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#which is a very strange choice to say the least but a lot of people seemed very scandalized about what a tent revival actually is?

velvet-games · 2 days

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in the middle of working on a lucifer redesign :)

thoughts/explanations + minor character analysis under the cut (this was supposed to be short but it ended up being very thorough lmao):

honestly love his canon design so I'm kind of working from that more than I'm trying to rethink stuff from scratch

I'm gonna admit right now that a lot of the design choices were very self indulgent lol; I just want him to be pretty :<

circus stuff~

I've seen a lot of people raise their eyebrows at the circus motif, so I was going to try something different, but I actually think it makes a lot of sense!

I think freakshows/circus acts have been tied to this idea that certain identities/abilities are strange and shameful, only valuable as dehumanizing entertainment -- they're mistakes, freaks of nature

but at the same time many circus performances require a lot of skill and work and love that can go unappreciated, each and every performer at the very least a person worth respecting

I think lucifer sees hell as a freakshow/circus he's been forced to lead and try to control

a bunch of wayward toys meant to be bright and beautiful that have been twisted into something terrifying

and he needs to discover a more empathetic, appreciative, and loving way to think about sinners

and also to realize that it's not about him or his mistakes; it's about a group of people with their own emotions and autonomy that he needs to respect

anyway

all that to say: we're keeping the circus ringleader thing!

I think a whip would make more sense for a ringleader, esp since alastor has a staff already (but they're enemies/foils so maybe their designs should reflect each other?)

there's room to turn the whip into a snake maybe

in the pic I made it look like his tail bc I considered making his actual tail a goat tail (cute! but the longer one suits him better I think)

maybe an apple on the top/handle still

the tux honestly looks a little too formal/cool for him most of the time lmao

so I think he should take off the jacket/have the toymaker apron on instead unless he's fighting

vaudeville doll~

lucifer has a lot going on tbh: circus ringleader, angel, devil/demon, snake, goat, vaudeville porcelain doll, toymaker, etc.

I think I'm gonna take out snake just to simplify a little, but I'll talk about that more later

I was also going to take out porcelain doll but

1) the rosy cheeks are super cute

2) fits with the circus theme

3) fits with the idea that he's both a toy and toymaker (an angel that tried to play god)

uhhh there's a couple self indulgent doodles of him in a vaudeville doll dress lol. not relevant to the design at all; I just like drawing stripes and ruffles

I ended up making him sort of androgynous in a lot of ways? (not that he wasn't already lol) which works for him I think

part of it was the vaudeville doll thing; I wanted to give him (keep?) the eyeshadow and add those little vertical marks you see on them sometimes

also because I really liked the puff sleeves in one of the references I used; it kind of emphasizes an extended hourglass shape with the puffy pants

plus I love drawing the more classic tuxedo shape <3 very yummy lines and details

hair/shape~

I fucking LOVE when people draw him with messy hair, so I made that permanent

I also think (esp since he's blond) having the hair stick out in tufts kind of makes it look like a star (morningstar, lightbringer, etc. etc.)

even more so with the pointy horns (those are also fun to draw cause they're right in the corners of his widow's peak)

I drew a random triangle on one of these as a reminder to keep the pointy/triangular shape language throughout lol

squares would def be wrong with the implications of sturdiness and stability

I think circles would be wrong too? he's vulnerable and ultimately very soft inside so I kept a lot of round lines, but I don't think he's the traditionally bubbly/friendly/peaceful archetype circles are usually used for

triangles are apparently dynamic, dangerous, and unpredictable, which is a little closer to what I'm going for

(shape language is a very flexible rule btw; I'm not saying they determine everything about a character or that one shape has to mean exactly one thing)

he's also a depressed, tortured soul, so I feel like he should look just a little unhinged and exhausted <3 (hence the eyebags on top of the messy hair)

angel stuff~

(sidenote: cherub and seraph are singular, cherubim and seraphim are plural. even the show gets this wrong tho, so feel free to say whatever ig)

I'm pretty sure most people agree lucifer was probably a cherub? cherubim only have 4 wings so I might go with that

I do think it makes more sense if he's higher ranking like a seraph tho ... it's hard to decide whether to go with the show's ideas about angels or actual religious texts cause both are interesting in their own ways

snake~

ARHHGHJF idk how I feel about his nose

again I thought about taking out the snake motif, but he honestly looks good w/o a nose (I mean it's there obviously but you can't see it if it's just snake slits lol), and I definitely like the idea of him having a forked tongue or his eyes turning into slits when he's angry

also also

mini rant on animal motifs in hazbin:

I get the impression that a lot of people think it's a bad thing that you can't tell what animal a character should be? and/or that a motif has to be clearly present in the entire design to be good

and I kind of just accepted that until I started thinking about ozzie's design from helluva boss

like the original demon he's based on is really just that fucked up and mixed with animals you can't always identify

and chinese dragons are like a billion different animals even though they sort of just look like lizards at the end of the day

like obviously if you want the audience to associate a character with a specific animal (like if you want people to think a character's spooky because they're a spider or something), then you do want the animal motifs to be clear/consistent

but sometimes you just want certain elements there and it doesn't matter if the audience picks up on it (at least consciously)

and I think with someone like lucifer, having a lot of animals/concepts mixed together in an ungodly combination makes sense lol

so idk

maybe we'll just give him the nose/tongue

I did try just giving him a button nose in some of these for the doll thing tho

goat/charlie~

urgh I hate realizing I should've designed certain characters together lol

I took out the rosy cheeks in my original charlie design since I wasn't thinking about lucifer, so I put them back in this time lol (and generally thought about how they should be visually related)

I like that it enforces the idea that charlie's lucifer's creation (toymaker makes a doll in his own image yk)

also they both have puff sleeves now :) (charlie's design is basically princess dress silhouette but make it a suit)

I also gave her goat ears, so I figured lucifer should have them too? idk because I like the way his hair looks a lot better without them, and I kind of like the idea of giving them diff combinations of goat features (maybe she should have a goat tail?)

also drawing this made me realize I have no idea why charlie has a puppy nose??? I thought it was the goat thing for some reason but that doesn't make any sense

maybe I'll just give her no nose

anyway! fucking incredible if you read all of that; idk what possessed me to write so much about a half-finished design lol. feel free to leave suggestions/answers to the questions I had!

#I was gonna draw some radioapple stuff and then realized I hadn't touched lucifer's design yet lol #still not done obviously but I have a working version now at least #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel redesign #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin hotel charlie #art #my art #character design #oh yeah I guess there's one #hazbin hotel alastor #in this one #oops

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kasagia · 2 months

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Right hand

Pairing: Na-Baron Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen x fem!exBeneGesserit! reader Summary: You were his right-hand (wo)man after he saw you in combat during your training on the Bene Gesserit. He freed you from them and turned you from a Bene Gesserit into a faithful soldier who took care of all his dirty business. Getting rid of the bodies of the people he killed, organising opponents for him to fight, poor people on whom he could vent his anger and desire for bloodshed, or even concubines. You were his eyes and ears in the baron's court. You reported everything to him, being more effective than any Bene Gesserit. But he wants more... much more. Warning: 18+; violence; blood; Feyd Rautha; death; fight; brutality; smut; bathing together; dagger play; breeding kink? I guess; a lot things happening; my first time for Feyd so I'm a little nervous😅; enjoy!; Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen's Masterlist ~•♤♤♤•~ Main Masterlist ~•♤♤♤•~ PART II ~•♤♤♤•~

It wasn't your choice to undergo Bene Gesserit training. Your mother abandoned you when you were a little baby and took you to these terrible women, leaving you to their mercy.

You hated them. Their entire organisation, which included planned breeding, aimed at creating the Kwisatz Haderach. To you, these women were a sick cult that you were reluctant to be a part of. You trembled with fear, thinking of the day when they would send you to extend the genetic line of a nobel family by lending your womb or to ensure that their plans succeeded.

However, you realised that you had little say in the matter. The Bene Gesserit would find you anywhere if you tried to run and hide. You were doomed to follow the orders of your crazy old reverend mother and wait in fear for the day when you could prove your usefulness.

But one day, you crossed paths with Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. And for a very long time, you considered it a real gift from fate. The first happy turn of events in your tragic life.

He was on a diplomatic mission. He was being shown around by the princess of your planet, and they happened to be attending the training of the Bene Gesserit sisters. You immediately caught his attention. Your movements were smoother, full of the passion of a true warrior. You charmed him so much that, at first, he thought you had put a spell on him. After seeing your potential and your obvious dislike for your sisters, he took you with him to Giedi Prime.

He faked your death so the Bene Gesserit sisters wouldn't come looking for you. He made you his right hand, his most trusted soldier. It was only after years of service under the Na-Baron that you realised that you had entered a much worse hell than any plans the Bene Gesserit had for you.

Feyd Rautha was supposed to be your personal devil. But first, you saw him as your saviour.

An animalistic, bloodthirsty scream resounds throughout the na-baron's private training room as his 'toy' falls dead under the blow she received from the furious man. You enter the room just as Feyd pierces him with his sword, causing drops of blood to land on your face.

You wipe them away, undeterred by the na-baron's brutality. Years of service had accustomed you to all the acts of cruelty he was capable of. At least this time, the dead man's entrails didn't spill around him. You hated calling his harpies to the feast. Despite so many years spent at the side of the baron's favourite nephew, you never got used to his concubines. They made you feel strangely uneasy.

"My lord, na-baron." You say, announcing your presence. Feyd breathes heavily and shifts his mad, furious gaze to you, not noticing your entrance until you speak.

You walk past the body, avoiding the pool of blood, and hand him a towel. He takes it from you without a word, wiping the sweat and blood from his head, chest, and back. You ignore his exposed muscles and kneel next to the man on whom he took out his anger, preparing to carry him out of the room before the next opponent/toy shows up.

"You were right. That old fool entrusted Arrakis to my brother. He will embarrass our family in one day. Ha! Even half is enough for him! This wretch doesn't know how to manage a small province, let alone an entire planet with fremen ready to attack at any corner." He says, rubbing himself furiously. He throws a towel into the corner of the room and walks to the table to pour himself something to drink.

"He gives him a chance to prove himself. When he wastes it, you will get it and prove to the baron and the lords that you are rightfully entitled to the title of baron." You say, securing the body so the guards at the door can carry it out.

"Every fool knows that. It's obvious that I'm a better choice than this scoundrel, who will sell the secrets of our family and swear allegiance to anyone who threatens his life. Baron throws a party in his honor. To the success of his mission. He's just doing it to piss me off. He doesn't give a damn about Rabban or whether he succeeds. This is just another of his tests on me. That's why you're coming with me. I've already sent for a dress for you." You look up at him with your surprised gaze. You're even more shocked when he reaches out his hand to help you up—something you didn't expect from him in his white, burning rage state.

"A dress?" You ask, taking his hand. You hold your breath, keeping yourself from gasping, as he lifts you off the floor with one strong pull. Unprepared, you bump completely onto his chest, not being able to keep your balance.

You freeze at the feeling of his muscled body close to yours. You can feel his heart pounding in his chest from the adrenaline he felt while killing this poor man. You tense up, seeing his icy-blue eyes already staring at yours. He starts giggling darkly as he presses you tighter against him so you can feel every muscle of his.

"Is there a problem? Would you prefer to come naked? I wouldn't mind, but…”

"I'm simply surprised that you want me there officially. I usually sneak there. I watch from the shadows. Well, you know." You interrupt me before he can insinuate anything, and with his silent permission, you move a decent distance away from him, leaving his arms.

You always had to be careful when making moves like this. You saw how he punished for minor offences, just for breathing. And you didn't run away from the Bene Gesserit with him to lose your life because of one of his… impulses. Although he has never put you in any serious danger, which was strangly amazing, since all of the servants who worked for him (and are still alive) have experienced his wrath on their bodies at least once.

"I know. But this time, I need you by my side. Not in hiding. My birthday is coming up—the most important of them all. I want to know what my uncle will come up with. Maybe you can find out something from the Lords. Besides, why wouldn't I want to have such beauty on my arm?"

"You want a woman by your side so you can humiliate your brother before he leaves? Perpetuate in him a sense of belief that you are superior, even if you don't have power over Arrakis right now?"

You see his hands tighten on his blades. You purse your lips, realising you were too quick to question his intentions. Basic mistake. You shouldn't have tested the waters when you knew Feyd was already on the end of his patience.

He takes a step towards you, entering your personal space. You swallow and lift your head to meet his gaze. This wasn't the first time he had intimidated you, tested you, carefully gauged your reaction, and waited until he finally saw the fear in your eyes. But you never gave him that satisfaction. If the Bene Gesserit taught you anything, it was that fear was weakness. A weakness you could tame... at least enough not to show it to anyone else.

So you endure his piercing, burning gaze with indifference. You stay like that even after a small smirk starts to appear on his face. You wonder how many people before you saw that smirk and stared into those night-black eyes on Giedi Prime as they passed from this world.

"That pink little tongue of yours will get you into trouble one day, my little witch." He purrs, his tone low and dangerous. He reaches up to your face with his free hand and gently runs his hand through your hair, caressing your cheek and jaw with the pad of his thumb. "Possible. I'm a na-baron... don't I deserve the best?" He looks defiantly at you, throwing you the proverbial gauntlet. He's waiting for you to stumble. For open defiance of his order.

You don't understand why, but he's been acting like this more and more lately. He made ambiguous comments, carefully watching your reaction. It was something new—a change in his behaviour that you hadn't figured out the reason for yet. But you had too much on your mind to think about it any longer.

"I can prepare you a beautiful concubine perfect for Giedi Prime standards." You suggest at which he shakes his head, laughing hoarsely. He turns his back to you and pours himself another glass of water.

"It's not necessary. I want you. Go and get ready. I'll join you in two hours when I'm done here." He says just as the door opens to reveal the soldiers you called for to take the body away and who have brought him a new drugged opponent. Feyd licks his lips, flips the blade up, and catches it, making a little show before lunging at his toy.

"As you wish, my na-baron." You say before leaving him to get ready for the party. Another warrior's scream echoes off the walls of the chamber as Feyd unleashes his anger on him.

You scan the room carefully, standing with your glass against the wall in a more crowded part of the room. You try your best to blend in with the crowd, but with your hair down, it's not that easy. Even if you try to cover your hair, you can feel people's curious gazes on you. But the worst ones are the burning gazes of the lords on you, some of them too lustful to be able to feel comfortable.

If you could, you would hide in the shadows, as usual, and observe them without being the centre of attention. You felt like a monkey in a circus or an exotic animal at an exhibition. The cold hand on your shoulder reminds you why you can't do this. You turn around to once again meet the na-baron's intense gaze today.

"You look good." He says as his eyes carefully scan the black latex dress with cutouts on the sides that reach down to your hipbones. "But I don't remember having that metal corset disguised as armour and that ridiculous chain veil sent to you along with the dress."

"I almost mistook this rag for a nightgown. I had to wear something on it. They think I'm your whore anyway; we don't have to prove it to them." You respond to his taunt and turn towards him. He is wearing black, formal armour, which is perfect as an official outfit.

"Do you find it scandalous to be my whore, little witch? Maybe even disgusting?" You meet his gaze to roll your eyes at him, at which he chuckles, wrapping his arms around your waist. You don't like this closeness, but there's nothing you can do to push his hand off of you. You are in public. Such a gesture towards him would be equivalent to a death sentence.

"I see nothing... honourable or good in being anyone's whore, my na-baron." You say, gently moving away from him so as not to lean on him as much.

"Have you seen anything noteworthy?" He asks, unfazed by your trying to move away from him. He pulls you up, wrapping his arms around your waist tighter and making your back rest against his chest. His fingertips brush against the exposed skin, caressing your hipbone.

You frown, turning your head to look at him. He's never been so... clingy before. He always respected your personal space and never touched you. You blame it on his desire to tease his brother, who is staring at you intently from across the room, and you shift your gaze to the people present at the party.

"Several lords congratulated your brother. However, there are rumours and beliefs that he will not be up to the task. Some also believe that you will slit his throat before his ship leaves for Arrakis."

"This idea crossed my mind. If you hadn't brought this information to me earlier, you would probably have had to deal with making the public believe in his… tragic and sudden death from natural causes."

"Natural causes; I wish I could see that." You scoff, finishing your drink. You turn around, leaving his arms, and set your glass down on the table. When you turn to him again, he holds out his hand for you to take.

"You'll see if you don't entertain me. I'm bored, and looking at this smug idiot isn't helping my patience or my ability to restrain myself. Dance with me, my little witch."

"You're interrupting my work." You complain, taking his hand. He leads you to the dance floor and spins you around, pulling you tight against his chest. He holds you close to him, perfectly placing his steps and moving to the beat of the music. He is as fluid in dancing as he is in fighting. Flawless as always.

"I'm your work. You are my right hand; you meet all my needs. I don't think I need to remind you of that, do I?" He asks in challenge, taking your chin between his two fingers as he looks at you carefully. You only smile at him in a sweet, artificial way. He laughs, fully aware of how fake this act is, and drops your chin.

Over the years, you discovered that he liked it when you teased him and responded to his taunts with your own. Of course, only when no one could hear it, and not very often. He had a reputation to uphold. He couldn't afford for anyone to see his right-hand (wo)man mocking him. Unbeknownst to you, he found it adorable the way your eyes lit up whenever you did something mischievous.

"Of course not, my na-baron."

"Good." He nods at your words. He takes his eyes off you for a moment and focuses on something behind your shoulder. He leans down, his cheek brushing against yours. You shiver at the sudden closeness, his scent becoming more distinct as you inhale it wholeheartedly. It's captivating. Sweet. Intoxicating. Dangerous. Just like him. "Do you have your daggers?" His hot whisper reaches your ear. He's so close, you can almost feel his full lips brush against your earlobe.

"Yes, why?" You ask, perfectly masking the tremble in your voice. But you doubt whether you can hide from him how your heartbeat speeds up. You blame it on the adrenaline rush. Not fear caused by his proximity.

"It seems to me that you will soon have to prove to these imbeciles once again why I chose you to be my right-hand man." He explains as the song ends.

You feel him reluctantly release you from his embrace and take a step away from you. You turn around and see his brother walking towards you, his right hand following him, giving you a mischievous look and a lecherous, mocking smile when he sees your outfit. You straighten up, lifting your head proudly at the man in a similar position to yours. The difference between you was that you served the stronger Harkonnen. It would give you an inviolably higher position if, like them, you had a penis between your legs.

"Brother. You finally brought your pet to play with us." Rabban says, nodding to his brother. You feel a wave of disgust as his gaze lingers on you longer.

Feyd tenses, furious, as his brother's eyes are all on you. You wouldn't have noticed if his hand hadn't been on your hip bone a moment later, hiding some of your exposed skin from his brother's eyes. You wonder what his problem might be. After all, he chose this dress for you by himself.

"Be careful. She doesn't have a muzzle. I would prefer that no harm come to you before you go to Arrakis. She's got some pretty... sharp teeth." He says it condescendingly, pulling you closer to him. In a perfect world, you'd kick them both in the groin. Unfortunately, you don't have that luxury. You can only imagine putting these two pseudo-alpha males in their place. But how sweet these dreams are...

"What about a small competition? My man against yours? Let's see what this mysterious beauty that you keep hidden can really do." Rabban's right-hand man gives you a cocky, confident look. He plays with the dagger in his hand, making a poor show that was intended to intimidate you. You roll your eyes behind your metal chain veil and shift your gaze to Feyd. You are only subject to his orders. Not some weak, pathetic creatures.

"This party is already dead. Do you want to kill also YOUR pet?" Feyd mocks him, and you almost break your unflappable, emotionless attitude, barely holding back your laughter. Na-baron sees this and smiles to himself, rubbing circles with the pad of his thumb on your hipbone.

"Are you afraid that she won't heat your bed anymore?" Feyd narrows his eyes at him. You feel his fingertips dig painfully into your hip as he tries to keep himself from lunging at his brother with the blade. You know full well that the eyes of the lords, the baron, and most of the people at the party are turned towards you.

"I have no doubt whatsoever about the outcome of this little skirmish. She will just sweat unnecessarily. And I would rather have her in full strength tonight." He says it in a mocking tone, shifting his gaze towards you. He licks his lips and tightens his grip to make his lewd intentions towards you clear to the two men.

Despite his famous reputation, he never touched you. Giedi Prime society might have thought otherwise, but in the years you had served as his right-hand man, he had never once taken you to bed or had you entertain him at night. You appreciated it immensely, which is why you accepted such behaviour from him without batting an eyelid whenever you were in public. It was all a game to maintain the reputation he had built over the years. Or so you thought.

"Feyd, boy, release your pet. Let her entertain us." The baron's words interrupt any skirmish that might have developed between the brothers.

It was not uncommon at Giedi Prime parties for soldiers to fight against each other to entertain the crowd. You just didn't think that you would have to fight someone during your first official arrival at the party. Although you should have anticipated such an unexpected turn of events. The baron and Rabban would not miss the opportunity to find out how much you were really worth and why Feyd, out of all the talented soldiers, chose the Bene Gesserit as his right-hand man.

You send a quick glance at Feyd. He gives you a small nod, so you bow to the baron and prepare to fight. The crowd around you parts to form a circle. You feel people's excitement as you flip the metal chains from your face to your hair, revealing more of your face. You wrap the shawl around your hair, tying it tighter and making sure it won't get in the way of your fight.

You look at your opponent, who is also preparing, trying to spot any of his weak points before the fight even begins. Rabban says something in his ear, which causes the manly smile to grow. Feyd stands in front of you, blocking your view of them. You look into his steel blue eyes as he leans towards you.

"Don't hold back." He whispers in your ear, handing you his blade. "And finish it quickly. We have other things to do."

You nod at him. He walks away from you, sending a mocking smirk at your opponent. He spreads his arms, taking a few steps back, as if inviting him to try his hand at you. You feel the burning gaze of his eyes on your back as you position yourself in front of the man.

"Don't worry, witch. If I win, I won't kill you. It's a shame to waste such a pretty face. I wonder if you're as good as the rumours say. Your pussy must be good to keep the na-baron entertained for so long." He says, waiting for you to activate your shield. But you don't do this. You want to completely humiliate him and give everyone in the room a clear message about your power and that you didn't secure your place just by having a pretty face. The crowd cheers, but you think you can hear Feyd growl furiously amidst the shouts of approval.

"I doubt you'll have the chance to find out." You say, and without waiting for his next words, you attack.

After the first few attacks, you figure out his tactics. He is physically strong, it's true, but that's his only advantage. It attacks you in a learned way, repeating its patterns. You read him quickly and position yourself to use his strength and mass against him. You could have walked up to him a long time ago and slit his throat, but you know it would be much better if you had some fun with him. You will show that you have complete control over the course of this fight.

You dodge the man's punches, and after a few minutes, you quickly get bored when you once again manage to kick him and send him to his knees. You take advantage of the moment he gets up from the floor to glance at your na-baron. Feyd doesn't look happy with your introduction. Of course, you see his interested look and how he appreciates your skills, but he doesn't look at you like he usually does. He doesn't wait with bated breath for your next move, like the crowd around you does. You can tell from his face that he wants you to finish this as soon as possible. You frown, surprised that he of all people doesn't enjoy watching the fight. You wonder what the hell is wrong with him.

Your moment of inattention is, of course, immediately exploited by your opponent. You manage to fend off the man's blade, but not his kick, which sends you landing on your butt on the floor. You feel rage more than pain; you only see red when you hear the cocky laugh of the man you are fighting with. You're so focused on driving the blade into his body that you don't notice Feyd's angry look, the murder in his eyes, and the desire to rip your opponent apart with his own hands as you fall to the floor. And you certainly don't see the trembling of his hand, as he instinctively wanted to grab you and pull you safely behind him.

You strike once, quickly driving the blade into the man's stomach and leaving it there. You push him to his knees, push away the hand that holds the sword, and reach for the dagger hidden in the sleeve of your dress. You strike a second time, piercing his shoulder. You stick the second dagger into his hand and knock the weapon out of his hand, taking it from him. You grab the man's throat in a tight grip and tilt his head back. You lean over him, a mocking smirk on your face as he struggles to breathe.

"I didn't even take off my high heels." You mocked him as you slit his throat.

You smile victoriously as you decapitate him. His head rolls at your feet, blood splattering your dress and face as you breathe heavily. You sigh, feeling your heart pound in your chest, as you bow to the crowd surrounding you as they shout and applaud you. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Rabban's sour, angry expression. You kick the head of his right hand towards him and give him a small smirk. You stand upright as you meet the eyes of your na-baron.

And then you saw it. Hunger in his eyes. Pure lust and desire, as his pupils were wide and solemnly focused on you.

You knew that gaze. He only looked like that at things he really wanted. Only his favourite concubines got THAT look from him or a beautiful, precisely made weapon that fit perfectly in his hands. Usually he had that look in his eyes right after the great battle he won. He would lock himself with his concubines and then spend long hours in his chambers, giving himself completely to his primal instincts.

You shiver as he walks towards you, ignoring anything else in the room. He grabs you tightly by the throat, and, to the delight of the drunken crowd who are screaming madly with excitement after the show you had made, he kisses you.

It is hard, hungry, and passionate. His hand completely removes the metal chains and shawl that were covering your head, and he pulls you to him as close as possible. His grip on your hair and throat is tight as he demands that your mouth be opened for him by biting your lower lip. You moan involuntarily, causing his tongue to slip into your mouth, as he is exploring new territory with a zeal you've never seen from him.

He pulls away from you when you're completely out of breath. Your vision is blurry, your heart is pounding from the adrenaline of the fight, and you can only stare at him stupidly and blankly while trying to understand what just happened.

Your eyes widen as he licks his lips, lust still burning in his eyes as he takes in your panting form and swollen, red lips. A trickle of blood drips from your mouth after he bit into it a few minutes ago. As you taste your blood on your tongue, you realise the terrifying truth.

Feyd Rautha Harkonnen desired you.

Feyd strokes your neck, which is still in his tight grip. His eyes travel from your lips to your neck, to your collarbones, to the valley of your breasts, and to your hips, which were starting to bruise from how tightly he held them in the moments before your fight. Suddenly, everything starts to fall into place for you. His strange, unusual behaviour, the flirtatious comments, the long stares, and his more frequent attempts to hold you close to him and touch your exposed skin are starting to make sense.

You were screwed.

Completely and utterly fucked up.

You've been avoiding him since that night. More than any Reverend Mother or Bene Gesserit. Which was a very difficult task, considering how many things you had to do as his right hand.

But, luckily, you managed to avoid being alone with him. Of course, it couldn't last long. You knew him very well, and you knew that eventually he would try something and come for you. But you tried to deceive yourself by living the lie that his desire would pass and his concubines would effectively take care of him.

If he noticed your attempts to stay away from him, he never mentioned it. Of course, he chased after you when he saw you walking alone down the hall, but you never gave him a chance to catch up with you. He may have grown up here, but you knew the palace like the back of your hand. And all the nooks and crannies you could hide in from him.

So you actually managed not to get close to him for a very long time. Until it was time to train a unit of soldiers directly subordinate to him.

"Y/N!!!" You're sure all of Giedi Prime could have heard his scream. You sigh, calming down as you continue your walk to the arena. You step out into the black sun, carefully watching the men training. You walk up to him and bow to him.

"My lord na-baron." You say it politely, unfazed by the fact that he's practically seething with rage. You were more used to dealing with him like this than when he was horny... or worse, kind. You would turn on your shield if you knew it wouldn't make him fall over the edge and start murdering everyone he could.

"Take your blade. None of these piles of useless muscles know basic defensive moves. Look, you all! You have to learn this by the end of the day, or next time you will enter this arena as my opponent!" He walks over to one of them, probably to either stab him or adjust his position, leaving you to get ready. You tie your hair up so it doesn't bother you during a fight and choose your blade.

You gasp in surprise when you are suddenly pushed. You turn around quickly, trying to keep your balance as you face the na-baron. You move your hand to activate your shield, but his voice stops you:

"Don't. I have to show them how to do it. No shield." You know he's lying, and that's not why he doesn't want you to turn on your shield, but you don't say anything. You just nod and prepare to get into a defensive position.

He attacks you quickly. Very quickly. You've trained with him before, and you have to admit, he's never been this… brutal with you.

You go through different positions with him until you finally stop following the textbook fighting patterns and start fighting seriously. You keep up with his movements for a long time, blocking his blade with yours and dodging attacks that you have no physical ability to block, but he keeps pressing against you, not letting you rest or trying to return the favour with one of your attacks.

You gasp in surprise when he trips you, sending you to the ground. You block his swing at you with your blade and kneel in the sand, trying to get up, but he's pressing too hard against you with his sword for you to move. You use all your strength to push him away from you. Feyd growls, throwing his sword aside, and simply lunges at you. You're too shocked to do anything as he snatches the blade from your hand and sits on top of you.

You fight him, sending both of you rolling in the sand. Eventually, he gets impatient and wraps his hand around your throat. You take a hoarse breath as he blocks your airway. You grab his hand around your neck and try to pull it away. You dig your nails into his palm, but he remains unmoved, pinning you to the sand.

He leans closer to you, and you take the opportunity to wrap your hand around his neck. He laughs, showing you his black teeth as he practically lays on top of you. His erection presses hard against your thigh as he grinds against you, grunting as he too begins to feel the need for air... and something more. You see black spots in front of your eyes, and you feel tears welling up in your eyes as you struggle to breathe.

You let go of his neck completely, your hand falling next to your head, and you desperately try to use the remaining air to try and use your Bene Gesserit voice on him. But before you try to say anything, he loosens his grip so you can breathe, but his fingers are still lightly holding your neck.

Too busy breathing, you don't notice how he tilts his face towards you. Only when you feel his tongue on your neck do you realise how close he is to you. You freeze when he runs his tongue from your neck, from jaw to cheek, to taste your tears. You hear him moan softly. To confirm that your brain, stunned by lack of oxygen, didn't make it all up on its own, he rubs against you, and his hardness in his pants is clearly felt by you.

You just fucking hope he doesn't fuck you in front of those soldiers.

You meet his black eyes with yours. You shiver as he leans in, his bare chest pressed completely against you as he whispers into your ear.

"Damn you, witch... if you taste as sweet as your tears..." He growls. You feel dizzy, and you're not sure if it's because of the heat of the moment, the fact that he cut you off from oxygen for a while, or because you're overwhelmed by his scent and the warmth that radiates from the two of you.

You thank whoever is above you as he finally pulls away from you and stands up. He gives you his hand and helps you stand on your two feet. The soldiers obediently look at the ground, not daring to face the na-baron's gaze. You swallow hard, pulling your hand from his grasp.

Feyd barks orders at them, herding them back to training. You breathe a sigh of relief when he stops paying attention to you. You use your shawl to wipe his saliva and your sweat from your neck. You take your blade and are about to leave the arena to do the rest of your duties. But a tight grip on your wrist stops you. You tense up and turn around to face him again.

"Y/N." He murmurs, watching you carefully. You're sure that bruises are starting to appear on your neck from his tight squeeze. "Come to my chambers tonight." A cold shiver runs through you, but all you can do is nod and watch his retreating figure as he leaves to continue the training.

You hoped he didn't mean what you thought he meant by that... invitation. Otherwise, this could be your last night on Giedi Prime or the last night of your life. You're not sure yet.

For the first time, you feel fear as you walk to his chambers. He had called for you at such times before, but it never occurred to you that he wanted to do with you something else than discuss with you matters that were related to the Giedi Prime Court, the baron's plans, or other political matters and plots.

You shudder, wondering what might be waiting behind that door. You saw the condition in which some of his concubines left him. You didn't want to become one of them; you didn't want to be reduced to being his lover. It was fine as it was. You felt very good as his shadow, ears, and eyes. You liked conspiring together with him, making plans, and that hrill each time you managed to take down the enemies that were standing in your way. He was supposed to be your savior, not your persecutor. Were you that naive from the beginning, or has everything started going to shit recently?

The guards let you through without saying a word. With your heart pounding, you enter his chambers.

He's sitting on the bed. His harpies finish taking off his clothes, and at first you want to back away, but as soon as his gaze meets yours, you freeze. Feyd snaps at one of them. She hands him a glass of his wine while the others look at you furiously.

"Leave." He tells them, never taking his eyes off you. The women look at each other, not wanting to leave him, especially leave him alone with you. You guess that if it weren't for Feyd's presence, they would have attacked you long ago, trying to eat you before their master got a chance to touch you. Disgust arouses in you as you think that you may be soon reduced to their role and turned into one of them. "I said something." He growls at them, shifting his gaze from you to give them an angry glare.

The harpies are going out obediently, but they are not wasting an opportunity to hiss at you as they pass you to get to the exit. You hear one of them scream in pain as Feyd suddenly throws a knife at them right before they close the door behind them.

You were more used to his brutal reflexes than to his tender gestures. You actually preferred him being aggressive more. At least you could have predicted his movement. That's why you didn't even blink when he threw a blade at his pets.

"You wanted to see me." You start when you are alone. If you could impress him with anything other than your fighting skills and the ability to obtain various information by staying in the shadows, it would be that you never showed fear or insecurity. At least not to those who don't know you. Almost no one could read you. Almost.

However, Feyd saw that you were behaving differently. But he was tired of controlling himself around you. He couldn't do it anymore after tasting your lips, tasting your skin mixed with tears, and feeling your curves press against him. He wanted more. Much more than he ever got from you. And he was going to take it, whether you wanted it or not. He won't go crazy with lust for you... or at least not with as much longing for you each night as he used to.

"I did..." He stands up, and you're grateful he's at least wearing underwear as he walks over to his bar and pours a second glass of wine. He hands it to you and taps it with his own. He takes a few sips and looks at you. After a while, he sits down on his bed again and swirls his glass, playing with the remains of the wine. "Baron wants me to find a wife." He announces calmly, staring at you intently as he finishes his wine with one big sip.

You almost choke on your drink. You place your glass on the table and meet the careful gaze of his cold, blue eyes. You feel yourself starting to get hot with nerves.

"I beg you pardon?" You ask, still reeling from the shock of this sudden information.

"He wants me to find a broodmare who will bear my heirs since I am getting close to the appropriate age." He repeats, standing up gracefully. He approaches you, his steps slow and measured, as if he were approaching his prey in an arena. And for a moment, that's exactly how you feel. But you show no fear or any other emotion as he stops a few inches in front of you. You straighten up, your muscles tensing as you think about any answer.

"I… I can make the necessary preparations and check which high families…"

"Strip." He orders you. His tone is hoarse, leaving no room for any objection. He talks just as if he were asking you to pass him the dagger rather than to stand naked in front of him. As if it was an order he carried out every day and something you should be used to following.

"What?" You ask stupidly, unable to process what he said to you in your head.

"Have you gone deaf? Undress. Take your clothes off." He repeats mockingly. He crosses his arms, takes a few steps back, and leans against the wooden post of his bed as he watches you carefully, waiting for you to either obey his order or openly disobey him, giving him the opportunity to punish you... as if he even needed a reason to do so.

"My na-baron, I..."

"Exactly, Y/N. I am your na-baron. So follow my order. Now. I'm not in the mood for our games. You think I haven't noticed you've been playing hide-and-seek lately? I have given much worse punishments for such disobedience and attempts at self-indulgence. Take your clothes off, or I'll rip them from you."

For a moment, there is a deathly silence in his chambers. Only your breathing can be heard as you try to find any way out of this situation. But you can't think of anything. Your mind is empty, your hands are shaking a little, and all you can do is look at him, silently begging him to change his mind. A frown of impatience appears on his forehead, and you know you have to do something before he gets irritated and cuts you with one of his blades.

You sigh softly as you reach for the laces of your shirt. You take your time, slowly untying your bindings. Feyd devours every bit of skin you expose to him, and you swear you hear him hold his breath as your shirt lands on the floor. You get out of your shoes and socks very slowly.

Luckily, he doesn't comment on it and lets you get out of his clothes at your own pace. He knows he will win anyway. Tonight, he will finally stop playing cat and mouse with you and put his hands on what is rightfully his. So he savours every moment, making a plan in his head for what he will do to you tonight for this small act of rebellion.

He licks his lips as you stand in front of him in nothing but black underwear. His eyes take in your every curve, skin lesions, and scars that mark your warrior body. Oh yes. He was going to enjoy this night and finally unwrap his early birthday present.

"Good girl. You know where the bathroom is, right?" Without waiting for your response, he goes there, expecting you to follow him.

You swallow hard. You're glad that at least you managed to stay in your underwear and that you're not completely naked in front of him. You get out of your pile of clothes and leisurely follow him to the bathroom.

As soon as you enter, the door closes itself behind you. You sigh, the sweet smell of bath salts reaching your nostrils. But you don't feel so relaxed when the coolness of the bathroom and the black marble you stand barefoot on make you shiver and your nipples harden.

The na-baron's dark chuckle catches your attention. He's in a large, black bathtub, his hands resting on its edges as he enjoys the warm water, watching you closely, a spark of amusement shining in his icy blue eyes. He looks like a vulture waiting for the best moment to kill his prey.

"It had been a long day. Join me." He says, lifting his hand for you to take and step into the tub.

Having no choice, you obediently reach for his hand and release it as quickly as you can, sitting on the other side of the bathtub with your legs tucked under you so as not to accidentally touch him. He laughs, shaking his head in amusement.

"Not so far, my little mouse. Closer. I won't bite… well, not yet."

"I'm not a mouse." You snap at him. If you're going to die, at least die with dignity. Blinded by your anger at him, you sit on his lap before you can think it through. It's only his hardness pressing against your ass that makes you realize what a mistake you've made. You don't show your discomfort, though; you even lean against his chest, letting your head rest on his shoulder.

He laughs softly, wrapping his arms around you just as the skin of your back meets his chest. You feel like you're in a cage, even though he's trying to calm you down by lazily drawing patterns on the skin of your arms. Your underwear soaks up the water and sticks to you, making you feel even more uncomfortable.

"Hand me my dagger."

You much prefer receiving such orders from him. You get up from the bathtub to get away from him for a moment, but he stops you by grabbing your hips tightly. He shakes his head and nods towards the dagger, which is literally at his fingertips. You bite your lip, keeping yourself from talking back at him, and reach for the weapon, handing it to him. You do this carefully, not wanting to cut the skin of your fingertips with the very sharp blade.

He cuts through the fabric of your bra with surgical grace. You gasp in outrage but don't move, knowing full well that you are only millimetres away from him taking your blood. You don't have to turn around to know he's smiling cockily as he traces the tip of his dagger across your skin to your panties.

"You know I can take it off by myself?" You ask as he traces patterns with the tip of his dagger on your stomach, around your navel. You hold your breath as he rests his chin on your shoulder and pulls you closer to him, rubbing against your still-clothed ass. You learn the hard way that the rumours about his... greatness were true.

"You had your chance at the beginning, now it's my turn. You're lucky that I'm not taking it off of you with my teeth anyway." He growls in your ear. You shiver as he presses a wet kiss on your shoulder, peppering kisses on your skin, down to your neck, and down to your jawbone before he rests his chin on your shoulder again.

"Sorry for interrupting your fun, my na-baron." You growl as he hooks the tip of his dagger against the fabric of your panties.

"No worries; you will compensate me in another way." He says, cutting your panties. He throws them behind him and lazily presses the dagger against your jawbone, forcing you to turn your head to look at him.

You meet his blue eyes with yours. His irises are practically non-existent, giving way entirely to his dilated, black pupils. He stares at you hungrily, licking his lips. He looks lost and indecisive, as if he didn't know what to do first.

His other hand, the one not holding the dagger pressed against your neck and jaw, explores your body, caressing your skin as if it were some kind of precious silk. You sigh as he cups your breast, which, of course, fits perfectly in his hand. You want to punch him in the face, but the dagger at your throat reminds you that one wrong move could cost you dearly. So you take his hand in yours instead, stopping him from over-exploring.

"You know... I tried to stay away from you. From the first moment I saw you... fighting with those daggers of yours... you're not as graceful in dancing as you are with them in your hands, taking down all your enemies. But you are Bene Gesserit. I know you're dangerous. So damn dangerous... if I were anyone else, you'd use your voice on me and tell me to castrate myself. Or you could make me magically disappear by throwing myself off some tall tower just because I thwarted your plans or looked at you wrong. Surprised? You may live in the shadows, my little witch, but I won't miss anything you do. You know I have trouble controlling myself... so how can I do that when you're so damn irresistible? The fact that I've endured all these years and not gotten close to you the way I wanted—the way I dreamed so many times at night—is quite a success, don't you think?"

He massages your breast, playing with it. You bite your lip, holding back a moan as he pinches your nipple. He leans closer to you, pressing his nose against your neck and inhaling your scent deeply. He removes his hand from your breast and moves your connected body along your body. You gasp, tightening your grip on his as he brushes your clit gently with his fingertip.

"I… I should go." You mumble, squirming in his grip, which is, of course, pointless and only makes him groan in pleasure as your ass rubs against his hard, leaking member.

"Stay. You won't oppose your na-baron, will you?" The bastard knows well that you won't openly oppose him, and he uses it as best he can. He moves your joined hands to his length, forcing you to wrap your hand around him. He hisses, pressing the blade closer to your throat and tightening his grip on your hand as he guides yours along his length the way he wants. "Your skin is so soft… and that beautiful hair that you needlessly hide… you don't know how many times I imagined pulling you by it." He mumbles into your neck. The hand with the dagger now presses against your chest, only causing your heart to beat much faster. A wave of heat washes over you, your traitorous pussy clenching desperately as you hear his moans in your ear.

"Feyd..." You moan as his hand releases yours and works at your desperate pussy. He growls, feeling the warmth of your walls around his fingers and the wetness he caused. You remove your hand from his member and tighten your grip on his hand, trying to push him away from your private parts in a desperate attempt to regain control of the situation.

"Don't fight. Just give yourself to me, Y/N. Let me show you how much you've lost while trying to hide yourself from me in your shadows…" He growls, pressing the tip of the dagger to your nipple. You freeze, moaning as he becomes stiffened by the sheer movement of his blade.

He bites into your neck, making you moan loudly and throwing your head back. He licks and sucks your neck, rubbing his painfully hard cock against your pussy. The water splashes around you, some of it spilling out of the tub due to his sudden movements. A few inches deeper, and he would have slammed into you, bisecting you with his huge cock, which stood ready for you from the moment he saw you in your underwear.

"Can you feel it? Can you feel what you're doing to me? How hard I am because of you? It's like this every time you hand me my blade, perfectly balanced and sharpened, every time you meet all my needs without even communicating with me, you just know what I want by looking at me, my little witch. So tell me, who is a better partner for me than my right hand? Who can I trust more than you? Who should I fuck, full of my heirs, if not you?"

You don't respond; you can't find any words as your brain desperately tries to shout out the pleasure he's giving you and force you to resist him. Unsuccessfully. The warmth of the water, his body, his scent, and his precise, deliberate movements cut off your thoughts. Feyd is practically salivating at the sight of you so lost in lust and desire as he witnesses you lose control for the first time.

He throws away the dagger, which falls with a crash onto the marble floor. Neither of you care as he grabs your hips and, in one smooth, quick movement, turns you around so you can face him.

You only have time to draw in a quick breath before he demands your mouth. You moan into his lips as he kisses you with the same passion and intensity as he did a few weeks ago at the party after you won the fight. You try to pull away from him, but he holds you tightly, placing his hands on your back as he presses you against him. You don't stand a chance against his strength. You can resist him, but you know it won't be long before you collapse from exhaustion. You bite his lip until you draw blood, which only causes him to groan and have him grind against you, the tip of his cock teasing your entrance.

You gasp as he leaves your lips for a while and pulls your hair, exposing your throat to him so he can mark it even more. He sucks on your skin, littering it with hickeys as you feel him slowly move, positioning himself beneath you so that his member presses against the entrance of your pussy.

And just as he's about to join your bodies, to make you two one, to feel your hot, wet, tight walls around him, there's a knock on the bathroom door.

This time, he's the one who freezes, tightening his hold on you. You feel like he's making sure he hasn't misheard or imagined it in this heated moment between you, but when the knocking sounds a second time, he realises it's real.

You pray with gratitude for the soul of the fool who dared to interrupt him, because you know that even if it were something important, he would not live to see the morning.

"What?!" He growls furiously, not letting you go, not letting you move an inch from him, still believing that he can quickly get rid of the intruder and go back to ravaging you, maybe even fucking you while he talks to whoever is standing in front of that damned door. Though Feyd preferred to be fully focused on you when he took you for the first time. However, he was convinced that if he didn't feel you around him soon, he would go crazy. He is so close... all he had to do was push a little more...

"My lord na-baron. The Baron wants to see you. It's very important."

You see pure rage bubbling in his eyes. He growls, shifting you from his lap as he stands up. You look down as you see all of him very clearly, especially what you were exposed to a few moments ago. He throws a towel at you, and you automatically catch it. He wraps one around his waist before he comes back to you again and grabs your throat. He gives you a crazy, passionate kiss, stroking your neck and appreciating the marks he made before pulling away from you.

"We'll come back to it, little witch." He leaves you with that promise, closing the door behind him with a bang.

You hear him shouting something at his harpies, and you shudder at the thought of having to walk past them to get out of here. You lean back against the tub, still sitting in the now-cold water, as you slowly process everything that happened.

You succeeded this time, but you know you won't be so lucky next time. You could either accept... your new responsibilities and his expectations of you, or you could try to break free from him, risking your life.

It was a decision to be made in the privacy of your own chambers. For now, you let yourself lie in the cool water, fully aware that if you weren't interrupted now, he would fuck you silly, likely planting his seed inside you.

You ran away from the Bene Gesserit with him because you didn't want to be a whore, a vessel for their crazy breeding plan. Apparently, you just changed the owner of your womb. You had to do something if you didn't want to end up as originally intended—as the mother of the future Kwisatz Haderach.

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blluespirit · 4 months

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okay first three episodes thoughts

good

bending is cool as fuck

sozin’s actor does an amazing job at full crazy but calculated

scenery is STUNNING

monk gyatso made me cry. idk why i just saw him and wanted him to give me a hug so bad

APPA ACTUALLY LOOKS GOOD AND NOT LIKE A LITERAL MONSTER

i wasn’t sure how id feel about them showing the air nomad massacre but i think the importsnt thing is that they showed it was a massacre - and that although they can defend themselves, they don’t have the ability to fight back like an organised army would bc they’re pacifists! they attacked a peaceful group

the abandoned fire nation ship in the southern water tribe looks so fucking cool

ARTIST ZUKO???!!! LETS GOOO

Dallas does an amazing job at getting across Zuko’s intense desperation

I actually ended up loving all the Sokka and Suki interactions sm it was so cute and wholesome

Katara is perfect i will kill and die for her

Azula’s opening scene being her manipulating those people trying kill ozai ultimately leading them to getting burned alive by him and smiling - literally so fucking good. she is the best villain in history of forever

really good move having the mechanist (Sai!) and Teo be in Omashu imo. having them destroy the northern Air Temple so carelessly always pissed me off

THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS ARE LITERALLY PERFECT I AM SCREAMINGGGG

I was wondering how they were going to introduce the Mechanist and Jet in a limited amount of episodes but I like how they combined the two stories

Also Sokka absolutely nerding out in the Mechanist’s home is so important to me

Zuko getting has ass beat by that lady for fighting Aang is literally so funny and reminiscent of the goofy aang vs zuko fights we see in season 1 (to be clear: i adore zuko. this is NOT hate on him)

Zuko losing shit about his notebook and trashing his room and then outing himself as a fire bender in Omashu is so perfect. god i love him so much. it’s very season 1 zuko. it’s giving I DONT NEED ANY CALMING TEA!!!

things i was not a fan of: (some of these are a little pedantic i’ll admit)

Exposition is a little is a little janky but i’ll forgive it i guess bc at least it isn’t egregious as The Movie That Shall Not Be Named

Aang leaving just to get fresh air/clear his head and intending to come back is a silly change to me. all i keep thinking about is the storm where we got those epic Zuko and Aang parallels which now doesn’t really work and also takes away a lot of Aang’s depth. A good change adds to the story, but personally this seems to take it away

WHY would they not make Katara the one to bring him back from the avatar state? just seems like a strange choice to me? not saying this from a shipping point at all but that moment is a big step to their bond/friendship especially since they have only just met

Still don’t understand why they made the head of the village Suki’s mum. like i don’t think it’s a terrible choice but they still could have let them have a mother/daughter bond but still let Suki be the leader without any implications of nepotism. it mostly seeems silly

tl;dr - really enjoying it so far!

#avatar the last airbender #netflix atla #netflix avatar #zuko #katara #sokka #aang #suki #iroh #ozai #jack talks #live action series

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merakiui · 2 months

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ex-husband floyd thoughts...

in which you're living alone with your daughter. it's been two years since everything, and you're all settled. it took a while to truly feel secure and stable, and you received lots of help from family and friends. surprisingly (or maybe not), floyd's twin brother was one of the first to extend a helping hand. it's mostly thanks to him that you were able to have enough money to pay the first few months of rent at your new apartment. but now you're back on your feet, and things have never been better.

your daughter didn't understand it when you told her she'd be living with you from now on. awkwardly, you tried to explain that papa couldn't come with because he was getting involved with some bad people, and that was dangerous. your daughter didn't understand or believe you. it was difficult. you know how much she adored her papa and how much he adored her. but this is for the best. this is safe.

following the divorce, your daughter started saying strange things. things like "i saw papa today and he made me a yummy lunch!" you tell her this can't be; that was the babysitter, not floyd. besides, the dishes are clean and everything is stocked as it normally is. there's no evidence floyd could have been here. furthermore, he doesn't even have a key and your daughter isn't tall enough to reach the doorknob to let him in. your daughter calls you a liar and storms off most days because you refuse to believe her stories. that's all they are, really. she's just missing her papa.

you told floyd you had no problems letting him see her so long as he cleaned up his act and stopped getting involved with delinquents. seeing as it's been two years and floyd's still running from people, you (as a parent) have a responsibility to keep your daughter safe. and you know it's terrible for her and floyd, but this is the best option you can think of. the safest option.

floyd thinks that's bullshit because he can protect you and his daughter plenty, but then he gets it. you never liked the shadows that accompanied his surname. he understands. but he thinks it's awfully unfair of you to just cut him out of your life when he promised you he'd change and do better and be better. :/

he sees how hard you work, how rough it gets when you haven't been paid yet. he has jade send you money because he knows you don't want to see him, and most of the time you accept it. but sometimes it's sent back, accompanied with a note thanking him for his generosity and that you can manage by yourself. again, floyd knows this is bullshit.

his shrimpy works so hard. :( you deserve a break.

so when you're sleeping every night, he pays your apartment a visit. you've started sleeping on the couch most nights, with the tv still on, your work spread out on the coffee table, your daughter tucked away in her bed... it's hard being a single parent, isn't it? why don't you stop being stubborn and let him back into your life? floyd will take good care of you. he always has, hasn't he?

he carries you to bed and tucks you in, cleans up the room, stacks your books, prepares a meal for you to heat up tomorrow at work, etc. and how do you respond to his kindness? you go and change the locks without saying anything.

so next time floyd thinks he has no choice but to be drastic. so next time floyd will make sure you understand that there is no life worth living if it's not you and him together. as a pair. as a whole. you might be frightened when he wakes you up in the middle of the night to drag you back to his home (to your home) and you might continue to be scared of him when he confines you to the basement, but this is for your own good. think of your daughter! she deserves to grow up with both parents. at the very least, be good for her sake.

floyd tells your daughter that you're in perpetual timeout because you've been bad and she believes him. after all, it was you who refused to let her spend more time with her papa. that's a very bad thing to do!

floyd brings you your meals, carries you to the bath, bathes you, dresses you... you scowl at him the entire time, call him crazy, tell him to get away from your daughter, refuse to eat, fight him every time he tries to undress you for the bath. he smiles, eerily patient, and simply says, "i'm willing to letcha see her once you've cleaned up your act. you can do that, can'tcha?"

#meraki mumbles #yandere twst

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dyns33 · 4 months

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Firefly

I can't explain why but I like The Collector movies a lot, Asa Emory was a weird character, and so I needed to write something about him at least once

Y/N had met Asa Emory in college.

He already had this strange look and this fascination for insects, which explained his choice of studies. She had never met anyone who wanted to become an entomologist.

The other students were a little afraid of him, when they noticed him, because Asa was very discreet.

Y/N had noticed him, and she hadn’t been afraid of him. She had sat next to him in the library while he read a book about spiders. Her questions had initially seemed to irritate him, he was obviously not used to being spoken to, then he had been intrigued.

For a time, Asa had looked at her as if she were one of the insects he collected, but also as if she were trying to make fun of him. Yet he answered all her questions, adding more and more details and information.

He had no one in his life. No one to share your passion with. He didn't tell her all the details, but he had lost his parents and siblings when he was young.

This loneliness didn't seem to be a problem for him, but over time he got used to Y/N's presence, he looked forward to her questions, and he eventually grew attached.

“My firefly.” He greeted her as soon as he saw her, with a shy smile.

“Why a firefly ?” she asked, laughing softly.

“Because you are a light in my life.”

Y/N might have taken offense saying that a firefly was a tiny, fragile light that would die quickly, but knowing Asa's love of insects, she knew he wasn't going to compare her to a sun or stars. It was even a nice compliment on his part that he deigned to compare her to a Lampyris noctiluca.

Even when insulting people, he never used insect names. That would be an insult to the insects and he couldn't do that.

As with everything else in their relationship, it was Y/N who invited him on their first date. He accepted without seeming to understand what that meant.

The poor man seemed lost when she kissed him. But not necessarily disgusted.

“My firefly, you are the only human being who matters.” he admitted when she asked him if he ever thought about marriage, after more than two years together. "There are only a few insects that practice monogamy, but most die quickly, sometimes during the act of reproduction. But you know how much I hate anthropomorphism. I will be happy to spend my life with you."

Life with Asa was calm. Perfectly organized, structured, like its classification of all arthropod species.

After obtaining his diploma, he had no difficulty in being hired in the largest natural science museum in the city. His name quickly became known in his field.

His frequent nighttime outings and other prolonged outings could have been frightening for Y/N, but he always warned her in advance, preparing his schedule according to the pace of life of the insects he was looking for.

"Rumors are circulating about an unknown species of grasshoppers in a forest. I will probably be gone all weekend."

"Oh. You won't be here for my cousin's birthday ?"

"I forgot. Forgive me, my firefly."

“It doesn’t matter… It’s for your work, it’s important.”

He promised to better note the dates that were important to her, because even though he was very diligent in his work, Asa was a good husband. He didn't care at all about other humans, and therefore her family, but he always tried to please her when he could.

Even though he had a true admiration for spiders, Y/N saw him more as an ant. He worked hard, he never seemed tired, and he often brought home gifts to make up for when he missed an appointment, or simply because he wanted to see her smile.

"Ants don't bring back gifts for the queen, they do this to feed the colony. Plus they work in groups, I work alone."

“I didn’t compare myself to a queen.”

"You could, it was you who worked to create our home. There is no colony without a queen, and there would not be our home without you."

Their house was perfect, but empty. They didn't talk about having children. The subject didn't seem to appeal to Asa. After all this time, he did not talk about his family, visibly traumatized by their disappearance, and his aversion to others, in addition to his complicated schedule, were not compatible with the role of father.

There were his dogs. Perfectly trained hunting dogs, who were only adorable with their master and his wife. But especially with Y/N, who loved to cuddle them.

“My firefly, they have already eaten and they are not allowed to be inside.”

"Oh, Asa, please ! It's cold outside, and they were very good !"

“You mustn’t get them used to it or they will become fat and lazy.”

“Only for tonight, please !”

His colleagues said he was tough. A cold, distant, almost mean man. It was quickly decided that he would no longer participate in school visits, because he did not know how to talk to children or teachers.

But with Y/N, he was gentle. He refused her nothing. The dogs stayed inside, and not just that evening.

The times Asa told her no, it wasn't his fault. The excuses he found always contained the words 'I would like to, but the museum, my colleagues, the insects…'.

No, she couldn't accompany him on his hunts. She wouldn't like it anyway. It was cold, there was almost no time to sleep, and she might be bored.

“I’ll be with you, that’s the most important thing.”

".. .It's always a joy to be with you. That's also why it's better if you don't come. Then I have a reason to come home."

And he always came home, tired, but satisfied with his work, placing a kiss on Y/N's forehead like a ritual, before caressing her cheek while looking at her as if seeing her for the first time, his eyes wide blacks seeming to devour her entirely.

Then came the night when he came home late, very late, with strange injuries and terribly angry. Growling like an animal, he slammed the door so hard that it woke his wife. She found him trying to stitch himself up, mumbling and shaking.

She had never seen him like this. Asa was always calm.

Hesitantly, Y/N asked him if he was okay, and when he looked at her, she was scared for the first time since they met. For a moment, he looked like he didn't recognize her, and was ready to jump on her. Then he took on the features of her husband.

"… My firefly." he sighed, getting up with difficulty to kiss her. "I woke you up. I scared you. Forgive me. There was an incident. I lost several very precious, unique species. But it's my fault, you don't have to suffer my bad mood."

“Shouldn’t you go to the hospital ?”

"It's okay, I promise. Scratches, nothing I can't fix myself. Go back to bed, I'll be with you right away."

Nothing forced her to obey. Y/N could have insisted, asked questions, called an ambulance, but she returned to the room, staring at the wall unable to sleep. She didn't move when Asa came to her, holding her close, his face against her neck, whispering that he loved her.

They talked about the incident in the neighboring town the next day on television. An abandoned factory was ravaged by flames. But that wasn't the worst. It was the lair of a serial killer, whom they called the Collector.

The survivors spoke of horrible things. Of torture, of strange experiences. According to police, the man had died in the fire along with his guard dogs and most of the evidence there was nothing left to fear.

Y/N didn’t ask Asa where the dogs were. She tried not to think about it.

If he was waiting for her to ask him about it, he didn't show it. He didn't talk about what happened during the night, behaving as if everything was perfectly fine, and going to work like every day. He would come home, he would kiss her, and he would do it again. The difference was only that he went out less often.

According to him, the season was not good for hunting. And with the problem at his office, he needed a little time, to rest, to repair the place.

This excuse could have worked forever. Of course, Y/N could have called the museum and they would have confirmed that there had never been any serious incidents, but she didn't want to. She continued to lie next to her husband, letting him embrace her tenderly.

Then there was the man's visit. He seemed surprised to see Y/N, as he placed a large red trunk in the kitchen. Almost sad too. He was holding a gun.

"I imagine you don't know anything about it. I can let you go, if you promise not to warn him, and to let me do what I have to do."

"… I don't understand what to talk to you about."

"Your dear husband. The man who kidnapped and tortured me for weeks. You're lucky you didn't see his little collection. He's a monster. He needs to die."

No doubt the man was right. There had always been something strange about Asa, everyone had always known it and Y/N had been the only one to refuse to see it. She had built her life with him, her home. They had to share everything.

So even if he was right, she without thinking grabbed a knife when he turned, convinced that she had understood and she stuck it in his back, at the level of his heart.

When she realized what she had just done, it was too late. The man was lying in his blood in the middle of the room, his gun fallen next to him. Y/N touched nothing, unable to do anything but cry while trying to remember how to breathe.

Asa found her like this, sitting against a wall, when he returned from the office. He looked at his wife, then at the scene in the kitchen, before putting his things down to crouch down next to her.

Like every times, he held her face so that she could look at him and he could kiss her on the forehead. Then with one hand he wiped the blood from her cheek, massaging her neck with the other to calm her down.

"Tell me what happened. Are you hurt, my firefly ?"

"No… He… He wanted to kill you. He said… Oh, my god. He had a gun, I… I was scared… He said you… Asa …"

"Shh. I'll take care of everything. Come on."

Holding her close, he took her to the bathroom where he helped her undress and get into the shower, which he adjusted so that the water was perfect. Taking a bath would have done her good, but he had to leave her alone to clean up, and he didn't want her to fall asleep.

"I'll be back, my firefly. Just sit here, it's okay."

Y/N didn't know how long she stayed under the water, shaking and crying. Not as long as she thought. Her husband quickly returned to help her get up, dry off and put on pajamas.

Although she was not hungry, he insisted that she have tea and biscuits, as it was not good to keep an empty stomach after such a shock, before putting her to bed. He certainly put something in the tea for her to sleep.

The kitchen was immaculate the next morning, as if nothing had happened. The man, the weapon, the red trunk, everything had disappeared.

Unusually, Asa had prepared breakfast. He was always up before her, but he only had coffee, and he often left for work while she was still asleep, coming to place a kiss on her forehead to warn her.

His dark eyes didn't leave her for a second as Y/N chewed her pancakes with difficulty, one hand on the glass of orange juice that she couldn't drink. She looked everywhere except her husband.

Before the intruder spoke, she had already started to have doubts. Questions. Now everything was quite clear, and all that remained was to decide what she was going to do. Asa was also obviously waiting, sitting near her.

The options were vast. Run away, call the police, risk getting killed… Y/N finally managed to lift the glass of orange juice, while thinking of their meeting.

"… Aren't you going to be late for work ?"

"No. I took some time off to stay with you."

“But your collection… I understood that it would take a long time to rebuild everything.”

"It's not as important as you, my firefly. My mantis religiosa. My black widow." he purred, running a hand through her hair, his lips on her neck.

Asa loved spiders. It was a nice compliment, even if she received it because she had killed a man and agreed not to report him to the authorities. He didn't seem to notice her fear, one of the reasons she remained silent.

Only the other reason mattered. And by giving her all these names, like a transformation, he was telling her that he would not harm her, that he did not see her as prey, and that even if she decided to do so, she could devour him.

#the collector #the collection #asa emory #asa emory x reader #asa emory fanfiction #slashers

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deusvervewrites · 3 months

Text

The First Line

A lot of people out there will tell you that the first line of a novel is the most important. I've seen the wisdom that the first line must grab the readers attention, be some kind of a "hook" to draw them in deeper, or to tonally reflect the main themes. That the first line needs to throw the reader into the thick of it!

But how true is that really? It's been nagging me for a while now as someone who has started more fics than I've completed.

Out of curiosity, I grabbed a handful of my favorite novels and compiled their first lines.

"There are many legends about my mother." Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Sue Lynn Tan

This line doesn't really establish much about the plot of this book. Not the narrator's name, goal, conflict, or even the setting. We can make some inferences from the existence of legends around someone, but 'legendary' only narrows anything down because of the book's title. It is, however, indicative of the narration style and the novel's prose.

"Mary Jekyll stared down at her mother's coffin." The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, Theodora Cross

This line puts us right into a scene. Some real In Medias Res. Except... it's not really an action scene. It's a somber affair. And from Mary's staring, it's safe to say she has some heavy thoughts on the matter.

We can also make some assumptions from the wording choice. Looking down at the coffin suggests that she is standing over it, so we know at once this takes place during the funeral.

Interestingly--and I'm going to break my soft rule of not addressing the rest of the text here--this line does not allude to the novel's framing device.

"The temperature of the room dropped fast." Bartimaeus: The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathan Stroud

This is another opening that's setting a scene instead of trying to introduce us to the cast or conflict, or even to the setting. Why is it getting colder? We can infer from the fact that the temperature is dropping fast that this probably isn't a good thing or at least not a normal thing.

"I've seen Steelheart bleed." Steelheart, Brandon Sanderson

This line fascinates me. It says a lot and, at the same time, very little. We know that someone named Steelheart exists, obviously. However, the narrator is giving gravitas to the sight of them bleeding. So we've already learned that Steelheart doesn't bleed very often, and seeing it was worth remembering. But who Steelheart is and why the narrator cares? Nothing in this line indicates that.

"Kendra stared out the side window of the SUV, watching foliage blur past." Fablehaven, Brandon Mull

I think this is the most relatable opening line I have listed here, since I can instantly in my mind picture the expression on Kendra's face knowing nothing else about her, or where she's going. We can guess she's probably not happy to be going there since she's staring out the window with what I would assume to be boredom. That's some conflict there. But, like, extremely minor conflict.

"The tired old carriage, pulled by two tired old horses, rumbled onto the wharf, its creaky wheels bumpety-bumping on the uneven planks, waking Peter from his restless slumber." Peter and the Starcatchers, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

Well this sentence rambled on a bit didn't it? But it's very evocative. It tells us very little about the story (beyond Peter's name) but it sets the scene beautifully. Not only is it evocative of the scenery, but the time period (from the horse-drawn carriage) and the tone as well. We also know that Peter wasn't sleeping very well, which indicates that he's either anxious about something or that sleeping in this carriage wasn't very easy. Or both.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

This is the kind of line that would get me murdered by a lot of writing advice that I've seen over the years. This line tells you next to nothing, not even whether or not its weird for hobbits to live in holes. What this line does do is ease us into the narration style that Tolkien employs, which is generally slow and descriptive.

Okay...?

So what was the point of all of that?

Well, this experiment has solidified my opinion on something. As I said, I've been having thoughts about opening lines, but I think that the actual first line of the book is not as important as the first scene of the book. None of these lines out of context are that good. Sure, The Hobbit is iconic, but that's not because that line itself is phenomenal. It's practically "Once Upon A Time."

But it works for the scene.

The first scene is far more interesting to me than the first line. I'm not so impatient that if the first line fails to captivate me I'll toss the book aside. And I know that's true for other people because H. Bomberguy posted a four-hour video on plagiarism and we all watched it.

What this means, I think, is that we don't need to treat our audience as if we're in an arms race against their dwindling attention spans as if we'll lose them forever to TikTok if the first sentence isn't the pinnacle of literature.

People will give a work a chance. That's what the summary is for; to tell people if they'll like it so they can know to give it a try.

If you were afraid to write, or to share your writing, because you didn't think the first line was good enough... I don't think that matters. I think that people won't hate it. Won't turn up their noses in disgust.

#writing advice

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aropride · 9 months

Text

i saw a post the other day that said that gen z/gen alpha say "unalive" and "seggs" and stuff bc they're afraid of being "punished by an invisible force" and while i do think that the self-censoring sometimes unnecessary and worrying, i also don't think they're self-censoring for no reason.

i think there are a lot of situations where talking about suicide/death in general and sex outright would be punished by very real visible forces like parents and teachers and instagram community guidelines. like these kids (i say kids but i know people my age (20) do this, i feel like it's mostly younger genz and genalpha though at least in my experience) aren't just self-policing and self-censoring for no reason. some creators learned to adapt their language to unclear nebulous guidelines to try and avoid their accounts being taken down or their videos being shown to fewer people, then people started assuming any mentions of death or sex would be punished and started doing the same thing, and now younger kids have picked up on it bc they're online a lot and don't know any different.

but that's not the only part of this that matters bc while that is strange and a little dystopian. there are also offline real-life reasons kids would be scared to talk about this shit with actual words. like i was raised very christian, evangelical, not quite fundamentalist, "we don't use labels but we have stage lights for the worship songs but don't wear skirts above the knee" type of thing. my parents didn't teach me about sex until they found out i would have a sex ed class bc they had to sign a permission slip. and then they gave me a book for kids about sex that was heavily christian, abstinence-only, deeply homophobic etc. it didn't teach about birth control, about what things are not normal, any of that. and i was not raised in a way where i was even the slightest bit comfortable asking my parents or talking about it at all. my twin brother got the same book and would talk about sex or make jokes about it and our parents would get upset because it was "inappropriate" and he shouldn't be thinking about that or whatever. and if i had tried to talk about like, menstrual health or signs of abuse or even just made a joke about sex at all my parents would have been upset.

you can probably guess this from what i just said but unsurprisingly my parents weren't big on being upfront about mental health issues either. i have been depressed since before i can remember and was suicidal by the time i was eleven and i had no idea that the way i was feeling wasn't normal or that there was a word for it. i don't remember when i learned about suicide but i know my dad was at least willing to say the word in conversation when i was 12, which my mother wasn't happy about because it was "too dark" a conversation to be having (he had been telling me about a friend he had in college, specifically about how he had recovered from substance abuse issues and suicidal ideation).

and my parents were definitely not normal but there are objectively situations where parents are way worse about this type of thing. there are absolutely kids who aren't allowed to say words like suicide and death and sex. and they're not afraid of algorithms, there are real-life offline consequences if they slip up. so they self-censor, they talk quietly in the lunchroom with codewords and euphemisms with their friends. and that's not even to mention school, and how kids will get in trouble for anything an adult doesn't want them to talk about, how they can get in, again, real-life offline trouble for speaking frankly about this type of thing. because it's "inappropriate," because it's "upsetting," because their teacher is having a bad day, because god said not to, because they don't want their dm to a friend on tiktok to be flagged.

and i would much rather kids talk about these things with sometimes-insensitive code words than to not talk about them at all. if it's a choice between someone coming out as "tr4ns" to their friend and not having someone to support them at all, if it's between saying they want to "unalive" themself and never seeking help, i want them to go the sometimes-silly code word route. because i think they should be allowed to talk about these things and if they're not i think they have the right to try to do it anyway. the unnecessary self-censorship has been criticized to hell and back and i'm not saying it shouldn't be, especially when it's adults saying these things in real life situations. i'm just saying i think kids have a lot more pressure to censor themselves than people think, even offline.

#text #long post #suicide mention #Turn this post into sh.ip di.scourse i will kill u in real life and if u think 'thats insane why would someone do that' well u have no #idea the amount of things ive seen ppl turn into sh/ipcourse on here.

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heliads · 8 months

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Lisa my love! I hope you don’t mind me sending another request (for none other than Jack Wilder again of course) — but how about a Jack x reader meet-cute situation, maybe she’s a barista at the coffee shop he likes to visit, and he definitely thinks she’s more than cute but reader is a little oblivious to that fact. But she doesn’t recognise him at first, (i can imagine a co-worker going “GIRL that was Jack Wilder!” and she’s like “who now?”). Jack ends up becoming a regular and the two get to know each other outside of the coffee shop setting (I’m also imagining he’d try to teach her card tricks and it’d just be so !!!!!! absolute fluff). Sorry, this request doesn’t have a SINGLE coherent thought in it, it’s literally so silly but I love this man bfhvdjhfvdn

anything for the boy

'wake me up' - jack wilder

masterlist

Nothing has ever made you want to drink coffee less than working in a coffee shop. Whether or not you’ll actually stop is purely up to your own moral strength, of course, but you’re reminded daily of why you would make such a choice whenever you clock in to your latest shift at your local coffee shop. The sight of so many exhausted people who seem to prefer snapping at you to actually taking accountability in their own lives is depressing, to say the least.

Still, you keep working there. You always do. It’s satisfying in itself, as far as jobs go, and your coworkers are funny enough that the time always passes faster than expected. It’s not bad. And sometimes, on rare days like today, you end up meeting someone with the power to change your life forever.

The funny thing is, you almost missed him. The shop was crazy busy when he came in. You would find out later that the people were only crowding into the shop and lining up down the block because of him, but you hadn’t known that at the time. You had just chalked it up to word of mouth, maybe enough people had finally appreciated the expert level of care you and your coworkers put into their lattes and decided to show up and see what’s what.

You certainly hadn’t counted on the cute boy who came bounding through the door of your shop, sending the bell fixed to the top into a commotion matching the hubbub surrounding the tables inside. Your first thought was that he seemed energetic enough that ordering coffee was unnecessary. Your second thought, as he breezed up to you, ready to order, was that you certainly didn’t mind your job anymore if it brought you faces as pretty as his.

For a complete stranger, he seemed very sure of himself. He had paused for a moment before speaking, as if waiting for you to burst into applause at the sight of him. When it became clear you weren’t going to fall into raptures, he just shrugged and rattled off his order. The words were perfectly cadenced, probably memorized. You wrote it down like normal. Routines can be tedious on both ends, even if two perfect strangers are meeting for the first time. Sometimes, you don’t know that the course of your life has been irrevocably affected until much later. You certainly didn’t know it then.

You had guessed that something was strange, though. You had asked what name he wanted with the order and the young man had blinked at you in surprise, as if he couldn’t fathom the possibility that you wouldn’t know who he was. You’re familiar with the regulars of the coffee shop, so you knew he wasn’t one of them. Still, he seemed so stunned that you didn’t recognize him already. In a good way, though. With the way he smiled at you as he said, “Just Jack, thanks,” you got the feeling that he thought quite a lot about you was good.

Jack’s order wasn’t too complicated, so you were able to finish it quickly, which he seemed to appreciate. Even after he moved out of line to wait for his coffee, Jack had still hung around the counter, eyes nervously darting around the room as if he expected someone to jump out at him. From the few glances you were able to sneak as you poured and mixed ingredients, you almost thought he was right to worry. All these tables of girls kept whispering and giggling to each other, staring back at him with this outright, unusual intensity.

You had no idea why he was seemingly being stalked by so many people, but he was cute, so maybe that would do it. There’s a college campus across town, maybe he was on a varsity athletics team or something. You called his name and several people perked up. No one looked happier than Jack, though, and he eagerly slid over to you so he could pick up his drink.

You raised an eyebrow at his excitement, unable to hide a small smile. “Really looking forward to that coffee, huh?”

Jack had the presence of mind to blush a little. “I just want to hit the road as soon as I can.”

You took an obvious look past him. “I think I can understand that. What did you do, announce that you’d be giving away free kittens or something?”

Jack chuckled, absentmindedly scratching the back of his head. “Not quite. Do you– do you not know who I am?” He gave this pained half-laugh as he said it, like he could tell that saying something like that didn’t make him come off as the nicest.

He was cute enough that it worked, though. Cute and charming. He could get away with anything. Later, you’d learn that he usually did.

“No,” you said, and his entire face had lit up. Strange. “I’m not a mind reader,” you reminded him, “I won’t know your name unless you tell it to me.”

“Well,” he had said slowly, “I won’t mind saying it again. Maybe tomorrow morning?”

You had laughed. “I’ll see you then.”

Jack had all but beamed at you, turning around to smile at you one last time right before exiting the shop. You’d watched him go with a soft smile, shaking your head to yourself as you headed back to get the next customer’s order.

When you started mixing up the next drink, though, one of your coworkers turned to you, practically shrieking in your ear with the force of her excitement. “Am I dreaming, or was that Jack Wilder?”

You glanced at her, confused, as you reached for the oat milk. “Who?”

Your coworker’s eyes widened in horrified shock. “You must be joking. Jack Wilder? Of the Horsemen?”

You had frowned at her. “Like the four that bring about the apocalypse? He seemed nice enough to me, I doubt he’s going to bring pestilence or death upon our coffee shop.”

Your coworker had shaken her head, her eyes flickering briefly shut as if praying for strength. “No, Y/N, the Horsemen are a world famous group of magicians. They’re like, crazy good. During a show, they once robbed a bank on the opposite side of the globe.”

“So they’re criminals,” you muttered, eyebrows raised, “They sound like lovely people, then. Should I check the credit card he paid with? Maybe it was a playing card instead and I didn’t notice.”

She rolled her eyes. “He wouldn’t do that, obviously. They’re like magical Robin Hoods, they only steal from banks and bad rich people and stuff like that. Jack Wilder is a celebrity, if that’s what it takes to get through to you. He’s like, the hottest one of all of them.”

“That I can agree with,” you had grinned to yourself. He was really good looking, and sweet at the same time.

You found yourself sincerely hoping that he would come back the next morning, although the odds of that had to be low. If Jack really was a world-class celebrity, he’d probably jet across to a new country by the end of the day. He probably wouldn’t stay in one place that long, especially given the questionable legality of his day job. Coming back to the same small coffee shop was practically out of the question.

And yet, when you open up the next morning, you find yourself idly glancing outside the front window every few minutes, constantly checking to see if there’s a cute magician slipping inside your shop. Each peek down the street is rewarded with the sight of faces that aren’t his, though that doesn’t stop you from looking again.

Eventually, you decide that he’s not coming after all and there’s no point in continually craning your neck to see past the people huddled outside the main window, trying to talk themselves out of purchasing a pastry. It is only now, when you let down your guard, that you see someone approaching the counter out of the corner of your eye and announce, as if this were some great, life-changing thing: “I’m back.”

For anyone else, this would be obnoxious. However, the cute boy beaming at you did make you a promise, so it is quite important that he would be here to honor his word. You end up smiling back at him in silence for a beat too long. It takes your coworker pointedly looking at the line growing behind Jack for you to remember yourself.

“Right, right. Coffee. What can I get you this morning?”

He looks bashfully behind him, as if only realizing that it’s not just the two of you in here, too. “Um, maybe a double shot vanilla latte? Oh, and can you draw something on the top?”

You hum as you write down the order. “Any ideas, or is the art my choice?”

Jack winks at you. “I’d love your number, but that might be too long. How about a heart, since you’ve already got mine?”

Heat rushes to your cheeks, but you do your best to keep your cool. “That’s sweet. Do you flirt with all your baristas like this?”

“Only the pretty ones,�� he promises. Maybe Jack’s magic isn’t just in card tricks, but in his smooth moves as well.

As he turns around to find someplace out of the way to wait for his drink, your coworker openly stares at you, jaw dropped. “What was that?” She asks under her breath, grinning.

You just shrug, although you can’t seem to stop your lips from curling up into a poorly hidden smile. “No idea.”

Jack thanks you for his drink when it’s ready. You weren’t brave enough to give him your number, assuming he was just joking around. He’s a celebrity, you remind yourself. He could probably conjure up Margot Robbie’s number if he really wanted it. He’s not going to go for you if he could have anyone on the planet.

However, when you slide over his coffee and he immediately checks the design in the foam, pretending to pout when he sees no identifying string of digits, you start to wonder if he wasn’t kidding after all. It certainly seems that way when he shows up the next morning, and the next morning, and the next. Jack is turning into a regular, which you didn’t expect. You figured he would sweep from city to city like the rest of the Horsemen, but for some reason Jack seems inclined to stay.

He insists on getting your number about a week later, and says he won’t leave the shop until he gets it. He pretends to handcuff himself to the chair of his favorite spot, pulling the metal cuffs out of thin air and grinning at your surprised reaction. You make him stay there, locked in place, for a few more minutes just to mess with him, but in the end he walks out with your number, and when you leave that night, you find a card tucked into the pocket of your apron.

It’s the queen of hearts, although the image is less entrancing than the phone number scrawled across the front. Just in case I lost yours by accident, says the note on the back. You press it to your heart, trying to stop yourself from audibly squealing. You had promised that you wouldn’t fall for him, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep your word.

Especially not when you get a text some time later that night: Get home safe? Then: This is Jack. Although I hope you wouldn’t be confusing my number with other handsome men who also wanted to see you.

In the safety of your room, you’re free to lightly kick your heels back and forth like a kid with a schoolgirl crush. No other admirers. Just you.

Just the way I like it, is the answer, practically only a few heartbeats after your text. You might actually end up loving him if he’s not careful.

Jack comes in the next morning looking far too pleased with himself. In fact, he even goes so far as to ask when you get off work that day. He says he wants to see you without other customers getting in the way. You remind him that he, too, is a customer, and he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, asking if you want him to be something else. You don’t deign to respond to that, but you think your self-conscious smile does enough talking. He certainly laughs like it does.

Jack ends up taking you out to lunch. He makes you laugh the whole time, looking proud of himself every time he manages to elicit so much as a smile from you. He tells you stories about all the fantastic jobs he’s taken as a Horseman, even attempts to teach you a card trick or two. Several dropped decks later, both of you can freely admit that he’s got more of a knack for sleight of hand than you, but his hands have been over yours in the name of teaching his trade often enough that neither of you much mind.

It’s getting harder and harder to pretend that this is just a game to him. You do ask him once, as he’s dropping you off at your door, if he really does want this. You. Everything. Jack looks softly at you once, eyes containing all the secrets he couldn’t possibly put into words if he tried, and then he kisses you sweetly, slowly, and you know. Jack Wilder could have the whole world in his hands, but as it turns out, the only thing he wants from it is you. He’ll convince you of that as often as it takes. You can’t wait to watch him try.

requested by @hiya-itsamber, i hope you enjoy!

now you see me tag list: @mayfieldss

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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callmebrycelee · 5 days

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MY DEFINITIVE RANKING OF THE 9-1-1 SEASONS

I got into this show back during the pandemic and I have grown to love all of the characters and the storylines. Now that I've finished season 7, I thought it would be fun to rank each of the seasons. Let's start with my least favorite season and work our way up to what I believe is the best season of 9-1-1.

#7 - Season 5

Why I chose this ranking? This season felt so disjointed. I usually enjoy the disaster episodes but the 3-part season opener seemed to drag on and on. I will say that the season drastically improved when Maddie and Chimney returned from Boston. Still, it sucked to have Maddie and Chimney gone for most of the season and then Michael and David left to go to Haiti. Eddie worked at dispatch which was weird and then they killed off Claudette right as I was finally starting to like her. What a strange season. I blame the pandemic.

Fave episode? "Boston"

Least fave episode? "Wrapped in Red"

Season MVP? Henrietta "Hen" Wilson

#6 - Season 4

Why I chose this ranking? Speaking of the pandemic. I don't think this was a bad season. I quite enjoyed this season and it was the first season I got to watch live. The disaster episodes (earthquake + mudslide) wasn't as grand as the previous disaster episodes. I will say that this season did deliver a lot of solid moments. We got to see Buck's backstory. Hen started medical school. Maddie gave birth. We got Josh's backstory as well. The treasure hunt episode was super fun and we ended the season with Eddie getting shot. Now that I think about it, the only reason this season ranks for low for me is because the other seasons are just so good.

Fave episode? "Buck Begins"

Least fave episode? "Parenthood"

Season MVP? Evan "Buck" Buckley

#5 - Season 6

Why I chose this ranking? Season 6 was a vast improvement on the hot mess that was season 5. We didn't get a disaster episode this season (unless you count the bridge collapse in the last episode) but that's okay because we got to see Athena catch the guy who killed the girl she knew growing up who went missing. We also saw Hen leave medical school. Buck got struck by lightning and Bobby and Athena tracked down the people who murdered Bobby's sponsor. We saw an alternate reality where Buck met his brother Daniel and Chimney finally proposed to Maddie. P.S., she said yes!

Fave episode? "The Devil You Know" and "In Another Life"

Least fave episode? "Death and Taxes"

Season MVP? Athena Grant and Evan "Buck" Buckley

#4 - Season 1

Why I chose this ranking? Unlike the first season of its spin-off series, I quite enjoyed the first season of 9-1-1. There are a few episodes I often revisit. The only downside to this season is the tone of the episodes and the characters. There's very little humor and everyone is the worst version of themselves. Athena is angry and prideful. Bobby is miserable. Hen cheats. Chimney lies. Buck is a ho. There's no Eddie nor Maddie. However, we do have Abby and I actually liked her before her character left at the end of the season. I do think that as the season went on, they figured out who each of the characters are. Buck toned down his rakish ways and actually became likable. Bobby let his walls down finally. Athena softened. Hen made up with Karen. Chimney got some self-esteem. Overall, a solid but short season.

Fave episode? "Worst Day Ever"

Least fave episode? "Point of Origin"

Season MVP? Bobby Nash

#3 - Season 7

Why I chose this ranking? Perhaps it's recency bias but I really enjoyed this short but bittersweet season. The change from FOX to ABC was a major boon for the series. The 3-part cruise ship disaster opener was well done and you can tell that the network poured a LOT of money into the episodes. Bobby and Athena survived their Poseidon Adventure-style honeymoon just in time for their surrogate son Buck to come out as bisexual. This was a major shocker for most viewers and a great choice for the character whom some had long suspected was not straight. Pairing Buck with former 118 firefighter Tommy was brilliant and it felt good to see Buck happy this season. Next, we got to see Chimney marry Maddie. Hen and Karen fostered a little girl named Mara and Eddie cheated on his girlfriend Marisol with a woman who looks remarkably like his dead wife, Shannon. We nearly lost Bobby and poor Eddie was left single and childless by the end of the season. Usually I'm exhausted at the end of a season but this season has left me super excited for season 8.

Fave episode? "Buck, Bothered and Bewildered"

Least fave episode? "Step Nine"

Season MVP? Tommy Kinard for saving Bobby and Athena and bringing happiness to our dear Buck's life.

#2 - Season 3

Why I chose this ranking? I honestly went back and forth on my number one and two choices. I really like season 3. It's so much fun. We start things off with a disaster episode (tsunami). Tensions get high when Buck sues LAFD putting his job and friendships in jeopardy. Eddie inexplicably joined a fight club. Hen is involved in an accident that takes the life of a young woman. Everyone goes to therapy. The dispatch center is hijacked. Abby comes back and Buck is finally given closure. Athena gets brutalized and almost killed by a serial rapist. Maddie finds out she's pregnant. We meet Chimney's half-brother Albert. We also get Athena and Eddie's backstories. Overall, this season is pretty amazing.

Fave episode? ""Sink or Swim" and "The Searchers"

Least fave episode? "Rage"

Season MVP? Athena Grant

#1 - Season 2

Why I chose this ranking? Without further ado, my favorite season of 9-1-1 is season 2! This, hands down, is the best season of the show and here is why. Episode 1, we get Eddie (and his 8-pack) and Maddie. We get an earthquake disaster episode. The 118 gets dosed resulting in Bobby losing his sobriety. We meet Norman and Lola. Wet get Hen, Chimney and Bobby origin stories. Maddie was kidnapped by her deranged ex-husband and she ended up having to kill him. Eddie's wife dies and Bobby and Athena get married after a firetruck crushes Buck's leg. This season from beginning to end is perfection. The tone of this season feels lighter and brighter .

Fave episode? "This Life We Choose"

Least fave episode? "Haunted"

Season MVP? Eddie Diaz and his cute as a button kid Christopher

#abc 911 #911 abc #evan buckley #athena grant #howard chimney han #maddie buckley #eddie diaz #hen wilson #tommy kinard #christopher diaz #bucktommy #buddie #tevan #madney #bathena #henren

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cosmichorrorsarestillnicerthanme · 6 months

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Holiday Gift To A Good Friend

@ryuryuryuyurboat

Hey Yukari, think fast chucklenuts!

NOW THEN!!!

I WISH YOU HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! AND A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR!!!

Kaeya has complicated feelings about christmas…

He used to celebrate every year with Diluc and da- Mr. Rangdividr.

But now… well…

You can imagine how someone like Kaeya spends his time on the holiday’s when no one else is around.

For all of his pomp, all of his slutitude, Kaeya had very few people he could spend Christmas with.

Jean would be forced off of duty to spend time with her sister and her family, Amber would wrangle Eula, Lisa would join in, the rank and file would be having a party on christmas eve in the mess hall which had been lovingly decorated by everyone, including Klee.

And all of them made him feel like he was out of place, made him feel alone.

Maybe that’s why he was always so down during the month preceding it?

Don’t get it wrong, Kaeya loved christmas, so many happy people, so much joy, so much cheer!

It was impossible for him not to smile!

Nonetheless, he didn’t want to be alone for christmas.

It had been his wish every year since leaving Dawn Winery all those years ago.

And every year, through some miracle, it had been a wish granted.

And it was always the same person who granted that wish of his.

You.

From the first time the two of you met in the roaring snow to this year as the two of you sat cosied up next to the fire, warm cups of your beverages of choice in hand.

And Kaeya, for all his pomp, all his slutitude, could never figure out what to say.

At least until now.

“Hey.” Kaeya called.

“Yeah?” you responded.

Kaeya placed his head on your shoulder before saying.

“I love you.”

Silence pierced the room and Kaeya briefly wondered if he had just ruined it all, wouldn’t be the first time after all.

Then, you placed your head on Kaeya’s and said,

“I love you Kaeya, even if your brain is a handful of ice cubes.”

“Heh, I’ll take it.”

“Oooh! Oooh! Big Bro! Look! There! That one!” Teucer happily shouted from atop Childe’s shoulders, pointing at the store decorated with lights and with quite a few toy’s in its window.

“Ha! Ha! You got it Teucer!” Childe exclaimed in response.

Childe loved this time he got to spend with his little brother, no matter how rare it was for him to find any.

Though he does have to admit, he’s tempted to buy a few of these toys for himself.

So many interesting models, so many strange new things like a paddle with a string that connects it and a ball.

What could it be used for?

What is its name?

What genius made it?

“Hello there! How can I help you?” a voice asked.

Childe was brought out of his reverie and looked up from the strange object in his hand.

In an instant, he felt a tiny shift in himself.

It was something strange.

He wasn’t fighting so why was his heart picking up?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Childe walked out of the shop, Teucer on his shoulders with a new plush and the strange toy known as a “Paddle Ball” in his hand.

“Big bro, why were you so weird around that nice toy person?” Teucer asked, curious at how strange his elder sibling was acting.

“I… I am not sure Teucer…” Childe answered half heartedly, mind still on that person.

Why couldn’t Childe keep his mind off of them?

“Hmmm… this warrants further study.” Childe thought to himself darkly as he began to sing along happily to the songs around himself with Teucer.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

It was a good day at the shop for you.

You sold quite a few toy’s and made a lot of children happy.

Including that strange man…

Ajax was his name if memory serves.

To see a grown man’s eyes light up at even the most simplistic of toys and trinkets…

What type of life did this man lead?

Still, you doubted you would ever get an answer to that question…

Either way, it was time to lock up now!

Then another wonderful day of selling toys!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Childe hit the ball with the paddle as he sat on the bench in the park.

That was the easy part for him.

Hitting it again however, not so much.

This is illustrated by the red rubber ball completely missing the paddle and whacking him straight in the face.

“Ow…” Childe muttered as he rubbed his nose.

Why was this thing so hard to use?

It was not anything special, there wasn’t any trick to it.

Childe just needed practice, that's all.

The orange haired man let out a sigh.

Why was that toy shop owner still on his mind?

Something about you had just… ensnared him.

Had completely captured his attention.

Even now, he still felt the warmth of your hand when you handed him the toy he held now.

Why in the world was this happening?

And why-

“Oh! Hi mister Ajax!” A voice told Childe, shocking the man somewhat.

It was you.

Oh no… it was you!

He was starting to feel strange again…

His face felt warmer, his heart was beginning to race, he began to notice the smallest things in the world around him!

What were you doing to him?

And why… Why did he want to kiss you?

In his time under the protection of the Crux fleet, Kazuha had noticed many things about his Captain.

She was always aware of everything on her ship.

She always knew what everyone on her ship felt like.

She had a strange talent for drinking anyone under the table without getting drunk herself.

She always, without fail, kept to a strangely exact schedule concerning where the ship went.

She had a small, tattered, picture that would always make her smile when she looked at it no matter what.

She always had the ship make port at Liyue Harbor at least two times every year.

She always spent those times in Liyue with someone he had never met.

Kazuha had a few hunches on who that person was to his Captain. All of them made him quite happy for his Captain.

Though he did have to wonder, what did his Captain get that person for their birthday and the holidays?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Beidou held a small black box in her hand as she exited the jeweler.

She then immediately turned into one of Liyue’s few empty alley’s.

The Pirate Queen had never been this terrified in her life.

It’s strange.

She had faced down all kinds of things that could’ve killed her a thousand times over by now.

But this thing in her hands?

It scared her a thousand times more than all of those put together.

Why?

She was deeply in love with you, the fact that she was going to ask you to marry her tonight of all nights should be proof of that.

Yet, she was still scared…

Beidou knew what she was scared of, but didn’t dare voice it in her thoughts.

She couldn’t.

If she did… she might not go through with this.

And she had to go through with this.

She wanted to spend the rest of her life with you after all.

And Beidou always got what she desired.

It was in her job description as a pirate.

So she was going to do this.

She was going to do this.

She was going to do this!

SHE WAS GOING TO DO THIS!!!

“I. WILL. DO. THIS.” Beidou exclaimed loudly to herself, hyping herself up for what she was about to do.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

That night, the crew of the Crux was given a very special surprise when their captain returned for the holiday party.

Their captain, a ring on her finger and holding her spouse close.

That night, a great many members of the crew lost a great amount of Mora.

Mora, which all ended up in Kazuha’s hands.

The woman in blue rushed around like the entire world was burning down around her.

This would not be a… overly dramatic statement of Furina’s current predicament.

Furina had tried to cook you something special for the holidays.

It, unsurprisingly, did not go well.

The drapes were charred and soaked, several dozen plates were smashed on the floor, the food she had tried to create seemed to have gained sentience and was now eating the pot it was born in.

In summary, Furina failed miserably at everything she had tried to do in cooking you some food outside of Macaroni And Cheese.

She wished she could say she was surprised at this.

She wasn’t though.

Oh by Celestia how was she going to fix this by the time you got back?

“Unless…” your all too loveable scamp of a wife muttered.

A devious plan hatched in Furina’s mind.

“Heh, heh, heh, I think it is time to show you off!” your wife said with a sinister chuckle.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

You were definitely not expecting this to be how everyone found out who your wife was.

Yes, your wife just so happened to be Furina.

It's nothing worth all the uproar being caused by everyone you know.

She was just like everyone else.

Well, not really.

She is hopeless as a cook unless it has to do with Macaroni And Cheese.

You got the feeling that this sudden desire to show you off on the holidays had something to do with that.

Still, you weren’t going to waste any time you could spend with Furina.

Not to mention, you had a gift to give her.

And now that she was showing you off?

It was the perfect time to give her something more permanent than the two strange rings of Macaroni And Cheese she initially proposed to you with in the heat of the moment while making said dish.

Still, the true rings would be put on display.

These were just to ensure that nothing broke those precious things.

You don’t think Furina would be able to forgive herself if hers broke.

She was like that with you.

And you loved her for it.

Also, why did Furina smell like burned food?

The pit in your stomach continued to grow.

You got the feeling she had ulterior motives for having you out like this.

But you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

#favoniuslibrary #nouveau livre #furina x reader #beidou x y/n #beidou x reader #childe #tartaglia #childe tartaglia ajax #ajax #kaeya x reader #childe x reader

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twst-drabbles · 6 months

Text

Dire 8

Summary: In the midst of Crowley’s attempt to keep you in line, a random passerby witnessed you burst his head with a simple breath.

(Hmmm horror time. I need horror. And more Dire Crowley. And horror for Dire Crowley. Kinda messy and all over the place honestly. Excuse that.)

You are… a very strange addition to say the least. To anyone that barely knew you, that only took light glances on your everyday routine, you were weak. Not the frail, pathetic kind of weak you’d see in people like Shiloh/Tul’Veith, but the boring kind.

It’s easy to look over you. Easy to ignore and just leave be because there isn’t a point in messing with someone that a lot of people liked. You were already the dog of the Headmage and nobody wants to risk getting expelled.

Well, at least that’s what this one student from Heartslabyul thought about you. He wasn’t one to hurt anyone but he does like to heckle just a little bit. Nothing too bad. He can’t help it. The stress of dealing with his Housewarden gets to him sometimes.

He wasn’t looking for you. You were the last thing on his mind, but the combined voices of Headmage Crowley and yours ended up catching his attention as he passed through the halls.

The student paused and hid his body behind a corner.

Pages of a floating book flipped before the mask of Headmage Dire Crowley.

“Lately,” the book closed with an echoing thump, “I’ve been finding more and more of these strange books inside the library. You wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with it, would you?”

His claws tapped against his cane as he gestured for the book to float right over his shoulder, as though he didn’t trust you enough to be close to it.

You didn’t look any different than the times he’s shared class with you. You’re still smiling, still with that straight back and stable footing, as though threats simply didn’t exist. As though you felt you were equal to the mages-in-training.

It’s annoying, but the student had better things to do than put you in your place. Besides, the way you stared and the almost mechanical timing of your blinks was just… gross? Uncomfortable? Unnatural. Yeah, unnatural.

“Yes, actually,” you clapped your hands, congratulating him in a way that just came off as mocking no matter which angle the student looked at it, “they’re nothing more than my notes I paid to be made into actual books. The club I established is full of wonderful talents, don’t you think?”

“And what do you hope to gain from sneaking them into Night Raven College’s library? It’s not a place for handmade things such as yours.”

It wasn’t anger. Nothing smoldering like that, but it registered as an accusation nonetheless. Suspicion from a man that is the definition of suspicious himself. These strange creatures and events that center themselves around this college don’t hold the Headmage’s focus. Well, that’s not quite right. It’s more Headmage Crowley wants to ignore everything going on, as though it doesn’t matter to him.

Knowing him from the reputation that’s been whispered by his peers and friends, Headmage Crowley was probably passing off all these problems to you. From what he hears, you don’t really have a choice and are a student by his “mercy.” Ugh, sucks to be on that end of the stick.

“If you’re wondering, it’s nothing horrible. I’m not out to curse anyone or break anything. Knowledge is power and I intend to spread it.” The air around you never changed. It was as light as ever. “They will need it.”

“What they need is the ability to harness their potential on their own. In my eyes, this is clearly a ploy to recruit more people into this ‘club’ of yours. And from what I’ve seen, it’s been working. And I’m asking you to stop before I reach the ends of my mercy.”

… the student has seen those covers before. A pile of them really, right on his roommate’s desk, stacked high up like a tower. He just thought it was the latest hot book.

“Dire Crowley,” you leaned forward, thinning your eyes as though gazing at him with fondness, “Don’t blink.”

And you breathed out, gently, as though putting out a flame. And like an artist violently smearing paint across an empty canvas, Dire Crowley’s head splattered into the air. His body careened back but never fell over, as though a puppet string was tied into his spine.

It was a gore puzzle made real. The skin of his neck ripped jaggedly from the jaw, pieces of bone lazily spun and floated in the air, and the student caught the eyes beneath the mask still rolling around in their sockets. Trapped in a moment in time.

The student was sewn in place. He couldn’t run. He can’t.

“Look at your head,” you stroked a string of bloody brain matter as it refused to obey gravity’s command, “filled to the brim with dreams. Bursting with possibilities. You would make a fine meal or a fine friend for any of my kin.”

You breathed in and everything slotted back into place. Headmage Crowley was upright once more before he wasn’t.

He fell to his knees, dropping his cane in favor of his face, his head. He dug his nails into his skull, as though trying to find the lines were his skull came apart, but you reached down and pried his claws out.

He made himself bleed.

“Oh don’t be so worried, I didn’t actually give you death,” you waved the idea away with a smile, “I’m simply… sharing a memory. Interesting, right? The ways the body can die with the breath of a monster.”

“What��” Headmage Crowley looked at you, gulped, but didn’t demand more.

“We have the same goal: we both wish for these students to grasp at their own potential. Of course, my method is a little more… invasive than most, but it’s needed. They need to prepare, because with these visitors, death becomes a luxury. So I ask that these books stay, so that these students may still find a way to return to themselves.”

You had cast a glance over his way, and that's all the permission needed for the student to stumble on his feet and run far away from there.

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst-drabbles #twst-drabbles exclusive #night raven college staff #dire #dire crowley #drabble #eldritch au #reader insert

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nikethestatue · 5 months

Text

A Match Baked In Heaven

Chapter XII

The Moan

“I want buns of steel. But also, buns of cinnamon,” Elain Archeron muttered, as she pulled out a pan of cinnamon buns from the oven. It was a strange choice, but this was Feyre’s favourite treat, and Elain felt that she owed it to her sister on her birthday.

Elain was running late. But there was a lot to do.

Feyre had changed her mind at the last minute, and they weren’t going to a Moroccan restaurant anymore. Instead, the restaurant was catering, the party was at Feyre’s loft, and Elain was tasked with making desserts. And there were thirty people invited, though with Feyre’s friends, it was quite possible that many more would drop by.

Now, Elain was running behind. She had to make a cake too, because Feyre requested her cake, and not one from a bakery. Elain was pretty proud of the cake, though she had no idea how she was going to transport it and carry it, but she wasn’t concerned about the logistics right now.

“Piglet, you are being very rude,” she told her pug. Predictably, she received no response.

As she mixed icing sugar, lemon juice and double cream for the icing, she continued, “That’s fine. It’s entirely up to you if you want to play introvert today. However, don’t expect treats then. You can’t be a glum introvert and still want treats.”

To that, Piglet expanded a mournful moan.

“No,” Elain said. “I don’t even know if you’ll get your Advent Calendar treat today. Unless daddy wants to give it to you, don’t count on me.”

Piglet looked sadly at his calendar, sniffling and barking weakly.

In about ten minutes, he raised his head, but didn’t get up. But Elain knew why–because in the next moment, the doorbell rang.

God she was running really, really late!

Wiping her hands with a towel, Elain fluffed up her hair–she wasn’t even sure why she was doing that–and went to the door.

When she opened it she was faced with not one, not two, but three men.

Three giant men. They looked wild, and dangerous, and beautiful. Not the men of this age or this time. They seemed ancient and powerful, like the warriors of old.

Not to say that they were dressed in armour or anything.

In fact, all three were wearing identical black suits, which probably cost as much as a downpayment for a house, and white shirts, open to various lengths on their brown, muscular chests.

Elain whooshed out a breath.

Her lady parts did a funny squeezie-squeeze, especially at the sight of Azriel Night, whose dark golden skin contrasted gorgeously with the white shirt and the black tattoos that snaked from under the collar of his shirt.

“Gentlemen,” she said at last. “Please, come in.”

“Ready for us, beautiful?” Azriel smiled and winked at her.

“Yeah, all three of you…”

Initially, Azriel self-invited himself to be Elain’s date to the birthday party. That was followed by him telling her that he’d be bringing Rhysand as well, since Rhysand needed to be introduced to Feyre. But, apparently, Cassian was also ready to party, since he was standing right here, smirking and looming over everything and everyone.

“Brothers, let me introduce you properly,” Azriel announced, once they were inside. “Lady Elain Archeron, my future wife and the future mother of my children.”

“Ohmygod,” was all Elain managed to breathe, her eyes wide and her cheeks red.

Cassian chuckled under his breath.

“Az is mental. Don’t mind him,” Cassian waved his hand, as he shouldered his way in.

He was strikingly handsome in a rough, lumberjack-chic kind of a way. Big. At least 6”6. He was probably a Viking or something like that in the past life. A Fae General. A chieftain, who’d smear himself in paint and fight the enemies with all sorts of terrifying weapons. He looked mighty fine in his bespoke suit, but it seems like all these modern trappings were little more than a nuisance to him, and he’d be just as comfortable in some fighting leathers.

“Hi Elain!” he boomed, looking around and whistling softly. “Nice digs, Lady. I’ve seen castles that aren’t as fancy as this. Is it too late for me to become a matchmaker?”

Elain smiled and he pulled her in for a quick hug.

“You are my future sis-in-law apparently!”

“Oh god, Cassian, not you too!” she moaned.

“Step aside, Lothario,” Azriel hissed at him and Cassian laughed.

“I’d be worried too. He knows I am irresistible to the ladies,” he announced proudly.

“I am positive that Lady Elain can resist you.”

With that, the third man, a lithe, tall, slender, muscular specimen, with an aristocratic bearing, a bit of a posh sneer, and an impressively beautiful face, pushed past Cassian and then gently took Elain’s hand and brought it to his lips.

“Lady Elain Archeron. Allow me to introduce myself. Rhysand Darling.”

“Just Elain,” she told him, but curtsied nevertheless, adding, “Lord Darling.”

He smiled. He reeked of elegance and good breeding.

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting the woman who’s bewitched my surly brother.”

“I am not surly,” Azriel threw with a frown.

Elain reached for him and then took Azriel’s hand in hers.

“He is alright,” she approved, smiling at him. “He’s grown on me.”

“I believe you know my mother and my sister,” Rhysand commented, as he clasped his hands behind his back and circled the formal living room and the parlour, admiring the art on the walls.

“Kandinsky,” he muttered to himself.

“I do,” Elain confirmed. “Lady Selene and the Duchess are members of the Women’s Institute, as are my sisters and I.”

“Wait, what?” Cassian gaped at the two of them. “You know each other? You know Selene?”

“We circulate in the same places,” Elain said vaguely.

Scowling, Azriel growled, “Yeah, with the Queen, right?”

“Her Majesty was a member of the Institute as well. The Sandringham Chapter to be precise,”

“You met the Queen?” Cassian gawked at her like she suddenly started juggling fire balls.

“Elain is a Lady,” Azriel said with a sigh, looking somehow depressed about it.

Elain held his hand in hers and gently rubbed her thumb over his pulse. When Azriel looked at her, she was smiling at him and that smile managed to calm him down somehow. Like Elain didn’t care about the difference in their upbringing, and she liked him for…him.

So Azriel smiled back at her and then whispered, “you aren’t even ready yet.”

“I’ve been baking.”

Azriel smiled excitedly and said, “I can’t wait to eat it! You know, matchy….Ours, is a match baked in heaven.”

“You are so ridiculous, I love it!” Elain stared at him, but then couldn’t help but laugh.

“I am not ridiculous! I am right,” he argued.

“Where is the little beastie with the bows?” Cassian looked around, seeking out Piglet.

Azriel frowned and also twisted his head this way and that way.

“Where is little matey?”

Elain pursed her lips and then pointed to the sofa in the family room.

“There he is. Being dramatic.”

And after a pause, added, “and RUDE! We have guests, and you are being absolutely rude!”

Azriel rushed to the pug.

Piglet was still dressed in his onesie, laying on the sofa arm, unmoving.

Depressed Piglet

“Pinky, my lovie, what’s wrong?” Azriel cooed, stroking the pug’s back.

Piglet didn’t move and just lay there listlessly, his little short legs draped over the sofa arm. Azriel nosed into his back and whispered, “what’s wrong? Daddy is home. I’ll take care of my boy.” He then picked Piglet up and cradled him to his chest.

“He is depressed,” Elain threw, while Rhysand watched Azriel fuss over the dog with amusement.

“Depressed?!?!” Azriel gasped. “Why? What made him depressed?”

Elain crossed her arms on her chest, and said, her voice laced with disappointment.

“We went to the vet today: to get Piglet’s longevity shots. It was a substitute vet–not his usual one–so he gave him a check up too.”

“Is he okay?” Azriel exclaimed in fright. “Is he sick?!”

Rhysand snorted a laugh at Azriel’s reaction. Azriel didn’t even look at him, while flipping him the bird.

“Whoa, is the doggo okay?” Cassian also asked, worried.

“He is fine. But the vet said that he is,” she took a piece of paper off the counter, and read out loud, “mildly anxious, highly spirited, overweight, overall well-adjusted, but with an extreme case of separation anxiety.”

As she repeated the diagnosis, Piglet released a tragic howl, before burrowing into Azriel’s neck.

“And he’s been like this ever since we came back.”

Azriel rocked Piglet back and forth in his embrace, kissing the top of his head.

“Don’t listen to the stupid vet. You aren’t overweight. You are just plump. And that’s okay. You are built for feed, not speed.”

Rhys laughed again, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of the scene.

“And it’s okay to have separation anxiety. I am anxious every time I am separated from Ellie. And from you.”

“What exactly are longevity shots?” Rhys asked, cocking his head.

“They are illegal!” Elain announced proudly.

“Illegal?”

“Yes. They are stem cell shots. Not legal here. But I am not having my dog die–ever. So he gets his longevity shots every six months.”

“Must be a pricey enterprise?”

“It is. Three thousand a pop. And I don’t care. It’s worth it.”

“Worth it,” Azriel agreed, and then gently pulled Piglet away from his neck and looked into his big, sad eyes.

“Baby boy, do you want to go to a party?” he asked. “Do you want to be the star? You'll wear the nicest outfit and you’ll have so much fun there. Everyone will be loving on you. What do you say?”

Piglet sniffled, clearly needing more encouragement.

“There will be snacks,” Cassian added.

“Yes. And cake. And maybe chicken nuggies! They are your faves!”

“He likes chicken nuggets?” Rhys asked, chuckling.

“They are chicken meatballs, but we call them ‘chicken nuggies’,” Azriel explained.

And then, he started signing. And dancing. With Piglet dangling in his hands, Azriel sang to the tune of Jose Feliciano’s ‘Feliz Navidad’:

Please feed the dog

I am so hungry

I don’t wanna starve!

I want a bucket of chicken nuggies!

And a slice of meatloaf

Everyone stared at him, slack-jawed.

“Jesus Mary and Joseph,” Rhys whispered in horrified awe. “Do we need an intervention?”

“Don’t get in between a man and his dog,” Cassian warned.

The dog meanwhile, bobbed his head to the song, finally coming to, and returning to his normal self.

“Did he get snacks today?” Azriel asked Elain. “He looks a little thin.”

“Yeah, he lost 5 kilos because he didn’t have snacks today,” she threw tartly, still displeased with Piglet’s attitude and behaviour.

“Okay, can we at least do the Advent Calendar?” Azriel pleaded, while Piglet slipped from his hands and then trotted happily to the huntboard and got on his hind leg, waiting for his daily treat.

“Oh, really? Now he is ready?” Elain asked dryly, staring Piglet down, who turned away from her and towards a much safer Azriel. And he even sweetened the deal with a smile, grinning at his dad, and showing a full row of his tiny little crooked teeth.

“He is ready!” Azriel announced excitedly, and then there was a whole argument between him and Cassian over who is going to break the slat and take out the treat. Cassian won, because he declared that he ‘never gets to do it, but Azriel gets to do it all the time!’ With that, he broke the seal, took out a small chewable treat shaped like a bone and broke it in half, before Azriel could stop him.

“Oh no!”

“What?” Cassian asked, alarmed, while Piglet crunched on half the snack.

“You don’t understand…it’s dog maths,”

“What?”

With a deep sigh, Azriel explained, “If you break a treat into two, that actually means zero treats. Or, for example, when dinner is at 7 pm, but you serve dinner at 7:02 pm, that means that you are two hours late. Though if you serve dinner at 6 pm, you are also two hours late.

“Anything that is human food is also dog food, but dog food is only dog food. In addition, human food is not counted towards food or snacks, therefore, it could be consumed in unlimited amounts.”

Rhys was shaking with laughter, while Cassian was clearly doing some complex calculations in his head, as he listened to Azriel. He fed Piglet the second part of the treat, and then confirmed, “So this means he did not receive a treat at all?”

“Exactly. A broken treat does not count as a treat.”

“I am adopting dog maths for all my maths,” Rhys decided right then and there.

Elain was watching the brouhaha with a shake of her head, before she asked, “May I count on you three, gentlemen, to undress him, put this tie on him, and then put his coat on.”

She handed Azriel a brown chequered tie and a Burberry jacket for the dog, but he in turn handed it to Cassian and said, “I am going to go help my girl out.”

It’s not that Elain needed help exactly, but she didn’t mind it either. Cassian looked at the dog attire uncertainly, gnawing on his lip, and then told Rhys ‘you are helping’.

“He likes to escape,” Azriel offered helpfully, as he ran after Elain up the stairs.

The moment the other two men were out of sight, he lifted her in his arms and pressed his face into her neck, inhaling deeply.

“I’ve missed my girl,” he murmured, dragging his nose over her jawline, up her cheek, kissing her softly and slowly.

“Azriel,” she moaned into his hair, grabbing the back of his neck.

“Let’s fuck off and not go to the party, send Cass, Rhys and pug, and stay in and fuck?” he proposed, hope shining in his eyes.

She laughed softly and said, “I think my sister might be a bit affronted if I didn’t attend her 25th birthday so I could stay home and fuck, as you put it.”

“Who, Fey? Fey wouldn’t care!” he blew his cheeks, “she is our shipper!”

“What?”

“She ships us hard. Wants us to be together!”

“Is this your dark romance lingo?”

“You should join the dark romance revolution,” he suggested. “You can join our Book Club,”

“Wait, you have a book club?”

“Yes, we do. But shit, you can’t! No girls allowed,” he shrugged apologetically.

“You have an all-men Book Club where you read dark romances?” she asked incredulously.

“Yeah. We are not sexist or anything. We read romances and smut.”

“You just said that no girls are allowed in your Book Club. That’s the definition of ‘sexist’.”

He frowned, thinking, while he deposited her on the floor in their bedroom, and plopped down on the bed himself.

“Oh yeah. Oh, well, a little sexist. But not super sexist.”

“Oh, well, phew. As long as you aren’t super sexist!”

Rolling on his side, and propping his head, he gave her a heated, lascivious look and said,

“Come on, strip, baby. Show me what you are wearing!”

“Since when did our relationship include stripping?” she pondered, as she disappeared in the walk-in closet.

“Not yet, but it should include plenty of stripping,” he decided. “I am all stripping-ready and if you’d like me to, I can strip right now.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Elain didn’t seem surprised.

Downstairs, it seemed that the two humans lost control of the situation pretty quickly. There was banging, suspicious crashing, curses and little claws clacking frantically on the floor. Cries of ‘hold him!’ and ‘shit’ and ‘why is he so fast’ peppered the commotion.

Azriel was smiling, listening to the chaos. He did warn them.

“This? Or this?”

When he glanced at Elain, his jaw dropped. Everything was forgotten.

If the house was on fire, he wouldn't have cared.

Because his naughty Elain came out, holding two hangers in her hands, and wearing nothing but a tiny, lacy, baby blue lingerie set. It hugged her generous form very deliciously and was basically see-through, which made Azriel swallow audibly. He asked for stripping and well, here they were. He could clearly see her full breasts and the pink nipples beneath the gossamer-thin material. And the way her knickers wrapped around the round hips just so…the firm, but ample thighs…

“Nu!” she pressed.

“What?” he asked, looking dazed.

At that point though, Piglet tore through the bedroom. He looked a proper state. Half of his onesie was hanging off his body, and he zoomed wildly around the bedroom, diving under the bed, before emerging and repeating his frantic circle.

From downstairs, they heard Rhys’s disgruntled holler, “What is this dog on?! What’s in the longevity shots? Cocaine?! I bet it’s coke!”

Elain stood there, almost naked, laughing, while Azriel devoured her with his eyes.

Piglet stopped his zooming and gave the situation an assessing gaze, looking whether any serial killers needed sorting out. Having not found any, he gave everyone a victorious bark and then bounded out the bedroom and down the stairs.

“Hold him on the right!” Cassian shouted.

“He is too fast!” Rhys screamed back, “how’s he so fast when he only has three legs!”

“Bribe him with a strawberry or a piece of cheese!” Azriel yelled in turn, not taking his eyes off Elain.

She grumbled, “how many men over 6”5 does it take to dress a three-legged pug?”

Azriel sat up on the bed and whispered, “Come here, baby.”

“Why do I feel like if I do, then we might not be leaving here at all?”

“You might be correct, but maybe, just maybe, if I touch some of these fleshy soft bits,”

“WHAT? Fleshy soft bits??” she gasped incredulously, while Azriel’s very long arm wrapped around her hips and he pushed her closer.

“Such,” he kissed her, in fact, soft belly, “fine,” another kiss right below her breast, “fleshy,” and his lips landed on the side of her waist, where it curved sensually and where he licked a path down to her hip, “soft,” and he lightly bit the spot just above the lacy band of her underwear, “bits,” and he inhaled so hard with his face against the mound of her sex that a satisfied, raw groan of pleasure reverberated deep within his chest.

Elain almost fainted, when suddenly, he wrapped his mouth over the lips of her pussy, biting them gently through the material of the underwear.

“My god,” she gasped, not knowing whether to push him away, or to pull his face closer and into her slit.

He dragged his tongue against the seam of her folds, and muttered hoarsely, his voice rough and harsher than usual, “do you know how much I’ve dreamt about eating your pussy? How much I want to watch you coming on my tongue?”

“My god, Azriel,” Elain managed to growl out, while he filled his huge palms with the flesh of her round ass cheeks. His thumbs stroked her skin, while he kissed her thighs, around her belly button, before gladly sinking his teeth into her breast and biting her nipple.

“I will be your god, my beautiful Elain,” he promised. “Once I make you come, you’ll understand the definition of ‘my god’.”

“So confident.”

“Oh I am.”

He pulled back a bit, and told her, “Gotta confess. A nice bare pink pussy is my kryptonite.”

“I suppose I fit the bill then?”

“You do. You always do.”

She picked up the two dresses that she had dropped on the floor and showed them to him again.

One was a wintry, knit dress, which no doubt, would look mighty fine wrapped over her form. The other, was a much more formal dress, in some ways sculptural, made of some type of heavy satin. It was cream, tailored and spectacular.

“This is more practical,” Elain said, lifting the knit dress. “I can wear it with tall boots and I think it would look nice,”

“No,” he said flatly.

“No?”

“You aren’t going to look ‘nice’. You’ll look stunning. ‘Nice’ is not for Elain Archeron. It’s not for my girl.”

She bit her lip adorably, considering his words, while he was watching her like a hungry hound.

“I do have these shoes that I’ve been dying to wear, but they are open and it’s December.”

“Bring the shoes,” he ordered simply. “You’ll put them on there.”

“Okay,” she agreed, though it didn’t seem like she needed a lot of encouragement.

…Downstairs, Cassian had Piglet in some kind of MMA headlock, while Rhysand was attempting to put the jacket on the pug.

Small wins: they succeeded in taking the onesie off. And Piglet had a tie around his neck, even if it was all skewed.

The jacket was proving to be a challenge.

“You two seriously cannot be trusted with a dog,” Azriel lamented, watching the pathetic display.

“Fuck, Elain,” Cassian gasped. “You look…wow. You look really beautiful.”

Azriel immediately wrapped a possessive, proprietary arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him.

“Thank you, Cassian,” Elain smiled and then snapped her fingers.

With frightening ease, Piglet broke out of Cassian’s hold, showing that he was just indulging them and that they never stood a chance. He also grabbed the jacket out of Rhys’s hands and trotted to Elain, handing it to her.

“Are you going to be a good boy tonight?” she asked, as she dressed him in about 47 seconds. “It’s Aunt Fey’s birthday and you have to be nice to her. She’ll want to give you hugs,” at that Piglet sighed, “and you have to give her hugs.”

Piglet led the charge, and when he saw Dev and Dev asked to ‘shake’, he shook with him. Azriel was carrying the birthday cake, internally freaking out. That was a heavy responsibility. Rhysand was charged with carrying the cinnamon buns and the pastries. Somehow, Cassian ended up without a task, however, once they piled into the car, he was responsible for holding Piglet in his lap. Elain carried and touched nothing other than her purse.

“Camden then?” Dev confirmed with Elain.

“Yes,” Elain nodded, sandwiched between Azriel and Rhysand, and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of testosterone in the car. The most amorous sensations came from Azriel’s side, whose scent she wanted to drown in. The heat of body, the muscular arm that pressed into hers, the very sight of his gorgeous throat which she wanted to kiss and lick and bite had her squirming in her seat, pressing her thighs together. Azriel gave her a side glance and smirked.

“You feeling okay, baby?” he asked lightly.

“Oh, just splendid!” she assured him tartly.

“You sure? You seem a bit squirmy there,”

“Oh, quite positive. Just setting in,” she offered him a fake smile.

“Anything I can do to help you? Settle in, that is?”

“Doing okay on my own,”

“It would seem so. Perhaps you’ve been doing it on your own for a bit too long…and might require a helping hand after all?”

Cassian squinted at them, stroking Piglet’s head, looking absolutely and hysterically ridiculous holding a dressed up pug. Elain kept averting her eyes from the two of them, because she knew that she was about to burst into laughter.

“Is this some kind of sex talk?” Cassian asked suspiciously.

Rhys smiled a brief smile, and it occurred to Elain that nothing much escaped this man.

“Ellie doesn’t do sex talks,” Azriel told him.

“Hmmm…sounds like sex talk,” Cassian insisted. “Will there be girls at this party?”

“Quite a few,” Elain nodded.

“Okay, maybe I’ll hook up with someone.”

“You are not going there to hook up!” Rhys warned him.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not an American frat party where you are going to be shagging someone in an empty bedroom. We are going to a birthday party. And we weren’t even invited!”

“I was invited,” Azriel argued.

“Technically, you weren’t,” Rhys argued. “You are going as Elain’s date.”

“Oh.”

“Then what am I?” Cassian wondered.

“Piglet’s date,” Elain joked. “Listen, it’s fine. You were all technically invited. Feyre wanted to meet everyone. She is quite taken with Azriel already. I am sure you’ll impress her as well. Now, impressing my older sister Nesta might be a little more difficult.”

“Oh yeah?” Cassian instantly leaned forward, as if the challenge of impressing Nesta intrigued him.

“Nesta is…complicated,” was all Elain said.

“Is she as beautiful as you?” Cassian queried.

Elain got all adorably pink and flustered and Azriel gave his brother an unimpressed look.

“Nesta is very attractive,” Azriel growled, stroking the side of Elain’s neck with his thumb. “But no one is as beautiful as Elain.”

Elain lit up like a Christmas tree at his words, blushing and smiling and trying to hide, but he only kissed her temple and held her closer.

When Rhysand heard ‘Camden’ he did not expect this. He wasn’t exactly a Camden type of a person, so he wondered if he’d stick out like a sore thumb in the Camden crowd. He was an Old Etonian. But when they arrived, he breathed a sigh of relief and reminded himself that the Archerons weren’t exactly poor. They stopped next to a sprawling refurbished industrial building. It was old London brick–dark and dirtied with age, which gave it character. There were a couple of huge windows, now brightly lit up, and behind the house was a canal and a little dock. This was nice.

Cassian got out first, and Piglet confidently trotted to the door and barked, announcing his arrival. Azriel was last, holding on that cake like his life depended on it. Rhysand smiled. Azriel was such a good boyfriend. Who would’ve thought? But he turned out to be the exemplary boyfriend, who was utterly obsessed with Elain. To an unhealthy degree, in Rhys’s opinion. Azriel already marked his body permanently with all things Elain. If this didn’t go well and ended in a way that Azriel wasn’t expecting, well…it would get messy. Hearts would be broken. Dreams would be shattered. Tattoos would have to be removed or covered up…

The door opened and a tall, very slim woman stood in front of them. That she was Elain’s sister was obvious. But her face was sharper, the eyes a steely grey-blue, long golden brown hair tied into a no-nonsense chignon at the nape of her neck. She wore a simple pearl-grey dress, well-tailored, but without frills, and a huge diamond and emerald brooch, a la the late Queen.

For a moment, she just stood there, assessing them all with an unflinching gaze.

“Are you Nesta?” Cassian suddenly stepped forward, his attention wholly on the willowy, busty beauty in front of him.

“You are late,” she said instead, ignoring him.

“We aren’t!” Elain argued. “The party doesn’t start until six and we have plenty of time to prepare.”

Cassian wasn’t deterred and announced, “I am Cassian!”

“Congratulations,” Nesta said. Then, she asked Elain, “What is this? A reverse harem?”

Before the confused Elain could answer, Cassian asked excitedly,

“Oh, a fellow reverse harem lover?! Very nice. What’s your favourite book?”

Nesta gave him a puzzled, but intrigued look, while he continued, undeterred,

“Mine is “The Kings’ Wife’! What’s yours?”

“‘Forget-Me-Not Bombshell’,” she answered flatly, surprising everyone. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Behind Nesta, they heard an excited voice, and an exclamation, “Elain, this cake!!! Oh my goddess! It’s crazy beautiful!! Piggy! Come…Come! Give me hugs! Come to me, my good boy.”

Piglet muscled his way between the sea of legs, and hopped towards the birthday girl, being a good boy, just like he promised.

She sat on the floor and accepted him in her arms, taking off his coat.

“Welcome everyone!” she said loudly.

“Thank you for having us,” Rhys said ahead of everyone. He wasn’t sure why.

And then, her eyes landed on him.

Feyre. What a name.

A gently lovely girl, with blue eyes and brown hair, and a scattering of visible freckles all over her nose and cheeks. Not a beauty like Elain. Not as striking as Nesta. And yet…

“I’ve heard your voice,” she suddenly said, her luminous eyes firmly planted on Rhys’s face.

“Pardon?” he stuttered.

“It was like you called me,” she continued, “and I heard you. Your voice. Across the hills, calling me. I think it was in a dream,” she laughed nervously. “But your voice was very distinctive.”

“Well, then I am glad that I am the man of your dreams. Literally.”

At that, Feyre laughed, but it was nervous, as if there was a grain of truth in his voice.

Rhys continued,

“Happy birthday, Feyre darling.”

She got up from the floor, still holding the pug. Piglet looked between the two of them with a smug look on his squished face. Like he knew something they didn’t.

“Are you Rhysand?” she asked shyly.

“I am Rhysand,” he confirmed. “You’ve heard of me?”

“I have. Apparently, I’ve also heard you. Welcome.”

Like her sisters, Feyre also wore a plain dress, of deep dark blue velvet. It was simple, but form-fitting, exposing her elegant neck. She didn’t wear any jewellery and at that, Rhys smirked and reached into his jacket pocket. He stepped closer to the birthday girl, ignoring all the curious stares from his brothers and her sisters, and then took out a flat black box and handed it to her.

“For you.”

Feyre blushed prettily and looked up at him from under her long lashes.

“A gift? For me?” she repeated, taking the box from him.

“A pretty gift for a pretty girl,” he smiled, smoothly opening the lid and suddenly taking out a…crown. A diadem.

Nesta stared at the gift, and so did Cassian, and even Azriel, with complete astonishment.

It was a delicate band of white gold, shaped like a branch, studded in places with tiny diamonds and lapis lazuli.

“A crown for the lady.”

Rhys smiled at Feyre, whose eyes were as big as saucers and then gently placed the diadem upon her head, effectively crowning her.

“Well, now it’s perfect.”

“I…my…I can’t…” Feyre began to babble frantically, but Rhys only offered an indulgent smile and said, “of course you can. Now, did you know that Piglet loves me and allowed me to dress him?” he lied.

“Oh no way! Really?!” she exclaimed, totally falling for his bullshit. “He could be so standoffish. And if he wants to zoom…well, then you can’t even catch him!”

“No?! You don’t say?” Rhys pretended to be shocked, while offering her his arm.

She took it easily, still clutching Piglet to her, her eyes never leaving Rhys’s face.

“May I tell you something?” she requested.

“Well, of course! What is it?”

“I think that you are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” she gushed. “And I thought that Azriel was handsome,”

“Well, he is another pretty face for sure. But not as pretty as mine,” Rhys winked at her, and they disappeared inside the huge loft, joking and laughing.

“Did he just give her a tiara?” Nesta questioned in disbelief.

“Yeah…who needs soup when you can just get a tiara,” Elain agreed.

Turning abruptly to Cassian, Nesta said, “Help me please.”

“With pleasure,” he grinned.

“I’ll let Elain take her coat off, but please bring the cake into the kitchen,” Nesta commanded, picking up the boxes with buns and pastries, while Cassian lifted the cake.

“Be careful with your bear paws,” she warned him sternly.

“Well, don’t stress me out!” he threw back, and they also disappeared inside the cavernous house, sniping and bickering playfully.

“Well, I don’t know what just happened there,” Azriel twirled his finger in the direction of his brothers, “but something did.”

Feyre’s place was wonderful, though very different from Elain’s. The floors were dark, old wide planks, the walls–exposed brick, shiplap, stucco, there were beams above, and soaring ceilings, impressive windows and all sorts of interesting industrial touches.

“I like our house better,” Azriel decided easily, after he looked around.

Elain smiled at his bluntness, finally taking off her coat. She sat on the arm of the sofa, and unzipped her boots. They were in a small sitting room, where Feyre usually watched TV. Just behind the wall, they heard laughter, clinking of glasses, and the arrival of more guests. Excited compliments of ‘Feyre, look at your tiara!’ ‘Fey are you wearing a crown?!’ ‘Feyre, you are a proper high noble lady’, ‘Should we call you Lady Feyre?’ and so on. They also heard Piglet squealing and galloping around, yelling wawabawa akwakwaka which was his usual call for snacks. Since he was ‘depressed’ earlier today, his snack consumption was quite low compared to his daily snack load.

It was only when Elain turned her head that she gasped and recoiled.

Because Azriel…

He was…

Well…

He was on one knee in front of her.

“Hi,” he smiled at her, seeing her shocked face.

“What…what are you…ohmygod…what are you doing?!”

She was literally hyperventilating.

Clutching the front of her dress, she was gasping like a fish, her face flushed.

“Elain, will you,” he began asking solemnly,

“YES!” she cried out, eyes wild. “Yes,”

“Give me your pretty foot,” he continued nonchalantly, smirking to himself.

“Wait, what?”

“Your foot, pretty girl,” he extended his hand out.

“You don’t want to…” her voice faded into a whisper.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“I am sure,” she hissed.

“So, you don’t want me to ask you to marry you?” he confirmed, while he took her foot and then pulled out her fancy high-heeled open toe pumps from the bag, and slid one on.

“No!” she shouted.

“No need to yell, beautiful,” he told her, working on the complex tie and clasp of the shoe.

On his knees

“I am not yelling,” she pouted.

“So you didn’t get excited when you saw me on one knee?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think that maybe, just maybe I’ll pull a ring out?”

“No!”

“Hmmm. You seem a bit upset, sweetheart.”

“I am not upset,” she folded her arms on her chest, as she bit her lip aggressively, trying to stifle the tears that threatened to fall.

“So you don’t want to marry me?” he pressed.

“No!” she repeated yet again.

“Hmmm,” he gave another annoying hum, and then took her left hand and squeezed her ring finger, before bringing it to his lips and kissing it. “And you don’t want a big diamond ring on this pretty little finger of yours?”

“No!”

“Okay, I am a little sad, as I was planning to stop by Cartier, but if you aren’t interested,”

“You are not going to do it!” she argued petulantly.

He shrugged, “who knows…But seeing as you aren’t interested anyway,”

Quickly she amended, “I am not not interested…”

“Oh no? Because I did think that you looked a bit devastated when you didn’t find me proposing.”

“I am not devastated. I was just surprised,” Elain insisted stubbornly.

He tied her second shoe and then bent to kiss her ankle.

“And if I did, propose that is, what would my Cinderella say to her Prince?”

He wrapped his big, warm hands over her bare legs, rubbing the backs of her knees slowly, as he waited for her answer.

“I don’t know! Can I say ‘yes’ after knowing you for 2 months?”

“You can say ‘yes’ after knowing me for two hours,”

“You called me a cow, and a prissy bird or something like that in the first two hours of our meeting,” she glowered at him.

“You implied that I couldn’t get it up,” he reminded her quickly.

“Ergh, I didn’t mean it,”

“Because I can certainly demonstrate–me getting it up pretty well,” he offered.

“So you keep saying.”

“And you keep denying me the opportunity,” he scolded, before kissing her hand again. “Look at me,” he ordered, and then lifted her chin, so their eyes met. “The truth is, at the end of the day, you are the one person I want to come home to. You are the only person who I want to tell about my day. You are the one who I want to share my happiness with, my sandnes, my frustrations. So, I’ll ask you, Elain Archeron. And you better say yes. Because there is no getting rid of me.”

Elain wiped her tears with her first. She didn’t even know why she was crying. Probably because she loved him. And the thought of him not asking her to be with him forever did in fact, devastate her.

“Why are you crying?” he asked gently.

“I dunno,” she admitted, wiping her tears again.

“You don’t have to cry. I am yours. I am.”

“You don’t have anyone else?”

“Nah…” then he stopped and looked at her guiltily, adding, “Well, I do…” he paused mysteriously and Elain gasped in silent horror.

“You do?!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah…”

“Who is she?”

“Oh, it’s a he,” he said immediately, grinning at her. “He is furry, likes snacks a lot, has three legs, snores and zooms,”

Through her tears, Elain smiled and then pushed him.

“Are you just going to traumatise me for the rest of the night?” she demanded, finally getting up.

“Do you like me on my knees in front of you, Miss Archeron?”

“That’s the least you can do for putting me through all this nonsense,” she looked down at her legs, her sexy shoes, and sighed.

“You are gorgeous. A girl of my dreams,”

“Apparently, that’s Rhys–he is in Feyre’s dreams,” Elain said dryly.

“Yeah, he is the girl of her dreams,” Azriel nodded and then rose up, while Elain laughed.

Cassian sat in an armchair, observing the revelry in front of him. He swirled his whiskey lazily around the tumbler, feeling mellow. He wasn’t exactly drunk, but he was under the influence for sure. It was a good feeling. The party-loving pug had arrived about fifteen minutes ago, definitely also under the influence of something, because he yawned widely and then raised his front paws, asking Cassian to pick him up. It looked like Piglet had decided that Cassian could join his secret and exclusive pug-pack and Cassian was only too happy to oblige. Now, Piglet was snoring blissfully, his head resting on Cassian’s thigh. Taking his pug-protector duties very seriously, Cassian scowled at anyone who attempted to disturb the sleeping pup, and considering his size and general appearance, no one dared to contradict him.

“Hey Nes,” he called out. “Come sit with me.”

Nesta, who was walking by, gave him her typical icy look and snapped, “Don’t call me that.”

“What? Nes?” he smiled playfully. “Alright, sweetheart. Whatever you say.”

He patted the seat next to him. It would be a snuggly fit for the two of them, since he took up so much space.

“What do you want?” she demanded, but he noticed that she didn’t exactly walk away.

“Come, sit with me. I’ll tell you a story.”

“I don’t want stories,”

“Sure you do, my prickly rose.”

“You are overly familiar, Mr. Night,” Nesta sipped her white wine, but Cassian reached out and held out his massive hand to her. And Nesta…Nesta…took it. He pulled her to him gently and she stepped closer, before he wrapped his arm around her waist and to her utter dismay, placed her next to him. Piglet moved onto his side, but didn’t wake up.

“The little beastie is tired,” Cassian murmured, his expression soft.

“What do you want, Mr. Night?” she tried again.

“You remind me of Elain,” he noted simply. “She is mad formal as well.”

“I don’t know you at all!”

“You can find out more. Whatever you want.”

“What do you do?” Nesta asked, squirming next to his massive, muscular body. God he was handsome. Azriel was handsome, hands down maybe the most handsome one out of the three–and that was saying something. Rhysand–not her type, but undeniably beautiful. But this one–objectively, he was probably the least classically handsome, yet to Nesta, he was simply stunning. Everything she didn’t know she liked he possessed. This size of his, the muscles, the strong features, the jet black silky hair tied into a haphazard bun.

“I am a sports agent,” he answered. “What about you?”

“A barrister.”

“I should’ve guessed. Here is what I think, Miss Archeron,”

“What?”

“You are a very successful, very beautiful, very lonely and very misunderstood woman,”

Nesta jolted in her place, her pale face colouring angrily, her brows knitting together at the audacity of his words. His expression remained calm, almost placid, though, unlike Azriel, this wasn’t a placid man. Undeterred he continued, “And I am guessing that you are knocking on 30 pretty soon, and you aren’t very happy with where you are in life. It should’ve been different, right?”

She attempted to get up, but he held her down, and tsked,

“Before you storm away, let me tell you something,”

“Leave me the hell alone!” she snarled. “You uncouth, rude bastard,”

He chuckled.

“Uncouth, huh? Cute. The Archeron girls are adorable. Now, look at them,” he jerked his head towards the crowd. Reluctantly, Nesta followed his gaze, and watched Elain and Azriel seated next to each other on top of the radiator cover, eating what looked like ice cream. Well, he was holding the bowl, but he was feeding Elain, who was licking the spoon, before he dunked it back into the ice cream, and took a swipe himself. She rested her head on his shoulder, both of her hands wrapped securely around his upper arm, holding onto him like she couldn’t let go.

It struck Nesta then–how relaxed Elain looked. Elain was always a little bit tense, unless she was with Piglet. She was especially tense around Eris, always worrying about his opinion, always desperate to please him, always seeking his approval, or a rare compliment. Elain worried about her figure, having been told by their mother that she was chubby and that she’d never get married, because men wanted a slender wife. Elain was insecure, old-fashioned, but bold and entrepreneurial, which made for a confusing combination. But never did Nesta observe Elain looking so…content. Happy. At ease. She held on to that big, tattooed, striking man and only had her eyes for him. It didn’t look like the rest of the world existed for her, because he was the centre of it.

“She is in love,” Nesta breathed, the realisation slamming into her like a hammer.

Azriel was in love, for a long time now, and of that she was sure. But Elain? Elain had fallen too.

Turning abruptly to Cassian, she found him with his hands clasped behind his head, looking mighty satisfied, with a proud smirk on his lips.

“What are you so happy about?” she demanded.

He tsked and said, “I set them up.”

“What are you on about?”

“Without me, they wouldn’t have met! I was the one who contacted her. I was the one who dragged him to meet with her. I was the matchmaker. And look how well I matched them. Now, obviously, this extends to Feyre and Rhys now. If it weren’t for me, they wouldn’t have met either,”

“Hold your horses with them! They just met tonight,”

“And yet he crowned her like she was his lady,” Cassian reminded her.

“Which was weird,”

“Rhys likes big gestures,”

“Alright, fine, what do you want? To quit your job as a sports agent and work with Elain as a Junior Matchmaker?”

At that, Cassian laughed, and woke up Piglet. The dog stretched, yawned and then rolled over and quickly located his ma and dad in the crowd. With a happy yip, he jumped off the chair and ran over to them.

Nesta turned away from Cassian, watching Azriel scoop some ice cream into a soup bowl and let Piglet slurp it all with messy gusto. Nesta knew how much Piglet loved a pup cup, and this was a pup cup on steroids. Elain and Azriel cooed and laughed over their dog, holding hands, watching him, commenting something to each other, and Nesta was struck by another revelation–they were a family. Somewhere along the road, somehow, the three of them formed a family of their own. And Elain was no longer just an Archeron. For almost thirty years, Nesta had her two sisters, and the three Archeron sisters were an unshakable, even somewhat notorious unit. They were regal and beautiful and available and wealthy. They were the Three Sisters. And now…She glanced at Elain again, who was back on the radiator cover, seated with her legs crossed and placed on Azriel’s lap, who held them tightly. Whatever he was saying, was making Elain laugh loudly, her head thrown back. The grouping of empty glasses near her probably played a role as well. But it stung Nesta somewhere deep in her chest. Her beloved sister was no longer hers. Her beloved sister was now beloved by someone else. Elain’s light and softness were well and truly melding with the untamed intensity of Azriel Night.

“The only one I want to matchmake for, is you,” Cassian said firmly. His tone was steady, but he said it in such a manner that Nesta turned to him, looking into his lovely luminous hazel eyes.

“And who are you setting me up with exactly?” she asked, cocking her head.

“Me.”

“You?”

“Me. You and I are going on a date.”

“Excuse me?” she almost choked on her wine.

“Why are you surprised, Nes?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll call you whatever you want me to call you, sweetheart. What do you say? Walk on the wild side? Me and you?” he winked at her.

“You are mad,” he concluded simply.

“Perhaps. Doesn’t mean I don’t know what I want.”

She stood up from the chair, and he didn’t stop her this time. He just looked at her expectantly.

“Fine,” she said tersely.

Cassian smiled.

“I knew you were a smart girl.”

“I am already regretting it,” she warned.

“You won’t have any regrets. Once I am done with you, you’ll be asking for more and more dates.”

“Doubtful.”

“I’ll prove it.”

She threw him a withering glance, and added,

“The only reason I am saying yes to you is because,”

“My blinding handsomeness? All my bulging muscles? My mighty height? Wicked sense of humour? Winning personality?” he offered.

Nesta rolled her eyes and moaned, “Help me Lord. No, ridiculous man.”

“What then? What secret weapon do I possess that totally made you want to go out with me?”

“Piglet trusts you,” she shrugged, like it didn’t mean much.

“Oh…”

“And he doesn’t trust many people. I’ve been watching him. He trusts no one like he trusts Azriel. He even trusts Azriel with Elain! Which is unheard of. He is actually capable of leaving her with Azriel and not hovering like he is surgically attached to her. And when I saw today that he actually sought you out and slept next to,”

“That was the turning point?” Cassian chuckled. “The beastie trusting me?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s good to know. He is my wingman. Now, where the fuck is cake?! Are we cutting or what?”

“It’s a birthday, not a wedding,” Nesta reminded him. Cassian took her by the hand, soliciting a small girlish gasp of surprise from her.

“Yeah…not yet.”

Elain was standing, eating birthday cake, chatting with her old classmate Lucien, who was also one of Feyre’s closest friends. Lucien was also distantly related to Eris, which only confirmed yet again how incestuous their circle actually was. Azriel teased her about it, but he was actually correct in his observation.

Lucien’s been throwing confused glances in Azriel’s direction most of the night, as if trying to figure out who he was to Elain, and what the nature of their relationship was.

But he was too polite to ask, so instead, he joked, “So, when am I going to be set up with someone sexy, smart and successful? What am I, a wet herring?”

Elain laughed.

“All herrings are wet by default,” she told him, “I thought you weren’t interested in matchmaking?”

“I wasn’t. But seeing how well you are doing, I am eager to have you change my mind.”

“Are you ready then?” Elain asked seriously.

A year ago, Lucien was in a very serious car accident, where he lost his eyes in the aftermath. His longtime girlfriend left him shortly afterwards. He’s been devastated ever since, and wouldn’t venture out in any social situations, let alone dates. This was the first time that he decided to attend anything that had more than three guests, and only because he and Feyre went way back.

“I might be. I want to have someone looking at me the way you are looking at him,” and he nodded towards Azriel who was talking in a group of men.

Elain squirmed a bit and blushed at his insinuation.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Eris. Not my business,” he told her quickly.

“Thank you. But Eris hasn’t been in touch for weeks now. It’s nobody’s fault.”

“His loss. Maybe mine as well,” and he looked at her with a longing that made her almost uncomfortable. “But I don’t think it was ever meant to be–you and I.”

“I don’t think so,” she agreed. “We look good on paper. But maybe we don’t work so well as anything but friends.”

“The friendship is good,” Lucien decided, sipping some of his champagne. “Let’s do that. Let’s be friends.”

“And there might be someone of interest who could be a good potential,” Elain murmured thoughtfully, clearly thinking about something.

“Oh yeah?”

“But you’d have to be a client. Formally.”

“At least tell me her name!” he laughed. “What if she has a horrible name!”

“Nuala. How’s that? Can you live with that?”

“Oh. Nuala. I like it!”

“So, if you are serious, then ring me up after New Year’s and we’ll create your profile and will get to work.”

“And you think that this wouldn’t be an impediment?” he asked awkwardly, pointing to his face.

Elain looked at him and said seriously,

“For some, yes. For others, no. If they can’t see beyond the surface and not understand what you bring then it’s probably not a good match. Or a good person.”

Suddenly a familiar, very muscular, very big hand smacked Elain on the ass.

She whipped and hissed at the grinning Azriel. Piglet was at his feet, looking up, also grinning smugly.

Before she could unleash, Azriel quickly explained, “It’s my burden, beautiful. Every man’s burden–the need to smack his lady’s juicy rump whenever we are near it.”

“Oh, is that so!!” she exclaimed, while Lucien hid his smile in his champagne flute.

“Listen,” Azriel said somberly, like he was being serious. “It’s not easy. It’s not easy to have these…urges. You think I want to walk around, see your gorgeous arse, and be overcome by an intolerable need to slap it? And then I have to trudge and actually, you know, do it! Slap your yummy buns.”

“Yummy buns?!?!?”

“Oh goodness…” Lucien laughed. “I think I shall leave you two alone to discuss!”

“Not until you tell her that it’s an uncontrollable urge that all men suffer from?” Azriel insisted, wrapping his arm around Elain’s waist.

“Most of us do,” Lucien confirmed. “Not everyone acts on it though,”

“See, not everyone acts on it!” Elain elbowed Azriel and he bowed dramatically.

“I think it depends on the arse. Yours is too tempting not to smack.”

Once Lucien moved on to another group of guests, Azriel grabbed Elain by the hand and dragged her after him, with Piglet hot on their heels.

“You are not having messy sex with me in the closet!” she warned.

He didn’t answer, but threw her her coat and her boots, while lunging at Piglet and taking him by surprise before he could escape.

“Are we leaving?” Elain asked, looking around and at her coat in confusion.

“No. But put it on. We are gonna go out for a sec.”

She frowned at his abruptness, but took off her heels and pulled on her socks and then her boots, before tying her coat with a belt. Piglet was wearing his jacket too, though he looked unamused and put off by the fact that he wasn’t chased around. Azriel even pulled on Piglet’s knit hat, while he dressed himself, and then taking Elain’s hand, he had the three of them sneak out quietly.

The moment they were outside, Elain gasped softly and threw her head back.

The world had turned white.

Snow.

Thick, fluffy piles of snow had fallen in the past few hours and now covered everything in pristine brilliant whiteness. It swirled in the lemony light of street lights, falling silently all around them.

Piglet looked up, awed.

This was a new and beautiful thing that he didn’t remember from before. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and he caught snowflakes on his nose, licking his lips loudly. Then, with a happy howl, Piglet burst forth and galloped through the snow, rolling in it and screeching joyfully.

Elain bounced on her heels, clapping her hands excitedly, laughing and also trying to catch some snowflakes on her tongue.

“This is better than sex in the closet!” she giggled, spreading her arms wide.

Azriel came behind her and wrapped his arm across her chest.

“Fuck sex,” he whispered into her ear, his lips warm and tender on her cold skin. She shivered at the proximity, because of how good he smelled, and because he enveloped her in his warmth and his bigness. He continued, his cheek scraping against her own.

“I am trying to be your home, you know. Your safe place. Your go-to person for happy and for sad. I am looking to be the reason you smile, and laugh and clap your hands.”

“Az,” she breathed and turned in his arms, looking up at him. Her chocolate-brown eyes were filled with tears. Tears of love. They rolled silently over her cheeks, while Azriel smiled down at her and whispered,

“We're still gonna have rough sex though.”

Before she could answer, he gently took her jaw in his fingers and tilted her face so it lined up with his.

“I want to kiss you, Elain,” he said seriously, his breath fanning over her lips.

“Kiss me then,” she permitted. Thick, white clumps of snow fell on Azriel’s black hair, his eyelashes, her hands that clutched at his shoulders. Her tears dried up and she breathed heavily, disoriented and aroused at once.

And then, Azriel kissed her.

His lips were heavenly.

Soft and light at first, tentative and gentle.

She tensed against him, the bulk of his body shielding her from the world. And in this world, in her world, there was only him.

His kiss was tender, but firm, luxuriant and dominant at once. He gripped her face in his massive hands, squeezing tightly and holding her in place, but his lips were soft and loving on her mouth. He didn’t hurry, but tasted her thoroughly, enjoyed the scent of her sugar- and wine-tinted mouth. She tasted delicious–like he always thought she would. Butter and honey and pastry and everything nice. Everything that was Elain. She was sweet and homey and familiar, and he felt like he’d kissed her a million times before.

His tongue parted her lips at last, and he continued his exploration, but it grew hungrier and more urgent as the kiss progressed. A groan of primal, animalistic pleasure escaped his throat, reverberating against her lips and Elain trembled in his arms, growing hot and needy, despite the falling snow and the sharp wind.

She felt consumed by him, and yet, worshipped at the same time. Just like always. He ignited feelings in her which she’d never experienced before–didn’t even think that she was capable of them. It was raw and hot, and left her feeling lightheaded and overwhelmed. Elain didn’t care about anything at that moment, nothing but Azriel Night, the man she came to love so desperately and completely.

She arched into him, wrapping her arms around his neck, holding the back of his head, while he cupped her head and delved deeper into her mouth, licking and sucking on her tongue. His other hand fell away from her face and slipped down her back, before pressing into her hip and pushing her closer to him.

Elain was well aware of his general size and how he was big everywhere. But feeling him now, thick and hard against her belly, definitely aroused–finally made her feel like a woman. She felt desired. Needed. Wanted. Big, strong, powerful, towering Azriel, and she was his undoing right now. Little Elain, whom no one took seriously. Azriel Night was kissing her. Panting for her. Growling in his chest like a beast because of how she made him feel.

She didn’t know that she needed this kiss until his mouth took possession of hers. To say that she’d never been kissed like this before was an understatement of the century. Azriel licked and sucked on her mouth, nipping on her lips, biting them until they were swollen beneath his. It was then that she released a ragged, pitiful moan of pleasure, because he ground himself between her legs and her breasts rubbed into his solid chest, intensifying her pleasure, making her feel everything.

“This is the sound I want to hear when I am inside of you,” he murmured into her mouth, kissing her lightly, before clamping his teeth over her jaw.

Elain felt his heart pounding against her own, and she howled into the night when he bit her neck, sucking in on the delicate skin and marking her as his anew. He sucked and bit her and she staggered back, almost falling out of his arms. He didn’t let go of her, but only growled like a beast, panting into her skin, his lips and teeth working themselves deep into her flesh, while his arms banded around her. Elain gasped from the pain and the sublime pleasure, because hearing him grunt and growl like that might have been the sexiest sound she’d ever heard.

“I want them all to know who you belong to,” he whispered, returning to her lips and kissing her hard and sloppily. She loved this untamed, wild side of him, where he lost his control and revealed the true nature of him and his utter obsession with her. “To me. You belong to me,” he chanted. “Mine.”

“Yours,” she nodded, kissing his lips, kissing his eyes, then his tongue, then his lips again. She was the one to lose control of the situation just as well. If he wanted to fuck her against the wall of her sister’s house, she’d let him. She was achy everywhere, tense and wet between her legs, and when he boldly thrust his hand under her dress, and between her damp thighs, he smiled.

His thumb brushed against her slit, and between kisses he asked, “all for me?”

“All for you,” she nodded, biting his neck hard and leaving teeth marks on his skin.

“I guess you want me to be yours as well?” he joked, and then pulled his hand away from her pussy and licked his thumb. Before she could answer, he kissed her again, his tongue sliding against hers and allowing her to taste her own essence. It felt forbidden and scandalous and not something that Elain’s done before, but she liked it. She liked everything. And this kiss…it was unreal. It was unreal in its intensity and its pure eroticism. Who could even kiss like that? Apparently Azriel Night could. She was buzzing. Head to toe she was shivering, her fingers and toes were tingling, her tongue couldn’t get enough of him, of his taste, of how he felt against her own tongue.

Once they pulled apart to get some air into their lungs, Azriel smiled at her and rubbed his cold nose against hers.

“Can I kiss you now any time I want to?” he asked.

“Yes!!” she just about yelled. “And I will be kissing you!”

He clasped his hands on the small of her back and kissed her again, “well, that’s brilliant, because I really, really like kissing you.”

He then reached between their bodies and said, “Now, look what I have!”

“What?”

From his pocket, he took out a…carrot.

“Stole it from Fey,” he said conspiratorially, as if it explained something to the very perplexed Elain.

He grabbed her hand and said, “come on! We are building a snowman!”

“Now?”

“Well, of course now!” he said, looking at her like she was silly. “Next year we might be building one with our baby. This year, we gotta build it with our fur son.”

“What baby?!” she gasped, as he tugged her along, to the clearing where Piglet was burrowing through the snow, rolling in it and howling with excitement.

“You know–son, daughter. Baby.”

“We are having a baby now?”

“Starts with kissing, ends with a baby. That’s how it is.”

“I wasn’t planning on having any babies,” Elain argued feebly, but he only said, “plans change’.

The snow was thick and wet, but there wasn’t heaps of it, since it was London, after all.

“You do the head, I’ll do the base,” Azriel instructed, assessing the situation and figuring that they’d have enough snow for a small, modest snowman.

Turned out that Elain sucked at making a snowman. She wasn’t wearing gloves and her hands kept getting cold, so Azriel needed to continuously interrupt his own work, so he could blow into and kiss her freezing palms, which only descended into more kissing…mouth kissing. Meanwhile, their stupid pug kept destroying the round snow mounds that they managed to construct by jumping into them and rolling around happily. Elain’s boots were soaked through as well, so by the time Azriel finally managed to roll a decent base, he had to give his girl a piggyback ride, because she was freezing and shaking, while laughing uproariously. She was also filming his work on her phone, while Piglet hopped around them, trying to understand what was happening. Hanging precariously off Azriel’s back, Elain finally managed to roll a decent-enough ball, which they hefted together and carefully placed on top of the other ball.

“Pink, we need a stick,” Azriel instructed, and Piglet took off before Azriel even finished talking.

“Whoa,” he breathed, as Elain laughed, her arms wrapped around his neck, and her lips constantly making contact with his face. “I guess he really wanted that stick.”

Piglet returned with a stick, tossed it to Azriel, who fashioned one arm out of it, before sending the pug to fetch another. Soon their snowman had two arms, a couple of coins for eyes, and then, with great fanfare, Elain pushed the carrot into the head.

She barely managed to take a few photos and a short video for Piglet’s Insta account, before he began to circle the snowman curiously, barking and growling at it, and then attacking it viciously.

“Why are you so mean?!” Elain cried. “You are supposed to be gentle with it! Don’t eat it!”

Oh yeah, he was gonna eat it.

Piglet savagely munched on pieces of the snowman, licking and pulling clumps of snow, smacking his lips.

“Fucking animal,” Azriel laughed, keeping his arms wrapped tightly around Elain. “Are you cold?”

“I am,” she nodded. “But I don’t want to go back inside. This is so much fun!”

“Yeah? What else is fun?” he teased.

She drew her knuckles over his cheek, his now-wet hair and then stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his cold mouth. He didn’t have to be asked twice and quickly took over, capturing her sweet mouth with his and eagerly coaxing her plump, buttery-scented lips apart. She whimpered against him, especially when his hands boldly slid to cup the curve of her behind, slipping beneath the coat and making her shiver from the cold. She didn’t care. She sighed warmly and deliciously into his mouth and wrapped her arms tighter around his neck, her cold, wet fingers tangling in his hair. Caressing his tongue with her own she opened up eagerly to the kiss, and Azriel responded in kind, deepening the caress of his tongue, kissing her filthy and hot, his lips both teasing, and dominating at once. It was dirty and open-mouthed, her kisses loud and maddeningly sticky, rendering his brain to almost naught–all he saw and felt was his gorgeous girl, finally, nearly all his.

Elain moaned against him and Azriel…pulled away abruptly and yelled, “Piglet! The fuck, you weirdo?!”

Elain turned around and gasped in shock, not knowing whether to scream, cry or laugh. So she did all three–laughing so hard, that tears sprung in her eyes.

Because Piglet burrowed into the snowman and successfully pulled out the carrot, which he was now crunching on, though it looked like he was making out with the snowman.

“Dr. Hannibal Piglet Lecter,” Azriel muttered. “Fucking savage pug.”

Azriel grabbed her phone and filmed the carnage.

From Piglet's Instagram: The carrot is no more

“This should pay for his upkeep for a month,” he said, knowing that the video will garner a million likes and comments.

Gripping the half-eaten carrot in his mouth Piglet rushed to them and demanded that Azriel pick him up.

“That’s it? You just give up?” Azriel laughed, as he grabbed the dog and pulled Elain closer to him.

When they returned to the house, the first thing they were greeted by was Nesta and Cassian, glaring at them and arms crossed on their chests.

“We saw you making out!” Cassian declared like he was Mother Superior at a convent.

“Guess the two of you failed as chaperones!” Azriel shrugged indifferently, while he helped Elain out of her coat.

“We didn’t fail!” Nesta bristled. “You two are out of control!”

Little did she know.

The next day

Dev arrived around 11:30 am. He hadn’t asked Azriel this yet, but he had wondered where Azriel planned to live once he and Elain got married. Elain’s house made much more sense for a family, not to mention that her office was here as well. But if Azriel was going to move here, Dev needed to consider where he was going to move as well. Russell Square, Holborn, Fitzrovia were really out of his budget. Azriel paid well, but these were some prime locations, and he’d have to rob a bank to afford something nice. Shame that he wasn’t a footballer who grew up with a billionaire duke, or a little heiress who inherited a damn mansion just because. Considering her sister’s place last night, Dev definitely thought that it was better to be born wealthy and healthy, than poor and ill.

The pug came out first, dressed in a full on morning suit, with a pale blue silk tie no less. He barked his greeting and headed for the car.

“Shake?” Dev asked, extending his hand. Piglet gave him his paw. Then Elain and Azriel came out of the house, holding hands like teenagers. No doubt about it, his old mate Azriel Night, the quiet, scarred boy whom Dev met in a group home when they were around eleven was in love. Azriel, who didn’t say much, leaving the talking to his rambunctious brother Cassian, but who possessed incredible speed, the ability to appear and disappear like a ghost, and a mean left hook that could fall even a grown man in a few seconds–that Azriel was now all grown up. And Dev was proud of him. Azriel deserved something good in his life. Something nice. Something pure and genuine. And this sweet little matchmaker of his, this fancy noble Lady and her posh pug somehow, amazingly, fit the bill.

Azriel opened the car door for Elain, and just as she climbed inside, he slapped her arse.

“I am a gentleman, baby,” he announced. “Always a man, not always gentle.”

“You can’t be like this in front of my father!” she warned.

“Oh, meeting the family?” Dev chuckled. “You ready for that, big man?”

“I’d have to meet him one day,” Azriel shrugged. “Guess today is the day.”

“So, where to? Kensington Palace? Buckingham?” Dev joked. Would he be terribly surprised of Elain said ‘yes’? not really.

“Mayfair,” she said. “Mount St.”

Of course. Dev wasn’t even surprised. An ultra posh street with Balenciaga, Rubinacci and exclusive jewellery stores, a caviar and champagne restaurant Scott’s, as well as the luxury Connaught hotel where basic rooms went for 1,000 quid a night.

“We usually go to Annabel’s for all of our birthdays,” Elain explained, and both Azriel and Dev shook their heads.

“Let me guess. Dad is a member?” Azriel chuckled. Annabel’s was an elegant private club with a dance floor for the famous, the dressed-up and the well-heeled.

Elain pursed her lips, indicating that he was.

“So why not today?”

“Feyre texted and said that we should go to dad’s,” Elain said. “Said to bring you,”

“Oh boy. I am getting somewhat nervous,” he joked, but Dev, who knew Azriel for a long, long time, noticed a note of worry in his friend’s voice. Azriel was all jokes and nonchalance and elegant swagger, but he was going to meet the father of the girl he loved. And that meant something. It was important.

It wasn’t a long drive and Dev soon parked next to a massive, three story Edwardian mansion. It was red brick with white trim and actual columns. Piglet barked excitedly, recognising the place.

“You’re going to go see grandpa?” Elain asked, stroking his head. Piglet barked again, raring to go.

“Whenever I have to leave him with my father–especially if I go on a holiday–I come back, and it’s basically ‘I shall require organic vegetables three times a day with freshly churned butter. A pup cup of the finest double cream delivered daily and milked from a prized cow in Oxfordshire. For dinner, I shall dine on a lightly seared steak, a bit of duck confit and a brioche toast. Oh, and a couple of mini cannoli straight from Naples’.”

“Somehow, I am not even a little bit surprised,” Azriel admitted and Dev nodded in agreement.

“The level of spoiling that he receives from my father is criminal.”

Azriel told himself that he was not nervous, when Elain took his arm, and they walked under the portico, the doors opening as if by magic.

There was a butler, who greeted them and called Elain ‘Lady Elain’. They walked through wide marble hallways and sitting rooms, Azriel feeling decidedly out of place even if he wouldn’t show it. Piglet tore through the house, howling happily, unconcerned about anything, and by the time they saw him next, it was in the dining room where a middle-aged gentleman was cooing and hugging the pug, rocking him like he was a baby.

To Azriel’s surprise, Nesta was here too, but also Cassian–which was unexpected, to say the least. Cassian raised his shoulders, indicating that he had no idea why he was here, though it didn’t look like he was greatly burdened by the company.

“Daddy!” Elain went to her father and he smiled at her.

“Good morning, pumpkin,”

Pumpkin? That made Azriel smile. But the nickname fit. She was his little pumpkin.

“Please meet Mr. Azriel Night,” Elain introduced them. “My father, Sir Charles Archeron.”

“Arsenal captain,” the older man nodded knowingly. “My girls are Tottenham fans. I am an Arsenal man myself. Though I do enjoy rugby a lot as well.”

“I am slowly pulling Elain and Piglet to my side,” Azriel teased.

“Oh, I saw all the photos on that Instagram that Elain has for the pup. He looked like a Gunner born and bred.”

Azriel laughed, “You follow him too?”

“How can I not,” he squeezed Piglet lovingly. “Barring my girls giving me actual grandchildren, this is so far, my only grand-pup,” he said dramatically.

Nesta rolled her eyes. Elain rolled her eyes.

And both groaned.

“This is what happens every time I mention grandchildren,” Mr. Archeron complained.

Just as he said the words, Rhys entered the room, holding a champagne flute, with Feyre on his arm.

“Oh, you’ve arrived!” Feyre exclaimed with a wide smile. “I was just showing Rhys around.”

“Why are we all here, by the way?” Nesta asked impatiently. “I was looking forward to Annabel’s.”

“Forgive the change of plans,” Rhysand said breezily. “We’ll be sure to go to Annabel’s soon.”

“Well then, what is it?” Nesta sipped her mimosa, while silent servants circulated around the room with trays of champagne. “We are all here now.”

“I am curious myself,” Mr. Archeron agreed, while he gave Piglet a piece of cheese. “And I am pleasantly surprised to see my three daughters with such fine gentlemen. All here together, today.”

Nesta was about to protest the implication that she was here with Cassian, but Cassian put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently, effectively quieting her down.

Rhysand and Feyre exchanged a glance, and then he said,

“Feyre and I got married earlier today. She is now Marchioness Feyre Archeron-Darling, Lady Darling. My wife.”

#elriel #elain archeron #azriel #azriel and elain #pro elriel #elain #elain x azriel #A Match Baked In Heaven #elriel fanfic #Elriel Fanfiction #my writing #acotar fanfiction #Three Brothers and three sisters #THe Bat Boys and the Archeron sisters #my fanfic #new chapter

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cyle · 11 months

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Hi! I'm wondering if you can offer any insight into something that's been bugging me with all of the changes. This is genuinely not a hostile ask - I know first-hand how hard (necessary) change management is. I don't envy the position y'all are in.

That being said - I'm having a hard time making sense of the strategy around the roll out for the last few big changes/"experiments"). It seems like the folks doing the messaging vs the actual feature management are not on the same page.

It has been stated several times that:

"We’ll be testing [our new] ideas in an opt-in basis with people who’ve been using Tumblr for years, and more especially with people who’ve never even heard of Tumblr (a difficult group to find)."

We've also seen, repeatedly, that

"Tumblr is a place where you can tailor and customize your experience to individual preferences."

With those statements in mind, the choice to roll these new features out to folks who *didn't* volunteer - and not offer any way to "customize our experience" seems like a strange one.

An expectation (which was positive) was established only to be directly violated within a few weeks. It makes it challenging to get a read on what y'all actually mean -- and to extend good faith or trust when communications do come out.

If you say you're going to do something, then do it, it builds trust. If you don't, it erodes trust. And that just makes your already difficult jobs harder - and the userbase even more reactive and knee-jerk resistant.

Can you give us a sense of what's going on here? Or can you at least pass this feedback on to whoever is handling the messaging around this stuff? We can see that y'all are striving for transparency, but that's only effective if it's honest/consistent.

[TL;DR: Tumblr's messaging emphasizes testing changes with volunteers, and offering the ability to customize - but that doesn't seem to be what's actually happening. What's up?]

this is a really great question, thank you for asking it. you've accurately pointed out some glaring holes in our communication strategy -- some of that is even my fault, to be honest, as someone who tries to help shape our public communications.

the easiest answer is that there's a lot of work happening on the internal tumblr side, and not all of it is the same kind of work, and therefore not all of it is being communicated consistently. that's a huge problem if you're not inside of it, as you point out; the contradictions seem weird for anyone paying attention.

i'm currently a part of the @labs group and we're trying to come up with radical ideas for reshaping tumblr, prototype them quickly, show them to people, and iterate on them, and reject them quickly if they don't make sense. the Tumblr Mini thing recently is an unfortunate example of that -- something leaked way too early, before we even got a chance to really understand how the thing we prototyped would be received. that may never go beyond the thing people saw, for good reason: it doesn't make sense. we're learning from it, but it's unfinished.

in that Labs group, we do want volunteer-based feedback, and we're actually starting that very soon with targeted user research. you may see some surveys soliciting that feedback soon, or invites to be a part of the testing. i'm extremely excited by that, because some other ideas we have feel like they should've been a part of tumblr since the beginning.

but.......

there's a whole different group at tumblr that are making "core product" improvements, and a lot of their work is reflected in the recent staff post about product strategy. their aim is to alleviate a lot of common points of confusion and frustration, some of which will seem counter-intuitive to people who have been on tumblr for many years and learned (what i call) "the hard way".

a lot of that core improvement work will be rolled out, experimented with, and iterated on, the traditional way: involuntary A/B tests, rather than volunteers. that is standard industry practice, because when you're trying to understand the behavior of millions of people, just asking for volunteers introduces too much selection bias.

however, it's important to note that even today's rollout of the new desktop navigation was released to some XKit devs beforehand, so we could get early feedback. so sometimes we do roll these core things out for feedback first, before "regular users", before we A/B test it. usually those small initial experiments are hyper-targeted though... in this case, because we do actually care about XKit and third party developers. you don't see that though!

so full transparency: not everything we do is going to be volunteer-based, not everything we do can be communicated adequately before we test it, not everything during testing will be customizable, because how much we want to customize is dependent on the outcome of these tests. it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.

and furthermore, this is kind of how it's always been, for better or worse, since around 2016 when tumblr started believing in A/B tests and experiments, rather than just "ship it and we'll see"... the common denominator, though, is that we want your feedback. we don't do a good enough job soliciting that feedback, but we do want it. (i kinda wish we had an easy feedback button for the new layout.) we do make decisions based on feedback, but we augment that decision-making process with hard data from experiments.

i hope that makes sense? there's too much to cover to provide you with the full context. i could write a book about it. all i can confidently say is that we're trying as best as we can to balance the ideas of keeping tumblr special and unique, while trying weird/bad/good/uncomfortable new directions to help the platform grow and thrive. status quo and complacency aren't acceptable; tumblr needs to change to survive. i am just as uncomfortable and upset by that fact as anyone, and i worry every day and night about it, whether the price of survival is worth it.

we'll see, hopefully together.

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metatronhateblog · 6 months

Text

Not to Be a Bearer of News pt 2 with some essence of Duck Duck what the Fuck

Something fowl is afoot. Between the newspapers and the ducks and the content of the newspapers. I have had the drafts for these posts sitting on my account for about a month or so now and was immediately screaming at the responses I was getting on the first part of this series of posts. So let's get further into this bit of a mind fuckery.

This one is gonna be a long one so just hang in there, I promise it's worth it. There's A LOT going on with this.

Back to the newspapers.

Last go 'round we talked about Mr. Brown (of Brown's world of carpets) and his very strange newspaper that is the cause of the opening sequence having an accordion duck in it, as well as some of the other appearances of ducks throughout the series.

This time, we're going to look more at the newspapers, with a touch of me screaming about my thoughts from the comments on part one of this mini-series of posts.

We already know Mr Brown (of Brown's world of carpets) holds a weird ass newspaper...

and how he practically waves it around like a billboard every time he's on screen, going so far as to even cover his face with it at some point.

Now I could go on about how the way time works in Soho seems practically non-existent, but we'll save that for a later day because we're talking about the newspapers. At least...the newspapers in season 2 specifically.

As we already know, thanks to the X-Rays on Amazon, Nina's coffee shop strangely holds the magazines that Adam read in season 1 (a very strange and deliberate choice to be making...) but those aren't newspapers so to speak.

(Screenshots for the people who didn't know)

So I'm gonna get started with the FIRST newspaper(s) we see in season 2.

And that would be a stack of them on the street right next to Aziraphale's bookshop.

Now unlike most of the other newspapers, you can't exactly see what these ones have to say, which is fine. I'm more intrigued by the fact that there just so happens to be (I assume that red thing is a newspaper thing because I'm from the US and that's not what those normally look like) a place to buy newspapers right outside the bookshop. The building itself says 'The News Agency' but I'm more intrigued by the little red cylindrical thing. How intriguing that so many characters wave their newspapers around for us to see and the News Paper building is literally right next to the bookshop.

Even more importantly this thing ALSO makes an appearance in the opening sequence. I know, I know, you're all probably tired of me screaming about the opening sequence at this point but seriously. Look.

And then this extra right here appears to be holding a stack of presumably newspapers, possibly making a delivery to The Dirty Donkey based off trajectory.

But I've also noticed we never really see anyone on the street holding newspapers, only in isolated locations where you can very clearly see the front page of their papers.

Which brings me to our second newspaper appearance (technically the first if you're going by readability)

Crowley (notice the ducks in the background, but kind of a given based on the location.)

We have three big 'headlines' on this one page we see right here.

"Maple Lane Post Box Becomes Home to Spider Species Not Seen in 45 Years."

"Norton Institute Reports its Highest Intake of Students Since Opening in 1888."

"Billions Still Owed to Millions."

Little weird. we have two things that are an increase in happenings since a certain time period...and a not so surprising 'billions owed to millions.'

Then we flip it around a bit (and ignore the...weird way he's holding his hand)

And we have the name of the newspaper. "TADFIELD ADVERTISER." With the main headline 'Is Tadfield the Best Village in England?' and no surprise that Crowley is keeping up to date and looking to see if anything else continues to happen with Adam.

The mini headline under the big bold one says 'According to voters of latest 'Best Village in England' poll Tadfield really is the loveliest place to live.' And in the tiny little blue box 'Entirely perfect weather AGAIN for Tadfield.'

So even after the end of season 1, it appears we still have some strange happenings in Tadfield. Right on.

By the by for those of you who didn't know, pretty sure every single page of Crowley's newspaper is the exact same.

But I think another important detail is, same as Mr Brown (of Brown's world of carpets) Crowley also seems to be holding the newspaper so you can very clearly see what's on it.

Next time something news related appears, we have our little red vessel appearing while Crowley loses his shit.

Now we don't actually see newspapers again until episode 2. This specific one is a doozy and had me and @lady-of-the-puddle screaming over it.

When Aziraphale is looking for clues over the Buddy Holly record, we see him pouring over some newspapers.

SO! Here we see Aziraphale reading a Scottish newspaper with an article titled "Everyday It's a gettin' closer" and we can see a couple more on the desk next to him. Now I've gone through and read the article (I'll post a screenshot so you can too if you want) and to sum it up it's basically the owner of The Resurrectionist discussing the records that keep changing to 'Everyday' by Buddy Holly and how he thinks it's a group of pranksters but never can catch them and the security measures he's tried to put up to prevent it from happening again.

Now the thing that's weird to me is actually the variety of newspaper articles Aziraphale seems to have...from different countries.

Now you might just kind of brush that off....but why on Earth would this news be important enough to make world news? Why would it be in news articles from different countries.

But most importantly...there's a typo.

Now. I don't speak German (so correct me if I'm wrong) but I do know how to use Google Translate.

This German article is titled 'Eden Tag nähert es sich... dem Wahnsinn des Wirts!'

And I don't speak German (though I'd love to) but I plugged this in to Google Translate and what I found was insane. Now when it translates you'll notice that the word Eden doesn't translate.

And there's a little suggestion underneath the German sentence, indicating you probably had a typo, and here's what you're probably looking for, which when you allow it to translate as such gives you...

Weird right? You'd assume the correct version of the news article would be where they're quoting the song they're talking about (unless it's a different dialect or slang of course.) But it's interesting that if I'm correct and that is a typo...it says 'Eden.' Now if you watched season 1 or have some Biblical knowledge of sorts, you might be on the same page as me...

Why Eden? Why create an article that translates to 'Eden Day' instead of 'Every day.' I wonder how many of the other news articles seemingly have a typo?

If this show has taught us anything, what do we know about typos? (Insert Markiplier voice here) DEMONS, JIM! So could that news article possibly have been written by a demon?

Anyways as we continue on, the next (and most frequent appearance of newspapers) is Mr Brown (of Brown's world of carpets.) And I won't add all the instances of that because if you read my last post, you already saw them.

But there he is, with his strange recurring article about accordion ducks.

But I actually want to focus on a different newspaper that appears in this scene. This gentleman right here.

Looks normal right? Except you can just barely make out the corner of something peaking out next to his leg. Well guess what? This is the same guy who was sitting at the table Aziraphale emptied.

In which his newspaper never comes 100% into focus, but it's right there on screen, flashing and saying 'HEY LOOK AT ME!'

in which he folds over his 'your travel' 'Milton Keynes' newspaper as such

to a completely new side of the newspaper and walks away. But wait there's more.

Check this out.

In which he turns to look at his newspaper AND ROTATES IT before going back to standing there looking like there's nothing in his hand. Look at these back to back shots though.

Would you look at that. Our newspaper is back. Guess what though. When we look away from him again and back, the newspaper is once again gone.

Mind you this whole time, when the newspaper appears, you see Aziraphale's eyes continuously flickering away from his conversation with Mr Brown (of Brown's world of carpets) and directly past him. Possibly to the newspaper? Maybe trying to direct your attention?

Here we have 'Thenewspaper' with articles

"Unearthed mysteries of sealed library basement."

and "Government approves funding for citywide [insert word here because i can't make it out thanks to his finger] stations."

Interesting....library basements and citywide funding. Huh.

Now as far as I'm aware, the only other times you see newspapers in the rest of the season, are Mr Brown (of Brown's world of carpets.) And even if there were more, I'd have to make a part 2 because I actually reached the image amount on this post.

That being said...there's a lot of weird shit going on with the newspapers, including our strange little accordion duck which has me absolutely bewildered. But I can't help but feel like the newspapers are important when everyone holding one seems to be holding it like a sign, just so that you can read it. Not to mention the freaking typo has me wide awake every night staring at my ceiling.

But for now, that's all I have. Stay tuned for another mental breakdown over something in this show that is preventing me from sleeping.

(Upon further examination I might be making yet another post about this.)

#good omens #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands #good omens season 2 #good omens meta #okay 100% not gonna lie #i was not prepared to post this yet #dont know what happened #but started getting notifs for it #but uhhhh i guess heres this post lol

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infernomicia · 1 month

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I still believe this relationship is based on a business arrangement. It's so common in Hollywood, so much more than lots of people realize, as you probably know as well since you work in the business. There is lots of money, stress and power at play and celebrities are encouraged or pushed by the studio system to make such choices. My belief is that she came into the picture when he was trying to get Superman back, something he'd literally do anything for, look at Gina Carano's recent interviews, she says that too. His sexual orientation likely comes into play as well, I still believe that. So they did a deal, whereby he'd get an age appropriate girlfriend that would follow him everywhere and give him a family. I agree with you that where it stings is that as part of that, they tried to create a powerful and talented film exec persona for her, which is obviously not the case. That's what makes me really dislike him. Do what you will, but don't try and manipulate us into thinking that this Gilead-like arrangement has actually anything to do with women's empowerment. Quite the contrary. I genuinely find it pathetic and no amount of bullying from their disgustingly toxic paid fake stans will ever make me change my mind. The mere fact that such paid fake stans exist tells you everything you need to know about the veracity of this situation.

I didn’t know there was paid stans? But I have found it weird that there’s stans that blindly support just her (not him) and she is not the famous one. I’ve also found it odd that she’s a VP producer since 2022 in TV and has done nothing, but somehow manages as a high ranking TV producer to work remotely and follow him around the world and attend events with a stylist that aren’t her projects. Also, she’s currently in LA and Vertigo released a TV show with Amazon, and she wasn’t at the premiere in LA. And as the VP of TV production at Vertigo, she should’ve been there to oversee the project. But she wasn’t. I do believe he goes for younger woman but if it’s over 18, legally it’s fine. However it lasting 3 years with a baby now is what’s preventing me from thinking it’s PR, because who would do that?!? But I do think the baby was unplanned because when questioned he sort of looked like a deer in headlights and deflected to talk about his career. And their lack of touching, intimacy and chemistry showed in the NY outings was odd for someone who is over the moon about his partner and the baby he always wanted. Especially as a gentleman people always say he is. What kind of gentleman lets his pregnant partner get in and out of a car onto oncoming traffic with paps surrounding on her own, doesn’t hold her hand down steps at hotels and doesn’t hold her hand or look at her in crowded areas like an airport? And he stated himself he is a very openly emotional guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. But comes across so cold to his love and mother of his child. His career is on a downward spiral since he’s no longer Superman or the Witcher. And Argyle bombed and the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare bombed too. I think his fans that have followed him since the beginning feel duped because he presented himself as being a self made, honest, kind, caring, truthful and nerdy person who always does the right thing. And she is someone who has bullied, loves attention, fame and has her career from nepotism and money. Seemingly the opposite. He comes across now fake and a liar, which fans don’t know how to defend. Blind loyalty is dangerous when what is being presented is strange to say the least. Also (not being hateful) but compare his 2019 self and Instagram pics to now and he looks really dishevelled. Lost weight, gaunt and dim in his glow. Even his smile looks forced. I was a runner, not within the Hollywood world, so I don’t know much about PR relationships. But it does look odd to say the least -

Again, this is my opinion and observation. Not saying hate, just saying what I see.

#henry cavill #hollywood #natalie viscuso #opinion #celebrity #celebrity gossip #relationship #actor #the witcher #superman

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