#well the chamber fucked him up a lot on that and i read somewhere that the voiceline in scary human heads
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thinkin about cooking. specifically human meat
#how far would vincent consider having to adjust to eating it before the dehumanization kicks him in the balls#well the chamber fucked him up a lot on that and i read somewhere that the voiceline in scary human heads#i love my martinis and cant live without them ←already know from the stage art and potg4 that its dracos recipe#pigsblood martini. plus an eyeball so they said he puts human remains in it#i mean myers did say they had to eat but consuming it works as well id imagine! its rly interesting#i wonder how vincent would think about eating the meat if it was cooked and prepared like usual food#thinking of making a comic just of draco prepping and cooking dinuguan while the wiki excerpt is the text over a few panels#its not animalistic compared to say. eating cold bloody scraps your captors throw at you for survival#god. godddd#also a butlers place at the table is they probably let him eat with them right. right?#victorrr also i hc they eat the same meals at least. whether or not vincent sticks to drinks#i think he does that man is tired of chewing#like even with sectioned off different meats for the same meal itd be just like a different food diet for one person#y'know?#i am simply fascinated. not confident or good in my writing but draco makes dinuguan is a drabble in my notes
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Layover in North Dakota by littlebitofkeery
Rating: Explicit
Relationships: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson/Gator Tillman
Additional Tags:
Alternate Universe, Alternate Timelines, Post-Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2, Stranger things meets Fargo, No Fargo spoilers, Gator Tillman - Freeform, steddie, Lots of Sex, all the sex, did I mention there’s sex?, Gator Tillman is a little unhinged, Post-Vecna (Stranger Things), Not Beta Read, Lust at First Sight, Eddie Munson Loves Steve Harrington, Love Confessions, Threesome - M/M/M
Summary:
The crossover that a very select group of people will look for, I’m here to serve 😉
This fic ignores the timelines of both shows involved, meets somewhere in the middle of the two.
Eddie Munson needs to get the fuck away from Hawkins. He has survived a near death experience, has been acquitted of the murder charges brought against him, has had maybe the toughest six months of his life. But the cherry on top of the mountain of shit, the straw that finally broke the camels back, was Steve Harrington getting a girlfriend. Pathetic as it is, Eddie could handle the monsters, the lynch mob, the nearly being eaten alive. But he could not handle seeing Steve with someone else.
With $500 of government hush money in his glove compartment, he bids the party and uncle Wayne goodbye. Tells them he needs a break from Hawkins for a while. Tells them he will be back but he doesn’t know when exactly. Steve hugs him, holds him, tells him he gets it, tells him he wishes he didn’t have to go.
Short little blurb under the cut!
He leans in close to Gator, whispers in his ear “you wanna escort me to my chambers, Deputy?”
The flirting has been cranked up to 100 because Eddie wants this guy. This fucking, pretty-eyed-Steve Harrington lookin’-bad boy- potential-psychopath with the Metallica shirt.. who’s also a.. basically, a Cop? What a heady mixture, Eddie’s dick is already half chubbed beneath his ripped jeans.
Truth is, he hasn’t fucked anyone in seven long months. Too busy pining like a pathetic prick for the straight guy back home to even attempt to get his dick wet.
Well, that ends tonight. He’s gonna dick this guy down so fucking good he’ll be walking with a limp for a good while after.
Gator tilts his head, their faces now mere inches apart. His eyes are even more incredible this close up. “Well now, what kinda Deputy would I be if I let ya wander these strange streets all by yourself huh?” He murmurs, wetting his bottom lip before biting it into his mouth.
#we weren't able to find this author here on tumblr#if you know their url or twitter handle let us know!#metaldeputy#steddie#eddie munson x gator tillman#steve harrington x eddie munson#gator tillman x eddie munson#steve harrington#eddie munson#gator tillman#crossover#stranger things#st#fargo#fargo s5#crossover au#stranger things x fargo crossover#munman
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Omg I just read your sub!Aegon alphabet and I totally agree with you that that boy does not wash regularly. So I was thinking imagine he’s forcibly brought back from a drunken night out on the streets and I feel like because this happens so often that the servants and alicent and Otto are not gentle when trying to clean him up. So his wife!reader dismisses everyone and washes him herself but she’s so soft and gentle with him. Just lots of fluffy intimacy ❤️❤️
A/n: Hi and thanks for the ask!! We are extremely pro healing Aegon in this household and I just so happen to lovee a bath scene (spot the thramsay enjoyer) so here we go. Also writing dialogue is so hard and I'm not that experienced with it so I hope it is decent and not too clunky. Please let me know your thoughts <3
Holding the Man
Soft!Aegon ii Targaryen x wife!reader
Rating: general/not explicit
Tags: mentions of alcoholism, mention of vomiting, fluff, bathing
Another a/n: even though it's not reflected in the pic, my x reader fics are always written to be as inclusive as possible for any reader unless otherwise specified. Obviously it's not as easy to find poc in this kind of aesthetic but please know this is just as much for non white readers as it is for anyone else. And if anyone wants something like specifically x black reader stuff I am open to writing that too. I fully understand what it is to feel like you aren't represented or thought about in the community and I don't want anyone to have to feel that way. Just request pls!)
It's been two days since you last saw your husband. He had been out as he often is. Gods know where. You worry of course, but you've always known who your husband is, even before you met him, rumors do travel in the realm. And you love him all the same.
You know he often spends time in places he rightly should not be, drowning in drink and turning up somewhere days later in a stupor. So when you hear the commotion echoing through the corridors with that all too familiar whine at it's center you can guess the scene that you're about to walk into. You slip on your dressing gown down and tie your hair back hastily, moving down the hall towards Aegon's personal chambers.
When you stop just within the threshold, he sits shivering in a tub in the middle of the room. A young looking serving girl stands near the tub as well, attending a tray of soaps and oils. His mother and The Hand flank him on either side. They both stoop over him, scrutinizing as his mother holds one arm above his head by the wrist, absently, as if handling a soiled rag. They squabble amongst each other, above his head while Aegon looks between them, visibly miserable, confused, and maybe a bit nauseous. He looks so small like that, being fussed over like a child, shaking and practically nude while they stand over him. 'It isn't right. He's the next fucking king,' you think. 'He should be treated with greater decency even when he isn't at his best.' You can't imagine how this must feel.
His mother is scolding him now, voice low and close to his ear but from her clenched teeth and bruising grip you know her words are harsh. Aegon flinches periodically and stares hard ahead, clearly holding back tears and willing his mind to be anywhere else. Otto stands on his other side, standing perfectly still with that leveling gaze and crossed arms. Watching so closely but saying nothing. Always watching. As soon as you step foot into the room all eyes turn to you, though Aegon sees you and quickly turns his gaze, training it on the water and letting his mop of greasy hair cover his face. The eyes of the Queen and her father are so intense that you have to take a deep breath to push down the nerves that threaten to crawl up your throat and out from your mouth. You still hadn't gotten quite used to these people, and you often find them strangely severe. An undercurrent of tension and unsaid words move alongside every interaction, and you can't say that you've been here long enough to understand why. No one says anything for the moment, as you take in the scene, mouth set in a hard line and forehead creased with concern.
The Queen mistakes your distaste of his treatment for disgust with the man himself, and you try not to let that assumption anger you. "And look now," she says, gesturing to you and stooping down to try and meet his gaze. "You bring shame and discomfiture to your lady wife." He twists again, finally breaking himself from her grip, causing some water to slosh out from the tub and onto the floor. He wraps his arms around himself, slumping to the side of the tub and sliding further in until the water touches his chin. She rolls her eyes and wipes the hand against her gown. She folds her hands together and turns to you, beginning to speak. When you hazard another glance at Aegon, he is looking right back at you, eyes pleading with you, 'Don't let them', and so you wont. "My lady," she begins through a tight smile. "I hope you do not-"
"My Queen", you cut in, internally cringing at your own inappropriate interruption. All the eyes in the room snap to you once again, Otto's curious, the serving girl's uneasy, Aegon's hopeful, and the Queen's simply unreadable.
Her face is calm but she stares straight into you with that look which always seemed to wait for a challenge wherever her children were concerned. "If you'll forgive the intrusion your grace," you say gently, bowing slightly "I would ask that I could care for my husband tonight?" Otto observes you looking almost amused. You swallow, eyes flitting over to Aegon who hasn't moved from his position but now grips the edges of the tub and looks as if he thinks he may float away if he lets go. He shudders slightly. The Queen's gaze remains trained on you and she takes in a deep breath, shifts her jaw as if she's considering much more than whether you should be allowed to bathe your husband. She glances back over to Aegon then to you again. "Well, I suppose I don't see why not."
Just then Aegon inhales sharply and lurches forward, vomiting on the floor and onto the feet of the serving girl. She looks to nearly jump out of her skin, nearly dropping her tray before scrambling back and clamping a hand over her mouth, suppressing a yelp. The Queen stiffens, hands clenching into fists but her expression unchanging. You well know that she has seen him like this more times than anyone could count. The girl however looks pale, and like she may be sick herself if she isn't careful. She must be new, a pity.
The Queen turns to her soberly. "Clean that up." She speaks without betraying a single thought. "Finish your duties, then be gone for the night." The girl nods, turns to place the tray on a nearby table and moves to get knees, suppressing a retch as she begins to clean. The Queen looks to her father again, then back to you, nodding and clasping her hands behind her. She and Otto move towards the door, where you still stand near the threshold. As she steps past you, she stops briefly and grasps your hand, seeking out your gaze and forcing the eye contact. "Good night my lady" she says with that inexplicable intensity, and then they're gone.
The serving girl remains, wiping up the last of the mess on the floor and quickly returning to her feet. She looks to you timidly, clearly unsure of where she should be. "Wait outside" you tell her with a small smile. She tries to return the gesture and her lips are tight, disingenuous cordiality betraying her judgement; but still nods curtly, turning on her heel and leaving the room. You're aware of how everyone in the castle thinks of your prince, but it matters not. Let their thoughts go with the wind.
Finally alone, you approach and kneel at the side of the tub, to your husband who sits reclined with his head resting against the back edge of the tub. His eyes are closed, but when you raise your hand to brush the hair from his face and press it against his forehead he opens them bad they meet with yours. He has the most expressive eyes, you've thought that for as long as you've known him. After a lifetime of being taught to conceal his true thoughts and feelings, they speak million unsaid words directly into your mind. Tonight you saw, as you often did, shame. And an apology.
You use a rag to wipe of remnants of vomit from the side of his mouth, scoffing. They had cleaned the floor spotless, but hadn't even bothered to wipe the prince's face. He looked so pretty, blushing red but your heart aches with the distant awareness that it's a product of embarrassment, not just the steam and the drink. You find one of his hands beneath the water and lift it, watching the way his pale fingers entangle with your own."My poor sweet Egg" you sigh, pressing a kiss into his bruised knuckles. "What will I do with you?"
He chuckles, ignoring the comment and looking away. "I don't think my mother much likes you"
You know the queen does not particularly like you, but so far as you've seen she does not seem to truly like anyone. Except maybe her white knight, but he seems to detest everyone else just the same. She is a woman under immense pressure and you recognize that. She is also a woman who protects her children above all else, so as long as you remain close to the prince she would always look to you with trepidation. She doesn't hate you, but you know she may never trust you fully. You wonder if Aegon ever things of these things. Either way, he does not need to think of them now, so you just smile, and poke him in the ribs playfully, making him jump and bat your hand away.
"And why ever would you think that, my lord" you ask sarcastically, drawing out the last syllable.
"Because," he breathes out, stretching, his tense body now visibly more relaxed. "You love me so easily. She tries so hard but...I still can't tell if she's succeeded. She loves her son but she doesn't love me. Who I truly am, the way you do. I think she's jealous." He giggles at the last sentiment, a hand coming up to rub at his face.
This gives you pause. He can be so lovely at times that is makes you want to cry, but never when he means to. It makes your heart soften. You don't know how to respond, so you push your fingers through his hair, along the back of his neck and down to his shoulders.
"Sit up darling, let's get you clean."
A tray sits on the table nearest to the tub, and from it you pick up the woolen rag and lump of soap, dunking them both beneath the water. You spend the next twenty minutes or so bathing him, mostly in silence save for the occasional sigh or hum from your husband. With a focused but gentle hand, you scrub the outside world from every part of his body, filling the room with a light aroma of oranges from the soap. Once he is mostly clean, you massage his back and shoulders, adoring the way he relaxes beneath your fingers. You lightly run your nails across his chest, not missing the way he shudders at this, shifting slightly when your hand brushes past his nipple. He swallows thickly and suddenly seizes your wrist. The in his eyes is suddenly sharp and reminds you endlessly of his mother.
"You do love me, right?" He never seems to know for sure, the poor thing. You place a hand on the crook of his neck, your thumb coming up to stroke his cheek. You study the worry on his face, the curve of his nose and those eyes that you gaze into and can’t help but love. "Of course I do, you fool." You lean forward, placing a chaste kiss upon his lips. He returns it, softly and without pushing for more. You place another soft kiss onto one cheek, then then other, then his temple and the tip of his nose until you find yourself leaving invisible marks of your love on every bit of his face until he begins to giggle and squirm away from the attention. You revel in the sweetness of it, the privilege of indulging in this part of the man who most people know as all sharp edges.
You move behind him, cupping some water in your hands and smooth it back through his hair. From the tray you take a few drops of rose oil into your hands and work a few drops of rose oil through his hair, massing and scratching his scalp as you go. He closes his eyes and hums, leaning back into your touch.
Once you finish you move to his wardrobe to find clean dry smallclothes for him to change into. Returning to the tub, you place the. Small pile of clothing on the table and squat down next to him, back at his level.
"Now," you say, sitting back up on your heels and resting your hands upon your thighs. "Shall we retire to my chambers while this is cleaned up?"
He looks up at you, a twinkle of mischief back in his eye and a smirk lifting one side of his mouth. "Well yes wife, I would think so."
#house of the dragon#house of the dragon fanfiction#aegon ii#aegon ii x reader#aegon ii targaryen#house targaryen#alicent hightower#otto hightower#prince aegon targaryen
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The Last Sun: Prologue/Chapter 1
The Last Sun! Here we go!!
I started this series (like a week ago) after finding a rec for it on Instagram. The only thing they said about it was "It's about a prince whose throne is brutally taken from him," and then a bit about him having a body guard and it being a queer found family book. I'll give you a little more info that won't spoil anything. It takes place on an island city called New Atlantis, and yes that's because there was an Old Atlantis. It's ruled by a series of courts that are named after the major arcana in tarot (or vise versa in this scenario)
Prologue
The prologue is very short, just a small intro for Rune Saint John, our protag. He talks about how he survived the fall of his House and this is where my first gut punch of the series happened, because I did not equate "having a throne brutally taken" to mean "brutal assault" which is the wording he uses.
"I am, before anything else, a survivor: of a fallen House, of a brutal assault, of violent allies and complacent enemies, of life among a people who turned their back on me decades ago."
Then he lists some of the not so great names people call him. the Catamite Prince, the Day Prince, the Prince of Ruin.
"I am the last scion of my dead father's dead court, once called the Sun Throne, brightest of all Arcana, now just so much ash and rubble"
It's really so short, I'm trying to not copy the whole thing, but it does set the mood very well. Things aren't great, there aren't a lot of people Rune can trust. All his family is gone and he's left with the ashes of a broken court.
Chapter 1: The Heart Throne
We open with an insufferable rich man regaling people with a tale of kicking a woman to the curve. He calls this woman, "a wrecked parasite," and Rune notes he has an Old Atlantean accent, pronouncing the word 'wrecked' as reck ked. "Cleaving it into two waspish syllables."
After flicking a shrimp tail into a potted plant and completely forgetting any manners he ever learned and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, we find out that he is at a very fancy party. We also quickly become aware that Rune hates, hates, hates where he is. The room is the size of a football field, it's two stories tall and nearly all windows that over look the ocean and giant gilded mirrors. There are tables of drinks, things that look like drinks but are mostly illusions, tables of pills in every color imaginable. And a bunch of servants who are described as, "young, drugged, and blankly beautiful."
"There was a forty man chamber orchestra; a woman with flames dancing across the enamel of her teeth; a young page who chilled people's drinks with a spell that left frostbite on his palms"
Frostbite on his palms! For a drink! Rune is very upset by all of this, and yeah, so I am. But he puts this aside because he is part of raid on this house. As he waits he gives the earpiece he's wearing a little flick, because he, 'misses Brand'.
"It's working," he snapped, his voice a tinny echo inside my head. "Calm the fuck down."
I really do love them. When I first read this I assumed Brand must be stationed somewhere where he could see what was going on. How else would he know that Rune was flicking the equipment, or is agitated by the things around him? You learn in a few more paragraphs what exactly a companion bond is. Brand was born human and as a baby was put in the crib with baby Rune, some words were spoken over them (they weren't separated for like five years after that*) and a mental bond was formed between them where they can feel each other's emotions and know when the other is nearby.
As Rune is pushed through the current of party goers he ends up in front of a set of windows facing the ocean. He has a moment of remembering a time on the beach when the sun was out, of warm weather and soft white sand. Then he hears a woman talking about the night that his House was attacked. She's wearing at least 12 sigils (items that are able to contain magic) we learn they are very valuable, rare, and that most scions of courts keep them filled with frivolous spells that enhance beauty.
This woman is talking to a group of younger scions telling them about the night when the Sun Throne fell. About how she was there, at the current residence, when it happened. How they didn't hear anything. That the attackers had stealth wards. No one found out until it was too late. But quickly she turns to the topic of the Heir scion, which is probably how most accounts of that night go. She says that he was the only survivor, that seven men in masks took him a shed while the attack was going on.
"and by gods, the things they did to that poor boy. They had him for hours before he escaped."
I have wondered and wondered throughout the books just how much of it was reported to the public. We never learned what details were released. Only that they get some of it wrong.
She goes on to say that one can still find him, Rune, wandering around now and then,
"A very, very pretty man, but rank with darkness. It precedes him like a fog."
She claims to be able to see this miasma, because she has seers blood. She then calls Rune the Catamite Prince, and implies it's because Rune has had 'relations' with someone called the Tower. Rune, hearing all of this, livid, approaches the woman, and has a little fun, saying that he is also a seer. The woman is intrigued and we learn two things, one, Rune is wearing a disguise that makes him look like a blond man. And two, most important, Rune is short. the eyes of the nondescript blond man illusion are somewhere in the vicinity of his forehead. Rune says that he sees this woman "crawling in a field of blood and char with bone shards in her hair".
He's furious as he walks away and, somewhere else, Brand is worrying about him
"To hell with her. To hell with her sigils, her fat fingers, her crowd of stupid boot-lickers. To hell with the Lovers and their Heart Throne and their drugged slaves. To hell with nine men in animal masks in a carriage house, and all the other stupid details people got wrong."
Brand is very worried and threatens to come down there to him. And it is a threat, because that's the only love language Brand knows. Rune takes a moment to cool down because his love language is trying to make people feel better.
"my Companion, born human and bonded with me in the crib, raised and trained to protect me. And he had. He'd saved me-saved us both-that night."
Rune gets his calm back, says he was upset because he hates seers, especially fake seers, which are both things Brand knows. Then Brand brings up a hitch in the plans, and enter Julia, whose name Brand cannot remember.
During the raid Rune is supposed to go to a lab in the building, only they just learned that the labs have different security. Now Rune has to find a keycard to get through the security. But it's okay!!! Julia looked into who is on the floor that night with access, and all Rune has to do is find the red haired man by the doors who is about 6ft tall. Only to find the door and there are three tall red haired guys.
One is obvious high, staring at his hands as he sways, the rainbow residue of the pill buffet on his lips. So Rune turns his attention to the other two men, employing all his stealth training to do so.
By finding the drunkest man in the vicinity, telling him that a red haired man by the door said he was out back giving a horse a blow job a while go, and standing back to watching the fight ensue. The man the drunk guy picks is not a fighter. He does little more than try and keep the drunk man off of him, the other red haired guy though watches the fight in a calm and assessing manner, his body turned and poised in case the fight moved to him.
Rune gets a warning from Brand just before a spell rocks through the ballroom and everyone but the four people on the floor that are part of the raid go down. Rune walks over and plucks the keycard from the guard and moves through the residence towards the lab. As he moves through the mansion the halls go from opulent to grey and sterile.
We learn a bit about Atlantean culture in this part. That the Heart Throne, ruled by Lady and (now dead) Lord Lovers, used to be an archetype of love and sex and all that good stuff. They had been important to their society as Atlanteans are very big on group marriages and love no matter someones gender. That strictly homosexuality or heterosexuality were both seen as odd. After the fall of the Atlantis homeland some courts (like the Heart Throne) turned to twisted ventures that put the whole of their society at risk of compromising their treaties with the humans. And so, twelve of the Arcana had agreed to this raid. Every Arcana that participated in the raid would get a share of the spoils.
Which is why Rune is there.
Rune has a pretty kickass weapon that is able to take the shape of anything he wants. And, it shoots fire. It was one of the few things that survived the attack on the Sun Throne.
"I shook my wrist. My sabre, now in the form of a scuffed gold wrist guard, stretched and slid over my knuckles. By the time it was in my palm, it had transmuted into a swordless hilt."
Brand and Julia chatter a bit, they tell Rune that Lady Lovers is not accounted for down in the ballroom, they can't confirm she's even on site.
There are seven mercenaries by a locked door contemplating blowing the door down until Rune shows up with the keycard and lets them all into the area where the labs are kept. Rune makes for a chemical lab, thinking it will be less fortified, he just needs to get a terminal to download something for current employer, Lord Tower.
"The operating system was reportedly the closet thing in development to an actual artificial intelligence; the Tower had cashed in a lot of favors to stake it during the raid."
This is a little tidbit I didn't hang onto in my first read. The Tower has this almost AI, I wonder what he's planning to do with it?
There are two men in the lab he enters, they were not effected by the spell. They are pale and shaking and holding a lamp and stapler as weapons. When Rune brings up how ridiculous this is, since they are in a lab full of caustic things, the oldest of the scientist grabs a silver letter opener and holds it against the neck of the younger scientist. He then tries to barter for his life by threatening to kill the intern.
There is some back and forth where the scientist tries to claim that they are innocent and totally not slavers, but that Run should still let them go or he's going to kill the intern. Which Rune responds to by, shooting the intern in the leg.
Rune pops in his USB drive and downloads the files he needs. Claiming that his knowledge of technology and computers is just being able to avoid spyware on porn sites
As it's downloading the scientist tries to guilt Rune about what's going on, that they were just trying to find someone to pin this on to make the humans happy. Phrased in way that heavily implies that because they are Atlantean, they should be above such things as human laws. Rune asks if he were involved in Project Laius, when the scientist quickly shuts up Rune takes that for a yes and shoots him in the head.
"The stuff that began with projects like Laius had ended with the mind-fucking of underage kids, who spent the rest of their miserable lives in dog collars as someone else's property. So I did what I did, and my conscience whistled."
When he leaves the room Brand is throwing a fit. It turns out that they didn't just lose signal for the earpiece, but that Brand couldn't even feel their bond when Rune was in that room. Reports come that people are starting to wake up in the ballroom and that he needs to get out quick. There's a little fight with Julia, who, much respect for her, but she needed to take a step back here, tries to direct Rune as though he were one of the mercenaries she's used to directing, and tells him to abandon their plan to evac on the roof.
"Mind your fucking manners," Brand said, all humor evaporating. "He's not one of your mercenaries; he's a scion of Atlantis. If it was a question about needing safe routes, I'd have him turn the entire side of the mansion to slag and gingerly fucking tiptoe through the puddles of plasma."
Have I mentioned that I love Brand?
On the roof there is a man who pops out right in front of Rune with an assault riffle, whose head Brand immediately blows off from his perch in a water tower close by.
"When I could breathe again, I said, "I especially liked it when you didn't warn me. That part was fun.""
Followed quickly an actual dragon swooping by. But the dragon is part of Lord Chariots raid team, and does nothing to hinder Rune. Brand is yelling at Rune to get the fuck off the root NOW. Because assault riffles and dragons weren't bad enough, Lady Lovers rushes by and opens a secret door right next to Rune's secret hidey spot. Ignoring Brand, Rune decides to follow her. I mean, her House is getting raided and she takes time to rush up there, I too would assume there was treasure of some sort in there.
So Rune walks through the door, and is instantly knocked out.
He wakes up chained to a wall, unable to activate his sigils and his disguise temporarily disengaged. Elena, Lady Lovers, recognizes him, of course.
""Faith, but you are a very pretty thing, Lord Sun. Hasn't it even been said that you are the most beautiful man of your gener-"
"That'll be enough of that, thank you," I said testily."
First instance of the beautiful prophecy!
They have a bit of back and forth in which Rune tries to remember to be polite to an Arcana while still pointing out that she deserves this. Arcana are very very old and powerful. In a city of magic users, they are demi gods pretty much. And now I'm wondering if Lord Lovers was an Arcana too...What house was he from? Was he a principality? (That'll be explained later) Something to think about.
When she finds out that it is 12 Arcana against her, a surprisingly high number for a sanctioned raid, evidently. Her demeanor changes. She releases Rune from the wall, his sigils flood back to his awareness once released. She tries to makes a connection between this raid and the one that happened to Rune's House, he is, of course, very angry. But, demi god, so he keeps it to himself.
Elena goes to her magic mirror and is able to use it to look onto the battle raging below
"To each age, a magic ascends. Death magic ruled the final days of the homeland. Hearth magic ruled the rise of New Atlantis. I had thought, perhaps, the lovers' time had come, that the age of heart magic was upon us."
Yeeaaahhh, from what we've seen "heart magic" is just fucking with people's minds and enslaving them. So, kinda glad that isn't the case.
At least she admits that things were wrong in the end, and that she should have released the Throne to someone else once her husband died. He was her Talla, soulmate, and she had only had the one consort ever. Which is very, very odd for their culture.
"In Atlantean terms, soul mates weren't always a cozy and romantic concept. Hatred was just as strong as love, in terms of metaphysical catalyst."
I need to go back to add Tallas to my list of things I'm going to be keeping an eye on. I have a THEORY!!! I'll add that after I'm finished here, I want to keep these relatively spoiler free for the whole series.
Almost immediately after reminiscing about her talla, Lady Lovers taps into her aspect. Sort of like the primal soul of an Arcana's powers. The demi gods within them, if you will. Hers is fea-ish. It's terrifying. Her fingers add another joint, her skin beings to mottle in jewel tones that moved as she moves. She has hornets wings and her dress is made of rose petal. Suddenly her scent (musk, honey, semen) is very powerful and her magic causes Rune to fall to the floor with an erection. It would be kinda funny, but the scene is suitably horrific.
""I would beg a favor, pretty Rune. I swear by the river the answer will be your own.---I ask that you deliver, and protect, a package of mine to a safe destination.""
In return for this favor, which she swears is nothing illegal, she will give him a sigil. A silver ring with three chips of emerald in it. Sigils are so rare and Rune has so few of his own, that after getting her promise that it isn't going to get him in trouble, he agrees. She releases the sigil to him and then she tells him the package will be delivered to his house and that he should hurry on so he isn't, "caught in the fire".
Rune gets out of there as quickly as he can, Brand is yelling again once he gets out, having lost all contact with Rune while he was in the warded secret room. Rune finally imparts that there is a bomb and using a gold chain sigil around his ankle, released a flying spell. He wobble-flies to the water tower to pick up Brand, depositing him by Brand's motorcycle to tell him about the deal, and his new sigil. Brand is upset, and they wait for a little bit to see if they mansion explodes....
it does not.
They drive home separately. Brand speeding off on his bike, Rune in his beat up old Saturn. He's nearly home when there is a large CRACK back near the Lover's compound and the sky behind him fills with fire and smoke. I would like to take the time to point out that Rune had "Foreseen" that the fake seer at the party would find herself struggling in a field of blood and char with bone shards in her hair. I wonder if that did in fact come to be?
At the door to their house Brand calls Rune a fucking dumb-ass and takes up the argument on having made a deal with an Arcana as though there was no time between. But he does calm down and ask if Run is okay after the fake seer incident.
They go in and Rune stops, because their house keeper, Queenie, always leaves cookies and juice out for them after their missions, and there is no cookies or juice on the coffee table when they come in. So Brand goes to check on her.
"He went in search of our housekeeper, Queenie, who lived in a tiny cottage in the backyard. Normally she laid out fruit drinks and snacks after a successful job, her small way of celebrating the fact that she was still employed."
I know I just said I wanted to keep this spoiler free, and it is, pretty much. BUT! what are they paying her with? How much? How can they afford a housekeeper?
Rune sits down and takes off his boots, telling us that they are warded and perfected fitted to his feet, and that he mostly doesn't wear socks with them. Gross. Brand enters and is followed closely by Queenie
"Her plain face swung side to side in a nonstop headshake. She said, "You took in a seventeen year-old boy?"
That's all we learn about her appearance. That she looks plain.
Rune is dumbfounded, because he does NOT remember taking in a child. But Brand, livid, and probably a little amused, let's be honest. Informs Rune that the "package" Rune agreed to take and "deliver" is in fact, a seventeen year-old boy. And the destination is his age of adulthood, twenty one.
And that is the end of the first chapter.
*this little bit of knowledge comes from a supplemental story you can download on the author's website. It's a four page PDF file and it's just a snippet of Rune and Brand as babies. And now that I'm thinking about it the tidbit that they weren't separated until the age of five might be something from another supplemental story. This is about what would have been their first instructor trying to separate them as toddlers. Neither of them can really speak, so it's told by their governess, Lady Patience (Look, if K D Edwards isn't a fan of Realm of the Elderlings I will eat everyone's hat! Lady Patience, Lady Amber, the Fool! If Francis isn't a Fitz stand in I will riot!)
It opens with baby Rune standing up in the crib, yelling about how Brand (he sits in the corner, well he sits where he wants but he always gives me the blanket and he's gone. And he took the orange rattle!) is missing. He's always been there for their whole lives and suddenly his Brand is missing. Lady Patience, not knowing how to calm him, goes in search of the instructor and Brand, to find baby Brand standing in a chair, brandishing the rattle, which is made of some pretty expensive material, at the instructor. He is also grumbling in a baby way because he too, can't really speak.
The instructor is displeased with the behavior going on here. He wants Brand out of the house, pretty much. Right around that time the door starts rattling, amber light filters in from under the door and it, kinda implodes inwards. Baby Rune is standing on the other side of the door, eyes glowing, and demands, "Band-aid!" Which is his word for Brand. Brand happily tottles over, hugs Rune and then proceeds to poke his nose to see if he can make it glow too.
The instructor is raging about how they need to be separated immediately, but is cut off by a tower of sunlight that stands in the doorway. Rune's father, Lord Sun. Even after he stops being on fire, no one can actually see what he looks like, only sunspots. He leans down and scoops both Rune and Brand up at once. Saying that he had to learn to pick them up at the same time, because they cried when they were picked up separately. He fires the instructor and walks off with "his boys".
It's really such a sweet story.
#the last sun#the tarot sequence#rape tw#rune saint john#brand saint john#live blogging#booklr#ttsrr
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I must request a rant about Pierro or Capitano, I love your headcanons with them!
Ohh man you've got no idea what you've just done aha, I'm very much fixated on these two specifically right now so prepare for not just a rant but a full blown ramble below the cut for both of them
Some minor angst for Pierro's section, be warned
Ok, so in a general kind of sense, I can see Pierro being a very volatile and unpredictable individual, especially when he's in a space where it's safe for him to do so. He can be extremely strict and bossy (especially towards the other harbingers) and kind of detaches himself emotionally from those around him and staunchly refuses to allow himself to get attached because he's just so tired of losing everyone and everything he loves time after time.
I could definitely see him having some form of PTSD, but his outbursts get brushed off as being because of him being in a very highly stressful position as opposed to the fact that he's mentally fucked from so many times of him losing everything he cares about. He really just needs a friend (and maybe some therapy).
I also headcanon him as having arthritis, which gets aggravated a lot by the cold, so he tends to rug up a lot, but he's still very much more on edge than usual - he hates the cold, which makes it kind of suck that he lives in Snezhnaya, in the palace of the Cryo Archon. I could also see him having some back issues (maybe scoliosis or something like that?) so he spends a lot of time cooped up in his chambers, huddled by the fireplace as he curses the cold and dreams of somewhere more temperate.
He's very much the 'grumpy old grandpa' trope, he reads his morning newspaper and drinks his black coffee at the dining table (and in modern AUs scolds people for touching the thermostat). For someone who loathes the cold so much, he sure does have quite the cold personality.
That's not to say his stony facade never falls, however, he does have his moments where he can be something that borders on sweet, especially to the younger members of the Fatui - he exercises an extra bout of patience and will try to the best of his ability to make sure those in his squadrons all come home safe. Despite his anger at the Archons, and the world in general, he doesn't want others to have to go through the same pain that he has.
Capitano... I feel like my interpretation of him differs depending on whether or not it's a modern/real world au. I really like the idea of him being an empty/haunted husk of armour, but now that I've found an appearance headcanon I like for him I've really warmed up to the idea of him being a human.
I headcanon him to look a bit like the rugby player Ma'a Nonu, who has Samoan descent (and is very nice looking imo). I know MHY is gonna disappoint if Cap ever gets a face reveal so I'm just going ham on my headcanons here.
Capitano is very big and broad, his head almost looks a little too small for his body (though his helmet covers it just fine). He has a decent amount of scarring that he's kind of insecure about (and perhaps a touch of vilitigo?), which is a large part of why he wears the clothing he does (in modern AUs, the knight's helmet is replaced with a baseball cap, sunglasses and face mask). He also has dreads, sorry not sorry.
On the surface (and to all of those around him) he's a quiet and intimidating individual, he doesn't speak much (if at all), and when he does it's straight to the point, he doesn't mince his words. His canon voice is... fine, but I feel like I have a different one floating around in my head when I write about him. He also knows a good amount of sign language too, but it doesn't really come in handy unless the people around him know it as well.
He comes off as cold and detached at first, but once he finds someone that he feels needs his protection (whether that be a self insert, canon character, or OC, depends on the day <3 (spoiler: in my case its usually a self insert akjfhkdjsf)), he turns into a big mama bear and takes them under his wing.
He's very protective over his chosen charge, despite how much the others may tease him for it. Capitano has a very strong sense of loyalty and ideals and once he's put his mind to protecting someone, he'd sooner die than let something happen to them. He firmly believes that actions speak louder than words, so instead of reassuring the ones he cares about, he just lets his actions do the talking, wordlessly looking after them in his own signature way (which could entail him physically protecting them from harm, or doing small things to keep them safe such as lending his coat, cooking food, or making sure there's always somewhere safe for them to hide away if things get too much).
Despite all of this, he struggles a bit to empathise consistently with those around him if he hasn't connected to them in his signature way, especially if he sees them as a lower rank than himself. In some AUs at least, he sees the other Harbingers as a kind of family, and subtly does things to help them out (though he's careful not to get caught), but if it's someone he doesn't spend much time around on a daily basis, he just sort of... disregards them.
Sorry this turned into a bit of an incoherent rant, I just got VERY excited seeing these two names in my inbox, I love these two so so much. Thanks so so much for the ask, I really do appreciate it :D!!
Please don't steal/copy/repost my work!
#general barks#i just i just. holds these two silly guys to my chest. i love them#genshin#genshin impact#genshin impact headcanons#genshin headcanons#genshin writing#genshin capitano#genshin pierro#il capitano#capitano#pierro#though modern au capitano i can see being a kind of freelancing security guard type deal if that makes much sense#headcanons#my writing
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Defiler - Chapter 20
[Click here to read the rest of the Defiler story]
A Maiden Cannot Choose
Lionelli held onto her blaster tight; she wasn’t about to let her guard down just because the ground had started shaking, not with those chrome morphing creatures still out there somewhere beyond the walls that surrounded them. The fall was as inevitable as it was disgraceful. To add further insult to her wounded ego, the gun also fell out of her grasp. It tumbled down into a hole in the wall, clanging on top of the metal entrails of the starchild. Now, it too would become part of this great machine, and in the future a defiler would find it, evaluate it, and then barter it in the market for rations.
She shook her head. Her Most Esteemed Lady Serenessi had called upon her to evaluate this ship. She had succeeded, of course; there really was never any doubt between her and Amateracci about the mission. A simple reconnaissance mission’s success is always guaranteed when these two are involved, really. No, the tricky part in such operations always comes in the extraction phase – and right now, they both found themselves lodged like a bullet deep within the cartilage of a planet killing machine.
Nevertheless, the objective was clear: find the way back home.
Home. Back to Wrethella’s embrace. To report your findings, to assess your threats. Threats to the King? His grip tightened around your collar with each sword you drew from your sheath. Each life took was in his name. And Wrethella? She was long dead, Her crushed rebellion still inspiring you to die the same way.
But home… Home was more than Her, or even him. Home was also Analussa and her care. Home was more than the wars, it was the embrace of the living as well.
She shook her head again. There would be time for sentimentalities later, deep within her chambers, alone and collected. A Maiden cannot choose how her service is spent, and she was not about to break her vows by dying inside this abomination.
“I lost my gun!” Lionelli grumbled as she used Amateracci’s hand to get back up.
“We’ll find you another!” Amateracci chuckled and she handed her spare pistol, one she had cleverly hidden in plain sight. It was more ceremonial in nature, but a bullet is a bullet; should the time ever come, a Maiden knew how to kill. Lionelli smiled in acknowledgement.
She then turned back. “Where’s the rest of them?”
“Guardian Van’kos!” Amateracci called. A pained valleakan sounded off from behind them. Next to him, the other valleakan armed guard, his helmet still somehow on. She smirked gleefully. “Good, you’re both still alive.” She stepped ahead, howling next for the defilers’ names in the darkness. Friga, the ratlung with her head in the clouds. Jaksy, the jaldari brute force of nature. Mallik, the ratlung who led them through this maze, even if she was no real defiler. Slowly, two responses came back. Distant, and further apart, but alive for certain.
“How the fuck did they get so far away from us,” Lionelli grunted.
“I do not like this, Lionelli. We should head back.”
“Did you hear Mallik respond?”
Amateracci shook her head. Lionelli turned to the distant voices. “Is Mallik there with you?”
“We thought she was with you lot!” the voice of Friga echoed back.
“Fuck,” Lionelli muttered under her breath and checked on her new pistol. Full charge, it would be good for seven shots at full power. She waved towards the guardians to follow her as she started walking towards the defilers.
“Why do you insist upon this ratlung?” Amateracci asked her, her position unmoved.
“Because she’s one of us.”
Amateracci threw her head back. “No, she is not, Lionelli! She is butanother ratlung, exploited by the savages of her home planet like we were. She is like us, but she is not one of us.”
“I think that’s where you are wrong, my old friend,” Lionelli retorted. Amateracci growled, and was about to speak her mind before the ship growled back.
Another tremor. Felt like a pulse. The ship was behaving erratically; ships are meant to hum gently in the background, the artifice of their construction never brought to the forefront, whether this construct took place aeons ago, ornately crafted to serve purposes grand and mystical and despicable, or mere months in haste to replace the unceremoniously departed. But this ship was different. It breathed. These circuits housed life within them, Amateracci knew it. She felt the wind across her chest, brushing against the armor with an intensity she felt when she drew her own breaths from her own lungs after a spirited jog. It would seem that the starchild now also drew and blew its gasps of Tabora’s stale, sand-filled air. The first it had in centuries.
But what was more was that neither maiden had ever seen a starchild prior to today, let alone been inside one. Though the Lady’s Recollections, the book every Maiden must memorize, were meant to be allegorical, there would always be instances where the details felt too specific, too pointed, too real for lack of a better word. How could one recall them and not consider what was said but a kernel of something greater, a truth dressed up in fairy tale garments so as not to scare the child away from its visage. Both she and Lionelli were highly trained elite warriors, a class above every other warrior the galaxy had to offer, whether on the King’s court or in the General’s yard. But ultimately, they too were children, and now, Amateracci was feeling unnerved.
So, instead of an argument, Amateracci opted to hold the grasp onto Lionelli’s shoulder pad. She grasped it tight, the sound reverberating within these tight white hallways.
“Do you really believe she can save our asses?”
Lionelli held onto her comrade’s hand softly.
“Yes.”
Amateracci stared into those eyes, considering the answer. Lionelli’s resolve burned stronger than the fire of the lit torches and busted handmade lamps around her. It was true though, that ratlung was smart. So were her friends, the other defilers. Maybe not Friga, but it would not be wise to underestimate a defiler at this hour. At the same time, those were literal children, all three of them. What little they could have known was pass-me-down legends and folklore from the previous generations.
Much like herself and Lionelli, really. Even Wrethella, she humoured, would smile at this coincidence of fates. Maybe Lionelli was right. She let go of her hand with a smirk. “Alright,” she said as she turned back to the defilers. “Friga, Jaksy! Get your asses here already! We got to find Mallik!”
“We can’t!” a pained howl rung back across the hallway.
“What do you mean by that?” Amateracci yelled back.
“The floor!” Jaksy responded. “It… It’s never done this before! It just shifted! It’s gone!”
“What?!”
And just then, both Amateracci and Lionelli were blinded. The lights came on. Not the ones prior pilgrimages had meticulously and carefully installed along those derelict hallways; no, those would not have been enough to shine all the way down to the floor through the thick layers of sand. The hallway, a standard, rusted and dusted path, suddenly blinked brightly. The dust that clung to its surfaces for centuries shot into mid-air, evaporating in an instant, as if none of it had ever sat upon its surfaces. Lightbulbs came on one by one, whilst wires and panels shifted before their very eyes. Those panels. Shiny and chrome, like the pale mirror surface of a lake under moonlight, shifting and shaping and forming until they solidified into a shape that resembled what came before. Except now it was new and spotless and clean, the walls having settled upon a gentle dull white colour that would not have looked out of place in one of those corporate offices back in the Twilight Strip.
Smelled about the same as well.
“What the fuck,” the masked valleakan guardian uttered in disbelief.
“FRIGA!” Amateracci shouted at the top of her lungs. “JAKSY!” But no answer came back. Amateracci armed her gun.
“Hold on tight, men,” Lionelli barked, “this is far from over!”
A gun clang to the floor, followed by the rush of a sprint in the opposite direction. “Van’kos! Get your ass back here!” Amateracci screamed in vain as guardian Van’kos abandoned them. His heart in his throat, tears streaking across his cheeks, the guardian run away, trying to follow the path they had carved into the structure prior, so meticulously and methodically. The last sight of him was reported by Maiden Amateracci, seeing him take a left turn where he should have taken a right.
Amateracci bellowed at him again, tossing her gun on the floor. The floor bent, and then promptly liquefied. The liquid chrome embraced her gun, starting to suck it into its structure. Amateracci, in her rage, screamed once more and kicked the gun away from the chrome, only for a tendril to reach out and grab her leg from below.
Only one shot rang out. No more were needed; a blaster, the standard gun type found across the galaxy, packs enough punch to sever tissue and metal alike. Whether in a small and ceremonial pistol such as the one Lionelli had just drawn, or in a regular rifle the other valleakan guardian he had fired with pinpoint accuracy just now. Tissue and metal alike, the blaster does not discriminate in its path of destruction. The tendril fell back into the panel, reforming again into a perfectly average, dull white tile in mere seconds, as if it had never moved.
Lionelli moved to her fallen comrade, gasping for air on the floor next to her gun. “You okay?” she asked softly, to no answer. She held Amateracci’s chin, forcing her to look at her in the eyes, and asked again, sternly like a commander. Amateracci gulped.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lionelli let go. Her hand reached for Amateracci’s gun instead, handing it over back to her once she was up on her feet. “Be careful with this. I don’t want to file a report on your death, Amateracci.”
“Oh, you won’t be rid of me that easily, Lionelli.” Amateracci chuckled, but Lionelli remained stoically stern. Amateracci lost her smile, and knelt. “It won’t happen again, my Lady,” she complied.
Lionelli nodded, and turned her attention to the last remnant of Lof’ra attaché to their mission. “Thank you, Guardian Zenkins,” she spoke to him softly. “How are you holding up?”
The guardian lowered his head, undoing the buckles of his helmet. “May I be candid, ma’am?”
“Of course,” Lionelli encouraged. The guardian took off his helmet, breathing in longingly. The maidens’ hearts sunk, and the barely contained emotions Lionelli had kept under control throughout this entire expedition formed into a singular rage. “What the FUCK are you doing here!” Lionelli exploded.
“I-I-I just wanted to ensure Mallik’s safety…” Zysso, son of Lof’ra, the man who hired their services to protect himself and his family, responded. His gun hung by his belt, barrel still smoking.
“HOW?!” Lionelli lambasted him. “By getting yourself killed too?!”
“Heh, Lof’ra’s kid’s got a crush on Mallik,” Amateracci chuckled.
“It’s nothing like that, I just…” Zysso swallowed his tongue. “I want my friend to be safe. And right now, I think we need to save her.”
“No, what we need to do right now is to take your idiotic, pompous rich ass back to your father, before I kill you myself,” Lionelli cut him off.
“No, Lionelli wait,” Amateracci chimed in. “Kid wants to help, and Mallik’s our only chance to save ourselves, right?” Lionelli narrowed her eyes. “Who knows, maybe the feeling’s mutual, and the kid being here will make her seek him out.”
“You insinuate that…” Amateracci nodded. Lionelli, still breathing sharply, continued. “You want to use the kid we were sworn to protect as bait then, Lady Amateracci?” The question came out more as an indignant bark of resignation. Amateracci stared at Lionelli, then glanced at Zysso. She nodded, adding a simple nonchalant “Yep” that startled the boy. Lionelli threw her hands on her face, contending the firing squads that would await them back home. If they ever made it back home. She drew in a long breath, filling those lungs with the gravity of the situation. Then she blew it all in resignation. “Yeah, fuck it,” she concluded, passing by Zysso, patting him on the back, welcoming him on board properly. “Keep that rifle sharp, kid.”
Zysso gulped; he had gotten his wish, and now fell in step after the two Maidens of Wrethella, in a quest that looked as futile to them as it seemed achievable to his young naïve heart. “So where do we start, boss?” Amateracci chimed as she walked next to Lionelli.
“For now?” Lionelli answered, her gaze not averting from looking forward. “Just get where Jaksy and Friga were. We find those bitches…”
“We find Mallik,” Amateracci concluded for her. Lionelli nodded with a smirk so forced you could tell she was not trying at all to upkeep her collected façade. A detail Amateracci found amusing, even cute to an extent. Zysso followed after them in silence.
The three of them marched down the corridor, their boots the only sound that kept them company. Those echoes dampened with each step, becoming quieter, reverberating in the air less and less. It was as if the room itself was getting accustomed to the presence of organic bipedal beings walking its corridors again and was taking measures to optimise its acoustics so as to make the noise less distracting. To create order out of a chaos that nobody but the room itself really noticed. It happened gradually, as the room stretched beyond the wall that once had separated the two defilers from the rest of them. That wall in fact was now gone, a corridor standing in its place that led down a longer corridor. Lionelli noticed how a smudged panel on the side of a doorway repeated every five or so doorways, the pattern of the smudge emerging fully formed.
And this form started taking shape. On the twentieth pass, whilst Amateracci and Zysso sat down to take a small rest, Lionelli examined it closer. Pareidolia. There was no other explanation for what she saw. She recoiled back, almost tripping on Amateracci’s leg. Lucky in that regard, for if it was Zysso’s leg she had stepped over, the poor kid she had given her vow to protect would now have no leg.
“What did you see, Lionelli?”
“Nobody.” She had lied. But the face of a person she dearly missed had clearly stared back at her, with eyes as big as the day she last met them. Eyes she did not want to entertain the thought of not seeing again. She locked that thought away with a shake of her head, and with a hand on her forehead she nursed a headache that she feared would soon become too great to ignore.
“This place does numbers to us all,” Amateracci confided. Zysso, timid and silent, simply nodded.
Lionelli turned to him. “You holding up alright, kid?”
Zysso nodded again. “I just… I don’t know, we should have reached Jaksy and Friga by now. I don’t get it, it’s like we’re stuck in a loop.”
“Want me to shout for them?” Amateracci asked, and did not wait before she bellowed their names again, to no avail.
Lionelli, clearly displeased, frowned at her comrade. “You have an awful shout.”
“Oh please,” Amateracci chuckled, “you just wish I was shouting your name instead, dear.”
“Yeah, I’ve no greatest pleasure in my life than to hear my friend let out a blood curdling screech of my very name.”
Amateracci, pleased with herself, got up again. “That can be arranged,” she added, lending out her hand to Zysso. He graciously took it and got up again. They then got on the move again, walking down the same corridor, turning right at the same turn, then a left before they walked down again the same corridor, turning left at the same turn, then a right before they walked down again the same corridor, turning a left and a right a left and a right and then straight ahead. Eventually, the sound of Amateracci’s steel-reinforced bootheels came back as softly as a slipper tiptoeing across the room at midnight to grab a refreshment from the kitchen.
And the journey to this kitchen was long. The room stretched on, distant sounds of mechanical whirs intercut with sounds of… singing. Amateracci stopped in her tracks when she recognized the tune that only faintly was carried through the air. A song from her homeworld of Isoropa. A simple world, an agrarian world, fields of corn and cotton. Days of gold and white, all under a blue sky filled with silver linings, linings emerging from the grid of a dome installed to ascertain the crops never befell harm. This childish hymn sang of living harmoniously with nature. It was a sound she thought she had forgotten. A sound that she had to forget.
Amateracci raised her hand towards the wall. It collapsed into a cornfield. Before she could blink her eyes, a murder of crows flapped their wings, cawing overhead as they swung by. And just as soon as she retracted her hand, she stretched it out again.
Then she was grabbed.
“Fancy seeing you here, buff pretty lady! But what are you doing in my desert?”
Amateracci blinked her eyes several times. The ratlung defiler, Friga, was grasping her arm. The air was no longer moist, but it had the same taste of stale and dry wind Eonov possessed. The golden crops, the silver linings, all a distant memory.
“Friga?” Amateracci asked hesitantly as she pulled her hand away from her grasp. “We were looking for you. Where the hell did you end up?”
“I think I’m home? But it’s tricky, ‘cause we’re not.”
“Yeah, no shit we aren’t.”
“So, I wonder what the Maker is doing with us, and why He is doing what He’s doing.” She frowned as she turned to look around the endless desert stretching across the horizon. “He’s never treated me like this before. It is kinda scary.” Friga had never looked smaller.
Amateracci did what she never thought she would ever choose to do. She laid her hand on Friga’s shoulder. “Friga,” she eventually asked. “Where is Jaksy? Did you see Lionelli and Zysso?”
“Zysso is here?!” Friga asked, her excitement overpowering her other emotions. Amateracci squeezed her shoulder a bit. Friga yelped and came back to her senses. “I… I am not sure,” she responded. “Jaksy was right here with me as the floor collapsed. Then I found myself here. I stretched out to grab onto the glorious sand, to thank the Maker I was out of here – and then you… showed… up…” Right as Friga finished talking, both were struck by the realization of what was being iterated.
Amateracci grabbed onto Friga’s small arm and held onto it for dear life. She then unholstered her blaster. “Pray that it works, small one,” she commanded as Friga covered her ears as best as she could. Amateracci took her gun and aimed at the sun. She unleashed a single volley.
It deafened the skies.
The lights went out.
Amateracci could feel Friga’s fear on her shaking hand.
A small chromatic lake formed right above the two of them as the shot panel melted from the heat of the volley. The chromatic tendrils, hard at work, rushed to replace what was lost. Friga hyperventilated as she looked around. Zysso and Jaksy were standing by the edge of the room, the confines now normal, finite, small, their guns raised as they tried to understand if their friends were still lost in the oblivion of the space within or not.
Friga, beaming with a huge smile, waved at Jaksy and Zysso. She tried to run, but Amateracci was still holding her. She looked at her with big pathetic eyes, trying to dislodge her arm from her grasp, but Amateracci would not let go. “Not until we make sure it’s safe to do so, small one.”
“Well,” Friga sighed, “at least I’m held by the hot one.”
Amateracci turned to look at her. “You have never heard of Wrethella and her Maidens, have you?”
“Nope!”
“Figured, small one.” She then walked towards Lionelli. She put her blaster away, and with her free arm, she reached out to grab Lionelli’s arm. She pulled it away from the panel with the smudge. Lionelli let out a yelp, a small pathetic sound like the ones children make when their toy is taken away from them in front of their very eyes. Tears streaked across her face as she began to realize where she was located.
“Amateracci? Are we still in the same room?”
“Yep.”
Lionelli shook her head, bringing both her hands to clasp and cover it completely. She let out a frustrated yell, muffled as much as possible. She then turned to look at the smudge on the panel on the wall, and, without a moment’s hesitation, punched it. Bent it.
“What did that poor panel do to you?”
“Zip it, Friga,” both Lionelli and Amateracci ordered.
Just then, a door on the wall opened. Nobody had realized this wall had doors. And it was only after it had formed that the doorframes around the door showed up. Or maybe they were always there, but nobody had come to noticed them in this room.
Out of this door walked a man. He wore a light grey polo shirt, and light grey overalls, and sported a light grey cap. He walked next to Lionelli, Amateracci and Friga, and asked them to scoot over. “This panel is faulty”, the man said. “I am here to fix it.” He then produced a screwdriver on his hand, it forming in between his fingers from the same material the chromatic tendrils were fixing the ship this entire time. He then proceeded to put down the panel with the smudge. He dropped it on the floor. It shattered into a million pieces, each piece making no sound at all, each piece absorbed directly into the floor. The smudge had never existed.
The man then produced a torch. He looked into the exposed wires, rusty and brown and coated in dust. “Yes, this will be a problem. But,” he turned to talk to the rest of the crew of misfits that had gathered around him, “I will fix it so we can keep on keeping on.”
“Keeping on with what, though?” Friga asked. Amateracci, still holding her arm, squeezed it out of self-afflicted embarrassment on behalf of this dumb kid.
“The protocol, of course,” the man replied and turned back towards his work. “We are ascending.”
“Ascending?” Lionelli asked. “To where?”
“The stars, of course.” The man bent slightly to the right opened a port window. There was no window, of course, Lionelli and her team were stranded so deep within the structure it would take hours to walk back to the external shell. And yet, here it was, in all its glory. Outer space. For the first time in so many days, this pure blackness enveloped Lionelli’s senses. Twinkling stars popped across the horizon as Eonov – Tabora – sunk underneath her eyes. The crater from which the starchild had dislodged itself cracked the earth, leaving ravines and canyons that spread rapidly in its wake, wrinkles of a world uprooted of its true age.
A deafening silence followed, as the realization hit them all.
Lionelli looked at her comrade. There was nothing that she or Amateracci could say. Their mission was a success. All that was left was prayers to wish that it was not. But, a Maiden cannot choose her fate. The moment Wrethella embraces you, your fate is sealed in Her name.
Only Zysso, much too later, stepped forth. “E-excuse me,” he asked the man, still blipping and blooping along to the circuit board he was tending. “Are communications allowed? Can… Can I make a phonecall?”
“Of course, dear Valleakan,” and the man presented Zysso with a brick that was phone shaped. On it there were five rows of digits, arranged in columns of six, accounting for every possible numeric system observable in the known galaxy. Zysso grabbed it. He started dialling the numbers he recognized.
“Who are you calling?” Lionelli asked him.
“Someone that can help us.”
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Dream tried to stop Wil from creating L'Manburg, Phil tried to stop him from blowing it up, BOTH value people over items and builds, Phil has said that they're replaceable but people aren't, Dream traded spirit for his best friends fishes (we kno he's not someone to talk abt feelings:[) BOTH were kind and selfless but used by almost if not everyone, BOTH were ready to be THE VILLAINS if it meant everyone else could live better after. ONE of them always had someone there, ONE didn't. Intentional?
aaaa sorry for the really inconsistent posts ,, im gonna try to post a little more in the next few days. i have a few things written up, so look out for them? maybe? for now, have this *gestures vaguely* thing ,, it’s kinda a mess but *shrug*
phil is such a fun character, anon, especially for all the reasons that you mentioned in the ask!! he’s a really fun character with a lot of complexities that go (sadly) overlooked by a large portion of the fandom, but he’s super cool even tho i havent analyzed him too much. hope you enjoy (and i hope my interpretation of c!phil isnt too ooc lmao)
tw: mentioned blood, injury, implied torture/abuse, starvation, trauma, mentioned death, prison arc/pandora’s vault
When Techno first brings Dream back from the prison, Phil doesn’t quite know what to think.
“I don’t trust him either,” Techno assures him, but there’s a flickering anger in the backs of his eyes, one that had emerged ever since he came back from the prison with the other man in his arms, and Phil knows his friend well enough to know that the words are empty in the face of the piglin hybrid’s particular brand of to-the-death loyalty. He shakes his head in reply, refusing to voice his thoughts for Techno’s sake, at least, but the look that the other slants at him suggests that he’s caught onto them all the same.
At first, the work is thankfully mindless; even if Phil has reservations on the man that Techno has more or less dumped into his house, he would hardly wish the clear suffering he’s been through on anyone. The first few days pass in a flurry of brewing potions, wrapping and rewrapping dressings, stitching up cuts and setting broken bones straight. The damage is extensive; Phil has to take more than a few breaks to just leave the house and breathe - he’s far from a stranger to blood and carnage, had received the title of ‘Angel of Death’ for a reason, but even he had never been particularly familiar with this form of cruelty. Torture was a level of violence that extended beyond what even he was willing to bestow - his hands may have caused many deaths, and the weight of each one would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life, but even those had the mercy of being a quick end. The wounds and scars that ripple over Dream’s skin, thin and stretched tightly over his bones with little muscle and fat left to cushion them, speak of horrors that were anything but merciful.
“I didn’t know they were capable of all of this,” Techno says, once, as they huddle of Dream, wringing towels in cold water to wipe his feverish skin. Techno’s hand reaches for the ribboning gold-filled scars that remain from the execution - carefully, Phil raises his hand to let his fingertips brush over them as well. “I mean, I knew he was dangerous and all, but-”
“I know, mate,” Phil looks back at Dream’s face, tight even in unconsciousness, at the darkened, hand-shaped bruises that remain around his throat, at the scar that runs over his left eye, clearly meant to mirror the same one that makes its way down the duck hybrid’s own face. “You said that Quackity and Sam were working together?”
“Yeah,” Techno’s expression darkens, eyes focused somewhere on the wall, seemingly very far away. He said that nothing happened to him in the prison, and he seemed relatively unharmed when Phil activated the stasis chamber, but ever since he came back, sometimes he’ll have moments, and Phil can’t help but - wonder. “Quackity does the dirty work, Sam gives him the way in and out, probably also the tools to do it. It’s-” he huffs a short, self-recriminating laugh. “It’s bad, Phil.”
“Mate-”
Techno shoots him a look, and Phil cringes, knowing already that he’d used the wrong tone. Even with the execution, Techno had been adamant to hide all traces of his own terror and fear away from him, masking it all with fury for Phil’s own sake. He knows, just from the way his old friend looks at the ribboning scars that remain sometimes, that he is far from as over the whole ordeal as he acts, but Techno never wants to talk and Phil never knows the right time to ask and they smooth it all behind plans and explosions and hope that the TNT can blow apart the trauma, too. He’s got a sneaking suspicion that the same thing is going to happen, here.
“As soon as we can,” Techno starts again, pointedly shifting his eyes away from Phil’s face, “we’re calling a Syndicate meeting to figure out what we’re going to do about the prison. Like- come on, man, you couldn’t make a more transparent abuse of institutional power if you tried, really-” he looks over, uncharacteristic uncertainty warring over his features. “If you think that’s good, I mean-“
“Of course, mate.” Phil’s voice softens. “Whenever you’re ready.”
‘Whenever he’s ready,’ as it turns out, is easier said than done, becoming even more evident when their charge wakes up from his days long spell of unconsciousness. The worst of his injuries have, under their careful care and the benefit of many potions, healed enough to no longer directly threaten his life, but the vast majority have quite some time to go before being healed completely. Being as the goal was torture and not death, most of his injuries weren’t made to be life-threatening, but rather to cause as much pain as possible - from the grimace that twists Dream’s face when he struggles to force himself awake, they’re doing their jobs.
“Hey, mate, slow down,” Phil murmurs, pressing the man down by his shoulder when Dream weakly tries to push himself up and off the bed, and his struggling only lasts for a few more minutes before he gives up and slumps against his pillow, eyes cracking open and seeming surprisingly lucid.
“Where-“ his voice is wrecked, and Phil reaches for the glass of water at the bedside as Dream coughs. “Where am I?”
“You’re at Techno’s house,” Dream’s eyes widen and then slip closed as he processes the information, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows as they knit together. “We broke you out, after Techno escaped with a stasis chamber with your book. Do you remember?”
Dream gnaws on his bottom lip. “Um- yeah. I think.” His head turns as his eyes crack open again- “Techno-“
“He’s out, right now. He’ll be back in a bit.”
“Oh.” Dream falls back into the bed, strength seemingly sapped from the short conversation. His breathing stutters, then steadies. “Okay.”
Recovery is slow. Phil doesn’t actually find himself seeing the man very often; now that he doesn’t need around-the-clock care anymore, he’s moved back into his own house, letting Techno do most of the work when it comes to rehabilitating the escaped convict crashing at his house. As he begins to spend more of his time awake and aware, he brings a whole slew of new problems; Phil catches him screaming one day, blurting harsh, angry words as Techno reads, unbothered from the other side of the room, and he stops in his tracks standing awkwardly in the doorway.
“Um-“ he winces when Dream curses, smashes something against the floor, and then curls into himself at the sound. Techno doesn’t even flinch. “Am I interrupting something?”
Dream stomps away, face flushed, arms wrapped around himself. Techno raises an eyebrow.
“You lookin’ for something, Phil?” he asks, and the unpleasant knot in Phil’s chest refuses to unwind.
The episodes, unfortunately, don’t seem to get much better. Though he’s rarely outright violent, Dream looks constantly murderous, usually muttering underneath his breath about something or another while he stalks the grounds of Techno’s house. It’s not too long before Techno sends him out to work around the house instead of just moping within the cottage, which also means that Phil sees him a lot more - tending to a small farm behind the house, feeding the dogs, hacking away at mobs, and usually complaining the entire time. It’s unnerving, even as injured and unarmored as the man is, to see him walking around like this; despite his rather pathetic appearance, swamped in sweaters that dwarf him thoroughly and thin enough to look like the slightest breeze will knock him over, his eyes are flinty and intelligent and bubble with promises of revenge.
“FUCK!” Phil turns to see him slamming a shovel into the snow, stomping away into the woods, and his hands tighten around his cup of tea. Next to him, Techno shrugs.
“Nerd’s got a few issues,” he drawls, and Phil laughs shortly.
“That seems like an understatement.”
“He’ll ease up in time,” Techno sounds surprisingly confident, completely content despite the muffled curses that come from the woods next to them. He’s probably used to it, with Chat and all, but Phil can’t quite seem to find the same calm.
“I just don’t know, mate,” Phil shakes his head. “You sure having him around is the best idea? He doesn’t seem...stable.”
Techno looks up at him over the rim of his cup of coffee. His head tilts, considering, but there’s a small smile on his face that tells Phil that Techno, inexplicably, doesn’t share the same sentiments. There was always a part of him that was, for the lack of a better word, softer than the rest of the server for his self-proclaimed rival, a sort of understanding that Phil could hardly hope (nor would really want to) understand.
“Don’t worry, Phil, if he tries anything I can always just tie him up in the attic or something,” Phil huffs a small laugh, amused, and nods to concede the point. “And- well, call it intuition. You could really try talkin’ to him, you know. He reminds me of you, sometimes.”
The words stick in his head despite his best efforts, rattling in his skull when he tries to sleep, lingering when he catches glimpses of the green-clothed man stalking around their properties. He can’t imagine what would’ve prompted his old friend to make the comparison, can’t think of a single thing (besides their affinity for the color green) that would mark him as similar to the - from what he’s heard - deranged menace with a particular penchant for destruction (not that his rants and fits of anger are doing anything to correct that impression). Even so, Techno had sounded so sure when he’d made the comparison, the words offhand like he’d thought them a million times before, like it was a simple observation that held no more weight than commenting on the color of the sky. Phil watches as Dream lugs a pile of logs behind him, huffing at one of Techno’s dogs that comes to chase and nip at his feet and grumbling loudly before faceplanting into the snow. He just...can’t see it.
Days later, Wilbur comes to visit, a grin on his lips as he dramatically recounts his newest exploit: a nation by Las Nevadas, a supposed safe haven away from the glitter and glory of Quackity’s city; it sounds brilliant, it sounds lovely, and more than anything it sounds stupid, and Phil tells him as such immediately.
“You’re being reckless,” he rants at his son, wings flaring outwards and only barely noticing Dream watching from the corner of his eye, “What are you doing- picking fights with Quackity? Starting another nation- didn’t you see what happened to the first two you made? You’re going to get yourself killed, Wil!”
“Well, I’ve already seen what’s on the other side of death, and it’s really not that bad-“
“You’re my son!” The words are angrier than Phil would’ve liked, and he knows that he looks ridiculous and overbearing, criticizing the actions of his fully grown son, but all he can see is Wilbur’s face, slack with pain and grief, stained with ash and soot as his eyes flutter to half-mast in the midst of the rubble of a country he loved and destroyed and destroyed him in turn. “I can’t lose you again, Wil!”
Wilbur doesn’t quite storm out, but it’s a near thing, leaving with a clipped goodbye and leaving Phil seething on his doorstep. He spends the rest of the night pacing around the house in a sort of mad frenzy, wings stretching and folding over and over. Not for the first time, he longs for the sky, to feel the air through his wings and let the world fall into pinpricks below him; it’s this that leads him to the roof of his house, staring stubbornly at the clouds as the sun sinks down to the horizon.
“Hey.”
Phil startles; there, down below him, is Dream. He rocks back on his heels, seeming awkward, before clambering up the wall (Phil rolls his eyes at the ease with which he scales it, the feeling in his chest almost fond) and settling himself on the shingles at Phil’s side.
“Hey, mate,” Phil shakes his head. The fondness leaves, and the irritation that had risen at Wilbur’s words, earlier, comes back full-force. “Sorry- Wil came to visit, we talked. I just needed some time to think.”
Dream hums in acknowledgement, and they fall into a comfortable silence, watching as the sun dipping down past the mountains in the distance.
“You know,” Dream starts, sudden, “I told him the same thing.” He looks up at Phil, eyes faraway with old memories. “Wilbur, I mean. When he made L’manburg- I told him he was being reckless.” He shrugs. “I guess he never listened.”
Phil pauses, Techno’s words ringing in his ears. He reminds me of you, sometimes.
Dream looks surprisingly normal up close - face no longer reddened with fever or pale from blood loss, even the scars fail to really take from the boyishness of his face. He bites his lips, eyes falling away at Phil’s scrutiny, golden blond hair flopping over his forehead, newly trimmed to be something a little closer to his old length, at least in the front, the back pulled into a small ponytail. He’s young, and shockingly awkward, teeth worrying his lip, hands fiddling with each other, shifting his weight from one foot to the other several times a minute. He looks like a kid.
“He never does,” Phil lets himself smile, watches as Dream smiles back, almost like they’re sharing a joke. He wonders how well he really knows the man behind the mask. “Want to come in for some tea?”
Dream smiles wider, and something old and worn in Phils chest, knocked loose ever since he felt his son fall limp in his arms with his own sword shoved between his ribs, falls back into place.
“That would be great,” Dream replies, the words almost hopeful, and they go inside.
#tw trauma#tw death#tw blood#tw injury#tw torture#tw abuse#tw starvation#prison arc#pandora's vault#-> my writing#my writing :D#my asks !!#-> my asks
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King of Cups || Chapter 7
Chapter 7: The Fool
Archive: ao3 | masterlist | six
Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Reader
Summary: It all spills over.
Word count: 8.8k~
Rating: Explicit
Warnings/tags: SMUT (WE MADE IT FOLKS), thigh riding, fingering/hand job, very brief breathplay/choking, cum eating¿? Angst/emo shit (I'm so sorry i have no self control)
Notes: HI FRIENDS, wow it's been a minute. Sorry for the massive delay. For anyone wishing to start KOC, now would be the perfectly spicy chapter to do so! This chapter was Herculean. idk why. Love you guys, enjoy! x (gif credit : @djarinsgf)
“Maker,” you bemoan, shielding your face from the heavy beat of the suns.
You’ve known warmth—you were raised in warmth. This is beyond it.
It’s not just warm, it’s sweltering. The heat is oppressive, congealing the air to mist; you can barely see through it what with the sweat running into your eyes. Tall, craggy dunes line the valley of desert, trapping the planet’s hot pulse within their walls. Your steps crunch along the dry, pebbled earth as you swat at the gnats buzzing in ribbons around your head.
A muffled gurgle sounds from behind you and you slow to a halt, boots gritting into the cracked top soil.
“You doing alright back there, Munch?” you ask, craning your head to the child nestled into the carrier fashioned onto your back. A green ear pokes free from the top, and you can see the jewel of his black eyes peering at you through the gauzy cloth you draped over it. He grunts, and you give a small shrug—shifting the pack by the straps, eliciting a giggle out of him. “We can always turn back, okay? I’m not going to be mad.” Another noise, a happy coo this time, and you shimmy your shoulders again, jostling the bag playfully.
“Well, you just let me know.”
Your conversations usually unfold this way. They leave much to be desired, but you’d like to think you understand one another—in fact, you probably understand the kid more than you understand his dad.
You’ve grown close with him, you’ll be the first to admit it. You’re attached to each other. The little one has been your constant companion for these months and in some ways, you suppose he takes care of you just the same as you take care of him. The chamber of space can be lonely; it’s cold and unkindly reflective, stranding you to the echoed chain of your thoughts—but when he tugs at your hair or slobbers spittle down the front of him or crawls up into your lap to nestle into your tunic, it feels like you belong there—there on the Crest, streaming through the galaxy.
And maybe, simply, it feels good to do right by a child—as if you could make up for it somehow, within yourself. To do better than you were given.
Squinting, you raise your wrist to check the coordinates on your comm and shade a hand over the screen, blocking the glare cast onto the display. “Almost there,” you mumble, resuming your stride as you begin the last leg of the trek to the settlement you and Mando discussed that morning.
“What?” he asked, planted some paces away from you.
You hummed a curious note, glancing to him.
“What is it?”
You were trying to be small all morning—shrunken and shy, avoiding the thought and avoiding him all together. You quieted yourself, as if to not take up space, but the attempt was fruitless; of course he picked up on it – you get good at reading people on the job, he’d said – and of course he called you out on your behavior. You took a big gulp of your caf, gaze flickering down—increasingly more and more invested in the scuffs marked into the table you sat at.
“Dala,” he said pointedly, arms folding over the breadth of his chest.
Shit. Who did you think you were fooling? Playing possum with a Mandalorian?
Worrying your lip, you stood. You couldn’t bear to look up at him, just looming there across the table from you, so you paced around the deck as you rambled. “Okay, so you know how I’m still connected to the RRM channels? Well, I’ve been checking the message boards and I—there’s a settlement here out in the Wastes. It’s small and new and they’re looking for volunteers and—”
You whistled in a breath. Fuck it.
“And I want to help.”
Like the toggle of a switch, you went from having a career—having a purpose—to having nothing. And all your gratitude for the transport he’s offering couldn’t fill that empty lull that’s settled inside you.
“Would you be comfortable with letting me take the kid? I know I’m probably asking a lot—and I will fully respect whatever you decide—but I can keep him by me the whole time, I swear, I just—” You shook your head, pinching your eyes shut before sighing, “I need to be doing something. Anything.”
There was a long pause. You scratched at the torn skin around your cuticle, nervously searching the pitch of his wordless visor. He didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t even twitch.
“That’s fine,” he finally remarked, graveled.
You blinked, taken aback at his agreement, and all at once your fidgeting ceased and a bright grin broke out over your features in its place.
It nearly brought him to his knees.
“Wait, seriously?” you asked, bouncing on the balls of your feet and he nodded, a subtle tilt to his helm. “Maker, thank you,” you exclaimed, and without thinking you flew towards him, flinging your arms around his neck and sealing yourself to his armored frame. His arms escaped out from his chest in surprise, suspended and stiff, before falling measuredly to his sides. You could’ve been imagining it, but you swore you heard the distinct grit of his teeth grinding together under his helmet.
“Really Mando,” you beamed, pulling back to lay your eyes on him, to let him see the earnest there: you have no idea how much this means to me. “Thank you.”
You gave his shoulders a squeeze, thumbs brushing along the scratchy fabric of his cape before tearing yourself away. Swiping up your mug of caf, you wound down the corridor - airy, buoyant - back to your makeshift quarters to prepare for your outing. It took him another minute just to get his damn feet to move from the spot on the durasteel you welded him to.
Din told you to be safe.
You smiled, and promised you would.
You left the Crest before him and it was strange, surreal. For the first time, you stood in each other’s shoes, leaving Din there on his own while you set off into the world. He watched you go—you and his boy—watched you walk away into some great unknown without him.
And he didn’t like it.
He soured, somewhere in the deep of him—within that pit he called a gut, he twisted sick.
Your feet hit the ramp, dull and tinny, and it sounded like goodbye—it sounded like you leaving. It’s what it will look like when time and fate touch, and inevitability catches up with him. It’s what it will look like when he takes you home. You’ll walk out of his life, down that same ramp, and your steps will echo those same beats. You won’t look back.
And Din, with all his strength, all his unshakeable resolve—Din will let you go.
///
The encampment is settled into the shadow of a cliffside, seeking respite there from the blazing suns, the taupe of the canvas shanties camouflaging into the arid landscape. Some crawl their gaze up as you enter the village, and you offer them smiles they do not return. Others do not acknowledge your presence at all— unstirred as your footsteps sound past, their heads bound heavy towards the earth. It’s not long before a decisive voice cuts through the hush that’s claimed the settlement.
“Are you with the RRM?”
You turn and are greeted by a woman ducking out of a tent—the grey of her woven tunic browned with sand, heat collecting in her black, coiled hair.
“Yes, I’m with the Movement.” It’s not a total lie. Sure, you’re on leave, but that doesn’t discount you completely. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
With a sharp exhale like a prayer of relief, she makes her way towards you. “Where’s the rest of your division?” Her eyes narrow discerningly, flitting behind you as if expecting to spot the rear of your party trickling in.
“It’s, uh—it’s just me,” you confess, pressing your lips together in a thin smile.
She rakes a hand over her hair, over her face. The skin around her knuckles is split, the beds of her nails chalked with days of unwashed grime. “Alright,” she concedes begrudgingly, without any better option presented. “And who is this?” She nods to the child, emerging from the pack and staring curiously at her.
“This is—” You take a moment to consider it—consider the secrecy around the child, the bounties, the life on the lam. Less is more, you decide. Again, it’s not a total lie. “I’m babysitting.”
The kid grunts an emphatic patu.
You both share a look—a quirk of her dark brow, an apologetic heft of your shoulder—and she sighs. “Well, I’ll take all the help I can get,” she quips dryly with a wave of her hand, leading you into the settlement.
///
She’s coarse, this woman—Arlaani, she told you—matronly and effective. She has a calculating gaze and powerful shoulders that she holds steady as she shows you through the camp. There are lines around her eyes, carved into the curves of her mouth. She knows what you know—what all women learn: sometimes you must be hard in order to keep others soft.
You walk shoulder to shoulder, matching her long strides with your own.
“The Black Sun has taken the southern hemisphere; their numbers have only grown since the Battle of Yavin. Pirates, mercenaries, spice runners—they’ve ransacked one half of the planet and have the officials of the other half in their pocket,” she scowls. “They have stolen our land, our homes—we’re moisture farmers, mechanics, mothers and fathers. We are simple people and we have been forgotten by our government—by those who vowed to represent us, protect us.” Arlaani draws in a long breath. “We’re on our own out here in the Wastes.”
You survey the area; the lifeless ocean of rock and sand, the few scattered trees that have died on their feet—roots withering bone dry in the suns. “Why settle here if it’s so uninhabitable?”
She huffs a humorless laugh. “Because, it’s uninhabitable,” Arlaani explains. “No one robs a beggar. There is nothing in the Wastes the Black Sun wants.”
There are no buildings, no structures; the whole area is undeveloped and raw. Tents are dotted sporadically in clusters, crates of supplies and water canteens stationed every other one. Children dawdle idly, tired and overheated, leaning against boxes and posts—their bellies distended and skin parched taut. Flies land on their shins, on their cheeks. They do not go to shoo them away.
“The Movement supplied those for us when we landed,” she comments, nodding to the crates. “That was two months ago.”
“No one has come back to check on you since?” you ask, brows notching together.
She shakes her head solemnly, jaw set rigid. “Our little ones go hungry, our elders are sick with red fever. We will run out of water before the week is through,” Arlaani says before she turns to you, holding your gaze—the seriousness evident in the stone of her eyes. “I thank the gods you are here.” She presses a palm to your shoulder. You feel the weight of it, the weight of her—of the lives she carries on her back.
“I thank the gods.”
///
You stop by each tent delivering what little food and medicine you brought with you from the Crest, and after each encounter—the people so grateful, so weary—your mind strays further and further to Mando.
Din, you scold yourself. Not Mando, Din. Din Djarin.
You still can’t bring yourself to say it.
He spent that whole fateful day nearly two weeks ago bristling at the very sight of you, going out of his way to limp to the other side of the ship just to ignore you better, only to do you in for one final head spin and give you his name.
Two weeks, and you still haven’t said it. There’s no other excuse: plainly - pitifully - you’re scared. You’re scared he regrets it.
Because how horrible of a truth would it be? To be offered something out of carelessness or guilt; to be the product of pity, or even worse, a mistake that cannot be unmade, cannot be rectified. He can’t take his name back, can’t unspeak it any more than you can unhear it, and this fear, picking at you like an old scab—it’s so painfully human, so terribly universal:
what if I’m not worth it?
And isn’t it easier to neglect the answer, then it is to ask the question.
So you’ve buried his name for both of your sakes, keeping it somewhere secret and private, there to garner dust in the quiet of your mind.
You’re brushing through the draped entrance of a tent when you spot him: a small boy hiding behind a supply crate, the top of his dusted head poking out over the ledge. You catch him peering at you, and he ducks down shyly. A honeyed grin blooms across your face.
“I think we’re being watched Munch,” you coo. The little ball of robes blinks up at you from your arms, earning his nickname tenfold as he crams his mouth with a flakey cracker. “You want to say hi?” He hums in response and you crouch, letting him wiggle free from you to toddle over to the other child. With small steps, he eventually makes it over to the other and immediately, without hesitation or provocation, extends one of his crackers to him.
Your heart swells until it bursts, proud and beautiful in your chest.
Munch leads him out from behind the box, the two boys shuffling slowly through the dirt back to you. He can’t quite meet your eyes—his gaze lands somewhere around your chin, your collarbone, and you fold forward, bent at the knees to meet his height.
“Do you have a name, sweetheart?” you ask kindly.
He nods, nibbling quietly on the cracker, and you breathe out a chuckle. “Not much of a talker, huh? I can respect that,” you say, eyes crinkling fondly with a smile. “Well if you want to tell me, you can—or not. That’s okay, too.”
He nods again, and you fish out more salty treats from the sleeve in your pack, gently handing them to the other—a gesture he nervously accepts, dirty fingers trembling as he plucks them from your open palm. This boy is precious—sweet faced and cherubic, he must not be a cycle over the age of seven.
And the realization comes so suddenly that it blindsides you—struck by it, there between your lungs: Din was his age when it happened—when life happened to him. When this could have happened to him.
You can’t help but think of it—think of him and everything he told you that night he came bleeding through the Razor Crest. You can’t stop imagining him; Din as a little boy tucked away, his people—his parents—decimated overhead. He is a Mandalorian by proxy. Displaced from his home, from his past, saved by a sect with an affinity for orphans—to protect those who cannot protect themselves. The irony of it all is not lost on you:
Din is a refugee too.
You see him in this boy, and in all the faces here—in every set of eyes, young and old alike. Each are individual - idiosyncratic - but they each wear the same qualifiers. The same exhaustion. They each fight the same tired battle, leaving them with identical sets of marks.
Does Din? If you were to see him, truly see him, would you find them there? You’ve seen the scars he’s earned from being a Mandalorian.
You wonder if he has any from simply being a man.
Pushing yourself to stand upright, you cradle Munch back into your chest, his teensy claws riddling your shirt, and offer the boy your hand—outstretched in front of you.
He’s cautious. Too cautious for a boy so young, for a child who should know nothing but abundant love and fearless imagination. He shouldn’t have had to learn this lesson: that some hands should not be taken, that some people should not be trusted. He studies you, hesitant but hopeful, and you smile softly—cycles of hard-won patience and empathy curving the corners of your lips.
He lays his small hand in your own. You walk on together.
///
The day blows by like hot desert wind, chafing at your skin. Minutes have ripened to hours—morning has crawled to midday.
The three of you finish your rounds— distributing rations throughout the camp, pitching tents, taking stock of the dwindling supplies for you to relay to the Movement once you return to the Crest and have access to your holopad.
It’s then that you notice Arlaani again. She’s speaking in hushed tones with another man, the both of them hunched over a large carton. You see the concern ticked clearly along the man’s jaw, the dread grooved into her brow, her crossed arms. With a frown, you plop the child down onto a nearby petrified log and the other boy joins, hopping up next to him, all too happy to get off his feet. You tell them not to wander off— a kiss to Munch’s forehead, a ruffle of the boy’s hair— before making your way to the couple.
“Hey,” you call, jogging over. “Is everything alright?”
Arlaani wheels around as you approach. It hasn’t been long since you’ve seen her, but somehow she looks older. Hollowed, drained— like there’s less and less in her. “It’s the water,” she grits out, “sand mites have gotten to the crates, to the canteens.” She tosses you one of the flasks. It’s littered with holes, porous and leaking— the remnants of water splashing out of the orifices bitten into the sides.
Arlaani dives through the crate, rifling through the supplies. She’s tense, upset, her voice is rife with it. “They’re all like this. Ruined, fucking—” She heaves out a hissed exhale and props herself up on the edge of the box, neck bowed between her shoulder blades. “This was the last of it, and now—now…”
The man tries his best - how do you comfort marble? - as he places an arm around her, his thumb drawing patterns there, reassuring and calm but she wants nothing of it; she gruffly shrugs it off as if stung, weaseling out of his hold. “I can’t— I need to think,” Arlaani bristles, as she paces away from the settlement, receding deeper into the Wastes.
“I’m sorry,” he stutters, “I have- I have to—” His eyes follow her shrinking form, worry apparent in the shape of them. It’s so obvious. He’s terrified of that woman—probably loves her, too.
“Go,” you say, and with a knowing expression, he turns and trots after her.
Heavy footed, heavy hearted, you trudge back to find the children exactly where you left them. Once there, you collapse to the hard ground, dust and dirt puffing up as you recline onto the log. Your palms run over the earth—scooping up sand and rock and letting it slip through the cracks of your fingers, gaze trained out onto the encampment—the people milling about, the miasma of helplessness stifling the air.
This isn’t enough. You’re not doing enough— these impermanent little nothings, your measly good deeds. It’s not going to matter. They’ll be bones by the time the next wave of volunteers rolls through. They’ll be grain.
You need to do something that lasts, that outlives you when you leave.
You glance over to the kid and his new friend, their little legs swinging off the edge of the trunk, heels thumping against the old wood. They look to you, two pairs of big eyes—crackers in their tiny fists.
“You boys ever dig a well?”
///|||///
The suns roast into his beskar, blistering him from the inside out.
The day has been long and it’s only half over. It took him longer than it should have to gather himself— his fob, his rifle, his fucking head—and depart the Crest. Longer than it should have to hunt the bounty here—some marauder scum who’s number is up and luck has run out. Longer than it should have to set up his sniper’s nest, sculpted into the mountainside.
Din is distracted, has been all day— has been since you left.
He can’t stop feeling you. Your warmth pushing against his chest, your arms looping around his neck, the heat of your palms searing through his flight suit. Din can smell you on him still— like citrus and moss, you cling to his cowl from where you buried your head.
It’s intolerable. It feels like an infection with how it’s been building, how this has spread— slowly but surely rearing to an unignorable head. Serpentine and insidious as it crept through him, this growing affliction— this morbid curiosity that spoiled like rotting stonefruit into infatuation— slipping along his bones and organs, blemishing Din in faint little licks— imperceptible to the naked eye but there all the same.
How did this happen? How did he become this?
You’ve been more relaxed now, bolder in some ways. Transparent. Sometimes, you’ll touch his arm as you walk by him or sweep your hair from your neck when you sit by his side in the cockpit, star shine on your jaw. You’re quick with a laugh, lips pulling back into a pretty grin. He’s even caught you staring at him, there out of the corner of his eye—from where he steals those same glances under the safety of his helm.
He spied you once, just a glimpse of your backside, padding quietly away from the shower with only your underwear on, drops of water tracking down your spine. It was brief, you were fast—you must have forgotten your shirt in your bunk—but he had to lock himself in his quarters and fuck his hand before he could even think about piloting the Crest into the stratosphere.
Din is a lot of things, but he isn’t daft. A part of him knows. A part of him is aware that you are two very human people with very human needs—and that you’ve been ignoring these primal aches with premeditated dereliction for months now.
And you can only dance around each other so long before one of you snaps.
And Maker, he’s so desperate to be rid of you—to get you out of his fucking system; to let him sleep without dreaming of you, to let him wake without plunging into his briefs and jerking himself off. You are everywhere. In his ship, in his galley, in his thoughts. He has no privacy, he has no sanctity— he has no idea how you have managed to worm yourself so deep into every living part of him. Others have tried and they have failed, and you— you did it in your sleep. From that very first fucking night, curled up in his chair, gore and ash stained tunic rising with your slumbered breathing. You snored.
You fucking snored.
And now you’re killing him— just as the suns above, you are blistering him from the inside out.
His level-headedness has all but evaporated. He’s peeved. Not only is Din distracted, but he's angry— has been since he plodded up this damn hill, waiting for his quarry to pass through the ravine between the valley of mountains—because instead of performing his job, he’s consumed with you. All of you.
He kneels, flattening himself against the rocky sand— your hands, so small and soft against him— and unclips the rifle from the strap on his back—how good you’d feel on his skin—he aligns his sights— the weight of your breasts in his palms—
His helmeted head clunks to the ground and he loses his aim, a frustrated growl emanating out from him. Focus, Mando. Fucking focus.
Din reorients his crosshair, training it on the gang of pirates in the gorge below. They lean haphazardly over their speeders, their cargo nets packed full with different wares and spices, jeering loudly and chugging from the jugs of spotchka they undoubtedly looted earlier that afternoon. He inspects the rabble, searching for his target and—those pretty lips that smile so easy for him, stretched around his length.
Fuck. He pinches his eyes shut.
You whispering husky into his ear as you ride him, you bent over the pilot’s chair begging for his cock, you sprawled out over the deck while he laps at your sweet cunt.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck— he can’t do this. He can’t fucking do this. You’re everywhere everywhere everywhere— you buffer his vision, his senses, his sight. He’s blinded with you. You’re blinding him.
With an infuriated heave he shoves himself off the ridge of the dune, bounty-less, and reverses his course back to the Crest—heart beating furious and bloody against his ribs.
///
The settlers surround the trench, peering down at you as you work. Hours ago, when you originally proposed this idea to Arlaani, they insisted on helping— to which of course, you insisted they didn’t. And so they watch— the refugees, Din’s foundling, the nameless boy— mangling their hands restlessly, animated with an inkling of that all too lethal substance long sought after by those of all species and creeds: hope.
You sink the shovel into the dry earth and your muscles burn with the effort—the skin on your palms stings from the rough grate of the wooden dowel and the yawn of your back strains as you pitch forward.
You’ve missed this.
You’ve been so distracted. You’ve grown comfortable in your routines, you’ve let yourself go listless—living in blissful ignorance—all because of a metal man in his metal ship with the most impossible and darling child you’ve ever known. All because your body reacts at the very sight of him, all because your belly flips when he speaks, that modulated purr rumbling loose from his beskar, all because, because—
You like him.
You wish you didn’t—you hardly know why you do—but you’ve soaked your fingers enough times in your rack to realize that this thing residing within you burns.
You can’t even see his face, and you don’t have to. His presence alone— that raw, vacuous energy that surges from him—it’s addicting. It's engulfing. It makes you whimper into the night, massaging your pearled clit as your other hand muffles your moans and you come over and over and over again, chasing after the fantasy you so dangerously harbor for this man. The man who’s piloting you back to Coruscant—the man who sleeps just down the hall.
But that isn’t real. That’s not real life— that’s not your life. This is real—the fuchsia of the setting suns blazing through the horizon, the sweat on your brow. You’ve missed this— Maker, you need this. Working with your hands, making an impact. You’re wanted here and kriff, does that not feel so unabashedly right. To be wanted. To be important.
Your back groans, the sinew woven over your spine aching in protest and you know, without a doubt, you’ll feel this for the next week. Half of you dreads it—being cooped up and sore, lactic acid compacting your joints— while the other excites at the prospect; the memory of a good deed lasting long after it’s finished. That reminder always there, always present: see, there’s still hope in the galaxy. We can still do good. There’s goodness where you look for it.
You fling dirt over your shoulder as you burrow lower and lower. With each shove, the soil changes hue, changes density—the striations darker, more definitive. It’s less dry now, thicker too—turning from sand to clay the deeper you dig. Again, you drive the spade into the sod with a taxed grunt, when you hear a distinct, wet squish.
You pause, stilling your shovel in the dirt. Everything - everyone - freezes.
Adrenaline thrums through you as you drop to your knees, using your hands to brush away loose silt piled atop the loamy floor, excavating what lies beneath.
Prayers and hollers erupt above you and you lurch your focus up to the sound, a feverish grin plastered to your face. The little boy jostles the child excitedly, and his green talons rumple the other’s tattered tunic. Your head falls back, cushioned by the dirt wall and you laugh - gargled, relieved - as water begins to seep through the tired ground.
Bubbling up, bubbling up—unearthing.
///
The promise of ridding yourself of your soiled clothes was the singular thought that fueled your trek back to the Crest. Every inch of you was filthy, caked in dried mud and gritty sand and you wanted nothing more than to strip from those dirty layers and melt into your bedroll. The kid, that lucky little bugger, had passed right out; sun drunk from his long day, he’d slept the entirety of the return trip—stirring only once when you placed him in the hover pram and sealed it shut.
Your bones are worn. Your tissue, your tendons— every little scrap that keeps you stitched together craves sleep. You reckon you should feel miserable, what with the tell-tale stiffness already burdening your spine and the fresh callus from the shovel’s handle reddening your palm.
But you’re not miserable, not even close. No, you’re happy—you’re glowing; fulfilled and serene, humming as you wash your pants in the basin, kneading at the sopping fabric. You wring out the article, shaking free the excess droplets before draping it on a metal rung overhead. You peel off your shirt and bra band next, leaving you only in your underwear as you plop them into the bowl and begin to scrub at the stains, concentrating on a particularly dirty patch at the sleeve.
The grating mechanics of the Crest’s great jaw unhinging sends your stomach bounding frantic to your lungs.
Kriff—shit shit shit, he’s back early.
Clutching onto your modesty, you cover your breasts and scramble to your quarters, quickly shimming a loose tunic over your head. Its hem barely covers the curve of your ass and you tug long at the cloth before peeking cautiously from the doorway and tiptoeing out of your room.
“Hey,” you warble, rounding a corner as solid feet pound up the ramp—you can feel their reverberations in the floor under your own. You pad into the galley, pulling at your shirt as you go, to tidy up the washing you left unattended. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you so—”
You falter.
He’s there at the mouth of the ship, the ramp drawing slowly up behind him and he’s fuming; you can practically see the steam lifting from his armor and his breathing is labored—chest rising, plummeting violently. You both stand immobilized on opposite sides of the hull—you, bare-legged and exposed and Din, all but anonymous under the steeled fury of his armor. Finally, the sound dampens, ship shuddering as she seals shut—sealing you in—and the leather of his fist creaks in the silence hanging dense like smoke around you.
“Mando...?”
He doesn’t grace you with a response. Instead he begins to stalk forward, stripping weapon after weapon from himself with every thundering step—rifle, blaster, vibroblade—he sloughs it all, metal clanging against metal as they clatter to the deck.
“Hey, what’s wrong-”
He’s not stopping. Fuck, he’s getting closer and closer and instinctually you back up—staggering until you’re pressed against the bulkhead—his broad frame crowding you until all you see is the silver polish of his beskar. You jolt when his hands fly up and slam into the wall behind you, framing either side of your head, fencing you between his forearms. Your lips part, wide-eyed and confused, and you gulp around the nervous lump threatening your voice.
“Do you have any idea,” he seethes, “what you do to me?”
“W-What-” Your stammering is cut short as he slots his thigh between your legs and you have to tilt your chin to meet his visor, a gasp finding itself on your tongue.
“Strutting around my ship, putting your hands on me, that kriffing smile…” Din ruts his knee into your heat, and you’re practically hoisted onto your toes. Your core pulses against the blunt pressure, blood racing to the throb at your center.
Maker, you could fucking faint.
“Do you know how long I’ve thought about this—about you?” His voice is tar black—smooth like obsidian—and you succumb to it. You can’t speak; any and all language evaporating from the forefront of your mind, because he’s everywhere. He’s inescapable and smothering and his scent floods over you, intoxicatingly wild—like iron and sand and something dangerous. Something heady, carnal.
“Is this what you want?” he hisses.
You’ve gone dumb. You’ve imagined this, you’ve dreamt of this, but now it’s actually happening—here, in the flesh, it’s finally happening and you’re trembling with the reality of it. All you can muster is a shaky nod, tongue darting out over your lip.
“Tell me,” he orders, scanning your face behind the guise of his helm. You feel his gaze rove over your eyes, your cheek—fanning across your lips.
Your breath hitches.
“Yes,” you whisper, “yes I want this.“
It’s all it takes.
Din is rougher than he means to be. He wears this as he wears his armor, plating the soft parts of himself he doesn’t want anyone touching. He doesn’t know anything else. He doesn’t know how to be anyone else but this.
He grabs a handful of your waist, rooting you still as he rolls his thigh against you. You inhale an airy noise, grappling onto his other arm stationed by your head and you bite your lip, sucking it into your mouth. Your cunt spasms for him as he presses up into your mound, fightless against the groan that seeps through you.
“You like that?” he pants. ”You like fucking my thigh?”
Din manhandles your hips, his hold on you vicious as he rocks you back and forth on his plated leg, your clit catching on the cold edge of his thigh guard with each motion. It sends hot sparks down your spine and you trap a moan behind your teeth, letting the sound rumble there before you swallow it. His hand weaves up from your waist, the drag of his glove setting fire to your skin as he passes over the swell of your clothed breast, and you arch into his palm as he swipes a thumb over a nipple. “You want more?”
He splays his large hand, groping at your plump flesh, and pinches your nipple hard until it pebbles through your shirt. With each sharp twist, his intention becomes clearer: it won’t be enough to skate by on moans alone.
“I asked you a question.”
Din slides his other hand to the small of your back, drawing you flush to his front, and you can feel him— the outline of his firm length twitching under his flight suit against your hip. He cranes over you, intimidating and menacing and achingly devious. The panel of his visor has never looked darker.
“Use your words, dala,” he husks.
You should be embarrassed by this—by your need made evident through the soaked lining of your underwear—but you aren’t. The heat that stipples your cheeks isn’t born from shame, it’s sprung from lust—pure and primal—and you can’t afford to give it any further consideration because all there is is this man wrenching sounds from you like an animal— and he’s scarcely even touched you yet.
“Your fingers,” you whimper, “I want your hands."
He learned this lesson within those first weeks—relearns it every fucking day. You could ask him for anything - everything - and he would oblige.
He can’t say no to you.
He shifts out from between you, hooking into the elastic of your panties and tears them down your thighs to rest just above your knees, the spread of your legs keeping them from dropping to your ankles.
Patiently - tortuously - he scrapes up your legs, leaving embers in his wake as he trails higher higher higher to where you need him most. You’re shivering—nerve endings fried and frayed—and every atom inside you hums with anticipation, with unbridled impulse.
The orange tips of his gloves dimple your inner thighs - squeezing, massaging - before he tilts his helmet, angling himself to see you better, and paws your swollen lips apart.
Your pussy is drooling for him.
He moans something indecipherable— a curse in Mando’a—at the sight of you glistening for him under the dimmed lights like this, and immediately you buck your pelvis to him, hungry for his touch—and the pathetic noises babbling out of you prove too much for him to bear.
“Fuck this,” he snarls, ripping a glove off and tossing it aside, “I need to feel you.”
Your eyes have dilated with want, blackened as you watch Din retrace his bare hand—that gorgeous thing you’ve never seen, only ever fantasized about—back to your heat and slowly - so fucking slowly - pass a finger through your slit.
You throw your head back, knocking against the durasteel. The mewl that escapes you is inhuman.
He’s so warm. His tan skin is molten—it’s like he brought the sun in with him, as if he’s burning that star straight into your sex. You’re slippery with arousal; you can feel how glossed you are, you don’t have to look. You can hear it—hear the obscene squelches he’s stroking from your seam.
“Maker, you’re - shit - you’re wet,” he groans loudly, reveling in the way you pitch your hips—seeking his warmth, his friction. He’s been toying with you, drawing patterns along your pussy and playing with your puffy folds, but he hasn’t even come close to your clit. You know it’s no accident. Din is methodical in all things, he doesn’t make mistakes. This is a decision—it’s intentional. You think, perhaps, he’s looking to break you—some sort of retribution for these months you’ve spent swimming in circles around each other—and you think, perhaps, you’d let him.
That you’d like it.
When Din grants you mercy, finally gliding his index along your neglected bundle of nerves, reflexively you fist into his cowl, knuckles going pale.
“Stars-” you exclaim—just like that.
He handles your body like he does one of his pistols - practiced, unparalleled - encircling your clit with precision, his finger on your trigger—blinding, perfect agony swiveled into your sweet cleft.
When he pushes himself inside you, all the oxygen gets punched out of your lungs.
“Fuck, and so tight,” Din growls, bending at the knuckle to curl over that spongy spot of your walls that makes you gape, makes your brain go slack. Your arms scamper around his pauldrons, nails scraping sharp over beskar. The heel of his hand presses into your clit and you grind against him, each roll of your hips pleading a filthy please please please as you chase after the orgasm he’s baiting you with.
He responds to that, bourboned praise dripping smug from his smirk. “Fuck, look at you, so desperate—gonna cum for me already?”
You don’t have the wherewithal to formulate a response. He’s fit another finger into you, fucking up into you hard—fucking you exactly how you need him to. It feels like you are about to shatter right there on your feet. It’s almost unbearable, this mounting tension that’s climbing within you. You’ve been so starved for this, so deprived of a kind touch and a good fuck, and within no time at all he’s coaxing you to the ledge of your release.
“Mando,” you sob, entwining your fingers into his cape, grinding grinding grinding into his palm when suddenly, without warning, his ministrations cease—that burning coil abating to a simmer. You let out a rasped pant, collapsing forward onto his shoulder— your climax ripped away from you at the last, pivotal second.
Your eyes are screwed shut, you don’t see the movement—you can only feel it once it’s already there: the bounty hunter’s glove grating over your neck. You sputter out a gasp as he forces your jaw up to align with the chill of his visor, trapped in the unrelenting strength of his grasp. Your eyes clamber around the chrome boxing you in, gulping back the fear coalescing in your mouth.
“You say my name,” he gravels. “You say my name when I’m inside you.”
Your cunt spasms around the fingers still seated within you—aching for movement, aching to cum—and your lower lip quivers as he leers. “I gave it to you—say it,” he commands.
For a fleeting moment, in the remaining rational corner of your brain, it occurs to you that you’re terrified—that there may be no going back once you speak it. There’s no unmaking this choice. Like a door—a door that swings both ways—once it is cracked ajar, it cannot be closed again. Because you know yourself, you loathe to admit it, but you know his name will crumble you; that you will bend—that you will want to give and give and give to him— and still, despite, you lay onto the handle and fling that door wide open.
“Din.”
“Fuck,” he seethes. His reaction is visceral—the whole of him stiffens, leathered pads of his fingertips searing into your throat. “Again.”
“Din,” you whine as he rocks his fingers into your walls.
He moans, wanton and guttural, at the way his name tumbles from you like velvet. “Good girl—fuck, that’s good.”
He vanishes from your neck, bringing his hand down to cup his cock bulging painfully against the fabric there and your gaze snaps to it, saliva pooling in the well of your mouth. You slither your hand down his breast plate, over the paneling of his flight suit, trailing south until it lands on the hide of his glove. You stop, waiting there - breathless - until he nods curtly.
His hand falls away. You mold your palm to his length.
“Din,” you give freely, high-pitched and girly, and his cock brays under your hand. Fuck, he’s big—you can feel his mass through his pants and your pussy flutters around his fingers moving deliciously lazy inside you. Your eyes latch onto his, the brown of them hidden somewhere under the helm, and you can feel his own bore into you, weighing leaden there—
before you both simultaneously rupture.
Din’s fingers slip out of you to fiddle with the hem of his pants, unbuttoning in a clumsy flourish until he springs free with a groan of relief.
Maker.
He’s fucking divine—long and veined, with a patch of dark curls padding around the base of him. Din weeps for you already, frustrated and pent up from the confines of his restraints, beads of arousal dappling his head. He hisses as you swipe a digit over his cock, smearing his precum down the silken slope of him. You’re transfixed—the both of you staring as you wrap your hand around his shaft and he shudders, keening in to your touch.
“Mm, fuck you’re soft- kriff-”
Din dwarfs you—you barely fit around his girth—and he can’t help but buck into your palm as you begin to move in tandem. Din flicks at your clit, mirroring your pace as you get each other off. It’s awkward and lewd and perfect—both of you, a tapestry of woven limbs and sweat and you pump him harder and harder, choking his cock with your fist. You fuck him raw, the dry drag of your satin hand ripping curses from his mouth.
“Fuck, dala,” he pants, “I-I’m not—” I’m not gonna last. His words are snuffed out as you circle your wrist and brush a thumb over his leaking tip, forcing him to shiver. He doesn’t have to finish his thought, you understand plenty well. You’re dancing along that same precipice, flirting with the fall.
“Stars, yes,” you plead. Fuck, you want him to cum— you need him to. You need to make him feel good, to let him know that you’re here - you’re right here - and that he means more to you than you care to admit; that you want him—have since you first laid eyes on him, since he rescued you, since he took you back to the Crest and gave you the last of his bacta to heal all your splintered bits. That he deserves this—with all that he’s done for you, all that he’s doing for you—
with all that he his.
“Din—please.” Fuck, you don’t even know what you’re asking for—more of him, all of him—and a groan tears through his modulator at the sound of you begging his name—like he’s wounded, like it pains him to hear you say it.
It’s a race now—the two of you hurdling headlong towards this terrible, messy collision. You’re both sloppy—wet sounds and slaps of skin—as you stumble closer to the brink of release. He’s been rendered incoherent, chiseled down to the basest of grunts and broken words you don’t recognize. His thumb finds a devastating pressure on your swollen nub and your legs begin to vibrate, nearly unable to stand on your own two feet with how fucking perfectly he’s working your pussy.
This thing inside you feels giant - monstrous - and that slow wave that’s been building and building and cresting is here, upon you. You’re trapped in the barrel of it, and it’s going to crash at any moment and sweep you out to sea. Drown you—happily, gladly. “I’m - oh fuck—"
“That’s it, good girl,” he praises, tightening his circles on your clit. “Cum for me, cum on my hand-”
A crack of lightening streaks up your middle, the whole of you shaking as your orgasm rushes through, a sputtering cry let loose into the ship. You feel yourself gush, dripping past his thickness stuffing you full, dripping down your inner thighs. Din pulls out from you and you whimper at the loss—his absence leaving you gaping, leaving you bereft. You’re siphoning down air, dizzy from your release, when he raises his hand, glistening with your fluids, and traces your bottom lip—asking for entrance.
Fuck.
You part for him, eager and pliant, and he snakes two fingers inside—tasting your own tang and the leather residue left there, stamped into the whirls of his fingerprints. Your tongue swirls around them, laving him clean, and you drag over the ridges of his shaft— still hard and throbbing and waiting in your grasp. He bobs his fingers in your mouth, matching you thrust for thrust, and you let out a depraved little moan, humming around him, and all Din can do is watch.
Watch as he disappears between your lips—his skin pulling and catching on your plush flesh— watch as you suck on them, watch as he practically fucks your throat. And Maker, you take him so fucking well, letting him do what he pleases with your all too supple body.
He can’t even begin to imagine what his cock would look like—what it would feel like nestled in the hot cavern of your mouth, hollowing your cheeks to suck him like hard candy. Din doesn’t let himself—can’t. If he did, fuck, that’d be it. He’d be done for. He knows he’d cum in a flash and he wants to make this last—to hold on to this - onto you - for as long as he can, allow himself this singular concession. The only time, he convinces himself, the last time.
He won’t think about you again.
He won’t think about you again.
He won’t think about you again.
You quicken your rhythm and Din bucks wildly into your palm, his seizing and twitching alerting you to how close he is. He slides from your mouth, a string of saliva trailing along after as he clasps onto the back of your neck.
“I’m gonna cum, I’m—” Din knots into your hair, gripping you rough, panting frantic. “Fuck. Fuck, dala— cyare-”
With a hoarse shout, he slams his gloved fist into the durasteel and spills over himself in hot, thick pumps, spurts shooting out to splatter on your tunic, on his flight suit, on your knuckles. You ease him through it, his cum glazing down his cock before you slow to a languid stroke, his seed sticky under your palm. You’re panting, the both of you, spent noises reverberating ugly and loud against the metal sidings.
Din sinks his helmet to your forehead while you catch your breath, his cold beskar kissing your flushed skin—the density of it comforting, grounding. Your eyes teeter shut and you let yourself lean into him, a dazed grin tugging at your wet lips. This is— nice; so much gentler than the pace he drove not minutes before. Head to head, his hand buried in your hair, your arm slung over his hulking shoulders; your fingers thread into the askew fabric behind his neck to discover a sliver of skin treasured away underneath. You trace there - lightly, whispered - earning a fizzle of static sent whirring through his vocoder.
“Fuck,” Din mumbles, before unweaving himself and separating from you. Your legs have gone useless and rubbery—you almost face plant forward without him there— and by the time you blink open, he’s already tucked himself into his pants and picked up his glove, slotting it over those skilled fingers that had just filled you to the brim. He turns back round to find you staring at him through the haze of your afterglow, eyes glassy and fucked out; your fluids dribbling down towards your underwear still bunched above your knees, hair tangled with sweat and saliva and cum—his and yours.
You look wrecked—disheveled. You’re so fucking pretty it makes Din want to scream.
He picks up a stray rag from a crate and offers it to you, before silently sliding your panties back up to your hips in one dexterous swipe. He lingers there but for a moment, savoring the touch of you—grazing a digit into the crease of your hip. You’re rendered mute— your brain can hardly string a sentence together— but finally you manage, your voice weak when you find it again.
“Thank you,” you croak, wiping away the traces of him off your knuckles, and you smile coquettish, delirious. “That was… that was, uhm—I really enjoyed that.”
A quiet beat slogs by.
And then, everything shifts.
Din’s hand descends from your waist, holstering it to his side, and he moves away. He moves away from you.
You can feel it immediately—like a gust of chilled wind, the change in the air nips at you. Din’s armor is anything but warm—his presence, his aura, anything but inviting—but now, he seems farther from you than ever before, his visor tempered and steely.
You know him. You know this man. You’ve travelled with him, you’ve mended his ills, you’ve taken care of his son, you’ve spoken his name, you’ve laid prints on his skin and deeper still—
And here, before you, Din is white noise. Indiscernible. Unreadable.
Nervously, you twiddle with the frayed edge of the stained cloth, worrying your cheek. You swear, just for a second, that you see him inch towards you— you think you sense him, some part of him, breaching the chasm that’s formed between you. But it’s only a trick of the lowlight—a trick of your cruel heart, winged and errant beneath your ribs, misconstruing your thoughts to fancy.
Because he doesn’t. He doesn’t come to you like you want. He doesn’t touch you again, he doesn’t hold you like you need.
It feels like you’re withering—your legs too bare, your tunic too short, hair too mussed, eyes too bleary—everything feels wrong now, misplaced. “Din,” you start, you try—you try to keep attached to this tether, to this thin strand you’ve sewn between your bodies, but he shrinks back. He severs it. He is as you first met him. Rigid. Distant. A Mandalorian bounty hunter— the best in the parsec. He is as he was months ago, when you were strangers.
When you were nothing.
“I—” He silences himself, teeth clenching shut around the unspoken sentiment you so long to hear, and instead takes another step backwards. Farther away. Farther from you.
He stands straighter, impossibly taller, and you feel
small.
“Goodnight,” Din gives, his voice shrouded and cloaked by his modulator. He pivots on his heel, retreating into the depths of the Crest and leaves you there, the ghost of his hands on your neck, on your breasts, in your heat— still tingling from where they haunt you. Exhausted, you thud back into the bulkhead, unfocused and unseeing.
“Goodnight Din,” you murmur, but it falls upon deaf ears. He’s gone, and the empty hull swallows your words—burying them.
taggies:
@girlimjusttryingtoreadfanfics @pedros-mustache @miranhas-art @djarrex @bookloverfilmoholic @keeper0fthestars @misguidedandbeguiled @bookishofalder @helmet-comes-off @grumpymuffinmama @niiight-dreamerrrr @spideysimpossiblegirl @janebby @greatcircle79 @djarinsbeskar @sammysdaisy @whataperfectwasteoftime @mandobloggin @silver-streaked-wings
#din djarin x reader#din djarin x you#din djarin x fem!reader#mando x reader#mando x you#mando x fem!reader#din djarin#the mandalorian#pedro pascal#star wars fanfic#the mandalorian fanfic#king of cups#mandalorian smut
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Much Better
A supernatural soap opera moment, Cerberus and Kia, featuring Aera (Sorcery Leader) - and the Demon lord's nemesis**, birchbark. As always, any and all questions welcomed, and thank you endlessly for taking the time to read my fics and meet my darlings. 💗💗
**or one of them, anyway.
--
Aera answers the archive chamber door with a fair bit more force and a significantly more frazzled expression than Kia had been expecting, and she double checks the time because of it. Okay, she’s definitely early, but not super early. Still, these hierarchy meetings often didn’t run to schedule, so…
“Hey, sorry, I can wait if…”
“Oh, gods, you’re welcome to him.” Aera turns to yell over her shoulder, “DeVille! Your much better half is here!” before returning her attention to Kia. She smirks wryly at the sound of a violent sneeze and a muted blessing or two from further inside. “He’s been a total delight.”
She addresses this as much to Cerberus as to Kia, the Demon king joining them at the threshold, more than a little dishevelled, crumpled tissues in hand and any semblance of patience clearly a thing of the past.
“Don’t expect me to appease your ridiculous lack of foresight with unwarranted courtesies,” Cerberus counters, his tone one of vivid, seething finality despite the congestion blunting his consonants. “If you’d given any thought to this…how th…hH… HHAHTSSCHuu!” He pushes chaotic ebony back from his face, sniffles forcefully. “This entire place is an allergen!”
“Entire place.” Aera scoffs. “Right.”
Cerberus blows his nose with the rough impatience of someone who is entirely sick of having to do so, excuses himself all the same, and sniffles again immediately against an itch that refuses to recede. “You have the room temperature set to something just shy of subarctic for reasons I cannot fathom and a level of birchbark usage enough to permeate the damn walls, which frankly should count as an entirety on its own, and as per usual, the place is a dustbowl.” He challenges Aera directly. “What exactly am I missing?”
Kia remains in wide-eyed, silent observance, her attentions fixed, intent mesmeric, on her bonded in beautiful disarray. She glances across at Aera, whose reaction is…very much not the same.
The Sorcery Leader’s reply is clipped, curt. “This is not your department.”
“Of…” His breath snags on urgent need, desperate and overwhelming, and Cerberus against all his wishes is forced to abandon his riposte to consuming physical insistence. He Creates the latest in a series of handkerchiefs he’s completely lost count of now and buries his face in it. “Ah-TSSCH-uu! Ahh-HEHTSCHUU! Goddamn it.” Another determined sniffle and he presses the back of his hand against his nose with significant force, returns to his point forthwith. “Of course it’s not my department! My department gets dusted more than once a… hh-HH…once a centuryyiAAHTSCHHuu!” The relentless tickle escalates demanding, unstoppable, and there’s nothing he can do about it but sneeze again, heavy, powerful. “Hh-AHHTSCHHUU! Gods!” He sniffles repeatedly, infuriated, and rubs irritated, reddened eyes and nose, wills still-hitchy breathing to submit for long enough to conclude with a furious, “And there’s no damn birchbark in it!”
Kia offers him a quiet blessing as he excuses himself and blows his nose again, which he acknowledges with a Mindsent apology laced with frustration.
“I thought you didn’t have a dust allergy. That’s the official line, right? Until you do, that is.” Aera rolls her eyes. “Godssakes, Cerbie.”
Cerberus, with a quiet sound somewhere between a dark chuckle and a snarl, flexes a hand; miniature wildfires dartdancing across his fingers for the briefest of moments the only warning before the chamber door is wreathed in virulent flames, crumbling to smoking ash and embers in seconds.
Aera makes a small startled half-shriek that she quickly redirects to outrage. “Holy crap, Cerberus, what the hell?!”
“Oh, did that inconvenience you at all? If only I’d been able to foresee that somehow and perhaps take steps to prevent it.”
“Seriously?! Okay, fine! Okay! Point taken! Gods! You burnt down my door, you…”
“You know perfectly well you can fix that in minutes. I, on the other hand, am probably going to be sneezing all night.” An indignant sniffle follows, pronounced and determined, though despite his best efforts his breathing remains erratic, unreliable. His brow creases slightly, his attention momentarily diverted as Kia Mindsends him pure sensation sympathy, calmative and gentle, and he meets her gaze in an appreciative, already shaky pause he knows is not going to last.
“I can fix it in minutes eventually! The Create part of it, sure! But I have to measure and prep and redo the whole…”
“Ah-HEHTSHhuu!”
Aera sighs, genuflects ostentatiously before straightening and raising a defiant middle finger. “Bless you, Your fucking Majesty. I’m done,” she snaps, and re-enters the chamber, Creating a makeshift temporary screen where the door used to be as she does so. She dearly wishes she could slam it.
“AHTSSCHUU! *snf!* Gods, honestly!” Cerberus turns his attention to Kia in vexed apology, anger shifting to a frustrated weariness. “Sorry, love. Excuse me.” He blows his nose firmly, rubbing it repeatedly in another futile effort to quiet the demanding itch, takes a deliberately cautious, unsteady breath he doesn’t truly trust.
“Bless you, hon.” Kia moves to him, places a gentle hand on his arm. “Should I even ask how your day’s been?”
“Argued with Aera, sneezed a lot. I’m fairly sure that covers it.” With a sharp, strong sniffle, he pushes newly disarrayed midnight from his face, manages a sardonic half-smile for his bonded. “You, darkling?”
Kia laughs softly, empathically. “Aw, sweetheart. Come here.” She embraces him warmly, wrapping one arm around his waist and reaching up with the other to weave her hand through his hair. On tiptoe, she touches a series of soft kisses to his neck in precursor to honeysultry whispersoft suggestion of never mind all that forget everything focus on me babe just me come here honey come here forget everything else now just me babe it’s alright and a Mindsent sensorial aetherwave of calm, of sanctuary, skin-on-skin heat and she moves closer again, cups his face in her hands, kisses him with lascivious invitation unmissable, relax sweetheart it’s over come to me and all is imagery and infusion suggestion distraction seduction take me home babe in flame and velvet heat and hot tub bedroom hearthside blazing slip between warm satin sheets in early night slowdance splendour sweetheart breathe now babe just me just us and she is perfect, she is haven and boudoir and everything, everything, everyth…
Well, almost everything.
Cerberus, wanting nothing more than to immerse in such pleasures and reciprocate without distraction, is nevertheless unable to do so; with a fleeting frown and helpless inhalation his focus dissolves in sudden desperate need and he stifles two rapid-fire sneezes against his shoulder. “hpt-XCH! hh…HXTchu!” Not enough, it’s never enough, and there’s not a thing he can do save submit. He conveys apology as best he can through watering eyes, brings Kia’s head with one firm arm tight against his chest in protection, and turns to sneeze into crooked elbow, powerful and possessing. “Huh-AAHTSSCHHuu!”
Kia’s pulse spikes and she gasps a constricted, involuntary Mm! and inhales deeply before purring a blessing still more breathless than she’d intended, as her beloved excuses himself with a quiet, exasperated groan, sniffles in unreliable recovery.
Cerberus shakes his head just very slightly, wondering pointedly – and not for the first time – if there’s any way that he can just eliminate silver birch from the face of the Underworld and be done with this nonsense once and for all, and looks at his bonded in consternation. “Love, I meant it when I said I’ll probably be sneezing the rest of the...”
Kia curls her hand around the back of his neck, through his hair, silences his words with impassioned kiss, and Mindsends a resolute, heatcertain :It doesn’t matter.:
“It’s just… *SNF!* ...chances are fairly high that I’ll sneeze on you.” A hitch of breath he forcibly suppresses, knows it can’t last.
:Promises, promises.:
“I…I don’t…”
“It. Doesn’t. Matter,” she repeats, entwining herself around him once again. “Trust me.” Her touch heatseeking, direct, undeniable. “I am going to make everything—” An insistent, inviting certainty infused luxurious and redolent as she switches to Mindsend, the crimson charisma carnal.
:—so much better.:
--
#my writing#my OCs#supernatural soap opera#cerberus and kia#cerbia#cerberus#his dust ‘sensitivity’ is one thing but when it’s birchbark dealing the damage he truly has no recourse.
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Like A Good Neighbor (sfw safe vore)
[M/nb vore with fearplay. safe soft oral non-sexual]
A tale of the Mystic Woods! Featuring Yonah HaEsh and Myran the Dwarf Witch and many other fun characters!
A story of bad first impressions and making new friends! Lots of GT, and a cute little adventure at a magical farmer’s market!
Warning: Careful there are references to Fa.tal! An example would be “ogres are far more likely to eat smallfolk than giants!” (implying that said actions are deadly). That is the extent of such references!
Other warning: mild harm during the immediate post-vore scene. Yonah just goes a little too far in scaring Myran.
——/——////——
“Did you hear?”
“Have you been told?”
“A new resident!”
“I haven’t checked it out myself! But Ms Zukkar told me-”
“A wizard!”
“Didn’t there used to be an old sorcerer there?”
“-new guy’s a witch!”
“So, hear about that new giant!”
“A giant wouldn’t fit in that tower! And wizards is all human!”
“A criminal, on the run they say”
“Maybe a magician? They like towers sometimes!”
“His Majesty wouldn’t hire a criminal!”
“-supposed to be evil?”
There were so many rumors being flung around that the dwarf witch Myran Gamadin decided to see for themselves and set out to investigate. Undoubtedly there was a new resident. The story was that he was a Mage, and a criminal, but also just expelled from The Academy of Wizardry. And a giant? That was strange, the old tower was much too small for a giant! Even if it was magic it was only 10ft taller than your average giant in the first place. However… they did hear about the trial of a giant recently… stuff that happened in the civilized court didn’t really concern those in the Woods.
“Why would you go to see a villain? You’re not evil!”
The World’s Largest™ Maine Coon cat trotted alongside the handsome young dwarf, looking more like an oddly fluffy pony than a cat.
“It’s important to know your neighbors! Even the evil ones!”
Siv flicked his tail up into his witch’s face.
“And he’s got to be just a young man! So young and the expectations on evil mages is so high! He will appreciate a friendly face!” Myran had done the math. If this Mage hadn’t even graduated from The Academy, he was at most 23. Unless he started his education late. But they doubted this.
“Why are we walking! You have your broom!” the cat complained.
“That’s for the tower, Siv. It’s one of those designed by assholes who think it’s clever to have the only entrance be the window at the top.”
“Hrfff,” said Siv.
“Do you think he will appreciate the house-warming gift? I didn’t really spend much time on it…”
“Fresh fish would be better.”
“Maybe if he were a cat. This is for a Mage.”
“Clippings of magical plants? Maybe for another witch. This is someone who was studying Wizardry.”
“Wizards use magical plants too!”
“Yeah, they buy them from witches!”
As the pair stepped out of the trees, they froze.
“I think he’ll like the gift,” Siv admitted as he And Myran stood in awe at the largest magical garden either of them had ever seen.
It wasn’t even finished yet! Plots of earth were freshly turned, and piles of wood, half built into beds that lay in patterns across the clearing. And massively spread apart. At least 3 meters between plots. And the finished ones. Well. They already had some amazing specimens. Even if they were just sprouting. Myran noticed the Twisted WyrmFern and harpy’s breath; delicate, but common magical plants that were being used to test out the soil. It was working great.
The garden did make Myran worry a bit.
Maybe this wasn’t a wizard at all! It could be a witch. And he could be very evil indeed. Even evil witches treated their gardens with the utmost care and attention.
But they had come this far. And the tower that looked over the garden was calling to them. Well. Not really. The green-black thorny vines screamed “STAY AWAY!” But when one had a flying broomstick, one didn’t need to heed such warnings.
Flipping their broom around like a baton, they sat side saddle and Siv hopped on the end, somehow managing to balance his prodigious fluff. They took off. And flew into the window.
“WOAAAHHH!”
It was like hitting an unexpected and large wave on a boogie board, but a magical one that flowed through the body! And Myran had never been to the ocean, so it made their brain swim.
The room, which from the outside looked normal, was anything but. The rumors of this being a giant were not just rumors.
This place was HUGE!
And yet, it was much too small.
Growing up, Myran had visited some giant villages with their family. They hadn’t been THAT much smaller then, but the houses and items in the village were definitely much larger. While giant mages certainly existed, they had their own traditions and made their own supplies.
This looked exactly like the workshop for a young wizard, with additions for the wizard being a giant. It was wild to see some of the common arcane tools at such an immense scale.
Flying over, Myran saw that the resident Mage had an ancient book under a magnifying glass, and had been translating it, with notes and commentary. Spell equations and diagrams were additionally copied in a dedicated smaller notebook.
While it was surely a fascinating read, they could tell at a glance the notes were somewhere in the middle of an involved spell, and they didn’t want to be the reason the Mage lost his place. The workbench had plenty of other diverting materials.
Siv had no interest in such things and curled up against the base of the magnifying glass. The sun hit the metal through the window, making it quite warm.
Myran put their broom down and explored the desk. There were several magical tombs! Rare ones! They flipped through and saw fresh handwritten notes tucked inside. Smart, this mage did not want to tarnish the original pages. There was also an open notebook and a few spell components laid out.
They stepped carefully back onto the notebook to get a better idea of what this wizard was up to. The notebook was written in giant, which Myran wasn’t fluent in but got the gist of. So this was indeed a giant wizard. Fascinating.
That’s what they were thinking until...
FEE FI FO FUM!
Myran nearly jumped out of their boots.
No longer fascinating. Very bad. Very dangerous! They’d heard stories that quoted these lines, classic, even amusing. However, hearing them bellowed by an actual giant nearly stopped their heart. These words were so loud and so immediately panic-inducing, especially when accompanied by thundering footsteps.
I SMELL THE BLOOD OF THE-
There was a pause and maybe a stutter
DWARVEN KIND!
The trap door off center in the room burst open and a giant with a mane of black hair, a trimmed goatee, and a wizard’s hat, climbed out. He was smiling, snarling, showing off impressive fangs.
USELESS TO FLEE, USELESS TO FIGHT, FOR YOU WILL BE MY MEAL TONIGHT!
Eat them!? Oh No. Myran scrambled to their feet as the giant advanced.
Siv had gone catatonic, or nearly, and fled behind the mirror. But Myran just stood there. The next thing they knew, they were in the giant's fist… AND THEN IN ITS MOUTH! There was a brief moment where they thought the giant was going to bite them in half… but no. Worse than that, the giant fulfilled his promise to make a meal of Myran by swallowing them whole.
Never had Myran imagined themselves in this predicament. Witches, as far as they knew, were not prone to being eaten by giants! Giants ate thieves, slayers, adventurers! Though... giants were known to occasionally eat random people that happened to be rude to them as they went about their business.
Myran had not been rude! They just hadn’t had a chance to be polite! This giant had no business eating them.
Not that any of this was actually going through Myran’s mind. Oh no. Myran’s thoughts were preoccupied with panicking about their impending doom!
First, they tried to stop the giant from swallowing. But the teeth threatened to crunch their limbs if they dared to try and find purchase! So, failing that, they tried to slow their progress down his esophagus.
The problem was the walls were too damn slippery! They knew that their slow progress was merely due to the tight fit, as they couldn’t stretch out. The flesh was too tough.
Right before they started to worry about suffocating, they were deposited into a large chamber, sliding into a puddle of nasty smelling fluid. They took a regretful breath of the rancid air.
Yonah sighed as the dwarf left his throat and settled into his stomach. Small yet still filling.
He patted his stomach lightly. “A bit disappointing. Dwarves don’t taste nearly as good as most other smallfolk, but I’m not complaining.” His prey thrashed and yelled but didn’t seem to be coherent.
YEOWCH!
Something bit his hand and he waved it violently. Whatever it was released and smacked into the wall that the desk was up against, crumpled into a motionless pile. Curious and momentarily forgetting his snack, Yonah investigated.
A cat!? And still alive but unconscious. Why had a cat attacked him? Then he saw the abandoned broom next to his notebook. And his stomach twisted.
“You’re— not a thief!” Technically, he could eat anyone he wanted, he wasn’t restricted to adventurers. He was still figuring out what kind of villain he wanted to be. Such self exploration would take time, time the person he ate didn’t have.
“I’m a witch!” He heard them squeak.
“A witch? Invading the lair of a wizard? Are you stupid!” He poked at them. They didn’t like that.
“Let me out!!”
So Yonah spat them up, sooner than he would have liked to, and leaned over them with a frown and glowing eyes.
The moment the witch hit the desk, the cat woke up and was between him and the witch as it hissed.
The witch was shaking and coughing, glancing at him with wide fearful eyes.
“If you’re a witch then what the fuck were you doing in my tower?” Yonah demanded.
The witch was still in shock but recovered enough to speak. “I’m… Myran! I wanted to introduce myself!”
“A likely story! Why would anyone want to introduce themselves to me?” Yonah wasn’t really in the mood for conversation, but figured he could use the practice at evil banter.
“You’re… new to the forest” they coughed.
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m your neighbor!” they said,
Yonah narrowed his eyes, “The forest is constantly moving, no such thing as neighbors.”
“I figured I’d try to be friendly!” they continued as if he hadn’t replied. “Everyone was talking about the new mage in the tower, but no one had any definitive stories.”
Another mistake. The giant snarled.
“You are a fool then! I don’t want any friends!” He hesitated briefly as he said it, not sure of the truth, but recovered fast. “But I don’t want you spreading rumors about my mercy either…” he picked them back up. Gripping them hard and getting their right arm between his teeth. He didn’t bite their arm off, but broke the skin with a fang and pinched their hand. They yelled.
“Stop! Stop! I won’t tell! I won’t tell!”
He dropped them and they sat, crying, holding their bleeding arm and hand which was turning a plum purple.
“Good,” he hissed steam in their face, scalding the skin red as his eyes glowed bright orange. “Now get the fuck out before I eat you for real!” He flicked the broom at them. “And if you ever show your face around here again, I will.”
Finally, they listened to him. They got onto the broom along with their cat and with a burst of magic kicked into the air and fled out the window. Yonah watched until they disappeared, then sat down. His hair hadn’t been smoking before but it was now. Additionally, his eyes still glowed.
His first visitor in months wasn't an adventurer and he’d eaten them without a second thought! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Maybe this was his destiny. For years he’d trained himself to be restrained. Keep his anger in check, Keep his half giant identity a secret and become a wizard. But that had all gone to shit when he’d been discovered not as just a half giant, but as a half fire witch. Chased out of the academy but captured by the authorities of Orr.
Forced to sign a contract with King Ben to become his new pet monster! So why not be a monster!?
But he still wanted friends… his friends from the academy weren’t allowed to visit him. His tower of magic and wonder was so empty. He put his elbows on his desk and buried his face in his hands.
~chink~ his elbow brushed against something.
He looked down and saw a broken clay pot, the soup spilling out and a seedling now helpless and exposed on the desk.
Quickly yonah dipped his fingers into a pouch at his side and licked it, saying a spell. With a puff of smoke he stood on his desk, a mere 8ft tall, and he knelt down.
With his more appropriately sized hands he gathered the soil and with a wave of his hand and another mutter the pieces of the pot shook and flew back into their original places. The pot was… functionally repaired. The proper repair spell required materials to fuse the pieces properly. So it wouldn’t hold water, but it could hold soil.
As he scooped it back in, a piece of paper fell from the loose soil. Curious he dug it back out of the pot and cleaned it off enough to read:
“Welcome to the Mystical Woodlands new neighbor! This seedling is from my own garden. A special cultivation of Frozen Thyme.”
The moment he read it he was instantly planning where this would go in his garden. But… this gift. Did he deserve it? He’d eaten the one who brought it. He chased them away!
He couldn’t accept this gift but he couldn’t just let the seedling wither and die. It didn’t deserve that. And thus, his brain rationalized a way for him to keep the gift. So now what?
Yonah’s brain was too full of rage to do any proper work, so he decided to take it out on the garden, which was still in a state of construction. He’d already torn up old dead pieces of the overgrown mess left behind by the predecessor. Now he was digging spots for flower beds and what would hopefully be an orchard. There was even a designated spot for herbs.
The reason this was slow going was he refused to use magic. For the most part. Thankfully, being giant made digging and construction easier. Now that he had the thyme, he prioritized the herb beds. It was with a sour pride that he completed one as the sun started to go down.
A large wooden box that curved in a lovely arc close to the tower. The wood was specially imported from his The Blue Sky Mountain Giants Tribe in the Implausible Mountains, the smell of it reminding him of home. The frozen thyme seedling was given enough space to grow. He even gave it some friends that he knew would be compatible.
With his mind a little more at ease, he managed to get himself to sleep.
And awoke the next morning with an ache in his heart and a new plan in his brain.
For the first time since he arrived in this prison of a forest, he ventured beyond the boundaries of his clearing. Yonah knew he was allowed, a certain distance from his tower, to walk the forest. It had just seemed pointless. Not wanting to draw too much attention, he wore his gardening outfit: a pink plaid button up and light blue overalls. He had a straw hat that he recently wove to be a wizard hat, as well as his wizard staff. He couldn’t really leave that behind.
The trees in the forest were shorter than back home, but still very large. Thankfully he didn't have to duck so much to avoid branches. In his mind was a list of ingredients he needed to find. Foraging in the forest might seem like a fruitless endeavor, but when you have the keen nose of a giant, tracking down wildberries was a simple feat.
What a bounty! A huge patch of bramble with perfectly ripe berries. He didn’t need a giant’s amount and they would just get squashed if he tried to pick them at his normal size so once again he shrank down. He retrieved a basket from his hat and started to pick berries.
About ten minutes in, the bush began to shift! A section opened up and out ran a gnome with a garden spade. It smacked into his hand mid berry pick.
“Stop! Thief!”
SMACK SMACK!
Yonah was so startled he backed away and returned to his normal size, the basket of berries spilling over.
The gnome yelped. “Giant!” They dropped the spade. “Don’t eat me! Take berries! Don’t eat me or family!”
There was something satisfying about the gnome’s fear and Yonah grinned, “While you would make for a nice little snack,” he said, “I’m not in the mood for gnome today.”
The gnome shook and took up the spade again, pointing it at him as if that would help. From inside the bushes, Yonah heard rustling, and smelled more gnomes. This must cover their burrow.
“Put that away, or I might change my mind!” Yonah growled, showing his fangs. The gnome complied, tossing it aside.
“But you are also in luck. I am not interested in being a berry thief. I have more honor than that. If you would permit me to buy some of your berries, at a discount for me not making a meal of you and your family, I will leave you in peace”
The gnome gulped and nodded, “Am… sure we can make a deal.”
“Pick up the ones I already picked, will you?” Yonah ordered.
The gnome scrambled. “You will need more?”
Yonah nodded. The gnome whistled. And a troupe of younger gnomes carefully came out of the bramble.
“Kind giant has offered to buy some berries. Exchange for not eating us!”
The kids looked nervous and their fear didn’t spark the same kind of joy as the adults. But Yonah had a reputation to build! And he had to admit, it was still a bit fun.
He watched as the gnomes gathered berries until the basket was full and the adult gnome put it down in front of where Yonah had sat down. He picked it up and took off his hat, dropping it in and noticed the gnome’s eyes get wide. Storage space items were not uncommon, but storage hats were tools of professional mages, not common folk.
“That all?” the gnome asked.
Yonah stroked his beard thoughtfully, “Yes. I think so.” He reached into this hat. While he didn’t have a lot of money, Ben had supplied him with funds should he need them, and he had distributed the rings between his various pocket spaces. He got out a large wooden dowel upon which hung many metal rings. Small ones and large ones. With a pair of tweezers, yonah removed a few silver rings and one gold ring and put them into his palm, placing it up in front of the gnome.
Who did not take it.
“Do not insult me by refusing my payment,” Yonah insisted but the gnome did not move.
“More than we charge normally… You wanted discount: berries, a silver a pound!”
Yonah blinked. He still wasn’t good with smallfolk money. When purchasing as a giant, you purchased such large amounts it always cost at least a gold.
“Oh? Er-” he didn’t want to actually exploit these gnomes. “I'm not taking it back! Take the money Or I’ll eat you!” his voice faltered and the gnomes looked a little confused, and a little more relaxed.
“Leave us alone then, yes?” The gnome reached out a hand. Yonah nodded. The gnome finally took the money, giving each of the kids a silver ring. Any fear the kids had was gone as soon as they studied their rings and looked at Yonah with excitement. It was hard not to let the warmth in his heart at their expressions show on his own face.
“Actually!” Yonah announced as the gnomes started to back away into their burrow.
The adult stopped and looked nervous again. Yonah huffed. “I’m not going to eat you, I never was. I just have a question.”
The gnome ushered the kids away, not trusting Yonah, before turning back to the giant. “And if don’t have a good answer, you won’t eat… right?”
With a sigh Yonah shook his head, “No. I won't.”
“Then ask.”
Yonah took a breath, “I am... looking to get some ingredients. I… lashed out at someone recently and I very much regret it, and want to make some amends. I have giant ones back home but… giant sized ingredients do not taste as strong as small ones. Do you know where, or who, I might be able to look for?”
The gnome smiles, “Yes! Mystical Market. Sell our berries there. Open today, also gnome holiday.” They gave Yonah the instructions on how to find the market.
“Thank you- er…” Yonah put a hand to his chest and bowed.
“Kalle” said Kalle.
“Yonah,” said Yonah. The gnome bowed as well, “Don’t be flaunting riches, mysterious half giant. Marketeers take advantage”
Riches!? He did not have endless funds. He would have to be more careful with his spending.
“I am also looking for… Er... Shit!” he exclaimed and was glad the kids were no longer outside, “I don't know their name. Dwarf witch.”
Kalle considered, “Know them. Likes almond cookies. Sorry. Market easier find than people. That all?”
From their tone of voice, Yonah knew the gnome desperately wanted to get back to their family. It was a holiday after all. Yonah stood up and nodded, leaving without subjecting them to any more conversation.
Almond cookies? That changed things. He had only made almond cookies once! He needed a little more help. However, he did not backtrack to the tower. He knew that if he went back, he would lose motivation. Locating the market was his current task.
Unfortunately, it took some luck. According to the gnome, it was a special place that one happened to come across, just by wanting to be there. The more familiar you were with it, the better chance there was of that happening. Yonah really really wanted to be there. So he gathered his will and set off in a random direction.
After an hour of walking yonah felt a weird tingle all over his arms and legs. Like his hair was standing on end and all pointing in the same direction. Had he entered some magical field? No matter, he was fairly immune to passive magic.
Then he took another step and a jolt of magic electricity surged through his body, causing him to freeze up. Before he could collapse, he felt as if a giant hook had caught around his middle. There was no physical hook, but it still yanked him back, pulling in through the forest.
Eventually it stopped and finally Yonah fell over, breathing shallowly as his heart raced. He rolled onto his back and stared up into the trees.
“What’s the big idea!?” Someone kicked him in the side and he sat up. “You’re blocking the way!”
An elf!
Yonah frowned. “You’re so bold for someone I could crush with a finger!” To tease the elf, he poked them in the chest.
“YEOWCH!”
For the second time that day, Yonah got bitten. This time, it was the elf who sank their fangs into his finger, letting go before Yonah pulled away.
“Don’t get sassy with me! Messing with smallfolk isn’t allowed in the market, you'll be banned!”
Yonah looked around “The market?”
He had assumed it was the Mystical Market because it was in the Mystical Woodlands. But now he realized that the name was rather accurate. An entire marketplace incorporated into the forest itself. Stalls and restaurants built into the trees, with carts parked in between. The trees here were also… there was no other word for it: majestic. Larger and older and, compared to the forest he had been exploring before, more deliberate spacing. He couldn’t even see all of it. The forest stretched on for a while, and thus was obscured by the very trees that made up the shops.
There were even buildings in the branches so that ogres, trolls, and giants did not have to bend down to make transactions. He even spotted a few trolls. Amazing! Trolls (and ogres) were much more likely than giants to eat smallfolk. Giants mostly threatened unless the person in question did something really, really stupid.
And yet, there was a troll, large with brown fur and green spots, purchasing a roll of fabric from the elevated section of a gnome shop.
“Yes you idiot, the market! And my cart won't fit through any other path! Move your giant ass or I’ll get the guard to move it for you!”
His elation at having found the market was in conflict with his pride that was being so insulted by this little creature.
“Apologize for biting me, and I’ll consider it!”
The elf looked indignant. “You threatened to squash me! MAGEN!!” they yelled.
Thunderous footsteps were heard and Yonah turned as a proper, full blooded giant, made her way through the shoppers, somehow avoiding stepping on anyone. She was maybe 17, but full grown and taller than Yonah by at least ten feet. Her skin was a light greyish pink and her eyes were a dark red. She wore a lovely headpiece of woven flowers and vines to look like hair, which full giants do not have.
She knelt “This man bothering you?”
The elf nodded. Yonah threw his hands up, “Hey! I don’t mean any trouble!”
“He threatened to squash me!”
The giant glared at Yonah, who glared back.
“How largefolk deal with smalls outside of the market is their own business,” she said. “But inside the market we do not even threaten to squash, or kick, or stomp, or eat!”
“I did not intend to and I did not know I was in the market! I have never been before!” Yonah stood up so that he was not at such an extreme height disadvantage. Magen was a rather short mountain giant, only 35ft tall.
She nodded, “I can believe that.” She stood up. “I would have remembered you for sure.” She sniffed and said in implausible Giant: “You are from the blue sky tribe?”
“Yes! I am.” he answered, also in Giant. “I just moved to the forest. I was looking for the market but… I must have… hit something magic. I sort of fell into here”.
The elf took the opportunity to weave their cart around the giants’ feet, disappearing into the market.
“Ah, the seller seems to no longer push this issue. My name is Magen.” she introduced, bowing.
“Yonah HaEsh,” Yonah answered in return.
“HaEsh! I know the name. Fire man who helped save the Implausible Mountains from the Society of Wizards!”
“That’s my dad,” Yonah said, a little embarrassed.
“Mom told me the story! How exciting!”
Yonah brushed himself off and glanced around, “So... What are the rules here, then?”
Magen shrugged, “Just don’t start fights, alright? All sales are final, so don't go making a fuss if you haggled wrong or think you got cheated unless you believe your items are defective. There are ways to deal with fraudulent goods, but we cannot risk collateral damage.”
“Does that happen often?” Yonah asked, “I only mean to buy food, I can tell if that’s fresh”
“Oh, you have a giant’s nose then. Good. It does not happen often. Makes my job easier. And I usually manage to break up confrontations before they get out of hand.”
Knowing he could likely sniff out the stalls he needed, Yonah asked if Magen could show him around and help him find all the items on his list. She happily agreed. He had to walk behind her as there wasn’t room for two giants to be side by side.
As she carefully led him, she took glances back and down Yonah who was getting a little nervous. It had been a while since he encountered other giants. He was watching his feet to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone, and he was stopping constantly to look into the shops and stalls and carts.
“What is it like, being half giant?” Magen asked, who somehow managed to walk without looking at her feet very often at all. Maybe Yonah was being too careful and people here knew to stay out of the way of largefolk's feet… Still, he didn't want to take chances.
“Er… I have hair, I guess?” he said.
“I was wondering if that was natural or a wig.” Magen brushed the vines spilling from her head.
“But mostly, things were just a bit inconveniently large for me. I still managed.” Then he countered. “What’s it like being a guard in the market?”
“The shopkeepers pool money to have me stand around, mostly. Smallfolk behave when an angry giant is within earshot.” She grinned with all her fangs.
“I thought you said giants couldnt mess with smallfolk here?” Yonah inquired.
“You can’t. It’s my job to interfere,” Magen retorted. “I haven't hurt anyone… badly. I’ve only worked here for a year. But I know everyone and everyone knows me!”
They stopped at a stand selling nuts and Yonah purchased the almonds he needed. The seller seemed a bit disappointed that he bought so few.
“Shopping for someone small?” Magen asked.
“Er- yeah.” Yonah said. They both had to back between trees to let a trio of trolls go by. One was only 10 feet tall and barely came up to Yonah’s waist, but another was nearly 20 feet! They carried baskets and bags on their furry backs, and even had some tied to their tusks!
Before they continued, two elves leapt from the tree nearby and onto Yonah’s shoulders! He was about to brush them off when Magen stopped him.
“Don’t! They are just hitching rides!” At that, he spotted more elves on her head. “You need honey, yes? I know the best shop!”
He followed Magen around the market, which was much larger than he had realized. The elves had no qualms about leaping on and off him and other largefolk shoppers and eventually he ignored them. Magen even helped him avoid making a bad deal for oat flour, saying she couldn’t believe the nerve of the shopkeeper trying to take advantage of a new resident.
Before Yonah left, he wanted to properly thank Magen. “If there is anything I can do to show thanks. Perhaps er-” he looked around.
“You know, the juice stand behind that tree has new flavors I’ve wanted to try. How about you buy me a drink? You should get one too. It’s very refreshing!”
“They make them giant sized?” Yonah asked.
“Oh, they are made by ogres!” Magen replied, rounding the indicated tree.
Ogres, kin of trolls and even more dangerous due to their magical powers. Typically smaller than trolls, but that was not the way to tell them apart.
An entire family of ogres were operating a massive open storefront. Jugs hung from branches or were strapped to the trunks of trees and fruit swung in baskets. Behind the counter was an elaborate prep station operated by two large ogres. Around the entire display were platforms sticking out from the nearby trees. Smallfolk sat on stools enjoying drinks and food at an elevation that made it easy to be served by the ogres. Magen walked up to the counter, which was not at an ideal height for her but was easily manageable. She spoke to an ogre with straw colored fur, blue spots, and large horns.
“Edna! I’d like two passion fruit smoothies please! One giant sized and one…” She glanced back at Yonah. “Full Troll sized!” She stepped aside and pointed at Yonah. “He’s paying”
Edna nodded and passed on the order.
Yonah stepped forward. Bowing “Yonah HaEsh”.
She bowed back, “Edna Baneclaw. That will be a gold bracelet for the giant and half for the full troll”
Yonah’s heart nearly stopped. A gold bracelet and a half !? He looked at Magen who flashed her fangs mischievously then back at Enda.
Edna smiled as well. “We don’t have enlarged passion fruit, not in high demand by largefolk.”
With another glare at Magen, Yonah fished into his hat. He didn’t have gold bracelets but he had rings. 10 silver to a gold. Rings to Rings. Bracelets to Bracelets… 10 gold rings to a silver bracelet… 10 silver bracelets to a gold ring. That’s 100 gold rings to a gold bracelet (he had really overpaid the gnomes for the berries... A holiday gift he supposed), but this was not money to spend on frivolous fruit drinks!
Too late, however. The drinks were ready, and he carefully removed golden rings from silver bracelets. 50 gold rings and 10 silver bracelets exchanged for two smoothies. They came in wooden cups with bamboo straws.
This better be fucking worth it. Yonah took a sip.
His eyes widened as the cool icy tart concoction hit his taste buds and he took a long drink. Finally, he looked at Magen and then Edna. “This is incredible!” he exclaimed.
Magen grinned and sipped hers as well. “Yeah. Too bad we’re the last two to have some for at least a month!”
“What do you mean?”
“That took all the passion fruit we had,” Edna informed. “Won't get more for a while”
“Worth it! Suck it smallfolk!” Magen teased the people on the platforms, a few looked a bit annoyed, but most didn't seem to care. She didn't seem to care either.
“Well it was nice meeting you, Yonah. I hope to see you again. Oh, and by the way, you can return your mug to the ogres for a silver bracelet, even if you take it home today!”
Yonah glanced at his drink. “Oh! Thanks for letting me know. But where are you going?”
Magen sipped at her smoothie loudly before answering. “This was my break, silly, I need to go back on proper duty now, and you have all your things.”
Magen held out her free hand and Yonah shook it, bidding her goodbye. It was getting late in the day now and he wanted to get to work on the almond cookies.
Wait… which way was back to the tower? How could he be so stupid wandering off like this!? His mom taught him better than that. Forest ranger rule number 1: DON’T GET LOST.
...okay, so that wasn’t really a rule. It was supposed to imply that you paid attention to where you were going so you could get back. This was not so easy in the Mystic Woods.
The moment he had walked far enough away from the market, he turned forward and then back, and it was already gone. He had nowhere to go but forward.
It was to his great surprise that only a minute later, he exited the dense trees and found himself in the clearing. The tower was on the opposite side. While he was elated to have made it back safely before dark, there was a distinct absence of any gladness to be home. This was not his home, after all. It was his prison.
Yonah HaEsh climbed up the tower and back into his prison. He took off his hat and sat down at his desk in the workshop, staring into the reflection on the large, ornate mirror that rested upon it.
To do this right, he needed help. Professional help. So he activated his mirror. Or at least… tried. He stared at his own reflection, then spoke. “Mirror Mirror on the desk,” he faltered, “Could you please connect me to Shoshana at the academy?”
The mirror snorted. “You think politeness will work after all this time? I don’t make exceptions. This is why your friends think you’ve forgotten about them! Put in the effort! Ask me properly or don't at all.”
“They’ve called me!!” Yonah insisted, but the mirror said nothing in response. Just like he would do when he got calls from his friends. Yonah growled and snorted back at the mirror, fogging it up. “Mirror Mirror, oh magical vanity, I wish to call Shoshana, at the wizard academy”
There was a whistle from the mirror. “Now that’s how you do it!” it praised. The fog cleared and for a brief moment, he saw his own face again before the reflective surface turned grey. Another moment and the face of his friend Shoshana emerged.
“Yonah!!!” she exclaimed. “You called! I cannot believe it!”
Yonah’s face turned a bit red. “I’ve… been distracted.”
Shoshana waved her hand, stopping any further excuses. “You’ve been through so much! I was worried! Since we graduated, you haven't called at all!”
/I never called before either... / Yonah thought. /It was always you.../ When Grand Master Sean reinstated him as a wizardling student, his friends would call regularly to work on homework and their theses, as he wasn’t allowed to actually attend the school in person. And while he attended the graduation…
That wasn’t a happy memory at all and he didn’t want to think about how he sat behind all the students in the amphitheater in magic chains looking more like a beast one of the adventuring tract students had wrangled for their final than a student.
“I need a recipe!” he said.
Shoshana raised her brows “That’s it!? First call in over a month, and it’s to get a recipe! You don’t want to catch up at all?!” Yonah’s eyes flickered and Shoshana backed off. “Alright, I can see you’re not in the mood. But please, we’re all missing you so much. We’d assumed you embraced the evil hermit wizard life.”
“I… haven’t meant to. But it’s surprisingly easy,” he admitted, grinning awkwardly. “I’d rather not go full hermit, of course.”
“Well, then dont go a month without calling your friends!” Shoshana chided. “Or make some new friends! The forest is full of interesting people, right?”
Yonah looked away, but his eyes were probably glowing orange now.
“This… is for that.”
“Oh!” Shoshana exclaimed, “I should have figured! Of course, I will give you whatever recipe you’d like.”
Yonah got out his ingredients to show Shoshana and explained what he wanted to bake. She nodded and made some suggestions for ingredients and spices to really make these cookies great. He did not have all the supplies she suggested, which led to some back-and-forth as Shoshana pointed out some substitutions for what Yonah bought or already had in his tower.
“Got that all down?” she asked, as she watched Yonah scribble out the final lines to the recipe.
“Yes!” Yonah exhaled in relief. “Thank you so much, Shosh!”
“Next time, we will catch up properly, but I had fun designing this recipe!” Shoshana chirped. “What a challenge. I wish you had called first, before just buying random ingredients.”
“I was already in the forest, Shosh.”
“I know, I know.” Shoshana blew Yonah a kiss and the mirror flickered back to his reflection.
It was time to bake! Which he did after shrinking down.
By the time he was done baking his jam print almond cookies, it was past midnight. He needed sleep and didn't think finding the witch at night was a particularly wise idea, especially since he was getting tired. That meant he was extra likely to be grumpy and irritable. So he placed the cookies in a special cooling rack to keep them magically fresh, then went to bed.
It was right after breakfast that Yonah HaEsh left the tower and, for the second time, entered the forest.
Once again, he had no direction, not that one could in the Mystic Woods. It wasn't even possible to have a map unless it was incredibly magical. Still, he was determined and willing to wander the forest for days if he must! But he’d do so at his full size, which would allow him to cover more ground.
That’s… That’s a witch’s hut! He hoped it was the correct one. It was more of a mound than a hut, with one side covered in rocks and moss and the other a more sheer side with windows, plus a flatter side with a door.
As he approached, a garden came into view and he heard a yelp before watching a small figure dart into the hut and close the curtains. The door opened briefly and a hand hung a sign that read “NO SOLICITORS”
That was the evil giant! Why was he here!? Why did the forest let him find the hut!? Was he here to eat them?! To finish the job!? Could they take on a giant fire witch?! Myran was a damn skilled witch, and at least 15 years the giant’s senior by their estimate, but they were quaking in their boots.
A knock sounded at their door. It didn’t sound forceful enough to be a giant. Siv was in front of them, hissing at the door. Thinking it better to be safe, they peeked out the window, then ran to open the door. Just a crack.
Red faced and holding a basket was… the giant. Only he wasn’t giant. Not exactly. He now stood at about twice Myran’s height. A little less actually. Right. Wizard. Giant wizard.
“May I come in?”
“Depends… what’s in the basket?” They narrowed their eyes. “I don’t want any nasty surprises.”
The wizard’s face got redder as he removed the cover. They opened the door and stood aside. They took the basket with their right hand…
Yonah hesitated. Their arm had a massive scar from shoulder to elbow, but the hand was unbroken. The Dwarf noticed and gave him a hard look as he crouched low to get through the dwarf sized door, Siv still hissing at him in warning.
Myran put the basket on the kitchen table and motioned to the couch. “Please, sit.” Yonah did. The couch was small for him but it took his weight. “I’m going to be honest.” Myran leaned against the kitchen table and crossed their arms. “This is quite the unexpected visit.”
“Oh?” Yonah said. Of course, it made sense. He chased them out. Why would he then try to find them again?
“You bit me!” Myran reminded him harshly. “You broke my hand, and you said if you saw me again, you would eat me. Again. And kill me.”
/Ohhhh/
Yonah’s breath caught before managing to say. “I did… didn’t I?” He looked down at his feet.
Myran. sighed. “Yep. Though eating me at your current size would be an impressive feat. So... What the fuck are you doing here? Besides bringing me cookies to fatten me up.”
“I’m not-!” He looked back up to defend himself and saw their cheeky grin. “I didn’t come here to eat you…” They raised an eyebrow in sarcastic disbelief. “I want to apologize. For what I said… What I did. After I ate you. I was so angry. I still am, though mostly at myself. I shouldn't have hurt you. It wasn’t right.” He was almost crying. Dammit, he’d gone nearly a month without crying!
“And for eating me?”
“Huh?” Yonah was thoroughly confused.
“You’re sorry for what happened after you ate me, but what about eating me?”
Yonah bit his lip, “I’m… I’m not sorry about that.”
The witch raised both eyebrows now, genuinely curious as to the workings of this monster’s thoughts.
“I’m supposed to eat people! Especially those who enter my tower unannounced. It’s part of my job! And… And I like it!” He startled himself with that statement. He liked his job? He didn’t even want this job!! He was forcefully employed by the King under threat of death! Being evil had never been his plan and he didn’t want that. Did he?
The witch didn’t look completely satisfied with this answer. But they didn’t get to inquire further as Yonah’s curiosity got the better of him.
“Er- your hand…”
Myran smiled “It was rather mangled by your jaws yesterday. Luckily, I am a very good healer, and well-known in this forest. If you had killed me, you would have had a lot of angry forest residents after your head.” Myran began preparing a pot of tea as Yonah Processed that statement. “You’re a lucky giant aren’t you?”
“What?” Yonah voiced. “For not killing you and putting a target on my back?”
“Yes, exactly. And that was curious. It is rare that evil giants are merciful.”
Yonah looked away, “I’ve only been evil for a few months. I… you’re the third person I’ve eaten at all. And I dont… I haven’t yet… killed anyone.”
That surprised Myran. “I guess I do not know the frequency that giants normally encounter adventurers… but what I meant was you’re lucky that you even get to eat people. Most giants like the taste of smallfolk but they don't actually eat them. It’s rather rare.”
“You said it yourself. Evil Giants eat people,” Yonah pointed out. “Which I am one. I guess it’s… nice that I get to eat folks. But it comes with a cost… It’s only a matter of time before slayers come after me.”
“Most evil giants kill their victims, right?” Myran asked.
Yonah shrugged “I met another one once. Said it depended on his mood.”
“Fascinating… though if you keep up your more merciful streak, perhaps you are less likely to attract slayers?”
“Perhaps…” Yonah had not considered that. He just felt he wasn’t ready to kill anyone yet, but maybe there were other perks than just a clear conscience in continuing to let his snacks go.
“Cracked some sort of code then?” Myran inquired. “Getting to eat people without attracting too much attention? Not that this would stop all slayers,” they added. “I expect you would kill a slayer?”
Yonah nodded, sniffed, and wiped his nose. In that case… Guess he was lucky. Indeed, he’d gotten to taste plenty of smallfolk. Plenty of giants did. It was unique that he’d had his human dad while growing up. But all of the smallfolk in the village knew that when giants kissed their hands, the giants were getting little tastes. Sometimes giants would lick a friend playfully or freak someone out. He’d had a few elvish and human friends growing up, and they sometimes let him and the other giant kids lick them during games of Jacks and Giants. And his academy friends were quite amused by his affections.
He very much missed them. It had not taken long for him to get used to living amongst human friends, not just because he got to taste them. And so quickly, that was taken away from him. Friends…
As tears welled in his eyes he couldn’t look at Myran any longer. He closed his eyes and turned his face away. Should he keep talking? Shit, how much of that had he said out loud!? The words continued to come out regardless.
“I know I said I didn’t want any friends. But I do! I need them. And I know I can’t be your friend. You came to me and I fucked it up. But I beseech you to not tell everyone else in the forest to avoid me. I already went to the mystical market and-“
“You… how did you find out that I liked almonds!”
Yonah looked up. They weren’t looking at him but reaching into the basket for another cookie. They munched on it thoughtfully, not a crumb falling into their beard. The tea was ready and Myran poured it with magic, leaving their hands free to hold more cookies. They walked over to Yonah, the tea cups floating with. He took the larger one out of mid air. It was very hot! And he drank.
It was… It tasted like tea he’d had at home. His village had alway gotten various teas from the dwarves. New tears came to his eyes.
“You alright?” Myran asked, offering a handkerchief. “You’re a very emotional evil giant.”
Yonah took it and dried his eyes. “The tea is… really good.” That wasn’t the real reason but right now he couldn’t process all of his emotions.
“It’s my grandma’s blend,” Myran said. “I’ve tried to replicate it using my garden, but you just can’t replicate those tunnel grown fungi.”
They dipped one of the cookies into the tea. From their expression, it wasn’t really a mistake but likely didn’t improve the experience. Still they munched thoughtfully.
“I’ll be your friend.”
Yonah’s jaw nearly hit the floor and he almost dropped his tea. It was a few seconds before he managed to pick his jaw back up. Were they serious? They walked over to him, placing their much smaller hand over one of his. Then they smiled most disarmingly.
“Just don’t eat me again.”
Yonah smiled.
“I think I can manage that”
[FIN]
——
(You can imagine that Yonah got to hug Myran before he left, probably a little too tight but dwarves are tough!)
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big thanks to my amazing editors @j0hnnymouse and @vixen525
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Can I have a gn reader x Aizawa? Maybe a college AU where Aizawa doesn't know how to handle his crush because he was awkward when he was young and ended up a bully who was handsy. Thank you!
EEEE this is my first ask so i hope you like it anon! :D thanks so much for requesting!
DISCLAIMER: i do not condone or encourage any of the behavior outlined in the following text. this is a work of fiction, and should be treated as such. :)
wordcount: 2299
warnings: dubcon, verbal abuse, slight dumbification, forced oral sex, brief mentions of gagging/vomit (doesn’t actually happen), aizawa is an law student asshole, quirkless!AU, ooc? more likely than u think
notes: im not like a writer so when i put this in word count and saw it was 2k words i gasped-
MIDTERM
Without a doubt, Aizawa’s the smartest student in your Civil Procedure lecture. You admire him; you’re both first years, but he already has an incredible work ethic and results to show for it. He works two part-time jobs to help pay for school (alongside his impressive scholarship), studies into the late hours of the night (mostly due to his being kept awake very loud roommate), and, despite a bad habit of regularly showing up to your 8 am class slightly hungover, still manages to produce the top marks in the class.
You’re envious of him, because you’re the exact opposite. Your tuition is paid in full by your parents, you have a wonderfully quiet apartment all to yourself, and you study as best you know how, only to practically fail every assignment. You wish you could be surprised, but the material is a dreadfully bland concoction of boring procedure and esoteric theory that you rarely get further than three or four pages into a chapter. You want to like law, you really do, but there’s something about the intricacies of drafting lawsuits that goes in one ear and out the other. It’s no surprise that you sought out Aizawa’s help, desperate to at least pass the class with a decent grade.
You wish you hadn’t.
You don’t understand what you do that bothers him so deeply, but something about you coaxes cruelty from somewhere dark inside of him. You always scurry towards the back of the lecture hall to grab a seat next to him, doing your best to be quiet and unassuming, but he shoots you a venomous glare or a soft flurry of harsh words. And you get it, to an extent- some days you walk into class chattering a little too loudly on the phone, and on others you loudly shuffle around in your book bag to try finding the notes that you attempted to start for this lecture (if you even brought them that day). You know it’s annoying, but you also know you don’t deserve the downright verbal abuse he throws at you for it.
“It’s hard to take notes if you forget your textbook. Try being prepared for once,” he’ll sigh as he slides his textbook to you. Like a good student, he took notes for lecture the night before, but it still took some convincing for him to spare you his textbook.
“Do you ever shut up?” He’ll interrupt you as you babble about your difficulties understanding the most recent lecture. You want to retort, tell him off for being rude, but the words die in your throat; he radiates an annoying apathy that makes you doubt the efficacy of anything you say to him.
“You wouldn’t fail every assignment if you actually studied. Or maybe, you’re actually just stupid?” He’ll quip as you clutch your paper, a red ‘47’ scrawled in the upper corner of the page littered with your professor's critiques and question marks. By contrast, Aizawa’s paper is pristine, donning a singular red mark of ‘98, nice work!’.
With a well placed glare and the sour baritone of his voice, laced with exhaustion, it’s always enough to make your stomach drop from shame and embarrassment. Under normal circumstances, you’d never allow anyone to speak to you that way, but your grade was a dire situation, and with the midterm upcoming, you forcefully swallow your pride and ask him for his help.
You have to beg, but Aizawa agrees to tutor you the day before the midterm. This grade is a make or break for the class- if you do poorly on this exam, you’ll have to drop the lecture to salvage your gpa, putting you half a semester behind your peers. It’s motivation enough to deal with his poor attitude, and the two of you end up reviewing in an empty studying room on the top floor of the library. You began the session alert and determined to catch up, but studying with him shows you just how far behind you are. The textbook sounds like foreign poetry coming from his mouth; Aizawa is nothing short of eloquent when explaining the complexities of something as boring as filing lawsuits, and you spend most of the two hours spent just zoning out, completely unable to focus.
“You’re just wasting my time at this point.” The break in his cadence snaps you out of your trance, unfocused eyes meeting his tired ones, slightly lidded in annoyance, “Are you even trying to remember the material? Or are you just expecting me to spoon-feed it to you?”
Your throat catches, forcing you to swallow a lump as you attempt to ignore his words.
“I am trying! I just don’t understand why there are two approaches, is all,” You whine, flipping back through your sparse notes to find the section that contained the explanation.
“I went over that almost 3 chapters ago. If you were paying attention, you would’ve stopped me by now. It’s hard to believe that you even got into this school, if this is how you studied in high school. Did your daddy pull some strings with his buddies in admissions?”
Your eyes narrow, searching harder for the correct section in your notes. That’s a pretty low blow, and even if he’s not completely wrong, it still stings. You now know for a fact you didn’t even read this part of the text, but you keep your eyes trained on the page. At this point, you’d do anything to avoid looking at Aizawa, lest you begin to cry.
“Don’t be an asshole,” is all you can muster, voice shaking with unshed tears, “Would it kill you to be a little nicer? It’s hard to focus when all you do is insult me.”
“It’s hard to focus?” He repeats, his tone a sickly sweet mockery of yours. “Sweetheart, I don’t think that’s my fault. You’re a lot dumber than you think, if you even think at all. The midterm is tomorrow, and we’re just now getting into chapter five. Don’t get mad at me for actually trying to study; if I was holding your hand through it all, we’d still be on chapter one.”
Your vision blurs and a single tear hits the lined paper of your notes, causing the ink to blur as the drop absorbs into the page. You clench your jaw and take a breath before standing up, opening your backpack to put you things away. You didn’t have to take this abuse, you could study on your own. Even if you did poorly, you’d have some of your dignity left.
“It’s pretty rude to just walk out on someone trying to help you,” Aizawa says after a moment, closing his notes shut. “Not only do you give me a headache every single morning, but I try to tutor you and you want to leave without even thanking me? I’m busy, you know? I take time that I don’t have to spare just help your sorry ass out, for free, and you’re not even capable of learning anything from it.”
You sling your bag over your shoulder and move to leave, but you find yourself face to face with Aizawa, his tall frame blocking the door, arms crossed over his chest, and a thoroughly disgusted expression plastered on his features.
“I should charge you a fee, just for completely wasting an afternoon. Absolutely ridiculous,” His tone is a juxtaposition to his demeanor; he sounds more amused than annoyed, a jeer underlying the words. It makes you feel sick, and you’re suddenly grossly aware of the fact that you're alone with him, the only method of escape blocked. It feels dangerous, and you want nothing more than to be at home, alone and safe.
“H-how much?” You stutter meekly, eager to appease him. “I don’t really have any cash on me but if you have Venmo-”
“That’s not quite what I had in mind,” Your heart starts to jackhammer against your ribcage and panic sets in. You’re frozen in place, unwilling to ask him to elaborate. You may not be very bright, but you have a good idea of what he’s going to ask for, and you can think of a million things you’d rather do instead.
“I know your pretty little skull is practically an echo chamber, so listen closely, okay? We both know that no matter how hard you try, you won’t be ready for the exam by the end of tonight, and I have to work in an hour and a half. So, if you behave and do what I ask you, I’ll let you copy my exam answers tomorrow. Understand?”
You’re silent, paralyzed by fear. A part of you wants to run, desperately, but your mind drifts to the midterm. You know that without any help, you’ll surely fail.
That’s how you end up on your knees in front of him, tears finally streaming down your face from choking on his thick cock.
“That’s it,” he groans breathlessly, eyes fluttering shut as his head presses back against the door, “I knew you were good for something. I bet this is how you convinced your other teachers to give you a passing grade, huh? A few cocks down your throat-fuck, to save your gpa, I wouldn’t put it past you, dumb slut.”
You hate this- hate being reduced to just a mouth for him to fuck. You hate how he sneers down at you, his eyes alight with sadistic pleasure. You especially hate the treacherous way your spine tingles and heat pools low in your stomach at his amused growls and degrading remarks. He’s just as cruel with the way he fucks into your mouth, disregarding your comfort entirely, hand in your hair roughly guiding your head over his length. He’s almost painfully thick, stretching your lips wide, tickling the recesses of your throat in a grotesque way. You try to wiggle away slightly, just to take a small breath; you’re beginning to feel dangerously lightheaded. You begin to pull your head away but he thrusts his hips upward, holding your head down and forcing your lips to wrap around the base of his cock.
“S’okay, baby, just relax that empty little head of yours, no need to breathe right now,” he sighs, watching you struggle against him with a smirk, watching the fear bloom in your chest and your mind buzz with the lack of oxygen. Your thrashing shifts his cock in just the right way and you violently gag, eyes widening with the painful sensation. You’re almost convinced he’s going to let you pass out, right before he yanks you off of him. You cough violently, gagging a few more times, drool spilling out of your mouth.
“Throw up on me and a failing grade will be the least of your problems,” he growls, and the threat is a sobering reminder of how fucked up this is. You meet his expectant gaze, and reluctantly return to the task at hand. You can hold out just a little longer, you tell yourself; his hips are beginning to move on their own accord and you know he won’t last much longer. All you have to do is hang on and it will all be over soon.
You know that he’s just a bully, that you’re just doing what you have to do in order to pass this class, that you’re worth more than your grades, that you aren’t stupid- but the dark part of your mind questions if he’s right. Maybe you do belong on your knees, because what do you know? Maybe you are just a dumb slut; there’s no need to study if the only thing you’re good for is swallowing.
The shameful thought forces a new torrent of tears to pour from your eyes, gagging once more on both your tears and his cock, and the look of pure despair on your face pushes him over the edge. Aizawa yanks your head from his cock with a curse and you flinch as his hot cum hits your face. There’s a lot of it, the viscous seed slowly dripping down your face. The sensation is downright disgusting. You feel dirty and used, your throat sore, knees burning, lips swollen from his brutal assault. He presses the tip of his cock on your cheek, smearing his load all over your skin with a cruel laugh.
Through your panting, you keep your eyes closed for a little bit, hoping that maybe this is an awful nightmare and you’ll wake up in your dorm, with an extra day to study and a little more hope in your heart.
The sound of a camera shutter rips you from your fantasy, opening your eyes to see Aizawa grinning at his phone. You’re too shocked to say anything, only staring at him incredulously from your position on the floor in front of him.
“You’re lucky you’re cute, you know?” He hums as he tidies himself up and grabs his bag. “So photogenic, I’ll be able to get off to this for weeks. Who knows what good you’d be if you were dumb and ugly.”
You didn’t notice that you had stopped crying, but the fresh tears and sound of your own sobs call your attention to fact.
“Try and clean up before you leave, alright? I know you’re a little too stupid to remember, but I don’t think it’d be a good look for you to walk around covered in cum.”
The door clicks closed, and through your sobs you look around at the room, only to notice that there aren’t any tissues left laying around. You hate him, you hate him, you hate him.
(But at least you get an A- on your midterm.)
#yandere x reader#yandere#yandere bnha#yandere mha#nsft#bnha x reader#bnha x you#bnha x y/n#bnha smut#bnha imagines#aizawa x reader#aizawa x you#aizawa shouta x you#yandere aizawa#mha x reader#mha x you#mha x y/n#mha imagines#tw: dubcon#tw: dubious consent#tw: dumbification#i know nothing about law so please be kind#apparently u take Civil Procedure in your first year and it teaches you about drafting lawsuits#allegedly idk im a design student ngdshfgjhf#ALSO ANON U MADE MY NIGHT I WAS SO EXCITED TO SEE AN ASK BLESS U#i rlly hope this is good and im Not just sleep deprived#akuma.fics
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Ok but no seriously don't do the other one, give me thoughts on corvo/daud
Joke is on you, I will do the other one as well and I will put an unnecessary amount of thought into it <3 (for the ship ask game)
Who accidentally pushes a door instead of pulling/vice versa.
Hmm, both feel too competent for that. But sleep-deprived Corvo might? I think Daud might, on some days, be pretty enough to just watch him try and figure it out. Usually though, he acts annoyed and like he has somewhere to be, but helps Corvo simply because he feels bad for him.
Who doodles little hearts all over the desk with their initials inside them
I think Corvo would be more inclined to do this. He definitely would have done it when he was with Jessamine, and I think it's a small sense of normalcy he can keep. Just a little "Daud Attano <3<3<3." This is also the reason he tries to figure out Daud's last name, but he will vehemently deny that.
Who starts the tickle fights
Once again, both feel too serious for this. But I think that if they ever did get to a domestic bliss stage, they might both be equally prone to do so? Daud would definitely be the one to win them most of the times though.
Who starts the pillow fights
Corvo. They're usually just an affectionately annoyed pillow thrown Daud's way. They escalate really quickly, and into an insane degree.
Who falls asleep last, watching the other with a small affectionate smile
I like to think Daud. Corvo would be jumpy and Daud would want to stay awake a bit longer in case Corvo has a nightmare brewing. But when he sees Corvo sleeping peacefully, he gets a dopey little smile on his face. Which he will not admit to ever.
Who mistakes salt for sugar
Once again, both feel too competent for that. That being said, it would definitely happen to both of them when exhausted. Daud dealt with it enough in the past that he just picked up a habit of tasting a bit first. It does not stop him from making a mistake when he's really tired.
Who lets the microwave play the loud beeping sound at 1am in the morning
Both their sleep schedules would be fucked? But Daud had to share a rather broken house with all his children, so he knows how to be sneaky. Corvo, while having spent a lot of time sneaking around to/from Jessamine's chambers, had the luxury of not being in the kitchen for a long time. So I think it would have been him.
Who comes up with cheesy pick up lines
Corvo. Daud always looks like he lost ten more years off of his lifespan, but some of them do make him smile on the inside. (Daud's pickup lines are usually teases at Corvo while calling him "bodyguard." Corvo took a while to see them for what they are, but he likes them.)
Who rearranges the bookshelf in alphabetical order
Daud. My guy spent time in the academy, he would be used to the library making sense. Corvo strikes me as someone who would definitely not read as much as Daud, so he rarely notices how the bookshelf is arranged.
Who licks the spoon when they’re baking brownies
Both when it's the last time they'll be using it. It's just a waste otherwise. Corvo might lick it in-between uses though.
Who buys candles for dinners even though there’s no special occasion
Hmmm, a tough one. I imagine Corvo? Daud feels too pragmatic for that to actively do that, but he might enjoy it.
Who draws little tattoos on the other with a pen
Hmmm. I would once again say Corvo? I imagine that if Daud has a book to read, he could survive the horrifying ordeal of having Corvo doodle on him.
Who comes home with a new souvenir magnet every time they go on vacation
I think Daud is more likely for some reason? Like, sure, he does not keep a lot of things in his life, but just a little small something when he travels.
Who convinces the other to fill out those couple surveys in the back of magazines
Corvo. Daud hates every second of it and questions why he agreed to it in the first place. He does take them incredibly seriously though.
Hhh this was fun! Even if I surrendered myself to the ordeal of answering an ask (and know that now people will realise there is nothing more in my head than elevator music). Sorry for the (slight) wait, and thank you <3
#flower answers#dishonored#corvo attano x daud#gee i sure hope my brain did not lie to me too much with regards to their characters#but i am still doing these mostly for myself so haha i care very little about that :´3
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✶ - sugarplums and stardust
pairing: fpopstar! reader x arc trooper fives summary: you, sugarplum, galaxy-wide adored popstar. fives, galaxy-wide renowned idiot. warnings: rated m for mature! this chapter includes: smut (18+), oral (female receiving), dirty talk, implied rough sex, pee pee in v, the beauty of checking up on your partner, mature language... a hot clone trooper, flirtation... alcohol... etc... fives being a little slut
THE BARRACKS ARE ALMOST ENTIRELY QUIET. Almost. The centre of Coruscant never quite escaped from the thrum of late-night traffic, or the sing of the planet throbbing right below their feet, through canals and chambers and pipes of sewers crawling with scrap rats.
Sometimes too much silence wasn’t good for Fives’ brothers. Sometimes it made them more restless, tossing and turning before eventually leaving to the gym, to push weights and punch bags until their tiredness had them collapsing on the mats. It was an uneasy and unpredictable world in the barracks- right where it should be predictable and easy.
The 501st are on shore leave along with a good handful of other battalions, a couple from the Inner Rim, the 13th Battalion from Sullust, even Wolffe and Cody were sticking around somewhere. Fives, although he was meant to be raving and silly and wild, was feeling a little… well, he hadn’t eaten much at dinner.
Something about the last campaign on Bothawui, a second, months after the first, and being soaked through with blood and gunfire, had just dulled him a little. Maybe he just needed sharpening.
He muscles his helmet in his hands, trudging down the main corridor through the barracks. There were separate rooms inside now, the one he shared with the rest of Rex’s squadron far at the end. The lights, although top of the range, working perfectly, were too bright, flickering off the durasteel of the walls, the floors, the ceilings. Fives wrinkles his nose. Too bright.
There’s the slightest shimmer of music, though, and for a brief fleeting moment, Fives is convinced it’s coming from outside, from Coruscant, but when he pushes through into his part of the barracks, his stomping ground, he stops still.
Now, the 501st have always been fans of partying, music, drinks, cantinas, women, but Maker, Fives was not expecting four full-grown men huddled around a datapad, nodding their heads to a silvery voice accompanied by a thrumming beat. He didn’t expect, either, the harsh shushing he receives from an irritated Kix.
The medic holds up a hand and starts rabbiting on to Jesse, perched on his left on the bunk, leaning his hand on his brother’s shoulder. Damn batchmates.
“See? She’s amazing,” Kix mutters, gesturing at the datapad. “She was on the radio the other day, little Tano said something about her and I looked into it.” Fives tosses his helmet on the opposite bunk and takes a peek at what exactly they’re watching.
Oh.
A popstar. Shimmying. Rather precariously.
She’s all clad up in pale, pastel lavender, her cheeks dusted in a thin film of shimmering pink, her mouth painted a matching shade. She’s even got this wild, bright yellow hair. Kix takes a wary glance at Fives before angling the screen a little more.
“Sugarplum.”
“She’s some babe from the Core Worlds, a superstar,” Hardcase supplies, chewing on a bar of some unidentifiable substance with a grin. “Hot,” he comments, when she turns to wink at the camera.
“What is this?” Fives asks, leaning heavily on the bunk. Her shimmering, glittery skin seems to just seep through the datapad with every shift, shimmy and spin.
“She’s doing concerts all over Coruscant in the next few days. Then Corellia, then the other ecumenopoli.” Echo speaks as if it’s common knowledge. Fives scowls at his twin, shoving his shoulder with a hand.
Kix swipes left on the datapad and suddenly a rather risque picture flashes up, Sugarplum’s tongue out, her eyes rolled back. A ripple of chaos from the boys as they try to cover the datapad, and a roar of laughter from Hardcase when the pad goes flying over their heads.
“What the fuck?”
“That is not my datapad, I swear-”
“Yeah, it’s Tup’s!”
“No, no, it’s definitely ‘Case’s.”
Fives snorts, throwing himself onto his bunk, listening, happily, to his brothers bicker.
“Want to bet she wants a piece of clone ass?” A murmur of dissent and discern when Jesse speaks follows- Fives struggles not to burst into a laugh. The cog-faced trooper looks down in embarrassment when he’s knuckled into a headlock. “Come on!”
“Yeah, maybe she does, but we weren’t going to say that!” A pause. “It’s practically gospel truth all of the beautiful ladies want a piece of us.”
The door busts open again, on four troopers in a pile, and Fives, beaming happily away on his bunk. It’s Rex, ole’ Captain, and he looks once at the pile, once at Fives, before moving into the barracks, silent as night- not on Coruscant, silent somewhere else.
Fives wriggles under his Captain’s gaze, uneasy. Sometimes he made him uneasy when he didn’t talk, didn’t even greet them. Sometimes it meant the end of shore leave. Fives swallows, stuffing the panic hard down in his stomach to edge himself along the bunk with a little more formality. Rex catches his gaze.
“You lot looking at Sugarplum again?” There’s an uproar of disagreements, denials and something else, just Jesse relenting with a sigh. Fives stuffs a fist against his mouth, trying to contain his laughter at the four troopers fumbling over each other, even as Rex stares, unimpressed.
“Yeah,” Fives mutters. “They were, but we saw some of Hardcase’s secret bank and they threw the-” A pillow hits him square in the face. “Hey!”
“You guys are bad as cadets,” Rex huffs, laughing softly, bringing his datapad up. He looks more tired than usual, rings under his eyes.
“You tired, Rex?” Kix asks, suddenly fluttering into medic-mode. He touches Rex’s forehead with the back of three fingers and draws an amused sigh from the Captain. Fives watches over the edge of his fist. If something’s wrong with Rex, that means no drinking themselves into inhibition later that night.
“Better not be! We’re out tonight,” Jesse knocks his hand on Rex’s shoulder as he throws himself up from the bunk. “And I’m dreaming of beating Commander Wolffe in a drink-down this time. This time.”
“Don’t you say that every time, vod?” Hardcase levels a gaze back at the now-scowling Jesse.
“What clubs do you think Sugarplum goes to?”
“Those glitzy ones on the upper levels, probably, the ones suspended in the air,” Rex joins in then, making weird shapes with his hands. “You’ve seen.” A moment of silence. “Okay, well, the General told me they sell sunfruit liquors there for five credits a shot.”
“Is it supposed to be better than the shit they sell us at 79’s?”
“Who fucking knows.”
“The General, apparently-”
“Kenobi was the one who told him.”
Another round of laughs. Fives sighs, smiling, before wrestling Echo into a headlock.
“Ready to get out-drunk tonight, brother?” A shove, a scoff, then a grin. “You better be. You owe me three drink runs.”
“Three?”
“Three, vod, three. For the last time I saved you.” Echo shakes his head, pushing a hand through his dark hair- same as them all, deep down. “Three.”
“Two.”
Fives laughs, bumping forearms with his brother. Echo knocks his temple against Fives’ and a moment of softness breaks the twins’ bickering.
“Fine, two.”
Fives never could refuse his batchmate.
-
You weren’t, and never will be, completely keen on Coruscant. Too much… difference. No, it’s not that, it’s just the deep tunnels into the ground and the rumours you hear sometimes, through your girls, through… well, anywhere.
‘Disease grows twofold as the lower levels of Coruscant are ignored for a Senate sickness’, or ‘The lower levels of Coruscant- most dangerous place in the galaxy?’. No, of course not. There’s police, you stupid news writer.
You pick idly at your nails, smoothing your thumbs over each metallic-blue painted tip to soothe your nerves.
Eva and Lirisa had planned for a club outing tonight. The concert earlier had gone perfectly fine, just amazing, really. Everything was on point, the dancing, the singing, the backup vocals, the crowd… it still tingles on your skin like a second skin. The thrill would never hit any different.
You’re hidden away in your dressing room back in your apartment, slumped over a chair like a swooning lady. Lirisa is fixing her hair around her three little head horns, a bright, vivid purple like her skin, frowning in the mirror over your shoulder. She catches your gaze after a moment, face folding into concern.
You stretch out in the plum velvet chair, legs in fluffy slippers spreading when she gets that look. That look meant questions.
“Why are you so down?” You frown, shaking your head, returning your gaze to the datapad in your hands. A news article about you paints the screen. Lirisa looks down, once, twice, realises, and snatches your chin away from it. “Stop reading it if it’s bad.”
“It’s not bad. It’s good.” She pouts, letting you go with a soft pat to the shoulder. You shuffle uncomfortably in your feather-trimmed robe, the sheer material not offering much of a comfort in the face of a wide-open balcony window a few paces away.
Eva appears seconds later, looking plump and perfect in her eye-snatching candyfloss pink minidress, feet hidden in peculiar fur-cuffed ankle boots. She shifts, eyes ducking against the ground, her tattoos across her nose, little black diamonds against pale green skin, vivid and stark.
“Oh, wow!” You exclaim, turning the spinning chair with a free hand. Lirisa squeals, rushing forward to tug at the hem of the dress, pulling the daring v-neck even lower. Eva hisses, batting away her friend’s hands.
“Don’t pull it down that far!”
“I wasn’t!”
A giggle and a sigh, then attention flickers back towards you. Your gut drops when they rush forwards, springing upon your wardrobe like it was their job- well, it was, but that doesn’t matter. There’s two options for dresses and you’ve already made your decision. A deep blue second skin, a dress that shimmered like a starlit night under the right light. The front was a simple scooped neck, low enough that your cleavage could make a gasp for breath, but not low enough you’d be recognised for a sleaze. The back is a square of sheer material until your hips, a little more than daring, a little less than risque, perfect for a night of dancing and drinking.
There were even little silver stilettos in the corner.
“No one will recognise me in blue, so stop trying to find other dresses,” you chide. “I’ve already made my decision.” A pout from Lirisa doesn’t move your hard-as-steel expression. Sometimes the Theelin girl had the ability to actually change your mind, but now, you sit there, waiting patiently for her to stop sulking. “Are we still going to that… um, that bar?”
“‘That bar’,” Eva mocks, turning you sharply to the mirror to start fiddling with your hair. It rests, untouched, until she starts pulling it up. “The clone bar.”
“Are we even going to be allowed in?” Eva nods, twisting a coil of hair around her finger. It’s not the same electric yellow it was on stage- the wig was long gone. “Who have you bribed this time?” You grin, glancing at her in the mirror. She shakes her head, disgusted at the pure suggestion of bribery.
(Wouldn’t be the first time she had… well, Eva had once tried to bribe a club bouncer with a tray of meiloorun fruit.)
“I heard from a reliable source in the GAR offices that a whole bunch of sexy, all-too-willing clones are on shore leave.” You sigh, tugging on a forlorn strand of hair. Eva grabs your shoulder, firmly. “Don’t pull, your hair is almost done.”
“Shouldn’t I get my dress on first?”
“You’ll only spill blumfruit juice on it.” You scowl. “And we’re leaving in twenty minutes, standard. I already called a speeder for us.”
“No paps?”
“No paps.” A pat on your shoulder and you relax. “Anyway, we’re going to have fun tonight!” Lirisa moves around in the background, now clad head to toe in what looks like skin-tight purple leather. She smiles, fondly, smoothing down a crease at her hip. The neckline plunges low below her sternum, but she acts as if she’s wearing Jedi robes with a swish and a sashay. You redirect your eyes when you get a rather tasteful flash of sideboob. “Looking good, Liri.”
“Thank you!”
“Is it a new suit?” A pause, a shrug. “Is it from my wardrobe?” You ask, eyebrow cocked in question. She nods, coyly smiling. “Fair enough.”
“Huh! If I took that you’d scream at me.”
“No, because I’d never confidently display so much sideboob at a club, Eva,” you mutter. Eva ponders it for a moment, but agrees, nodding. “Exactly.”
“Well, let’s just get to the club first, then we’ll decide how much ‘sideboob’ you’ll display after a few drinks.”
-
If there was one thing Eva was right about, it was the abundancy of rather good-looking men in the same place. Getting in had been easy- just flutter your lashes at the Coruscant guard on the door, he’d step aside and let you straight in with promises of a kiss later.
Inside was beautiful, purple and blue lights swinging low from a long-greyed ceiling, huge yellow holograms with all manner of languages on them- news, nunaball, flashes of the GAR-droids, the ones that present it. Then, even a flicker of your own face. A familiar beat begins thrumming ten steps into the bar.
Eva barks a laugh, hooking her pale green arm through yours, tugging you closer towards the bartender. She starts ordering shots in a rapid call, smiling politely at the droid behind it. You lean an elbow on the bright, turquoise counter, relishing in the sultry high notes of one of your latest tunes. Lirisa throws her arms around your waist, humming softly.
“Three.” Eva holds up her fingers. “Thank you.”
You flex your hands under the glow of a green-yellow menu. It’s fascinating, being suspended in a place like this and being able to take your eyes off the crowd for just a moment without being scared of being hustled. Eva touches your shoulder momentarily, her usual gesture of reassurance.
Your gaze slips from the bar- it’s fascinating, yes, but more fascinating are the similar faces flashing around you. Each one the same, but slightly different. Silver hair, shaved head, tattooed, long hair, dark hair, pale hair, wider smile, careful gaze. You wet your lips and catch the gaze of a trooper a few seats down.
He’s broad, like the rest of his brothers, but something else settles about him like a halo. Dominance, confidence. He’s got one cybernetic eye, too, but the gruffness of his expression as he moves from his seat has your eyes fixated.
Suddenly, you catch another gaze of another set of troopers some ways away.
Huddled in a booth, an entire squad is staring right at you. With a startled huff, you cross your legs, tugging gently on Lirisa’s leather sleeve.
“I think I’ve been made.”
“Where?” She looks over your shoulder, brown eyes searching against the near-darkness of the club. She raises an eyebrow, slowly. ��Oh. Just troopers, it’s okay. They won’t bother you.” You frown, interlocking your fingers and moving, slowly, to lean awkwardly against the counter. Their gazes reside on your back, sticky like syrup, until someone speaks roughly at your side.
“You’re not a clone.”
You turn, matching the gaze of the gruff man from before. A glance over his armour tells you nothing- great. He’s patched in a pale, unforgiving black, and he moves, tilting his body to rest on the countertop.
“No,” you murmur. “I suppose I’m not.” Your fingers go immediately to your necklace, a thin chain of silver studded with transparent stones, to tug. It’s a habit. The trooper looks at you for a long moment, dark eye and silver eye roving until he smiles, a little. Something tells you smiling isn’t normally what he’s used to. “Is that a good thing?” A look through your lashes and a splutter of drink from Eva over your shoulder has you struggling to hold in a laugh.
The man’s eyes flit to the screens, then back to you.
“Is that you?” You purse your lips, glancing at the hologram. “Nice.” Nothing else is added before he prepositions: “Want to dance?”
It’s only a moment after he offers his name, ‘Wolffe’, that you agree, letting him lead you to a writhing pack of men, clones and civvies, a few girls of all species. Your fingers thread through his and with a giggle, you sit your drink- a sunfruit cocktail- now finished, on an empty table. A rivulet of excitement ripples through your stomach when he tugs you firmly to his chest, roving a strong-fingered hand over the small of your back.
He asks a soft ‘this okay?’, but you’re too far flushed with music and finally, relaxation. You throw your arms around his neck and sway to the upbeat bass. A few more moments and your head drops back with a soft sigh, Wolffe’s fingers catching against the thin seam where the sheer material turns back into oil-slick silken fabric. Your breath hitches.
“Never did get your name,” he huffs, nose brushing yours. You sigh, smiling politely.
“They call me Sugarplum,” you murmur, letting his hands on your hips move you a little more vigorously to the disco-beat. Wolffe grins, wolfish, before flipping you around, a hand flattening against your stomach.
The music continues, and you continue to let Wolffe roam his hands along your midriff until he’s heaving heavy breaths in your ear and becoming slowly less dancer-like. You had to admit, the clones seemed like they were lithe bands of silk ready to snap, but you were dying for a drink.
When the song starts to pulse out in favour of a quicker, sharper tone, you slide your hands against his and softly remove them.
“I need a drink,” you shout over the music. He swipes a hand over his sweat-stricken hair and nods, dropping himself into a booth. “Thanks for the dance.” You brush your lips against his cheek and dart through the crowd, desperately searching for a flicker of pink, or purple. Luckily, Lirisa’s still at the bar, pressed against it by someone in red armour, perhaps, but there nevertheless, and smiling, sober. “Liri and… friend.”
“This is Thire,” she calls, patting his hand. “Coruscant Guard.”
“Fancy.” You stare at him for a moment, trying to decide on his intentions when he gives the brightest, sweetest smile you’ve ever seen. You feel your cheeks rush with heat. “Nice to meet you.”
“Plum,” Lirisa mutters. “How was your dance?”
“Oh, fine… you know me…”
“What, a prude?”
“No!” You bat her arm with a hiss. “Picky.” You flag down for another drink, dumping a pile of credits on the counter. Thire’s brows skyrocket, his face a portrait of shock when the droid picks through and takes only what’s needed. “Oh, I don’t know the prices…”
“That’s a lotta’ credits.”
Lirisa tilts his chin with one long, lavender finger and captures his mouth, eyes settling on you with a meaningful look. You swipe the credits up, dumping them back in the little silver shoulder bag she’s got on the counter. Oops.
You hear yourself in the speakers again.
“Huh. Whoever’s DJ-ing has nice taste.” Lirisa pulls away from Thire after a long moment, her lipstick a little smudged, but with a warm smile, Thire swipes it back into place. “Thank you, baby doll.” Thire darkens. “I’ve always liked ‘Popgloss’.”
“It’s not my best,” you murmur, eyes fluttering with shyness.
“This is you?” Thire asks, gesturing at the screen. You look at yourself, bearing a bright, fluorescent blue wig and matching lipstick. “That’s you?” He huffs a laugh of surprise. “Nice lipstick.”
“Thank her,” you reply, jabbing a thumb in the Theelin’s direction.
The droid slides a new drink over. You frown, staring at it. The glass is literally glowing, a white-ish liquid simmering inside.
“Courtesy of the 501st, ma’am.” The droid trundles away and you stare at the bright blue liquid with a smile.
“Boys in blue, huh?” Thire looks at the drink, then back at Liri with hooded eyes. “That looks like a mist-cocktail.” He turns, glancing over his shoulder towards where you’d seen the table staring at you. You follow his gaze, but only a few troopers remain. One of them raises a hand in a two-fingered salute, though. You smile coyly, waving in return.
With a careful touch, you raise the glass to your mouth and take a sip. It’s warm, warm down to your toes, and tastes amazing.
“Tastes great,” you say, a little surprised. “I should go thank them.”
“No, you should leave them waiting, maybe they’ll come up to you!” You scowl, shaking your head. Another sip of your drink and you turn, walking swiftly towards the table where only three troopers remain out of what was a lot more. One with long hair, another with lines tattooed down his face, grinning roguishly, and the last with a buzzed, blonde cut.
“Um, I just wanted to say thank you for the drink.” You fiddle with the draw, lashes fluttering of their own command. All three troopers are staring, two at your face, and the other quite firmly at your legs. “And, well… thank you for fighting. Your service,” you murmur, suddenly taken aback with shyness. Come on, superstar personality! Make your appearance.
The blonde grins.
“You’re welcome. On both counts.” His demeanour is remarkably similar to that of the Wolffe from earlier. Perhaps a Commander. “We’re quite enjoying your music tonight.” You chew idly on a thumb, smiling bashfully. “And we enjoyed Wolffe’s poor attempt at dancing.”
“Oh!” You snort. “He wasn’t that bad!” Eyes follow your hips as they turn, swaying back and forth as you try to plant yourself firmly and more confidently at one side of the round table. “Um, well, thank you anyway.”
“Thank you, Sugarplum.”
You make a wild getaway before you can embarrass yourself further or faint in the lap of the blonde, who was staring a little too sharply for your taste. The music seems to pulse louder with every step you get back to Lirisa, who is now firmly shoved against the counter and smothered by Thire’s mouth. Eva is nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Eva?”
“She ran off with a Twi’lek lady.”
You smile, huffing a chuckle of disbelief, leaning forwards to finish your drink in two more sips, when slowly, you notice a presence approaching you from the side.
Hands, well-defined, lined with veins and a few here-and-there scars, draw your attention like an industrial magnet. His skin is bronze, a dark, deep gold, like his brothers, but he plants his weight on the bar and clears his throat softly before speaking.
“Hey,” he says, voice low, dark. You swallow, hard, turning your head. He’s quite a face. He’s got quite a face- sorry, he’s… got quite a face. Right below his hairline, there’s a little ‘5’ tattoo, nestled there, inked in night-black. You take another sip of your drink for courage.
Alone, it’s easier.
“Hello.” Your voice is a little uneasy, but the trooper smiles, his eyes shining with politeness. Your eyes flutter shut when another one of your songs bursts through the speakers, but the trooper’s grin only grows.
“I’m not boring you, am I?”
“No! No, sorry, I’m just… I don’t know.” His smile softens at the corners, less devilish, and he shifts his weight, spine arching with the movement. You let your gaze flicker along his lithe body, contained in blue-stained armour. ‘Boys in blue’, Thire had said. “Oh! You sent me the drink… it’s delicious.”
“Yeah? One of my favourites.” He moves a hand back through his dark hair, eyes ducking for a brief second, before meeting yours once more. You feel your chest swoop and you smile, wide, wider than usual. “Fives.” He offers a hand, a handshake, and you accept it, only for him to flip your wrist. His lips ghost your knuckles. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“You can call me Plums,” you supply. “That’s what all my friends call me.”
“Friends?” A coy, cocked brow. Your chest flutters and you nod, drawing your bottom lip between your teeth. You’ve probably got dark lipstick all over your teeth by this point, but the way Fives poses the question has you suddenly not-so-bothered. Lirisa’s knuckles jabs your spine twice, a signal. You’re pretty much alone now. She’d bring Thire back to her apartment, two floors under yours, and Eva was wherever that Twi’lek took her. “We like your music in the barracks.”
“Oh? Thank you,” you murmur, gazing into the bottom of your glass. “I wish you could all come to one of my concerts, that’s the only place I sound good sometimes. My studio stuff is a little-”
He suddenly tilts your chin with the knuckle of his finger, still grinning brightly.
“Don’t want to lose my beautiful view.” You chew helplessly on your lip, chest releasing a sort-of sigh, more like a swooning hum. “And I like both. All of it. The boys were playing a couple clips of your concert today.”
“Really?” You fiddle with the stem of your glass, not letting your eyes drop from his face, chiselled and kind, warm.
“Yeah. I like the pink, but if I’m honest, I like this blue on you even better.” He taps your lower arm, where the sleeve ends at your wrist. “We’re matching, see?” He gestures at his blue-painted armour. You suddenly smile, nerves dissipating.
“Seems like we are.” A smile shared, and Fives shifts forwards. His fingers skim your waist as he signals the droid for another drink. “You want me drunk or something?”
“How many have you had?”
“I can handle another. For you.” He raises a brow, eyes suddenly narrowing with a wild grin. “I suppose.” You rest a hand against his chestplate and he huffs a noise of near-surprise, before taking your fingers in his. He brushes his mouth against them and thanks the droid when he appears with another mist-cocktail, no, two. “What are these even made from?”
“Good question,” he murmurs, taking a long sip of his. You stare at him, unabashedly, for a moment, watching the light flicker through his long lashes, then the twitch of his mouth when he realises you’re staring. “Something you like?”
“You have the most beautiful profile I’ve ever seen,” you gush, turning his head with the tips of your fingers, smiling. His breath comes out in a slow whirl when you slide a fingertip down the bridge of his nose. “Like a statue. One of those ones on Naboo in the big fancy halls.”
“You callin’ me handsome?”
“I’m calling you more than that.”
He takes another long drink of his cocktail and you follow, letting it warm your stomach. You glance at his blue armour, touching the lines of his arm.
“Boys in blue?”
“501st Legion.” He bows his head. “At your service, I’m certain. In fact, half the GAR will probably fall at your feet, princess.” You smile, sheepish. “Don’t be so unsure of yourself,” he murmurs, touching a curl of fallen hair at your temple.
“Who said I was unsure? Maybe I’m just faltering in the sheer radiance of your beauty.” Fives laughs, a low rumble in his chest, finishing his drink in one swallow. “501st… are you a Commander?”
He shakes his head with a smile.
“ARC-trooper. Advanced Recon Commando.”
“Oh? So… elite of the elite?” Fives’ eyes flutter, sliding over your features in one long, languid sweep. “Am I stroking your ego?”
“I’d much rather you stroke something else.”
You hum, head turning. You want to pretend the crude line has made you suddenly disgusted, but when he fastens a hand around your waist, you’d rather fall into him, onto him, onto him. He radiates energy.
“Can you kiss me now?”
His eyes widen, at least a little, and he smiles, eyes lidded, gaze smokier than a Sullust sunrise.
“Can I kiss you? That can be arranged.”
Fives leans, capturing your lips in a soft, chaste kiss. He tastes of cocktails and fruit and something else sharper, darker, but you don’t care. It’s suddenly rather hard to care as he brushes a thumb along your ribs and leans you back further. Your chest hisses a content sigh when he tilts your chin, pulls back, then takes your mouth a little harder.
He’s soft as silk for a soldier with calloused hands, his touch careful, hesitant until you moan quietly into his mouth and he touches his tongue against the seam of your lips. You let your jaw open, and he slides his tongue along your teeth, grins, then groans when your hips cant into his.
“Fives, do you want… do you want to come to my apartment?” He huffs, almost as if he can’t believe his luck, mouth shining with moisture. His head dips, claiming your lips once more like he’s got unfinished business there.
His thumbs ripple over the creases in the dress at your hips, his index, middle, ring finger pressing into your ass, pulling you closer. He knows how to work himself, that’s for sure. You shudder, one hand threading into his hair, the other fastening firmly around his bicep like a vice. He slides his tongue into your mouth and sucks at your bottom lip with a chuckle. You muffle a choked whine, desire suddenly starting to yap at the gates like a feral beast.
“Yeah…” he replies, finally, eyes fluttering to kiss you again, twice, three times.
There’s gazes on you from the boys in the booth, you know, you feel them, but you don’t take a chance at them until you can lean back for a cool breath of fresh air. They all sit there, slack-jawed, wide eyed.
“Your friends are looking at us,” you murmur, fingers digging into his upper arm.
“Let them look. They’re not the ones getting an eyeful of this masterpiece up close,” he hums, nosing along your jaw. “You should be painted.”
“Is that what you say to all the girls?”
“What do you want to hear?”
“The truth.”
“You’re the first one it’s true for.” You feel your heart thrum a little quicker, his fingers pressing hard into your ass, then relaxing. “You wanna call a cab?”
“Yeah. Yeah, come on,” you murmur. You’re more out of breath than you’d like to admit- than your ego would like to admit. Fives steals another cool kiss in the entrance to the club, greeting a few of his brothers in a language you don’t understand, before ushering you in his warm, huge hands, to the cab drop-off. His arms suddenly hook around your waist and you sigh, softly, contently.
After dialling in the address to your apartment, the cab takes only another long two minutes to show up, of which consists mainly of Fives drawing his tongue in teasing circles on your neck, and hot, heavy touches along your ribcage.
You step into the cab first, smiling politely to the driver, only to be pinned to the seat by a suddenly ravenous Fives. He pulls you up, over, onto his lap and keeps you there with a hand on your thigh.
“What do you want from me?” He asks, voice low, rough. “I want to be sure you want this.” A finger gestured between your chests and you laugh, threading your fingers through his hair. “What’re you laughin’ at?”
“How could it be possible anyone wouldn’t want you, Fives?” You tug gently at his roots, smoothing kisses on both of his cheeks with a coy smile.
“You haven’t met my brothers,” he whispers, lips brushing your ear. “They don’t want even to bet on me when we spar.” You sigh, stretching. “Do you normally do this?”
“Do what?” You ask, certain your eyes are probably blared with lust and something more primal, more dangerous. Fives smothers his face in your throat, nipping gently at your pulse, breath more of a growl now. “Invite handsome men back to my apartment? You should ask my friends.”
“The Theelin and the Mirialan?” You nod.
“They think I’m quite picky, so nine out of ten nights end with me alone, eating ice cream and watching limmie.” Fives laughs, stroking a thumb over the crease of your knee. “So, you’re lucky.”
“Oh, yeah,” he growls, thumbing at your bottom lip with a grin. You take the digit into your mouth with a hum. “I’ve hit the jackpot.”
The cab stutters up to the dock at the very bottom of the apartment block, and it takes Fives a moment to stare up at the towering building before you can pay the driver and usher him into the doors. Islair, the Nikto receptionist, raises his hand in a polite wave, before doing a double take at the trooper on your arm. He still smiles, though, when you step into the lift.
“You aren’t afraid of heights?” You ask, when Fives leans against the metal bar on the opposite side of the half-glass lift. It slides smoothly through the building, leaving Coruscant more and more distant with every floor climbed.
“No.”
“Good. We’re going to the fiftieth floor.” You smile, fluttering your lashes, crooking your finger towards him. He crosses the lift, boots thudding against red carpet beneath your heeled feet, before shoving you roughly against the wall. His lips break your resolve as soon as he presses them against yours, tongue sliding through into your mouth with a hard groan. He shifts his hips against yours and hooks your wrists beside your head.
“You… we have to make sure there are boundaries.”
“You’d be surprised how much I can take, Fives.” He huffs, a low, gasp of a breath, fingers running up, below your dress. “How much can you give?”
“You’re really riling me up, princess,” he whispers, voice sharp. “How long till your floor?” You glance at the numbers, ticking up through thirty.
“Not long, handsome,” you murmur, sliding the tips of your fingers down his stomach, along his codpiece, until he groans, planting two hands hard on either side of you He could almost bend the metal. “Relax.”
“Tell me to relax while you’re doing that?” He grumbles, smothering you in another rushed kiss when the lift pings, and the doors open. In one graceful swoop, he hauls you into his arms and waits for you to flick out your apartment key. You rustle through the black, studded purse in your hands and quickly draw it out, a shimmery, pearlescent card.
“Apartment Three,” you whisper. Fives hurries along the carpeted hall, lowering you to your feet in front of a rather decadent black door, watching as you flick your card over the scanner. A soft, delirious scent of vanilla hits him right in the face when it opens, and he lets you tug him inside.
There’s a moment of silence.
“So, this is my apartment,” you mumble, feeling his presence creeping behind you. His hands snake around your middle, to the hem of your dress and up once more. He takes his time, like he’s standing in front of a painting at a gallery, pushing himself along your spine. You arch your back, sighing softly when he cups your breasts in his hands and kisses your throat, once, twice. “You don’t care…”
“Nice place.” Is all he manages, rubbing his thumbs over your nipples, hardened against the silk of your underwear, underneath your dress, but he knows- he grins, smoothing his hands down your sides. “Do you want me?”
“Yes.” You turn, fiddling with the latches of his armour pieces, kneeling on the cool wood of the ground. His throats jumps, but you ignore it, finely, too, as you release the rest of his white and blue protection onto the floor. “There. All done.”
“Uh, uh,” he calls, wrapping a hand around your wrist when you try to escape. Your breath hitches. Your back hits against his chest. “Your turn, princess.” His fingers play with the hem of your dress, spreading out along the warmth of your thighs.
“Zip.” He leans back, moving a hand to slowly drag the zip along your spine.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, kissing your shoulder, your throat. “Beautiful girl.” You exhale, sharply, shifting the dress from your arms with a wriggle. “Fuckin’ Maker,” he huffs, reaching forrwards to skim his thumbs over your bare skin. You’re suddenly quite happy you wore the black, slightly sexy underwear rather than the black, completely mismatched pair you were rushing for a few hours earlier.
“You like it?”
“Who were you planning to snag at the club? Wolffe wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with you. He’s hard on the outside, soft on the inside.” Fives smooths the pads of his thumbs across your breasts, nipples hardened in the cups of your bra, before lowering his mouth to the crevice between them. He runs his tongue, slowly, carefully, along the cool silk of your skin. “Fox, maybe. No… no, he’d finish and kick you out. Rex? My Captain? My brother?” You gasp, cupping his face between your hands. “No. Too soft. Too slow.”
“What are you trying to say, Fives?”
“That I’m the brother for you.” You giggle, throwing your arms around his neck. “I promise, I promise from the bottom of my heart… I am the clone for you.” He offers a goofy smile.
“I trust you, Fives,” you whisper, brushing his nose with yours. “Do you still want to try it, though?” You stroke a finger down the nape of his neck. “Figure out whether I’m the woman for you?” He tucks an arm below your hips and hauls you up, up into the air.
“I already know.”
“You don’t even know my favourite colour… my favourite flavour of ice cream, my favourite meal!”
“All in good time. For now,” he busts open a door at random. “Good choice.” It’s the bedroom. A wide bed, perfect for ignoring alarms, and what seems to be, to Fives, a good throwing range. He tosses you onto the mattress, and you bounce, just a little, watching him from the head of the bed. “Comfortable, too.”
“Come here,” you call, springing onto your knees. Fives reaches over his head and tugs in one mighty pull, his shirt off. You swallow, dry-mouthed, when he displays deep bronze skin, six lines of ridged muscle, broad arms, broader shoulders. His grin grows.
“You like what you-”
“Yes.” You hook an arm around his neck and pull him back onto the bed, hauling him below you. Bare skin against bare skin, you tremble with every hot, silky-smooth touch he ghosts up your legs, over your knees, along the curve of your spine. You shift your hips against him, pressing purposely along the velvet length hidden in his blacks. Your fingers splay against his chest, sliding along his stomach, into the waistband of his trousers.
A husky gasp and a growl when your fingertips fuss through the downy triangle of hair at the very centre of those defined lines of muscle, a perfect V. He thrusts his hips up, planting himself at an angle on his elbows. You grin, wrapping a hand around his cock.
It’s broad, long, big enough to make you wince, and hot to the touch. You sweep a thumb over the tip, wetness pooling there somewhere, a drop, more than that, a rivulet running along the underside of the head.
“Fuckin’ hell.” You smile, capturing Fives in a hard, rough kiss. His teeth clack against yours, but he doesn’t care, all he seems to care about is keeping that pressure on his dick and keeping you right there, beside him. “Oh, Maker.”
“That feel good, soldier?”
“Pull rank on me and I’ll cum in your hand right now.” He grins. You sigh, tapping your chin with your free hand.
“What comes next, I wonder?” Fives growls, tossing you on your back in one hard motion. He kicks off his pants, exposing bulking, heavy thighs corded with muscle and a long, thick cock. You grin, going to crawl forwards, but Fives presses you to the bed with a hand.
“No, no. Just stay there.” His fingers hook in the waistband of your panties. They’re lace and silk, elegant, and he tugs them down, slowly. “You’re beautiful.” You feel your body flush, Fives’ breath quickening against your stomach, your knees, the apex of your thighs, before he presses his mouth into your heat.
“Oh, Gods, give a little warning next time-” He squeezes the skin of your right thigh with a sigh, running his tongue up the liquid warmth between your legs, between your folds, along the petal-pink flesh, wet with desire. “Fives.”
“You’re sweeter than sugar, princess. Sweeter than anything.” He taps your hips and pins them into the bed, nose brushing your clit with dangerous precision. “So pretty, soft.” His tongue thrusts into you, gathering your slickness in one long motion. He moves his fingers slowly, carefully, along your skin, rubbing one against your entrance in a wolfish, evil way.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Hm?” Fives croons, biting softly at the skin of your thigh. “You say something?” He hums, licking his lips before shoving his face back between your legs. With the quick shift of his head, his finger eases into you, slowly, carefully. You groan, pushing your hand through his hair. His tongue is teasing at your clit, his finger shifting delicately inside you, slower than anything, but electrifyingly so.
“Fives, you tease,” you groan, eyes screwed shut. “Stop playing around.”
“You’re asking me to stop playing around?” He adds a second finger, stretching you to the knuckle. You hiss, a hand latching around his upper bicep like a vice. Fives grins. He pecks you twice on the hipbone, then returns his attention to between your legs. “I’m quite enjoying playing around.”
“You’re being a tease. I’d much rather give you attention- ah, fuck, fuck- too. Please,” you hiss, eyes shuddering back as he coaxes the oncomings of an orgasm out of you. A grin against your skin- you feel it. His teeth graze your skin, then his mouth latches onto you once more. Liquid heat burns through your gut, coiling you tight. “I’m going to…”
“Yes, pretty girl, give it to me.” He flicks his tongue over your clit. “Give it to me, Sugarplum. You got it, baby.”
You choke on a moan as your orgasm snatches you away. It’s a thrumming feeling, a wheeze that escapes through your lungs and burns you hot inside out. A grin spreads onto your face, your skin is vibrating, shivering under the still-relentless touch of Fives between your legs. He eases up onto the bed, then, smoothing your breasts into his hands.
“Perfect tits,” he whispers.
“How do you want me?” You ask, breathless, eyes still spotty-white from the blinding climax rushing between your legs, rendering you twitching, shaking.
“Get on your back for me?” He asks, pinching a nipple between two deft fingers. You keen, shuffling beneath him. Your hand snakes between his leg and slowly strokes his cock, carefully, quietly. Fives groans, capturing your mouth with his. A moan is lost into his tongue, wetting your lips then moving against them once more. He’s a battering ram- no mercy, a perfect soldier.
“Fucking hell, Fives,” you whisper, raking nails over his scalp. He moans. You feel your stomach drop to your feet. “You like that?” He nods, parting your legs with two rough, callused hands. Your fingers pull hard at his hair and he whines, slipping his tongue back into your mouth, sliding his hand between your legs once more. He plays with your clit, your hand around his cock.
“I’m gonna fuck you now,” he rasps, nipping at your bottom lip. You let go of him, reaching up to slide your arms along the hot, hard planes of his back. Fives stares at you, just for a moment, eyes dark like smoke, before he grips himself and pushes against you. “Slow?”
“Whatever you want,” you whisper, mouth cracking open when he impales you carefully in one liquid thrust. “Oh, shit. Now is probably a good time to tell you I’m on suppressors.” Fives tries to speak, but his words are lost in a broken groan into the hot crook of your neck. Your nails push crescent moons into his shoulders, letting him stretch you carefully along his generous length. “Are you all your brothers… this big?”
Fives huffs a laugh, nose brushing your pulse.
“Weird question.”
“Yeah,” you gasp, fanning your face with a hand. “Yeah, you’re right.” You stifle a moan between your fingers, eyes ducking back into your head. “Fuck, fuck, Fives, just a little quicker.”
“Quicker?” His hips snap against yours with a sharpness you haven’t felt before. Your chest drops out, but he continues, thumbs digging into your hips when he tilts you upwards, finding the best angle. His fingers slide beneath the small of your back to suspend you there, perfect for his ruin, when he brushes his mouth over your nipple and ruts firmly into you. “That, ah- that better?”
“Hm, yeah, yes.” You slide a hand into the hair at the back of his head, eyes fluttering shut, mouth slipping open with every thrust of his hips, every shift of his cock inside you. “Yeah, baby, that’s better.” You scratch gentle nails over his back, admiring his warmth, before tugging carefully at his hair. He groans, pinning you into the bed.
Your eyes slide shut. Stars begin to speck behind them and you think he knows by the breathless laugh against your throat, then the broken moan into your jaw, your mouth. He tongues your mouth gently, bruising your lips swollen with the fervent touches.
“Fives-”
“Ah, yeah?”
“Touch me, just a little more,” you plead, nose brushes his as he pecks you once more, thumbing your right nipple, then finding your clit beneath a rough finger. “Yeah, yeah.”
“You like that, pretty girl?” He huffs, dragging his tongue along your throat. “Yeah?”
“Yes! Gods, yes, please!” You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him flush against your chest. Fives’ eyes disappear beneath his eyelids, his chest rumbling with soft, persistent groans every other thrust. You whine, pulling at his hair, scratching at his back.
“You’re a little… fuckin’... ah, keep pullin’.” You giggle, threading your fingers through his hair, kissing him twice on the mouth, once on the jaw, angling his head as you see fit. “Yeah, baby, that’s right. Tight little pussy.”
He squeezes your waist with one hand, still flicking at your clit with the other hand, desperate to chase your orgasm out of you, and it works, he gives you one in moments. You stiffen, back arching, fisting a hand in the sheets, the other smoothing over his neck. Your moan echoes in your bedroom, and Fives eggs you on with gentle praise.
“Good girl, yeah, keep… fuck,” he wheezes, hiding his face in your shoulder. His arms are so tight. “Can I move you?”
“Uh-huh, yeah,” you whisper, letting him shift you into a lower position, where he impales you so suddenly your breath hitches and you shriek, turning into a whimpering mess. “Oh, that’s so good!”
“That’s good?” He breaths, pupils almost completely lost in black-brown irises.
“Yes, Fives, it’s good,” you whisper, smothering your mouth against his with a giggle, a grin, slipping your tongue into his mouth. He grunts, releasing your clit to roll a nipple between finger and thumb. You hiss sharply against him, forcing your heels into his back to push him deeper, harder. “Harder, baby, please.”
He quickens his pace, the bed shaking a little under his force.
“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful,” he murmurs against your lips. “Sweet angel,” he reaffirms. “Heaven sent.” His fingers wrap around your free wrist, pinning it against the silken sheets below your head. Your back arches with the pressure, a grin spreading along your face. “Fuckin’ hell, I’m gonna cum.”
You hiss when he touches your clit, so eager, so painlessly prepared to give you what you want- another orgasm, more pleasure, anything. He coaxes it out of you, another climax, relishing in your writhing against him, your low whine in his ear, the shiver that follows, the sweat that slicks him head to toe.
“Fuck!” You cry, shuddering back into the sheets.
Fives’ hips falter, his eyes scrunching shut, his groans lower, deeper, until you wind a hand into his hair and kiss him once more, and his thrusts pause.
“Inside?”
“Yeah.”
He finishes, coating you with one hard grunt, a sharp sigh, his eyes finally opening to find yours, a grin eventually appearing on his tired features. You let him fill you, for a moment more, before he pulls away a little.
“Sorry,” he whispers, pulling out. You huff at the cool touch of air against the wetness sinking deep into your skin, and watch him do a quick double-take around the room for the bathroom. With a snort, you point at the door on the left. He punches the release and wanders in, clattering around.
“Under the sink, baby.”
“Yeah! I got it,” he calls, reappearing after the tap runs for a moment. He kneels between your legs and gently, softly, wipes the warm cloth over you until he’s satisfied you’re cleaned up well enough. “There, princess.”
“Thanks.”
He disappears back into the bathroom, and a wet slap suggests he’s just tossed the rag into the bath tub. An muffled ‘oops’ and there’s another sound of running water.
You stifle a giggle behind your hand, darting from the bed to snatch up his long-sleeve top. It had the Republic branded right in the middle, grey against the black, and you snuggle into it, sliding your arms into too-big sleeves. Fives reappears after a moment and grins, crooking a finger towards your shrouded form.
“Do you want me to go?” He asks, quietly, sincerely. “I’m assuming ‘no’ since you’ve stolen my shirt,” he hums.
“No, stay, please.” You usher him towards the bed, hands on his ass. You squeeze once with a snort and toss his trousers at him. He eases himself into them and pulls you into his chest.
“Are you okay?”
“Better than okay.” Fives grins, craning his neck to kiss you softly on the mouth, the nose, the forehead. You stare helplessly at him, your heart suddenly quite warm, and collapse onto the bed. “Come sleep.” You pat the space beside you and watch as he slides himself in. “Never had a double?” His look of confusion is an easy tell.
“Nope.”
“Comfy?”
He turns, half buried in thick duvet and silk sheets. You can barely make out his nod but slide down beside him, tucking your head into the crook of his neck. He’s like a furnace- probably going to irritate you later in the night- but you relax against his chest.
“‘Night.”
“G’night, pretty baby.”
*
for the bbs always: @thegoodbatch @djangofetts @jangohshit @queenofheavenandhell
#fives x reader#fives#arc trooper fives#arc trooper fives x reader#fives imagine#arc trooper fives imagine#fives smut#arc trooper fives smut#star wars#the clone wars#star wars smut#purely self satisfying
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Quidditch camp (part 2) | Fred Weasley x Reader
Summary: You and Fred attend quidditch camp like every summer, but, this year, there’s been a mistake in the cabin and rooming situations. In other words, they’re short of bed and you and Fred will have to share.
Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader
Word count: 1800
-
You hadn't talked to - or even looked at - Fred since the kiss.
Once you pulled away from the kiss, you had made a beeline for the bathroom, no longer caring that there was no hot water. A cold shower would do you good - and it was apparently very beneficial for the skin.
Anything to not be in the same room as him.
At supper, you sat with Angelina and Katie. You talked about the afternoon training session, which will cause your legs to ache in the morning and the latest gossip going around in the girls' cabin. Apparently, a girl had snuck into Cedric Diggory's cabin last night - according to Angelina the suspect was Cho Chang - and Madam Hooch was furious.
Most importantly, you didn't tell them what happened at the cabin.
Unconsciously, as Katie was telling you about a new broomstick trick she learned this afternoon, your eyes drifted to the redhead Beater - and the kiss you had shared. The same kiss that had left you wanting more.
Although Fred was three tables away from you, you could still feel his hands on you, strong and firm but not too rough, smell his woody soap and hear the soft sounds of appreciation leaving both your mouths as his warm tongue slipped past your lips and easily found yours. You couldn't believe you had let it escalate to that. At least no clothes had been removed - Fred was just in his shorts, but it still counted.
.
After supper, you left and went to your cabin, faking a headache. You'd usually follow the girls to their cabin and hang out until curfew, but not tonight. You needed time to think and, most importantly, get your mind off of Fred Weasley. Perhaps reading a book would help?
That didn't work for long because the twins walked in the cabin less than twenty minutes later, laughing about some prank they had pulled on one of the younger campers.
''It was brilliant, Freddie! Who knew Chambers could scream that high pitched,'' George said, talking about the prank.
''That image is forever engraved in my mind. Spiders! Spiders! They're gonna get in my pants!'' Fred mocked, imitating Chambers. ''It was hilarious.''
''How did you find so many spiders?''
''There's a whole colony behind Ron's cabin. I lured them into a cup and-'' Fred stopped himself when seeing you on the bed, his mood dropping and changing.
''Hey, Y/N,'' George greeted with a smile, going to his side of the cabin. ''You're here early.''
''I wasn't feeling good. I think it's the heat,'' you explained. If you were consistent with your lie and told everyone the same thing, no one would suspect it was a lie.
''Well, get some rest. Tomorrow's game day. We play against the Phoenixes.'' George fished for his toiletries and slung his towel on his shoulder. ''I'm gonna shower.'' He looked between you and Fred. ''Try to not kill each other while I'm in there, alright?''
Fred sat on his brother's bed and waited until the shower was running to speak. ''So...are we going to talk about it?''
''Talk about what?'' you asked, faking ignorance.
Fred gave you a stern look. ''Don't play that game, Y/L/N.''
You sighed. Forgetting it happened would've been so much simpler.
It's not like the kiss meant anything. It was just that, a kiss. There was no need to make a fuss about it.
''There's nothing to talk about.'' You closed your book and stood, slipping on your shoes and headed outside for a walk.
''Where are you going? I thought you had a headache.''
''I do, but hearing your voice makes it worse.''
.
The match against the Phoenixes was not going well.
McLaggen was sick, therefore he was sitting out this one, which left his keeper position to one of the younger - and less skilled, campers. Much to their bad luck, the young boy had let in five goals in a row. Five! He was probably nervous for his first time on the field, but five goals was a lot of points.
You were scheming the field, trying to spot the snitch, but, much to your luck, the only thing in your vision field was Fred's abs - which was distracting. To your defense, it was Fred's fault for bringing the bottom of his quidditch jersey up to his face to wipe away sweat. The little fucker also purposely flexed his abs a little every time he did it. You tried to look away, but those abs were difficult to look away from. Damn you, Fred Weasley!
Fred's exibitionist manners caused you to miss the snitch and, by the time you had snapped out of your staring, Cho had caught the snitch.
.
''Maybe McLaggen is right. Maybe we should fuck,'' Fred declared after the match, removing his protective gear.
You almost sputtered your water all over yourself. ''Excuse me?'' you asked, hoping you had heard wrong.
''You and me. We should fuck.''
A laugh left your lips. ''Did a bludger hit your head?''
''You were looking at me, weren't you? That's why you didn't see the snitch.'' A smug smile curled on his face. ''Do you have a crush on me, Y/L/N?''
''Wow, that bludger must've hit your head really hard, uh?''
''I'm not going to tell the team...if you accept to have sex with me.''
What?! You couldn't believe what you were hearing.
''Are you blackmailing me into having sex with you? You know that's sextortion, right?''
Fred shook his head. ''No. I'm saying, it's been proven that sex raises endorphins and other hormones that boost mood. Perhaps if we release those good hormones we won't be at each other's throat and picking fights during games...or staring at the other. It would be for the team's sake.''
You scoffed. ''The team's or your dick's sake?''
''I'm being serious, Y/N. Think about it.''
.
The time had been set. Friday, during the campfire, while everyone's attention would be occupied, you and Fred would slip to your shared cabin and...do it.
You didn't want to let it get to your mind, but it was all you could think about throughout the day. While the plan could work and ease the tension between you two, there was a possibility that the sex would go wrong - or be bad - and make things worse inside the team. You were also worried that it would be awkward afterward or that Fred would tell everyone.
During seeker training, you weren't flying your best. Madam Hooch had noticed that your mind was elsewhere and questioned you about it. You lied about not getting enough sleep the night prior and vowed to not stress yourself over tonight.
It was only a big deal if you made it one, right? To prove yourself, you didn't dress special - other than matching your underwear to your bra. It was just Fred, you didn't need to impress him. You didn't even put on lipgloss!
You started with kisses, slowly getting comfortable with each other, but quickly wanting more. His ginger hair smelled of smoke from the campfire and his lips tasted something sweet - roasted marshmallows. You hummed, slipping your hands under his shirt, feeling the curves of his abs and back. Merlin, you loved those.
''Did you lock the door?'' you asked, not wanting to be walked in on by any of your cabin buddies.
Fred hesitated and you sighed, going to lock it yourself.
When you returned to Fred, he had discarded his shirt, leaving him shirtless and you had to hold yourself back from biting your lip. Damn, that body.
Seeing as it was unfair that he was the only one who had taken off clothes, Fred helped you take off your top. You should've felt exposed, but it wasn't the first time he saw you in a bra and it wasn't much different than bikini tops, right? But, this bra was a little sexier than the sports bra you usually wore and, by the look Fred was giving you and your body, he didn't hate it.
''Ohh, I didn't know you owned other things than sports bras, Y/L/N,'' he teased, gliding the pad of his finger on the edge of the black lace.
You swatted him and he laughed.
His lips found their way back to yours, hands exploring each other's bodies. You felt the backs of your legs hit his bed and fell back onto it due to a not-so-gentle shove from Fred. You narrowed your eyes, but Fred joined you, crawling on top of you.
Small moans left your lips as he kissed the side of your neck and your hands went to his hair, keeping him there. He was probably going to give you a bruise and it could be a bitch to cover up, but you'll worry about that later.
No. No more kisses. You were running tight on time.
You snapped out of your bubble and pulled Fred off of your neck. If you wanted to be finished before anyone realized you two had vanished from the campfire, you needed to get straight to business and not fool around too much.
Sparing you both some time, you arched your back off of the mattress and unclasped your bra, throwing it somewhere in the room. You took a mental note to pick it up later to not give Oliver another reason to complain about sharing his cabin with a girl.
As you laid there, topless under Fred, the boy couldn't help but stare at your breasts, hunger in his eyes. He bit his lip and covered them both with his large hands, thumb brushing against one of your nipples, watching it harden.
''Weasley! Less ogling, more fucking. We don't have all night.''
.
''If you talk to anyone about this-'' you warned, pulling on your denim shorts and buttoning the button.
Fred emerged from the bathroom, having discarded the proof of your sexual intercouse at the bottom of the trash to cover your tracks. You couldn't let any of the boys see the used condom.
He scoffed. ''Don't flatter yourself, this was nice, but I'd rather no one knows.''
Was he embarrassed of having slept with you? It couldn't be. It was his idea - technically it was McLaggen's - to have sex.
''Because, you know, we'd get in trouble if Madam Hooch found out,'' he continued explaining, slipping on his shirt and running his hand through his hair to fix them.
Yeah, sure. That was the reason.
Everyone knew having sex on campsite was strictly forbidden and had great consequences - aka, sitting out matches - if Madam Hooch found out, but that didn't stop campers from sneaking around and doing it.
''I mean, it was fun, but you're not worth sitting out matches for.''
#fred weasley#fred weasley x reader#fred weasley fic#quidditch camp#harry potter#harry potter prompts#this one is a bit shorter but there WILL be a part 3
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ok so im making a long ass post about Abzu (the game) within the context of mesopotamian mythology because I'm insane. It's gonna be a doozy and likely incomprehensible so <3 below the cut it goes! There's gonna be TONS of spoilers for the game, and, like, I guess for the mesopotamian creation epic, so. Play Abzu if you haven't and if you wanna read the Enuma Elish that's also cool. Good for u
(a note from afterwards: it's long. like, REALLY fucking long, holy shit. if you actually want to read the whole thing, be. prepared or something idk take breaks! the last two paragraphs (i know they're walls of text pls bear with me) contain most of the important information. like, the final hurrah of my brain after working on this for multiple hours! So if u wanna save time and avoid some of the redundancy, just skip to those last two <3)
So "Abzu" referred to two things; the fresh water people got from underground aquifers (also as the void-sea which was underneath the Sumerian underworld, Kur), and the deity; he only appeared in the creation story, Enuma Elish, because a big part of that whole thing was that oh no! He dies! And that's also a thing I'm gonna touch on (sorry about the lack of accent marks in advance, it's not available on my current keyboard^ ^;)
I'm gonna start off with a brief tale of what happened with Abzu the deity, and then move onto how both the deity and the concept relate to the game!
So like I mentioned, Abzu the deity only really appears in the creation myth. The story goes that the Primordial Soup divided into two beings, with Abzu representing the freshwater and Tiamat being the saltwater. They were married, and together birthed some of the first formative gods! Some of these gods, jealous of Abzu's power convinced Tiamat to kill him (or, I thought it was started by Tiamat growing resentful of the younger gods, one of those). Either way, Abzu was killed, and Tiamat ended up lashing out, creating the first "dragons", or perhaps becoming one herself; with "poison instead of blood". She is killed by Marduk, the god of storms and the child of Enki (one of the first gods created by Abzu and Tiamat), and from her body the heavens and the earth are formed. Imagine getting killed by ur grandson lol cringe /j
Now! The waters itself! This also brings Enki into the equation, who kinda took over as god of the waters in place of his dead father. He's also the god of creation, intelligence, crafts, mischief, and more! Very important guy.
Abzu refers to both the groundwater reservoirs that people depended on for both accessible clean water and for some agricultural work, and also to the void-sea beneath the underworld, where it is said that Enki rests. He had a temple at Eridu, a now-ruined city, and I remember hearing somewhere that he lived in a temple in an underground aquifer? But I can't find wherever I read that anymore so don't take my word for it. Anyway, the basics of Enki as a deity is: child of Tiamat and Abzu, widely worshipped in his time, god of the waters, generally a cool and important dude.
And now. Finally. We move onto the game. My head hurts.
So, for a quick (post-writing: lol it's not quick) overview of the game; you play as a funny little diver, who woke up in the middle of the ocean and, as the player, are given no clues as to who or what you are. You explore through the ocean levels peacefully at first, and with the guidance of a scarred shark (painted as a bit of an antagonist at first with the audio cues) you make your way to wells at the bottom-center of each level that revitalize the space around them; as they progress, many levels start out as barren, empty landscapes that give you a foreboding, nervous feeling going in, before using an energy from yourself to rekindle the life. Huge coral growths, seaweed, and a myriad of ocean animals spring to life. The player character can also ride on the sides of the bigger ones! The game also puts a big stress on unity between yourself and the environment; there's not a whole lot you can physically interact with, but you can play with the animals there and, like I said before, ride on some of the larger animals. There are also "meditation spots", statues where you can sit and explore the wildlife from more of their point of view, able to follow them seamlessly and see what the different kinds of fish and such are called. It's a calming experience, and really the most interaction you get with some of the more timid animals, letting you still see them up close even if you can't get there as the player character.
The story of the game is told via writings on the walls, which you can light up and access by solving small puzzles regarding connecting reservoirs of glowing waters, similar to that of the almost cosmic area you go to between levels; one thing I read described it as a kind of "rebirth area", which I can definitely see hehe!
At the end of the game, you've held the shark in its dying moments, you've discovered a strange factory that builds the weird triangular prisms that deliver anything that touches them a shock, the little flashlight dudes that you've found over the levels, and little divers that uncannily resemble yourself, and you've seen yourself disassembled to your funny little mechanical skeleton, weak and slow as you try to walk on land, before you are rebirthed from the void-cosmic-water area once again, fully yourself. There's a wonderful ending sequence where you swim through all these rivers, bringing life with you as you go, with the shark once again by your side. The whole game, you saw no land when you poked your head above water, just miles and miles of water, but you've travelled far enough to reach a reservoir. You cut the chains to a central triangular prism, and it grows over with moss. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it, really, it feels like such a... grand gesture as you play through it. It feels personal.
Okay. Theory time. Finally, we're getting into the meat of it. Fucking hell.
So, imagine that you are this being. You're wandering an oceanic wonderland, observing and caring for what you need to, doing as any good little diver should. After a bit of poking around, you discover the start of the engravings on the walls; they tell the story of the people that were here before you, who built these temples and halls and used, or at least stored, the strange blue glowing "water" that you connect and move. It's a water of life, of sorts, one that they truly valued. You come to an impasse between areas, and this massive, scarred-up shark cuts in front of you. You're gonna stay hidden, that thing is terrifying! You try not to move. It doesn't spot you, or at least doesn't move to attack you. However, once it's safely out of view, you do follow it, and it leads you to a dark, desolate, empty chamber. This is wrong, you think to yourself. This isn't how it should be. There's a well, towards the bottom, and you approach it, taking... a fragment of light, from your chest, and imbuing that spark of life into the well. And, lo and behold, that intuition proved helpful, because the world around you springs back to life. Congratulations! You did it! And you continue to, as you work past puzzles and challenges and the appearance of these strange triangular mechanisms, that shock you when you get too close. These people worshipped a shark, as well, likely the same as the one you saw; the guide, now old and scarred, that brings you to where that spark is needed. Even later in the game, you see depictions of the triangular mechanisms, at first heralded as a positive, before these things are found to be the reason for this society's collapse. As if that wasn't perplexing enough, you see a depiction of a being that appears suspiciously similar to yourself, once again treated with reverence from the past civilization. In their hand is a ball of light, similar to the one shown when you revitalize the oceanic chambers. Well, that's certainly odd, you think to yourself. Perhaps this was a being that postponed the death of the civilization, or first allowed for those small chambers of life to exist in captivity instead of the open, natural landscapes you explored at the start. Regardless, it's now a relic of something long gone; but it still gives you something to think about. Later on, that strange coincidence of your similarities to that person are explained; you find a manufacturing plant, full of the vicious triangular mechanisms in each tight hallway, and right at the center of it all... multiple iterations of yourself, running down an assembly line, a spark not unlike what you saw before imbued into each of them. My, look at that; you've been responsible for part of this destruction all along, haven't you? Borne from that same ill that has been forcibly removing that spark from each of the places you've gone to. A bit inconsiderate of you, no? And yet... look at all the good you've done. You've rebirthed, revitalized, purified these ocean fragments, is that not enough? You are the keeper of these waters, regardless of the evil you had come from, despite the terrifying empty things may have reverted to. You, who trusted and followed the shark that seemed so scary at first. You, who followed it as it tried to attack a source of the evil, of the thing that was draining the oceans of their life. You, who held and comforted that shark as it lay dying, despite any fear you may have had. You, who attempted to traverse a minefield of those triangular machines, shocked over and over again and at the final moment, unable to make it to the finish line. You, who was rebirthed in full regardless by the oceans you'd cared for, by the void-sea you always returned to, to rest. You, who traversed a now-ruined citadel, temple, all of which had been flooded and had been dedicated to you. You, who brought life with you.
I hope you see what I'm getting at here. You're serving as a figure not unlike Enki, god and guardian of the waters. In the wake of Abzu, the avatar of the fresh waters, now confined to irrigation canals so as not to kill the younger gods, Tiamat lashes out. Her husband is dead, as far as she is concerned, and she goes to those younger gods to seek her revenge. The dragon, that which sucked the life from the seas and poisoned the waters. That which Marduk killed, to carve new life from. I would say that the shark is Marduk, even; given how the shark is the only one who is openly on the offense to those mechanisms, and who comes in at the endgame to finish them off, bringing new life with it. Even in how it all shapes up with the civilization before, in connection to the constructs; Tiamat was the mother of all in existence at that time. She was surely loved; but she turned hostile and violent. She could no longer be safely loved. And Abzu, both the glowing water we use to open doors and the light that we hold and the deep void-sea we enter between levels and father to all in existence, he was confined to small canals and reservoirs and put in a deep sleep so that he would not kill his own children. And by you, no less. Enki put him there. That is why you can use that water from the start; you lived in the Abzu, you came from it, and each time, that is where you return. That temple, now submerged and decrepit, is Eridu; the place where Enki was most worshipped. The other diver clones are the other gods, or perhaps the "dragons", now, that Tiamat had mothered. The smaller prisms definitely count in that "dragon" category; purely harmful beings that seek to destroy life. And in the end, indeed, you restore life; you and your son, upon killing Tiamat, return life to the world from her body. Perhaps you could not save those who once worshipped you, perhaps those structures will forever be in ruin. But there is no more danger, now; there is space to build and replenish. There is space to grow.
Fuck ok that was long as hell. Hi if u made it this far i love u. god fucking damn im never writing anything again after this. it took about as long as a full playthrough of the game, coincidentally!!
#my writing#abzû#abzu#giant squid studios#ancient history#the moss mumbles#im not joking this is horrible. like it's all just word vomit about sumerian legend -> the game -> the game again (but in second person)#and THEN we get to The Point. god christ
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Could you maybe post a long-ass list of good ironstrange fics because at this point, there's nothing else to do and you seem like you have great taste
puppets on a string
Summary: Stephen Strange is a villain. But a hot one.
Words: 103,206 (incomplete)
This fic is courtesy of our very own @funkylittlebidiot, so definitely give it a read!
Find a Way (to break the fall)
Summary: Stephen didn't think about it anymore. It had been buried deep beneath all the other shit he'd had to live through in the last couple of years and it didn't impact his day to day life in any way whatsoever. Until the day it does.
Words: 2,170
This one is short, but emotional and impactful. Warning for discussions of past rape/non-con.
The Brands We Carry
Summary: Tony Stark is almost thirteen years old when he gets ready to settle down to bed one early-early-morning and happens to look in the mirror on his childhood wall and catches sight of a circular brand on the skin above his heart.
“About fucking time,” Tony mutters, and goes to sleep without bothering to tell anybody he just cussed out a baby that’s only just crying its way into its new life somewhere on the planet.
The date is February 17, 1983. Happy birthday, whoever you are. Took you long enough.
Or: Tony Stark and Stephen Strange are soulmates. You'd think that would mean they would be perfect for each other right from the start, but it turns out that their soulbond is a long path of mutual distrust, dislike, and miscommunication. Just their luck.
Words: 10,497
I love a good soulmate au, and this is a good soulmate au. Very interesting look at both characters and also what happens if someone’s soulmate has a not insignificant age gap (though they only meet in person for the first time as adults)
A Crown of Thorn and Shadows
Summary: Anthony Stark, King of Blood and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie court, did not expect to find Prince Stephen Strange of the Seelie chained up in his torture chamber, cold iron being driven into his hands. Stephen Strange, a Seelie healer, never dreamed of finding himself in the court of nightmares, being cared for by the king that the Seelie called a monster. They must work together to find the traitors in two Faerie courts that have not spoken in over six hundred years and reclaim Stephen's memories before the courts descend into war once more.
Words: 58,465
Wonderful fantasy au, great worldbuilding and relationship buildup. Lots of fun.
Villain Stephen Strange and His Obsession with Tony Stark
Summary: Just a bunch of prompty oneshots that are partially based but 100% inspired by Tumblr IronStrange Posts. Rated T-M
Words: 1,029
Do I even have to explain it? This is just fun.
Ten times outta nine, I’m a hand grenade
Summary: Though neither remembered that night, it turns out that Tony Stark and Stephen Strange had first encountered each other years earlier. Unfortunately, that might end up destroying the universe.
Words: 419,141
This is a loooooooooong boi. But oh, it’s a good one. Stephen and Tony basically go back in time, change the universe, and fall in love. It’s everything you could want from them. Complete with romance, angst, drama, and humor.
Where Severus Snape is hot, not a stalker, and somehow gets the girl
Summary: And then, as if he wasn’t already the most embarrassing estranged biological dad ever, Tony stopped in his tracks, raised his sunglasses (because of course he would wear sunglasses inside a lecture hall in April), and gave Professor Strange the most blatant, sustained once-over in the history of fuckboyness.
Then he put down his glasses, shot a winning smile at the teacher, and said, “Well, I’m Tony Stark, of course.”Or: Peter Parker is sick and wants to cut his Neuroscience class. Tony just wants to help (and maybe date his son's hot teacher). Stephen Strange just wants to give his lecture in peace.
Words: 2,387
Stephen is a college professor. Peter is his student. Tony is having too much fun with this.
You Remind Me of a Man
Summary: Tony Stark cannot stand the overly opinionated and egotistical Dr. Strange and the feeling is extremely mutual.
Words: 44,788
Perfect no-powers au for them. They’re assholes who fall in love and see another side to each other. It’s amazing, 10/10 would recommend.
I am here
Summary: There’s a technical reason Stephen must surrender the Time Stone to save Tony’s life. It has to be done, and that’s enough for him to do it. But just in case, the universe decides to give him a personal reason as well.
Words: 11,708
This one is so soft. Basically, while looking through time, Stephen keeps showing up in the past at various points throughout Tony’s life. And then they fall in love! Good for them.
T For Tony
Summary: Your soul mark is the first letter of your soulmate's name.
Stephen has an 'A'. But he's in love with Tony. Cue anxiety, jealousy, angst.
Words: 2,794
They’re so stupid in this fic. It’s great. It took them so much effort to remember Anthony starts with an A. (I still think this fic should’ve been titled A For Tony, but I didn’t write it, so)
something taken, something new
Summary: The ChronicConnection implement and app allows a person that lives with chronic or illness-induced pain to transfer their burden temporarily to a willing loved one. Tony and Stephen sign up as beta testers.
Words: 14,541.
I must’ve recced this a thousand times ..... AND I’LL DO IT AGAIN. THIS FIC IS THE PERFECT MIXTURE OF SOFT AND ANGST AND IF YOU DON’T READ IT, YOU’RE WRONG.
15 Million
Summary: For every alternate reality there were ten thousand alternate realities from that. And from those ten thousand more. And then ten thousand more off each of those. And so it goes.
The Avengers win once. There’s ten thousand versions of it.
Stephen Strange doesn’t know what to make of the fact that Tony Stark seems to be *his* victory.
Words: 2,755
Obligatory “Stephen looks through 15 million possible futures and falls in love with Tony in the process fic”. Can’t have a fic rec list without it.
Hero Swap AU
Summary: It's a boring day for the Avengers until Tony Stark attacks.
Words: 17,391.
Just pure, fun crack.
Only a Matter of Time
Summary: Captured by aliens, mistaken for a mating pair, Tony and Stephen find themselves having the universe’s most awkward honeymoon.
Words: 6,056.
Smut. Good smut, though.
Sunrise in Exile
Summary: Tony does the math and realizes their best chance to save the universe is by... not confronting Thanos on his own turf.
So he steals a wizard and a spider and a space ship. And he runs.
(Three humans and an A.I in space, the alien friendships they make along the way, and discovering how science and magic might coexist in a universe where they can be one and the same.)
Words: 352,079 (incomplete, has not been updated in a while)
A long fic set during Infinity War where they just ... run away to space. And it’s great.
Rewriting Icarus
Summary: Stephen and Tony, from the beginning to the end and beyond.
Words: 23,504
Pre-powers AU, except they fall in love then get powers. Sad, angsty, beautiful.
variations on a theme
Summary: Stephen sees into millions of possibilities and finds only one where they win, but he never expected to end up falling in love with Tony Stark in almost every single one of them.
Words: 5,134
Another Stephen looks through the possible futures and falls in love with Tony? ... Guess you can’t have just one.
Five’s A Party
Summary: It's an orgy fic, I'm not sure what else to say
Words: 2,639
... Not much I can add to that. Magic smut.
A Lapse in Judgement
Summary: Stephen, the newly minted Sorcerer Supreme, is strong, powerful, and in control of his life in every micromanaged detail, because failure to do so could result in (another) cataclysmic event within the universe. He is. But then Stephen accepts an off-handed offer to spar from Tony Stark – a man who is Stephen’s non-magical equal, a man who Stephen barely sees outside of bi-weekly meetings and the few and far between fight against a villain – and Stark discovers Stephen’s biggest weakness, his most hateful secret that is a deeply fundamental part of Stephen’s psyche.
Except instead of judgement, and horror, and disgust, Stark meets him halfway, and a lapse in judgement turns into a possibility that could change their lives forever.
Words: 22,694
This is the first of a series which was just updated (haven’t finished reading the new part yet, looking forward to it) and is just a really good, surprisingly soft and emotional BDSM series/fic.
Ironstrange Fics and Ironstrange Cinematic Universe
Oh, how did these get here?
Yes, I’m reccing my own work. I’ve written 29 fics and 377,132 words for this ship, I think I’m entitled.
Ironstrange Fics is a collection of every ironstrange fic I’ve written, short, long, sweet, angst, and everything in between. Ironstrange Cinematic Universe (itself responsible for 49% of those 377k words) is my ironstrange rewrite of the MCU specifically. Please read, enjoy, and leave comments, I’m not updating any fics for a couple of weeks and I need the validation.
#long post#very long post#asks#incorrect-ironstrange#ironstrange#fic recs#fanfiction#ironstrange fanfiction#my fanfiction#Anonymous
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