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pseudowho · 3 months

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Deadly Nightshade

(help me find the Suguru artist in the banner, for crediting and thanks/permission!)

A Suguru Geto "sex pollen" fic.

Suguru swallows an aphrodisiac curse, and finds the reader when his entanglement becomes too much to bear.

Warnings: *MONSTERFUCKING*, Loss of control (Suguru), rough but consensual, throat-fucking, Suguru's cursed technique...but sexy, tentacle shibari, cum as cure

(AU!Adult Suguru who never left Jujutsu High timeline)

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"Will be late home. It's a big one. Go to sleep without me, baby. You'll be tired."

Suguru finished tapping, looking up to the abandoned industrial site with wary interest, slipping his phone back into his pocket. He felt beckoned into this concrete jungle in a way he found unsettling; the Curse was clearly disguising its true potential, hiding in plain sight...but calling in back-up (likely Nanami or Higuruma at this time of day) would only put them at risk. And, they were tired.

With an internal spiteful sting at having lost his evening with you, which Suguru suppressed, black eyes flat and expressionless, he stepped onwards into the plunging lush foliage and exposed steel beams.

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Suguru's apologetic text filled you with disappointed longing. Loneliness and worry quashed your appetite. All your hopes and plans for a soft, touch-filled evening curled up on the sofa with him, were wiped.

Sighing, lovelorn and resigned, you took yourself to bed, your face snuffled into Suguru's pillow and the soft-spiced smell of him, to lull you into sleep.

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Suguru staggered through the door, leaning back to close it, gasping, sweating, clawing his jacket and shirt off his body. He burned from within, like the nine circles of hell.

After swallowing the curse, the roiling forest had disappeared with it...but Suguru soon felt its many limbs stretching within him, caressing the deepest parts of him, blighting him with this ungodly pain--

--no...not pain, Suguru thought vaguely, now naked except for his hakama, beads of sweat dripping from chest to belly as he teetered towards the bathroom. White-knuckled hands clasped the sink-- Suguru caught himself in the mirror, ripples of desire thrumming through him with every frantic beat of his heart, his raven hair free of its tie and framing febrile eyes--

Suguru retched, his shoulders heaving with exertion, retching again, his rigid cock crushed against his thigh as he collapsed forwards, seeping pre-cum and shaking and moaning, thinking of you in your bed you in your bed you in your bed--

Out of control I'm out of control got to take it back got to--

Something in Suguru snapped.

The lights flickered out one by one, from bathroom to corridor, as an eldritch forest clawed its way back out of him.

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You awoke in a fever dream, your sigh condensing and hanging heavy and humid in the earthy hushhushhush of a tropical forest, teeming with life.

What a strange dream, you thought. You did not notice how this set you apart from true dreamers, who would not find anything unusual about waking on a bed of moss and monstera. The duvet felt warm and springy with foliage beneath your fingertips, your toes, your body.

You had slept, and these uncanny tropics had grown up around you. Not one surface was free of queerly animated vines, yawning tropical flowers, and thick verdant leaves. Unable to see where one room began and another ended, your little home suddenly stretched for miles and closed in on you all at once.

You stepped gingerly off the bed, your feet settling on dewy leaves, splitting the fine low mist that clouded there. As you stepped to the doorway, you did not feel the hissing black tendrils, more creature of the deep than plant, that reached longingly after your feet.

Led only by curious patches of bioluminescence, eerie and golden, you moved to the living room, blinking, certain you were ill. A familiar voice, soft and dangerous, came forth from the shadows.

"You're awake. Good. I'd have fucked you while you slept, but they wanted you squirming."

With a gasp and a cry, you felt yourself become intangibly bound and suspended, feeling the rush of smooth tendrils snaking around your chest and bare thighs, wrists and ankles. Wrists tied behind your back, and legs folded up until your heels touched the backs of your thighs, your legs spread, you hung at face level to Suguru, who stalked out from a patch of hazy light.

Suguru had always held a haunting grace, a soft, untouchable masculinity, an unwavering abstract sensitivity. But, approaching you now, his black eyes were flat, sharklike, predatory. He had not hunted you, but had, instead, waited for you on the outskirts of his web.

In only his hakama, fine black tendrils tattooed his skin, animating him as he panted, desperate and sweating. The tendrils seemed to be soothing him, stroking, constantly moving over his rigid cock, his chest, his throat. As your own tendrils began to offshoot from the black wet-velvet vines that bound you, creeping under your clothes, circling round your nipples and creeping towards your core, a whimper broke free from your throat.

"Shhhhh, shh, shh, I need you wet if you're gonna do this for me, sweetheart."

Suguru stepped to you as if you catch your voice in his hands, sliding one finger into your mouth, pressing down on your tongue. He shivered in contrary to the inferno inside him, gripping his weeping cock with a roughened moan. As Suguru stroked your tongue, he reached down to undo his hakama, letting the coiling vines pull them from his body.

Suguru pressed against you now, lifting your top so he could rut his weeping cock against your belly, still examining your mouth with his fingers. You felt them tremble against your tongue. The last shreds of your Suguru were the only thing holding him back from taking you with bruising force. The vines coiled through your top, your underwear, shredding, removing, until you were naked, suspended, entwined.

Suguru's black eyes feasted on you, one hand stroking his cock with an iron grip, pre-cum wetting his fingers, and the other hand grazing over you, stroking the peaks of your breasts, your ribs, slipping between your puffy lips to see how ready you were for him. Carnal instinct took over, and he pressed himself back against you, his cock leaping in his hand.

Suguru shivered again, skin to skin with you. He knew, instinctively, that the itch at the base of his skull would not-- could not-- become dormant until he had completely spent himself inside you.

"You know I wouldn't ask more of you than I know you can take," Suguru cooed, soft and persuasive against your lips. You felt a tendril slip over your mound, slipping between your wet folds and coiling snugly around your clit, massaging it, rolling it. You mewled into Suguru's mouth, and he swallowed it down hungrily, kissing your sighs and whimpers off your lips.

"Oh fuck, baby-- you feel so wet--"

With a jolt, you realised that Suguru's hands clasped you by the hips, nowhere near your core.

"You can't feel tha-- how can you--" Suguru bit your lip, punishingly hard and you squeaked as the tendril that pleasured you so tenderly squeezed your clit in reprimand, simultaneously.

"They're mine," Suguru hissed, "just like every godforsaken curse I swallow," and he pulled you lower so your core settled on his cockhead, the vines acting in symbiosis with him to drag your thighs apart, "just like you're mine. And you'll help me...won't you?"

You felt a thicker tendril snake up the inside of your thigh, ghosting at your entrance. With savage force and a growl of warning, Suguru ripped it aside, pressing his cockhead inside you just enough to prevent any other intrusions.

Suguru's orgasm hit him with obscene force and he collapsed into you, stuttering his hips just once, before cumming with a shout, his seed spattering into your entrance and puffy lips, dripping down your bound thighs in thick white streams. Suguru's moans elongated into staccato whimpers, before descending into a hiss of unbridled rage.

"That did fucking nothing," he growled, tangling his fingers into your hair, yanking your head to the side, sinking his sharp canines into the front of your throat. His cockhead still leapt just inside you, spurting weak trickles of cum, and Suguru almost cried to feel absolutely no relief from the burning need throbbing through his body.

You felt the vines squeeze around you, your nipples clamped and rolled until tears filled your eyes with ethereal blurred lights. Suguru reached his long arms behind you, grasping the tops of your shoulders to slam you down against him, impaling you, gasping and wildly overstimulated, onto his cum-lubricated cock.

The tendril rolling and flicking over your clit picked up speed, and you came, twisting against your restraints, crying Suguru's name. Suguru stared hungrily down to where he bottomed out in your pussy, watching and feeling it clench around his cock with shuddering bliss.

As the tendrils continued to work on your nipples and clit, your pleasure becoming frantic and painful, making you squirm and pull away from them, Suguru landed a stinging slap to your arse.

"Fucking take it. What good are you if you can't milk this thing out of me? More." Suguru lifted you just once, cruelly slamming you down again, warning you against your squirming, needing beyond need for you to clench around him again.

"Suguru-- please-- it's too much--" Your needy cries broke off into agonal gasps as you came again and Suguru's head dropped back, jaw slack as he felt your pussy clench and contract, sucking cum from him, surely enough to relieve him, surely--

"No, I-- no--" he panted, his eyes frantic, watching his seed leak out of you, now floppy and malleable in your corseting vines. Digging both hands into his hair, scratching at his own scalp, then moving his fingertips to his tongue to suck them with a ragged groan, Suguru grasped at straws for any stimulation to purge him of this monstrous need.

As he gripped himself, clutching and agonised, his eyes feverish, you could only moan stunted little moans as the vines around you lifted and dropped you, thrusting you savagely onto Suguru's length, still impossibly hard. You leaned forwards, kissing Suguru with urgency, trying to claw him back to you as his vines fucked you against him. He nipped at you, biting, no longer the gentle man you knew.

"Not hard enough-- shit, you can-- can do better than that--"

Finding some strength again, Suguru's hands dropped to your hips, kneading the plush fat there, trying to squeeze you around him, and he added to the strength of his vines, lifting and slamming you back onto him.

So lost were you both in chasing his release, neither of you noticed the forest around you gradually withering, fading and dying. The bioluminescence waxed and waned, throwing strange, marionette shadows around the room.

You were thankful for the embrace of the vines, unable to count how many times you had peaked from the constant stimulation of vines, masturbating you while Suguru kept your cunt and belly constantly filled. Suguru gasped and murmured into your neck, all unintelligible, unreasonable demands of you, and pleas for release.

As Suguru came with a ragged cry again, filling your aching pussy to the sound of wet, squelching thrusts, you felt the tendrils around your breasts and clit wither away, leaving your buds swollen and tender.

Suguru could barely stand, supported by a few remaining vines, still staring into you, so hungry but so spent. You felt him pull his cock out of you, dripping with his own seed, and you cried out to feel his cock replaced by a thick-tipped vine, pressing against your cervix, shunting his seed up into your belly.

Suguru's eyes rolled back to feel this bizarre vicarious pleasure, lazily letting the vine thrust his cum back into you, as the others twisted you, tilting so your back was parallel to the floor, your head tipped back, mouth level with his cock, still so red and aching.

"Is your throat tighter than your pussy?" Suguru pondered aloud, drunk and swaying with divine ecstasy as he fingered the sides of your jaw, slapping his cockhead against your lips and tongue. When you stuck out your tongue invitingly, swiping its tip across Suguru's slit, he gasped, shuddering and gritting his teeth.

"Let's find out," Suguru hissed, sliding his cock into your mouth, letting you taste your combined arousal, before thrusting with an injured moan into your throat, squeezing you, feeling the ridges of his cock move inside you as you gagged around him.

Pulling out enough to let you breathe, Suguru gripped you by the head and neck, grunting as he rutted into you, his pleasure doubled by his vine fucking his cum back into your pussy. Suguru's eyes fixed, fascinated, on the wet slip of this extra appendage inside you, how you reflexively humped against it as if it was his cock, how you mewled and whimpered at its intrusive tenderness.

As you twitched and shuddered, convulsing with overstimulation, Suguru came for the last time in a soundless gasp, his knees almost buckling beneath him as wave after wave of please rolled through him, washing away the dreadful, burning itch running through his brain and spine, leaving him exhausted, but finally un-fogged, finally in control.

With little warning, you were released from your bounds, and Suguru caught you, cradling you against him, and lowering you with a fractured groan to the floor. He sunk onto you, his mouth on your neck in prayer, kissing and soothing, blessing you with his relief.

"Would've died," he insisted, kissing your hair, your eyes, your nose, spooning you against him as the last remnants of this unwelcome forest embered away, rising like ashes on rising heat to fade into the night, "would've died-- died if you hadn't--"

You shushed Suguru, plaiting his fingers with yours across your chest as he shivered and heaved against you.

"Not...not your fault," you yawned, leaning into his kisses, "but like I keep telling you...you can't eat all of your problems away." Suguru laughed softly, nuzzling you.

"No...can fuck them away though, apparently."

Sticky and intertwined together on the floor, Suguru surveyed the cracked floorboards, the walls rended by vines, and trickles of damp running down from the ceiling. Lips puckering in dread against your neck, Suguru whispered.

"What, uhm...what do we tell the home insurance company?"

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By far the most unhinged thing I've ever written. I'll see myself out.

1K notes · View notes

foli-vora · 1 year

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once again in your arms

joel miller x f!reader

A/N: mwahah, hello boys i’m baaack (10 points to whoever knows what movie that quote's from). took an unexpected break coz life, but i’m ready to get back on track. this was requested by a beautiful anon a while back (sorry for the wait angel), but i hope you enjoy! x

Request: hello! so this is kinda angsty: joel and the reader are married and have a baby (plus sarah, obviously). the day of the outbreak, reader and baby were in town and she couldnt call joel (or viceversa) cause the phone lines were down. they were separated for a few years until they arrives at the quarantine zone he's in, and he recognizes them in the crowd.

Word count: 4.5k-ish

Warnings: mentions of pregnancy, birth and having a baby, domestic fluff, angst, pre and post outbreak, some spoilery things if you haven’t seen the show yet, heartbreak, loss of a child, apocalypse things, i sweat at the idea of caring for a baby during the end of the world, soft reunions, fluff, cameos of my fave oc’s made in a different series

It’s a fact you had learnt in the very early days of your relationship... the Miller men knew how to care for a lady. Whether it was Tommy sliding in to open the door for you before you could reach for the handle, or Joel draping you in blankets and taking on the responsibility of keeping your hot water bottle warm to fend off cramps for the evening, not a moment went by when you didn’t feel the constant reassurance of their care.

Especially now, fresh from the hospital and tender from your days of excruciating pain and an extensively long labour, Tommy quickly slaps the pillows into something plusher, hands gentle as they guide you down until you’re reclining into the armchair.

Joel keeps an eye on you from across the room, the brief wash of concern slipping away with the easy smile that grows along his lips when your eyes meet.

He rocks the wrapped bundle in his arms softly, a big hand dwarfing the small head that peaks from the blankets. His fingers brush through the light smattering of hair peeking out from the cotton burrito, his index running along the tiny peak of a nose and you feel your heart swell in your chest.

“Dad,” Sarah whines with an eager smile, shifting restlessly on the couch, “come on, I’ve been waiting all weekend.”

“Oh my god,” Joel drawls sarcastically, “all weekend? Baby girl, how are you survivin’ right now?”

“Shut up,” her grin widens, “give me my baby brother before I explode.”

“Well, we don’t want that mess all in the livin’ room,” Joel quips, stepping over your weekend bags tossed on the floor and closer to the couch, “ain’t treadin’ your brain all into the rug—thing was damn expensive.”

Sarah shrugs, readjusting her body to sit straighter and holding her arms out expectantly, “Least I have a brain.”

Tommy snorts in amusement, grinning at his brother's expense, “That’s true.”

“Are you still here?” Joel side eyes him, barely fighting the smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

They bicker, throwing their little snippy sibling comments back and forth before Sarah clears her throat, her eyebrows rising in impatience.

“Alright, alright. Here, watch his head,” Joel instructs gently, a smile playing along his lips, “that’s it, baby, you got him.”

It’s a beautiful picture, Sarah carefully bringing the baby closer and tucking him carefully into her arms, and the sentiment is shared with Tommy as the flash and click of a camera goes off. He removes the polaroid sliding from the slot and sits it on the coffee table to develop before instructing Joel to slide in next to her and smile.

Both Joel and Sarah are oblivious to his instruction, lost in the bubble that has overcome them. You find peace watching them, warmth spreading along your limbs by the sweet tenderness of it all. The love is clear between the three of them cuddled on the couch, and it’s almost too much for your heart to bear.

Sarah beams down at her baby brother, cooing soft words and stroking a gentle finger down Matthew’s cheek. Joel throws an arm to rest on the top of the couch behind Sarah, turning into her and answering her questions quietly.

8 pounds, 3 ounces. Smaller than you. No, he didn’t cry at all—gave me and the docs a damn heart attack. She sure did a great job.

Your Joel was never a man to wear his heart on his sleeve, but the emotion shines from his eyes, bleeds through the lines in his face and it’s enough to bring tears building along your lash line.

“You okay over there?”

His familiar drawl brings your attention to him, and you smile at him, tired and fully at peace. It’s bliss, despite the ache of birth still hanging in your limbs. M

“I’m fine,” you respond quietly, lids heavy with exhaustion, “I’m just so happy.”

He fucking beams. His grin creases his cheeks and he nods softly.

“Me too, honey,” he mutters, turning his attention back to his children and playing with a strand of Sarah’s hair as he gazes down at Matthew, “me too.”

—

Four months later.

Chaos.

Matthew wails against your chest, the deafening sounds of screams, bullets, sirens and explosions setting him off into hysterics. Your arms tighten around him, keeping his face tucked closely into your throat so your scent could hopefully provide him some reassurance.

You crouch beside cars, you run until your legs ache. You take cover in stores, the soles of your shoes crunching over broken glass of the shattered windows. Every phone you try gives nothing but a dull tone. Radios are filled with static and emergency broadcasts play on the view screens you run past in your effort to escape whatever the hell is happening.

Worry stirs along the edges of your mind. Is Joel okay? Sarah? Tommy? You can’t call him, you can only run and hope nothing takes you down in your effort to get back to your car. You pass people crouched over others, blood smearing along their lips as they tear unforgivingly into the flesh of another.

It’s a nightmare, and it’s everywhere you look.

Almost there.

You see the sign of the parking lot and it only makes you run that much faster, even though your legs threaten to give out at any minute. You pass an elderly man crouching beside a woman, blood flowing from the open gash on her throat, and the ache clutching your heart only increases when his pleas reach your ears over the mayhem.

“Gloria,” he mutters in an aged rasp, “up you get, love. You’re alright, come on now—”

You can’t help it.

Somewhere in your mind you can feel Joel screaming at you to keep running, to get yourself to safety and not give a damn about anyone other than Matthew, but the image of this man cradling his wife’s wrinkled, bloodied hand is enough to get you advancing to him before anyone could hurt him.

“Sir—”

He ignores you, too busy with brushing the woman’s blood soaked white hair from her face.

“Sir, we have to move—”

You wrap your fingers around his shoulder and shake firmly. His head gives a shake of denial as he clutches his wife’s hand tighter.

“No… no, she’ll need help—she has a bad ankle.”

Shifting Matthew unsteadily onto your hip, your fingers wrap under his arm and tug him onto his feet. He fights you, bats your hold away with an infuriated expression at your rough handling of him.

“I’m so sorry, but she’s gone—we have to run. I—I have a car, please… just come with me, please!”

“I won’t leave her—”

“Please… they’re coming! I—would she want this for you? To die like this?”

He blinks, his frown softening ever so slightly before screams pierce the air, much closer than you anticipated, and terror claws up your throat until you feel you’ll vomit.

You hold out a hand, relieved when his own rough, calloused hand finally takes it, and then you’re running, albeit slower than before, but you make it to your car with no issues.

You dive into the driver's seat, passing Matthew over to the stranger when he makes an impatient gesture to hold him and then you’re tearing out of the lot, running down the few rabid looking beings that advance on you with bloodied expressions of hunger.

You don’t think you take a proper breath until you’re past a military barricade that had seemingly been destroyed in the attack, flying down the highway and around other panicked drivers with sweat slicking your skin.

Taking a deep breath to slow the brutal pounding of your heart, you look at Matthew, now calmed and looking up at the stranger with an obvious shine of curiosity. The old man is clearly softened by the baby, letting his small hand wrap around his finger and wiggling it playfully in his hold.

“That’s Matthew,” you mutter shakily, meeting the eyes of the elderly man before gazing back out the windscreen. You take another breath before giving your own name, tears biting at your eyes when you utter the name Miller.

Do you still have a husband? A step daughter? A brother in law? The unknown scares you, outright fucking terrifies you.

The man nods in your peripheral vision.

“Harold,” he finally says, voice rough and tired.

—

There are people everywhere, screaming, crying.

People run, shout, wail over family and friends.

Tears have long dried on his face, his head thumping relentlessly with the remnants of his heartbreak. Tommy’s grip is firm on him, tugging him out of the way of people tearing down in their direction, pulling him to where a makeshift table is thrust under a tent as a reception of sorts.

He doesn’t care about the people already there asking about their family and friends. He shoves them out of the way, hands shaking as they clutch the edge of the weak table.

“I’m lookin’ for a woman… she’d be with a baby boy, not even four months old—”

His voice shakes. He can’t get it to stop. He struggles to get out the detailed descriptions of you both down to the clothes you were wearing, speaking your names through trembling lips. His stomach jolts at the thought of you somewhere, lying helplessly on the floor with your flesh getting torn into while Matthew screams in his car seat.

He’s a damn baby. He wouldn’t know what’s happening, wouldn’t know why his mama’s not there with him—

The woman gives a small expression of sympathy over the thin surgical mask covering her mouth, “I’m sorry, sir. We’ve had no babies that young come through, and nothing like that has come in over the radios.”

He retches.

His body heaves, almost as if it’s rejecting the mere idea that you weren’t somewhere safe waiting for him. He had failed. Failed to keep Sarah safe, failed to keep Matthew safe, you—the vows he had made now meant shit. He hadn’t been there for better or worse. He’d hadn’t done what a father should have and kept his kids free from harm.

Sarah had died, terrified and in agony, in his hold. Her bloodied handprints remain dry and caked on his arms. Matthew had died, not even making it to six months. A baby, still fresh to the world, only just able to hold his own head up. You had died, not knowing where he and Sarah were, if they were even safe.

Tommy hauls him to a close trash can, rubbing a firm hand up and down his back as he chokes on vomit, tears soon streaming down his cheeks when his body eventually has nothing left to give. His heart hammers in his chest, thundering against his ribs and filling his ears until he’s unaware of the noises around him.

“They’re gone,” he whispers hoarsely, clutching at the rim of the trash can in an effort to keep himself up.

“Now we don’t know that—”

“God damn it, Tommy, you saw what it was like out there!”

Tommy sighs, his own eyes filling with tears. “We gotta keep hope, Joel—”

“Hope?” Joel spits at his brother, “What good is hope against that shit out there? She would’ve been alone, you know as well as I Matthew only would’ve slowed her down. They were in the city. We couldn’t even keep safe out here! They’re—they’re gone. My wife… my baby boy, my baby girl—”

The sobs tear from his chest, harsh and painful. He mourns for hours, unseeing of the flurried movement still happening around him, his sorrow mixing with the flood of agony filling the makeshift safe zone with every new unhurt civilian looking for someone familiar.

Tommy doesn’t take his arms away from around his brother until dawn starts to pierce the horizon,

—

Two years later.

He still fills your thoughts daily.

Your life, your old life, would flash behind your eyelids at night when sleep would finally claim you. You’d feel his touch, kiss his lips, touch his face. It all felt so normal. The dreams would be nothing but memories, and somehow, it made them feel more like nightmares.

Mornings making breakfast with Sarah, dancing to the music falling from the radio. Family game nights, watching Tommy and Joel get more and more competitive with each game. Grocery shopping with Joel, simply wandering down the aisles and relishing in his comforting touch warming your lower back.

You could never quite make peace with the possibility that he was dead. It didn’t sit right. The idea that your Joel had been lost to the disaster that had claimed the world just seemed impossible. Your heart rejected the notion, refused to accept that its counterpart wasn’t somewhere out there, living, breathing, surviving,

Sarah and Tommy, too.

They had to be somewhere, holed up safely and keeping well. They had to.

“They’ve established a quarantine zone close by,” you say quietly, mindful of Matthew sleeping on your lap, “it’ll be a lot safer there than out here. I think we should give it a go… find a more secure place to live. I’ve heard they have work available, good flow of food and medicine…”

Harry snorts quietly, shifting under his old, thick jacket, “That doesn’t mean they’re happy giving it out. There’ll be a catch somewhere.”

You eye the long carved frown in his features and lean forward to fix the blanket covering his tired legs, “Don’t you think we should try at least?”

“Maybe they’ll put a bullet in me,” Harry grumbles moodily, “I’m old—I can’t work like they’ll want me to. Although, it’ll beat living through this bloody nightmare any longer.”

“Harold,” you chide softly, heart aching at the thought of losing the grumpy old man after spending so long by his side.

He’d quickly become a grandfather figure of sorts, to both you and Matthew. The little boy was obsessed with him, and had been since the day you had come together, and though he tried to hide it behind his usual icy facade, Harry was smitten, weak from the boy learning to call him pa.

“He’ll be safer in there,” Harry finally grumbles, gazing at the sleeping toddler. “This is no life for him out here. It’s getting worse and worse. Stability will do him good.”

“And you’ll come with us?”

He sighs sharply, crossing his arms over his chest. “Fine—I’ll come. But if they don’t kill me, I’ll be bloody upset with you.”

You snort in amusement, a grin curling your lips. “Fair enough. Now drink your soup.”

“I’m not hungry. You have it.”

He shoves it away, pushing it in your direction, as he usually does. It’s a daily fight—him refusing food in favour of giving you and Matthew more, ensuring you both never went hungry despite his own hunger and rapid weight loss due to the sudden lack of food.

You give him a playful frown and hold the small cup out to him.

“Don’t make me force feed you, old man, drink it.”

—

The walls of the Quarantine Zone are a lot more daunting than you had originally thought they would be. They tower high, and the barely there movement of soldiers along the front and top of it have nerves start to build in the pit of your stomach.

Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Surely they wouldn’t shoot without asking questions? Would they even give you a chance? What happens to you if the zone is full? Would they let you go on your merry little way?

God, you feel sick.

The ice creeping along your skin doubles, and you tighten your grip on the baby carrier strapped to your chest. Matthew hums quietly against your back, his little fingers tracing random patterns along your shirt as he bounces with your each step. Harry walks somewhat steadily beside you, his cheeks reddening with the more distance you cover.

He gives you a reassuring nod when you look to him for guidance, and you continue forward, swallowing the lump building in your throat when you become aware of them yelling about your presence.

Their guns are raised when you eventually make it closer, and it’s automatic to throw your hands up in surrender.

“We’re not infected!” you shout, hoping they’d listen.

A soldier steps forward. “On the ground, now!”

“Shit. Okay! Please, I—we’re not infected—”

“Get. On. The. Ground!”

“I have a kid! I have a—please, we’re not—”

“Get the kid out.”

Panic flares to life in your chest. You fight the tremble in your fingers as they raise to the clip across your chest, winding a supportive hand around to your back to keep Matthew from falling out of the carrier as it loosens from your torso.

After a bit of shifting, Matthew stands on shaky legs, his eyes darting between you and the few soldiers with their weapons raised.

“It’s okay, baby,” you soothe softly, “we gotta do what the man says, okay? Can you do that for mama?”

You continue to lower until your front hits the rubble covered ground, and you motion for Matthew to do the same, heart breaking as he cowers in fear and falls to his knees before copying your posture and hiding his face against the road.

More voices fill your ears, the obvious presence of more soldiers swarming from the gate causing your pulse to skyrocket as Harry lowers on the other side of the small toddler.

“Check ‘em.”

“Everything’s fine,” you murmur, keeping your gaze on Matthew and smiling when he peeks at you from between his fingers, “we’re okay. Keep your eyes on me, baby. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

It stings.

You automatically flinch away from the device someone holds at your neck, freezing when more weapons are raised in your direction. The device gives a small beep and the soldier gives a loud clear, before moving for Matthew.

He cries out at the pain, his chest heaving with his growing sobs. The guns move in his direction and you’re flying towards him before you can even think, yelping when arms pull you away from your baby before you can console him. His screams worsen.

“Please,” you beg, “he’s just a baby—!”

The soldiers remain emotionless.

Another beep, another clear.

The fingers digging into your arms loosen and then you’re free, hurriedly crawling on all fours until Matthew’s in your arms, his tear stricken face pressing into your throat. You soothe him softly, murmuring how well he did and that he’s safe with you while the soldiers move their attention to Harry.

When the device gives a final clear, another soldier steps forward, a small smile stretching his lips.

“Sorry about that,” he says, stepping forward until he’s only a step away, “but we can’t be too careful.”

It’s surreal being around people again.

For the longest time, it’s just been you, Matthew and Harry. The people left after the event had turned cruel, desperate for any remaining resources and resulting to violence left, right and centre. It’d been sheer luck that you three had escaped some of the nastier characters you’d come across during your treks. Sure, you’d lost a few supplies every now and then, but you were thankful you all were still here at least.

The man leads you into an office of sorts, with rusted old chairs to sit on while he goes about ‘registering’ you. You’re surprised at the process of it all, confused when he says you’re in luck because after this morning, there are new rooms available. What does that mean? Had something happened to the occupants?

Your stomach turns, but you dare not dwell on it.

Safety for Matthew, that’s all that matters. That’s why you’re here.

It feels like hours before you’re stepping into the sun again, lead out onto a relatively normal looking street with written directions to your new accommodation. The door bangs loudly behind you, fully closing you from the horrors of the outside world, and you try not to focus on the looks of curiosity, borderline hostility, as you start to walk further into the QZ, the height of the wall casting a large shadow over your path.

There’s a main square of sorts, filled with small stations of people selling various items. Your stomach grumbles at the sight of shitty looking food, desperate to eat something other than the random old bits and pieces you’d find through your looting, but you’d have to begin work to even afford a single half burnt bread roll. The two ration cards you had received at your ‘registration’ wouldn’t make a dent in what you’d need to afford any of it.

You pass the sellers, sharing a sullen look with Harry as he too realises he wouldn’t have enough for any of it.

There’s crowds, and you try to keep to yourself as you move, but something catches your eye, as if your sight had been automatically pulled to that direction and you’re oblivious to the people bumping into your frame.

For a moment, you’re sure you’re dreaming.

Did they end up shooting you at the gate? This couldn’t be real, couldn’t be unfolding right before your very eyes. You feel alive. You feel your pulse, your breath. You feel Matthew shift in the carrier, you hear Harry making comments about the people and the surrounding buildings.

You can’t look away.

You’re pulled in his direction, certain with every bone in your body that it’s him. It’s him.

The man turns, and his eyes are meeting yours through the crowds before you can even brace for it, and you see the moment it hits him.

He freezes, his eyes unblinking as if they don’t want to risk losing the hallucination his mind had conjured. He steps forward, and again, and again, slow in his movements, cautious.

“Joel?” You breathe, knowing he wouldn’t be able to hear you over the bustle of your surroundings and the distance between you, but he must see your lips mould his name because then he’s running, ducking through the people and heading straight your way.

You start to jog, careful not to disturb the carrier holding Matthew too much, and then he’s there. He’s there and he’s real and he’s saying your name so sweetly, a broken rasp of disbelief and a tremble taking over his hands as they raise to cup your cheeks.

You sob at his touch.

The tears flow from your eyes and you grasp at whatever you can on him, your fingers tightening around the jacket hanging from his frame as you attempt to pour two years of loss into your embrace. He cradles the back of your head, keeps your face pressed tightly against the dirtied skin of his throat as he mutters brokenly about how he thought you were dead and that he’d missed you so damn much.

“Oh baby boy,” he rumbles, noticing the baby carrier and the toddler within it with tears filling his lash line, “look at you.”

You hurriedly unclip the harness and sweep Matthew out of it, bringing him into the middle of your embrace. Joel runs a hand along Matthew’s cheek before sweeping down and kissing him on the forehead, his tears dropping over the toddler’s cheeks in obvious relief and utter joy.

“How—”

You shake your head, nuzzling into the rough hand holding your cheek. “Later. We’ll talk later about everything, I just—god, I’ve missed you so fucking much, Joel.”

His head lowers until his forehead is pressed against yours, and his eyes flutter closed. You feel it in the simple gesture, how much he had missed you, mourned for you. He gives a small nod, followed by a quiet okay, before another presence suddenly makes themselves known.

Your body jolts with the weight hitting your side, and you jump in fright before your eyes come across a slightly skinny looking Australian Shepherd desperate for attention.

His tongue lolls from his mouth as he attempts to lap at your cheek, and you chuckle through your stream of steady flowing tears at the cheerful dog.

“Chip,” Joel grunts in slight annoyance, shoving the fluffy beast away from where he tries to jump and sniff at Matthew’s cheeks, “down—down, boy!”

“You have a dog?” You ask in curiosity, reaching out to pet the animal. Your smile widens when he eagerly nuzzles into your touch with an excited whine.

“He was wanderin’ the QZ when I came in,” Joel replies, one of his hands leaving your waist to deliver a rough rub to the dogs head, “followed me home one night and hasn’t stopped botherin’ me since. Tommy said he’d be good for me.”

“Tommy’s here? And Sarah?” You perk immediately in excitement, your eyes flying past his shoulder to look for his brother and the other part of your heart that’s been missing for years. “I’m so glad they’re alright, where are they?”

You don’t notice how considerably quiet he’s gone until you look at him. He’s defeated, guarded, his dark eyes drawn to the floor. He can’t look at you. Why can’t he look at you? What’s happened?

“Joel?”

“Sarah… she—she—”

He struggles to finish the sentence, the words stick uncomfortably on his tongue. His features twist in clear anguish and you feel the world around you shatter. Sarah, she… she’s gone? When? How?

Your heart sinks, weak and broken by the unexpected news. Your mind struggles to wrap itself around the notion that you’d never see her again, that the last time you saw her was truly the last.

Regret begins to build in the pit of your stomach. That last day… you should’ve hugged her tighter, kissed her forehead, told her how much she meant to you and how lucky you were to be in her life—

The tears begin again.

“Oh Joel, I-I’m so sorry,”

You both share the heartache, wrapped in each other's arms and breathing in the other. His tight hold doesn’t loosen for a second, and you attempt to put every ounce of energy in your tired body into returning it.

The world stands still, just like it did that cursed day.

How can you be so elated that he’s here, and yet be filled with so much pain at the same time? How long has he been lost, no doubt blaming himself for his baby girl not making it to where he is now? You mourn her, mourn him for being lost, stuck on a path of despair and believing he had lost everything for so long.

What had become of him? What had the pain done to him? Surely it would’ve been pure torture for the man who practically breathed family.

Harry can wait. Introductions can wait. Food, drink, sleep—you care for none of it. Not now. All that matters is that Joel is here, truly here in the flesh, wrapped in your arms and holding the child he hasn’t seen for two years. All that matters is that you had found one another in the violent hellscape the world had become.

Peace, but that tranquillity will forever be tainted by loss, a void hanging in the midst of relief, never to be filled again.

tag list 1: @maievdenoir, @javier-pena, @lv7867, @dihra-vesa, @katronautt, @radiowallet, @januarystears, @missminkylove, @beskarprincessjenny, @mswarriorbabe80, @danidrabbles, @sergeantbannerbarnes, @amneris21, @eri16, @absurdthirst, @hnt-escape, @acourtofsnakes, @ezrasbirdie, @mstgsmy66, @lovesbiggerthanpride, @coaaster, @sherala007, @kelseyxyeslek, @greeneyedblondie44, @wyn-n-tonic, @you-got-me-starry-eyed, @shirks-all-responsibilities, @withasideofmeg, @harriedandharassed, @andruxx, @buckybarneshairpullingkink, @spideysimpossiblegirl, @prostitute-robot-from-the-future, @tanzthompson, @mad-girl-without-a-box, @hope-for-the-best-98, @fangirl-316, @christina-loves, @jediknight122, @hallway5, @xoxabs88xox, @nicolethered, @churchill356, @massivecolorspygiant, @just-here-for-the-moment, @gracie7209, @pinkie289, @lavenderluna10, @goodgriefitsawildworld,

tags that have continuously not worked will be deleted from my taglist soon x

#joel miller x reader #joel miller f!reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x wife!reader #joel miller #tlou fanfiction #pedro pascal x reader

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submalevolentgrace · 1 year

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Hi! I'm very interested in attempting to write a disabled character (not for this blog, I assure, for an book I'm writing) in which the story doesn't fetishize/objectify her prosthetic limb. I'm in many writing circles and have been for a long while, but I've never seen this issue brought to light which I realise is a very important one. I have much to change in my thought process, and thank you for bringing this issue to attention.

I'm curious, and I apologise if this has been asked before, but what sort of design could you see for a functional prosthetic that doesn't go for a plainly aesthetic appearance, or is soully to please others? I do note that you said prosthetics are generally... not that helpful. So is there a way that it could be? Or do you think it would always generally be better to not use a prosthetic, as its mostly for aesthetic purposes, as you said?

I apologise if this ask is too outright or anything, and I don't mean to intrude. Thank you for your time and have a beautiful day!

okay, i want to answer this as in depth as possible, because whenever i talk about having a prosthesis, someone will always tag some variation of "#writing reference" and i do wonder what message they're taking away, and i want to get as much of my experience out as possible to maybe help shape how this is all portrayed in the future. and yeah… this is gonna be one of those rambly smg posts that the expand feature was invented for, so i'll start with the very abridged TL;DR:

if you're writing a character with an upper limb prosthesis; don't. arm amputees are unicorn level rare even compared to leg amputees, and i've never interacted with or even heard of an upper limb amputee that regularly uses a prosthesis, let alone relies on one. fiction has lied to you for the sake of cool aesthetics, don't repeat the cycle. more in depth writing advice including nuance and "but i waaaant to" will follow.

that said, grab your donning parachute and let's get started...

context for everyone involved: i am an upper limb amputee that rants a lot about how prostheses suck, i lost my right hand roughly five years ago at roughly the age of 30 after a very rough decline in health… it was pretty rough. this question is being asked in the context of a previous rant post of mine, and i checked that the ask is about an upper limb prosthesis in particular.

the situation regarding the usefulness of lower limb prostheses is totally different; i am definitely no expert, but by all accounts, prosthetic legs are incredibly useful for many people. getting a good leg can be absolutely life changing and more or less necessary for day to day life for some; mostly because infrastructure and society is just so fucking hostile to wheelchair users. being able to walk - at the cost of pressure sores and rashes and increased residual limb pain - is a preferable option to many people than being unable to fit through a doorway or in a bathroom stall or find out that the key to unlock the only elevator is in the admin office up three flights of stairs (true story).

but upper limb prostheses… see, the thing is, hands are incredibly complex organs that rely on a lot of immediate haptic feedback to work at all. hand dexterity is all about control, you need fine granular movements of the digits yes, but you also need the subtle sensations of pressure and proprioception in order to adjust your movements on the fly. i speak from experience, in the years leading up to the full loss of my hand, i was slowly losing function of it, usually swinging between numbness that made it clumsy at best, or screaming overstimulation from moving it at all resulting in unpredictable spasms… and let me tell you, a half working hand is infuriating to try and deal with. you can never know if you have a good grip on something or if it's slipping because of the wrong amount of pressure, and there's only so many smashed bottles of pickles on the floor before you give up using it all together… so amputation wasn't a great loss there, i had time to adapt.

a prosthetic hand of any kind has all of those issues and more. they're heavy and bulky, the cosmetic faux fingers or gripping claw have crude movement at best, and there's zero feedback (put a pin in this). 100% of the time you're using a prosthetic hand you have to keep your eyes on the grip and visually guesstimate whether or not the thing you're carrying is held tight enough but not too tight, that is if your "heavy duty" prosthesis can even support the weight without the servos disengaging or the wrist attachment socket just busting loose. i dropped a whippersnipper on my foot last week when my socket couldn't take the weight and i think that was the final straw in me desperately trying to prove to myself that there is a single task my prosthesis actually helps with.

this is usually where fully two handed people start talking about bleeding edge DARPA tech, and how we just need to invest more,research more, develop more. better tech, more tech, neural integration, more more more. okay i promise the writing advice is coming! for starters on tech, my experience is already with a mid-to-high end ottobock terminal device: i've got a myoelectric nerve-signal operated proportional control heavy duty greifer; about the only upgrade left for me to get would be a rotating wrist joint if i could coflex. it's not military, it's not "rockclimber that owns a prosthetic company", but it's quality tech. it still fucking sucks. secondly, that high level military tech exists primary for PR purposes so they can say they treat their discarded casualties well, "we can rebuild him, we have the technology" style. every war vet i've read about or heard from that's been gifted that high level tech also abandons it for the same reasons; it's imprecise, there's no feedback (or the haptic interface has to be fully recalibrated every time they put it on), but mostly they're more capable without one.

okay, the transhumanist ableds say (i should know, i used to be one), what if we did more ~research and development~ and got that neural feedback working? then we could have fireproof superhumanly strong robot arms to fix up everyone! here's where i take out that pin we put up before and i tell you that a class of prosthetic arms/hands already exists that has perfect proportional control, fine motor control, and physics perfect pressure feedback piped directly into the patients' existing sensory systems! they're called body-powered prostheses, and they were invented in like the 1600s. you strap a whole bunch of stuff to your arm and shoulders shoulders, and control the operation of the terminal device and elbow through cable tension by flexing your shoulders. they do take a considerable amount of training to operate - though hell i spent 18 months training to use my myo - but based on everything i've read, body-powered prostheses are the best option if you're an upper limb amputee and absolutely need a second hand for some reason.

but they don't look cool and futuristic, and according to my prosthetist, most people give up on using them too. we all give up on our prostheses, no matter the type. my rehab OT was impressed i lasted the 18 months of my training. towards the end, they even asked if the clinic director could drop in to one of my sessions to see my progress; he expressed genuine amazement at me casually using my bulky robot claw to use a brush and dustpan, and made an offhanded (hah) comment about what someone can achieve "if they stick it out to the end", implying it was somewhat of a rarity for me to have done so. several years on, and yesterday i wedged the dustpan between my ankles to sweep up into it, awkward but exponentially less effort than putting my dusty robot arm on. which, by the way, is a whole thing. look up some videos, they're all awful to don. i don't actually know the official technical name of what my clinic calls a "parachute" but it's a bitch to use! have you ever tried to pull back with your arm whilst also pushing it forwards at the same time, and simultaneously lean in to and away from an external force pulling on you? that's how you get a myo socket on.

bare with me, i promise writing advice is coming, and i promise it's more than the tl;dr. but. remember when i said a half working hand is infuriating to deal with? any prosthesis, from fancy myo tech to pirate-era body powered, will only ever be half as good as a working hand, and being juuuust within capability to do something but not quite able to is maddening! but you know what works way better than a half working hand? no hand at all. using whatever residual/vestigial limb you have - whatever "stump" you have, i hate that word - is pretty much always better than trying to use a prosthesis. i can use the inside of my elbow to grip and carry things, i can use the nub of my arm to apply pressure to hold things, open doors, use a computer mouse, turn on taps and lights, if i put a glove over it i can use it to prep for cooking. i have full proprioception and pressure feedback with skin contact, i don't think i've ever dropped and broken anything from my elbow, unlike countless things slipped from my greifer - which, by the way, absolutely will start clenching as tight as it can if i get even slightly too sweaty around the electrodes, which has both broken things i'm holding and also injured me, because surprise surprise but servo operated robot claws have pinch points on them right near the "emergency disengage" lever for some reason!

but i am exponentially more capable without it on than with it. no, i'm not fully independent, i rely on housemates and loved ones to help me out with some tasks that simply just need two handed dexterity, but none of those tasks are things a prosthesis makes me able to do anyway. i used to imagine my prosthesis would be like a bra; a bit awkward and uncomfortable, but i'd wear it throughout the day because it's helpful and take it off in the evening to decompress. in reality it's actually exactly like a bra: an absolute bitch to put on one handed, unbearably uncomfortable because it never sits right, ugly af unless you're a millionaire, and absolutely useless except for the fact that i get gawked at and judged by strangers if i leave the house without it on.

and if you really want to discover how far "no hand is better than a half working hand" goes, brace yourself, and look up the patient's stories (not medical system stories) of people that have had hand transplants. the first man to receive one hated it, he was promised a return to normal function, and what he got was a nightmare worse than being one handed; he wanted it removed again but the doctors refused because it would undermine their grand achievement of the first hand transplant. the doctors and society wanted him to be fixed, they wanted him to be normal, they wanted him to be abled. they failed. they made him less able to do things, denied his autonomy, and left him with someone else's hand slowly rotting on him, prioritising the idea of "scientific progress" and "two hands good" over the physical health, mental health, and ability to function of this man.

he's not alone; every story from the patients' perspective about hand transplants that i've read goes this way, including a woman who was born quad limb different and was promised hands would improve her life, pressured into a double hand transplant, only to find herself after the surgery essentially experiencing disability for the first time ever, because she had lived her whole life getting by just fine with her 'underdeveloped' limbs, but half working hands are worse than useless. you can try to find these stories yourself, but i'm not going looking for sources on any of these cases, because if you look back through enough of my posts you'll get a glimpse of the horrors and abuses that i too was put through by doctors who prioritised trying to "fix" me at any cost, rather than providing me the best quality of life, and in turn traumatised me and left me more broken than any loss of limb on its own could. dear goddess, i promise the writing advice is coming.

so. why do upper limb prostheses exist at all? if they're so terrible and useless, what is their function? i want to borrow something someone else left in the tags of a previous rant here, from someone who i believe works in prosthetics and/or rehab, cleaned up and anonymised at their request:

"upper limb functions are wildly more complex than: 1) bear weight static, and 2) bear weight moving. but every single upper limb amputee i know has a fancy expensive prosthetic just gathering dust in the closet because there is literally nothing it can do like a few years of adjustment and if needed non-dominant hand retraining can't do. the existence of forquarter prosthetics to begin with is just kind of silly and useless and entirely to make OTHER people feel comfortable, especially considering they universally are UNcomfortable for the amputee. i hate the notion that as soon as you get the amputation the prosthetic is The Thing That Will Fix You And Make You Feel Normal again because it universally isn't! but every forequarter person i know had like this ideal of Being Fixed By Magic Prosthetic that they were then obviously wildly disappointed by and had to do yet another grieving process with, versus if the dominant narrative were just one of: yeah. it'll take time, there is no magic fix."

and i think that really nails down what the actual purpose of upper limb prostheses is: they're not for the user, they're for the sake of other people. and not just their comfort when looking at our bodies, although based on the pressure for both amputees and people born limb different to get functionless cosmetic plastic hands, there is a lot of that. but it's not just that.

i fully believe that the reason prosthetic hands exists is to comfort the fears of the two handed. "don't worry", they say, "we can fix you again. you don't have to fear becoming Disabled, you don't have to worry about adapting or your life changing. we can make you Normal™ again."

you would not believe the number of people that have approached me to shower me with pity, to tell me how horrific my life is, how they can't imagine it. people have told me, apropos of nothing, that they'd kill themselves if they lost a hand. indirectly, that my life isn't worth living. unless, of course, i happen to be wearing my cool as fuck looking robot prosthesis! then they tell me how wonderful it is, how lucky i am, how glad they are that we have the technology to fix me. that's what a prosthetic hand says, what all the happy fishing photos on limbs4life posters at the rehab clinic say: don't worry, we can fix you. that's what the bleeding edge DARPA flexi-whatever fully articulated neuro-feedback hands say: don't worry if you get IED'd while hunting civilians for us to drone bomb, if you get hurt, we will fix you, we will fix the fuck out of you, we will motherfucking adam jensen you into a cool as fuck cyborg that your son will idolise; come on boys, don't you wanna enlist just for the chance at being as cool as this? join the bomb squad for a ticket to the upgrade lottery.

and so we arrive at fiction. as much as his dialogue options protest, adam jensen loves his robot arms, they punch through walls, turn into fucking swords! they make him the most special man in the world. what would he do without them? learn to cope? grieve? practice acceptance? take up poetry? just, be disabled? there's no power fantasy for ableds in that.

in fact, can you think of a single fictional character that's an upper limb amputee that's, well, just an amputee? they all have robot arms. not realistic prostheses, not medical devices; robot arms. sleek or bulky, top of the line or broken down self built, steampunk or nanomachines or magitech automail; they're never without them. never just an amputee. never born limb different either! there's always that element of tragedy to overcome, always suffering and misery porn, always focus on the pain and the helplessness without the absolutely vital robot arm that makes them Normal and Whole. the closest amputee example i can think of is furiosa from mad max, who iirc fucking punches max in the face with her residual limb like a motherfucking badass! i can barely lean on mine wrong and she punches a guy! but she still apparently needs a dieselpunk robot hand to drive a truck, something you can do one handed so easily most drivers don't even notice they're doing it! please don't, by the way

and so many disabled fans love to point to robot armed characters as disability representation; the winter soldier, luke skywalker, edward elric, misty knight, that genderswapped furry girl from ratchet and clank, jet cowboybebop, finn the human, and yes, adam jensen…. these are all characters that someone disabled i know has told me they love because they "represent disabled bodies"…. and i know nobody wants to hear this, because i've been screamed at for saying it before, but… they do not. they are not disabled, functionally or within fiction. they are either perfectly able bodied Normal people with chrome paint on an arm, or tortured misery porn we are supposed to pity and feel lucky we're not them. sometimes both!

also you ever notice how it's basically always arms? lower limb amputations are orders of magnitude more common than upper, my prosthetist said i was probably only the 4th or 5th upper limb she'd worked with in her career, with literally hundreds of lower limb fits. but fiction doesn't seem to reflect that, huh? or any other part of the reality of disability. it's always cool as fuck robot arms, never cool as fuck wheelchairs or crutches or dialysis machines or colostomy bags. a fair few "i was blind but now i can see with Robot Eyes and also infrared and xray" around, which again, plays into that "we can fix you and make you cooler" propaganda.

by the way, up above when i was describing body powered arms, if you wondered to yourself why i went with a myoelectric one instead when i clearly believe body powered is better… yeah. i am not immune to propaganda! i too wanted to be cool as fuck. i spent years with deteriorating function in my hand for reasons that are still unknown, was misdiagnosed and medically neglected to the point that removing my hand seemed to be the only option left to offer some relief, and even that was a clusterfuck that left me worse than ever… of course i wanted to believe in the power and prestige of a cool robot arm that fiction promised me.

but fiction promises fantastical lies. and so.

we get to the writing advice portion of the novella that is this post. you asked for advice on how to write a disabled character with an upper limb prosthesis. you've read the tl;dr, you've read everything above i assume, you know i don't want you to do it. the obvious twist is that it's been writing advice all along, me trying to share my perspective on what it's like being an amp with a robot arm and how shitty it is, implying how almost any fully realised and realistic character that's missing an upper limb would give up on a prosthesis at all. you can already tell that every value judgement in me says "don't give her a prosthesis, no matter how functional or cool you make it. don't try to make the tech better to justify it, just let her be one armed, one handed. just let her be disabled, but not helpless. let her show off her elbow or underarm carry strength. let her love interest appreciate how soft and squishy her residual limb is in a moment of tenderness. let her natural disabled body be respected and valued."

but that's a personal value judgement from me, and you are the author of your own work. i know it's trite to say, but you are! even the act of deferring to someone with lived experience in the hope of doing a better job at representation is a value judgement, a good choice in my opinion, but one you needn't necessarily take. maybe you do want to write a character that has a cool as fuck unrealistic robot arm as a power fantasy, or a comfort blanket… i did.

i've been slowly writing my own probably terrible scifi epic for over a decade now, and when my arm was giving me hell back then, i'd take great comfort in this fantasy of my protagonist with her chunky robot arm, the terrible traumatic suffering of her loss, overcoming, the power and ability her advanced prosthesis gives her over others, that she alone has access to, because others are not willing to make the sacrifices required. inspiration porn. awful stuff to me now, but empowering to me then. as i grew and gained direct experience, i slowly reimagined her, rewrote her, ship of theseus'd her into an entirely new character; a reflection of me now, bitter at the whole thing, spiteful that her natural flesh arm evokes fear and distrust, but unwilling to suffer the pain and frustration of her unnatural prosthesis just to make others comfortable and respect her as "whole", however artificial that whole is. and as with the ship of theseus being two ships, once i realised the transformation, i re-added the old protagonist back in whole cloth as a separate character; proud of her robot arm and its power, but in new context, as a foil and antagonist, an in-universe military prosthesis propaganda figure to reflect how i now feel characters like her exist to us, the readers.

i'm not just sharing that as egotistical self promotion, but to highlight that, even if i sit here begging you all up and down not to write characters with robot arms for how bad and unrealistic they are; there's still something genuine and true that their inclusion can say. the great thing about the story that you're writing is that only you can write it, as they say. but i whole heartedly believe that to write to your best, you have to be aware of what you're writing and why. as tempting as it is to feel these characters form naturally in us and therefore we're averse to changing traits about them that feel organic and self evident; as authors we have omnipotent control over the text, every trait and detail is a reflection on us, so we'd sure as hell better understand why we're choosing to write a character with this trait. because anything you write without being aware of intent will take on its own meaning in the space between.

and on that note, if i don't say this, i'm leaving it to be inferred: i definitely don't want to appear to come down on the side of saying "you cannot write an amputee unless you are one", because we are rarer than single young bisexual unicorns! and it would be a tragedy if anyone read through all this and then turned away in fear, deciding to never write an amputee character (with or without robot arm) because they feel they can't do it justice… believe me, no matter what anyone says, some hack writer somewhere is going to keep writing adam jensens and winter soldiers. don't let them be the only voices in fiction! just try to do your best.

so my ultimate advice on the topic of writing a character with a prosthetic limb is to ask yourself one question in two different frameworks, and meditate on what you feel the answer is:

why does she have a prosthesis?

from a doylelist perspective as the kids say, as an author with omnipotent control, why are you choosing to write about this topic? why are you choosing to give this trait to this character? what does it say about how you view ability and disability, what makes a person normal, and what our society values? will you let her be in her natural body? or will you give her a prosthesis, force her to wear it by authorial fiat, or author her a meaningful reason to choose to? if yes, be sure you know; why did you give her a prosthesis?

and from a wastonian perspective, diegetically, inside the story, why does she choose to wear a prosthesis? what does it say about her inner character, and how she interacts with the world? how does she feel about doing it, is she prideful and loves the attention she gets, or does she resent whatever necessitates its use? how do people in this world view ability and disability, what does this society value? and above all, whatever the answer to these questions, whether or not she uses a prosthesis or is badass without one, how does she deal with the eternal freezing cold that every amputee ever feels constantly in their residual limb and why does nobody make a heat pack that fits over a nub without drafty gaps???

i can't outright tell you how to write a good upper limb amputee, but if you at least know why you're writing one and for what purpose, you're on track to write the best character that you can. that's the best advice i can give… other than, like, this whole rambly mess.

and, as a reward for reading this far, please have a very blurry cryptid photo of my cat doing his old man sit:

#prosthesis #prosthetic #disability #ableism

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eilidh-eternal · 3 months

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You don't like silence

Part of the Metanoia series | Part 1 | Masterlist |

The house is silent, but inside your head a brumous storm swirls, wispy tendrils of fog curling around delicate gray matter.

Your routine—watching Johnny walk Isobel to school, going to work and coming home, just in time to glimpse Johnny leaving to retrieve her—has changed.

You still watch from the window, mug bleeding warmth into cold, stiff joints from between your palms. Peer around the curtains every morning as the pair amble down the pavement together.

A new month brings a steady influx of meetings and end of quarter reporting, projected sales and last minute production tweaks, but your days are no busier than normal. Rarely miss a lunch break. Leave no later than three each afternoon.

Dinner, if you have any, is ready by five.

Even so, restlessness lingers in the midnight moons hanging beneath your eyes, darkens the air around you with somnolent clouds, and you list in the torpid deluge that rains down.

Sleep evades you altogether most nights, and you’ve made a game of picking out patterns in the knockdown. Faces, animals; nebulous, nameless things.

Some nights, when the faces of strangers, burned into your retinas, find their way into the patterns of textured drywall, you listen.

Isobels room must be on the other side of yours, beds sharing a wall. On the nights you manage to make it upstairs, you can hear them both. Isobel’s slow and measured pronunciations. The lilt of Johnny’s voice, filling in the blanks where she pauses on a word she doesn’t yet know.

They’ve finished all of her animal books, which means the imitated roars of big cats and bleats of farmyard animals have morphed into exaggerated accents. Sing-song rhymes about the importance of kindness, accepting differences, and other life lessons told through colorful illustrations and whimsical narratives.

Every now and then, if you’re lucky, she falls asleep within a few pages, and you can pretend that the low, pillowy rumble of Johnny reading is just for you. A gentle coaxing made of velvety words, swaddling your mind, heavy with exhaustion, and cradling it to his chest against the maelstrom you’re spiraling in.

Sometimes she stirs, woken hours later in the placid, milky hours before dawn, just as your eyes begin to droop. Tiny feet patter across the hardwood like rain, muffled in uneven intervals by what must be a rug or runner in the hall, on her way to Johnny’s room or the washroom maybe.

You wonder if it’s full of frilly, feminine things, her room. Pinks and purples, dolls and plushies. Does she have princesses or ballerinas on her bedding? Do posters and drawings line her walls or does floral, pasted wallpaper?

She likes Mulan, you remember. A warrior. Fighter. Soldier. Like Johnny.

Probably not so frilly, then.

Perhaps they could make a fighter out of you. Press you into the mold of their little family–strengthened by loss and galvanized with love–and breathe life into clay limbs. Carve a soldier from the malleable earth. Shape you into something useful.

Now, most of your nights are spent huddled in the living room, listening to the droning of the television. Throw blankets suck you down into the sofa like quicksand and each breath draws them tighter and tighter around you, filling pockets of air with crushed velvet and fleece. Tonight, you let them swallow you whole. Sink willingly into a latibule of plaid and warm cashmere.

The cold and quiet of your empty home isn’t so bad when you can hear Johnny moving about on the other side of the wall. Isn’t so unbearable when the warm timbre of his voice chases away the numbing fog that muddles your head.

There are nights that he calls you, like he knows. Knows that you're drowning in the silence.

He does that now, after he puts Isobel to bed for the night. Calls to ask about your week. Casts a lifeline into the churning ocean between you, procellous waves lofting you on spuming peaks, and calls your name from the battered, broken shore.

A lighthouse calling to a ship, lost in the mist on a perilous sea.

Last Thursday he asked about the cookies you made with Isobel. Asked if you would be willing to share the recipe with him–teach him–so that he could make them with her for a school event coming up in the spring.

The tenderness with which he speaks of her is a balmy breeze for your gelid heart. Soothes the burn of ice floes in your veins. Melts weeks of tension from aching muscles.

Now, his voice is somber, pensive, as it filters through the lack of insulation between you. “Friday. No, ah havnae told ‘er yet. Jus’ got the call.” He pauses, and you think you hear a muffled sigh. He sounds tired, too, accent thicker than honeyed whiskey rolling off his tongue, dropping consonants in favor of deep, throaty vowels. “Aye, ah ken. She’ll be happy tae see ye though.”

He’s on the phone, talking about Isobel. They must have family visiting soon, or a family friend if Isobel knows them well enough to be excited.

You wonder what the MacTavish family is like, if they’re a rowdy bunch. If they’re a large, extended family. Johnny seems like the kind of man who comes from a close knit community, one where you grow up down the street from your cousins and spend summers terrorizing small towns together.

“I’ll talk tae ‘er in the mornin’. Ah- No.” There’s a pause again, and even with layers of sheetrock separating you, you can feel the weight of his silence. “No, Mam. She’s… ah worry. Leavin’ ‘er like this. Piss poor timin’.”

He’s leaving? Without Isobel?

It’s muffled through the wall, and you feel like you can’t have heard that correctly. He mentioned the army, but you had thought, with a child at home, that his work wouldn't be the sort that requires travel.

Ice floes turn to glaciers in your chest, frozen spikes threatening to pierce brittle, fragile muscle, and the clouds swirling overhead descend upon you.

Lost in the mist, and he’s leaving.

He’s leaving, and he’s taking the sun with him.

“Ye cannae keep it from the lassie forever, John. Ye havnae even told 'er what ye do?”

Christ, this woman…

“She knows ‘bout the army,” he defends. “Cannae say much more.”

Fenella MacTavish clucks her disapproval. “Ye’re heids full of mince.” Dishes clatter and a cupboard closes a bit too forcefully on the other end of the line.

Johnny runs a hand through the disheveled strands of his hair, overdue for a trim, well outside of regulation length. “Mam—”

“Dinnae ‘Mam’ me,” she cuts in. “John Alexander MacTavish, ye tell that lass what she’s gettin’ herself intae—or I will.”

“Mam,” he tries again, voice pitched low, “Not yet. Cannae send ‘er off, naw like I do wi’ Bell. It’s safe enough here.” You’re safe with him here. “Dinnae like knowin’ she’s alone—Christ, I can hardly stand tae have the wall between us when I ken she’s hurtin’—but there isnae anythin’ I can do that’s naw already been done. Kate’s made sure of that.”

Fenella huffs and he can’t quite make out the garbled muttering on his end, but he has a fair idea of what his mother is blathering about beneath her breath. “Kirsten—have ye gone tae see 'er?” she finally asks, mercifully shifting the conversation out of your direction. “Has Isobel?”

“No,” he admits, and guilt twists in barbed coils through his chest.

He’s been meaning to, to drive up for the weekend and take her to visit her mothers grave, now that she’s older. Stay with her gran and look through the old albums. She's only ever seen the few photos they have at home, hanging in the hall near the kitchen.

Sometimes she asks about her. If she liked the things she likes. The way rain freezes on the tall grasses and tree branches in the winter, making glass gardens of trellises and window boxes. Extra whipped cream and blueberries for her pancakes.

If she would have walked with them to school in the mornings. Take her to the park down the block in the summer. Hiking in the fall, looking for wisps darting about beneath the fallen abscission.

Isobel is so much like her mother there are days Johnny swears it’s her refusing to eat the dinner he’s made. That it’s her complaining about cold weather and overcast skies in the heart of winter, bemoaning how long they have until spring revives the land. Swears it’s her voice that wakes him in the middle of the night. Her ghost, standing in the dimly lit doorway of his bedroom, a blanket pulled ‘round her shoulders and a teddy dangling from her hand.

“I’ll take ‘er, then.” Johnny can hear the grief that tempers his mothers voice, turning anguish to steely resolve. “I’ll come by tomorrow evening, let ‘er have a few hours with ye at home before ye say yer goodbyes.”

“Thank ye, Mam,” he says on a strained exhale, lungs rattling with fragments of his own grief. It slices into old wounds until pockets of air become sanguineous aquifers, bubbling up in his throat and leaving a sour, metallic taste on his tongue.

“I meant what I said earlier,” she reminds him. “Ye tell yer lass. Dinnae leave ‘er in the dark like ye did Kirsten.”

The line goes silent and Johnny sinks back into the old corduroy sofa, pushed up against the wall beside a shelf overflowing with picture books in the living room, and a ragged sigh unfurls from his chest.

The television across from him is dark, turned off when he took Isobel upstairs for bed, but he can hear an old rerun of Taskmaster playing softly behind him.

He listens, every night, for you. For the sound of your fridge, opening and closing. The soft ‘clink’ of porcelain against granite. The oven timer or the microwave.

He prefers the former. Knows, after these last few weeks, that you cook when you’re in a good mood. Usually go to bed soon after. The sound of the microwave precedes long, muted evenings and little sound from your side of the wall. He won’t hear the stairs creak beneath your sluggish feet until the wee hours of the morning. If at all.

He listens in the mornings, too, while he makes Isobel’s breakfast. Makes sure he can hear you doing the same. Smiles to himself when he glimpses movement in the window beside your door, a miniscule swaying of the curtain, and he holds Isobel’s hand a little tighter as they navigate lingering ice patches on the pavement.

The phone call with his mother, making arrangements for Isobel, masked the sound of your movements earlier, and his fingers twitch against his leather phone case.

When your side of the wall is quiet, he knows a storm is brewing; that you’re sitting in the eye of it, waiting for the walls to close in around you.

He doesn’t know if you’ve eaten tonight. Can’t hear anything beyond the muffled television and occasional creak of the sofa beneath your shifting weight.

So he calls.

One… two… three… four… “Hi, Johnny.” Soft and breathy. Like the air the words are spoken on has borrowed from the softness of your lips as it spills into the receiver.

This is the way you sound when you’re tired, he’s learned, all soft and rounded syllables. Too exhausted, even for your own nervous habits. You don’t have the bandwidth to explain every little thing like you normally would; don’t bother with rationalizing your actions aloud.

“Hi, bonnie. What’s cookin’?” It’s cheesy as hell, but it earns a huff of a laugh from you and it tempers the jagged edge of his worry—a knife, lodged between his ribs.

“I, uh… I had leftovers. Takeaway, from a work thing.” He’s never seen you with takeaway. Always canvas bags full of groceries and the occasional frozen box dinner.

How empty is your fridge? When was the last time you went to the grocer?

“Didnae take ye for the ‘easy’ type. Ye always make me work for it.”

“Work for it?” He can picture the pinch of your brows. The way your lips quirk to the side when you’re confused.

“Aye, got me makin’ puppy eyes an’ beggin’ for yer scraps.” You laugh again, more of a scoff, but it eases some of his worry all the same.

“When have I ever made you beg, Johnny?” He’s been begging any higher power that will listen to see you smile again, and he’d give anything to see the smirk he knows is dancing at the corner of your mouth right now.

“Could do it tomorrow,” he blurts before he can think better of it. “Come over. Show me that recipe again.”

Don’t make him tell you he’s leaving over the phone.

“I thought… you said the charity event is at the end of March, right?”

“Aye, but I think I’ll need a few lessons ‘fore my bakin’s fit for auction.”

He needs to know—needs to see—that you’re well before he goes.

“And you want to start tomorrow?”

“Why not?” He’d have you baking in his kitchen now if it weren’t for the late hour.

There’s a stretch of silence, interrupted only by the faint crackling of static and the sound of your breathing. “Do you have flour? Sugar? Anything to bake with?” you ask, and he answers with a proud ‘yes’. “Okay… okay. I can come over after work tomorrow.”

“I’ll ‘ave Bell home early then. She’ll want tae help.” Your amused sigh echoes across the line, followed by the faint rustling of fabric and then the soft pattering of stocking-clad feet over hardwood, fourth and fifth step creaking softly as you climb the stairs. “Off tae bed?”

Another sigh–on the tail-end of a yawn, he realizes. “Yeah. Well, trying. Don’t get a lot of sleep these days,” you admit, and though he’s successfully abated the storm of your thoughts, he wishes he could disperse it entirely.

Be the shelter you seek, at the very least.

He’d nestle you in the warmth of his bed, tucked close and sleeping soundly in the cage of his arms. Anchor you to him with a leg hooked between yours, whispering adulation against the howling, taunting winds.

He would make himself a rock to let your tempestuous thoughts batter and besiege. Weathered and whittled down to pebbles on a beach, he’d roll in the undertow alongside you. And when he is but sand on the ocean floor, still, he would drift and settle wherever the storm of you takes him.

“I used tae read for my sister when we were weans. She’d wake, spooked from a dream, and come tae my room in the middle of the night.”

“You have a sister?” A door clicks closed and blankets whisper over sheets as you settle in for the night. “What’s she like?”

“A lot like our Mam. Headstrong. Stubborn.”

“Are you the oldest?” You sound further away. Muffled. Like you’ve got the blankets pulled up to your nose and the phone beside you on the pillow.

“I am,” he lilts.

“She gets it from you, then,” you murmur, and his chest tightens.

“She got a fair number of things from me, I’d wager.”

He continues on, speaking just above a low, gravelly whisper. Reminiscing his early years and the trouble the two of them got up to. Thick as thieves and wild as the kellas cats roaming the highlands.

Your interjections dwindle, turn to soft hums and slow, even breaths. Sleeping.

He listens for a few more minutes to the soft, sweet sounds you make, little chuffs and sleepy hums, the susurrations of shifting sheets and nightclothes, and he whispers into the darkness, “Goodnight, sweet girl.”

Work passes you by in a blur, meeting after meeting chipping away at the hours and minutes ticking by on the analog clock perched on your desk.

The drive home is uneventful and it feels as though you’ve passed through a wormhole somewhere along the way. Can’t quite remember making the turn into your neighborhood from the main road.

Normally, Johnny would be leaving to retrieve Isobel from school right now, but as you gather your things and step out of the car you hear your name being called from several houses down.

Braids bounce and red wellies squeak as Isobel darts ahead of Johnny, weaving around patches of ice to get to you, and you step up onto the pavement just in time to keep her from running into the road.

She barrels into you, wrapping her arms around your leg and smooshing her face against your slacks. “Ye’re back!” she squeals, fingers curling into the fabric.

She’s leaving.

Your hand settles atop her head, soft wisps of curls tickling the pads of your fingers where they’ve escaped their plaits. “Where did I go?” you ask, and she tips her head back to look up at you.

“Bubby said ye were busy with work. Sometimes he gets busy too, and I have to stay with my gran.”

They’re both leaving.

Johnny’s caught up with her, lingering a few steps away near the walkway leading to your door. When you look to where he stands, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, windbreaker bunched up around his forearms where a tattoo peeks out, the corners of his eyes glimmer.

A smile curves the corners of his mouth, and it’s an odd mixture of grief and happiness that flickers there in the crook of his lips and set of his brow, sloped upwards and creased in the middle. His hair is longer than you remember, scruffy sides and tufts of mohawk curling at the ends, loose strands tousled around his face.

Wind blows at your back and a single tear tracks down the sharp plane of his cheek, disappearing in the dark shadow of stubble that lines his jaw.

“I have been busy with work,” you confirm, peering down at Isobel once more. “But I didn’t leave.”

You’re staying, and they’re leaving.

The wind picks up and she presses closer, shielding herself from the cold behind your frame. “Let’s get ye inside and put yer book bag away. Then we can catch up over cookies an’ milk,” Johnny says as he closes the distance between you.

“Cookies?!” Her excitement carries on the wind, and his smile sharpens, bright and hopeful, but the whetted edge of sorrow undercuts the warmth.

“Aye, but we’ll have to make ‘em ourselves.” He brushes a stray lock from her eyes, fingers brushing against yours where his hand settles beside it on her crown, and dread blooms low in your stomach where warmth should.

She ducks away from you both, bolting towards their front stoop, and you’re left with both of your hands hovering in the air, his half curled over yours, staring after her.

You pull away first, adjusting your bag on your shoulder. “I just need to sort this–” You gesture to the tote full of binders and your laptop. “–and I'll be right over.”

He fishes his keys from his pocket and takes a step back, towards Isobel. “We’ll be waitin’,” he says with a wink, and turns to take her inside.

There's flour in your hair and matching handprints on your slacks, and neither Johnny nor Isobel have fared much better. You’re all a mess, and the cookies you’ve made are tantamount to your disheveled state–lumpy, dry masses of something more closely resembling a biscuit.

“Dunno what ah did wrong,” Johnny muses, breaking one in half and inspecting the crumbly texture.

You sit beside him at the kitchen table, watching Isobel dunk half a cookie into a glass of milk. “It’s the butter and flour. The ratio is imbalanced–not enough fat.” She doesn’t seem to mind, stuffing the entire piece in her mouth and readying the next, fingers covered in crumbs that fall in her milk.

Johnny shifts beside you, sliding out of his chair and taking a bite out of his cookie as he moves towards the fridge. “Still tastes good,” he says around a mouthful and pours two more glasses, placing one down in front of you when he returns. “But I’ll need another demonstration when I’m back, I think.”

You take a cookie from the plate in the middle of the table, breaking off a chunk to dunk in your milk, and ignore the mirrored sensation in your chest. You knew this was coming. You know he’s leaving.

“When you’re back? From where?” you probe. No need to dance around the subject.

He shifts again, uncharacteristically nervous, and speaks softly. “Have to leave for a little while, for work,” he explains. Your cookie turns pliant between your fingers and you bite off the softened corner, chewing slowly while you listen. “Willnae know where they’re sendin’ me to until the briefin’.”

“When are you leaving?” You stare down at the crumbs swirling in your glass.

“Tomorrow morning.”

The foreknowledge of his impending departure doesn’t make the break any cleaner. The fracturing feeling in your chest widens into fissures and chasms, jagged edges crumbling, tumbling down into the festering darkness.

When you lift your gaze you find that he’s been watching you–studying you–and his hand has crept across the table, close enough you can feel the warmth of him. “How long?” It comes out wobbly. Unsteady.

You’re drifting out to sea again.

“Few weeks. Maybe a month.” Your chest feels like it’s caving in.

There’s a knock at the door. A canary in a coal mine, warning come too late.

“Gran!” Isobel’s chair nearly topples as she pushes back from the table, racing from the kitchen to the front door.

Johnny’s hand covers yours, long, callused fingers curling around your clenched fist and squeezing. “I’ll be back before ye know it,” he murmurs, smoothing a strand of hair away from your face and tracing the curve of your jaw as he stands.

He only goes as far as the kitchen doorway. Your heart’s already somewhere in the North Sea.

“Hi, Mam.” He’s greeted by an older female voice and pulled into a hug by a woman a whole head shorter than him. Isobel hovers nearby, bouncing excitedly from foot to foot, and tugs at the older woman’s–her grandmother’s–cable knit sweater.

“Gran, come meet our friend!” she says, and tugs again until she lets go of Johnny.

You stand from the table on wobbly legs, fighting to balance your listing emotions and put on a warm smile as Johnny’s mother slides past him into the kitchen.

The resemblance between the three of them is uncanny. Johnny shares his mothers dark coloring, rich hair and warm skinned, and they all have the same eyes–steely hues of grey-blue, spiraling outwards from inky pupils like storm cells.

“So, this is the lassie next door ye willnae stop glaverin’ on about?” she asks no one in particular as she openly appraises you.

“Mam–” Johnny begins, a simmering warning, but she holds up a hand to silence him.

They carry themselves in a similar manner, in the set of their shoulders and broad stance. She may not stand as tall as he does but she’s no less imposing, and it’s an effort not to squirm under her scrutiny.

Seconds feel like hours as she looks you up and down, cataloging the flour on your pants and in your hair, glancing to her left where Johnny stands in a state of equal disarray, and a knowing look flickers like lightning in her storm cloud eyes.

“It’s good tae finally put a face wi’ a name,” she says, smiling, and pulls you into a hug, too. “Call me Fenella, or Fen, whichever ye like.”

You return the gesture hesitantly, looking over her shoulder to Johnny for guidance and finding none. He simply smiles back at you from where he leans against the doorway, something unreadable in his expression lingering beneath it.

“It’s nice to meet you too… I- I’d love to stay, but should probably be heading home. I have an early morning and wouldn’t want to intrude on your visit,” you say by way of excuse.

“Ah’m naw stayin’ long, dear,” she explains, finally pulling away. Isobel returns to her side, pressing her shoulder to her thigh, and Fenella’s hand settles on the crown of her head. “Here tae take the wean for a stay wi’ her gran.”

“Is yer bag ready, leannan? D’ya have all yer books for school?” Johnny asks from where he stands, hands having found their way into his pockets again. His shoulders droop, broad frame deflating before your eyes. Leaving her behind, even with his mother, takes a toll on him.

Isobel leans around her gran to say, “I’ave all my books. And Mr. Ghost.”

“Goan an’ get yer things then, Bell,” Fenella ushers her out of the kitchen, climbing the stairs behind her to her room.

You watch until they disappear above the half open staircase, but Johnny has been watching you. Watching you navigate the shoal of your emotions, razor sharp rock scraping against a flimsy hull.

“C’mere, lass,” he entreats, one arm outstretched towards you, and your feet move of their own accord, carrying you forward until his hand settles on your shoulder, momentarily moored in the eddy of a tide pool. “Didnae mean to tell ye in the middle of… this.” He gestures above him to the sound of footsteps overhead. “Only got the call yesterday.”

With your hands folded at your front, you stare down at them, picking at a loose thread on your sleeve. “It’s okay. I understand—”

“No, lass, it isnae okay,” he interrupts, hand gliding up your shoulder, your neck, and coming to rest on your cheek. He lifts your gaze back up to his and he’s wearing that nameless emotion, staring down at you with a pained expression.

This hurts him as much as it hurts you.

“The job I do, it isnae always… predictable. Dinnae get much warning when I’m called in for assignments. I should have warned ye…” his thumb traces soothing arcs over your cheek, but it does nothing for the gaping hole in your chest. “I’m sorry… I should have—”

“It’s okay, Johnny. Really.” The lie feels like rubbing salt into a wound, burns the back of your throat like you’re speaking around a lump made of sandpaper, and your voice comes out scratchy and raw.

His hand lingers on your cheek, eyes darting from yours to your nose, lips, cheeks, brow. Memorizing.

“Let me walk ye home?” You nod, unsure if you can speak around the cordolium lodged in your throat, and his hand moves from your cheek to your waist, guiding you through the razor rock and churning tide to the front door.

His arm remains firmly around you, fingers digging into your softness as he escorts you across the meager expanse of your lawn.

There’s an SUV, still running, parked in front of both houses and left to keep warm while Isobel gathers her things. She and Fenella step out into the brisk evening air just as you and Johnny reach the top of your stairs, and Isobel waves to you as they descend. Your arm feels leaden as you lift your hand into the air, waving back to her.

“She‘ll miss ye. Talks about ye all the time,” Johnny says beside you, unwilling to let you go just yet. “I’ll be missin’ ye too,” he admits, and you thought you’d found the bottom of the pit in your stomach. Thought you were already lying at the bottom of it.

You were wrong.

The well of your affection for them feels bottomless. The floor crumbles, residual tremors of the quaking in your chest, and you’re falling, falling, falling…Even with his arm around your waist.

You fell in love with the man in front of you. Fell in love with the darling little girl climbing into her grandmother's car. You’re already in love with Fenella and her dedication to her family.

You’ve been falling this whole time, no safety net in sight.

“I- …” Your voice cracks, and you try again. “I’ll miss you, too. Both of you.”

You’re falling, and they’re leaving.

There’s little warning, just a tug of your blouse, before you’re being folded into his arms. A wide palm cradles your head to his chest, fingers threading through your hair, and he presses his cheek to your crown.

“Won’t be able to use my phone a lot, but I’ll call when I can.” He murmurs his promise into your hair. “If… if I’m not here an’ somethin’ happens… I gave my Mum yer number. Saved hers in yer phone when I gave ye mine.” He pauses. Sucks in a shuddering breath before he continues. “Whatever it is, she’ll help.”

You nod your understanding and he pulls back just enough to see your face, guides your head to look up at him and says, “Promise me. Promise that ye’ll go to her if ye need anythin’,” with a desperation you’ve never heard from him.

So you make another promise. Let your eyes flutter closed as he presses his forehead to yours and ghosts his lips across the chilled skin of your brow.

And then he leaves.

Isobel is sorted, buckled into her car seat and saying her goodbye’s to Johnny, and Fenella MacTavish stands beside the driver’s side door, watching.

She’s said this goodbye a hundred times. Sent him off to god knows where to fight a war she’s never heard of. It never gets easier.

Isobel’s door closes, and her son turns to her with pain in his eyes. “I hate leaving ‘er.”

“Which one?” she intones, and Johnny leans his hip against the B pillar.

“Both of them. The three of ye.”

“Then make sure ye come back tae ‘er–tae all of us,” she advises, and pulls him into one last hug. “I cannae bury another child.”

Next>>>

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rawrsatthetree · 8 months

Text

Dark urge and Astarion hold a baby

GN!Durge!Tav x Astarion

Inspired by a fanart of Astarion holding a baby and an audio of Neil talking about babies as Star

Warings: well it's druge so descriptions of violence

As you and your party waded through the crowd of refugees a strange sound caught your attention. It sounded like crying but far too high pitched to be any person or child. The sound grated and scrapped at your mind and before your realized it, you had wandered off from your party in search of the source.

Among the crowd of broken families and lost souls you found an old elven woman cradling a squirming bundle in her arms. The thing wriggling about in her grasp was what had been making the terrible noise that had now quieted down into a pathetic whine.

You didn't notice how close you were lingering until the old woman spoke up. "Can I help you dear?" She questioned, her demeanor warm and friendly.

"Oh, um I was just um..." You were at a loss of words, your eyes fixed on the thing in her arms.

"Would you like to see him? Come closer, no need to be shy." She gave you a warm smile.

Hesitantly you shuffled forward to where you could see what it was she was holding, expecting some sort of animal or other strange creature.

"A baby?"

"Yes, a precious little thing, his name's Arthur." The woman rocked him in her arms.

The baby took a reprieve from it's fussing to turn and look at you. It stared at you blankly for a moment as you stared back before it broke into a smile and babbled at you.

"Would you look at that." The woman cooed, "he hasn't smiled once since he lost his mother to the Absolute's army."

The very sight made you mind ache and twist. Thoughts of all the horrible ways you could end the small innocent life flooded your skull. Perhaps you could simply smash it, the little ball of goo and viscera that it is. Or maybe it would be fun to squeeze its little neck until its doll like eyes popped out of its skull and its neck snapped.

Your vision started to blur, your pulse pounding, hands shaking. You tried to regain your sanity, remembering the mediation exercises you had practiced with Halsin. First ground yourself, breathe, what can you hear, what can you see.

Breathe in, you heard the footsteps on the crowd.

Breathe out, you felt the cool breeze.

Breathe in, you smelled smoke and farm animals.

Breathe out, you heard the chatter of the crowd around you.

Breathe in, you heard the old woman speak. "Would you like to hold him?"

Breathe out, you could see the baby still smiling up at you.

Your mind cleared as your vision came back into focus. The Urge had passed for now and relief washed over you. You answered the woman, "Can I? Are you sure its okay?" You asked mostly to her but partly to yourself.

"Of course dear, he seems quite fond of you and it would give my old arms a much needed rest." The woman held little Arthur out to you.

You stood there stiff as a board not sure how you were meant to take the baby.

"Have you never held a baby before?" She asked noticing your apprehension.

You shook your head 'no'. Even if you could remember you doubted you had ever held a baby in your past, at least in a way that it's limbs stayed intact.

"Here, hold your arms like mine, almost like your making a basket."

You followed her example as best you could. The woman shifted the baby into your arms with out warning.

"There just like that! Be sure to support his head, see you're a natural." She encouraged you as you panicked with the infant in your grasp.

After an awkward moment of adjusting to the warm squirmy little weight in your arms, Arthur calmed and snuggled into your chest. The innocent little thing feel asleep in your arms happy and at peace. You were over come with emotion, it felt so sick and wrong, it shouldn't have been possible for you to hold something so precious. Yet there your were holding a baby gently without any intent to harm it. The feeling of his little body in your arms filled your heart with a feeling you didn't quiet understand but it brought tears to your eyes all the same.

*************

Ever since that night he had you restrained, Astarion had tried his damnedest to keep an eye on you. It figured the moment he got distracted by some snide comment from Shadowheart, you had vanished. He hadn't even noticed until he went to turn to you for back up only to discover you were gone. Panic over came him as he frantically scanned the crowd for any sign of you. Either you had been abducted by one of your countless enemies or your urge had drawn your attention away from the party. Both outcomes filled him with dread.

Without even a word to the others he rushed though the crowd. He smelled the air for any hint of blood, yours or your victim's. Nothing, at least you weren't hurt or hadn't hurt anyone else yet. He only grew more worried as he moved though the refugees with no sign of you, surly you couldn't have gotten far.

Just when he was sure you had been kidnapped by some villain never to be seen again, he found you. There you were with your back to him standing with some old woman. Whatever relief he felt was quickly replace with concern as he noticed how you rocked and swayed.

"Darling, what are you doing?" He approached you cautiously hoping he wasn't to late to save you from the urge.

"Oh, is this your husband? What a handsome young man." The old crone greeted.

Astarion ignored the woman only focused on stopping you from what ever nightmarish act you were about to commit. Before he could reach out to you and pull you way, you turned around to him.

"Astarion look! I'm holding a baby!" You beamed at him. You moved closer and whispered so only he could hear you, "and I'm not hurting him."

You were a sight to behold grinning from ear to ear with dried tears staining you cheeks. Just as you said, there in you arms was a fat little lump of a baby curled up and completely intact.

He wasn't sure why but seeing you standing there with a baby cradled in you arms made his cold heart ache. He was relieved you were safe, proud that you had fought through your urge, deeply sad - although that was nothing new; but there was something else, a longing he didn't understand. Not wanting to dwell on the feeling he turned his attention to the baby.

"Just look at the little thing, so cute and helpless." He smiled fondly at the infant.

You noticed the way he looked at the baby with such softness, a genuine smile tugging at his lips. "Can my husband hold him for a bit?" You asked the woman, not realizing how naturally the word 'husband' had rolled off your tongue.

"What?" Astarion was taken aback, "No, I couldn't possibly." He looked to the woman hoping she would object.

The woman gave the two of you a knowing look before answering, "of course dear."

You turned back to him, your eyes shining, holding out the baby, "only if you want you Starlight."

Astarion caved under your loving gaze, he hated how easily you swayed his heart. "well alright give it here, you know I can't say no to that face."

His action did not reflect his words as he stood there froze just as you had, not sure how to take the baby. If he had ever held a baby it was centuries ago long before he had been turned and far to long ago to remember.

"Here Star, hold you arms like mine." You instructed him just as the old woman had done for you before gently passing the baby into his arms.

The aching longing tore a hole in his heart as he held the sleeping infant in his arms. You felt it too as you watched him, your love, cradling the baby as if it were the most precious thing in the world. You moved closer to him warping an arm around his waist, you cuddled into his side as he relaxed into you resting his head against yours. The two of you didn't need words to understand what the other was feeling. The baby, although a source of pain, was also a symbol of your hope. Hope you'd both find freedom, hope you'd survive this whole ordeal, hope you'd have a future.

"Astarion, I-" You were cut off by a familiar voice calling out over the crowd breaking your tender moment.

"There they are! Hey!" Shadowheart was waving at you as she approached with Lae'zel close behind her.

As if snapped out of a trance Astarion quickly handed the baby back to his caregiver and thanked her. He whipped misty eye before either of them could notice.

"What the hells are you two doing, we've been looking everywhere." Shadowheart scolded, examining you both with suspicion.

"Sorry, I had another episode," You lied. "Thankfully Astarion found me before I could hurt anyone."

"Enough doddling, we've wasted enough time searching for you." Lae'zel turned as if to leave with out you. Shadowheart simply rolled her eyes, turning to follow.

"Come my love, we don't want to be left behind." Astarion spoke to you softly as laced his fingers with yours, pulling you toward the party. You waved goodbye to baby Arthur and the woman before turning to continue you journey.

#bg3 #astarion #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate astarion #bg3 astarion #dark urge #durge #astarion x durge #bg3 durge #astarion x reader #astarion x tav #astarion x dark urge #baldurs gate #astarion ancunin #bg3 dark urge #the dark urge #bg3 tav #bg3 fanfiction

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stars-for-circe · 15 days

Text

Bones and All - Part 1

Part 1, Part 2 - wip

Tags / cw: Cannibal!reader x Vampire!Ellie, reader is a psychopath, Ellie is over 100 but physically 23, reader is around 27-30, reader is sophisticated/classy, gore, blood, suggestive, dark themes - read at your discretion, murders, drugging, cannibalism, reader is rich

On Monday, you were reckless. Starved. It had been three days since you had last feasted. And even now, after catching a meal, it was only a leg. The poor victim crawling away in agony as you dined on his limbs. And when he dared to pause his escape, to look back at the sight of you tearing through flesh with your teeth - your white cocktail dress now wine red, drenched with his life - he screamed.

"Y-you fucking monster!" He was dry heaving at this point, saliva and snot and tears dripping out as his body tried to keep itself alive.

You merely turned to look at him, and grinned - bearing your red teeth.

"And what did your wife call you? When you hit her? When you killed her?"

He whimpered in realisation. This, this wasn't some random attack. This was planned, methodical. This was karma. Whatever god that ruled above had breathed a purpose into you, as a vessel of retribution. You simply took back what your victims stole. A life for a life.

"Darling, don't act so righteous. You and I? We are no different." You were almost patronising, void of any empathy, any remorse.

He promptly passed out. Either from the blood loss or the shock - or both, you considered - it made cleaning up easier when the mess wasn't screaming for help. Unfortunately, the pill you slipped into his glass didn't work for long. You realised as such when you noticed his brows scrunch as you dragged him out of your car and into the forest. God, there was so much blood. Painting the forest floor, the fallen Winter leaves now reflecting the colour of Autumn. It was nauseating.

And usually, you were meticulous. In choosing your victims (who were always as evil as you, in their crimes, their abuses), in luring them out of hiding, in drugging them until you killed. You made sure to be inviting, enticing, making them eager to have dinner at your manor, or drinks at a quiet bar.

Of course, dining at home was easier for you to slip something in their food, but most bars were dark enough for a dissolving pill to go unnoticed. And sometimes you enjoyed going out - the thrill of possibly getting caught, the clouded eyes of your victims thinking you were taking them to bed. Well, you did, but it was to their deathbed, rather.

You would undress them, bathe them, even talk to them. Because who knows? Maybe they could still hear you in their dreams, amidst all the drugs in their system. Then, in a bathtub filled halfway with warm water, you would slit their throat. And you would let them drain until there wasn't any blood left. Because unlike your other, more famous peers, you hated blood. Its metallic taste on your tongue oh-so unpleasant, when you'd rather savour the other delicacies in humans.

But this time, you had no choice. The son of a bitch woke up halfway home. You had to take a detour into the forestry surrounding the manor. You had to eat. You couldn't wait any longer. That sense of panicked urgency now overtaking your ravenous hunger. And as the drugs wore off, he was thankfully still weak enough to drag outside, and leave laying against a tree. But as the drugs wore off, he screamed and begged for his life when the glint of your knife shone under the moonlight.

You just begged for some peace and quiet while having dinner. But, some dreams would only remain dreams. And he would remain screaming as the knife sunk in.

So that night, you ate. A disgusting, bloody meal. But a meal nonetheless. It tasted horrible, but it would last you another few days - it was enough for now. The creatures of the forest would eat the rest.

On Monday, Ellie smelled the blood. It was fresh.

On Tuesday, Ellie found the source. 7 miles away, in some forest in the middle of nowhere. Wolves, surrounding a carcass of what was once a man, now just fertiliser. The leaves, damp from early morning fog, squelched under her feet as she got closer. And vampires, being at the top of the food chain, bowed to no-one. The wolves ran away at the sight of her.

"Holy shit..."

It was missing a fucking leg. A clean cut - the wolves weren't this clean in hunting. And it couldn't be because of the wolves - they never attacked people. This was a body, left in the forest, missing a fucking leg - and Ellie didn't know why.

For a moment, she suspected another vampire in her territory. This was in the outskirts after all, maybe they didn't recognise her markings. But vampires didn't do this. They were discrete - which was part of the reason why it was so difficult to hunt in this era, with the amount of fucking CCTV everywhere. Ellie herself hadn't eaten in weeks. This? This was a fucking mess. There were clothes thrown everywhere, the body was still identifiable, and the smell reached miles on every side.

But most importantly, there was blood. So much blood. And Ellie was a vampire, for fucks sake. Another vampire wouldn't kill for no reason - and this looked like the blood was avoided on purpose. Her mouth watered. Fuck, it was unintentional - this was so gruesome she could have thrown up at the sight. But the coat of fresh blood spread everywhere made her wish the body was still alive - still warm.

So Ellie was confused. And honestly? She was really fucking spooked, too. This forest was quiet - eerie even. There were no birds singing, no crickets chirping, even though they should have been wide awake. It screamed of danger, even to her. Vampires were predators, but for some reason, Ellie felt like prey. Her leg started twitching, begging her to run out of this place, lest it be next.

So she got out of there as fast as she could, in whatever direction was in front of her. The fog, still cold and damp, blanketed both the forest floor and herself, and Ellie couldn’t tell if it was the temperature or nervous that send the chill down her spine - but she ran. And after an hour, spent narrowly missing hidden branches and rocks (No, she didn't trip), she found a break in the clearing. Thank god.

Wait, was that a manor?

…

She ran the wrong way.

"Son of a-"

"Fuck these fucking forests and their fucking trees and their fucking rocks and houses-" She kicked a nearby tree, breaking the trunk in half. Then a rock, then the dirt. The volume of her yelling caused the birds to fly out of the trees. She glared at them, and then ran back to the proper way out. Fuck the blood for smelling so enticing.

On Tuesday, You heard commotion in the clearing near your house. But no human dared to come near, so you blamed it on the wild animals.

On Wednesday, You built an appetite. But so did Ellie. And this time, you were prepared.

On your bedside table sat a sugar bowl, a vintage style of ornate - only the sweets worthy enough deserved to be held within. It was rather beautiful, as the early morning sun gently reflected off the edge of it. It garnered your attention, as you slowly woke up. And slowly, as you leaned against the headboard of your bed, and reached over to sit it on your lap, your mouth watered at the promise of the treats inside. Today was the day.

You took the little gold lid off, eyeing the candy inside. Each piece wrapped in a different type of paper than the last. You licked your lips tentatively - what would you fancy today? Gooseberry? No, you had that one two days ago. How about Grapefruit instead? A tough choice to make, given the amount of flavours to choose from. Gently, your fingers circled the rim of the bowl, tracing the intricacies drawn onto the china, before you dipped your hand into the bowl and pulled a piece out at random.

The pastel green wrapper crinkled as you unwrapped it, before popping the candy in your mouth and closing your eyes as you savoured its taste. Green apple - an old favourite of yours. Though, it had definitely been a while since you last had that one in particular, because they were always the hardest to catch. Hidden in the ridges and bumps of the bowl, seen rarely, and chosen even lesser. Hm, you had your work set out for you tomorrow.

You clenched your fist in contemplation, and felt a poke from the crinkled wrapper still in your hands. You almost forgot. And at your favourite part nonetheless! You sat your self up, now cross legged on the bed as you unfolded the wrapper in anticipation. It was silent for a moment, as you raised a brow, absorbing the information in front of you.

Oh?

Written, in small font, was her information. Her age, her name, her crime. A lovely choice. And it was ironic, that out of all the ways she would be punished for it, you were her executioner. How cyclical, you thought. But never mind that, for she was just another victim to get rid of - nothing more, nothing less. You bit down on the candy, breaking it inside your mouth. It’s sour taste clouding your senses as you contemplated your methods. And yet, it would be a shame not to have fun with this one, after all, it wasn't often you feasted on one of her kind.

'Ellie Williams, 23, vampire.'

A dinner party at your manor would suffice, to lure her into your clutches, and to celebrate your forthcoming victory.

On Wednesday, Ellie was reckless. Starved. 3 weeks since she had last fed - and she was ready to do anything for another taste.

Taglist: @bready101 @elliewilliamsblunt @aouiaa @strangehuman101 @lov3lylotus @wishbones999 @seraphicsentences @les4elliewilliams @happysparklingshadows @irelandzo @r3starttt @iamaboringrattat @genderfluidlesbain999 @slut4mascss @rxreaqia @kylorey25 @massivepeacefemme @elliewilliamsfavborderhopper @ratdungeon @elxarw @mariasabanahabanabana @vvynia @abbyshands @littlegingerperson5 @flowersforvi

#tlou2 #the last of us #the last of us 2 #ellie williams x reader #ellie williams x you #ellie williams #Ellie Williams the last of us #Ellie Williams tlou #Ellie Williams the last of us 2 #Ellie Williams tlou2 #tlou

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sonamytrash · 2 months

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Distraction

AN: Based after the female titan arc where Levi injures his leg. Cute lil nurse reader and Levi come to terms with their mutual feelings after the scouts suffer such heavy losses. Smutty smut smut galore, enjoy! Divider by @cafekitsune

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x F!Reader, Levi x Nurse reader

Warnings: Sex, little bit of angst, mostly smut, handjob, fingering, sex, vaginal sex, female anatomy described, mutual pining, orgasm, creampie, dirty talk, Levi's office chair is humanities strongest chair, not proof read.

Levi sat at his desk, one hand propped up under his chin as he stared out the window, watching the rain patter against the glass. Levi ackerman's office was as austere as he was. It was a space that invited solitude, a retreat from the chaos of the world outside. And yet, even in this sterile environment, there was a certain air of... anticipation. A spark of life that Levi had not felt in a long time. He could feel it crackling in the air, dancing on the tips of his fingers, and whispering his name. It was not the wind, nor was it the rain that had been pounding against his window for hours. It was you. You were coming.

You were a welcome distraction from the current stres and grief he was plagued with these past few weeks. The gorgeous nurse with the sweet voice, gorgeous figure, and big doe eyes. He found himself looking forward to your visits amongst the chaos.

Levi couldn't help but wonder how long he'd been admiring you for. It seemed like every time you had to patch up any injuries or wounds, his gaze would unconsciously gravitate towards you. You were a beautiful woman with an alluring personality. He settled on the thought that he had been drawn to you for as long as he could remember.

Over the years, your relationship has evolved from one of a patient and nurse, to something more complicated. He wasn't sure what it was, but he knew it went beyond professional.

His thoughts drifted back to the last mission. His entire squad had been wiped out, amongst hundreds of others, and he was lucky to have made it back with just an injured leg. The memories of that day replaying themselves in a macabre loop in his mind.

He couldn't help but wonder how you would feel if he didn't make it back alive. Would you mourn his loss? Would you remember him as more than just another injured soldier you had tended to? The thought both terrified and thrilled him.

Levi leaned back in his chair and surveyed his office once more. The door was slightly ajar, and the sound of approaching footsteps echoed through the hallway outside. He took a deep breath, trying to steady his racing heart, and straightened his posture. This was Levi ackerman, after all. He wasn't the type to get flustered or nervous. But he couldn't deny the butterflies in his stomach or the heat that had spread to his cheeks.

The footsteps grew louder, and then there was a gentle knock on his door. His heart leapt into his throat. "Come in," he croaked, his voice sounding strange and distant even to his own ears. The door opened, revealing a vision of loveliness that took his breath away.

"Good afternoon, Levi," you said, "I'm here to check up on that leg of yours." Your voice was as alluring as ever, like honey dripping from the tongue of an angel. You glanced briefly at his injured limb before looking back up at him. Even that simple action made him feel a strange fluttering in his chest.

As you walked over to him, your movements were fluid and graceful. Levi tore his gaze away from your curves and back to your face, not wanting to seem rude. You knelt down beside his chair, your eyes meeting his once more. "How's the pain been?" You asked, your voice low and soothing.

Levi swallowed hard, trying to find his voice. "It's... bearable," he managed to say. "Better than it was, at least." You nodded, studying him carefully. He felt self-conscious under your scrutiny, as if you could see right through him, as if you could read his mind that was plagued with desire and by thoughts of you.

You reached out your hand, your slender fingers gracefully curving over his knee. The contact sent a jolt of awareness through him, making his breath hitch in his throat. "I'll just take a look," you murmured, your voice low and soothing. Your touch was gentle but firm as you began to probe at his leg, feeling along the muscles and bones.

Levi closed his eyes, trying to focus on the sensation of your hands on his skin rather than the way your body brushed against his chair. It had been so long since he'd felt anything like this, and he couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to have you in the way he desired most.

"And how have you been, Captain?" You ask him, trying to initiate conversation sensing his tense body language.

He shrugged, looking away momentarily. "Oh, you know. Bored out of my mind. Nothing new." You giggle at his comment, and he felt the heat in his cheeks growing more intense at the adorable sound, his expression softening. "Is there anything I can tell you about the state of my leg that you don't already know?" He asks teasingly.

"It's healing nicely. You're making excellent progress." Your voice was soft and reassuring, "but I do want you to take it easy for a little while longer. No strenuous activity, alright? Or else." Your fingers danced over his knee again to examine the proximal area of his leg, sending shivers up his spine. He chuckles. "Or else what?" He asks, raising an eyebrow. You smirk playfully in response, "or else I'll come for you, I don't care if you're humanities strongest soldier." You pout playfully, trying to hide the fear in your eyes, thoughts of how he only narrowly returned from the recent scouting mission. "I'll come and find you and drag you back here myself." You said sternly. "Understood?." You ask, meeting his gaze, his lips curve almost into a smile, that answers his earlier question. Your face was etched with concern, concern for his wellbeing. Because if one day he didn’t come back, your heart would break.

You continued your examination, your fingers moving higher up his thigh. Levi's heart raced, and he could feel himself growing harder beneath his uniform. He tried to focus on something else, but it was impossible not to notice the way your breasts pressed against your uniform whenever you leaned forward.

"Though I do think you're ready for some light exercise," you said, your voice still soft. "Just to keep the blood flowing and help with the healing process." You paused, looking up at him with those eyes, those fucking eyes. "And," you added with a mischievous grin, "to make sure you don't get too bored sitting around all day."

"Well," he said, his voice slightly unsteady, "What did you have in mind?" He forced himself to meet your gaze, hoping his expression conveyed the interest and attraction he was feeling.

You paused your examination, hands resting gently on his thigh. Levi felt your eyes flicker down to where his uniform was straining, and he couldn't help but blush hotter, you had noticed. He wanted to look away, but he couldn't bring himself to break eye contact with you. There was something in your gaze that made him feel both vulnerable and strangely aroused.

"I see you're feeling a little warmer over here," you murmured, your voice low and teasing. Your thumbs slowly brushed against the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, sending a shiver of pleasure through him. He could feel the heat rising in his face, and his breath came faster as you continued to touch him.

"That's understandable, considering the circumstances." Your thumbs traced light circles over his hardness, and Levi gasped, arching into your touch. You smiled at his reaction, your eyes glinting with mischief.

"But you shouldn't feel embarrassed." You continued, your hand palmed harder along his length, and Levi bit back a moan.

You smiled, eyes never leaving his as you lifted yourself to his level. You leaned closer, your breath warm against his ear. "I could help you feel better," you whispered. "If you'd like." Your hand slipped around to cup his groin, your thumb pressing against the tip of his erection.

"Fuck," Levi moaned, unable to contain the sound as pleasure coursed through him. He arched his back, pressing further into your touch. "Yes," he managed to croak. "Please."

With practised ease, you undid the buttons of his uniform, revealing his chest. Your touch was gentle but firm as you guided his shirt off, tossing it aside. His skin was warm and smooth beneath your fingers, and you revelled in the feel of him beneath your touch.

"You've been such a good patient," you continued, your voice a husky whisper. "I think it's only fair that I reward you."

Levi arched into your touch, a hiss escaping his mouth. He wanted more. He needed more. He reached up, threading his fingers through your hair and pulling you closer still, their lips mere inches apart.

"And you've been such a patient girl, waiting for me to come back in one piece all those times, patching me up each and every time. I'm sorry I've made you worry. It only seems fair that I return the favour...." He says, mimicking your words seductively with a tenderness you had never heard from him before.

You smile as you lean in, your lips brushing against his. The kiss was tentative at first, a mere flutter of your lips against each other. But as your tongues met and explored the depths of each other's mouths, the kiss deepened, becoming more urgent and passionate

You leaned forward, your breasts brushing against his chest as you reached down to unfasten his pants. With practiced efficiency, you slid them off, taking his boxer briefs with them. Levi was left bare before you, his erection standing proudly, leaking pre-cum. You couldn't help but marvel at the beauty of his body, the way his muscles rippled beneath his skin. His gorgeous cock that had just the right amount of length and girth.

You watched him with a mixture of lust and tenderness, your eyes tracing the lines of his face and body. The way he responded to your touch made your heart race, the feel of his skin beneath your fingertips and the sound of his pleasure echoing in the quiet room.

You fingers tracing a circle around the head of his cock before wrapping your hand around him, stroking him slowly and gently. He arched his back, pressing into your hand, moaning softly. His hips began to move of their own accord, seeking release. Your expert touch sending waves of pleasure through him. Your fingers tightened around him as you began to stroke him faster. Levi groaned into the kiss, his hips bucking upward. "Y/n" he murmured, his voice thick with desire. "I want you." He breathed. You smirked at his words as you straddled him in his seat, careful not to put too much of your weight on his injured leg.

"You have me, you've always had me, Levi." you whispered, your lips finding his neck. Your tongue darted out, tracing a line along his pulse point.

Levi growled in response, arching his back further into your touch. He wrapped his arms around you tightly as he kissed you again, your tongues tangling in a desperate dance. He felt your other hand against his chest, your nails digging into his skin, leaving little trails of pleasure and pain. The sensation only served to heighten his arousal, making him harder and hotter than ever.

You moaned into the kiss, your body moving in perfect synchronicity with his. Your hips now rocked against his, grinding against the thick ridge of his erection. You felt the warmth of him, the need in every thrust of his hips.

Levi's hands were everywhere, tracing lines of desire over your skin, his fingers leaving trails of heat in their wake. He nipped at your earlobe, sending shivers down your spine, and then soothed the sting with a tender kiss. You arched your back, pressing your chest flush against his, your breasts crushed against his muscled chest.

"Take off your clothes," he murmured, his voice rough with need. "Show me everything." There he was. The assertive, forward and absolutely fucking irresistible Captain Levi.

You felt your heart race as you gazed into his lustful eyes, your cheeks flushed, biting your bottom lip. Slowly, you reached up to undo the buttons of your blouse, revealing the underwear you wore beneath. You pulled the fabric off, letting it fall to the floor before he reached behind you and unclipped your bra. Your breasts, rosy and firm, were now on display, "Fuck." He groaned.

Levi's eyes never left your body as you continue to undress, his gaze traveling up and down, drinking in every inch of you. "You're so beautiful," he murmured, his voice thick with desire. He reached out to brush a thumb over your nipple, and you arched into the touch, a moan escaping your lips.

You began to undo the button of your pants, your hearts racing in anticipation. You pushed them down over your hips with your underwear, revealing all of your body. Levi's eyes darkened at the sight of you, and he reached out to touch you again, tracing a line down your stomach, over your mound, and finally to the center, where you were dripping wet for him.

Your breath hitched as his fingers made contact, and you arched your back. You whimpered his name, pressing yourself against his touch. His other hand moved to cup your bottom, lifting you up so that you were positioned over him.

"You're so wet for me," he growled, his voice low and husky. "I can't wait to feel you around my cock." He spread your wetness with his fingers, teasing your entrance, before finally slipping one inside.

As his fingers found their way inside you, you gasped, he cupped you, his thumb brushing against your clit,

"Oh, fuck," you moaned, your hips moving in time with his hand. The sensation of being filled by his fingers was overwhelming, sending waves of pleasure coursing through you. You felt yourself growing wetter, hotter, as he thrust his fingers deeper, curling them to hit just the right spot.

"You're so fucking tight," Levi groaned, his voice thick with desire. His fingers found your entrance again, slipping and sliding as they prepared your body for him. "L-levi," you moaned. He smiled against your skin, his free hand pinching and tracing lazy circles around your nipple. "That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you." His other hand continued to work on your pussy, his fingers finding a rhythm that made you writhe and cry out.

He moved his fingers faster, harder, as he watched your face contort with pleasure. Your breasts heaved with each ragged breath, your nipples hard and begging for his attention. He took one between his lips, sucking gently before biting down softly, causing you to cry out his name again.

"Oh God, Levi," you moaned, your voice strained. Your inner walls clenched tight around his fingers, milking his touch, and he could feel your orgasm coursing through you. He increased the pressure on your clit, rubbing it in circles, his fingers still working you, slowly easing the intensity of the sensations.

He gently parted you r legs with his fingers, revealing your wetness to his gaze. "You're so beautiful," he murmured again, his voice low and husky. "So hot and ready for me."

You shuddered, your body still quivering from the intensity of your orgasm. You looked into Levi's eyes, your faces mere inches apart, "More," you whispered, your voice barely audible.

He smirked at your words, "What was that? I couldn't hear you." He said teasingly.

You felt incredibly exposed and vulnerable with Levi looking at you like that, but it was also the most arousing thing you had ever experienced. His words sent a shiver of desire through you. "Please," you whispered, your hips moving in time with his hand. "I need you inside me, Levi."

Levi smiled, his eyes darkening with desire as he watched you respond to his touch. He withdrew his fingers from between your legs, only to grip your hips and pull you closer. His erection pressed against you, hot and hard.

"Are you ready for this?" he asked, his voice gruff with lust. You nodded, eyes locked on his, your fingers digging into his shoulders. With a groan, he positioned himself at your entrance and slowly pushed his length inside. You met his movements and lowered yourself onto him. Your body tightened around him, greedy for his cock and he let out a shuddering breath as he felt your heat engulf him.

"Fuck, you're greedy little pussy is sucking me right in." He says through gritted teeth. Trying not to cum there and then. You whimper at his words as he stretches you "I can't help it Levi," You say breathlessly "It feels so good."

He began to move, slowly at first, his hips meeting yours in a steady rhythm as you adjusted to each other. You arched your back, as you felt him filling you, stretching you in ways you hadn't even known were possible. You moaned his name, nails gripping his shoulders.

Levi's movements grew more assured, his body aligned with yours in perfect harmony. The sounds of your skin slapping together filled the room, a primal symphony of desire. You were so wet, so tight, it was almost painful for him to hold back any longer.

Your face was flushed with desire, as you surrendered to the sensation of being taken by him. Your breasts bounced against his chest, hips meeting his thrusts with a desperation that threatened to unravel him. You moved against him with a ferocity that both aroused and terrified him. He was lost in the feel and the taste of you, the sound of your moans filling the air. He gripped your waist, his fingers digging into your soft flesh in an attempt to steady you as he felt the familiar tugging deep in his core.

He gripped your waist tighter, feeling the muscles in your abdomen tensing and releasing as you rode him. Your breath came in ragged gasps, your fingernails digging into his shoulders as you tried to find purchase, to draw him deeper inside of you.

Your lips parted in a smile of pure pleasure, the way you moved against him, the sounds you made, the way you arched your back and cried out his name—it was all driving him closer to the edge.

Your hands gripped his shoulders, your nails digging into his skin, leaving tiny half-moons of red in their wake. He could feel you tightening around him, youer muscles tensing and releasing, your body moving in perfect harmony with his.

He could feel the heat emanating from you, the wetness that coated his fingers as he reached down and stroked your clit and your hips bucked harder against him in response to the stimulation.

"You're so fucking wet," he groaned, his voice raw with need. "I can feel you dripping onto my cock. You're killing me, baby." He thrust upwards harder, deeper, feeling you inner muscles clench and release around him in perfect rhythm. Your hips bucked wildly against him, urging him to continue.

"You feel so good," he groaned, his voice rough with need. "Your tight little cunt... It's like you were made for me." He thrust harder, faster, his cock sliding in and out of your wetness. Your breasts bounced with each movement, your nipples hard and aching for his touch.

"You're so big, Levi," you moaned, your voice low and throaty. "Your cock is making me loose my mind." You mewled. His cock throbbed within you at your words, filling every inch of your tight, wet warmth.

"You feel so good," you moaned, your voice thick with desire. "I can't believe how much I love your cock."

"God, you're so filthy," he growled, his voice rough with lust. "I love how much you want this." Your dirty little moans sent a shiver down his spine. Your hips began to move faster, your body undulating in a rhythm that was both primal and irresistible.

"Oh god, yes!" You cried out, your voice breaking. "Don't stop!" You begged him, he bucked his hips up, thrusting deeper inside of you, kissing your cervix with his cock. Your movements growing more urgent. He knew you were close.

"Fuck, that's it," he groaned, his hips thrusting harder as he continued to play with your clit. Your body trembled above him, your pleasure building to a fever pitch. He watched your face contort in ecstasy, eyes rolling back into your head as you came undone.

"Yes," you moaned. "Levi, I'm going to... I'm going to..." Your voice trailed off as your body gave in to the sensations washing over you. With a force that took him by surprise, your muscles contracting powerfully around him, your juices pudling where your bodies were connected, cries of pleasure filled the room as you came.

Levi felt your body tense, the muscles of your core grip him tightly, and with a final, powerful thrust, he cried out your name as he came, his hips bucking wildly, his cock pulsing deep inside you. You arched your back as you met his thrusts, your body shuddering with the force of your own orgasm.

Your bodies moved together in perfect rhythm, sweat-slicked skin sliding against each other. His cock twitched inside you as he emptied himself into your cunt. You leaned forward, your forehead resting against his, your chests rising and falling in unison as you both fought to catch your breath. Your eyes were wide and glassy with desire, lips parted in a soft, satisfied smile.

He traced a finger along your jawline, tracing the outline of your lips before cupping your face in his hand.

"I'm not going anywhere, I'll stay alive." he said, looking into your eyes. "I promise, even if I'm not in one piece, I'll come back to you, always."

#levi x reader #levi ackerman #levi aot #levi x y/n #levi smut #captain levi x reader #levi attack on titan #levi ackerman x reader #aot smut #fanfiction smut #levi ackerman fluff #levi fluff #fluff #aot fluff #levi ackerman x female reader #levi ackerman x y/n smut #levi ackerman x you

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cauliflowercounty · 2 months

Text

Knives Dance (Part III)

Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen x fem!Reader

Summary: It was hard to have a prose summary so here are some bullets of what’s happening in part 3

Baron Feyd missing you + heartfelt reunion

Feyd being totally infatuated with you

SCIENCE!!! and POLITICS!!!

Rabban being pitiful

Reader being a badass

Feyd vs Paul on Arrakis (what will happen? You’ll never knowww… [unless you read this chapter **wink, wink, wink**]

Warnings: Violence, blood, death (woohoo)

Word Count: 10.3k (whoops… I went typey-type)

A/N: I wanted to say a sincere thanks to everyone who's read Knives Dance up to this point. This series is some of the most fun I've had writing in a long, long time. Sending lots of love your way :)

Part I | Part II | Part III

Stirring gently in his bed, Feyd recoils slightly as the light from Giedi Prime’s black sun hits his eye line through the wall of windows that separate his bedroom from the private balcony that overlooks the cityscape. He extends his arm to your side of the bed and runs his hand languidly across the surface, feeling the cool, silky sheets under his fingertips. His heart feels heavy in his chest, and he lets out a low growl of frustration into his pillow. It has been a long three weeks without you.

You’ve been off-world on a visit to Youra to see your father and bring back equipment for the laboratory you’re constructing on Giedi Prime. He knows that he doesn’t have to worry about your safety because he insisted on a full Harkonnen security detail accompanying you, which should have put his mind at ease, but he’s laid awake each night since your departure, staring at the ceiling and trying not to think of disasters befalling you during your travels. One night it’s asteroids colliding with your ship, tearing gaping holes in the walls, and sucking you into the vacuum of space. Another, it’s an ambush by an undiscovered society, hellbent on killing alien peoples for sport. Perhaps a novel virus wiping out the entire population of Youra and you with it in a matter of days? No farfetched scenarios were off limits when Feyd allowed his mind to wander.

The foreign feeling of loss due to your absence has not only plagued him with anxiety, but allowed Feyd to slip into a state of abject melancholia. None of his old vices have come close to fulfilling him, let alone make him feel much of anything. Watching his servants cower in fear or making foreign ambassadors quake in their seats wasn’t giving him the same gratification as it once had. Even hearing the roar of the crowds in the arena didn't given him any satisfaction. Everything had felt unbearably pedestrian. The only thing that brought a smile to his face was the thought of having the other half of his bed full again and listening to your tranquil voice. With every passing moment, he’s yearned for the life you had built together on Giedi Prime to resume.

Your mornings together were simple and easy. They were a time when he could always experience a drop of serenity within the political quagmire he’d gotten himself into since assuming the title of Baron. He’d wake up with you already in his embrace, your head laid delicately on his chest. He'd listen to your soft breathing and savor the way your limbs would entangle with his. The image of you blinking your eyes open to look at him with the special glimmer of affection reserved just for him never failed to make his heart flutter.

Overtime, Feyd noticed you had been taking very well to Harkonnen dresses, which you now wore more often than not. He had the best seamstresses on Giedi Prime make and tailor custom outfits for you, though he didn’t expect you to always wear them, knowing how important your heritage was for you. Nevertheless, you continued to grab one of the black gowns from your shared closet for your daily tasks and tell him with a smile “I’m Baroness Harkonnen now. Shouldn’t I dress the part?”

Before leaving your quarters each day, Feyd always took the opportunity to take your hand in his and bring you in front of the floor length mirror in your shared closet. With his hands around your waist, he would pepper gentle kisses from your cheeks down your neck, whispering in your ear “you are a vision today, my Baroness.” You'd always smile and blush bashfully in return, returning his kisses in kind. Moments like those when it was just the two of you had become one of his favorite parts of the day.

You made the meetings, filled with diplomats groveling to win his favor, bearable. How he loved to watch you as you sat on the grand Harkonnen throne beside him. You never failed to command the room with your head held high. Power and dignity seemed to drip off of your being and fill every room you entered. You were truly worthy of the title of Baroness, and with every passing day and every interaction, there was more and more for Feyd to admire about you.

In private, you took to training together, where he would bask in your shared might. With every blow he endured from you, all he could think about was that he, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, was the only person alive to witness you so animated with ferocity and passion from battle, as all others who have seen you this way have been slain and buried. Sparring sessions between the two of you almost always ended with you both on the floor, limbs entwined and chests heaving after one of you would get the best of the other and take the opportunity to pin the other to the floor.

At the end of the day, you'd always assume your position on the balcony in a flowy, white nightgown. With a gentle gesture, you’d beckon him to accompany you while you observe your shared domain, watching the shuttles flying through the gaps in the dark architecture and the stark white floodlights passing over the cityscape. He’d hold you close by your waist and whisper sweet nothings into your ear until you start to shiver from the evening chill, at which point he’d tug at your waist to take you back to the bedroom to retire for the night. Every day, Feyd was falling deeper and deeper into you, and he’s loved every moment.

Bringing himself upright, Feyd stretches his arms and stands up, walking over to the closet. Across from his sets of Harkonnen formalwear and battle gear, your gowns are neatly hung. Half of them are the sleek, black Harkonnen designs he had made for you. The other half are gorgeously vibrant Youran gowns. He sighs, imagining sharing one of your moments again in front of the mirror like always, but alas, you are not beside him. Once he’s dressed, he emerges from his quarters and is met with a nameless servant.

“Good morning, Baron,” the servant says, bowing deeply and trying not to give Feyd an excuse to kill him. “I am here to inform you that we have received a signal from the Baroness’s craft. Her arrival is imminent.”

Hearing those words, Feyd turns on his heel toward the landing docks, dismissing the servant who heaves a sigh of relief because his head is thankfully still connected to the rest of his body. As Feyd walks the halls, his pace quickens, feeling the anticipation rise in his chest. People bow and salute him in the hallways, but he doesn’t pay them any attention. He’s too preoccupied with his thoughts of you; he can already smell the aroma of rainforest flowers you carry around with you. The thought that he’s so close to having you near again nearly drives him mad.

When he arrives at the landing docks, the fleet of Harkonnen vessels is already touching down. As he hears the machinery’s loud whirring die, the ramps of all the crafts to meet the floor. Lines of Harkonnen soldiers file out first, each soldier with weapons in arms. The steady pulse of their synchronized footsteps echoes through the space with perfect adherence to Harkonnen military standards is satisfactory for Feyd. The commander in front barks orders, and the guards immediately step into formation, making an aisle that extends between Feyd and the craft closest to him.

He is at a loss for words when he sees you walk down the ramp. You are undeniably gorgeous in Harkonnen clothes, but you look positively ethereal in the Youran gown and golden headdress that adorn your body today. Instead of shrouding yourself in the cloak you’ve worn in the past to hide your weaponry, you’re wearing a traditional dress reserved only for Youra’s utmost nobility. Layers of sheer, olive and cerulean fabric flare behind you to create your dress’s skirt out from under a ribbed bronze and mahogany corset. Seeing how it’s cinched your waist and accented your silhouette, all Feyd wants to do is hold you and drag his fingers up and down the length of your figure.

Through the abundance of delicate golden chains that are symmetrically draped over your exposed shoulders and chest, Feyd can see how the corset and the off the shoulder neckline cradles your breasts in a way that makes him feel lightheaded. The entire skirt of the dress is decorated in dazzling embellishments and the characteristic Youran golden thread that Feyd has come to love on you. The fabric of the train seems to flow like water behind you as you walk.

The high front hemline of the gown that ends at your upper thighs gives Feyd a good look at your legs, the lengths of which are delicately wrapped in the thin, tan ribbons from your sandals. The crosshatched pattern of the ribbons allows him to see just how beautifully your legs are sculpted from years of training and exploration. The sight makes his mouth water. He is truly breathless gazing upon you, his Baroness.

You return his affectionate gaze and call his name excitedly, reaching down and bunching up your skirt in your grasp before breaking into a run between the lines of Harkonnen guards. Your footsteps are the only noise reverberating throughout the area. Before he even realizes it, Feyd’s running for you, too. As you approach each other, he extends his arms out to you, and you leap into them, wrapping your legs around his waist. As he lifts you up into his arms, he spins you both around as you nuzzle yourself deeper into his hold.

Your grips on each other are desperate. Without a moment to waste, he cups your cheek with one hand as the other holds you tightly by the small of your back. A tear threatens to fall from his eyes as he considers saying that he hopes that you’ve missed him, but the look in your eyes already tells him the answer. This is truly happiness like he’s never experienced before. It washes over him when you finally bring your lips to meet his. His breath is warm against yours as he exhales into the kiss in satisfaction. He feels your hands come up to clutch the back of his head to deepen your kiss and growls hungrily, quickly losing himself in your embrace while attempting to resist the urge to devour you on the spot. His brow furrows when you finally break for air.

“Hello, my love,” you whisper softly, pressing your forehead against his, as if what you’re saying is a secret meant for only his ears. He grins at the pet name you’ve picked for him. “How have things been at home?” Your words make Feyd pause. Were you calling Giedi Prime “home?”

“Everything has been adequate,” Feyd says, kissing you again. “But I do prefer it when my Baroness is beside me.”

“I guess you’re in luck then,” you smile at his words. You rest your hands on his chest, feeling his prominent pectoral muscles underneath his shirt which makes him sigh in satisfaction. You swiftly squash the temptation to kiss him again as you meet his gaze because if you do, you’d never want to stop. Feyd sets you down, even though he’d gladly carry you all day wherever you want.

“My father sends his regards. He’s very pleased with House Harkonnen. He also sends his condolences at your uncle’s passing,” you say, which makes Feyd scoff silently to himself. “I’ve also gathered all I need for the laboratory. I hope I didn’t bring too much back with me. I hope it’s not a burden…” you trail off.

“You could never be a burden. We have plenty of servants. They can handle the labor,” Feyd assures as he turns to one of the closest guards. “Start unloading the Baroness’s things. You know where to take them. Don’t you dare damage any of it. There will be repercussions if anything is found broken.”

“Yes, My Lord,” the guard responds before beginning to bark orders to the others. One by one, the guards disappear into the vessel, and emerge moments later, carrying large wooden crates by the bronze colored handles attached to the sides of each. They all file out and disappear into the fortress, headed for your lab.

“So,” Feyd says, turning back to you. “Home is Giedi Prime now? I wouldn’t have expected you to call anywhere but Youra home. It’s not that I’m unsatisfied that you’ve found comfort on Giedi Prime, but I was surprised to hear you say those words.”

You smile and glance down at the ground before looking back to him, responding. “Younger me would have agreed with you. Youra is my first home and will forever be such. However, my feelings have changed. Home is wherever you are,” you explain, intertwining your fingers with his. At your words, Feyd pulls you in again by the waist for another quick kiss, and he wonders what he did to deserve a wife like you as you both turn to follow your belongings.

Weeks ago, you and Feyd had set aside the largest of Baron Vladimir’s personal recreation spaces to be converted to a laboratory for you on Giedi Prime. You both had celebrated the initiation of the transformation by gathering all the Baron’s belongings and smashing them to smithereens, which was quite cathartic for the both of you. In particular, you loved bashing Vladimir’s pipe and ripping his bathtubs apart piece by piece. The day of eradicating every trace of Vladimir, except for his portrait in the hallway, culminated in you both basking in the warmth of a glorious bonfire, fed by what remained of the Baron’s belongings.

You both arrive at your laboratory. The Harkonnen workers have been very efficient installing the necessary infrastructure in the time you have been away. The room that was stripped to the bones the day you left for Youra is now a proper lab, outfitted with fireproof surfaces, chemical hoods, gas lines, and plenty of storage cabinets.

“Wow, Feyd,” you say. “This is amazing. I can’t believe this got done in the time I was gone.”

“Only the best for you, my love,” he replies as more servants arrive, and you begin to instruct them how to unpack your belongings. Feyd stands back on the sidelines and watches you, seeing the sparkle in your eyes now that you’re able to bring part of your life from Youra to Giedi Prime. Many of the instruments and objects he sees being unpacked are unfamiliar to him, but you seem unphased, perhaps even comforted, by the diversity of items. He marvels at your proficiency with handling all of them. With the help of the servants, you quickly have all the crates unloaded and the items put away and organized. You dismiss all the workers promptly, so you and Feyd can be alone. Once the doors are closed, you let out a sigh of relief.

“Is the space to your liking?” Feyd asks, coming to your side and slipping his arm firmly around your waist.

“It’s perfect,” you reply, looking around with elation in your eyes. You reach into a drawer in front of you and take out a jar. Inside, he sees it’s full of the iridescent indigo scales of the fish you had shown him the night you were attacked on Youra. “I wanted to wait until I got back to Giedi Prime to do the extraction on the scales for your batch of the elixir. …Would you like to stay while it happens?”

Feyd nods without hesitation. He knows that watching you work is something only the people closest to you ever get to see. “Of course, my love. It would be my pleasure,” he says. You smile at him, delighted at his interest. You point to a little door in the corner and tell him to wait for you before disappearing into it. A few minutes later, you emerge having shed your gown and jewels for a tan lab coat. When you smooth your hands over the new coat, Feyd thinks to himself how put together you look. You seem even more at ease now that you’ve changed. In your arms, he sees another coat and two pairs of safety glasses.

“To protect your clothes and eyes,” you say, walking over and handing him the other coat and one of the pairs of glasses. Inside the coat, he sees “Baron Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen” delicately stitched in with golden lettering. As he puts it on, he realizes it’s been tailored to his measurements perfectly at your behest. His heart swells once again. Your foresight is obvious to him. Beside him, you take out a mortar and pestle and pour a few of the scales into the mortar. He hears the scales clatter like pebbles against one another as they fall.

Over your shoulder, Feyd can finally get a closer look at the scales from the fish you had shown him. The scales are shaped like rounded trapezoids and glimmer even in the artificial indoor lighting. Through the striking coloration, he can see delicate silver ribs that flare out from the narrower end of the scales, making each scale look like a pocket of moonlight rays shining through an inky night sky. Feyd thinks how it’s truly a wonder how nature produced such a creature that bears such beauty.

You grasp the pestle in your hand and start striking the scales with firm, downward motions. Upon impact, the scales fracture at the ribs. Little by little, the scales become smaller, and you change your technique, beginning to roll the pestle around the bottom and up the sides of the mortar. You reverse the direction of the circle every few times. Because of your expert hand, the scales are soon reduced to a fine powder in the bottom of the mortar. The dust glistens beautifully as you pick up the mortar and tip it around in a rolling motion, observing the results of your grinding.

“It’s time to perform the extraction and then the purification. Hopefully the crystals will be well formed,” you say to him, taking the mortar over to the fume hood behind the two of you and flipping the on switch to the hood. “Have you ever watched any of your scientists work before?”

Feyd shakes his head as he follows you, memories of his childhood passing through his mind. “My uncle always instructed me to remain in the arena and the training grounds growing up. The laboratories on Giedi Prime were never our places to be. Our scientists would always come and report to us rather than us going to them. It has always been that way. Everyone in House Harkonnen works for the Baron. Everything they do is in service to him. It is inappropriate by our standards for him to go to them.”

You nod at his words, reaching for the glass sash that separates you and Feyd from the compartment of the fume hood. “Unsurprisingly, it’s the opposite on Youra,” you say, putting the mortar with the powdered scales inside before lowering the sash again until it’s almost closed, leaving gap a couple inches tall for continued access. “Yes, all workers serve my father and me, but we are all colleagues, in a way. They are the workers and my father is the hub for all of the departments on Youra. Much of my father’s success is tied to them, so he would often visit our workers to acknowledge their efforts and dedication. He always wanted to see their work for himself, too. He’s always been the curious type. My father had me follow him to the laboratories as soon as I was old enough to understand safety protocol. I’m sure if it wasn’t for regulations, he’d have brought me into the labs in a baby sling.”

The image of young you in a laboratory, holding your father’s hand as Youran chemists show you both what they’re working on comes into Feyd’s mind. Even though he didn’t know of you when you were children, he can imagine you then, much shorter with a rounder face but with the same bright eyes brimming with curiosity. The idea makes his heart warm and a smile tugs at his lips.

“I’m sure those laboratory visits were most influential for you,” Feyd says. You nod in return as you put on a pair of gloves and reach under the sash to grab an amber bottle containing a clear liquid from the side of the hood.

“Absolutely,” you reply as you transfer all the powdered scales into a glass Erlenmeyer flask and add enough of the liquid to cover the solids. You move the flask onto a raised plate in the hood and press a few buttons to begin the heating process. “I loved watching them do their work. They knew so much about our world, but were still determined to know more. The way they moved in the lab was like a dance. I desperately wanted to be a part of that, so I began working with them when I was fourteen…”

As Feyd listens to you talk about your past as you work, his admiration of you grows. Your determination and tenacity through failed experiments and stalled projects are astounding to him, and the fact you’ve been able to become a swordswoman on the side this is truly a marvel. Your skill and years of training are evident today, as your body seems to know this process by memory. This in front of him is the product of all those years of effort.

The liquid in the vessel begins to bubble gently. As the moments go by, the liquid takes on the iridescent nature of the scales and becomes a vibrant blue. Removing it from the heat, you strain the liquid through fine mesh into another container, removing all the powdered scales from the mixture. Looking at the collected solids, Feyd can see the scales have lost their original coloration and turned a chalky off-white. You smile to yourself, knowing that the extraction was effective while you prepare a large volume of a different liquid, also clear and colorless, in a large beaker.

“Are you ready for the recrystallization?” you ask him, grabbing a syringe and drawing up some of the extract into the barrel. You return to the beaker of liquid and gently tip it sideways with one hand while pointing the tip of the needle at the side of the beaker. Carefully, you begin to squeeze the syringe and the indigo liquid begins to drip out the needle’s tip and trickle down the side of the beaker. As the extract hits the surface of the clear liquid, deep purple crystals seem to flutter out from the point of impact into the liquid instantaneously. Feyds lips part in amazement, unable to tear his gaze away from the process

“How does it work?” he asks, watching as a batch of thin, needle-like crystals start to gather at the bottom of the beaker while the bulk liquid remains colorless. It’s as if all the color of the extract has been contained within the crystals.

“I use the first liquid to remove the compound from the scales and make a concentrated extract. I then add the extract to a bulk solvent which our compound of interest is insoluble in. The compound forms crystals when the liquids meet because the second liquid is in great excess compared to the first,” you explain, drawing up more extract and adding it to the beaker in the same way. Once you’re out of extract, you squat down to bring your eye level to that of the beaker. “It’s perfect. I don’t think the crystallization has ever gone that well.”

You’re absolutely beaming as you swirl the crystals suspended in the liquid, admiring how they twinkle in the light. He can’t deny that your excitement is contagious. You collect the crystals by filtering the mix through another filter and spread out the crystals on a metal sheet to allow them to dry before removing your safety glasses, and Feyd follows suit.

“This is the compound I was referring to that night at the Pools of Ashora,” you say to Feyd. “If we dissolve the crystals in water and drink it, it allows people to retain their body’s water content and reduced the frequency at which people needed to drink water.”

“Fascinating…,” Feyd trails off, staring at the delicate crystals scattered across the surface inside the fume hood.

“When I was on Youra, I tested the elixir myself,” you say. Hearing you say that you’ve done that, a bolt of fear goes to his heart at the thought of you just drinking a novel chemical. Feyd’s eyes quickly lock onto you, and his neck stiffens. His mind swirls with distress at the possibility of you getting hurt. You may look okay now, but was the elixir difficult for you to stomach? Did it hurt you in the moment?

Looking at him, you’re immediately in tune with his reaction, and you lift your hand up to rest on his arm to calm his nerves. At your touch, he immediately relaxes. “Don’t worry, Feyd. I am alright. There’s nothing to be worried about. We’ve done plenty of trials since I first introduced this fish to you. I assure you it’s safe. I’ve had all of my best scientists on this project, and I had the best doctors in Youra monitor my vitals for two days after the fact.” Feyd nods, knowing if anyone is competent enough to keep you safe, it's yourself and the Youran doctors and researchers. “We still don’t know the exact mechanism of the compound in the body, but we do know there aren’t significant negative side effects on people. Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” Feyd replies, taking the opportunity to bring his hand to your waist and pull you close enough that your lips are almost touching and you’re both staring into each other’s eyes. “I will always put my faith in you and your work.”

“I’m glad to hear,” you reply, your breath fanning out across his face, which sends shivers down his spine. “That means a lot, Feyd, we’ve been working hard the last few weeks for this.” Grinning at you, he takes your chin between his thumb and forefinger and tips your head up toward his, catching your lips in his. You quickly take off your gloves and hold his cheeks in your palms, savoring the intimate moment.

A knock at the door sounds through the room. Feyd grumbles in annoyance as the tension between you releases. You and Feyd look at each other before ending your embrace. You call out “Enter!” in the direction of the doors. A military advisor enters the lab in full uniform with his head low. He immediately drops to his knees in front of both of you to show his respect.

“Baron, Baroness,” he says. “I am deeply sorry for interrupting you both, but I bring critical news from Arrakis.”

“Very well,” Feyd says, straightening up and peering down at the man kneeling before him. “Out with it.”

“There has been an attack by the Fremen. They destroyed eighty percent of the most recent spice crop.” You can tell by the way the man shivers that he is afraid. Nobody ever wanted to be the one to break bad news to Feyd-Rautha. “Count Rabban attempted a counterattack.”

“‘Attempted?’ What happened?” Feyd growls, his eyes flashing in dissatisfaction. You catch Feyd’s hand in your palm as it flies in the direction of the knife he keeps on his person. You shake your head. You tell him there is no use in killing this man because it would be a waste with just a look.

“Y-Yes, my Lord,” the man says, a bead of sweat dripping down his temple. You can hear him beginning to hyperventilate despite his best attempts to steady his breath. “Rabban went after the Fremen, but the dust and debris from Rabban’s initial artillery attack made the visibility so poor on the battlefield that only Count Rabban and a few others survived. They were ambushed in the haze; it was a massacre with a casualty rate of seventy two percent and climbing.”

“Over half?!” you gasp, your own fists beginning to clench at Rabban’s blunder.

“Rabban says he saw the Fremen prophet, Muad'dib, on the battlefield before he fled. The Fremen… they are dedicated to him. They kill for him, Baron. Our spice operation is in jeopardy. We await your command.”

Feyd stiffens, a vein threatening to pop on his temple. He sucks in air through his teeth, infuriated at Rabban’s continued incompetency. The advisor recoils at the noise, shuffling backward toward the door.

“You are dismissed,” you call to him with a huff. A wave of relief washes over the man as he bows and thanks you before slipping out the door.

“Rabban is a damned fool!” Feyd shouts once you’re alone. “He has had every chance to rectify his mistakes on Arrakis, but he seems to leave his brain behind when he makes decisions and lets this Muad'dib win every time! And now I hear news of abandoning the battlefield at the sight of this prophet? He is a coward! An absolute imbecile! If something doesn’t change soon, the Emperor will take Arrakis from us!”

You reach your arm out and rest it on his shoulder. In moments, you’ve quelled Feyd’s initial outburst until he’s only seething with fury instead of being on the verge of trashing the entire lab. “I think it’s time to relieve my brother of his duties,” Feyd says after he takes a deep breath. “We shall go to Arrakis to do it. I want to see the look on his face and the hope drain from his eyes when he knows he’s failed. I will take over the operation on Arrakis. We will do what my brother was incapable of.”

“In that case…,” you say, preparing two glasses of water, adding a pinch of the crystals to each. The water immediately turns a luminous indigo, and you hand Feyd one of the glasses, which he gladly takes. You raise your glass in the air. “To victory and to House Harkonnen.”

“To victory and House Harkonnen,” he replies, connecting the rims of your glasses and drinking the entire glass in one go. The elixir is salty and rich on his tongue as if he’s drinking the essence of the tropical ocean. As the elixir flows into him, he feels a warmth pulsate throughout his body. He isn’t sure if this is truly the effects of the elixir or just a placebo, but Feyd feels powerful, like he could slaughter a thousand men and still have a hunger for more. As he meets your gaze, you give him a knowing look. You feel the energy, too. You both shed your laboratory coats and leave the room to prepare for your journey to Arrakis.

The preparations before and journey to Arrakis went without a hitch. You had opted to choose Harkonnen battle gear over your own, but you and Feyd still agreed on concealing your knives under a black Harkonnen dress cloak, still not eager to let anyone know of your true nature. Arriving in Arrakeen, you notice the striking architecture, made up of geometric slabs of tan stone layered to create a fortress to protect its inhabitants. This time on Arrakis, Feyd doesn’t feel the heat like he used to. It’s as if his body is fighting back against the harsh environment on the desert planet. You feel it, too. You were initially concerned because you had only tested the elixir during the dry months on Youra, which paled in hostility in comparison to Arrakis, but seems the elixir’s protection is more than sufficient.

You and Feyd walk the halls of the fortress side by side, heading to the room where all of the Harkonnen strategists and military officials are. You see them gathered around a digital map projected by a computer in the middle of the room, which shows the locations of all the Harkonnen forces in the north of Arrakis. Upon seeing their Baron and Baroness side by side, they all freeze and bow.

“Welcome to Arrakis, Baron, Baroness” one of them says. He opens his mouth to continue but Fed cuts him off.

“Enough,” Feyd hisses at him. “I have orders for you. You are no longer to follow the word of Count Rabban. As of today, he is relieved of his duty as Planetary Governor of Arrakis. You will report directly to and receive orders only from me and your Baroness.”

The room of men immediately shout “Yes, My Lord!” in response. A smirk forms on Feyd's lips at their responsiveness, and he instructs them to hit the Fremen with old-fashioned artillery. As the orders are executed by the Harkonnen military, you watch the map intently as the targets on the map turn green, indicating the Fremen bases are hit successfully. All of the military advisors’ eyes widen in surprise at the genius of Feyd’s strategy as the reports of complete annihilation from the ground forces roll in.

They all begin to applaud Feyd and as their chants fill the room, your heart fills with pride. Feyd has finally proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was always meant to be the leader of House Harkonnen. As the applause continues, you see Rabban appear in the doorway, a look of surprise disgust on his face. You notice he’s still wearing his nightclothes, and your eyes flash between him and Feyd as Rabban approaches Feyd, Rabban’s legs still stiff from sleep.

“Leave us,” Feyd instructs the others in the room, who promptly file out. They keep their eyes on the floor, not daring to look at Rabban. They know people who end up alone in a room with Feyd after repeated blunders usually don’t exit the room outside of a body bag.

“What are you doing here?” Rabban growls at Feyd.

“It’s early morning. What are you doing here?” Feyd quips back. Rabban lets out a frustrated huff.

“You can’t just waltz in here,” Rabban says through gritted teeth. “And how can you bring that woman into the inner sanctum?”

“How dare you refer to your Baroness like that!” Feyd roars, grabbing Rabban by his collar. “If you have forgotten, dear Brother, I am Baron now. I will do as I please and take my wife wherever I wish!”

Feyd throws Rabban back and he falls on his back hard. In desperation, Rabban tries to scramble to his feet again, but as soon as he’s almost upright, he feels his knees buckle from under him as you kick the backside of his knees in. Rabban’s forehead collides with the stone floor with a visceral crack, and he feels his arm caught in your grip behind him. He groans as you push his arm to the verge of overextension. On his neck, Rabban feels the cool tip of a blade threatening to pierce his skin, which sends a chill down his spine, his head still spinning from impact.

“You should learn to respect your superiors,” you whisper to him as Feyd’s gaze is fixated on you. The picture before him has a fire rising within him. His breath turns thick and heavy, seeing you over Rabban, your blade on his neck and your foot on his back with a fiendish smile on your lips. “I would have expected more from my brother-in-law… You are a disgrace to House Harkonen,” you drawl, pressing your dagger’s tip into Rabban’s neck enough to draw blood. Dark crimson blood trickles down Rabban’s neck and he squirms. You remove your foot from his back and step forward to place your shoe by his face. You take the opportunity to kick his cheek in a little with the toe of your shoe before the heel of your combat boot hits the floor by Rabban’s face with a firm thunk. “Kiss my feet, and I may spare your life.”

Rabban quivers under your hold, his palms spread over the stone floor. He considers trying to escape. He could try to press his body up and avoid the blade on his neck and try to sweep your legs out from under you, but he quickly realizes that you are in control. Any movement like that would end with your knife in his chest, back, or neck. Despite his position being compromised, he hesitates to kiss your foot How could he, Glossu Rabban, kiss a woman’s shoe in submission?

“You heard her, Brother,” Feyd hisses, stepping toward you both as he basks in his brother’s terror. Feyd stops in front of his brother and squats down to look at him. “Kiss her feet. Now.”

After a moment, Rabban quivers and presses his lips against the leather of your shoes. As he does, you see how miserable and pathetic this man below you is. It's truly a shock that this oaf is the brother of your Feyd, who is confident, domineering, and skillful in every way.

“You made a good decision obeying, Rabban,” you say, releasing the blade on his neck. “I would have wasted a perfectly sharpened knife slitting your throat if you hadn’t cooperated.” You step back from him as he clambers into an upright position. His hand flies to his neck, feeling the blood trickle down his neck and seep into his nightshirt.

“You are hereby relieved of your duties as Planetary Governor of Arrakis,” Feyd grins at the pitiful sight before him. “You will return to your quarters in the meantime and wait for future instruction.”

Rabban leaves in defeat. Once the doors shut behind him, you and Feyd smirk at each other, and Feyd rushes to you giving you a tender kiss. “I love you, Baroness,” he murmurs, completely infatuated with you.

A few days later, you stare up into the atmosphere of Arrakis. The Emperor’s craft has just entered the atmosphere. You and Feyd share incredulous looks and you immediately make your way to where the emperor will be docking.

“What could the emperor want?” you ask Feyd as you walk.. “We restored spice production. It’s never been more efficient.”

Feyd shakes his head, deep in thought. “I do not know, my love.”

“I don’t like this, Feyd.” you whisper to him, trying not to let anyone else hear and Feyd nods in return. “What could have summoned the emperor to Arrakis?”

“We shall see,” he replies. Rabban arrives and bows to you both, which makes you frown. Rabban hasn’t been involved in House Harkonnen’s operations since he was removed. Nevertheless, he still proceeds into the throne room before Feyd or you can dismiss him.

Inside the throne room, the emperor is perched on a large throne up a large flight of stairs with his daughter and a Bene Gesserit standing by him. Your eyes narrow seeing the witch’s presence, knowing they have tricks they are not afraid of using to manipulate the great houses. You, Feyd, and Rabban kneel in front of them, bowing your heads. Before any of you speak, the emperor’s voice rings out.

“I am sure you are curious as to why I have come to Arrakis,” he begins. “What do you know of the prophet Muad'dib?” Rabban speaks up first, saying that Muad'dib is a madman.

“Mad?!” the emperor says.

“All Fremen are mad!” Rabban counters, and the Emperor’s fist clenches around the arm of his throne. You and Feyd shoot daggers at Rabban, and he closes his mouth immediately, putting his head down again which casts his face in shadow.

“We apologize for my brother speaking out of turn,” Feyd says to the Emperor. “Rabban has had no part in the latest work of House Harkonnen. He is not a reliable source of information. We know Muad'dib is a figure of the Fremen, and they follow his command.”

“Yes,” you say. “He organizes their forces, and they have been effective in battle against many of our forces by hiding in the sands and staging ambushes. They’ve been effective at destroying our spice harvesters in the past, but we’ve been able to successfully retaliate.” The Bene Gesserit flashes some hand signs at the emperor. She must be able to tell if people are lying or not.

“What of the prophet’s whereabouts?” the Emperor asks, his voice darkening with frustration at your lack of knowledge. The emperor’s suggested scorn directed at House Harkonnen is sour on your tongue, and you grit your teeth.

“We control the north of Arrakis and spice production, Emperor,” you reply, keeping yourself collected. “We believe Muad'dib has fled to the south to hide in the storms after my husband’s last military tactic was successful in neutralizing their northern bases.”

As you utter those words, you feel a tremendous boom propagate through the air, causing the building to shudder. Everyone in the room looks up. Some of the diplomats that have accompanied the emperor swallow thickly. You and Feyd exchange knowing glances. Something isn’t right. The Sardaukar forces, who have come to protect the emperor, raise their weapons and get into formation with one line in front of the emperor, who has abandoned the throne in favor of shelter.

The other line of Sardaukar forms a line opposite the entrance way, as more explosions can be heard beyond the walls. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Rabban slip away, ever the coward. You feel Feyd’s touch on your arm as he beckons you to position yourself behind the defenses with the other diplomats. From your shared position, you both wait and listen intently. The others in the room are paralyzed in a cold sweat, but you and Feyd are silently watching, waiting, and listening, already gathering information on the situation to calculate your next move.

Dust fills the room as another bang resonates throughout the room and the barrier breaks down. The frontline of the Sardaukar advance, weapons at the ready. As they disappear into the dust, you know they aren’t coming back. The room is almost entirely quiet, but through the haze you hear the barely audible but familiar sound of daggers piercing armor, slitting throats, and tearing flesh. The remaining Sardaukar dig their heels in as a figure emerges through the orange debris, wrapped in tan fabrics caked in others’ blood. His face is concealed by a scarf, and the only flesh of his you see are his eyes, blue from spice. He is accompanied by an army. Judging by the amount of noise they made on their arrival, you and Feyd know there are probably hundreds of them. Fighting your way out is not an option. This must be the prophet Muad'dib.

Muad'dib looks around with his blade drawn, seemingly searching for someone as he enters the room. You see him and Feyd make eye contact. Feyd’s eyes narrow at him in curiosity. When Muad'dib does not find who he is looking for, he turns the crowd of people behind the Sardaukar guards. Most of the diplomats instinctively take a step back. He makes eye contact with the emperor before turning to his own forces and hissing something in a foreign tongue which you presume to be Chakobsa, Fremen language. He exits the room back into the crowd of Fremen who chant for him, waving their war banners. You see they bear the hawk insignias of House Atreides. The son of Duke Leto Atreides is alive.

The Fremen advance, easily slaying the last remaining Sardaukar. Many of the diplomats shudder and jump in surprise as the Fremen plunge their daggers into the Sardaukar warriors, who are powerless to stop them. Once they are all dead and their blood is spread across the floor in crimson red pools, the Fremen start grabbing the rest of you by your arms, and you are all dragged away one by one. You are being taken prisoner. You look to Feyd, who gives you a subtle nod as if to say “go along with it,” and you do.

You’ve laid low all in the confinement the Fremen have kept you in all night, not eager to give any of them a reason to kill you. Silently, you’ve been analyzing your situation, trying to figure out a way to achieve an optimal outcome, which you feel is slipping through your fingers. Since you have been taken prisoner, you can only presume that the rest of the Sardaukar and the Harkonnen army have been slaughtered and their bodies burned before daybreak. You and Feyd are likely the last living Harkonnens on Arrakis.

After sunrise, you are called upon by a faceless Fremen, who orders all of the prisoners to follow. You are reunited with Feyd, who takes your hand, careful not to let the Fremen see this gesture of affection as to not allow them any leverage. His touch automatically makes you as at ease you can be, given that you are both captives without allies.

Arriving in a room with the other prisoners, you see the surviving Fremen mingling and congratulating one another. The man from before stands in the clearing of the room without his face covering, his black wavy hair framing his face. Feyd turns to you and mouths “Atreides.” You nod in understanding, and watch as Paul Atreides addresses the Emperor, challenging him for the throne. Looking out the window, you see warships in the distant sky. The other great houses have arrived and Paul Atreides threatens to destroy all the spice fields if the houses intervene.

“Stand yourself or choose your champion,” he orders the Emperor, who turns to Feyd.

“I select Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen,” the emperor declares. “Get him a blade.” You inhale sharply, knowing this means Feyd must fight to the death against a man who has already slain many in battle and emerged victorious from the bloodbath of the previous night. You trust Feyd’s skill, but you know not to underestimate Paul Atreides. Feyd’s eyes flicker toward you. He knows what you’re thinking and gives you a slight nod as if to promise he will fight his hardest, not for the emperor, but for you. He is presented with a blade by one of the members of the emperor’s council. To your surprise, Feyd pushes it away and turns to you. Coming to stand in front of you, he gestures downward toward your legs, where your daggers are still strapped to your thighs out of sight.

“Feyd, are you sure?” you say to him, your voice small.

“I want to use your blade. Please let me fight for you,” Feyd whispers. You nod and reach down to fulfill his request, drawing one of your Youran weapons from your garters. When you hand it to him, Feyd feels the familiar heft of your dagger in his hand, which makes him grin. Just as he remembers, it’s expertly balanced and perfectly crafted, its pointed tip shining in the low orange light of the room. He smiles, recalling the night you handed him the same blade, the first time he saw your true nature. He twirls the knife in his grip with a flourish of his wrist as he stands opposite Paul Atreides.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, cousin,” Paul says.

“Cousin…” Feyd says, continuing to evaluate Paul for his weaknesses. “You wouldn’t be the first family member I’ve killed.”

His words don’t phase you. You’re well aware of Feyd’s family history. You clasp your hands in each other in front of your chest, willing Feyd to be the victor. Paul Atreides straightens himself and salutes Feyd. “May thy knife chip and shatter,” Paul says with a gruff tone, lowering himself into a battle stance and pointing his knife at Feyd. Feyd smirks, raising your weapon. The sight of it in his hand is gratifying for Feyd. Despite standing alone against Paul, it’s as if you are both in this fight together with him wielding your weapon.

“May thy knife chip and shatter,” Feyd returns and within moments, they're after each other, having an all out brawl in the middle of the room. They each swipe at each other with reaction times like lightning. The sounds of blades crashing against one another, the low smacks of their bodies colliding, and their grunts of exertion fill the room. You have to admit, Paul Atreides is an impressive fighter. He’s quick on his feet and swiftly dodges and counters many of Feyd’s attacks, but it is obvious that Feyd is the one with strength on his side. The only way for Atreides to win is if he is able to find a way to use that strength against Feyd.

You’re barely breathing at this point. Your facade of stoicism threatens to crumble when you see Paul Atreides’ forehead connect firmly with your husband’s nose. To your surprise, you don’t see any blood on Feyd’s face. Paul Atreides’ head is thrown back after almost bouncing off of Feyd’s nose. Paul’s head seems to be spinning as he stumbles backward on uneven footing. Feyd recognizes Paul’s debilitated state is fleeting, and takes advantage of the moment, striking Paul again. The tangle of limbs is intense, but in the blink of an eye, you see Feyd disarm Paul, taking Paul’s knife for his own.

As they break away from one another, Paul Atreides is heaving, struggling to breathe as the leather bound hilt of your dagger protrudes from his abdomen. He’s wheezing as his own blood seeps into his battle gear. His allies gaze upon the sight in shock, some wincing in second-hand pain.

Feyd approaches him promptly, and grabs Paul by the scruff of his neck, raising Paul’s own knife at him. Paul Atreides uses his own gloved hand to grab the blade, trying to push it away, but Feyd leans in, forcing the blade to slip further into Paul’s grip, cutting the flesh of Paul’s hand open with a sickening noise, the tip of the knife getting closer to piercing Paul’s neck.

The next moment, you feel like screaming. The dagger, once poised to slice open Paul Atreides’ neck, is no longer in the air visible to you. Paul Atreides has used his grip on Feyd’s blade to redirect the tip toward the stomach of your husband. Your hands fly to your mouth, tears threatening to spill. The force Feyd puts behind his blade at that proximity is fatal.

The memories of meeting Feyd on Youra, fighting by his side against Ozran, plotting into the early hours to kill his despicable uncle, your wedding ceremony in front of House Harkonnen, and the moments of tenderness and affection he’s given you in private flash through your mind. Your stomach writhes, and your heart shrivels into itself, and your mind begins to confront the idea that you now must mourn the life you and Feyd had assembled. Another thought flashes through your mind. You’ll likely be killed after this with the rest of the prisoners in this room, and die alone without your husband, lightyears away from your people on Youra and Giedi Prime. You’ve failed.

Through your tears, you stare at the scene as the air and the people surrounding you are completely still. However, something gives you pause. You hear something hit the floor look down to the area under Feyd and Paul’s feet. You spy fragments of metal, broken into uneven shards, scattered across the floor. However, there is no blood to be seen. Your eyes shoot to Feyd, who is also looking down to where they both hold the hilt of the broken knife.

Without a second to spare, Feyd’s hand flies to your knife in Paul’s side, ripping it out of him. Paul cries out in agony, the removal of the knife causing a blood curdling squelch of skin and muscle ripping. The next moment, Feyd slits Paul Atreides’ throat with a grand swing of his arm, sending blood splatter fanning across the floor. The pregnant woman seated in the wooden throne bearing the Atreides crest lets out a high pitched shriek, and she begins to wail, seeing the light from her son’s eyes fade as his body crumples to the floor. A Fremen woman across from you lets out a shaky breath, her lip quivering and tears pool near her bright blue eyes as Paul Atreides’ fresh blood collects in a puddle on the stone floor under the gaping hole in his neck.

Feyd turns back to you, bloody blade in hand and lets out a deep exhale, allowing the tension in his own chest to dissipate. He had thought he was dead, too, but no. He is alive. He is victorious, and he gets to look into your eyes again, knowing that he has done his job for you.

Kneeling, Feyd presents the emperor with the soiled blade. The emperor smiles and pronounces Paul Atreides, the prophet Muad'dib, to be dead and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen as the victor. In defeat, the ally of Paul, identified as Gurney Halleck, relays a message to the great houses of the outcome of the fight. The emperor’s reign shall continue, and your husband is alive. You push your way past the others in the crowd and throw yourself at Feyd, who cradles you in his arms, running his fingers through your hair, whispering to you “Please don’t shed any more tears, my love. I am still here… I wouldn’t leave you that easily.”

“I thought I lost you,” you choke out and Feyd shakes his head, using his thumb to wipe away the tear stains on your cheeks.

“You haven’t and you won’t,” he replies, his hands holding your body steady. “Let’s go home.”

—

Holding your knees to your chest, you sit in a private chamber on the Emperor’s vessel as it leaves the atmosphere of Arrakis to take you and Feyd back to Giedi Prime, which was the least the emperor could do given that Feyd nearly died for him. One of Feyd’s hands rests on your waist, holding you firmly in his grip while the other rubs gentle circles on your shoulder with his thumb. Feyd watches as your eyes dart side to side, which happens when you’re deep in though.

“What is on your mind, my love?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper.

“I’m thinking about your battle with Paul Atreides,” you reply. “The knife broke when he tried to turn the tables on you, didn’t it?” Feyd nods, bringing his hand down to the spot on his abdomen where the knife was. “May I see where it was?” you ask and Feyd obliges, creating a small bit of distance between the two of you so that you can get a good look at his torso.

You bring your hand to where Feyd’s armor has been sliced open by the blade. Bringing the other hand to his body, you gently spread the layers of fabric and leather apart to look through the hole. Underneath, you see Feyd’s familiar pale skin and his chiseled abdominal muscles that you’ve always loved to drag your fingers across. His skin appears to be absolutely pristine without a single nick or bruise in sight. You bring your head closer to get a better look before saying, “There isn’t evidence of any damage to your skin, Feyd. Your body is like the battle never happened. There isn’t a trace of impact.” As soon as you utter the last word in the sentence, you freeze and your lips part ever so lightly as your mind races to connect the dots. He knows that look on you, and he sees the gears turning in your mind.

“Impact…,” you mumble to yourself. Your eyes shoot up to Feyd’s “During the battle there was a moment when Paul Atreides’ head collided with your nose.” Your hand flies to his cheek to steady his head. You examine his nose, using your hand to tilt his head side to side. Everything about his face is unchanged, which shouldn’t be the case, especially after a fight like that and the headbutt he endured from Paul. You tip his head back. Again, there is no blood or breakage.

Your mind begins to race as you return your hands to your husband’s torso. Your hands fumble as you attempt to remove the layers of armor in between you and Feyd’s skin. Feyd realizes what you’re doing and soon enough he’s shirtless in front of you. You extend your hand out and drag your hand over his stomach. You press your fingers firmly down onto his abdominal region and upper body repeatedly, changing the area you’re putting pressure on each time. He feels solid under your touch and not in the way you’re used to. Feyd has always been bulky and muscular, hardened from years of training, but something about this is different. It’s like his body has the durability of an alloy the researchers on Youra could only dream of engineering, but he’s still flesh and blood. Bring your fingers to your own stomach, pressing your fingers against your own front, and you gasp. “That’s it!” you exclaim.

“What is it?” he asks, knowing you are on the edge of an epiphany.

“It’s the elixir!” you gasp, standing up and holding your head in disbelief “It saved your life!”

“I thought it was only to help the body retain water,” Feyd says as you get up and begin circling the room.

“Don’t you remember? That’s the end result of the elixir, but we were still unsure of the mechanism by which that happens!” you exclaim. “Remember the night I showed you the fish? I said that the fish sheds its scales at the beginning of the wet season. What I didn’t tell you is that the wet season is the only time of year we can get the scales off the fish because they fall off naturally. Our scientists have tried to get the scales before the transition of the seasons, but they've always been unable to pry the scales off or kill them because it was impossible to slice open the fish. No matter how much we sharpened the knives, we couldn’t cut them open!”

“That’s how the fish retain water in the dry season. The fish develop these scales with this compound that transforms their own bodies into a shield from the elements, so that water can’t escape. I’ve always wondered how a fish would be able to survive the whole dry season on a dried up lake bed. This compound is why the fish species hasn’t gone extinct! When they’re sitting in their dried up ponds, no predators can eat them because their bodies are too tough to pierce,” you surmise, delight filling your complexion. “By drinking that compound, the same thing has happened to our bodies! You were able to survive the battle because your skin became this impenetrable barrier that lets you keep your water that just so happens to be impervious to outside attacks as well! That’s also why your nose didn’t break and why Paul Atreides was so disoriented after he struck you with his head. It was as if he rammed his head into a steel wall. Researchers on Youra didn't catch this effect in the clinical trials because we don’t just go stabbing all of our test subjects with knives or subjecting them to blunt force trauma, especially not for a study about water retention!”

Feyd hardly believes what he’s hearing, but he knows it's true. Everything you’re saying makes perfect sense. Memories from the battle flash in his mind. He remembers his arm is suddenly bending toward himself, feeling the rough surface of the broken blade scrape against his abdomen, but the pain he had been trained to resist since childhood never hitting his senses. He brings himself to his feet and pulls you into his arms, squeezing you as tight as he can muster. “You are phenomenal, my dear, I can’t believe you figured that out,” he murmurs to you. “Thank you. I owe you my life.”

He lowers his lips to yours, kissing you like he’s never done before. You both cling to one another, relieved you are both alive and safe. Feyd holds the back of your head and runs his fingers through your locks tenderly, thinking about how far you both have come in this short amount of time. Mere months ago, you were a stranger he had the obligation to meet and marry. He knew he would have to enter a loveless relationship with you in the name of alliances. He tried to convince himself you were a woman he wanted to make a plaything out of. Before, he was intent on manipulating, breaking, and exploiting you for his own amusement. Those ideas feel so foreign to Feyd now as he revels in your affections and caresses your cheek.

Looking down at you, he sees you for what you are. You are the most beautiful being to ever exist. Nothing past or present will ever compare to you, and it brings tears to his eyes, knowing you are his wife and he is your husband. You are the culmination of all House Ronen and House Harkonnen have worked for, a true representation of the union of your two houses, and the pinnacle of all Feyd has come to hold dear. You are where brain meets brawn, where tradition meets modernity, and the pride and joy of Feyd’s life. You are simply everything.

Thanks for reading! I can’t believe the series is over (but I'm also considering writing an epilogue, but I have some requests coming down the pipeline, so we'll see about that. lmk if that's something you might be interested in...). Anyway, I really hope you enjoyed Knives Dance! :)

Also is it obvious I study chemistry yet?

Taglist:

@austinbutlerslovers @rougegenshin @itshype@woodland-mist @tian-monique @torchbearerkyle @austinswhitewolf @allthingsimagines @meetmeatyourworst @nyaaaaa008 @caroline334 @alana4610 @targaryen-madness

Tags that aren't working for some reason??? @roguegenshin @miaraises

#feyd rautha #dune part 2 #dune part two #feyd rautha x reader #dune #x reader

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dollwrites · 5 months

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ᴀɴɢᴇʟs ᴏғ sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ! ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ᴜʀᴏɢɪ & ᴋᴀʀᴀᴋᴜ

𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 ∣ smut ( minors dni ), fem!hashira!reader, noncon, breeding kink, descriptions of blood and injuries, instant loss / bad end trope, dvp, the boys are meanies, choking, degradation, lots of cum, brief oral sex ( m! ), fingering, all characters featured are aged 18+

𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 ∣ please reblog && leave feedback. not proofread so there’s probably mistakes. thanks for reading < 3

𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 ∣ @serenesaku [ thank you so much, i hope you like it! ]

“If you drop her, our fun’s over before it even starts!” you can faintly hear Karaku harping, and your head rolls around on your neck— it feels like jelly, hardly able to support the weight of your head as it droops backwards to look up at the demon who has you in his grasp. his talons are wrapped so tightly around one of your wrists that you can see a trickle of ruby, feel it as it runs down the length of your forearm. the blood mingles with the dirt and scuff that clings to your skin as you hang there, suspended in the air by merely his claw’s grip on your arm. “Give her to me already!”

all of the muscles in your arm were on fire, sore and aching, and you felt as though the pull of your weight on the one limb had knocked it out of socket. that wasn’t the worst of your injuries, however, but most of the pain from the battle had numbed at this point, anyways.

you don’t even remember where your sword had clattered, broken and useless. wherever was, it was well out of your reach as the demon flies you higher and higher, as if planning to perch you atop the moon itself.

it had been quite the game to him already, flying you higher, and then loosening his grip to let you slip just far enough to gasp and fear the plummet, before he gripped your arm again. at this point, you were praying to whatever god could allow this to happen that they would simply kill you already and get it over with. being toyed with would’ve been scary enough, but you were Hashira, and you were supposed to win this fight. not become a demon’s marionette under the moonlight.

Urogi glances down, smirking with putrid delight as he sees the dulled, defeat-snuffed gaze as you take in your position. “Wishing I would really drop you, demon slayer?” he was mocking you, spitting the words as if they were soaked in acid. “Let you die this easily?” a low cackle bubbles up from his throat, amber eyes burning. “Not a chance.” the violent flap of his wigs send blades of cold wind through your hair and ruffles your torn uniform, you could swear the sheer force of it nicks your cheek as he swoops downward, diving towards the ground. “We’re not done playing yet!” the speed makes your head spin, but you’ve not enough energy to squirm or try to stop the impending collision, so you close your eyes, brows furrowed, and brace for impact.

it comes, but not in the way you expect. with a flick of his talons, Urogi flings you from his grasp and into Karaku’s, who laughs wickedly at the way you smack against his chest like a sack of potatoes, and then try your best to grasp his shoulders. you wanted to regain some semblance of control over yourself, find your footing, but he wasn’t having it. both fists grasp your wrists and pull them back. your knees buckle with a gasp of pain, and you’re once again supported only by a demon’s will, and his hold on your arms. you dangle there, clenching your weak fists. “‘M… going to…”

Karaku’s emerald gems light up, “You’re going to what? Kill me?” you didn’t have to nod, but you do so weakly, and he leans close. only inches from your lips, his fiery breath washes over you. you shy away from a demon for the first time in your life, letting out a soft whimper, “You’re not going to do anything, girl, but let me tell you what we’re going to do to you.”

as Karaku speaks, his lips moving and grazing your cheek the closer he gets, you feel the ground shake beneath you when Urogi lands behind you, talons cracking rocks beneath his powerful feet.

“We’re going to rip this demon killing uniform off,” Urogi’s claws work diligently to make good on his counterpart’s promise, shredding the fabric of your top, down through your pants until the black garments fall away in defeated, little strips. Karaku croons yo you, in amusement, “it’s not like it’s useful, anymore. Your demon killing days are over.” you let out a grunt of discomfort, feeling the drag of his talons against your stomach, biting at your vulnerable flesh. “But your demon serving days? Well, those have just begun.”

“— And we’ll defile your defenseless, human body.” Karaku flashes insanely sharp teeth in a daunting grin as Urogi finishes his threat, his talons grasping your thighs to hoist them up. your feet, that were dragging against the ground prior to this not sweep from the ground, and dangle helplessly as he spreads your legs. completely exposed to the one thing you were meant to hate in this world, the thing you’ve trained your whole life to kill, you felt disgusting and shameful, and your thighs twitched and fought against his strength to close. “Until it all but gives out.”

Karaku takes one look at your cunt as it’s presented to him, and a low gurgle of lust rumbles in his throat, dropping your hands to, instead, jab two fingers inside abruptly. you cry out and immediately grapple at his arm with one hand, trying to pull his hand out, while the other grabs for his horn and forehead, pushing with all your might, squirming and writhing, but you’re trapped. “Stop—!!” but Karaku’s guffawing drowns out your weak demand. his fingers are thick and rough as they pump into your unprepared core, though the rough treatment coaxes your arousal to life, encouraging you to soak his knuckles as he scissors them inside you. pressing his calloused fingertips against your inner walls, he can feel them spasm and tighten.

“Tighter than I expected,” his voice is a low, raspy growl as his fingers work relentlessly inside you, pummeling over delicate nerves. you can’t help but pant and groan, but you try to steel your glare, and push him off. “Your little Hashira buddies haven’t fucked you out yet?” his digits spread, testing the elasticity of your insides, and you moan, haplessly. “All those muscles and no brains. They promote a useless, little piece of fuck meat and don’t even take advantage?”

Urogi giggles from behind you, his lips close to your ear as he hisses. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of that.”

Karaku, using his free hand to retrieve his cock, wraps his fist around the girth and pumps it to life at the same velocity with which he finger fucks you, and his fangs peek out against his bottom lip as he bites down on it, moaning low and guttural. “I broke her down, so I want to fuck her first.”

Urogi had been taunting you, kissing at the shell of your ear, whispering threats and excitedly watching you jerk and squirm to get away from him, but when Karaku says this, he pauses. you can feel the air behind a powerful grit of his teeth, as if Karaku’s claim annoyed him. “We broke her together—“

“Shut up,” Karaku waved off his counter’s nagging, grasping his ready cock at the base and guiding between your thighs. replacing his fingers with his cock was a sudden switch, and a size difference your body wasn’t prepared for. “I’m already in.” your eyes widen, your nails scraping at his horns and his face as he forced his way inside you. your walls spasmed and fluttered around the intruder, clamping down, instead of trying to push him out, and your back arches. the movement was intended to bring you a moment of reprieve, and shove him out of you, but the curve of your body only gives him the room he needs to slide hilt deep.

“F—fuck!” you exclaim; you can’t help it. the force behind his nesting is almost too much to bear, and you grind your teeth, glaring up at him weakly, with your thighs trembling. Urogi’s claws dig into them, blood beading to the surface as you struggle. “Y—you despicable, vile… uh!!” you were just about to make your stand, demand he pull out of you or else you would find a way to kill him with your bare hands, but his hips rocked suddenly. back and forth, falling into a rough and hungry pace that had you scrambling for breath, your feet flopping in the air. “Y-you can’t…!!”

Karaku howls with pleasure, both of his hands now wrapping around your throat, instead, a wild and primal look in his wide eyes. his lips are etched into a permanent, open mouthed smile as he fucks you with reckless abandon, cackling and crowing as he does so. “Aha! It’s been such a long time since I’ve had tight, warm human cunt!” his thumbs press against your windpipe, teasing it closed until you’re clawing at his wrists, gurgling pleas to breathe. it was hard to focus on anything but the lack of oxygen, and yet the sound of your squelching and the smack of his balls against you pounded in both of your ears. “It’s good,” his tongue flicks at his teeth, his breaths coming out in ragged breaths, “the more I choke you, the tighter your cunt squeezes me!”

Urogi was smiling again, his eyes flickering down to the join of your bodies to watch Karaku’s cock slide in and out at a rapid pace. if he zeroed in, he could see your entrance clench down on him, as if to keep him anchored within you, and he chortles low, nipping at your earlobe. “It almost seems like she likes it, listen to how wet she is. Choke her harder, I want to see her cheeks turn purple.”

you shake your head, fervent, “D-don’t!!”

you didn’t want them to hear how your body betrayed you, how it spat and sputtered, grateful to be decimated with demon cock, but even that scream sounded less reluctant. your sounds were changing, twisting from protest to pleasure, and you couldn’t stop it. the tighter the demon gripped your throat, the more pleasure you derived from being taken against your will. the wetter you got.

Karaku’s brows knit together, focusing all of his energy into pounding deep, as he hissed through clamped teeth, “Cumming for you, little demon killer. Going to fill up that belly!”

you didn’t have time to process what his threat had been, because a few, forceful thrusts against your limit, his tip battering your insides, and he erupts with a wail, giving your neck one final, right squeeze that you thought for sure would crush your trachea. it doesn’t, somehow, and when his grip loosens, you choke on a massive influx of air, uttering a defeated, “N-no, not inside—“ though it was too late. you could feel his cum in your guts, much more than a human could produce, sloshing about as he continued. he didn’t pull out, or even slow his pace. dribbling white release out with every buck of his powerful hips, his climax only seemed to spur him to fuck you harder.

“Do you feel that, Hashira?” Karaku taunts, grabbing your hair at the roots to pull your head up, forcing you to stare deep into his eyes. every thrust pushes his release deeper into you, and you mewl and groan, “You’re full of demon cum.” your eyes roll around in your head when it shakes, but Karaku swipes his mouth over yours, tasting your kiss with his long, invasive tongue. “You’re my breeding bitch now.”

“Ours. We’re supposed to be sharing her, did you forget?” Urogi nagged, dropping one of your legs to free a hand. your toe scrapes against the ground, leg limply dangling, but you don’t have the energy to use it to fight back— all of your resistance Karaku had already fucked from your body. you assume, with Urogi’s shifting behind you, that he too was grabbing and readying his cock, and you groan at the thought of being handed off for this to happen again. if you had to satisfy them both, you would surely not survive this night. “Give me room.”

“She’s too tight,” Karaku barked, “give me a minute to open her up some more.”

Urogi snarls, and rubs the swollen head of his cock against the brutal fucking you’re getting, causing your eyelids to flutter as you try to look back at him. surely, he didn’t intend to force his way into the same hole at the same time?

“We’ll stretch her out together. I’m not waiting anymore, I want to break her, too.”

Urogi worms his way inside, spearing your elastic entrance and forcing you to stretch to not only accommodate Karaku’s brutality, but now Urogi’s cock, too. they were roughly the same size and shape, at least they felt that way, but the sensation of them rubbing together inside of you, bulging against your inner walls, was utterly maddening. you felt like you were being torn in half, or as if you were a rope in a vicious game of tug-of-war between the two demons. Urogi was just as eager and cruel as his counterpart, falling into a merciless rhythm opposite of Karaku, so as Karaku was retracting, Urogi was pounding deeper, keeping your limits brutalized with not a moment to recover.

it was difficult, at this point, to do anything short of blacking out. your eyes rolled around in your head, your mouth hanged open, drool leaking from the corners and mews and helpless babbling fell free. your body slumped, in between the two sturdy demons as they all but fucked right through you.

Urogi moans, much louder and huskier, breathing hot on your neck and in your ear. “She’s so much more receptive now that she’s been tenderized,” he takes a sharp inhale, his talons tickling your chin as he tilts your head back, instead, to smash his hungry lips against yours.

the kiss is wrong. rough and forceful, and you can’t fight it, so your mouth hangs open, gurgling quiet pleas for some sort of mercy. Urogi ignores them, and kisses you deeply, so deeply that you worry his tongue, that was prodding at every inch of your mouth, would eventually choke you as fiercely as Karaku had with his hands.

he breaks the kiss for a moment, to pull back and admire the broken expression on your bruised countenance, before he tilts his head. “You’re being ruined, you know? Turned into a mindless fuckdoll.” a wide grin teases his taut lips, “Your body is ours, demon slayer, to destroy as we please. To breed when we feel the need.” if you had any tears left, they would’ve streaked the dirt on your cheeks, but you couldn’t cry.

it felt too good.

“I’d… rather… die…” you breathe out, uneven and trembling, trying to hold on to what little denial you could still muster.

“Shut up, breeder.” Karaku chomped at your clavicle, sucking and biting, leaving his mark on you. “We’ll kill you if we get bored of stuffing your holes, but you won’t get that lucky for a good, long while.” Karaku was grunting again, speeding up, as he must’ve caught on the trail of a second orgasm, and you started to whine and whimper to punctuate each thrust. all of the stimulation— the rubbing against his shaft as Karaku pounded and the way you clench and milk the two cocks fighting for ownership of your pussy— must’ve pushed Urogi over the edge, because he dropped off along the way. coming undone and bucking his hips madly, whimpering with sordid delight as he kisses you again, his release joining Karaku’s and the load already inside as they cum together this time.

a strangled cry bubbles out of your throat, the pressure on your belly more than you’ve ever felt. you could feel a faint bulge, as if they’d inflated you like a balloon, as the excess that refused to fit seeps out between your legs, splattering on the ground underneath you. you could hold absolutely no more, and they both knew that, too. as if coordinated, they both release you, and you crumble to the ground on your belly, sliding off both of their cocks in the process. another eruption of their release oozes out from your abused cunt as you lay there, fucked out and weak.

“Look at you.” Urogi swoons, planting one claw on your arm to pin you in place, squatting down to your level. his cock swung in front of your face, still hard and smelling of your body. it made you dizzy, so you tried to look away, smearing your face in the dirt to escape. “You’re no soldier, girl. All of that training did nothing for your weak mind or your easily ruined body. Break your sword and feed you a couple of demon cocks, and your true purpose is revealed.”

you hear footsteps on the other side, and only a moment passes before Karaku grasps a fistful of your hair. you were familiar, now, with that terribly painful grip. and, upon jerking your head upwards, your open mouth is plugged by his cock, giving you no choice but to taste the cum that frosts it. it’s raw and musky, and your eyes roll back upon swallowing the taste, gurgling weakly. he laughs at this, pushing your head down to force it deeper. “Hanging off our cocks like a pathetic, human puppet.”

#karaku #karaku x reader #Karaku smut #karaku x you #urogi #urogi x reader #urogi x you #urogi smut #hantengu #demon slayer x you #demon slayer smut #demon slayer x reader #demon slayer #kny #kny x reader #kny x you #kny smut #kimetsu no yaiba

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strawberrystepmom · 6 months

Text

the one

pairing: gojo satoru x f!reader

word count: 10k

about: in the aftermath of incredible loss and pain and nearly losing satoru himself, a week long road trip on one of the most famous routes in the world solidifies what you've already known to be true about gojo - he is the one for you & you for him.

contents: nsfw - mdni. established relationship (reader and gojo are engaged), story told through vignettes, major spoilers for ch 220 and beyond although the story is not canon compliant (gojo dies and is revived), major character deaths and discussion of them, descriptions of anxiety, panic attacks, and dealing with trauma, discussions about marriage and engagement, mentions of blood and injury.

gojo has an identity crisis, reader is a teacher and is appointed interim principal of the Tokyo campus, lots of flowery descriptions of nature and of my beloved california (i am not a california girl but i have longed my whole life 2 be one), gojo is referred to as husband, sweetheart, and baby, reader is referred to as wife, angel, pretty, and baby, reader has breasts, small smut scene with sensual and romantic unprotected piv sex, mutual body worship, vaginal fingering, creampie.

notes: if you have made it to this point and still want to read, thank you. this is a love letter spritzed with parfums de marly delina sent directly to gojo satoru from me and i'm very proud of this work.

he's so important to me and i think exploring him when he can't hide behind the veneer of being strong anymore is one of the most worthwhile uses of my time since ever. i hope that you enjoy ♡

wavy divider thanks to @/cafekitsune!!!!

One week.

One measly, little week - 168 hours or seven unique opportunities to see the sun rise and set - is all you’re asking to be granted while promising all but your limbs and hypothetical first born child to the acting principal of both the Kyoto and Tokyo campuses following the deaths of both Yaga and Gakuganji.

Utahime’s arms are folded over her chest and her mouth is set in a firm line while taking everything that has happened over the last month into consideration. Do you guys even have time for a break of any kind?

Time, as you and her have both learned since that fateful night in Shibuya, becomes more difficult to quantify when you feel it’s slipping away. Every day since October 31st has felt like something each of you have had to earn rather than been given by sheer act of existence. It has been a fight since the moment each of you stepped foot into the railway station and now that it’s over, things feel so undefined.

What comes next now that the immediate evil is gone? There will always be another threat of danger that appears as soon as one is eliminated and all that’s left of the sorcery community learned the hard way that sometimes that evil proves difficult without the man who has worked tirelessly to keep all of you safe around.

“Please. He needs this so badly and I know if I don’t force him to stop, he won’t.”

Your plea causes her gaze to shift from downward to your face and Utahime’s distaste for the man in question all but disappears when she looks over the concerned furrow of your brow and the dark circles under your eyes. She watched Gojo being whisked away to return to the Tokyo campus, the place where the two of you are sitting and having this discussion, ripped to all but bits but still throwing his thumb up to confirm he’s okay to everyone’s mixed annoyance and amusement.

Contemplating every aspect of the situation for a moment, she comes to the conclusion that this week is something both of you need and there’s no viable way for her to tell you no. Not when you look so desperate, hands shaking and eyes sunken.

Despite the mess you will be leaving behind, building debris and rubble the mere surface of the ripples caused in your small community and wider society by Satoru’s defeat of Kenjaku and Sukuna both within days of each other, she feels there’s no other option but to reluctantly give in.

“Okay.”

The tone of her voice is so tentative you’re expecting a but as her very next word but she shuts her mouth with finality written across her face. Grateful, you bow your head and blink back tears but she walks toward you and grabs one of your hands. She squeezes it gently, reminding herself to avoid the spots you broke it in 7 weeks ago and you find the sudden change in her demeanor concerning.

Did she change her mind? Is he going to have to go from half dead on a cold metal table right back into the swing of things?

“When you get back, be ready because you’re in charge here.”

The news comes as a shock and she can tell, your eyes widening and hollowing further. Bile rises in your throat and you swallow, blinking additional tears back, ashamed that your weakness is what represents the strongest individuals you’ve ever met and not just the one who your heart belongs to.

Iori doesn’t stick around for long to watch you come to terms with your new position, simply squeezing your hand and patting it with the back of her other one, before dropping it to slink off to her students that stand on the opposite side of the lounge everyone is occupying.

Shutting your eyes tightly, you use the time to balance yourself and remember that you can deal with the upcoming challenges when you return. What’s most important is the here and now and there are a few things you’re currently sure of.

First, Satoru is alive and breathing despite the terror you experienced when he was not. Second, you have at least one week to contemplate your own future and in true procrastinator form, you will wait until the last minute to even begin processing the weight of the responsibilities that have been placed on your shoulders.

“He’s asking for you.”

Shoko’s approach is stealthy and you don’t notice her until she’s pulling a glove off beside you, the snap of the latex making you forget the tidy little list you were creating in your head. She doesn’t look any more morose than usual and you take it as a good sign, awkwardly nodding and keeping your head pointed toward the ground to avoid prying eyes.

It’s not like everyone doesn’t already know about the two of you but there’s no plausible deniability anymore. No coy smiles and playing it off like it’s no big deal, not when there’s an engagement ring nestled safely in its box on your nightstand at home and when he’s asking for you as soon as he wakes up.

The room is eerily silent as you shuffle out of it beside one of your oldest friends and this is where she finally drapes an arm around your shoulder, stopping you and crowding you off to the side of the hallway.

“He doesn’t look like himself right now,” she warns and you nod. You expected it, his energy depleted by the time both battles were won, but you still swallow thickly and struggle to get the lump in your throat down. Once she’s certain you are okay, she nods and keeps her arm around your shoulder until you reach the metal door to her domain that separates you and the love of your life.

“I’m going to give you two some privacy but if you need me you know where I’ll be.”

You’re sure she’s grateful for the reprieve, catching sight of her puffy eyes as she turns to walk away. You stop her and she smiles wordlessly, friends for long enough that the two of you know what the other is thinking.

Thank you, I know, I’m glad he’s okay too.

Pushing the door open you hear an exaggerated groan and a watery giggle bubbles out of you. He just can’t help himself, one arm wrapped securely and safely and the other still oozing through its bandages. His torso is exposed and you can see the blow that killed him firsthand, an unnaturally precise cut across his lower abdomen.

This is the sight that chokes you up and he chuckles weakly, unable to lift his head more than a few inches. He does look different, covered in scrapes and cuts and blood of uncertain origin, but he’s still himself. Those dimples still stick out against his pale skin when he smiles weakly at you and despite its pinkish hue, his white hair sticks up on end like it always does.

“No crying, baby.”

Sniffling, you look toward the cold tiles below and he tuts from the operating table. Holding his cleanly wrapped arm up he curls a finger toward himself to beckon you over.

“C‘mere.”

Slowly, you do. Each footstep feels as though you’re walking across cracking ice and it makes you cautious, scared that you’ve deluded yourself into believing that he’s here and he’s fine and things are going to be okay and in the midst of the angst, suddenly you remember - he is.

He’s in front of you and breathing and you can’t stop the tears from falling when you reach the edge of the table, reaching to cup his face in your palms like you always do.

“Don’t ever do that to me again.”

Another weak chuckle and he wraps his hand around one of your wrists, delicately holding it with his thumb and index finger.

“Didn’t you say that about the prison realm too?”

Nodding and sniffling, you smile and he smiles back. It’s warm and inviting and all you can think about is how you feared you’d never see it again; that he’d become another loss forcing you to grow colder and colder until the inevitability of becoming a husk like the other sorcerers in your life would come true.

“Yeah, I guess I did. Maybe I need some new material.”

A chuckle that turns into a wince makes you coo and his half smile instantly turns smug, one corner of his mouth upturned into a smirk.

“I have always been the funny one, haven’t I?”

Scoffing, you don’t playfully swat at him like you always do and he misses it. The gentle swipe of your fingers across his pec or shoulder or arm to let him know he has entertained you is something he will not take for granted from this day forward. His chest tightens and his loose grip around your wrist tightens.

It hasn’t registered quite yet that he almost never saw you again twice. That realization will come painfully when he’s struggling to sleep some night, wrapping himself around your body to be certain you will never leave his side, as all of his realizations about his own mortality do.

Until then he’ll embrace the reality in front of him.

“I’m so happy to see you,” he whispers and you see a shadow of sadness cross his face, smirk drooping into a frown. Your palms on his skin leech warmth into his tired bones and he shifts his head to lean into one of your hands, eyes fluttering shut and staying that way until he musters enough humility to say what he wants to say to you the most.

“I’m sorry.”

It’s still the coward's way out but he’s simply too tired and weakened to go into the specifics of everything he’s sorry for. Is strength even worth it if you still managed to save so few people you care about? The weight of the world remains on his shoulders and you carefully lean over him, pressing your cheek to his and shifting your hands from his face to his shoulders.

“Oh sweetheart,” it’s a nickname you rarely use for him and it makes his heart leap to hear it even when your voice cracks. “You have nothing to apologize for. Never to me.”

He wishes he agreed with you.

“Well, I am and nothing like this will ever happen again.”

The unspoken truth between both of you is that he said the same thing when he was released from the prison realm weeks ago and yet, this happened.

“You can’t control everything, Satoru.” You lift your cheek from his and glance down at him to see his eyes half open. “Nothing that has happened is your fault.”

Something else he wishes he could agree with. He gives you a small smile and you lean to kiss his cheek, shutting your eyes tightly to keep from breaking into absolute hysterics. You’ve been teetering on the edge for days but you know this is not the time for your usual dramatics, it’s time to hold it together for him like he has done for you so many times.

“But we can and should talk about this more on our trip.”

His half open eyes shoot open and he looks at you with uncertainty etched in all of his pretty features.

“Trip?”

Currently, he’s in no condition to go anywhere except for hopefully home with you tonight, but a few more hours with Shoko and his cursed energy slowly returning should be enough to get the process of healing going but he knows you know that and wonders what your angle is.

“Road trip. Very little impact, all we have to do is fly to California and don’t worry, I’ll drive the whole time.”

He smiles and chuckles, reaching to capture your hand in his own and lift your palm to his mouth. Kissing you gently, he sits up a little more now that he’s feeling stronger and you lean on the side of the table.

“How long?”

“I had to practically beg for it but we both have a whole week off. The road trip will be 5 days and we’ll have two days to travel there and back.”

Summarizing the trip aloud makes it feel real despite you having done no work to make it so, eager to see him and how he’s doing before making any solid plans, but you can tell that he’s interested based solely by the look on his face. Still, you worry it’s too soon and too much after everything that has happened.

“Do you want to? We can always hold off and do it another time if you don’t feel up to it.”

He shakes his head and kisses your palm again, molding your fingers to the curve of his face so that he can be held by you for just a little while. Your touch may not heal him physically but it fills the gaps in his soul, the little pieces he has been torn into since October 31st, and he needs it more than he needs another session of energy granted to him from Shoko right now.

“I want to go as soon as we can. Especially if I get to look pretty in the passenger seat the entire time.”

It’s so beautiful to have him come back to you a bit at a time and your heart swells until you’re afraid it’ll burst when you look down at him. His eyes are shut again and his cheek fits perfectly in your palm, just as it always does.

He lived and now he gets to have a week by your side with no responsibilities. If he weren’t so comforted by your presence right now, certain you are real and tangible and holding him to the best of your ability in his current condition, he would believe that he’s still dead.

“I should let Shoko get back to work,” you say finally and he whines. A little bit more of him comes back with each passing moment and emotion swells again, your eyes burning when they start to well up.

“I love you,” he whispers and you lean down to kiss him for real, your soft lips hungrily pressing against his dry and split ones for the first time since he left you and came back. It’s familiar and it sends you over the edge, tears breeching your closed eyes and dripping onto his cheek. He laughs, although it’s a bit hollow, and you back your face away from his.

“I told you no crying.”

You laugh and lean in to steal another kiss, his arm wrapping around your body and cupping your hip. The kiss grows in intensity, although it’s more a lazy exploration of each other’s mouths more than it is an earnest makeout session, and his hand slides from your hip to your ass just as the metal door screeches open.

“Save that for when I send him home with you tonight.”

Heels clack across the tile floor and you peel yourself away from Satoru, who keeps his hand firmly cupping your ass, turning your head to see Shoko snapping on a pair of gloves and walking toward her patient. You shoot her a grateful smile and she nods her head, letting you lean in for one more kiss before reluctantly parting.

“Man I love her,” you hear him mutter to Shoko who laughs and shakes her head as you’re leaving.

“Yeah, I know. You never shut up about it even when you’re half dead.”

DAY 1 - SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Your flight landed three hours ago, 9 hours passing far more quickly than you expected. Satoru held your hand the entire flight and you let him have the window seat, watching clouds obscure the light dancing over his face every time he'd shift his gaze toward the sky outside. Looking at him never gets old, even with a baseball cap pulled over his face to obscure his injuries despite how much they’ve improved since days ago.

Disembarking and entering the airport felt like going through the motions and you realized while grabbing your luggage that it has felt like that all day. It feels like just going through the motions despite everything and your excitement for the next several days and guilt gnaws at you because of it. Shouldn’t you be living every day, minute, second as joyfully as possible given Satoru is alive and with you? Why do you still feel so bad?

The feeling remains a mystery while the two of you gradually make your way out of the airport and into the cool city lying outside, your rental car already picked up and the keys jingling in your hand as you unlock the door to load everything up. Gojo takes the duties over for you and you smile at him gratefully, heading to the driver’s seat to get settled in.

“You alright?”

He has asked you many times today how you’re doing and your answer has been a polite nod and a smile each time, maybe a muttered “yeah I’m alright” if he’s lucky, but he can tell something is bothering you. Chalking it up to travel anxiety, he slides into the passenger seat and finally takes his hat off, chucking it aside. You watch his wispy hair fall over his face, the dark bruise on his cheekbone finally looking lighter than it did when you left Tokyo this morning and you genuinely smile for the first time all day.

“Hello handsome.”

Satoru chuckles and you laugh along with him, eyes crinkling at the corners. You aren’t sure if it’s exhausted delirium making you feel better but you allow yourself to feel at ease for the first time in weeks, settling into your seat and starting the engine of the mid size SUV that will be your chariot for the next several days.

“Do you wanna go straight to the hotel or did you want to stop somewhere first?”

He hums, thinking, and his stomach growls which gives him his answer.

“Let’s stop and get something to eat.”

You nod, tipping your head toward his phone.

“Your pick. Find a place and I’ll get us there.”

Picking the device up, he smiles at the sight of your face next to his on the screen, matching grins as big as your faces. Hopefully there will be opportunities for more photos just like that one on this trip despite how worn both of you feel right now.

Even smiling sounds exhausting at this point but he musters one for you, opening the app with a little map as its logo, searching for restaurants near the airport. He wrinkles his nose at the list of chain restaurants and settles on a deli that looks easy to get in and out of, disinterested in a sit down meal.

He turns the phone in your direction.

“Sounds good?”

You hum affirmatively and press on the screen, a digital voice through the speaker giving you turn by turn directions. You’ve visited San Francisco before and so has he, just not together, and the two of you smile contentedly watching the city roll by and you’ve arrived before you know it, parking on the sidewalk outside of the entrance. He grabs the cap he dropped onto the floorboards and slips it over his head, the bill covering his bruised eyes.

Taking a deep breath, you don’t notice he’s glancing at you until you turn to look at him and his brow is furrowed in concern. You are wound as tightly as he’s ever seen you and he worries this entire trip and the pressure of it is stressing you out more than you already are, the opposite of the desired effect.

“Are you sure you’re alright, angel?”

Nodding, you plaster on a quick smile and reach for the door handle.

“I think I’m just tired. I can’t remember the last time I slept well.”

He understands not to push any further despite lingering concern and he opens his door, stepping out into the cool evening and sighing contentedly, stretching his long limbs out. Still a little stiff from his injuries, he waits on the sidewalk for you to round the car and join him and wiggles his arms and hands.

“You look so cute when you do that,” you mutter with a smile. For a moment, his concern quiets down but your face falls so quickly it comes straight back. Coming to his side, you clutch his hand as if it’s an anchor keeping you sane and nod in the direction of the door. “After you, baby.”

Gladly, he pulls you along with him and the bell over the door dings. It’s a small space and while not packed wall to wall, it’s more crowded than you expected on a weekday evening and you take it in stride, the overhead lighting making your eyes burn after a day spent in mostly darkness. Satoru leans down and kisses the top of your head, inspecting the menu hanging from the ceiling, keeping his mouth pressed against your hair and humming. It’s comforting and you appreciate the gesture, he knows you well enough to be able to tell when you’re struggling, but you can’t focus on what’s happening with the pit in your stomach growing wider by the second.

This room full of people has no idea what either of you have just been through. The weeks of hell, watching the man you love so much you’re afraid it will be your downfall, die in front of you and return like Lazarus himself, your best friend’s death.

Your hands start to shake and your mouth runs dry.

They have no idea your fiancé just killed the body of a man he loved dearly for the second time or that children he assisted raising both lost their lives in the process. These strangers will never know or understand what happened, their lives continuing as carelessly and freely as they always have, and a lump develops in your throat remembering the responsibilities waiting for you when you return home.

Your life has changed forever and the world keeps turning, a notion that is suffocating.

It has been years since your last panic attack but you recognize the feeling immediately. The room shrinks and you laugh nervously, balling your fists. Satoru recognizes something is wrong and tries to grab your attention, quietly mouthing words you can’t make out. Shaking your head and blinking, you laugh again and he uses his grip on your hand to gently guide you toward the door. He keeps his steps short and soft to make sure you stay with him until the two of you are able to find a way to slip outside.

Bending at the knees slightly to come face level with you, he cups your face with your free hand and knits his brows together. If you can't remember the last time you had a panic attack neither can he and he wracks his tired brain to figure out how to make this better. You aren’t asking him to, just for his support, but he has failed to keep you safe and happy so many times he can’t bear to let you fall victim to your own mind while he stands and breathes beside you.

“Come on, let’s get in the car.”

Nodding, you can’t fight the tears anymore and they start to flow freely, dripping down your face and onto the sidewalk below as you let go of his hand long enough to skulk to the driver’s seat of the SUV. Opening the door and sliding in, the door has barely shut by the time you sob aloud, gasping for air and lifting your shaking hands to your face.

Satoru grasps your wrists with one of his hands and pulls your hands down from your cheeks gently, using his other hand to position your head until you’re facing him. Seeing you like this utterly rends him, his own throat tightening watching you struggle to breathe. Without thinking, he does what he would do for his students in this situation.

“Can you breathe for me?”

Despite how sobs make your shoulders shake, you nod and try to inhale deeply through your nose. It still doesn’t feel like enough air but you panic less once it reaches your lungs, exhaling through your mouth.

“Oh, baby.” He hates that this is the only thing he can think of to say. There has and never will be a point where he’s better at words of comfort than you are and it intimidates him how his blindspots only come to light when people need him the most. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Without thinking, you blurt out the news you wanted to tell him after you returned home.

“They’re making me principal.”

His eyes widen and he starts to grin but it dims as soon as he sees more tears fall down your face, your sniffling filling the car.

“They picked the best person for the job,” he comforts and you shake your head, refusing to believe that it’s true.

“They picked the easiest scapegoat. They’re going to kill me just like they did Yaga.”

The people who killed Yaga have been permanently removed from their positions by two of your students, their deaths coming just before Satoru’s battle with Sukuna began, but you still worry about what comes next. The clans now hold all of the power and if they’re angry enough over what occurred, you’re the person who will be on the hook to deal with it all.

“No one is going to do that, I would never let them.”

You sniffle and look away, brows furrowed while tears drip into your lap.

“What if it isn’t your choice, Satoru?”

A dark thought consumes the usually easy going man, his stomach turning. Has your faith in him wavered? Do you think he wouldn’t cut down anyone who dared try to hurt or upset you?

“Look at me?”

You do, just as you do any time he asks, and he sighs defeatedly. Now your hackles are raised because you’re worried about him, sniffling and reaching across the car for him. You clutch onto his t-shirt and he lets you, the fabric spilling between your fingers.

“I will never let anything bad happen to you ever again.” You’ve never seen him look so serious, no trace of humor to be found anywhere. No glimmer in his tired blue eyes, no upturned lip to reveal a dimple. You know he needs this confirmation and you nod, sniffling and pulling him closer to you with his shirt.

“Do you trust me?” You nod but it isn’t enough, his gaze still hardened. “I need you to say it.”

Swallowing to try and wet your dry mouth, you nod again and sniffle.

“I trust you with everything and I always will.” Another sniffle but you feel more normal, your breaths still coming quicker than usual but slowly steadying with each moment that passes. Keeping his shirt in your balled fists, you sigh and shake your head. “This isn’t about not trusting you, it’s about being afraid of what comes next.”

Now he understands.

Your faith in him is unshakeable, something you have told him more times than you can count and meant every single one, but the future itself is terrifying. Nobody knows what is coming next, least of all you.

“I know but just like you always tell me, things will work out how they’re supposed to and if they don’t, I will kill anyone who is mean to you.”

Finally, this draws a watery laugh from you and he softens, posture slackening. His stomach growls again and you whine, upset that your own antics prevented him from doing what you two came here to do in the first place - eat.

“I’m sorry about this,” you mumble and he leans over the console to kiss your forehead.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, I’d rather get room service anyway.”

Sniffling again, you untangle your hands from his shirt and turn toward the wheel, positioning yourself to start driving again.

“Wanna go to the hotel then?”

He nods with a soft smile, wrapping an arm around your shoulders.

“Do you want me to drive?”

You shake your head, face looking far less distraught than it did a few minutes ago, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

“Will you really kill anyone who is mean to me?”

He hums exaggeratedly to accompany an animated nod.

“Thank you,” you whisper and he squeezes your shoulder with his arm.

“I’m a nice guy, what can I say?”

DAY 3 - MONTEREY, CA TO BIG SUR, CA

The California coastline glimmers beneath the sun and although you’re driving, you keep sneaking glances toward the edge of the highway, eyes widening every time something beautiful comes into view. You may as well keep them wide open, constantly amazed by the world surrounding you even as it breezes past while you drive.

Day 2 went off without a hitch for the most part, no panic attacks or the like occurring, but you noticed this morning that Satoru seemed quiet. His usual exuberance has been missing from your conversations, instead dimmed down into something that feels like an imitation of the man. You understand this is part of the process of coming to terms with everything that happens but you feel guilty, as if your outburst is keeping him from feeling comfortable enough to be himself.

It could also have nothing to do with you but it’s easier to blame yourself than it is to think about anything else that could possibly be bothering him, your tendency to fall on your sword even worse when it comes to him. The devotion he gives you is returned in full, your natural instinct always to keep him happy and away from anything that could hurt him as unfair as it can be to do so.

You can’t protect anyone from sorrow, it comes as naturally as the waves wash up on the shore below you, all you can do is witness it unfold and hope it doesn’t become a tsunami.

The two of you have been driving in comfortable silence for miles, occasionally oohing aloud at the cliff sides, but it has become less comfortable now that you’re thinking about how it has been like this all day. You try to think of something to talk about but come up short, focusing on the road, and he captures your attention when he speaks.

“I saw them, you know. When I died.”

You raise your eyebrows but don’t look at him, keeping your focus on the road.

“Did you?”

Satoru nods and clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, carelessly sticking his hand out of the small crack in the unrolled window. It isn’t big enough to let the chilly winter air through but it’s just wide enough for him to feel the wind at 40 mph with his Infinity off.

“Yup, they asked me about you. How you’re doing.”

He doesn’t have to say who he saw but you know, gut churning. It’s unlikely that Kento would ask, given you were one of the last people he saw before meeting his fate but Yu and - as painful as it is to even recall his name sometimes - Suguru would.

“What’d you tell them?”

“The truth.”

Raising a brow, you focus on the road ahead of you and drum your fingertips idly against the sides of the steering wheel hoping he’ll elaborate on what the truth actually is. The silence sits heavier than you’d like it to and you open your mouth to end it but he beats you to the punch, head tipped back against the seat he’s sitting in.

“Told them about us and that we’re going to get married.” You smile and he watches your cheek curve, mirroring it with one of his own that fades quickly while he continues speaking. “Told them you’re probably doing pretty badly because I failed to keep you safe. That you have been dead already.”

Shooting him a glance out of the corner of your eye, it’s hard to convey exactly how his words affect you while navigating a vehicle down an elevated single lane highway.

Sometimes he forgets what it’s like to exist vulnerably. You’ve always been the wall between himself and the world, the place where he has allowed himself to soften and take down all airs, but now he wonders what it would be like if he extended that beyond just you. Other friends, what remains of his family, his students. He could never fully give himself to anyone the way he has to you but it’s something to consider while he spreads his fingers and lets the wind blow through them.

Does he deserve any of this?

He didn’t keep you safe. He didn’t keep Megumi or Tsumiki or Nobara safe. He failed, yet here he sits by your side, cold air chilling the tips of his fingers. In an instant, he feels nothing, turning his Infinity on wordlessly and keeping his gaze locked on the trees rushing by his window while you consider what to say to help him right now.

“It has never been your responsibility to keep me safe, Satoru.”

He chuckles humorlessly and swallows so thickly you can hear it even with the sound of air entering the car through the cracked window.

“For my entire life, my only purpose has been to keep people safe. If I can’t do that, what can I do?”

Glancing at the road, you spot the shoulder and decide to pull off to the side, parking and turning on your lights. Satoru has been wordless and still for longer than you’ve ever seen him and your heart breaks imagining how he must feel right now.

The weight of the world is a heavy burden to carry and he has done it since before he could form full sentences, a fact you forget because he wears the responsibility as though it’s a cloak he can shrug off at any time, but you know that he takes it far more seriously inwardly. His life has been wrapped up in grooming him to be not simply a protector, but the protector, the gatekeeper of the insular society the two of you are a part of.

“Look at me?”

You ask just as he asked you to do two days ago and he does, the quarter turn of his head giving you an actual view of his face for the first time all day. He looks better than he did yesterday, scratches and bruises healing far faster than they would otherwise as he restores his energy. His eyes meet yours for a minute and you catch the shimmer that means his Infinity is turned on and you look away from him to compose yourself.

His carefully crafted facade has shattered at his feet - he’ll always be The Strongest but his weakness was exposed in the form of bleeding out, severed through the middle, on a battlefield. What is he supposed to do now?

Your eyes turn toward him once again and you sigh though it holds nothing but concern and you unbuckle your seatbelt to shift your body until you’re facing him, knees pressed against the center console. He half smiles and chuckles to himself seeing you move and get comfortable but it dies as quickly as it came, his head still pressed to the headrest while looking directly at you.

All you can do is help him pick up the pieces and figure out who he wants to be now that he has the ability to choose.

“You know I don’t love you because you’re strong, right?”

He shrugs.

“I’m sure it probably helps.”

“No, Satoru. I love you because you make me laugh and cry and get angry sometimes. You let me be myself and never ask that I be anyone different even though I’m sure it would make your life easier if I were less stubborn and set in my ways.”

Getting choked up, you stop yourself and his eyes stop shimmering, Infinity off. He reaches across the center console and holds your hand, smoothing his thumb over the back of it and feeling the puckered wounds that are becoming eerily smooth scars. Swallowing, you blink and will yourself to keep it together until you get through what you have to say.

“I love you because you are courageous and that has nothing to do with your abilities, that’s who you are in your heart. You care so much despite how little you try to show it and your devotion goes deeper than the ocean and you are loyal and…”

Trailing off, searching for the words to sum up how you feel about him, he squeezes his hand and you see a peek of him in the soft smile on his face. Tipping his head to the side, he widens his eyes.

“You forgot handsome.”

Despite being near tears, you laugh and he feels warmer just listening to it and witnessing the grin he loves so much spreading across your face.

“You are the most handsome man I’ve ever laid eyes on, even when you’re a little scraped up, don’t worry about that.”

Despite how difficult you have been to understand throughout various points in your decade long relationship with the man, he knows everything you’re saying is true or else you would not say it. You are too honest at times even if it’s sugarcoated to keep from hurting feelings but he knows you give him the most vulnerable form of yourself just as he does for you.

He scrunches his nose and turns toward you, unbuckling so he can shift his body to face you.

“Those sound like vows. Have you been practicing?”

Shrugging, you play his question off with a wry smile because he caught you. You still feel teary but blinking keeps any from coming and you idly play with his fingers and allow yourself to indulge in romance despite the heaviness still lingering between the two of you.

“Not necessarily practicing, just trying to figure out how to put how I feel about you into words because I don’t think the words I need exist.”

An arched brow is his response and you roll your eyes, tilting your chin toward the ground to hide your smile. He doesn’t want to coax anything additional out of you but the relief he feels knowing you still want to marry him despite everything that has happened is almost as comforting as the first breath he took waking back up after being healed enough to keep going by Shoko and Yuuta.

He would be doing you both a disservice if he let you off the hook completely, though.

“So you still want to marry me?”

You scoff, lifting your head to look at him with a raised brow that mirrors the one he just gave you.

“Please. I’d marry you right now if you wanted.”

“Then do it.”

Opening your mouth to speak, you stop when the words won’t come, and he fills in the blanks for you.

“Let’s get married right now.”

“Satoru, we are in a car pulled off to the side of the road on one of the most famous highways in America.”

“So?”

At least his mood seems to have improved, the mischievous glimmer back in his eyes as he looks at where your hand and his take turns smoothing over each other. The two of you are always so sync even if you don’t realize it, seeking one another out like air, and you inhale sharply to keep from getting emotional once again.

“Okay. How do you wanna do it?”

He grins, shrugging.

“I guess we just say it.”

“You’re ridiculous,” you shoot at him despite the smile on your face and he leans across the center console to kiss you. It amazes you just how many different types of kisses this man can give you in the span of a few minutes, going from silly to sweet to sincere to sexy, but you’re grateful to be on the receiving end of each one. Your lips mold to his perfectly, no longer split and cracked the way they were a few days ago, and he pulls back from you with raised brows and meets your eyes.

“And you’re my wife.”

For as unceremonious as the event of apparently becoming his wife has been, you feel a rush of heat to your face when he says the word in reference to you and the way his gemstone eyes are gazing into yours tells you that he means it. You are his wife and as far as you’re concerned, just saying it is enough, you can worry about the rest later.

“Does that make you my husband?”

Smiling, he tips his head and leans forward to press his forehead against yours.

“I sure hope so.”

And so it begins, the rest of your trip as makeshift newlyweds, your heart pounding at the realization that this means forever. This is the commitment to one another you’ve both been anticipating and scared to make, you spent years running from him because you knew this was the only outcome, but with noses touching and two sets of eyes blinking at one another it has never been more apparent that you two were meant for this, for each other.

DAY 6 - MALIBU, CA - POINT DUME LOOKOUT

The final day of the trip has passed by at lightning speed, your flight leaving from LAX first thing in the morning. It feels correct that you’re spending your last few hours on some of the most beautiful soil on earth watching the sunset over the horizon in Malibu despite the cool air of the January day. The ocean glimmers and you can’t help but gasp in awe at what you see, feeling like a proverbial goddess staring at the open land below you.

“This is beautiful,” you mutter and Gojo joins your side, wrapping an arm around your shoulder. He has a blanket and spare jacket tucked under the other, something to keep you both warm after the sun fully sets and the air grows colder.

“Almost as pretty as you.”

Rolling your eyes, you swat at his chest and suddenly every piece falls back into place. The past five days have been exactly what he needed to find himself, to return to who he is and who he wants to be, and it thrills him to think for even a moment that he may someday feel completely normal again. It won’t undo the things that have happened but it will help him make sense of them.

“Ouch,” he mutters playfully and you laugh, pulling the blanket out of the crook of his elbow and placing it on the ground below with a flourish and a shake of your hands. You instantly sink to the ground below, crossing your legs and sitting back with your hands bracing you. Satoru follows suit with an easy smile, sunglasses covering his eyes despite his facial injuries now being mostly gone.

Sighing, you tip your head upward and let the sunlight warm it.

Things are going to be okay, you tell yourself with an earnestness you couldn’t muster a week ago. This is exactly what you needed.

A comfortable silence falls over the two of you, contentedly watching seabirds drift by in the distance, but you sit up and turn to face Gojo, smiling wistfully watching the sunset on his features.

“You wanna know what I’ve been thinking about lately?”

He hums at your question, nodding emphatically.

“Of course.”

Turning your face back toward the sunset, you recall a moment you have been thinking about since the moment it happened, the night he called you his soulmate. It was in the thick of an emotional evening after a long day, the two of you indulging in some pillow talk before falling asleep. It was so easy for him to say, as if he never assumed anything else could be true.

“Years ago you told me you’ve always known it was going to be us and I brushed it off as you running your mouth,” Satoru fakes offense at your words but you smile wistfully, shaking your head and looking down toward your crossed thighs, the sun suddenly becoming too bright to keep gazing at. “But it’s not a coincidence it has ended up being us two, is it?”

You feel guilty for leaving out Shoko and Utahime and the other friends and students you have met along the way but he knows better than anyone what you mean. He smiles back and captures your hand in his, your palms pressed together while watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean, cold winter waves lapping at the jagged rocks below the cliff you sit on.

“Add clairvoyance to my list of skills because I called it, didn’t I?” Humor mixed with unwavering honesty, one of the things you love the most about Satoru, peeks through his every word and you feel so full of love it’s hard to do anything but finally stare at him, eyes squinting thanks to the last bright remnants of daylight. “Even back when you thought I was nothing but a pest with freakishly long arms I knew it had to be you.”

Giggling, you think back to those days that were a practical lifetime ago. Time seemed like it was endless, stretching on and on forever in sundrenched days lounging in the courtyard grass at school, and you assumed you had endless amounts of it. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, it’s all the same when you know you have theoretically at least six more decades to live.

You were reckless with your feelings and even more so with those of others back then, the man next to you a frequent recipient of annoyed eye rolls and scoffs. He knows he deserved them all even if he gives you a hard time about them now, his boyish determination to impress you gradually buffing away your edges until none remained.

To the uninitiated, it may appear he tamed you, buffed and smoothed you into perfection equal to his own, but anyone who matters knows better. Satoru remade you, as being loved unconditionally does to anyone. He loved you when you were scowling and spitting and swiping, refusing his friendship and certainly his affections, and he loves you now with your palm pressed against his while you gently breathe in brisk ocean air wrapped in his coat.

“Thank you for never giving up on me.”

He pulls you closer, chin resting on top of your head as it always does. No response comes and you don’t need one, content to listen to the soft puffs of air leaving his nostrils that ruffle the top of your hair. Weeks ago, you weren’t certain you’d ever hear them again. Now though, the mix of the roaring waves and his breaths and his heartbeat pounding against your back catch you off guard and you start to cry, a tear trailing down your nose.

“Don’t do that. No crying.”

Despite the tears, you laugh. It’s impossible to do anything but when he looks down at you with his head cocked, a little mocking pout on his lips. Leaning up, you kiss him gently and he hums into it, thumb reaching to swipe the stray tear off of your cheek. Leaning back from him, you sniffle.

“Just a little? You know how I am.”

He shakes his head. How can he ever deny you anything? You’re his life, his reason, his world. His one.

“Okay, a tear or two for my little crybaby but that’s it.”

Whatever tears were welling up dissipate quickly when you start laughing and it wows you how it seems like everything is truly back to normal. The two of you glancing at one another like lovesick teenagers, the same as you did ten years ago, the same as you will for the rest of your lives.

“You were right, you know. We are soulmates.”

He grins.

“That’s not something I hear from you often but I’ll take it.”

DAY 7 - TOKYO, JP

The 9 hours back home felt far longer than the ones passing on the way there but after a blissful week and an easy flight, you are home and you are clean and you are comfortable in your own bed.

Spread across the mattress in nothing but a towel, you listen to Satoru hum from the adjoining bathroom while he brushes his teeth, running water mingling with a song that kept playing on the radio during your trip that has been stuck in his head for four days. Giggling, you wonder if he knows you can hear him or if he’s truly in his own little world.

“Turn the water off, it’s wasteful!”

You playfully shout into the bathroom and you hear the water cease but the humming continues. He’s well aware that you’re listening and it’s glorious to see even more of him come home - his happiness returning and stabilizing over the last few days. You worried at the beginning of your trip things would never be the same and they won’t, of course, the losses you’ve both suffered more than any one person should have to, but they will feel good again and already do.

Speaking of feeling good, your husband (who is very insistent that you call him this despite no legal documentation of your marriage existing) saunters into the room with a towel low slung on his hips and you can’t help but let your eyes roam over every part of him. His arms are no longer bruised and scuffed, back to their defined and pristine glory. The face you know every contour of is back to normal as well, nary a trace of anything happening in the first place, but curiously - he isn’t devoting any energy to heal the scars across his torso. Small silvery slashes and the big one where Sukuna split him into two remain visible.

Your mouth waters watching him dry the ends of his hair with a towel and it’s no longer satisfying to merely look, you need to feel; to touch every piece of him to ensure he’s still here despite having done it many times over the last several days. Every touch will be like this for the rest of your life, you think, making sure he’s whole and real and yours.

“Come here,” you nod and tilt your head, flipping from your back onto your stomach and swinging your legs in the air behind you. Gojo hums, raising his eyebrows and sliding onto the bed next to you, leaning onto his side and propping his head up with a hand.

“What can I do for you?”

You giggle almost girlishly, fluttering your lashes for no particular reason other than to let him know that he still has the ability to fluster you a decade together later. Tentatively, you reach toward him and trace your finger over the scar through the middle of his torso, the flesh smooth and pearlescent.

“Keeping that one?”

He shrugs, looking down to see your single finger become an entire palm pressed against his abdomen, your fingers tracing small paths across his abs and chest. The muscles beneath your hand tense with each touch and you pull yourself to your knees, crawling across the bed to kneel beside him.

“Maybe I’ll get rid of it eventually. I have the choice, you know?”

That he does and you nod, understanding. Your hand continues to travel over his chest, smoothing over each of his pecs and your core flutters excitedly when your hand travels from his upper torso to the lower portion, fingers sliding beneath the knot of his towel.

He looks over your body, the way that your tits are pressed together and spilling over the towel secured over them, eyes trailing from your cleavage to your shoulder where a jagged and angry scar of your own sits. It’s from an attempt to dismember you in Shibuya, to cleave your arm straight from your shoulder, yet you don’t let the fact that it’s there bother you a bit.

Satoru’s cock starts to harden under his towel merely looking at you and you smile watching it come to life beneath the cotton covering it, pushing him backward and flat onto his back so that you can straddle him. Discarding your towel, you drop it on the floor next to the bed and lean over him, chests pressed together while your knees rest on either side of his hips.

“Hello there,” he teases and you laugh, leaning down to kiss him and bracing your forearms on either side of his head. There is no time wasted on gentle kisses, opting instead for the type that sear as you pant into his mouth and feel his bulge pressed against your bare cunt. You grind against him, the friction from the towel over his cock making you whimper, and one of his hands finds your hip to hold you steady while you make yourself feel good.

“You like that, baby?”

Humming affirmatively to his question, you drag yourself across his covered length for only a moment more and choose instead to sit up, giving him a full view of all of you. This is a sight he has been blessed with more times than he could begin to count but every time it feels like a gift, your breasts swaying as you steady yourself. His hand slides from your hip to your waist and even higher, thumb and index finger pinching your nipple and making you tilt your head back and moan.

“To think I almost never saw this again,” he mutters to himself but you hear it, leaning forward enough that your face hovers above his. You kiss the side of his jaw and he groans, cock so hard the towel has shortened by several inches while it fights to sit against his stomach as gravity intends for it to.

Kissing further down his jaw and his neck, you rest your face in the crook of his neck for a moment and sigh dreamily. You're already soaked, ready to slip him inside of you at any moment.

“To think I never saw this again,” you repeat back to him and sit up, reaching behind you to unknot his towel and push it off of his hips, looking over your shoulder and groaning at his pretty pink tip resting against his belly, glossy with precum. You look down at him with a slight pout, leaning in to kiss him while running your hands over every inch of his body that you can.

“Look at you, Satoru. You’re so beautiful.”

He’s no stranger to your compliments but he flusters a bit anyway, chest turning pink as his face heats up. His white lashes flutter as he looks down at you, your mouth pressing kisses into his neck and warm chest. You scrape your teeth over his nipples and it makes him whine, bucking his hips and pressing his heavy cock against your pussy.

"Fuck baby," he mutters, hissing when you press your hips down against him, the wetness seeping from you coating your lips and his shaft in return, your hips gliding easily over him. Your mouth remains occupied, pressing kisses lower down his abdomen and over the scars he hasn't yet healed. It's your responsibility to remind him that every single piece of him is as lovable and stunning as ever and you take it seriously.

"I need you."

The rasp in his words makes you smile and you nod, ceasing your kissing and straightening your spine so that you can press your tits against his chest again. There is zero space between your bodies, just how you prefer it. He reaches for his cock and groans, wrapping his fingers around the base, abandoning it to brush his fingers over your wet cunt.

"All that for me," he marvels, two digits sinking into you with ease and you arch your back slightly, letting him spread you open while grinding your hips down against his pelvis, the direct contact of his body on your clit sending sparks through you.

"Just for you, handsome," you smirk against his neck and he crooks his fingers inside of you, brushing the spot he knows drives you wild. You moan and he pulls his fingers out of you, your cunt clenching in protest only for him to immediately replace them with the girth of his cock, your walls stretching to accommodate him.

"Feels so good," you whisper and he hums, hands coming to your hips to keep them steady while he thrusts upward into you slowly, sinking himself to the base methodically, shallow thrusts pulling him nearly out of you.

He's greedy though, undeniably addicted to the way you make him feel, and keeps enough of himself inside of you that you are unable to even begin to miss the way he feels. Your walls clench around him, keeping him secured inside and your hips grind lazily despite his grip on them.

The pleasure is mind numbing but you keep yourself alert, moaning softly while he throbs inside of you. More lazy thrusts met with slow and passionate grinding make you moan on unison, lips finding each other. Moaning into each others mouths, occasionally brushing tongues and kissing, you're overwhelmed with nothing but pure love knowing you have this to look forward to forever.

Forever sounds like a long time but you can't think of any better way to spend it than with your Satoru.

"You gonna cum baby?"

He asks and you nod, your walls gripping him tightly. His thrusts speed up, the sound of skin on skin filling your bedroom. The mind is a powerful tool and despite this being quite possibly the least active sex the two of you have ever had, you're so in love with him your body does what it does naturally and that's cum around his cock, clenching and pulsing to let him know how much all of you loves all of him.

"I love you," you babble against his mouth and he chuckles. "I know baby, I know."

Your hips still and you let him hold you in place, his back arched as he thrusts fully in and out of you, his own release slowly coming over him. His eyes flutter shut and he stays buried inside of you, ropes of his cum filling you and seeping out around the base of him, dripping down onto the towel below him.

You don't say a word, sinking into his chest while he softens inside of you. Talking feels unnecessary when your body itself says so much but the big mouth is back to normal so the blissful silence doesn't last for long.

"I love you too, by the way."

At least he's being sweet.

Giggling, you kiss him and wrap your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist, clinging to him while he moves from your mouth to press kisses into your hairline.

"So," he starts and you look up, hovering off of his chest enough to look him in his eyes. "When are we telling everyone that we're married?"

"Let's make it legal first, yeah?"

He pouts but it is replaced quickly with a wry smile and you sink back down to rest against him, cheek pressed into his collarbone. The news surely won't come as a surprise to anyone but you want to make sure it's set in stone before letting everyone know.

"Let's go first thing in the morning."

His eagerness makes you laugh but you acquiesce, knowing there's no excuse to wait. You spent enough time fighting off the inevitable that for once, you're glad to just sit back and enjoy the ride, especially when you're enjoying it by Satoru's side.

#gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #satoken #this is an entry to satoken canon yes #kendall writes

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boxofbonesfic · 3 months

Text

Title: Tonality [5]

Pairing: Prince!Geralt x Princess!Reader

previous Chapter

Summary: “The white wolf wants you. He’ll have no other.” As you grieve the loss of your father, your mother marries the king. Whilst you struggle to acclimate to your new life, you begin to suspect the interest your new brother has in you is less than familial.

Warnings: 18+ Only, Dark Fantasy, Darkfic, Step-cest, Medieval/GoT inspired AU, Genre Typical Violence, Mild Descriptions of Violence, (Future)Smut, Dubcon/Noncon, Manipulation, Gaslighting, Obsessive Behavior, Possessive Behavior, MINORS DNI!!

A/N: OMG I’M SO SORRY. this chapter was so hard to write and it kept getting away from me, because i really wanted to pivot hard into some of the main plot points. i really hope you enjoy it, please drop me a comment and let me know even if you didn’t.

“Come.” Your mother’s voice is firm. Her mourning veil just barely outlines the shape of her face, as her lips move beneath the fabric. It billows behind her as she walks down the darkened line of empty pews toward the front of the little chapel, a flickering candle held steady in her gloved hand.

Your father is to be buried tomorrow.

You know his grave is already dug—a fresh square cut out of the dark earth next to his father’s. The thought of him alone in the dirt is enough to make your throat tighten, though no tears come. You have cried them all already; a veritable ocean. Even so, your dry eyes ache for lack of them.

“W-wait, mother, I—” You do not want to see it, the vacant thing your father’s soul has left behind. At the end, you could barely recognize him in the fragile body decaying in his sick bed. You catch at her sleeve with numb fingers, lowering your head in shame. “I do not want to see—” Her icy fingers wrap around yours, long and thin, her jagged nails digging into your skin.

“We must each place a stitch upon the shroud.” You wince as she presses the long needle into your stiff hands. “It is our duty.” Only when you accept it does she release you, and for a moment, you see her lips quirk cruelly beneath the veil. You tremble as your mother steps aside, your breath catching as you see the shape of the body on the altar.

Just behind her is your father, his shroud dotted with the shapes of dead flowers and bare trees. It does little to quell the horror you feel to behold him, though, his thin outline visible through the shroud, limbs folded and delicate like a baby bird. You remember what he looked like two nights prior, his rheumy eyes dull and deep set into his skull, skin thin and sallow. He looks small now, too, beneath his shroud, and you find it hard to believe this withered corpse had once been a great mountain of a man. A good man, a strong man, now reduced to the barest scraps of skin and bone.

“Stitch.” Her command fills every inch of space, in the chapel and in your head. And though you want nothing more than to close your eyes and be gone from this place, your body will not obey. You raise the needle.

“Please, mother—”

“Stitch.” Her voice is like iron nails in your skull. Blood drips from your nose, and you taste the warm copper of it on your lips. You pinch a corner of thin fabric between your fingers, and push in the needle, pulling it through until the knot at the end of the thread catches. You lower your hand to the shroud as you sew another stitch, and as you do so, your fingers brush your father’s sunken cheek, and you retch.

You cannot stop—

She will not let you.

You look down at your father’s body with tears in your wide eyes, and as you do, a scream builds in your throat. You pinch his lips together between your forefinger and thumb. Delicately; like you would the hem of your gown for a curtsey— and sew another stitch through the meat of them. He is beginning to rot, now, you can smell it over the cloying scent of incense.

“Mother stop!” Your scream is swallowed by the heavy darkness of the empty chapel. Your mother sighs, her breath curling against your ear.

“How else can we make sure the dead don’t speak?” She threads her fingers through yours as she pulls your hand toward his sunken eyelids. You pinch the stiff flesh between your fingers, holding it taut for the needle.

“Now close his eyes.”

You wake with a start, sitting up in bed as you cover your mouth with one hand, fingers searching for the thick black funeral thread—but of course, you find none. The dream clings to the edges of your vision like spider silk, the taste of decaying things still heavy on the panicked air you draw in. A ra sob wrenches its way out of your throat as you press the heels of your palms against your closed eyes.

Perhaps I am mad, after all.

Ain’t supposed t’see the dead ones. Maybe Madge’s old superstitions had borne fruit in your own mind. You recall the symbol she made with one hand, finger on thumb, finger on thumb, before spitting down into the dirt as you left your father’s burial. She’d shaken her head then, some the silver-gray locs piled on top of her head coming loose. Ain’t supposed t’see them. They stay when you see, them, Lady.

They stay.

“No!” You throw the blankets off of yourself, lurching out of bed and stumbling towards the wash-bowl on the dresser. The thought of that day fills you with the same cold dread you have come to know too well. You’ve little choice in your dreams; the specter of his burial hanging over you like overripe fruit. But here, in waking, in the chill autumn daylight, you have the power to turn your thoughts to other things.

At least, you try to.

The water is shockingly cold, but you are grateful for it, staring down into the porcelain bowl. A knock at the door startles you, and you jump.

“W-who is it?”

“Kassandra, Majesty. Might I come in?”

“Yes,” you sigh. “You may.” You pat worriedly at your swollen eyelids, and you frown at your reflection as the door swings open. Your mother has an effortless sort of beauty, one that needs neither rouge nor powders to enhance—a trait you certainly do not share. Your disturbing, sleepless night is written plainly on your face.

Kassandra sets the tray down in the sitting area, before turning to you with a worried expression.

“Her Majesty hopes you are well,” she says, nervously tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear with dainty fingers. “As you were not at break-fast this morning.”

“I was… I did not sleep well.” You shake your head. “I trust my mother made her displeasure quite clear.” She stifles a laugh. “She’s good at that.”

“She did.” Kassandra gestures to the tray, porridge and an assortment continental fruit cut into bite size pieces. “You should eat, Lady. While it’s hot.” You pick uninterestedly at the porridge until it is mostly gone, along with the tart green grapes and sweet winter melon. At the very least you do feel better for it, or at least, more present—more grounded in this world, not the dream one.

You clear up the remains of your breakfast, piling the dishes neatly back onto the tray. In the armoire, you note that more Rivian style gowns have been hung, your light Redanian dresses folded neatly and shunted off to the shelves on the side. Your mother’s thin excuse makes you wrinkle your nose in distaste as you finger one of the heavy sleeves. “Much too light for these Rivian winters, Dear,” she’d said, patting the neatly folded dresses.

“You won’t need them.”

The truth remains unspoken, but you know it still—she does not want you to need them. You pull a heavy crimson dress from its place and begin to undo the lacing. Kassandra clucks her tongue at you.

“Highness, please. Allow me at least one task.” You roll your eyes in response.

“I believe you are capable of more than dressing me—and that I am more than capable of dressing myself,” you reply. You change into a fresh shift before shrugging into the dress. You twist around to reach for the lacings, but Kassandra shoos your hands away to do them herself.

“You’re doing them wrong.” She chides you gently. “Up for lift, down for compression, my Lady.” Kassandra nods at you in the mirror and then positions your body so that if you crane your neck just a little, you can see her hands as she easily threads the thick ribbon through the eyelets. “Opposing sides. Like this.”

You purse your lips. “We don’t wear these dreadful things in Redania,” you mutter, your breath hitching as the corset tightens. She laughs before stepping away, brushing loose lint from the folds of the heavy fabric.

“Even so, our fashion does suit you.” You can tell she wants to say something else, the way her mouth opens and then closes, her lips pressing into a thin line.

“You’ve another correction?” You ask, gesturing at yourself with a chuckle, but she shakes her head. She glances at the door, as though reassuring herself that it was still shut.

“No, no, I—I do not mean to be insolent, Highness,” Kassandra begins, “but I do not think I have ever heard you say you have rested well within these walls.” Your smile turns brittle and tired.

“No. I have not. And your concern is not insolence. I am grateful for it.”

“Healer Janna—her draughts have not availed you?” You hesitate, wondering if you should describe the shape of your demon, give it form and substance outside of your mind. You shake your head, steepling your fingers together to stop them from trembling.

“It seems the dreams that plague me require more than nightroot and dried frogspawn to satisfy them.” I see my father. I see him dead a thousand ways.

“Healer Janna’s draughts for sleep and pain are as close to magic as they’ll allow in the White Keep, you know that.” Bastard’s magic. You do. You think of Father Rame’s disgusted expression. He does not seem the type to suffer a witch to live. “But I have… there is another. A woman—they call her The Dock Hag.” Her voice is a low whisper, as if she fears the good Father ears will ring with her heresy, even here.

“And she can… she can rid me of these dreams?” The prospect is a tantalizing one. “You know her? You have visited this woman?”

“I—yes. I met her. Once.” Her smile is sad. “When I was small, and the older Ladies had need of her.” Kassandra’s words are aged, heavy with the weight of years that both do and do not belong to her in equal measure. “And then again, for the memories.”

“She…” You cannot bring yourself to say it. Kassandra nods, the smile going brittle and crumbling from her face.

“Not many Lords will claim their bastards, Highness, if you will forgive my candor.”

In your mind’s eye you see a small Kassandra, attending her own mother, most likely, or perhaps even an older sister or cousin who… had need of this woman. The witch who had taken their babies—

And then burnt their dreams out.

“What did it cost?”

“Nothing special. Gold.” You let out a relieved sigh at her words. That, at least, is an easy enough problem to solve. Kassandra cuts her eyes at you. “Are you going to go? To see her?”

Perhaps Madge was a superstitious old northern goat—But maybe she was right too: the living are not meant to mingle with the dead. Perhaps it is some guilt that drives your father’s image to the forefront of your mind, some secret thing that the specter of his death clings to—you cannot know.

But the witch might.

—

The east stair is narrow, cut roughly out of the stone as if it were an afterthought. The iron railing is pitted and mottled from the salt in the air, and it rattles dangerously as you grip it. The stairs themselves are uneven, still slick from the inconsistent rain that had stopped only hours before. Every step feels as though you are lurching forward, being pulled down the long winding stair to the paving below.

There are more ways to enter and exit this keep than the main gate, Majesty.

The east stair wound around the back of the White Keep like a snake, the steps hidden in the stone like a secret. As you take another cautious step down, your foot slips and you gasp, the railing shaking as you cling to it. You steady yourself, locking your trembling knees tightly as you recite Kassandra’s instructions.

You will take the east stair down from the parapets over the chapel. Through the gap in the wall is the city. Go straight to the docks, ask for the Hag.” She had not wanted to stay behind, though you had convinced her with a stern look and an order to send away any who came knocking at your door till you returned. You would need her to provide a believable excuse in the event that anyone came looking—and an empty room would be cause for alarm, especially with you… “ill.”

Below you, the city glitters with light even as the dark begins to deepen. Beyond it, the sun sinks into the sea, lingering on the horizon before disappearing completely. Like Kassandra had said, near the foot of the stairs—twenty feet back, and behind a column, but near enough—is the gap in the wall. It is overgrown thick with dying ivy, the orange leaves already turning spotty brown at the edges.

Crushed leaves litter the hood and shoulders of your cloak as you start to squeeze inside, the stone catching at your clothes. You push your way through the narrow passage, panic coiling in your gut at the feel of the unyielding pressure at your chest and back. Your fingers meet open air at the next push, and you practically drag yourself out into the streetlight, fingers digging into the stone.

The misty street that greets you is practically empty, and what few people there are do not seem to have noticed that you have joined them from nowhere on the wet cobbled street. Hurriedly, you brush dirt and discarded leaves from your cloak before you adjust your hood, angling it down over your eyes. You keep your head down, your hands clenched into trembling, nervous fists. Every heavy step you take away from the keep sets the warning bells in your skull to ringing, as gooseflesh rises on your arms.

It isn’t too late to go back. It isn’t. Not too late to turn around, slip back between the ivy covered crack in the east wall and seek your mother’s counsel once more—and go to sleep, knowing that you will see beyond the veil again.

The thought spurs you onward.

The streets are even more unfamiliar in the growing dark, and as you watch the lanterns flare to life to chase it away, you swallow nervously. There is so much to see, here—too much. As you approach the city centre the market is still bustling with activity, the shops open and windows bright.

You spare yourself a few moments to watch the people. A woman buys bread, her son playing in her skirts, a man pulls shut the door of the tavern across the way, a blacksmith’s hammer falls rhythmically like a drum, the chapel’s bell rings for evening prayer—there is so much here, the sheer amount of everything almost dizzies you. A woman bumps your shoulder as she passes by, and it stirs you out of your reverie. By the time she turns to apologize, you are already gone, hurrying off through the square.

The air turns salt with brine the closer you get, and you lick your dry lips, tasting it. The night had been thick with sounds in the city center, but the further you travel from it, the more quiet the streets become. It is eerie, the stark difference between these silent, empty streets and the lively square only moments ago.

The last time you had been to the docks was when you’d stepped off of the ship, in the scant few days before your mother’s wedding. Now, the narrow streets look different, unrecognizable from the snatches you remember through the carriage windows. You look in one direction, and then another, frowning.

“You’re lost, Sweet.” There is no question in the old woman’s voice. You see her then, standing beneath the street lantern in a pool of pale light.

“I—I am looking for—”

“Me, Sweet. You’re looking for me.” The shadows fall away from her face without her moving, like the light has only just decided to accept her. The Witch’s white hair is wild about her face. And her face… she is a severe beauty, like wind whipped ocean waves. The years define her jaw, sloping in gentle strokes down around her eyes, and her ears slope upward into gentle points. She is older than your mother, though you know this not by sight but because you simply… know it. An uncanny feeling that has grown in the back of your mind that she is like you, but… un-like you, too.

She is an elf.

It is not just the ears, but the air about her, an ethereal quality that surrounds her as thickly as the shawl about her shoulders. It is in the delicate set of her jaw, perhaps, or the distinct lack of canine teeth in her amused grin. You take a halting step forward, and then stop, wary.

“You are the W—you can help me?” The Witch wraps her shawl tighter about her shoulders, and fixes you with a hawkish look.

“Don’t know that yet.” She purses her lips. “Shall we do this in the street? Or will you oblige me my own roof?” You nod hurriedly, and follow her as she turns quickly on her heel down the street. You are close enough to the docks to hear the water as she approaches a small house, pushing open the door. You follow her inside, halting briefly at the doorway. There is dried heather inside, hanging in a braided bushel on the arch. She watches you step inside, her dark eyes narrowed.

“Shut the door behind you,” she snaps, flicking the edge of her shawl over her shoulder. “Never met a Princess raised in a bloody barn.” You brush aside the bushels of dried herbs hanging from the low ceiling as you make your way inside.

The Witch rounds the other side of the table, where you see the evidence of her unfinished work. A grindstone, laying on its side, with half-ground herbs lying in the bowl.

“How did you know?” You ask as she picks it back up, the sound of stone on stone filling the room as she resumes. “That I was looking… for you.”

“I always know,” she replies, somewhat exasperated. “Like a rabbit knows a fox.” Her sharp eyes find yours once more. “What ails you, sweet Princess?” There is mockery in her tone, though you dare not take umbrage at its presence. “A suitor you wish to beguile? A fair maiden you wish to remove from his eye?” Her gaze drops down, and then darts back up again.

“Or perhaps an unseen consequence?”

Your throat tightens.

“No, I—my dreams.” You say. “I dream the most terrible things, and I—I want you to take them away.”

The stone stops.

“Come here, child. Into the light.” The Witch holds out her hand, beckoning you forward. “And take down that stupid hood, you’re not hiding from anyone here.” She clucks her tongue at you as you approach, fingering the edge of your hood reluctantly. She already knows who you are—though you are not quite sure how she knows. With one hand, she reaches for your face. You do not flinch away from her—you do not fear her, though perhaps if you were smarter, you suppose you would. Her touch is gentle as she tilts your chin up, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear.

The fire crackles in the hearth, louder for the silence.

“And what do you dream?”

“I see…” You swallow. “I see dead things.” She peers into your eyes, her pupils wide. “I see my father.” You tremble as she steps away, your mouth suddenly dry. “These dreams, these-these nightmares, you can stop them, can you not? You can—”

“I’ll not hear more about what I can and cannot do from the maid in the high castle,” she snaps. “And they are not dreams, though you walk through them in yours.” With her other hand, she reaches beneath her collar, producing a thin leather cord. There are all manner of things tied to it—feathers, beads, and small, clean animal skills that shine dimly in the firelight. There is a long black needle there, too, hanging by its’ eye.

“There is a spirit tethered to you.” She turns your hand over, stroking her fingers over the lines in your palm. She snaps her fingers, motioning for you to give her your other hand. “By great sorrow—” The Witch squints, bringing your hands closer to her face. “Or rage.” She drops your left hand, holding onto your right. “I can no more remove it than I could your shadow.”

“Tethered?” You repeat. “These are—they are dreams, they are not real—” You sputter in protest, but the Witch merely looks at you, orange firelight dancing in her dark eyes.

“If they are only dreams, why do you fear them so?” You cannot answer. “They are messages. You should be grateful for them, there are few feats quite as great as bridging the divide between us and those who have gone before, Little Queen. Your father cannot watch over you forever.”

“I am a Princess.” The Witch smiles.

“Is that right?” She grasps your hand, gripping your index finger hard and watching as the tip reddens. You flinch as she pinches the needle between two thin fingers. “Come now, Sweet. Mustn’t be afeared of a little pain.” She jabs it into the meat of your finger, and you yelp, tugging uselessly at your hand, but her grip is iron.

“Ouch!” With a twist of her hand she swipes the fat drop of blood from your fingertip and flicks it into the fireplace. It does not fizzle out, but instead lands on the topmost log, bubbling until it turns black. It smells like ozone—not copper. You do not know why, but you tremble a the sight of it. You have come here to have something taken away, but as you watch your blood crack and burn, you feel as if perhaps something is being given instead.

“What does this mean?” You turn to her. The Witch rubs your blood between her fingers, sniffing the residue for a moment before wiping them clean on a rag. She does not answer you right away, staring thoughtfully at the thin line of black smoke curling from the fireplace.

“Please, I—”

“It means, Princess, that we are kin, you and I.” She tilts your chin back as you stare at her, wide eyed. She runs the tips of her fingers over the narrow curve of your left ear—not pointed, not like hers, but… You push her away before you can stop yourself, clutching at your chest with your other hand as if to calm your racing heart.

“This cannot be true, it—it cannot!”

“Less than half,” she continues as if your sputtered refusal had never been spoken at all. “Less elf blood in you than I could hold in my hand, but aye, kin we are, still.” The Witch looks you up and down, and this time, there is pity in her gaze. “I cannot take your dreams.” Cold spreads through your trembling limbs. “You must release them yourself.”

“Release them? How?” She cups your face, and the movement of her thumb over the swell of your cheek is almost affectionate, though the words she speaks next send a cold chill down your spine.

“No fear, Little Princess. No fear.” For a moment, you swear her eyes go gold, and Geralt’s voice echoes again in the space between you. Before the Witch can say more, you quickly dig the gold out of your pocket, tossing the coins down onto the table as you flee. You do not register her cries to stop, to wait as you barrel through the door, throwing it shut behind you.

It is raining again, hard sheets of cold water pouring down from the dark, angry sky. You can hear the sea raging against the docks, water crashing in thunderous waves up against the harbor’s weathered stone. Your head is spinning, full to bursting. You are elf-kin—perhaps? Maybe?

Your mother had never seen fit to mention that minor detail—and for that matter, neither had your father. You tug your hood up roughly over your head and turn your face down, away from the cold rain pelting against your skin. Had he even known?

Would he have even wanted to?

Perhaps I can just ask him myself.

The thought makes you shiver, wrapping your cloak tighter around your shoulders. I can no more remove it than I could your shadow. You do not know which is worse—having left your father behind alone in the dirt, or the restless specter of him living in your dreams. Your finger aches from the point of the dock witch’s iron needle, and you clutch your hand to your chest as you make your way back towards the White Keep. Above you, a white hot arc of lightning splits the sky, throwing up stark shadows against the row of dark houses.

It is by that grace alone that you see the man.

You stop short, your heart leaping into your throat. He stands in the shadows beneath the sagging eaves, his stony face surprised as your eyes meet. He steps forward with a heavy sigh, a gloved hand resting on the hilt of the sword at his hip.

“Highness.” Your throat tightens, and you take a cautious step back as he comes into the meagre light offered by the street lantern above you. “Please don’t make this difficult.” His cloak is drawn over his chest, but you can see the shape of the armor underneath, jet black.

Nilfgaardian.

You turn—and run straight into a hard, armored chest.

“Good evening, Your Highness.” Duke Emhyr’s long fingers dig hard into your shoulders, hard enough to bruise. His black hair is slick with rain. He was waiting here… waiting for me. “I shall have to inform Lady Kassandra of your whereabouts,” he sneers. “She seems to think you are asleep in your bed.” You lift your heel and grind it hard into the top of his foot, and the Duke curses, his grip loosening. You pull away, but he manages to catch the edge of your cloak, pulling hard until you fall backwards.

The impact knocks the wind out of you, leaving you gasping and dizzy, staring up at the dark sky.

“We did not get to finish our little chat, in the garden.” He says, squatting down over you as you struggle up to your knees on the wet street. “I think we should do that now, Princess.”

Your heart pounds heavily against your ribcage as you stagger to your feet.

“No.”

“It is not a request.” He motions to the guard behind you, and he grabs you as you struggle, wrenching your arms behind you.

“Filthy witch,” he hisses, and you flinch. “You and your whore mother.”

“Gavin, your manners.” He tuts mockingly. “I would be honored, Majesty, if you would accompany me for tea.” You stare at him in silence, the rain soaking through your cloak. “If you would, Ser Gavin.” He forces you forward, and you stumble.

“It is late for tea, Lord Emhyr,” you snap, dragging your feet against the paving stones. “Perhaps a discussion with Her Majesty herself—” Ser Gavin grunts with irritation at your resistance and shoves you, hard. You stumble as the Duke makes an angry noise deep in his throat.

“I’ve little stomach for lies.”

A cold shiver winds its way up your back. You hear the threat though the words remain unspoken. The streets are deserted, and you cannot tell if it is the weather or the hour. Behind you, clears his throat.

“Here, my Lord.”

The faded, splintering sign hanging above the door reads Madam’s Tea House, though by the riotous noise coming from inside, you suspect they serve a few things little stronger than tea. Ser Gavin places a rough hand on the back of your head, forcing it down as he steers you through the doorway. Your stomach drops as your eyes adjust to the dim lighting.

The air stinks of ale, sweaty skin and something more pungent and sour that you cannot identify. There are people everywhere, draped across tables, lounging on pillows and pinned against walls in various states of undress. Your throat goes dry, at the sight of the bare-breasted women sprawled over the tables, their dresses rucked up around their waists. A woman with white painted cheeks and cherry red lips steps quickly out of the way as you are shuffled through, her eyes lowered and lips pressed into a thin line. You understand their choice of venue now—

No one will even remember you were here— and no one will remember when you are not.

As if sensing your rising panic, Ser Gavin’s hand tightens on the scruff of your neck, and with the other hand, he grasps your shoulder. On the raised dais in the center of the dim room, a woman twists lithely, scarves gripped in each of her dainty hands. Gold rings dangle from her bared nipples, matching the one in her nose. Your eyes meet and for a single moment, for a single step, she falters.

The crowd at her feet turns on her in an instant, jeering and spitting. The same men who had watched her dance with silent awe now mock her openly, insults dripping from their lips along with stray drops of ale.

“Let’s get a new girl up here. One who can remember her bloody steps!” There is no end to the praises of men when one is perfect—nor an end to their venom when you are not. The truth of it is as plain as the room Duke Emhyr and Ser Gavin force you into. There is a bed with a bare, stained mattress upon its dilapidated frame, and a wooden chair stands between it and the weak fire in the hearth.

“Sit.” Emhyr instructs you with a bored gesture, and when you do not comply, Ser Gavin squeezes your shoulder hard until you gasp from the pain of it. You lower yourself reluctantly to the chair as the Duke watches, and you get the feeling that he enjoys it, watching you be forced to heel. If not my mother, then me. Through the silence, you can hear the muted noise of the brothel outside. As uncomfortable as it is for you, you hope it is doubly so for them.

The Duke stares at you, his eyes narrowed.

“You wouldn’t see it, not at first,” he says. The disgust drips from every syllable, like he is speaking of something unsavory. “The way you favor them.”

Your heart pounds even as you feign ignorance, schooling your features into shocked offense at his words. He cannot know that this is the second time you have heard them this evening, that you are already itching to get to a mirror to confirm these revelations for yourself, because you do not even know if they are true. The memory of black blood curdling in the hearth is enough to set the uncertainty in your lead filled stomach rolling.

“I know not of what you speak, my Lord.” The words feel fragile, like they are made of glass. “There—there is still time to let this be nothing but an unpleasant misunderstanding—”

The duke stands in front of the hearth, his hand resting on the mantle. The curve of his back speaks to his weariness, and you wonder if he has been looking for you all night.

��You and your whore mother have upset the order of things quite a bit, here. Whatever other things you may be, you are not unintelligent enough not to have seen so.” He turns, the fire reddening his cheeks and setting the whit es of his beady eyes ablaze. “Two seasons of talk and courtships undone in a month—and for a woman who is too old to bear a new heir.”

“His Majesty has an heir,” you remind him. “Or have you forgotten? If you disagree with your king’s decision, you are more than welcome to challenge it before the court a second time, though Their Majesties might not be so prone to leniency given the circumstance.” His jaw tics at the reminder of his position—and yours—but the sly upturn at the corners of his mouth do not disappear.

“So the Witch does inspire loyalty in you.” He squats in front of you. “Do you know what we do to witches, in the North?” He asks, fingering the dagger at his belt. “Father Wolf is the devourer of all things. Even savages.”

“Ever since I stepped from boat to shore I have heard that word, and I cannot help but wonder,” the words pour through the gaps in your gritted teeth, and you hope he chokes on the broken glass of them—“if you have ever uttered them looking in a mirror.”

He raises his hand, as if to backhand you across your face, and you duck down hunching your shoulders to prepare for the blow. It does not land, however, and when you look cautiously up at the duke, he is staring behind you, locked above your head. There is a fourth presence in the room now, one you feel pricking at the back of your neck.

“No, no, continue.” The drawl that fills the empty room is both shocking and achingly familiar. “I would see the treason with my own eyes.” Geralt stands in the doorway, filling it to the brim with the width of his shoulders. Water drips from his sodden silver hair, though he makes no move to push it back from his face. His hand rests openly upon the sword hanging at his hip.

“That way it passes fewer lips on its way to the king.”

Duke Emhyr’s eyes go wide, and then angry.

“I protect the crown, and you call it treason,” slowly,—almost regretfully —the duke lowers his hand. “Can you not see? Can you not see how they twist—” Geralt turns his gaze to you, and somehow his golden eyes seem darker. Harder.

He came for me.

Ser Gavin fingers the pommel of his sword nervously, playing at the thought of unsheathing it, but too craven to commit. Still, he stands between you and the prince, and does not move. The duke’s rambling of treason and bewitchery continues behind you, rising to a fever pitch as you approach the door. Briefly as you turn, you see him, his face red and lips flecked with frothy spittle as he flings a long, accusing finger towards you.

“They will poison this empire, it’s people! You cannot allow them to sit the throne, it is treason to do it knowingly, you must act!” The fire burns bright in his wide eyes, and you see reflected in them the same vicious zealotry that burned in Father Rame’s. “That which is rooted in rotten soil cannot grow! I will not stand idle while we are destroyed from within.”

In the spaces between his words you can see the calculation. He’s chosen death, you realize. You taste it in the air before he speaks, the power of his decision already shaping the world around it, like chaos—but not the kind they shunned. It tastes like the air inside the chapel; the still, thick air, perfumed so that the smell of his body would not leak further than a few feet beyond his corpse.

“You know the truth of what I speak, Majesty, you must see that His Highness is not himself! He pants after the elf-bitch, like a man possessed! It is unnatural, you must—you must see it!”

Geralt’s mouth creases with anger. “I see your distrust in your King has bred treasonous discontent. I see your desire to rise above your station would have you slavering after my father’s throne like the dog you are.” He steps into the room then, and you watch as the Duke’s hand closes about the grip of the dagger strapped to his waist. “Your dedication to this fiction will cost you.”

You had not been able to see Geralt’s other hand, positioned behind him, his arm taut as though he were dragging something heavy. He steps aside, and your heart leaps into your throat as you see why—

A dead Nilfgaardian soldier lies behind him, dark liquid pooling thickly underneath his armor. The duke sees it too, his body tensing.

“If you will not serve your people, if your father will not protect them, what choice have you left me?” The duke murmurs, the words underscored by the quiet ring of steel as he unsheathes his blade. You jump up, knocking the chair over in your haste to get away from him. You trip over your skirts, stumbling forward as Ser Gavin grabs for you, his hand knotting in your cloak.

“You will let her go.” Geralt delivers the instructions as truth—no ultimatums.

“Oh, aye,” Emhyr, nods, forcing the words out through clenched teeth. “On that we agree.” You expect him to lunge for the prince, to hear the sharp clash of steel on steel, but you do not. Instead, his face fills your vision. “You may go wherever you wish, now, Lady.”

You taste death on his words and in the air, and when he steps away, his hands are empty. There is a strange coldness in your belly, and slowly, your hand drifts up to investigate. The leather grip of the dagger is warm, but the steel is cold, so cold you can feel it all the way inside. It’s strange, the way it doesn’t hurt, the way the blood does not feel hot on your trembling hands but cold—

The death Emhyr had chosen was neither his own, nor Geralt’s—but yours.

Dimly, you are aware of Geralt, of your body tucked tightly against his, the sound of steel on steel, the feel of cold rain on your face. Weakly, you lift a hand to your belly, your fingers slipping on the handle. Geralts hand closes over yours.

“You must leave it, Doe, you must. I know it hurts.” It doesn’t. You want to tell him, but you cannot find the will to move your lips. You feel your grip slacken on his cloak, your fingers releasing themselves without your permission as your vision tunnels. Geralt tells you not to close your eyes, and the words echo far off in the encroaching dark.

I have to, you think that perhaps the words escape your slack lips in a low mumble, but you cannot be sure.

Just for a little while.

to be continued…

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perlelune · 1 year

Text

Tag, You’re It | Ethan Landry | ii.

Happy, carefree college days meet their abrupt end when every guy who approaches you mysteriously turns up dead.

Warnings: NON-CON, Stalking, Bimbo!Reader, Clueless Reader, Loss of Virginity, Incel Ethan, Cheerleader Reader, Skin Carving (w/knife), Canon Typical Slashing, Voyeurism, Kidnapping

This is a dark story. Heed warnings before reading under the cut.

𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘 𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

The party’s already in full swing when you arrive at the OKB house. While getting ready, you lost track of time. Putting the finishing touches on your hair and nails took longer than you planned.

You dodge the bodies swaying to the loud music to make your way to your friends through the swirling blue lights.

Mindy spots you right away and waves at you.

"Not bad, freshman," she praises as you twirl in front of her and Mindy to show off your nurse costume decorated with splashes of fake blood.

They’re both sprawled on the couch, limbs twined. Expectedly, only Anika made the effort to don anything resembling a costume, a pumpkin-colored hat with a bloody knife poking out of it sitting atop her head.

Mindy even bothering to come considering what happened the last time she attended a frat party is already a huge effort on her part.

You chat for some time, sharing the latest news regarding your friends.

You learn that apparently Tara got into it with her sister…again.

A lot of tension has built between the two of them lately, Sam’s protectiveness clashing with Tara’s craving for independence.

Maybe Sam’s been overdoing…but who can blame her?

Those two have been through hell and back.

"Have you guys seen Connor?"

While you attempt to sound casual, even tossing a shrug, Mindy sees right through you and flashes you a teasing grin.

"One-track minded, huh?"

Your face warms. "Sorry, I just…I really looked forward to seeing him."

Anika gives your hand an encouraging squeeze.

"It’s okay, babe. To be young and in love."

"And horny," Mindy adds, dragging a quick eye over your outfit as her smile broadens.

Her comment sparks more heat in your cheeks. Sure, things between you and Connor are growing steamier. But you don’t want to rush anything. You like him, and you want your first time to be special, romantic.

"I’ll see you guys later."

"Have fun," Mindy says, waving her beer bottle at you.

Your search resumes and you grow nervous, pondering if Connor is even in attendance. Maybe you missed him. Downsides of running late.

Damn you and your tendency to spend hours dolling yourself up.

As you wander across the room, you nearly crash into a familiar broad, muscular back.

An easy smile creeps on your face when your friend turns to face you.

"Hi."

"Hey, looking good."

"You too, cowboy."

You’re pretty certain Chad’s never looked bad a day in his life. There’s a reason why he’s the most popular player on the team, and one of the most sought-after guys at Blackmore. Well…several, starting with the fact that his hotness is only matched by his unwavering kindness to everybody he meets.

You suppose if you hadn’t known him for so long, you’d harbor a crush on him too. But you’re too familiar with Chad to see him in that light. You still recall when he insisted on wearing a Pokemon onesie for nearly a year. You used to watch cartoons with him and Mindy as children, play together. He’s even tried to get you into Magic: The Gathering at some point but you couldn’t understand how the game works so he gave up. He’s like the brother you never had.

"So I hear you've met Ethan. He's cool, right?" He throws his muscular arm around Ethan’s neck affectionately. "A whole snack he is. Look at him." An endearing tinge of red decorates Ethan’s cheeks, his gaze fleeing yours.

It draws a smile from you. You’re glad they’re getting along.

You tilt your head, gauging his appearance. Confusion fills you.

You’re not exactly sure what Ethan’s costume is supposed to be. A knight perhaps? Either way, it’s original and it suits him.

"Hey again," you greet.

He lifts two bashful fingers as a response, returning your smile.

"Yeah. I appreciate him helping me out."

Ethan’s chestnut gaze widens at your words.

College’s busy enough for everyone. It’s incredible of him to offer some of his free time to help you out when it doesn’t benefit him in any way.

Ethan opens his mouth as if he were about to say something but, before he can speak, someone taps you on the shoulder, beckoning your attention.

You pivot in your high heels.

Your chest floods with warmth at the sight welcoming you.

"Hey, gorgeous," Connor hums, giving you an appreciative onceover that turns your legs into jelly. His voice lowers as he approaches you. "I’ve been looking for you all night. Where have you been?"

Your heart skips a beat at his closeness, the scent of his masculine cologne and his mesmerizing blue eyes overwhelming you.

"Just ran a bit late," you mumble.

His hooded gaze takes you in as he suggests, "Well, you’re here now. Wanna go hang out in my car?"

Pursing your mouth, you hesitate.

"I…I don’t know. Is that safe? Mindy says it’s always best to stay in crowded-"

He halts your explanation with a hand under your chin. Bewildered, you gawk at him.

His pearly whites shimmer in the dusky blue and green hues saturating the room.

"Do you trust me, gorgeous?"

You blink up at him, dazed and lost in the sea of his gaze.

"Y-Yes, I do."

"I’ll keep you safe. I promise. Come on."

His hand engulfs yours as Connor begins to drag you toward the exit.

Chad’s deep, concerned voice interrupts the abrupt getaway.

"Are you sure?" His forehead creases as he inches closer. "You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. You know that, right?"

At first, you’re a bit confused.

Then you remind yourself he’s just being protective. Both he and Mindy share that trait. In fact, her attentive eyes carve a searing dent in your skin from the other side of the room.

Usually, you adore that about them, how caring they are. But right now, you find it a bit much.

Connor isn’t a threat. He’s just the guy you like, not a serial killer.

You place a placating hand on Chad’s arm.

"It’s fine. I trust him. Catch you later, okay?"

He gives a belated nod, his jaw clenching as he stares Connor down, before letting you walk away.

You wave Ethan goodbye but are somewhat dejected when he stares at you and doesn’t reply, his blank expression unreadable.

Both you and Connor step outside.

Moonlight bathes the damp pavement in silvery light as you trail behind him.

He wastes no time once you’ve reached his expensive sports car, pinning you against the hood and kissing you senseless.

"Fuck, been dying to do this ever since I saw you in that slutty costume," he purrs against your temple. His hands begin to roam over you, impatient fingers fondling your curves.

When he sneaks under your short dress and tugs at the waistband of your panties, you push against his chest.

A sudden tide of discomfort swells inside you.

"Connor…wait. This is going a little fast for me," you giggle.

Ignoring your protests, he keeps kissing you and even turns things up a notch by grabbing a fistful of your ass. You gasp.

"Just relax. I won’t hurt you, gorgeous."

His weight presses against you, a sizzling cage of need you can’t escape. Tears prick at your eyes.

"Connor, please…" you whimper.

Annoyance ripples in his tone as the grip on your rear gets firmer.

"How you’re gonna be a fucking cocktease then give me blue balls, come on, gorgeous."

His tone is light but your chest is heavy. This isn’t how tonight was supposed to go. You hoped Connor would be gentle and nice.

This isn’t nice.

And you’re starting to feel a little scared. As the taut bulge in his crotch rubs at your front, your stomach knots.

But things don’t get to wander any further.

In fact, they hit a sudden stop as Connor stills against you. Your brows knit.

As he chokes on his own breath, blood gushes from his mouth, painting the front of your costume crimson.

Your eyes widen as his head lolls before he slumps to the pavement with a heavy thud.

Time stands still when your gaze lifts.

Your heart slams against your ribcage.

A tall figure clad in black and donning a Ghostface mask is now standing before you.

The blood rushing in your veins makes your ears ring.

The stranger cocks his head, studying you for a few seconds before pouncing on Connor’s prone form like a starved hyena.

Horror-struck, you gawk as the stranger rains vicious stab after vicious stab upon Connor's writhing body. Each strike draws a shudder from you, more violent than the last and causing scarlet rivers to flow from every part of Connor.

The world becomes red.

A scream bubbles in your throat but remains trapped in it, shock striking you mute.

When Connor's body stops moving, the sickening squish of the blade twisting out of his mangled flesh reaches you.

With the knife in his hand still dripping blood, its crimson hue catching the moonlight, the killer rises to his feet.

His focus travels to you. Your insides coil, deadly anticipation gripping you as tight as a fist.

A gravelly, distorted voice rises beneath the mask.

"This is the part where you run, princess."

Right…

It’s what happens in those horror movies Mindy had you watch with her, you think. The characters run away, fighting whatever’s chasing them with all their might.

It’s the sensible thing to do.

And you want to move. You should move. But you can't.

Even breathing is toilsome, stilted whimpers and gasps spilling from your chest instead.

All you can do is peer into the pupil-less gaze of the mask as you crumble into a quivering, sobbing heap onto the pavement.

The killer inches closer and it's as if your heart jumps out of your chest.

His blade kisses the trembling flesh of your throat, right above your racing pulse.

Languid tears roll down your face as he traces your jugular.

Cool metal slices past your collarbone, to your rapidly heaving chest.

The song of the night yields to the symphony of fear echoing in your ears. Every scattered heartbeat. Every uneven breath. Every desperate sob.

A sharp stinging blooms in your delicate flesh as he carves oblong patterns on your breast with his knife.

His motions are slow and focused, as if your skin’s the canvas and his blade the brush.

Paralyzed, you don’t move. His cloaked figure bends and blurs in your misty vision, more monster than man in the scarce light provided by the street lamps.

He slants his head when he’s done, admiring his handiwork.

This must be it, you infer, the moment all of it ends.

Your eyes quake shut as you wait for the inevitable blow.

You wait… An eternity it seems.

For the blood. For the agony. For the darkness.

Yet nothing comes.

When you open your eyes, Ghostface is gone, the only nightmarish vision before you being that of Connor's body lying unmoving on the pavement.

You pay no attention to the chaos around you as you pull the thin blanket closer to your frame.

The lights of the ambulance twinkle in your hazy sight.

Amidst the chatter of shocked students standing in the street behind the yellow tape, the whispers of reassurance of Mindy and Tara fade to white noise in your ears.

Numb, you gawk as they drag Connor’s body away on a gurney.

For some silly reason, you keep expecting him to rise again, to not be dead.

Because this cannot be real.

This cannot have happened.

The police ask you a barrage of questions and you give mechanical answers. None of them help and they grow frustrated with you, sparking a heated argument between your friends and the stubborn cop.

"I’m just doing my job," he insists, raising his hands when Chad gets in his face.

If it weren’t for Detective Bailey vouching for you, you’re not entirely sure you wouldn’t be sitting in the back of a patrol car right now.

"Can’t you see the kid’s traumatized. She doesn’t know anything," he berates one his co-worker who seemed unwilling to accept your version of events.

The one where you froze and Ghostface somehow let you live with only a strangely shaped scar on your chest as a souvenir. The one the medic commented looked a little like a heart.

Absently, you pat the gauze covering the healing wound.

It's weird…but it hurts your head to ponder why this occurred. The only emotion you can process is the crippling guilt consuming you.

You’re alive while Connor's cold body is on its way to the morgue.

Your friends gather around you, their warmth chasing away the night’s chill. While Tara and Mindy sit next to you on the pavement, Chad stands protectively in front of you.

"I-I didn’t do anything, Tara. I just let him…" Your voice cracks, withering into a sob.

The arm around your shoulder gets tighter.

"Hey, don’t talk like that. It’s not your fault," she feverishly responds.

You open your mouth to argue but close it once it dawns on you that all the energy’s been drained from your body. There is none left in you.

Still, you can’t help but disagree. If it were Tara, her sister, or even Mindy, you bet they’d have fought tooth and nail instead of shrinking and crying like you did.

You’re the weak link in your group. Not smart enough, or strong enough.

The thought makes you sob harder.

Mindy rubs circles on your back.

You cast a quick glance around before your tearful gaze finds hers.

"Where’s Anika?"

"She went home. She’s not great with blood. She sends her love though."

You nod at that. If you could, you’d be home too, hugging your stuffed bear and trying your best to forget this awful night ever happened.

Chad’s irate tone startles you out of your fog.

"Speaking of people not being here… where the hell is Ethan?"

You blink up at him, confused as he and Mindy trade a pointed, heavy look.

You don’t get it.

Sure, Ethan’s new to the group, and the twins are slow to give their trust. You know that. But Ethan? He’s entirely too sweet and kind to have anything to do with this…Right?

Ethan wouldn’t. You’re sure of it.

#ethan landry #dark!ethan landry #ethan landry x reader #ethan landry x bimbo!reader #ethan landry x you #scream 6 #scream vi #scream

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makoodles · 1 year

Note

tsu'tey with baby fever

TSU'TEY WITH BABY FEVER

alright babes, ya got me. i got so many asks about how tsu'tey would handle catching baby fever around his little human mate, so here we are! this is kind of a continuation of tìtunu, but it can be read as a standalone either!

pairing: tsu'tey x fem!human reader

word count: 6.8k

tags: fluff, pregnancy mention & discussion, tsu'tey catches baby fever bad, he is also very whipped

masterlist

baby fever

If you were to ask Tsu’tey, he would tell you that he’s never been happier. His life is truly as close to perfect as possible. The Omaticaya have reclaimed the forest as their home, he has established himself as an experienced warrior-teacher, and he has the sweetest little mate he could have ever asked for. It doesn’t matter that you’re human; you fit in his life so perfectly, he can’t stomach the thought of anyone else taking your place.

Life is good. He can’t remember the last time he was this content with himself and his place in the clan. Things are finally getting back to normal now that the Sky People have returned to wherever they came from, and the people are high-spirited and joyful.

When Jakesully and Neytiri choose to take on the child born from Grace’s demon false-Na’vi body, Tsu’tey hardly takes notice. He spends his evenings and nights nuzzling into you and losing himself in your body, and his mornings foraging for fruit for your shared breakfast. It’s an impossibly easy lifestyle, lackadaisical and whimsical, and he enjoys every second of it.

He can’t think of a single damn thing he’d change. At least, he couldn’t. But that starts to change around the time that Neytiri and Jake welcome their first son into the world.

The clan celebrates for days. The birth was quick and easy. Tsu’tey has never seen his old friend glowing so bright, and he joins in with the feasting and the dancing and the singing along with the rest of his People. The elation is almost palpable in the air; the people are happy for their Olo’eyktan and for Neytiri, and they take the easy birth of a strong baby as a good sign for the future.

Neteyam. He is a happy child. Even as a tiny baby, he rarely cries. He just takes in the world around him with wide, curious eyes. Neytiri holds him close and watches him as though she has birthed the personification of her heart, smiling and whispering soft words and songs to him every chance she gets.

Tsu’tey thinks it’s all very sweet, but that’s really all he thinks about it. He is pleased for his friends, but other than that he doesn’t think too much about things. He is busy, after all; much of his day is spent training the young warriors and hunters. It’s fulfilling, and he enjoys his work.

The change in his thinking doesn’t occur gradually – rather, it hits all at once, like a punch to the gut.

He returns to the village one evening to find your little form next to Neytiri and Jake by the cookfire. His hackles raise instinctively at the sight of you so damn close to Jakesully (an irrational reaction considering he is holding Kiri in his arms and Neytiri is also sitting right there, but he can’t help it), but he relaxes slightly as he approaches and sees that you’re just chatting.

When he gets close and gets a proper look at what you’re holding in your arms, he nearly trips gracelessly over his own feet.

Even as a newborn, Neteyam is almost comically large in your arms. His pudgy limbs wave in the air, and his big golden eyes gaze up at you in fascination. You return his look right back, your expression soft and awed as you coo at him.

At your side, Neytiri watches your every move carefully. It has taken her some time to warm up to you, given that you’re a living reminder of the people who had caused so much loss and destruction of her planet, but the two of you have slowly but steadily built up a sense of trust between each other. Still, she is visibly cautious when it comes to allowing you to hold the baby.

“Tsu’tey,” Jakesully calls, waving him over with a grin. “Come here, brother. Have you eaten?”

Tsu’tey feels as though he’s been struck between the eyes. He can’t tear his attention away from the baby in your arms nor the way you’re smiling at him. When you finally look up from Neteyam only to smile softly at Tsu’tey instead, he thinks his heart might actually explode. He tries to smile back at you, but he’s sure it comes across as a pained grimace instead.

His steps are less sure than before when he continues forward, choosing to settle down by your side. His eyes dart down to the baby in your lap and stick there. Neteyam stares back at him – it seems like neither of them quite know what to make of each other.

When he finally looks away from the baby, it’s just in time to see Neytiri and Jakesully exchanging an amused sort of look, as though they’re both trying not to laugh. You, on the other hand, look a little concerned.

“Are you alright?” You murmur, leaning into him.

You’ve rested against him like this a thousand times before, and yet Tsu’tey feels his mouth run dry. Oh, what is happening to him right now?

“Yes.” He says a little woodenly, before turning to Jakesully. “I have not eaten yet.”

Jake is still watching him with an odd little smirk, but he nods and hands him a nikt'chey filled with sweet meat and vegetables. Tsu’tey takes it with an appreciative nod, before tearing a bite out of it a little more savagely than he intended.

You’re still watching him confusedly, but you obviously decide not to ask any further questions. Instead, you look back down at Neteyam and run the pad of your index finger down the bridge of his wide nose. The baby’s mouth opens in a gummy little smile, and you smile behind your breathing mask on reflex.

“Sweet thing,” You coo at Neteyam as his little hands grab at your fingers, and Tsu’tey nearly chokes on his nikt'chey.

It’s just a baby, he thinks frantically to himself. Pull yourself together.

He’d be lying if he said that he never thought about starting a family with you, but it wasn’t ever a real, serious thought. It was just little daydreams, idle fantasies after mating with you so soft and lovingly and leaving you full of his release. But now, seeing you holding Jakesully and Neytiri’s baby, he starts thinking of you carrying his own baby. Thinks of you plump and round, belly swollen with the baby he put in you.

His fingers squeeze the wrap a little too hard, and some of the filling spills out over his fingers.

Jake laughs, a stupid little snicker that has Tsu’tey scowling at him. It’s unlikely that the Olo’eyktan knows exactly what he’s been thinking, but the demon has always been perceptive – he likely has a vague idea. Tsu’tey imagines that his expression has likely been rather telling.

“Hey,” Jakesully says suddenly. “Why don’t you hold Kiri for a moment?”

Tsu’tey goes still, before checking over his shoulder in case Jake was talking to someone else.

“Ah,” He says, a little uncomfortably. “I do not think-”

“Oh, yes!” You smile, shifting your hold on Neteyam so that he’s cradled to your chest as you look up at Tsu’tey. “You haven’t met either of the babies properly yet, have you?”

“I attended their birth celebrations-”

“That’s not meeting them.” You interrupt with an eyeroll, before gesturing Jake’s way.

Tsu’tey is still protesting when Jake deposits the other baby in his arms, and he stiffens as he scrambles to support Kiri’s head as it lolls on her weak little neck. His nikt'chey falls half-eaten to the ground as he tries to hold the baby as securely as possible.

If Neteyam looked small in your hands, Kiri looks tiny in his. Something in his stomach twists. Oh. Alright then.

“Aren’t they so cute?” You whisper to him, laying your head against his bicep and grinning down at the baby in his hands.

Tsu’tey just grunts. He’s not sure that he’ll actually be capable of making words right now if he tries.

His reticence doesn’t bother you – you’re so patient with him, never minding all that much when he goes broodingly silent. You’re so good at giving him space and time to think, to come to terms with all the thoughts that spin wildly around his head. But now, the space you offer only gives him more time to consider things that he really shouldn’t be considering.

“Yeah,” Jakesully drawls, and he wraps an arm around Neytiri’s shoulders before pressing a kiss to her temple. “We make cute babies.”

“You didn’t even make Kiri yourselves.” You point out with a laugh, rocking Neteyam softly against your chest as he lets out a quiet little babbling sound.

“Yeah, she just picked up on the cuteness by being around us,” Jake grins. “Like that science shit. What’s it called… osmosis.”

“That’s not how osmosis works, moron-”

Tsu’tey hardly hears a word either of you are saying. Kiri is shifting in his hands, her tiny pink mouth opening as she yawns with a flash of her gums. Her hair is downy and soft, and her tiny hands clench around air as she reaches out, seeking a grip on anything. Were all babies this lovely? He had no idea – he’s never really been around any.

His gaze slides sideways, towards you once more. On a good day he finds it difficult to keep his eyes off you, but now? With you holding a little Na’vi baby to your chest as though it’s all so perfectly natural, and smiling as though you’ve never been happier? Now, he’s finding it impossible to keep his eyes off you.

He would make cute babies with you. He just knows it.

A throat is cleared, and Tsu’tey is jarred from his thoughts. When he looks up, he finds that Neytiri is looking at him with a particularly knowing look. You’re still talking to Jake, laughing at whatever he’s saying, but Tsu’tey still grows flustered. He feels caught.

“Take her back.” He says, his voice gruff as he proffers the baby back to her parents.

Kiri’s tails waves lazily in mid-air before wrapping around his wrist, and Tsu’tey nearly crumbles entirely. Why was this happening right now? He was fine before this – now, he feels as though his mind is melting into absolute mush.

Neytiri raises an eyebrow at him, clearly unimpressed by his manner, but she accepts the baby back all the same. Kiri gurgles, and Neytiri coos softly at her before holding her protectively to her breast.

Still embarrassed at having been caught out, Tsu’tey’s eyes slide right back to you. This time though, you’re looking back at him. Neteyam’s head is resting sleepily against your chest and you’re stroking at the fluffy bits of hair on his head, but you’re watching him closely. There’s a little crease between your brows – you look concerned.

You look to Jake, and offer Neteyam out with a smile. “Better take the little guy too, then.”

Jake takes his son back, and Tsu’tey watches with a twitching tail as he smiles down at his son so proudly. He doesn’t fully realise that he’s staring until he feels your small little hand on his forearm, and then he looks down to see you peering up into his face. He knows that you would be able to read him all too easily, so he hurries to wipe his expression clean.

“Are you okay?” You whisper, low so that Jake and Neytiri can’t hear. “You’re quiet. Even more so than usual, I mean.”

“I am fine, ma’muntxate,” He says mechanically. He thinks once again of you with a rounded belly, happy and sated in your shared kelku, and wonders if his brain is rotting.

You’re still squinting at him, clearly unconvinced. “Is it because you dropped your food? I can get you more-”

“No,” He says, though it comes out distracted and unconvincing. “I am tired. I will go to bed now.”

“But don’t you want-”

Tsu’tey has always prided himself on being a fearless warrior, a mighty hunter. And yet in that moment, he ran from the cookfire like a coward to take refuge in the dark shelter of the kelku where no one could see how shamefaced he was.

Tsu’tey is embarrassed to admit that for several days, he avoids you like the plague.

He’s afraid that you’ll read his thoughts right off his face. He can barely even make eye contact with you. Now that he’s started thinking about it, it feels like he can’t think of anything else.

The thoughts of family, of children, have set into his thoughts like an infection. The thought of you carrying his baby is wonderful (and the thought of making the baby even better) but that’s not the only place his thoughts stray to. He thinks of raising the child, with you by his side.

Parenthood doesn’t suit everyone, he knows that, but you? You have so much unconditional love to give, he knows that you would be wonderful. When he thinks of himself as a father, a curl of excitement licks at his stomach. He imagines how it would feel to hold his child close, to teach them the ways of the people, how to hunt and provide. He thinks of how he would teach you how to weave a songcord, how you could both add on to it for every milestone.

It’s not fair, and he knows that. He was content before – he is content now. His life is good. He doesn’t need anything else, but he just… he can’t help but think. You are stronger than you look, but you are still delicate. There are many things your body can take, but a Na’vi pregnancy? Not likely. And that’s assuming that you actually could get pregnant. You may be sexually compatible, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be reproductively compatible. And that’s fine – really!

He’ll get over this moment of madness, he just needs a little bit of space to get his thoughts together.

He spends the next few days hunting deep in the forest, or lurking around the village in spots that you’re not likely to come looking for him. He ends up spending a lot of time in the hot springs north of the village, hoping that the hot water will soothe the ache in his shoulders from all that tension he’s been carrying around.

He had thought that he was being subtle, but he is not entirely oblivious to the looks that he’s been getting from others around the village. It was rare for him to spend so much time away from you, and he knows that everyone is wondering about it.

“Trouble in paradise?” Jakesully asks one day, following him around the village like an unwanted little pest.

“What?” Tsu’tey snaps; he is still unused to those irritating little human idioms.

“What is going on with you, man?” Jake asks, reaching out to grab at his arm.

Tsu’tey wrenches his arm free and bares his teeth in warning. Jake throws his hands up in surrender, but he doesn’t look sorry.

“Nothing is wrong.” Tsu’tey grumbles, rolling his shoulders and attempting to look unaffected.

Jakesully just raises an eyebrow. “Right. Look, whatever you argued about, just talk to her-”

Tsu’tey is surprised at that, though he tries not to show it. “We have not argued.”

“No?” Jake’s brows furrow. “Oh. Well, why are you being so weird, then? She’s all upset, you know. Thinks that you’re angry with her.”

Tsu’tey’s stomach sinks. Fuck, he knew that he was handling this badly. Now he’s gotten himself into one big mess.

Jakesully is still looking at him thoughtfully, but then his expression unfolds into realisation. “Oh, man. Is this about the baby thing?”

Tsu’tey nearly chokes at that. How could Jakesully have known?

“What?”

“Oh, come on,” Jake rolls his shoulders, and glances around quickly to ensure that no one is listening in. Tsu’tey has a furtive look around of his own, and then Jake is leaning in to talk quietly, “Look, I’m not judging. When Neytiri said she wants kids, I swear I couldn’t keep my hands off her-”

Tsu’tey whirls, baring his teeth in warning, but Jake just keeps going.

“Just talk to her, skxawng. It doesn’t matter if you have some weird pregnancy kink-”

“I do not!”

“She’s been sniffling around the place for days now, thinking that you’re not into her anymore!” Jake steamrolls over his protests. “Just tell her you want babies and that you’ve been acting like a total dickhead about it. You know she’ll forgive you, but she has to understand first.”

Tsu’tey stands there, feeling as though he had just been slapped around the head.

“She thinks I am not interested in her?” He repeats, bewildered. “But- we have mated before Eywa. She is my mate. How could I lose interest?”

Jakesully has a look of longsuffering about him, as though this conversation is ageing him years. “Yeah, well. Didn’t I tell you before that mating doesn’t work the same for humans? She’s worried you changed your mind.”

Tsu’tey is absolutely floored. He had tied himself to you for life when he had mated with you. Every success and failure, every triumph and heartbreak, every low and high, it was all to be shared with you. There would never be anyone else – the thought of there being anyone else made his stomach rebel.

“Why would she not tell me that she is feeling like this?” He wonders, a little hurt.

He’s not expecting the harsh shove that comes to his shoulder, and he hisses at Jakesully before stepping out of the way of another hit.

“You’re avoiding her, moron!” Jake snaps, apparently having officially lost patience. “How the hell can she tell you anything if you keep running from her?”

Tsu’tey’s ears flatten. He recognises that he is being unreasonable, and he shuffles uncomfortably on his feet.

“My desires are not fair to her,” He mumbles, shame-faced. “She is enough for me, she will always be enough for me, but I keep thinking…” He trails off, uncertain about how to voice his feelings. “I am thinking of possibilities.”

Jakesully is watching him with an expression that is uncomfortably knowing.

Tsu’tey clears his throat, embarrassed and irritable over his vulnerability. “She was very good with your children. Did you see?”

Jake’s face twitches into a smirk. “Yeah, man. I saw. Your reaction was pretty obvious.”

He grumbles, but doesn’t see any point in arguing. It probably was obvious.

Jake sighs, and reaches out to push at his shoulder again. This time it’s more gentle. “Go on. Go talk to her. This is stuff that she should be hearing.”

Jakesully has a point, to Tsu’tey’s irritation, and he bows his head.

“I will talk to her.” Tsu’tey mumbles, looking away.

As it happens, Tsu’tey doesn’t have to go looking for you at all. You find him.

He’s in the forest outside the village, hovering around the stream as he waits to spot a fish, when you emerge from the trees behind him.

His ears perk up in surprise at the sight of you. “What are you doing here, ma’yawntu? It is not safe for you to come into the forest alone-”

You don’t appear to be listening to him at all. Your eyes are narrowed and you glare at him as you hop down the rocks so that you can stand in front of him. When he reaches out to help you climb down to the shore of the river, you slap his hands away with a scowl.

“For fuck’s sake, will you just tell me what’s wrong?” You hiss, your expression all crumpled up and hurt. “Jake said that you weren’t angry at me, but I don’t understand why you’re avoiding me like this!”

His ears pin back against his head. He had planned to come and find you, but now it feels as though he’s been cornered. He hasn’t planned what he was going to say to you, and he finds himself floundering. How could he tell you? There was no easy way to put his desires into words.

“Of course I am not angry at you.” He mumbles, slinging his bow over his shoulder. After a beat of hesitation, he steps forward so that he’s kneeling in front of you at eye-level. “Sweet girl. I am sorry.”

“For what?” You demand. Your expression is all scrunched – he is confusing you, and his stomach sinks at the realisation that he has been upsetting you so much.

His tail lashes anxiously. How is he supposed to look you in the eyes and confess this? It is so selfish of him.

“You were very good with the babies.” He murmurs, fixing his gaze on your shoulder.

Even without looking directly at your face, he can see your look of bewilderment. To you, that probably seems like a non-sequitur.

“The babies?”

“Mm.”

You’re still staring at him blankly. “Are you trying to change the subject?”

“No,” He mumbles, his cheeks growing hot with embarrassment. “It is the same subject.”

Very slowly, comprehension is beginning to dawn over your face. “So all this is about babies?”

Oh, he wants the ground to open up beneath him and swallow him whole. You must think him disgusting. Do you think he is a bad mate? It is so selfish of him to wish for this, after all.

“Oh, Tsu’tey,” You sigh. “You idiot.”

His ears flatten as he frowns at you. “Why idiot?”

When you step forward and loop your arms around his shoulders, he perks up a little. Does this mean that you are not angry with him?

“Why wouldn’t you talk to me about this, skxawng?” You murmur, reaching out to run your fingers through his beaded braids. His eyelids flutter at the pleasant feeling and he leans into your hands. “You want a family?”

“You are my family.” He says quickly, shifting on his knees before raising his hands to rest against your little hips. That makes you smile.

“I know,” You breathe, thumb stroking over his cheek. “I know that. But I’m asking you about children.”

Tsu’tey’s sure that his pupils have expanded, and he can feel his tail swishing slowly from side to side. You’re not judging him at all; you’re just waiting for an honest answer. He feels his heart swell impossibly larger.

“I… have been thinking about it,” He says. His voice is low and embarrassed, but he raises his gaze so that he’s looking right into your eyes. “About you having my children.”

It feels like a dirty little secret, but you’re smiling at him so fondly.

“Yeah?” You breathe, grinning. “Well, why the fuck were you hiding from me, then?”

His ears twitch. “It felt… selfish, tìyawn. To wish for something you cannot give.”

That makes you frown. “Can’t give?”

His thumb strokes over your waist, his eyes drawn to your belly. “You are so small. You could not carry my child. It would be too dangerous, even if it were possible.”

You’re watching him thoughtfully, lips pursed. “Is this like, a thing for you? You just want to see me pregnant?”

He certainly can’t deny his interest in that, but it’s important that you know that’s not just it.

“Not only that,” He murmurs, leaning forward to kiss the base of your throat. “I keep thinking… I think of you raising our child. I think of teaching them, of loving them. You would be wonderful with them, I know it. And I… I would like fatherhood, I think.”

Your expression has gone so soft, and when you lean in to kiss the top of his ear a shudder rips through him. His hands tighten around your waist, and he leans in to nuzzle insistently at your throat.

Oh, this little confession feels like having a weight lifted from his shoulders. You weren’t angry at him – you just listened, so full of understanding. How could he have expected anything less from you?

“Tsu’tey,” You murmur, tilting your head back with a sigh as he nips a soft kiss into your throat. “Come with me.”

He glances up at that, interest piqued. “Where?”

“The science outpost.”

Oh, now you have his attention. He perks up in delight, and moves to stand immediately. You have not lived among the other humans in the science outpost since you had mated with Tsu’tey and moved into his kelku, but that does not mean that you have not been back to the little human encampment since. It is the only place where it is safe for you to remove your breathing mask, and so the two of you make good use of your old bunk whenever you feel the need to.

“Let’s go then.” Tsu’tey says, doing a poor job at concealing his eagerness.

You just laugh, and take his hand as he leads the way through the forest. Several times he gets a little too impatient when you slowly clamber over roots or rocks, and he ends up scooping you right up into his arms as he barrels his way through the forest.

The science outpost isn’t too far away, but it still feels as though it takes an age to reach it. When the shoddy building finally looms up in the distance, Tsu’tey feels his stomach leap. It has been too long since he’s had full access to his little mate’s face, and he longs to kiss you properly. What will likely follow after the kissing is even more thrilling, and he feels his tail lash eagerly at the thought of taking you in that cramped little bed.

You’re laughing at his eagerness as he attempts to shoulder his way inside the building, clenching his jaw in irritation as he’s forced to wait for the pressurised doors to close behind them and regulate the atmosphere before the two of you are allowed past the entryway.

“Someone’s excited.” You say coyly, reaching up to remove your mask as soon as the doors slide open with a hiss, allowing you to enter the outpost properly.

Tsu’tey doesn’t care that several of the human scientists turn to look at the two of you when you step inside. He has not had access to your face for over a week now, and he catches you by the waist before leaning in for a quick, passionate kiss. He is excited, and he likes letting you know exactly how you make him feel.

The scientists are very used to the two of you by now, and he can hear them start to hastily gather up their things as they prepare to give you some privacy.

Good, He thinks smugly. They know when to leave.

But then, to his confusion, you break away from him.

“Wait, Norm!” You call out.

The lanky human scientist pauses, looking up with a visible wince. He looks anxious at the sight of you, and his gaze cuts towards Tsu’tey with a grimace.

“Ah. Hey.” He says weakly, lowering his files back down to the desk he had just scrambled to pick them from. “We’re actually headed out now! So, um, you can do whatever-”

“No,” You say quickly, growing visibly flustered at the insinuation. “We’re not here for that.”

Tsu’tey’s head swivels around to look at you, his brow drawing low. “We are not?”

You ignore him, swatting absently at his side as you focus on Norm. “Where’s Spider?”

Norm is looking from you to Tsu’tey, and Tsu’tey is looking blankly back at him. He has no more idea about what you’re doing here than the scientist does – especially since it appears that you hadn’t brought him here with mating in mind. He feels a little put out, honestly.

“He, uh… He’s been running wild all morning. He’s totally tuckered out now – he’s sleeping in the back.” Norm says at last, pointing a thumb over his shoulder.

“Thanks,” You smile at him, before reaching to take Tsu’tey’s hand in yours.

He goes easily when you tug at him, following you with a confused scowl as you lead him towards the back of the building. When you lead him into the living quarters, he looks wistfully towards your old bunk, but you pull him on insistently.

“Why are we here?” He mumbles, still scowling a little. He is happy to be here with you, but he doesn’t understand why you’ve brought him amongst the Sky People.

For a moment, you don’t answer. You just pull the little CO2 regulator off your bunk where it had been left the last time he was here, and push the breathing mask into his hands. He takes it with a grumble, and takes a deep inhale before looping it around his neck.

“I want to show you something.” You say simply, before raising his big hand to your mouth and pressing a kiss to his knuckles.

His ears rotate forward, pleased with the sensation of your soft lips against his skin. Unable to deny you anything, he follows you without complaint.

As you approach the back of the room, ducking under the privacy curtains, his ears pick up on soft, snuffling breathing.

“What is that?” He mutters to you, tugging at your hand.

You hush him, before pulling back one last privacy curtain to reveal a small bunk. The bed is occupied by a figure so small that Tsu’tey squints at it in bewilderment. It is a human child, obviously, no older than two years old, but he hadn’t ever imagined that human babies were so small.

Your eyes are fixed carefully onto his face as he steps forward to peer down at the child, but he doesn’t look at you. The child is fast asleep, his mouth dropped open as a little bit of drool glistens on his cheek. Golden, tangled curls are plastered to his forehead, and he snuffles sleepily as he nuzzles into the pillow under his head. He’s clearly being well-fed, but there are streaks of dirt around his plump face and across his legs.

“The science guys have been taking care of him as best as they can, especially Norm,” You murmur, your voice very soft to avoid waking the baby. “But you know how they are. Sometimes they forget to eat and shower themselves, nevermind a baby.”

Tsu’tey is still watching the child sleep, a confused frown beginning to creep across his face. He is not stupid. He has heard of this child before. His existence alone has been controversial for the People, though he has gone unseen and unheard of for the most part. Are you suggesting what he thinks you’re suggesting?

“He has no one,” You whisper to him, soothing in the dim light of the room. “I’ve been thinking of suggesting this for a while, but I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”

“Yawntutsyìp, I know who this child’s father is.” He tries to keep his voice low like you, but he can’t help the rough edge that has crept in.

“He has no father.” You whisper back stubbornly. “He has no mother. Look at him.”

Ears flat, Tsu’tey obeys. His eyes travel over the child’s grimy skin, and he grimaces as his tail tucks low.

“He is a sky demon.” He grumbles, though he is already leaning closer to look at the child’s face.

“So am I,” You point out grimly. “You don’t always get to choose how your children turn out, you know.”

His children. Tentatively, he reaches out and rubs at a spot of dirt on the child’s leg. Instead of flinching away from his touch like he had expected, Spider leans into his hand. His throat tightens, and he wonders how often this child actually experiences physical contact – even asleep, he chases after it as though he’s starved of it.

“How will he breathe in the village?” Tsu’tey wonders, brow furrowed. “Your masks will not fit him.”

From the corner of his eye, he can see you biting at your lip. He realises that he’s just inadvertently conceded to you, and he tries not to sigh.

“Norm has made him a smaller one that will fit.” You murmur, edging closer to him. “You’re thinking about it?”

“It will be hard for him.” Tsu’tey is frowning, reaching for your hand and squeezing lightly at your hands to ensure that you’re listening to him. “He is too small. Too weak. This world is not made for him, and the People will find it difficult to accept him.”

You hum softly and edge closer, laying your head against his shoulder. The proximity makes him relax a little against you, and he presses a kiss to the top of your head.

“You could say the same about me, you know.” You say pointedly, nuzzling at his shoulder. “But you’ve taken care of me so far. I know you’d look after him, too.”

Even in this circumstance, he preens lightly under your praise. It means a lot to hear that you believe him to be a strong care-taker and a good provider, to both you and to a possible child.

“If we don’t care for him, he’ll be raised here,” You breathe. “He won’t get any proper care. Look at him – he’s not even two yet, and he’s being overlooked already. He needs attention, and looking after. And you just told me that you are willing to offer those things to a child.”

He is already nodding. He can see that you’re right – the human scientists are not capable of raising anything, they are not capable of seeing. They lack the ability to connect to anything, only able to appreciate his planet on a surface level.

Your attention shifts back to the child on the bed, and your face softens into a smile. “Hey, Spider. You remember me?”

Tsu’tey’s head snaps back around to find that the baby has awoken, and is staring up at him with wide eyes. Tsu’tey stares back, uneasy and curious. Slowly, Spider nods.

Your smile brightens. “This is Tsu’tey. Can you say hello?”

Spider does not say hello, but he does sit up so that he can peer curiously into Tsu’tey’s face. He doesn’t appear afraid at all, and Tsu’tey wonders if he is the first Na’vi that he has ever seen.

“Hello,” Tsu’tey rumbles, his English heavily accented.

The child’s fearlessness is admirable, especially in the face of one so much larger than him. Tsu’tey finds himself reluctantly impressed.

“Come here,” You murmur, reaching out your hands.

Tsu’tey watches with avid interest as the child crawls forward into your arms. You wrap him into your arms and pull him against your chest, stroking his mess of curls as he lays his head against your shoulder. What a quiet little thing.

Something odd curls in his chest at the sight. His small human mate, holding such a tiny human child. Cautiously, he curls his arm around your shoulders and feels you lean into him.

Oh, he thinks. The rush of emotions at the feeling of holding his mate and a child in his arms is startling, and he takes a deep breath as he nuzzles his nose into your hair. It feels right.

“I will have to finish building the rope bridge to our kelku,” He grumbles. “He will need a safe way of getting up there without breaking his neck. The ladder will not be enough for one so small.”

A big grin is blooming across your face, and you twist around to look at him over your shoulder. “Protective daddy mode activated already, huh?”

He doesn’t understand half of what that means, but he can’t stop the eager thump of his tail. Yes, he will be a good father. He will keep the child safe.

A very tiny smile begins to curl around his mouth, and he brushes his nose along your shoulder. With his face hidden from you, he finally has the courage to say, “I have always wanted a big family.”

He feels your little laugh more than he hears it, and then you say, “I have something else to show you.”

When you stand up straight, Spider clings to you. It’s a sweet sight. He doesn’t look like a demon, like this. He looks small and delicate and weak.

“Hey,” You murmur to Spider. “Want to go up high?”

When the child nods, you turn and hand him to Tsu’tey. He freezes, staring at the child that you’re offering him. Spider stares back at him, wide-eyed and inquisitive as his limbs dangle in the air.

“He wants to go on your shoulders,” You whisper pointedly, raising your eyebrows.

“Ah.” Tsu’tey manages, finally reaching to take him. It’s scarier than he had expected, taking the child into his hands. Spider is very small, and Tsu’tey’s hands practically dwarf him.

When Tsu’tey reaches to settle the baby on his shoulders, Spider’s tiny hands grab at his braids and tangle there. A quiet, almost impossible to hear, little laugh comes out of his mouth, and Tsu’tey feels the child leaning heavily against him for balance.

You’re looking up at them both so softly, and you smile as you reach to tug at Tsu’tey’s hand. As always, he follows you without asking questions.

When the two of you emerge from the living quarters with Spider on Tsu’tey’s shoulders, the two of you are subject to a lot of raised eyebrows and surprised sort of looks. Tsu’tey meets those looks with a dangerous glare of his own, and the curious human scientists are quick to look away.

He follows you through the laboratory, one of his hands settled cautiously over Spider’s very tiny thigh to prevent him from falling off his shoulders. Every so often the child will giggle softly, and one of Tsu’tey’s ears will flick in response.

At the back of the lab, there’s a large glass tank, and you gesture at it as you approach.

“Do you know what that is?” You ask, reaching out to tap lightly at the glass.

Tsu’tey frowns at it. The tube is not empty. It’s full of some kind of liquid, and floating in it is a body that is very familiar. It’s Grace. Or at least, what was once Grace’s avatar.

“A tube.” He says, rather unintelligently. He does not want to admit his ignorance, but you pick up on it anyway.

“Avatars are grown in tubes just like this.” You say, peering in at Grace with a sad smile. “Whole Na’vi bodies grown from half human, half Na’vi DNA. Impressive, isn’t it?”

“Demon technology.” Tsu’tey comments with a frown. Spider shifts on his shoulders, and he hurries to adjust his grip on the child.

You roll your eyes. “I thought you’d be used to demon technology by now, muntxatan,” His tail swishes at the term of endearment, but you just smile and continue, “My body might not be able to sustain a hybrid pregnancy, but it doesn’t need to. There’s no reason that this demon technology couldn’t be used to grow a baby from human and Na’vi DNA. It’d be kind of like IVF, in a way.”

That gives Tsu’tey pause, and he turns to look at the tube with a new perspective. He had never considered that the demon technology could be used for something like that. It is… a lot to absorb.

“You don’t have to think too much about it just yet,” Your voice is so soft, as though you know he has been overloaded. “But if you want a big family… well. I just wanted you to know that it’s possible.”

He doesn’t have the first idea of what to say. He has gone from believing that he was aberrant for wishing for this with you and being terrified to so much as voice his desires, to agreeing to take on a little demon baby, and already planning for more.

His ears swivel, his eyes wide and thoughtful. Slowly, he nods.

“We will discuss more later,” He murmurs, bringing his free hand low to rest on your lower back as Spider tugs at his braids. “We must take the child back to our kelku, first.”

“What’s the rush?” You ask, teasing at him.

Tsu’tey squares his shoulders, some of his old confidence returning. This is a challenge he is fit for, he’s sure of it. He will provide for his tiny weak mate and his new tiny weak son, and he will protect them to the best of his ability. You have been quick to learn the ways of the People – Spider will learn too, with guidance. His mouth twitches at the thought of teaching him customs, teaching him how to hunt, making him a songcord. All those nonsense dreams he had, now a reality.

“I have to finish that rope bridge.”

#tsu'tey fic #tsu'tey x reader #na'vi x human #na'vi x reader #avatar way of water #avatar x reader #avatar 2 #awow #tsu'tey #avatar 2009 #terato #fluff #fics

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flordeamatista · 8 months

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𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗠𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻

pairing: bull rider!bucky barnes x heiress!reader

concept: Passionate dusk pleasure covers you both with lust, spilling its mist through the night.

word count: 3k

warnings: best friends to lovers, ranch hand Bucky who works for reader's family, fluff, angst, smut (riding Bucky) soft kisses, nickname- Sweetheart

a/n: I created this fantasy daydream almost a year ago. Hopefully you'll love these other pretty men this fall/winter as well. Way Down We Go Masterlist

lovely beta: @writing-for-marvel and @lfnr-blog-blog-blog

line divider by the lovely @lfnr-blog-blog-blog and she made me the pngs

masterlist

Despite the danger of loss, time purifies something impure, but still wants to be touched.

He sees the world ticking off to every moment in life for him to be ready for the moment because you only have eight seconds to live.

Stepping up to the bull, Bucky felt its rage throbbing through its thick white hide. The creature looked mean, angry, and fierce as it pawed at the ground beneath it. It was ready to face its challenger, waiting for a chance to strike back at the man who dared to encroach on its territory.

Under its thick, white hide, the bull's muscles bulged, while steam hissed from its nostrils. Grasping the sticky rope with one hand and clutching his cowboy hat with the other, Bucky's heart raced. People held their breath in the thick air of tension.

Suddenly, a crackling roar filled the arena, like a thousand thunderclaps rolling across the sky.

One second.

Its horns aimed at the middle of the arena like deadly weapons, as the gates burst open, and the bull charged forward. The packed arena roared as the mighty bull rushed forward, its horns glittering in the moon’s light, and him riding it with the creature of the night.

Bucky's show.

Two seconds.

Terrified that he wouldn't make it to the end, his limbs quivered and his grip on the rope tightened. But then he remembered why he was doing this.

The love.

Three seconds.

He felt a faint warmth behind him, which when he glanced in its direction revealed you at the edge of the arena beaming with pride and waving your arms for encouragement. You came to see him. The applause grew louder and were about to roar even more when Bucky’s hold on the strap and his hat grew tighter.

Three words: Only for you.

Four seconds.

A sudden wave of power surged through Bucky's veins at the sight of you, giving him newfound strength and focus as he fought against being bucked off the wild beast beneath him.

Maintain his body's strength.

Five seconds.

The bull's fury was intensified by the crowd's jeers. The spectators continued to cheer wildly while Bucky remained atop the bull, wishing desperately that he could turn around and see whether or not you were still there.

Observe him, love him, sweetheart

Six seconds.

Bucky's cowboy hat was lifted off his head abruptly as he clung to the bull's back. His legs were spread wide, straddling the saddle and pinning him against its stiff leather surface. The force of the animal's bucking sent drops of sweat flying from his brow, into his sea-blue eyes, and down his throat. He took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the rope before stretching out his free arm. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the bull's rhythm, his muscles quivering with each buck. Though he felt himself slipping, he was determined to keep going. He was desperate for any gust of air that could keep him in place.

With every muscle in his body, he willed it to remain still.

Seven seconds.

Bucky saw out of the corner of his eye that you were still there; leaning over one rail with your fist raised in triumph at his progress so far. With this last boost of courage, he made it through to eight seconds.

Bucky soared into the air and landed on his knees, facing you. Dedicated to the person who never seems to leave his mind, the wind knew where to land his two feet. The bull rushed towards him out of the corner of his eye. His attention was caught by clowns maneuvering the bull away from him. Several yards from the fence, his hat lay in the middle. His instincts pushed him forward, despite knowing it was potentially dangerous.

The danger of losing you would be worse if he didn't do it. Then he picked up his hat and bowed when his name sung.

With arms outstretched and legs pumping, he leapt through the open gate and sprinted towards you, where you stood watching.

He wrapped an arm around you and pulled you close. His warm breath caressed your ear as he whispered, “You know I won in eight seconds. I don't want money. I want eight kisses from the sweetest lips in the world." He placed his hat on your head. When he stared straight at you, the glint in his blue eyes revealed something very lustful. A smirk spreads across his face as he licks his lips and walks away.

Electricity flowed between you. The air was electric with anticipation and excitement, as your heart raced. You had been moved by Bucky Barnes' first kiss, which made crossing lines with a best friend harder every day.

You want more kisses, and you want to give him more than eight.

Just as the sun began to glow over the horizon, pink hues were cast over the still landscape. Morning mist hung in the air, the cooling feeling kissing his skin.

A warm, orange sunrise tints his cheeks as he gazes at you in your bedroom, from his hiding spot on your balcony. Taking a breath, he opens the french glass door. A smile spreads over his lips as a breeze blows past him.

A single rose nestled between his fingers looked delicate compared to his strong hands.

Taking a deep breath, he bent forward and placed the flower next to your pillow.

With a whisper of wind, he left his love as he left the room.

Dreams and kisses make one 'I love you' form in his eyes when they are merged from your lips.

The air was heavy with humidity and the sky was painted with orange, pink, and tangerine hues. The light that reflected off the shimmering shadows around you slowly sank below the horizon as you.

A glass of red wine in one hand, you watched from your balcony as he emerged from the hills after working in the stables. Shirtless, he headed up to a spotlight near the tree line, pulling off his glove before running his fingers through his hair.

The soft petals caressed your fingertips as you slowly sank down into the mattress, a smile pulling at your lips as you felt the sudden rush of adrenaline, as if the night whispered in the breeze that things were going to be different from now on. He had given you proof of his love, and now all he wanted was for you to take what he'd offered, to hold onto it with him and keep it by your side forevermore. He knew better than anyone about one thing: love can never be separated from you, no matter how much the air around you sings out to carry his love with you.

In order to embrace this step in your friendship, it took more than just time; it required action as well. He gave you an exit that allowed you to see and feel his love without being forced to confront him; he left his words in this letter, giving you the upper hand.

Taking a moment to savor the memories of the day Bucky entered your life was a joy you recorded. The soft voices of joy and the ever-growing bond between you were evident. A giggle escaped your lips as you ran your fingers over the rose's velvety petals. When it comes to your feelings, he is the heart of it.

You can only watch for so long before dreaming of running your fingers through his hair. Pulling off his shirt, he stripped in front of a spotlight, showing off his body to nature. The sun highlighted his silhouette as he walked closer, to reveal tan skin adorned with sweat and dirt.

The purpose of being outside is to tease him since he sees you. It's not like you walked from that spot to see if he could glance through your window or balcony. You were playing this game of riding with soft gazes, teasing.

You knew that it was wrong to play a game like this, but you couldn't help yourself. In your position, no one played games with the employees, but who has the authority to tell you no. Your body felt a burning sensation as it encounters the one person that makes it feel the meaning of lust and desire.

You felt your heart flutter as you realized what he meant. You wanted to tell him, but the words stuck in your throat. You know you crossed the line that night but what happens if you cross the line every night?

Your family was left speechless when Bucky declined the prize money, saying he wanted something more precious than money asking only for a single rose.

To him, you were the most valuable flower in the world.

The fire inside of me is being built patiently and carefully by you, and I eagerly anticipate the day when it is fully ignited.

Seeing you from the balcony, he stepped closer to get a better glimpse of you from below and saw your fingers tug at the brim of his hat.

His blue eyes darkened, he called your name with a moan. To give him a little show, you slowly unbuttoned your blouse by sliding the buttons through their tiny loops. His eyes were fixed on you intently, watching every move you made. Shadows were cast on the wall behind you as the last sun rays glinted off your exposed skin. As the light faded, you stood proudly.

There was a whisper of wind around the two of you.

You both watched each other attentively.

To the sound of rushing air, he waited patiently while you undid them slowly. When you approached the railing closer to your balcony, your blouse fell to the floor. It was hard not to smirk at his eyes that roamed around you and looked behind him to ensure no one could see this beautiful painting he was seeing.

To start time, you blew him a kiss and yelled, "One".

Time was ticking away, and if he didn't act quickly, his chance would be gone.

You caught his gaze in surprise. As the cool stone of the wall pressed against his hands and feet, he realized it wasn't a dream, but reality.

You steady yourself on the door frame with one hand while the other grasps the blinds. He heard you yell "Two!"

A journey was being set out, and he was determined to follow it wherever it led. The power of your kiss drove him to scale the wall.

Not like last time. Last time he lost his opportunity.

Love remains, despite time's passing.

Bucky saw you sob that night, tears dripping down your face as your ex-boyfriend’s words sunk in. You were nothing more than an object to him, and he told you so.

His hands were strong and calloused as he grabbed yours, yet his touch was gentle and caressing. As he smiled, his eyes showed respect, love, security, safety, and patience. When he released your hands, his fingertips gently touched the side of your face before finding your lips.

Slowly and deliberately, the kiss deepened with an intensity that left you both trembling.

But you ran. You left.

The next morning you ran to leave abroad, and all he could do was watch you go.

From that point forward, he devoted himself to becoming the kind of man who deserved someone like you in his life. In spite of all the advances he received, he refused to accept any of them.

The memories of the day you left melt my heart, I will never be able to forget you, I feel the nights so cold without you, and I keep hoping that I'll see you again soon

This is because he knew your kiss was the only one capable of bringing him the same amount of happiness. He worked hard at your parents' ranch until he was the star.

He waited to taste your lips again.

And now he gets that opportunity.

Bucky's strong hands gently yet firmly grasped your waist; the warmth of his touch sent a tingling sensation up your spine. He turned you around so that you faced him, the blue eyes you had imagined finally appearing before you. All the laughter, knowing you could always rely on him as a friend, him wanting to be yours, and you wanting to be his.

Moving closer, he inhaled slowly, as if stalking his prey. His lips parted a little as he took in all of you.

His chest glistened in the light like a pane of glass, and his chest was covered with streams of sweat, reflecting the light like tiny diamonds. His touch was like a caress of liquid fire on your body, sending sparks of pleasure through your veins. You clung to his neck tightly, wanting to stay there forever.

You knew why he'd reprimanded you for being sassy earlier—but when he looked at you with such hunger and desire, it felt like something greater was at stake.

Before yesterday, Bucky always stood by you, and he will stand by you tomorrow as well.

In a whisper, he spoke four simple words: “My lips need kisses."

You smiled to yourself and replied softly, "Let me finish counting. Three!”

His warm fingertips traced delicate circles on your neck nape as his hands reached your shoulders. You felt a sense of security as he gently yet firmly held your hand in his, and then delicately kissed its soft surface. With eyes closed and breath held, you savored the tender sensation of his lips on your skin.

He smirked as you open your eyes and see him. "Four seconds left," he says.

As you stand close to him, he moves down to kiss your lips and instead moves to your check. Grabbing your throat, "Five, pretty boy," you tease him. You felt the heat of his breath tickle your earlobe as he hummed softly before placing a gentle bite just below your collarbone.

You opened your eyes and saw him licking his lips, a smirk playing across the corners of his mouth as he seemed to revel in the quiet. Through the still air, you heard your own soft whisper, "Six! You're running out of time Bucky. What's happened to winning?"

His thumb shifted under your chin, tilting it towards him.

"Seven!" you softly whisper into the air.

A gentle touch, a kiss, a rush, a flame ignited, an unstoppable passion.

His mouth suddenly slams into yours, and you felt his tongue sliding into your mouth as he parted his lips. Moaning into the kiss, you felt him deepening it and he is wet, messy, and desperate.

In that moment, everything else melted away; the heat of the moment, the rush of desire; it's the kiss that ignites your heart.

"Think you can handle another one, Sweetheart?" he hummed between your lips.

"Bucky, you win. You've got it all, and all the kisses."

A passionate lust for him consumed you, and you cannot resist it. You reach for his face and pull him in for a second intense ferocious kiss. You let him inhale every kiss from your lips into his. Your gaze flitted over his eyes and you saw the reflection of desire and hunger.

“I'm gonna ride you, Mr. Cowboy” you whispered breathlessly.

A smile spreads across his face as he hugs you, and you giggle into the room.

Passionate dusk pleasure covers you both with lust, spilling its mist through the night.

“Ride me, Sweetheart”

Straddling Bucky's hips, you slowly lowered yourself onto him. His thickness filled every part of you and you couldn't help but moan in pleasure at the sensation. His hands moved up to your hips, gripping them firmly as he pulled you deeper into him. With each passing moment, you both developed a deep connection; you long to ride every move with him and share every emotion. A wet tongue lapped against the tips of Bucky's fingers and wet fingers running all over your body, sending vibrations throughout. Teasing you as he marked every inch of you.

"You're such a fucking tease, you know that?" you moaned softly as you felt the electric shock pass through every inch of your skin as you kept moving yourself towards him. His gaze was hot on yours as he watched every second of this blissful ecstasy. Taking your time, you savored and you reached the point of perfection together. He swept his eyes over every inch of your skin, sending electric shocks through your body that increased with every move.

You were pinned beneath him as he spun around with your hands in his. He brushed your forehead sweat with his lips and whispered into your mouth, "Sweetheart, you feel so good. From kisses to orgasms, everything is yours, and so am I." With a tender kiss, he mumbled, "I belong to you, too."

Your feelings for Bucky were clear from this moment on; you could not bear to be apart from him. In the midst of this shifting world, you might be this lady, but all you wanted to do is ride your rider from sunset to sunrise.

Today, tomorrow, and wherever my kisses of love can lead, I dedicate my entire life to showing you my love.

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