#& how even after all this time sometimes the war is still fresh as ever on his mind

[wttcsms]

horribly short summary of what im trying to accomplish here, but if you were to read a fic featuring character, a soldier honorably discharged and is officially off the battlefield and yet he can’t seem to shake off the war from clinging to his body, and he’s basically a bit of a mess and feels incapable of returning to ordinary life and there’s you, the sweetest thing in the whole world, and he keeps trying to tell you he’s no good and you’re there to help him with everything (and it kills him a bit, to see you wasting your time to help him, and it kills him because he feels like he shouldn’t be the type of person who needs help) and !! just slowburn and falling in love and just read the tags for the vibe ok, who would it be for

#i was originally thinking ghost from cod since hello there’s so much source material to work with #and the fic would suit him nicely but also idk if i have cod readers left on my blog #so any characters are fine like an aot character would also prob fit the bill for this #but ive just been thinking abt everyone who’s analyzing hozier’s snippet #with how he takes his coffee black and his whiskey neat and how this girl is too sweet FOR HIM #as in… not being deserving of something so nice #and feeling that way but also showing how in the healing process - in the process of getting better - #we start to discover that we are allowed to enjoy and indulge in nice things. that we also deserve to live a life full of sweetness #and it’s a bit serious since it will touch on ptsd; on survivors guilt #and the fic is long - spanning from getting together to him having kids w u #& how even after all this time sometimes the war is still fresh as ever on his mind #and just !!! it’s a lot #also that Taylor line that’s like ‘is it really your anxiety that keeps you from giving me everything? #‘or do you just not want to’ + ‘you wouldn’t be the first renegade to need somebody’

[candycandy00]

Office Life (Shigaraki x Reader)

Just Shigaraki awkwardly fantasizing about the cute receptionist who works in the same office building as him. You guys let me know if you like this quick “imagine” format for when I don’t have a full fanfic idea.

Smut. 18+. Violence/Blood (not Reader’s). Gender neutral Reader. Dubcon.

Shigaraki, who never had much interest in sex before, when he was so busy with the League and the war. Sure he jacked off to hentai every now and then, but the thought of having real life sex with a real live person didn’t really enter his brain. 

Until now. 

Shigaraki, who is fresh out of prison and working a dumb office job as part of his “rehabilitation”. Who is ignored and avoided by most of his coworkers because of his very publicized past. 

Shigaraki, who just can’t understand why you’re nice to him, why you smile at him so sweetly, like he’s an actual human being and not a monster. Why you, the cute receptionist from down the hall, keeps coming into the office he works in with five other men, desks all lined up neatly. 

Shigaraki, who likes that you look at him and acknowledge him, but sometimes has the irrational urge to show you how terrifying and monstrous he can be, to make you fear him the way everyone else does.

Shigaraki, who sometimes has violent fantasies about you that he will never act upon. Like today when you come into the room to share cookies you baked and brought in to the office. You, having such an obvious crush on him that even a socially inept weirdo like him can tell, blush and smile shyly when he takes a cookie from the box you hold out to him. 

Shigaraki, who has no idea what you could possibly like about him, but feels a little smug that the rest of the guys in the office are clearly jealous. 

And as you move toward the back of the room handing out cookies, constantly glancing back to see if he’s eating his, as if wanting his approval, Shigaraki’s dark fantasy takes over again. 

He imagines standing up from his chair and moving through the room, decaying each man in turn, most of them still holding their dumb fucking cookies, only to reach the back, where you’re cowering in a corner, trembling with fear as blood pools around your feet. 

You turn around to look at him, terror in those big wet eyes of yours, and then the pleading starts. He imagines you begging him not to kill you, babbling promises to not tell anyone, confessing your love in some desperate attempt to win his favor. You’re still clutching your frilly pink box of homemade cookies in your shaking hands. 

In his fantasy, he has perfect control over his quirk at all times, and with no effort at all he can decay the clothes right off your body, leaving you naked and vulnerable in the room full of bloody chunks. And you drop the cookies in your shock, trying to cover yourself with your hands. 

He won’t allow that. He’s wondered what you look like under your clothes for too long. And so he roughly pulls your hands away, getting an eye full, before shoving your back onto the nearest desk, spreading you open and unbuckling his pants. 

In this fantasy, you always struggle at first. But after he starts fucking you hard, you begin moaning his name, wrapping your arms around him, looking up at him with teary eyes and blushing cheeks as he rails you. 

Shigaraki, who snaps back to reality when you walk by him, the scent of your floral perfume drawing his attention. You look at the uneaten cookie in his hand and a flash of sadness crosses your face. He hurries to take a bite, and tries to give you a smile that isn’t creepy. 

You smile back, and he knows for a fact he will never, ever act on his worst impulses with you. Because far more than his desire to show you how much of a villain he can be, he wants you to keep smiling at him. 

And someday, maybe he’ll stop being a fucking coward and ask you to go to a movie with him. 

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki smut #shigaraki #shigaraki tomura #bnha smut #bnha x reader #x reader

[xthelastknownsurvivorx]

an incomplete list: things alex (and us readers) love about hrh prince henry of wales

something that I love dearly and find super cool about the list that alex makes for henry about what he loves about him is that we've actually experienced most of these things about henry with alex throughout the narrative of the book so it feels super organic and touching because yes we've come to love these things about henry too

so in honor of henry's birthday and because i was feeling sappy, here's all the moments throughout the book described in the list under the cut

1. The sound of your laugh when I piss you off.

Chapter 2, end of alex's london trip

“No booty calls,” Alex tells him, and Henry chokes on a laugh.

Chapter 4, great turkey calamity

“…you’re not a totally boring asshole.” “Wow,” Henry says with a laugh. “I’m honored.”

Chapter 10, morning after alex storms kensington

“Hi,” Alex says carefully, squinting over his coffee. “You seem … less pissy.” Henry huffs a laugh. “You’re one to talk. …’”

2. The way you smell underneath your fancy cologne, like clean linens but somehow also fresh grass (what kind of magic is this?).

Chapter 7, post-karaoke

Henry smells like expensive cologne and champagne and a distinctly Henry smell that never goes away, clean and grassy…

Chapter 9, lake house

…then Alex has him, inhaling the clean smell of him, laughing into the crook of his neck.

Chapter 15, election night

The second he steps backstage, there’s a hand on his back, the achingly familiar gravity of someone else’s body reentering his space before it even touches his, a clean, familiar scent light in the air between.

3. That thing you do where you stick out your chin to try to look tough.

Chapter 6, post-red room

“Hang on,” Henry says, and Alex is already groaning in protest, but Henry pulls back and rests his fingertips on Alex’s lips to shush him. “I want—” His voice starts and stops, and he’s looking like he’s resolving not to cringe at himself again. He gathers himself, stroking a finger up to Alex’s cheek before jutting his chin out defiantly. “I want you on the bed.”

Chapter 7, phone conversation

“It’s fine,” Henry says, steadiness rising in his voice as if he’s stuck out his chin in that stubborn way he does sometimes. Alex wishes he could see it.

Chapter 13, confrontation with mary

And [Henry] does the thing Alex loves so much: He sticks his chin out, steeling himself up. “I’m not a coward,” he says. “And I don’t want to fix it.”

4. How your hands look when you play piano.

Chapter 6, post-red room

Alex tries not to be in awe of the simple agility of his hands, tries not to think about classical piano or how swift and smooth years of polo have trained Henry to be.

Chapter 8, in Henry's apartments following wimbledon

His hands are fast, almost effortless, even as he goes off into a tangent about the War of the Romantics and how Liszt’s daughter left her husband for Wagner, quel scandale.

5. All the things I understand about myself now because of you.

Chapter 6

He’s starting to understand what swelled in his chest the first time he read about Stonewall, why he ached over the SCOTUS decision in 2015. … It’s weird that the thing with Henry could make him understand this huge part of himself, but it does. When he sinks into thoughts of Henry’s hands, square knuckles and elegant fingers, he wonders how he never realized it before. When he sees Henry next at a gala in Berlin, and he feels that gravitational pull, chases it down in the back of a limo, and binds Henry’s wrists to a hotel bedpost with his own necktie, he knows himself better.

6. How you think Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars (wrong) because deep down you’re a gigantic, sappy, embarrassing romantic who just wants the happily ever after.

Chapter 2, in the medical supply closet

Then, unprompted, Henry says into the stretching stillness, “Return of the Jedi.” A beat. “What?” “To answer your question,” Henry says. “Yes, I do like Star Wars, and my favorite is Return of the Jedi.” “Oh,” Alex says. “Wow, you’re wrong.” “…isn’t there something to be valued in a happy ending as well?” “Spoken like a true Prince Charming.” “I’m only saying, I like the resolution of Jedi. It ties everything up nicely. And the overall theme you’re intended to take away from the films is hope and love and … er, you know, all that. Which is what Jedi leaves you with a sense of most of all.”

Henry's passion and ability to recite things he's interested in 7. Your ability to recite Keats. 8. Your ability to recite Bernadette’s “Don’t let it drag you down” monologue from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Chapter 7

It’s another thing Henry does—whipping out these analyses of what he reads or watches or listens to…

Chapter 10, in the v&a

“James was completely besotted [with George Villiers]. Everyone knew. This French poet, de Viau, wrote a poem about it.” [Henry] clears his throat and starts to recite: “‘One man fucks Monsieur le Grand, another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre, and it is well known that the King of England, fucks the Duke of Buckingham.’”

Henry, who has tried, does try, and keeps trying 9. How hard you try. 10. How hard you’ve always tried. 11. How determined you are to keep trying.

Chapter 6, red room

Alex has been learning for a while Henry isn’t what he thought, but it’s something else to feel it this close up, the quiet burn in him, the pent-up person under the perfect veneer who tries and pushes and wants.

Chapter 7, conversation with June and the J-14 magazine

“It pisses me off sometimes, thinking about everything he’s been through. He’s a good person. He really cares, and he tries. He never deserved any of it.”

Chapter 10, when alex storms kensington

Alex swallows hard. “You’re not even gonna try to be happy?” “For Christ’s sake,” Henry says, “I’ve been trying to be happy my entire idiot life. My birthright is a country, not happiness.”

Chapter 10, morning after alex storms kensington

“I’m saying,” Henry begins, and the knit of his brow is nervous but his mouth keeps speaking, “I’m terrified, and my whole life is completely mad, but trying to give you up this week nearly killed me. And when I woke up this morning and looked at you … there’s no trying to get by for me anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever be allowed to tell the world, but I … I want to. One day. If there’s any legacy for me on this bloody earth, I want it to be true. So I can offer you all of me, in whatever way you’ll have me, and I can offer you the chance of a life. If you can wait, I want you to help me try.”

Chapter 13, in london following the email leak

Henry who has been through the worst thing and now the next worst thing and is still alive. [Alex] reaches out a hand and touches the ridge of Henry’s shoulder blade, the skin where the sheet has slid off him, where his lungs stubbornly refuse to stop pulling air.

Honorable mention: When Alex used to think Henry didn't try Chapter 1, the lead up to cakegate

“I’m just saying,” Alex says, resting an overly friendly elbow on Henry’s shoulder… “You could try to act like you’re having fun. Occasionally.”

12. That when your shoulders cover mine, nothing else in the entire stupid world matters.

Chapter 5, in Alex's room after the state dinner

Henry’s hands are huge on his back, his jaw sharp and rough with a long day’s stubble, his shoulders broad enough to eclipse Alex when he rolls them over and pins Alex to the mattress. None of it feels anything like anything he’s felt before, but it’s just as good, maybe better.

Chapter 7, post-karaoke

Henry rolls Alex onto his side and burrows behind him until he’s covering him completely, his shoulders a brace for Alex’s shoulders, one of his thighs pressed on top of Alex’s thighs, his arms over Alex’s arms and his hands over Alex’s hands, nowhere left untouched. It’s the best Alex has slept in years.

13. The goddamn issue of Le Monde you brought back to London with you and kept and have on your nightstand (yes, I saw it).

Chapter 7, paris

In the morning, room service brings up crusty baguettes and sticky tarts filled with fat apricots and a copy of Le Monde that Alex makes Henry translate out loud.

Chapter 10, morning after alex storms kensington

And beside him, there’s a copy of Le Monde on the nightstand… He recognizes the date: Paris. The first time they woke up next to each other.

14. The way you look when you first wake up.

Surprisingly, no direct descriptions of this but we can extrapolate from Chapter 15, presidential election victory celebration

And for a fraction of a second, a whole crystallized life flashes into view, a next term and no elections left to win, a schedule packed with classes and Henry smiling from the pillow next to him in the gray light of a Brooklyn morning.

15. Your shoulder-to-waist ratio.

Chapter 5, alex sexuality crisis musings while on a run with june

He thinks about Henry’s voice low in his ear over the phone at three in the morning, and suddenly he has a name for what ignites in the pit of his stomach. Henry’s hands on him, …Henry’s mouth, … Henry’s broad shoulders and long legs and narrow waist…

16. Your huge, generous, ridiculous, indestructible heart.

Chapter 9, last night at the lake house

What if [Alex] got so wrapped up in everything Henry is—the words he writes, the earnest heartsickness of him—he forgot to take into account that it’s just how he is, all the time, with everyone?

Chapter 11, hometown stuff email

You love so much bigger than yourself, bigger than everything. I can’t believe how lucky I am to even witness it—to be the one who gets to have it, and so much of it, is beyond luck and feels like fate.

Chapter 12, bad metaphors about maps email

…the truth of you. the weird, perfect shape of your heart. the one on the outside of your chest. give yourself away sometimes, sweetheart. there’s so much of you.

Chapter 12, in london following the email leak

Six feet of boy curled around kicked-in ribs and a recalcitrant heart.

17. Your equally huge dick.

Chapter 10, in the V&A

“Oh, yeah,” Alex says. “The top list of reasons to love you goes brain, then dick, then imminent status as a revolutionary gay icon.”

18. The face you just made when you read that last one.

Chapter 4, new years eve party

[Alex] was having fun watching everything he did play out on Henry’s face.

19. The way you look when you first wake up (I know I already said this, but I really, really love it).

See #14

20. The fact that you loved me all along.

Chapter 10, morning after alex storms kensington

“What about you?” “What about me?” Henry says. “Christ, Alex. The whole bloody time.” “The whole time?” “Since the Olympics.” “The Olympics?” Alex yanks Henry’s pillow out from under him. “But that’s, that’s like—” “Yes, Alex, the day we met, nothing gets past you, does it?” Henry says, reaching to steal the pillow back. “‘What about you,' he says, as if he doesn’t know—”

Chapter 11, re hometown stuff email

But the first time I saw you. Rio. I took that down to the gardens. I pressed it into the leaves of a silver maple and recited it to the Waterloo Vase. It didn’t fit in any rooms. You were talking with Nora and June, happy and animated and fully alive, a person living in dimensions I couldn’t access, and so beautiful. Your hair was longer then. You weren’t even a president’s son yet, but you weren’t afraid. You had a yellow ipê-amarelo in your pocket. I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire. And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.

#rwrb #red white and royal blue #firstprince #henry fox mountchristen windsor #alex and henry #rwarb spoilers #alex claremont diaz #rwarb #rwrb fic

[tteokdoroki]

☆༉ — KATSUKI BAKUGOU. all my life i’ve dreamed of you.

about. you think that he was made for you. im in the mood for some fluffy husband!bakugou !!

warnings. none. sfw, fluff & gn!reader.

“i don’t mean to be corny,” you say late one night, nosing up the side of katsuki’s neck. “but i think i dreamt you up.”

it’s routine for the two of you to be up together for at least an hour before your husband drifts off — bakugou is old fashioned, he doesn’t believe in blue light and phone screens before bed so you’ll often catch him reading a book recommended by momo in the time leading up to his beauty sleep.

you’ll never understand how he manages to fall asleep upright, but for tonight you convince him to lay back with you in the sheets so you can nuzzle your face into his plush chest.

you feel his ruby gaze on you before you meet it — pulled away from the words in his book. “whaddya mean by that, gorgeous?” bakugou chuffs in amusement, a faint smile tugging on the corner of his lips while he shoves his thumb into the spine of his book to bookmark the page.

“when i was little, i dreamt of someone who loved me,” you start by choosing your words carefully — bakugou has always been a man spooked by love he doesn’t think he deserves and even after all this time together, he still has his doubts as to whether or not he believes you should waste an ounce of time on him. he’s come a long way since when you first started dating. but sometimes even the strongest of people need convincing of why they should get to be loved.

bakugou doesn’t run or flinch away, instead he stills his lungs locked away in his chest and waits with baited breath for the blow you might deal him. the doubts start to cloud his mind. “someone who cared for me the way that they do on tv, someone who adored me the way my grandpa loved my grandma…you get it.” you continue, drawing a heart on his stomach with invisible ink.

“yeah, i get it.” the blonde rasps apprehensively.

you push yourself up, bracing yourself on the tussled fabric on bakugou’s side of the bed to cage him in — glassy, tired eyes searching through the soul that swirls in his own. “what i’m trying to say, is that i’ve dreamt of moments like this all my life and now i’ve finally found the person to share it with. no one has ever loved me the way i wanted to be,” from this position you can see the faded constellation of barely there freckles that decorate bakugou’s skin. you see the war he lived and died through etched into worry lines and creases in his skin. you see it all and you love it all. perfectly imperfect just how you imagined it to be.

“not until i met you, kats. you’re the only person who’s loved me enough for me.”

the exhale your husband lets out expels the fear from his chest and replaces it with a glowing feeling — a happiness in the shade of warm toned yellows and oranges. it illuminates katsuki’s face, eases his stress lines and fills him with reassurance.

“i’ll love you enough f’the both of us. always.” he respond, folding a doggy-ear into the corner of the last-read page in his book. bakugou shoves it to the side and let’s his calloused hand cup the back of your neck — it’s weight reminding you of his presence, letting you know that he’s not going anywhere. katsuki is your dream and yours alone.

swooping down, you paint his lips with a feather light kiss and hum at the taste of minty fresh toothpaste intertwined with his promise of forever on them.

“you’ll have to let me give some of that love back,” you say, contentedly. “i need you to know how much of me still loves and dreams of you.”

꒰ end. — all rights reserved © tteokdoroki 2023. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.

#bakugou x reader #bakugou x you #bakugou fluff #bakugou imagines #bakugo x reader #bakugo x you #bakugo fluff #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou katsuki fluff #bakugo drabble #bnha x reader #bnha x you #bnha fluff #mha fluff #mha x reader #✧ ₊˚੭ — writing #tteokdoroki #✧ ₊˚💭੭ — aali just posted

[so-long-soldier-writes]

One of Those Days

poly!mikaelsons x reader | request

summary: between the constant fighting and city clamor, you're overstimulated from the minute you wake up. you try to isolate until you feel better, but sometimes, that only makes things worse. luckily, your loving vampire partners are always there for you.

tags: sensory issues, mental health, overstimulation, arguing, mild emotional hurt / comfort

word count: ~2.6k

a/n: requested by @asexualaromosafezone - i am SO SORRY this took me literal months to complete. a couple days ago, i suddenly remembered i never filled it and finished it asap. i hope you like it, and again, so many apologies!

Sometimes, you wake up, and can immediately tell it’ll be a hard day. The sun has barely risen, yet there’s already a million noises coming through your window. Chatters of people having their morning walks, car horns from those too impatient to let them cross, the distant clang of a dropped pot, and-

“REBEKAHHH!”

-Klaus, yelling for his sister. At seven in the morning. 

“What the bloody hell are you shouting for?! I’m right here!”

You sigh, glad that mystery solved quickly.

There’s probably a few more minutes until your alarm rings, so instead of getting up a little earlier, you opt to enjoy your last minutes of peace. Though you soon realize that’s impossible, given your circumstances. On top of the city sounds, there’s a bird right outside your window, and when you try to turn away from it, the tag on your blanket itches the inside of your thigh. 

“Ugh!” You toss the blanket off. 

Your alarm sounds not a second later. 

With a slap to your phone and then another to your forehead, you decide to just get ready for the day. Luckily, not much is planned. Marcel still has control over the city, and with you being human, your Mikaelson hosts don’t want you outside at all. 

See, you live with the family of original vampires. You used to be a Mystic Falls’ resident, but then after developing a close connection with the siblings, decided to move to New Orleans with them and get a fresh start. You were tired of the small town life, and while the big city can be overwhelming at times, you’ll never get sick of the culture it has to offer. Besides, living with the most powerful family makes you happier than you ever believed you could be. 

As much as you love them, though, they can be a pain. Like when Klaus can’t find his sister, but forgets a whisper would summon her just as effectively. Instead, he has to wake up the whole quarter, and inconvenience you with a headache. When you reach the dining room that day, you slump your head on the table. 

“Everything alright, darling?” Kol’s voice floats over your head, making you aware of his presence. 

“Tired.”

“Is your bed comfortable enough? Do you need more blankets?”

You haven’t been in the city long, and his consideration warms your heart. 

“Oh, I’m okay. I’m very comfy. Just haven’t gotten used to the city yet.”

“Ah, I understand.”

His attention drifts to his sister. You busy yourself with a plate of food and ignore how tired you feel. When Elijah sits beside you, you offer a smile, but don’t say anything. The man, polite as ever, does the same. Though while two of the siblings are quiet, the other two aren’t. Klaus and Rebekah are still on the same topic from earlier. They bounce off each other quickly, childish banter turning into an argument.

You try to eat in peace and ignore them, but it’s difficult. And it doesn’t help that you’ve been feeling down lately, anyway. It’s rather unexplainable, the way you feel. Some days you’d rather stay in bed all day than face the world. Your whole body could be begging for you to get up and get things done, but you just can’t. No matter how hard you fight your own mind, sometimes there’s no winning the raging war. 

To make matters worse, you’re always hypersensitive when you find yourself in these low moods. Every little thing is overstimulating and there’s no pause button. This morning, you didn’t even get a chance to wake up before the sounds started. (Thanks, Klaus.) You roll your eyes in your head, annoyed. 

“Hey.” A poke to your shoulder startles you, making you jump. “You okay?” 

“Ooh, you caught me off guard.”

“Sorry,” Kol smiles, “you in deep thought, or rolling your eyes at Klaus’ statement?”

“Uh…” You bite your lip. You were rolling your eyes about Klaus, but missed whatever statement it was that he just made. “What did he say?”

“That he was on his way to have a little chat with Marcel. That will go swimmingly.”

“Oh.” You snort and decide to joke. “Both.”

Kol grins at you, but then, thankfully, leaves you alone again. 

After breakfast, you retreat back into your room, not in the mood to face the day. If Klaus is really going to start shit with Marcel, it’ll be an intense day. You’ve never met the current king of the French Quarter, but Elijah’s told stories. Marcel and the family used to be close, but then, like all their other relationships, ties ended drastically. 

“But not with you, of course,” he had promised. “You’re our girl.”

You were skeptical for a moment. Who wouldn’t be, knowing the Mikaelsons? But then Klaus approached you from behind with a kiss to your hair and confirmed his brother’s words,

“As long as we have your loyalty, you’ll always have ours.”

You could see the truth in his statement. Everyone who ended up on their bad side had betrayed them in some way. So, as long as you didn’t repeat others’ mistakes; as long as you kept your trust in the family, you would be considered family. And ever since the day you first grew close, you have been their family. 

You’re close with all of the siblings. Elijah, first, when you couldn’t take your eyes off him at Damon’s dinner party. Then Rebekah, and then Kol, when he undaggered. Even Finn, before his untimely death - thanks to Matt, your good friend now worst enemy. Klaus took the longest to trust you, and you can’t blame him for having trust issues, but once he realized how much his siblings adored you, he was quick to accept your place with them. 

Now, the five of you live together, nine hundred miles from your hometown. It’s certainly a change, but every day with them is an adventure.

Like today, you suddenly think, overhearing Elijah’s footsteps in the hallway. Today has definitely been one of those days. 

“Y/N?” He stops outside your door.

“Mhm?”

“Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

Elijah opens the door, but doesn’t fully enter your room. He looks you up and down before smiling. “I just thought you seemed sad earlier and wanted to check on you. Is everything okay?”

“Oh!” You put on a brave face to mask the tiredness you feel internally. “Yeah, I’m just out of sorts today. It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure? Because if someone’s bothering you, that’s something we can take care of.”

“No, no, I promise. It’s all just me. Just having a day.”

“You’re positive?” He asks for confirmation again.

“Have I ever lied to you, ‘Lijah?”

He looks down at his shoes, embarrassed. “No, you haven’t. I apologize for doubting you.”

“It’s okay,” you step closer to him, resting against the door frame. “No need to apologize. But I swear, I just… woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something. New Orleans is a loud city. I’m still adjusting.”

“Okay. Well, call if you need anything. Even the smallest thing.”

“I will.”

“Oh, and be careful in the off-chance that Marcel storms in here. There’s a fight brewing in the quarter.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Better yet, stay inside for the day. So you’re not in harm’s way at all.”

“Okay, ‘Lijah.”

He smiles at you, then kisses your hand. “Now, I need to neutralize my brother. But I needed to make sure our girl was okay first.”

“She’s okay. Go deal with him.”

Elijah straightens his collar before speeding off to no doubt defend his brother in a fight. You love Klaus, but man, does he get angry. And then from anger, comes pure rage, then absolute chaos. Once situations escalate that far, the whole block better hide if they want to keep their hearts in their chest. 

You sigh, thinking of the carnage that may come. You’re not sure you can deal with his anger issues today, especially not coupled with those of Marcel. Of all the days they have to fight, it’s the one that you might snap, too, if he raises his voice one more time. 

Suddenly, your bed looks like the perfect oasis away from the mess behind your door. A good pillow over the ears might prevent an impending meltdown. You crawl into it at once and let your body melt into the mattress. 

You hadn’t lied to Elijah, though you hadn’t given him the full truth, either. Yes, you are, in general, okay. Not necessarily today, but at that moment, you were. Also yes, you’re not feeling great today, partly because of all the city noise. And, finally, yes, most of it is just you and your body not in the mood to be awake. Though Klaus is contributing, just a little bit, to your mental distress today. Elijah would understand, of course, but then he’d have a talk with his brother about it, and you really didn’t want to burden either of them in that way, so you put on a smile and didn’t mention it. You’d bet Elijah knows the full truth, and knows why you won’t admit it, but he respects you if you don’t want to talk about it. That’s one of the reasons you love him so much. 

You get a couple hours of rest until your slumber is interrupted by a new knock on your door. It’s not soft, like Elijah’s, so it must be one of the younger two. 

“Oh no,” you mutter, wondering what it must be now.

“Y/N?” Rebekah’s voice comes from the other side. “Are you awake?”

“I am now.” 

She opens the door as you reply. “Oh what the bloody hell are you still doing in bed?”

“Sleeping.”

“Obviously! Come watch a movie with Kol and I! We’d love your company.”

“An actual movie, or the public display of violence happening outside in the quarter?”

“We haven’t decided yet!” She grabs your hand. “Come on!”

You yawn. “I’m gonna pass today, I’m not up for it.”

“Awh, Y/N! It won’t be as fun without you!”

“I have a headache, Bex,” you fib. 

“Do you want some blood for that?”

“Does that even work like that?”

She shrugs, “not sure.”

You cuddle into your pillow. “Another time, okay?”

The girl smiles, then leans forward to kiss your head. “Okay. If you change your mind, come find us.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Dinner’s at seven. Will you be there?”

“Yeah,” you promise, “I should be better by then.”

You are not, in fact, better by then. If anything, your foul mood progressed into an actual headache within thirty minutes of Rebekah leaving. Shouts throughout the city managed to penetrate the thin glass of your windows, and you could hear almost everything as Klaus heckled the current king. For hours, it went on, until the sun went down and they assumedly put it off for another day. By seven o’clock, you were able to sneak in another nap, but you still felt way overstimulated from the day’s events. 

Not to mention the fact that you spent all day in bed. Sometimes, you’re overstimulated by too much going on, but today you partly did it to yourself by hiding away all day. The guilt of avoiding everyone weighs on your chest. Rebekah had invited you to a movie; Elijah went out of his way to check up on you, and you had more or less dismissed them both. A bitter taste sits in your mouth when you think about it. Water doesn’t wash it out.

Hopefully dinner will. 

For the first ten minutes, the night passes peacefully. Most of the conversation is focused between the meal and the movie the two had watched. The events of the day, seemingly, are left in the past.

But then, of course, Kol has to make a comment on something he overheard that he thought was funny. And that set Klaus off into a spewing of anger. He’s pissed at Marcel, but now, also, at Kol for bringing it up. Elijah puts his face in his hands, and Rebekah sends both a huge eye roll. 

What was a moment of much-appreciated silence is now a yelling match. After five minutes, you reach your breaking point. 

“Why do you feel the need to comment on that, Kol? It was so insignificant, but you’ve felt the need to bring it up, and now I’m reminded of how much Marcel has done to piss me off!”

“I didn’t mean to make you upset, bloody hell! I thought it was funny!”

“It wasn’t funny to me when he was spitting in my face! I-”

“Oh my god! Are you ever not arguing?!” You suddenly shout. 

The table goes silent and all eyes are on you. A needle could be dropped and it would be heard across the quarter. 

“I’m sorry,” you apologize quickly, embarrassed.

“Love,” Elijah puts a hand on your shoulder, “are you alright?”

At his touch, you flinch. He retracts his hand quickly, but doesn’t move his body away from its proximity to yours. 

Klaus, although upset at the interruption, notices this and calms a little. “Everything okay, Y/N?”

“I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

“That little outburst didn’t sound like nothing.”

“I’m just stressed.”

“Darling, what’s got you all upset? Tell us and we’ll sort it out now.”

“It’s no one, Kol, I’m just not feeling well.”

“Still have a headache, sweetheart?” Rebekah asks. 

“You have a headache?” Klaus butts in. 

The assortment of questions makes you drop your head. It nearly hits the table, but Elijah grabs your frame before you can fall. Tears form in your eyes, visibly. 

“I’m just really overstimulated today. I woke up weird and this city is loud, and then there was all the fighting all day long, and then I hid in my room all day, but then I felt bad about hiding, and now I’m making you all worried because I can’t get my shit under control!”

“And that’s your fault, how?” Elijah asks, “you cannot blame yourself for the way you feel.”

“But I need to handle my emotions better. I’m sorry.”

“No apologies necessary, love,” Klaus adds, “I certainly haven’t helped, fighting with children all day.”

“Niklaus,” Elijah warns, but Klaus doesn’t argue with him this time. 

“I should’ve stayed with you when you said you had a headache.”

“Don’t blame yourself either, Bex. It’s not your fault.”

“But we could’ve cuddled,” she frowns.

“It’s okay. I got a nap, and it helped a little. I just need to get used to my life being different now. None of you are at fault.”

“Nor are you,” the eldest reminds, “it’s been quite a day for us all.”

Kol clears his throat, “say, after dinner, if you feel up to it, we could all watch a movie and cuddle around you? I think some comfort is much needed.”

“Sure,” you agree, “but I might fall asleep during it.”

“That’s quite alright,” he smiles. He then stands up to hug you, but when his arms wrap around your neck, you freeze.

“Not yet, please. I’m still a bit stressed.”

He gives you a wink. “Of course, darling. Let me know when you’re ready.”

Klaus flicks his napkin across the table. He’s folded it into the shape of a heart. “We love you. You know that, right?”

You take the heart, kiss it, and put it in your pocket. “I do. I love you all, too. Thanks for understanding.”

#poly!mikaelsons x reader #poly!mikaelsons #elijah mikaelson x reader #kol mikaelson x reader #rebekah mikealson x reader #klaus mikaelson x reader #tw mental health #i feel so bad for taking so long on this

[theidiotwhowritesthings]

Do You Want Me, Cyar'ika [happy]

Dark!Din Djarin x Jedi!Female Reader

Warnings: HEY THIS IS DARK WATCH OUT, stalking, manhandling, slight choking if you kind of squint, dubcon (reader is willing, but is def under the influence of the darksaber), smut, hand job, mentions of blood and injury, mentions of permanent scarring of the reader

Word Count: 6,717

Summary: Din Djarin is a man who lost everything. His home, his son, his Creed. But at the end of the day, he still had you. He still had you, and he was determined to keep you. Part One: Ni Ceta, Cyar'ika Part Two: I Love You, Cyar'ika

[a/n: THIS IS THE HAPPY ENDING TO THIS TRILOGY. My suggestion is to read the version you really want first b/c the beginning half is the exact same. It's only the end that differs.]

.

"sometimes, you just need a fresh start. a new beginning. a clean slate. just get rid of everything going wrong and make it go right." -the importance of starting over

.

The echoing of your footsteps bounced off the walls and the quick pace seemed to match the racing of your heart. No looking back. You needed to get to the tarmac. Din was supposed to be in the war room with Bo Katan and the others in his council discussing something or another. This morning he had told you that he wouldn’t be able to meet you for lunch until a bit later in the afternoon. Half an hour after he had told you this, you grabbed your stuff and started running. 

You had the right idea months ago when you first tried to leave. This was going to be your last chance. If he caught you this time you don’t know that you’d ever get the chance to run away again. Memories of that beskar chain and anklet hung heavy in your mind as you picked up your pace. A terrifying thought occurred to you. Would he stop there? How far would Din go to keep you by his side? You truly believed, deep down, that Din wouldn’t hurt you, but… were you just being delusional? At some point, he’d consider the line to be crossed.

The tarmac was mostly empty. The few Mandalorians that were in the area gave you curious looks, but nobody dared stop you. That was a side effect of being ‘owned’ by the Mand’alor and though you found it disturbing previously it was truly working in your favor now. Everybody on this rock, save for a few people like Bo Katan, were too terrified of Din to even look in your direction for longer than a few seconds. As you sprinted to the closest ship you knew how to pilot, the Mandalorians began to disperse. You had a suffocating suspicion that they were in the process of calling Din.

You made it further than you had last time. You were on the ship, ramp closing behind you, and you clambered into the cockpit and got things running. As the ship slowly began to rise, you saw him. Din stood at the edge of the tarmac with his hands on his hips. The wind tunneling through the ship’s exhaust and down onto the ground below caused Din’s thick cape and hair to whip around. Even from this distance, you could feel Din’s gaze burning straight through you. The look on his face was haunting⏤ a mix of devastation and unbridled rage. You couldn’t bring yourself to look away. Even after the ship was in the atmosphere and Din was far out of view, you stared down at Mandalore in pain. Your chest ached as your heart already begun to miss the man you were running from.

Before allowing yourself to wallow, you input the coordinates to Tatooine and let the ship slip into hyperdrive. The second those all too familiar lines of blurred space cast a blue glow in the cockpit, you pulled your knees up into your chest to bury your face there. If somebody were to ask you the exact reason why tears streamed down your face you would not be able to give them an answer.

You just knew, everything was wrong.

You agonized over who to send a message to. As you drew ever near to Tatooine, doubts began to plague your mind. Should you reach out to Boba and Fennec? They were obvious choices because they cared about Din and they knew how to hold their own in a fight. However, you had a nagging fear at the back of your mind that would not silence. It blared like a ghostly siren. Din was not himself right now, and though you knew without a doubt that he would not hurt you, could the same be said for Boba and Fennec? Especially if they stood in the way of Din getting to you?

You hated that you were unsure of that.

You hated that a part of you honestly thought Din might hurt his friends or worse.

There was no changing course though. The best solution you had was to get in touch with Luke Skywalker. He might have answers about this. Even if he didn’t, having him and Ahsoka by your side would help. Three Jedi surely could get that cursed saber away from Din. Granted, there was no assurance that separating the saber from the love of your life would actually work, but it was all you had. It was the last bit of hope you could cling to. 

Upon your arrival to Tatooine, you immediately slunk away to a crowded cantina. You were not a fool. You knew Din was not just going to let you wander away and you knew he was one of the deadliest bounty hunters in the galaxy. He was very good at what he did⏤ especially when passionate about the mission. That didn’t leave you very much time to get the information you needed. 

You sent out a decoded distress message to the number Skywalker had left you when he took Grogu. He left it strictly for emergencies and this obviously classified as one. After it was out in the universe, all you could do was wait. So you saddled up to the bar, sat on a stool, and ordered a drink. It was all you could think to do. This was the first time in ages that you were in a space not clouded by Din’s presence. You hadn’t realized until now how suffocating it had been.

Being with Din, watching his slow descent, you had gotten accustomed to that cloud of darkness that hung over his head. To the point where you didn’t notice it worsening and worsening. It felt as if your body had acclimated to living under the ocean. Your body grew used to the crushing depths. Your lungs shriveled from the lack of oxygen. Your eyes grew blind from the absence of light. Now? Sitting at this dingy, dirty bar, it was as if someone had forced you up from the ocean floor and dragged you quickly up to the surface. It was jarring. The fresh air was painful as it filled your lungs, your eyes burned from the disappearance of darkness, and suddenly it was freedom that felt wrong. 

A sudden beeping made you glance down at the communicator. Eyes wide, you answered it, “Hello? Luke Skywalker?” Your name was spoken over the line in concern. “Thank the Maker. I⏤ Din and I are in trouble.”

“What has happened?”

“It’s…” You took in a slow breath and began to walk him through what was going on. You started with the moment he took Grogu and described every single downward step the two of you had taken with the saber in his possession. When you finished, your throat felt thick with emotion. “I got away, but he’ll be after me soon. I know it. Luke, I… I don’t know what to do. I just know I need help, and I’m too afraid to go to anybody other than you.”

“You were right to reach out to me.” Luke sighed. “This needs to be handled by us. No need to risk anyone else.”

The thought flickered through your head without warning. You were okay with putting Luke Skywalker and Ahsoka in danger. It came quickly and you swatted it away just as fast, but it felt like poison. Obviously, Boba and Fennec meant more to you than Luke and Ahsoka. You were closer to the first two. However, it still didn’t make risking the lives of the latter two okay. The fact that the belief attempted to nestle in your head reminded you of the dark saber. Your hand wrapped around your own lightsaber⏤ seeking comfort in the energy it radiated.

“You believe he’ll follow you, correct?” Luke questioned.

“Absolutely.” You answered without an ounce of hesitation.

Luke hummed on the other end of the line in thought. “I will send you coordinates. Come to us. The Mandalorian will follow and we will handle this from there. You just need to get here. Can you do that?”

“Yeah.” You nodded your head, trying to convince yourself. “I can. I’ll leave as soon as you send me those coordinates.”

“Of course. Call us again if you have trouble.”

“Thank you.”

The call ended and you threw back the remainder of the drink before rushing for the door. It would take fifteen minutes to get to the tarmac and you assumed you’d get the coordinates by then to use. The crowded Tatooine streets made you anxious. Shoulders clipped into yours as people rushed past you in the opposite direction. It felt like there were eyes burning into your skin, but every scan of the crowd told you it had to just be your paranoia. 

Your communicator beeped again and a quick glance down revealed the coordinates you’d be heading to. Good. You quickened your pace to turn a corner to the last leg of the path that would take you to the public tarmac when you spotted him. A flash of glinting silver under the hot Tatooine suns. Your feet came to a screeching halt, and for a moment the two of you stood stock still. Din was down the road. Closer to the tarmac’s entrance than to you. His hands rested on his hips, and he was helmetless. Even from this distance the darkness swimming in his brown eyes sent a chill down your spine. He had been a sight to behold in his full armor, a faceless figure of intimidation. However, you knew now that it was worse without the helmet. Actually seeing those burning eyes, rather than just feel them, made your stomach flip.

The crowd ebbed and flowed, a small group passing between the two of you, and when they passed fully Din was gone. You couldn’t see him. Without a second more of hesitation, you spun on your heel and sprinted in the opposite direction of where he had been standing. The public tarmac was a bust. You’d never be able to successfully route yourself back around, but you still needed a ship.

Peli’s shop. As soon as it came to mind, you altered course to head in that direction. You prayed that Peli wasn’t home. Hopefully she’d be out losing credits to a group of jawas in sabbac or conning some poor sap at the market. Your chest burned in the effort it took to keep your quick pace, your heart pounded painfully, and you could still feel Din’s eyes on you. Every time you glanced over your shoulder or down alleys there was no sign of silver, but you knew⏤ you just knew⏤ that he was hot on your heels somehow. 

You finally reached Peli’s shop and the garage was closed which meant she was not home, but you remembered the way in through the back. Peli had shown it to you and Din ages ago. Even if she didn’t have a client’s ship sitting in the bay, you could steal her land speeder and come up with a different plan from there. Once in, your eyes landed on a small ship parked in the main bay and your lips curled up into a relieved smile. Find the FOB, get the ship open and started. You rushed to Peli’s office and cursed the wrecked state it was in. Her baseline was chaotic and it showed in her organization choices. You dug through the mess until you found a FOB that seemed to match the ship waiting for you.

Victorious, you sprinted out of the office back down to the bay, but the second your feet stepped into the open area something hard slammed into you. The air was knocked from your lungs as you landed on the ground. Din’s features stared down at you as his body straddled yours. One of his gloved hands pinned down your dominant hand while the other clamped down on your throat⏤ not enough to restrict air, but just enough to convey his warning. You could see your fearful eyes reflected in the beskar covering him as he towered over you. Din’s face didn’t look angry or worried. He didn’t look scared or confused. Din looked cold. Emotionless. Somehow that was worse.

“Din⏤”

“Don’t.” Din said sharply. The fingers on your neck flexed once. “Don’t speak, cyar’ika.”

More suffocating than his demeanor and broad figure was the poisonous energy seeping out of the saber hung on his belt. You were drowning in it, struggling to keep your head above it’s dark waters, and Din was pushing you beneath the waves. He held you under. Din was a man drowning and in your attempt to rescue him he was dragging you to the depths as well. 

“How could you do this to me?” Din asked. His voice cracked⏤ the only sign of his pain. “Cyar’ika, you…” Din swallowed. A flash of heartbreak filled his expressive brown eyes and the degree of his hurt briefly made you feel guilty. Like you had been the one to betray him. “I love you. You are my everything. I would burn the world for you. How could⏤ How could you leave?”

“I never asked for you to burn the world for me, Din.” You whispered. “That’s not what I want.”

Din shifted and leaned down so he could rest his forehead against yours. His hand hung loosely around your throat, forearm pressed against your chest, and it was a position your body was familiar with. If you closed your eyes and gave into the darkness trying to claw its way down your throat and into your lungs, then you’d simply feel like you were sharing a private moment of intimacy with your love. Din’s lips suddenly ghosted against yours and you felt your body tremble.

“What is it you want?” Din begged. “I will give you anything. I just want you safe by my side.”

“I told you what I want, Din…”

Din sighed, his hot breath fanning across your lower face, “I can’t do that.” His voice was strained as if her were in agony. “The saber is how I protect you, cyar’ika.”

“You’re losing me because of that saber, baby.”

For the longest moment, Din remained silent. His eyes were closed and you could see him ruminating over something. After a second, he opened his eyes and Din’s eyebrows furrowed in defeat. A flicker of hope burned in your chest until he opened his mouth and spoke. 

“Things were okay. We just need to start from scratch again. I know you hated that chain, cyar’ika, but it’s for the best.” Din said softly and your eyes widened at how serious his words were. How much he believed that to truly be the best path. “It won’t be forever, I swear it. Just until I trust you again.”

“Din⏤”

“No.” Din snapped. His soft despair turning to a firm demand. “There will be no argument. I’m taking you home.” You opened your mouth once more, but Din’s fingers began to tighten around your throat marginally. “You’re already in trouble, cyar’ika. Don’t make it worse.”

Panic began to make your heart race. You were sinking fast and the light was beginning to disappear from your sight⏤ your freedom with it. In a poor attempt at a final chance of survival, you spoke up despite his order to stay silent. “I just wanted to say sorry.”

Din scoffed. “You understand why I find it hard to believe you.”

“I know.” You nodded. “Please, baby. I’m sorry. Please believe me. You know I love you.”

You could feel Din’s thumb around your neck tracing the skin under it as he stared down at you. He took in a deep breath and leaned in to press his forehead against yours once more. Din brushed his lips lightly against yours. “You’re always so pretty when you beg, cyar’ika.” That was the one thing you had working in your favor. Din always had a hard time telling you ‘no’ when your bodies were folded together like this. “I’ll hear you out, but let’s get to our ship first.”

“Why not now? Let me tell you how sorry I am, Din.” You begged and he let out a soft sigh as his eyes closed. Your eyes darted to the saber on his belt. If you ended up back on Mandalore it would be over. There would be no second chance. Determined, you rolled your hips up and just as you suspected you were met with the firmness of his half hard cock. Din groaned. “Let me show you how sorry I am.” Your non-dominant hand had been clutching at the hand he had at your throat, but you very slowly let it travel up his arm to bury in his soft hair. “Please, baby.”

You tilted your head up as much as you could with Din’s hand clamped around your neck. Carefully, in fear that too quick or sudden a movement would break the spell, you began to pull Din down closer. Din hesitated against the slight force of your hand only for a second before he slotted his lips against yours. As always, Din’s touch set you aflame. He released the wrist he had pinned and hooked that hand under your thigh to spread your legs so he could settle between them rather than straddle you. You should be focused on escape alone, but the taste of him made you hungry for more. You weren’t sure how much was your love for Din and how much was the saber twisting it into something recognizable. 

Din’s teeth caught your lower lip, and he pulled back a breath, “You’re supposed to be showing me how sorry you are, cyar’ika.” He leaned back down to lick into your mouth, his kiss crushing and near painful as Din’s hips pressed firmly against yours. He left his lips close enough that you felt every word he spoke. “Yet here I am…” Din gave a sharp thrust and even with layers of clothes between the two of you he was able to snap the bulge of his erection right where your clit was hidden. You gasped at the pleasure that rocketed up your spine as hot pangs arousal pooled in your lower belly. “...doing all the damn work.”

At his words, you closed the space to press your lips against his again, deepening the kiss, as your hands traveled to his belt. You undid his belt with practiced ease, and while one hand slipped under the waistband of his flight suit to find the base of his cock the other went to grasp the saber.

Your fingers brushed against the thrumming metal of the saber for only a second before Din’s hand slapped on top of yours pinning it to the saber. Everything froze. Din and you were both panting, breathless from your kiss. You had one hand stuffed into his pants with your hand pressed against his skin on the space above the base of his cock and the other on the saber. Din had one hand tightening around your neck while his other crushed your fingers against the darksaber. He chuckled and the sound sent chills throughout your body.

“Let go, Cyar’ika.” Din’s voice was gruff and seemed to rumble out from his chest. You began to try and pull both hands back, but Din grunted. “Not both. Just the saber.” You sucked in a sharp breath and remained frozen. “What? You don’t want to finish what you started?” He shoved one hand down his pants to roughly grab yours and force your hand to wrap around the entirety of his throbbing cock. It was like this tense moment was spurning him onwards⏤ filling him with a thrill you had never seen before. “I thought you were sorry.”

You hated how his words made your own core ache with want. 

Din snapped the saber off his belt tossed it off to the side. Too far for you too reach, but close enough that its influence weighed heavy on you still. He did the same to your own weapon which was hooked in its usual place on your belt. Din threw that one further, more carelessly, before lowering his face back down toward yours. His hand was still wrapped around yours, and Din thrusted into your dry grip. It couldn't be comfortable you thought, but Din moaned in your ear as if it were already drunk in pleasure.

“Din…” You murmured.

His hot mouth enveloped yours, tongue licking into you, as he thrusted twice more. Din’s teeth caught your lower lip again, but this time he bit down hard enough that the taste of metallic blood flashed across your taste buds. You yelped, he thrusted into your grip, and then Din pulled back just enough that you could see his lips painted with the red of your own blood.

“Are you going to make me take you?” He asked in a harsh whisper. “Or will you come willingly?” Din pressed his bloodstained lips against the side of your face, dragging, and you shuddered as a cold, but tempting, chill filled your body. “I’ll spend eternity chasing you, cyar’ika, but it will be more enjoyable if you just agree to be mine again.”

His lips found yours once more, and for one second you weren’t in your body. Your mind clouded with a sort of vision. You saw Din sitting on Mandalore’s throne splattered with blood he had drawn from others and his features masked in a cold indifference. The saber was not on his belt, but any confusion you had on it’s location faded as a different version of you came into view. She wore an elegant and revealing gown that was as dark as a starless night, and the inactive saber was held tight in her grip as blood covered her hands and left a trail of red petals as she passed. While Din’s face held a cold indifference this version of you looked feral with enjoyment. 

She settled herself on Din’s lap and the mask he wore cracked to reveal adoration as he stared up at this other you in awe. Without wasting a beat, this unrecognizable version of yourself pulled Din into a firm kiss. The blood on the hands that resembled yours smeared against his stainless beskar, and the blood on his face left smears along features you spent your entire life staring at in a mirror. Suddenly, the other you broke away to turn and it seemed she was glaring directly at you.

The saber in her hand activated and burned with a soul sucking energy that seemed to draw you in.

“Be mine.” Din’s voice snapped you back into the moment. “Be my queen, cyar’ika. I want no else.” He pressed his lips to yours again but in a way that was too soft to match the rest of this situation. The tip of his tongue dragged through the torn tissue of your lower lip and you shivered. “Let me protect you as you rule by my side.”

And you wanted it. It was like your body had finally reached the lowest depths and your lungs were filling with the dark water you were drowning in. It was almost peaceful allowing yourself to settle into the cold⏤ allowing it to swallow you whole. Distantly, you could feel the crystal in your lightsaber desperately calling out to you, but you were certain no light could reach you where you were. Cold turned to pleasure as Din’s hands began to map the familiar planes of your body. 

“I’ve always been yours.” You whispered. Din molded his lips to yours and he pulled your hand out from where it was hidden under his waistband so he could have to room and access to begin frantically undoing your own belt. You lifted your hips so he could tug your pants down past your ass and off entirely. He didn’t bother with his own pants, deciding to just tug them down enough to be useful, and  Din settled between your legs. As he worked himself out of his pants he planted his lips against the hollow of your neck.

You tilted your chin up, panting, as you gave him more room to work his tongue against the skin there. Every atom of your being was throbbing and aching for the man on top of you, but briefly a glimmer of pain lanced through your heart. A reminder. You thought you were too deep in for the light to reach you, but your lightsaber’s call managed one faint echo. A weak lifeline back to the surface. Without thinking, your hand reached reached out to where the sabers were cast aside and for the first time in your life you felt the Force do more than just read an energy. It enveloped the space around you and seconds later something firm was in the palm of your hand.

You cried out, managing to roll Din and yourself over so you now straddled him. The saber activated in your hand and rather than the warm familiar glow you wanted, you were greeted by the soul sucking, burning energy of the darksaber lighting up in your hands. Your eyes widened in alarm. The power that washed over you was overwhelming. It rocketed up your arm and pierced your very soul. Din laid on the ground under you as you stared at the cold glow of the saber burning in your hands, and you heard him begin to laugh in amusement. 

“Maker, you’ve never looked prettier, cyar’ika.” Din grinned⏤ the look in his dark eyes was wild with desire. “How does it feel?”

Your skin was crawling as if someone was holding a live wire to it. A tremor shook your body and it took you a moment to detangle your mind away from the raw pleasure that screamed out to you. The darksaber was sinking it’s cold claws into every aspect of who you were and you could feel your reality slipping away from you. You tightened your hand around the hilt and began to squeeze. It was hard to focus the Force to bend to your will with the darksaber’s influence pressing down on you, but you clenched your teeth and squeezed harder. The crack of bending metal filled the air.

“No.” Din growled and his hands roughly pawed at you, to try and take the saber from your grip, but you raised your hands up above your head and continued to squeeze until you felt actual pain began to seep into your body. “Stop! Don’t!” 

The metal cracked further, heat began to lick out of the hilt as the saber’s burning energy flickered and grew wild. It was burning your hands, leaving the flesh it touched raw. Din screamed out at you to stop again, but you couldn’t hear him over the high pitched ringing the darksaber’s kyber crystal seemed to emit. The saber was angry⏤ the saber was scared. You focused every bit of your body’s energy to channel the Force. You screamed in agony as the saber was crushed under your grip. The crystal cracked and the energy stored in it grew volatile and unstable. With one final push of power, the crystal shattered into pieces within the crushed hilt of the saber and the release of energy blew you backwards into the dirt. 

Your ears from ringing from the blast. Your head ached painfully, you could feel blood matted in your hair from where the back of your head had slammed into the ground, but it was hard to focus on anything other than the miserable and excruciating pain that was radiating up your arms. Shakily, you lifted your hands up to try and examine them. Even though your sight was growing blurry, you could still make out the state of your hands. Scorched flesh, raw and torn, greeted you and warm blood was dripping from the spots where jagged bits of kyber crystal embedded in your skin. It rained down on you.

“No, no, no, no.”

Din was suddenly in your line of vision as he cupped the side of your face in fear and disbelief. Your hands, heavy with exhaustion, fell limp and they didn’t even hurt much anymore. You were having trouble feeling anything actually. “Please, Maker, no.” Din gasped. His voice was ragged and hoarse. Tears were swimming in his eyes and for the first time in ages, you recognized the clarity. “Cyar’ika, no, please…”

Your lips twitched up in a smile as you gazed up at him. You sighed in relief, “It’s you.” Din’s face crumpled as the tears streaked down his cheeks as he tried to pull you closer. “You’re back, baby.”

His voice seemed far away. As your eyelids grew heavy, you still felt content. If these were to be your last moments you were more than happy to share them with Din Djarin. Your Din Djarin. Pure and kind hearted. Loving and soft. Darkness seemed to envelope you, but it was not the cold darkness the saber used to force you into. This was warm and tender. You felt enveloped in love and your own kyber crystal, loyal and strong, whispered a lullaby as you relaxed into sleep.

.

[three months later]

.

It took you ages to find Din. After waking up in Boba’s palace, post bacta tank infusion, you realized he had slipped away without a word. Boba and Fennec had comforted you, but the only message Din left you was a soft apology passed down along friends. The fact that he hid from you was proof enough that the darksaber’s influence was gone from him. You felt it no longer either. Occasionally, you’d wake from a nightmare and a lingering darkness would cloud your thoughts, but it always dissipated with the morning light. 

You walked slowly toward the bench where he sat armorless. Din wasn’t wearing a shred of beskar, had not a single weapon on him, as he rested his elbows on his knees and stared into the distance where rolling hills and mountains sat. What made him hard to track was he stayed constantly on the move, but you were surprised that this was where he allowed you to catch up with him. You stopped by his side, Din didn’t turn to look at you, and you followed his gaze to see Grogu far in the distance sitting with Luke Skywalker on the crest of a small mountain.

“I don’t know why I came here.” Din mumbled quietly. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Din⏤”

“I don’t deserve to be here.” He added. Din hung his head down and lifted his hands to rub at his face in exhaustion. He shook his head once. “I was supposed to leave before your ship ever entered the atmosphere, but I… I got stuck.”

That made more sense. In a moment of weakness, he stopped to see his son and he hadn’t been able to tear himself away to flee you like he usually did. You reached out to touch his shoulder, but your fingers only managed to graze his shirt before he pushed to stand began to stalk away.

“Din!” You cried out and followed his brisk pace. He walked back to where his small ship at waiting. “Din, please, wait.”

“Leave, cyar’ika.” Din replied firmly.

“No.” You snapped and raced up the ramp into his ship’s tiny cargo hold to slide into his path to stop him. You expected to see anger in his eyes from your disruption, but the only emotion his large brown eyes conveyed was pain and desperation. You felt your heart ache at the way he stared down at you in misery. You shook your head. “Din, will you please talk to me?”

Din swallowed, his voice was hoarse, “There is nothing to talk about.” 

You reached out to rest your hands on his chest, and he glanced down to stare at them. The bacta tank had saved your hands and left you with full use of them, but the scarring remained. The skin was discolored with burn scars and jagged lines where kyber crystals had pierced your skin and left their mark. 

“This wasn’t your fault, baby.” You whispered as you noticed how intently he was staring at your hands. Din shook his head and tried to pull away from your touch but you tightened your hands into fists⏤ clutching his shirt like a lifeline. “Din, I don’t blame you.”

“You should!” Din suddenly yelled and your eyes widened. His hands wrapped around your wrists as he held your gaze. His voice shook. “You should blame me.” Din took in a sharp gasp. “This was all my fault. I was weak.”

“Din.”

“I remember it all.” Din closed his eyes in agony. “Maker, I⏤ I was manhandled you. I chained you to the fucking wall. Held you hostage.”

“Din⏤”

“Hunted you down like a bounty. Forced you into the position where you had to use your body just to distract me so you⏤ I⏤ Maker. Even if you don’t blame me, cyar’ika, I do. I don’t deserve access to my weapons. I don’t deserve the armor of a Mandalorian. I don’t deserve you.”

You held onto him tighter as he tried to pull your hands away from him. “I love you, Din.” He scoffed. “I do. I love you. The darksaber was to blame for all of that and I stayed by your side because I knew that and I refused to lose you to it. I stayed knowing the risk.” Din’s eyes were still shut tightly, but you could see tears collect in his eyelashes. “And I can’t lose you now.”

“Cyar’ika…” He mumbled.

“Open your eyes.” You demanded. You released his shirt but only so you could cup his face with your hands. Din’s entire body trembled under your touch and his hands squeezed your wrists. “Baby, open your eyes and look at me.” Finally, after an agonizing moment, Din opened his eyes and you offered him a small smile. “I love you.” He let out a shaky gasp. “And I can’t sit idly by while you punish yourself for sins that you shouldn’t have to bear. Please don’t run from me. Please let me stay. I’ll keep following you all over the galaxy if I have to or⏤ or if you don’t want me then I’ll… I’ll stop. If that’s what you really want, then I won’t follow.” Din leaned into your touch. “I’m not trying to control or torture you with my presence, I just… I miss you, baby.”

Din closed his eyes again and loosened his grip on your wrists so he could trace them up and lay them over your smaller hands resting on his jaw. He sighed. “I hurt you.” His thumbs traced the scarred skin on the back of your hands. “I did this to you.”

“No, you didn’t. The darksaber did, and I chose to fight that damned thing.”

“If I had been stronger against it then you never would’ve had to.”

“You had no way of knowing, Din.” You shook your head. “It even took me a while to realize how dangerous that saber was and I’m Force sensitive. Nobody in the galaxy would have been able to resist the influence of that kyber crystal even if they knew what it could do. You were blindsided by it.”

Din opened his eyes. “You resisted against it.”

You pressed your lips together then pulled his face toward yours so his forehead was resting against yours. “I knew what it was doing, and it was still the hardest thing I have ever done.” You admitted. “Even now I still feel that darkness crawling across my skin in the dead of the night. Like a ghost haunting me.” You tightened your grip on his jaw. “But you know how I did it?” Din didn’t respond, but you pressed onward. “I did it because I wasn’t going to let anything take you from me. I was not going to let it keep your soul⏤ I was not going to lose you.” Quickly, you pushed forward a pressed a chaste lip to his lips. “Not then. Not now. I will always fight for you. Even if it’s your own guilt I have to fight.”

“Do you want me, cyar’ika?” Din whispered⏤ his voice so soft and faint you almost thought you imagined it. 

You caressed your thumbs against his cheekbones. “I will always want you, baby. Always.”

To prove your point, you tenderly slotted your lips against his. You stayed motionless, just holding him to you, and you could feel a tear trace the outline of your thumb before reaching his lips. It was as if the taste of his salty tear awakened something in him. Din’s mouth began to move against yours desperately. You shifted your hands down and around his neck to cling to him. Din’s own arms wrapped tightly around your torso so he could pull you flush against his body. 

His lips suddenly left your lips to press sloppy, desperate kisses against your jawline then down your neck. Between every touch of his lips against your skin he whispered an apology or an exclamation of love. You tried to drag his lips back up to yours, but he surprised you by falling to his knees. You gasped and stared down at him. Din rested on his heels as his hands hugged the back of your thighs. He stared up at you in adoration, but you could still see agony there as well.

“I am so sorry.” He pleaded like a man begging in prayer at an altar. “I love you, and I am so sorry. I could spend an eternity reminding you of that and it still would not be enough to express how I feel.” Din leaned forward and rest his forehead against your hip. “Ni cuy’ nass ures gar. Ni cuy’ osi’yaim. Ni cuy’ hut’uun.”

You slowly peeled his forehead away from your hip and his hands off your thighs so you could kneel in front of him as well. You held his face once more and wiped away the lingering tears that stained his cheeks. “Cin vhetin.” Din’s eyes widened at the words. A phrase you had Boba teach you. “That’s what I want.”

“Cyar’ika…”

“I hate seeing you speak so poorly of yourself.” Your bottom lip quivered and your throat felt thick. “It pains me to watch you hate yourself⏤ when I love you so much.” Din sucked in a sharp breath. “So, if you love me still, Din, that’s what you’ll give me. Cin vhetin.”

Din paused before he gave you a curt nod. You pulled him into a tight hug, arms clinging to his shoulders, and you were relieved to feel Din hold you just as securely. As if you were both terrified to feel the other slip away again.

.

[three months later]

.

You woke with a start, eyes snapping open in the dark of your bedroom, and the cold, cruel ghost of the darksaber gripped your spine. It crawled up slowly as you tried to push away the lingering nightmare and piece together your reality. The bed under you shifted as someone climbed in beside you. A heavy hand slipped over your abdomen as Din shifted his closer. His bare chest pressed tightly against your back as he held you close.

“I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” Din whispered in your ear, voice heavy with sleep. “Grogu woke up wanting a glass of water.” That was your reality. You had the love of your life back, and the green boy you and Din both adopted as your own was back in your lives. You, and the ones you loved, were nestled in your cozy home on Nevarro. Din’s lips pressed against your neck. “Riduur?” The new nickname a reminder of the peace that came with your reality. “Are you alright?”

The warmth of his skin against yours cast away the chill the memory of the darksaber brought. One of his bare, thick thighs slid between your legs until every part of you was tangled with every part of him. You let out a soft sigh of content and nodded. “I’ve never been better, baby.”

Din peppered soft kisses against your shoulders and you fell asleep safe in his arms.

.

mando'a translations:

Ni cuy’ nass ures gar: I am nothing without you. Ni cuy’ osi’yaim: I am a despicable person. Ni cuy’ hut’uun: I am a coward. Cin Vhetin: fresh start, clean slate (term indicating the erasing of a person's past when they become Mandalorian, and that they will only be judged by what they do from that point onwards)

.

[here is the dark ending]

#the mandalorian #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #reader insert #mando x reader #mando x you #female reader #jedi reader #dark!din djarin #din djarin smut

[neteyamsluvr111]

[aged up] Neteyam x Afab!Metkayina!Reader

Mature Content ahead.

Wc: 1142

!Sfw!

— Neteyam is not a jealous guy at heart, but he does sometimes have his moments of insecurities. Though, he doesn't otherwise fully express them to you because he knows they don't matter, and you love him regardless.

— Neteyam loves the way you smell. In his words, you smell like the first day of Spring, fresh rain after a long summer of drought, flowers, sunshine, and him.

— Neteyam compliments you every chance he gets, and when he has to leave before he could properly say goodbye to you (I.e when you are asleep) he writes them down on pieces of cloth and leaves them for you to find.

— Physical touch, words of affirmation, and acts of survive are all his love languages and the love languages he needs from his partner.

— i.e He needs to be touching you at all times, may it be a tail around your calf or a hand splayed across your lower back. He feels he must express how much he loves you, but sometimes words aren't even enough. So, he does things for you; i.e make or have someone make the finest jewelries, hunt the finest foods, make your home as comfortable as possible, etcetera.

— Neteyam wants a large family, like he had growing up. (Maybe five or six) But he doesn't want his children to have to be born in the aftermath in war, so he wants to wait a few more years until he's sure they can be born and not have to worry like he and his siblings had.

— going back to the first hc, he feels sometimes inferior to the Metkayina men for their size compared to him (although, he takes after his father and gains muscle pretty easily)

— he has violent nightmares from the night he almost died.

He'll wake up in a cold sweat, tears quickly forming and spilling from his bright eyes, harsh sobs racking his body as his hands violently try to grasp at the still very apparent gunshot scar along his hard chest. In times like those, only you or his family can soothe him.

— The nightmares usually result in violent panic attacks as well.

You still remember the first time it happened, being woken up by the sounds of someone choking. Looking over to see your lover seemingly panicking and grasping at his throat. You'd rush over, gasping loudly and trying to see what was wrong. You were calling out his name, trying to get his attention but it was like he couldn't even see you. Finally, after delicately placing your hand upon his cheek did he finally look up and see you. That's when the tears came, streaming down his pale face as he tried to express that he couldn't breathe, trying to call out your name in stuttered gasps.

You didn't know what was happening, no one in the Metkayina had ever had something like this happen to them in the years you was alive. You quickly ran to Lo'ak and Tsireya's tent, waking the boy up and telling him something was wrong with Neteyam. Everything that happened after was a blur to you.

— After one night when you and Neteyam had a harsh fight, the both of you completely ignored each other due to stubbornness and went to sleep angry. Neteyam now knows, after he didn't get a wink of sleep and nearly spent the night forcing himself not to wake you up and beg you for forgiveness, to never let it happen again.

— He only lets you give him tattoos after he does something worthy of one. He finds it to be an intimate moment that should only be shared between the both of you. And it's an excuse to stare at you for hours and demand attention.

— On a drunken night out with Lo'ak, Aonung, Rotxo and a few other friends, Neteyam gets your name sloppily tattooed on the skin of his side, under his armpit. That was fun to explain to you and his parents.

His mother damn near gouged his eyes out, his father was doubled over in laughter, tears pricking his eyes from how hard he was laughing, and you were loudly scolding Neteyam's brother and friends for getting so drunk and allowing it to happen.

— His nicknames for you are endless, ranging from Na'vi to even English. His favorites are baby and sweetheart, because he loves how you giggle at the foreign sounds of it. He never actually tells you what they mean in Na'vi, but you know they are endearing.

— Neteyam fell first and harder.

— Before you started dating, and he was too much of a puss to tell you his feelings, he'd confess how he feels about you quietly in English; knowing you didn't understand him. It was a bittersweet feeling for him, but sometimes he felt like he would explode if he didn't spend every waking moment in your presence telling you, so this was his solution.

!NSFW!

— He's a pleaser at heart. Anything you want, he'd do it for you, and with sexual intimacy it was no different.

— he loves holding your hand, no matter the position. His eyes nearly roll to the back of his head every time he feels your fingers squeeze around his when you release around him.

— his favorite positions are both reverse cowgirl and doggy. Quite basic, but true. If he wants it to be extra intimate; missionary or 'cuddling'

— he's a switch. He doesn't mind being in control and he doesn't mind you being in control. It's usually whatever you want they night and he's up for it always.

— when he is in control, expect it to be very intimate.

— He's a praiser. He's a body worshiper.

— he's doesn't like degradation especially aimed toward you, but if you really beg for it, he might sprinkle in a gruff "My prettiest whore," or a "My perfect slut," but never anything more.

— He groans a lot and sometimes even slips out small whimpers. He’s quite vocal when you ask him to be, otherwise he’s pretty quiet because he wants to focus on the sounds of you and your wetness.

— when he's close, he starts to speak whatever is on his mind which is usually him just telling you how perfect you are for him and how Eywa graced him so much and he doesn't  know how to repay her or why she had blessed him so much.

— When he's especially close, he begs you to tell him you love him. Like, begs you. "Please, please, baby, say it one more time, please—" It’s the only way he’ll allow himself to cum.

— His aftercare is godly and unmatched. He’s whispering sweet nothings into your ear, he’s cleaning you up, he’s feeding you sweet refreshing fruits, the whole nine yards.

— Safe to say, Neteyam is the perfect lover all around.

#neteyam smut #neteyam x reader #neteyam sully #neteyam fanfiction #neteyam #x reader #female reader #avatar smut #avatar the way of water #avatar #avatar: the way of water

[sabo-has-my-heart]

Haloo yellow helllloooooo

Is it alright if I ask for like Trafalgar Law x reader? It's up to you if you wanna make them male or female, I'm thinking of having a reader that can summon wings but with a price. Like the wings would literally rip out of their back, leaving a big scar and lots and lots of blood. It's not bad enough? The feathers are made of light steel but has sharp edges at the bottom. Making it more than painful... And I think it should be a curse so that you wouldn't have to think of a devil fruit? It's alr if you did, tho.

omg, this almost made my cry while I was writing it! As a note, Noroi means curse. I will also likely be creating the devil fruit I used in this as well as one based on her transformation (it sounds interesting to me). I made it more than just the wings, but there's reasoning for that... I'm gonna go cry now! (not really, but holy shit, this fic!)

Warnings: graphic depictions of injuries, blood, curses, angst, pain, hurt/comfort, GN!Reader

Word Count: 1675

     The first time he saw the scars, he was horrified. Two long, vertical lines down your back about where your shoulder blades were. Starting just above the shoulder blade and running down to your mid back. He wasn’t sure if the scars looked more like tears or cuts. You hadn’t answered him when he asked what they were from, you’d refused to tell him. After asking again and again, he began to assume that something horrific had happened to you, something you were afraid to talk about. Had you been captured and tortured? Had someone betrayed you? Had it been an accident of some sort? Did you even remember what had happened? Maybe it was so traumatic that your mind blocked it out, perhaps it was painful to remember. So he stopped asking, if it was traumatic, he didn’t want to risk an outburst or break down. 

     You remembered how it had happened, how you’d gotten this curse. A devil fruit, yet it wasn’t you who’d eaten it. The Noroi Noroi no mi. It allowed the user to bestow curses upon other people. Some minor, some… some like yours. Large metal wings, sharp blades that cut through your skin as they tore out of your back. Light weight yet strong, capable of propelling you hundreds, sometimes even thousands of feet in the air. The pain was like nothing you’d ever imagined before, the first time they’d sheared through your skin, you’d screamed in pain, falling to the ground. You’d lost consciousness, the pain too much for your mind to handle. You didn’t pass out from the pain anymore, but it still made you cry out in pain, it was still a blinding pain that left you shaking. With your wings fresh from your back, you looked like an angel of war, metal wings glinting in the sunlight as fresh blood dripped from the sharp tips of the ‘feathers’. Yet the curse didn’t stop there. With each activation, the curse progressed, as if to make your life an endless hell, maybe to ensure that you’d never just learn to deal with the pain. Metal that ripped out of your hair line, forming a beautiful silver circlet, yet dripped with blood, the red liquid running is streams down your face. A burning in your eyes, like acid, as they changed into an unnaturally bright blue, the whites turning a a lustrous ivory, like pearls. With each activation of your curse, you looked more and more like some sort of twisted, bloodstained angel of war. All you could think was it was only a matter of time before armor sprouted from your limbs, a cuirass of steel protecting your chest, until your body dripped with blood and you became a ‘true angel’ of blood and steel. Your worse nightmare. Horrific pain as the metal ripped through every part of your body, dripping with blood as people looked on in fear. What would the others think? What would Law think? Would they push you away? Or perhaps they might comfort you? Would they look at you in horror? Or would their looks turn to ones of sympathy? You couldn’t take that chance. You couldn’t risk losing those you loved most. 

     Now, however, you risked losing them anyway. Should you transform, you risked losing them as they pushed you away; but if you did nothing, you risked them dying and losing them for good, risked knowing that they died when you could have saved them. So with a pained cry, you allowed the metal to tear from your skin. Once more dripping with blood, you faced your enemies. Everyone’s eyes were on you, the scream, the transformation, drawing their attention. Pauldrons of metal covered your shoulders, your blood covered circlet dripping with blood, your wings glinting in the sunlight as the red liquid dripped from the tips to the ground. Unnaturally blue eyes glared at your enemies as the hilt of a blade formed at your waist. You could feel the metal springing from your skin in the same horrific fashion, yet this time, you didn’t care. This time, you took hold of the metal willingly, this time, you pulled it from your body as if the pain didn’t matter, as if what you had become was trivial. It left a gash in your hip, the hilt burned like red hot fire against your hand as you charged forward. An angel of war? No. A demon of blood, steel, and fury as you cut your enemies down. A metal blade, sharper than any man made sword, sharper than even Law’s scalpels or feather blades. Piercing and slashing through your enemies and suddenly, you were covered in blood once more, yet this blood was not your own. Chest heaving, you dropped the blade at your feet. All around you, bodies littered the ground, blood watering the earth and pooling at your feet. You closed your eyes as tears burned behind your eye lids. It was time to face the others, time to face their horrified stares and terrified faces. But you refused to do so as you were now, refused to face them as the demonic creature you’d become. The wings retracted, the blade on the ground seemed to gain a mind of its own as it turned into liquid metal and shot into your calf. Pauldrons pulled back into your skin, and circlet slipped back into your head. But more had formed during your battle. Blood stained vambraces folded back into your forearms and a gold trimmed tasset slipped into your waist. Your clothes had been shredded by the metal that had sprouted from your body and was covered in your blood. The wounds caused by the curse quickly healed, leaving more scarring. It was a bitter sweet ability of the curse. It allowed you to heal quickly, making wounding you difficult. Because if you bled out, the curse could no longer take hold of you. The palm of your hand now had burn scars and your eyes still felt like they were covered in acid. Still, still you turned to them. Their looks were ones of horror and sympathy, they cradled their own wounds, yet they stood up, hurrying over to you. Bepo was the first to reach you, pulling you close and wrapping his large arms around you, sobbing as he tried to say something that was lost in the sounds of his crying. Penguin and Shachi were soon wrapped around you as well, muttering apologies and words of comfort. Soon the entire crew minus Law was holding you in a group hug, words of comfort surrounding you. Tears ran down your cheeks, yet these were not tears of pain. They were tears of relief. They didn’t hate you, they weren’t turning you away. They were pulling you closer. You lost track of how long they held you before you all returned to the Polar Tang, the crew offering to cook, help you clean up, let you rest, whatever you wanted. It was shortly after you’d entered your room, before you got a chance to shower that Law appeared in your room. The two of you simply stood there in silence. He was the one you were most afraid of right now. Would he leave you? Would he hate you? Would he be angry at you for keeping it a secret? Law walked over to you in silence, gently taking your arm and examining the new scars.

     “Now I know why you didn’t tell me… are you… are you still in pain?” he asked, eyes looking at you in concern. 

     “They’re… tender. They will be for a few days.” you admitted, looking away from him. Law gently wiped some blood away from your arm with his sleeve before pressing a soft kiss to the new scar that ran up your entire forearm.

     “From now on, I’ll take care of you, You’ll never have to use this ability again. I… I won’t let you. As your captain, I forbid you from using it again, no matter the situation.” he said sternly, yet you could tell that his words were simply out of worry for your well-being. You could only nod as you stared into his eyes. While they were filled with sympathy and concern, they also shone with love. He loved you too much to let this happen to you again.

     “Let me help you.” he said softly, gently pulling the remains of your blood soaked clothes from your body before gently carrying you to the shower. He was more gentle with you than ever as he carefully washed the blood from your body, almost as if he was afraid his touch would tear your skin open again. Once you were clean and in fresh clothes, he ‘shambles’ed you to the dining room, the crew already having made your favorite. While they wanted to be there for you, they’d all agreed to leave you be, not wanting to make you feel like a freak by standing there and staring at you or asking you questions. They had questions, they wanted to care for you, but they knew it would be best if they treated you like normal, as if nothing had happened. To treat you like always so that you knew that nothing had changed, you hadn’t changed in their eyes. In a way, it was true, you hadn’t changed in their eyes. You were still you, still the same person who cared about them, still the same person they’d always cared for, who was part of their little family. They’d let you rest more often, they’d treat you with more care, they’d protect you more, but you were still you, even with your curse. Law would be the same. He’d treat you like he always had, yet at the same time, he’d be more careful with you, be softer with you. But you knew it was only because they didn’t want you to have to suffer that pain again. Only because they loved you. They still loved you. 

#one piece #one piece law #op Law #one piece trafalgar law #one piece trafalgar d water law #trafalgar law x reader #trafalgar one piece #trafalgar law #trafalgar d water law x reader #trafalgar d law x reader #trafalgar d water law #trafalgar d law #angst #hurt/comfort #cw: gore #graphic depictions of injury

[perpetualcynicism]

𝚃𝚘 𝙳𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝙰𝚖𝚒𝚍𝚜𝚝 𝙰 𝚂𝚎𝚊 𝙾𝚏 𝙵𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚜 — 𝙴𝚡𝚝𝚛𝚊 𝚂𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚎 #𝟸: 𝙱𝚎𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚞𝚕, 𝙵𝚘𝚛 𝙰 𝙼𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝.

𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: Hurt/comfort. 𝚆𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜: Scars, mentions of blood and violence. 𝙻𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚝𝚑: 2,258 words. 𝙰𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝙸𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗: Gender-neutral reader, minor god!reader, reader is the god of sea foam, reader’s name is ‘Aphros’, reader has total mutism, third person narration, pre-established character dynamics and relationships. This is an extra scene from the fic ‘To Dance Amidst A Sea Of Flowers’ — read the whole thing here if you’re interested.

[~1,970 A.A.W]

It was little known among those other than the yakshas themselves that karmic debt could reawaken old wounds. They never reopened, of course—once a yaksha scarred, the injury would remain that way forever, unable to bleed or heal completely ever again—but pain was common in the deepest of them. Sometimes, it was barely there as a mere irritation or itch. Other times, it was like a hot knife prising apart the skin. 

Xiao was lucky, then, that this time it was only the former which inflicted him a few days after another wave of karmic debt. He sat with Aphros in their abode, folding leaves into a crane while Aphros themselves worked away on a scroll of calligraphic poetry. The cave was filled with the sounds of focus and a gentle twinkle of bell song whenever a breath of wind stirred the various acoustics hung around the cavern walls. 

A sudden heat in his shoulder made him wince, like the prick of needles raking across his skin. The leaf crane fluttered to the stone floor. Aphros glanced up from their parchment, silent concern drawn in the crease of their brow.

“I’m fine,” Xiao said, shaking his head at their worry. “It is only old scars again. Nothing too painful.” 

What he said was true, of a sort. The pain he currently felt was nothing compared to what he’d experienced over his lifetime. However, pain of this kind, which could not be treated with herbs or rest, was sometimes the most difficult to cope with of all, simply because there was nothing to be done but waiting for it to pass.

Aphros did not appear convinced by his answer. In their communicative water dish, they wrote, Where does it hurt? 

“I told you, it barely hurts. It is not worth your concern.” Aphros did not revoke the question. With a sigh of heavy reluctance, Xiao admitted, “On my back.”

Aphros pressed their lips into a line. They reached out their hand towards him, then withdrew it just as quickly. Xiao recognised the action as a tell-tale sign of their hesitance to ask something against their better judgement.

“What is it?” he prompted. Aphros chewed on their lip, still hovering in their uncertainty. 

Could I… touch them?

Xiao read the question and shifted in his place. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Aphros, or even that the idea of Aphros feeling his scars was in any way unwelcome—far from it—but rather that he loathed what they wanted to see. His scars were not a mark of glorious pride as another warrior may have it: to Xiao, his scars were failure. His scars were violent. His scars were the constant reminder he was forced to wear of a never-ending war he was forced to wage. 

Aphros had tended to his wounds before, true, but those were always fresh; blood which could be wiped away, gashes which could be treated. Thanks to their efforts and his own biology, they healed with a fine white line at worst. Xiao had always taken efforts to conceal from Aphros what he thought of as the unkind scars. The ones which would not heal, no matter how much time they were given, because they had been inflicted with too much hatred and left by the enemies Xiao had to succumb to savagery to defeat. If he had a choice in the matter, Aphros would never see that side of him. 

But now they were asking for it—not only to see it, but to feel it—and his certainty wavered beneath the well-meaning gentleness of their gaze.

Aphros caught onto his hesitation. They drew back, mumbling silent apology and returning to their seat. In that instant, all Xiao knew was that he didn’t want to see them go. 

He spoke before he knew it. “No, you…” He took a breath which shook more than he would like to admit. “You can. You can touch them.”

Their expression asked, Are you sure?

“I am sure.”

Hesitantly, Aphros stepped towards him. Xiao exhaled slowly and lifted his top garment over his head. The mountain air pricked his torso as he knelt down. His bare back faced them, bearing all the grotesque ‘glory’ he’d spent so long shielding them from. 

His head was bowed and eyes closed as he steadied himself against the thought of how Aphros might react to seeing the true extent of the lives he’d taken. Each scar was an ugly, rough mark of the violence which defined him; a thing of shame, the evidence he’d collected for his lifetime of slaughter. Aphros had never seen him truly in battle, but these scars alone were sufficient to paint a picture more than terrible enough to disturb them.

When their touch came, it was cool and light across his shoulder blades. Xiao almost jolted, then almost shivered, then stiffened like a board, and only forced himself calm when they had finished following the length of this first scar. He could feel Aphros’ thumb running over the risen, knotted skin, tracing each line with such care that a painful lump rose in his throat before he could force it down. 

Even after all the millennia he had known them—after all the times they reassured him—Xiao could never shake the doubt from his mind. How could they treat him like he wasn’t some abhorrent creature?

He sat still as Aphros continued, not daring to move. None of the scars hurt, exactly, except for the current one lingering after his karma—they had all healed countless years ago—but something about the sensation of Aphros’ finger skimming the skin sent nerves sparking down his spine, reawakening battles he’d both long forgotten and wished never to remember. He felt them hesitate, which was when he realised he’d begun to tremble. Forcing out a sharp sigh, he invited them to continue. Still, it took a second encouragement before they resumed.

As Aphros’ hand roamed around his shoulder blades, down his back, Xiao found there were certain wounds he distinctly remembered receiving, and others he’d forgotten he had. Aphros felt along a puncture wound just shy of his ribcage, and Xiao was shocked at how visceral the image of spurting blood and glinting arrowhead was that flared through his mind. Phantom pain, new this time, pricked along his torso. Another scar, judging by its shape left likely by some beast’s raking claws, he couldn’t recall a single detail about. For some others, there was a vague imprint of pain or the infliction, but for most, there was nothing: his scars were dead things, and anything he may have felt from them was, for the majority, long gone.

The last scar was on his lower back, an inch or so above the base of his spine. Aphros lifted their thumb from the hard skin. A second of cold dread seized Xiao as he wondered what came next. 

In the next moment, Xiao felt their forehead press against his nape. Their arms came around his waist from behind and they placed their hands above his own; not quite an embrace, but a reassuring reminder of their presence nonetheless. A sombre ambience filled the room, heavy with acknowledgment of both the life he led and the ones he’d taken. Xiao closed his eyes and let them hold him. For a moment, he didn’t think about what the scars meant or what they stood for: Aphros was warm. That was all that mattered. 

They sat for a long time in silence.

Xiao almost didn’t notice when Aphros stood up. Their footsteps were light on the stone floor; quiet, soft things which stirred his attention but didn’t quite disturb it. He heard a lapping sound, like water on a rim, and their seawater bowl was set before him with a faint thunk. He opened his eyes enough to read the foam.

May I paint on them?

Xiao paused. His silence rang through the empty cave.

“…You may.”

Aphros rose again and walked to gather their painting materials. There was a whisper of paper being pushed aside. They picked up their brushes and their ink dish, which knocked against the tabletop. Aphros walked back to where Xiao was kneeling and knelt behind him with a rustle of clothing. Their fingers came again to his back, skimming over the lattice of scars like they were mapping out the history of his bloodshed. He could almost hear their concentration.

When it came, the brush tip was cold. An instant of faint pressure moving down his back before it was gone. Aphros exhaled. A moment later, the brush returned, this time for a longer stroke. The sensation—cool, wet, yet smooth and controlled—set his nerves tingling. These must be the outlines, he thought, recalling all the times he’d observed them painting on parchment. 

Time began to bleed into insignificance the longer Xiao sat there, utterly still, focusing solely on the sensation of the brush slipping along his tense muscles. The air in the cave was cold: distantly, he was aware of himself being cold, too, with pricking skin and pluming breath, but this didn’t bother him. The occasional touch of Aphros’ hand—an accidental brush on his back, a steadying hold on his shoulder—was fire on his skin, each one sending hot, tickling flames down his spine which chased the cold away. The crystalfly, always residing surely in his ribcage, rose to meet those flames, chasing after them with a desperate flurry of wings like a moth long starved of light. (If he could, Xiao would beg them to hold him for longer, but he thought he might burn if they did.)

In the corner of his mind probed a voice of curiosity, asking What are they painting? and How long will this take? The rest of him—most of him—was thoughtless. If Aphros was the artist, Xiao felt a statue; patient, unmoving, thoughtless. Waiting to be moulded into something more by the hands he’d given himself to. He was wholly at their mercy, in these lasting moments. If they wanted to, they could plunge a knife into his back, through each of the scars they handled so carefully, and end him before he could blink. That thought should scare him: after a life like his, Xiao knew too closely the dangers of letting one’s guard now. No, the thought should terrify him. 

And yet, if Aphros did it, Xiao doubted he could find it in himself to hate them for even a moment. 

It must have been hours before Aphros placed their brush down and wrote a new message in the sea foam. Xiao blinked himself out of his musing.

Would you like to see it?

He dipped his head. Aphros moved to a corner of their cave and drew out a mirror from behind a small boulder. Xiao rose to his feet slowly, afraid that if he stood too quickly, he would somehow disturb the paintings. Aphros lifted the mirror to his back, and Xiao craned his neck to see the reflection. He nearly gasped at what he saw. 

Xiao had never thought his scars anything worth marvelling at. On the contrary, they’d always been something shameful: crude, tainting marks to be repulsed by, and a lasting reminder he bore of his existence as a weapon of slaughter. Looking at these same imperfections transformed into a landscape of ink, he hesitated. In stunning detail, the ugly cross-hatching of scars on his back had become mountains, forests, lakes. The wound left by the arrow was a boulder, and the claw marks twin streams winding down a mountainside. Billowing clouds wove a wreath across his shoulder blades in the place of a long, curved cut. 

Rendered speechless, Xiao could only stare in silence at the metamorphosis which had taken place on his skin. (Although, he supposed he shouldn’t be so surprised: Aphros had a habit of taking the ugliest parts of him and making them beautiful.)

The only thing more he could have asked for would be for it to never wash away, as it inevitably would; but that would be an impossible request, and Xiao knew it.

He exhaled deeply and turned to face them. What should he say? His vision was strangely blurred; he struggled to distinguish all of Aphros’ features, even at this close a distance. A sore throat rendered him unable to voice neither his astonishment nor his gratitude. Even if he could speak, he doubted he could find the right words to tell them what he felt.

Speech failing him, Xiao instead reached out and took ahold of Aphros’ hand. His touch was foreignly ginger to even himself when he wove his fingers between theirs—and if he noticed the hitch in Aphros’ breath, he gave no indication of it. With a guiding tenderness, he lifted their hand upwards and pressed his forehead to the back of their knuckles. His eyes fell shut, but the contact lingered, steady and comforting, saying all the things he couldn’t. Something hot slipped from the corner of his eye; he only held their hand tighter, and cried more when Aphros’ free arm came around him because he never wanted to leave. 

They felt like home. They felt like safety. Like everything he’d never had and everything he’d wanted for so long before he met them again in that cavern beneath the mountain all those millennia ago. 

His past may still be ugly, and the painting over his scars only temporary; but right now Aphros was warm, and he was beautiful, and for one moment longer, maybe that was enough.

#genshin impact x reader #xiao #xiao x reader #tdaasof

[elettralightwood]

Do you know, I’ve realised I’ve never actually told you what I thought the first time we met? You see, for me, memories are difficult. Very often, they hurt. A curious thing about grief is the way it takes your entire life, all those foundational years that made you who you are, and makes them so painful to look back upon because of the absence there, that suddenly they’re inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system. I started to think of myself and my life and my whole lifetime worth of memories as all the dark, dusty rooms of Buckingham Palace. I took the night Bea left rehab and I begged her to take it seriously, and I put it in a room with pink peonies on the wallpaper and a golden harp in the center of the floor. I took my first time, with one of my brother’s mates from uni when I was seventeen, and I found the smallest, most cramped little broom cupboard I could muster, and I shoved it in. I took my father’s last night, the way his face went slack, the smell of his hands, the fever, the waiting and waiting and terrible waiting and the even worse not-waiting anymore, and I found the biggest room, a ballroom, wide open and dark, windows drawn and covered. Locked the doors. But the first time I saw you. Rio. I took that down to the gardens. I pressed it into the leaves of a silver maple and recited it to the Waterloo Vase. It didn’t fit in any rooms. You were talking with Nora and June, happy and animated and fully alive, a person living in dimensions I couldn’t access, and so beautiful. Your hair was longer then. You weren’t even a president’s son yet, but you weren’t afraid. You had a yellow ipê-amarelo in your pocket. I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire. And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you. And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it? Sometimes, even now, I still can’t.

You shut the fuck up.

I can’t decide if your emails make me miss you more or less. Sometimes I feel like a funny-looking rock in the middle of the most beautiful clear ocean when I read the kinds of things you write to me. You love so much bigger than yourself, bigger than everything. I can’t believe how lucky I am to even witness it—to be the one who gets to have it, and so much of it, is beyond luck and feels like fate. I can’t match you for prose, but what I can do is write you a list. AN INCOMPLETE LIST: THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HRH PRINCE HENRY OF WALES. 1. The sound of your laugh when I piss you off. 2. The way you smell underneath your fancy cologne, like clean linens but somehow also fresh grass (what kind of magic is this?). 3. That thing you do where you stick out your chin to try to look tough. 4. How your hands look when you play piano. 5. All the things I understand about myself now because of you. 6. How you think Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars (wrong) because deep down you’re a gigantic, sappy, embarrassing romantic who just wants the happily ever after. 7. Your ability to recite Keats. 8. Your ability to recite Bernadette’s “Don’t let it drag you down” monologue from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. 9. How hard you try. 10. How hard you’ve always tried. 11. How determined you are to keep trying. 12. That when your shoulders cover mine, nothing else in the entire stupid world matters. 13. The goddamn issue of Le Monde you brought back to London with you and kept and have on your nightstand (yes, I saw it). 14. The way you look when you first wake up. 15. Your shoulder-to-waist ratio. 16. Your huge, generous, ridiculous, indestructible heart. 17. Your equally huge dick. 18. The face you just made when you read that last one. 19. The way you look when you first wake up (I know I already said this, but I really, really love it). 20. The fact that you loved me all along. I keep thinking about that last one ever since you told me, and what an idiot I was. It’s so hard for me to get out of my own head sometimes, but now I’m coming back to what I said to you the night in my room when it all started, and how I brushed you off when you offered to let me go after the DNC, how I used to try to act like it was nothing sometimes. I didn’t even know what you were offering to do to yourself. God, I want to fight everyone who’s ever hurt you, but it was me too, wasn’t it? All that time. I’m so sorry. Please stay gorgeous and strong and unbelievable.

And you also shut the fuck up

They make me want to curl into a little ball and cry for the rest of my life

#rwrb #red white and royal blue #firstprince

[here222lurk]

Toji Fushiguro Vs. The Plushies

Will Toji win the IDGAF war? 

Part 2

Warnings: 18+ only, fem!reader, fingering, tit worship, sex, breeding, and this is my first fic in a hot second (8 years)

3 months have passed since you put a label on your relationship. It's been 3 months since Toji started introducing you as his girlfriend, but you still feel giddy every time. You spend your weekends together sometimes in his apartment, but most times outside trying to see the city in a new lens that only you two share. It feels like the right thing to do after having endured the work week. 

But today, you decided to cook for him in your apartment. You saw this pasta recipe on TikTok that you think he’d like so you decided to make it for him today. 

The night before, he made sure to ask if you had all the ingredients you needed on hand, knowing damn well a minor inconvenience can send you spiraling. He made sure to pass by the weekend market to get fresh pasta and tomatoes on the way to your place.

Toji was eager to help and even volunteered to be your sous chef. You weren’t too excited about this. You never really liked when other people were in your way in the kitchen, but to your surprise, he was actually not bad in the kitchen. He knows how to hold a knife and clean as he goes. 

It was nice seeing him harvesting herbs by your kitchen window while you prepare the garlic bread. He’s focused and looking so pensive hunched over a pot of basil, the warm sun shining over his face. He just looked so… beautiful wearing the same skin tight black shirt that hugs his chest in a way that’ll never fail to make your heart beat harder than usual.

“Hey y/n eyes up here,” walking towards you.

You snapped out of the trance he put you in and blushed, “I’m sorry! It’s hard to concentrate when there’s a giant whore hunkered over my herb garden.”

You both laughed at how absurd your brain fart reply was. 

“What?! I’m not…” he paused, “Well maybe for you I am,” he replied while flashing the cheekiest smile you’ve ever seen.  

“Yeah? Prove it.”

“Oh I will,” you feel him hugging you from behind with his hard dick pressed against you.

“After lunch maybe? I’m starving….”

“Yes, chef!” he says sardonically. 

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

“That was really good. Thank you,” Toji says while he trails to the kitchen holding used plates and utensils. 

“Don’t start bullshitting me” You stay seated at the dining table but your gaze follows him.

“I’m not! Oh how can I ever repay you, my culinary princess?”

“Simple. 25 bucks for the pasta plus 5 for the bread.”

“That’s too much for me, you brat… Will this do?” his voice gets more audible as he walks back to you.

You feel him guiding your shoulders to make you face him. Toji towers over you on your left side. The impression of his hard dick clearly visible underneath his pants. 

You feel your cheeks getting hotter, but try to play it cool looking displeased “Maaaybe…”

“Then let’s find out,” Toji holds your hand as you head towards your bed. 

Your room is a bit messy with your office clothes still on your mattress from all those nights you came home from work feeling too tired to grab a clean shirt to sleep in. You push them off the bed, careful not to send your plushies plummeting to their death along with your clothes. You managed to save them all except for a fluffy pink cow plushie.

The crystal ball you hanged on your window catches the bright afternoon sun and illuminates specks of color around your room. You sit on your bed watching the specks move slowly on Toji as he undresses. You’re unsure if you’ve seen a view prettier than this. He takes his shirt off first, revealing the familiar scars on his body. His pants follow, falling to the floor.

“What’s the matter? Hmm?” he whispers onto your neck. Feeling his warm breath sends a shiver down your spine. He kisses you softly behind your ear, his hand making its way inside your underwear. 

His fingers feel cold against your clit. You push your thighs together as a reflex. 

“If you’re not gonna talk to me can you at least keep this warm for me?” you feel his finger sliding further into your folds. You stifle a moan trying to come up with a reply to humble his smug ass but you lose to his gentle touch and his quickening pace. His movement is encouraged by your wetness. Two fingers begin to slide inside, stretching your entrance. He rests his fingers in the spot you like best and glides over it repeatedly. You feel yourself tightening around his fingers

Tojiiii

You like that, brat?

Mmmmh

He pulls you in for a kiss and you reach for his dick. Starting your grip from his base to his tip. You feel him already wet with pre-cum and it makes you smile.

“Already?” you tease.

He begins to undo your buttons and take off your bra. Exposing your chest he palms your hard nipples. “Already?” he teases back. He looks so smug the scar on his lip inches upward.

“Asshole,” you mutter.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since I saw you in that apron” Toji is a boob guy degenerate who heads straight to lick around your nipples. You feel your nub get harder as he wraps his mouth around your left nipple to suck on it. He sucks harder and harder and the volume of your moans follow suit. 

His idle hand alternates between rubbing your right nipple and pawing on your boob. He groans as he buries his face into your flesh. You can feel his dick grinding on your bare thigh unsure when you took your bottoms off.

The two of you close the distance between each other. You make out like it’s your last and he opens your legs up for him to hold your knees in place. He moans while putting the tip of his penis in and stays there, waiting for you to settle. You grow impatient and scoot your hips to push him further inside. He meets your pace and pretty soon the room is filled with the sound of you and Toji.

His crotch lands on your clit with every grind, making you wetter than you already are. You're too occupied with pleasure that the only coherent thing you could say is “Please.”

You feel his square jaw touch your neck as he starts moaning in your ear. “You look so fucking hot when youre begging for my dick, my princess” he whispers in your ear. And you’re done for. You feel yourself cumming around his hard dick. Your pussy twitching, trying to milk his dick for everything he has. “‘M cumminggg,” as your nails dig into his shoulders. You let yourself loose grinding against him.

Your legs feel like mush but your core keeps its tight grip around him. Toji pumps into you at a faster, frenzied pace. He looks so desperate for relief it’s adorable. He stares at you wondering how you’re the same person who used to find him so insufferable before. Your usually uptight face is replaced with a lewd look that tears him up inside. You find yourself close to cumming again. But before you could share this with Toji, you hear him say “Be my cumslut, baby.” You feel him shooting warm squirts of his thick cum inside you as you pulsate around him. It feels unreal cumming at the same time. It makes you wish you weren’t wearing an implant so he can ruin your life plans and give Megumi a sibling. 

He gets his weight off of you and you start to notice the sun beaming across your bedroom, giving the space an orange tone. You didn’t realize how late in the afternoon it already is.

Your head rests on Toji’s chest as he wraps his arm around you. You watch him breathe heavily as he comes down from rearranging your guts. It’s getting a bit toasty in your pile of limbs, but it feels nice in the February chill. You stay like this, just quiet for a minute before you feel your eyelids get heavier and heavier. The last thing you remember is him kissing your forehead whispering “I love you, y/n” so quietly that you’re not sure if what you heard was a dream or not. You drift off to sleep.

You wake up suddenly feeling like you were falling from a cliff for a second, but you were caught by Toji’s big arms reminding you that you’re safe and he’s here. You wrap your arm around him, pulling him closer. His hand is placed on your back tracing soft random lines that comfort you for whatever reason. 

“Babe? Can I ask you something?” Toji asks you in a low voice. 

“Yeah sure. Always.” You prop yourself up to face him instinctively tilting your head ever so slightly to the side.

He cups your cheek and looks you in the eyes. “How many of these bed hogging plushies are from your dumbass ex?”

You laugh but this question took you aback a bit since you haven’t really decluttered recently. It’s not like the old stuff you received from past relationships still means anything. They just kind of faded in the background and you never really gave them a second thought.

You point to 4 out of 7 plushies on your bed and count simultaneously. “So, four. Oh and that cow on the floor.” Answering made you feel a little embarrassed not realizing how much of the plushies you own came from previous partners. You and Toji only started dating officially only a few months ago. Making him feel uncomfortable is not in the list of things you want to do. 

He follows your index finger and studies the plushies. “Are you into the super soft ones or fluffy ones?” he asks.

“Hm… I have no preference, really… Just anything that you think I’ll like is great.” 

So the next time you meet Toji in the train station, he’ll be picking you up from work and you’ll see a soft green unit big enough to be your pillow. It’s a lot to hold but it looks small when Toji carries it by his side.

“No way. Is this for me?” 

“It’s for my side chick actually.”

You give him a side eye. One pout and he back tracks in record time. 

“It’s for my favorite brat, obviously.” he hands the frog plushie to you and gives you a tender kiss. 

You bury your face in the soft plush and it instantly reminds you of the stuffed toy that never left your side when you were a kid. It smells just like Toji.

“Oh he’s so grumpy,” you can’t help but let out a high pitched adoration for the frog.

His brows furrow upwards, “You don’t like it?”

“He’s perfect. He looks just like you,” you reply, tears forming in your eyes. “I’ll never sleep without Jiji again,” you named the frog. 

“Oh you better.” he smirks.

The frog plushie in question

Part 2 soon????

#toji fluff #toji smut #jujutsu toji #toji fushiguro #fushiguro toji #toji imagine #jjk toji #toji x reader #toji thirst #toji x y/n #toji x you #soft toji #ineedabigboywithpolarbeararms #jujustu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen toji #jjk fushiguro #fushiguro x reader #toji fushiguro x you #toji fic #dilf toji

[cosmicjoke]

This Life, After

Chapter 1:

Levi wakes in the morning after three hours sleep. Normal, for him. How it will always be.

There’s no one in his life anymore that he needs to worry about dying. About being eaten by titans, or killed by violence or disease.

There are no titans anymore. There is no war. The medicine in this new world is beyond anything Levi ever dreamed of, living in the squalor of the Underground, thoughts of clean living and good food and fresh air, up above, always filling his head.

All the things he has now.

None of that stops the dreams.

They still come to him every night. He still sees their stricken faces, eyes wide with horror, bloody and torn to pieces as they beg for him to save them.

Erwin. Hange. Petra. Olu. Gunter. Mike.

Furlan… Isabel.

All of them.

Well, it’s just the way it is for him. No use hanging on to it in the warm, morning light slanting through the half-pulled curtains over his small bedroom’s single window.

The images smear and wash from his mind as he pushes himself up and slides himself to the edge of his mattress.

As it is every time he stands now, Levi has to brace himself for it.

He reaches out, gripping the corner of his nightstand with his three, remaining fingers, and uses it to help lever himself to his feet.

His bad knee creaks and cries out in protest as he puts his weight on it, threatening to give out, and Levi pulls a deep breath in through his nose to steady himself, waiting until the sharp throbbing dies down into something more manageable before he reaches with his left hand for the cane propped against the wall between the table and bed frame.

It’s a relief as he transfers his weight from his leg to the stick.

He hobbles to the washroom.

He might be embarrassed by how long it takes him to make it across the floor, if anyone were here to witness it.

But the house is quiet.

It won’t stay that way.

Later, Gabi and Falco will arrive. They will have breakfast with him, as they do every morning. And then they will help him to his shop, help him to open, and set up.

The both of them will be off to some fancy university in a couple of years. They won’t have time to see Levi every morning when they do, he supposes.

That’s alright.

He’s glad to know they got accepted. Glad to know they’ve got the brains for it.

Education was important. Erwin used to tell him that. Hange too.

Levi never went to school. Not a single day of it.

That deprivation made itself known to him in strange ways, sometimes. Most times, he got by just fine.

He takes a shower. The water comes out warm just by him turning the handle the right way.

They had plumbing here, in Marley. They hadn’t had that back on Paradis. Not Underground, and not back when he’d first joined the Scouts, and had been a younger man. Then, they’d had to pump the water from a well.

He has to take showers sitting down now. Falco had helped him install a little bench along the stall where he could do that.

He doesn’t let himself indulge in the warm water, even though it feels nice. He’s out in five minutes.

He shaves.

The sparse stubble he’s always had is even patchier around the gnarled scars which mar both sides of his face.

It no longer hurts, the way it did early on. It’s numb now as he drags the straight razor over and around the puckered, white skin.

His right eye is milked over and blind, the scar which runs from his forehead and over it, down across his lips and chin, often frightens the new customers who wander into his shop, their eyes widening with fear, sometimes disgust, when they see him. They’re never rude enough to say anything.

Children openly stare at him. Sometimes they point. Sometimes, he hears people whisper as he passes.

“Look at that man’s face.”

“Don’t you know who that is?”

“No. Who is it?”

“Captain Levi Ackerman. The Eldian who helped save Marely.”

“That’s Captain Levi? He’s so small though.”

It hardly registers.

He’s been treated far worse in his life. Spoken of so much worse.

Anyway, he was always ugly. Everyone told him so. A few scars weren’t going to make much difference.

He combs his hair, then goes back out into his room and dresses.

He’d had a hard time, at first, buttoning his shirts, with the index and middle fingers of his right hand gone. But he’d gotten used to that too, eventually. The same as he’d gotten used to performing menial tasks, like holding utensils, holding his cups the way he preferred. He’d spilled hot tea all over himself more times than he can recall.

Every time that had happened, Gabi and Falco had fussed over him as if he were a small child, frightened that his skin had been burnt.

A few times it had.

It made him think of Hange. How they had died.

They’d had so much courage.

He doesn’t like to think on it. Makes his guts twist all up and his throat tight. He thinks how much pain they must have been in. How scared.

He thinks these things about all of them, at different times. All his comrades.

All his friends…

Those first, several months… after the war had at last ended, Levi had spent in a hospital.

It hadn’t just been his face that the blast from the thunderspear had damaged.

His insides had been a mess.

The doctors told him it was a miracle he hadn’t died. That they didn’t understand how he’d lasted so many days after the initial blast without proper medical treatment, let alone how he’d been able to fight.

He hadn’t bothered explaining to them about his blood. About how being an Ackerman made him stronger, supposedly.

He would never again walk unaided. That one had to do with his leg nearly getting bitten off by a titan.

Some days, Levi thought, if he had to, he could still use ODM.

But there was no need for that, anymore. Because there were no titans.

He moves then from his bedroom and out into the hall. It’s only a short distance to the kitchen.

Levi had wanted a single story house, when he’d moved here. Well, he hadn’t really moved. Just decided to stay.

He hadn’t ever wanted to go back to the island, even if he’d been able. He couldn’t either way, on account of the Jaegerists, and how they still considered all of them who’d stopped Eren enemies. Well, even without that…

Too many bad memories, he guesses.

A single-story house, he’d said, on account of his bad leg. He didn’t want to have to go up and down no stairs.

Onyankopon had helped him find one and buy it. The same for where he’d eventually set up his tea shop. He wouldn’t have known where to start without the other man’s help, since Levi didn’t know anything about that sort of thing. He’d never owned anything. Never owned any kind of property.

His life in the Underground had been nothing but squatting down in one abandoned hovel after another, moving constantly when things got too heated, either from rival gangs, or the MPs, or, when he’d been a kid, just any passing fucker with bad intentions, looking to snatch up or steal from a lone child with no one looking out for them. Before that, even, there’d been the whore house his mother worked in. After it all, he’d lived in military barracks.

So, there he was, almost 40 years old, and he hadn’t known nothing about buying a house. And so Onyankopon had helped, talked to all the people that needed talking to, and taken care of all the paperwork. All Levi’d had to do was give him the money. Easy. He’d had almost everything saved up from his time in the Corps still, all of it. He’d never spent it on anything. Nothing to buy.

He puts a kettle on the stove for tea. He sets to breakfast.

Gabi and Falco will be by in a little less than half an hour.

Levi likes to think he’s become alright at cooking simple foods. Stews and breads and things like that.

He makes egg white omelets now, with diced tomatoes and avocado. Gabi likes the avocado. He slices and toasts some bread, spreads marmalade over Falco’s, jam for Gabi and himself.

The two brats arrive just as he’s plating the food. He hears them come in through the front, Gabi’s excited chatter filtering in, Falco’s quiet responses following after.

They remind him, in so many ways, of Furlan and Isabel. Sometimes, when he looks at the two of them, he swears he sees his family, and his breath catches in his throat, and his eyes burn, and he has to look away.

One time he called Gabi Isabel by mistake, and she’d looked at him in alarm, and Levi had turned his face away, ashamed and embarrassed, muttering an apology.

“Mr. Levi!” Gabi calls loudly, and a moment later, she comes skidding into the kitchen, breathless and happy. Falco is right behind, his entrance quieter, but the smile on his face just as genuine.

“Hey, brats.” Levi says in way of hello, setting their plates down on the table.

Gabi strides towards him in her confidence, throws her arms around him in a hug.

She’s taller than him now, by a good three inches. Falco by almost half a foot. They’ll keep growing, he knows.

Levi hugs her back, awkward and stiff. He should be used to hers and Falco’s affection by now, but he isn’t. He doesn’t think he ever will be.

Falco hugs him too, after Gabi pulls away, his arms gentler around Levi’s shoulders.

“How are you?” The boy asks, looking down at him with the same, pinched concern he always greets Levi with.

“Fine.” Levi tells him, the same as every time he asks. “Sit down and eat, you two, before it goes cold.”

He can feel Falco’s eyes on him as he turns and hobbles over to the ice box. He ignores it. They don’t need to be worrying about him. They have their own lives ahead of them. Their time should be spent on that.

He retrieves the pitcher of juice he’d put in there last night to cool, brings it back to the table and pours them each a glass. He goes to the stove when the kettle whistles, and pours himself a cup of tea.

Gabi’s already sat down, inhaling her food. Falco is still standing, waits for Levi to finish pouring and then pulls his chair out for him.

Levi almost snaps at him that he doesn’t need his help, but he swallows it down. The boy is just being kind to a crippled old man.

So he mutters out a thank you instead and lets himself fall heavily into the hardbacked chair.

He hooks his cane over its back.

He asks the two of them how things are going in school, and Gabi chatters away excitedly about their classes. She tells him in their science class, they’re dissecting frogs, and the food in Levi’s mouth turns sour at the thought. He thinks poor things, and says nothing. Falco says they’re going to start learning about the wars, soon, between Marley and Eldia, and the table goes quiet at that.

Levi thinks its pointless, to explain to those who have lost why they have lost. It doesn’t make the feel of it go away.

“If anyone says anything rotten about us Eldian’s, I’ll knock their fuckin’ teeth in.” Gabi declares.

“Gabi!” Falco gasps, as if her language is going to offend anyone sitting here.

Levi stares at his eggs. His stomach hurts. He forces himself to eat anyway. He could never justify wasting food. You can’t, he thinks, when you know what it feels like to truly starve.

He scraps his knife and fork through the eggs, his grip clumsy and slow. He can’t hold the knife right. Shit, he… He’s gotta’ be able to hold the knife right, he thinks. There’s a tight, flighty feeling in his chest, all of a sudden. How’s he gonna’ show Kenny he knows right, if he can’t… Can’t even grip the damn thing right? Kenny’ll be mad, if he can’t… he’ll… he’ll take him out back again, whip his hide raw with his belt, ‘till Levi starts crying and begging him to stop, and that’ll just make Kenny madder, and he’ll… he’ll…

The sound of metal on ceramic grates in his ears.

“Just take a giant shit on their desk.” He says. “That’ll hurt worse.”

The air goes still and silent. He looks up, sees Gabi and Falco staring at him and Levi realizes a beat too late they don’t know what he’s talking about. Minutes have passed since Gabi’s comment about knocking fuckers teeth out. Levi got stuck in his own head again.

He looks away, and sees he’s cut his eggs to ribbons.

“Anyone talks shit in class,” he mutters, ignoring the heat spreading over his cheeks. “just take a giant shit on their desk. It’ll save your knuckles from getting busted.”

Another, heavy beat passes, and then Gabi bursts out laughing. Falco chuckles nervously beside her.

Gabi’d gotten used to Levi’s crass humor pretty quickly. Falco, not so much. Kid thinks he’s weird, Levi knows. Well, he is weird, he guesses. That was alright.

After breakfast, Levi insists on cleaning the dishes and putting them away, like he always does, and Gabi and Falco wait for him out in the entryway.

By the time he rejoins them, Falco’s already got his wheelchair set up and waiting, unfolded from its spot near the front door, where Levi keeps it leant against the wall. He only uses it when he’s got to go a distance longer than a mile.

He hadn’t wanted to use it at all, at first. He’d been a stubborn ass, insisting he was fine to go on long walks with just the cane.

That stubbornness hadn’t lasted long. Not much after he’d gotten set up here, after the deal for his new house had been finalized, and Gabi, Falco and Onyankopon had helped him move in, he’d agreed to accompany Onyankopon on a walk downtown, and not half an hour into the fucking thing, Levi’s leg had cramped up so bad on him, he’d collapsed in the middle of a busy market and thrown up in front of a startled, gathering crowd, the pain had been so bad.

Levi can’t remember ever feeling what he’d felt then. His skin had turned so hot, it’d felt like someone was holding a flame to it, his stomach tight and nauseas, like how you felt in free fall, sometimes. He remembers thinking he had to get away. Needing desperately to get away where no one could see him. No one could look at him.

And he’d cursed himself for his stupidity.

Because he’d felt his leg going lame on him long before then. Had felt the telltale pings and twinges and throbbing which let him know he was putting too much strain on his fucked-up knee. Had felt the creeping ache which always started just above the joint, and traveled slowly down the whole of his calf, into his ankle, ‘till it felt like the whole fucking limb was being flayed and peeled and crushed with stones.

He'd ignored it because he’d thought, for some stupid fucking reason, Onyankopon would think less of him if he couldn’t keep up. And even when his whole face had started breaking out in a thick sweat, the same pooling in the pits of his arms, and he knew he must stink, and his whole lower half on his left side went numb up through his hip, except for the zap of wretched burning each time he took a step, and he couldn’t feel his foot striking the ground anymore, still, he hadn’t said shit.

Well, and he’d paid for it alright, because as fucking embarrassing as all that had been, it was even worse when he’d realized he couldn’t stand back up on his own, and Onyankopon had had to lift him onto his back like a damned child and carry him back to his house.

So he’d accepted he needed the damned chair.

He settles himself down into it now, laying his cane across his lap.

“You want your hat, Mr. Levi?” Falco asks. “It’s pretty sunny out today.”

“Sunglasses too, Mr. Levi.” Gabi points out.

Levi blinks, and then nods.

This is how they take care of him. These small sorts of details they notice. Which Levi is hardly aware of himself.

He gets headaches, now. From the sun. A cluster of pain which forms behind his ruined, right eye.

Gabi fetches the things for him. A wide brimmed fedora and a pair of round, blacked out spectacles.

Levi likes the way they hide his face. The way that, when he wears them, people notice him less.

The fewer people that notice him, the less people want to speak with him, the less chance he has of saying or doing something to make them uncomfortable.

He’s always a disappointment, he guesses.

The walk to his shop takes only fifteen or so minutes, and is uneventful, as it is most days. Gabi pushes his chair at a leisurely pace, Falco beside her, just behind Levi’s periphery. Levi keeps himself occupied with the paper in his hands, ignoring the passing people.

He’s tried to get better at reading, in his time after the war. Wasn’t much else for him to do, other than run the shop. He was never going to be brilliant, the way Hange or Erwin had been. He still struggles with anything above the reading level of a grade schooler.

Exercise could be difficult too, though he still kept up a routine in the afternoons and before he went to bed. Pushups and sit ups. He had a few weights he moved around. It was pathetic, compared to what he once could do. But he kept in shape as best he could.

Once they arrive, Gabi and Falco help him set up shop. Levi unlocks the front entrance, and the two brats hurry inside, beginning without needing to be told to take the chairs from where they sit waiting along the surfaces of the scattered tables, positioning them neatly into place while Levi heads to the backroom to take inventory and start in on setting up his displays.

Gabi and Falco can’t stay long after that. Gabi pokes her head round the door, looking into Levi’s stockroom.

“We’re heading to school now, Mr. Levi. We got all the chairs set up, and Falco opened the register for you. You okay from here?” She asks.

Levi waves a hand at her, keeping his focus on the tin he’s holding. He’s running low on this particular blend. He’s going to have to order more soon. He hates dealing with the suppliers.

“I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Alright! We’ll see you for dinner later!”

And with that, he hears the two of them scamper out, the little bell Gabi had insisted he put over the door to let him know when customers had entered reaching his ears faintly.

He sighs, pushing himself up with his hands on his knees, the joints aching viciously as he straightens. He’s not even that old, but some days he feels ancient.

He grabs his cane in one hand, holding the tin in the other, and heads for the front counter, where the telephone sits. Levi still can’t quite get over that particular contraption. How much easier would it have made things, back on Paradis, to be able to deliver urgent messages and orders in seconds, rather than the hours it often took to send a rider out?

Well, it was pointless, wondering over things like that.

It was all over, anyway.

He lifts the receiver from its cradle and begins turning the dial to ring his supplier.

The static that fills his ear as he presses the receiver to it makes him think of sound of wind rushing. The deafening wash of a titan’s roar.

#Levi Ackerman #attack on titan #shingkei no kyojin #shingeki no kyojin fanfiction #attack on titan fanficiton #onyankopon #gabi braun #falco grice #levi/onyankopon #this life after

[george-weasleys-girl]

Could you write an angsty George fic where shortly before he and Fred leave hogwarts to open thier shop he dumps you because he feels like he owes it to fred and his family and basically everyone to give 100% of himself to the joke shop seeing as everyone could use thier spirits being lifted and maybe also part of the reason he dumps you is cuz he's a little pessimistic and depressed about the future because of the impending war

Thank you, dear anon, for requesting this. It took a twist that I wasn't intending when I began. I had so many false starts. Nothing I wrote seemed to work. Then I listened to The Pretenders, "Back on the Chain Gang" and "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper. Once I set it in the future, with them looking back, everything fell into place. I hope it doesn't disappoint.

~•~

Time After Time

Warnings: angst, couple of curse words

Summary: George broke up with Y/N the night before he and Fred left Hogwarts. Four years later, after zero contact, she walks into the joke shop.

~•~

"You're as beautiful as the day I lost you." George said, his eyes locked on to her face as he traced the lines on her palm. He still remembered their patterns even after all this time.

Y/N's eyes rose to meet his. "You shattered my heart that day. There are pieces of it still missing." She sighed, pulling her hand from his. "And I still don't fully understand why you did it."

George's breath caught at the sudden loss of her touch. Four years of regret and longing punched him in the gut. So many nights, he'd cried himself to sleep yearning for her. Her soft breath against his cheek, her sweet voice whispering 'I love you,' into his ear over and over. He was desperate to gather her up in his arms, tell how sorry he was, how stupid he had been, how much he still loved her and that if she just gave him a second chance, he'd never, ever let her go again.

But he didn't. Instead, he poured himself another hefty glass of wine and downed all of it in one swig.

"I didn't deserve you," he said, eyes cast down at his empty hands. "I guess I still don't."

"Yeah, you drilled that into my head the day you broke up with me," she snapped. "That still doesn't explain why you did it."

George said nothing, continuing to stare downward, unable to meet her gaze.

Y/N closed her eyes for a moment. "Even now, after four years, you still can't tell me the truth." She stood, beginning to regret accepting his invitation to come upstairs to his apartment. "I--I shouldn't have come here. I should go."

She turned to grab her jacket, but George stood, clasping both her hands in his. "Please, Y/N, don't go. I--I'll explain. Just--please, just stay a little while longer." The words, 'I love you,' were on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them whole, afraid they might be too much.

Y/N stared into his eyes for a long while, then she nodded. "Ok."

~•~

They moved from the kitchen to the living room. Once they were sitting face to face on the sofa, with fresh glasses of wine in hand, George took a deep breath and began.

"You were my world, Y/N. I loved you so much it hurt sometimes. The two years we were together were the happiest of my Iife. I woke up everyday feeling like the luckiest son of bitch to ever live. I couldn't believe that someone who was so beautiful and kind and smart and funny as you could love me." He pointed to himself, lowering his eyes. "Me. Fred Weasley's sidekick twin."

The sharp pang of remorse stabbed into her heart at the mention of Fred's name. She should've come back for the funeral, but after her and George’s relationship imploded, she didn't know if she'd be welcome. The last thing she wanted to do was cause a scene at the funeral of one of her dearest friends.

So, she stayed away.

Y/N swallowed hard, forcing down her guilt. "Tell me, George, what happened to all that love?" she asked. "Did it all just fade away?"

George's head snapped up at that, eyes wide. "What? No! How could you think that? It's just--" he paused briefly, chewing on his lip. "It's just that Fred and I were ready to open up the joke shop. I owed it to him, to my family, to put everything I had into making our dream come true." His brown eyes locked onto hers, pleading for understanding. "And there was so much darkness then. So much fear. People needed something to help them forget, you know? Forget that the war was coming. If only for a little while."

"So, I no longer fit into your grand dream? Is that it?" Y/N's chin trembled when she spoke.

"No, love, no," he said. "It wasn't like that. It--I couldn't be the boyfriend you deserved anymore. You deserved someone who could give you their all. Someone who wasn't working all hours of the day and night. Someone who would be there. And I knew I couldn't be that person for you anymore."

Y/N placed her glass on the table, then looked him dead in the eye. "You're a damned fool, George Weasley. We'd talked so many times about how it would be when you and Fred opened up the shop. I supported you and the shop and everything that came with it. I gladly accepted it all because I loved you, and I wanted your dreams to come true. I would've done anything to help that become a reality. So don't go there, George. Don't you fucking dare pretend I didn't know what I was signing up for."

Y/N rose abruptly and crossed the room to gaze out the window.

"It's not that, Y/N." His words were barely above a whisper. "I know you understood, but I'd thought about it alot, and it wouldn't have been fair to you, love. You deserved so much more than an absentee husband."

Y/N rounded on him. "That was my choice to make! Mine! And you took it from me without my consent."

George flinched as if she'd slapped him. "I didn't mean--I didn't think-‐"

"You're damned right you didn't think!" Y/N interrupted, running a shaky hand through her hair. "What are you not telling me, George? There's more to this, I know there is." She sighed and her voice grew soft. "Was there--someone else?"

George rose to stand before her, cupping her face in his hands, his eyes unflinching. "No, Y/N. There was no one else. There never has been. You were and still are the only woman I've ever wanted."

"Then why, George?" Y/N pulled away and walked back to the sofa. "Why?"

He remained silent for several long moments. "I was afraid," he said finally, refusing to turn and face her.

"Afraid? What do you mean? Afraid of what?"

"The war."

"I don't understand." Y/N said. "Everyone was afraid. What did that have to do with our relationship?"

George whirled around, eyes brimming with tears. "I didn't want you to die, ok?!"

Y/N stared at him, taken aback by this revelation. Of all the things he could've possibly said, she never expected this. "Why were you so certain I would die?"

"I wasn't. But it was a war. People die in wars." His voice trembled. "Fred died. He died, Y/N! And it damn near killed me. If you'd died too--" George shook his head, burying his face in his hands as he broke down.

"Oh Georgie." Y/N crossed the room, her open arms wrapping around him.

He melted into her embrace. "I-I'm sorry. I was stupid." She could barely make out his words through the hiccupping sobs. "I th-thought if I pushed you away, you'd go back to your muggle family. Y-you'd be safe."

Y/N squeezed him tighter. His plan had worked. It'd worked so well that she took a job at Beauxbatons teaching Charms.

"Of course, you would do that." Y/N wept into his shoulder, finally understanding. "How did I not see it? Merlin, that was such a--you thing to do."

George chuckled through his tears and pulled back to look at her.

"I never stopped loving you," he admitted, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

"Nor I, you."

Before either of them realized what was happening, they closed the distance, their lips touching for the first time in four years. It wasn't this deep, passionate reunion as they both imagined it would be, but tremulous and gentle. They were suddenly those two fifteen year old kids again. Nervous, eager, yearning, and so desperately and madly in love. It was their second first kiss.

~•~

"I'm so sorry, George. I should've come back before now." Y/N confessed once they rested on the sofa again. "I was angry at you for a long time, and when it finally faded, I didn't know if you'd still want me around."

George moved closer to her, placing his hand over hers. "I've missed you so bloody much, Y/N. I can't tell you how many times I wrote to you, but never had the balls to send the letters." He smiled sheepishly. "Because I was afraid you wouldn't want me either."

Y/N snorted. "I bet if we looked up the word idiot in the dictionary, there'd be a picture of us."

George chuckled and nodded. "So, what now?" he asked.

"Well, I have three months until summer break. I've been debating for a while whether to continue my teaching job at Beauxbatons. And I think I've finally made my decision."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm. I think it's time for me to come home and when I do, I'd like for us to try again."

George's smile put the sun to shame. "I'd like that too." He raised her hand to his lips, leaving a lingering kiss on her palm.

"Are you hungry?" He asked.

"Yes, I'm famished!"

"I happen to know this great place, just a short walk down the hall. The chef is superb. Makes the best spaghetti and meatballs."

"Ooh, my favorite!"

George smiled and offered his arm. "I remember."

#george weasley #george weasley x reader #george weasley x y/n #george weasley angst

[kallie-den]

Hunting Hound

Leinth Aritimis, a rebel pilot, is captured by the enemy. Her personal hero, Sartha Thrace, is there to be a lifeline - but she's a changed woman. Can Leinth set Sartha free? Or is Sartha so lost to Handler's brainwashing, she'll betray a woman who trusts her above everything else?

This is a sequel to Warhound! Please make sure to read that story first so that you can understand this one

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---

Nothing makes Leinth Aritimis feel good the way being saddled up in the cockpit of a huge mech suit does.

It’s not a rare refrain for a pilot. Most are enraptured by the sheer power it brings. You can feel it in your gut; the thrum of the engine, the shaking of the earth, the divine thunder of artillery. It’s never been that for Leinth, though. Truth be told, the noise and fury of her own Genetor still frightens her at times. But what really matters is what it lets her do.

Fight.

Leinth never set out to be a hero herself. She just wanted to be a little like her own heroes. To do her part. That was the least anyone could do, and the duty had grown heavy in her belly during the last years of her adolescence, until she was finally old enough to join up. The war isn’t going well. They’re always on the back foot. But that means Leinth always has something to defend, and knowing that makes her strong. The looks of hope and relief she sees on peoples’ faces when she dismounts after a long, hard-fought battle - that’s what feels good.

Now, after a couple of years, people were starting to call her a hero. Crazy.

She doesn’t deserve it, and she always tells them so. She’s no Sartha Thrace, and her Genetor is certainly no Ancyor. Ancyor is a proud old beast. Genetor is a slab. A fortress as much as a vehicle. Huge, angular, unwieldy - but not for Leinth. She’s learned well how to wield it. In her hands, the rebel prototype is a bulwark. She takes pride in that, and she’s proud of her machine in turn. Proud of the way it keeps moving even now, with an awful, jagged chunk taken out of its right leg.

Leinth reaches up overhead and punches a few switches, shunting power into the sensor suite for one more sweep. A few moments later, it clicks back its report. Nothing. No movement. That’s a  relief. Maybe it’s actually over.

“Genetor reporting,” she says into her radio. “Sector is clear. I’m gonna stay out just a little longer. Make sure the bastards are gone for good.”

You got it, comes the warm reply, after a brief burst of static. But I think we got ‘em, Leinth. Don’t wear yourself out.

Right now there’s little choice but to take the sensors at their word. No use looking outside, that’s for damn sure. The day’s fighting has turned the cityscape into a blackened ruin where ash hangs in the air like fog, billowing on unnatural winds. What tall buildings remain are nothing more than burnt rebar skeletons ; in amongst them are the carcasses of mechs that haven’t quite managed to fall, looming over the shattered concrete like strange, harrowed statues. Most of them are so ravaged by the firestorm, Imperial and rebel models look exactly alike.

It’s demoralizing. But as long as there’s land and there’s people, they can rebuild. Leinth always insists upon that, to herself.

It’s been bad here. Intense. A fresh Imperial offensive. There’s no telling how much worse tomorrow might be. This could have been the final battle or merely an opening skirmish. Sometimes the resources and reserves at the enemy’s disposal seem all but unlimited. There’s a push-pull logic to the ever-moving front lines that Leinth can’t perceive. It’s not her job to, as a pilot. But like everyone else, she knows that they are not winning.

Maybe they can win here. Maybe Leinth can be the rock on which the tide breaks. She’s the one who never loses faith.

The falling dusk is a mercy, in a way. It hides the worst of the damage, and the most heartbreaking details. The contents of a wardrobe and a life ripped out of a building by an artillery shell and strewn all over the ashen ground. No good comes from looking. Those things - the human traces, the human remains - are too small for most mech pilots to notice. But in quiet moments, Leinth finds herself looking, magnifying them to fill the Genetor’s viewscreen. It’s a bad habit, and the darkness of night saves her from it. If she indulges, it’s too easy to let her thoughts turn to dark things.

Dark things like Sartha Thrace.

It’s been months since she disappeared. She went out like a hero. Her Ancyor was last seen plunging deep into the enemy’s lines to fight a furious rearguard. She’s listed as MIA not KIA, technically, but Leinth has done her best to make her peace with her hero’s passing. The rumors are making it damn hard, though. Rumors about seeing the Ancyor back in service on the wrong side of the war. Rumors about it moving the way only she could make it move.

Leinth hates hearing that shit. She’s said so often enough and angrily enough that no one says it to her face anymore. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t overhear when people are whispering about it. And it’s hard as hell to get it out of her head. Sartha Thrace means the world to her. Meant the world to her. That poster above her bunk in the barracks. An idol. Even Leinth’s transition goal, in the early days before she knew better. Now the kind thing to do is to let her memory rest until the time comes when they can honor it properly.

It’s not that she doesn’t wish Sartha Thrace was still alive. She wishes that more than anything. Especially in battles like these, it sure would be nice to have a hero to believe in.

Genetor! Headed your way! Leinth!

The urgency of her CO’s voice on the radio catches her attention just as much as her name. Leinth snaps back to attention and looks down at her scope - and then freezes. Her first response - her rational response - is that it’s a glitch. It has to be. It doesn’t make sense for a heat signature like that to be moving that fast. Then instinct takes flight. Leinth can feel it already. The vibrations. The heat in the air. She brings Genetor around to face the new threat, brings her weapons up, and kicks her searchlights up to max.

It’s too late. No time to brace herself. Ancyor is upon her.

Leinth would recognize its savage face anywhere, even here, and it makes her hesitate. If she wasn’t already screwed, that pause is what screws her. Once Leinth can make her hands move, it’s far too late to make use of Genetor’s shields. And Ancyor doesn’t stop to launch a blow. It simply barrels into her. With a raw howl of steel on steel, the mechs collide. Genetor might be a slab, but Ancyor is monstrously strong and it has momentum. There’s no contest. The impact sends Leinth off-balance. The ACS screams at her, but there’s nothing to be done.

Genetor topples over. The bastion falls.

And it will not be allowed to stand. Ancyor is still on her, driving its massive chainblades into the prone mech’s limbs. Leinth cries out in panic. She feels the severance in her own flesh. The rattling, the noise, the flashing lights as Genetor’s systems struggle to shunt power to the cockpit - it’s a nightmare. She already knows she’s lost. There’s no coming back from this.

But it gets worse. Ancyor rears up, and amongst the ashen city, lit only by Genetor’s flickering searchlights, it looks truly awful in its lupine fury. Then it brings its fist down, right on the cockpit. The sound of the blow is an awful crunch; a noise no metal should ever make. Leinth screams as the wall of her cockpit starts to bow in against her. Genetor holds, but only just. Another blow has it convulse, and Leinth’s scream is silenced when her head is thrown back against the back of the cockpit. No ACS to compensate now.

She starts seeing in black and white. Not good. Concussion, at least. It happened so fast. Leinth is still struggling to believe in what she’s seeing and feeling. It doesn’t make sense.

There’s only one woman who can pilot Ancyor like this. But it’s not her. It’s not her.

There’s no third blow. Or if there is, Leinth is too far gone to feel it. She hears something, though. Other vehicles approaching. Not mechs. Smaller. They get close, then stop, then Leinth hears scrambling. Shouting. Climbing. The realization of what’s happening makes her breath catch with fear, but she’s beyond even adrenaline now. Darkness is here for her.

The last thing she feels before oblivion is the Imperial engineers starting to drill their way into Genetor’s cockpit.

***

There is no time, in the room. No daylight, no clock. Leinth has been counting sleeps and by that tally it’s been fifteen days, but that’s surely off by a day or more. Especially given how hard she got knocked around.

Leinth remembers being pulled from Genetor’s cockpit. She remembers being bound and guarded and dragged into an infirmary, to receive only the most basic medical care. Leinth had been in and out for most of that, twitching and shouting whenever she was close to consciousness, but then they gave her something that brought her all the way back up to uncomfortably sharp awareness. Then, an interrogation. Noise, bright lights, sternness, threats - the usual. Crude. Blunt. Like all pilots, Leinth has prepared herself for this long ago. They got nothing from her.

She’d been bracing herself for torture to follow - but no. At least, not that kind of torture. Something had interrupted the proceedings. There had been a whisper in an ear, and then a strange ripple had gone through her interrogators. With fresh urgency, they’d dragged her to her feet and she’d been taken somewhere else. Somewhere down, under the hangar, far beneath the rest of the Imperial base.

It’s strange here. The walls are dark, and it’s much too quiet. None of the hustle and bustle that’s everywhere in any normal military facility. Since then, nothing. Leinth has been left to sit and rot in her uncertainty and her boredom. The solitude is maddening. There is nothing to disturb it except occasional meals given at irregular intervals through a slot in the door.

From how it leaves her feeling, Leinth is pretty sure the food is drugged. She eats most of it anyway. Tricking her into starving herself could be another way of softening her up.

The sound of locking bolts retracting into the wall heralds change. At once, Leinth is completely focused. Any information about her situation, any stimulation at all, is a sweetness she’s desperate for. When the heavy cell door swings open, she catches sight of the person holding the key. Immediately she regrets her eagerness. This is almost more disconcerting than seeing nothing at all.

The menial standing before her had once been an Imperial pilot, judging from the uniform and the wings on her lapel. Once, but no longer. There’s something unmistakably broken about her. Her uniform is wearing thin from neglect and she moves with a strange, stooped, shambling gait that just doesn’t look right on a person. She’s like an animal that’s been beaten one too many times. Leinth wishes she could see her face, if only to verify her humanity, but she can’t. The menial is wearing an awful hood that hides her face - leather, perhaps, and fashioned to look like a dog’s head.

It’s some sick shit, even for Imperials, and Leinth doesn’t have a clue what it means.

All is forgotten, though, when the menial steps aside and reveals Leinth’s visitor.

Sartha Thrace.

Her presence is electricity on Leinth’s skin, and for that reason she knows she’s real even before she pinches herself and blinks - three times, four times, five times. It’s impossible, but she’d know that face anywhere, even here, even in the dim glow of the cell’s lights. It’s the real deal. Leinth believes it with her whole heart, especially when Sartha Thrace flashes her a classic smile and reaches up to rake back her messy blonde hair. Somehow, in the flesh, she’s even more beautiful than she is on the posters.

“Leinth Aritimis?” Sartha says. “Looks like you got scooped up pretty rough, huh?”

“I… I… you…” Leinth’s mouth is struggling to catch up with her brain. There are too many questions, and the first to fall from her lips is embarrassingly juvenile. “You… know who I am?”

“Sure.” Sartha walks into the cell - ushered in, it seems - and the door closes behind her. “We fought together, right? The Dacian salient?”

Leinth nods numbly. She remembered. She actually remembered. They’d only met in passing, as two pilots amongst many, and Leinth had been nobody then. She’d assumed Sartha Thrace had taken no notice of her. She feels - and notes with humor - a faint flicker of gratitude for her captivity.

Then she blinks. She remembers her place.

“I should…” Leinth stands and salutes as best she can. “Captain!”

“Woah, easy.” Sartha laughs and waves her off. “I’ve never been a stickler, Leinth, and it doesn’t seem to make much sense here. Just call me ‘Sartha’.”

Leinth nods. She can barely believe her luck. It’s like a dream come true - circumstances notwithstanding.

“So they… they got you?” Leinth asks slowly, as Sartha walks over and sits next to her on the long bench that’s one of the cell’s only features. “We all thought you were dead.”

“Yeah.” Sartha smiles faintly. “I guess they did.”

“I saw Ancyor out there,” Leinth says. “It’s what took me down. I guess they… gods.”

Sartha doesn’t reply. She just looks down. In the dim light, Leinth can see there’s a strange look in her eye. Distant. Glassy. She’s not herself, in that moment.

Leinth can’t blame her for it. She doesn’t want to think about how she’d feel if she knew someone else had taken Genetor from her. Was using it against her people. The violation would be monstrous. She silently prays her mech was too damaged for that.

“So,” she says, hoping to bring Sartha back. “What happens now? To us. To… me.”

“Wish I could tell you.” Sartha looks up. She sounds OK again. “I don’t even know how long I’ve been here.”

“Did…” Leinth is afraid to ask, but she needs to know. “Have they done something to you? Anything I should prepare myself for?”

Sartha looks down again. “I don’t… know.”

Leinth has no words for that. She shivers. She clamps down hard on her own, faint disappointment. She tries to remind herself that Sartha Thrace is more than a hero on a poster above Leinth’s bunk. She’s been through hell. Anyone would be in pieces after months down here.

“But,” Sartha adds after a long moment, “you’ll be OK. I remember how I felt when they first put me down here. You’re strong. This is not the end. I’m still here, aren’t I? And now there’s two of us. It’ll be easier.”

Now Leinth feels ashamed of even that initial flicker of disappointment. She can hear the grit in Sartha Thrace’s voice. She can feel the warmth, and she is warmed by it. Thanks to her - thanks only to her - this chthonic hell feels bearable. She’s gonna get through this. They’re going to get through this. She can believe that, with a hero at her side. Leinth is so very grateful for Sartha’s presence.

But that begs a question.

“Thank you,” Leinth says, but frowns. “Why do you think they put us together like this?”

“Dunno,” Sartha replies. “She didn’t tell me anything.”

She? Who? The menial? Maybe, but there’s something about how Sartha said it. It’s probably not important.

“Could be they want to get us talking?” Leinth glances around. “This place could be wired for sound. Maybe they’re hoping we’ll let something slip.”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s keep it light, eh?” Leinth says. “Just in case. No secrets.”

“You got it,” Sartha agrees. “I have something important to ask you though.”

“OK.” Leinth glances around again. She decides to trust Sartha’s judgment, but just in case, she leans in so they can whisper to one another. “What?”

“Have you met Her yet?”

“No,” Leinth answers, before thinking. The question puts a nasty feeling in her gut. “Who?”

“Her.”

That one little word contains within it an ocean of feeling. Sartha quivers with excitement as she speaks it. She can barely contain herself. It’s a prayer, swelling with reverence, bursting with unnatural devotion. Leinth can sense already that Sartha is consumed by this ‘Her’. Nothing she said to Leinth before matters. Whatever - whoever - she’s talking about is utterly totalizing.

“Sartha,” Leinth says hesitantly. “What are you talking about?”

Sartha Thrace smiles, and now her smile is all wrong. It’s too serene. “Ah. You haven’t. You’d know if you had. Don’t worry. I’m sure it won’t be long.”

“Sartha…” Leinth’s stomach is plummeting. She’s panicking again. This isn’t right. “What the fuck?”

“She’ll explain everything,” Sartha assures her, and it’s like she thinks Leinth will be grateful for the assurance. “Once She talks to you, everything will make sense. You’ll make sense.”

“Stop talking like this!” Leinth pleads. “Just… just tell me what’s going on.”

Sartha pauses and restrains herself. Leinth can still see the light of energy and enthusiasm brimming within her, though. She’s just holding back because she can see Leinth isn’t ready yet.

“Handler,” she explains. Her tone is worshipful. “Oh, Leinth. You have no idea how wonderful she is!”

“Your…” Leinth feels like she’s going to throw up. “Sartha. Out there. The Ancyor. That… please. Please don’t tell me that was you.”

“It was.” Sartha tilts her head. Her eyes grow distant. “Well. In a way.” 

Leinth doesn’t know what the fuck that means, but she’s heard more than enough. She springs to her feet. Leaps away. Anger is clawing at the inside of her skin.

“Traitor!” she snarls. “How… how could you? How did they… no, no, it doesn’t fucking matter. You betrayed us all!”

Sartha looks saddened, a little. Not enough to doubt herself. “She said you’d say that. But it’s OK. She said that I don’t need to listen. I think she just wants me to help you.”

“Help me? What the…”

Leinth doesn’t want to hear that. It’s awful - that whoever this ‘She’ is, all she has to do is say one word, and Sartha shuts off? That’s inhuman.

“Help you,” Sartha repeats. “It’s… an adjustment. Being with Her. I struggled with it too, at first. At least, I think so. She says I don’t have to remember anymore. But once you accept it - once you accept Her - everything gets better. You’ll see.”

Obviously they’ve done something to her. Brainwashing. Obviously she’s a victim too. Leinth knows that - but knowing isn’t enough. She would have kissed the ground Sartha Thrace walked on. She would have given everything for her. Now she’s with them. Leinth starts to shed tears as her voice becomes a bitter, frigid growl.

“Traitor,” she spits, hoping she can inject enough venom into her voice to make it sting. “You’re a fucking traitor.”

It works. Sartha looks offended. Wounded. She looks away, like she’s trying to go distant again, but she can’t quite manage it. Even now, even after whatever the fuck they did to her, she has just a little bit too much fight for that. She needs to retort.

“You shouldn’t call me that,” Sartha says defensively. “I’m not a… I’m a hero, right? You know that. The way you looked at me, it’s… I’m just here because…”

Because? Leinth can see gears spinning in her head, but she’s going nowhere. She doesn’t know why she’s here, or what she’s doing. Not really. She looks so lost.

“I-I have to do what She says.” Sartha sounds almost pleading now. “It’s not like I’m… we’re soldiers, aren’t we? We follow orders. And Her orders are special.” It’s like she’s tricking herself. Searching for justification. She’s found one now, however thin and false. Her distress abates. “If you just met Her, you’d understand…”

Her confusion is so obvious it hurts to witness. It’s embarrassing. Sartha Thrace is meant to be a hero. She’s meant to be better than this. Contradicting feelings tear into Leinth’s mind. She wants to forgive the confused woman in front of her. Their captors must have done something truly awful to her. But that also makes her presence hard to bear. Is it a warning of what fate they have in store for Leinth? Leinth doesn’t want to think about that. Not for one second.

Sartha Thrace is meant to be better. She’s meant to be the hero on the poster. Not this. Leinth doesn’t want to see her like this.

“Just leave me alone,” Leinth says quietly. When she catches Sartha looking sadly at her, she balls her hands into fists. It pisses her off. “Get the fuck out already! Go. It’s not like you’re a prisoner here, right? I don’t want to fucking look at you.”

She laughs bitterly at that. Sartha looks sorry for both Leinth and herself. She stands.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Sartha says stiffly. “I’ll be back, though. I promise. I don’t want to leave you all on your own down here. And I really think She wants me to help you. To look after you. She’s so kind, you see.”

Leinth just stares at the wall, so Sartha walks over to the door of the cell. She bangs on it twice with her fist and the door opens. Leinth stays dead still until she leaves and the door closes again behind her. Then she buries her head in her hands and starts to sob.

Fuck.

***

After that, it all changes. The solitude and boredom, as interminable as it was, is something Leinth comes to miss. Because after Sartha’s first visit, they start torturing her.

That’s how Leinth chooses to think of it, anyway - torture. She’s not sure what else she’d call it. It’s not a kind of torture she’d ever prepared herself for, though. It’s not an interrogation. There are no questions. It’s not pain for pain’s sake, either. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt at all. They drug her with drugs that make her feel like nothing else. They hook her up to strange machines that seem to do nothing and everything. They shine bright, flickering lights into her eyes, and it’s like they’re projecting something, like an old movie on film, and only part of her mind is able to see it.

Other times, it hurts worse than Leinth could ever describe.

Either way, by the time Leinth is dragged back to the cell she feels like her skin’s been ripped inside out. She feels like one of those mech carcasses, still standing even though they’ve been burned to ash on the inside. All she can do is collapse and lie shivering on the floor of her cell, trying to piece herself back together. Sometimes, all the sensations they inflict on her seem to linger on in her body, burrowing deeper, until she can remind herself they’re not real. Sometimes, the drugs leave her with an impossible euphoria that makes Leinth feel like she can’t trust any of her own thoughts.

At those times, when Leinth is at her very lowest, Sartha Thrace comes to visit. 

The first few times, at least, Leinth finds the strength to tell her to fuck off. To her credit, she does. But Sartha keeps coming and eventually, in a moment of weakness, she relents. It was meant to be just that once, but after that Sartha always ends up staying. Leinth is not made of stone. Without Sartha, she’d never see a single soul except for the hooded menials that drag her from her cell each day, and they barely seem to count as human.

She takes infinite comfort simply in sharing her cell, for a time, with another, familiar person. Just seeing Sartha’s face, seeing her little human gestures like the way she adjusts her clothes and rakes back her hair, makes Leinth feel less crazy. Less alone and forgotten, like she’s died and gone to her own private hell.

Sartha’s good company, too. Even though she’s a traitor. She only wants to talk if Leinth does. She’s never pushy. She’ll put up with Leinth’s insults and anger. And sometimes, it even feels like Leinth is getting through to her.

She’s so beautiful, too. That helps.

After a time, it becomes a rhythm. Torture, then Sartha. The rhythm makes it easier to bear. No matter what they do to her, no matter how it feels, after a while Sartha will be there. They can talk if Leinth needs to hear her voice, or not if Leinth needs quiet. Eventually, her anger abates. There’s no point being angry at Sartha Thrace. They’re both in hell. Maybe Sartha’s just in a little deeper.

The rhythm does trouble her, though. She’s not blind to all the ways it could be used against her. Everything that’s happening to her in this place seems as regular as clockwork, but sometimes Leinth senses something behind that. A presence. A person. The rhythm’s conductor, perhaps. It might even be that mysterious ‘she’ Sartha sometimes refers to.

Or it might not. Maybe Leinth is just losing her mind.

Talking helps with that. It feels like it helps, anyway. Not that there’s much to talk about. Mostly, Leinth talks about herself. Sometimes they talk about the war, although it’s difficult to draw Sartha out on that topic. It’s like she doesn’t want to think about what’s happening, or what side she’s really on. It’s like she prefers to be confused. Leinth learns that if she presses too hard Sartha might shut down on her, or worse, leave, and so Leinth learns not to. She finds the line where she can draw out Sartha’s sense of contradiction without scaring her off.

And sometimes there are glimpses of the old Sartha. Of someone bright and brilliant, full of charisma and heroism. Leinth comes to live for those glimpses. Even now, Sartha is a kind of hero to her.

“’In a way’,” Leinth says slowly, one day, thinking back to their very first conversation. “What did that mean?”

“Huh?” Sartha, sitting just along from her in the cell, turns her head.

“When I asked you about piloting Ancyor,” Leinth presses. “You said it was you - ‘in a way’. Tell me what that means.”

Sartha looks away. “I was… nothing. It was me.”

“Bullshit.” Leinth has learned what it looks like when Sartha doesn’t want to think about something. “Tell me. Stop hiding something.”

Now Sartha sighs. “I’m not… hiding. You just wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

It’s possible she’s pushing too hard, but the question has been burning inside Leinth. After a short time, Sartha sighs.

“It’s like… it’s like there’s someone else in my head,” she says slowly. Then, realizing how that sounds: “I mean, it’s still me. Obviously. But sometimes I can… let them take over. When She wants me to.”

Leinth doesn’t need to say anything. Her expression does all the talking. Sartha gets defensive.

“I-It’s not how it sounds,” Sartha insists. “I’m just not explaining it well. It’s like… it’s like how, sometimes, in the heat of battle, you just go on autopilot. You know that feeling, right?”

Leinth nods.

“It’s just… one step further than that.” She’s grasping and she knows it. Leinth can tell. “It’s better this way. A clearer separation.” Sartha taps her foot restlessly. “I wish She was here. If She explained it to you, you’d understand perfectly.”

“Why do you need to be separated?” Leinth argues back. “I don’t. I want to be me. When I’m piloting. When I’m fighting. I want to know what I’m fighting for. Don’t you?”

“I…” Sartha taps her foot faster. Agitated. “N-no. No, it gets distracting. Better to keep it separate. Better to focus. Better to ignore everything, except orders. Her orders. She says I don’t need to think, and the other me makes it easier. It’s better this way!”

By the end, she’s almost shouting. It’s the first time Sartha’s seen her get so worked up. She wants to push further, but she can sense this is the limit - for now, at least. Maybe Sartha’s mistress doesn’t realize how fragile she is. Maybe Leinth is starting to figure out where the cracks are.

But she’ll be smart about it. Rhythms go both ways. Now she can be the one to provide comfort. She slides along the bench and rests her arm across Sartha’s shoulder. She squeezes her. Sartha relaxes. She welcomes the touch.

“You know,” Leinth says slowly, after a minute or more has passed, “that it wasn’t always like this, right?”

“Yeah.” Sartha’s voice is empty.

“And…” Leinth takes a deep breath. “And you know it’s not like this for most people, don’t you? You know it’s not right.”

Sartha plants her head in her hands. She might be crying. Then slowly, finally, she nods.

***

Time passes. It goes on. It gets worse. Whatever they’re doing to Leinth, it’s getting more intense. Not more painful - no, that would be preferable. Increasingly, instead of agonizing memories that reverberate yet more pain, Leinth is left with no memories at all. She’s left without clarity. Often for hours, even after she’s returned to her cell. Blackouts. Lost time. It’s like her mind, her life, is being packed into smaller and smaller boxes. Each day, less space remains. Less of her is able to survive. The rest is all an endless, wandering fog. Each memory and each clear thought becomes a hard-fought battle.

It’s a war. And Leinth is losing this war too.

The pilot has no defenses against this. She knows how to be strong, but strength isn’t enough. Leinth’s emotions are starting to fray. She screams. She wails. She sobs. She bangs her fists on the cell walls until her skin breaks.

Leinth can’t even count the hours or the days. She can’t tell if she’s putting up a good fight. What haunts her more than anything is that all of this could have been no more than a couple of weeks. What if she’s falling apart like this in just two weeks.

It brings her to despair. Only Sartha Thrace can comfort her.

Leinth is lying across her lap, resting her head in the softness and warmth of her former hero. It’s the only soft thing she ever gets to touch. When the inside of her own head feels like a hive of bees or a yawning abyss, she can lose herself in the slightly scratchy texture of Sartha’s clothes. She can become something that only exists in the present tense, without her past to grasp at and her future to dread.

She can’t remember when she lost enough of her pride to accept this embrace, from a woman she’s called a traitor. But Leinth is glad she did. Without this, she couldn’t make it. Her very worst fear is that one day, Sartha will simply stop appearing at the door of her cell. She just has to pray they won’t start using that against her.

Sometimes they talk. Not often, though. What’s there to talk about? Nothing changes down here. Leinth tries to keep working Sartha, though. Putting her fingers in those cracks. Pulling them apart. She thinks it's working - not that she trusts herself to judge. But Sartha talks less about ‘Her’. She seems more uncomfortable, whenever Leinth questions. That’s something, right? That’s hope?

None of that today, though. Leinth isn’t together enough for it. All she can do is rest her head in Sartha’s lap and sob.

She tries to sob silently and cover the shaking motions she makes when her breath catches awkwardly in her throat. Maybe she doesn’t want to cry so nakedly in front of an enemy. Maybe she doesn’t want to cry so nakedly in front of her hero. Either way, she keeps her face turned away and hopes Sartha can’t quite see her in the dark.

Then it strikes her: of course she can. It’s dim in here, but not pitch black. And Sartha’s head is right above her. Of course she can see.

Leinth pulls her arms and legs in tighter. She tucks in her head. “Sorry,” she says quietly.

Mercifully, Sartha doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even make some condescending, cooing little noise. She just, very gently, reaches down and starts to stroke Leinth’s hair.

Leinth closes her eyes. At first in shame, but slowly she relaxes. Sartha’s touch is startlingly pleasant. It feels like an angel’s touch. Suddenly, Leinth is struck with a kind of vision.

She imagines that it’s the Sartha Thrace from the poster, sitting above her, stroking her hair. Sartha Thrace as she once was. Always victorious. Always right. Resplendent in her heroism. Her stirring beauty shining like the sun. Smiling a cocksure smile that lets everyone with her know that it’s going to be OK.

The fantasy is a little childish, she guesses. But she needs it right now. Leinth gives herself over to the pleasant daydream. It makes her feel like it’s going to be OK.

Eventually, after a long while, she manages to make herself still. She stops crying. She’s shed enough tears for the day. But there’s no escaping the knowledge that tomorrow will be the same. Fresh torments. And once they’re over, even less of her will remain.

“Sartha,” Leinth says. Her voice is shaky and hoarse. “I’m not going to make it in here. I’m going to end up like you. Or worse.”

There’s a long pause. Then: “I know.”

Leinth summons up her courage. “Will you help me escape?”

A longer pause. Then:

“Yeah.”

***

They make a plan, that night. It’s a simple one. No time for refinements. Leinth is desperate to get out and, frankly, she can’t trust Sartha to keep her word.

From what she’s said, simple should be good enough. This part of the base - the ‘kennels’, Sartha calls them - is large, but has only a small contingent of those dog-hooded menials. Sartha can send them away once the cell door is unlocked, and then she can lead Leinth to freedom. They shouldn’t encounter anyone else on their way to the hangar. All Leinth has to do is steal an Imperial mech and run like hell.

It sounds a little too good to be true. But what choice does Leinth have but to put her faith in Sartha, and hope she has enough of her own strength left to overcome any unexpected challenges?

The real sticking point is Sartha herself. She says all this like she’s not coming. Leinth senses that she shouldn’t ask. Now more than ever, she can’t afford to push Sartha to breaking point. She can see, plain as day, all the fear and doubt inside the captured hero. For all her reputation, she’s like an abused puppy now. She isn’t just thinking running away will earn her another kick. She’s thinking that running away will mean she’s nothing at all.

Leinth wants to prove her wrong. She’s nursing a hope that, at the very last moment, when they’re standing at the threshold, Sartha will choose to take her hand. They have a connection, as pilots and fellow prisoners. Whatever Sartha’s done, she can still be redeemed. She can be whole again. A hero once more.

And Leinth can be the one to take her back into the light. It feels like fate, in a way. Maybe that’s why her chest is filling with tentative confidence.

The moment comes. Leinth hears the lock on her cell door disengage. There’s a pause - longer than usual - before it opens. Sartha is standing in the doorway. No one’s behind her. Sartha steps back, beckoning Leinth. Leinth’s heart starts to race. It’s happening. It’s real.

“This way,” Sartha says.

They start moving quickly, not quite running for fear that their feet pounding the concrete will alert something or someone. It’s just as dark out of Leinth’s cell as it is inside it, and to her the dark corridors and passageways Sartha is leading her through are utterly indistinguishable. She’s tried mapping the place based on what she sees when the menials drag her out each day, but no luck. There’s too little light, and their work leaves her far, far too disoriented.

Sartha appears to know them intimately, though. She leads and Leinth follows, and eventually she senses that they are sloping upward. It takes longer than she’d hoped, though. How big is this part of the base? Is this sprawling complex just for prisoners like her and Sartha? There’s no sense to it than she can discern.

She can puzzle that out later, though. Now she just needs to escape.

They round a corner and Leinth almost runs headfirst into Sartha’s back. She’s stopped. Leinth can immediately see why. For the first time, they can see light - not the light of day, but the bright, harsh light of the mech hangar, and that’s close enough. It’s still distant and faint but it’s closer than had Leinth dared hope for.

But that’s not why Sartha froze. There’s something else. Someone standing between them and freedom. Not one of the menials. Leinth immediately knows who this is.

It’s Her.

Sartha’s handler. The woman she seems utterly in awe of. There’s no one else it could be. She’s wearing a strange kind of uniform - black leathers and a dark cap, with a long coat that lends her a formidable silhouette. Hair is platinum, almost white, as cold as her eyes. She wears a thin smile as she stares down the escapees.

This is bad. Leinth knows that right away. But she’s already running the numbers. This woman’s no bigger than she is. Even if Sartha freezes up, which seems likely, it’s a fair fight. Leinth can win those.

Sartha Thrace does something much worse than freezing up.

“Well done, Sartha,” the handler says. She gestures down. “Now. Heel.”

Leinth is frozen in horror as Sartha rushes across to the handler’s side and kneels.

Her obedience isn’t the worst part, much as Leinth wishes it was. The worst part is how bursting with energy Sartha is. With certainty. There’s no hint of doubt or shame or guilt in her demeanor. She’s rushing forward. Practically wagging her tail. So eager it’s embarrassing.

If she was going to betray Leinth again, the least she could have done was hesitate.

“Good girl,” the handler says as Sartha throws herself at her feet. She reaches down and blesses her head with a couple of fond pats. Leinth is grateful she can’t see the look on Sartha’s face. She’s sure it would break her heart. “Hello, Leinth Aritimis.”

Leinth grits her teeth. This is as bad as it gets. She needs to get her head into gear. This is combat. She should run. But she needs to ask the question.

“What did you do to her?”

Handler takes her time. She tilts her head. Considering, perhaps, how to answer. "I gave her a gift,” she says. “The kind of gift that wins anybody over. I made her perfectly happy.”

Anger swelled in Leinth’s bosom. “You’re sick.”

The slight smile on the handler’s face is maddening. “Do you think so? I believe I’d like to give you the same gift, Leinth.”

That makes her skin crawl. “She’s not happy, you piece of shit.”

“Doesn’t she look happy to you?” the handler replies. She extends her palm, and Sartha stretches her neck to rest her chin on her hand. There’s nothing more Leinth wants than to rush over and break the handler’s jaw. But who knows how Sartha would react to that?

“I’ve seen what she’s like,” Leinth growls. “It’s no gift. She’s suffering. She’s in anguish. I’ve seen it. Half the time, she’s falling apart!”

“Indeed,” the handler muses. “She struggles without me, doesn’t she? But she put up with it so bravely. I’m so proud of her.”

The emotion dripping from her lips is a sickening mixture of mocking condescension and genuine affection. Leinth has never heard anything like it.

“Sir,” Sartha pipes up. She has eyes only for her handler and she seems nervous about speaking, but excitement at the praise has overcome her. “May I have it back?”

The handler smiles down benevolently at her. She’s so proud. “Of course you can, Sartha.”

She reaches into one of her coat pockets and retrieves something - a small, elongated, metal cage with a pair of leather straps mounted to it.

A muzzle.

Sartha presents herself and keeps dead still as her handler bends down and affixes it to her face, taking care to brush her hair out of the way and make sure the straps are exactly as tight as they need to be. It’s as loving as a kiss. As twisted as a curse.

“Up,” the handler says once she’s done.

Sartha rises to her feet. She turns to look at Leinth but barely seems to register her presence. The muzzle jutting out of her face is grotesque. Leinth can’t help but notice how serene she is now. Sartha’s face is clear of doubt, wracked by none of the confusion that had plagued her whenever they’d spoken in Leinth’s cell.

Was it an act? Or does the handler’s presence simply have this much sway over her?

Which is worse?

Leinth swears to herself and spits on the ground. Fuck this. Fuck whatever this is. She’s not going to fall to pieces over this. She’s not going to stand here and stare and let this woman play games with her head. She’s getting out of here.

“See you in hell, freak,” she snarls, and breaks into a sprint.

All she needs to do is put the handler down and run. Leinth can figure the rest out on her own. Sartha isn’t going to help her. Not now.

She makes it a few paces before the handler reacts. She doesn’t panic, though, or raise her arms to defend herself. She just says something to Sartha in a firm, clear voice.

“Off The Leash.”

The next thing Leinth knows, she’s on the ground. It’s just like when she got laid out by Ancyor. Something is on top of her. Something panting and violent and angry. It’s Sartha.

Except it isn’t.

Nobody could go from zero to sixty that fast. Nobody. No person. But Sartha doesn’t really count as one of those anymore. She’s staring down at Leinth with a look of impossible, bestial hate, eyes as furious as they are shallow. Her hackles are raised and her back is arched, and her lips are drawn back to expose snarling teeth. There’s a sound coming from the back of her throat; a low, rumbling growl, like the rolling of thunder. It’s a sound that has no business coming from a human.

This is her. The other self Sartha was talking about before. Leinth knows it. Not a person. Just a honed instrument of her handler’s violent will.

A hound.

"Easy, Hound,” the handler says. “I don’t want her harmed.”

Hound eases off - but only just. The hate burning in her eyes as she looks at Leinth is so singular. It’s utterly totalizing. Leinth tried to desecrate her goddess. That’s all there is to it. The depth of her devotion is so unnatural it makes Leinth’s skin crawl.

The handler moves to stand over her, looking down at her. “You will not escape from here,” she pronounces. “You will never leave this place again. Not unless I permit it. Understand?”

Her manner demands an answer. Leinth doesn’t have one, not even a foul spit of defiance. She’s just trying not to fall to pieces. She’s cursing herself for her optimism. For not seeing the signs. She’s trying not to tear up too, because that would just be too pathetic. She doesn’t want to give this woman the satisfaction. But for that strength, she needs hope. And there’s precious little to hope for, now.

Only Sartha.

There has to be something left of her, right? You can’t just take a human being and take them apart and put them back together like this. Right? Right? You can’t just make a person this small.

There’s something left. Leinth just needs to get through to her.

“Please,” she mouths silently at the hound. She tries to meet her gaze, hard as it is. So much hate, in eyes that had become so familiar. Her muzzle disfigures her. It’s hard to look past that and see the face of a hero. But Leinth is determined to try.

“You have such faith in her.” The handler’s lips curl. “Don’t you see? She’s mine now.”

“No!” Leinth cries, although her voice is weak. “She… she wants to leave with me. She knows this is wrong. She knows you’re her enemy. I saw it.”

The handler arches an eyebrow. “Hound. Up.”

Hound rises to her feet instantly, offering Leinth one last warning growl. Leinth knows better than to try to stand.

“Take off your jacket,” the handler instructs.

Again, Hound obeys without thought. She discards the military jacket she was once so proud of like it’s nothing. Underneath she’s wearing a simple, khaki tank top. The handler lifts the hem to Hound’s chest and uses her other hand to fondly touch the pilot’s abs, feeling at their definition. She’s enjoying them - her smirk makes no secret of that - but this is all for Leinth’s benefit. She’s trying to piss Leinth off. Showing her that only she gets to touch Sartha Thrace this way.

It’s working.

Then the handler makes her hand into a fist and punches Hound in the gut.

She may not be a pilot, but she’s a military woman and her form is good. And more to the point, Hound makes no attempt to defend herself. The blow leaves her bent double, retching and heaving, before her legs give way and she sinks to her knees. She looks like she’s in agony.

Leinth is sure that Sartha Thrace - Hound - whatever - is quick enough to have sensed the blow coming. But she didn’t brace herself. Didn’t even tense her muscles or expel the air from her lungs.

What the fuck kind of control is that? Control on an instinctive level. In her nerves, her muscles, her reflexes.

And that’s not the end. After watching Hound contort and groan for a few moments, the handler lowers the offending fist to Hound’s lips and pushes her muzzle aside.

Hound kisses it.

The kiss is almost innocent. It’s like a knight kissing her liege’s ring. Knowing it's the hand that just left a mean bruise on Hound’s stomach makes it twisted. It gets worse when the handler extends her fingers and uses them to pry Hound’s lips apart, running her fingertips over her teeth, pinching her tongue, smearing drool across her face.

Depraved. There’s no other word for it.

“Do you still think she wants to leave?” the handler asks as she pulls back and fixes Hound’s muzzle.

“Yes, damn it!” Leinth’s wishes her voice sounded firmer. “You’ve done something to her. That… thing is not Sartha Thrace. It’s just something you put in her head. It’s not her.”

“Would it help to hear it from her own lips?” the handler asks. “I’m trying to help you see the truth of her, Leinth. She doesn’t deserve your faith.” She turns to Hound. “On The Leash.”

Light returns to her eyes - a semblance of it, at least, but smothered by the handler’s presence. It’s Sartha again. The muzzle, though, still ruins her face.

“Sartha,” the handler says. Sartha’s ears prick up, grateful merely for the attention. “Do you want to leave me?”

“No!”

The word bursts from her lips, an explosion, before she can catch herself and add the appropriate ‘sir’. Sartha is suddenly desperate. Panicked, far more so than she’d ever been with Leinth in her cell. Her eyes register a wounded confusion.

Is she being abandoned? What did she do wrong?

“No, sir!” Sartha repeats. Her eyes flick and flit manically. She’s on the brink of collapse. “P-please…”

“Don’t worry.” The handler pets her head again. “You don’t have to leave, Sartha.”

All at once, the hero relaxes. Shoulders sink, muscles release all their tension. Her face slumps into a glowing smile. This is all she needs. God is in her heaven; all is right with the world.

And Leinth’s faint hopes grow fainter still.

“That’s… not…” She feels the need to set this to right, somehow. To explain it away. To make an excuse. “You’re in her head! You have been for months, you sick freak. Whatever fucking game you’re playing with her doesn’t change the fact that she’s still Sartha Thrace!”

“Hmm.” The handler looks impressed, or something like it. “You believe in her so very much. More than I’d expected.”

Leinth would be proud. She takes faith as a mark of strength. For rebels like her, faith in one other is indispensable. She would be proud, if not for how pleased the handler seemed.

“Where does that come from, I wonder?” the handler muses. “Loyalty and admiration so fervent it persists in defiance of reality itself. You can understand, I’m sure, why I might take a professional interest.”

Leinth spits. She’s sure this woman knows absolutely nothing about loyalty. Less than nothing.

“The way you look at her is fascinating,” the handler goes on. She’s bending down a little, peering at the pilot. “Respect. Faith. But other things, too. Envy? That’s normal, between pilots. Who wouldn’t envy my hound?”

At that, Leinth just snorts. It’s nothing she hasn’t thought about before. ‘Do I want to be her friend, or do I just want to be her?’ She’s at peace with it.

“And,” the handler adds. “Lust. You want her.”

“W-what?” Leinth feels something pull tight in her chest, even as she laughs and scoffs. “Don’t be stupid.”

“You do,” the handler decides. She says it so academically. Like she’s putting together a puzzle. Like she’s dissecting a frog. “Why deny it? We know your inclinations. She’s attractive, isn’t she?”

“I didn’t mean…” Leinth glances at Sartha. She has eyes only for her handler, even now, but surely she can hear both of them. “Of course, but-“

“The way you look at her is obvious,” the handler interrupts. She glances at Sartha. “It’s obvious to her, too.”

Leinth’s eyes flash wide. That’s… no. No. She’s lying. The handler is messing with her, that much is obvious. And Leinth was always so careful. She never let those feelings reach her face.

Except…

She can’t be quite so confident, can she? Trying to sort through her own memories of her captivity is like trying to grasp at water. At times, she was all but delirious from the pain and the drugs. Did she let something slip? Did something filthy reveal itself in her gaze?

Leinth looks to Sartha, hoping for confirmation. She’s unreadable. She’s in a blissful daze, shining with gladness at the reunion with her handler and her muzzle.

“Tell me, Leinth,” the handler says. “That poster, above your bunk. Did you ever look at it while you touched yourself?”

Leinth recoils like she’s been struck. Cold washes over her, turning all the hairs along her spine into little icicles. “How do you know about that?”

“Our methods are very effective for extracting information,” the handler tells her. “Did you think that my staff were merely amusing themselves?”

Panic. More panic. Leinth scrambles away across the concrete floor. Suddenly the handler’s eyes on her skin are unbearable. What else might she know? Leinth tries to reach back into memory and find pieces of herself. She finds a black hole. She can’t remember spilling any secrets - but clearly she has.

Who has she betrayed? Please let it only be herself. Please let it not be anyone else.

“I think I can take that as confirmation,” the handler says. “Not that I needed any. You want her.” Her smile widens. “You could have her, you know.”

Leinth goes very still. “What?”

“Is that what would make you happy, I wonder?” The handler reaches out to Sartha again; a light touch across her torso, where a bruise is already beginning to rise. “All I’d need to do is say the word.”

“No! Fuck - no.” Leinth’s stomach churns at the suggestion. “I would never… fuck, she would never.”

“Not at all.” The handler’s confidence is supreme. “If I ordered you to, you’d give yourself to Leinth. Wouldn’t you, Sartha.”

“Yes, sir.”

She doesn’t hesitate before answering, of course. Leinth is just about prepared for that, but she isn’t prepared at all for how plainly eager Sartha is. She’s looking at her handler with hope in her eyes. She wants her handler to say the word. She wants to be given a chance to obey.

No matter what.

Leinth can’t tell if it’s too hot or too cold now. She starts to clamber to her feet, leaning heavily on the nearby wall for support. She feels dizzy. She feels like up is down and down is up. Before she knows it, the handler is right there, merely a kiss away, her eyes inescapable.

“Do you want her, Leinth?” she asks, voice barely a whisper, like what she proposes could be a secret, safely told. “Do you want her body?” She puts her lips against Leinth’s skin. “Do you want her to suck your cock?”

The handler is a pillar of ice, but somehow, just for that one, simple question, she makes her voice impossibly sinful and tempting, like warm syrup being poured into Leinth’s ear. It sticks to her. It makes Leinth’s body stir. Leinth recoils violently, thrown into panic, trying to flee - but she’s already against the wall, there’s nowhere to go.

She can’t let it show. She can’t. But it’s too late, of course.

Disgusting. She’s disgusting. The handler’s disgusting. Hound is disgusting. This is all disgusting.

“You could go down on her too, of course,” the handler adds. “If that’s more to your taste. But I think… yes. This is what you want. Sartha Thrace, on her knees, before you. Warm. Eager. Welcoming.”

“N-no!”

Leinth’s voice trembles. She squeezes her eyes shut. Her fantasies are turning against her and all she can do is turn inward, trying to obliterate them with white-hot shame.

“Well, let’s see.” The handler is ice again as she steps back and beckons Sartha forward. “Here, Sartha. Come. Kneel. Remove your muzzle. Open your mouth.”

“Yes, sir!”

Leinth can hear the eagerness of Sartha’s obedience as she rushes and falls, and briefly fumbles with the strap of her muzzle. Her mind’s eye does the rest, and the picture it paints makes her shiver.

“Look,” the handler commands, and the sheer force of will in her voice is irresistible. “Open your eyes.”

Leinth holds firm for a few moments but it only takes one lapse. One moment of weakness - or perhaps, she fears, of curiosity.  Once her lids part, there’s no going back. She’s transfixed. Sartha Thrace is kneeling before her. Her mouth is open. Waiting. She is ready to receive. There’s a warm smile on her face - it’s for her handler, of course, but it could so easily be for Leinth. It would be so easy to pretend. A fantasy, a wet dream, could never be so vivid and so real.

If it wasn’t already too late to pretend, it is now. Leinth is hard. Her clothes aren’t tight, but it’s still obvious.

“There.” The handler says. She’s not smug, just sure. She doesn’t need to be smug. She knew exactly what was going to happen. “Now, Leinth. Should I say the word?”

Leinth shakes her head in mute horror. If she answered ‘yes’, if she even considered it, she’d become something unforgivable.

“Why not?” The handler asks. “You want to. She wants to.”

“She- ah!”

The handler interrupts her by resting her hand on the back of Sartha’s face and pushing her forward until Sartha’s face is pressed against Leinth’s front. The touch is sparks to dry kindling. Leinth twitches awkwardly, trying to shrink back, but there’s nowhere to go and the handler won’t let her.

Sartha, sensing her handler’s intent, starts rubbing and nuzzling, eager, happy to be of use, and that makes it even worse.

“S-she,” Leinth stammers, struggling to keep the thread of her reason taut. “She doesn’t! She’s… you made her like this! It’s your fault! She doesn’t - Sartha Thrace would never - want this.”

“That doesn’t matter.” The handler shuts her down brutally. “Who knows why anyone wants what they want? It doesn’t matter. Look at the woman in front of you.” She turns to Sartha. “Sartha, would you like to clean my boot?”

“Yes, sir!”

Leinth winces. More of that bubbling, twisted eagerness. Each time is another knife.

“Then do so.”

She extends a foot forward pointedly. Again, there’s no hesitation. Sartha bends forward, prostrate, as if in prayer, and puts her lips to the tip of the handler’s long, tall, black, leather boots and begins to kiss. The wet licking sounds that follow stroke Leinth’s imagination.

Leinth wishes she could look away. But Sartha Thrace’s fall is transfixing. It’s a solar eclipse. She’ll take a punch and thank her handler for it. She’ll kiss her boot like it’s a lover. She’ll make herself a whore at her handler’s command. Is there anything she wouldn’t do for that woman? Any limit?

The question provokes an uncomfortable curiosity.

“That will do, Sartha,” the handler says, after several long seconds. “Stand.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sartha’s voice is breathy with excitement. When she stands, Leinth can see that the handler’s boot is shiny with her spit. She keeps staring.

“Look at her, Leinth,” the handler chides. “Not at my boot. Look at her.”

Leinth doesn’t. She doesn’t want to. The handler doesn’t fight her on it. She has other tactics.

“Sartha,” she says. “Kiss her.”

“Hu-“

Leinth can barely breathe before Sartha, her hero, is pressing against her. Their lips meet. Sartha is insistent, and Leinth doesn’t have the strength to push her away. The kiss isn’t chaste or robotic or forced. Sartha sinks into it, willingly embracing her duty. She’s passionate. Eager. After a moment, Leinth sinks too. The fantasy is too nice, even though there’s one unmistakable difference between this and her fond daydreams.

Sartha’s lips taste like leather and boot polish.

Sartha is the one who pulls away in the end, which is its own kind of humiliation. In the moments after the kiss, with her face inches from Leinth’s, she looks breathy. Flushed. It’s enough to make Leinth pine.

“Do you see it yet?” The handler’s voice breaks the moment. It’s as final as a sunset. “She’s not your Sartha Thrace. Not anymore. So why not enjoy her, if it pleases you?” Her smile ticks upwards. “Many have.”

A spike of anger brings with it a kind of clarity. This is wrong. It’s not even a fantasy anymore. Whatever daydreams and intimate thoughts Leinth has succumbed to, here and there, she never wanted this for Sartha. Never.

Many have.

It makes Leinth shudder. This isn’t a wet dream. This isn’t her long-treasured fantasy. This is just… cheap. Cheap titillation. It’s unworthy of her. It’s even more unworthy of Sartha Thrace.

“No!” Leinth cries. She finds her voice for the first time in what feels like an age, and the force in her denial drives Sartha back an uncertain step. The handler looks at her - surprised, perhaps, although more curious than afraid.

“No?” she asks.

“Just go fuck yourself already!” Leinth screams. It feels good to scream. “You can throw me back in the damn cell, but you’re not gonna get me to… to…” She just looks at Sartha. “I don’t know how you got so twisted that you get off on this sick shit, but I’m better than that. She is better than that.”

“She is not.” The handler says it with a knowing smile, like she’s the one who has grasped Sartha’s soul in her hands, and that pisses Leinth off even more.

“Yes she is!” Leinth insists. “She’s Sartha god damn Thrace! She’s a hero. She’s the hero. You can change a lot of things but you can’t change that!”

It feels good to say it to her face. Everything’s fucked up right now, but not Leinth’s faith in Sartha. She’s placing that beyond reach. Her faith is the midday sun, boiling away the morning fog. If nothing else, she can make sure the handler goes to her grave knowing that she was never able to tarnish it.

“There will always be people out there - rebels out there - fighting because they were inspired by her.” Leinth is finding her theme and her voice. “Her face and her name are on recruitment posters all over the planet. People will always believe in her. I will always believe in her. No matter what you make her say or do, people will always know: it’s not real. It’s not her. The real Sartha Thrace was always a hero.”

For the first time, the handler is silent. Her silence is intoxicating. Seeing her, of all people, seemingly lost for words is almost as rewarding as freedom itself. It’s tempting to keep going, to rub her face in it, but there’s something far more important at stake. Leinth turns, again, to Sartha. She steps forward and clasps her hero by her shoulders, pulling her close.

“And you,” Leinth says. “Listen to me. You will always be a hero. I know that’s not getting through to you right now because of how badly they’ve fucked with your head. But it’s true. We spent a lot of time talking down in that cell. It wasn’t all fake. You can’t tell me that. You’re still in there, somewhere. And one day, you’re gonna get out. You’re gonna escape. You’re gonna find your way back to yourself. It’ll be hard, it’ll be painful, but I know you’ll do it, because that’s what a hero does. And when that day comes, you’ll… you’ll…”

She trails off. There’s something in Sartha’s eyes. She’s listening to her now. Leinth’s words have made it through. The look dawning on her face is real, and that’s exactly what makes it so devastating.

Sartha Thrace looks pained.

It’s a bone-deep, weary kind of pain. Suddenly she doesn’t look like a captured hero or a brainwashed hound. She just looks tired. Like she’s a woman who’s been ground down and chewed up by the world. And now, just by talking, Leinth has become one of the teeth. She’s hurting her. Sartha just wants her to stop.

Leinth can’t go on. She didn’t think it would be like this. In the face of this mysterious wound in Sartha, she’s powerless.

But now, of course, the handler has something to say.

“There’s a chink in the armor of every single human being.” The handler speaks slowly. She wants every word to sink in. “At least one. And if you pry it open, you find a void. If you can fill that void, then they are yours. Right down to their soul. She is the chink in your armor.”

Leinth closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to hear this. She doesn’t want to know that all this, all her defiance, was just another part of this woman’s dance.

“You have such faith in her,” the handler says. “You think it makes you strong. It just makes you brittle. You can think you can handle seeing her broken and dirtied and disappointing. Perhaps. But you cannot handle the real truth of Sartha Thrace.”

It’s that pain. It has to be. Leinth wants to close her heart off to it. To make a hated enemy of Sartha in her head. Then she wouldn’t need to care. She can’t do it, of course.

“The chink in Sartha’s armor,” the handler tells her, “was you.”

Leinth opens her eyes in disbelief.

“Not just you, of course,” the handler adds. “Not you personally. But all of you who call her a hero and worship the ground she walks on. All that faith. All those expectations. Did you think she could carry that much weight? That she didn’t notice? That it didn’t drag her down with every step? She was tired of it, Leinth. Deep in her soul, she was tired of it. She wanted to be free of it. She would never have admitted it out loud, of course. But she knew it all the same. And when I offered her freedom, something deep inside her reached out and took it. That is how I made her mine.”

Leinth is frozen. She never thought about it. Not once. To her, Sartha was always a woman on a poster. Why didn’t she ever…

“I should thank you, shouldn’t I?” The handler says it without mirth. “For helping to wear her down. For helping to deliver her into my arms. And after that little speech, I think she’s more mine than she’s ever been.”

Sometimes, when Leinth pilots Genetor, she takes some pretty fucking big hits. It’s part of the job, after all. Genetor was built for it. It’s the kind of machine that was designed to stare down an avalanche and dare the mountain the do its worst. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like shit, though. It doesn’t matter how heavily built a machine is. When you get hit by heavy ordnance, the force has to go somewhere. It goes through you. And the noise. It’s deafening, in the most literal sense. After some battles, Leinth can’t hear properly for hours afterward. There’s nothing in her ears but a skull-splitting mosquito whine of complaint.

Even that doesn’t compare to how bad her head is ringing now.

It was her fault?

She looks at Sartha once again. That’s the only thing that can save her now. Sartha telling her that it’s a lie. That she never felt that way. That she was OK with it. But Sartha avoids her gaze, and her shame speaks louder than any words.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? She’s still just looking to Sartha to save her.

“A hero, a martyr, or a traitor,” the handler muses. “Those are the only fates you left her with. No wonder it was so easy to make her a hound instead.”

Leinth gets it now. There are no heroes down here. Not a one.

“Sartha,” the handler says once she’s sure it’s all sunk in. She knows the signs. The slumped shoulders. The sagging, lightless eyes. “Off The Leash. You can take Leinth to my room now. She’s ready for my personal attention.”

It’s a mercy to be faced with Hound instead of Sartha. Hound knows no shame, and no judgment either. Hound doesn’t hesitate. She just puts a hand on Leinth’s shoulder and starts guiding her, unresisting, away from the light and deeper into the catacombs beneath the base.

---

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#story #Warhound

[jake-g-lockley]

Across the Stars (Marc Spector x desi!reader)

Masterlist | Spotify Playlist

Warnings: panic attack, injury

Summary: How tf did you end up stargazing with Marc Spector?

Word count: 1.5k

A/N: Kinda based on Marc liking Star Wars as a kid and I always had a small feeling that Marc loves space in general <3 (the poster in the show almost made my heart crack) This song is kinda mandatory innit~

There are a lot of things in this world that you love. The little things in life that give you a short notice of peace such as the smell of fresh coffee, the quiet sounds of an early morning, melodic carnatic music, the smell of incense and flowers at the temple and the clear blue sky on a hot and sunny London afternoon. All of these things gave you a sense of surety, solidity and purity.

But nothing could compare to the love you had for Marc Spector. He was, and still is, an enigma wrapped in questionable life choices, a painful past and many other issues that he could not resolve. But he was still there for you and for someone who had normalized feeling alone, you too had found it quite easy to cling to Marc Spector.

You could almost ignore the debilitating anxiety that was placidly squeezing its fist on your already shattered heart when he was around you. You could almost forget the mangling pain that filled the already occupied parts of your lungs, that would often make it hard for you to breathe when he held your hand. For a while, and just a while, you could escape from the unbearable thoughts of suffering and self hatred, all because of him.

He was your neighbor but you hardly ever saw him at first, just sometimes when you were in the old rickety lift or walking down the dusty hallways. He’d always wear a monotonous expression that you could not read. You would give him a big smile whenever you saw him but he would rarely return your smile, sometimes just replying with a small nod. Other times, he looked lost or confused and you were slightly intrigued by him.

For a good while, he was just Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome. His beauty was undeniable and definitely something to behold, even features which people considered as flaws complimented his strikingly handsome looks. You didn’t even realize he was American. The first time you spoke to him, you were taken aback by his deep, steady accent, fully expecting a British drawl. He also gave no intention of getting to know you, although you wanted to undercover what was under his hardened shell.

This is why your first official meeting with Marc Spector was really unexpected. You were curled up on the couch one night after a long day of work, when you heard a small hesitant knock on your balcony window. You had thought you were hearing things and you were about to ignore the sound when a little gut feeling told you to go and investigate.

You were completely horrified when you found a man covered in a white shroud collapsed on your balcony. His face was turned away from you and you thought that he had passed out. Slowly, he turned to face you, eyes wide and mouth pulled into a grimace. For a few shocking moments, you stared into Marc Spector’s scared face. He was afraid to move and you didn’t understand what was happening.

“Marc, is everything alright?” you started and he quickly shook his head, moving the shroud, now looking more like a cape to reveal that his body was covered in beautiful armor and a worrying gash across his stomach.

You had gasped and reached forward to move his hand away from the gash and Marc flinched, making you draw your hand back quickly.

“Hey, Marc, sorry, I should have asked you first. I’m going to help you now, okay? Everything is going to be alright.” you slowly said and reached out to slowly touch his hand.

He had slowly nodded and you helped him into the apartment. Marc barely made a sound as you helped him limp towards the couch but his angelic features were contorted with immense amounts of pain. You set him on the couch and instructed him to lay down as you went to gather supplies.

Before you started, Marc stopped you, grabbing your wrist and making you look at him.

“Y/N could you maybe just talk to me, just about anything, I just want to hear your voice.” he whispered, voice cutting off with the pain he was enduring.

So that's what you did. You told him everything you did all day, from start to finish, adding in sly little details and gossips from your office as you cleaned, sewed and dressed his wound. He kept slipping into sleep and you lightly tapped his face to keep him awake as you worked on him, trying to keep calm and not question him at all.

After you were done, you had given him a glass of milk and some cookies and he eyed you suspiciously when you had set them down in front of him.

“My father used to give me milk and cookies whenever I fell down or sustained some type of silly injury, like a paper cut. I know your injury is slightly bigger than a paper cut but it doesn’t hurt to give you milk and cookies.” you said shyly and a small smile graced Marc’s face.

“I’m really sorry, Y/N, I really didn’t know where else to go to, you know?” he said softly, his fingers playing with one of the cookies on the plate.

“It’s alright, Marc.” you had said, smiling reassuringly at him.

That is what kickstarted your relationship with Marc. The day after the balcony incident. Marc had brought you an ice cream cake and you started telling him about yourself. Marc would listen intently and eventually he started asking you questions to clarify details. The both of you would go grocery shopping together and sometimes take walks at the nearby park. The conversations between the two of you became more relaxed and you certainly started to crave Marc’s company.

A turning point of your relationship occurred during one of the most challenging points in your life. You had just been laid off from your job and you had returned to your apartment feeling numb. You didn’t know the reason why you and a lot of your colleagues but you had taken it in stride when your boss had announced it to all of you. You had managed to get yourself home but you sank to the floor the second your front door had closed behind you.

You sat there for a long time, not feeling anything until a loud bang sounded, startling you. Then the tears started running down your face uncontrollably and you felt distraught. Hyperventilating, you clawed at your throat trying to gasp for air. Eventually you gave up and crawled to the front door and pulled yourself up with the handle, pulling the door open and stumbling out.

You crossed the threshold until you felt your body slam into the door opposite to yours with a loud ‘thump!’ The door opened almost instantaneously and you let yourself fall. Marc had caught you and held on to you, his strong arms bracing you.

“Hey! Y/N, sweetheart! Breathe alright?” he said, loud enough for you to hear as you try to gather yourself together.

Marc brought you close to him and swayed slightly until your breathing slowed and tears stopped flowing. You found enough energy to wrap your arms around him, pulling him closer.

“Come on, let's go get some air.” he said, guiding you through the apartment to the balcony.

He sits down onto the floor and pulls you down. You rub your nose with your sweater as you watch him lay down. He pats a spot beside him and you follow suit. Hesitantly, he pulled you closer until your head was comfortably settled on his chest. You were surprised by the gesture but you didn’t complain.

“I’m not expecting you to tell me what’s just happened, but I think I know how you feel. Whenever I would feel like this, I would come out here and lay down like this, watching the stars.” Marc whispered as you averted your eyes from his handsome face to the sky above.

You softly gasped at how clear the sky was, despite the fact that London was constantly shrouded with light pollution. You looked back at Marc who sent a small wink your way. Mars grabs your hand, pulling your pointer finger out, tucking the rest of your fingers into a fist and covering your hand with his. He circles your finger around a large portion of the sky above the both of you.

“That right there is the Orion constellation.” he said, as you moved your eyes towards the sky again. “That there is, obviously, the moon.” he said, using your finger to point at the gorgeous crescent in the sky.

“That suit I saw you wearing had a beautiful crescent moon.” you said softly and his grip on your hand tightened slightly.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I’ll tell you about it sometime, we have all the time in the world, Now focus.”

You smile at Marc as he continues to tell you about each star that he pointed to in the Orion constellation.

We have all the time in the world.

That was the same line he had used before pushing a beautiful ring onto your fingers a few years later. You knew from the second he showed you the universe beyond, that your fate with him most definitely lay across the stars.

Tagging: @brekkers-desigirl @wordacadabra @paymeinkash @ahookedheroespureheart @swiggy-needs-mental-help @pakhiya @mintpurplemnm @soumya-13 @violet-19999 @dystopian-reverie @softieekayy

Next few fics after this are gonna be requests that i took way too long to complete heheheheheh

#moon knight #steven grant #marc spector #jake lockley #marc spector x reader #steven grant x reader #moon knight fluff #marvel moon knight #marc spector angst #marc spector x gn!reader #marc spector x y/n #marc spector x you #marc spector x desi!reader #marc spector fluff #marc spector smut #fluff #stargazing #marc #marc moon knight #moon knight marc #oisaac #oisaacedit #fanfic #fan fiction #marc spector imagine #marc spector imagines #Spotify #moon knight imagine #moon knight imagines

[missnedge]

Vulnerability (Starscream/reader pt 4)

Summary: Starscream agreed to stay with you tonight. You thought it would be a simple crash on the couch situation. But when have things ever been simple between you two?

Relationship: Starscream/you

Tags: Fluff, angst, mentions of loss, smut, passionate, kissing, oral, NSFW minors dni, 18+, yeah I gave you smut this time be happy

Written by Edge

Personal account: @hollister-mc

It surprised you that Starscream actually agreed to stay with you tonight. You could only hope he wouldn't get in more trouble when he got back to the Nemesis, you'd honestly rather he didn't go back at all but you doubt bucket-head would allow that. 

You sigh and finish putting on your nightshirt in your bathroom. You stare at yourself in the mirror, slowly running your fingers through your hair. Why are you nervous? You're just letting him rest at your place, you're not even gonna sleep in the same room since there's not really much space on your bed for you both… Would he even want your bed? How the fuck to Cybertronians even sleep? Or recharge?

Whatever, you can't stall forever. One final sigh and you exit your bathroom. Starscream was up and looking at various things in your room, currently examining a photo on your wall. Starscream looked at it with what can only be described as fondness. In the picture you stood with three children that he recognized, the very same kids that were with the autobots. The ones that you had sacrificed yourself to protect the day he brought you to the Nemesis. The autobots had taken the children in, becoming their guardians and forming deep friendships.

An uncomfortable pang of jealousy hit him. They always looked so happy. They cared for each other greatly. It's not something he wanted to admit to himself, but the thought of a team– no, a family was something he longed for. Oh how he missed his Trine brothers. The only silver lining from their untimely demise was that they didn't have to see the fall of their planet. It had been so long already, but the pain of their loss still felt like a fresh wound whenever he thought of them. 

You watched Starscream stare at the photo, his wings had dropped behind him, the fond look in his face was replaced with grief. You stepped a bit closer and looked at the photo, yours, Miko’s, Jack's, and Raf's smiling faces stared back at you. You glanced back at Starscream for a moment before clearing your throat softly. "We took this photo not that long ago, I had recently gotten a new camera and Miko insisted on taking photos with it." A warm smile spread on your lips as you recalled the memory. Starscream moved his gaze from the picture down to you. "You four are… close?" He was hesitant. You nod and smile at him. He glanced away for a moment. "How um… Did you meet them?"

You chuckled softly. "I actually knew all of them separately before they met each other. I babysit for Rafs' parents sometimes. I met Jack at his work once and we got along super well, we just bitched about our jobs for an hour. And I nearly ran Miko over with my car once and I've never been able to shake her since." You laugh at the memory, Starscream's lips twitch upwards as he watched you. 

You stop laughing after a moment, face falling slightly. Your eyes meet his and you chew on your lip nervously for a moment, debating whether or not to ask the question on your mind. 

"I'm sorry if it's rude of me to ask, I know it's not really any of my business but…" You take a deep breath and continue. "It's just the way you looked at the picture, it's like you were recalling someone… Is there anyone you're close with?" 

Starscream falters for a moment. "On the Nemesis? No. I rant to Knockout occasionally but I wouldn't say I have any… Strong connections. But…" He gets a far away look. "Back on Cybertron I had two younger brothers, they were killed early on in the war. They were the closest people to me." 

Starscream broke your heart for the second time that night. 

"I'm so sorry…" You whisper out. Starscream shakes his head and glances back at the photo. "It was a long time ago. I've moved on, but I still think about them from time to time." 

You nod slowly. "What were their names?" 

"Thundercracker and Skywarp." 

You crack a small smile. "Those are kickass names." 

Starscream lets out a bark of laughter. "If only they could hear that. I have a feeling they would have liked you, especially with how snarky you are." You laugh and send a smirk at him. "Did they enjoy annoying you as much as I do?" 

Starscream chuckles lowly and shakes his head. "Oh you have no idea." You giggle softly. "Damn, now I really wish I could have met them…" You trail off, a beat of sadness in your voice. Starscream turns and looks down at you, a warm expression on his face. "As do I…" 

You lift your head up and meet his gaze. Your heart seemingly stutters in your chest once you see the gaze he's giving you. You've never seen him so… Content.

It's hard for you to keep yourself grounded when he's looking at you like that— like he's seeing the night sky for the first time in his life. 

Starscream can't take his optics off you. These emotions he's feeling, they're brand new. He's had past lovers, brief, fun, intense, but a fast burn. He's never dived into the deep abyss that is passion, and dare he say love. It's quite frankly absurd that he even dares let his mind wander to such things, but the way you look at him… It's like he's finally being seen for the first time in his life. 

He's never talked about his brothers before, to anyone. Not even Megatron bothered to get to know his second in command. His brothers only lived in his memories, he held that close to his spark. It was the one thing he could have that no one else could. 

And yet… He told you. 

He shared his most personal memory with you, came to you in his weakest moments, and had been intimate with you. All of these moments, he was at his most vulnerable. And you, a tiny organic, held more compassion and kindness in you in your small fragile body than any of the countless lifeforms he's encountered. 

He should hate you. You're a human, let alone an alley of his enemies. He found organics disgusting anyway. So why was he so drawn to you? Why did he want you so badly?

Starscream slowly raised his arm, his servo nearing your face. You felt a strong sense of Déjà vu, recalling the night where he first came into your house. You had sex and then before he left he almost touched your face, but last second he stopped himself and left without another word. You wonder if he's going to do it again.

He looks nervous, you give him a soft smile. His servo touches the right side of your face, his temperature has increased since he first arrived. You leaned into his touch, turning and kissing his palm. He made a choked sound, you glance up at him again, a light blue glow dusting his face. 

Starscream feels like he just entered zero gravity. The warmth that you gave off, physically, and emotionally was intoxicating— addicting even. You raised your hand, resting it on his servo that was placed against your cheek. Something inside him snapped. 

He leaned down and crashed his lips into yours, eliciting a surprised gasp from you. You shut your eyes, raising your arms to touch him. Starscream immediately noticed you trying to reach him. He snaked his arm under your rear, lifting you effortlessly up. You yelped at the movement but he cut you off, thrusting his tongue into your mouth. You moan and wrapped your legs and arms around him, arms carefully moving along his chassis avoiding any damages. 

Starscream moves his servo from your face to the back of your head, running through your hair. You shudder at the sensation of his sharp talons moving across your scalp gently. His tongue glides over yours, his movements hungry and desperate. The sensation of his mouth is sending you into a sensory overload. The texture is firm and flexible, making you wonder if they're able to taste the same way humans do. You're lost in the motion, mind buzzing from the way he's making you feel. 

After a few moments Starscream moves towards your bed, laying you down gently all while continuing to kiss you with the intensity of a damn supernova. You slowly come out of your daze as you feel your back hit the bed. You pull back and place your hands on his chassis, panting softly. "Wait." Starscream pauses and looks down at you with a slightly worried expression. "What's wrong?" 

You run your hands over the smooth metal. "Shouldn't we wait until you're healed?" You breathed out, still tracing shapes with your finger tips. Starscream tilted his helm, giving you an adoring smile as he looked down at you; he ran a digit ever so gently over your bottom lip. "I've dealt with far worse my dear." 

You frown and reach up, running a hand over his face. "That's not exactly comforting." He chuckled and grabbed your hand, mimicking your earlier action by pressing his lips to your palm. "Trust me, I'm more than capable of handling certain physical activities…" His voice grew deeper towards the end of his sentence, his grin was wicked with implication. 

Your face burned at his tone. "Alright but… You lay down then." Starscream blinked. "What?" 

A sly smirk spread on your face and you slowly sat up. "Lay down on the bed. I'm in charge tonight." His face lit up with blue from your tone. "W-What, are you positive? I um… Was I not good last time?" Your face dropped and you got to your knees, raising your body higher so you can be closer to his face. "No! No, no you were… Extremely good… I just want you to relax this time, let me take care of you." 

Starscream let out a nervous ex-vent. Thinking back to previous flings he's always been on top, reason being, he just… Doesn't like being at the mercy of someone else. 

It's not that he doesn't enjoy it, he's indifferent either way. A hard life lesson he's learned is to not let himself get into compromising situations, any type of situation. Getting on his knees, literally or metaphorically for anyone makes his sends an uncomfortable feeling through him. Its bad enough he has to grovel at Megatron's pedes to avoid getting beaten. But when he thinks about you, and letting you have control… Maybe it's not so bad.

You see the hesitation in his expression, you caress his face again soothingly. "It's alright if that's not your thing. I just don't want you to over exert yourself." 

He shakes his head and makes eye contact with you. "No It's alright, if that's what you wish." You grin and get off the bed. "Okay, just lay down and get comfortable." You move put of his way and head out into your main room, making sure you turned out the lights and locked your front and back door for the night. Starscream awkwardly climbed onto the soft mattress. Human berths, or 'beds' were different from Cybertronians. Berths weren't that complex, he could recharge anywhere, comfort wasn't exactly a need. He understood why humans needed the comfort, organics had muscle and tissue that could become sore and tense if they didn't get the proper support. Sleep cycles in humans were also different then his species. 

He leaned back, resting his helm on your pillows. It was a lot nicer than he had anticipated. You walk back into your bedroom, smirking at how stiff he looks laying there. You slowly shut your bedroom door and dim your lights. "You certainly look comfy." 

He scoffs and rolls his optics. "Don't get snippy with me, you're lucky I'm even doing this." You snicker and move closer to the bed, he stares at you, running his gaze up and down your body. "Come on now, do that thing humans do. Strip for me." 

You let out a bark of laughter. "Demanding hm? You're lucky you're injured, if you would have said that to me any other time I would have had to punish you." Starscream nearly shivered at your words. Despite you being a mere human he didn't doubt your threat, instead he made a mental note to provoke you next time. 

You're not quite sure how to put on a strip tease when you're in a baggy shirt and pj shorts, so you just go for a slow removal. You slide your shirt up, exposing the skin on your mid section. His optics follow the hem of your shirt up, soaking up the gradual reveal of skin. You ball your shirt in your hands before tossing it at Starscream, he scoffs and flings it away, not even bothering to look at where it went. 

You slide your pj shorts down, this time you can make it a little more sensual. You glide them down whilst moving your hips side to side. They drop to the floor, leaving you in only your underwear. Starscream raised a talon, curling his digit in a beckoning motion. Your heartbeat quickens as you move towards him. It feels like slow motion as you get closer. His gaze burns through you, it's nearly enough to make your knees buckle. 

You climb onto the bed and lift your leg over him, straddling his thighs. He's staring up at you, running his optics up and down your body. "May I?" He hovers his servos over your sides. You nod and he runs his talons up your sides gently, enjoying the soft warmth you gave off. A smile forms on your face, you lean down pressing a light kiss on his lips. He slides his sharp talons up your bare back ever so gently, sending a shiver up your spine. 

You place your hands on his chassis as you kiss him, making sure to be extra careful as your fingers glide over any scratches or dents. Your feather light touches over his injuries sends a sensation through him he's never felt before, it's like a burning in his spark. He tightens his grip on your sides, pulling you up further and resting you on his hips. You let out a hot breath as you pull away from his lips.

You stare up into his optics as you slowly move your hips over his. The red in his optics darken slightly, and his grip on your waist trembles. Biting your lip you take that as a sign to do it again, he groans softly at the burning heat growing in his interface panel. You marvel silently as you grind, finding it fascinating that you feel the pressure grow under you. Truly, you'll never get over the wonders of how Cybertronians work. 

A smirk slides over your lips as you watch his face twist in pleasure, you can tell he's trying to hold it together, but you're not going to let that happen.

You slide your fingers up his chassis and towards his shoulders, your hips move agonizingly slow as you slide your fingers in between the creases of his armor. He lets out a breathy moan, bucking his hips up into yours. You let out a hiss through your teeth. "You gonna show me how you did your magic last time?" You ask.

He furrows his brows, glancing down at you with a dazed expression. "What?" 

You bring your hand downwards, tapping lightly on the plating where you had been grinding. He twitches under you. "This right here. You wouldn't let me see it last time." He blinks in recognition and lowers his gaze, he smirks and hooks a talon on your underwear, pulling it and snapping it back to your skin. "Only if I get to see you take this off." 

A breathless chuckle leaves your mouth and you scoot backwards, stopping when your back meets the spikes on his knees. You tried to move in the most elegant way you could as you slipped them off, it wasn't graceful but it was the best you could do in your position. His predatory gaze wasn't helping either, it made your hands shake with anticipation. 

He grins. "Good job~" You snap your eyes down, watching in awe as his panel hisses open. You felt your mouth salivate as his length stood in front of you. You never thought you were one for body worship, but you guess aliens can have an exception. 

He cleared his vents after you kept staring, he couldn't help but feel a tad self conscious. After all this was new territory for both of you, yes you've messed around before but last time was quick and intense, this was far more… Intimate. What if now that you were up close and personal you're having second thoughts about everything? 

You snap your eyes up to his and he averts his gaze, a light blue creeping onto his faceplate. You giggle softly at his bashfulness. "Hey now, no need to be shy, Star." His face darkens in color at the nickname, he's looking everywhere but your face. You look back down at his length, there's no way in hell you could fit it all into your mouth, but then again you don't need to fit it all. 

You lean over and place both of your hands around the base, you still can't believe this thing fit inside you, you gotta remember to give yourself a pat on the back later. Starscream tensed as you touched him, you can't imagine the thoughts running through his mind right now. He's obviously not used to being the one not in control, at least in this type of situation.

You let out a hot breath over the tip of his erection, you don't really know the proper term so you just decided to keep it ambiguous in your mind. You take the tip into your mouth, you could have swore you felt a faint zap on your tongue. 

Starscream jolted, letting out a quiet whimper. "W-What are you doing?" Your mind kicks into high gear hearing that whimper. You swirl your tongue, tilting your head so that you can keep an eye on his face. A shuddered moan leaves his mouth, and you take that as a sign to do more. You stroke his shaft with one hand as you suck, using your other hand to rest on his thigh. 

"N-Ngh~" Starscream throws his helm back onto your pillows, never before had he felt such a… unique sensation like this. You dipped your head forward, taking a little more into your mouth, all while stroking him near the base. "Primus…" He lets out a low groan, lifting his servo run through your hair. You moaned onto his shaft, causing him to whine and buck his hips up. You gagged slightly as his length reached your throat, your mouth burned from being stretched but you couldn't stop now. No not when he was a moaning pathetic mess underneath you. 

The nearly agonizing throbbing between your legs was enough to keep your mind off any discomfort, surely you were going to be a dripping mess at the end of this. 

"P-Please, if you keep going I-I'll~" He cut himself off with a loud moan as you hallowed out your cheeks around him. You pulled back with a heavy breath. "Can I swallow?" 

His breath hitches and he looks confused. "H-Huh?" You smirk at his dazed expression, continuing to stroke him. "Oh come on sweetheart, I know I distract you but answer my question." He whimpers as he looks at you, nearly trembling as you lick his tip teasingly; waiting for his answer. 

He fumbles with his words, choosing to clench your bed sheets instead, no doubt ripping them in the process. You're trying hard not to get an ego boost, but there's no doubt that you're making him absolutely stupid from the pleasure. A deep burning satisfaction grows in your guts. No one aboard the Nemesis could do this for him, not the way you can. Dare you say no one in the nearby solar systems could either. 

You lick him a few more times while waiting for his reply, each time making him shutter and moan. "I-I don't think my… Mm, transfluid would be safe for you to ingest." He groans softly. "Granted it probably won't kill you, b-but it probably won't feel great…" It took a lot more effort to form those sentences than he would have liked. You grin and pump him even faster. "That's fine, just cum on me then~" Your voice was velvet to him. He came suddenly, moaning loudly as he spilled his neon liquid onto you. You had to silence the voice in your mind telling you that the glowing fluid looked pretty splattered on your body.

Starscream panted heavily, he's never had such a sudden overload before, something about your voice just did him in. He opened his optics and looked at you, Primus you looked so good like that. You, kneeling over him, wiping a bit of his transfluid from your cheek, whilst the rest dripped down you, it was mesmerizing. He raised his servo to your face, curling a digit under your chin, tilting your head up to look at him. Your breath caught in your throat when your eyes met his. They were filled with an emotion you couldn't quite distinguish, or maybe you were just too scared to. 

Starscream slowly sat up, you placed your palms on his chassis and glanced at his wounds worriedly. "Star you should-" He kissed you. Not roughly, or hungrily like he has before. No, this was soft, meaningful, and dare you say… Loving. 

Your eyes fall shut and you relax into the kiss. Your mind is running rampant. Granted, you've been telling yourself for a while that this… relationship that you have isn't good for either one of you. If anyone finds out you both are fucked, you both knew this. 

But this… was a different type of danger. You felt like you were tip toeing a fine line between whatever this was and something more, something deeper. 

The worst part was that some part of you didn't care. He was so much more than you had originally thought of him. When you first met him it was during a fight and he nearly killed you. After hearing the stories that the autobots told you, you decided that Starscream was just an arrogant, power hungry, self-righteous twat. 

But now… the way he looked at you the first night he came to your house, and then tonight… You learned so much more about him, he was so vulnerable and most of all he trusted you. 

You let out a quiet whimper as he kissed you. It was barely audible but of course he picked it up. He circled his arms around you, and hoisted you further onto his lap. You could feel his length in between you both and it made your face burn. You moaned as his tongue slipped into your mouth, it slid along yours curiously. Like he was wanting to memorize the way you felt. 

Your fingers gripped onto his broad shoulders, pressing your tongue into his. You don't think you'll ever get used to how he feels, how he tastes, it's so fucking addictive. You pull away gasping for air, he immediately dives for your neck. You gasp loudly at the sensation of his tongue running over your neck. You unconsciously lean your head back, giving him better access as you try to catch your breath. 

He nibbles gently while gliding his servo down your chest and stomach, your breath hitches as his talons run even lower. Your grip on his shoulders becomes tighter, as you shut your eyes. His mouth on your neck sends ripples throughout your body, all ending up between your legs. "S-Starscream…" You whine, arching into him slightly as his digit slides across your slit. Just as you imagined you are soaked and beginning to drip down your thighs. He moves carefully, using the back side of his talon to avoid cutting you as he rubs up and down. You pant heavily and rest your head onto his chassis, hissing from the mix of pleasure and want for more. 

He reaches back and guides his erection in front of your entrance, eliciting a choked moan from you. Starscream turns your head towards him. "Look at me darling." You nod pathetically and stare into his optics. They have got to be the most gorgeous shade of red you've ever seen.

With that he moves forward, sliding into you slowly. Your vision blurs slightly from the pain but it quickly regains. You keep your eyes on him, even as you wince in pain you look at him. He was buried inside of you. Shaky breaths leave your mouth as you adjust to his size, you feel his servo tremble on your lower back. 

The pain slowly melted away, Starscream watched you the entire time. You gripped onto his shoulders a bit tighter before slowly rolling your hips forward. Starscream let out a low grunt, like he was trying to restrain himself. A slight grin formed on your lips, there was something so satisfying knowing the effect you had on him. 

You lifted your hips slowly, letting his length slide out. Your breathing was shallow as you slowly sank back down. Your lips quivered and let out a quiet mewl. Starscream ran his talons down your back as you rocked up and down slowly. You leaned back and rested your hands on his thighs, moving your hips a little faster. Soft moans from you both filled the room along with the groans of your bed frame. You just hoped the extra weight wouldn't do in your frame, it at least had a couple more years left in it. 

Starscream gripped your hips firmly as you bounced, he started to match your movements, thrusting in time with you. Your arms trembled but you kept moving, your speed growing faster with need. 

Your eyes fluttered closed and all you could think of was how good it felt to have him sliding into you repeatedly. Starscream watched your face contort with pleasure, it was positively enthralling for him.

A deep buried part of him sparked to life, a part that thrived from pleasing others. Normally he felt it whenever Megatron gave a light praise, or someone commended him on his flight skills. It was normal for anyone to have such a reaction from such things, but for him it was a bit more. To put it bluntly he was starved for praise. And seeing you nearly drunk on pleasure, pleasure that he was giving you?

Primus, he had no idea how to get himself out of this mess. Let alone if he even wanted too. 

His talons dug into your lower back, a deep moan left your throat as he thrusted roughly into you. Your whole body twitched as he hit that deep spot. Your breathing was shallow, and your vision was spotted with stars. Never in your life was anyone able to hit your g-spot, it never bothered you, some people didn't care or couldn't figure it out. But Starscream just found it by accident, and oh boy did he notice. 

"Human anatomy is fascinating." He chuckles, his voice gravelly and traced with static. You let out a huff and look at him. "I don't know what you're talking about." He grinds slowly, keeping his length inside you. "Sure you do darling. You must know that I'm aware of how your body reacts. Especially right now…" He grinds a bit more roughly, pushing his tip right into that special spot. "I can feel the difference, see the difference, and hear the difference…" He grins wickedly as you whimper. 

He sits up straighter, pulling you flush against his chassis. Your breath hitches and you glance up at him. He dips his helm, swiftly capturing your lips into a soft kiss. He pulls back and moves to the side of your head, letting hot air ghost over your ear and neck. "Let me know if it gets too much for you." 

"What?" You turn to ask but the sharp buck from him makes the breath in your chest evaporate. 

Starscream started to thrust into you, roughly. All you could do was moan as you got quite literally, fucked stupid.

Starscream made it his sole goal to hit your g-spot every. single. time. Your hands fumbled around his chassis, searching for anything to find purchase on. Anything to ground you from feeling like you were going to melt through the bed and into the floor. You decided to slip to his back, gripping onto his wings, his intake hitched and his hips sputtered. A guttural moan left him, he quickly recovered his rhythm, going even faster than before. 

"S-S-Star~" You sounded pathetic. You could barely form words, as he drove into you ruthlessly. You gripped his wings tighter at the base, far away from the minor injuries he had on them. A moan that could only be described as slutty left Starscream, your core tightened impossibly fast and you became suddenly aware of your oncoming climax. He was driving into you with unhinged force, you wouldn't be shocked if your pelvis gets dislocated. 

"I-I… fuck, Star your gonna make me—" You cut off your own sentace with a moan, Starscream's talons racked down your lower back. The sting shot straight into pleasure as you quickly realized he broke the skin. Your grip on his wings tightened instinctively, Starscream growled clenching your hips tighter. "Please, please I'm so fucking close… Please, oh fuck please~" Your face was pressed into his chassis, moaning a mantra of pleads for release. 

Starscream heard you loud and clear, he kept his brutal pace. It took nearly everything in him to hold off on overloading. He wanted you to do it first, he wanted to feel you around him. Fuck yes, he wanted you to be the thing that sent him over the edge.  He groaned and held your soft body closer, the heat you gave off was heavenly. “Overload for me, do it.” He panted out in-between thrusts. 

Your back arched and a strangled moan left your lips, it was white hot pleasure that shot through your entire body. Your muscles clenched tightly around him, sending him into a violent and electrifying overload. His optics went offline as his hips sputtered, he shot transfluid inside you. it felt different this time, like TV static pooling in your abdomen. 

Your moans faded into raspy breathing, you could have sobbed from the ecstasy pulsing through you. Starscream's optics came online, he blinked slowly as his intake went back to normal. You were flush against him, face pressed into his chassis. Your hands had slipped from his wings, instead resting above his hips. He glanced down at you, slowly lifting his servos from your hips. 

His spark dropped as he noticed the crimson scratches running down your lower back. "Scrap, I'm sorry I hurt you." 

You let out a contempt hum, glancing up at his worried expression. "You did the exact opposite to me, Star." Your voice was slightly hoarse. Starscream ignored the sensation in his spark at your words. "I scratched your back, I made you bleed."

A stupid grin spread across your lips. "What are you grinning for?" Starscream's voice was soft, he sounded like he was moments away from a breakdown. You looked up at him, your eyes lidded as you gazed up at him. Maybe it was the post orgasm glow, or the heat of the moment in general, but fuck did he look stunning. 

"Trust me sweetheart, you didn't hurt me. You… Christ, you made me feel so incredibly good." You gave him a warm smile. He looked unsure. "But you're bleeding…" 

"Feels good. At least it feels good for me knowing I made you do that. Human culture has a thing where scratches like that are a sign of satisfaction. Trust me, look it up." You giggle, letting your fingertips run over the edges of his armor. He let out a soft sigh of defeat, as he moved his servo up to your head. A single digit twirled some strands of your hair. 

Your chest felt tight as you stared up at him, admiring how handsome he was, how pretty he was. How the utter contempt in his face made your heart flutter. You wanted to treasure that peaceful look, you wanted him to feel safe all the time. The thought of him going back to Megatron made you sick to your stomach. You wanted to run away with him, hide him away from the war lord, from everyone who wanted to harm him. It was irrational, and impossible. You knew this, but it sure as hell didn't stop you from imagining it. 

"You look tired." Starscream broke the silence, his voice was low as he continued to play with your hair. "So do you." You replied, voice just as low. His optics met your eyes and that flutter racked your heart again. "You take a lot out of me." He smirked slightly.

You chuckled and slowly got off of his lap, pulling him down onto the bed with you. He watched as you grabbed the blanket and pulled it up, covering your body and part of his. You snuggled into his side, draping an arm over him. His wings were flat against the mattress, he shifted slightly, feeling surprisingly comfortable. He couldn't tell if it was the bed or you that made him feel that way. 

"Is this comfy for you?" You mumble. Starscream glances down at you, wrapping an arm around you gently. "Yes."

You rubbed your hand in soothing circles over his plating, as your eyes grew heavy. He watched with the faintest smile on his face as your eyes drooped shut. 

He could get used to this. By the pit he wanted to get used to this. It doesn't matter if he'll be a bit sore in the morning for staying in mass conversion for so long. He'd stay like this forever if you asked him. Whatever you wanted, whatever it took to be able to be with you. 

...Be with you? He wanted… to be with you. 

He squeezed his optics shut, his processor buzzed unpleasantly, his spark doing the same. He had a horrible feeling that he knew what was happening. Something that was dangerous. It put not only him at risk, but you as well, which was the worst part. 

This whole night was more intimate than it should have been. He was an idiot for coming here in the first place. He should have just gone back to his quarters and sulked, no he still would have thought of you. Truthfully he should have never let his thoughts of you go past hate, things would have been so much simpler. 

But here he was, lying next to you in your bed after a night of you taking care of him and intense interfacing. Primus, he was in trouble, he doesn't know what he would do if Megatron found out about you both. Megatron would kill you, slowly, painfully, and probably in front of him before he turned and killed him as well. 

Then again, maybe he wouldn't have to know. If he just stayed on top of everything and did his work well Megatron would have no reason to suspect anything. He could have the best of both worlds, a successful Commander, and a—

A what? What was he to you? What did you want him to be? What did he even want to be to you?

Starscream let out a deep sigh and offlined his optics. He was far too exhausted to be dealing with these thoughts, perhaps recharging would clear his processor.

Both of your thoughts were messy as you and him drifted to sleep, so many things were uncertain. But one thing was clear for you both.

The two of you were in way deeper than you had originally thought. 

++++

I'll go back and format this later, i know the spacing is wonky its just i had to get this out asap and its 2:40 am right now and I'm so tired

#tfp starscream #starscream/reader #starscream #reader insert #starscream x reader #smut #Starscream/reader smut #one shot #fanfiction #no minors allowed #fluff and smut #bit of angst #captured series #i finally did it plz be proud #requests #macadam