are or where you’re going. You’re a man out of time, for all time, always.

He straightens and draws in a few deep breaths, surveying his new surroundings: A narrow brick terrasse. At the back wall, a glass sliding door reveals a room covered in darkness, but as nothing moves inside (his night vision remains far superior to that of mortals), Loki turns instead to take in the view of … London.

There is a taste of early spring in the air, and before him as far as the eye can see, the rooftops and spires of the city stretch out into the distance.

Millions of little lights flicker in the dark and the fumes of traffic and city grime mix with whiffs of different cuisines drifting out of air vents.

He has been here once or twice before, though not in decades, and there are whole clusters of towering structures of glass and steel that he does not recall from on his previous visit.

The house by the ocean in 2016, Budapest in 2015, New York in 2014 and now London in what he assumes must be 2013. As methodical as the backwards count has proven to be, as confusing are the destinations and varying seasons.

Only they cannot possibly be random.

Free will is an illusion.

The eerie feeling that even this, his ill-thought-out ‘quest’, is being guided by an invisible hand in charge of his destiny is so dispiriting it’s comical. He can’t quite decide whether to feel perversely honored that some higher being – a version of He Who Remains? – would take interest in toying with him, or furious that he has been singled out for this preposterous punishment of drifting through another Loki variant’s timeline.

It is no use dwelling on either emotion. He has no one to measure his pride against, no one’s expectations to live up to expect for his own, and, frankly, by now that bar is scraping the floor. There is no telling where the female variant of him went and Loki has no means of contacting the TVA or the analyst-interrogator even if he wanted to (he really does not anymore).

Loki unclenches his fists.

Seeing as each destination may have been an intentional set-up for whatever bizarre reason, the question is which character from his past he will encounter in this place. He vows to himself that no matter who he bumps into, he will attempt to reactivate that silver tongue of his and gather actual, useful information.

No more chaotic exits.

Provided no one tries to kill him on sight or squash him through a wall.

The terrace is furnished only with an old sun chair and a few plants, but the room beyond the glass door appears very lived in, with books stacked on the floor and several shelves, a large couch, a couple of armchairs, and what looks to be an adjacent kitchen area with a dining table.

Amazing how most mortals spend their years in such small, crowded dwellings.

Using only his magic, he slides open the door. It makes a low swooshing sound. Quiet as a cat, he steps over the threshold.

It hits him immediately, like walking into a wall: The scent of lavender.

And Thor.

The apartment is quiet, but they were here and recently.

He has been delivered right to them.

Loki is once again frozen in place.

His initial plan when knocking out that man in the canteen at the TVA and stealing his tempad was to find Thor and Jane at the scene of his own moral redemption (well…) on Svartalfheim. Where he supposedly saves their lives. Find them and use the momentum of their unfiltered gratitude to deliver the news that, most regrettably, the universe is likely coming to an end if they do not devise a plan together to prevent a multiversal war – preferably enlisting the help of Thor’s colleagues, too, and in the best of scenarios, Asgard.

Seek out Thor before saving Jane’s life, and Loki would have to first win his brother’s trust in the aftermath of the attack on New York. Find Thor after Svartalfheim, and there would be the small matter of explaining how the variant faked his own death and, after having thus broken Thor’s heart again, took the throne of the Realm Eternal.

Not an ideal conversation starter, even for them.

From the reel, he knows that there were other moments, much later, when he and Thor would become friendly again. After Ragnarok, before his end.

But Loki also knows that this need to get to Svartalfheim has as much to do with her as it has with Thor. Perhaps even more so.

Something important transpires between himself and the brown-eyed scientist on that brutal, barren planet and if it is the last thing he does, Loki will find out what it means.

It does not make any more sense now than it did when he sat in the kill me kind of room, transfixed by her face, but if he had had any initial doubts as to whether he was simply imagining the magnetic pull of her, those had been effectively shattered to atoms when she threw her arms around his neck outside the white house.

“Where did you go, handsome?”

Nothing on this timeline seems to be playing out as it should. Which of course also means that the events on Svartalfheim may never have occurred at all.

On this timeline, a variant has more or less befriended the Avengers in the years after New York when, according to the proper Loki fate, he should have been on Asgard. And, in a few years from now, the variant will somehow be with Jane.

Jane, who has stayed in this very apartment. With Thor.

Briefly, Loki is back to wondering if Thor dies and how, but then he remembers what Bruce said about their “family soap opera” and Loki’s “victory”.

Could it be that he and Thor actually fought over Jane?

As much as he wishes it otherwise, even Loki finds it hard to believe that his variant would have beat the God of Thunder in a fight. The might of Mjølner is formidable. And though his brother has not quite discovered it himself yet, Loki has always suspected that Thor has his own kind of magic.

Then there is Jane: Without having ever conversed with her, Loki would be surprised if Jane would appreciate being treated as a prize to be won.

He is getting a headache. A rare thing for a god, but there is no putting the puzzle together with so many pieces missing from the board. Since he has no hope of using the tempad to transport him off Midgard, maybe the best thing to do would be to just wait here and see if Jane and Thor come back. He has been specifically sent here, has he not?

Without really noticing, Loki has moved to the blue, puffy couch. He sits himself down and leans back into the soft cushions, letting out a sigh. When was the last time he slept or ate anything? There is a sense of fresh paranoia as he realizes that he cannot remember doing either at the TVA, expect for when he fell asleep during research.

“Time works differently at the TVA. You’ll see”.

He stretches his legs out in front of him and yawns. On the wall opposite from the couch is a paper calendar: 2013.

He takes in the rest of the apartment but does not magic any of the lights on. There is the open kitchen, a tiny hallway with a coat rack and a few pairs of shoes, and two more doors to the left of where he is sitting.

Getting up suddenly feels immensely tasking, but Loki nevertheless hauls himself to his feet and goes to inspect the other rooms. First, there is the washroom. The scent of lavender is stronger in there, even more inviting, and spotting a stack of fresh towels on a shelf, he considers taking a shower. It is not as if he cannot easily use magic to uphold appearances (wait, were there showers at the TVA?), but that is no substitute for the soothing feel of warm water running down his body, relaxing his tired muscles.

Yes, he will shower. And cast a spell on the apartment, so he will be alerted if anybody attempts to enter.

He takes a small comfort in his powers being restored.

Loki reckons the other door leads to the sleeping chambers but just to be sure, he magics it open with a flick of his wrist.

A window with closed blinds. A wooden bookcase to one side, volumes and magazines piled high. An old, white wardrobe with brass grips. A pile of clothes strewn haphazardly on the thick yellow rug on the floor near a large, unmade bed.

Unmade – and not empty.

Loki stands perfectly still, one hand still raised.

Why did he not sense that someone was here?!

Seeing as Clint (Bird-Eye?) managed to surprise him in Budapest, perhaps Loki’s “wolf’s ears” really are failing him.

Even so, his nose is working just fine. Unless …

Then he knows. Of course.

His tongue tastes bile.

Inching closer, he sees the black hair spilling over the madras. His own lean, sculpted body whose long limbs and handsome Asgardian features Loki has never felt less appreciation for than right this very moment.

The variant is deep asleep. And half-naked under the sheets.

Something twists in his stomach at the scene. Something small and pathetic and evil that wants out. A foul, winged creature batting against his ribcage with sharp claws.

He takes another step forward.

How has the variant not been alerted to his presence yet? He seemed strong – very strong – in 2016.

Loki studies his twin’s face. His own exact face. Same high cheek bones, same long, dark lashes against a pale complexion. Only this close, the man’s skin has a faint ashen sheen to it. A few tiny beads of sweat glisten on his temples and, yes, Loki hears it now, his breathing is slightly labored.

He is injured. Enough to dull his senses.

It is not the madman from the Void, as Loki had feared after their first encounter. His energy is quite different from any of the other variants, and Loki suspects he may be the closest to a perfect double that he’s encountered yet (and please, let this one be the last. No more variants or Loki will forget which life was his own).

Stepping so close he can lean over the bed, the reason for the variant’s sedated state becomes evident:

Tied around the man’s mid-section, just about visible over the sheets, is the upper edge of a large bandage. Loki sniffs. Yes, he can sense the wound and the ugly tinge of dark magic still surrounding it, like a poisonous signature: This was inflicted by a blade of the dark elves. The variant has come from Svartalfheim after all.

The cut must have been near fatal, but from the smell of it, it is healing well, aided by the variant’s own powers and what can only be human medicine, judging by the clinical odor.

Even so, why was he not taken to the healers on Asgard?

Because he is evading his punishment for the attack on New York, Loki guesses.

Thor and Jane must have brought him to London instead of delivering him back to Odin. Although thanks to Heimdall’s watchful gaze, the All-Father will be aware of what has transpired. In his condition, the chances of the variant being able to use his magic to shield himself from Heimdall are next to none.

Still, he is here. No one has come for him yet.

Loki does not know which is stranger: That the variant is legitimately, badly injured and not currently in the process of dispatching Odin off to some home for the elderly in New York, or that Odin has allowed the variant to be taken to Midgard instead of the dungeons.

Presumably neither the All-Father nor Thor are aware of the variant’s role in Frigga’s death.

Though he tries to shake them off, the images remain crystal clear: The queen mother, killed by one of Malekeith’s monster.

A shiver suddenly runs through the variant’s body on the bed and Loki holds his breath. The man shifts under the sheets but does not wake.

So, dear ‘brother’, your Nexus event was that you nearly died for the people who care for you instead of following up your heroism with deceit, as I would have done.

What sentiment.

The winged creature growls.

Loki could kill him right now.

Kill him and take his place.

It would be easy, so easy to slit his throat. It is not as if he has not committed murder before.

“I don’t enjoy hurting people. I don’t enjoy it …” But this is not ‘people’.

This man is a murderer as well.

The variant has already veered spectacularly off course from his fate, and yet there are no Minute Men next to his bed, holding him accountable for his “crimes against the sacred timeline”, nor will he be apprehended in the following years.

This man got “the Time Keepers’ stamp of approval”, just like the Avengers.

It is so monumentally unfair it is enough to make Loki’s fingers grasp for an invisible dagger. The variant’s existence makes a mockery of the life that was cruelly stolen from Loki by the TVA and for that he loathes him with every fiber of his identical body.

Why should the variant have any more right to live?

Because he will make her happy.

Loki forces himself to rein in the rage. The man will play a part in Jane’s life.

He stares at his sleeping double.

The variant is worthy.

Or just simply unbearably, ridiculously lucky.

No matter what, he must live, but if Loki stays here much longer, he fears the variant’s chances of making it past 2013 will rapidly decrease by the minute.

Loki cannot stand to look at him, nor will he contemplate the fact that the variant is comfortable enough in the apartment to discard his clothes.

If he does, he will stab him to death. And relish in it.

Loki is about to magic himself away to find somewhere nearby to wait for Thor and Jane’s return, when a noise reaches him from the hall outside the apartment.

Someone is coming towards the front door, keys in hand.

Jane.

He should leave immediately. Disappear before she can turn the key in the door.

But he does not.

Still looking at the sleeping, half-covered form in front of him, something finally snaps instead. The winged creature shrieks in delight.

A quick spell ensures that no sounds from outside the sleeping chamber can reach the variant, no matter how light his sleep becomes.

Another one renders all the light switches in the apartment useless.

Then Loki swiftly picks up the clothes from the floor, looks it over, and changes his own black outfit into what he is holding: A dark green, long-sleeved shirt and a pair of soft, well-known black leather pants that makes him feel both a bit homesick and a lot stronger.

Don’t do this, don’t do this.

A voice, not the clock this time but his own. He ignores it.

He does not know what Jane’s relationship with the variant is of this time or what state of mind she expects to find him in, but she has let him stay here – and right now, she is alone.

Her fingers weaving through his hair while the sun beat down on his back.

His conscience will not allow him to kill the variant, yet Loki cannot resist the temptation to be him.

Again.

But just for a heartbeat or two.

This last part he promises to himself and to her, though it does nothing to bury the shame.

Perhaps he did not change at all during his time at the TVA. Perhaps his true, villainous self just lay dormant, biding his time, while various oppressors walked all over him.

Is a stolen moment with her worth more than his honor? Is it worth jeopardizing his one chance of enlisting Thor’s help?

Yes.

Yes, it is.

This is lowest you have ever sunk.

Shut up.

He steps out of the bedroom and closes the door behind him, but not before catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror on the wall. His hair. The variant’s hair is noticeably longer. He cocks his head to the side once and the difference is levelled out.

In the hall, Jane is fiddling with the keys. When the lock clicks, Loki is sitting on the blue couch again, trying to appear casual while his pulse is racing as fast as when Bruce turned green before him.

And there she is.

Hair windswept, cheeks flushed from the cool evening air, wearing a dark green parka, jeans and boots.

Her eyes find his in the low light and a warm smile spreads on her face. His heart leaps into his throat.

“You’re back”. She does not stop to take off her jacket or attempt to turn on the lights before coming towards him and, unsure of what to say, he stands up. She stops in front of him, apparently a little unsure of the situation herself. She bites her lip.

“So how did it go?”

Her voice sounds at once both concerned and hopeful and her eyes are wide with expectation.

She is searching for some sort of positive affirmation and so Loki smiles down at her and says the only thing that seems fitting:

“It went well”.

Jane exhales loudly and her smile returns. “It did?!”

“Yes”, Loki replies, grinning at her (her smile is too infectious) and hoping she will not ask him to elaborate on whatever the subject is.

“Of course it did! I mean, you’re still here, aren’t you? Oh Loki, I’m so insanely relieved!” Jane laughs and looks like she is about to throw herself into his arms (automatically he reaches for her) when she stops herself mid-motion. “Sorry! I nearly forgot. Again!”

She takes one of his hands in both of hers, and Loki swallows hard as her fingers softly caress his with unmistakable intimacy.

“But seriously, you two didn’t fight, like fight-fight, did you …? I hope Thor didn’t …”. She trails off and looks at him questioningly.

“No. No, we didn’t fight. Don’t worry. We both … behaved”. Loki tries to catch up while keeping his replies as vague as he hopes he can afford.

The variant and Thor have had words, and Jane has worried about the outcome. Could it have been a discussion of whether to return Loki to Asgard? But then why has Thor not come back to the apartment?

In fact, why go anywhere else to talk at all, with the variant being as beat up as he is?

Because he and Thor both expected a row not suited for the indoors.

“Okay, you sit, you’ve moved around enough for one day. I’ll fix us something to eat and you’re going to tell me everything”. Jane gently lets go of his hand, then shoots him a teasing smile. “Unless you’ve emptied the fridge. Again”.

“Um”, is Loki’s inspired contribution to the conversation.

“Uh oh, pasta it is then”, Jane laughs, and goes to shrug off her jacket and boots in the hallway, revealing an open flannel shirt with a white T-shirt underneath.

Was she wearing the same thing that day in the desert town? It looks familiar.

Jane flips a light switch next to the coat rack and makes a “huh”-sound as nothing happens. She tries a lamp next to the dining table with the same result.

“Has the electricity gone again? Was it out when you got back?”

“Ah, yes. It was”.

“The landlord seriously needs to fix this, that’s the third time this week…good old London”. Jane scoffs but does not sound all that bothered.

“Can you work a little magic for us?”

When Loki does not move, Jane walks up to him (now even shorter without her footwear) and lightly places a hand on his arm, nudging him back on the couch. “Sit. And shine a light, please”.

He lets her push him down, and her hand moves up to rest on his shoulder. Now he is the one looking up at her. She is standing between his legs and there it is, the affection in her eyes that almost makes him forget that he is not the man it is meant for.

He wonders for how long he can get away with not saying anything remotely coherent before she suspects something’s amiss.

Obeying her wish, he holds out his palm and a small, orange flame appears, casting a warm glow on both their faces. Motioning with his fingers, he makes the flame float elegantly over the low coffee table in front of the couch where it stills in the air.

“I was thinking more along the lines of just making the electricity come back on, like last time, but okay, that is very pretty too”. Jane looks at the little light with wonder and Loki thinks he sees the stars in her eyes again.

Then her attention is back on him. Her fingers brush against his hair. They linger by the curls at the nape of his neck.

“I don’t know if it’s relief, but it’s almost like you look a bit … different”. Jane’s eyes roam his face, his hair. “Do you even still have a fever?”

Before Loki can answer her hand is touching his forehead.

Jane shakes her head in surprise. “It’s much better than this morning. Maybe it was good for you to get some real air after all. It has been almost three weeks …”

How easily she touches him. How sad that he's not used to being touched anymore.

He has only to lay his hand on her forehead in return and he could use his powers to reveal glimpses of her past (yes, he kept many of his gifts from the female on Lamentis).

More specifically, what has happened between her and the variant.

But not without revealing himself in the process.

Her left hand is still on his shoulder while the other now travels down the side of his cheek. He leans into her touch and closes his eyes, just breathing in the scent of her skin when he feels her bending down and locks of her auburn hair tickle his face.

He opens his eyes and looks right into hers, inches from his.

You have not earned this.

You are deliberately, selfishly, monstrously taking advantage of her.

I am a monster.

And then her mouth is on his and he does not say no.

To hell with his soul.

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

For a second, she thinks she feels him tense up.

But as soon as her lips melt onto his and he immediately, hungrily reciprocates the kiss, everything is right again.

Crazy, sure, but also oh so right.

Jane literally never wants to stop kissing him.

She actually told him exactly that the other night. Or, accidentally blurted it out as they were coming up for air, since she is falling for him so fast her brain apparently cannot keep up with her mouth.

Immediately she had felt embarrassed, but it did not last longer than it took for him to raise a teasing eyebrow at her and pull her close again. “Why, Doctor Foster”, he had purred in that low voice that he absolutely knows makes her go weak, “by all means, please…(and he’d kissed her) don’t…(another kiss) stop … (kiss) Ever”.

Then he had leaned back a little, still gently cupping her face between his large hands, and flashed her the most gorgeous, happy, wickedly lascivious smile she had seen on him so far.

Not many people radiate smoldering sex appeal while simultaneously suffering from the agonizing pain of a wound inflicted by an alien sword, but of course Loki pulls it off with flying colors.

From there on, there had been no returning to ‘movie night’.

Now, trying not to break the kiss, Jane carefully moves to sit herself down on the couch as well, making sure not to press against him. For two weeks, they have been making out like teenagers whenever they are alone. Somewhat hindered by his injuries, obviously, which prohibits him from moving much – it is both very, very hot and insanely frustrating.

The first time she had kissed him, he had been too stunned to move a muscle anyway.

The second time, he had nearly ripped the wound open again.

Since then, they have tried to take it slow, although on more than one occasion, Loki has been all but begging to throw caution to the wind – “I’ll heal!", “It doesn't hurt!” (said as he looked like he was going to pass out), and, Jane’s favorite, “It might make me heal faster”.

His impatience would be quite funny if it was not because Jane was feeling just as dizzy with want.

She has been going for a lot of runs in Hyde Park lately.

“Do you have a death wish?!”, she had asked him teasingly at one point when he had spontaneously grabbed her hand as she passed him the kitchen and pulled her tight against him, only to groan loudly in pain when her body collided with his bandage.

Then he had looked suddenly very serious and let her go, and she had instantly regretted the comment.

She knows enough about his past not to joke about things like that.

“Oh. Oh, no”.

That was all her mind had been capable of thinking when she and Loki had locked eyes in the palace on Asgard, right after she had slapped him (surprising both herself and everyone around her).

He had looked down at her with his trademark arrogant smirk, except as soon as Thor and Sif had turned away, his gaze had turned infinitely softer, and Jane had felt something monumental start to shift inside of her.

Something that had nothing to do with the Aether coursing through her veins.

Not long after that, on that awful, doomsday-looking planet, he had saved her life. Twice in quick succession. And for a horrifying second, it had looked like he would die right in front of her.

The memory makes her involuntarily shudder a bit and, drawing her legs up on the couch so she can twist to face him more directly, she runs her fingers through his long, silken hair, and nips at his lower lip… and is startled when his head jerks. For real this time.

Jane draws back.

“Are you okay?”. Perhaps things did not go as smoothly with Thor as she had hoped.

It was a big ask after all.

Once more she feels a sharp pang of guilt. It is not just her and Loki’s worlds that have been turned resoundingly upside down in a matter of one turbulent month.

Loki seems lost for words, and the sadness flooding his face shocks her.

He is far from okay.

In fact, he looks close to tears. Were it not because she had just felt his cool forehead, she would have assumed it was the fever flaring up.

Jane feels her stomach tie itself into a knot. They are taking him away from her before they have even had a chance be together.

Or, even worse still, he has regretted everything about their unlikely union.

“Jane, I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry…”

Here it comes, Jane thinks as nausea builds. Erik is about to be proved right about him.

She lets go of him. He is clearly wrestling with himself.

And he does look different. Is this what him dropping the mask looks like?

It is more than just his facial expression, it is his entire posture. Even wounded and half delirious with fever, Loki usually carries himself with no small amount of pride.

His eyes are so lost.

What the hell is going on?

“Just tell me, Loki”. Jane tries to disguise how alarmed she suddenly feels. His touch is the same, and yet it is like a stranger is taking over the man in front of her.

He inhales deeply and runs both his hands through his hair. Entirely without wincing as he lifts his elbows above his chest, she notices.

“Okay”, he begins. “Jane…” (the way he says her name, like he is tasting the word) “…you have every right to hate me for what I’m about to tell you. I truly deserve nothing less.”

She feels the tears welling up.

“I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Her voice breaks and Loki has the audacity to look taken aback.

“Are you being dragged back to Asgard, or are you dumping me? After trying so hard to get into my pants?!”

It comes out way too harshly, and Loki appears genuinely flummoxed.

Also, his face has gone red.

“Oh, Jane, no, he’s not going to… He won’t leave. I mean- ”

“What?” A chill runs down her spine.

“’He’? ‘He’ who? Thor?”

Before he can answer, they both jump a little as her phone suddenly goes off in her bag by the door.

That inane ringtone.

She still has not changed it.

Erik. She promised she’d let him know as soon as …

Jane wants to ignore it, but then her mentor will most likely keep calling and she cannot put it on silent from the couch. Loki probably could though, but she is not about to ask.

“Wait”. She holds up a hand and gets up.

While rummaging in the bag, a single tear runs down her cheek. No. She will keep her composure and listen to what he has to say like the commonsensical grown-up woman that she is.

Was.

She’s only just begun to get to know him properly, so why does it feel like she won’t be able to live without him?

She pulls out the damn phone and presses the button on the side.

The she straightens up again and turns. “Okay, Loki …”

Jane gasps.

The room is dark. And empty.

No, he didn’t!

“Loki!”

No answer.

She stalks over to the couch and frantically looks around. Nothing.

“Loki, don’t you dare!”

The phone vibrates in her hand. Shaking all over, Jane answers the call. “Erik?”. Her voice is very small. “Yes, hi, Jane, it’s me. Listen, has Loki gotten back yet?”

She starts crying. “Erik, he left. He was here when I came home and just now, he disappeared! He didn’t even say goodbye.”

She can hear how desperate she sounds.

“What do you mean ‘disappeared’?” Erik sounds confused.

“He is gone! I turned my back on him for one second and he vanished!” Jane’s voice breaks.

“Look, Jane, I really can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe you misunderstood him? He came to see me not two hours ago after that thing with Thor and, well, let’s just say he went out of his way to make a case for himself. And you…”

“What? What did he- ”

“Jane?” Darcy’s voice cuts through. She must have taken the phone from Erik. “The lunatic is absolutely batshit crazy about you, okay? Stop blubbering. He’s probably just bored and fucking with you since you’re not actually f- ”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Muffled sounds, as Erik wrestles the phone back.

“Come on over, Jane, okay? We’re all still at the lab. Ian’s made tortillas if you can believe it”.

“But…” Jane wavers. Is Loki really playing a joke on her?

Erik is not taking no for answer: “Jane, don’t indulge these little games of his, okay? Come have dinner with us, and I’ll tell you what he told me before. And if he isn’t back later tonight, it’ll be my pleasure to enlist Thor to beat the crap out of him. It’s long overdue”.

Despite herself, Jane cannot help but smile.

“Okay. I’m coming over”. She exhales. The feeling of unease is subsiding a bit.

“Good girl”, Erik says. “Tell her to bring beer!” Darcy shouts from somewhere in background.

Jane hangs up and puts on her boots again. Loki and Erik had an actual conversation with no casualties?

She grabs her jacket and slams the front door behind her.

He really is infuriating, that prince of hers.

If he turns up later, she will make him pay dearly for scaring her.

No making out for a week.

(Yeah, right.)

To be continued in part 7 ....

This was supposed to have been the final chapter. Only 'someone' needed extra time star gazing. Please forgive me him!

#shine a light #lokane #loki series #lokane ff #lokane fanfic #tva loki #loki x jane #jane foster #loki #loki fanfic #loki ff #plainlo inthemorning #shine a light fic #loki show

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thebakingqueen5 · 3 years

Text

KW 2021: Tease

Day 6 for Kataang Week 2021 hosted by @kataang-week with the prompt Tease!

I might have stuffed up the use of this word and its definition in context but shhhh it’s fine and this is cute.

Links: FF.net | AO3

Summary: Another year, another summer, another week of prompts celebrating our favorite couple. Kataang Week 2021 Day 6. Tease (verb): gently pull or comb (tangled wool, hair, etc.) into separate strands. Aka the take on the “tease” prompt that no one (not even me) expected.

Word Count: 1.8K

It had been a tiring, tension-filled day.

The war ended five, maybe six months prior, and the four nations were still partaking in the grueling process of learning to work together after a century’s worth of fighting. Considering that a group of teenagers were the reason there was any hope of amity in the first place, it came as little surprise that most of the pressure to arrange and facilitate treaties and peace talks fell on the Gaang, much to their chagrin.

And so here they were, utterly exhausted after a long day of trying to convince the Earth King and Zuko that violence was, in fact, bad, and stressed out of their minds, aching for a distraction.

It certainly didn’t help that tonight, of all nights, Katara’s long, dark hair was refusing to cooperate despite her having just stepped out of the shower a mere 10 minutes past. No matter how many times she ran the whalebone comb through her thick locks, nothing seemed to help, and her patience was quickly dissipating.

“Spirits, Zuko and Kuei are going to drive me absolutely crazy, sweetie.” Aang ranted as he entered her room, closing the door shut behind him as he made wild gestures with his hands.

“They’re both so… stubborn! And self-righteous and it’s getting us nowhere!” he huffed in frustration. “I wish they could just- oh.”

The airbender immediately faltered, finally noticing the appearance, or rather the clothing, of his girlfriend seated in front of a square mirror, nightgown riding quite high up her thigh.

“Sorry,” he blushed, eyes darting around the room to look anywhere, absolutely anywhere except at her to keep what little modesty they had left between them. “I didn’t know you had already showered and changed- I really should have knocked.”

Katara rolled her eyes, a slight pink tint rising to her cheeks as she returned to the task at hand: attempting to tame the lion’s mane she called her hair resting atop her head at that very moment.

“It’s fine, Aang,” she laughed, pushing a strand of hair out of her face. “No need to be embarrassed, really. Besides, it’s nothing you haven’t already seen.”

The waterbender snuck a quick glance at her boyfriend, and, quite frankly, she wasn’t sure he could get any redder if he tried. A tomato would have been jealous of the vibrant hue of Aang’s face, and he couldn’t stop staring at the floor, gaze entirely focused on the wooden boards beneath him.

The boy remained silent, and guilt began to fill Katara’s stomach.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she frowned, standing up. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I can go change if you want-”

Aang instantly looked up from the ground, quick to clarify his thoughts. “No, sweetie. It’s not that! It’s just- you look absolutely beautiful, and I don’t want me subconsciously staring at you to make you feel uncomfortable or uneasy around me.”

Katara’s eyebrows raised in pleasant surprise, and she patted a spot on the edge of the mattress, beckoning for him to come sit near her before turning back and glaring at herself in the mirror.

“Believe me, sweetie, there is very little you can do to make me feel uncomfortable around you. Honestly, it’s a bit of a compliment knowing that’s how I seem in your eyes,” she said shyly.

The airbender grinned and walked up to her. Feeling a little emboldened, he tenderly wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed a kiss to her cheek, chin barely reaching an inch above her shoulder.

“You could be wearing a potato sack and you’d still be the most beautiful woman in the world to me,” he murmured as his stormy eyes met her cerulean ones through the mirror.

“Really?” she raised an eyebrow and gestured to the mess on her head. “Even with this bird’s nest?”

“Always,” Aang smiled earnestly. “Speaking of, though, do you need some help with that?”

“I appreciate the offer, Aang, but I’ve been trying for the last half hour now and you aren’t exactly the most experienced with hair.”

“Well, maybe a new perspective is just what you need.”

He gently pulled her back towards the mattress a few feet away from the dresser with the mirror and sat her down in front of him. Rolling her eyes, the waterbender handed him her comb, but he simply cast it aside, instead using his nimble fingers to work through the knots and tangles in her hair.

Katara was right- he did have minimal experience with hair, not having much of his own, but he often played with hers when they spent time together. He knew what relaxed her and what didn't, which gave him the perfect means to seize this opportunity and prove her wrong, while also, of course, helping the two unwind and spend some time with one another.

The waterbender had already been quite frustrated when she had started working through her hair, and her movements had reflected that. She was stressed and antsy, and she combed harshly and roughly, only compressing the knotted hair to the end of the strand and making it harder to get out. Between that and the day she had, she had been close to tears and Aang’s gentle touch was just what she needed.

Much of Aang’s stress had been alleviated when he had entered the room earlier in simply being able to see and embrace his girlfriend. Because of this, he was able to take his time and the change of pace was nice for the both of them.

He worked slowly and methodically, fingers lightly massaging the top of her scalp before moving down to dampen and separate her wavy tresses into individual strips of hair with the help of some waterbending. He took care to not tug too hard on any one strand, having heard many a horror story from Katara in the past with her unable to tolerate anyone else handling her sensitive locks. The airbender was determined to make it a pleasant experience for the both of them, and it was.

In fact, Katara had been mildly shocked by the sheer love and effort she felt Aang direct into detangling her hair. It was sweet seeing him put so much energy towards trying something new just to help her, and the tension in her mind that had been knotted up began to unravel as well.

“Halfway,” Aang whispered, breaking her out of her thoughts. His gaze was still intense and focused on her unruly strands as she sighed softly and leaned ever so slightly back into him.

“I’m sorry I ever doubted you,” she murmured back. She closed her eyes as Aang’s rhythmic yet feathery touches to her scalp soothed her and then gave herself a quick look in the mirror through her peripheral vision- her hair was already looking a lot better and far more tame than it had been 15 minutes ago.

“That’s alright, just have a little more faith in your amazing boyfriend next time, yeah?” he winked with a smile, hands moving the hair he had untangled to the front as he directed his concentration to the last section.

This section was by far going to be the hardest- most of the strands were embedded into a few large and messy knots creating quite a complex network. Nevertheless, Aang was up to the challenge. He began humming an old Air Nomad folk tune, one of the many they’d perform at Yangchen’s Festival, causing Katara to hum along with him as he spread apart the last few unruly waves of hair.

After finishing, he steadily ran his fingers through her hair like a comb, taking extra care to caress the nape of her neck and back of her head as she sighed happily, and gave it one last sweep with the whale-bone comb.

“All done,” he said, tucking a lock behind her ear when she turned around to face him.

The waterbender beamed before lightly pushing him down on the bed as they both sank into the mattress.

“I take it you enjoyed it?” Aang laughed, looking up at her.

“Very much so,” Katara responded. She then carefully angled herself so that she was lying pressed up against Aang’s side, head resting in the crook of his neck.

“It was pretty relaxing for me too,” Aang blushed. “You know I love playing with your hair and this just kinda took it to another level. I’d be happy to do it for you in the future if you ever find yourself fighting with that comb again, that is.”

“I’d like that, Aang. A lot,” she smiled shyly. “It was great to just… unwind. Have you there with me and just relax. I was basically about to cry when you came in and you just melted all my worries away with those magical hands of yours.”

The airbender chuckled, snaking his arm around her shoulders and leaning his head against hers. “Glad to hear it, sweetie. It’s getting late though, and we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Time for some rest?”

Katara wordlessly nodded, sighing and closing her eyes as Aang did the same and blew out the candles lighting up the room.

“Thank you for this, sweetie. I love you.”

“I love you too, Tara. Good night.”

The two were taken away into the dream realm, but an unspoken custom was crafted that night. It became a ritual, a way for both of them to calm down and escape the high stress levels of their everyday lives.

When Katara found her dad kissing Malina and it felt like her whole world was crumbling down around her, Aang had snuck into her room that night and combed and plaited her hair until they drifted off into each other’s arms.

When Aang had confided in the waterbender about feeling anxious and insecure about becoming a new father after she had informed him of her pregnancy, Katara had shown up to the stables with a comb and some apples for Appa in tow. The two ended up assuaging each other’s concerns while leaning back against the fluffy bison, much to their attention-seeking flying lemur’s annoyance.

Whether they were stressing over not being able to find an old book from the Southern Water Tribe after moving to Air Temple Island or had just come home after a near-death experience with the most dangerous bloodbender in the world, one of the two would always sit the stressed one down and grab a comb.

It never became a chore or something they dreaded; it was almost a secret love language for the couple. It was a way of reminding each other that no matter what was going on in their lives, they would always find time for each other and help one another. It pulled Aang and Katara out of some of their lowest, darkest moments, and it only accentuated their highs.

Such a simple, pure act born out of nothing but love and a desire to help- it should’ve been insignificant, a one-time thing, but it became so much more. To Katara and Aang, it meant the world.

#kataang week #kataang week 2021 #kataangtag #kw 2021 #kataang #aang x katara #atla fanfiction #aang #katara #fluff #romance

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nagitoandkokichioneshots · 3 years

Text

A Sick Hope

"Great! I'll be there in ten!" I hung up the phone, jumping off the sofa. I grabbed my (F/C) backpack from the coffee table and made my way into mine and Nagito's shared bedroom. It was going to be the first time I'd be seeing my best friends in a while. Between finals coming up and wedding preparations for me and Nagito, we barely even had time to breath. Luckily Sonia invited all her closest girlfriends to her place to blow off some steam before finals week, which many of them agreed to

One of them happened to be me!

As I was stuffing my pjs and my toothbrush into my backpack, I felt a pair of skinny arms snake around my waist. I yelped at the sudden pressure placed on my stomach, but turned my head, seeing my fiance. As I sighed in relief, I let go of my backpack strap, letting it gently plop on the bed

"Ah, there's my angel of hope," Nagito chuckled lightly, planting a gently kiss on my cheek. I smiled only for a split second before prying away from his arms, slapping his arm gently

"You idiot! You don't usually get off classes this early! I thought you were a robber or something," I scolded him, pouting. As I crossed my arms, the white haired boy frowned, sulking

"I'm so sorry, my angel. I didn't mean to upset you," He sniffled, looking down. I mentally sighed to myself. Nagito and I have been together for almost five years and he still goes on about how someone as beautiful and hopeful as me shouldn't be so blind to date a piece of trash like him. Well, better shut him up before he goes on his usual "I don't deserve you" rant, no matter how many times I assure him

I placed a kiss on his lips, smiling gently at him. "Nagito, I was joking. But you did startle me. It's not even 6 yet and you usually get home from your night classes at 8:30. What happened?" I asked him. His face light up again, relieved that I wasn't mad at him anymore. He crossed his arms, smiling at me

"My professor ended early since we're ahead of the syllabus. But enough about me. Where is my angel of hope going tonight?" He asked, pointing to my backpack

"Oh, Sonia called me and a few of our friends. We're going to have a sleepover at her place to blow off some steam before finals," I explained, grabbing the straps of it again. I double checked that I had everything I needed as Nagito grabbed a water bottle from the table, taking a sip from it

"I see. I hope you girls have fun. But you'll text me once you get there, right? Oh! And please stay safe, alright? I can't have anything happening to my ray of hope. I know you're allergic to nuts so double check with Sonia if the food you have has any. Oh! And if you feel sick, and Mikan isn't there, call me and I'll be there t--"

I shushed Nagito with a peck on his lips, chuckling. I shook my head, knowing damn well after all this time, Nagito was still overprotective of his 'angel of hope'. I couldn't really blame him though. I don't say that to sound conceited, but besides Hajime and sometimes Chiaki, I was basically his only support system. To say he was a bit clingy was an understatement. For the first few weeks of us dating, I would've been lucky if he let me use the bathroom

"Marshmallow, don't worry about me. I'll be just fine. Sonia knows all my allergies and Mikan will be there in fact. So I'll be A-okay!" I smiled, slinging my backpack across my shoulders. Nagito smile, kissing my forehead

"Alright, whatever you say, angel. But please text me when you get there atleast," He pleaded, throwing his own backpack onto a chair. I promised him one last time before slipping on my converse sneakers, heading out

***********************************************************************************************

"(Y/N)! It's been so long! How have you've been?" Sonia welcomed me into her home with a warm smile and open arms. Since we finished Hope Peaks Academy, Sonia decided to settle down in Japan for a little while longer to go to college with her friends. Her apartment wasn't far from mine and Nagito's. Which also meant that it didn't look anything out of the ordinary from a normal apartment. Well, Sonia did say that she wanted to be treated like a normal girl

"Hey Sonia! I've been great, thanks for asking. Well....aside from school and the whole...learning thing," I chuckled, as I set my backpack down on the floor. I saw Mikan, Ibuki, and Chiaki all sitting on her couch, bundled in a bunch of blankets, watching Mean Girls on the TV. Ibuki was the first one to notice me and hollered to me

"YOOOO-HOOO!!! (Y/N), Ibuki is so glad you made it! Sit with us!" She patted an extra space for me on the couch, right between her and Mikan. I chuckled at Ibuki being...well Ibuki, but gladly accepted her offer, squeezing myself between them

"Hey girls, did I miss anything?" I asked them, as Ibuki handed me a bowl full of white cheddar popcorn. Mikan smiled lightly, shaking her head

"Not at all, (Y/N). We just popped in the movie before you came," Mikan gleamed happily, but her rare cheerful expression was replaced with her usual anxious face in a moment

"O-Or we can pick out a-another movie for you, (Y/N)! OH! Or do a-anything you want to do, (Y/N)! It was stupid of me to assume you even wanted to watch a movie in the first place! Please f--"

"Mikan, please relax. That is nothing to stress over. I'd be more than happy to watch Mean Girls," I calmed my close friend down, as I gently took the popcorn bowl from the musician

As I was reaching for a greedy handful of popcorn, I felt a sudden pain spike across my forehead. I winced, pressing three fingers to it. My slight grimace was apparently enough to snap the gamer girl, who was playing Super Mario Brothers on her Nintendo Switch, look up at me.

"(Y/N)? Are you okay?" Chiaki asked, pausing her game. Sonia frowned too, seeing me press my hand against my head

"Yeah. I heard you suck in a breath, (Y/N). I hope you're alright," she said, kneeling down to the side of me. She offered me a can of ginger ale, which I smiled and took

"Thank you for your concern, girls. But I'm fine. Really," I assured them, gently peeling off my hand from her forehead. Mikan's nervous expression quickly returned to her face, hearing my side

"E-Excuse me for interrupting, but you don't really sound so confident, (Y/N). If you really aren't feeling well, you should rest for a bit," she suggested. Before I could reassure her once more, she squeaked, blushing

"Eep! I'm so sorry, (Y/N)! I didn't mean to call you out on lying. I understand if you totally hate me and never want to—"

"Mikan, Mikan, calm down. I'm okay, I promise. And besides, even if I did have a little headache, that won't stop me from having a great time with my girls!" I cheered, pumping my fist. This caught Ibuki's attention as she encouraged the sleepover to go on as well

"Now that's the spirit! Come on, Sonia! Let's play this bad boy already and get our sleepover on! Ibuki even has a mixtape she prepared for us to jam out later!" She smiled proudly. Sonia gave her an approving smile, as she pressed play on the remote and sat down next to Chiaki, already on the third level of her game

The rest of the night wasn't so fun for one single person.....

"Wow, I'm pretty exhausted if I say so myself. What about you girls?" Sonia asked her friends, turning to the couch to talk to them. Chiaki didn't need to answer as she was already asleep on the floor, hugging her Nintendo close to her. Mikan was spraying some setting spray on her newly painted burgundy nails, and Ibuki was clearing up the music CD's she brought along

"I am getting a bit tired myself," Mikan yawned, putting the spray back on the table. "Maybe we should get to bed. After all, 22 year old girls should be getting a proper 8 to 10 hours of sleep," she smiled, but it suddenly turned into a frown. She ran her hands through her hair, panicking once again

"U-unless you guys aren't tired yet! If that's the case, it's fine! We can stay up all night and tell ghost stories! Or watch more movies! I didn't mean to sound boring! Please forgive my ig—"

"Mikan, chill girl! In fact, some sleep does sound like a great idea. I'm a bit b-....." I was about to agree with Mikan, but I just stared at the floor, not....doing anything. Why wasn't my body complying with me? Why....didn't I want to move?

"Huh? Hey, Ibuki to (Y/N)! You hear Ibuki?!" The ultimate musician practically screamed at me, waving a hand in my face. Nothing. I...I didn't feel like getting up. Almost like I was out of fuel, despite the snacks we all filled up on

"(Y/N)? Are you okay? What are you thinking about?" Sonia asked, sitting next to me. She tried shaking my shoulder, not getting a response from me. Ibuki got up and retrieved Mikan for me. The nurse crouched down to my height, feeling my forehead

"Eep! (Y/N)?! You're burning up! You have a serious fever!" She squealed, standing up. I mustered all the energy left in my body to even look at my shy friend, but my eyes looked glazed and cloudy. Sonia gasped, as she felt my warm cheek with her hand

"Mikan is right! (Y/N), you feel really hot!" The blond exclaimed, getting up. She ran to her landline, dialing a number

"N-No! Don't call...." I tried to shout at her, but something that was barely above a whisper came out from my pale lips. Suddenly, the sharp pain from earlier sent hurtful waves through my stomach. I yelped in pain, falling to my knees from the couch. Ibuki gasped, as she tried to steady me with Mikan. Mostly because I was an inch away from crushing a sleeping Chiaki

"I'm calling Nagito," Was all I heard Sonia say before my world got black, blocking out all my senses

***********************************************************************************************

When I woke up, I felt something ice cold resting on my head. I felt a heavy pressure next to the bed I was lying in, the sheets pulled loosely, but comfortably to my chest

Wait? I was in my bed?!

I looked up and saw Nagito looking at me as if I was a dead body. I saw that his eyes were a bit puffy and red around the edges. And wait....were those dried tears that rolled down his cheeks?

"(Y/N)! Oh, my ray of hope," he immediately yanked my hand from under the blankets and kissed my hand all the way to my forearm

"(Y/N), I was so worried! When Sonia called me and told me you felt ill, I felt despair building up inside me. How can I be so blind not to notice there was something wrong with my hope? I'm such a disgusting excuse for a human...." he mumbled, not looking me in the eye. I frowned, caressing his cheek

"Naggie, you aren't a disgusting excuse for a human. Never talk bad about yourself again, I keep telling you this. I didn't even feel sick until I arrived at Sonia's. In fact, I'd say you arrived just on time," I gave him a weak smile, making him flash me a gentle one

"Do you really mean that? Oh, it makes me so happy that my darling angel is praising trash like—" I cut him off with a death stare, scary enough to even make Gundham run away. He cleared his voice, continuing with his statement

"My angel is praising me," he corrected himself, making me smile again. However, that smile only lasted for a split second as I grimaced again, feeling another painful headache rush through my skull. I sat up quickly to get a better grip on the ice pack on my head, but Nagito gently pushed me down

"No, no, no, angel. You're too weak, don't get up so early. I'll be back with some medicine and tea. After that, I can prepare a bath for you. I was about to get in the shower before Sonia called me, so I didn't wash up either," He got up from the bed, only for me to grab his arm with a feeble grip

"Can I rest a bit more with you before we take that bath?" I asked him, making him grin sweetly at me, nodding

"Of course, darling. I'll be back in a minute with some tea and medicine for you," He told me before he placed a loving kiss on my temple, going out of our bedroom. I smiled, snuggling against the sheets. I took in the scent of toasted bagels and a hint of chocolate chip cookies, knowing damn well that was Nagito's scent (and that he was snacking on the bed earlier). I felt myself drift off into another sleep spell, smiling at the fact that me and Nagito were both lucky enough to end up with each other

#danganronpa x reader #nagito komaeda #nagito komeada kin #danganronpa x y/n #danganronpa #nagito x reader #nagito headcanons #nagito oneshots #danganronpa goodbye despair #goodbye despair #nagito fluff

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robinsarm · 3 years

Text

Just a Little Anxiety Before you Leave

I’ve unfortunately allowed one of my in game habits to fester and it’s now become a short, one off fic for the Zarina x Deathslinger ship. Enjoy :)

(Word count: ~2400)

(Some mature topics included)

There were times Zarina could get along with the killer she’d arrived with, The Deathslinger. He may have been very rough around the edges and you needed a pickaxe to break through his cold and unforgiving demeanor. But, Zarina had done that on many occasions before. However, right now, Slinger was getting on the girl’s nerves.

She’d been left on the dusty ground of Dead Dawg Saloon for the fifth time now. It wasn’t anyone’s outright fault, the killer just didn’t seem to want to hook her past the first time a few minutes into the trial. She’d had the foresight to bring a loadout that countered such strategies, but it only worked as long as her teammates were feeling altruistic.

They weren’t...not this trial at least.

Yui was busy keeping Slinger’s attention, Nancy was making sure not a totem was left in the small town, and Quentin...well, Quentin had fallen asleep. The killer got tired of hearing those unrelenting crows circle over the boy, so he’d been killed off quickly.

As Yui was placed onto her second hook of the trial, Nancy finally made it to Zarina who’d been crawling towards her the entire time.

“Sorry,” Nancy tried to apologize, but Zarina didn’t stay to hear her out. She turned on her heels and sprinted towards the old saloon. There was a chest out back she wanted to search and, hopefully, get a med kit. However, before she could even pass the killer shack, Nancy screamed, having been speared by the relentless bounty hunter.

Zarina let her head fall back in defeat; why did it always seem like she had to babysit the entire trial? Rolling her eyes, Zarina took a right instead of her intended left and quickly hobbled back towards the water tower. Yui was hooked right behind the dilapidated buildings lining a majority of the town. By the time Zarina got there, the poor girl looked like she’d been beaten to an inch of her life.

“I got you-”

“Don’t!” Yui interrupted her, shocking Zarina into stepping back.

“What? Why?” Zarina asked quickly and instinctively looked down at her feet.

“Nancy’s on death hook,” Yui said with a struggle, right as their last teammate was stabbed to the ground. “One of us is going to make it out. Just take it,” she added, referring to the hatch.

“Why don’t you take it? You can run him better than I can,” Zarina protested, raising her arms to either side of Yui’s torso.

Yui shook her head, her fight with the Entity swiftly coming to a close. “I’m done with this trial.” Her grip on the Entity’s claws began to slip. In a panic, Yui shouted, “There’s a med kit in the basement,” before the Entity plunged it’s finger-like claws into her body and hoisted her into the sky.

Zarina couldn’t stand watching that part of the sacrifice. She’d seen it plenty but it still didn’t get any easier. She wiped Yui’s blood from her face and neck before beginning the search for healing anew. Nancy was hooked not five seconds later; now Zarina was in a rush.

Thankfully, the killer didn’t immediately come for her, so Zarina made it to the basement before ever catching sight of the cowboy. Yui was correct, in the chest was a completely unused Emergency med kit. For a moment, Zarina wondered if Quentin had searched the chest but left the kit for someone else. Like the thousands of times before, Zarina unpacked the kit and used it effortlessly on herself until there wasn’t a wound left bothering her.

Leaving the med kit behind, Zarina bolted from the basement, knowing her time was limited. Find the hatch, that was her only objective at this point. As she left the basement, a feint but noticeable ringing buzzed in her eardrums. She knew what that noise was and already knew it was too late.

In less than a second, the killer shot his gun sending the precisely aimed spear directly into her right side. Not only was she primed to lose another health state, but she quickly realized she was about to lose them both. That spear hit sent a wave of nausea through her system, her skin erupted with goosebumps and she gained the overwhelming thought that she was going to die.

She was exposed.

Zarina yanked on the spear, trying to pull it loose, meanwhile glaring at the killer. “You brought the coin, you fuck!” she screamed at him as he pulled her closer.

“You’re only figurin’ this now?” he yelled back, then laughed as he slashed her to the floor.

Going from fully healthy to dying on the ground was something Zarina hated worse than anything. That action usually broke bones or tore major arteries. It hurt worse than anything Zarina had ever experienced, so she avoided it no matter the cost. But now, she was back on the ground - back to where she started. Now, she was bordering on hating this man.

“Can’t you just-” Zarina paused to spit out a glob of blood out from the back of her throat- “kill me?”

The Deathslinger chuckled whilst reloading his weapon. “Now why would I do that?”

“Fuck you, Quinn,” Zarina hissed as he got closer.

“Oh,” Slinger cooed. “Big words coming from the person who takes them literally.” The killer had dropped low, practically down to Zarina’s level to give her that comeback. He was so close she could feel him breathing on her neck. She knew what he was doing. He’d toyed with her before. She wasn’t going to give him any sort of satisfaction this time, however. She remained stone-faced, staring straight out into the small, desert town, all the while trying to ignore him and the heat flushing her cheeks.

Slinger laughed again when she didn’t responded then resumed his position, towering over her. “Quit bein’ so stoic. You’re missin’ your escape.”

“My escape?” Zarina questioned in her head then gave the killer a narrow stare.

Slinger was still smiling, but he was shifting his gaze between her and something off down the road. Zarina considered the circumstance then pulled herself forward into the dusty road. Turning her head was all she needed to do to see it - the hatch. Down towards the center of town, the metal square seeping black fog mocked her from its impossibly far distance. She gave Slinger another look, this time with more spite behind it.

“Well go on then,” he joked. “I haven’t been pickin’ you up, have I?” With that, the killer walked a few paces in front of her, then turned around and waited for her.

Zarina wanted to scream, maybe even throw a fit and call him a few choice words that would really get her killed. Instead, she lamented, took a long painful breath, and began the crawl.

Right off the bat, the gravel scraping her ribcage and stabbing into her open wounds was enough to make her want to quit. Mixing that with Deathslinger’s added nervous ticks as he waited “patiently” only made her more irritated. The man wouldn’t know how to keep still if his life was on the line. He paced, he tapped his good foot, he inspected his gun and even began cleaning it in a few spots. It was the comments that slowly picked at Zarina.

“Damn your slow for a young one,” or “I think my mum, 6 feet under, might beat ya to it.”

The only thing that kept her going was the fact that she’d brought Tenacity. The distance between her and Slinger and the hatch were all closing fast. If she had to endure this harassing torture at normal crawling speeds, Zarina would have just given up.

As Zarina passed the stagnant killer, she let herself wonder if he was actually letting her go. But, like the godly timing this killer always seemed to have, Slinger smothered that thought as she heard the spurs of his boots clinking towards her. She stopped just as Slinger stepped over her, now standing with a boot on either side of her ribcage.

“What?” she grumbled as she tried to look back up at him.

“You’re goin’ a bit faster than usual. Remind me what you’re runnin,” Slinger asked with a tone in his voice Zarina didn’t like. He was tormenting her and now she was wishing she hadn’t used her Unbreakable earlier in the trial.

“Tenacity,” she answered begrudgingly.

“Ah, that’s right. How ‘bout we slow ’r down a bit,” Slinger insisted more than asked.

Zarina almost immediately ignored him and continued crawling; it was an action she instantly regretted when Slinger prodded his spurs into her sides. She yelped and tried rolling away only to be stopped by Slinger’s other leg.

“Slow it down,” Slinger repeated more firmly this time, then resumed his normal stance.

The list of things Zarina wanted to call Slinger at this point had reached an extended scrolls length. She was so fed up and just wanted to go back to the campfire. She could rant and rave there about how annoying he and this entire trial had been. Most likely she was just going to sleep her anger away like she always did. Sleep sounded intoxicating at that moment, so Zarina focused on that.

The survivor made a conscious effort not to move too quickly. She’d start a crawl then stop, making sure no part of her was about to run into the knives that were Slinger’s spurs. As she crawled, Slinger stepped up with her, slow and steady. That’s how they moved for what felt like minutes. She crawls an inch, he steps forward, she crawls a few more inches, he steps forward again. Zarina hated it.

Eventually, Zarina ignored the killer entirely and focused on only two things: the rhythm and the heavenly whistle of the hatch not 10 meters away from her. She counted the meters the best she could. 9...8...7. With each passing moment, Zarina’s heart pounded harder and harder with excitement, with hope. Adrenaline was surging through her veins, making her shaky. Once she was close enough, Zarina forgot all about the killer above her and resumed crawling at her faster pace.

Another mistake she was quickly corrected on.

“Now what did I tell ya!” Slinger reprimanded as he reached down and grabbed her shirt.

“No! Wait,” Zarina screamed.

She was so close. If she reached out she’d be able to touch the edge of the metal escape. Just one more second and she’d be gone.

“You messed up Kassir. Shoulda listened,” the killer taunted as he slugged her effortlessly onto his shoulder.

Tears welled in Zarina’s eyes. Another death. After all that torment, she’d let herself believe that he was going to let her have it. She felt embarrassed and humiliated. For once, she let herself cry. Instead of wiggling at a chance for freedom, she gripped onto the back of his coat and held on for dear life.

“Caleb, please,” she begged with a shaky voice. “I’m sorry, please. I’m sorry.”

The killer stopped in his tracks and gripped onto Zarina’s shirt tighter. “I ain’t fallin’ for your crocodile tears-”

“I’m not faking!” She screamed as more tears leapt from her eyes.

“Okay, okay,” Slinger lamented softly. He was hearing the emotion in her voice now. Setting his weapon against the shack wall, Slinger used both hands to gently slide the survivor off his shoulder. Zarina didn’t get far before she latched onto him, wrapping her legs around his waist and hugging his throat like she’d fall off if she didn’t.

“Love, I was only playin’,” Slinger said, trying his best to calm the girl that was glued to his torso. “I was gonna give ya’ the damn hatch.”

Zarina didn’t try to make any additional comments. She was currently focused on keeping herself quiet. She may have felt like an absolute hot mess but she didn’t want to irritate the man any further with her sniffling and lack of control over her emotions.

Slinger, trying his absolute best, gently patted Zarina on the back while he paced around the area. Eventually, he figured she needed support, and he needed a bit of weight off his lungs, so Slinger lifted her up under her thighs. All Zarina could offer in return was a small apology that barely escaped her throat without cracking.

“I really get you this wired?” Slinger asked genuinely as he walked over to the windowsill of the shack to lean against it.

“No, I just-” Zarina cut herself short, feeling her throat about to give out again.

“Settle, love,” Slinger whispered and gently kissed her shoulder. “Breathe for a minute.”

“ ‘m sorry,” she mumbled into his coat.

“Quit your apologizin’. You didn’t do nothin’,” Slinger said. “Shoot your shit when you’re calm enough.”

A man of many words this one wasn’t, but Zarina liked that. Slinger was always straight to the point, sometimes being a little harsh, but she could take it. She’d be a pretty bad journalist if she couldn’t handle a few expletives.

Eventually, the survivor got around to calming her mild panic attack. At the first sign of her settling down, Slinger questioned again if she needed to speak her mind. There wasn’t much Zarina could say that she hadn’t already vented to him about before. So, she just shook her head and feigned exhaustion before trying to remove herself from the killer’s arms.

“I don’t give a shit how tired you are,” Slinger told her flatly. He kept her fixed to his chest then began the short walk back to hatch. “When you get back to your friends, bring your ass right on back here.”

Zarina raised an eyebrow even though he couldn’t see it. “What do you have here that I’d want?” she asked, playing along.

Slinger shrugged. “Quiet night. Apology whiskey. Maybe some make-up sex.”

Heat rushed to Zarina’s face again as she tried to stifle an excited laugh. “Whiskey’s fine.”

“And so are you,” Slinger quickly added before safely dropping her at the foot of the hatch. “Now hurry on and get your ass on back here.”

Zarina laughed for a moment before her wounds reminded her that she’d better get going. “Thank you, Caleb,” she said softly before dropping into the cool darkness of her escape, fully intending on returning to the blazing heat of that old western town.

#the deathslinger #zarina kassir #dbd #I fully intended on making this short #then it turned into 6 pages #dead by daylight #caleb quinn

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skyholders · 4 years

Text

Lucien: Passing By [Rumours & Secrets]

This translation contains DETAILED SPOILERS of Season Two of MLQC- Proceed with caution!

NOTE: This Rumours and Secrets tells the happenings of what happens after MC left for the other world, leaving Lucien in the OG world to prepare for the “Second Birth of Life.”

P.S: Apologies for any grammatic or spelling mistakes I have missed. Some minor details are added to this translation to make it less confusing.

Section One

[1/6]

It was very quiet in the streets, quieter than Lucien thought. His hand(s) reached into the pockets of his coat, and, unhurried, he walked towards where it was usually the most lively in the streets. A large, yellow truck was abandoned amidst the road, filled with furnitures like an old wooden rocking chair, a bookcase without half of a pair of frosted glass doors; toys stuffed and huddled into large plastic bags- seems like the truck of a moving company.

Lucien couldn’t piece the phrases together, 'end of the world', 'moving', 'abandoned truck'. They seem to have no connection among them to formulate a believable story. He stood in front of the truck, thinking of the time when he’d first moved in next to the girl.

[2/6]

Lucien is a rather minimalistic man: When he’s moving, he’ll only bring along his collection of books, his computer, and other necessities. Packing up doesn’t require more than seven boxes, and with the moving company's employees' skills, everything will be moved within two trips up and down the apartment. The night has grown very dark, Lucien stood in the middle of the road.

[3/6]

A gust of wind blew against his bangs. He sudden thought of how pleasant the weather was the day he moved. He’d lifted his head up to the sun as he drove, looking towards the sky above him. The sun was hidden behind a layer of clouds then, yet it still burned the eyes and sizzled the heads of many.

The moving company’s supervisor had a white towel hung across his shoulder, using it to dab the sweat off of his face occasionally. He said hello, chatted briefly. He smiled, saying how little he’s brought with him, and how customers like him are quite the rarity. After all, who doesn’t bring their life along with them when they move?

“I’m afraid it’ll be quite inconvenient, I can always purchase them once more after I’ve settled in,”- That’s what he said to the man.

[4/6]

As time went by, there were certainly many new additions to his home. However, most of them are gifts the girl’s gifted him. From a small cartoon memo, to a big, soft pillow, among other intriguing decorations.

He thought of the girl’s expressions when she first walked into his living room, a sort of timid politeness- not daring to look around too much, not daring to look at him any longer as well- like an innocent little bunny, entering the predator's trap willingly and without any bit of caution.

However, the little bunny soon familiarized herself with him, happily bouncing about around his life, trimming the leaves of his plants occasionally, never once leaving without assuring his fridge was filled with food. She liked to read while laying against the rug next to the floor to ceiling window, her legs dangling about. And she would have fallen asleep by sunset, where a seemingly miraculous golden hue coated her dress and her hair.

[5/6]

Those memories, seemingly distant, yet close enough to grasp, they came without warning. As it turns out, he remembers every little thing so vividly.

There was a foreign light dancing in his eyes, and yet, when he looked around, he couldn’t see a single thing. The buildings around him had no lamps or lights, they stood along the road, two roads facing one another, looking as if they’ll collapse anytime soon.

The end of the long road's an endless darkness, like an abyss raised from the grounds, with not a bit of light able to pass through it.

It’s only him, and the hems of his white coat being blown by the wind, contrasting against the night, thick with darkness.

[6/6]

A group of comets left brilliant trails among the sky, and he stopped looking, walking towards the pressing darkness in front of him.

Half an hour later, he stood in front of the Highest Bioscience Research Centre.

Section Two

[1/6]

Lucien noticed the weeds and shallow puddles of water in front of the gates.

He was also here when the research centre was under renovations, and it almost looked the same, if not for the taller grass, and little earthworms in the mud- Abandoned, ruined without a trace of humanity, yet brimmed with liveliness.

Life will always create all sorts of surprises in every little way, and life will never seem to be erased.

Lucien stepped over the shadowed silhouette of a branch filled tree, and pushed the doors of his research centre open.

[2/6]

There’s probably no one in there, perhaps there won’t be anyone else.

Without the lights, the hallway seemed long and narrow. Lucien walked along it, his leather shoes echoed as they hit the marble floors, creating an almost sinking sound to the malicious space.

He didn’t inspect each and every laboratory, instead, he walked straight to his own office- he still had one more thing to complete.

[3/6]

The hanging pot of orchids beside his window had completed wilted, its long branches reduced to a sick, black and yellow hue, falling down onto the floor from high above. It was quite a determined little thing, it only needed a little bit of sunlight to survive. He’d always forget that he needed to care for them, but the girl will always think of them. She loved caring for them, buying them all sorts of nutrients

.Many praised him, saying how rare it was, to see orchids raised as beautiful as those.

It’s always been a species that’s learned how to survive under minimal care, but under her nurture, it could grow its branches and leaves comfortably under gentle winds, it could breathe freely under the sun, could crawl freely far from ground- it had the chance to live with such contentment.

[4/6]

Lucien pulled his chair, and unknowingly sat on the wilted leaves of the hanging orchid.

After entering the password for the data storage unit, Lucien browsed through the information he’d stored with his own special method.

[5/6]

In the silence of the office, there was only the clear sound of a keyboard being used. The screen reflected upon Lucien’s eyes, as countless lines of data rolled over the screen, not worthy of being read. His eyebrows furrowed, lips sealed to a tight line. He’d spent countless hours researching of it, and it’s been clear, through numerous repeated experiments, that there aren’t any abnormalities or differences between the gene of an EVOLVER and an ordinary human being. The truth these data revealed had halted any further research, but even so, one thing’s for certain: The information he’d taken (out of) from BLACK SWAN was not complete.

He’d even argue there was only half of it.

[6/6]

He’d been delaying it for far too long. He must immediately find and acquire the lost vital information, and uncover the most important secret hidden among these data, he had to do it now.

Section Three

[1/8]

The Highest Bioscience Research Centre.

Lucien’s familiar with every corner of the place. When it was being reconstructed, it’d only gone through the most basic of renovations. There wasn’t any changes towards the information units, and all the data stored in them remained the same. In this period of time, he’d almost stripped down every drawer, every layer of every bookcase, and yet, it’s proven to be fruitless...Not truly so, however.

He found something wrapped in old newspaper, sitting hidden in the lowest layer of a bookcase. Upon unwrapping it, he was stunned- ten pieces of 5.25 inch and 3.5 inch disks, each stored in a plastic container, with a red date tag stuck on them.

[2/8]

Lucien was curious. He found an old computer in the storage room, and inserted the disk into the empty drive. The computer still had a CRT display, the mouse still had a little roller in it. And when filed were being transferred, the computer would make an odd, clicking sound.

He selected the files in the disk, files which showed many experimental results cramped together neatly in numerous rows.

Bioscience, every since this branch of science has been established, there’s been countless scientists putting all efforts into finding ways to advance further. Even with differing views, even with differences among their specialties, they’ll willingly dedicate themselves into the field with every bit of their passion. Lucien mindlessly explored through all of them, from the first disk to the last, there were a total of twelve years of experimental results recorded in them.

[3/8]

Those were twelve years of a researcher’s life.

Lucien didn’t know why he’d thought of all of those things all a sudden.

He stood in front of the window, looking towards the big beam of light from the horizon- the first batch of comets had hit the surface of the earth, the second batch should arrive forty five minutes later.

He entered a deep state of thought.

[4/8]

A soft disk has the storage of 1.44 gigabytes, and has the capacity of 700000 words, where as a regular disk has the storage of up to 700 gigabytes, and with that in mind, it’s possible to store as many GB as you want in one single removable disk., or in a USB. If the 'other half' of the missing information are mixed within these things, simply thrown in random corners of this building, who can possibly find it?

If it were him, he wouldn’t do it- any digitally stored content has the risk of being damaged.

[5/8]

Even then, seventeen years ago, when digital technology has reached a level that’s beyond imaginable, as long as it’s a piece of data stored in a computer, then there will be the absolute possibility of a person finding the information they need in a short amount of time.

Not to mention, KEY was still there seventeen years ago. The hacker’s appearance is a guarantee that every information stored digitally can be found. Reality has proven so.

Lucien’s gaze shifted, as he walked towards the deepest end of the corridor- and into the database room.

[6/8]

There, all of the data were organised and stored according to their dates. Lucien took out an old report, sealed in a brown paper envelope from 17 years ago. He read slowly. Even though the handwriting was quite messy, and the drafts and diagrams drawn haphazardly, he still read them with his full attention. The sound of pages being turned over filled each corner of the room. There were only thirty pages of reading materials, yet it took him half an hour to go through them.

Finally, he stopped at one particular page. Tearing it down, he brought it up towards the light. The paper was thin, yet it blocked it.

He’d found it.

[7/8]

The paper was made of two individual pages, someone had skillfully glued the two pages together, creating a secret layer. The trick was one as old as time. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would use a trick like this to store information in a time where information can be kept digitally. It took Lucien quite a while to tear the pages apart, using a small screwdriver to take out a piece of paper kept in the middle.

It’s small, around B5 in size, and it was very light. Its corners have begun to yellow with time, and the center of the paper was ever so slightly wrinkled, perhaps having been soaked in some sort of liquid. It was a poorly done work, as it’s left its traces.

Lucien handled it once more, and finally, he unraveled the mystery.

[8/8]

The information on the slip of paper was yet another data of genes, yet its structure's slightly different from that of a modern human's gene. It’s been given many question marks for many decades, and for that, Lucien made a bold deduction. It’s written on the back of the paper as well, the same theory inked in a fountain pen- The Prehistoric Civilization.

Lucien knew, that the tiny paper may perhaps be the very foundation of his research centre, the meaning of its postcode existence. It’s the passion project, the effort and time spent by researchers from one decade to another, all for the desire of seeking the truth among the world.

The secrets carried with it was perhaps heavier than the data of every genetic information of all human beings.

Section Four

[1/9]

Lucien knew that humanity's traces were undergoing an eradication, as when the comets have impacted the Earth, its explosions have formed tsunamis- obliterating countless cities and large museums, palaces and cathedrals, skyscrapers and all the wonders alike.. nothing could escape as big of an inevitable as that.

A notification from his phone rang in the silence of the night, pulling him away from his thoughts. He didn’t imagine that anyone would contact him at all.

[2/9]

“The Seedlings Project's*” researchers have sent him the final observation report. Even if the group of young people have always felt that they should be crippled with fear, burying in pain, in tears upon the awakening of a disaster as big as this, they’d still hang onto their researches.

Lucien did not open his email, instead, for the first time in forever, he clicked on the messaging app instead- as expected, the group of researchers have been keeping in contact with one another in their moments. He was unexpected hit with a wave of those researchers' beliefs and values: They were still hanging on, smiling and joking about, and at the same time, they’re working as hard as they can.

Lucien opened the email, and absorbed the contents of the three thousand word report in one go. After a short while, he responded with a “Thank you for the hard work.”

He lifted his head up, looking at the device in front of him.

[3/9]

The dream recording device.

Under the cold of the light, his expression seemed much too calm.

The information's complete.

The secret files BLACK SWAN had been hiding with every bit of effort, the progress and results of the research centre's years of research, they’re right in front of him. Even if Lucien does not have any proof, even if he’s unable to testify on his own verdicts and hypotheses, for he’s running out of time, and does not have a chance to settle on a solid conclusion through numerous procedures and experiments.

[4/9]

At that moment, he’ll have to trust on his own instincts. To believe in the girl that’s already left- left the road that’s already so close to its end, waiting for her to unravel a new scene, a new future. He does not disapprove of this idea at all, he’s a scientist- he accepts any sort of possibilities, however improbable they may be.

Anything that hasn’t been proven has the chance to be true.

She can do it, and she will do it. He’s determined to believe in her, and because of it, he’ll have to be prepared for any possibility that lies ahead.

There’s something he must leave. Something that will seem obvious.

[5/9]

To be frank, he’s rather worried of the girl.

Even if she’s grown to be rather strong and independent, however brilliant she may be, he still remembers the pair of innocent eyes. The fact that he is unable to walk along with her on her journey makes him feel rather unsettling.

She’s only left for the other world a few hours ago, yet he’s starting to miss her already.

And when he felt that sense of longing, the person he’s longing for is already out of reach.

[6/9]

He lifted his hand to the left side of his chest, feeling the rise of the familiar rhythm. Lucien felt himself being more honest to his own feelings than he did in the past. He wondered what sort of a smile the girl would give if he told her that. Will it be comforting? Or will it be as if an eruption of joy? Or will her cheeks flush a shy shade of red, as she steps a little closer towards him?

Time did not stop its pace, the silent countdown reached its final few moments.

[7/9]

Around a hundred comets flew across the ozone layer, more magnificent than any other view, a scene unable to be described with words; unable to be captures fully with any form of expressions. Lucien thought that he was very lucky to be able to witness such a scene. He’s not an astronomer, but he knew, for the past centuries, countless astronomers had held up their telescope, aimed towards a place further than the sky, beyond the horizon, just to have a chance to witness how these stars morph into crushed pieces of rubble, how they form, how they’ll react as they sink into the ozone layer, its explosion as it collides.

Humanity was formed by a single spark. Humanity’s extinction was brought on by a single spark. Nature has always had a sequence.

And he will keep holding onto this sequence.

[8/9]

Another piece of a comet fell onto the range of mountains a hundred kilometers away from Loveland City, its steam igniting the night as it set the forest on fire. Following tightly behind it, was yet another group of comets brought by the night.

“The next time we meet..”

Lucien's eyes shone with a glimmer of gentleness, lasting for one fleeting moment before they returned into their usual coldness once more.

He turned around, activating the dream recording device.

Your appearance is enough to occupy the years of my life I’m losing.

[9/9]

There was a sudden beam of light from the sky once more, welcoming the string of comets. In that sinking moment, the brilliance of the night sky fell upon Earth, bright as a large firework.

And at the same time, the wilted hanging orchids returned to its soil as a little seed, and continued to remain asleep, until the second birth of life.

Time’s cycle has reached the starting line after completing its turn.

The round of chess restarts itself.

[END]

*The Seedlings’ Project (Direct translation): An international scientific project where a group of scientists preserve seeds of many species of plants as a way of protecting those species from the “End of The World.” Part of the New World Project.

May we have a moment of silence of the hanging orchid, all the furnitures Lucien’s abandoned, Lucien, and everything involved in this story.. so the entire world.

You will be missed for now.

Hope you enjoyed this odd translation, sorry for any grammatic mistakes I’ve missed, and have a nice day!

And no worries, I am as confused as you are!

-Shio

#mlqc #mlqc spoilers #mlqc lucien #mlqc translation #lmao my phone went fbrevbervbeb because of a volleyball #mr love queens choice #mr love spoilers

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little-mad · 3 years

Text

Little Jackpot Pt. 3

~ Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5 ~ Part 6 ~ Part 7 ~

Ambry attempted to fight her way out of the grip on her body as she felt herself begin to be lifted upwards. The thumb and index finger of the giant hand were in the front, while the other three fingers were wrapped around her back. This position prevented her wings from being bent but still effectively held her in place. No matter how hard she struggled she was unable to free herself.

“Calm down, I wouldn’t want to accidentally damage my little jackpot.” Kole hummed, the hand holding Ambry finally stopping its upward movement once it was directly in front of his face.

A murderous scowl formed on Ambry’s face. “Let me go, you bastard!” She growled.

Kole chuckled. “You know, you’re the first pixie I’ve ever encountered.” He remarked, a smile painted on his face. “I always imagined they’d be more meek and skittish.”

Before Ambry could spit back a venomous response, she noticed the dark haired witch pulling off the black backpack that was slung over his shoulder. With his free hand he unzipped the thing and began to lift something out. As soon as Ambry realized what it was, a renewed sense of panic began to take over.

“No!” She cried, intensifying her escape efforts.

In Kole’s left hand was a large glass jar, the metal twist-on lid complete with several drilled in holes. It didn’t take a genius to know what he planned to do with it.

There was one thing almost every pixie had in common, and that was a shared hatred for confinement. Winged creatures weren’t designed to be restricted, they craved the freedom to travel from place to place whenever they desired. It was for this reason that the mere sight of the jar made Ambry’s heartbeat quicken.

“Sorry, little pixie, but I need to get you out of here discreetly.” Kole stated simply. He walked over to a side table by the front door and set the jar down. He then plucked the metal lid off, evidently it had just been resting on top and hadn't actually been twisted on.

As the hand holding her began to move over the open mouth of the jar, Ambry tried desperately to wiggle her way out of the human’s grasp. “You can’t do this!” She shouted. When her gaze flicked up to Kole’s face, she saw his features shaped into an amused expression.

“I’m afraid I can” was the last thing he said before his grip on Ambry’s body suddenly released. Before she could even think about trying to use her wings to fly away, she was trapped in the confines of the jar. The drop wasn’t long, so she managed to stay on her feet, but she quickly found there was hardly any room to move. The jar was about an inch and half taller than Ambry was, and the width barely allowed her wings to spread fully. It certainly wasn’t enough room to be able to fly, her wings would just bang into the glass walls. This thing was clearly designed to keep a pixie trapped.

A loud clattering sounded from above and Ambry winced. She looked up to see the jar’s metal lid being swiftly screwed on. All she could do was watch as her prison was sealed shut.

Without warning, two giant hands suddenly took hold of the jar on either side. Ambry let out a yelp as Kole lifted the object off the table and up into the air. Inside the jar, Ambry stumbled against the massive movements, having to brace herself against the glass walls to keep on her feet.

When the disorientating movements finally halted, Ambry found herself once again being held in front of Kole’s face, his dark eyes boring into her. Immediately she slammed her fists into the glass. “Let me out!” She ordered, desperation tingeing her voice as the reality of being trapped in a tight space finally began to set in.

The witch’s eyebrows were raised, an amused grin on his face. “Ah right, I forgot to tell you. I enchanted the jar so that while sound can get in, no sound can get out.” Kole explained, maintaining his pleasant disposition. “So I wouldn’t waste your breath shouting insults at me.” He advised with a chuckle.

Ambry clenched her fists so tightly her nails nearly drew blood. Never in her entire life had she ever felt so totally powerless. Ever since she had come to the human world, feeling helpless had become fairly common. Whether it be getting cornered by a monster she and Sebastian were fighting, or simply not being able to lift the everyday objects the humans around her picked up with ease. However, none of that came close to what she was experiencing now. She was completely, utterly stuck, unable to even be heard by the outside world. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop her own abduction.

In the next moment Ambry’s jar was in motion again. Kole lowered it away from his face and held it at chest level as he made his way back to where his backpack sat on the floor. Ambry’s stomach lurched when the human suddenly dropped down to one knee in front of the backpack.

There had been plenty of times when Ambry had ridden around on Sebastian’s shoulder, or head, or even his hands once or twice. Being totally subject to another sentient being's movements was certainly bizarre, and there were times when Sebastian moved a bit too quickly or roughly for Ambry’s liking. However, those instances were nothing like this. The way Kole carried her around in the jar was sickening, his movements were just so massive and quick. It made Ambry wonder if Sebastian had been purposefully toning down his motions whenever she was with him.

Glancing down at her feet, through the glass bottom of the jar, Ambry could see Kole was holding her jar over the dark abyss of the inside of his backpack. Of course, carrying a jarred pixie out in public would more than likely turn a few heads. Which meant Ambry would not only be trapped in a jar, but trapped in a jar inside a dark bag.

Ambry shot up one last look at her kidnapper. He was wearing a satisfied look on his face, clearly pleased with his catch. “See you in a bit, little pixie.” He said before lowering her into the confines of the backpack.

The next thing Ambry knew, there was a harsh zip sound from above, and she was plunged into complete blackness.

#g/t #giant/tiny #g/t writing #g/t story #g/t community #ocs #trahb #sebastian altalune #ambry #my writing #g/t fearplay

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bedlamsbard · 3 years

Text

Part 9 of the other side AU concept! I did split this one when it started getting long, so there are some scenes snippeted earlier that aren’t here because they’re in part 10. (Which should be the final part but who knows, since I’m doing this for fun and will continue until I’m not entertained anymore.) I also want to add a gentle reminder that despite its length, this is concept writing, not a polished, chaptered, titled fic like Backbone or Gambit.

Previous: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

5.3K below the break.

***

“I have something for you.”

The younger Kanan sounded unspeakably weary, for which Kanan couldn’t blame him. He said gently, “Did you get any sleep?”

“Some.” He felt the younger man eye him, hesitating on whether or not to say anything else, then he said, “This happens pretty often.”

“I’m –”

“Not as sorry as I am.” The kid scrubbed his hands back through his hair, letting his breath out in a sigh. “It’s fine. You were – I know what you were trying to do.” He put a shoulder against the wall, scuffing a foot absently against the floor.

“Kid –” Kanan hesitated, turning his head briefly in the direction of the common room door. He was aware of both women in the other room, having some kind of argument with Chopper about either fruit or repairs; he couldn’t figure out which of the two it was without putting more than glancing attention to it.

“I’m starting to feel like you’re just calling me that to get a rise out of me.” His voice was dry, with a hoarse note to it after the previous night’s screaming. Kanan had noticed that he always spoke a little hesitantly, as if he was never quite certain he should be doing so at all.

“The alternative is a little confusing, but I’ll stop if you want.”

He felt the younger man’s brief amusement. “It’s fine. I know what you mean.” He tapped a finger against his forehead. “And you don’t do it the way the rest of the Inq – the way it is at the Crucible.”

He stepped back from the wall, letting the door to his room slide open behind him; Kanan followed him inside. It was on the tip of his tongue to apologize again, but he stopped himself; words only did so much when it came to Jedi. Instead, he said, “Will you be all right?”

They both knew he didn’t just mean after the events of the previous night. The other Kanan sighed and said, “I don’t know.” He turned his attention to his hands, studying his unmarked palms and the faint scars across the backs of his knuckles. “Would you be?”

“I was lucky.”

“Every other –” He hesitated for a long moment, then grimaced and finished, “– every other pet the Hunter had died. So maybe I was lucky too.”

“You’re alive.”

“Yeah.” He snorted. “I guess.” He gestured at the meditation cushion and Kanan took a seat, folding his legs tailor-style. His automatic impulse was to let his mind roll out, but he kept a hold on himself instead, studying the younger Kanan without reaching further into the Force than he had to.

The kid turned away from him, opening the drawer beneath his bunk. Kanan felt the bright flare of the holocron’s awareness and the other Kanan flinching away from it, unwilling to test himself by bringing it out. He turned around with his – with Caleb Dume’s – lightsaber in his hand, offering it to Kanan.

“I know you don’t have yours,” he said quietly. “And I don’t – I can’t – it’s a Jedi’s weapon, and I’m – I’m not a Jedi anymore.”

Kanan got to his feet. He felt the boy look up quickly, his eyes widening, and knew somehow that his gaze had gone immediately to a point three inches above his own head – where the Grand Inquisitor’s eye line would have been. After a moment the younger Kanan swallowed, biting his lip.

After a moment, he said, “You didn’t see the worst of it.”

Kanan bit his lip. His sleep the rest of the night had been restless, a welter of incoherent dream fragments that he knew he had picked up from the other man during their connection, and some of it had been worse than he had imagined the first time he had touched the younger man’s mind. He had woken up with the light touch of Hera’s hand on his shoulder and nearly flung himself off the bed, as if burned by her touch. It had taken him three shuddering breaths to remember who she was and where they were, and who he was, for that matter.

He put his hand on the hilt of the lightsaber, just above the boy’s, but didn’t take it from him. The other Kanan started to release it, then stopped.

Kanan could feel the kyber crystal beneath his fingers, familiar but also not at the same time. It was just slightly discordant to his senses, a difference in resonance to his own so slight that he might not have noticed it if he hadn’t known his own kyber crystal so well. The crystal is the heart of the blade…

He drew his hand back, and felt the younger man look up at him in surprise. “It’s your lightsaber,” Kanan said gently. “Reach out with your senses – can you feel it?”

“I’m not a Jedi,” the boy said again. He turned his attention down to the weapon in his hand, his mind reaching out to the crystal and then flinching back even as Kanan felt it welcoming him.

“Why do you think that?” he asked quietly. “That you aren’t a Jedi, I mean.”

The boy looked up at him. “I’m an Inquisitor,” he said, his voice flat. His free hand dropped to the lightsaber on his hip, then jerked away as soon as his fingers brushed the metal of the hilt. “I can’t be. Not after what – not after.”

Kanan couldn’t tell if he had meant to say “not after what I did” or “not after what happened to me,” but he didn’t ask. He said, “You didn’t bleed your crystal, though.”

“No. I – my lightsaber was on the Ghost when I was…when my master took me from Naboo. When we got to Mustafar – to the Inquisition headquarters there, the Crucible – they put me in a room with four trainee Inquisitors, all armed. I wasn’t. That’s where I got this.” He touched the lightsaber on his hip again, then closed that hand into a fist.

Kanan put his hand out silently, and after a moment the other man took that lightsaber off his belt and put it into his hand. He turned his mind to it, cautious, and felt the kyber crystal respond.

He could sense the boy’s sudden interest; he had felt the kyber crystal’s reaction too. Without turning his attention from the lightsaber, Kanan sat back down on the meditation cushion, folding his legs in front of him. When he dropped his hands to rest on his knees, the lightsaber stayed where it was, suspended in the air before him. His mind ticked over the weapon, pulling it into its component parts.

It had been the standard Inquisitor’s double-bladed lightsaber with its circular guard before, he found. At some point the younger Kanan had dissembled it and reassembled it to his liking, clearing the crystal of its taint when he had done so; the second kyber crystal that made the dual blade possible was gone. Casting his mind out further, Kanan couldn’t sense it anywhere on the ship – though with unaligned kyber crystals it was always hard to tell – so the boy might have left it on Mustafar or lost it somehow.

He lifted the remaining kyber crystal gently away from the other components to examine it on its own. It was attuned to the other Kanan, but only weakly, the way any item in the possession of an active Force-user would attune itself to them over time. The boy’s fear had kept him from sinking into it inasmuch it was possible with any random kyber crystal, rather than the one he had found on his Gathering.

Kyber crystals weren’t sentient, not like people and not the same way holocrons developed a kind of low-level sentience over time. But they weren’t not, either, and Kanan could feel this one responding to him with cautious interest and gaining enthusiasm. The other Kanan hadn’t hated it – either he was too good a Jedi for that or he had saved those strong emotions for the Grand Inquisitor, either consciously or otherwise – but he had both resented and feared it.

He could sense the crystal’s previous owners entangled in its matrix. It puzzled him for a moment; amongst the Jedi kyber crystals were only ever passed down between Temple Guards, who set their own lightsabers aside as long as they served in that post, and he had never had any reason to examine a Temple Guard’s lightsaber closely.

The Grand Inquisitor was a Guard, he thought with a sudden start. Not for the first time, he wondered how much of what he had seen in the temple on Lothal had been real.

Telemetry wasn’t one of his wild talents and this wasn’t really telemetry, but he still blinked in surprised at the flash of memory that he felt through the crystal. It passed in less than a second, but even that was long enough for Kanan to be aware of the younger Kanan’s constant fear, that hot flash of satisfaction when he had taken it from the Inquisitor who had borne it previously, that Inquisitor taking it from another, and another before him, and then a moment, scraped raw and bare, when the crystal been removed from its original lightsaber and bled to its red sheen. Beyond that, there was nothing, as though the trauma of its bleeding had wiped the crystal matrix of its memory of its first bearer.

I’m sorry, Kanan thought, for whatever that was worth. The idea of his own kyber crystal being stripped from his lost lightsaber and corrupted that way was unbearable, nearly as bad as the loss of his sight. Kyber crystals were sacred to the Jedi; his own body was only flesh.

He felt the crystal align itself to him, the resonance of its silent song altering incrementally until he could barely tell it apart from his own body. He let it settle back into the framework of the lightsaber hilt, his mind bringing the disparate pieces back together, settling firmly and comfortably into place. When he raised one hand, the lightsaber fell neatly into his palm, feeling different somehow than it had when he had first taken it from the boy.

He raised the lightsaber in front of him, feeling the strong, familiar warmth of it in his hand. He depressed the trigger almost without conscious thought, the blade springing up before him.

“It’s blue,” the younger Kanan said, his voice harsh with longing. “It’s yours.”

Kanan deactivated the lightsaber and let his hand fall to rest on his knee. “That weapon is yours,” he said, nodding at the lightsaber the other man still held. “You know it, I know it, your crystal knows it. The crystal is the heart of the blade; the heart is the crystal of the Jedi; the Jedi is the crystal of the Force; the Force is the crystal of the heart. All are intertwined – the crystal, the blade, the Jedi – you are one.”

The other Kanan began to weep, harsh, gasping sobs that shook his whole body. Kanan was on his feet in an instant, pulling the younger man into his arms as he wept. The other man didn’t try to pull away, just leaned against him. He was all turmoil in the Force, fear and pain and the open, bleeding wound that was his connection to the Hunter. Kanan held him the way he would have held Ezra, but unlike with Ezra he didn’t need to speak out loud; just let the warmth of the Force pass between them in something more primal than words. Words would have rung false, anyway; so he just held the other man, letting him cry as if his heart was broken.

“Do you remember when we went to that mountain resort in the Mid Rim?” Hera murmured, her lips against the back of Kanan’s shoulder. His skin was warm against hers, still a little sweat-slick from their earlier love-making. She felt comfortably relaxed, curled against his back with one leg thrown over his. “When that Imperial officer was supposed to meet with that spice dealer?”

“And he broke his neck skiing and we got to spend the rest of the week eating expensive desserts on someone else’s credit and having sex in front of the fire?” Kanan said, his voice warm and amused.

Hera flushed despite the fact that they were both naked in bed together. Their – whatever it was – had still been new enough to be a little shocking to her, but she had been able to put that aside when they were on their op, undercover as an Imperial officer on a discreet vacation with his Twi’lek mistress. The role had let her relax a little, to admit that, just for a little while, this was what she wanted – to shut the world out beyond the confines of their small suite.

“I think that resort is still there,” she said. “There wasn’t much fighting on that world – just a little in the cities, not out in the countryside. I wouldn’t mind going back sometime.”

Kanan turned over so that they were facing each other. “I wouldn’t mind that either,” he said. He kissed her, his mouth warm and comfortable against hers, and Hera smiled.

She put an arm around his shoulders to draw him closer to her and murmured, “Well, there isn’t a fire right now, but –”

“I think dessert’s right here,” Kanan said, grinning against her mouth. He had one hand on her back, moving it lower to squeeze slightly and make her gasp.

Hera kissed him again to stop him from saying anything else.

“I’ll miss you,” the other Hera said. Her voice was still a little hesitant, as if she wasn’t certain how to admit any of her own feelings to anyone else. “It’s…nice to have another Twi’lek around. And you’re not like –” She flexed her fingers on the handle of her caf cup, thinking for a moment before she went on. “My family wants certain things from me, and I just…I don’t know how to be that for them. You never wanted anything from me.”

“I wanted you to leave the Empire,” Hera said gravely.

“You never told me that,” the girl pointed out. “You never expected it.”

Hera opened her mouth to respond and then hesitated, thinking back on everything she had said those past few days. She supposed she hadn’t ever come out and asked for anything other than help getting to Scarif, and she wasn’t certain she had ever asked outright for that either. She had stated her case, and left the two Imperials to make up their own minds.

“I didn’t need to,” she said at last. She smiled at the other woman over her own cup. “I didn’t have to.”

The other Hera sighed. “I wish I could have that kind of faith in anything.”

Hera flicked a glance in the direction of the cabins, where the two Kanans had gone to talk or meditate or both. “Nothing?”

The girl followed her gaze and sighed again. “I love Kanan more than anything,” she said, lowering her voice. “And I know he loves me. But – it’s not him, it’s me.” She looked down at her mug, turning it until the handle pointed directly at her, then up at Hera’s distressed expression and bit her lip. “Oh,” she said, even softer. “It’s me, then, not…us.”

Hera tried to arrange her features into something less appalled and reached across the table to lay one hand on the other woman’s. “I would stay if I could,” she said. “Both of us would.”

The girl turned her hand palm up and curled her fingers briefly around Hera’s. “When I was at the Academy, I never –” She hesitated over the words, frowning. “I…forgot who I was. And I can’t be – I can’t be you, or who I would have been if I’d grown up with the Fleet, but I didn’t know what was…me…and what was – what was the Empire.” Her hand moved briefly under Hera’s, as if starting to gesture before she stopped herself. “It’s…nice, I suppose…to have a baseline.”

“I’m not sure I’m much of a baseline,” Hera said mildly.

She lifted a shoulder in a brief, constrained shrug, the same kind of gesture Hera had seen a dozen Imperial defectors make over the past few years; uniformed Imperials weren’t prone to much in the way of expression, while armored troopers tended to exaggerate their gestures when they made them at all. “You’re something. And I can’t – I’ve never been able to remember anything from before the Spire very well. It’s there, but it’s – it’s like it happened to someone else, or something that I watched in a holovid.”

She looked down again, not releasing Hera’s hand. “Auntie said – but it’s not what happened at the colony. I mean, it didn’t help, but – the Spire – my cell there – it was my whole world for so long. It’s like my life ended there.”

Hera squeezed her hand, not knowing what to say in response. If she had been one of her cadets back in the Alliance there were things she could have said, but this wasn’t a cadet or a recruit or another officer, it was…her. It could have been her.

The other Hera looked up suddenly, heat flushing her cheeks. “May I ask you something? You can say no. It’s – it’s a little – a lot – personal.”

“Of course,” Hera said, bemused. She squeezed the other girl’s hand again, then released her to wrap her fingers around her mug.

“You and Kanan – your Kanan.” The girl bit her lip, not meeting her eyes. “When –”

Hera bit her lip, not sure whether to blush, laugh, or cry. “Sometime around now, I think,” she admitted, after a moment where she got herself under control. She could feel heat in her face, spreading up under her flight cap to the base of her lekku.

The girl’s eyes went wide. “That’s a long time,” she blurted out, then covered her mouth with one hand. “I’m sorry –”

“No, it’s – when did you?”

The other Hera looked down, blushing so hard that it vanished beneath the high collar of her shirt and the edge of her flight cap. “About four months after Gorse,” she said, her voice small. “He was so beautiful, and he – he was so kind and he – I wanted him so badly. I never wanted anything – or at least, I never wanted anything and got it before then.” She put her hands over her face, breathing hard, then lowered them after a moment. “You don’t know what it’s like in the service if you’re a Twi’lek. They’re – it’s –” Her hands were shaking.

Hera reached across the table and took her hands in both of hers again. “It’s all right,” she said gently. “It’s over with now.”

The girl wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I thought I was broken,” she said. “People kept – telling me things about what Twi’leks – what Twi’lek women – were like, and I – I knew they were wrong, but they kept saying it, and I felt like I was going mad. Or that I was broken. Or both. And he – I wanted him so badly. I’ve never felt like that about anyone else. He was – he still is – so beautiful, and I wanted him so badly. I didn’t think that I – that I could feel like that. He wasn’t like anyone else I had ever met, and he – he treated me like I was a person. Like it didn’t matter. Or – that’s not right. Like it was just part of me. Like me being a Twi’lek mattered because it was part of me, not – not because I was a Twi’lek. Do you – do you know what that’s like?”

“A little,” Hera said. “It was different for me.”

The other woman looked at her uncertainly, but whatever she saw in Hera’s eyes must have convinced her. “What was it like for you?”

Hera hesitated, setting her teeth against her lower lip as she thought. “I wanted to fight,” she said finally, trying to remember what had been going through her head at the age of eighteen. “More than anything. My father only cared about Ryloth, but I wanted something bigger. Kanan – I met him on Gorse too – was part of that. I couldn’t let myself think about anything past that. He understood that.”

The other Hera nodded slowly. “What happened?”

“Well, we both almost died,” Hera said, and the girl made a sound that was almost a laugh, though she immediately looked worried that Hera would be offended. “It was complicated. I probably made it more complicated than it needed to be; I never wanted to talk about it. We just – went on, I suppose. And then we started getting a crew, and – it was harder because there were more people on the Ghost –”

The girl winced, for which Hera couldn’t blame her.

“– it was all right,” Hera hastened to assure her. “It was just different. And then Kanan got an apprentice, and we started working with other Rebel cells –”

The other woman nodded in sudden understanding. “Everyone at the ISB knew about us,” she said softly. “But around other people it’s different.”

Hera nodded. “It was stupid of me,” she admitted. “We’d been together for a decade – sleeping together for most of that – and I just thought we’d go on. He – knew. He knew there was something coming. And I wouldn’t –” She took a suddenly shaky breath; this time it was the other woman who squeezed her hands.

After a moment she raised her head and smiled crookedly at the other Hera. “It’s good that he knows you love him,” she said. “And that you know. I wish I’d had that when I was your age. There’s nothing wrong with having a mission, but – I thought it had to be that at the cost of everything else for such a long time. That cost us both.”

“I’m sorry,” the girl said gravely. “That sounds difficult.”

Hera didn’t think it sounded half as difficult as what she had been through, but she wasn’t going to say as much, since she wasn’t sure that there was anything she could say about it that wouldn’t sound like a veiled insult. “Will you be all right, once we’ve gone?”

The other Hera nodded. “Yes. I don’t know what we’ll be – who we’ll be – but I think we’ll be all right.” She glanced at the door the two men had gone through. “He’s better now. I didn’t think he ever would be.” She hesitated, then added, “I am too.”

Hera squeezed her hands. “I’m glad,” she said. “I wish –” She wished a lot of things, but at the end of the day she needed to get the Cluster-Prism data back to the Rebellion and she needed to get back to her son.

“We’ll be all right,” the other Hera said again. “Both of us. I – thank you. I don’t know what would have happened otherwise, but…thank you.”

“This could be a little awkward,” Hera said thoughtfully. She accepted her blaster from the other Hera with a faint smile, automatically checking the safety and the charge before holstering it; since she had never needed it she hadn’t bothered asking for it back before now.

Kanan smiled at her. “Awkward as in ‘duck, they’re going to start shooting’ or awkward as in ‘this is going to take a lot of explaining’?”

“Probably the second one,” Hera said. She checked the bag slung over her shoulder for the fifteenth time that morning, making sure that she had the datacards with the Cluster-Prism files and the ISB files she had gotten from the other Hera, along with the box Bail Organa had given her for Leia. “Maybe the first one, depending who’s there. I hope Zeb hasn’t decided to make a three-ring circus out of this. Or Chopper.”

Chopper grumbled at the sound of his name and Hera smiled a little. “My Chopper,” she clarified. “Not you.”

Kanan grinned in reminiscence, then stepped aside to talk quietly with the other Kanan. Hera turned away to give them some privacy, looking at her counterpart. After a moment she held out her arms.

The girl hesitated, then stepped into her arms, returning the embrace. Despite the obvious muscle in her shoulders and arms she still felt terrifyingly fragile to Hera, as if she might shatter under too much pressure. Hera pressed a kiss to her forehead and said, “You’ll be all right.”

She got a smile in response. “So will you,” the other Hera said. She hugged Hera again, then stepped back.

Hera looked over in time to see Kanan put an arm around the younger man’s shoulders in a swift, fond embrace. He said something to him, too low-voiced to make out, and the other Kanan nodded, his response equally soft. When Kanan released him, he came over to Hera.

She put her hands out to him, smiling, and he took them. “Thank you,” she started to say, at the same time he said, “Thank you –”

Hera laughed, then released his hands so that she could hug him. “Thank you,” she said again. “I just – thank you.”

He hugged her back. “Thank you,” he murmured in response. He didn’t clarify that, but he didn’t have to.

“Be well,” Hera told him gently, kissing each cheek. She hugged him once more, then let go of him.

The other Hera was speaking shyly to Kanan. Hera waited for them to finish, then saw both men wince in unison.

“Are you all right?” the younger Hera said, startled.

“It’s starting,” her Kanan said. He gave Kanan a crooked smile. “I think we’re both going to be sensitive to that for the rest of our lives.”

“Forgive me for hoping it never comes up again,” Kanan said, returning the same grin. He put his hand on the other Hera’s shoulder, smiling at her, then stepped back.

Hera held out her hand and he took it as he stepped up beside her. She could feel the pressure coming, the air starting to hum as her vision flickered at its edges. The younger Kanan and Hera backed up, as did Chopper.

“May the Force be with you,” said the girl.

The universe dissolved around them.

“– ait, there’s something wr –”

Luke Skywalker’s voice was garbled, as if coming over a malfunctioning comm. Hera tried to respond and couldn’t; when she breathed in, there was nothing there and she gagged; she opened her eyes not to blackness but to nothing, to an absence. She would have screamed if she could have.

The only thing she was aware of was Kanan’s grip on her hand. She felt his fingers flex against hers, his breath hissing out between his teeth with effort.

“– ith me, togeth –”

The second voice was female, familiar, with the same quality of being barely there. Hera flailed out wildly with her free hand, but there was nothing. It was like being in vacuum, but worse; there were no stars, no planets, no pieces of shattered starships to orient herself with. There was only Kanan’s hand.

“– n, think about your mo –”

Kanan’s hand flexed on hers again. Hera dug her nails into the back of his hand, terrified that she might release him by accident and lose him in the void.

“– the Force –“

Hera had the sudden sense of being thrown, disorientingly familiar as the familiar confines of the Ghost’s common room coalesced around her. For an instant she still saw the younger Kanan and Hera where she had seen them last, then they were gone, replaced by Zeb and Chopper. She staggered sideways, fighting back nausea and supporting herself on the holotable before she fell over.

“Whoa!”

“Mama!”

Hera jerked upright in time to see Alexsandr Kallus grab Jacen and thrust him behind himself before he could run to Hera, his hand on his holstered blaster. Sabine was there too, her blasters already in her hands and raised, pointing at –

Hera flung herself in front of Kanan, who had very sensibly not moved. “It’s him!” she said. “I swear, it’s him!”

She took in everyone in the room with a glance – Zeb, Chopper, Sabine, Kallus, Jacen, Luke and Leia, Rex in the doorway, and –

Ahsoka Tano, one of her lightsabers already in her hand and ignited, her expression hard. Kanan’s head was turned towards her, his white eyes fixed on hers. Luke, who was holding the bell-shaped artifact between his hands, drew in a sharp breath; even Hera felt the air flex between them.

“It’s him,” she said again. “It’s Kanan, I swear.”

“We’ll see about that.” Ahsoka deactivated her lightsaber but kept in her hand as she stepped forward, gesturing Luke to stay back when he made to join her.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Kanan told her quietly as she approached.

“I could say the same for you,” Ahsoka said. Her gaze went to the lightsaber on his belt, the one he had gotten from the other Kanan, then she said, “Don’t fight me.”

“Don’t give me a reason to.”

“He’s –” Hera started to say, but Ahsoka held up a hand to silence her.

“It’s all right,” Kanan said, turning a quick smile on her. “This won’t take long.”

“What –” Sabine started to say, then gave it up, her blasters still raised.

Ahsoka replaced her lightsaber on her belt and placed her palms on either side of Kanan’s head, her gaze boring into his. Kanan didn’t pull away; Luke sneezed and Leia put a hand to her head, her expression pained. Jacen made a startled sound and Hera made a reflexive motion towards him before Kallus met her eyes. She stopped.

Ahsoka stepped back suddenly, her breath ragged. “I –”

Kanan wiped blood away from his lower lip where he had bitten through it. “That’s a little hypocritical, isn’t it?”

She stared at him for a long moment, then took a step back until she could sit down abruptly on the bench-seat, pressing a hand to her forehead. Something passed silently between them, and Ahsoka’s hard expression softened. Her shoulders slumped suddenly as she said, “It’s good to see you again, Kanan.”

There was a long moment of silence in the room, then Sabine flung herself forward with a shout, nearly bowling Kanan over as she hugged him. Zeb was just behind her, sweeping Hera into the embrace as well as they almost knocked the holotable out of its seating.

“How!” Sabine said, not so much a question as an exclamation “How – it’s you? It’s really you? This isn’t a trick?”

“It’s me,” Kanan said, sounding slightly strangled. “It’s really me.”

Zeb yelled in triumph. Hera found herself laughing, effulgent with joy and success. She could hear Chopper shrieking just behind her and managed to disentangle herself from the group embrace to kneel down and put her arms around her droid. “I missed you,” she told him fondly, then looked up.

Kallus looked as gobsmacked as everyone else in the room, still holding onto Jacen’s hand as they came over. “Mama!” Jacen said, and Hera released Chopper to put her arms out. She swept her son into a hug, kissing his forehead and breathing in his familiar scent.

“Hello, love,” she said. “I missed you.” She reached behind herself without looking, knowing when Kanan took her hand. He knelt beside her, and Hera looked over at him, smiling. She was crying; she didn’t remember starting, but she could feel the tears on her cheeks. “Jacen,” she said, “this is your father.”

#cut scenes and concept writing #as always comments are appreciated #other side au tag

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