#(Me stepping out of the shadows just to say this)

[on-my-vigilante-sht]

Favoritism

Levi Ackerman x Reader

Summary: Captain Levi wouldn't let his feelings for a scout under him get in the way of his professionalism, right?

Warnings: Minimal use of Y/N, Levi being a dick to others, implied smut, making out, nudity, titan deaths, drinking.

Word Count: 2.5K

Masterlist

Y/N sat in the conference room, tapping her foot nervously. It was time for assessment of the newest scouts and she was the last to go. Every single one of them had come out of Captain Levi’s office either looking dejected, shaken up, or outright crying. She had no clue what he could possibly be saying to everyone to elicit such reactions. Everyone had been nervous and she had no idea why. Captain Levi had been nothing but decent to her but her former classmates didn’t seem to share her view. In contrast, she wasn’t nervous for her meeting until she saw everyone else’s reactions.

As the door opened across the hall, she could hear quiet sobs followed by footsteps running down the hall. After a couple minutes, Captain Levi appeared in the door frame. “L/N?” he called before turning on his heel and walking back into his office. She followed after him quickly, stepping into his office as he held the door for her. Once she was inside, he shut the door behind her and gestured for her to sit. She complied as her captain took a seat across from her behind the desk. He took a moment to look through some papers before speaking. “So going over what your instructors had said when you were a cadet I’m not at all surprised you’re doing so well. You work well with the team and communicate. You’ve shown just how skilled you are in titan combat and you’re very professional in the workplace.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“My only suggestion is to stop taking such big risks. Your actions have never risked anyone else’s safety so I’ve never felt the need to say anything. But for your sake, make sure you’re not putting yourself in any unnecessary danger.”

“Understood, sir.”

“And with that in mind, I’d like to offer you a spot on the Special Operations Squad. We could use someone like you,” he said with the slightest ghost of a smile.

Her breath hitched and she was pretty sure her eyes widened. A spot on Captain Levi’s team? The Levi Squad, as it had been dubbed, was the best and most exclusive unit in all of the Scouts Regiment. “I’d love to, sir. Thank you.”

His shadow of a smile grew into a small one as he sat back in his seat. “Good. Seeing as I have nothing else to complain about, you’re dismissed.”

Not wanting to embarrass herself out of joy and excitement, she hurried out of the office. That was the meeting that had sent the rest of her teammates off crying? She didn’t dwell on it as she walked back towards her living quarters. As she walked through the hall, she could hear faint sobs and hushed, angry whispers coming through the doors. She ignored them until suddenly one of her classmates left her room with slightly red eyes. “Oh, Y/N,” Zelma greeted. “How was your meeting with the captain?” she asked, pity already creeping into her expression.

The newest member of the Special Operations Squad froze. Did she tell people? It would seem like she was rubbing it in everyone else’s faces. But they’d all find out eventually, right? Still, there was still time for her to tell them. It didn’t have to come on the heels of everyone else’s tears. “It was fine. He just chewed me out a bit for taking risky moves.”

“Yeah, well you got the best of it then. Mandel got chewed out for a full ten minutes about writing the date on his documents incorrectly.”

“Oh god.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to see if Rose is okay,” Zelma said, brushing past her. As she continued onto her room, she thought about her interactions with Captain Levi. Nothing about him seemed like he’d do that to a person. When she first started, she screwed up about ten pages of reports but rather than scream at her, he had spent the whole night helping her fix them.

“What’s this?” a deep voice rang through the nearly empty office. Her head snapped up towards the door, finding easily the most feared man in all of the Survey Corps… scarier than Commander Erwin Smith.

“Uh… hello, sir,” she stuttered out as she tried to covertly cover up the paperwork she had messed up and was trying to redo.

He said nothing as he approached her desk. Before even looking at her piles of paper, he lit the candle on her desk, making her realize just how late it was and how dark it had gotten. He then observed her papers, easily identifying what she tried to cover up. Wordlessly, he pulled up a chair to sit on the side of her desk, grabbing half of her pile. She looked at him perplexed until he finally explained. “I’ll do this half so we finish quicker.”

“Oh… uh… thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”

“No problem,” he replied, the phrase seeming too casual for Humanity’s Strongest Soldier. “I’ve made these mistakes before.” No he hadn’t. But he wanted to make her feel better.

~

A week later, the Levi Squad was heading out on a mission to reclaim the Scout Regiment’s old headquarters outside Wall Rose. This would be her first time fighting since her cadet class had attempted to retake Shiganshina.

“You ready, brat?” a deep voice asked, coming up behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, finding Captain Levi approaching her.

“Yes, sir,” she agreed, standing up straight and turning to face him.

The Captain stopped in front of her, taking a moment to observe her. A slight frown adorned his face as he stepped closer. “May I?” he asked, gesturing to the straps wrapped around her thighs. Unable to find her voice, she just nodded. He knelt down, grabbing the strap wrapped around her left leg first. He tugged at it, finding that it was a bit too loose, as well as throwing the wearer off balance. She fell forward, catching herself on Levi’s shoulder. She immediately moved to steady herself but another tug seemed to bring her closer.

Levi kept his face straight as he moved on to her other leg. He enjoyed the closeness of her. Ever since that night they spent filling out her paperwork, just reveling in each other’s company, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He had justified it in his mind as simply admiring her dedication, enabling him to invite her onto his team. And he couldn’t just let his newest member slip out of her ODM gear, right?

Moving on from the straps around her thighs, his hands wandered up to her waist. He was still kneeling before her but now that he was no longer pulling her leg forward, she stood on her own. He kind of missed her gentle yet firm grip on his shoulder. Nevertheless, he tugged at the straps around her waist, finding them perfectly snug. Satisfied, he finally stood, pulling her attention up with him. “You’re all set.”

“Th-thank you, sir,” she said, slight nervousness creeping into her voice. He just gave her a soft smile before heading over to his own horse.

~~

It had been a long two days. The Special Operations Squad had fought long and hard to clear and secure the Survey Corps’ headquarters but they did it without any casualties. Now, locked safely within the walls of the old castle, they celebrated.

“Oh my god, did you see Ral take down that five meter?” Bozado practically shouted in excitement. “Hell, she tripped the thing and still cut it’s nape.” Everyone cheered on Petra as she blushed.

“Did you see the rookie, here?” Jinn caught everyone’s attention as he nudged her shoulder. She blushed as well as everyone looked at her. “How was your first solo kill?”

She smiled, trying to hide her embarrassment. “Not enough,” she declared, eliciting a cheer from everyone. Across the table she caught Levi’s eye, giving her a smirk and nod of approval, the biggest reaction anyone had gotten out of him.

After a while of celebrating, everyone else was drunk with the exception of her and Levi. Needing a moment of quiet, she slipped out of the room, everyone else too drunk to notice. She made her way to the upper floors until she found a balcony in what was probably the commander’s room. Stepping outside, she just took a moment to breathe in the cool air. Fortunately all the titans had dissolved into nothingness, leaving the view almost beautiful. The only damper was the damage the titans had created.

“Mind if I join?” a low voice came from behind her.

Startled, she jumped, relieved when she saw that it was only Levi. “Oh, you scared me, Captain.”

“Did I?” he said, coming to stand next to her. “Didn’t take you as one to be scared easily. You did just stare down the jaws of a titan today.”

She shrugged, the blush returning to her cheeks. “Yeah well, I’d sooner face a titan than the infamous Captain Levi.”

He chuckled. “You did good,” he praised.

“Thank you, sir. Thanks for inviting me.”

“Your record speaks for itself,” he dismissed.

Turning to face the outside world again, a sudden breeze caught her, sending a chill down her spine. Noticing her movement, Levi unclasped the cloak from around his shoulders before placing it around his newest soldier. “Oh thank you sir but-” He waved his hand, dismissing her before going back to looking over the castle’s grounds, sipping on his tea. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, trying to find the words. Clenching her jaw, she pondered all of his actions. Taking a deep swig of the whiskey Jinn had brought, she worked up the courage to speak. “Why do you treat me so well?”

Levi’s blood went cold. It was the question he dreaded and the opening he craved but still never hoped would come. Choosing to deflect, he spoke casually. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I treat everyone the same.”

“Sir, with all due respect, no you don’t,” she countered sheepishly. “When others in my class screwed up they were punished, you helped me. You invited me to your squad even though I wasn’t first in my cadet class. You don’t even really interact socially with your squad but you’re out here with me.”

Levi sighed, considering his next words. She had him pinned on this. “You… I…” he took a breath. “You impress me,” was all he said. “More than anyone ever has.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she pressed further.

Levi groaned internally as she kept pushing. Unable to say the words, he decided to show her. Resting his cup on the thick railing of the balcony, he stepped right next to her, grasping her face softly. Her doe like eyes stared up at him innocently until they fluttered closed as Levi leant down, connecting their lips. She parted her lips, granting him access to her mouth, which he took eagerly. His hands fell to her hips, pulling her in eagerly which she took as an invitation to reach for his coat. He helped her shed the clothing before he worked to unbutton his own shirt, still kissing her. Once it was off, he returned his hands to her hips, pushing her into the room and onto the bed. In a flurry of lips and clothes, Levi had her naked underneath him. Pausing for a moment, he pulled away just to observe her. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he breathed before returning his lips to hers.

~~

Laying in the bed that had been prepared for him earlier that day, Levi stroked his newest squad-member’s hair. Her bare skin bathed in the moonlight as she slept peacefully on his chest. He couldn’t help but smile into the top of her head, feeling like a giddy teenager. He couldn’t believe he had finally found the girl of his dreams. In the Underground he had had no time for and therefore no consideration of love. He knew he’d have to keep her a well-guarded secret. Sometimes there were bigger threats than titans.

Continuing to enjoy the weight on his chest and the feeling of her soft hair running through his fingers, Levi stared out into the night. He could get used to this. One day they’d have to kill all the titans, right? Then they could get a nice little house out here in the country. Where it could just be the two of them.

Checking the clock that had been wound to the correct time, he could see that the sun would be rising soon. He hadn’t slept at all but that wasn’t out of the ordinary and he didn’t mind. He had more important things to think about than sleep. A small, irrational part of him worried that someone or something would come snatch her from him in the night right as he finally had her. But for the sake of keeping his reputation, he reluctantly slipped out of bed, gently replacing his chest with a pillow so as to disturb her as little as possible.

~

Given that the balcony doors had been left open, the object of Levi’s affection woke with the sun. With a gentle stretch, she soaked the sun in for a moment, inhaling the scent of her commander on the sheets. Despite wanting to lie in bed all day, she’d much rather avoid someone bursting in and asking her why she was in Levi’s bed so she got up reluctantly. Looking for her clothes, which had been shed on the balcony, she found them folded neatly at the foot of the bed. Smiling to herself, she put them on and fixed her hair before heading down to the kitchen.

Upon entering, she found all of her teammates grabbing food from the counter before sitting at the wooden table in the center. They all grumbled good mornings to her as they served themselves and sat. Still standing in the doorway, she saw her captain standing at the stove in an apron. “More pancakes are coming,” he announced.

There was a quiet cheer from the rest of the team as they were already digging through what had already been made. Sitting down, she helped herself to some of the fruit on the table before a plate full of pancakes appeared in front of her. She looked up, finding Levi sitting down beside her at the head of the table with another plate for himself. She just sent him a smile and said a quiet thanks as she dug in.

Meanwhile the rest of the team stared at the pair in shock. Seeing them first, Levi sent them a glare. “What? She hadn’t gotten a plate. Feed yourselves,” he barked before returning his attention to the woman sitting beside him.

Masterlist

#levi #levi ackerman #captain levi #levi x reader #levi ackerman x reader #captain levi x reader #attack on titan #attack on titan x reader #aot #aot x reader #x reader

[emilyondemand]

🌸Death’s Fanged Beast🦇

“Look who decided to grow claws after all” -acosf

“I think we haven’t yet seen all she has to offer.” - Feysand bonus chapter

🌸🦇🌸🦇

Them: Elain is boring, useless, she has no personality and she doesn’t deserve Azriel or Lucien. I hope she has to grovel for her mate. I don’t care if Elain says she’s part of the Night Court, she looks bad in black!

Elriels: Elain “I hope they burn in hell” Archeron who steps out of the shadows to kill an ancient Fae king with a magic dagger, who faced down a dozen arrows to the throat and public humiliation to plead for the safety of humans, who saved Azriel’s life by viciously fighting naga hounds off of him, who peered across the world to find the answer that allowed Prythian to defeat Hybern’s army, the one who chooses hope over hate which is the more difficult and better strength to have. Elain bows to no man, and the males need to endeavor to deserve her, as does this fandom. Elain will have her little black dress moment (just like all the other fmc’s have) and it will be in her book when SHE is the one meant to stand out.

🌸🦇🌸🦇

As it is stated in canon: the only woman Azriel is interested in worshipping and would “beg on his knees” for is Elain (and he will be 😉). I will always root for the male who risks life and limb for Elain and sees her worth from day one over the one that had to “see if she was worth fighting for.”

🌸🦇🌸🦇

I was so lucky to be able to have the beautiful @oli_diart bring this concept to life for me! Everything she touches turns to magic and this was no exception, Oli took what I was envisioning and made it 1000x better! She is always an absolute pleasure to work with 🩷🩷

🌸Art by: @oli_diart

🦇Commissioned by: me

🌸Characters belong to: @sarahjmaas

🦇 @elriel-month

Find it on Instagram

Likes, shares, saves, and comments are always welcomed and appreciated!!

Do not repost without permission

#elriel #elain archeron #azriel #pro elain #acotar #acosf #acomaf #ACOWAR #ACOFAS #elriel month #elriel month 2024

[itskattkm]

Multiverse

Based on a request: Could you do a fanfic where all of JOs characters meet and R has to explain they're all characters in movies and shows and how they're acted by R's gf, Jenna Ortega?

Characters would preferably be the following: Wednesday, Tara, Vada, Camila, Phoebe, Lorraine, Mabel, Ellie and Cairo (Even tho that movie isn't out yet)

If you don't want to use all the characters thats fine lol. I'm too lazy to write this myself.

JO Characters X Fem Reader

A/N: I’m so sorry that it took me so long. I wasn’t sure what end I wanted to choose. So I decided to not overthink to much and keep it short so the end is pretty shit haha. Hope you can still enjoy anon :)

————————

It’s been one of those rare summer days where the clouds were turning into a coal grey way and turning the whole light that fell onto the earth in a mix of yellow light and dark highlites. I saw just seconds ago a light struck in the corner of my eyes as I turned my head towards the window in the living room trying to say “there was a lightning it mus-“ and then there was it.

A growl. Something that sounded like a crisp crash high in the distance but still like it was happening right next to you. Thunder.

I chuckled to myself. Before I could end my own sentence the thunder had spoken for itself.

I walked towards the window. Watching rain falling down in an immense amount, feeling glad that I was in my apartment and didn’t had to walk through that wild mess.

“Rain... Rain is like a heavy mood. It is sad but it has a beautiful way of calming you down at the same time. Rain can make you cry but it can also make you calm"

I heard the familiar voice of my girlfriend. But kept watching the rain without turning around and smiled.

"You know... Rain can also be a bit spooky. Rain makes the shadows darker. Rain makes the dark even darker. Rain makes mystery even more mysterious."

I chuckled saying “wow that one turned a bit dark I guess…” I was turning around Expecting to see her soaked in the rain. Seeing already in front of my eyes how her bangs were probably all wet and sticking on her forehead. But when my eyes met hers, i was quite confused and a light laugh escaped me.

“Why do you look like Wednesday Addams?” I asked her. Walking a step towards her. It was almost like she became one with the shadows in the room. Wearing a big black coat. Covering what she was wearing under it. Her also black doc martens being pretty visible.

Her hair was darker then it was before she left to meet Enrique and prepare things for the upcoming met gala. I looked at her with a tilted head.

“I thought that people stopped asking stupid questions but here you are… another example for our current lost generation” she said monotone.

I looked even more confused feeling like there were tons of gears moving in my head and that she could see them “I’m confused…” I barely whispered.

“I often have that affect on people…”

She said and looked with an almost disgusted gaze at me. Scanning me from head to toe making me feel some kinda way uneasy. Even though I really loved the way Jenna played Wednesday Addams… that type of character was defiantly to much to handle. I found enough courage despise the mixed feelings I had and was about to say something when I recognized another figure beside me. My eyes landing on dark brown eyes, Emphasized with dark eyeliner wich Jenna rarely wore.

My mouth opened slight. Looking even more confused by now if this was possible.

My eyes scanning her figure within seconds. Seeing her wearing some short hot pants with a thin top and a congnac brown leather jacket. The fit feeling pretty familiar to me.

She was wearing eye makeup but the rest of her face was all clean. Wich made her freckles more present than usual. A smile with also slight confusion covered her face “wow you look pretty emo…” was what she said. But she didn’t said it to me.

“Some would consider I’m the definition of emo” said the one who looked like Wednesday.

I felt my heart running faster looking between the both of them.

“You see her too?” I asked Jenna beside me. But I wasn’t sure if it was actually Jenna.

“Yeah I do… by the way what’s your name?”

She answered giving me that big smile that showed her dimples and made me feel a bit flustered. That smile always had an effect on me.

But I was way to overwhelmed to actually tell her my name since there were two people that looked like Jenna so I asked

“Who are you?”

“Mabel…” she said and gave me a very knees weakening look, combined with that smile.

“Mabel… Wednesday…” I whispered looking between the both of you.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked more myself than both of them.

And right when the last few words left my mouth there was another person appearing in the living room. But the person seemed to be way to focused on my bookshelves.

All three of us watched the person.

She was wearing a white dress, showing her curves and long legs wich were wearing knee high brown boots. A tiny bag was hanging over her shoulders as her tiny but also gentle looking hands touched the backs of the books. Reading in silence the title names. Her hair was falling over her back in beautiful waves. The little light in the living room falling on it and showing a mixture of brown and red highlites.

“Y/N I don't think you have real books here... you have a Harry Potter book.. that's not a real book” She scrunches up her face “I'm sorry but it's the truth” She picks up a book and checks the title “Ugh... It's called a touch of darkness and it's about Persephone and Hades in a version of a Greek world in our time? *She shrugs it off*”

I felt a bit offended but also didn’t knew what to say.

Wednesday said “if you like Greek mythology you at least could’ve read the real tales. Like the ilias or oddysey” I nodded slightly ashamed and my gaze met Mabel’s she whispered “I only watched Percy Jackson once so don’t look at me for help…”

I took a deep breath and looked back at the woman beside my shelves. She had turned around by now and was lightning up a cigarette. I could see the amount of rings on her other hand and that cheeky but also dangerous smile on her dark bordo lips.

“Cairo Sweet?” I asked speechless.

“Wow well that’s a …unique name” said Mabel with a chuckled.

“I would say being called after a weekday is more unusual then being called as a well know city with history…” said Cairo and gave Wednesday a look.

My eyes widened feeling like Cairo was about to die.

“ I’m named after a nursery rhyme containing the line “Wednesday's child is full of woe.” The poem, which assigns personalities to children based on the day they were born, dates back to at least 1838. Cairo-Sweet. What kinda name is that, anyway? Sounds like the kind they'd use in a very bad written fanfiction” Wednesday glares at Cairo for daring to question the legitimacy of her name and gives her a dead stare.

I looked at both of them excited now and chuckled saying “as a writer you should have know that Cairo… you better not mess with Wednesday. She’s a writer and she could kill you if she wants”

Mabel beside me just whispered quite “okay this is getting very interesting here”

Wednesday and Cairo were throwing glares at each other when another person moved to my side and said “what kind of fever dream is that?”

I laughed and shaked my head looking at my right side to see another version of my girlfriend, wearing basketball shorts and an oversized shirt. I felt like nothing could surprise me anymore at this point so I smiled friendly and held my hand out saying “your Vada right? Nice to meet you I’m Y/N”

Vada smiled and shook my hand. I was explaining to her what was currently happening and introduced the others to her. Vadas hand rested on my shoulder now as she said “it’s like the most weirdest names I’ve ever seen…” an awkward smile appearing on her lips.

“You’re not surprised about the fact that you all look exact the same? Just different?”

Suddenly there was a Laugh “Yeah, there's a glitch in the system or something. It's just kind of...” said the 5.1 Latina beside me and shrugged. I looked speechless at Tara fucking Carpenter. Not sure if I was in a fan girl mode or going right into the simp mode.

“Tara Carpenter… holy shit” I whispered and looked at her stunned. Not sure how to process this all. She gave me a friendly smile and my head felt like exploding.

“She good?” Asked another version of Jenna’s Characters. Sitting on the armchair with her sunglasses and smoothie as she held a tiny book in her hands. Ellie from you I assumed.

My eyes kept jumping between all those people in my living room. Noticing even more of them.

“10 dollars she’s gonna pass out” said Wednesday cold as Cairo agreed and jumped in the bet. In my living room we’re around six characters that my girlfriend had played and it was way to hard to understand what the hell was going on.

No matter in what direction I looked. They were everywhere. Talking, arguing, connecting.

I took a deep breath and sat down on my couch. “What the hell is going on?” I asked louder and everyone became silent.

They looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

“I have to admit this is weird… for real why do we all look like the same person?” Asked now Vada pointing out her hands at everyone.

Everyone looked around, till all gazes fell on me. Tara walked towards me saying “you seem to know every one of us… so you may enlighten us?” I nodded in an almost trance like mode and got up. Standing in the center while all of them were standing around me like in a circle.

“Okay… maybe this is some weird multiverse thing? A Paradoxon? Or I’m dreaming… dead… I don’t know but!” I said looked at all of you.

I shrugged my shoulders

“Well what can I say you all are movie characters…”

“ Y/N are you feeling alright? Or are the fumes from the glue factory getting to you?”Wednesday gives me a cold stare “Or do you need to sit down? Do you need a hit with the shovel so the bad thoughts go away?”

I looked at her serious saying

“What?! No! Listen…” I said and reached for my phone. I typed in Wednesday in Netflix and showed it to her and the others.

Cairo Looks at me with confusion “What a nerd, knowing all the facts about movie characters and who plays them. Like, who cares? I’ve got better things to do all day long than waste my time on silly little facts of the past, and I don’t even want to waste my time being in the same room as a loser like you!” She glares at me, showing clear signs of aggression.

“Okay you are defiantly meaner as you seem in your movie…” I said slight offended and looked over at Tara who was my fav character. Seeking for some comfort

She Shrugs “Oh don’t let her bother you, she’s... Anyways, did you guys want to talk about anything specific or are we going to all go to our separate corners and just stare at each other? I mean, that sounds kind of odd if I say it outloud...”

I laughed nervous “I would like to know why you guys even are here in the first place… this is against all rules. How is this even possible?”

“You’ll find a lot of things hard to explain away with logic, you know? Especially a certain someone who likes to hang out with a bunch of fictional characters” said Wednesday monotone and gave me another cold, intimidating stare “beside that you better stop trying to convince us that we are only movie characters. I’ll be good for you, if you drop the topic”

“Why? After all you all just appeared out of nowhere in my Apartment!..” I said a bit angry. Starting to feel like I was the bad one here suddenly.

Mabel looked around while playing with her moving her hands in the back of her pockets “So, what should we talk about then?” She asks awkwardly.

Vada was sitting in the corner and stares at the floor then says “I feel like the most... average one here....”

Tara Looks at Vada awkwardly “Don't say that... you're just as special as all of us. You're not average. Don't ever think that!”

“Yeah she’s right. You are special and we love you… what you’ve been through was awful” I said reassuring and hugged her. Since I knew what Vada had been through cause I watched the movie obviously, I had a soft spot for her.

“Uh... Thanks y/n......” She awkwardly hugged me back and blushed a little bit, looking down and covering her face. “How did you know?.....” She looked up at me a bit more, curious than before.

“Because you’re a movie character and I saw your story… that’s what I’m trying to explain to you guys” I sighed and looked at Tara.

“Tara you have a sister called Sam. You two had been survivors of a ghostface attack two times. You have several stab wounds in your abdomen and shoulder and on your hand as well. Sam ist the daughter of the origin Ghostface killer, Billy Loomies “ I explained “Your form the movie called Scream, your character was introduced in the fifth and sixth movie… my fav ones” I added with a shy smile.

Tara looked around impressed “How do you even know all these facts?” She whispered and realized that I knew all the names without even asking any one of you “It’s like, magic or something?” She asked.

I looked at Cairo and said “And your form one of the current movies my girlfriend made. It’s called millers girl. And yeah. I know what you did. Accusing your teacher for something he did not really do but I’m on your side tho. But it’s not cool to kiss and blackmail your best friend Winnie. Your dangerous Cairo. But I still feel mesmerized by you… somehow” I explained and shrugged.

Cairo rolled her Eyes “Wow, just wow. Who cares? I didn't ask for your input so keep it to yourself please and thank you” She turns her cigarette off and crosses her arms, giving me a pissed look.

“You are really mean... You seemed so nice at the beginning of your movie” i said almost disappointed. “Yeah well I turned out to be different and that's too bad for you” She continues to glare at me with aggressive eyes.

I sighed again and looked at Mabel.

“Mabel. You’re from the movie finestkind. You’re dating some fisher guy. It’s about crime and drugs. Your character is only a side character but you’re cool. Pretty bold and flirty. You had some spicy scenes respect for that…”

“Wow you really do know a lot-“ She was cut off by Wednesday, who started making an unimpressed sound.

I turned to her “And then the one and only Wednesday Addams. You are the currently new portrayed version of that character. You have your own tv show. You attend a dark Academy and solve crimes and murderes… second season will come out soon and by the way… people ship you pretty hard with Enid”

Wednesday looked me dead in the eyes “I do not appreciate your tone of delivery at all. I’m going to have to ask you to watch it a little, or else… that’s the nicest I can make” She gives me a scary look of disapproval and anger.

“Hey I didn’t wanted to be harsh or something… I’m just trying to telling you guys about the movies you all are from. I don’t know how you made it to my universe but you are all not real in this one…”

“Its your fault we're all here in the first place, so it’s best if you don’t go around with a mouth that likes to spill every detail about us that you possibly can, hmm?” Wednesday gave me a threatening look, daring me to break eye contact first.

I felt a bit hurt and said quite

“Sorry… but I really don’t how all of you came here” I looked around “You all just appeared suddenly” I said softly.

“it’s time for you to make us all disappear” Wednesday looked at me with cold, empty, soulless eyes.

“I don’t know how” exhausted I looked in the eyes of all of them.

“Look guys, let’s not make things too hard on her. She didn't even do anything, all of us just suddenly appeared and its not her fault! “ said Tara and stands up for me. I felt so relived when Tara stand up for me, making me fall for her even harder. Okay focus y/n Jenna is your girlfriend. But yeah… I also love all characters she plays… nevermind.

“I must say, you are very pretty y/n...” said randomly Mabel with a smile.

“Th-thank you” I said blushing hard and looked down.

Vadas eyes fell on me “Yeah, Tara’s right though. She didn’t have anything to do with why we’re here, did she?” Glances at Wednesday and Cairo, looking suspicious.

Cairo Shrugs “I’ve been trying to find out but so far I haven’t got a clue...” Her eyes narrow as she looks at her surroundings “We need to figure this out as soon as possible...”

„Well as soon as possible isn’t quick enough for me, I’m not going to sit around here forever just to wait this all out“ Wednesday added.

„You guys can do what ever you want.

I don’t know how all of you became real. Just know that in this universe none of you is supposed to be real“ I said and sat down on the couch exhausted

Wednesday Shrugs „Well we didn't do it on purpose. It's just something crazy I guess...

What if we never make our way back...“ She looks at everyone with a cold, intimidating stare. It’s clear she’s trying to hold her anger in check for the moment.

„Come on, don't even talk like that Wednesday... we'll find our way back, one way or another...“ Tara said.

„Yeah right? We're not stuck here with her forever!“ Cairo shudders at the thought.

„Ouch?“ I said not sure if I should feel offended.

„You should feel offended. We are going to find a way out of here and when we do, I am making sure I stay the hell away from you“ She glares at me again.

I gave Cairo a thumbs up and looked at Tara speechless saying

„I can’t believe I actually had a crush when I watched her movie back then“

Vada shrugged „Well I'm glad you changed your mind“

„Why? What kind of crush did you have on me?“ asked Cairo, not letting her anger die down yet.

„None“ I said trying to end the conversation. „Come on, you can tell me. Please?“ She leans forward with puppy eyes, but they look a little bit sinister.

„Just for the record since my girlfriend plays all your characters I do have a thing for all of you for sure“

„What do you mean your girlfriend plays all of us?“ Wednesday gives me a suspicious look, leaning in closer and giving a scary look again. „My girlfriend. The actress. Who portrays all your characters in this universe“

Mabel stares at me for a while. Her eyes narrow even more than before* What's her name?”

“I don’t buy it” Wednesday scoffed

“What's that supposed to mean, Wednesday?” I asked

“That was an act, you’re not just now realizing that y/n’s girlfriend is the one who plays all of us. I think she’s trying to hide something”

“I’m telling the truth you can google it” I said louder

Wednesday Takes me by the collar and glares at me with a cold, intimidating look “Okay then, Y/N. I want the truth and I want to know now. What’s your play here?”

Some part of me felt scared and turned on. It took me some time to answer. “I swear nothing. I was just enjoying my day off and suddenly all of you were here”

“And nothing at all happened before that?” Wednesdays voice was getting more and more sinister as each second passed.

“A storm came up. Thunder… lightning” I explained. “Hm... a storm...” She let go of my collar and turned her back on me. She began pacing around the room silently.

“Maybe it has to do with the storm then? Some Paradoxon?” I said

Wednesday looked st me “Is that really all you know? You have no other secrets you’re holding back?”

“Nothing. I’m the most boring person right here” I said quite

“Boring?” She looked back at me and smirked, and turned back around again “If you think your life isn’t interesting, then you’d better make your peace with this life being all you’ll ever be. You have no purpose here. You have nothing to contribute to this world” She stopped her pacing and turned back around again “This is it for you. This is all your life is worth” She let me take that in for a while before speaking again “So do not call yourself boring ever again. You hear me?”

I nodded feeling touched.

“Good” She sat down next to me, and put her hand on my shoulder. After a while of silence, she finally broke the tension “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I shouldn’t have done that” She looked down at her feet, ashamed.

“Thank you… i really appreciate your apology” I whispered feeling better now.

“Okay since we all don’t know why you’re here and I’m tired of explaining and arguing… Wanne watch a movie together?”

#jenna ortega #tara carpenter #tara carpenter x reader #tara carpenter x you #vada cavell #wednesday #fanfiction #jenna ortega x reader #wednesday addams x reader #jenna ortega x y/n #vada cavell x y/n #vada cavell x reader #wednesday addams x you #wednesday x reader #mabel finestkind #cairo sweet x reader #cairo sweet #jenna ortega x you

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 10: Poseidon, God Of The Sea]

A/N: Only 2 chapters left!!! 🥰💜

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 7.2k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

It’s Friday, November 1st, and it begins like every day does: with you sneaking a birth control pill and swallowing it with a handful of cool water from the sink. Aemond is usually gone before you wake up—writing speeches, reading newspapers, strategizing with Otto and Criston and Sargent Shriver—but you always lock the bathroom door just in case he reappears. You’ve popped the tiny pink pills out of their circular packages and hidden them in hollowed-out tampons, each opening sealed with cotton balls. You don’t like taking the pills; you don’t fully understand how they work, and you don’t like feeling out of tune with your body’s own rhythms, but they are infinitely better than the alternative. You can’t imagine having to carry Aemond’s child now, sacrificing your comfort, your health, your future, your life for a man who doesn’t know the real you and doesn’t want to. You return the modified tampon to the box you keep in the linen closet, then begin to pin up your hair.

When you venture downstairs, you’ve thrown on a long flowing floral skirt and chunky black sweater, black flats, small unceremonious gold hoops in your ears. You’ll have to change before the journalists arrive to fawn over the children as they bake homemade apple pies this afternoon. You’ll have to wear whatever Aemond tells you to. But presently, it’s Aegon you’re looking for; you begin with the basement.

He isn’t sprawled across his futon, he isn’t lazing on the floor. He isn’t there at all. As you stand on the steps, you see only Eudoxia, muttering irritably in Greek and crawling around on her hands and knees as she picks globs of red out of the shag carpet.

“What is wrong with him?” she says when she glances at you. “Can you believe this? Melted candle wax everywhere. He is a pig. A pig! Someone should make bacon out of him. Then he could finally be useful. He’s just about fat enough. He could feed the whole family, and all the dogs too.”

You don’t know how to reply; you can’t apologize for helping to make the mess, you can’t agree that Aegon is a plague and nothing more. “Do you want help cleaning up?”

“If Aemond saw me putting you to work, I would be deported back to Tyrnavos.”

“No, Doxie. Asteria would fall into the sea without you.”

She peers up at you through fallen strands of her hair, dyed a palpably artificial pitch black. Then she grins, large doughy cheeks, crinkles around her eyes. “Go help Aemond win his election.”

“Yes ma’am,” you say dutifully, and head back upstairs.

In the living room, Aemond and Otto are hissing like snakes as they leaf through the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reports that Nixon’s poll numbers are climbing in this crucial eleventh hour. They can’t decide if that’s true or if the Wall Street Journal, a Nixon-friendly publication, is trying to give him a little extra momentum as Election Day approaches. Criston nods at you from where he sits on the couch, looking exhausted, dark shadows around his eyes and shoulders slumped low; Aemond and Otto don’t notice you at all. You keep moving.

There is chatter and giggling and the clanging of bowls and pans in the kitchen. You peek inside from the doorway. Fosco, Helaena, and the nannies are making pancakes with the children. Butter sizzles, spatulas scrape, bubbles appear in wells of batter. Helaena is lifting Evangelos so he can pour a cupful of smooth, milky batter into one of the pans on the stovetop. Cosmo, drizzling maple syrup over an ambitiously tall stack of pancakes, waves at you. You smile and wave back. In the corner of the room, Ludwika is smoking one of her Camels and shooing away Aegon’s second-youngest son Thaddeus, whose fingers are covered with flour.

“Please take your paws elsewhere,” Ludwika says, flicking ashes into the kitchen sink. “This dress is Prada.”

Fosco spots you. “Would you like some pancakes?” he asks as he approaches, wiping his palms on the apron tied around his slim waist. Flour dusts his eyeglasses. “We have enough batter to make about 500. Although I cannot promise they will not be burnt. Our chefs are rather inexperienced.”

“Thanks, but I’m not really hungry.” You take one last look around the kitchen, wondering where Aegon could be.

Fosco understands. His voice drops low and discrete. “I have not seen him this morning.”

“He isn’t usually up yet.”

“He’s not, this is true.” Fosco taps his chin, leaving white dabs of flour there. “Maybe he’s sailing?”

“Maybe. I’ll check.”

“And I have no idea where you’re going or why,” Fosco says with a wink before returning to the stove.

Outside it’s grey, misty, only 50 degrees. It would be a bad day for sailing. The wind rips at your clothes and your hair like a man’s lustful hands; the waves are choppy and treacherous. You think of Icarus plummeting into the ocean, of Andromeda being offered as a sacrifice to assuage Poseidon’s wrath, of sirens beckoning doomed sailors. From where you’re standing in the backyard of the main house, shivering with your arms crossed over your chest, you can’t see Aegon’s boat Sunfyre bobbing in the rough surf. You turn left to investigate Helaena’s withered garden.

As you walk, the hem of your skirt dragging dead autumn leaves, you skim your fingertips over the evergreen emerald hedges, cool and damp. At the center of the garden—like a diamond in a wedding ring, like the sun surrounded by its planets—you don’t find Aegon smoking a joint or napping under Zeus’s shadow, only a silent stone circle of gods who watch you with unmoving, all-knowing eyes. You spin slowly, studying each of them, deities who loved and cheated and offered mercy and cursed and killed. From his gurgling fountain in the middle of the clearing, Zeus glares at you most fiercely, wielding his lightning bolts, aching to loose them. The wind rattles the leaves of the hedges; crows caw from somewhere out in the mist.

“Oh! You’re here, darling?” Alicent says from the arched doorway cut into the greenery. She’s pushing Viserys in his wheelchair. Sparse white spiderweb-strands of hair hang limply from his head, mottled with liver spots. His fingers are bony and clawlike. “In this awful weather?”

You scramble for an explanation. “I just, um, needed some quiet.”

“Yes, the children are very rambunctious this morning, aren’t they?”

“Children?” Viserys echoes, as if he is only just learning of them.

“Your grandchildren,” Alicent reminds him. “Aegon and Helaena’s kids. Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, Cosmo, Daphne, Evangelos, and…” Panic crosses her face. She realizes she’s forgotten one, but she doesn’t know who.

“Neaera,” you say.

“Of course. Such a sweet girl, gentle like a lamb.”

You weren’t blessed with that sort of disposition. Sometimes you wish you were. Life seems easier for women who don’t feel bitterness or forbidden ambition, who pain moves cleanly through like clear water. They have no thorns for it to snag on and grow roots into the bones, the soul. They are never at risk of becoming poisonous like Jupiter’s moon Io. “What brings you to the garden on a day this dreary?”

“I feel close to them here,” Viserys rasps.

You stare down at him, baffled. “Close to who, sir?” You rarely interact with the ailing patriarch of the Targaryen family. He is often confined to his bedroom, attended by Alicent and Eudoxia and his nurses, and even when he is physically present his mind is sluggish, alien, impenetrable. Now Alicent’s eyes are downcast, and she drifts away to inspect the statue of Poseidon, a formidable bearded man holding a trident and with dolphins and sea turtles emerging from the waves of white marble at his bare feet.

“I left them back in Greece,” Viserys says, his gaunt face vacant, distant, vaguely sad. He is bundled up in a thick wool robe that hides how skeletal he has become. “I thought about having them brought over to be interred at the mausoleum, but it felt wrong to disturb their bones. Now I cannot visit their graves. I can only hear them here, among the gods our ancestors worshiped.”

“Who…?”

“Aemma and Rhaenyra,” Alicent tells you from where she now stands by Aphrodite, gazing longingly at the goddess of love. You notice that she is clutching a komboskini in one hand; she must believe that what her husband is saying is blasphemy, but she doesn’t condemn him. “Viserys had a wife and daughter before he met me.”

You feel a sudden and overwhelming stab of grief for the old man; you are thinking of Ari. “What happened?”

“The sea took them,” Viserys explains. “A riptide off the coast of Euboea. We found their bodies three days later.”

“Oh God. I’m…I’m so sorry for your loss.” You don’t know what else to say; it’s too disastrous, too unspeakable.

“Aemma was pregnant. It was a boy. She delivered him in the water, a coffin birth.” And you know from his face, his voice, that Alicent and her children never stood a chance, that Viserys has only one true family, only one set of names carved into the scarlet chambers of his failing heart. You think of Aemond’s heart, claimed by Alys and her son; you think of your own.

“They’re at peace, Viserys,” Alicent says. “They are in heaven with my mother and Ari and Mimi.”

He continues, as if he hasn’t heard her: “I thought that if I made something of myself in America, if I helped contribute something incredible to the world, then they would not have died for nothing.” Viserys reaches out with trembling, gnarled hands, and when you realize he wants to hold yours you let him. His grasp is weak and cold. “Aemond will be president. He will save countless lives, he will save this nation’s soul. And you have made that possible.”

Where’s Aegon? Is he okay? Why is no one else ever looking for him? “Thank you, sir.”

Viserys begins hacking, doubling over in his wheelchair, and Alicent hurries to soothe him and provide a handkerchief that Helaena embroidered green spiders onto. When he has recovered, you leave them with the gods: Viserys to grieve his old life, Alicent to mourn the one she never had.

You plod through sand dunes out to the Atlantic Ocean, peering into the fog as you search for Aegon’s sailboat. Still, there is no sign of him. You glance back towards the main house as sea spray peppers your cheeks and your knuckles. You’re beginning to get nervous. Where the hell is he? Is he passed out somewhere, is he sick, is he hurt?

And then, at last, you see him: sitting at the bottom of a small bluff so he is invisible to anyone not at the water’s edge, arms linked around his bent knees, not smoking, not drinking, not gulping pills, just gazing out into the waves that thrash and rumble beneath a grey sky, his too-long blonde hair whipping in the wind. He wears one of Daeron’s army jackets over a white turtleneck sweater, ripped jeans, no shoes, a collection of other men’s dog tags slung around his neck.

“Hey,” you say as you join him, dropping down onto the cool, crumbling sand.

Aegon smiles. “Hey.”

“It’s strange to see you awake before noon.”

“Yeah…I didn’t really sleep.” No, he didn’t, you can tell: his eyes are bloodshot and his voice tired, husky. He is watching you, so hopeful but so afraid. “What are we gonna do?”

About us. About Aemond. “If he loses on Tuesday, I can leave him.”

“What if he wins?”

You don’t have a good answer. You shrug, avoiding Aegon’s eyes. “It’s not forever, you know? It would be four years, and then…”

“Four years?” Aegon says. “No, I can’t wait another four years. I’ve been waiting my whole life for something like this. And what if he gets a second term? Eight years? I’ll be almost fifty. We’ve already lost so much time, I can’t surrender another decade.”

“Aegon, first ladies don’t quit. It’s never happened before, not once since 1789. It’s a part of the democratic process. People aren’t just voting for Aemond, they’re voting for me too. You know that. You told me we were a package deal, and you were right. If they trust me and I walk away, it’s…it’s…it’s treason, it’s abandonment, it’s wrong. And Aemond needs to have the political credibility to get what he wants done.”

“Look,” Aegon says, like it pains him. “I get that my life is already half over, and I haven’t done anything worthwhile with the last forty years, but I want to be different. I want to be better. And I can do that, but I need you to give me a chance.”

“You think Aemond would let me leave? If I publicly humiliated and undermined him?”

“We don’t need Aemond, we could figure it out—”

“What do you think he and Otto would do to you, Aegon? They would ruin you anywhere you go, they would have you declared mentally unfit and take your children away.”

“They don’t own us!”

“They do,” you insist. “And if you try to fight them it will destroy you. You’ve never cared about strategy, and I love that you’re truthful, and I love that you’re real, but I need you to understand what you’re asking for right now.”

“But he breaks the rules,” Aegon says, and his eyes are glistening. “He has Alys. He has a kid out of wedlock.”

“Yes,” you agree softly.

“And what, I’m supposed to hope Aemond loses?” Aegon swipes tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Because that’s the only way I get to touch you? Nixon wins and more draftees get butchered in Vietnam, and Daeron doesn’t come home, and the white supremacists get to resegregate the beaches at Biloxi, Mississippi and wherever the hell else they want to, and civil rights protesters get attacked by police dogs, and teenagers get sentenced to decades in prison for marijuana possession?”

“I’m sorry.” You can’t tell him he’s mistaken about any of that. He isn’t.

“I’ve spent my whole fucking life in a cage, but I’ve never felt this powerless.”

“Aegon?”

“Yeah.”

“Am I…” It’s terrifying to ask. “Am I the same way Mimi was when she was younger? Is that why you like me?”

“No,” he says immediately. “No, you’re different than Mimi. Mimi was fun, and we could party together, and I cared about her, obviously, but…” He stares out at the ocean, shaking his head. “She wasn’t as strong as you. And she couldn’t really get to me. I feel like you could kill me if you wanted to, you could reach inside my chest any time it crossed your mind and crush me in your fist and I’d be gone.”

You stretch out your fingertips until they collide with his sweater, warm yielding flesh woven over his ribs. “Not so easy,” you say. And then Aegon smiles and he leans in to kiss you, the ocean roaring like an ancient beast, a titan, a maelstrom. The wind rakes through your hair and stings your eyes. You ask when he rests his forehead against yours, your hand on his face, your thumb stroking his cheek: “Do you wish you could go back to when you hated me?”

“Never. I’ve gotten used to not being alone.”

“The kids made pancakes. You should go have some.”

“Come with me.”

“You first. I’ll be five minutes behind you. We shouldn’t walk to the house together.”

“Why?” Aegon teases. “Because people might think we fucked in the basement last night?”

“I’ve already told them. Aemond is waiting for you in the kitchen with a bazooka.”

Aegon laughs and struggles to his bare feet, slipping on the sand. “Okay. See you soon.”

“See ya.” Once he’s gone, you recite the full length of Here’s To The State Of Mississippi in your head, then trek across the sand and through the backyard to rejoin the rest of the Targaryens.

When you open the sliding glass door, Otto is standing in the hallway. His icy blue eyes sweep from your simple black flats to your windswept hair, still pinned up but unacceptably tousled. “Why the hell aren’t you dressed for the reporters?”

“Because they won’t be here for another two hours. Surely you are well-acquainted with the itinerary that you yourself arranged.”

“Don’t get yourself in trouble, girl.”

“Remember when you used to defer to me about things? Were you stupid then, or are you stupid now?”

“Do you know what Joe Kennedy did when his daughter Rosemary threatened the family’s reputation?” Otto says, eyes glittering cruelly.

You really don’t know; you weren’t aware that JFK had a sister named Rosemary. “What?”

“He took her to a surgeon to be lobotomized. Now she’s hidden away in a little cottage in Wisconsin, can’t speak, can’t walk, with full-time nurses to wipe the drool off her face and change her diapers. How would you like that? Would your obscene little flirtation still be worth it? We could tell people that you were in a car accident or fell down the stairs. The doctors go in through the eye socket, you know. And you’re awake the whole time.”

“You can’t do that to me,” you say, shellshocked.

“Oh, if that’s what it takes, I’ll find the will somehow.”

There is shouting from the basement, and you and Otto both bolt for the staircase. At the bottom of the steps, Aegon and Eudoxia are embroiled in a ferocious confrontation, red faces, hands itching to slap and shove. Aegon roars, jabbing his index finger at her like a petulant teenager: “I told you to stay the fuck out of my room!”

“You are filthy, you leave crumbs everywhere! We will have mice!”

“Where’s the garbage?” Aegon demands. “Huh? Where’d you put it? Out by the curb?”

“It has already been picked up.”

“No, no way! That’s bullshit!”

“You’re too late!” Doxie says. “The truck went by 20 minutes ago. And why is this a problem? What precious heirloom did I steal from you? An empty rum bottle? A magazine full of naked women? Candy wrappers, cigarette ashes, melted candle wax? You live like a pig, you should not be so outraged when you are treated the same as one.”

“Aegon, what happened?” you ask. Otto is equally bewildered, surveying the markedly clean basement, his brow knitted into deep crevices.

Aegon doesn’t answer. He only glances at you—frustration, anger, but shame too—and then sighs in defeat and stomps up the stairs to the main floor of the house.

Eudoxia looks at Otto and shrugs nonchalantly. “At least there were not so many used condoms this time.”

Your gaze catches on the end table by the futon. The empty cups are gone, the ashtray is spotless…and there is no folded white corner of a receipt poking out from under it.

The math problem from Mount Sinai, you think, that relic, that talisman, that worthless scrap of paper that Aegon never wanted to talk about but kept so close to him, just like you cling to the card he gave you and Aemond cherishes his engraved Ouija board. It’s gone. It’s almost like it never happened.

~~~~~~~~~~

After the journalists arrive and the apple pies, so quintessentially all-American, are made—you help Cosmo with his job, layering strips of dough into lattice crusts that turn golden in the oven, glinting with sugar crystals like diamonds—Aemond’s retinue begins the last of their campaign stops by travelling via limousines to Philadelphia, just an hour and a half across the width of New Jersey and over the Delaware River. In your penthouse suite at the Ritz-Carlton, you soak in a bath opaque with bubbles, steam hot and dewy on your skin. Your hair is long and free. The Zenith radio out in the kitchenette is playing Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles.

Your hands have just slipped beneath the hot water—your skull full of Aegon, things he’s done, things he’s said—when you hear the bathroom door open behind you. You rest your arms on the spotless white rim of the tub, porcelain-enameled steel, and try not to look like you’ve been interrupted. Aemond’s footsteps cross the linoleum floor, then he kneels by the bathtub and wraps his arms around you, his long uncalloused fingers skating over your shoulder, collarbones, nipples, before linking like a long necklace. He likes you best like this, when your scar is hidden, something that might have been a nightmare or a sad story that happened to somebody else. He rests the mutilated left half of his face against the right side of yours; his eyepatch scratches against your temple. You shift uncomfortably, you can’t help it. You don’t want him touching you. His arms tighten around your ribs.

“You know, JFK’s mother went through a crisis of sorts as a young wife,” Aemond says calmly. “She realized her husband was a hopeless philanderer and tried to leave him and go back to her parents. But her father sat her down and explained that she had made a commitment. Marriage is for life, and you don’t abandon your vows when the circumstances prove difficult. So she went back to Joe. And if she hadn’t, there never would have been a John F. Kennedy, or a Bobby, or a Eunice or a Ted, or a million other things too.”

“I am so fucking sick of hearing about the Kennedys.”

“You used to love being compared to Jackie.”

“I’m not her. I’m never going to be her.”

“I’m giving up things too,” Aemond says. Now he’s combing his fingers through your hair, unraveling tiny knots, yanking at your scalp. “If I win, I won’t be able to see Alys and our son. It would be too risky, someone might catch me. For as long as I’m president, I’ll have to be apart from them. You don’t think that’s painful? But Alys understands. She knows it’s for the greater good.”

“Please stop touching me.”

“You’re mine to touch as much as I want to.”

You stare at the seafoam green wall and try to pretend you’re in another place, another year.

“I’ve been thinking,” Aemond says sympathetically, an appeasing sort of tone, like he’s trying to strike a bargain. “I’m a realist, I’m aware that I can’t keep you locked up in a basement or put you in a straightjacket for the next fifty years. That doesn’t serve either of us. If you are truly desperate to be rid of me, there’s nothing I can do to change your mind. And I require a partner who is fully committed to my cause, my legacy. Not a captive. I can’t fight Nixon and you too.”

You twist around in the tub to look at him, skeptical, amazed. Is there a way out? “So what are you offering?”

“I need you for as long as I’m president,” Aemond says. “If I win, I need you for at least four years, probably eight. And a short while after that to establish myself in retirement and fade from the headlines, another few years. But then…we could work out some arrangement that is mutually agreeable.”

The hope is so fragile, so fearful, splintering glass. “You would let me go?”

“We’d have to negotiate the details, particularly as far as our future children are concerned, but…yes. In some sense, at least.”

You can’t find any words. You don’t want to offend him, to shatter this moment. And yet the price is so steep. Four years, eight years, ten years. But then…but then…

Aemond smiles, his remaining blue eye bright and cunning. His fingertips trace the slope of your jaw. “I care so deeply for you. You are my Aphrodite, you have made my wildest ambitions possible. You will help me save this country. I am worshiped because of you, I am trusted, I am envied. No one has a wife as beloved as mine, and everybody knows it. So I feel…I’ve considered…” His hand moves down to your throat, drawing invisible chains of gold or silver. “If you’ve given me so much, I can extend some mercy in return.”

“You can’t harm Aegon,” you say. “Or take his children away, or do anything else to punish him.” And then you lie, a necessary fiction, an invention, a myth, Prometheus stealing fire to give it to humans, Zeus hiding Io from Hera. “He hasn’t betrayed you.” And he’s saved me over and over again.

“Of course I won’t harm Aegon. I need him too. This act he has now of the devoted, reformed, tragedy-besieged single father? People adore it. At this rate, I’ll be able to make him the attorney general for my second term if he uses the next four years to rack up some experience. And his children are gold mines for the photographers. They have filled the void left by our own son’s death.”

“Ari,” you say.

“What?”

“He had a name. He wasn’t just ‘a son’ or ‘our son.’ His name was Ari.”

“You’ll feel better once we’ve had others.” Aemond stands and holds out a hand to you. He’s wearing a black suit like he’s getting married, like he’s going to a funeral.

You gaze up at him, not wanting to leave the water. You belong to him, but when he touches you it feels like the earth dying when Persephone is stolen away by Hades each autumn, it feels like Eurydice’s spiderweb-fragile life evaporating when Orpheus dared to look back at her as he led her out of the Underworld. “What if I can’t get pregnant again?” you ask. “It took over a year the first time. And the surgery…what if there’s too much scar tissue, what if I’m just…just…broken?” There’s real pain in your voice that staves off any suspicion Aemond might have. You do want more children, you believe, you know; just not with him.

“Then it is God’s will. But we’ll keep trying.”

Aemond draws you out of the water like a fish from the sea, something to devour, skin and muscle, delicate bones sucked clean.

~~~~~~~~~~

The sunlight is cloudless and glaring. Leaves swirl in the brisk wind in jewel tones: gold, ruby, fire opal, honey calcite, tiger’s eye, red jasper. Aemond has just finished a speech at Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, standing in a stone gazebo that you can’t help but think resembles a Greek temple, tall columns that house deities of love and death, oceans and fire. Alicent and Helaena have taken the children to attend the opening of a new public library on the other side of the city. The rest of Aemond’s entourage—you, Criston, Otto, Ludwika, Fosco, Aegon—are arranged in a semicircle around him on the stage. Only 50 yards away, there is a small parking lot full of police and press vehicles. Philadelphia residents have walked miles to hear Aemond speak, to glimpse him, to cheer for him, to take leaves he’s stepped on or loose threads from his navy blue suit as relics like the bones of a saint. You match him, as you always must: navy blue dress, high heels, hair neat, makeup mature and understated, gold jewelry gleaming on your ears, throat, wrist. Ravens flap their wings from the skeletal limbs of bare trees. A car radio is blaring Break On Through by The Doors.

“Senator Targaryen,” a reporter calls as flashbulbs strobe dizzyingly. “What do you think about Tommie Smith and John Carlos getting death threats for raising their fists in the Black Power salute at the Olympics in Mexico City?”

There is a split-second lull; it is a difficult question. Aemond must remain the savior of the hippies and college kids and civil rights activists, yet he must not let the old-money urban elite or suburban families mistake him for a discord-sowing radical. You and Aegon exchange a glance; Otto placed him on the opposite side of the gazebo, and this is not a coincidence. Then Aemond decides what to say. “Peaceful protests—even those that can make us confused, defensive, fearful—are not a threat to democracy,” he speaks into the microphone steadily, deliberately, commandingly. The crowd leans forward as they listen, enraptured. Journalists’ pens fly across the pages of their notebooks. “They are not the harbingers of some doomed descent into anarchy. They are a manifestation of the fact that we have already failed. Our nation has failed, our laws and our leaders have failed, and this is our chance to address those dire inadequacies. I urge every single American to listen to what Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos have actually said about their concerns and their hopes, to be empathetic, to be honest when reflecting on what our country has achieved and yet so desperately still needs to improve upon. These men are not enemies of the United States. They are the United States. They are a part of us, and we are a part of them, and we must not allow prejudiced, ignorant voices”—he means Wallace, he means Nixon—“to draw divides between us. The harassment that Mr. Smith, Mr. Carlos, and their families have experienced is a travesty. It is something that we should expect from a fascist or communist regime, not from a democracy. And to do my small part to show my admiration for them and atone for the mistakes of this nation that I so fervently hope to make better, I would like to personally fund private security services for the households of Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos for the foreseeable future.”

The crowd erupts into applause, cheers shouted, signs held aloft. Your eyes snag on one, clutched by a middle-aged woman bundled up against the cold; only her eyes—grey, tearful, shining like quarters—are visible above the red plaid of her thick wool scarf. On her sign is a large photograph of a young man in uniform, maybe nineteen, maybe twenty. Below the photo in red marker is written: Ryan Farrelly, my youngest son, burned to death in Phan Thiet on September 21st. Bring Daeron home! Bring them ALL home!

The woman waves at you. You raise your hand wave back. And then there is a sound that comes from everywhere, a boom of thunder, an explosion, bullets like the one that demolished Aemond’s left eye in Palm Beach back in May, a lifetime ago, a truth that has become mythology. There is something hot and sticky splattered across your face, and you can’t see; when you wipe it away with your sleeve and open your eyes, there is a hole in your palm that you can look through like a window.

Where else?

But when you check your chest, your belly, you are whole. It is only a hand would, and that won’t kill you. It doesn’t even hurt yet, though the blood runs in torrents down your arm. You peer frantically around to see if anyone else is hurt.

Aegon, Fosco, Ludwika, Criston??

People are rushing the stage to shield Aemond and his family from bullets. Police are tackling somebody in the audience and beating him bloody with their batons. Aegon is screaming and shoving through the chaos as he fights his way towards you. Otto slams him against one of the columns of the gazebo and holds him there, because Aegon is not the one who’s supposed to get to you first. Now Aemond’s arms are around you, and he is ushering you down the stone steps towards the parking lot, and Criston is running alongside him and telling Aemond that the closest hospital is Jefferson Methodist, but UPenn is better and only two miles farther.

“Who else?” you ask as you cradle your hand against your chest, blood turning your dress from navy to black. Now it hurts plenty, like waking up from your c-section, like a crimson wave that is scalding and crushing and dragging you under to be drowned. “Is anyone else—?”

“No, just you,” Criston says, a reassuring grip on your shoulder. “Don’t worry. Nobody else is hurt.”

“Senator Targaryen, this way!” a police officer is yelling, and he leads the three of you to his black and white car. Criston leaps into the passenger seat; Aemond pulls you into the back with him and slams the door. The sirens shriek and the police officer careens out of the parking lot, Criston giving directions, Aemond yanking off his suit jacket to wrap around your hemorrhaging hand.

“I’m not going to lose it, am I?” you ask dazedly. None of this seems real. You wish Aegon was here. “I need my hands.”

“No, honey. I don’t think they’ll have to amputate.” Then Aemond stares down at the blood on his palms, warm scarlet ruin, water and oxygen and iron that once pulsed in your arteries and veins and now stains him. He frowns, then wipes his hands on his white shirt until almost all the blood is gone from his skin. He is cleaning you off of him. He is readying himself for the cameras that will undoubtedly be waiting at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Inside the glass doors of the building, dust motes circle in aisles of sunlight; you watch them as doctors and nurses push you towards the operating room on a stretcher.

“We’re going to take excellent care of you, Mrs. Targaryen,” a doctor says as he ties a sterile white mask over his nose and mouth.

Don’t let Ari die, you almost murmur in response; and then you remember that’s already happened.

There are needles gliding into your veins, bright lights, pain vanishing like the memory of a dream dissolving when you wake.

~~~~~~~~~~

Four hours later, you are propped up in bed on a mountain of pillows, your hand surgically repaired and bandaged, morphine in your IV drip. The doctors think you shouldn’t lose much function—the bullet was from a pistol, blessedly small in size and missing most of your major tendons and nerves—but you won’t know for sure until it’s healed. Ludwika is here with you, lounging in the chair beside your bed and flipping through a copy of Cosmopolitan with her Louis Vuitton stilettos propped up on the ottoman. She is content to be here, but this is technically a job; she has been tasked with supervising you while Aemond and Otto meet with the Philadelphia police who are investigating the attack. The rest of the family—everyone except Aegon, who you suspect has been forbidden to enter the premises—has already been here to fret over you and ask if you need anything. But you aren’t in the mood for visitors. You are stunned, and aching, and you hate hospitals. You keep thinking of tiny babies in incubators, priests in black robes.

Your room is already filling up with flower bouquets. Every few minutes, the phone rings and Ludwika has to answer it. Each time she announces who it is—“Oh, hello Lady Bird, so nice of you to offer your well-wishes!” and then looks to see if you nod, agreeing to take it. The current first lady says that you are already as beloved as Jackie Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt. Pat Nixon calls you a gladiator.

There is a mint green Zenith radio on your nightstand, the volume turned way down low, and a television mounted on the wall. NBC news is on, but you’ve muted it to attend to the barrage of phone calls. There is a knock on the doorframe. Aegon stands there in his khaki pants and ill-fitting viridian button-up shirt and tan moccasins, wide searching murky blue eyes, carrying a white Dairy Queen cup.

Ludwika observes him as she puffs on a Camel cigarette. “I am suddenly struck by the inspiration to spend Otto’s money at the gift shop. I hope they take American Express.” She rolls up her magazine, shoves it into her oversized Gucci purse, and clicks in her heels out of the room and down the hallway.

Aegon commandeers the chair and drags it closer to your bed so he can feel your cheeks and your forehead, so he can get a good look at you. “Hey, little Io. You hurt your hoof, huh?”

“It’s not that bad. The caliber of the bullet was really small. Who shot me? One of Wallace’s Klansmen?”

“No, just some insane guy who thinks Aemond is a Russian double agent trying to overthrow capitalism here and put us all in gulags. I heard you could see right through the wound.”

“Yeah, I had a hole in my palm.”

“Just like Jesus.”

“I guess they fixed it.”

“Messiah status revoked.” Aegon sets the Dairy Queen cup on your nightstand. “I brought you a lemon-lime Mr. Misty.”

“I need to get out of here.”

“They gotta make sure you’re okay, babe. You could spike a fever or something.”

“Aegon,” you say seriously. “I can’t be in a hospital. I need to leave.”

He understands; his voice is gentle. “I might be able to get you out tonight, okay? I’ll try. I’ll talk to the doctors.”

“Okay,” you whimper.

Aegon turns up the Zenith radio, Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl. He sings along, snapping his fingers and shimmying his shoulders, his hair shagging over his eyes:

“Hey, where did we go?

Days when the rains came

Down in the hollow

Playin’ a new game…”

Reluctantly, you give him a smile. And you think very clearly, though you don’t say it: I love you.

Aegon leans across the bed to rest his head on your lap. He says softly as you run your fingers through his hair with your good hand: “Maybe Aemond will lose.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

On the muted television, Nixon is giving a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina to a euphoric crowd. You can’t hear the people gathered there, but you know their applause are thunderous. Nixon is flashing peace signs with both hands and beaming radiantly, this man who was once so poor, tragic, ordinary, unwanted, unloved. He has learned what it feels like to be a god.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Sunday, November 3rd, and your hand hurts like hell. You swallow your pills, smiling a little. Now Aegon is getting clean and I’m the one swimming in a haze of narcotics. Who could have predicted that? Still in your robe and bare feet, you swish to the hotel bathroom to wash your face, brush your teeth, rebandage your hand and make sure it isn’t growing dark insidious vines of blood poisoning.

When you venture out to the kitchenette, Aemond is in a sapphire blue suit and seated at the table, reading the Wall Street Journal, his face hidden by columns of black ink and interspersed photographs. This is unusual; he should be scheming with Otto and Sargent Shriver by now.

“Everything okay?” you ask with only vague interest as you go to the refrigerator to get yourself a leftover slice of apple pie, meticulously wrapped and packed in a cooler by Eudoxia before your departure from Asteria. Aemond doesn’t answer. You plop a piece of apple pie onto a plate, return the rest to the refrigerator, and then turn to your husband. And only now do you register the newspaper’s front-page story.

The photographs, all three of them, are of you and Aegon. They are blurry, taken from a distance, but you recognize the moment immediately. You can feel it again: ocean wind in your hair, his lips on yours, your hand on his face as you willed him to be closer, healed, permanent. You are sitting at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, turbulent and perilous. The journalists must have been north of you, shrouded in mist, their camera shutters clicking feverishly. The headline reads: A Family Affair?

And you remember what Aemond said on your 23rd birthday before he left for the Washington State Convention in Tacoma, how he scolded Aegon when he saw him lighting a joint in the backyard at Asteria: You know journalists will sneak around trying to get photos. You know we’re never truly alone out here.

You can’t speak, you can’t breathe. Aemond knows. The whole world knows.

Slowly, Aemond lowers the newspaper so you can see his face, scarred and hateful and horrifying, lethal like the volcanic hellscape of Jupiter’s most cursed moon.

~~~~~~~~~~

What are my earliest memories? Aegon getting drunk on his futon in the basement while I played with toy soldiers on the green shag carpet, Aemond with his poems and his myths, Helaena letting a praying mantis creep across her knuckles, Criston teaching me how to swim and sail, my mother cleaning sand from my face and hands and giving me water to wash the grit out of my teeth, my father wandering through the doorways of Asteria like a ghost, always on the periphery of my vision, and I had the sense that if I reached out to touch him my hands would pass resistlessly through his skin and sinew like a stone through water.

These are the things I think of here in the rain-dripping darkness, bruises down to my bones, eyes swollen almost completely shut, teeth broken and throbbing like blows from a hammer, fingernails ripped out. I know Tessarion is here because I can hear her, soft sympathetic squeaks, the padding of her tiny feet. I know John McCain is still alive because sometimes he taps back through the cracked concrete wall. I have run out of folklore, so now I tell him the truth. I tell him that I am afraid each beating will kill me as my body becomes a stranger, someone weak and brittle and helpless. I tell him that all my life I wanted to run as far as I could from home, but now I would crawl back to them through razor wire, I would fall into their arms in a shredded bloodstained heap and I’d be happy to do it. Isn’t that funny? I mean, I don’t laugh much these days. But maybe you can appreciate the irony.

Has the election happened yet? Has Aemond won? I’ve lost track of the days, but it has to be getting close to November 5th. What happens if he can’t get me out? What happens if Nixon wins?

I don’t want to be a hero anymore. I don’t want to have adventures like Heracles, Achilles, Jason, Odysseus, Perseus, Orpheus, Ajax. I just want to go home. Please let me go home.

I can hear keys jangling against the lock on my cell door. My heart jolts into a breakneck, pounding rhythm; I think that sound will terrify me all my life. Some things you just can’t forget, you know? Some things dig down deep and build a home in the marrow of your bones, a rust-red cave of immutable memory. I know exactly what the communists want from me. They’ve been asking since they dragged me out of the Loach four months ago.

Everyone has a breaking point. This is mine.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader #aegon x y/n #aegon ii x you #aegon ii x y/n #aegon ii targaryen x reader #aegon ii fanfic #aegon ii x reader #aegon ii fic

[tcustodisart]

What are some cute moments that occur throughout the different acts that aren’t necessarily in the game but live in your head rent free?

Oh, this one is going to be a long answer, because there's a lot of squatters in my head and there's a lot to be unleashed. Let's start with this doodle with the boys playing lanceboard at camp and continue under the cut. Lots of cringe and brainrot incoming, so brace yourself.

Act 1:

Connie is constantly bickering with Astarion over him stealing his journal. Gale suggest to cast arcane lock on it, but Connie knows it won't stop that gremlin from reading it so why bother.

This sad pile of rugs is where I imagine Connie sleeps in Act 1. Additional Astarion line: "Damn darling, you live like this?"

During the first romance scene Connie tells Shart about his family, about how he and his brother know the city inside and out, about his parents and the tavern they run, about the trap incident. It's the most he talked to someone who wasn't his family or his crow in years. He wishes that night would never end.

Connie sends letters to his family via Faust, he stops after entering Underdark.

Act 2:

I mentioned it before that Connie is not taking the Shadow Curse very well. He misses the sun, misses the grass, he's unable to contact his family, Shart has distanced herself from him. Karlach notices it and tries to cheer him up. They end up having long talks almost every night. That's the moment their friendship evolves from just friends to besties.

When Connie finds the second warding bond ring, he wishes he could give the other one to Shadowheart, but finds the moment inappropriate. He ends up giving her the ring at the beginning of Act 3.

Act 3:

I have a lot of stuff for this act.

This is inspired by one of Jaheira's lines: "'The Cub and the Crow'- sounds like a cautionary tale. As it probably should." Connie draws her a mock up cover for a kids book. Jaheira sticks it to the traveling chest (I mostly store food there, so to me traveling chest = fridge).

Connie goes through a serious breakdown at the start of this act (after a companion is abducted), he ends up crying and saying that for the first time he doesn't believe they're going to make it, that he'll never hug his mom, never hear his brother sing again, won't be able to tell his step dad that he saw Darkmaw the Wicked. He's being comforted first by Jaheira and then by the rest of his party.

His favorite armor gets damaged one time, he's very upset about it. But the next morning he finds it magically repaired (Astarion fixed it, from the start of Act 3 they become besties).

This wip that I'm very slowly working on happens during act 3. Connie makes some flower crowns and talks about how his mom taught him to do that. I'm not going to say more, because I really want to finish that comic.

Connie has a deal with Popper that he'll pay him double for every night orchid he finds (I actually did that in game, I bantered him more money for the flower than he asked for, I love that little guy so much).

This one is more funny than cute but when Connecticut Tav was younger and still lived in Baldur's Gate he used to visit Sharess's Caress pretty regularly because it was the best way to practice drawing people. He really enjoyed talking with the workers there, he eventually convinced them that maybe creating an union isn't such a bad idea. He ended up being banned from entering the brothel because of that. So when the party approaches it to meet Voss, he's very nervous that the owner will remember him (she does). There's a dialogue in my head but it would work better with some visuals, so maybe one time I'm going to draw it.

In my head, the cottage they end up living in is Connie's old hunting hut. So after the conversation with Shadowheart about her plans for after defeating the brain, he suggest that it would be the perfect place to go. He then draws the house to show her how it looks like, tells her that it's surrounded by a forest, there's a lake nearby, a small stable that can be turned into a barn if needed, and that he's not sure about the quality of the soil, but he did grow some herbs there, so maybe it's going to be good enough to grow flowers.

At the end of the game Connie decides to stay in Baldur's Gate for a while to help his family fix their tavern (which was heavily damaged). He tells Shart to go the house I mentioned before, because he wants her to start her new life as soon as possible + because it would be better for her parents. He stealthily puts his journal in her stuff with a note attached to it saying that he finished it this morning and she can read it if she wants to. He also gives her Faust so she can write him letters whenever she wants to. After 2 tendays he arrives at the cottage with some gifts (night orchid bulbs and a pamphlet about how to take care of them, there was supposed to be another gift, but he wasn't able to find it just yet, but that's for another story).

Epilogue party (because I'm that insane):

It's been sitting in my wips for more than two months, so I don't know if I'll be able to finish it. But during the party Connie and Shadowheart take 10 minute brake to visit the place from the first romance scene. They have a very similar conversation like before, but their roles are reversed now - It's Connie asking questions about Shart's current life. "Tell me something about yourself, but no tadpoles, weird artifacts, petty goddesses. Something about you."

#ask me anything #bg3 #connecticut tav #oh oof this took some time #but know this annon I am giving you a kiss on the cheek and I'm paying for our imaginary kids' collage for asking this question

[caffedrine]

Azel Radwan - The Beast’s Love is Unstoppable - Event Summary

This is mostly a summary for me - I make no promises on the accuracy of what’s happening. I’m not nearly fluent enough to get half the jokes/innuendo much less accurate plot points.

Azel, the Living God of Tanzanite and Emma’s lover is not an honest person. He often says, ‘I don’t love you’ and ‘I am not in love with you’ and has never said anything else. However, Emma knows that words aren’t everything when it comes to him.

As she sits on the steps of a dilapidated temple and gazes at the moon dominating the night sky, a shadow falls over her. With an exasperated expression on his face, Azel asks what Emma is doing out here.

Emma explains that she wanted to go for a walk, and Azel wonders since when has she developed the bizarre interest in walking through wastelands. Emma points out the moon, remarking that she will never grow bored of looking at the Tanaznite moon.

Azel tells her that is a stupid excuse, and worse yet, she is wasting her time out here. Scoffing, he settles down next to her, obviously not intending to leave her alone. Emma asks if he came out just to look for her.

Azel denies this, he only came out looking for fresh air. Emma asks what he was just saying about walking through wastelands, but Azel corrects her. He is going on patrol. Emma decides to drop it. She knows no matter what Azel says otherwise, he would not spend time with her if he didn’t like her.

Shifting closer to Azel, Emma apologizes and explains that she’s cold, and then snuggles up next to him. She smiles a little and remarks that he feels warm.

Azel refuses this and stands up as if he was planning on running away from her. Instead, he circles behind her and settles down, wrapping his arms around her from behind. He explains that this is more efficient at comforting her, and not to worry, he’ll collect the fee for warming her up later. Emma agrees, telling him to look forward to tomorrow’s breakfast.

With his arms wrapped around her midsection, Emma leans back against Azel, wondering why he doesn’t want to admit that this is love, no matter how close they are together. She turns her head, meeting Azel’s gaze.

God’s eyes are a mysterious color, making her think of starry skies, and draw her in. Azel asks why she’s so interested in his eyes, and Emma admits that she still hasn’t figured out what their color is.

Azel insists that it doesn’t matter what color his eyes are, but Emma is serious. She wonders if she could call it a dreamy color. Azel complains that she’s using girly names for his eyes. Emma grumbles, wondering if his eye color will ever be given a name.

Emma continues to look at Azel, who remains silent. Rather, their faces are drawing closer and closer. Suddenly Azel remarks that he has often been told that he’s strange, but when she looks at him like this . . .

The stary-sky color comes closer to Emma, and their lips touch. Emma’s eyes widen with shock, and Azel complains that the atmosphere between them was telling him to kiss her. Emma disagrees, it wasn’t that atmosphere at all. Emma turns her head away, only to hear evil laughter from behind her.

Emma asks why he kissed her all of the sudden, and Azel insists that it’s just a physical desire. Emma disagrees, but Azel insists that there are many mysteries about the human body that have yet to be unearthed.

This isn’t a mystery. It’s love.

Azel begs Emma not to mix up physical and emotional ties. Even as he denies being in love, he doesn’t stop touching Emma and pokes the back of her neck. Emma lets out a strange noise, and Azel laughs again. Emma turns around and smacks him in the chest.

Azel tells Emma to stop hitting him, otherwise he might kiss her again.

Emma asks if God has always had a flair for physical desires, and Azel reminds her that this god is a human too.

Maybe some gods only feel the physical desire, but from Azel’s expression, Emma could tell that this went far beyond a physical connection.

The longer Emma stays with Azel, the more she feels a sense of immorality, as if she’s defiling something sacred. As she stares into his eyes, Azel grabs her chin. He assures her that she can look into his eyes as long as she likes. In return, he will kiss her as much as he likes.

Maybe Azel should thank his eyes.

The kiss that starts out with them barely touching each other morphs into one full of lust. Even though Azel usually has a pure and holy expression, when he’s with her it melts away to one of base instincts.

In between kisses, Azel’s hand slides down Emma’s waist. His hand caresses her back through her nightgown, running over her shoulders, and bringing out all sorts of immoral feelings. Azel’s tongue flicks along her mouth, and Emma’s stomach grows hot. She asks Azel to hold on, it’s too intense.

Full of false sympathy, Azel asks if Emma has forgotten to breathe, which she has. Poor thing, he thought she was better at this. Just before he can dive back in, Emma covers Azel’s mouth with her hands. Nope, they need to take a break from kissing.

(Azel just wants to kiss only Emma, spend time with only Emma, and sleep with only Emma. Totally no feels)

Emma gasps and jumps when Azel’s tongue runs along the palm of her hands. He takes the distraction to remove her hands from his mouth.

Emma grumbles that the feeling of wanting to kiss someone is considered ‘love’. Azel disagrees, he’s not thinking of something so horrible and crazy as love when he’s with her. He just feels selfish.

Seriously, he’s not in love with her.

Emma decides to leave it be, thinking that one day, she’ll have to show him a mirror so he can see the love in his reflection.

#ikemen prince #ikepri #azel radwan

[whereianonymouslypostfics]

In The Night

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x reader

Word count: ~3.3k

Summary: Late night out

A/N: Another risk assessment

Warnings: stalking, violence, blood, hurt/comfort

The years you’ve spent with your wife have only heighted your already healthy paranoia. You didn’t go anywhere alone after dark if you could help it, and if you did, you tried to at least have your dog with you. 

Tonight, you only had yourself to blame. It was nearly 10 o’clock and you’d watched as night fell from where you sat with some of your friends and Boone at a brewery near work. You didn’t drink much because you never do, but you’ve eaten enough to become pleasantly full and a little sleepy. You reach out to pet your dog and smile when he sniffs your hand for any morsel of food. You haven’t given him anything but his treats under the table, and you know he’s not very happy about this. 

“It’s getting late.” 

You say this despite it being way earlier than the last night you’d spent out with your friends. However, this time you have your dog, and you also want to get home to your wife. She’s texted a couple of times, and seeing a picture of her on the couch with Fletcher makes you want to get home sooner so you can join her.

You hug your friends goodbye before they leave you and Boone to head back to your car only a couple of blocks away. 

You’re only a little on edge as you leave the bright lights of the brewery behind you for the dimly lit streets. You figure Bucky is nearby, but you try to walk as quickly as you can without seeming like you’re running. Boone’s walking beside you and you’re holding his leash in a white knuckled grip as you turn the corner down the road where your car is parked. 

The sound of her phone ringing from the coffee table jolts Wanda back to consciousness. She hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep until she sees that the show she’d been watching has stopped playing, and Fletcher was nowhere in sight. She sighs as she reaches for her phone and answers it almost before it’s to her ear when she sees it’s Bucky. As usual, he was following you around since you were away from home. Hopefully he was calling to tell her that you were on your way back. 

“Hey Bucky.” 

“Wanda, I need you to meet me downtown. Now.” 

Wanda’s already off the couch and running to the garage before Bucky’s finished speaking. She asks what’s wrong, but she doesn’t wait for a response as she slams her hand against the garage door opener just outside the door as she steps into a pair of boots before running for her car. Wanda jumps inside and the engine roars to life before she backs the car out almost before the garage door is all the way opened. 

“We’re going to meet whoever’s been tailing you for the past couple of weeks.” 

Your car is only about 100 feet away, and at this point it’s one of the only ones on the street given the late hour. You pick up the pace a bit before reaching into your pocket for the key fob to start the car. You’re still 50 feet away when the engine cuts on and you breathe a sigh of relief. You’re almost to your car when you feel your phone vibrate in your pocket. You smile when you see it’s Wanda and you’re opening the passenger door to let Boone jump in when you hear your wife’s voice come through your car speakers. 

“Hey Wands.” 

You’re fiddling with your phone so you can still hear your wife as you shut the door and step off the sidewalk. 

“Y/n, where are you? Are you safe?” 

You stop in your tracks at Wanda’s frantic voice, and you’re about to tell her that you’re fine when you hear something behind you. You don’t get a chance to turn around when something is thrown over your head and pulled tight against your throat. You gasp and drop your phone as your hands go to grab at the cord that’s quickly tightening around your neck. You can’t see much through the hood over your head, but you see shadows moving around you as you’re dragged back onto the sidewalk. You hear Boone’s muffled bark from inside the car and realize that you should have gotten in first. Or at the very least not shut the door on him.

You’re kicking and trying to regain your footing as you gasp for breath, but when you feel someone try to grab your legs, you realize you’re running out of time. You hiss out a curse as you reach to your right side where you have a hunting knife stashed under your jacket. 

Your brother-in-law had gotten it for you as a gag gift because he knew how much you hated the idea of hunting. After seeing your wide-eyed, confused expression, he’d told you and Wanda that it was something you could use to protect yourself. He’d even suggested putting it in Boone’s harness pouch of weapons. 

You’re extremely grateful that you’d chosen not to do this tonight as you feel the handle against your fingers and quickly yank the knife out from under your jacket. You bring it down behind you as hard as you can, and you hear a satisfying scream when you bury your knife into the man’s thigh. You gasp when you’re dropped and air floods into your lungs as you rip the hood off your head and breathe in deeply. You look up from where you’re on your knees to see that the person who’d been trying to help cart you off to who knows where was about to grab you again. You don’t have time to think about it, and you raise the knife that you luckily held onto. 

“You bitch!” 

You blink when you realize that you sliced open his cheek, but he’s still coming after you. You curse as you try to catch your breath enough to stand up, but movement out of the corner of your eye makes you pause. You open your mouth to curse again, but you don’t make it in time. 

You can only watch as Boone jumps out the now open window and lunges at the bleeding man in front of you. You’re barely on your feet when you feel someone grab your hair and yank you backwards. Your world spins and you’re shoved against brick, your hand that’s holding the knife stuck between you and the wall. 

“Fuck-.” 

You don’t know what would have happened next, but the feeling of more hands on you tells you enough to be grateful for the rescue. You hear tires squealing and multiple gun shots that make you flinch in anticipation. You hear your dog snarling and you decide you need to figure out what’s going on, so you push back as hard as you can against the body that’s at least a hundred pounds heavier than you. He stumbles but doesn’t fall, but it’s enough for you to have time to turn around and kick him to the ground. 

You look around frantically for the next threat, and can’t help the way you fall against the wall breathless. Now that you’re able to think, you realize that you hurt all over, and each ragged breath you take burns. 

“Y/n!”

You finally notice the car parked behind your own, and see that Wanda is running toward you. You glance down when you see that Boone is still mauling the guy who choked you and you barely even flinch when Wanda hits him in the head with the gun that you just realized she’s holding. 

“Y/n, we need to go. Can you give Bucky your keys?” 

You flinch violently when Bucky appears out of nowhere and comes to stand by you. You see that he has a cut above his brow and a couple of bruises on his face. You don’t have time to ask what happened and you’re reaching for your keys without a word. You’re too dazed to say anything as Bucky gets in your car and starts it up again before he takes off. 

You let Wanda lead you to her car that’s still running, and she opens the door for you before hurrying to the driver’s side. Boone jumps into the open back window and Wanda raises it before she takes off after Bucky. You don’t hear the sirens in the distance, but Wanda does and she takes a deep breath before speeding to catch up with Bucky. 

“Are you okay, detka? Where are you hurt?” 

Only then, do you realize that you’d been holding your breath since your wife arrived, and you gasp again before you double over and start coughing. You’re shaking by the time you drop the bloodied knife at your feet, and you struggle to catch your breath as your head throbs. 

You squeeze your eyes shut and try to focus on breathing as Wanda speaks up. You don’t realize that she’s on the phone, until you look up and see that she’s hanging up on them. You sigh and lean back in your seat with a shake of your head. 

“It’s okay. I don-no doctors, okay?” 

Wanda frowns and turns to you briefly before she looks back to the road with a sigh. It’s just light enough in the car for her to see that you’re bleeding, but other than a small scratch on your face, she can’t tell where it’s coming from. She’s also not sure why you’re coughing which is worrying her, but she’s already made arrangements to have a doctor waiting at the house by the time you get back. Instead of arguing with you about this right now, she decides to figure out what she can about what happened. 

“Y/n, where are you hurt? I’ll drive us to the hospital right now unless you tell me.”

This gets your attention and you take a moment to focus on your aching body. Your head hurts probably from being slammed into a brick wall, or maybe the brief oxygen deprivation, and your knees and stomach hurt. It’s not until you mention your stomach that you look down and see that you’re bleeding. 

You’re not sure how that happened, but you can’t be bothered by this right now. You’d rather figure out what the hell happened tonight. 

“What-who were those people?” 

What did they want? 

You don’t bother asking this question because Wanda understands without it. You watch as her grip on the steering wheel tightens as she drives away from town and up toward the mountain road that will lead to your house. You aren’t going to tell Wanda this now because you hope she’ll offer an explanation, but you had a feeling as soon as you sat down for dinner tonight, that something would happen. 

You’re paranoid, for sure, but as soon as you’d reached town and parked, you felt eyes on you. This was confirmed when you noticed the same nondescript car drive by the brewery at least three times. It wasn’t a weekend; parking shouldn’t have been that difficult to find. Then the second hint had been the fact that Bucky had left the restaurant about an hour before you did, and then he never came back. 

You had figured that he was going to wait somewhere else, somewhere still in sight, but apparently he’d been searching for the same tail you noticed. 

“Bucky thinks they were trying to take you for ransom. He tried to track them down when he called me, and they ended up running him off the road.”

Your eyes widen at this and you realize now why Bucky looked so beat up. You make a mental note to check on him tomorrow, but for now you’re just grateful he was able to call Wanda before it was too late. 

You groan under your breath when Wanda pulls into the driveway beside an unfamiliar car. She turns off the car once you’re in the garage, and she comes to your side as soon as you open the door to help you out. You don’t complain or argue because you’re suddenly exhausted, and you just barely remember to retrieve your dog from the backseat. 

“Good evening, Mrs. Maximoff, Dr. Maximoff.” 

You turn so quickly that your neck protests, but the sound of an unfamiliar voice immediately puts you on edge. Wanda turns much slower, and makes sure to keep Boone back when you notice the doctor she’d called to come look at you. You try not to sigh in defeat when you see a woman in a white coat holding a small black bag at her side. You don’t want to be rude, but you really just wanted to lie down on the couch for a minute before falling into bed. 

“Dr. Blackwood. I hope we haven’t kept you waiting long. Please come in.” 

As you are led inside, you see Bucky pull your car up beside the doctor’s. You want to talk to him now, but you have a feeling Wanda won’t let you, and it would also be rude to make the doctor that had already been waiting on you wait any longer. 

You tamp down your urge to go sit on the couch, and instead head to one of the chairs at the dining room table. You sigh heavily as you sit down and watch as Wanda plays the role of a host and anxious partner at the same time. 

Finally, after returning with a glass of water for you, despite your desire for something stronger, she sits down in the chair beside you and waits for the doctor to finish setting up. It’s only then that you notice her outfit. She hadn’t changed from what you’d seen from the picture she sent you hours ago. She was still wearing sweatpants, and a flannel shirt that you easily recognized. You reach out for her with a smile and tug at the hem as you meet your wife’s gaze.

“This is mine.” 

Wanda just smiles at you before reaching up to wipe some of the dried blood from your cheek. Now that she can see you better, she immediately notices your bruised jaw and the dark angry marks around your neck. She regrets not shooting everyone when she realizes what some of the sounds she’d heard through the phone meant. She glances down at your bloodied shirt just as Dr. Blackwood finishes setting out everything she’ll need. 

“Dr. Maximoff, would you mind removing your jacket so I can examine you?” 

You tell her that she doesn’t have to call you that, but the look on her face although appropriately polite tells you she’s not going to drop the formality. Not in front of Wanda. You decide it’s not worth arguing about, and you shift slightly as Wanda reaches out to help you take off your coat. You smile appreciatively before you sit up and move to the edge of your chair. 

The next few minutes are silent as the other doctor in the room listens to your heart and lungs and looks at your injuries. The scratch on your face isn’t serious, just annoying, and Wanda helps clean this one up as you hold up your shirt for the blonde to look at where you accidentally cut yourself. It’s deep enough to need a couple of stitches, and you try not to sigh in annoyance at the fact that you basically did this to yourself.

You’re trying to distract yourself from the sting of alcohol when you hear the garage door close. You look up just in time to hear the mudroom door open and Boone jump to his feet. There’s no growling though and Wanda doesn’t seem concerned so you aren’t either. You figure it’s Bucky or Steve, but when no one makes an appearance, you figure they’re waiting until you’re fixed up to discuss what happened. You listen to Boone pant for a bit before he comes back into the room to lie down on the rug in front of you. He’s able to watch you and the doctor from here, and you watch as he rolls onto his back with a yawn. 

You focus on your dog and do your best to check for any injuries from a few feet away. You grimace a little when the first stich is put in and you try to focus on the feeling of your wife’s hand running up and down your back. You jump in surprise and then curse when Fletcher suddenly appears in front of you, and it takes all of your self-restraint not to curse her out. She just looks at you expectantly before flicking her tail in your face as she walks by you to get to Wanda. 

“Do that again and I’m going to take you in for your annual visit early, Fletcher.” 

Your wife’s cat just ignores you and Wanda shakes her head and does her best to ignore her cat so as not to encourage her bad behavior. Eventually the tabby gets bored and leaves, and luckily by this time you’re all stitched up.

“Those can come out in a couple of weeks. I’ll leave you something for the pain. It will help with your neck too. Other than a sore throat for a couple of days, there shouldn’t be any lasting, physical damage.” 

You oddly appreciate the blonde’s precise wording and you just nod in response as you lower your shirt over the bandage. You see Bucky appear in the doorway and you smile before turning your attention back to your doctor. You can’t wait to get something to eat and then take some pain medication that will hopefully help you fall asleep. 

“Thank you, Dr. Blackwood.” 

The blonde nods before asking if you or Wanda have any questions. When you both shake your heads, she packs up and stands to leave. She half nods, half bows to Wanda and you can’t help but find it ridiculous. Bucky escorts the doctor out and Boone jumps to his feet when you stand up with a sigh. 

You turn to your wife with an apologetic look before you reach for her hand and bring it to your lips. 

“I’m sorry. I’m extremely rude. Thank you for saving my ass out there.”

Wanda can’t help but roll her eyes at you before she leans in to kiss your uninjured cheek. She doesn’t blame you for the delayed thanks. She figures you’re still a little rattled and just wanted to get you taken care of. She hates that you were hurt because of her, but she couldn’t lie and say she wasn’t proud of you for holding your own. She’s just grateful that your kidnappers were relying on stealth and didn’t shoot you. 

“Of course, detka. I’m always up for saving your ass.” 

This time you roll your eyes and Wanda laughs as you mutter something under your breath. She simply watches as you greet your dog before kneeling so you can get a good look at him. She glances over your shoulder when Bucky reappears and she can’t help but smile when she realizes that he had taken the time to get a couple of stitches too. 

She knew they had to talk about what happened tonight, and how she was going to respond. She had learned a long time ago that incidents like these were inevitable, and the best she could do was prepare everyone for them. Maybe you needed to train a little more when you were healed. She’d ask you about it later. For now, she just wanted a few minutes to ignore the sense of impending doom, and watch you play with your beloved dog. 

Masterlist

#wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x female reader #wanda maximoff fanfiction #wanda x reader #silver springs drabble #silver springs #mob au

[rottiens]

✮ tags. . vampire gojo x afab! human reader, helltown au. divider creds: cafekitsune.

✮ cw. . 1.5k

It's late in Helltown, your boots struggle against the pile of white snow under your heavy boots and every so often you sniffle through your nose looking to somehow escape the cold that builds up on your face, exposed to your least favorite weather. 

The trees rise above your head and lull you as if they carry words inside their leaves, autumn is giving way to winter and the whole transition, along with the news that has filled the papers these past weeks gives the picture a gloomy tone. Your hands are inside your coat while an icy air escapes through your pale lips.

You shouldn't be out on the street so late, much less alone, much less with the news of the disappearance of those young women.

It wasn't just disappearance. It was the murder of that young woman who studied at the same university where you teach and then her best friend who had been missing since Halloween night and of whom nothing was known after that day. The parents had announced rewards, and the local police were scraping clues even under the rocks; however no one had heard anything from her or anyone had managed to provide relevant information.

You grab the edge of the coat around your neck and pull it upwards in an attempt to battle the cold as your steps quicken, you are close to your house, however due to the lack of movement on the avenue it feels more like a much longer walk than it really is. All the doors and windows are closed, including the houses and premises, you only have the company of pale light bulbs illuminating the entrances and your way home. 

A shiver runs down your back as the wind howls around you, a foreboding feeling tells you that you are not alone, though you dismiss one terrifying idea after another as this can and must be due to your suggestion. You grab the pepper spray inside your pocket as if your life depended on it and quickly turn around to verify that it was all in your head, holding the white bottle at the level of your head, your finger trembling on the tip of it. 

The wind roars in your ears, the noise of the blood pumping overwhelms your senses. In the distance you hear fluttering and your eyes snap, checking the shadows for movement within them. You remain in this position for a few seconds, frozen in time, until your legs tingle with warm blood and you return to the front to hurry on your way. 

Turning your eyes forward you meet a pair of piercing blue eyes that lock with yours for a few seconds before the man quickly looks away, you stifle a scream by clenching your jaw and the adrenaline makes you spray the pepper near his shoes. 

You take two steps back, raising the pepper spray to a considerable height. The blue-eyed man wears a baggy black hooded sweatshirt and a leather jacket of the same color over it making uncovering the features of his face an impossible task. 

“That's not how you use pepper spray,” he says in a strangely friendly voice.

You look him up and down wondering where he came from, though the voice sounds familiar, you don't remember seeing him anywhere before. Although you can't tell for sure since most of his face is covered, all you can see are those intense blue eyes scanning you up and down. 

“Tell me who you are or I'm going to scream,” you warn him, raising the spray to the level of his face. 

He raises his gloved hands to his chest in surrender. 

“Hey, take it easy. It's me.” He brings his hands to his hood and pulls it back to reveal a shock of white hair swirling in the icy wind. 

“Oh my...” Your horror turns to panic as you realize you were about to ruin the eyes of the new Biology teacher's assistant, he had only just moved to town a few weeks ago. You slowly shake your head, moving the spray away from his field of vision, back into your pockets. “I'm so sorry,” you utter, your panic slowly transforming into an embarrassment that burns like a torch on your face. 

“It's okay,” he smiles sideways, pulling the hood back over his head. “You acted properly.” 

The now not-so-stranger looks you up and down again, with those blue eyes that break the harmony of the white snow.  You run away from them when you get the chance, hurrying your pace along with him who starts walking with you.

“It's terribly cold.” You laugh, downplaying the sudden fear that still rubs your veins against each other. “I'm freezing,” you try to make it sound like something to break the tense moment, but your voice comes out cracked as you hide your face in your coat at the same time as you lift your shoulders to get out of the chill. 

“It is dangerous for you to be out here.” He looks down at you, you can feel it out of the corner of your eye. 

“I know,” you stutter, avoiding those haunting eyes. “You mean because of the deaths and stuff?” As soon as you add the last you regret it, you really didn't want to talk about it. “I was running late reading my students' papers, then visiting my grandparents,” you add, giving him explanations he doesn't need to hear but you feel somehow compelled to say. “I hope the police catch them soon, whoever the culprit is,” you finally say with a frown, remembering the news.

“Hm.” Is all that comes from his lips. “Mind if I walk with you? I live close by anyway.”  

At the proposal your heart pumps fast. Despite the fear you feel, you think it's better to accept than to walk alone. You nod, swallowing hard. Saliva cuts your dry throat.

You say your name waiting for him to introduce himself. “I haven't seen you around here before? Are you new to the neighborhood?”

“Yeah, I just moved in a little while ago. I- I've been watching you,” he whispers, you stop walking abruptly looking at him with wide eyes and quivering lips, pepper spray hovering against your fingers hidden in your pockets. The man stares at you for a few more seconds, before throwing his body back, chuckling. “I meant to say that I've observed your classes and you're good, my name is Gojo Satoru.” 

You relax a little at the joke, forcing a smile but still tightening your spray, maybe you were too tense, maybe your friend's assistant... Satoru, how he had introduced himself, was nothing more than that. So still with your nerves making your senses more responsive you decide to keep walking beside him.

“Thank you,” you reply. “My house is the next one,” you point to a tall brick house around the corner.

“All right.” He walks in the same direction you pointed, still staying close to you. His steps are light, as if he's gliding along the sidewalk. “I imagine your husband must be worried.” You look at him briefly, clearly confused. “I mean the man who comes to pick you up from college sometimes...”

“Oh,” you chuckle. “No, no, that's just a friend. No husband... I live with my friend,” you say. “But now she's visiting her parents for the vacations.” This time your eyes go to him shortly, hair escaping through his hood in white snowflakes, falling softly over his eyes.

You flee to the road before he can notice, your cheeks burning. As you stand in front of the door, you pull your keys out of your backpack.

“Thanks for walking me out, Satoru.”

“No problem. I'm glad I could help you get home safe and sound.” He gives you a warm smile even though you can't appreciate the fear and hesitation of the moment. 

You want to invite him in and be nice, but you know your friend would slap you if you told her about the stranger you let in the house knowing there's a killer on the loose. So you smile weakly at him and lean your body forward momentarily in a bow.

“I'll see you at school,” you say instead. 

Satoru doesn't reply anything else. He remains still, standing a few feet from the front door, waving his fingers in a goodbye that you cut off as you close the wooden door. Inside, the heat envelops you and you let out a purr of reassurance. Warmth surrounds your neck and cheeks cool as a woolen scarf, and you sigh in relief, letting out the fear and tension that encounter had caused you.

Satoru was a interesting guy… You try hard not to think of situations that might make your job uncomfortable, but you can't help the questions that arise in your mind. You wish, deep down, to know a little more about this mysterious man.

#wr #vampire gojo #gojo x reader #gojo x you #gojo x y/n #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x y/n #helltown au

[closetsof-backlogged-dreams]

merthur fic recs: sof's masterlist

(inspired and encouraged by the ever-lovely @romanticeulogizingelegies <33 ilysm babes)

hello, there! these are fifteen fics that i've collected over the years as my favorite merthur fics of all time. they come in all sorts of genres and lengths and vibes, so buckle up!!

Sorcerers & Knights, and their long-lost Prince by DracoWillHearAboutThis [30k, 9/9]

"Can't you watch where you're going?!" Arthur snapped. 

"You ran into me!" the other man exclaimed, incredulous, and Arthur stilled because he knew that voice. And that accent.

He looked up and found himself face to face with a flushed, indignant Merlin Emrys, tour shirt drenched with coffee. Bloody hell.

"That shirt is Dior," was all that came out of Arthur's mouth, without his permission, and the singer's face hardened.

"Well, bugger for you," Merlin snapped. "Might have to wear off the rack, for a change, like the rest of us. Maybe the money you saved with that could go to your precious charity."

Arthur blinked, the blow of the other man's words not even hitting him before he heard Gwen Smith shriek from down the corridor.

"Merlin! You can't say that to the Prince of Wales, oh my God!"

Merlin is the lead singer of the popular British band called Sorcerers & Knights. Arthur is the Prince of Wales. Their paths cross and destiny unfolds.

fellow merthur/rwrb fans rejoice, this is practically a rwrb AU! except Merlin is the lead singer of a rock band, Sorcerers & Knights, and Arthur is the prince of Wales. the romance between the two of them is so insanely sweet, and i love all the outside commentary from the rest of the cast:)) i also recommend literally anything else by DracoWillHearAboutThis !!

Caesura by StormDancer [52k, 1/1]

Merlin is a writing prodigy with the world's most angsty case of writer's block; Arthur is an overachieving Econ major struggling to escape his father's shadow. Together, they fight crime!

Well, no, they don't. But they do fall in love.

College AU where Merlin is an undiagnosed unmedicated ADHD anonymous prodigy author who takes a course on his own work, meets Arthur, a fan, and they fall in love?? omg. on another note, Merlin's characterization in this fic is INSANE! he's giving deranged thought daughter and im obsessed

all ye faithful by schweet_heart [26k, 1/1]

After an eight and a half year absence, Arthur returns to his father’s house for Christmas, determined to find some closure and finally let go of the past. Merlin, as ever, gives him a reason to hold on.

wow. this fic. there's just so many good things to say about it, but i'll start with the beautiful depiction of parental abuse. Uther isn't physical, and he never does anything too obviously harmful, but it's the little things he says and the overall toxicity of his presence. and then the way he acts with Mordred, Morgana's son, while Arthur watches and wonders why his father never treated him like that?? it's brilliant. absolutely brilliant. the whole fic is a small town AU where Merlin and Arthur were together in secret and broke up as teenagers, and meet again when Arthur comes home. everything about this fic, from the breaking-up-and-making-up to the beautiful depiction of abuse, is so amazing.

Of Lemon Drops and Lizard-Cats by supercalvin [26k, 2/2]

When Inspector Arthur Pendragon went into work that morning he didn’t expect to get on the bad side of an attractive paramedic whose dessert-related insults were surprisingly scathing. Then the same man turned up at the police station, with a clever glint in his eye and his daughter in his arms.

When Merlin Emrys became a single father he made one simple rule: he wouldn’t date until Aithusa was old enough to understand. Merlin had always had his hands full with his daughter and never had a problem with this rule until Arthur stepped into his life. Then everyone he knew started conspiring against him.

single dad paramedic Merlin?? smitten detective Arthur?? mutual pining but self-forbidden romance?? it's amazing. and the domesticity of this fic... let's just say i finished it and couldn't stop thinking about families for the next week. the outside commentary from the rest of the cast in the department is top tier, and Aithusa as Merlin's daughter is the absolute cutest thing

wanna be your end game (my youth is yours) by ladililn [63k, series]

Merlin grows up in Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, so does Arthur.

this fic is actually a series, and it's genuinely so adorable i have no words. them?? growing up together?? badgering and arguing and teasing?? but truly being there for one another, always, when it came down to it?? elite. the absolute greatest. and their completely oblivious mutual pining never fails to make me giggle <3

after the storm (are you leaving) by Imagined, Scarlet_Ribbons [60k, 6/6]

“Gorwin is my King,” Merlin says, golden eyes fixed flatly on Arthur. “And I work for him. That’s what it says.”

“That’s what what says?” Arthur all but roars, wishing he had a sword just so that he could swing it at something. He needs to let all of this anger at something, anything, he’s just not sure at what and he doesn’t really care anymore.

“The treaty you signed."

Or:

Arthur lends Merlin's aid as a sorcerer to an allied kingdom. He doesn't expect to find Merlin, two years later, in shackles, and only a mere echo of the person he used to be.

this fic is beyond devastating. a warning that it is extremely dark, with a lot of addiction and (non-sexual) slavery. overall, though, it's so beautiful. the way that Arthur forces himself to allow Merlin to leave, and then finds him absolutely destroyed?? then stands by his side through all of it and never gives up on him?? such a beautiful fic, as well as everything else written by these two authors

secrets i have held in my heart by arthur_pendragon [20k, 8/8]

Merlin carves himself into Arthur’s soul while the song of summer trails behind them in the sultry air; while the trees haggle with the sun over the price of autumn — separation. Arthur will forever remember this week in which he obtained his heart’s desire and had it ripped away from him.

wow ok so i'm really not exaggerating when i say this is the best fic i've ever read in my life—it's so heart-stoppingly beautiful and painful and the writing is gorgeous and genuinely i don't even know how to communicate how good this fic is. it's friends-with-benefits but also secret-mutual-pining and angsty and hurtful and ahhhh. so so so good.

Next to You (It's the Rule) by LunaMyLove [62k, 8/8]

Arthur and Merlin have a special relationship. They always have, even when they were prince and servant. While many question it when first noticing, eventually it becomes an understanding in Camelot—and even among some other countries—that where there is Arthur, there is Merlin. And, where there is Merlin, there is Arthur.

Or

Arthur and Merlin's relationship as witnessed and explained by others.

Also, or

Five times someone realizes that Merlin is the Queen, one time Merlin realizes it himself, and one time he owns it.

this is one of the funniest fics i've ever read! if you're familiar, it's very reminiscent of CaffeinatedFlumadiddle's writing. Merlin and Arthur's relationship is hilarious, very mischievous-cat and cat-owner. i also adore Mordred in this fic—he's so squishy and adorable idkidk

since we're alone, you can show me your heart by isolationqueen [7k, 1/1]

Going on a month long road trip though Europe with Arthur is probably a terrible idea. Only, Merlin has never been able to say no to Arthur.

modern road trip AU my beloved!! ughh i love the bitchy pining in this fic, and how protective and jealous Arthur gets. just them going from club to club in all these different places.... so good!! always recommend <3

More than I bargained for by follow_your_fire [27k, 3/3]

Arthur's had enough of hearing about Merlin's unsurpassed bedroom skills from his friends.

There's no way Merlin is better than him, is there?

Well, only one way to find out.

this one is for my porn-with-plot girlies!! Arthur being gay for Merlin is the funniest thing ever, and watching him be so bewildered and confused the entire fic but covering it up so that Merlin doesn't suspect a thing is top tier. and then Merlin being soft?? and loving?? and fluffy?? and then Arthur just doesn't know what to do..... SO GOOD!!

A Collapsing Star With Tunnel Vision by objectlesson [8k, 1/1]

“Perhaps we are doing her a favor then,” he says, pausing to chew the inside of his cheek before adding in a measured, careful voice. “I wouldn’t want to live without my love, either.”

Arthur whips around in the saddle to stare at him, eyes hard and dark, like the storm clouds building on the distant horizon. “What love? You haven’t got a love,” he snaps, like he’s the sole keeper of all Merlin’s secrets.

'Arthur acting different with Merlin alone than he does with the knights' my beloved!! this fic is so poetic and beautiful, with Arthur being ugly and mean but so in love and Merlin is equally so ahhhhh. so insanely good. lots of monster hunting and metaphorical discussions. im obsessed with this fic you don't even understand

Nicest Thing by idlestories [19k, 1/1]

Arthur has been best friends with Merlin since they were eleven, and in love with him since they were sixteen and he realised what that was. Too afraid to risk the friendship, he's resigned himself to never telling him how he feels.

Now, high school has just ended, it's their last summer together before university, and Arthur? Arthur is just trying not to think about it.

Featuring: loneliness, pining, drunk Merlin, driving lessons, and more than a few poorly-executed teen movie clichés. Covers June-December the year they start university.

this fic is so criminally underrated it makes me homicidal. one of my top three favorite fics of all time, do you understand me? it's so. it's so good. the pining?? the yearning?? the split as they go to different unis?? the summery poeticism of the writing?? i'll never get over this fic. i think about it every day. amazing.

time, mystical time by andiwriteordie [17k, 1/1]

Finally, the man tears his gaze away and meets Arthur’s eyes once more. “I seek the aid of your Camelot,” he says, but his voice sounds more hesitant now, as if he’s had to change his response for some strange reason.

Merlin can’t help but believe that reason is him.

“As for who I am,” the man says with a bit of a chuckle, and he glances around the room again at familiar faces, at his friends. “I am Arthur Pendragon, King of Camelot.”

Or:

When a mysterious stranger shows up to Camelot claiming to be Arthur from the future and seeking help for his sick consort, Merlin learns some things about himself, about Arthur, and about a future he never dreamed was possible.

Arthur from the future time travels back in time to find Merlin, the only person powerful enough to save his cursed consort, an older Merlin?? i physically cannot. this fic is so good. shows two sides of the same coin (ha): Merlin and Arthur, established with Merlin's magic out and proud, and then Merlin and Arthur, unestablished and Merlin's magic still a careful secret. and Morgana in this fic is elite!! she's absolutely hilarious and completely done with merthur's bullshit

For Want of a Nail by 0hHeyThereBigBadWolf [235k, 44/44]

Fleeing from Essetir in the bloody beginnings of the Purge, Hunith finds herself on the doorstep of old friends. That's all it takes to untangle the skeins of destiny and weave a new tapestry.

long fic alert!! but oh my god i love this fic. Leon being Merlin's older brother?? elite. Arthur and Merlin going through angsty mutual pining?? top tier. and then later on, this fic features probably my favorite OC of all time: Bellegere, Arthur's cousin and Agravaine's daughter. i love her so much and you can pry her out of my cold dead fingers. just such a good fic!!

what is this feeling by redkay [13k, 1/1]

“Get out of my sight, and don’t come back until you can prove to me why I should allow you to remain in my service.”

Merlin stares at Arthur, confused. His tone was ominous, and it certainly sounded like a threat, but Merlin can’t quite work out what part is supposed to have him shaking in his boots. He’s halfway back to Gauis’ chambers when it dawns on him: Arthur actually thinks this stupid, degrading job is something he would be willing to fight for - as though Merlin’s life wouldn’t be complete without the honor of scrubbing the sheets Arthur manages to soil on a disturbingly regular basis.

In which it takes Merlin a bit longer to warm up to Arthur than it does in canon, but he gets there in the end.

we deserve more of Merlin being genuinely bitchy and pissy at Arthur!! the show really did make him Arthur's #1 fangirl wayyy too quickly, but this fic fixes that right up. it's so funny, but so heart-touching at the same time. a classic <3

wow, this list is so long overdue it's insane, but i think this was the right time to finally put it out there. i hope you like these fics!!

#merthur #merlin #bbc merlin #bbcm #merthur fic #merthur fic recs #merlin fic #merlin fic recs #arthur pendragon #merthur fanfic #merthur ao3 #merlin fanfic

[houserautha]

no, but feyd is upset with you over something you did and so he goes to train for hours to release some steam & comes back and ur 🐱 is dripping from thinking of ways to please him and get back into his good graces and he just takes ur poor little kitty on a joy ride to solace and ur creaming and crying bc this is all you ever wanted was to make him feel good, use you, and love you

There’s this audio of him say “I already know everything I need to know” and I can’t stop thinking about trying to apologize to him or make up for whatever you did to make him angry and he says that and then takes us to poundtown!!!

I think I blacked out writing this. Horny me fully took over.

Warnings: humiliation kink? He calls you a whore, rough sex

Feyd strikes the training dummy. Once. Twice. Until his knuckles bleed.

You thought you could go behind his back and put out an order for extra artillery — a decision that, had you made together, would’ve been fine. But you are supposed to be a team. Too many people have deceived him, have torn from him what he held in esteem. And though he didn’t think you capable of such a thing, it didn’t lessen any of his anger. It festered, molten-like, inside.

And since Feyd only had two ways of easing his temper, one of which had been the cause of it, he was forced to rely on the other. Sparring.

Eventually he got lost in the movements of his body, his opponent, the surge of blood in his ears. The soreness in his muscles a welcome reprieve to whatever was grieving him. He could lose himself in this, in combat, when his mind slipped away and he reverted back into old, violent habits. The way he was before you.

But he couldn’t think of you. Not now.

A sigh loosens from you. Frustrated, you withdraw your fingers from your cunt. There’s no denying that something is wrong with you, to be so aroused by your fight with Feyd that you seek out your pleasure as soon as he is gone. But it’s not what you want, what you need — only he can provide that. And who knows how long he’ll be gone, Feyd is unpredictable on a normal day, much less when he’s furious at you.

Still caught in that state of arousal, you allow your thoughts to drift back to the moment before he left. His pupils blown, plush lips pulled back in a snarl, stalking the room and looking so damn attractive in his armor. You barely heard any of the words he yelled at you, could only focus on the heat of desire pooling between your thighs.

It’s not until the shadows have lengthened and the glow globes illuminate the room that he returns. You’re there, waiting for him, dressed in the sheer teddy that you know he favors, and there’s no mistaking the approval in his eyes.

“What’s this?” He rasps, infuriatingly neutral.

“I wanted to make it up to you,” you say. You slowly approach him, footsteps muffled in the soft carpet.

“Then revoke the request.”

You stop. “No.”

Feyd brushes past you without a word. Irritated, you roll your eyes to the ceiling, pleading for some higher deity to relieve you of this burdensome man. Not one to be deterred, however, you traipse after him. “Let me show you how sorry I am.”

He begins removing his armor.

It’s a performance truly deserving of the highest accolades — his muscled body covered in a fine layer of sweat, each discarded piece of metal revealing more and more of him. If he’s trying to frustrate you even more or you’re just incredibly horny, you can’t tell. You tear your gaze from him as you feel your cunt clenching in anticipation.

Feyd ignores you. The view of him from behind is even more tantalizing than the side, firm ass on display as he steps into the shower receptacle. Your only answer is the burst of hot water from the spigot, washing away the blood and sweat, his tricep rippling as he puts one hand above his head and stands beneath the spray.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

“Feyd, c’mon, don’t be like this,” you say, raising your voice to be heard over the roar of water.

Still, nothing.

You try every trick in the book, but nothing you say invokes a solitary word from the na-Baron. You would rather have him be screaming and raging than this silent treatment and, worst of all, you’re still aching for his cock in you.

Teeth gritting, you force out, “Fine. I shouldn’t have done that. But I need you to know —”

Before you can even finish your train of thought, Feyd is stalking toward you. Water beads on his skin, in the furrow of his brow. A squeak escapes you when he grabs your face, hard, squeezing your chin to the point of tears forming in your eyes. Oh god, you want him so badly.

“Stop. Talking.” He orders. Feyd holds you there, dark gaze roaming over your face. When he speaks again, his voice is deep and rasping. “I already know everything I need to know.”

Then his mouth is on you, fierce and possessive, bruising your lips with his. Hands clutch at your sides, driving you forward. You gasp at the assault of the hot shower water on your skin as he thrusts you beneath it, shoving you up against the cool stone wall. The sheer teddy clings to your form and he angrily tears it from you, a dark chuckle brushing past your ear when he realizes that you weren’t wearing any panties underneath.

“Look at you, such a slut,” he snarls. You can feel him stroking his cock, readying himself, and you writhe in desperation. “You’re pathetic. So needy for this cock inside you.”

“Please,” you breathe out, blinking against the onslaught of water.

“You liked our fight,” he continues, “I could see it in your eyes.”

You nod, thighs clenching together as you imagine his intrusion. What was he waiting for?

“Tell me you liked it.”

“I-I liked it,” you say, your voice hovering into a whimper.

“Such a whore. And you think you can make it up to me by offering up that pretty pussy?” He cups your breasts, tugging on one of your nipples, and you cry out in surprise. “Tell me.”

“I thought I could — I thought I could make it up to you by offering up my pussy,” you stammer back. His fingers on your breasts are distracting, massaging and kneading, flickering over your taut nipples. Every touch of his feels as if it’s tethered to your cunt, ripples of desire flooding through you with each one.

Feyd presses his front to your backside, cock nudging up against your inner thigh but denying you the entry of it. He all but purrs in reply, mouth on the shell of your ear, “That’s right. So naughty. How do you know I even want to fuck a whore like you?”

“Please, please. I said I was sorry —”

He takes the opportunity to spear you with his cock, forcing you up against the shower wall with all of his might to keep you from squirming. The size and length of him without any warning is shocking, nearly cleaving you in half. At least, that’s what it feels like as he continues to rock into you, each snap of his hips burying him deeper and deeper inside.

It feels so fucking good that you grind back into him, desperate for more.

This is what you wanted, what you needed. You needed him angry and unhinged. Needed his mouth to scrape bites and kisses across your skin, his hands clamoring to touch all of you at once, fingers leaving bruises. You needed him to pump inside you like his cock was your penance, your misgivings laid at his feet. He was your fall from grace but also your redemption.

Your vision blurs as he wrings each orgasm from you until, finally, he shoots his cum inside you. It’s warm and thick, sticking to your walls, and both of you pant to catch your breath as he finishes, keeping his cock slotted in your cunt.

The shower water has turned cold now, dowsing you in glacial rivulets.

Feyd removes himself from you and places a kiss on the junction of your neck and shoulder. “Don’t do it again,” he warns before leaving you to recover, shivering from the cold and your weak knees. You can’t help but smirk.

In the end, you always get what you want.

#feyd rautha #dune #feyd x reader #feyd x you #feyd rautha harkonnen #fanfic writing #feyd smut #this really got away from me #I just need this man biblically

[yanderes-galore]

May I ask for lmk Macaque with your list of prompts 59, 57 and 22 :3

Sure! Here's sadistic shadow monkey that follows you around :) I really do love him, lol. Hope you like the plot (It isn't much but I'm sure him learning you have other friends... opens old wounds.)

Yandere! Macaque Prompts 59, 57, 22

"Are those friends of yours? Are they your everything?"

"You're stuck with me, like it or not."

"They never loved you. Only I love you."

Pairing: Romantic/Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Emotional manipulation, Stalking, Jealousy, Possessive behavior, Clingy behavior, Forced relationship/companionship.

Macaque had recently found a new toy to mess with. He had always been one to mess with humans for his own amusement. Mischief was one of his favorite things.

Speaking of favorite things...

"You aren't ignoring me, are you~?" His voice echoes around you, shadows changing shape on their own. You had grown used to such anomalies recently. Shadows following you around had been something you were dealing with for months.

"Aww, come on, sweetheart! Did you really think I'd just leave you alone? You're far too interesting for that...."

Just like that the shadow monkey manifests, piercing yellow eyes staring into you as he materializes. He has a grin on his face, arms crossed as he circles you. Here he was... your forced companion.

"It's just so boring without you in my sight, Y'know?" Macaque purrs, acting like he ever let you out of his sight. He follows you from the shadows and in animal form. Really... there's no way he ever takes his eyes off you.

Which is why he felt he should 'cut in' when he saw you with a group of supposed friends.

"Didn't even bother to invite me~?" Macaque pouts playfully, dramatic as ever. He then wraps his arms around you, fur tickling your skin as he flicks his tail. He can feel your body tense under his touch, making his grin return stronger. "I thought you loved me~? Aren't we friends?"

Macaque can see your teeth grit at his comment. In response he really rubs it in, nuzzling into you playfully with a sigh. Oh how he loves your little reactions.

"Not now, Macaque." You say, trying to shoo him away but the monkey stubbornly stays. You had just had finished hanging out with your group of friends before Macaque stepped in. So luckily... they didn't have to see you try to shake off a shadow monkey.

"Why~?" Macaque whispers, tail swaying as his grip tightens. "Were those friends of yours?" Macaque coos, circling so he's in front of you. His grin is teasing... but also appears to be hiding something underneath. "Are they your everything?"

"Yes?" You answer, making Macaque lean back and cackle. You glare at him... only to pause when he stops with a serious expression. He looks... irritated.

"Oh, sweetheart..." Macaque purrs, staying close to you. "Do you really think they care about you?"

"Hey, what's your problem!?" You growl, pushing at the monkey as he grips your hands. He grins, holding them up to place on his cheeks with a cruel look in his glowing eyes.

"What? Don't believe me?" Macaque frowns in a growl, playing with your mind. He doesn't like the idea of you having other friends. Really... you deserve so much better.

"Of course I don't!" You hiss, pulling your hands away as Macaque frowns.

"Really now?" Macaque tilts his head before giving a concerned look. "If anyone knew the truth, it would be me!"

You look at him confused, Macaque humming with a nod of his head. He begins to circle you again, occasionally prodding at you affectionately. He loved when you squirmed.

"Don't give me that look, dear! Can't you tell?" Macaque prods, leaning his head against you. "If I can follow you around... Then I can follow them! Which means..."

Macaque notices the hurt in your gaze, leading him to quickly latch onto you.

"Oh, don't worry... that's why I'm here!" Macaque chirps, embracing you. "You look like you're about to cry... it's okay... just let me comfort you~"

Macaque knew how to use his words. He knew just what to say to manipulate others. You, poor oblivious thing, looked like you believed him.

Which made it much easier to lure you in all for himself.

"They never loved you. I heard it myself!" Macaque nods, playing the role of looking genuine as he sees your eyes water. Such a bittersweet look. "Really, only I love you."

"You're lying..." You whisper, the monkey leaning closer to your face.

"I swear I speak only the truth." Macaque whispers, tilting your chin up. "Cross my heart and hope to die."

Macaque observes as you stare ahead, not quite trusting him. He understands, he's a known liar. In fact, he's lying right now.

But your emotions are quick to take over rational thinking.... It's not like you can prove him wrong, right? Maybe your friends really are just pretending.

"I see..." You whisper, Macaque smiling when he realizes he has you wrapped around his finger.

"You never needed them anyways, sweetheart." Macaque shakes his head, humming while he pets your hair. "Seriously, they were so dull."

You can see Macaque stick out his tongue in disgust before returning his attention to you. You swore his piercing eyes dilated as he wraps his tail around you. You couldn't believe this.

"Well, I think it's time I made you feel better." Macaque hums, patting your back playfully before grabbing your hand. "How about we go on a little walk? Get something to eat?"

You look hesitant. Macaque wasn't someone you could necessarily trust. Although... he's been working on getting better lately, right?

It's not like he's hurt you....

"Again with the looks?" Macaque pouts. "Yeesh, the truth hurts, doesn't it?"

You nod and Macaque hums, a grin returning to his face before he pulls you into him.

"Well, come here then!" Macaque sighs, embrace tight against you. "I'll be here to comfort you... maybe even teach them a lesson for you, yeah?"

Macaque chuckles darkly, eyes half shut while he holds you tight against him and presses his face beside your ear.

"After all, You're stuck with me, like it or not, sweetheart."

#yandere lego monkie kid #yandere macaque #yandere lmk

[aceofshitposts]

anastasia based au that i was playing around with @yeisons a while ago. meant to get this posted sooner but uh my brain is Soup as usual lmao hope you all like it!!!

-

Jay should have known better. Should have known better than to trust Roy and Kori. Trust that he'd found his past and where he belonged. Of course he wasn't the missing Jason Wayne, any resemblance was simply coincidence that Roy and Kori had aimed to exploit for money.

The ballroom is too big, his clothes too tight. He isn't meant to be here at this party, in this manor, attempting to fit into this life. He pushes past the throngs of dancing couple roughly in his sudden bid to escape, mumbling halfhearted apologies as he goes.

He hears Kori call out to him but it doesn't matter. She was part of this too. He needs out.

Now.

His footsteps echo down the empty halls as he walks. No particular destination in mind as he goes, mind too busy trying to formulate another plan.

What, exactly, is he going to do now?

Stupidly, he had pinned all his hopes on this. That when Roy and Kori told him he was surely, definitely, Jason Wayne and that they wanted to help reunite him with his family they were telling the truth. That he was someone who was loved and not just abandoned at the orphanage, unwanted.

The halls are quiet and still here, contrasting sharply with the loud and lively atmosphere of the ballroom. He stops, looking around the long corridor and realizes he has no idea how long he's been walking for or where in the mansion he's ended up.

There's a line of doors spaced neatly apart, all closed with shadows from the outside windows cast against them. It's... familiar, somehow.

Something brushes past in his mind's eye, the echo of a kid running through a brightly lit hall. He turns to follow it, a fleeting feeling of warmth that leads to one of the closed doors.

It's no different from any other door he's seen and yet.

He reaches out to the handle, hypnotized by the foreign feeling.

"Can I help you?"

Jay startles, jumping back a good foot from the door.

There's a man standing just off to his right, bright blue eyes and glossy black hair tied back in a low ponytail.

"Sorry, I just-- I was looking for somewhere quiet," Jay says quickly, taking another step back from the door. Why on Earth was he thinking of opening the door, this man probably thinks he was planning on robbing the place while the Lord of the manor was preoccupied.

"I understand," the man says with a smile, a flash of teeth that tells him that he was right.

"No, I swear, I. Ugh, this looks really bad, doesn't it?" Jay shoves a hand through his hair in despair, fingers roughly combing through the fancy gel Kori had used to slick back and tame his hair.

"Well, it certainly doesn't look good," the man agrees, rocking back on his heels. He gives Jay a calculating look, eyes narrowing briefly before smiling and sticking out his hand. "I'm Tim and we can forget this if you come back to the ballroom with me."

Jay blinks, there's that feeling in his head again. A brief warmth, a blue eyed child looking at Jay and smiling, music drifting around him like a ghost. He takes Tim by the hand.

"I'm Jay."

#astrix writes #jaytim #salutes you all and goes back to wuthering waves #i am addicted to starting in media res LMAO #if ur curious basically this starts right after jay overhears roy trying to get bruce to come meet jay #and jay finds out about the reward money

[elvendria]

Clean

AU Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

Final Part

You return to Hawkins after a few years in the middle of the night during the summer with your 4-year-old sister in tow, thinking the two of you could fly under the radar and settle in at Forest Hills Trailer Park. You thought you could get by without bumping into your old enemy, Eddie Munson, the town freak.

But you weren't always enemies. There was a time when you two were closer than anything.

Eddie dreams of making it big. You just dream of making it out of here alive.

\\enemies - lovers//

((Warning: I'm not from the US, so bear with me with states and such) )

18+ MINORS DNI 

Eddie starts as a dick, but I promise he gets better. There’s a slap, but it's low-key warranted? Mentions of blood

18+ MINORS DNI or I will be busting kneecaps, E.D, physical abuse, child abuse, runaways, the reader Joyce's ex-step-niece, Will and Johnathan's cousin, Joyce is Queen, Wayne is King, slow burn, gambling addictions, the reader is 20 and Eddie is 21, Chrissy is the villain but we stan Grace. Reader has a small scar on her lower torso. underage drinking, allusions to smut, no details of smut for obvious reasons, eventual smut in upcoming chapters, brief mention of Y/N

Every detail of the room felt etched into your consciousness—the rough texture of the wooden floor beneath your feet, the cold smoothness of the linoleum countertops, the mundanity of the generic painting hanging above Eddie's head. You'd stared at it for so long that it had lost its semblance of reality, blending into the background of your mind's eye. But as much as you preferred the silent refuge of these familiar surroundings to the looming conversation you needed to have, you knew you couldn't evade it permanently.

Eddie's voice cut through the thick silence, a reminder that avoidance was no longer an option. "You can’t stay silent forever. We still need to talk about this."

Your heart sank at his words, the weight of unspoken truths pressing down on you. You wished for a way out, a reprieve from the inevitable confrontation. But deep down, you knew that delaying the conversation would only prolong the agony.

Summoning every ounce of courage, you forced yourself to speak, though you couldn't bring yourself to meet his eyes. "I tried to talk about this. Five years and five months ago." The words tasted bitter on your tongue, a painful reminder of a past you'd rather forget.

Closing your eyes, you allowed yourself to drift back to that fateful day—the memories flooding back with a visceral intensity that threatened to overwhelm you. It was the worst day of your life, a day etched into your soul with searing clarity.

The air was heavy with tension as you and Eddie sat across from each other, words caught in your throat like shards of broken glass. You'd rehearsed what you wanted to say a thousand times in your mind, but when the moment came, the words failed you.

You remembered the look of confusion and hurt in Eddie's eyes as you struggled to articulate the truth. You remembered the silence that followed, thick and suffocating, swallowing you whole.

In the years that followed, you buried the pain deep within, hoping that time would heal the wounds you couldn't bear to face. But now, with Eddie's patient insistence echoing in your ears, you knew that avoidance was no longer an option.

Taking a deep breath, you opened your eyes, steeling yourself for the conversation ahead. It wouldn't be easy, and the road ahead was fraught with uncertainty. But you knew that facing the truth was the only way forward, no matter how painful it might be.

5 years and 5 months ago

In the stillness of the room, time seemed to stand still, each passing moment stretching into eternity. The air felt heavy with emotions, suffocating in its intensity. The soft glow of the bedside lamp cast elongated shadows across the walls, serving as a silent witness to the turmoil raging within.

As you sat on the edge of the bed, the familiar comfort of the mattress now feeling foreign and distant, you couldn't shake the weight of the sealed envelope clutched tightly in your trembling hands. The words "Return To Sender" emblazoned on its surface seemed to mock you, a cruel reminder of rejection in its most brutal form.

With each passing second, the questions swirled in your mind, each one more haunting than the last. How could Eddie do this to you? How could he turn his back on the life growing within you, on the love you once shared so deeply?

As you traced the outline of each handwritten letter with shaky fingers, the sting of tears threatened to overwhelm you once more. The pain was palpable, a physical ache that radiated from your heart and settled deep within your bones. It was a pain born of betrayal and abandonment, a pain you never imagined you would have to endure.

Desperate for some semblance of connection, some shred of reassurance that you weren't alone in your anguish, you reached for your phone. But each call ended in silence, the void on the other end echoing the emptiness in your heart. It was a loneliness unlike anything you had ever known, a loneliness that consumed you from the inside out.

In the silence of the room, memories flooded your mind like a torrential downpour. You couldn't help but replay the moments leading up to this, each one a painful reminder of what once was and what could have been. The whispered promises, the shared dreams — they all felt like distant echoes of reality you could no longer grasp.

And yet, despite the overwhelming sorrow threatening to engulf you, a flicker of defiance ignited within your soul. You refused to let this moment define you, to let Eddie's betrayal rob you of your strength and resilience. You were stronger than this, stronger than the pain that threatened to break you.

As you sat there, enveloped in the solitude of the night, you couldn't help but wonder what the future held. It was a future shrouded in uncertainty, fraught with challenges and obstacles yet to be overcome. But it was also a future filled with possibility, with the potential for growth and healing in ways you never thought possible.

And so, with a newfound sense of determination, you rose from the edge of the bed, the weight of the envelope still heavy in your hand. You knew that the road ahead would be difficult, filled with twists and turns you couldn't anticipate. But you also knew that you were not alone, that somewhere out there, amidst the darkness, there was a glimmer of hope waiting to be discovered.

Present Day

The memories unfurled like delicate petals in the garden of your mind, each one a testament to the fragility of youth and the bittersweet symphony of love and loss. You transported yourself back to a time when innocence was your constant companion and the world seemed painted in hues of hope and possibility.

“You know, I used to draw a little design along the back of my letters so you could make sure they hadn’t been opened by the time they got to you. It was stupid. I mean, what kind of person would want to read a letter from a 16-year-old?” The simple act of drawing a squiggly line on the back of your letters emerged from the recesses of memory, a quaint ritual born from a desire to safeguard your innermost thoughts from prying eyes. At the tender age of sixteen, such gestures felt like feeble attempts to protect the sanctity of your words in a world fraught with uncertainty.

But uncertainty seemed a distant memory compared to the raw ache that now gnawed at your soul. Tears welled up unbidden, tracing silent rivers down cheeks once adorned with the flush of youth. You hadn’t even realized they were there until the telltale sting of saltwater against your skin brought your attention to their presence.

The weight of your emotions bore down upon you like a heavy shroud, suffocating and relentless. A sob escaped your lips, the sound foreign and raw in the stillness of the room. It was a sound wrought from the depths of your being, a primal cry for understanding in a world that seemed determined to remain indifferent to your pain.

This is what happened when you thought back to that day. You felt your chest tighten like your whole body had shut itself down and stitched itself up, trapping any remnants of the life you once had inside.

 “But… that was just it. I thought you would. I thought after everything, everything, that you were that person, that you’d want to read each word, and keep them until I came home to you.” You murmured, voice barely above a whisper as you navigated the labyrinth of memories that threatened to consume you whole. It was a day etched in the annals of your existence, a pivotal moment that had irrevocably altered the course of your life.

Your chest tightened with each passing moment, a vice-like grip that threatened to crush the fragile remnants of your shattered heart. It was a physical manifestation of the agony that permeated your being, a tangible reminder of the scars that marred your soul.

The spark of happy memories flickered briefly before being engulfed by the suffocating darkness that loomed on the horizon. It was a cruel juxtaposition, the juxtaposition of light and shadow that seemed to define your existence in equal measure.

“But… that was just it,' you confessed, the words tumbling from your lips like fragile petals caught in a tempest. It was a confession borne from the depths of your despair, a desperate plea for understanding in a world that seemed determined to remain deaf to your cries.

“I thought you would,” you continued, voice trembling with a vulnerability that left you feeling exposed and raw. It was a sentiment rooted in the belief that love, true love, could transcend the barriers of time and space, binding two souls together in a tapestry of shared experiences and whispered promises.

But his face remained impassive, a mask of stoicism that betrayed none of the tumultuous emotions swirling beneath the surface. It was a facade you had grown accustomed to, yet it still cut you to the quick, a reminder of the chasm that now yawned between you.

You watched in silence as he spoke, his words a litany of accusations and half-truths that cut through the fragile veneer of your composure. It was a barrage of verbal assaults, each one a dagger aimed squarely at the heart of your fragile hopes and dreams.

The question he posed hung in the air like a heavy fog, suffocating and oppressive in its silence. It was a question that pierced the very fabric of your being, laying bare the insecurities and doubts that had long plagued your tortured soul.

“Is she even mine?” he demanded, the words a cruel echo of the doubts that had long haunted your darkest nightmares. It was a question you had feared and dreaded, yet it still cut you to the quick, reminder of the fragile foundation upon which your fractured relationship now stood.

Any lingering traces of guilt dissolved in the face of his callous indifference, replaced by a seething anger that threatened to consume you whole. How dare he? How dare he question the paternity of the child you had borne alone, a testament to the strength and resilience of a mother’s love?

“Look, don’t give me that look,” he snapped, his voice dripping with contempt as he dismissed your pain with a casual wave of his hand. It was a dismissal you could ill afford, a reminder of the gulf that now stretched between you like an unbridgeable chasm.

But you refused to be cowed by his indifference, refused to allow him to diminish the magnitude of your sacrifice with his callous words. You squared your shoulders, steeling yourself for the storm that threatened to engulf you whole.

“And I don’t know you’d been telling me in your letters how you were getting close to this Jeb kid,” he continued, his words a dagger aimed squarely at the heart of your fragile hopes and dreams. It was a betrayal of the highest order, a betrayal you could ill afford in the face of his relentless onslaught.

Sure, you had attempted to befriend Jeb, and had sought solace in the fleeting moments of companionship he offered. But it was a fleeting respite, a reprieve from the relentless storm that raged within your tortured soul.

“Look, I think we just need to do a paternity test-” he began, his words a death knell tolling in the depths of your despair. It was a proposition you could ill afford, a proposition that threatened to unravel the fragile threads of your fractured relationship.

But before he could utter another word, something inside you snapped. It was a primal instinct, a raw surge of emotion that propelled you forward with a force you could not resist. The crack of your hand meeting his cheek echoed in the stifling silence, a symphony of defiance and liberation.

“Get out,” you spat, the words a bitter indictment of the betrayal that now stained the fabric of your fractured relationship. He recoiled, a hand pressed to his stinging cheek, shock etched into every line of his face.

As he made his hasty exit, you remained rooted to the spot, grappling with the aftershocks of your outburst. Glass shattered against the door, a physical manifestation of the shattered fragments of your fractured relationship.

Alone amidst the debris, you collapsed to the floor, knees buckling beneath the weight of your anguish. Blood mingled with tears as you surrendered to the overwhelming tide of emotion, the cold embrace of exhaustion lulling you into an uneasy slumber.

And so you lay, battered and broken, the echoes of his accusations lingering in the recesses of your mind, a reminder of the fragile nature of trust and the devastating consequences of its betrayal. But amidst the wreckage of your shattered dreams, a flicker of hope remained a beacon of light in the darkest depths of despair. For in the crucible of adversity, you had discovered the strength to endure, the resilience to rise from the ashes of your shattered past and forge a future worthy of the love you so desperately sought.

Eddie seethed with a mixture of frustration and disbelief as he stepped into the familiar confines of his home in Hawkins. All he'd attempted was to apply logic, yet he was met with hostility. Perhaps "assault" was too strong a term, but it wasn't far from the truth. This marked the second occasion he'd been struck since returning home. Did he even still consider Hawkins home? The question gnawed at him as he pushed the door shut behind him, the weight of uncertainty settling heavily upon his shoulders.

Inside, the atmosphere was tense. Wayne sat at the worn wooden table, his hands folded neatly before him. The silence that enveloped the room hung heavier than usual, suffocating any hope of a casual greeting. Eddie's jaw tensed as he braced himself for the inevitable confrontation, his mind racing with a thousand unanswered questions.

"So... what went down between you two?" Wayne's voice cut through the oppressive silence like a knife, his gaze fixed intently on Eddie. Eddie couldn't help but admire his uncle's directness, even in moments like these.

"We argued, as we always do," Eddie began, his voice heavy with frustration. "She gave me the silent treatment for ages, and when she finally spoke, she blamed me for not knowing about the kid. So, I asked if the child was even mine, and she slapped me! Can you believe it?" His hands clenched into fists, his knuckles turning white against the strain as he recounted the altercation.

Wayne sighed heavily, rubbing a weary hand over his face. "You're being dense, Eddie," he said, his tone laced with exasperation. He knew Eddie was smarter than this. Yet here he was, behaving like a petulant child. "Of course, Willow is yours. All the signs point to it."

Eddie shot Wayne a withering glare, his frustration boiling over. How could his uncle trust her over him? Surely the reasonable man Wayne was would understand why Eddie preferred to err on the side of caution, especially with matters of the heart.

"Edward, the kid has your eyes and your hair. She looks exactly like you did as a child. I knew she was yours the moment I saw her."

The words hit Eddie like a ton of bricks, a sudden realization dawning on him. "You knew? When did she tell you?"

"She didn't have to. Edward Munson, that kid is your spitting image. When she visits, all she wants to do is listen to your tapes and hear you talk about your Caves and Lizards game."

"It's Dungeons and Dragons," Eddie corrected automatically, his mind racing to process this new information. "She's mine... isn't she?"

"Of course she is. Did you think she'd choose anyone but you?" Wayne's voice softened, a hint of warmth creeping into his tone as he reached out to reassure his nephew. He had seen it the moment she entered their lives. She and Eddie had an infatuation with each other. They loved each other from day one, and it took a child to make them realize it if they ever did admit it.

"Yeah... about that..." Eddie's voice trailed off, a pang of guilt gnawing at him. How could he have doubted her, doubted them? He'd never forget the look in her eyes, like everything had fallen into place for her that night. He knew because he felt the same way. Even now, he felt like his entire existence revolved around her. "I kind of hinted that I thought she might be with someone else."

Wayne's expression softened, a flicker of understanding passing between them. Eddie had always been quick to jump to conclusions, but his heart was in the right place. "You're something else," Wayne said, a hint of fondness tugging at the corners of his lips as he rose from his seat.

With that, Wayne pushed his chair back and headed to the bathroom, leaving Eddie to grapple with the weight of his own emotions. As he made his way to his room, a sense of unease settled over him. He had ruined everything he ever wanted, and the consequences of his actions weighed heavily on his mind.

To top it all off, he might have ruined any chance of seeing his daughter again. The thought hung heavy in the air, a stark reminder of the fragility of their newfound bond and the importance of trust in their relationship.

The echoes of the argument still reverberated in your mind, though two weeks had passed since the war within your… situation… erupted. Now, amidst the chaos of life, bigger things demand your attention. Today marked Willow's first day of school, a milestone overshadowed by the recent upheaval. Delaying it by a few days seemed necessary as she grappled with the revelation that the person she believed to be her sister was, in fact, her mother. It was a truth that unravelled a web of emotions, triggering one of the most monumental tantrums you had ever witnessed.

As you sat in the parking lot, the weight of recent events felt momentarily lifted by the simple joy of hearing Willow refer to you as her mom for the first time. The word, so longed for yet unexpected in its arrival, wrapped around your heart like a warm embrace. It was a validation of the bond you had worked tirelessly to forge, despite the obstacles and uncertainties that clouded your path.

"Mom... we should go." Willow's voice broke through the reverie, grounding you in the present moment. You couldn’t get past the significance of her words, even if she didn’t. Each syllable held a promise of newfound connection and acceptance for her and a promise that part of you was starting to slip away. It was a moment you had longed for, a moment that filled the void left by the turmoil of recent weeks.

With a sense of renewed purpose, you stepped out of the car, the cool breeze of the morning air brushing against your skin. Making your way around to Willow's side, you extended a hand to help her out, savouring the warmth of her small fingers intertwined with yours. The simple act of physical contact felt like a lifeline, a tangible reminder of the love that bound you together.

Pulling her into a tight embrace, you marvelled at how much she had grown in what felt like the blink of an eye. The past few weeks had been a whirlwind of emotions, but in this moment, as you held your precious child close, everything else faded into insignificance. You couldn't help but lavish her with affection, doting on her every movement as if trying to make up for lost time.

"I know, I know. It's just you're so big now!" you exclaimed, your voice tinged with a mixture of pride and awe. Willow's smile mirrored your own, a reflection of the unconditional love that flowed between you. As you stood there, basking in the warmth of the morning sun, you knew that no matter what challenges lay ahead, you would face them together, bound by a love that was as resilient as it was unbreakable.

As she skipped beside you, her sparkly pink trainers lighting up with every step, you held her hand tightly. With each bounce, she seemed to carry a piece of the sun's brightness, infusing the world around you with an infectious energy that made everything seem more vibrant and alive. You wished you could bottle it, like her own brand of lightning in a jar. You were certain a joy like that could cure all ailments.

As you stepped into the building, a wave of familiar scents enveloped you, triggering a strange sense of nostalgia. The hallways exuded a peculiar blend of bleach, plasticine, and an elusive aroma that seemed to linger in every school corridor. It was a scent that stirred up memories, perhaps of apprehension, or maybe of anticipation, but most likely a concoction of both.

High school memories flooded your mind, and you couldn't help but think of her. You wondered how time would mould her, shaping her perspective of the world. If she retained even a fraction of the effervescent spirit she possessed now, you could easily picture her as a beacon of joy, radiating positivity and warmth wherever she went.

As you approached Willow's classroom door, a mix of emotions swirled within. Each step felt like a journey, leading inexorably to a new phase of life. The door creak seemed to underscore the weight of the moment as it swung open, revealing a space alive with the energy of youth. But amidst the chatter and colourful decor, a bittersweet truth lingered: this marked the beginning of the end of an era. Standing in the hallway, holding her tiny little hand, the gravity of the occasion settled like a heavy cloak. It was a poignant reminder that time marches on, carrying precious moments with it, even as it ushers in new beginnings.

“You ready to go in, sweetie? You want me to come in and help you get set up?”

“Wait!” 

Your head snapped up, startled by the rapid tempo of shoes striking the linoleum floor. As you turned, your heart leapt at the sight of the one person you least expected yet secretly yearned for. It was a paradoxical moment, where surprise collided with a silent prayer answered. Time seemed to stand still as you processed the unexpected encounter, each heartbeat echoing the tumultuous mix of emotions swirling within.

“I drove here as fast as I could. I… I had to see her.” 

His dishevelled appearance, with hair hastily scraped back and clothes seemingly inside out, hinted that he rushed here, disoriented maybe. The last thing you wanted was for Willow's first day to be marred by tears or confusion, so you hurriedly guided her inside, a silent observer from the doorway.

As Willow bounded towards a girl in a bright blue sweater, effortlessly engaging in her natural talent for making friends, you couldn't help but feel a pang of emotion. Yet, you remained silent, unable to meet his gaze without the weight of an unspoken intensity pressing against your chest.

It was a sensation that threatened to overwhelm you, leaving your eyes burning and your mouth dry. The urge to scream into the void, to release the pent-up emotions into the world, was almost palpable. But deep down, you knew that no amount of noise could articulate the complex feelings swirling within you.

“Why did you-” You couldn’t handle his questions, only holding up a hand to shut him up for a minute.

“You can see her from here. I can’t have her asking more questions just yet.” He didn’t have to deal with the fallout, he’s never had to deal with any of it. He just walked back in, fired around a bunch of accusations, and walked back out again. He’d never get to understand the pain that left you.

“I’m sorry for what I said. Please, just… just listen to me.”

“Will listening shut you up? Will it make everything go back to the way it was before you knew?” You choked on the end of your words, fighting back the tears that stung your eyes and threatened to fall.

“Just let me speak, and if after I'm finished, that's still what you want? Then we can try to go back to normal. But it’ll never be like it was before I knew, because I want to know her.”

You stood up and began walking away, hearing him follow close behind. You weren't in the mood to hear what he had to say, or how he felt he had some god-given right to see her after everything he had said and done. His presence grated on your nerves, each footstep amplifying your frustration.

“I want to know my daughter. Please.” 

His voice sounded almost like he was begging, pleading with you to change your mind, to hear him out. The desperation in his tone made you hesitate, hearing him call her his. It stirred something within you, and you stopped in your tracks. Turning around, you fixed him with a ferocious glare, your eyes burning with a mix of anger and pain. The intensity of your gaze was enough to make him falter, and for a moment, the hallway was filled with the heavy silence of unspoken emotions.

"So now you feel entitled to call her yours?" Now you get to believe me when I say that I’d never been with anyone but you? Why did you suddenly have a change of heart?

He continued walking towards you, slowing his pace as he noticed you stiffen when he got too close. It was as if he was handling a wounded bird, afraid that any sudden movement might cause you to flee and leave him behind once more. The only thing convincing him that you wouldn't run was the undeniable truth that your child was still here, and you would never leave her. The weight of this unspoken understanding hung heavily in the air, a silent tether binding you to the spot despite the turmoil within.

“I was a fool before. Wayne showed me that. Hell, I was more than a fool. I was an outright fuck up.” He stood there, holding his breath. You could almost hear his heart battering against his ribs from where you stood. As you turned around and met his gaze, a flicker of softness crept into your heart. You wanted to dash to your car, to escape home and hide until it was time to pick her up. But you knew it was impossible. For Christ's sake, he lived across the street. Eventually, you'd run into him again. The thought of the inevitable encounters made your shoulders sag with the weight of resignation, yet you stood your ground, steeling yourself for the confrontation that you knew was coming.

“That doesn’t answer my question. It just proves I was right. Why do you feel the right to call her your child when I was the one who had to endure hell for years?” 

You felt the tears fall, but made no move to wipe them away. A part of you was glad you didn’t when you felt his warm hand on your cheek, gently brushing them away with his thumb. He looked at you with that familiar expression—the one that had gotten you into this mess in the first place. It was a mix of tenderness and regret, a look that pierced through your defenses and made your heart ache. Despite everything, there was still a connection, a lingering trace of what once was, and it left you standing there, torn between the past and an uncertain future.

And it was goddamn working.

“I remembered it, just this morning.” 

He was staring through your soul with those eyes that could melt the ice-cold walls you’d built to keep yourself safe. He was the only person you had ever known who could make you feel secure, make you feel at home. In his gaze, you saw a depth of understanding and a silent plea for forgiveness, a reflection of the love that had once bound you together so tightly. Despite the pain and the years of separation, he still had the power to unravel your defenses, leaving you vulnerable yet inexplicably comforted in his presence.

“When I called you and the line went dead, I tried again and again to get through to you. Eventually, someone answered. It was your dad. He told me you didn’t want to talk to me ever again. Then I remembered something you said to me about a letter you wrote. I… I never got it.” 

The realization hit you like a freight train, surging through every vein in your body like an unstoppable force. It felt as though the tracks had suddenly given way beneath you, sending you hurtling into chaos. Yet, amidst the chaos, everything began to fall into place, like pieces of a puzzle that had eluded fitting together until this moment.

Memories flooded back—your father's abrupt phone call, the slammed receiver, the whispered conversations behind closed doors. And then, the return of your letter, marked with "return to sender." It all made sense now. The pieces of the puzzle, disjointed and scattered for so long, finally clicked into place, revealing a picture you had never dared to imagine.

A surge of conflicting emotions washed over you. Part of you wanted to cry and scream, to unleash the years of pent-up anger and frustration at the injustice of it all. You had wasted so much time hating him for what he did, resenting the world for the hand it had dealt you. But on the other hand, there was a profound sense of gratitude, a realization that despite the pain and heartache, his actions had led to the greatest gift you could have ever received.

In the midst of the turmoil, there was a glimmer of light—a beacon of love and joy that had emerged from the darkest corners of your past. Your child, the embodiment of a love you had never thought possible, had brought warmth and meaning into your life in ways you could never have imagined. And in that moment, as you grappled with the complexities of your emotions, you couldn't help but feel a sense of profound gratitude for the unexpected blessings that had emerged from the depths of your pain.

“I shouldn’t have said what I did when you told me that Willow was mine. I should’ve believed you. I always believe you.” He walked closer to you, till the tips of your shoes were touching, and you could feel his breath on your skin, the smell of nicotine engulfing you. “Maybe if I told you sooner that I…” You watched him catch his breath, watched him stop speaking for a moment. You had a blooming warm feeling in your chest, hoping what he was about to say was the same as what you’d been feeling for as long as you can remember.

“Say it, please. So that I can tell you the same thing.” 

You watched as a sparkle appeared behind his eyes, a joyous expression threatening to overtake his face. It made you want to grin against him too, want to smile stronger and wider than you’ve ever done before.

“Maybe if I told you sooner that I loved you, I could’ve made you stay. We could’ve raised her together. God, I love you, have loved you and will love you for my entire life. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything before now. I wish I had told you that night, the beautiful night that I have been obsessed with since you left.” His words were like poetry, music to your ears.

The fluorescent lights cast a soft glow over the empty high school hallway, the distant hum of the lights barely audible. After five long years apart, you stood facing each other near the lockers where you had shared countless memories as children yourself.

"I never stopped loving you," he confessed, his voice trembling slightly. "Not for a single moment."

Tears welled up in your eyes, your heart pounding in your chest. "I love you too," you whispered, your voice breaking. "I've always loved you."

For a moment, the two of you simply stared at each other, the weight of your mutual feelings hanging heavily in the air. Then, almost in unison, you took a step closer.

His other hand reached up to cup your cheek, his thumb gently brushing away the last stray tear. You leaned into his touch, your eyes fluttering closed as you savored the warmth and familiarity of his hand.

He tilted his head, closing the distance between the two of you. Your breaths mingled, and you could feel the heat radiating from his body. Then, your lips collided with his in a tender, lingering kiss, a kiss that spoke of years of longing and unspoken words.

It was soft at first, a gentle exploration, as if you were both afraid the moment would shatter. But then, the intensity grew, the kiss deepening as you poured all your pent-up emotions into it. His arms wrapped around you, pulling you closer, and you responded in kind, your hands tangling in his long, thick hair.

The world around you seemed to fade away, leaving just the two of you in a bubble of love and passion. The cool metal of the lockers pressed against your back as they kissed, grounding you both in the reality of the moment. When you finally pulled apart, both of you were breathless, your foreheads resting against each other as you tried to catch their breath.

"I've missed you so much," you murmured, your voice barely more than a breath.

"And I you," he replied, his voice thick with emotion. "But we're together now, and I'm never letting you go again."

You smiled, your heart full, and kissed him once more, sealing the promise with a tender touch, the echoes of your love resonating through the silent hallway.

This, this was the life you deserved, the love you deserved, all along. This was what true love felt like, what it felt like to be loved. He was an intoxicating drug, and you knew that you were hooked for life.

You sat in the car together, catching him up on everything he’d missed while you were apart. Soon it felt like no time had passed at all, and that you were back to your old ways. Best friends, and now lovers.

You hadn’t realised that hours had passed until you saw the cute little bundle of joy bounding her way over in her pink light up sneakers. You saw a look on Eddies face, a beaming sight of joy.

“What is it? Are you okay?” You got a little worried, thinking maybe something was wrong.

“She… she’s wearing my old hellfire shirt. It was the first one I’d ever made. I didn’t want to waste a shirt my size, so I tried it on a child's one. Wayne, well, he must have sold it on or something.” You could now see that what that look in his eyes was. It was pride. Pride that his little girl was showing an interest in something that was uniquely his.

The grin stayed on his face even as she climbed into the car, throwing her arms around the seat to hug him, squealing his name in delight. It made your heart soar, like fireworks lighting up your whole world.

“So sweetie, how was your first day?” 

“I got a boyfriend named Sam!” 

You watched Eddie almost choke on his own breath, meanwhile you couldn’t help but break into a belly laugh, clutching your sides breathlessly.

“Well, guess I better meet this boy.” He turned to you, whispering gently. “Is it too much to sit on the porch with a shotgun?”

“Eddie! The kids probably five years old!”

“Hey! She’s my little girl, I gotta protect her from the big bad kindergartners of the world.” 

And that was it, that was how you’d go onto spend the rest of your lives. With a beautiful sunny glow surrounding you like heavenly light. 

The look of love would stay on his face forever, on your wedding day, on the day you brought a brother into the world for Willow. It was there always, and you just knew.

You knew that this was what it meant to be clean.

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

And there we go! The final chapter is done after so damn long. I've been writing this fic for over a year and im so glad to finally have it be over. The amount of WIPs I've come up with since then has been enormous, but I've commited and didn't want to give up on this baby. So here it is, I hope you all enjoyed!

next up.... BRIDGERTON EDDIE

@vintagehellfire @1paire2vans @introvertedmouse @ms1oftheboys @ashlynnkennedy @poisonedluv @302rocks @micheledawn1975 @corrodedcoffincumslut @f-cklife @chloe-6123 @hellfirexwhore @caseyqdilla @alyisdead @winchester-angel @sunflowerabyss @badluckgirl @blackb4ts @tlclick73 @eddiemunsonsgf2 @rozxartaki @emilyslutface @them-cute-boys @ilovetaquitosmmmm @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @captainonaboat @lottie-90 @adaydreamaway08 @munsonmunster @thecomfortgoth @uglypastels @ghost-proofbaby @trashmouth-richie @blueywrites @amberolivia666 @mystargirl-interlude

@elegantkoalapaper @eddiesguitarskills @hazydespair @rozxartaki @seatbacksandtraytables

#eddie munson stranger things #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #eddie stranger things #eddie the freak munson #eddie x reader #eddie x y/n #eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fic #eddie #enemies to lovers #eddie fluff #eddie munson comfort #eddie munson angst #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x fem reader #eddie munson imagines #eddie munson imagine #reader x eddie munson #eddie smut #boyfriend eddie munson #eddie headcanons #eddie munson fluff #eddie x fem!reader #eddie munson soulmate au #eddie munson series #eddie munson st4 #eddie munson headcanon #eddie munson headcanons

[bubbles-for-all-of-us]

Hello friend I was wondering if I could request a fourth wing x reader fic with xaden? Maybe where instead of Violet being tortured by varrish its reader? And maybe we see a bit from xadens pov?

Hurts like hell

The pain was like no other. The concept of time had slipped away a long time ago. Your body was sore and stiff. Nor could you distinguish if it was the sound of your blood dripping on the floor or the condensation of the cellar walls. “This could be so much easier, wing leader”, Varrish's venomous voice fills your senses and suddenly you wish you hadn’t blinked. Hadn’t made him aware of your consciousness. “What do you know about the rebellion, girl?”, he takes fistfuls of your hair, yanking your head back. Your angry eyes glare up at him, “Eat. My. Shit”, you hiss through gritted teeth as the back of his hand slams into your cheek. The rings he’s wearing crack the scabbed-up cuts all over again.

And it’s as if he feels it. Every blow. Every cut. Every scream. Xaden had lost the amount of time he had vomited since they had taken you. Or more since you had saved Bodhi’s and Garrick's asses and was taken instead of them. Had he beaten both of them up for it? Yes. And he planned on repeating it once you were back in his arms.

“There’s nowhere else they could be keeping her”, Imogen says, tapping her finger on the map. Everyone had been looking for you for three days now. “Unless he’s usually magic he shouldn’t”, Bodhi adds, making Xaden let out a growl. It was driving him mad knowing that you were taking a beating for his slip-up. They weren’t being careful enough. They weren’t thinking about the consequences when they smuggled such a big load of weapons out. “Tonight. There’s an upper-hand meeting at seven that leech of a man should be there”, he grunts, his shadows drowning his hands in the darkness. “Imogen you will make sure he stays there for as long as possible”, and for the first time, she only nods, because she too can feel that Xaden is on his last straw. “You two will come with me. Fuck knows what they have going on down there”, running a hand through his hair, Xaden watches as both Bodhi and Garrick nod. Hold on, he pleads, just for a bit longer. Because he would kill them all. Burn this whole academy down if you were… and that’s enough to make him go ridge once more. He couldn’t let himself think about it.

His heart is beating so fast and so loudly that he doesn’t even hear his footsteps as they navigate the dark corridors of the dungeons. Checking every nook and cranny. Every room. Every floorboard. Until the metal gates leading to the back cellar catch Xaden’s eyes, and the way his shadows rush to it in a frenzy. His legs step forward before he even realizes it. Breathe hitching in his throat.

“Y/n”, he mutters rushing forward. His hands are shaking so much that he can barely push the hair away from your face, let alone look for the pulse. Face. Barely recognizable face. So cut up and bruised. Drowned in angry purples and blacks. “There’s a pulse”, Xaden’s head snapped to the side, he didn’t even realize that Garrick had followed him in here. “Faint but there”, he clasped Xaden’s shoulder, “But we need to get her out of here”.

And he tries, tries so hard to get the ropes of your wrists but it’s as if his own body is going into an overdrive. “Bodhi, get Xaden out of here”, Garrick orders, freeing your legs, reaching to press his fingers to your neck once more. “No”, Xaden argues, pulling at your hand, “Baby, you need to open your eyes”, he mutters looking at you, “Tell me that you hear me”. But there’s nothing. Just your limp body. Drowning in blood and filth. A firm palm presses against the back of his neck and his head is turned away from you.

“We are getting her out. Do you understand?”, Garrick’s firm words slip past the haze. “You will go with Bodhi because you can’t help out anymore and I will carry her and keep her safe”, and it’s no longer a question. It’s a statement. An order. One that Xaden follows. With Bodhi reassuring with the whole way. Catching one last look at you. Of Garrick carefully scooping you up as he mumbles, “Come on, girly, we need you here. Don’t you give up yet”.

Xaden doesn’t move from your side after Brennon meds your wounds. The Rioroso house was the only place they could think of that was safe for you. But even here his mind doesn’t ease up. It’s been a week and you haven’t shown any signs of waking up. So just like any other night when he came to visit you, he’s carefully running the healing balm into the cuts on your face and arms. Needing to know that he’s doing something. Helping in some way.

And it’s the pain sigh that leaves your lips when his fingers brush over the cut on your temple that has his stalling. “Baby”, he breathes, gaze now fully fixed on your face. His lips brush over your knuckles, “Please, open your eyes. I need to…”, and it’s as if his words coxed you out of your slumber as you blink rapidly. Scared eyes scanned the place.

Xaden leans closer, carefully bringing his fingers through your hair. Trying to soothe you with the feeling of him. “Xaden”, his name on your lips is enough to finally make him crack. He lowers his head onto your shoulder as ugly sobs echo through the room. He knows that he should be strong. To be calmer and colder but he was convinced that he was never gonna hear the sound of your voice ever again. “I’m here, my little fighter”, he sniffles, looking back up at you, “l will never let you hurt like that ever again”.

#xaden riorson #xaden riorson x reader #xaden riorson x you #xaden riorson imagine #xaden x reader #xaden imagine #xaden fourth wing imagine #xaden fourth wing x reader #fourth wing imagine #fourth wing x reader #iron flame imagine #iron flame x reader

[santaasi]

STAY

pairing: james potter x fem!reader

summary: james potter's life doesn't make sense without you

warnings: pure angst, death of the main character, no use of y/n, english isn’t my first language

word count: 1.7k

a/n: part 2 of waiting for you

THE WORLD HAS STOPPED. In a second, the world of James Potter stopped completely concentrating only on you. You were lying on the bed among the lacy white sheets. So beautiful, pale and innocent. Like the first snowdrop peeking out from under a thick crust of snow after a cold, hard winter.

James took an unsteady step towards the bed. Then another one. And one more. You were asleep. He could hear you breathing in that cold crypt-like room. And your chest was slowly rising and falling. He saw your breathing, didn't he? It wasn't an illusion. You were just sleeping. His angel was just sleeping.

A sob escaped Dorcas's lips and James turned a frown on her. She shook her head, pressing a hand to her mouth, stopping quiet cries. What does it mean? Why is Dorcas crying? James didn't understand anything, but that strange oppressive feeling that had arisen as soon as he stepped into the room was still felt all over his body.

"Hey, angel. Why are you sleeping at lunch?" James chuckled, sitting down on the bed. Dorcas tried to touch his shoulder, but he pushed her hand aside, focusing all his attention only on you.

"Angel, come on, wake up. I brought your favorite mints from Honeydukes... you looked so sad today.… And I decided... I decided..." James's voice began to tremble, and a lump stuck in his throat. It couldn't be true.

"Angel, don't joke like that. Please. Open your eyes," the guy whispered, running his gaze over your marble face, on which there was not even a shadow of a smile. You looked as still as a broken doll discarded on the floor, your face a beautiful ruin as James brushed your hair gently away. Your arms lay lifelessly against chest, like broken wings.

"Hey, A-Angel... open those beautiful eyes of yours... come on... open those big beautiful eyes for me... d-don't scare me like that, angel. Don't do this..." James quickly mumbled, grabbing your stone cold hand, lifting your body and pressing it to his chest.

You were cold. Colder than graveyard. But you've always been cold, haven't you? James always had to give you his scarf or gloves when you two went out to Hogsmeade. You were always cold, so it didn't mean anything. But have you ever been so still? So artificial and deathly pale?

"Angel, please…" James pushed you a little away from his chest, peering into your empty face, and you hung lifelessly in his arms. Your head is thrown back, and your hands have fallen on his lap. James's breathing accelerated and he immediately touched your cheek, shaking you slightly, forcing you to wake up. Hoping that you will wake up. But it didn’t work out.

"No-no-no-no… Angel, come on, say something. Don't do this. Don't leave me. No. Nah-ah. Please. Wake up. It's me. I-I... your Jamie... your Potter... your Gerrrronimo… Come on. You can't leave me, angel," the first sob escaped James's lips, and with it came the realization… His angel was dead.

James Potter felt it. From the beginning he felt that there was something wrong with you. He felt like you were distancing yourself from him and avoiding him at all cost. He saw the light in your eyes slowly go out. And heard rumors that went around Hogwarts... but James Potter never believed the rumors. He knew you. He knew that you would have come to him if something had happened. But he was wrong.

His forehead touched yours, which was as cold as ice. Through a vale of tears, he looked at you so beautiful and calm, so alive and at the same time dead. James tucked a strand of silky hair behind your ear and his hand touched your cheek, stroking gently.

"You should have told me... you should have..." James whispered softly, feeling his heart slowly struggling in his chest, echoing with the sound of a metronome in his ears. Tears were running down his reddened cheeks. And he still couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that you were gone.

"I would do anything for you… Angel, do you hear? I would do anything for you.… I'd die for you if you'd just give me a chance.… One small chance" James didn't recognize his voice. He heard it as if from somewhere far away, under a layer of ice in the cold water of the Arctic ocean, sinking deeper to the bottom with every passing second.

You're gone.

You're gone.

You're gone.

"James," Sirius whispered softly, sitting down next to best friend. James just shook his head. He won't let you go. Not now. Never. To let you go was to admit that you were gone. And James Potter couldn't do that.

James inhaled the scent of your vanilla shampoo, which after so many years by your side seemed to surround him wherever he went. He pressed your body closer to him. His fingers tangled in your soft hair, and quiet sobs came from his lips. He could feel how your body was getting colder and colder by the second.

James Potter felt the red thread that connected your lives slowly thinning and losing its color. With every passing second, you felt like sand, grain by grain, spilled through his fingers and James Potter couldn't catch and hold you. For the first time in his life, you were in his arms, but he couldn't catch you.

"No! No! NO!" James felt Sirius's hands on his shoulders, forcing him to let you go. Black was saying something, but James couldn't hear anything. He was in his own world. In a world where you were still there. With him.

"Angel, wake up, please wake up… I'll do anything... I'll throw away that ugly T-shirt that we bought at the flea market... And I-I will listen to all The Beatles records with you! I will learn every single song by heart! Just wake up… just stay with me, please" James felt himself slowly being pulled away from you. He could feel how you slipped through his fingers. How the cold start devouring him from the inside. James could hear sobs, sighs and murmurs filling the room. But none of that mattered.

"I... I'm not going to make pranks on you anymore, angel... I-I... I'm going to buy your favorite mints every day! I'll do anything, wake up, just wake up! Don't leave me!" James's voice broke.

He didn't hear anything, trying his best to remember your voice. He didn't feel like several hands were pulling him away from you, remembering only the touch of your fingers on his skin. And he saw nothing in front of his eyes, except a veil of tears and shared memories that quickly flashed before his eyes. The first smile you gave him when he let your cat down from the tree. The twinkle in your eyes that you've always looked at James with. Your soft skin. Big eyes that seemed to look straight into his soul and heart. Moles, the location of which he knew by heart. The freckles that appeared on the bridge of your nose only in summer and that James could admire for hours. Your hair, which always didn't lie the way you wanted it to. There was an image of you in front of his eyes that he would never see... hear... feel... touch… again.

James Potter fell to his knees exhausted, watching as Miss Pomfrey touches the soft skin of your neck and tries to feel your pulse. James saw her face turn pale in an instant, she pursed her lips and shook her head, looking at someone behind Potter. The room fell silent, and from the depths of James's soul came a brutal animalistic scream of realization and pain that came with it.

James screamed, pounded his fists on the wooden floor, smashing them into blood, buried his fingers in his hair, clutching them in his fists, trying to make himself feel something other than grief. He clung to the robe of Minnie, who sank down next to him, motherly hugging him to her chest, while he was crying his soul out uncontrollably, feeling as if a part of him had died with her. Feeling his whole world turn to ruins and dust.

And then it was all over. He heard Minnie whisper something in his ear, saw the wave of her wand in front of his eyes and there was... void.

An all-consuming, hopeless black void consisting of your laughter, smiles, shining eyes and memories that have turned into pain because there will be no more new ones.

Just like there will be no more of you.

And there will be no more of James Potter either.

You were his everything. And without you, nothing in his life made any sense. And if you were next to him, in this dark cage that he built for himself. You would become the moon and stars for him, who could light his way and lead him the right path, as you have done a million times before.

But you were gone.

And there was no sun, moon, or stars.

And James Potter accepted it as soon as he opened his eyes in a hospital bed at Hogwarts. He accepted it when he carefully packed your things in the dorm in boxes, imagining that this was the last day of school and he was helping you, as he did every year. He accepted it when he was sitting in the library after dinner, looking out the window at the setting sun, imagining that you were sitting next to him and telling him another silly fact about Muggles. He accepted it when he watched your body being buried six feet under, and thought about how you wanted to live next to the sea and meet the sunrises on the beach. James Potter accepted your death when he closed the door of his house with a soft knock after returning from your wake from the house opposite.

But every night, when he went to bed, he cuddled the old brown teddy bear that you gave him when you found out that it was difficult for him to cope with nightmares. He would close his bloodshot eyes and see your face, hear your ringing laughter, feel your fingers in his hair....And he didn't need anything else in this life.

And every night, a minute before he had to return to reality where you were gone, he quietly whispered "Stay" to you, hoping that when he opened his eyes, he would go out into the backyard of his house and see you with a smile on your face.

He hoped that he would see you waiting for him.

You’ve always been waiting only for James Potter.

you asked for it, you got it. honestly, I still don't know how I feel about this sequel, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway! you can always share your opinion in comments or my inbox :3

thankx for reading <3

- your santi 🪐

#– santi 🪐 #james potter x you #james potter x y/n #james potter imagine #james potter x reader #james potter fic #james potter #james potter angst #marauders fic #marauders x reader #harry potter fic

[marchtooctober]

It's been some time since i posted something 😅

My contribution for prompt "Desperate"

@dailytwiyorprompts

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“Yor.”

“Yesh?”

“Your scarf. It's falling off.”

“Oh… Shorry.”

It was one of those dinner nights of Loid and Yor, a regular practice that is part of their cover as Mr. and Mrs. Forger. Loid managed to pull off the date smoothly at the cost of another intoxicated Yor. At this point, he's now surprisingly used to it after so many times.

But maybe, this is the last.

“Thish too hard.” With struggling effort, Yor tried to fix her scarf.

“Let me.”

“N-No it'sh alright…” She mumbled.

Loid grabbed the scarf and wrapped it around Yor. As he adjusted the cloth, he felt Yor's warm breath on his hands. The sensation made Loid feel fuzzy inside, as if the warmth has spread all throughout his body. Then he quickly pulled back his hands, quite abashed.

“Thank you.” Said Yor and turned away.

She walked a few steps ahead while tapping her cheeks.

Loid wondered if he made a mistake. He didn't want Yor to be wary of him. But he couldn't help himself.

“L-Let ush cake some for Franky and Anya.”

Despite the messed up sentence, Loid understood.

“I don't think we can buy cake at this time. It's already late. I'll just bake one tomorrow if that's alright with you.” He replied.

“M'kay.” Said Yor and continued walking.

It's deep in the night and only a few people are still out, just like them.

The cobblestone pavement carpeted with dry foliage, the leafless trees line up the path. Howling of chilly wind signifies the near ending of fall. And it won't be long before winter comes, and a lonely one at that.

No matter how much he yearns for an ordinary life, Loid will never attain it. The so-called “home” where he wants to be, is a place very far from his reach.

“Loi? Where are you? Loi!”

Yor's voice took him out of his grim reverie. He rushed to her.

“I’m here. Hold on to my arm and walk carefully.”

Loid held out his arm but Yor declined.

“I’m fine. I jush thought you gone shomwere.”

Hearing those words, Loid swallowed hard.

“You don’t have to worry. I… I’m here. I’m not going anywhere..” Replied Loid and smiled bitterly.

They continued, Yor still walking ahead. Loid stared at her back and felt the unfamiliar sting of guilt. And where did it come from? Guilt out of saying those words? Handful of words added to the pile of lies. But it was necessary, lying for his mission. Yet, he couldn't shake the heaviness of guilt.

There shouldn't be any emotional hindrance. He knows it well. But for a second, he was possessed with selfishness and tried to reach out his trembling hand. Loid simply wanted to hold Yor’s hand.

Suddenly, he quickly remembered that he had no right to do such a thing.

Who he is right now is nothing but a disposable mask. Loid Forger is just one among the many passing shadows of Twilight.

Pain is welling up in his chest. Twilight realized his fault. The suppression of feelings that he didn't want to face.

Is this love after all?

What he knows about romance is mostly from theory but never experienced the real thing. It’s unfitting to someone like him. Feelings and sentiments were never beneficial to him.

Drawn to the flame he can't touch. As a last resort, he called out to Yor.

“Yor.”

“Hmm?”

“Can we take our time walking?”

“Why?”

“B-Because…”

“Okay, Loi… If you want sho. Let'sh walk sowlowly.”

Yor beamed a smile and turned away. Loid was thankful that he was walking behind. He didn't want Yor to see the few tears that escaped his eyes.

This little distance between them is the only thing that keeps Loid from losing his sanity. He knows that even this moment will fade as a memory once everything is over. And he will be left with nothing but a blank canvas for him to paint another fakery.

That's all there is to it.

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#spy x family #loid forger #yor forger #loiyor #sxf fanfic #sxf #twiyor #drabble #dailyprompt #twiyor daily propmts #loiyor drabble #yeayeayea i kinda promised a royai fic but that one will take me loooonger #i need to do a proper research first lol #so anywayyy #long live angsty fics #twiyorprompts