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morverenmaybewrites · 19 hours

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A Crown of Bone

Pairing: Changeling! Reader x Fae Lord! Zhongli Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence Additional Tags: Fae!AU, Implied Reincarnated Lovers!AU AO3 link Notes: Thank you to @sgri-sgri for beta-ing this!

Summary:

Imagine being a changeling child and living your life in quiet yearning.

You had been found in the dead of winter, or so your mother tells you, a half-fey child abandoned in a snowbank.

Imagine a lifetime of secrets: your first memories are of a spring that does not belong to the mortal realm. You dream of golden eyes gleaming at you from the darkness as your mother picked you up and carried you away.

Imagine keeping these things to yourself, tucked away against the curve of your ribs, right next to your slow-beating heart. Secrets that are half-yearning and half-memory: someone had left you there in that snowbank, and there are days that you think that they did not do so willingly.

And you hope that one day, they will find you again.

Story:

Imagine being a changeling child and living your life in quiet yearning.

It is a life of hollow hunger and a longing for something you cannot quite name.

You had been found in the dead of winter, or so your mother tells you, a half-fey child abandoned in a snowbank. She has told you this story many times before. Sometimes in fond reminiscence, more often in hushed whispers, her eyes fearful and haunted as she recalled your unnatural stillness, the way the snowflakes that landed on your skin did not melt.

You don’t answer whenever she tells these stories; she is already frightened enough. You do not tell her that while you had been found during winter, your first memories were of spring.

Except it is not the spring of Snezhnaya, where you had been raised. It is not the cold sun, finally rising after months of not showing its face. Nor is it the first tentative buds of snowdrops, pushing their way up from the melting snow.

The spring you remember is brilliant, bursting with vivid color. You remember walking underneath trees whose leaves were the color of fire; you remember the taste of wine against your tongue.

And sometimes, in those odd moments between dreaming and waking, you would remember seeing the gold of someone’s eyes and the curve of black, gleaming bone.

You do not mention this to your mother, who is already half-afraid of you. Nor to your father, who gazes at you with a resigned sort of acceptance.

Instead, you keep it to yourself, tucked away against the curve of your ribs, right next to your slow-beating heart. A secret that is half-yearning and half-memory: someone had left you there in that snowbank, and there are days that you think that they did not do so willingly. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

Imagine arriving in Liyue during winter, a season of cold and gnawing hunger. The trees that dot the landscape are now bare, their branches the color of bleached bone. Whatever flowers that once bloomed in its fields are now gone, their colorless stems now covered by frost.

It is also a time when ice forms in the harbor, icicles as thick as spears, cresting with each wave. No ship dares to land on the Liyue Harbor during winter. During winter, food, paper, and cloth grow scarce. The shrines you pass by on the road show only a few, meager offerings: a single piece of fruit, the skin shriveled and mottled with mold. A carved wooden statue of a carriage, half-burnt, for fire does not survive long in this cold. You wonder what the Good Folk make of such meager offerings, whether they are as quick to anger as your Tsaritsa.

Something gleams at the bottom of the bowl, wet and dark. You come closer to inspect it and feel a shiver of disgust when you realize what it is.

Teeth, still bloody and steaming in the cold air. You step away, stomach twisting, and you think: the Tsaritsa would approve.

Perhaps Liyue and Snezhnaya have more in common than you thought.

You reach your destination, some remote village on the outskirts of Liyue, and feel a sudden shock of fear at what you find there. The woman who greets you stumbling at the gates is already half a stranger. The Aunt Baiji you knew had been both vivid and beautiful, with dark hair that gleamed like oil even in the dim sunlight of Sneznahya’s endless winter.

She had been strong, too. As a child, you remember how her voice shook the walls of your small household, as she shouted down both of your parents. You remember looking down at your burned hands, still steaming from holding iron cutlery, and wondering if you are worthy of such rage.

She had handed you a pair of chopsticks before she left, carved from bamboo and coated in dark lacquer.

“They’ll see sense soon, little Dragonfly,” she had said. “In the meantime, use these instead.”

You had carried the chopsticks with you on the long journey to Liyue, wrapped in wool like a shroud. You find that they give you courage for what you are planning to do.

They give you the courage to lie now, and it tastes like iron against your teeth.

“It’s good to see you, Auntie.”

But it isn’t. The woman who throws her trembling arms around you looks nothing like the one who had defended you all her life. To hold her is like holding a skeleton, you can feel the individual knobs in her spine, the skin hanging loose over her flesh.

You feel it then, like the flitting of a bird against your chest: fury, bright and pure. And with it, the determination to see this through.

“You came,” she whispers, and her voice is as insubstantial as a ghost. “Oh, my love, when I got your letter, I didn’t believe…You know I would never ask you to do this. You don’t have to do this.”

Yet, in her eyes, you can see her raw, desperate grief and the way she swallows down her tears as if they are poison in her throat.

“Yes.” You say it as gently as you can, and even then, she flinches. “I do. Show it to me.”

She sucks in her breath as if struck, and you hasten to add, “It’s not him, Auntie. You know this.”

She gives you a shaky smile, one that makes the wrinkles on her face as deep as mountain crags. “I know, Dragonfly, I know. But it–”

Her smile shakes, then cracks like porcelain, and with it comes her tears. First a trickle, then a flood. And you watch as the woman who had never shed a tear in your memory cries as if she will never stop.

“I’m sorry, Dragonfly, it just looks so much like him…I can’t…He’s still lying there.”

Her head is bowed, her thin shoulders shaking, as if the weight of her grief is enough to split her in two. Watching her, you feel a knot forming in your throat, and you wonder if grief can be contagious.

You take her hand in both of yours, guiding her. She has grown so thin that you can feel the bones of her wrists pushing up against her skin, the way the current of rivers curve over stones.

“Let me show you, Auntie,” you say. “There is nothing underneath.”

She lets you lead her, childlike, through the doors of her own house and it is as bare as you have ever seen it. Gone are the oil paintings from Mondstadt, the tiny figurines carved from noctilus jade bartered from night market stalls at the Harbor, the bolts of embroidered cloth you had sent over from Snezhnaya. Apart from the small cot lying in the corner of the room, the small room is almost obscene in its nakedness.

You say nothing, but an image unfurls over your mind: that of your aunt selling her belongings, piecemeals, making offering after offering to appease the ones who have taken her son.

You remember the teeth on the shrine, still steaming from the heat of someone’s mouth, and you shiver.

“He’s in my room.” She pauses to inhale, as if she has to force the next words out. “I can’t bear to leave him. Or look at him. I’ve been sleeping here instead.”

The crib is made out of woven horsetail; you can see the pink cotton of their seeds curling around its base like flowers. A mobile of figurines carved out of sandalwood hung above it, circling slowly, providing toys for a child that neither saw nor cared about them.

Behind you, you can feel Aunt Baiji shaking.

“We don’t have to do this,” she whispers through bloodless lips. “Perhaps we are wrong. There is still time to call the funeral parlor. Burn offerings for him in the afterlife.”

Her hand is cold and shaking as she puts it on your shoulder; it is like being touched by a corpse. And for just a moment, you feel a shimmer of dread, the world splitting as if into fractals.

Aunt Baiji’s son’s had been declared dead for nearly a month, the time it took you to prepare and travel to Liyue. It had been long enough that the hell gates that welcome the souls to the afterlife are about to close.

During this time, the proper offerings should have been burned to accompany him to the afterlife: joss money to line his pockets for bribes, delicate wooden carvings of servants to serve him, a pagoda carefully painted on rice paper so that he may have a place to stay in the afterlife.

And perhaps, most importantly, food. So he did not spend his afterlife with an endless hunger gnawing at his belly.

And just for a moment, you are scared to look into that crib. Nausea pulses in your gut like an open wound as you take one step, and another, then another. Your fingers curl around the woven horsetails, and your eyes seek the mobiles gently swaying in the wind.

And you look down.

You had been there to witness every moment of Aunt Baiji’s pregnancy, written in careful hand in her many, many letters to you. You had been the first person she told about when she felt the flutter of quickening in her belly, when she first felt her son kick inside her.

I have not seen him yet, but he already owns half my heart. She had written once, the letter feeling soft and sun-warmed against your shaking hands.

I have decided to name him Sevastyan. After his father. I cannot wait until the two of you meet each other. You will love him like a brother.

Brother.

In Snezhnaya, where nearly everyone knows your story, you had nothing to keep you warm. There is only your mother’s wintery stares and your father’s endless silence. But now, in a remote village on the outskirts of Liyue, the word beats against your throat like a swallowed star.

But when you look down, the child inside the crib does not look like a brother.

After he was born, Aunt Baiji sent you letter after letter, describing the dark mess of curls on his head and the fat of his cheeks that resembled fried dumplings. She described the shape of his mouth that resembled his grandmother’s and the curve of his nose that was like his father’s.

He is perfect, my Sevastyan, she had written. He is beautiful.

And he is. But the child in the crib has all the cold beauty of a carved statue, perfectly still and silent. No dreams chased behind his closed eyes and his chest did not flutter with each breath.

He does not look dead like the doctor had said. Instead, he looks like he had never been alive.

This is how you know, all those months ago. You have read enough stories and listened to enough legends about your kind not to know. The child in the crib is not Sevas, as your Aunt Baiji had feared.

Your hand hovers over his face, and on your fingers you can see the numerous cuts and bruises from your long hours of labor.

You’re shaking.

Perhaps from the cold, perhaps from fear.

As your hands close over the child’s face, you can feel it, magic pulsing against your fingers like the threads in a loom. All it takes is a slight tug and the weaving collapses. Aunt Baiji lets out a wail as the child’s face warps and twists, then it finally collapses into a pile of twigs and dried leaves.

“Oh, oh Archons. My son is alive. But they–they’ve…”

Her lips tremble, unable to form the next words.

“The Fae have taken him,” you say. “And I mean to get him back.”

And then your legs are collapsing from underneath you, shaking so hard that you are afraid that they will never stop.

And then your heart is pounding against the cage of your ribs like a frantic, dying bird.

You can feel your bones creaking, pinned under the enormity of what you must do. It is a surprise that the weight of it doesn’t crush you.

For the Fae have taken your aunt’s son, and you mean to get him back. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

Imagine wintertime in Liyue and all of its quiet menace. It is a time when the trees shed their golden foliage, leaving their branches bare and skeletal. No birdsong echoes through the woods during the winter, and no crystalflies light the way with their glowing wings.

It is only the light of the moon that guides you as you deliberately stray away from the beaten path. It is something children learn, even in Snezhnaya, never to do.

Do not go too deep into the forest. Do not stray off the path. Do not catch the attention of those who dwell in the dark.

You have caught glimpses of them as a child: the glint of the moonlight reflecting off their eyes as they peer at you through the foliage, the curl of fingers with too many joints as they grasp onto your windowsill.

You had always wanted to stumble after them, wanted to follow them down into the dark.

Take me with you, you had wanted to say. Tell me why you left me here.

But they never did.

This time, however, this time you mean to give them no choice.

You stand there, at the heart of the forest, shivering violently, for the robes you are wearing are not made for the cold. Instead, the robes you are wearing are reminiscent of spring. For the first warm day in Snezhnaya, when the sun’s rays finally split the frozen river in two, signaling the end of the cold months.

The silk is the blue color of rushing water, bursting free from underneath the ice. You had used silver thread to embroider the slow dance of the last of the snowflakes, doomed to melt before they ever touched the ground.

Your fingers still ache with the effort of embroidering them into the fabric. And yet, you consider the effort well worth it. The Good Folk are a hungry lot, and they were known to covet things they don’t have: love, music, and things of great beauty. They are often known to take the most well-cared-for children, the best dancers, the singers whose voices could wring tears from a stone.

If you are going to draw their attention, you need to bring your best creations.

Hours pass or perhaps only minutes–past a certain point, it doesn’t matter. Your fingers feel frozen, your face raw and frostbitten from the wind.

And finally, you see them.

Your breath stutters in your throat as they slowly form into existence, like the hazy figures in a dream. First came the light of their bonfire, only a faint glow in the beginning, then brighter and higher until you can feel its warmth spreading across your fingertips.

Then their music, the sound of lyre and war drums. It is something ancient and wild and speaks to the very core of you. You can feel your muscles tensing as if your body wishes to join in the laughter and the revelry. Or perhaps it longs to run free in the forest, and sink your teeth into the throat of some small, living creature, to feel the wild beat of its heart as it dies in your hands.

And then, you can see them. The Fae.

They are known to have as many forms: as many as there are types of fish in the ocean or birds in the sky. The ones who came to you this time are unfamiliar: the curves of a naked woman combined with flowers you have seen in the field. Their hair flows into petals, and their skin is as smooth and unblemished as the inside of a tulip.

There are three of them, dancing around the bonfire, their feet so light that they barely touch the earth. And yet, in the shadows, you can see the twisted forms of creatures, their clawed hands plucking the strings on a lyre, their palms beating a frantic beat on the drums. You can feel your pulse leap to the sound of it.

But you do not move to join them, even as your fingernails dig into the meat of your palm, even as you down on your lip so hard that you taste blood.

It is they who must approach you.

And finally, finally, one of them breaks free from the circle to approach you. You can hear the other two, giggling and making jokes, their laughter resembling the chittering of insects.

The one who approaches you has the pale blue skin of a mint flower. Leaves sprout from the top of her head, flowing down to her shoulders like hair. But the eyes that behold you are the eyes of a reptile: cold and calculating and nothing human in them at all.

Her hand is cold as she grasps the sleeve of your robes.

“This is beautiful,” she declares, and her breath sends a gust of cold wind against your cheeks. “Almost like a river before it is frozen over. Please, may I wear it?”

“You may wear it.” You speak through gritted teeth so that she can’t see you chatter. “For a price.”

The smile that unfurls across her face is slow and fluid, the slow trickle of water before the flood.

The hand that was once on your sleeve slides down your skin, until they are resting on your near-frozen fingertips. She looks at you, eyes half-lidded, and you see that her eyelashes are rimmed with frost.

In her presence, you find that the wind does not howl so loud and that you can no longer feel the cold. In fact, you begin to feel warm, as if there is a fire burning at the center of you.

“Name it.” Her voice comes as if from very far away. “I will pay a great number of things to wear a robe of such beauty.”

A price?

Your thoughts are muddled, like the hazy silhouette of people in a snowstorm. Your skin is burning.

You remember feeling the same way, in the snowbank where your mother found you, so many years ago. The same heat at the center of you. The same exhaustion.

And you remember a hand reaching out to you, a flash of gold through the trees.

The memory sears through your thoughts like a bolt of lightning splitting open the sky. You know this creature, and you know her story. Of the travelers she leaves on snowy mountaintops, naked, except for the frost that grows on their skin like moss. You step back from her, your voice almost cracking from the cold.

“My Aunt’s son. Your kind have taken him.”

The smile she gives you is nothing human, and when she reaches for you again, this time, you know enough to avoid her.

“Ah, the child. We left another in his place so she doesn’t miss him.”

“Wood and dried leaves make for a poor son,” you snap. “Give him back and you may wear the robe for the night.”

She grins at you, and you can see bits of gristle stuck between her teeth. Behind her, the fire roars, and her two companions dance faster. The creatures playing the instruments stamp their feet and lift their voices, their howls feral and inhuman. You can feel the pull of their magic as if your skin means to rip free from your body and, still streaking blood, join their dance across the snow.

“Of course. But first, you must join us around the fire.”

And this, you know from the countless stories. Of young men and women, joining the Fae on moonless nights, dancing to the beat of their wild, dark songs until daybreak.

And if the Fae end up liking you, they may grant you a favor. A good harvest. A fated marriage.

A son.

This time, when the snow-woman reaches for your hand, you do not flinch as frost forms where your skin meets hers. Your shoes barely skim the earth as she leads you to the fire, where the music thrums in your ears as frantic as a pulse. You grit your teeth even as the fire burns high enough to blot out the stars.

You remind yourself that you must be brave.

But perhaps, you have not read enough stories.

Or perhaps the snow-woman wishes only to trick you.

Because before you start to dance with them, you make the mistake of glancing at one of the musicians’ faces. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

You wake under sunlight and with the taste of blood in your mouth.

You do not have the boy.

What happened?

You try to sit up, only to gasp and curl around yourself like a newborn. Your entire face is pulsing with pain. When you touch it, your hands come away stained with blood.

And then, you remember.

Not the musician’s face, but what you had done after you had seen it. You had raked your fingers across your face and dug deep furrows into your cheeks. You had taken your thumbs to your eyes and pushed until they popped like overripe fruit.

You had taken out your eyes.

Yet, you can still see.

Carefully, with the gentleness of one afraid of what they might find, you explore your face. No scars meet your questing fingers, and your eyes are still intact in their sockets.

And yet, you remember: lying in the snow, blinded and sobbing, hot blood trickling from your eyes like tears. You remember, too, listening to the three beautiful creatures arguing about who got to wear the robes first. Their voices growing higher and angrier until they resembled the chittering of insects.

You remember they had come at you with teeth and claws, grabbing at whatever bit of fabric they could reach. Pulling at the silver thread so that they unraveled from their patterns, curved claws slashing away at the sleeves, cutting the soft skin underneath.

You remember screaming for them to stop.

What had happened?

By all rights, you should be dead. Blinded, and dead.

The robes you had worked so hard to make are shredded. You flush, realizing that you are almost naked, but the skin that peeks through is whole and unblemished.

“How–”

Your voice is cracked and hoarse. You can taste blood on your lips.

How are you alive?

You scour your memory for the answer but you do not know the answer. You only remember one other thing. Your hand is shaking as you raise it to your eyes so that it blocks your view of the forest.

Your skin is cold. You can feel the calluses formed from your many hours of sewing over the years.

But it is not the hand that rested over your eyes last night.

It is not the hand that healed you.

Someone had saved you last night. Someone who could heal the many cuts the Fae have left on your skin, someone who could restore your sight and your face, after you had taken your fingers to them.

And yet, you cannot remember who.

You remember only one other thing, seen only in the fleeting edges of your restored vision: a great curve of bone, rising over you, gleaming as dark as obsidian. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

Imagine Liyue in wintertime, when the rivers grow black and treacherous. No man or animal dares cross them, lest they come out blue and frozen on the other side. Underneath the wild torrents, you can see the twisting images of the creatures you’ve come to seek.

The image of a child, face bloated and black with rot, rises briefly to the surface. You remember, three years past, about a fisherman’s son who had drowned in this river. His playmates had claimed that they had seen him playing with a nobleman’s horse near the water. A scream rises in your throat like vomit when you realize that his eyes are boiling with maggots.

You stumble, water lapping at your ankles, making the hem of your robes heavy. You remember your own eyes, the sensation of them popping underneath your thumbs.

Perhaps you couldn’t do this.

Aunt Baiji will not blame you if you come back empty-handed. You know the truth of this with a heaviness in your bones. Perhaps this would have been easier if you knew that she would rage, that she would point an accusing finger at you and demand her child back.

But she wouldn’t. In fact, in her letters, she had begged you not to try. She would live if she lost her son, she wrote.

But she could not lose you both.

For her, you think as you step back into the river. For her.

And, perhaps selfishly, for something else. For the person who had placed their hand over your eyes and healed you.

For answers.

This time, you do not have to wait as long. The Fae do not come with the beating of drums or the sweet lilt of plucked lyres. Instead, they arrive in silence, rising from the churning waves, their forms still streaming water. Water-creatures that look like herons flap their wings, droplets of water flinging from them like feathers.

A trio of mallards circle the river, their bodies rising from the river, their feathers gleaming with barely-formed frost.

The boy who had drowned in the river grins at you from the banks. You can smell the stink of him: rot and the congealed blood of gutted fish, left to soak the deck of a fisherman’s boat.

And finally, it arrives. Faceless, its body formed from the river’s black torrents, it floats through the air as if cutting through water. This creature is old, old enough that no one alive remembers its name. All that is left are the stories: of the creature who lived in the rivers near Qingce Village, and who drowned any mortal who dared approach.

Its flippers glow like the wings of crystalflies as it approaches, beholding you with one gleaming eye.

“Your clothes are beautiful.” Its voice echoes through your head. You can feel it thumping against the walls of your skull.

You are struck with the sudden realization that this thing, just with its voice, can shatter you apart. Make its voice loud enough that your bones splinter into a thousand tiny pieces, like rocks of a cliffside crumbled away by the ceaseless waves.

You struggle to form an answer. Your thoughts are muddled as if your head is underwater.

As a child, you had spent hours upon hours in tea shops, sipping fragrant osmanthus tea and listening to the storytellers on the stage, their voices heavy with emotion and tragedy. Liyue is an old land, rife with legends, and you collected them like a magpie collected treasure for its nest.

You wear one of their stories now.

This time, your robes are the color of the skies over Liyue. And in its fabric, you have embroidered thousands of crystalflies, their wings glowing with the color of starlight.

It is one of Liyue’s most famous legends and one of its most tragic.

“Take them off and leave them here, so that they can decorate my riverbed,” the Oceanid demands.

The glow of its single eye is endless, and you find it nearly impossible to look away.

But still, you manage to shake your head.

“You can have my robes. But only if you are willing to trade.”

You can feel its disappointment and roiling anger like a sudden weight on your chest. You feel a sudden, fleeting panic that your cribs might crack in two, but it is all swept away by Oceanid’s rage. For thousands of years, it has been worshiped, fishermen and kings alike leaving offerings at its banks.

And yet you, stinking of your mortality, come to its waters and demand a trade?

Your skull thumps with the weight of its emotions, and for a second, you are sure that you will collapse. Your skin will split open, your bones will splinter, and blood will explode out of your screaming lips as thousands of gallons of pressure bear down upon you. You imagine your organs floating to the surface of the river, to be feasted upon by the mallards and the smiling child sitting on the banks.

But then, a word rises through your thoughts like an oncoming wave: Rhodeia.

And you are sure that you have found the creature’s name.

“Rhodeia.” Your word comes as if from underwater. “I have a story.”

You shake your sleeves so that the pale threads glint in the dim moonlight. You direct its attention to the crystalflies you have sewn into the fabric, so detailed it seems as if they are taking flight. On your back, the crystaflies form a bridge, cutting straight through the heavens, so that two lovers can walk across the sky.

You had embroidered their entwined figures just below your neck, at the curve of your spine. The star-crossed lovers of Liyue, cursed only to meet once a year for a single day.

And then you can breathe again, falling to your hands and knees on the soft, sucking mud of Rhodeia’s riverbanks. It floats in the air in silence, heedless of your strangled coughs. Somehow, you are sure that it is staring at the embroidery on your back. At the two entwined figures.

“Fine,” it says. “Name your price.”

Your lungs burn as you struggle for words. “I have a cousin who has been taken away by your people. Give him back to me, and my robes may decorate your riverbed until the end of time.”

“Done.”

Its tone is clipped and precise. Impatient. It holds out a limb to you, like the way a human would hold out a hand. It could have been a wing of a flightless bird or the fins of a leaping trout. Or it could have been nothing at all, as shapeless as water.

You grit your teeth. The Oceanid had agreed too easily.

“Show him to me, so I know that you’re not lying. Show him to me, so I know that I am not trading my work for bones.”

It beholds you, silent. And then, the churning waters of the river change, turning smooth as glass. In them, you can see him. Sevastyan.

And you think to yourself: he really is beautiful. This is not the carved statue that lay still in its crib. This is an actual boy, whose fat little fists wave in the air as he screws his face up to cry. He is still swaddled in the blankets you had sent for him, and you feel a painful twist in your chest as you remember your aunt writing that he adored the one decorated with sea turtles.

When he opens his eyes, you realize with a start that they are the same color as your Aunt Baiji’s. Black like the wings of beetles that crawled on your hand like a child.

These are the eyes of someone who had loved and defended you your whole life. Strange as you are, half-human as you are.

Your breath catches in your throat as Aunt Baiji’s words rise in your memory, as relentless as an oncoming tide: I have not seen him yet, but he already owns half my heart.

I cannot wait until the two of you meet each other.

The image dissolves into foam and the river begins to flow once more. You let out a startled cry, reaching out a shaking hand towards the current.

“Do we have a deal?”

In your head, you can feel the Oceanid’s biting impatience. You stand on shaking feet, the mud still thick on your open palms, between your toes.

And you let Rhodeia lead you into the river. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

You wake to the feeling of silt and mud curving underneath your spine. Your clothes are sodden, making your movements slow and your limbs heavy. The fabric is heavy, swollen beyond repair, the rich dye bleeding off of it like molten silver.

The dress is ruined.

And you do not have Sevastyan back.

You place a shaking hand over your eyes and curse softly.

“Fuck.”

Disappointment churns your gut like acid, and you are gripped with the sudden urge to vomit. There is a reason why people had spent centuries leaving offerings at the Oceanid’s banks: unlike the Fae in the woods, it is known to keep its bargains.

Then what happened?

The child. At the banks.

You remember his shadow, darting underneath the waters as the Oceanid guided you. A hand, webbed and pale and bloated with rot, reaching out to grab and pull you under. The rich fabric of your clothes had immediately become heavy and sodden, making you unable to swim.

Unable to move.

Perhaps the creature in the river had been a child once, but he is certainly more–or less–than that now. He had darted through your flailing limbs as nimbly as a fish. You remember seeing its twisting shape.

And you remember–

Its teeth.

Not sharp. Flat, like that of a horse. Ripping out a chunk of your arm. Then your leg. The muscles in your neck. Over and over until your vision ran red. And when you had broken the surface of the river to scream, you remember–

It had been so cold that you felt frost form in your lungs. Your scream frozen like hoarfrost inside your throat.

And the child had pulled you under again.

Like the first time, you should have died. Drowned and bitten to pieces, your bloodied entrails floating to the surface of the river for the mallards to feast on.

Then what had happened?

You are cold, yes. Your limbs feel stiff and frozen from your time in the river. But you are not dead. You pull up the skirts of your robes to examine your legs.

You remember, with a shudder, the child-thing’s flat teeth tearing into the soft flesh of your thighs, ripping apart at the fat and strands of muscle. Crunching through bone. The water going oily from your exposed marrow.

You touch your thigh, shaking. The skin there is smooth and unblemished.

And that is when you notice the river. You scramble back onto the banks with a small scream, slipping on the mud and your sodden clothes.

The river is no longer a river.

What was once a raging current is now nothing but dark earth. It is less like it had been filled in like there had never been a river at all. You can even see the small buds of something new and green beginning to push up from the soil.

“How…”

A curve of bone. Gleaming black as obsidian.

Whoever–or whatever–had done this, it had been done as an act of rage. Perhaps for the child. Or perhaps of the Oceanid. Perhaps both.

You’re shaking, feeling your arms about to give way underneath you. Hot tears flow down your face, from eyes that should not have even been there in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” you cry, the words forming gusts of clouds into the cold air. “I’m sorry.”

Your shoulders shake, and you gasp clouds of frost in the cold winter air. “I have to get him back. I have to keep trying.”

Someone’s hand. Warm over your burning, bleeding eyes. You cannot remember the last time you had been touched so tenderly.

You try to stand but slip down onto the earth. You have to grit your teeth and try again, and even then you’re afraid you’d fall.

“If you—” Your teeth are chattering with enough force that you can barely get the words out. “If whatever you are…if you keep trying to save me. From the Fae. The Good Folk. From these monsters, why did you leave me in the first place?”

A child swaddled in a blanket decorated with sea turtles. His eyes are the color of the wings of beetles.

“I have to get him back,” you say and you hope that whoever saved you is listening. “I’m not you. I’m not going to leave him to some…some stranger to be his family. I have to get him back.”

And as you make your way up the river that is no longer a river, a memory rises in your mind again. Not from the forest, and not from the river.

But from the snowbank, all those years ago.

That of golden eyes, peering at you from the snowbank as your mother picked you up and carried you away.

Imagine Liyue in wintertime, when the land is at its most treacherous and barren. During summer, the trees are laden with fruit, so heavy that their branches bow from the weight. The skin would still glisten with morning dew as one plucks them, their juices bursting against a hungry traveler’s teeth.

But in winter the trees are empty, their branches bare and skeletal. No game wanders in the woods, and all of the animals are warm and asleep in their burrows until spring. Liyue in wintertime is a time of silence, and if one is not careful, it is also a time of death.

By the time you reach your destination, you are weak with hunger, nearly maddened by thirst. It is a live thing that twists and claws at the hollow place in your belly; it pulses like heat against your parched throat.

You find that you can barely stand as you gaze at the entrance.

Imagine a place in Liyue, one you have only heard of once or twice, in those strange, dreamlike hours before dawn. When all of the lanterns have been snuffed out, when all the tea has been drunk and all that remains is their scent, hanging heavy in the air like a ghost. When all the storytellers have closed their paper fans and set aside their gavels, ready to turn in for the night.

Perhaps, one of them–always, always someone ancient, so old that their skin slides over their bones like a river over stones–will have one more story in them.

About a cave, somewhere deep in the mountains. And a tree, large enough that its trunk towered over mountains and its leaves can cast entire towns in its shadow. Here, they say, lies the oldest and most powerful of the Fae.

Here, no human should ever disturb the earth with the sound of their footsteps.

Here, there are stories: of mortals transformed, their screaming faces turned into the bark of trees, their fingers dissolving into blades of grass, their tears becoming the spray of water from a rushing creek.

Here you stand, shivering and afraid.

The robes you have brought with you no longer fit you right, but it does not matter. It does not matter that there is a new hollowness to your cheeks or you can feel a fever burning behind your eyes.

Because you know that the Fae will come, to this most sacred of all places.

Because this robe is the most beautiful of your creations, and perhaps your last. It is the rich dark color of a patch of earth that used to be a river. The color of a tree bark in summer, when it decorates the forest with leaves the color of fire. The color of a farmer’s field, freshly tilled and awaiting to be sown with new seed.

In Liyue, it is the color of life.

Once upon a time, this color could only be worn by those of royal blood.

Once upon a time, wearing something like this would have gotten you executed.

Perhaps it still might.

You had used gold thread to embroider images of crystalflies, glowing with the color of Geo. You had embroidered the ginkgo trees in full bloom during summer. You had embroidered the tiny jade slimes you would see at the Harbor, carved with a chisel the size of your fingernail. You had embroidered delicate golden corals from across the sea in Inazuma. You had embroidered every little thing you think Sevastyan will miss if he is not returned to the human world.

And on your back, its scales glinting with gold, is the great Dragon of Liyue. The one who had shaped the mountains with his hands. The one who had driven the sea back so that his people could thrive on land. Across your shoulders, in the darkest thread you could find, sits his crown: a great rack of antlers, as black as obsidian.

You do not know how long you will last in this cold. A feathering of snow settles across your shoulders. Against your cool skin, they do not melt. This time, you do not have the luxury of waiting.

Instead, you unsheathe a knife from your belt. Even in the gloom, you can see its wicked edge. The curve of its blade. The scent of cold iron.

You swallow down your fear, beating against your throat like a heart.

The first cut burns like the cold, blood welling up from your palm as you slice into the meat of it. Your skin smokes, your fat bubbles, the oil of it running down your wrist.

You have not touched iron since you were a child. Since your Aunt had stood up for you, all those years ago. You think of the chopsticks she had given you, carved from bamboo and coated in lacquer. Just one of the many ways in which she loved you when you feared no one else did.

You let your blood drip down onto the snow, gleaming like rubies, the color so vivid that it makes your head spin.

Quickly, quickly. You do not know how long you will last. Hunger and thirst have taken much of your strength, while fear and exhaustion have taken the rest.

You call out to them, out to the shifting shadows you can see at the center of the cave.

“I am…” You can smell your burning skin. “I am one of you. Who you have left to die so many years ago. You have taken something precious from me. You have taken my brother. By heart, if not by blood.”

You sway, standing on shaking legs. The knife drops from your hand.

You bleed.

You burn.

You continue.

“Return him and you may have…”

Eyes, golden and glinting, stare at you from the darkness. You grit your teeth. You can feel yourself falter. Twice now, you have done this. Twice now, you have failed. And here, inside a cave forbidden to mortals, you know that you might fail. For you will never make anything more beautiful than the robes you are wearing now. If you fail this time, you might never have a chance.

Your voice cracks like porcelain, your words die in your throat.

You try again.

“Return him and you may have…”

The robes, the robes. Tell them they can have the robes. Tell them they can have anything.

Perhaps it is hunger that gnaws at you endlessly like a starving beast, or perhaps it is the sight of your blood, running down your wrist and staining your robes. Perhaps it is grief, or all three; you cannot tell.

But before you can finish your speech, your great and final offering to the Fae, your vision goes black and you collapse, unfeeling, onto the snow. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

This time, you gain consciousness slowly, like someone waking from a pleasant dream. For the first time since you started your journey, you do not feel the cold. Quite the opposite, it feels as if you have been basking underneath a summer sun: your skin feels as warm as honey, your muscles loose and relaxed, as if your body no longer remembers all of its suffering.

Someone is stroking your hair. A hand is resting over your eyes.

You shift and whoever is stroking your hair stops. Somehow you feel a keen sense of loss at that, so sharp that tears prick your eyes. It is something like craving, something like hunger. You find that you do not wish for them to stop.

You cannot remember the last time you had been touched so tenderly.

“You’re awake.”

You can feel his voice echoing inside of your head, like you did with the Oceanid. Except this time, it is a call returned from a great chasm, the feeling of the earth shifting underneath one’s feet, the roar of a river now rendered silent.

Whoever is speaking to you isn’t human.

You rest your trembling fingertips on the hand resting across your eyes. There are legends, the way there often are, of Fae who are so beautiful or terrible that to gaze upon them would cause madness. Your mind would spiral into insanity as it tried to make sense of something inhuman and unknowable.

You are too afraid to look. So instead, you speak to them blindly and pray that you do not offend.

“Who are you?”

When he speaks, you can hear a note of amusement in their rich voice, and you wonder if this is another trick devised by the Fae. “Do you not know?”

“I don’t–”

You fall silent as you explore the hand resting over your eyes with trembling fingertips. And though there is only the slightest bit of pressure, the gesture feels sharp with memory. You remember blood streaming down your ruined eyes like tears and a gasp flutters against your throat like a caged bird.

“Were you…” Your voice cracks before you can continue your sentence, snapping under the weight of both terror and wonder. “Were you the one who healed my eyes? After I tore them out with my thumbs?”

“Yes.”

You realize with a start that the hand over your eyes did not feel like flesh. It is too smooth, too hard. Like a skilled sculptor had carved a perfect likeness of a human hand, entirely out of jade. You think of what you had seen, glittering at the edges of your restored vision: a great curve of bone, rising over you, gleaming as dark as obsidian.

You think of the image you had embroidered onto your robes, the crown of antlers unfurling across your shoulders.

And you swallow down your rising fear.

“And the river?” you whisper. “Were you the one who pulled me from it?”

“Yes.”

“And…” You think of the river that is no longer a river. The small buds of something green and new pushing themselves up from the earth. “You are the one who…you are the one who destroyed it.”

You feel a sudden stillness in whoever is holding you, the coiled tension of an animal just before the strike. When he speaks, you can feel a new anger in his voice, and a shiver runs through you. You can hear the creak of dried branches, the flutter of a bird’s wings.

Birds?

You think of the silence you had found in the woods. The absolute lack of birdsong. Most of them travel to warmer places for winter. And yet, for a second, you can hear their panicked chirping.

“Rhodiea was unable to control one of her subjects and ended up breaking her contract with you. She knew the consequences.”

In your head, his voice is magnified a thousandfold, and it is the Oceanid all over again. His anger is palpable, the slow grind of stone against stone, the feeling of the earth shifting underneath your feet, the sound of entire mountains crumbling overnight. You clap your hands over your ears, hoping to block out the way his voice echoes in your skull.

All of a sudden, it stops, and you are left gasping for air. You can feel blood welling up from between your clenched fingers, there is a new, endless ringing in your ears.

“Forgive me. I forget that you are now half-mortal.”

A Fae who asks for forgiveness?

You cannot remember if there are stories of that.

Will it anger him for you to accept his apology? Will he think that you consider him beneath you to do so? Will it anger him even more for you to remain silent? You tremble, and you remember: Sevastyan’s life hinges on your answer.

It is the Fae-Lord who decides for you, those strange hands lying on top of your bloodied fingers. You recall the forest. And the way he had held you, blinded and dying, before he restored your sight.

The ringing stops.

“Than–” You stop yourself, biting your lip so hard that you feel it split underneath your teeth.

You had nearly thanked him. A mistake that would have cost you a lifetime of servitude.

“If you wish to thank me, I give you my word that I will not use it to bind you to me. That is not what I wish to do.”

His word. You do not know if what he said is binding or if he is simply luring you into a trap. With a start, you realize that you can no longer rely on old legends or stories to guide your decisions. You are treading through the path of your own tale, and there are no old roads to follow.

Briefly, you wonder if the heroes of all the stories you’ve loved have ever felt so afraid. If they’ve ever felt at such a loss what to do.

You think of the Oceanid and her lost river. The consequences of a broken contract. You decide to take a chance.

“Then…then, thank you, Great Lord. For healing me. For saving me. I owe you my sight, my hearing...”

You think of sinking underneath the churning waters of the Oceanid’s river. Of both the current and the child dragging you under. You think of your scream freezing in your throat, of frost forming in your water-logged lungs.

You had drowned in that river, you are sure. And yet somehow, you are still here.

“...and my life,” you finish quietly.

He does not answer. The silence stretches out between you, and this time, you are sure that you can hear the faint snatches of birdsong, the carefree chittering of insects, and the sound of the wind blowing through the leaves in the trees.

The land you had passed through to get here had been covered with frost. The cave you entered had been as solemn as a tomb. You suck in a shaky breath, and you could have sworn you can smell the scent of flowers in full bloom.

“Lord?” you call softly.

“Yes?”

“May I see your face? Will it not…” You pause. Your throat feels dry with fear.

You think of your eyes popping underneath your thumbs like overripe fruit. You think of the musician, whose face you do not remember. And you think about how that might be a mercy.

“Will it not drive me mad?”

He does not answer for several long seconds, and then, you hear a slight exhalation of air. It could have been a sigh, it could have been his quiet laughter, or it could have been nothing at all.

“Mad? No. It will not.”

You remember the glimpse of him you had seen: the curve of bone, rising over you. The golden eyes glinting from the darkness. The shadow of a figure from across a snowbank, all those years ago. The knowledge suddenly comes to you with an almost painful clarity, it twists like a knife between your ribs: you had seen his face before.

He makes no move to remove his hand, still resting over your eyes. And you realize that he is waiting for you. Gently, you push his hand away so that you may rise to your knees in front of him.

What hits you first is the cave. Gone is the swallowing dark and creeping hoarfrost. Golden leaves blanket the ground you are kneeling on, and trees, gnarled and ancient, rise over your head. Birds of every color sit on their thick branches, snatches of their song filling the air. The fat buds of flowers sprout from the ground, in full bloom and so heavy that their stems almost bow to touch the earth.

The cave is now in the full flush of summer.

Or perhaps, it is something else. For the birds that stare at you from atop their branches are not ones you have ever seen. Their feathers are too bright, their colors too vivid. From inside a knot in a tree trunk, an owl with a human face blinks at you.

Even the flowers glow with their own strange light, summoning crystaflies as if from thin air. A few of them alight on you, touching their embroidered counterparts in the sleeves of your robes.

Perhaps, it is not summer that has visited this place, then. But something else. Something wild and ancient and free. Perhaps this is what the cave had been thousands and thousands of years ago before the first humans had even existed.

And yet, when you glance outside the mouth of the cave, you can still see the lands in the grip of winter. The trees, their branches bare of leaves, like skeletal hands reaching out towards the sky. Even inside, you can hear the howling of the wind, see the way the snow falls in sheets like rain.

You wonder what power the Fae Lord beholds, to be able to bring life wherever his feet touch the earth.

Finally, you turn to your savior. The Fae Lord that you owed your sight, your hearing, and your life.

Your first thought is that perhaps it is worth it to go mad, to feel your thoughts spiral away from you like a bird taking flight, just to be able to behold this man for a few fleeting seconds. Gleaming hair, the color of the bark of the oldest trees, long enough that it spreads across the forest floor where he sits. His face is smooth, unblemished, inhuman in its perfect symmetry, as if someone who has only ever heard of humans from legends had to carve one from jade. But it is his eyes that disturb you: it is the same shade of gold that you had seen glinting from the trees, the same eyes that had beheld you as you sliced your palm to offer your blood.

They are strange and reptilian, and they gaze at you with such fervor that you find it hard to look away. And on his head, like a crown, sat a gleaming rack of antlers, as black as obsidian. With a choked gasp, you realize that they match the embroidered ones on your robe perfectly.

And suddenly, your forehead is touching the earth before him, your vision spinning from the speed at which you had thrown yourself into a deep bow.

“Lord,” You force the words out like you are choking on them. “Please, forgive me. I did not mean to offend.”

In any other Fae, this show of subservience would have spelled your doom. The Good Folk are capricious and cruel, quick to try and humble humans with tricks and glamour. But the being before you is the great great Dragon Lord. The one whose legends tell of how he shaped the land with his hands, who had driven back the sea so that his people could thrive on land, whose spears had created mountain ranges. It would have been child’s play for him to destroy the river of an Oceanid.

It would have cost him nothing to save your life.

You feel him placing his hand on the back of your head, as if in reassurance, and you shiver at the contact. You think of legends of ancient kings, whose royal blood meant that they must not touch the skin of ones who are of lower status than them, lest they debase themselves at the contact.

You think about how, in ancient times, this gesture might have gotten you executed. You bite back a whimper of fear, trying not to cower like a frightened dog.

You feel his hand touching the back of your head, as if in reassurance.

“Forgiveness,” he repeats. “For what?”

For your insolence. For being in his presence. For a thousand other things you cannot hope to name.

Even with your wealth of knowledge in stories and legends, even with your endless hunger for contact with the Fae your entire life, even if you have started this journey with the knowledge that you may not survive, you find yourself at a loss for words. You grit your teeth, unable to come up with a satisfactory answer.

“I don’t know,” you whisper, still bowed so low that your lips nearly touch the earth.

“If you do not know, then perhaps you have done nothing that requires my forgiveness. Rise. I wish to see your face when you speak.”

You rise, still terrified. You realize that there is dirt stuck to your forehead and your cheeks, and you scrub away at them, feeling your face burn in shame. In the face of the Fae Lord’s beauty, every flaw you had seems magnified.

“Tell me, then,” the Fae Lord begins. “Why did you call me?”

“Call you…?”

You lift your hand to continue scrubbing at your face, and then you remember: your blood gleaming in the snow, the knife slicing through your flesh. The cut has now been healed, all that is left is a scar, stretched across your palm. And you wonder if you had the Fae Lord to thank for that once again.

He notices you staring at your scar and says, almost reproachfully, “The knife was made of iron. You would have died if you had cut yourself any deeper with it.”

“I did cut myself deeply with it.” You remember the stink of your own burning skin, the sound of your bubbling fat.

You remember, as a child, trying to feed yourself with iron cutlery. The burns you had suffered after. The way the skin around your fingers had gone tight and resisted movement. It had taken weeks before you could hold something again.

“I should have died,” you found yourself saying. “Why didn’t I die?”

The Fae Lord’s shrug is easy, almost careless, as he looks away from you. But you catch a glimmer of blood on his lip, gleaming like a precious stone. An image flashes before your eyes, a memory hazy with pain and exhaustion: that of the Fae Lord with his lips on your bleeding palm, sucking the poison out as one would a snakebite. You feel a sudden flush of heat at the thought of his mouth against your skin. You find yourself tracing the scar with your fingers as if to recall the feel of his kiss on it.

“You saved me again.” You bow your head. “Thank you.”

“It was a foolish business with the knife. I would have come even without your offering of blood.”

“Foolish, perhaps,” you say quietly. “Or desperate.”

He closes his eyes. “Desperate, then. Why?”

You think of your Aunt Baijin, who had greeted you at the gates of her village, already half a stranger. You think of her belongings, sold piece by piece, so she can buy offerings for the Fae. You think of her many, many letters, begging you not to try and get him back.

You think of chopsticks wrapped in wool, carved just for you so that you will not burn your hands when you eat.

You think of a boy, swaddled in blankets decorated with sea turtles, with dark curls and eyes the color of beetles. You think about how Aunt Baiji had hoped that the two of you would grow to be as close as siblings.

“For love,” you answer. “And the promise of it.”

When the Fae Lord opens his eyes to look straight at you, they do not look quite so reptilian. Instead, you see something human in them: sorrow, perhaps, or the memory of it. Once upon a time, maybe he had lost someone, too. He stares at you with something like grief.

“For love,” He speaks slowly, carefully. You can feel the weight of his power in each word. “For love, then, you may ask of me a single boon.”

Somehow, you do not think that he is thinking of Sevastyan.

“A boon?” you repeat, your pulse pounding.

This is, after all, what you have been searching for this entire time. You sigh the long, bone-deep sigh of a traveler who sees home. Here, at last, is the possible end to your journey. But before you can speak, another memory resurfaces: that of the river, of your breath turning to ice inside your throat. You think of frost forming inside your water-logged lungs.

You had drowned in that river, you are sure. And yet you are still here. When your lungs have turned black and rotted from the water, you remember that he had pressed his lips to yours and given you his breath.

“Why?” The word comes out harsh and labored. You speak as though your throat is filled with broken glass. “Why go through so much trouble for me? Why save me, over and over again?”

He looks at you, but he does not answer. But your anger has turned your words into a raging flood, you find it impossible to stop.

“Why did the Fae take my brother?”

“Why did you…” Your breath is sharp. The question is like a knife pulled clean from the curve of your ribs, it leaves you bleeding on the way out. “Lord, why did you leave me?”

You can feel something hot on your face. You do not remember crying. But the Fae Lord’s face is devoid of expression. He is so still that he could have been carved from stone. You wanted to scream, you wanted to reach out and shake him.

“Please,” you whisper softly. “Please, answer me.”

“Is that your boon?” His voice is sharp and clipped. “Answers?”

You can feel your breath stutter. The way he spoke, as if in warning. If he gives you this, his tone said, you cannot have Sevastyan. If he gives you this, he cannot give you anything else. You look at him, and you can feel something split into pieces inside you. Here, at the edge of the thing you have longed for your entire life, you find that you must turn away.

“I have spent years searching for answers,” you say through gritted teeth. “For my brother, I can wait a while longer. This is not my boon.”

The Fae Lord speaks almost gently, as if he knows what it must have cost you to choke out those words. “Then what do you wish to ask of me?”

“My Aunt’s son,” you say quickly. “My brother, by heart if not by blood. Your people have taken him, and I wish to have him back.”

After a few seconds of silence, you add, “Please.”

He speaks, still in that same gentle tone, “Even a boon from the Fae will require an exchange.”

“An exchange…?”

Horror churns like acid in your belly as you glance down at your ruined robes. The silk is damp with tears and melted snow, the sleeves are stained dark with your blood. The greatest and most beautiful of all your creations, ruined. You have nothing left to offer. And yet, you have come so far.

The Fae Lord is still waiting for your answer.

You think of the words that had beat against your thoughts like a drum when you had sliced open your palm with an iron knife.

Tell them they can have anything.

You think of the Fae Lord: his hand over your eyes as he restored your ruined sight, his lips over your bleeding palm, sucking iron out like poison from a snakebite. You think about how he had kissed and given you his breath when you were drowning.

You think of the snowbank, and golden eyes glinting at you from the darkness.

“Lord. If you let me take my brother home. Then you may have…”

You pause. You can feel your bones creaking, pinned under the enormity of what you must do. It is a surprise that the weight of it doesn’t crush you.

For the Fae have taken your Aunt’s son, and this is what it means to get him back.

“You may have me,” you say resolutely. “I will give you my life and my name. And I swear on both of these things to live for you and serve you and stay with you for the rest of my days.”

Finally, the Fae Lord’s calm veneer cracks, like ice splitting over a frozen lake. He exhales, and for a second, you feel as if the sun in that small cave glows just a little bit brighter. You think you can feel the earth moving underneath your feet.

This. This is what he wants. Not the clothes that you have rendered with painful detail, now stained and useless. Not your skill, or your sanity, or your blood.

You.

“I accept.”

The words roll over you like thunder, and you sway in your place. The air is thick with his magic, and crystalflies manifest out of thin air, bursting into golden life around him. It is done, you think, raising a shaking hand over your eyes. Your life is no longer your own.

“What do you require of me?” you ask.

“Only your name, as you have promised.”

You look at him. Even sitting, he towers over you. The crystalflies that he has brought to life flutter about him as if drawn to his presence. A few rest on the horns on his head, and they look like they belong there. You are reminded that he is not human, that this is a creature who has seen hundreds of lifetimes. Perhaps, in that knowledge, lies your answer.

“I think,” you whisper quietly. “You already know it.”

The corners of his lips twitch as if he is pleased.

“I do,” he confirms.

Your skin jolts at this newfound knowledge. You feel as if you have been struck by lightning. In every story you have heard, every legend you have read on ancient, yellowed scrolls, you have always been warned of one thing: never to give your name to the Fae. To give your name may mean a lifetime of servitude, it may mean never leaving their realm again. It may mean your death.

But this no longer resembles a tale you have heard in a teahouse or something you have read in a book. You are treading through your own story, and there are no old roads to guide you.

“Then it is yours,” you say. “As am I. To use as you see fit. For…for the rest of my days.”

As a child, you remember walking down the darkened roads of Snezhnaya, hoping to catch fleeting glimpses of the Fae. Hoping that they would remember you and take you home. To think that all of your choices will lead you here.

“Thank you,” the Fae Lord says, and he sounds like he means it.

Again, this Lord breaks all conventions. You lick your lips and feel the split in them left by your teeth.

“If I am–” You have to pause, frozen perhaps, by your fear. Or perhaps it is something else. Frozen by the knowledge of hundreds of legends telling you not to do. But you have already given everything to him in exchange for Sevastyan. You find that you have nothing left to lose.

He waits, as still as the mountainsides. You find that his patience gives you the strength to continue.

“If I am to serve you, to be your companion, then may I at least know your name?”

His gaze is gold of the summer sun, peeking through the leaves of trees, it is the color of honeycomb, the skin of sunsettias as they burst between your teeth. It feels like you have known it all your life. And when he speaks next, you find that there is truth in his words.

“You already know it.”

“I do,” you realize.

Even the oldest, most ancient of storytellers had dared not mention his name in their stories. To speak the name of a Fae draws their attention to you, and they dare not do so, for fear that they will not wake the next morning, their flesh split open by a thousand glittering gems.

And yet, you are sure of it: you know this Fae Lord’s name.

“Then speak it,” he says.

This time, it is a command. You can feel the pull of it, tugging at the space behind your ribs. And you wonder if this is what it means to give your name to one of the Fae. Your lips move as if they are on strings.

“Morax.”

You feel it again, the sensation of power rolling over you like gathering storm clouds. Except this time, it is yours. Morax closes his eyes and you think you can hear his breath start to shake, his shoulders shudder at the way you say his name.

You wonder: if giving him your name meant a lifetime at his side, then what would it mean for you to know his?

“It is done,” he declares with an air of finality. “You may bring the child back to its mother.”

Sevastyan winks into existence, with a suddenness that makes you jump. First, there is nothing, and then there is a child, lying on a bed of golden leaves. He is still wrapped in a blanket decorated with sea turtles, and when he opens his eyes to look at you, you can see the shape of your aunt’s eyes in them. You find yourself scrambling on your hands and knees to reach him.

You do not know how to hold a child, how to keep him safe against the cold that you know is waiting for the two of you outside the cave. His skin feels warm, and when you lift him in your arms, he still smells of milk and sandalwood. The blanket that he is covered in feels too thin. After all, you had sewn it for him to wear in fall, not winter. It will not protect him against the cold.

And so you do the only thing you can think of: you strip yourself of your robes, the most beautiful of your creations, stained with your blood and your tears, and you wrap it around him. Underneath, you are only wearing a thin shift, meant to protect the rich silk from your sweat.

You stand on shaking legs, cradling the child to your chest. Morax stands with you, and in his presence, you feel small. His eyes are fixed on Sevastyan, at the clothes you had wrapped around him.

“And you?” he asks.

You blink, “What about me?”

“The journey is long. And you will be cold.”

You shake your head. Despite his words, you find yourself unafraid. After all, you had already gone so far and survived so much. You are confident that you can survive this, as well. But before you can answer, he does the same thing you did only seconds prior: he removes his cloak. Unlike your frantic movements, he does it slowly, languidly and there is an intimacy in it that makes your throat run dry. You find that you can’t look away. You see the expanse of his chest, the glitter of scales on his skin. You can see his hands and his arms, and you realize that you had guessed correctly earlier: they do not appear as if they are made from flesh. Instead, like his antlers, they look as if they have been carved from obsidian. Glimmers of gold run through his skin like the glint of veins in an ore.

You think that this is not the first time you have seen him like this.

When he finishes, he wraps his cloak around you. It is the color of the leaves underneath your feet, as light as air. As if someone had grasped threads of sunlight and used them to weave the cloth. You think of the forest, of lying almost naked in the snow, your clothes shredded from thousands of cuts. You think of the river, of the water-logged fabric, dragging you down to the riverbed. After you have faced only suffering and humiliation for your work, Morax chooses to clothe you in finery.

Gratitude keeps you silent, you do not know how to voice the enormity of what you feel. Perhaps he reads it on your face, on the tears that burn at the corners of your eyes, for he places a cool finger on your lips. You remember the cut there, and you wonder if he will kiss this one new as well.

“Wear my cloak. Go with my protection and return the child to its mother. Then return to me to fulfill your end of our contract.”

You nod and turn to leave. But something holds you back. You glance back at him, the question burning in your throat.

“Was I…always meant to come back here? This place?”

Was I always meant to come back to you?

But you had already asked for your boon, for the child shifting sleepily in your arms, and as you expected, he does not answer. You find that you do not mind. You will get your own answers, in time.

After all, you had promised him a lifetime.

“I will come back,” you say resolutely.

“Yes,” he says. “You will.”

“Not for contract,” you say. “For you, Morax.”

He looks surprised, staring at you with reptilian eyes that for just the briefest of seconds, look almost human. And then, he smiles. Something tugs like quicksilver at the edges of your memory.

This is not the first time you have seen him smile.

“Good.”

It is all he says.

It is enough.

Hugging your brother to your chest, you walk out of the cave.

#zhongli x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact #fae!AU #fae lord!zhongli #my contribution to the sold to 1D trope #it is now free <3

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sheepispink · 22 hours

Text

A Pearl Necklace

HAPPY ENDING VER of A Pearl Series

Ch1 Ch2

Where leon doesnt mess up and also leons pov because THATS SO FUN!!!

Continued from end of chapter 1 👍 this is a BONUS chapter. It makes more sense if you read chapter 2 first then this one. This can also be read as a continuation from chapter 2 as in the time line is the same except that it is ends with a good way and its his pov and like a few lines r diff

“That’s good enough. I fucking hate being woken to push her away from me..” A surge of anger swims in his chest as he shuffles to the edge of his bed, fuelled by a fear he doesn’t dare to pay mind to. It’s true, he hadnt wanted to deal with your tears or the feeling of you so close to him; nowadays

it created a feeling that was like a gnawing at his gut. His body eventually settles as his head sinks into the pillows, fluffed by your hands. Even when he’s tucked underneath the covers and beside the love of his life, he just feels so, so.. vulnerable. He rolls onto his side, one hand under his head as he tries to settle a racing pump somewhere in his chest, his eyes squeezing close. His throat chokes and his muscles clench and although he hasn’t made a sound, the reminder of the past few weeks screams in his ears like bells. Every single day is starting to feel more and more like autopilot, blanking his head out in hopes he can do his job without being reminded of horrors of years ago. He was worked up tonight, having fought another B.O.W and hiding a nasty gash beneath his shirt. You’d definitely ask about it later; the mere possibility bringing a flame of anger and forcing him take a sharp intake of breath. He turns over, seeing your back face him now and his lips pull at a small frown, wondering if you woke up for a moment. You shouldn’t be crying yourself to sleep, ever. But he leaves you this time, still revolting the thought of your touch and your skin if he dared to come closer.

When he wakes the next morning, he cant take it anymore. How is there another round of tears upon her face? He finally pushes away the nausea that creeps in his throat, his hand resting on your shoulder. “Hey, love, what happened? Who did this to you?” Forcing such honeyed words feels like a crime to himself, almost making him frustrated with himself for being untruthful. He also hates the way he’s grateful when you just wipe them away and force a smile, mumbling something about watching a sad movie. Not even for a moment does he dare challenge that, satisfied with a lie as he gets up for another gruelling day.

Over the next month, he feels a swell of pride for how much he has healed. For one, he’s managing his thoughts and emotions much better, no longer hanging on a loose thread whenever someone just speaks. He feels better, having finally gotten to the hang of closing his mind off whenever the thoughts arose. He was sleeping better, you barely even touched him in his sleep anymore— it was perfect. The one thing that slightly irked him is when you would leave the house. Why are you leaving? He hates that he’s curious and he knows he should just let you go; it’s another fuel for the temper that seems to take him easily these days. You’ve also been asking a lot of questions about him recently: how he finds the clothes you ironed for him, the food you cooked and, worst of all, his day. He’s already doing enough to push it away and you’re just bringing it right back to him again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He smells the familiar scent of blueberry pancakes as he steps into the kitchen that morning. You’ve been making them again recently but he wont dwell on the why and how. He doesn’t really like to think too much anymore. He picks up the newspaper as he sits at the small kitchen island, hair tousled and muscles aching from the long rest he received after a particularly tough mission. He had woken up on the other side of the bed today, kind of confused how he didn’t squash you in his sleep but as always, he doesn’t question anything. You slide a plate over to him, stacked high with those tasty pancakes and a dollop of whipped cream atop. He always had a bit of a sweet tooth and it’s been a long time since he’d been in the mood for sugar. Regardless, he’s not in the mood to smile or thank you, just eating his food as per normal.

“So..? Did I finally get it right?” He doesnt need to look up to see the small laugh and the way your lips curve into a teasing smile, one he had grown to despise. You always do this, every time you ask about his damn day.

He just- he cant take this anymore. You’re always prying, digging deep into his head and ripping bandages he left on because the wounds wont heal, they never will. He keeps them patched up for a reason, he doesn’t want to see it again. Nor does he want to talk about it.

“Can you stop interrogating me every day about whatever you do? It’s fine, okay? It’s never been any damn different; I don't see the big deal.” He scoffs, gritting his teeth as he holds back from practically shouting at you. His eyebrows furrow in exasperation, one hand rubbing his temple; he cant bear the headaches your words bring.

“I.. Leon- I was just trying to get some feedback.. They dont ever taste as good as the ones you would make.” Now you’re reduced to a stammering mess, trying to stir guilt within his gut, but he wont give in today.

“Well, can you stop? It’s really fucking annoying having to answer your stupid questions every day over menial things. Are you that insecure?” He doesn’t know why he said that but he knows it’s left his lips before he can stop it and one pang in the back of his head tells him that maybe he really is just being honest. You are insecure, thats why you’ve been doing so damn much and annoying him all the time. He takes another bite of the pancakes, his body screaming for relief even now with each rumble of his stomach.

“Leon- I understand work has been stressing you, but I'm just trying-“ There it is, that stupid expression again as you speak the one thing he never wanted you to say. “Work? That's what you think this is about? Maybe you are just idiotic or too narcissistic to realise maybe you are the problem.” He drops the fork in his hand, the metal hitting the porcelain plate as he stands. Of course you just had to mention work, you could never let him get a break could you? You just always had to ruin it for him.

“I am trying to actually be understanding, I'm sorry if I annoyed you but Leon- there is no need to put me down like that.” Again. Work. Don’t you know how to stop? He can feel that anger fuel again, rising and burning with each an every word. Until it snaps.

“You think you’re being understanding.” He laughs at your pitiful expression, thick with a mocking tone, as he says the words. “I can’t believe it. You actually think that. If you can get one thing through your mind, know that you don’t understand anything about me. You never have. Hah.. ever since that night where I almost fucking choked you.” He sneers at you, pushing the chair back as he stands, walking over to the sink with footsteps that echo with uncontrolled emotions.

“I’ve been trying to ask you—to help you. I want to be there for you..“

“Yeah, as if. You know, on that night, I really thought that you might just understand, unlike anyone else has. I was stupid enough to even think that. You just told me your same stupid reassurances; I should’ve kept my hands on your throat a little longer that day. I wish it scared you off and out of my life.” He snaps, leaving a thick tension in the air, like a wall between the pair of you. It’s cruel and unforgiving and an ache in his heart tears the muscle. Bloodthirst, it’s all he can remember from that virus thrumming in his veins. He can’t just quench that bloodthirst, not to you, so his mouth does the work, wearing you down bit by bit. The consuming memory of devouring the very life out of a human, it’s almost like it’s returning to him now.

“You’re not what I wanted.” Words are just spilling out his lips and he cant even control them; he cant even hear each calculated insult.

“I shouldn’t have expected things you could never reach.” He speaks, the plate dropping into the sink with a horrible clatter. All your words are blurring into one, meeting, intersecting all at that one statement ‘work has been stressing you’.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He stands before the sink, having splashed his face with water at least seven times for the past forty minutes. Only now does he finally feel more like himself—or well the version of himself he prefers to exist as—and his head is free from that invasive fog. Slowly his chest falls, letting out a long breath as his finger pushes the tap off. He hasn’t dealt with that in a while and it only served to remind him that he never wanted to again. That feeling of an aching chest, ribs feeling like they’d crack from the pound of a terrified heart, desperate for relief. Although he always manages to calm every time, the edge of the cut always remains unsealed. Theres no real relief other than the fact it’s all over, no peace in his mind ever. It frustrates him all the more, he’s tried anything and everything and yet theres still that pinprick of a hole which has cracked his mind and heart.

After that, he barely stopped interacting with you altogether. He wasn’t sure why, but it felt right. Maybe it was because you really were pissing him off about everything or that he had started to fall out of love with you. Or maybe, though he never liked to let it linger, he was terrified of the memories only you could resurface. He watched your every frown, the light in your eyes slowly dim out as you start to shift and change. It’s been two months since he last considered you his wife, let alone someone he even cared for. He barely feels the guilt of leaving you like this anymore nor does he feel anything anymore. It just feels blank. Like everyday, every hour, every minute of these days. He can’t remember when he last washed his hair; he just knows he did it. He cant remember filling out the reports, but there they sit on the desk. He cant remember what life was like before the missions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Six months. It’s been six months since he almost killed you, since his hands were on your throat and your terrified expression flashed through his eyes with your shaking pupils and beating chest.

Six months since he hurt you. He thought you had moved on, he thought he moved on. He thought he was doing okay.

Only having just stepped through the doorway, his eyes already found your trembling form on the couch. Your eyes were red and wet, salty streaks down your cheeks as you sob. The worst of all is that when you heard him enter, your eyes widened in a way that was far worse than just regular shock. Like you’d be scolded or mocked, shouted at or reprimanded; you looked like you were scared you would be hurt. He couldn’t shake that sight this time, every time he looked at you even when you scramble to reassure him that it was just hormonal. He knew it was bullshit; he had always known and he wanted to ignore it but he just couldn’t. Not anymore. Not when you were scared of him.

He sits at the breakfast table again the next morning, the air quiet from the lack of humming when you make your food, not even music playing in the kitchen or a pep in your step as you dance around the kitchen. You dont spend 5 minutes fluffing the pillows before bed, nor do you use those stupid face masks with the silly patterns. Hell, you dont even put makeup on anymore. The fridge is stocked and yet theres not even a trace of you to mark it as yours. Everything seems to have changed more than he expected. He cant fathom that he missed all these little differences and the fact there were so many. You’re not the same anymore.

There you go again, leaving randomly during the day after scrambling some excuse about needing spring onions. You barely ever use spring onions and he’s positive he saw some in the freezer yesterday. Whilst he usually would’ve ignored it, he finds himself edging closer and closer until he finds himself following you down the road. He saw the fresh tearstains this morning and you gave him no explanation again, this time he will find out.

You walk and walk and walk, and yet you never go to the grocery store like you said. So why do you even leave the house? It’s not like you were avoiding him, you still hung around him plenty and it’s not like you just needed fresh air, otherwise you would’ve just said so. He keeps his distance as he follows you, your depressed expression obvious, until eventually you pass by a friend. It doesn’t look planned but eventually the pair of you sit at a bench and as bad as it seems, he just cant turn around now. What if you tell her the reason you’re always upset? He needs to know.

“Hey, you know i always see you outside these days. I mean damn, do you really love nature that much?” Your friend teases, although a small pitiful look swirls in their eyes. Leon had been wondering the same thing as her.

“I uh.. well..” You give a sheepish smile as you lean into the bench. “I figured Leon would want some alone time.”

“Again? You come like everyday.”

You just shrug, sinking into the bench and quickly shifting the topic with a shake of your head.

A lot of things are starting to become clearer to him now. Every single action of yours held genuine love and yet he couldnt even bear to think about it. He wouldn’t dare to, he couldnt give in no matter how tempting it seemed. This is the life he chose; the life that would kill him slowly but it had it’s perks. He heads home after that, thinks about what happened for a bit before deciding ultimately to leave you alone again. Even so, you still plague his mind every night, every minute and second. It still makes his chest burn all the more, his irritation on an all high. He should not care, he cannot care. So why does it feel like he’s going to eventually break?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His body is covered in bruises when he returns home that night, a bandage around one of his hands and his eyes sunken. He had never felt worse in his life, feeling like he was tipping on the edge of fainting or just losing everything altogether. His heavy feet dragged him, feeling like weights were pulling him back as he reached the doorstep. After a few mishaps, he finally finds the keys and unlocks the door. His boots echo on the hardwood floor and though he’d usually collapse into bed, he needs some painkillers desperately tonight. The door for the kitchen is right there but he feels compelled to head to the living room and check if you’re awake. He hates that he’s actually glad he did.

This feels like the memories that resurface, only a new kind. You’re crying, again. You’re sobbing your eyes out and he’s had enough; he’d exhausted, bruised and battered and he’s not letting guilt consume him tonight. How dare you disturb the life he forced himself to follow? Anger swells at the sound and sight of you crying today, not because it hurt his hears but because it hurts his heart. The footsteps grow louder as he nears the couch and he hates the way you look up at him in a trembling fear, hands gripping the fabric of your pajama trousers. “L-leon, i didnt mean- it was a sad movie-“

“Stop giving me those fucking excuses.”

He’s pissed, his body feels broken, and he’s not letting you get by anymore. He’s letting that anger reign free. He nears the couch until he’s standing before you, no words spilling out your lips as you freeze up in fear. He could do anything to you but would he actually harm you? He knows he looks like he would, and he sees that realisation flash before your eyes. He leans down, closer and time seems to slow as his hand reaches out. His eyes focus on how you squeeze your eyes shut, the mere sight grasping his heart tight, brace for the impact and the sting of pain that should follow if he were anyone else.

But he’s not anyone else and he’s disgusted with himself that you would think so. His hand meets the small of your back as his arm wraps around you. He places your hands around his shoulders, knowing you seem far too frazzled to do so and takes you into his lap as he settles in your seat. In silence, he strains his bruised arm to grab the blanket you keep at the end of the couch. You always said it was for ‘cold nights’ but it always translated to cuddling sessions until you were caught by slumber and he carried you to bed. The warm fluff of the blanket is pulled over the pair of you, his hand keeping you firmly in place against his chest as he makes sure to settle you. He doesn’t dare say a word, the nausea in his throat creeping higher with each brush against your bare arms. But he’ll bear it for you, just this once. He knows your still unsure: he can see the way you sneak small uncertain glances as your hands twitch at his shoulders, begging to wrap around his form. So he doesn’t make you lift a finger, taking your hands in his and helps them to settle around his body before he returns to his embrace on you again. It’s utterly silent in the room yet the need to speak is desperate; the both of you know this isn’t normal and yet neither of you are complaining. With his chin resting gently on the top of your head, he rubs your back slowly until you relax into him and somehow grasp him even tighter. Even though his body feels like a block of ice, some part of him inside melts aswell; a small sign of that vulnerability he despised returns. Yet still he stays here until you begin to mumble small apologies which are only met by a small shake of his head and a motion to stay silent. You immediately fall quiet and he sees your eyes glimmer for the first time in months; he’s not sure if the crying caused it or true hope, but he prays you’re feeling just a smidge better. You end up resting your head against his chest comfortably, glistening tears staining your cheeks as you eventually fall asleep.

He takes you upstairs soon after, settling you on the armchair as he notices the dirty sheets from his lack of care. Despite his previous exhaustion, he couldn’t care less about his bruises as he takes out fresh sheets from the cupboard and changes them quickly. Once the bed smells brand new again, he scoops your drowsy body again, hushing you when you begin to wake, and tucks you beneath the covers. He cant lay beside you in such a state so he begins to head to the bathroom, considering a quick shower just to scrub off any grime. Much to his dismay, he’s quickly stopped, your weary eyes blinking as you sit up in bed and your fingers lightly tugs at his hand.

“I.. uh.. um..”

“Yes?” His voice comes out gruffer than he’d like, fingers twitching at the feeling of your skin against his.

“You- you’re going to come back, right? You’re not going to leave, will you?” The mere sound of your hopeless tone is enough to make him grit his teeth. The question sounds hopeful and yet it’s obvious you think you don’t trust him to say the truth.

“No, i’m not leaving, I’m just taking a a shower.” He states, voice just as cold as the one that would cut you through with insults. Still, his hands are gentle as they push your shoulders back into the bed.

“Go back to sleep..” He sighs, pulling the covers over you again. “I’ll be quick. I promise.” He watches as you reluctantly nod, eyes watching him with distrust before he turns around and disappears into the bathroom.

He stands infront of the mirror again, waiting for his mind to crack and fall as it usually does on these hallowed nights. He had done everything wrong tonight; he touched you, spoke to you, even promised you. He went near you when he shouldn’t have. But no onslaught of fears come today, or that sharp ache in his chest which reminds him on horrors in a foreign place. Instead, he just looks at his confused expression in the mirror, because for the first time in seven months he’s not acting mindlessly. He’s actually thinking, breathing and talking; he’s living. After everything he’s done to survive and live better, the one thing he needed was you. He understands now, after all this time, why his mind was so insistent on staying away from you, why he did everything. It was because he was scared.

Everytime he gets a nightmare, it ends with the fear on your face after that horrible night. The more he pushes it away, the more he tries to forget is the more he ended up harming you. He refused to touch you because of the fear he could do it again. Every single thing shut off in his brain because he was terrified of those traumatic experiences and he couldn’t ever admit it. He even refused to come near you because he was scared you’d try console him and he knew he would break within seconds. Vulnerability had never been his strong suit and the mere fear of it had ended up being the cancer that consumed every single part of him until he became a living shell. He never wanted to hurt you, or snap at you, or make you feel like nothing. He always figured it was better that way because it meant you wouldn’t have to deal with him and he wouldn’t have to open up. He was a coward and he had paid the price for it; the cost would’ve been your sanity if he hadn’t cracked tonight. He doesn’t want to think of what could’ve happened if he didnt, but he has to. Avoiding everything led to this and it will again. His hands plant against the shower wall as he starts to wash, and slowly begins to think about everything he did wrong even if it hurts more than those night terrors.

He watches your drowsy eyes widen upon seeing him when he re-enters the room, his heart aching at the tear stains that shimmer on your cheeks from earlier. “I told you to sleep..” He mumbles out, standing awkwardly in the doorway, wishing he could avert his gaze but that would be too cruel to you. “I..i… you..” Your lips fumble for words, eyes gazing up and down his unclothed body. Just in his boxers, he stands before you with his adams apple bobbing as he swallows sharply. “Yeah..”

From head to toe his once pristine skin was covered in scars and bruises of all kinds. He hadn’t let you seen him since his trip to Spain and the sight had been much more horrible back then. Scratches, bite marks, dark scars that show deep gashes and even fresh purple bruises from today’s mission. He knew he couldn’t bear to speak to you about anything just yet, but he mustered up his courage to at least show you. He was also aware this wouldnt make you magically forgive him and he wouldn’t accept it if you did. He fucked up, everything, but he’s not about to let it die when he can at least help you bounce back. He’d destroy himself if it meant seeing you as happy as you used to be.

“Leon.. i..”

“I know you’re going to feel bad, so don’t. I didn’t want you know, thats not your fault.”

He watches you nod meekly, quiet eyes still scanning all over his scarred form, before he begins to walk hesitantly over to the bed. Clenching his fists, he drives down the burn of pain that comes with each step and the guilt that blazes through his gut. Your hands reach out, tentatively before grabbing onto his own. “..Fine, i wont say that.. but can i say one thing at least?”He lets out a small sigh and nods in agreement, squeezing your hand as he sits in bed next to you. Your eyes flutter meekly as you swallow, his hands carefully lifting you to bring your head to rest on his lap with his back pressed against the headboard.

“I’m pissed at you. I- i really am and-“ Your eyes are persistent as they look right up at him, chest rising quickly as you spill everything out. “You made me feel like i was going insane and-“ He’s concerned at how your nails imprint into your palms before he gently moves your fingers to focus on something else—anything else, even himself. So he pulls you into him as you crumble, your fingers digging into his back as to express your desperation.  “I wanted to help you so bad- i didn’t want us to fall apart and we were, fuck- we couldn’t even be near each other. You looked so miserable every damn day Leon- I couldn’t even do anything about it-“ You let out a choked sob against his neck, his hand pulling you firm against him as he squeezes you protectively.

“It was never your fault, you’ve never done anything wrong in your life. I was too much of a fucking coward to face life and i ruined us.” He confesses, the palms of his hands cupping your flushed cheeks. “Dont you dare forgive me, not now. I dont want you forgiving me until you’re absolutely sure.”

You quieten down almost instantly by his words, reaching your hands up to rest behind his neck until eventually you nod and he knows he’s made the right choice. His lips turn up just slightly and then you sit up a little better, trying to look firm even though you had been so vulnerable a moment earlier. That’s why he loves you, you’re just so perfect. Not once have you ever cared about what others think of you, nor do you let yourself be trampled over so easily. Even if you’re lips are wobbly as you narrow your eyes at him right now, coming off more adorable rather than angry. Despite everything he’s ever fought and the praises he receives for his work, you’re the strongest person in this very world and the reason he’s still here. You once told him that if he was a mountain, you’d be like those little flowers that grow at the top even when the conditions are beyond habitable. He’s never believed anything more until now.

“Fine.. if you really want that then i wont forgive you until you tell me everything. I refuse to forgive you until you tell me every little thing in your head.” His lips quirk into a slight smile, a first in too many blank days to count. His thumb rubs the curve of your cheek, so rosy and pink. “I promise, the day you forgive me will come.” He leans forward, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead before shuffling until he’s laying back in bed with you atop of him. “But for now, i want those dark circles under your eyes gone immediately.”

“You should sleep on the couch for all the days i did.” You feign annoyance, small huff leaving your lips and without a second thought he rises out of bed. It’s like it’s hitting him all over again, like a teenage boy trying to hide his crush, he misses the warmth of your body desperately. Even so, he knows he deserves far worse than sleeping on the couch, so he’ll bear it for now.

“I’ll make you breakfast everyday day going forward too. Blueberry pancakes, just the way you like it.”

Right now, it sounds like the bare minimum, but you had no idea how much he’d love you from now on. He’d tell you more but he’d prefer to see the glimmer in your eyes when you’re surprised. Though you tug at his hand before he can go.

“I think we can leave your punishment for next week. You owe me 6 months worth of love.”

That makes him finally grin and he’s under the covers again, arms enveloping you before you press your lips against his.

#leon kennedy #resident evil #resident evil fanfiction #resident evil fluff #resident evil angst #leon x reader #leon kennedy x y/n #leon kennedy x you #re4 #re4 leon

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drumlincountry · 1 year

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EVERY fantasy book EVERY scifi novel every starwars movie every post apocalyptic show. I ask, WTF??? The same same question EVERY time. Say it with me - WHERE’S THE FARMING?

#ursula k le guin is guiding me. hand on my shoulder.#approx 200 generations of agriculturist ancestors stand at the other shoulder and they are yelling #where does your food come from? who makes your clothes?#who repairs them?#how do you store these things? how do you preserve them?#What fuel do u use to cook how many people are you feeding?#look. too much of the art i consume comes from the imperial core/global north where most of us have to think about where our shit comes from #approximately none of the time #but if u are writing about an alternative world u HAVE to have these systems #i just watched the gay episode of TLOU and it was pretty good in that regard but in the early part the guy had chickens #excellent move good work #and then the chickens never reappeared?? nor the food garden? we only saw leisure activities? which sure u could have some time i guess.#but what the fuck were you feeding those chickens? did ur big metal fence keep foxes away too?#and then at the end [spoiler event] WITHOUT LIKE. REFERENCING WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO THE ANIMALS?#YOU HAVE DEPENDENTS MY DUDE. YOU CAN'T JUST [SPOILER].#and how do those quarantine zones work? those walled citiess? we saw the land 10 miles to the east and it was wilderness?#and weirdest thing there was pasture? grazed pasture? but no animals on it? is this city land?#why weren't the fugitives avoiding it? why was it in the middle of forest?#or was it some other self sufficient person? in an underground bunker? who herded all their sheep in when they heard people coming?#which if u have ever worked with sheep. good luck doing that urgently.#me fein #agriculture

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emphistic · 25 days

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Bf!Sukuna who sometimes calls you 'girlfriend' — and not in a flamboyant way

"Girlfriend, c'mere."

"What do you want, girlfriend?"

"Sure, girlfriend."

Bf!Sukuna who loves having your lips on his; he'll just randomly come up to you and slot his lips against yours without a word

Bf!Sukuna who walks around the house shirtless, and teases you by saying, "You should try it out," only to get a pillow thrown at his head

Bf!Sukuna who would pause his video game just for you

Bf!Sukuna who is actually super clingy, and cannot function without having you in a foot radius — but will never admit it

"I'm going to go get groceries now."

"I'll come with you," he said, immediately standing up from the couch.

"I thought you hated errands."

Sukuna shrugged, "'m bored."

Bf!Sukuna who spits in your food when you're not looking

Bf!Sukuna who, when he can't sleep, will just stare at you — a few times, you've woken up to his creepy crimson eyes staring back at you, and you socked him in the jaw

Bf!Sukuna who claims to hate your music, but whenever you two are in the car, he'll always let you handle the aux

Bf!Sukuna who purposely forgets to do your laundry so he can see you be forced to wear his clothes instead

Bf!Sukuna who is the king of keeping eye contact

Bf!Sukuna who'll hover around while you do your makeup and just ask random questions

"What does that do?"

"Why the fuck is it shaped like that?"

"It's almost as big as my dick."

Bf!Sukuna who steals your things and raises them above his head where you can't reach just to mess with you

Bf!Sukuna who never gets cold, and while that may seem like a good thing in the winter because you have a personal heat generator, it is the absolute worst during the summer — you have to ban cuddling because Sukuna is just too damn warm

Bf!Sukuna who doesn't help you bring in groceries, even if your hands are full

Bf!Sukuna who ignores you for the rest of the day if you forget to give him a good morning kiss, or good morning text (if you guys are temporarily apart)

Bf!Sukuna who is good at everything he touches

— a/n: kinda irrelevant if you ask me, but I just had to include this

Bf!Sukuna who pretends to forget if you guys have planned a date together

Bf!Sukuna who gets a hard-on when he sees your angry face; he loves having you pull on his ear and drag him away to a secluded area to hear you yell at him — he thinks you sound so sexy and look so hot

Bf!Sukuna who isn't above doing extreme pda when he sees someone staring at your ass

Bf!Sukuna who whines about going to work, claiming it's boring, but in reality: he just doesn't want to leave you — or vice versa: he doesn't want you to leave for work

Bf!Sukuna who swears up and down he doesn't want kids and hates children, but when he sees you taking care of his little brother Yuuji, he finds himself doing a mental 180°

Bf!Sukuna who goes into a trance staring at your ass

Bf!Sukuna who has no purpose for an Instagram account: you forced him to make one — he never posts on there, but when does, it's only pictures of you and occasionally him and you

Bf!Sukuna who has a drum set in your guys' shared apartment, but refuses to play it for anyone but you, and even then, he only plays to annoy you or wake you up from your nap

Bf!Sukuna who permanently quit smoking when he saw you plugging your nose near him

Bf!Sukuna who enjoys chasing you around the apartment, sometimes with a knife in hand just to make you extra scared

Taglist: @starlets-things @sad-darksoul @mochimoee @r0ckst4rjk (pls lmk if u only want to be tagged in my boy nextdoor series or all of my work) @lillycore

#sukuna x reader #ryomen x reader #sukuna x you #jjk x reader #jjk x you #sukuna fluff #sukuna headcanons

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mortalityplays · 1 month

Text

You need more free art.

I quit my job yesterday. Well, actually I quit my job eight weeks ago, but they finally released me yesterday for good behaviour. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do - but I do it for the wrong reasons. Working for major charities, you learn very fast that 'I want to make the world a better place' is a phrase you use to ask people for money, not to give them things. I was an ass-backwards fit for that world.

You need more free art. I need more free art. Everyone has felt the shift in our media landscape over the last ten years, away from access and towards nickel-and-diming the human experience. That lack of access is making life and culture worse for all of us, across the board. Paywalled news sites leave us less informed, attacks on the Internet Archive leave us less capable of research. Algorithmic social feeds and streaming walled gardens trap us inside smaller and smaller demographic bubbles, where we are increasingly only likely to encounter ideas that have been curated for us by marketing departments. Hasty efforts to resist AI commodification have only led to more artists locking their work away and calling for even more onerous systems of copyright law. This is not good for us.

We all need more free art.

So what am I going to do about it?

This is a question I have been asking myself for years. It's easy to sit here feeilng frustrated and thinking 'boy I hope SOMEONE does SOMETHING'. It's harder to take action in a world where I still have rent to pay. But hard doesn't mean impossible. Sometimes hard just means time-consuming, frustrating and slow. And sometimes it's worth doing something time-consuming, frustrating and slow because...I want to make the world a better place.

I'm going to do this:

1. From April 1st, I am relaunching as a freelance writer and editor.

This is the one that will (hopefully) help to pay the bills. I am a very good and experienced editor. I've worked on hollywood movies, I'm a member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, I have clients who have been coming to me exclusively for more than 10 years.

Alongside bigger contract jobs, I am going to refocus on offering my services to small-press creators at a reduced rate. That means you, graphic novelists. That means you, itch and amazon writers. I want to help you develop your work, the same way I help large organisations. You can learn more about what an editor even does and what kind of pricing you can expect here.

2. I'm also going to start giving shit away. Like, constantly.

Next week I'm going to launch a new free shop. If you're unfamiliar, a free shop, giveaway shop, swap shop, etc. is an anarchist tradition of setting up a storefront where anyone can take what they like for no cost. Offline, this often means second-hand clothes, tools, furniture, food etc. Online, I am going to be giving away digital art. Copyright-free, no strings attached. It will (eventually) feature everything from print-res posters to zines, poems, tattoo flash, t-shirt designs and anything else we come up with.

Yes, I said 'we' - while this is a curated collection, it will feature work from a variety of credited and anonymous artists and activists, all of whom have agreed to give their work away to the public domain. Some of it will be practical, some of it will be political, but a lot of it will be decorative or personal. This is, in part, a response to recent difficulty I had finding somewhere that would print a one-off joke poster for a friend that featured the word 'faggot'. Enough. No middlemen - no explaining ourselves. Just print our shit and enjoy it.

I'm very, very excited about this project. I'll have more to say about it closer to the launch, but you can expect it to go live on March 27th.

2.2 I forgot to mention the ACTUAL LAUNCH GIVEAWAY

To celebrate my launch, I am going to be giving away a ton of physical prints. When I went looking for my old stock to see if it was worth setting a new (paid) storefront up, I realised I had way more old work in storage than I thought. This will be announced in its own right on Monday, but this is why I've been hinting you should go follow my Patreon.

On April 1st, I will pick 8 random patrons (from across all tiers including non-paying followers!) and mail them a bundle of assorted prints and postcards. The prize pool includes A3 and A4 posters, packs of A6 postcards, and printed minicomics that I've previously sold for up to £12 each.

You don't have to be a paying subscriber to enter - this is strictly no-purchase necessary. It is purely and entirely a celebration of the concept of GIVING ART AWAY FOR FREE.

3. PORN, YOU PERVERTS

Because I still have to pay to stay alive, I am going to be subsidising all this free art with the introduction of Fuck You Fridays. Starting from March 29th, I will drop a new 18+ short story on the last Friday of every month, over on itch.io (yes I know my page is desolate right now, don't worry I'll get there).

The first edition, Go Fuck Yourself, is about, well - telling your boss where to stick it. Julia has had it with her millionaire man-child manager, and is just about ready to let him know what she really thinks. It's a short and steamy 5k words, with a gorgeous cover illustration by @taylor-titmouse, and you can pick it up for $3 starting from March 29th.

4. ANOTHER BIG SURPRISE

I'm keeping this one under wraps for now, but April 1st will also play host to one more (FREE) launch. If you've been following me for a long time, you might remember the other significance of this date (no not April Fool's day, though that is certainly thematically relevant to this entire effort). That's all I'll say right now. Watch this space.

tl;dr: I'm sick of paywalls and career ladders. I'm literally putting my money where my mouth is. More free art for everyone and I'm not kidding around!!!

#announcement #please reblog let's make this HAPPEN

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charliemwrites · 3 months

Text

…. So Mister(s) steal your girl, huh?

Content: Unhappy Relationship, (Brief) Gaslighting, Sad Reader

Bombshells, you always thought, were supposed to making a whistling sound before landing. A high pitched warning of impending doom. Too late to escape the incoming devastation, but at least it wouldn’t come out of nowhere. There’d be some time to brace, for all the good it would do.

Maybe you watched too many movies.

Three months. That’s how long you got to enjoy the bliss of engagement before the world began to fall around you.

Your fiance came home and sat you down, his hand around yours. You thought he was breaking it off for some reason. What he did instead was worse.

In the aftermath you can only remember snippets of the one-sided conversation. Like tinnitus, an awful running in your ears left over from a dropped bomb.

Things like,

Still young, I want to explore…

How will I know you’re my forever unless I know what’s out there?

Last bit of freedom before being tied down…

If you love me and our relationship…

You love your fiance and your relationship. You don’t want to lose it just because you’re selfish. He’s still coming home to you, after all. You’re the one with the ring and all the plans for the future. So what if he wants to… explore? He’s even offering the same to you.

An open relationship, he calls it, like it’s some innovative idea.

You’ve heard of them before, never had much interest. Still don’t, honestly, but it was that or the desolution of 4 years.

You insisted on a long engagement. Your fiance promises that you two can revisit the open relationship when you’re married.

Within a week of agreeing, he’s leaves for the weekend. He doesn’t tell you where he’s going, who he’s meeting. He comes back Sunday evening smelling like someone else’s perfume with a hickey on his collarbone. When you refuse any advances, he sighs and says he “understands that this is a transition” and goes to shower.

It’s like that for six months. Weekends without him. Sometimes sending him off Friday morning and not seeing him until Monday evening. Lipstick on his collars, strange perfume invading the laundry. You start doing his clothes separately.

Six months. You spend months suffering in silence, sniffling through Saturdays and drifting through Sundays. Adjusting meal plans to cook for one.

The last straw is when you try to make plans on a holiday. You and your fiance haven’t done on a proper date in months. You want to go out, have all his attention on you, not shared with his phone.

“Ooh, sorry dear, I’ve already got plans with Malorie. Rain check, yeah? We’ll do something next week.”

You decide to go out anyway, sick of feeling sorry for yourself. Nothing fancy, just a bit of self care. You buy yourself a cute new outfit, put on a bit more makeup than usual, do your hair. Find an interesting little late night book shop. They serve wine and food and have comfy booths for people to read or talk or play board games.

The perfect place to be out but alone.

You’re debating the merits of a romance novel when a voice comes from your left.

“Love that one.”

You blink, glance up. Find a handsome man with eyes simultaneously so dark and so warm. Coals, you think. There’s a cheeky little quirk to his mouth as he nods at the novel.

“It’s good if you like will-they, won’t-they.”

You hum. “I’m more in the market for something… easier? If that makes sense.”

He hums, gives you a solemn look. “It does. Here, you might like this then.”

He plucks a book off the shelf and offers it for inspection. You feel awkward reading it the summary thoroughly, especially when you can feel his eyes on you. But you skim it, it looks promising, and a hot guy just suggested it, so…

“Read a lot of romance?” you ask curiously.

He ducks his head a bit, endearingly shy. “A bit, yeah. Call me hopeless.”

You bite the inside of your cheek, but can’t help saying. “I think it’s just romantic.”

His eyes light up. “Yeah? And what kind of books d’you usually like?”

Before you know it, you’re talking thrillers and horror novels with him. Recommending your favorite spooky novel and then following up that you always read a comedy afterwards as a palette cleanser.

You end up touring each other around the shop, talking books and authors and genres. Yet you’re somehow surprised when he asks if you’d like to sit with him. But you agree, a little thrill in your stomach that you haven’t felt since… a while.

You each buy a stack of books, then claim a booth and proceed to read none of them. He tells you his name is Kyle, that he’s in the military but on leave right now, stocking up on entertainment for flights or long spans of hurrying up and waiting.

You’ve never met a military guy before, and you trip over your curiosity. Trying not to pry but interested in what he does. He’s polite and patient, admitting there are a lot of things he can’t tell you but he’ll answer. You don’t stay on the subject long, figuring the last thing he wants to talk about it work.

He gets you back in the department of uncomfortable topics when he notices the ring on your finger. You’re quick to explain the situation, hot with shame all over again, eyes stinging despite yourself.

Instead of mocking you or just getting up and walking away, Kyle sits back looking flabbergasted.

“That’s fucking mental,” he says, “excuse me for saying.”

You burst into laughter. Haven’t told anyone any of this out of embarrassment, but hearing someone on your side is… good.

“I thought so too, but… he’s happy,” you admit.

Kyle frowns. “What about you?”

You blink, can’t look him in the eye. You know the answer but make a show of thinking about it.

“I’d… like to be again. This — the open relationship thing — seems to be working for him. So… maybe it’ll work for me too?” You shrug. “Worth a try.”

Kyle reaches across the table, a big warm hand enveloping yours. There are callouses you’re not expecting. Tantalizingly different.

“Would you like to try it with me?” he asks. “Don’t have to put a label on it or anything. But my schedule is a bit… it’s hard to keep up a traditional relationship, you know? But I like you, and I think your fiance is a knob.”

You snort, but flip your hand around, thumb brushing over his.

“Yeah…” you muse, and after saying it, a surge of confidence infuses you. “Yeah, I’d like to try this with you.”

His smile is absolutely brilliant. You won’t admit — not even to yourself for a long time — but you fall in love a little right then and there.

#thoughts™️#cod #my writing #fanfiction #reader fic #misters steal your girl #poly 141 #open relationship trope #kyle gaz garrick #kyle gaz x reader

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hazbinhotelxreader · 3 months

Text

Rosie x Alastors wife reader!

A/n: hii! I hope this is good! I tried my best to fit in with her character

(Requested:shugar0cone)

-The first time you both met was through Alastor, obviously.

-You entered Cannibal town and it was actually pretty nice, just like Alastor had told you.

-And it was pretty peaceful, despite the cannibalism every now and then.

-Alastor brought you over to a nice, old style looking building, it kinda reminded you of Alastor’s style, which you loved.

-Instantly you notice a lovely woman also known as Rosie, the over lord and the owner of the cannibal colony.

-Alastor dragged you over to her, with a smiling face and waved over to her.

“Well well well, look who it is! Alastor my old pall”, Rosie exclaimed with a large smile as she walked over to you two. “It’s been ages deary, where have you been?”, She then looked over to you, and smiled, taking your hands. “Oh! And who’s this lovely dear?”

Alastor let out a chuckle, his smile never faltering. “This my dear, is my lovely wife, [name]!” You waved nervously at the cannibal overlord.

“Oh! I would have never guessed!” Rosie smiled, happy. “Now tell me dear, how did Alastor here score such a lovely lady like yourself?” She smiled, you smile back, you were about to speak up but she spoke first. “Oh why don’t you come have some tea with me dear? I would love to get to know you more!”

You smiled and nodded at her offer. “Alright then, thank you”. You and Rosie both left together, Rosie speaking to you, as Alastor was left to stand there alone.

-After that event you two have grown pretty close together. Having tea together or hosting small parties for friends were often on your schedule.

-You two definitely gossip together, a lot. You’re basically just two adult women with the minds of a middle schooler, gossiping about a lot of people, especially Susan.

-You both totally gossip a little about Alastor too. You’re his wife but it’s fun to talk about the weird or strange things he does to Rosie, resulting in Rosie using them against Alastor playfully later.

-You’re never jealous of Rosie and Alastor being close. It’s obvious their friends, and Rosie’s to sweet to actually get with a man that’s already taken, and Alastor would never cheat on you. He is a gentleman when it comes to his ladies.

-She will offer you limbs and parts of demons for you to eat, if you take them then eating demons for snacks would be something both of you eat on a daily basis together

-If not then she’ll respect your decision and will try her best to make food you actually will eat, wanting to make you as comfortable as possible during the times you hang out.

-Best girl to get help or advice from. She’s literally the best. No one can compete. She’ll sit and listen to any problems you have, whether it’s relationship problems with Alastor, or something different. She’ll give you the most genuine advice she could give you

-I’d like to think you both enjoy wearing matching outfits together. Just two best friends wearing stunning clothes. She’ll definitely try to get you into her style, and you most likely will.

-Overall she’s your perfect, sweet gossiping bestie

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caelivir · 3 months

Text

hidden lights | rayne ames

— synopsis. reading rayne ames is impossible. that's why you don't get why he offers to take you out on a date after you've been stood up again.

— pairing. rayne ames x fem!reader

— genres. modern au, you and rayne are roommates, fluff, you’re so oblivious it hurts, rayne's most likely ooc towards the end but we do it for plot,

— warnings. one kys thrown in at the end but it’s not in a serious manner

— word count. 3.2k

— notes. in honor of triple liner rayne being animated. i have quite literally been waiting to see it animated for years. also hi.

you can never tell what rayne ames is thinking. he wears the same cold, uninterested glare on his face at all times of the day. he never speaks unless spoken to, never lets you know when he leaves the apartment, never does anything to show that he actually has emotions.

you're asked on the daily how you survive rooming with him, and in all honesty, it's really not that bad. he does his half of the chores, and he doesn't leave his shit all over the apartment. really, the guy's only problem is his lack of emotion. it drives you up the wall.

finn says not to take it to personally during the one day he visited his brother. apparently, he's like that with everyone, but he's still a good guy. it just takes time.

you would like to believe that, but rayne makes that extremely difficult to believe when he looks like he wants to kill every person who so happens to exist in his direction.

so naturally, seeing him so angered after finding out that you've been stood up is surprising. it's an even bigger shock when he offers to take you out on a date instead.

you don't know what compels you to agree. even if you hadn't accepted his offer, something tells you that rayne would've found a way to get you to leave with him so there's no use in trying to deny him in this matter.

that's why you allow him to drive all the way to marchétte street, where a night market is being held in full swing. the road has all sorts of stalls lined up one after the other, ranging from foods to clothes. but because the marchétte night market is ridiculously popular, the place is packed to the brim with people.

rayne offers his hand once he notices that you're daunted by the crowds. you stare at him with surprise. when you don't make a move to accept this action, rayne huffs before grabbing your hand. he interlocks his fingers with yours and drags you into marchétte street's traffic.

the first thing you note is that rayne's hands are surprisingly warm and soft. for someone so incapable of talking, his touch is strangely reassuring.

he drags you to a vendor selling takoyaki. and even as he orders, rayne doesn’t let go of your hand.

“what do you want?” he says into your ear so that he doesn’t have to yell over all the noise. the feeling of his breath fanning over your skin sends shivers down your spin. it's maddening.

“oh. uh-” your eyes quickly scan over the menu, and you blurt out the first item that you read. out of habit you reach for your wallet, but rayne is quick to shut you down.

“absolutely not.” he grumbles, letting your hand drop to your side so he can pull out his cash. rayne hands the amount to the girl at the register, and she hands back his change that he drops into the tip jar.

“thanks.” you say quietly, still so flustered about the entire situation.

rayne only studies you before humming in acknowledgement. “come on.” he guides his hand to your upper back, moving you out the way so you can wait on the side for your orders.

it’s during this time you really look at rayne as if that would provide you with the answers you need to understand him. you try to wrap your head around it. you draft up every possible explanation, but none of them seem to make sense.

unless… it couldn’t be… does rayne like you? you shake your head, dismissing the thought as soon as it crosses your mind. no, that’s absurd, the furthest thing from logical. this is rayne ames we’re talking about. in the five months that you’ve been living together, you two have never had a solid conversation. how could he ever like someone he’s barely talked to?

you're about to confront rayne about his intentions until your number order is called, and all the courage you built up crumbles away as rayne leaves you to go pick up your takoyaki.

still, whatever his reasons for doing this may be, this is a rare opportunity to come by, and that means that maybe rayne doesn't have to continue being a stranger. maybe you can get under those layers and find that good guy finn said was there.

"i never knew marchétte had a night market." you say, breaking the silence as the two of you walk side by side through the market.

"i didn't either." rayne admits, poking his fork into one of the octopus balls, and shoving the whole thing into his mouth.

"what?" your face scrunches in disbelief. "then how'd you find out?"

"i asked finn as we were going down to the garage." your date shares nonchalantly.

you turn to look at rayne with the intent of questioning him further, but the sight of his cheeks bulging with food makes you burst out in a fit of giggles.

"what?" rayne asks, narrowing his eyes at you. you bite your lip to contain your laughter. your gaze falls on a mixture of crumbs and sauce that sits on the corner of his mouth, only causing you to smile wider.

"you got a little something there." you gesture at his lips. rayne fumbles for a moment, swiping his fingers around various sections of his mouth, somehow only cleaning half of the mess up.

you shake your head, still grinning up at him. he tenses when your thumb grazes the edges of his lips. you can feel his eyes staring deep into you, and you have to ignore the way it makes your stomach flip.

"all done." you whisper, wiping the remainders on the napkin in your hand.

rayne doesn't say anything regarding what occurred, only urging you to follow him further down marchétte street.

you swear that you see the tips of his ears go red, and something about that makes you all fuzzy inside.

as the night progresses, you and rayne abide your time by visiting stalls. well, it's more like you choose which ones interest you the most, and rayne follows behind. you comment on certain items that look nice; sometimes, you ask for your roommate's opinions to decide on whether something will be worth your money or not. to your surprise, rayne's advice is solid, and you end up listening to him.

at some point, you convinced him to buy a pair of absurdly looking mugs for the apartment. he fought you hard on it, saying that a mug shaped like a fish is extremely inconvenient, but in the end, you won with insistent begging.

when the two of you both got bored of the market, you decide to take rayne to one of your favorite spots in the city.

"the park? really?" rayne gives you a dead stare.

"hey, don't judge." you pout. "i love this place."

"why? no offense, but i don't think parks are all that special."

"i feel like i can take a step back here and just a catch a break from everything," you answer honestly. "sometimes, i sit down and watch people as they live their lives, and something about that is strangely comforting. it makes me want to keep going."

rayne doesn't follow up on your words, but you can tell that he's really considering them, and that brings a smile onto your face.

"plus, i feel like it's a good place for when you want to talk to someone." you grab onto your roommate's wrist. "come on let's go to the swings."

you practically drag rayne to the playground, which is completely deserted, but that's to be expected when it's already 10p.m. no parent would be dumb enough to bring their kid out this late.

you force rayne onto the the swing next to you, and all he does is sit there, unwilling to indulge himself in such a simple joy. annoyed with him, you hop off your own set, coming behind him.

"what are you doing?" rayne whips his head around as your hands plant themselves firmly on his back.

"oh live a little." you huff, mustering up enough strength to push him. the swing rocks forwards and comes back. even as rayne complains and threatens you, you continue to push him, watching as he goes higher and higher. he may be masking it, but you can tell that he's enjoying it.

you finally give up when your arms grow sore and a layer of sweat coats your face. slumping back into the swing beside rayne, you breathe heavily. "man, that was a workout."

"i told you to stop." your date reminds you, shooting you a look.

"you can be honest, rayne. i know you liked it."

"i did not."

"yeah, yeah, keep telling yourself that." you wave him off, laughing.

for a minute, neither of you say anything. you're the one who said that the park is a place where you can talk openly with someone, yet there's not a single topic that you can think to bring up.

luckily, rayne swoops in to save it. "can i ask you something?" your half-blonde roommate asks, something more serious laced in his voice. it makes you swallow a lump in your throat. an anxious feeling creeps into your body.

"of course you can."

"why did you bother giving that guy a chance?"

it's easy to know exactly who he's referring to. you shrug. "he's nice and has good energy."

"but he had stood you up two times in the past though. clearly he isn't as nice as you make him out to be. you seriously can't be that dumb to have fallen for it three times."

that statement in itself should get you mad (even though he would be right), but there's something peculiar in what he said that had you ignoring the jab altogether. "how'd you know he stood me up twice before? i never told you that."

at that, rayne freezes, eyes blowing wide open. it's so obvious that he's trying to find an excuse right now, but you push further.

"who told you that, rayne?" you lean closer, watching as his ears turn beet red. you're not even angry with him. it's mostly curiosity making you push him. not to mention that seeing him in a flustered state is entertaining and quite cute.

"max did." your roommate finally admits albeit quietly.

you pull your head back. "max? as in max land? how the hell does he know?"

"your dates happened to be at the restaurant he works at."

"why would he bother telling you that though?" you wonder. "up until tonight, i don't think it concerned you."

"it did though." the half-blonde mumbles, thinking you wouldn't hear, but you do anyway.

"what?" you press.

"forget it." rayne shakes his head, growing irritated.

"no. fuck that.." you seethe, annoyed at his unwillingness to be honest with you. rayne bites his tongue to hold back. you see it. "don't act like this. just tell me, or i swear to god i'll text max right now-"

"it's because i knew that i could treat you better." the words rush out of rayne's mouth as he snaps his head toward you. the fire in his eyes die as he locks his gaze onto you. the harsh emotion written across his features softens. you can feel your own exasperation slipping away like that of a retreating ocean tide. he grimaces in regret, knowing that he didn't mean to let that slip out, but he did anyway. it's out in the open, and now you knew.

surely, you're hearing things wrong. perhaps you're misunderstanding what he just said. how could that be misinterpreted though? it's such a painfully straightforward statement, yet it still doesn't make any sense.

rayne sighs. it's like he can already hear your thoughts and your confusion. the least he can do is clear the air and dump everything onto you while he can. "i didn't expect to feel like this," he begins to explain. "when i moved in, i just assumed you'd be another person i wouldn't pay attention to. i'm sure you know how i am. i don't bother getting to know people, but a lot of people feel the need to force themselves into my life, and shit like that pisses me off. but you didn't do that. you introduced yourself, explained the ground rules of the apartment, and then left me alone."

"so... you like the fact that i leave you alone?" you tilt your head.

"shut up. let me finish."

"okay."

"but yeah, that's part of it. you keep your distance, but you still try to show that you care. you don't do anything groundbreaking. it's just that the small things you do for me got to me. it may sound dumb to you, but it meant a lot to me."

suddenly, you're hit like a train because you know exactly what rayne means. you recall all the times you ensured that there was dinner for him, the times you moved his laundry into the dryer when he forgot to do it himself, and the times you restocked his favorite snacks when they ran out. you hadn't realized that you did any of that. it just came naturally, no hidden meaning behind it.

"oh." you breathe out, blinking.

rayne nods, continuing. you're honestly floored over the fact that he still has more to say. "you don't notice it. at least, i don't think you do, but at some point, i tried doing the same for you. i started paying more attention to you and what you liked and how you liked things done. i did it mostly to pay back your kindness, but over time i continued just 'cause i liked seeing your smile."

you have to process that for a minute, piecing together how certain events lined up until it finally clicks into place. "s-so the island vase-"

"i replace the flowers because you like them fresh."

"the key holder?"

"you always forgot to bring your keys until i installed it."

"when you put on movies-"

"i check your letterboxd and hope that you'll sit and watch them with me."

"when i put on movies-"

"i sit with you because i want to be near you."

your jaw falls open. never in a million years could you have expected this. you thought that rayne could care less about your existence, but the reality was that that was far from the truth. cold, aloof rayne was always doing things for you. all this time, you've been so oblivious.

still, there's more to the story so you stay quiet, letting him get his feelings off of his chest. "to be honest, i was never going to say anything. max tried convincing me to confess on multiple occasions, but i was dead set on letting it pass. i didn't think you liked me in the same way anyway.

"but then you came home today and you told me about your date and i just got so... angry," rayne clenches his fist around the chains of the swing. the whole situation infuriates him every time he thinks about it. "it just wasn't fair. you spent so much time into looking your best just for that asshole to go and waste your effort. you're so beautiful, so kind and understanding, and i fucking hate the fact that he's been taking advantage of that.

"i really wasn't thinking clear when i proposed this date to you, but god after tonight, i'd do it all over again. i wanted you to know what it's like to be with someone who does care about you. i wanted to see you smile. i wanted to hear stories. i want you so badly it's all i can think about sometimes.

"i know this is a lot, and i'm freaking you out right now. i'm sorry but you-"

"rayne." you interrupt with a big smile on your face. he was unaware to the fact that you had got up.

"for fucks sake, can you let me finish? this is already weird enough for me to talk about as is." he rolls his eyes, narrowing his gaze at you, blush splashed across his cheeks. still, without any resistance, you pull him up from his swing by his wrists.

"then don't." you whisper as you pull him in.

and the moment you crash your lips onto rayne's, the world stops. he instantly melts into you, the palms of his hands finding the soft skin on your cheeks. your hands tangle themselves into his hair. his lips are incredibly soft. a faint taste of matcha and sugar syrup dances on his tongue from the boba he drank earlier. a noise of approval vibrates down his throat, and you can't help but smile against his lips.

rayne wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer as he deepens the kiss. you get what he was talking about earlier. this kiss is all it takes to prove it to you. you feel his affection and desire all at once. every single bone in your body is so aware of how much rayne ames cares about you.

when you finally pull away for air, it's like a smile is permanently tugged onto your lips. rayne trains his eyes onto you, engraining every detail of this moment into his head.

a comfortable silence falls as each of you take your time to catch your breaths. your stare finds its way up, admiring the night sky. there are barely any stars out tonight. no, that part isn't remotely true, not fully anyway, because light pollution drowns out stars and their lights. the reality is that there are billions of stars hanging high out of reach; they just go unseen.

rayne is kinda like that you realize. finn was right. his brother is a good guy. there's a hidden light within him behind all those aloof layers of his. you just have to squint and maybe put on some prescription glasses is order to see it. it's a shame it took you five months to to really acknowledge it. but now that you've finally found a glimpse of it, you'll continue to clear past the fog. you want to know every part of rayne and see his light just as he did with you. you want him to be able to shine at his full brightness with no fear. you'll take rayne ames for all that he is.

"come on," you coo, a lovestruck look in your eyes as you slip your hand into rayne's. "let's go home."

bonus:

rayne: finn, give me a date spot quick finn: are you actually going on a date? rayne: stop asking questions finn: there's a night market on marchétte street. finn: are you seriously going on a date though? finn: hello? finn: rayne. finn: stop leaving me on read. finn: is it (y/n)? finn: it is her, huh? finn: asshole.

delisaster: hey sorry delisaster: can we reschedule for next saturday? y/n: kys y/n: lol sorry that was my bf delisaster: bruh what? delisaster: did you have a bf this whole time? *this message could not be sent* delisaster: did you fucking block me? *this message could not be sent*

#anime #manga #mashle #mashle magic and muscles #mashle x reader #rayne ames #rayne x reader #rayne ames x reader #from kor ; ♆

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moonsaver · 24 days

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Ohhgghuhohoho..... wait wait i dont have the entirety of aventurine's backstory accurately but imagine. Just imagine!!

Imagine coming across him while he was still "enslaved" (technically he still is, to the IPC but lets ignore that), unkept hair, shackles binding his hands, tattered clothing and so on.

You're just a passerby, someone who was minding their business when you see him. You do your best to help him, offering your jacket because his skin is freezing cold, giving him some food, trying to hide him from whoever's looking out for him, to treat him just once.

Sneaking him back to your home so you can sit him down peacefully on a warm sofa and treat his wounds so carefully, asking him painful details in such a soft, caring voice that he could almost cry, wiping away the dirt next his wounds because he won't let you see his face or move the hair out of his eyes, flinching but never once complaining about the pain when you disinfect his wounds with alcohol.

Imagine years, maybe even a good decade after he's become the illustrious senior manager of the IPC strategic department, who regrets never actually asking your name, who regrets not taking a closer look at your face, who only remembers your voice when he goes to sleep. He dreams, dreams, and dreams of that moment you cared for him for so long that it grows heavy in his chest.

And when he does find you, he's delighted. That's what he's supposed to feel at least. But you don't recognize him. And he can't blame you. You'd have never known you took in a Sigonian to care for at some point. But its alright, he knows just what to do.

Pulling a few taut strings is enough to leave you in a vulnerable spot – maybe one of your closer relatives went into debt and need your help? Maybe you're the one who's gone into debt? It won't take too long digging up incriminating details about you; where you work, your friends, your hobbies.. Or perhaps he should just show up to your little box of a house again, and repay your generosity directly? That memory of you in the past weighs heavy in his chest, but the now you weighs his heart heavier. You don't recognize him, but once you're in the palm of his hands, he'll make sure you never forget.

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sprout-fics · 10 months

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Valeria Garza Headcanons

I have so many ideas about the queen herself, and I can definitely thank @writeforfandoms and @soapskneebrace for listening to my insane unhinged ramblings about the story concepts I have for this bisexual menace. Have a fic idea I'll never write but is fun to think about:

El Sin Nombre has had a lot of women spend time in her bed. Pretty, seductive, sly women that see the woman with the tattoos and dark eyes, with the brand name clothes and nice cars and think mine

You’re different

Valeria doesn’t pick you up from a strip club or bar, but from something much more mundane, a resturaunt where she sees your boss berating you and somehow decides she’s curious

She asks for you by name, and the next time she visits she does the same. Repeatedly, and each time you wait on her she grows ever more interested in you

You can’t help feeling the same way- this mysterious woman who’s flanked by guards, who always orders top shelf liquor and yet her eyes are not on the food but on you

The proposition she gives you is sudden. Spend a weekend with her. Just one. You don’t have to pay, and she doesn’t expect anything from you either. Just come keep her company

You agree, against your better judgement. Within minutes you’re bundled out to a car in the back alley and driven up to the mountains, to a sprawling villa with tenderly constructed landscaping, tiled hallways and a courtyard with clematis climbing up the lattices. It’s an old money estate, subtle, well crafted. It doesn’t speak of the riches Valeria recently inherited, doesn’t scream gaudy decor or lavish indulgences

It’s beautiful

The weekend that follows is the stuff of dreams. Valeria takes you shopping, buys a wardrobe for you with a signature on a check and a withering glance when you protest the expense. She dines with you in private at the villa in one of your new dresses, and you talk long into the night as the shadows grow long

You wake up the next morning still tangled in her sheets, and it isn’t long after breakfast that you return there…and then the pool…the bathroom…the couch…

By the end of the absolutely dizzying whirlwind of a stay that’s stolen your breath away, Valeria has you in her lap, your hands delicately resting upon her shoulders and she asks

“What is it that you want? Money? Jewels? A car?”

She expects you to say as much. This is not the first time she’s done this. There’s been a dozen women before you who have blinked down at her and coquettishly requested these things, saw Valeria for her riches and not for the person she was. They long after her lifestyle not knowing of the blood involved, ask for beautiful things and then play games to try and cling on to her just a little longer

Instead, you offer something else, biting your lip in thought and shyly asking:

“Can I spend more time with you?”

Looking back, Valeria thinks perhaps it was that moment that sealed her fate

You do visit her again. Several times a month, and each visit is filled not with the riches of her coffers but with the wealth of her attention to you. You find yourself opening up to the mysterious heiress, knowing nothing of the brutality that lurks behind the tenderness she bestows upon you

She ensures your rent is paid for, always on time, pays off your boss so she can take you for the week, and you visit the coast with her. You try your hand at cooking for her and she has the gall to tease you when the smoke detector goes off. She makes you taste new, strange food and drags you into bed with their taste still lingering on your lips

She pushes catalogs of lingerie into your hands and urges you to buy as many as you see fit, and then has you model them for her

All of them

You call her when your car breaks down, when you don’t have enough to pay for a health appointment, hesitating over the phone before she merely laughs and asks if you think she can’t afford it

You call her in tears when your landlord kicks you out without warning after harassing you for money- pointing to the rich stranger who comes to collect you for days at a time

Valeria comforts you in her room, has you dry your eyes on her shoulder and silently nods to her second in command

You look to her when your things are brought to the villa, and Valeria tells you with little fanfare that she’s moving you in

You also never see your landlord again

She acquiesces when you insist on keeping your job, but reminds you that she can easily provide for the both of you

You never find out where the money comes from, and Valeria likes to keep it that way. If she can keep your hands free of that bloodshed, she will

You’re the thing in her life that’s free from violence, the remedy to the rot, the gentle flicker of a lantern in the darkness of a coffin. She drinks you in like sunshine, a needed cure to the brutality in her

You slowly realize the depths Valeria will go to for you, ad you’d be lying if it didn’t scare you

She locks down the villa after a call too close- a lieutenant of her gone rogue, one who knows far too much about you for you to be safe. You aren’t allowed to leave the villa for over a week, and at one point Valeria vanishes for a full day before coming back. When she embraces you, you can’t help but think she smells like death.

She’s had men killed for less than the offense of threatening you

Yet with you she’s softer. Not gentle, per say. El Sin Nombre will never be gentle. She’ll tease you until you beg, ensure you beg for her until there’s tears, and even then she’ll only tell you “Is it too much, querida? Ohhh, poor thing.”

She’ll bite her marks into your skin, will have you fist the sheets until the only thing you remember is her name. She’ll make sure that even if the world ends, it’ll be the only thing left in you

She’s so damn sensual sometimes it’s hard to breathe. Pushing up against you in the kitchen, her hand rising up under your skirt and her voice undeniably pleased at the little gasp you give her in response

She loves flustering you, will blatantly say something sexual if only to see you splutter. It’s like the act of getting you riled up is a drug itself to her, sinfully addicting and oh so sweet

She takes this perfect life for granted, because one day you don’t come back from your outing

Gone

You yourself don’t know the two strange soldiers that bundle you into the back of a humvee while you’re shopping, tremble in the back of the car while they take you to the Mexican special forces home base and interrogate you over El Sin Nombre, a mysterious and terrifying figure you know nothing about

Until you do

You think a long time ago maybe you would have been horrified, would have gotten on your knees and begged for them to protect you. Now, you have something else to protect. So when Ale and Rudy try desperately to press you for answers you only glare

Then, a messenger, and you hear Valeria’s voice float over the radio. There’s bloodshed and cruelty in the words she gives the Vaqueros, and she promises that she will carve a path of carnage should you not return to her unharmed

“I will burn Las Almas to the ground.” She vows, voice sinister in the low, rasping oath she swears to them. “I will make sure the children that dance on your graves know my name.”

It’s a threat that works, because as much as Ale would rather kill Valeria, the devotion to his home runs deep inside him further still

It’s Rudy who issues a low, grave warning about the woman who has captured your heart, and his words are gentle despite the prophecy he gives you. There’s something mildly resembling pity in his eyes

It lasts for the entire drive until you’re returned back to Valeria’s arms, and you beg her for mercy when she threatens to end Rodolfo’s life for the transgression of touching you

Yet in the aftermath that follows it’s Valeria who cups your face and turns it up to her, asks with gentleness that doesn’t reach her gaze if you’re hurt

You tell her no, you’re unharmed, and that even if you were, you’d suffer a thousand blows if it meant you could once more return to her side

She kisses you there, in front of all her sicarios, holds you close to her and tucks your head into her shoulder

Silently, to herself, she thinks that regardless of riches and wealth, of treasures and the power that comes with being El Sin Nombre, that the most precious thing in her entire empire is you

#valeria garza #valeria garza x reader #valeria garza x fem!reader #valeria x f! reader #valeria x reader #cod mw22 #headcanons #drabbles #my writing #If someone does somehow decide to pick this up I'd appreciate if you could credit me but it isn't strictly required #Thank you!

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nerdpoe · 8 months

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Jon Kent Sr knows what the newborn Kittens their cat had sound like, and whatever-whoever-is crying in his barn is not one of them.

He goes to check it out, as he does, and lo and behold; there's another alien child.

Or he assumes she's an alien child, what with the green blood.

The second she notices him, the crying stops, and her form goes from white hair and green eyes and a strange outfit to black hair and blue eyes and the ragged clothes of a homeless tween.

Because that's what she is. This is clearly a lanky-limbed tween, injured and hiding in his barn loft.

More importantly, regardless of what form she just switched to, she needs help.

"Well, looks like you've gotten yourself into a right mess," he says, keeping his hands where her wary eyes can see them, "You're gonna need to clean up a bit, to make sure that doesn't get infected. Why don't you come on down and we'll see about gettin' you bandaged up, maybe get a little pie in ya as well."

It takes thirty more minutes of coaxing, but he manages to get her in the house and sets Martha on her for wound treatment.

He busies himself with getting the girl a plate of leftover dinner that hadn't gone cold yet, when Martha comes back in and nods at him, before opening the kitchen window.

"Clark, sweetie, I think we've just found you a little sister," the air shifts as their son appears between one blink and the next, his eyes wide as he stares at Martha, "But she says her older brother stayed behind so she could escape. Could you get your Justice League friends and go pick up your little brother?"

Jon picks up the plate to take to their new daughter; Clark'll find his new little brother, he's absolutely certain of that. In the meantime, he needs to make sure the little miss gets some food in her.

And, well, Clark could use some more family, and he and Martha had always considered having more kids.

Or, after running from the GIW and Danny staying behind to give her time to escape, Ellie Phantom hides in a random barn in Kansas and accidentally gets herself and Danny adopted by the Kents, who think they're aliens. Clark, upon realizing his parents are very serious about this adoption thing and that his new little brother was probably being subjected to inhumane experimentation from Ellie's description of the situation, does in fact hunt down and retrieve said little brother. He also destroys the base said little brother was being held in.

@simplestoryteller

#dpxdc #dcxdp #dp x dc #dc x dp #story prompt #phanfic #superman au #superman #clark kent #danny phantom #dani phantom #ellie phantom #jon kent sr #martha kent #kal-el

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twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat · 5 months

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how deep is your devotion? ; satoru gojo

synopsis; you’re his knight, and he’s your prince. if only it were that simple.

word count; 6.6k

contents; satoru gojo/reader, gn!reader, royalty au (..but no effort put into making it historically accurate in any way oops), knight!reader x prince!toru!!, childhood friends, mutual pining, fluffy overall, some hurt/comfort too, vague allusions to abuse (reader is punished by one of the castle maids as a child but it’s only really hinted at), knight!reader is horrendously devoted but prince!gojo is arguably worse, he would burn the world down if u asked nicely <3

a/n; big big BIG thank u to @softgirlgonehaywire for having the biggest brain in the world and infecting me w this concept <33 if u pay attention while reading u can tell the exact moment i started slowly spiraling into insanity

you are five years old when you meet the prince.

five years old, a mere child, and too young to be blinded by such brilliance. too young to be where you are; curled up in a dark alley, back against a grimy brick wall, covered in bruises. like a beaten dog — scrawny and afraid. waiting for a strike that never comes.

the boy in front of you is also five years old, but you don’t know that. something in him looks older, somehow, something in the way he carries himself. like he doesn’t have anything to be afraid of. like he’s never even felt fear. he parts his lips and speaks like he has the right to, like he’s comfortable in his own skin, a radiance so blinding you could mistake him for the sun. too much for you to bear.

”does it hurt?”

the words fall on deaf ears. but you flinch, your body reacts, a tremble down your tiny spine. you hear the sound but not the words. too mesmerized, too paralyzed, unable to look away from the blue of his eyes, painted with rich watercolour hues. seeping into the world around you like ink on paper, cobalt and aquamarine and something else, something you’ve never seen before —

a blue so jarring it makes you shiver.

the boy has an innocent face. almost girlish, plump cheeks and long lashes, clean clothes and smooth skin. a little too pretty to be out here, you think, in this part of town — too pure to be anywhere near someone like you. he’s above you, that much you can tell. a pretty, innocent face, untouched by dirt or ache; the face of royalty. an entirely different species.

there’s something keen in his eyes, a contrast to his childlike features. a sharp gaze, something that sees through you, something that won’t look away. something mildly frightening. enough to have you cowering in fear, hugging your knees closer to your chest.

but then he smiles. and it’s sincere. sweet, vibrant, all honey and milk and a world you cannot reach.

a smile so captivating you take his outstretched hand, and let him drag you away to god-knows-where.

(that's how it begins. the dynamic that’ll follow you into your adult lives; satoru takes the lead, and you follow. no matter where he’s going.)

satoru gojo, as you soon come to learn, is the prince of the nation you reside in. the only child of the royal family, born with talent and prestige, fame and fortune, set to become king. a different species, indeed.

but he brings you home with him, to a castle so grand you feel as if your very presence is an insult to the architects who designed it, and convinces his parents to let you stay. it’s surprising, but you don’t protest; following him like a puppy at his trail. and he’s stubborn, insistent, demanding that he get to keep said puppy.

the king and queen don’t care one way or another. they glance at you with apathy, and tell satoru to do what he wants — but convincing the scary and displeased castle maids takes some work.

satoru doesn’t waver, though. he holds your hand in his, and demands that you be treated with respect.

and he wins. he always wins.

that’s how you become the prince’s playmate. raised alongside him, allowed to stay close, eat from the same food. he won’t settle for anything less. defending your honour, always, before you even know what honour means. before you care.

time passes slowly. joyously. every day is a new adventure, as you attempt to get used to the miracle that is your new life — sweet and silky, apricot blossoms and fresh peaches, duvet pillows and a bubbly laughter you didn’t know you still had. he coaxes it out of you, with every secret midnight outing, every bout of mischief he drags you both into.

satoru has nice hands, uncalloused palms, fingers that grasp yours and don’t let go. he takes you outside, to see the stars, to catch fireflies in the dark of night on top of the hill that oversees the castle. to take a dip in the river just below it, gleaming a silver hue under the blue shade of the moon. you worry about getting in trouble, but he reassures you — the prince can do what he wants.

that might be true, but you are no prince. not even close. satoru may safeguard you, but all you’ll ever be in the eyes of the world is a stray he got to keep.

and one time, only one time, you do face the repercussions of your midnight outings. you, and you alone. a bad influence — seething words, buzzing in your ears. an angry castle maid, and a stinging pain in your cheek. blurry tears.

but that’s an incident no one in the castle dares to speak of.

(you’ll never forget that look in his eyes.)

satoru is an odd boy. he keeps you close, always, clinging to you like he needs you to breathe. you don’t understand why, but you’ve learned not to question him. the castle guards all know you as the prince’s best friend, and some part of you knows that’s all you’ll ever amount to. but you don’t mind.

because you love him. at five years old, six years old, seven and beyond, you love him. satoru gojo, the kindest boy in the stratosphere.

a boy who keeps finding you, no matter where you are, who tugs you along as naturally as the rise of the sun. who raids kitchen cabinets with you and always makes you laugh, little giggles and chuckles that have him beaming proudly. a boy who cleans your wounds with a serious expression, and tells you that he’ll protect you forever.

(you tell yourself the same. that you’ll protect him forever and ever, until you run out of air to breathe. a boy so sweet you’d die for him.)

a pledge is made. you make it before you know what a pledge is. pledging to protect him, to become his sword, because even as a child you understand that his life will be difficult. you see it in the dullness that sometimes comes over his eyes, the apathy of his so-called parents, the hours he spends locked up with nothing but a pile of dusty books to keep him company.

so you decide to become his knight. his, and his alone.

it’s challenging. but you push through; training with another aspiring knight, miles better than you, black hair tousled by the breeze as he knocks you off your feet for the thirtieth consecutive time. wincing as the girl who sometimes watches your sparring patches you up, soft hands cleaning your wounds so tenderly that you almost choke up.

and eventually, as the apricot blossoms of the castle orchard wilt and bloom over and over in a flurry of pure white, your dream comes true.

there’s something playful in satoru’s eyes, when he places his blade on the curve of your shoulder. something sweet and fond, and just a little bit ironic — as if you’re still seven years old, and playing house.

you want to tell him that it isn’t a joke. that you’re serious, about this, that you’d tear your stomach open to keep him safe. but you know he’d just laugh. so you let the words clog up your throat, honey-sweet devotion sticking to the walls of your esophagus. breathing in through your nose, as he speaks. as the words you’ve waited to hear flow from his glossy lips.

when all is said and done, satoru smiles. he calls you his little knight, and you can tell that he’s teasing you. indulging you, as if he’s in on some joke that you aren’t. but you’ll take what you can get.

you call him my prince, expecting him to laugh it off, but his smile begins to fall. and a pang of ache rushes through your soul, instantaneous, guilty, although you don’t understand why.

so you keep calling him satoru. even though it’s more than a little unprofessional, and you become painfully accustomed to receiving a few judgemental looks here and there. a knight and a prince shouldn’t be so very close, they think, and you don’t disagree. but there’s nothing they can do about it, anyhow.

the prince and his knight can do what they want.

not much changes. you’re his knight, but he treats you the same as before. he’s playful, a little goofy, and you indulge him. as always. attached at the hip, bickering and bantering, bouncing off each other effortlessly. and satoru never bothers to hide your history, the soft spot he has for you; it’s in every fleeting glance, soft tilt of his head, teasing call of ah, there’s my favorite knight.

(you’re no stranger to jealous looks. sometimes a pout on the lips of a pretty girl, a crease between the brows of one of your fellow knights. and sometimes a glare, from his fiancée — a woman he was engaged to before he was old enough to speak.

but you don’t mind. you’ve never cared what anyone but satoru thinks of you.)

satoru never loses his smile, that effortless air of confidence. the charm that makes people want to follow him, a charisma you know well. one you fell victim to at five years of age. he’s still just a prince, far from being a king, but he receives the same respect.

and that keen, sharp glimmer in his eyes never quite goes away; the hardened shell around his heart unbroken. you see it in fleeting glances, during meetings, ones he allows you to attend despite your status. when he speaks to a room of people with more power than you can imagine, his voice unwavering. back straight. elegant, serious, the presence of royalty — enough to receive respect without even trying.

but he still shoots you a smile, easygoing, when your eyes meet. one only you can see.

as for you, the step into knighthood is a clumsy one. but you take your duties seriously, and adjust properly. a deep devotion runs through your veins, from your beating heart down to the tips of your fingers, where a sword lies clutched. you keep it close, always, ready to serve. to obey. to protect.

all of it for one person.

all you do is for him. duels in his honour, beasts slain for his peace of mind, and he’s always there to welcome you back. wiping the blood from your cheek, tenderly, smearing his untainted skin with red; all while he looks at you softly, a coo or word of praise waltzing on the tip of his tongue.

that’s only for when you remain unscathed, though, when the blood on your cheek isn’t your own. when you get hurt, it’s different — something begins to brew inside his eyes, and you can’t tell what it is. but he insists on bandaging you himself, paying no mind to your meek protests.

sometimes, you’re more reckless than usual. your injuries worse. sometimes he looks upset, angry with you, and doesn’t speak. you don’t, either.

a strange look comes over his eyes, every now and then. when you get down on one knee, to kiss his hand, the metal of the ring on his finger — and if you look up, you’ll see it. simmering inside those blue depths, something just as fond as it is sad. troubled, you think.

(something tells you he’d kneel, too, if only you’d let him.)

the bond between you remains intact. even as you begin to shoulder more responsibilities, more duties, even though you don’t have as much freedom as you used to. even though you seem to get less time to spend with each other every single day. but you stay together, even so; just like when you were children, running around and causing trouble, more than you could get away with now.

despite everything, satoru has grown up into a fine man. and you couldn't be prouder.

“do you think i look good in black? be honest.”

you throw him a glance. curious, somewhat perplexed, eyeing him up and down.

satoru is wearing a white blouse, puffy sleeves and a low neckline, showing off the skin of his bare chest. no black colours to be seen. you think back to that banquet he attended last month, forced into an expensively tailored black coat. a corset around his waist. and then you hum.

“sure you do.”

”suguru said it makes me look like a try-hard,” he scoffs, crossing his arms. tilting his head in your direction. ”do you think he’s jealous?”

”definitely.”

a moment passes.

satoru narrow his eyes, and gives you a dubious look. clicking his tongue. ”… something tells me you aren’t taking this seriously.”

”i am,” you assure him, a lazy smile at your lips. meeting his gaze, that displeased little pout. still smoothing a brush down the mane of your horse, the smell of hay soothing your muddled senses. ”just tired. you look good in anything. you know that.”

he hums. silent, the sound of a spring breeze filling in the gaps.

it’s late. outside the stables, the world is engulfed by a dark sky, almost too murky to see anything. hazy stars glimmer in the distance, and a sense of fatigue gnaws at your bones. it’s been a long day, and yet you’re here — doing even more work. just a little more.

and satoru’s right there with you. even though he’s just sitting there, on the floor, not lifting a finger to help. not that he has to. insistent on spending some quality time with you, keeping you company. just talking and munching on the food he snuck in, bread and cheese and an expensive bottle of wine, that he leaves completely untouched. he tries to leave some of everything else for you, though. keyword being tries.

a sense of peace simmers in the air. palpable, almost enough to taste, as midnight air streams in from the opened doors, chilly and pleasant on your skin. ruffling the thin fabric of your clothing.

and it’s nice, you think, just to have satoru there — talking about this and that, complaining about all the annoying people he had to meet yesterday, yawning every now and then. nostalgic. like this, it almost feels like you're still kids. back when you spent every single hour of the day by each other’s side.

it’s been a long time since you got the chance to speak like this. satoru’s been busy, and so have you. more so than usual.

”are they running you ragged?” he suddenly asks, and you don’t realize you’ve spent the last minute staring into space. resuming your brushing, with steady hands, but turning your head to meet his gaze.

”need me to…” he makes a slicing motion with his hand, right over his throat. a glint of mischief in his eyes. ”handle it?”

and you scoff. amused, but answering him seriously; unsure if his question is all-together humorous, if it doesn’t carry a hint of something genuine too. ”of course not.”

there’s a weariness in the way you blink. the way you pet the animal in front of you, having finished getting the dirt and blood clots out of her mane. she lays down in her stall, and you smile. turning around to rest your back against the wooden border between you, a respite for your aching bones.

it gets just a little bit tiring, sometimes. fighting, patrolling, helping townsfolk. protecting the castle, making sure everything is in order. killing whatever needs to be killed. cleaning the stained silver of your sword.

but…

”it’s my duty,” you answer, seriously, and it comes out sounding like a vow. because it is.

you avoid his gaze, but you can feel it, as you pick up the wine bottle by your feet and pop the cork. soft moonlight flits in from the windows, illuminating the green glass. a chartreuse glow that reminds you of fireflies, shimmering in your grasp, and for some reason it soothes your heart.

satoru only hums, far from approving. popping a piece of cheese into his mouth.

after a brief pause, he continues. ”you don’t have to be so serious all the time, you know.” his voice comes out a little raspy. it’s got a certain tilt to it, one that means he wants you to take him seriously. ”not around me.”

you take a sip of the wine. expensive, blood red. it’s too sweet for your taste, heavy on your tongue.

”… i’m less serious with you than i am with others.”

satoru sits up a little straighter.

”yeah?” he grins, a kind of satisfaction blooming in his eyes. cerulean and sweet. almost smug, you think, like the cat that got the cream. ”that’s good. you really should loosen up, though.”

a glance. fleeting, just to see him — but he isn’t looking at you. he’s looking outside, through the opened window, at the sway of the apricot trees. white petals flitting in, landing by his feet. in his hair.

when his eyes meet yours, they’re smoothed over by that something you can never put your finger on. a blend between longing and fondness. crinkled at the edges.

”you’ve got a pretty smile,” he exhales. ”be a shame not to show it off.”

when you look at him, really look at him, you see it. that fatigue. it slips out when he talks to you, a sincere way of speaking that never quite allows him to hide his emotions. you hear the hint of a yawn, can practically feel the weight on his shoulders. the weight of an entire nation. a weight he was always bound to carry.

(you could never bring yourself to be even remotely alright with it.)

“have you been doing okay?” you ask, and satoru blinks. there’s a soft look in your eyes, as they trail over the contours of his face, his lashes catching the light of the stars. an innocent, pretty face. but he looks tired. frail. like he hasn’t been sleeping properly.

something rotten bubbles up inside your throat.

”they’re running you ragged, too,” you say, hand settling on your hip. where your sword usually is. unconsciously, on instinct — or maybe just to make him laugh. ”need me to step in?”

satoru chuckles. husky, mellow. dripping with soft amusement.

”settle down, little knight.”

a moment passes. silent. his eyes flutter shut, for a second, and a breath slips from his lips. almost a sigh. in the distance, you hear the quiet coo of an owl.

”of course,” he eventually answers, opening his eyes. and you think he looks a little resigned. but smiling. self-deprecating, you think, although he’d like you to assume otherwise. ”all of it is just preparation, anyhow.”

a flimsy smile, as he looks into your knowing eyes. ”it’s what i was born for, wasn’t it?”

you purse your lips.

“… i don’t think so.”

another chuckle. a little delighted, this time.

“yeah,” he cranes his neck, emitting a low groan. “me neither.” something sweet blossoms in his eyes, sweet like the crunch of the apple he bites into, juice dribbling down his chin. ”but it is what it is.”

a beat. you part your lips, trying to find the right words. ”tell me if there's anything i can do,” you settle on. the same words you always choose. ”anything at all.”

satoru smiles. “right.” his voice carries a teasing tilt; almost a purr. ”there’s nothing you wouldn't do for me, hm?”

“— there isn’t.” you smile. “nothing at all.”

he blinks. a little dazed, for a second, and you watch as his ears redden. slight, enough for you to notice, but gone before you can bring it up. a contemplation smooths over his features. and a pleasant breeze flits in, ruffling his hair, apricot petals kissing up his skin. he looks at the apple in his hands.

then he sighs. placing his palms on his knees, and rising to his feet. his arms twitch, muscular beneath the flimsy blouse, and you gulp. although you aren’t sure why.

“alright, then.” his eyes flicker in the dim light, sharp and decisive. he crosses over to you with long strides. “there is something you can do.”

when he’s close enough, satoru reaches out his hand; opening his palm. a silent beckoning. you look at him, not saying a word. his expression is unreadable.

then you intertwine your fingers with his. unquestioningly, even in the midst of your confusion.

(it reminds you of that day. when he pulled you up to your feet, held your hand in his and refused to let go. leading you to the promise of something better.)

no matter where he goes, you follow.

and satoru grins. it’s sweet, just like back then, a smile so vibrant you wish you could tuck it into your sleeve and keep it there forever. he curls his fingers around yours, gentle, fondness bubbling up inside his eyes. for a second, you think you see the sun.

“come with me.”

at first, you truly aren’t sure where he’s going to take you. hand in hand, you begin to walk, feeling the midnight breeze nip at your skin. beyond the castle walls, away from the hustle and bustle of the nearby town. satoru holds your hand and smiles, tousled tufts of white hair swaying with the wind, leading you to a place you know well. a place where the air tastes like freedom.

it’s the river you used to play by as children.

gleaming a solemn silver under the evanescent moon, framed by bushes of lilacs, blooming indigo and violet and pure white. butterflies flutter about, almost glittering, blue wings settling down on the leaves. the scent of nectar hangs heavy in the air. on top of the hill just above you, you think you can spot tiny little glowing dots; green and yellow, buzzing around. dancing merrily, now that there aren’t any troublemaker children left to trap them.

satoru lets go of your hand, to roll up his sleeves. the hems of his pants. then he’s taking a step forward, dangerously close to the edge of the river, and you can tell what he’s thinking.

“ah — wait —“ you stumble forward, to grab hold of his arm. a worried crease forms between your brows. “that's dangerous, satoru. you could slip and fall.”

he turns to face you, a teasing mirth in his eyes. smirking lightly. “oh? is that so?” he hums, a slight tilt of his head. then he’s stepping closer, so close you feel his warm breath on your skin, but you will yourself not to step back. “wanna know what i think?”

he leans forward, just a little further, warm air brushing against the shell of your ear. flushing beneath it. his voice comes out low, a sleepy lilt, dangerously raspy. hand ghosting over your waist.

”i think you’re too scared to get in.”

you blink.

”… really?” you deadpan, stepping back a tad. satoru looks pleased with himself. awfully amused.

“really,” he purrs. “you were always like that. could barely dip your toes in without shivering.” he reaches out to pinch your cheek, a coo on the tip of his tongue. ”scaredy-cat.”

you raise your brow. unimpressed.

satoru steps back. inching closer to the river, until a quiet splash tells you that he’s standing in the water. lapping up his bare legs, not enough to even reach his knees — it felt a lot scarier when you were smaller. he’s still holding your hand, very loosely, fingertips ghosting your own.

“c’mon,” he coaxes. soft, encouraging, a playful glimmer in his eyes. teeth catching the light of the moon. “or is it too much for my brave knight to handle?”

satoru laughs, when you furrow your brows, attempting to hide the flush of your cheeks. a warmth spreads through your chest at the term of endearment, and you bite your lip. melting a little.

his knight. his favourite knight.

“.. fine,” you tangle your fingers in his own. sighing deeply, taking a tentative step forward. “just be careful, okay? i don't want to deal with your whining if you hit your head.”

“ah, but you’d kiss it better, no? if i asked?” he flashes you a honeyed grin, eyes rich with amusement. you hope the darkness of the night is enough to hide the red of your ears.

a grumble buzzes in your throat, locked behind your pursed lips. something in your jaw goes tight.

the man in front of you softens. parting his glossy lips. he says your name; slowly, thoughtfully, as if savouring every syllable. dragging them out, speaking with a lilt that tells you he’s being sincere.

“— loosen up. it’s just you and me.”

so you do.

and it’s odd. how easy it is to get lost in him, the watercolour of his eyes, the brightness of his grin. how pliantly you let him whisk you away. before you know it, you’re playing in the water — because satoru splashed you, laughing at the shock on your face and the shiver of your spine, and you had no choice but to retaliate.

the sound of his laughter fills the air, sweet and bubbly. deep and giddy. strands of hair stick to his wet skin, droplets running down his neck, but his grin never falters. bright and toothy, boyish. he looks younger than you ever remember him being. like there’s no weight on his shoulders, none at all, only soaked fabric weighing him down. a flimsy, see-through blouse.

you think it’s ridiculous. two grown adults, splashing each other like children. but his melodic giggles are contagious, and before you know it, you’re laughing too — and satoru looks at you like you hung all the stars in the sky. through dewy eyelashes, with cerulean eyes that melt into the pale blue of the moon and the silver of the river. filled with wonder.

a particularly ruthless splash knocks him off balance, and he has the instinct to reach for your arm; stumbling, slipping, dragging you down with him. you land on his chest, cheek against his neck, his pulse against your skin. erratic, joyous. fluttering happily.

his chest is heaving. lifting you up and down, a little, rhythmic and comforting.

a sudden yelp slips past your lips, as you get snapped back into reality, into the realization that you basically just pushed your own prince into a river and used his unfairly soft chest as a cushion. a mumbled string of apologies escapes you, as you attempt to get up, scrambling to find footing.

but satoru wraps his arms around you. tucking you under his chin, keeping you flush against his chest. nice and still.

and then he sighs. a blissful little breath, fatigue seeping out of him. into the air.

“stay like this, for a bit,” he rasps. ”it’s okay.”

his heartbeat resounds in your ear. warm and rapid, like claps of thunder, coaxing you into closing your eyes. satoru has always felt so very safe. the water of the river is cold, seeping through the fabric of your clothing and sticking to your skin, but…

(he’s warm.)

silence. and then, a whisper; frail, slipping past his lips, gently slicing the silence in half. softer than you've ever heard him speak.

“i missed this.”

…

nuzzling into his neck, you breathe him in. he smells like sandalwood and dried roses, buzzing with warmth, heavy arms around your waist. solid. when did he get so big? you used to be taller.

then again — that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?

“… me too.”

“missed you,” he continues, his jaw on top of your head. it’s a sincere confession; childlike in its innocence. “missed hearing you laugh like that. feels like it’s been so long.”

you stay silent. unsure of what to say. satoru continues, and you let his husky voice carry you away, the tremor of his chest running through your entire body. soothing like a lullaby.

”we haven't had much time together, lately. i’ve been worried,” he admits, and something about it strikes you as rather sheepish. a little ashamed. ”it bothers me that i can't be there to watch over you. make sure you're treated with respect, you know.”

a sleepy chuckle. muffled into his shoulder, almost a scoff — slightly exasperated. little droplets cling to his skin, sticking to your lips.

”relax, your majesty,” you tease. ”i promise the other knights aren’t bullying me.”

satoru pouts. you can hear it, when he speaks. ”i’m serious,” he huffs, squeezing you lightly. ”and it’s not them i’m worried about. suguru’s there.”

another scoff threatens to escape your throat. you want to tell him the only knight that should be suspected of bullying you is suguru himself, but before you can even think to part your lips satoru’s beaten you to it.

”they all treat you so carelessly.” there’s something cold to his voice, an irritation tugging at his teeth. oddly seething. ”like you exist to serve them. like you’re disposable.”

a moment passes, heavy with a silence so thick you don’t dare break it. when he speaks again, it’s an order. a demand.

”i want you to tell me if they go too far.”

silence. again. you can do nothing but gnaw at the flesh of your bottom lip.

(he isn’t wrong. but that’s simply what it means to be a knight — half-human, half-weapon. an unattainable ideal, stuffed inside a suit of armor.

when a weapon breaks under the force of a slash, the only choice is to throw it away. that much you know.)

”it’s fine. i’m not that fragile,” you weakly protest, but it’s not enough. satoru huffs.

”you’re a human being,” he reminds you. strangely stern, for once. chastising. ”you deserve to be treated with respect. knight or not. fragile or not.”

a deep inhale. he breathes in, and the rise of his chest carries you with it. his voice buzzes with something, a slumbering kind of fury. one you haven’t heard in years.

“if anyone gives you trouble — if anyone hurts you… if anyone makes you feel unsafe,” he almost spits the words, like they’re venomous, sacrilegious. ”tell me. i’ll destroy them.”

silence. and then, a chuckle.

that’s all you can manage; that one meek little breath. resisting the urge to cower, at the love that clings to every word he speaks. angered affection. a promise, dangerously genuine, like a growing wildfire.

”i can take care of myself, satoru,” you remind him. hoping it’ll soothe him. ”you know that.”

but his grip around you only tightens. gentle, even still. as if you’re made of glass, a firefly cupped in his palms. he lets the silence linger, for a moment.

and then;

“i’d do it, you know.”

a questioning hum. “do what?” you ask, though some part of you already knows.

satoru’s reply is instantaneous. an arrow hitting its target, cold and concise, decisive. frighteningly honest. almost a growl, flattened, a hint of teeth behind his soft lips. ”destroy them. anyone.”

”i’d tear this nation apart if you asked me to.”

…

(ah. that look in his eyes — one you remember well. strung together with blurred memories, the sting of a palm on your cheek, a castle maid you never saw again.)

you search for the words. biting back a gulp, hesitant. “… i wouldn’t.”

“i know.” satoru yawns, breathing you in, voice shifting back into the softness you’re so used to. your shoulders relax. “but i would. if that’s what you wanted.”

and it’s a little scary, the depths of his devotion. but you’re almost certain you’d do the same for him. maybe you're both a little sick in the head, a little too eager to serve your hearts on a silver platter.

“it bothers me, you know.” satoru breaks you out of your thoughts. gentle, a soft lull of his tongue. ”when you get hurt. when you fight for me.”

“i know,” you murmur. you’ve seen it in his eyes, a worry he’s not as good at hiding as he thinks. ”i want to, though.”

“and i want you to be safe.” a chuckle bubbles up in his throat, just a little bit rueful. “you never listen, do you? so stubborn, i swear. always worrying me.”

you bite down on your lip. he sounds… a little sad.

“… sorry.”

a moment’s pause. then he shakes his head; cradling you close. “it’s fine. i’m here. always,” his palm runs down the small of your back. ”in case anything happens.”

he inhales. ”and when i become king —” a beat. he swallows thickly. ”you’ll never have to worry again. no one will be able to touch you.”

”satoru,” you crack a small smile. amused. raising a single eyebrow. ”i’m not worried. i can protect myself.”

”i know. but i’m saying you don’t have to.”

and then he’s pulling back. just a little bit, just enough to see you. cheek smushed against his chest, comfortable and soft, more unguarded than he’s seen you these past few months. it’s enough to get his heart racing.

enough to have him reaching out, fingertips ghosting over your hand, tangling your fingers together. bringing it to his glossy lips. a chaste kiss, brimming with unspoken murmurs of love.

”— i’ll protect you forever,” he vows. ”remember?”

there’s devotion in his eyes. heavy, a vow he’ll never quite be able to voice in full. something that makes the blue of his eyes glow even brighter, cerulean, aquamarine, a blue so jarring it makes your heart beat faster than it should.

you blink. starstruck, caught in a daze, lost within that sea of blue. distracted by his warm breath on your cold skin, the soft whisper voiced against your knuckle. something shy blossoms in your chest, enough to have you averting your gaze.

“... you really don’t care about the dynamic here, do you?” is all you can reply. a meek scoff, a weak attempt at hiding how flustered you are. “i’m the knight. i’m your protector.”

“oh, i know.” a smile sticks to his lips, playful, the back of his hand caressing your cheek. a coo on his tongue. “my little hero. what would i ever do without you?”

a roll of your eyes. satoru chuckles. in the distance, you hear crickets chirping, a breeze rustling the lilac bushes all around you. he’s still cradling your cheek, smoothing over your wet skin, brushing a drop of water away with his thumb. clinging to your bottom eyelash.

“i don't get it, though.”

you blink. when you meet his eyes, satoru looks a little perplexed. muttering under his breath, absently rubbing circles over your cheekbone. you resist the urge to close your eyes again, biting back a blissful sigh.

”a prince shouldn’t care for his knight…” he repeats, like he’s heard the string of words a million times before. ”the idea of that. i don’t understand it. never have.”

the smile that blossoms on his lips is soft, indescribably so, as if he’s looking at the most precious thing in his life. rich and warm, like wine in your veins, nectar on your tongue, a chest pressed against your own. dripping with fondness.

satoru tilts his head, as if in confusion — but he’s smiling. “what’s so strange about wanting to protect the one dearest to my heart?”

…

his hand slips from your skin, a warmth leaving your cheek. only to search for your hand, again, cradling it in his larger palm. placing it right over his chest, against the soaked material of his blouse. ”feel that?”

you do. a rhythmic rise and fall, a soft flutter from the depths of his ribcage. as if it’s itching to break out, out of the cage that binds it, the hardened shell around it. a heart too big for his body.

”it’s you,” satoru whispers. ”all for you.”

a moment passes.

silently, you lean forward; tucking yourself into his neck. into that comforting warmth, wet skin beginning to dry, the steady thrum of his heart right by your ear. you listen. not saying a word, afraid of what might leave the confines of your strangled throat. it feels as if your heart has begun to crawl upwards, sweet honey blocking your airways, and all you can do it feel it pulse.

all while satoru gazes at you, fondly. placing a big palm on the back of your head.

fireflies dance in the distance. butterflies flutter about. strings of lilacs bloom under the glow of the moon. and satoru’s heartbeat never changes, never falls out of tune, a sound you would recognize even if the sky were to shatter, if the world were to end. the sound that saved you, the boy who dragged you out of hell. into his light.

satoru gojo is everything. he’s the beat of your heart, the silver of your sword, the reason you believe in goodness. he’s your prince, your favorite person, and you’ll protect him until your very last breath. until the world runs out of oxygen.

a boy so sweet you’d die for him.

(a boy so sweet he wouldn’t want you to.)

a shiver runs down his spine — sudden, a shudder of his bones, and a quiet little sniffle. you feel it, hear it, and don’t attempt to bite back the fond smile that slips into the curve of your lips.

”c’mon,” you beckon, almost a coo, placing your palms on his chest to hoist yourself up. ”let’s go home.”

but satoru shakes his head. and then he traps you again, strong arms around your waist, pressing you against him. you could escape — you’re almost certain you’re stronger — but you don’t quite have the heart to. ”it’s fine,” he huffs. almost a whine. ”stay.”

”you’ll get sick.”

”i never get sick.”

a deep exhale. tumbling from your lips, just a little bit humorous. mostly exasperated. ”that can change,” you mumble, fingertips dancing along his exposed skin. absentmindedly.

a smile. one you can’t see, but you hear it clear as day. he sounds content, like he’s got everything he needs right in front of him. ”some things never change,” he informs you. pleased. ”just look at us.”

and he’s right. so you don’t say anything else.

but your heartbeat quickens, only for a beat or two, and you’re almost certain he feels it. if he does, he opts not to tease you for once, and you’re grateful. and so the silence lingers. as if time has begun to freeze, into an eternal dusk, a string of silent seconds. broken only by low melodic chirping from the faraway fields, his soft breaths in your ear.

until satoru suddenly chuckles.

“hey,” he hums, shifting a little, the river swaying around you. pulling back to meet your gaze, eyes crinkled and voice raspy. “wanna know a secret?”

you raise your head. a dubious look on your face, one that has him breathing out an amused puff of air, like you’re getting ready to hear a bad joke. “... what is it?”

before the words have fully left your throat, he’s resting his forehead against yours — breath fanning over your lips. a pleasant shiver trails down your spine, at the close proximity, goosebumps spreading across your chilled skin. only exacerbated by the whisper that follows, so quiet you almost don’t know if you heard him correctly. childlike in its sincerity. a sunlaced smile woven in between the vowels.

“i think i was born to meet you.”

(a sentiment so sweet you barely even feel the warmth of his lips meeting yours.)

#u both catch a cold the next day <33 #anyway i am normal about the devotion of a loyal knight paired w the devotion of a man who’s only ever loved one single person in his life #shoutout to knight x royalty dynamics for inventing romance #i wanted to get a good balance on prince!gojo’s twisted side and soft side so i hope i did ok!! :’3 #hes a kind man at heart he rly is but i think being born at the peak of the class pyramid does smth to a person lmao #i didn't touch on it in the fic but he would have turned out a lotttt more twisted if he hadnt met reader as a child …#what if i was ur knight..;;; and u were my prince….;;;;; and we changed the trajectory of each other’s lives 😳😳 👉👈#mickey if u see this!!! tysm for letting me write abt this concept i had so much fun!!! this fic is for u <33 #gojo satoru #gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru fluff #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x y/n #gojo x y/n #gojo x you #gojo fluff #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x gender neutral reader #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk x y/n #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jujutsu kaisen

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imsilay · 8 months

Text

VENOR pt.2

NSFW! mdni +18

word count: 1.8k

summary: His obsession for you was overwhelming. So yours too.

cr: dwisesz on twt

You were in the most comfortable position on your bed, pillows between your arms and legs as you lay on your side. The feeling of the warmth of your bed was so good to leave but you had to go to work. You turned around in the bed and you felt something else, something you weren't used to. It was big, hard, and covered the most of your twin-sized bed.

"Guten Morgen, Prinzessin." he chuckled lightly at the confusion on your sleepy face and ran his fingers through your hair. "König?" you mumbled, looking up to meet his icy-blue eyes. He hummed in response and continued to fondle with your hair. His gaze was on your hair, adoring how beautiful it was. His heart was hammering in his chest, as he tried to stop the trembling in his hands. Being this close to you was overwhelming him. "Did you break into my house? Again?" you said jokingly like you were tired of finding him in your house all the time. Only if you knew what else he was doing while you were at work... "You were the one who gave me your keys, Prinzessin." He chuckled again. He would be a giggling and blushing mess, if he didn't have the self-control. "Yeah, but does it give you the right to come unannounced and lay on my bed?" you said, proping yourself up on your elbows.

You little cheeky thing... The position that you're in made his gaze drop to your breasts. "Yes. It pretty much does.” he mumbled quietly while his head was moving to look at your face, but his eyes were glued to the thin fabric of your black nightgown. Your nipples were visible and his mind was going foggy from seeing them this close. What would you do if he weighed himself on you and pinned your hands above your head? Could you stop him when he lose himself between your breasts? Inhaling your scent deeply and sucking your nipples until you were wet and ready for him.

"I guess I need to get used to it by now." you giggled, sounding everything but disturbed by his actions. Your breasts undulating deliciously, making it even harder for him to look away. He was drooling over the sight. Of course you noticed where his gaze was, he was making it too obvious. You used it to tease him cruelly. He nodded his head with no idea what he was agreeing with. All he could think about was tearing your nightgown and devouring you. You noticed he was so zoned out and you shaked your head. He was so cute and you knew he was blushing behind that mask.

You got up and he caught a glimpse of your soft thighs. He just got up from your bed reluctantly and followed you like a lost puppy. He was almost entering the bathroom with you, but you gave him a look and he stood right before the door. It was funny to see a man like him, understanding and following your orders, without you needing to say anything.

He put his ear to the door, trying to listen to everything you did inside. The sound of the shower turning on made his heart skip a beat. You were there, naked and vulnerable. He could just bang in and do everything he wanted to you. He could bend you down and fuck your little cunt from behind as you tried to steady yourself from his rapid pace. He could fuck you like a animal and then bathe you like a baby. Just to fuck you later again.

But he didn't do anything. He took the opportunity to fix and hide more little cameras around your house, a new one for your bedroom and kitchen. Because you broke the previous one, without even knowing they were there. When he was done, you were out of the shower and, unfortunately for him, changed into new clothes. "I just realised that it's my day off!" you said, while entering the kitchen, knowing that you'd find him there. "I assume that you're hungry?" you smiled, as you already knew the answer. He was always hungry, not only for the food, but that mountain of a man, ate a lot. He would eat whatever you gave him, without complaining. He was leaned against the fridge and had his arms crossed over his chest, and looked bigger like that, you thought to yourself.

"That means I have you all for myself, huh?" He smirked at you under the mask, tilting his head to the side. His whole mood brightened up when he got the news. "Sorry, i already promised someone." you winked at him and started to prepare something for breakfast. It wasn’t true, you were just trying to get some reaction from him. His body tensed at the thought of you being out with someone other than him. He clenched his fists and his muscles looked bigger. He was right at your way, while you were trying to open the fridge. "Can you sit down?" you tilted your head to the side as you waited for him to move away. "Do you have a date?" He raised an eyebrow and didn't move from his place. Now feeling his cold and firm expression, you knew the reason why. "Maybe," you cooed, stepping closer to him, enjoying the effect you were having on him. "Why did you ask?" you smiled.

"Nothing." He mumbled quietly, while moving away. Having you close made his mind go blank and his focus waver. He knew he'd find out later on. "If you say so." you shrugged but knew that he was trying his best to cover up his jealousy. Then he sat down like a good boy, with his eyes firmly set on you, as you were moving inside the kitchen. You could feel that he was watching your every move, intensely. He had his urges under control, but the urge of taking ownership over you was too strong to suppress.

Watching you was triggering something in him. He just had to touch you when you were this close. His cock got hard as your body danced inside the kitchen. You were so focused on flipping the pancakes, and wanted to make it perfect, he got closer to you from behind. He grabbed your spatula, "Let me do it, Prinzessin." in a low voice that sent chills up your spine. His voice was like a purr and he towered over you, with his firm chest almost pressing against your back. You felt the heat radiating from his body and swallowed thickly. That tension between you and him was back and you wondered what would happen next. He could bend you over to counter and bully his cock inside your tight pussy but the pancakes would go waste, not that he was scared of your rejection. "Sure." You muttered, your voice just above a whisper. His big palm was covering your small hand and you used all your willpower to let go. He bit his lip, as he tried to not let out a moan when your body brushed against his while you walked out in between him and the counter. The tension between you was palpable as he glanced at ypu while flipping the pancakes with such seriousness. His cock was rock hard already and he wished you wouldn’t notice the big tent in front of his pants. When the pancakes were ready he rushed to bathroom saying he had to wash his hands real quick. But his intentions were different.

The first thing he did, was to place four cameras in there. He wanted to see you in every angle. After the job was done, it was time for him to get rid of the tent on his pants. His gaze wandered in the bathroom trying to find anything that could help him. Anything that reminded you. And that was when his eyes landed on the laundry basket. At first he shook his head and pulled his cock out, wanting to do it fast and go back to kitchen. But stroking the thick length with his palm wasn’t enough. He tried to toy with his precum leaking tip. It was so sensitive and draw low groans from him. But it wasn’t enough. He needed more because knowing you were at the same house turned him on wven more. It angered him that you got him that hard. He let out a sigh of frustration and quickly searched the thing he was looking for. He found it. And his cock throbbed with just the look of it. It was the panties you wore yesterday, when he watched you desperately finger yourself with your small hand. He groaned and brought it closer to his mask hesitantly. It was the first time he got that far. What if he became addicted to your scent, your taste? What if he couldn’t contain himself anymore and eat you out before breakfast? What if it would be his breaking point?

It was too late for thinking about it when your arousal filled his nostrils. His cock twitched in his hand. He leaned against the cold wall of your bathroom with your panties under his mask, sniffing it like a pervert, and stroking his cock furiously. “Scheiße- I want you so bad, Maus.” he whimpered. His breath swollen and fast. His eyes rolled back when he stuffed your panties into his mouth to muffle his groans and moans. Your taste spinned his head and made him cum uncontrollably fast. Now he was wanting to taste your fresh arousal. Nothing was enough until he had you. He was so desperate for it to regret his action. He placed the panties back because he knew if they disappeared while he was at your house you’d know. You’d know how pervert he is and hate him, right? No. You were at the door when he was jerking off to your panties, whimpering your name. It made you feel proud of yourself knowing that he couldn’t even waited to go back home to satisfy himself.

You noticed he could not look you into the eyes during breakfast and even while doing the dishes, he remained silent. Was that because he was ashamed of his actions? You tried to look into his eyes but he kept avoiding you constantly. Your heart ached when he did not even look at you as he left your house. What was he thinking? Normally he wouldn’t leave your house before midnight or you kicked him out. The curiosity got to you and you wondered what was going on in his mind.

He would have done it a long time ago had he the bravery. "What am I going to do with you, Maus?" He mumbled to himself and sighed. It was difficult for him not to attack your lips after tasting your arousal -even through your panties- He could not even look you in the eyes, because if he did, he wouldn't be able to control himself and do something he'd regret later.

a/n: please support me by reblogging, if you liked the content ofc <3 your comments also makes my day :* and i love to reply all of them :>

taglist

@bunnyclaire @bigtastyrake @lazyflue @eddiemxnsonlvr @azzy-ozborn @sukioyakio @maylovesyousomuch @pinkblossomsworld @alxexhearts @cheezbites @opaljoyfish @maylovesyousomuch @aizawaswhoresworld @rilamon @catycat01 @ghostslillady @penguinobambino @elichisstuff

idk i’m not satisfied with this. tbh i hate this so i could delete and change it later :/ (i lost my ability to write?!)

#könig call of duty #konig #könig #könig smut #könig cod #könig mw2 #könig x reader #obsessed könig #konig x reader #konig cod #konig smut #konig mw2 #konig x you #konig x female reader #konig modern warfare #könig x you #könig x y/n

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angelltheninth · 6 months

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Creepy Lovesick Genshin Men

Pairing: Kaeya, Diluc, Itto, Childe, Dottore, Pantalone, Neuvillette, Wriothesley, Zhongli x Fem!Reader

Tags: fluff but make it creepy, confessions, stalking, kidnapping, forced kissing, love bombing, cuddles, biting, marking, tail use, possessiveness

A/N: Let's make this creepy!

Kaeya kept an eye on you all night, watching as you were being ogled by various other people. He didn't like that one bit, he's been planning to confess to you for months but every time his job pulls him away. Well tonight he'll do the right thing. You didn't expect the great Captain to come to your rescue, but even less that he'd introduce himself as your boyfriend and try to kiss you. Why are you resisting, you gotta sell the act, it'll be fine, it's just one small kiss after all.

Diluc doesn't see what he does as stalking, just him making sure his favorite worker gets home safely. People can take advantage of a pretty woman like you, and he could never allow that to happen to you, he loves you too much. You think you see him sometimes, a flash of red on the roof, in the corner of your eye. But that's not your boss, it's just a coincidence that he always leaves after you. Right?

Itto is a very protective oni, one with the brawns needed to protect anything and anyone he cares about. Weather you like it or not he is your protector. He always happens to be at the right place at the right time, scaring away anyone who wants to hurt you and then saying he's hungry afterwards, he could use some good food. You could go with him, you could even make it a date. He promises to keep you to himself... eh, that is, the creeps away from you.

Childe will go to any length to make you his own, including getting rid of his perceived competition. By being the winner he thinks he's completely charmed you, proven himself to you, won your heart, when all he's proven is that he saw fighting as the only way out. Oh don't you worry, that's how he deals with those he doesn't like, but he loves you, he has much nicer things planned, many kisses in store for you, if you behave that it.

Dottore makes sure everyone knows that you belong to him. Not only does he make you dress only in the clothes he buys for you but it's all very short clothes where anyone who looks at you can see the evidence of the night before. Made by his hands, mouth and various other things he uses to mark your body. You should know, he only does this because he loves you, he loves you so much he would go crazy without you. You don't want that do you?

Pantalone keeps you close to him just so he can observe you. He's happy to look at you for most of the day, you're the most precious thing to him, so of course he would openly adore you and tell others of how great you are. You're so engrossed in his words that you barely notice his gloved hand taking hold of your wrist and making you stand by his side until you don't think you can stand anymore, so the only place to go is his lap.

Neuvillette tells you he loves you all too often. One would think there's no such thing but he says it with so much longing in his eyes, like he'll die of he doesn't say it. Don't even think of interrupting him, he'll hold you in place with his tail while he cuddles up to you after a long day of being apart. He missed you so much, this is his time to enjoy you, to make the rain outside finally stop pouring.

Wriothesley believes he's keeping you safe when he locks you up in his house. It's the only place where no one but him can reach you. What started as simple bodyguard work has developed into so much more. Neither of you thought it would come to this just from a few kisses but it did. He's grateful, he actually has someone to welcome him home now, someone to kiss, to cherish and truly call his.

Zhongli marks your whole body with bite marks, it's how he shows his love, not his possessiveness. He kisses each of these marks, treasures the sight of them on your skin, renews them every night, not even giving them a chance to heal, not wanting to risk someone looking at you thinking you no longer belong to him. The way his eyes glow when he looks over your body is nothing short of awestruck, his greatest treasure, wearing his marks.

#genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #kaeya x reader #diluc x reader #itto x reader #childe x reader #dottore x reader #pantalone x reader #neuvilette x reader #wriothesley x reader #zhongli x reader #genshin impact imagines #genshin imagines #genshin impact headcanons #genshin headcanons #genshin impact x you #genshin x you #genshin impact x female reader #genshin x female reader

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pinguwrites · 7 months

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In The Light of the Moon | Thomas Shelby

Pairing -> dark!thomas shelby x innocent!reader

Summary -> Having enough of being mistreated by your family, you decide to runaway to the small town of Birmingham. There, you meet the feared gangster, Thomas Shelby, whose intentions with you are less than pure.

Warnings -> smut (minors dni), kinda dark tommy, innocent!reader, mentions of abuse, p in v, anal, oral (both sides), fingering, allusion to stalking, bunny pet name (briefly, as a joke), lingerie, spanking, very light breeding, bleeding, pain, first time for reader

Word count: 5k

Disclaimer: Peaky Blinders characters, plots, quotes, etc. do not belong to me and belong to the rightful owner(s). This is only fanfiction and this is just for fun.

“Where do you think you’re going, sweetheart?” Tommy asked, taking a quick drag of his cigarette, the white smoke curling up in the cold, bitter air.

You hugged your body with your arms and averted your eyes. “Sir, I have to go home. It’s almost night.”

Tommy raised an eyebrow, amused. “Home? The streets?”

You didn’t have anything to say to that. You were sleeping on the streets, ever since you ran away from your abusive family in London. You had nothing with you but a bag of sandwiches you were carefully portioning, some cash, and the things you were wearing — a light skirt with intricate pink patterns and boots.

“Are you here just to make fun of me?” you said, a little annoyed.

He stepped forward and brushed his fingers against your cheek. You shuddered at the feeling, involuntary leaning into his warm touch, but then you realized what you were doing and backed away.

“Such a pretty girl,” he complimented. When you pulled away, he stopped his caressing, but he didn’t bother to create space between you two. No, he seemed to like the way things were. “Where’s your family?”

“You don’t need to know,” you huffed. You were trying to sound intimidating, but your tone betrayed your emotions. You were vulnerable, without a clue of what to do.

He laughed. “You have some bite, sweetheart. Tell me, what’s your name? I told you mine.”

You hesitated.

“What’s your name?” he repeated, more forceful. “Or do you just want me to call you girl? Perhaps bunny?” He chuckled. “You’re cute like one. Ought to get you some fluffy ears and tail, maybe a collar . . .”

“I’m not a bunny!”

This man was embarrassing you. Why’d he have to say things like that? The idea of you wearing an outfit like that, probably provocative based on the manner he was suggesting, made you feel small and upset. How could he say such things so freely?

“Then what’s your name?”

You grumbled but told him anyway.

“Good girl.”

You ignored the way his words made your body tingle and warm up in all the wrong places.

“Now, did you run away?”

“Why are you so curious?” you questioned, not wanting to tell him. What if he got in contact with your family and found out about the reward they were offering for your return?

“Because you’re a strange girl who shouldn’t be here, on my fuckin’ property, and I like to know who goes on my property and why.”

“Are you a gangster, Mr. Shelby?”

You were starting to think this man wasn’t just some wealthy mayor, but rather a criminal, the kind you were always warned about. He was far too crass to be of a higher class, but he certainly had power, or he wouldn’t be acting this way.

Tommy took another puff of his cigarette. “Ah, so you know a thing or two. Thought you’d be stupid.”

“I’m not—” you cut yourself off, not wanting to engage in such useless conversation. “We’re done here. Goodnight, Mr. Shelby.”

He grabbed your wrist before you could leave. “You think I’m letting you go out there, alone? With no family to keep you safe, no man to protect you? No. You’re coming home with me. I’ll give food, shelter, nice clothes,” he tugged at your dirty dress, “a place to sleep. How does that sound?”

“I don’t even know you!” you sputtered out. “I can’t go to a stranger’s house and live with them.”

His eyes darkened. “And what is the alternative? Lay on concrete? Starve to death? Wait for some bastard to come along and hurt you the way sick men like to hurt little girls?”

You were at a loss. You had nothing to say, no argument to defend yourself. Staying at Tommy’s place sounded comfortable, but you couldn’t.

“I—I can’t.”

Tommy sighed and pulled you closer to him. “I’m just telling ya’, you wouldn’t be a burden on me. I won’t harm you, and I won’t touch you if you don’t want it.”

“You’re touching me right now!”

"There's a difference," he growled, pushing you up against him, his face inches from yours. "I'm protecting you. Do you think I’d hurt you?”

You whimpered, scared. “N-no. I—I don’t know!” you stuttered. “I barely know you, Mr. Shelby.”

You turned your head so you didn’t have to be so close to him, or look him directly in the eyes.

“You’re staying with me,” he said in your ear, his breath tickling your skin.

“. . . Yes, sir,” you breathed out, flustered at the close proximity.

===

Tommy led you back to his apartment. He got you some food and water, a cozy room to sleep in, and a hot bath. He was so generous with everything, and though you were cautious of him at first, you couldn’t help but let your fantasies run wild.

Before you could start daydreaming, Tommy entered the washroom, holding something behind his back.

You shrieked. You had just gotten out of the water and were drying yourself off with the towel, but it was too small to cover your entire body. You squeezed your legs together and covered your chest.

“You can’t be in here!”

Tommy laughed and ignored your words. “Why not? It’s my place.” But he looked away. “You were taking a while, that’s why I came in. I was worried.”

“I’m fine, you can leave now.”

“And what will you wear?”

You didn’t think of that. He hadn’t given you any clothes yet.

He showed you what he was holding, but it didn’t even look like proper clothing, rather undergarments and a skimpy top. You stared at it for a moment, before realizing he was expecting you to take it.

“I can’t wear that,” you protested.

He sighed. “‘I can’t do this’, ‘I can’t do that’, when are you going to learn to do as I tell you? I want to see you wear this, so wear it.”

You didn’t complain after that, though you did hesitate. You made him turn around while you changed, trying to fit the skimpy clothing on your body.

The bra was white and comfortable, but it would easily slip down if someone wanted it to. It accentuated the curve of your tits. It was the sexiest thing you’d ever worn, and you felt horrified at the thought of Tommy seeing you in this thing. It made you feel like a . . . like a prostitute.

The panty barely covered your ass. It was all hanging out for show. What is the point of such outfits? It’s useless! you thought.

“You can turn around now, sir. Just, please don’t stare.”

He did stare, he stared at every part of you like a hungry beast, ready to tear his prey apart. You felt wanted under his gaze, but the whole situation was making you feel a little uncomfortable. You weren’t used to behaving like this, you weren’t used to being around men like Tommy. It was all so new and daunting.

“Walk towards me,” he ordered.

You did so, hugging your body with your arms — a bad habit. Your tits were bouncing slightly with every step, but you made sure it wasn't too obvious. You couldn't help but wonder what your family would think if they saw you like this.

How have you gone from being a rich girl to living on the streets to the arms of a handsome gangster?

“Oh, that’s a nice view, sweetheart.” He licked his lips. “Turn around now.”

You did that as well.

“You see that scrubber on the floor?”

You looked, spotting the thing you used to wash yourself. It must have fallen at some point.

“Yeah, do you want me to pick it up?”

“That’s right.”

You knew your bum would be clear to him if you did, but it was your fault it was on the floor, and you felt bad about it. It was your obligation to pick it up, right? You didn't want to be a poor guest.

"Don't look."

You bent over and picked it up. Mr. Shelby let out a heavy sigh and you immediately felt something poking your behind. He was pressing his body up against you! You tried to get up, but he pushed you back down, holding your waist and shoulder so you didn’t fall over.

“What are you doing?!” You couldn't move with the way he was holding you. It was such a compromising situation, what was he trying to pull?

“You’re so easy,” he groaned. “You don’t question why I want you to wear those things? Or maybe you do know . . . dirty girl.”

He picked and placed you over his shoulders, carrying you through the apartment hallways. He led you over to his room, placing you down on his bed despite you smacking your hands against his back.

“You said you wouldn’t touch me!”

“Only if you didn’t want it. But you want this, don’t you?”

“No!” You tried to get off his bed but he pushed you back down with a thud. “. . . Maybe. I don’t know! I’ve never done this before."

You didn't even know what exactly he wanted to do with you. You were vaguely aware of promiscuous activities ungentlemanly men got up to at night, and that it could sometimes result in babies, but you were uneducated on the details.

His gaze softened. “It’s alright, sweetheart. I know you’re a virgin. I’ll be gentle at first, okay?” He gave you a rough kiss, his tongue flicking against your bottom lip.

"Mmph!"

You tried to push him off you but he wouldn't have any of it. He pinned your arms above your head and continued to ravish you, nipping at your neck with his teeth, running his hands all over your body — your arms, your stomach, your thighs, all the way down to your feet.

His lips finally left yours, but before you could say anything, they were back on.

You couldn't deny, it felt good. This was the best you'd ever felt your entire life, even more so than that one time your desires got the best of you and you tried touching yourself, though that was probably because that time resulted in a swift confession and punishment.

Tommy started grinding his hips between your legs, making you moan against his mouth. He pulled away, still rolling his body. "See? You're enjoying it." He let go of your hands, to which you immediately gripped the back of his shirt. “I know you want this,” he continued. “Say you want this.”

You didn’t say anything, too overwhelmed to respond. You weren’t sure what you wanted.

He stopped and you whined.

“Say you want this,” he said, his nose brushing up against yours. “Say you want me to fuck you.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Shelby. I shouldn’t . . .”

“But you should,” he convinced. “I won’t dump you after I’m done. I’ll take care of you. You’ll live here, with me, okay? You’ll be my sweetheart, my pet.”

He leaned down to kiss you again, but you placed your hands against his chest.

“I don’t know how to have—how to,” you struggled to find the words.

“How to what? Fuck?” He laughed. “I’ll teach ya’. What do you know?”

It felt weird saying it out loud, but you did. “A man and a woman need to be married,” — Tommy huffed at that — “and a man is supposed to take his . . . well, I’m not sure, but he’s supposed to take a part of him and put it inside a woman’s privates.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know,” he said, but he didn’t look upset at your lack of knowledge. “I’ll show you, but first I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Do you want to know what I’m going to do to you?”

You nodded your head slowly in anticipation, not ready for how vulgar it was going to be.

“I’m going to split you open on my cock and fuck you till you go dumb,” he said, grabbing his crotch. “This thing here, it’s called a cock, and I’ve got the best one you’ll ever see.” He pulled it out, a hard length, too long and thick to possibly fit in you. It was throbbing, with some type of liquid leaking out the top. “Look at it. This is what I’m going to ram inside your holes — all three of them.”

Your breathing hitched and you gasped. “All of them? I don’t understand—”

He interrupted you by forcing two of his fingers down your throat, making you gag and sputter, tears welling up in your eyes. “My cock will go inside your mouth first. It’ll make me feel good. I’ll teach you how to suck properly, how to lick, how to swallow.”

He removed his now wet fingers, letting you relax for a brief moment, but then he flipped you over onto your stomach and pulled your panties down, giving a nice, hard slap to your ass.

You yelped.

He spread your cheeks apart and pushed his finger in your hole, just a little bit, to give you the idea. You squirmed. It didn’t hurt that much, but you were sure if he went further in it would.

“Then here, sweetheart. We’ll spend a lot of time here. It’s always been my favorite.”

You thought about how his cock was supposed to fit in there. His fingers already felt too big.

“It won’t fit—”

“—It will. I’ll shove it in until it does.”

His hand snaked under your stomach and down between your legs. “And here.” He brushed his fingers against your folds and over your entrance. “Your pussy. I’ll fuck it, and you’ll take it, like the good girl I know you are.”

You felt your heart beat against your chest like it was going to jump out. In excitement or fear, you did not know.

“Will it hurt?”

“Yes, and it may even bleed, but only for a while. I promise I’ll make it feel good. Now, flip over and spread your legs.”

You rested on your back and widened your legs, wondering what he was going to do when he placed a pillow under your hips, moved your panty to the side, and kissed your pussy with fervor.

“What are you doing?” you asked curiously, the sensation feeling warm and weird.

“I need to get you ready, and I want to show you what an orgasm feels like.”

“An orgasm?”

“You’ll see.”

He flicked his tongue over your bud, sucking on it, holding your hips in place. It felt like heaven, enough to make you forget your guilt and focus on the way he was eating you out.

“Oh,” you moaned softly, looking down at Tommy. He was looking up at you, observing your reactions, trying to see if this made you feel good or that. He was doing it with such precision, too. It felt sloppy and messy, the sounds of his kisses a loud pucker, but it couldn’t have been unthoughtful, because it felt so good.

He kept doing it. Your body was tingling as he started to get more passionate, finally pushing his tongue inside your pussy.

“Huh,” you let out.

“I’m going to put my fingers inside now,” he told you. “Just relax.” He slid his hand up and down your thigh soothingly. “Relax.”

You loosened your tense muscles and rested your head on the pillow. You shut your eyes, trying to let your thoughts go blank, but the sudden intrusion of his finger was too painful for you to ignore.

“It hurts,” you whispered.

“I’ll go slower.”

He pushed in a little further. He wasn’t going slower, or at least, it didn’t feel like he was.

“How much more needs to go in?”

“About three more quarters of what’s already there,” he guessed. “But I’ll need to put two more fingers in after that, and then my cock.”

You looked down at his cock. It was still open, hanging firm out of his trousers. Huge and thick and fat. You were sure he was lying when he said it would fit. You imagined him trying to push it in, but failing, because how could that possibly make its way inside you?

“I wish it didn’t hurt, sweetheart. I wish I could take away your pain.”

Now his finger was halfway through. It was like someone had placed an object where it was not meant to be. How could this be natural if it was so painful?

“Just a little bit more.” He continued running his other hand up and down your thigh. “You’re taking it so well.”

He pushed the rest of it in, letting it stay for a bit.

“Shh,” he soothed. He brushed your hair out of your face, curling his finger inside. “You’re alright, you’ll be alright.”

He pulled his finger out. There was a bit of blood on it, mixing with your clear juices.

“I’m sorry,” you apologized, looking away. It was disgusting.

“No, don’t apologize. It’s normal. I won’t have you feeling ashamed of yourself.”

He added another and did the same thing. Eventually, he was pushing in and out at a slow, steady pace. It was horribly painful, but it was starting to feel a little good, especially with the way he started licking your pussy again.

“One more. Just one more.”

You cried out. “Too much!”

He didn’t respond.

Your walls were being stretched, and you felt like you were a stretchy piece of fabric about to get ripped apart. But the pleasure of his tongue managed to counter it a little.

You felt a strange sensation in your belly, coupled with pain.

“I—I,” you tried to say.

“I know. Come for me, sweetheart. Come on my fingers.”

You came — whatever that meant. You felt like you were at some peak, a little dizzy in the head, with some substance leaking out of your body.

You panicked, worried it was something else, but to your shock, it was white, and Tommy was lapping it up.

“W-what’s that?”

“Your cum. It’s what happens when you orgasm.”

You nodded your head in understanding, even though you didn’t fully understand. It was like heaven, pure bliss, and as long as it was happening, you were fine with being ignorant. You just wanted to feel that way again, and you wanted to make Tommy feel that way, too.

“Are you ready, sweetheart?”

Tommy took his cock in his hands and gave it a few pumps. You sat up. He pushed the tip to your lips and you gave it a lick. It was an alright taste.

You looked up at Tommy nervously, running your fingers down his length.

“Just leave some kisses along it,” he instructed. “I’m not expecting your first time to be perfect.”

You did as he said. He didn’t make any noises, but you were observant and could tell his breathing was getting a little uneven. When you put his tip in your mouth, his hand went to the back of your head, guiding and gentle.

You pulled away. “Do I just . . . take it all?”

“Yes, sweetheart. It’s okay if you gag, just push it all the way in. Breathe through your nose.”

Calming your nerves, you slipped about a fourth of his cock into your mouth, wetting it, swirling your tongue around the way you did sweets like ice cream.

“Use your hands for what can’t fit.”

You started pumping the rest of his length, the way you saw him do.

Tommy finally made a noise, a little groan. It made you feel more confident that what you were doing was right, so you started sucking more passionately, with more enthusiasm, taking in more of his length — enough to make a difference, but not enough to make you gag.

Tommy let out a little choke and started pushing your head down on him. “Think you can take all of it?”

You couldn’t say anything with your mouth filled, but it was a yes. You wanted to push yourself.

“Good.”

He gave a quick, experimental thrust into your mouth, one that made you gag. Tears welled up in your eyes, but it was gone after a few seconds. It was just so unexpected. It didn’t hurt much, it just felt odd and uncomfortable.

He kept thrusting, pushing his cock deeper and deeper inside your mouth. Every time you thought it couldn’t go any further, he proved you wrong. Now you really were crying. You thought that maybe he would stop, but all he did was make a shushing sound and wipe away your tears.

You tried to make the experience as pleasurable as possible for him, and it seemed to be satisfying enough because he didn’t ask you to do anything different. He just had that blank stare, grunting, the only sounds in the room ones of him and the slurping noise you were making.

After a few more minutes, he told you he was coming, and forced you to swallow his sticky, white liquid.

He pulled out and you coughed.

You went to him for some comfort, but he was already leaving the room.

You were confused, your throat sore, but then he came back with a glass of water and a wet towel. He cleaned off your face and helped you drink. It made you feel much better.

“I’m tired, Mr. Shelby,” you said.

“Such a princess,” he responded. “Have to do some work once and decide you don’t like it? Just want your own pleasure?”

His words made you look down. Now that you knew how it felt to orgasm that was all you wanted to do, but you would be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t enjoy your mouth on Tommy’s cock. You were sure that you would get used to it after a few more times, and soon it would stop feeling so uncomfortable.

“No.”

“It’s okay. All you have to do now is take it.”

You remembered his words. He was going to take your ass next.

“Can’t we wait a bit—?”

“No,” he growled, pushing you on your hands and knees. “I’ve waited too fuckin’ long.”

Waited too long?

“And besides,” he continued. “Don’t you want this?”

“Yeah,” you said quietly. “But I just want a little break—”

He slapped your ass hard and you cried out. “What do I have to do to make you listen to me, huh? Is it a good spanking? ‘cause I can do that.”

“No,” you whimpered. “I’ll be good, m’sorry.”

He spanked you again, pulling your underwear all the way down and tossing it to the side of the room. “I think I do want to spank you. Pretty, rich girls like you don’t get much discipline, eh?”

You did, but you didn’t know how to say it.

He pulled your top down a little, to reveal some small scars. You knew he could see them, but you couldn’t see his reaction.

“Are you going to be a good girl for me?” he asked.

“Yes, yes!”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means doing as you tell me, sir.”

Satisfied with your response, he rubbed your sore ass, trying to make it feel better.

He grabbed a bottle from the nightstand and applied it on his hands. “This is lube, sweetheart. It’ll reduce the friction.”

He slid his lubed-up finger in your ass and you hissed.

It was the same process he did with your pussy. He pushed in and out, stretching out your hole. It hurt, and you were sure it was bleeding a little, but after a while, it began to feel pleasurable.

Tommy’s fingers started rubbing your clit, distracting you from the pain. He pressed the tip of his fat cock in your ass, shoving it inside it.

“Mr. Shelby, slow down!” you squeaked out.

He didn’t listen. He pushed his cock further in, and it made you feel like your insides were going to snap if he stretched them too much.

“Mmm,” you winced, “is that all?”

“Fuck. That’s only half.”

Tommy held your shoulder with his other hand on your waist. “So tight,” he murmured, pushing further in. “You’re going to make a good pet, I can tell.”

The term was degrading, but you didn’t say anything, not like you had the guts to when he was inside you, not after he warned you that you would get a spanking if you didn’t behave like a good girl.

“Oh, Mr. Shelby.”

He pushed himself all the way in. You felt so full of his cock, and you had half a mind to ask him to stop. He was beginning to move, slowly at first, making sure that you were okay with it.

“You alright, sweetheart?” Tommy asked. The hand on your waist moved to your top, his fingers sliding underneath it.

“Y-yeah.”

“Good.”

He picked up the pace, his balls slapping against your body. Suddenly, the force of his thrusting was pushing you forward, the only thing stopping you from falling over was his grip. You cried out, the pain and pleasure too much for you to handle.

Your breasts started to bounce, but their movement was being held by the top he gave you, which Tommy slowly pulled up. Tommy pinched your nipples, flicking them, twisting them, pulling on them, whatever he wanted. You whined, half-heartedly trying to shove him away, but while he did stop, he was still cupping your breasts in his hands, continuing to ram your ass.

‘This is what I want from you,” he grunted, thrusting his cock deeper and deeper inside. “Most days, I’ll want to fuck you like this. I’ll — ah — I’ll expect you to be ready on your hands and knees when I tell you to.”

Occasionally, you could feel the scrape of his pants against your skin, reminding you that his clothes were still on. You moaned when he started rubbing your clit more vigorously.

“Spread your legs further apart,” he ordered.

You did, which only made him gain access to a deeper part inside of you.

He continued his brutal assault for a couple more minutes until he changed his position. He forced you to lay down on your stomach while he draped his body over your back, thrusting stiff and rough. Now, he could start kissing your shoulders, the back of your neck, any part of your body he couldn’t reach before.

He finally came into your hole, his whiteness spurting out. You could feel it drip out and down your thighs. You tried to wipe it away but he wouldn’t let you.

He flipped you over on your back. He took off your top completely, admiring your naked body. Despite the fact that this man had just taken your virginity, his hungry stare made you cover yourself up. You supposed it was because you weren’t used to it.

“Oi!”

You immediately sprawled your body, fearing a reprimand.

“There ya’ go.”

He grabbed another wet towel and wiped off your body. He told you it was important, to keep clean and safe.

As you expected, he didn’t give you much of a break. In this hour, you figured that he could only fuck you — or prefer to — when his cock was hard, and within a few moments, it was already starting to rise up.

Once he got his cock inside your pussy, all the way in, despite your squirms, he started fucking — rough, hard, and fast.

“So good,” he praised. “So good for me.”

You whined in response. He was gripping your waist like his life depended on it, making sure you couldn’t squirm or move away.

“You’re learning so well. Keep still.”

His movements were making the bed and your body shake. You whined, pathetic mewls leaving your mouth. You really weren’t sure how much more of this you could take. Your limbs were starting to feel sore and your mind foggy, like if you didn’t take a break you would pass out from the sheer intensity of the moment alone.

But you didn’t want to. You fought to open your eyes. You didn’t want Tommy to know you couldn’t take it anymore, that would be embarrassing.

He finally came inside of you, locking your hips together as he murmured something about your breasts getting bigger and swollen, which you didn’t understand, but didn’t ask for clarification regardless.

He pulled out and collapsed beside you, droplets of sweat trickling down his forehead. He was exhausted, and so were you.

After taking a few minutes to yourselves, Tommy said, “I’m never going to let you go, you hear me? Never.”

You didn’t say anything. Somewhere in all that fucking you had accepted your fate. You belonged to Thomas Shelby now, and that was just the way things had to be.

“I ran away,” you finally confessed. “My family . . . they weren’t nice to me. Promise me,” you said seriously, looking into Tommy’s beautiful eyes. “Promise me you won’t send me back. If . . . if you don’t want me anymore, you can just send me on my way, not back to them. Promise?”

Tommy laughed, as if what you had just said was absurd.

“I won’t let you go back to your family. Those oil bastards.”

You paused. How did he know they were in the oil business?

“How did you—?”

“Shhh.” Tommy placed a finger over your lips, silencing your words. “You’re tired. It’s time to sleep.”

“But—”

“Sleep.” He caressed your face, running his fingers through your hair. You couldn’t fight the command, you were truly feeling sleepy, and all you wanted to do was shut your eyes and rest.

But that nagging thought in your head. How did he know?

He didn’t give you any more time to think. He pulled you close to him, close enough so that your head was resting on his shoulder and your legs were draped over his body.

“Sweet dreams. Tomorrow we’ll have a few more rounds. You’ll need your rest.”

And with that, your eyes fluttered shut and you were taken away into the abyss of darkness, into your dreams.

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#thomas shelby #thomas shelby x reader #thomas shelby x y/n #thomas shelby x you #peaky blinders #peaky blinders fanfic #pinguwrites

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