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#I actually like how his hair turned out here. Oh the wonders of using references

hellsslibrary · 10 months

Note

I really liked your Epel and Riddle first time with male reader post bc I never really see top male reader content 🫂 if it's okay with you could you write a similar post for Kalim, Jamil, Floyd, Malleus, and Silver? I always appreciate your work ❤️🌈

✧･ﾟ:*Kalim, Jamil, Floyd, Malleus and Silver's first sex with M!reader*:･ﾟ✧

DNI : minors.

#a.n. : Oh god thank you!! I am very pleased to hear this. Well, Top male reader is actually a rare topic in general, so I'm glad someone is enjoying it!

!!Warnings : first time (obviously), fingering, praise, comfort, Floyd is a bit of a brat, pet names, gentle sex, reference to eel mating (yeah, get ready for biology).

Kalim.

Well... It was probably not even planned, to be honest, but it just kind of happened so spontaneously. Well, you know, just one of you will get turned on (or both of you) and the situation will just take its course.

He has been ready for a long time, so what else can he expect? Well, except for your consent, of course. But other than that, he doesn't need anything, so he's ready for you to take him at any moment.

Although of course he is nervous, because this is such a moment! His favorite boyfriend will deprive him of his virginity, it's so exciting for him! While he'll still be excited about it, he really wants you two to end up fine.

So he will give you control and dominance without any arguments. He wants to make you feel good, which means he will fulfill any of your requests/orders, just to make you feel good.

"Oh, that's so weird, you know? Not bad of course! But weird..." Kalim mutters as he watches your fingers disappear and reappear in his hole as he squeezes your shoulders in his grip.

You chuckle, spreading your fingers in him slightly, which makes him gasp for breath and squeezes your fingers, which makes you laugh even harder.

"I know, sunshine... You'll get used to it soon, trust me," he just nods vigorously at your words, enjoying your soft and slow movements.

"I believe, I believe! It's just... Oh, there!" he screams when he feels your fingers touch his sweet spot, which makes you smirk.

Of course, it was strange to feel your dick in him, and in general something inside him, but he was just in seventh heaven for happiness!

When he finally gets used to the feeling, he will let out something between a moan and a chuckle, pulling you closer and kissing your lips in a sweet and long kiss.

"Mmm, amazing... Don't stop, please!" he whimpers, wrapping his legs around your waist, bringing you even closer to him.

You let out a chuckle, nodding silently, kissing his shoulders, making occasional hickeys on his tanned skin as your hips move at a firm, moderate pace.

He moans, biting his lips in pleasure, burrowing his hands into your hair and squeezing around your cock from time to time.

"So... So g-good, oh, yo-you're so good..." he mutters, moaning as you squeeze his thigh, rubbing its inside painfully close to his bouncing, from your thrusts, cock.

He'll definitely bombard you with compliments after you're done, and he'll probably blabber about it to someone the next day (after all, how often does he think before he says something?)

Jamil.

I don't know. I kind of want to think that he probably wouldn't care too much about it, but at the same time I can't. I think that you would also discuss the most important aspects with him, just in case.

He doesn't worry too much. He's just about to lose his virginity to the guy he loves, it's just a little exciting, that's all.

But of course he will make sure that your first time will be wonderful and memorable! Just... Just in case :) .

Doesn't really want to give you full control, but will allow you to control most of the process, although it will still take control here and there.

And you will probably be doing this at night... You know, so that all sorts of princes can't distract your Jamil.

"Uhm... A little deeper, [Your name]... Mmm, yes, right there, okay..." he mutters, relaxing under your fingers.

He closes his eyes, his tanned fingers lightly squeezing the pillowcase beneath him as your fingers slowly but surely stretch him for the next experience.

"Are you sure you don't want to speed it all up?" you ask, covering his back with kisses along his spine.

"Do we have somewhere to hurry?" he asks a clearly rhetorical question, glancing back at you over his shoulder, causing you to shake your head in denial.

And, random headcanon, I think he will almost immediately get used to the sensations of your dick inside.

It's just... He's way too relaxed and calm during the whole act (well, as far as you can be when you're being fucked, of course).

"Ghah...I never thought it would be so nice..." he mumbles into the pillow, slowly moving his hips in time with your thrusts.

"And why? You never thought this would happen?" you ask, squeezing his buttcheeks lightly, running your thumb along his stretched rim.

"I thought I wouldn't have time, ah, for this in general, b-but... It's really ni-nice," his voice breaks slightly as he feels your cock touch his prostate.

And then the whole room is filled with sighs that grow into quiet moans when you deliberately start fucking him from this angle, earning a light kick in the side from him.

Floyd.

Well... Am I supposed to say this? It wasn't even discussed at all. It just happened. Both of you just got horny and just fucked. It's Floyd after all.

He doesn't care at all. Although he is still interested in how sex works in human form, because he probably does not know much about it. Eventually the eels reproduce (Probably. No one knows yet how the mating process occurs in eels) through clouds of sperm that fertilize nearby caviar, they don't even have a dick as such.

Actually... Whether he gives you control or not depends entirely on his mood. So hope for the option that you think is the best, imp.

But damn... It's a great feeling for him! He's also very loud, although you may not even be working on his lower half yet, so I suggest covering his mouth.

"Oh, Koebi-chan, hurry up, I can't stand it! Faster!" Floyd whines as he tries to push your hand away, but only whimpers when you press harder on his prostate.

"Shut up, Floyd. It's going to hurt if I don't stretch you, so be patient..." You whisper, pulling one of his legs over your shoulder, fingering his ass, causing him to squeeze the sheets underneath.

"You're so mean, Koebi-chan~," Floyd mutters, but obviously enjoys your touch.

Well... When your dick is in him, he will not pay attention to pain or strange sensations and will tell you to start fucking him right away!

In the end, it's such an amazing feeling... He even starts to love his human form more. He would never have thought that such pleasure was possible.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes, right there! Hu-hurry—Mhm!" He screams and then furrows his brows at you in a playful manner as you cover his mouth with your hand.

You just continue your quick but gentle thrusts into him as you feel him bite your hand lightly, causing you to hiss and your other hand slaping his ass with moderate force.

"Floyd, shut up... And don't bite, or I'll put something in your mouth, got it?" you ask, stopping your thrusts by looming over him, and tearing out a desperate moan muffled by your hand as your cock pressed even harder against his prostate.

Malleus.

... I'm torn between two options that he knows too much about sex, or absolutely nothing, I just can't decide ... But since we're talking about virginity here, let's talk about the second option.

He probably doesn't know anything about sex except that there is a phallus and there is a hole. Like, really. So you should probably discuss this beforehand to let him know that sex is not just about instant penetration.

Definitely, he will look for any information about sex, especially about two men (I bet he did not even know that same-sex people can have sex).

And gladly give control into your hands, and also gladly take control into his hands, if that's what you want. He doesn't care as long as both of you are satisfied afterwards.

"Oh... Darling, that's... So weird, not described in the book at all..." Malleus whispers, holding his legs wide for you.

"I don't even want to know what book it is... But anyway, it'll be nice after you get used to it, I promise," you whisper, kissing him on the mark on his forehead, which makes him hum in satisfaction.

"I get it... Then I'll try to get used to it," he nods to himself, closing his eyes and focusing on the feel of your fingers in him.

He probably won't even feel pain at the moment of penetration of your dick, like the truth. He will immediately get used to it, adapt and that's it.

Although he is very sensitive, yes. Considering that the boy is so desperate for touch and he gets the most intimate of them, this is too good for him! Although he is still quite collected.

"Oh, love... You're amazing. You know... Can you bend forward a little, please?" he asks you, and you raise an eyebrow, but you bend over him a little forward, digging a moan out of him.

"What you..?" you stop short when you notice how his fangs bite his lower lip in pleasure, which makes you smile, and continue thrusting in this position.

"It's just that in the wide-legged position, you have to bend over further, mhm, and there will be more pleasure, because the pressure of the ph-phallus on the prostate will be stronger, well, at least that's what I read," he mumbles, lying on his side.

"He's really over-prepared..." you mutter under your breath, chuckling, but take his left knee in your hand, spreading his legs a little wider, eliciting a whimper from him.

Silver.

Well, he definitely knows that sex is sex. He does not know the subtleties, but he understands the basics quite well. So, you still need to discuss it with him one way or another.

Absolutely not against doing this, although he is worried, of course. But not because he will lose his virginity (although this also worries him a little), but because he is afraid to fall asleep.

He will completely give control to you without pretensions and disputes, which is not surprising. And tell you to wake him up if he suddenly falls asleep, of course.

Although... I doubt he will sleep tonight. In the end, it's a new experience, a sensation for him, and also a slight fear that someone (we don't go into details ;) ) might hear you two and Silver will never see the end of teasing about it.

Only soft moans and whimpers came out of his mouth as he fidgeted on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position to lie down.

You chuckle at this, taking his waist with your free hand and pulling his body closer to you so that his ass rests on your lap and his upper half remains on the mattress.

He groans, but then relaxes, trying not to moan too loudly for fear that someone might hear you, so when he feels your fingers touch his prostate, he pulls you closer, kissing you and moaning against your lips.

He wasn't particularly tense during the act anyway, so it wasn't too uncomfortable when you entered him, although it still hurt.

"Oh, hush, hush, it's not that painful, you know?" you whisper soothingly, wiping a couple of tears from the edge of his sleepy eyes, to which he nods.

"Yes, yes... Continue please, I'll get used to it... It's all right," he smiles reassuringly, nodding weakly.

You nod, kissing his closed eyelids, which makes him smile tenderly, hugging your neck as you cover his face, shoulders, and neck in kisses, which makes him laugh at the tickle, moaning at your thrusts.

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maeby-cursed · 3 months

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➴ OH, STUPID CUPID ! ♡

✧ a/n: happy valentine's, dear angels ! ♡

Toji Fushiguro doesn’t believe in Valentine’s Day.

Why would he, after all? It’s merely a capitalist ploy to keep the consumerism engines turning. You can disguise greed in glittery pink polish and white chocolate bonbons but at its core, it won't change its nature.

And so, he spends St. Valentine’s like he would any other day; gets up at dawn, works until his hands are peeled and his back aches and gets home to eat whatever he has left over.

It’s a good routine, the most stable one he’s found for himself in years.

He can't recall a time where the fourteenth of February meant anything at all.

(Except for that one year that it had.)

But he won't think of withered flowers or laughing kisses or other sweets that have since rotten in his memory. A woman, a child, an apartment downtown.

That is all long gone now. The apartment downtown had gotten expensive, and the child had grown older. The woman had gone long ago and there were no more flowers or kisses or laughter.

It’s all capitalism, it’s all vapid and stupid and childish.

So, Toji Fushiguro doesn’t believe in Valentine’s Day. That is until you come along, knocking on his workshop’s door.

You’re obviously lost, mumbling an inquiry about how much you could get for selling a motorbike you keep referring to as "an old piece of garbage".

He can't help but snicker at your wording, a little chuckle that grows into a full chest laugh when he sees what you’ve dragged to his shop. It’s painfully obvious that this thing isn’t yours.

You keep holding the handlebars with careful hands, sparing few disgusted glances to the vehicle, as if its mere existence wounded you.

He asks how long you’ve had it, and where you got it, and how much you’d like to get.

You answer back curtly: two years, your ex, nothing as long as you get rid of it.

You seem annoyed just by having to be there and for some unexplainable reason this amuses him to no end. Maybe being surrounded by car engines in a small workshop with no windows is starting to affect him.

“I’ll take it.”

You raise your gaze from the dusty headlight, shocked by his offer.

“You will?”

“Sure thing. You don’t want it, I could use some new parts, I’ll just scrap it.”

You let out a sigh, relieved, and all the tension dissipates from your shoulders.

“Oh, that… well, that would be great! Thank you.”

Your smile makes him stop in his tracks. Pretty and warm and familiar – something dangerous. His head travels back.

After a second that lasts forever, he acknowledges what you've said, grunting as his only response and getting back to the store with you in tow.

“Could I leave it with you now or…?"

“Bring it back next week, I don’t really have a place to put it right now, y’know?”

You look around the place. It’s full of buckets of paint and car parts, no decor but stacks upon stacks of metallic shelves full of objects you can’t recognize. You chuckle awkwardly, seemingly in a better mood after the compromise you've arranged.

“Right, uhm… Actually, I'm not here next week, could I come back tomorrow?”

Toji turns back to stare at you, and for the first time, really sees you. You look young, probably in your mid-twenties, of bright eyes and shiny hair, and that pretty smile that keeps fluttering over your lips.

He hasn’t done this in a long time… But maybe…

“I close at 10pm today, why don’t you come back then?” he says, closing his fists to stop them from sweating.

Your wondering eyes freeze on him then, and your lips part slightly. He just can't stop staring.

“But it’s Valentine’s Day. Don’t you have any plans?” you ask, shyly.

“I don’t believe in that crap.”

Shit. That wasn’t supposed to come out like that.

“Oh,” you whisper. You're still grinning up at him, but your expression has lost its warmth, instead replaced by a polite awkwardness and doubtful gaze, and now he's kicking himself in his head.

“Sorry, did that bother you?” he asks, hiding his guilt with a smirk.

“No, not at all!" You laugh, playing with your hands. "I… just, I don’t mind it, I guess.

"I know it's not even a real holiday and that it's merely a product of capitalism, and that it’s all about sales and consumerism and all of that, but… I find it nice, you know? Having a day to be with the people you love…" You look around his shop once, before giving him a shy stare. "It’s sappy, I know.” You end with a shrug, your ears flushed.

Toji doesn’t say anything for a minute, he just breathes and takes it in.

Oh, he’s grown bitter, hasn’t he? Old and sour.

His son is out there right now buying flowers with his friends, his coworker is on a date at a fancy place, his one and only friend is buying chocolates for his wife… And he’s here at 5pm, with his hands dirty and his neck sweaty and the prettiest woman he’s seen in a long time in front of him, with no plans for tonight and a lovely smile hidden by a familiar sort of nervousness.

What is wrong with him? Is he truly that fucking stubborn? Can't he deal with a bit of pink?

He’ll admit that he's never minded the chocolates and the roses – even if they aren’t his favorite – and that he always laughs at the cherubs and the cheesy postcards. Of course, he won't talk about how he still hums old 50s songs while he works or how he indulges in a bit of dessert when February rolls around, though.

But he knows. He's always known.

So, maybe it’s not all about the money. Maybe it’s more about being accompanied for once since he was twenty three and alone. Maybe it’s more about taking a shot at getting something good back.

Maybe it's not all capitalism, not all vapid and stupid and childish.

“Yeah… I guess it’s not all that bad.”

“I do like it… sometimes,” you finish, as if completing his train of thought. This hasn't happened to him in a long time. "I’ll be back tonight then…?”

He recovers quickly, smirking briefly before turning to clean his hands with a rag.

“Sure, at 10pm," he says, over his shoulder.

You laugh, cheerful once more, and begin walking to the door.

“It’s a date!”

And, God, he really hopes it can be, if only because it’s Valentine’s Day.

#🎐 𓂃 mae’s typing !#jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk fluff #jjk imagines #toji fushiguro x reader #toji fushiguro x you #toji fushiguro fluff #toji fushiguro imagines #fushiguro toji x reader #fushiguro toji x you #fushiguro toji fluff #fushiguro toji imagines #toji x reader #toji x you #toji fluff #toji imagines #toji fushiguro #jjk

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yestrday · 6 months

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do u have any more crumbs abt crazy, tiny, will scratch and bite me if provoked (kinky....) housewife scara? 🙏 LAWDDD ABOVE, ur writing is too good.

notes: anything for my babygurlll 💪💪

( jealousy, masochism <- reader, sadism <- kuni, slight blood, slight nsfw mentions, mentions of cheating, no one cjeats, possessive behavior )

"... what else do we need? fish, chicken... ah, we ran out of sichuan pepper just yesterday too... hm, i think our rice is running low too. hey, [y. name], run over to the rice section and get us some—" kuni turns to you, and a scowl etches on his features as puts his hands on his hips. "wipe that stupid look off your face, we're in the grocery."

you don't know how being in the grocery is relevant to anything, but you do kind of know about what stupid look he's talking about. maybe he's referring to the way you're slumped on the grocery cart handle, grinning widely with a hand cupping your cheek as you stare all moony-eyed at your pretty husband. straight from the house with a lilac apron on and clutching a hurriedly written grocery list, he was the perfect image of domesticity. your partner, glaring at you right now through those bewitching purple eyes and—

SLAP! "cut. that. out!" kuni growls under his voice, pulling your hair towards his height and looking all menacing like despite the red blush on his cheeks. "you're embarassing me in public!" you stop the slight moan coming from your mouth, as well as the comment to point out his hypocrisy. some onlookers look like they want to interfere, but one look at your heart eyes and blushing face makes them deter at the realization that you're both freaks.

"sorry, sorry~" you coo, bringing him into a hug and nuzzle your face into his neck. though his hands lay limp at his sides, he doesn't squirm and only buries a pout into your skin. "you're just super duper a thousand times cuter today than usual, y'know~ i couldn't help myself!"

"you said that yesterday and the day before that and everyday before that!" kuni grumbles softly. "now i'm starting to wonder if you actually mean it."

you gasp softly, pulling him away by the shoulders and looking into his eyes. "now how can you say that?"you ask, feigning hurt. "you should know how deeply and madly i'm in love with you, right? my darling cute kuni, who makes me lose all rationality whenever i stare at him..."

kuni rolls his eyes at your dramatic confession. "oh, please—"

"... [y. name]?"

an unsure voice cuts him off, and the two of you quickly glance at the wide-eyed man staring at the both of you with a grocery basket hanging off his shoulder. a spark of realization lights up in his eyes when he finally takes a better look at your face, and he grins happily at you. "[y. name]! it really is you! fancy running into you here!"

anyone talking to you should ready themselves for a beating from kuni, who already has a scowl deeply etched on his face, but you quickly step forward before things can escalate. he glances up at you, and he furrows his brow at the relatively normal demeanor you've put up. "kyle!" you grin with a tone that makes kuni bristle. "good to see you here. your girlfriend got you running errands?"

"h-how'd you know?"

you laugh. "just a hunch. from the way she's been ranting to her department about how she does all the chores anyway." you slap a hand to his shoulder. "help your girlfriend out too. sharing chores is quite a great way to bond. why, i'm actually here with my hus... band..."

your voice trails off when you see kuni staring daggers into kyle. you chuckle a bit nervously, afraid that he might materialize an actual dagger out of nowhere (he was in the habit of being a tad murderous). "well, currently not in the best of moods, but my lovely wife's here with me."

thankfully, kyle's not the brightest man, so he's quite unaware of all the homicidal thoughts running around kuni's brain as he offers a respectful bow. "hello, mr. [l. name]! i'm [y. name]'s junior. they've been a great help to me and sadie ever since we entered the company!" he offers out a hand for a good ol' shake, but kuni only sneers at it and hides behind your back. kyle is left dumbfounded, stretching his hand towards air.

"inazumans... don't shake hands," you smile as you make up a reason. you can feel kuni burying himself in your back, his sharp nails digging into your hips as a warning. you try to maintain your composure and suppress the blush on your face. "anyways, we've gotta run. kuni's still got cooking to do!"

"n-no worries, [y. name], i'll see you this monday. a-and..." kyle nervously fidgets with his basket and avoids eye contact with you. "you can come over for dinner after work with us anytime. me and sadie do owe you a lot... really. it's..." kyle's blush deepens and he bites his lip— a nervous habit you're familiar with. "... it's the least we can do."

when kyle dashes off, you and kuni finish the rest of the groceries in silence. that make syou a little nervous, especially since you were half-expecting (awaiting, more like it) for him to just pin you to the nearest wall as soon as kyle was out of the picture. you two load the groceries in your car in silence, all while you give kuni nervous side-glances.

finally settled in the driver's seat, and kuni stormily cross-armed beside you, you try to catch his eye. "kuni...?" you ask in a breathy nervous half-laughter. "what's wrong?"

hyou flinch at how much venom is in his voice and ignore how it's making you feel down there. "someone tried to ask you out in front of me!" his voice is shaking. "and you're gonna have the fucking audacity to ask me what's wrong?!"

"they're just my co-worker, kuni, i promise," you try to soothe him. "it's not like i was gonna take them up on their offer anyway. why would i, when i got y—"

"liar!" you wince as his voice shrills in your ear. "if you weren't planning to, then you should've just turned them down, right in front of me. no, you were planning to, weren't you?" he leans over and jabs a finger into your chest, glaring up at you with those sharp purple eyes. "you were planning on going with them after work, huh? then what?"

"i had no plans, kuni." you try to reach a hand out to stroke his hair, but he quickly grabs it and digs his nails into you. you stare into his eyes. "i promise."

kuni scowls, and you don't even know why you bother. once he gets into this possesisve, irrate mood, nothing can abate him till he lets all the stress out. "liar," he growls, and reaches over and pulls the handle to lay the driver's seat flat.

you fall back with a hard thump, and kuni wastes no time in straddling you in your seat and grabbing you by the collar. "you filthy, fucking liar. how dare you play around with me, your husband, huh? what the hell were you gonna do with them, anyway?! eat dinner, then what? let them fuck that slutty mouth of yours till you go stupid?" he sneers "i know how good you look doing that. i bet everyyy guy and his wife in your office is itching to get a taste of you."

oh. ohhhh. oh gosh, car play? your heart is beating a thousand miles per second, and your blush deepends as kuni's other hand digs into your torso painfully. oh archons. kuni mistakes the blush on your cheeks for something else, and his eyes become positively stormy.

"filthy bitch," he spits, digging even deeper until he draws blood. you whimper in arousal as you feel the familiar warm trickle from your torso. "what, you get off to fantasizing about your whole office fucking you?" you try to shake your head, telling him that it's him making you like this and no one else, but he swoops in to steal a kiss before you can say anything.

it's nothing like the sweet kisses you steal from him when you walk out the front door. it's feral, animalistic. he's biting on your lips till he draws blood and sucking on your tongue until your brain goes numb from the tingling. he lets out a haughty smirk as he pulls away, the trickle of drool connecting your lips till it breaks.

"thaat's better," he sighs, slumping back and getting a good look at your blissed out face. "just a little kiss and you're all fucked out for me just like this.

"just like how it should be."

#yandere genshin impact #genshin impact #yandere x reader #yandere genshin impact x reader #yandere genshin #yandere scaramouche #yester.writes #yester.au — househusbands 💍

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cookiescribble · 10 months

Text

Just a Little Chilly (Dick Grayson x Male!Reader)

A/N: Hello there! This is not only the very first published fic on this blog, but also my first x reader fic so please be nice <3 Also, I used Brenton Thwaites's Nightwing as a reference but this version of Dick Grayson is mainly written with my own masterpiece of headcanons in mind. Enjoy! <3

-Mod Ghost

~~~

I was reading in the library when I heard the telltale signs of Dick coming home from patrol,

The entrance to the cave opening, the sighing, the shivering—

wait a minute.

I stood up from the corner where I'd been for the past few hours while my boyfriend was out, nearly passing Tim and Jason playing chess. I guess this was one of the days they were getting along with each other. I looked between the two of them, as if they had the answer.

“Hey, do you guys hear that?”

Both of them turned to look at me, a bewildered expression on each of their faces.

“Huh??” Tim was the first to actually speak, staring up at me like I had three heads.

"Hear what?" Jason happened to speak up at the same time, which made them stare at each other as if they were wondering when they became the twins from The Shining.

I sighed softly, they might have been too focused on beating each other at the game to hear the racket. Or I might not have been as focused on my book as I thought.

“Nothing, I’m gonna go find Dick. Let me know who wins.” I ruffle Tim’s hair then run off through the study and the living room to catch Dick at the bottom of the stairs.

“Dickie!” I called, running up to him and grabbing his arm to get him to turn around. He stopped shuffling along and turned to look at me, trembling and wet with his hair plastered to his forehead.

“What happened to you??” I ask softly as I push his hair back away from his face, cupping his cheeks which nearly startled him. As if he wasn’t fully aware that I was there.

“Huh?? Oh-I, I, uh, was f-fight-t-ing F-freeze and uh—i-it was obv-v-viously c-c-cold.” he stuttered and slurred through his words, his entire body quivering.

“Jeez, okay, c’mon, let’s get you warmed up.” I tutted as I led him up the stairs and down the hall to his room, helping him tug his suit off as soon as the door was closed completely. Immediately, I helped him into pajamas and a hoodie, rubbing along his arms to help his body heat rise.

“I’m not totally sold on the fact that it was just cold, my love. You’re soaking wet and your suit is, too. I’m not trying to scold you or anything, I just need to know how to take care of you.” I whispered to him, leaning up to kiss his forehead before sitting him down on his bed and grabbing a pair of my fuzzy socks to help him put them on.

“W-Well, while I was trying to um…to bring him in, I…I…” he trailed off, letting out a long yawn.

“Shit, okay, we’ll talk about it later. Let me see if I can find Alfred, he can make something warm for you.” I hissed under my breath, noticing the signs of hypothermia as I stood up from where I was kneeling. I hoped that we’d caught it early enough that he would be okay—

I stopped in my tracks when I felt his shaking hand wrap around my wrist, turning to look at him.

“Don’t…Don’t leave me…Please, Y/N…” He begged weakly, looking up at me with wide watery eyes.

“Alright, move over, I’m coming. Don’t worry, I’m right here.” I spoke quietly as I immediately started opening up the blanket just enough to shuffle underneath it with him then pulling him close to me. “Shh, it’s okay, c’mere.”

As soon as I was underneath the covers with him, he clung to me and pressed his head against my chest while I shushed him. Considering he was taller, he was a bit scrunched but I could tell that he wanted the comfort of being close to me. I gently combed my fingers through his hair, my other arm wrapped around his back to keep him close to me.

“I haven’t been that scared on a patrol in a long time. I couldn’t stop thinking that I was gonna die, Y/N. That I wouldn’t come back to you…”

“Hey,” I tilted his chin up, forcing him to make eye contact with me as I held him there, “You’re here, and I am not letting you out of my sight until I know that you’re okay. Got it?”

He nodded meekly, before I let him tuck his head back against me. I took out a thermometer that I kept in a makeshift first-aid kit under the bed and stuck it under his tongue, waiting until the little device let out a soft beep.

I slid it back out to take a look, seeing that it was 95 degrees fahrenheit. If there was any sign of hypothermia before, I was less concerned now seeing that he was warm enough to be considered normal for a human.

It was a long time before I heard him again, and even then, his voice was soft and he sounded like he was half asleep.

“There is a way that both of us could warm up pretty fast, if you wanted to try that, y’know…” Dick suggested, grinning from ear to ear as he peeked up at me.

I laughed and playfully nudged him, shaking my head as I rubbed my hand over his back under his shirt to help him continue to warm up.

“I’m not cold, Richard, but it seems like someone’s starting to feel better, huh?” I teased, unable to help the laughter that escaped. It comforted me to hear him making jokes, like he was slowly getting back to his normal self.

“Maybe. I guess we’ll just shelf that idea for later then, but don’t think I’m about to fuhgettaboutit,” Dick drawled the end of his sentence in a thicker accent than his usual bit of New Jersey twang and I nearly started cackling as Alfred knocked and came into the room.

“Is everything alright in here, Master Dick? Master Y/L/N?” He asked in a much more proper tone than the one Dick had just used, holding two mugs filled with something warm and sweet smelling.

“Yes, Alfred, thank you. What’s in these?” I answered before Dick could speak up, taking the Blüdhaven mug with the bisexual flag on it that I assumed was my partner’s so I could hand it over to him before taking the other one.

“For Master Dick, I have made Egyptian Chamomile and for you, I have made English Breakfast. Made to your taste, of course.” Alfred explained, watching Dick start to drink his. “I will leave you two alone now, however, Master Bruce has requested my help in the Bat Cave. I trust that Master Dick is going to be in good hands?” Him and I made eye contact over Dick’s head as I nodded, giving Alfred a smile as he started to leave.

“Thank you very much, Al.”

“You’re welcome, sir.” Was the last thing he said before he closed the door again, which made me turn my attention back to the man currently sitting on top of me.

It looked like he was going to fall asleep in his mug, his slow sips and half opened eyes giving him away.

I chuckled and kissed the top of his head, carefully taking the mug from him without spilling what was left of his tea so I could set it aside and laying back on the bed so he could be more comfortable but keeping him in the blanket burrito with me.

As he slowly drifted off, he let his back relax to lay a bit more comfortably. “Goodnight, Dickie.” I whispered up to him, kissing just under his chin. Within 10 minutes, he was out like a light with his head on the pillow just above mine as he finally fell into a deep state of sleep.

#dick grayson #dick grayson x reader #dick grayson x male reader #batfamily #batfam #alfred pennyworth #jason todd #tim drake #fanfiction #dc comics #brenton thwaites #dc universe #dc titans #dc fanfic #also i looked up a floor plan of wayne manor just for this #i'm so normal about him #anyway enjoy #mod ghost #ghosty

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jamdoughnutmagician · 6 months

Text

New Ink

Tattoo Artists!Eddie x Reader (Fluff)

Getting your first tattoo should be a nervy experience, but having a cute tattoo artist to hold your hand through it, then surely things aren't all bad? (sorry I suck at summaries)

Also, let it be known that the authour doesn't have any tattoos, nor does she know anything about what it's like to get a tattoo.

*actually update, the author now does have a tattoo 😛*

Word count:1,680

Masterlist Eddie Munson Masterlist

You pushed yourself through the door of the tattoo parlour, and began to make your way towards the front counter where a boy with hazel brown eyes, a shaggy mess of brown hair and a sleeve of various different colourful tattoos greeted you.

"Hi there, I’m Steve and welcome to Hellfire Tattoo Parlour, what can I help you with today?" The boy smiles brightly.

"Um, well, I'd been considering getting a tattoo for a while, and I was wondering if maybe you have any available slots?" You ask, slightly nervously.

"Is this your first time getting a tattoo?" He nods, looking up at you

"Is it that obvious?" You chuckle.

The boy flips through his register book for a moment, before turning to look back up at you.

"Well, first of all I would have to book you in for a consultation with one of our artists, you know, to talk about what you want and what not, and since it’s your first time getting a tattoo we’ll be able to talk you through what goes on.” he explains.

You nod, as you listen to what Steve has to tell you.

“We’ve got a space for a consultation in a week's time? How does 11:30 sound to you?”

“That sounds great, thank you!” you smile.

“Perfect! I’ll just schedule you in here.” Steve nods, turning to write down your name and contact details in his appointment book. “Let me also just say, that if you have any picture references, or pictures you want to bring in to help us get a feel for what sort of design you would like, then that would be helpful.”

“Oh okay! Thanks!”

“Alright then, that’s you all booked in for a consultation next week! We’ll see you then.” Steve tells you with a friendly smile

You thank him once more before leaving the tattoo parlour with a pep in your step, happy that you’d finally bit the bullet and made the first steps to actually getting the tattoo.

“Hey Harrington, who was that girl?” Eddie says as he casually strolls up to the front counter. “She was kinda cute, don’t ‘ya think?”

“That was a new client, she’s booked in for a consultation next week, with you no less, so if you could keep it in your pants until after everythings all sorted that would be great, Munson.”

A heated flush crept up from Eddie’s chest and bloomed over his cheeks in a scarlet blush. Busted.

He swallowed down his embarrassment and promised Steve to be on his best behaviour next week.

Sure enough your appointment rolled around and you found yourself sitting on the small couch with your artist, Eddie. He was tall, dark, and far too handsome for his own good. His hair is tied back in a loose, messy bun that rests at the nape of his neck, and his intricate gathering of smaller tattoos that make up one larger sleeve piece sprawl from underneath the sleeve of his Metallica t-shirt. However it’s not that draws you into him. It’s when you look past his septum pierced, freckled nose, that his big chocolate brown eyes draw you in. The way they sparkle with a honeyed glow under the studio lights of the tattoo parlour.

“So what sort of tattoo did you have in mind?”

“Well, you know Lord of The Rings?” you start cautiously.

Eddie nodded, it was one of his favourite books, and when the films had come out, they too had become fast and firm favourites of his.

“I really wanted Arwen’s evenstar.” You explain. “And I was thinking of having it by here” you continue running your hand against the side of your ribs.

“So, Harrington was telling me that this is your first tattoo?”

You nod as he continues to speak.

“Well let me just tell you that the ribs can be a particularly sensitive place for a tattoo, I should know. I’ve got a sword right here" he says pointing to the right side of his torso "..And that hurt like a bitch." he chuckles.

“Well I was kind of hoping to have in a discreet place, besides I’m a tough girl, I can handle a little pain.” you tell him confidently.

“Well it sounds like you know what you want, how about you give me some time to put together a design for you, and you can come back later on to see if you like it or if there’s anything we can tweak and then we can go from there?” he proposes.

“I like the sound of that!”

“Great! If you swing back at around 2:00, then I should have a sketch for you to review.”

“Okay! Thank you so much!” you say standing up and offering your hand up for him to shake. “2:00 it is.”

He gladly takes your hand, giving it a friendly shake.

“I’ll see you then." And with that he bids you goodbye, and watches as you make your way out of the shop.

He waits until you're completely out of sight before huffing out a breath.

"She's so cute. I'm fucked." he sighs.

"Yes. Yes you are." Steve laughs, clapping a hand on Eddie's back. “Now shouldn’t you be getting back to work?”

Eddie is just putting the finishing touches on his sketches of your tattoo design when you come back into the shop.

He welcomes you to sit on the couch in the studio so he can show you his work.

"So here's the design I had sketched out, let me know what you think of it."

"It's perfect!" You beam brightly.

"Really? Because I did have a few other sketches done if you wanted to see?" He offers.

"No, no, this one's perfect! It's exactly as I had imagined in my head!" You tell him.

"Well, thank you, I'm kind of a Tolkien fan myself, and those films are very dear to me, so I should know what the Evenstar looks like."

Not only was he cute, but you had a shared interest, and that just made him all the cuter in your eyes.

"I've got no other clients for today, if you're up for it I could do it for you now?"

You nod excitedly, eager to have your very first tattoo.

"Thank you! That sounds great!" You tell him with a smile.

"Awesome! I'll just get everything I need set up and I'll come get you in a bit, okay?"

Eddie has you lie down on the padded table in his tattoo studio, the leather of the dark cushions squeaking as you adjust yourself to be comfortable.

“Can you just roll your shirt up for me, please” he asks with a smile as he snaps on a pair of disposable gloves.

You roll up the hem of your shirt to expose your ribs on the side where you want your tattoo.

“..and your um-your bra too please..” he stutters out, fighting against the blush rising to his cheeks.

Way to keep it professional, Munson.

You pull the band of your bra out of the way, allowing him to lay down a tracing outline of his design on your skin.

“If you need to take a break anytime, just let me know alright, this is gonna suck for a short while, but it’ll look so good in the end I promise. You’re in very safe hands.”

The tattoo machine whirs into life, as he reaches for the gun and begins to trace the stencilled outline on your ribs.

It hurts. It feels like a thousand tiny knives stabbing you repeatedly, but you’d put on a brave front after being very bold about your high pain tolerance.

“You’re doing really well, y’know. If I’m being honest I cried like a wimp when I got my first tattoo” he jokes about himself as he catches you grimacing when his needle runs over a particularly sensitive spot.

You take a few shallow breaths as he continues with his work, pausing every once and a while to wipe your skin and to give you a small break.

He continues his work once more, adding the finishing touches to his design until it’s complete.

“Alright, that’s you all inked up! There’s a mirror over there for you to go check it out.” he tells you, peeling off his gloves.

You get up off the table and make your way over to the full length mirror to see your new tattoo in all its glory.

“Oh I love it!! It’s so good!! You did such a good job on it! Thank you so much!!” you praise him brightly.

“Well thank you, it’s nice to know my art is appreciated so highly.” he smiles back at you. “Now let’s get you sorted out and wrapped up.”

Eddie wrapped up your tattoo in a thin layer of plastic wrap and talked you through the proper after-care etiquette for looking after your tattoo.

You hand him over the money to pay for your tattoo, with a smile.

“Thank you so much, again. If I ever decide I want another tattoo I’ll definitely be coming back here and asking for you.”

“Well it’s always good to see off another pleased customer, I’d be more than happy to tattoo you again if you want, tough girl.” he chuckles, throwing an adorably cheeky, boy-ish grin your way.

“How about I give you my number, and maybe we can discuss my next tattoo over drinks? Say.. maybe this Friday at 7.00?” you offer up hopefully, desperately wishing that you hadn’t read this wrong. “There’s a great bar in town that does a great Old fashioned.”

He flushes with a pink blush as you grab a sharpie from the pen pot on the desk and write your number on his other forearm that isn’t covered by a sleeve of ink.

“Sure. Friday. 7pm.” he nods “It’s a date, tough girl.”

You leave Hellfire tattoo parlour with some new ink, and a pep in your step at having secured a date with the cute tattoo artist.

@penguinsandpotterheads @itsfreakingbats @xxhellfirebunnyxx @munsonology @ali-r3n

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x reader fluff #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x female reader fluff #tattoo artist!eddie

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 months

Note

hey hey hey I have had a hell of a day (Actually Hell) because I did too many fun things (a problem apparently) and then also we put up the christmas tree leading to the inevitable christmas tree installation arguments (they pop up every year like clockwork!)

anyway i have been overstimulated and stressed (just want to emphasize that there is NO pressure here whatsoever! id like to avoid any semblance of that actually and I know you're already working on 12 days so take your time) and it would be very cathartic to see chris dealing with similar issues (the Wonderful guy. we are pretty similar.) thanks a lot for reading this, even if you don't write anything !

Sorry this took so long, Anon! I swear I've been trying to get this written for literally almost two months now

CW: Some references to Chris's past, overstimulation, anxiety

"Hey, where did Chris go?" Laken blinks and looks around, but the living room of the house they rent - filled with laughing, happy people - shows no sign of Chris's telltale lavender hair with its new-penny copper roots.

One of Brit's friends just shrugs at them and gestures, vaguely, in the direction of the kitchen. "Dunno. He wandered off a while ago, maybe that way?"

"Oh, okay. Huh." Laken steps back, the circle of laughing people closing up tight as soon as they do. Their dark eyes scan the room, but there's no sign of him.

He'd been doing great - all but holding court, one of the most popular people at the party. He's sort of famous, since the Olympics, and people had been peppering him with questions and compliments, crowding around wanting nothing more than to be friends with the ex-pet who stood up to the bad guys on live TV. They'd seen him dancing, too, the music loud enough to nearly make the walls shake. The easy, unselfconscious dancing they loved in him the most.

He'd seemed to be enjoying himself, at the time, but...

Where has he gone?

They weave around people, stopping to pick up an ornament that has fallen off the tree. The scent of pine is subtle and ever-present, and they carefully work the ornament's little loop back over a branch, ruefully watching a couple of pine needles come loose and drift down. The damn thing is already starting to turn a little brown around its edges, thanks to Laken's roommate having insisted on buying it literally the day before Thanksgiving.

Laken doesn't even celebrate Christmas, not since they stopped going to Mass on Christmas Eve years and years ago. Still, in a house they rent with three others, they're the only one who doesn't at least pay lip service to the holiday.

And even if they don't give a fuck about Christmas, they do like having an excuse to throw a party.

The tinsel wrapped in spirals around, over, and below the ornaments glitters in the light, and the look makes them think of Chris, and how his eyes have always looked just the same, to them, when they're out at night and the moon hits the green of his irises just right.

Their search leads them to Ben, contentedly sitting on the couch, a drink in one hand and his phone in the other, quietly reading something there while the party is in full swing around him. He glances up and then instinctively, immediately, uses a finger to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "Hey, Laken. What's up?"

"Is Akio not coming tonight?"

"Oh... no." Ben blushes - it's adorable, and Laken can't help the smile playing around their lips. "He's got some kind of meeting with the gymnastics team, or his coaches? Or... something like that. He said sorry, though."

"Nah, no problem. But, hey, so. Uh, have you seen Chris, like within the last ten minutes or so??"

Someone puts Christmas music on and Laken shudders as they hear that damn 80s pop song start up again. If they have to hear that fucking song one more time...

"Nope. Not in a while." Ben shrugs, taking a drink. Whatever he has in that cup is pinkish-red and probably far more alcoholic than it tastes. Laken's roommate had insisted on a signature cocktail. "You could check outside? Sometimes when there's a lot of people, to Chris it's... too much."

Laken nods, still scanning the crowd, but their stomach knots a little with the first hit of real anxiety. Ben is right, Chris can get overwhelmed by too much noise and movement, but also he's been drinking tonight - they saw the same red punch in a cup in his hands earlier - and he has a tendency to get... hazy, when he drinks. Flirty in ways that aren't natural to him. Willing to let people hug him that he doesn't like, unable to bring himself to stop them. Sometimes his stammer smooths out, which makes people who don't know him feel more comfortable and people who do know him nervous. He starts tipping his head to the side in a way that makes the sweep of his growing-out hair hide the scar on his forehead, biting his lower lip when he smiles. It makes Laken feel a little sick to see it happen and realize Chris doesn't even notice when he's doing it.

The last thing they need is to have to come up with an explanation for Chris losing track of himself again, or why he's eating olives off the charcuterie board Brit brought knowing damn well he'll just go to the bathroom and get sick all over the place again, or... fuck, what if somebody hits on him and he's too drunk to stop it?

That hasn't happened since college, but...

They pull their phone out, uneasily checking for a text, but there's nothing. If he went outside, he'd text, right? He does, he always does. Texts can be easier and Chris is always a little nervous about being outside alone.

He insisted on coming tonight, said he was feeling good lately, but-... what if-...

They flinch when fingers touch their arm, only to see Ben must have stood up when they weren't looking. He slips his own phone into his jacket pocket and looks Laken over more closely. "Hey. It's okay, he's probably fine. You know he gets weird when parties are really going. It's like a light switch, enough to too much, I totally get it. It's why I'm on the couch fucking around on Kindle instead of, you know... talking to people." Ben says it like talking to people is literal hell, and... okay, Laken can see how that might be the case. "He probably just needed to get away from it and wandered off."

"Uh, yeah. I know." Laken rubs at the back of their neck, fingers moving through the soft, shorn undercut beneath their longer black waves. "I'm sure that's it. Just... you know, sometimes he... when he gets nervous..."

"I got you." They adore Ben, sometimes, for how often they don't have to finish the sentences they don't want to say. He knows what words haven't yet spilled, unwilling. Sometimes he acts like he belongs to us, not like he loves us. Sometimes I can't trust him to find his way back on his own. Sometimes I feel like Jake, and I hate feeling like Jake.

Words die in their throat.

Ben squeezes their arm, gently. "Let's split up and search around. I'll go outside, you go around the house, okay? We verify how he is, then whichever one finds him tells the other. Sound good?" Ben smiles, and Laken relaxes a little, finding a smile for him in return.

"Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, Ben."

"No problem." Ben has always understood Chris, thanks to his little brother being similar in some ways. He understands Laken's worry, too, because better than anyone else here - he knows how Chris sometimes gets lost in his past, especially if he's drinking, worse the maybe twice Laken's ever seen him try an edible or a pill.

What if he got drunk and someone offered him something and he took it? Drunk Chris sometimes isn't a Chris who can easily turn down anything he's offered.

This party was a stupid idea.

Laken takes a deep breath and squares their shoulders.

Chris is not a child.

He is a goddamn grown man and Laken is not his keeper. They're not his parent and they're not a babysitter. They're definitely not his fucking... owner or whatever the bastards that hurt him would have called it. They're his partner. He can handle himself, better than they could if they'd lived his life, and they need to trust him to either know his limits and to get away if he can't say no, or to come to them if he wants to ask for help. Otherwise, they're not any better than the bullshit he's been buried in for longer than he's known them.

Ben goes to check outside, slipping silently out the sliding door onto the back porch where a small crowd has congregated in a cloud of skunky smoke, while Laken heads upstairs, peeking their head in to room after room with no sign of him anywhere. They see some movement under a pile of coats, but that's... definitely not Chris, based on the very female voices who yell at them to give them some fucking privacy, please.

"Sorry, Brit," Laken calls, closing the door tightly. "And, um, Leigh. Just looking for Chris-"

"Well, he isn't in here or we'd have kicked him out already," Brit says, cranky but without any real anger in her voice. Laken doesn't recognize the redhead whose eyes pop up from beneath the pile of coats next to her. "Check a different room."

"Yeah, I will. Uh... keep having fun, I guess-"

"That's the plan! Now leave, please!"

The door latches as they close it, and they exhale. There's one room left, at the end of the hall, and they can hear a familiar murmuring from behind the door when they press their ear up against it.

Laken knocks, rapping gently with their knuckles, and turns the knob when they hear no answer - but no demand to stay out either. The murmuring goes silent. They sigh, and the door swings open, light cutting across the carpet until it reveals their wayward boyfriend.

No one has claimed this bedroom yet, so it's bare and empty except for a couple unpacked cardboard boxes, Brit's exercise bike by the window, a couple of her yoga mats, a laundry basket with a few folded towels, and a bare mattress the last housemate had left behind on the floor when they moved out.

Laken's lips press together, eyes scanning the room. Chris's phone is on the mattress, along with an empty beer bottle, but Chris isn't. "Chris? Cariño?"

A muffled rustling makes them jump, heart in their throat, and then they realize the sound came from the closet, where the folding doors are closed. Laken pulls them open to reveal Chris curled up, knees nearly to his chin, an open bottle clutched in one hand, his chewy necklace in the other. He'd chosen the bat one tonight, and his hand is closed around it in such a tight fist Laken can tell his knuckles are white even in the dark.

Chris doesn't look at them. He's swaying, rocking forward and back, his eyes focused on something far, far away from them. There's red lines on his left wrist, where he's dug his nails in, scratching not quite deep enough to draw blood, but close. Laken takes a deep breath, shifting into a crouch.

"Talk to me, Chris."

"No." The answer is flat, and they watch his thumb rub over the little nub of the silicone bat's nose, the points of its tiny ears. "No, no, no. No."

At least he's saying it out loud.

That alone makes the knot of anxiety in their chest start to loosen. If he can say no, he isn't gone, maybe just... standing a little farther back, inside his own head, than the surface.

"Okay. Okay, that's fine. No talking, that's fine. Are you okay, baby?" Laken keeps their voice just above a whisper and lays their hand on the wood trim that frames this shitty excuse for a closet, the floor creaking under them. "You... kind of vanished on me, there."

Chris's eyes flick to them and then away again. "Loud," He manages, and he sounds like he's forcing the word out between gritted teeth. Maybe he is. "Too, too, too... too loud. Too much, too... many."

"I guess Ben called it." Laken sighs, pulling out their phone and sending Ben a quick text that they found Chris and everything's fine. they get a thumbs-up in reply almost immediately. Ben must have been as anxious as they are, if he was just watching for their text to come in. "Do you want me to call Jake to come get you, or..."

"No!" He snaps it, and Laken tries not to wince. He's just struggling with the noise of the party, they tell themself, he's not actually angry. Chris almost never gets angry, and even then it's only at himself. Which... is worse, somehow. "No. Just... Quiet, it's... it's it's quiet."

"Right. Do you want me to stay with you? Be quiet with you?"

He shakes his head, but he doesn't say anything else. His mouth moves, but no further sounds come out.

"Chris, did..." They want to ask, did someone say something to you? Sometimes people said things, referenced pets or something in a way that set him off. But even if someone had... he probably wouldn't tell them, at least not now, not when every word seemed to have to filter through layer after layer of self-protection in his mind. "Never mind. Is there anything I can do for you? Water, or..."

He shakes his head. "No. Just. Um. Quiet... quiet, now. Please?"

"Yeah." Laken leans over and presses a kiss to his hair. He tips his head against their lips and they exhale in relief. "I love you, Chris. Come back if you can, but if you can't, that's okay, too. Just don't hurt yourself, okay? Things should start winding down in a couple hours." They take the little plastic bat and push it against the hand that's still scratching at his shoulder, until he takes hold of it again, pressing it against his mouth and running it back and forth, back and forth.

Chris is quiet, but as they open the door to head back into the hallway, they hear a quiet, "Love, love you," from Chris, barely audible.

They smile as they close the door. Down the hall, the sounds of the party hit them like a brick, beckoning them back to the noise and the cheer and the awful fucking Christmas music still blaring at top volume. Someone yells something out and the whole damn crowd cheers, making Laken wince at it feels nearly deafening.

Maybe Chris has the right idea.

@finder-of-rings @endless-whump @arlin-always-writing @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @whumpyourdamnpears @cubeswhump @burtlederp @whump-tr0pes @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @outofangband @hackles-up @grizzlie70 @mylifeisonthebookshelf @keeper-of-all-the-random-things

#whump #chris the strawberry blond romantic #recovery whump #recovering whumpee #overstimulation tw #autistic whumpee #referenced alcohol use #laken mamani #referenced dubcon #angst #fluff #comf #I guess this is the one that wins out first of the drafts?#we'll see if kauri or vince wins out next

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frostycatblr-fandom-files · 23 days

Text

Of Honeysuckle and Haiku [Tech x Fem!Reader]

Warnings and Information: This is my submission for an event hosted by the wonderful @cloneficgiftexchange, written for @apocalyp-tech-a. I hope you enjoy my first Tech x Reader! 2nd Person POV, undescribed Fem!Reader who works as an analyst/researcher for the GAR. Minor AU changes (no missing and/or dead Clones here (but Echo is still part of CF99)!). Prompt sentence/s will be orange to keep in line with the color scheme of the graphics. Tech has a “secret” crush on Reader that she knows about. Flirting is stored in the info-dumping/poetry. Star Wars and real-world swearing is as naughty as it gets. Some Mando’a. Brief references and allusions to injury and other canon-typical violence, and a small flashback where Reader’s senior colleagues are (implied to be) behaving like jerks to Tech, but nothing explicit. Use of stylistic and narrative italics. Fictional flowers.

Prompt: Can't we ever go to a nice place? | Oh, that's what that button does.

Word-count: 8,270

Another Primeday, another pile of notes in your locker.

That's how the weeks always started.

You worked closely with the Grand Army of the Republic as something of an analyst and unofficial bookkeeper, going on for two years now. Colleagues and work-friends would slip scraps of flimsiplast in the ventilation grooves of your locker as a way of non-electronic communication.

The old fashioned way, older department heads joked.

The flimsi stacks contained a mishmash of written comms. Inside jokes. Recipe trades. Reminders to get CT-6922’s helmet serviced for the video feed you needed for Jais in the Reverse-Engineering Department if they're ever going to find out how that new Separatist spider droid worked.

And a poem, written in spidery Aurebesh lettering from your “secret admirer”. Always the top of the pile that collected at the bottom of your locker.

You knew full well who it was after a while, piecing together all the clues he'd strung along for you. Game recognizes game, as they say. It took cracking a complicated cipher in order to-

Nah, who are you kidding?

You got impatient and asked Jais in R.E.D. to help you with scrubbing the security footage for the last person to stop by your locker one morning, finding a haiku waiting for you. A haiku regarding subject matter you had just been discussing with a colleague the other day who had a grueling day of carefully dissecting a Flame Beetle from Kashyyyk ahead of them, and you were slated to assist them.

The shimmering shell That conceals a beetle’s wing Is called elytra - I wish I was a beetle

Mild alarm that someone was messing with you turned to curiosity soon after; it had been Tech of Clone Force 99 who dropped the poem into your locker some weeks ago.

He'd been helping the analysts while he got his leg in working order, having broken both the tibia and fibula of his left leg in a skirmish. (That's about as much as you knew at the time.) Tech would be returning to fieldwork sooner than later; between check-ups and some physical therapy work, the genius and navigator of CF99 kept himself busy here, so he would still feel useful to the GAR while recovering.

Of all the analysts Tech assisted, you seemed to be his favorite given that you actually liked letting him help you, and didn't saddle him with a dull day of deskwork like some of the senior analysts who wanted him out of their hair.

You felt it was incredibly unfair to Tech, but there was nothing you could say to change their minds. You'd tried.

Instead of reading this week's new stack of flimsi notes from your weekend off at your locker, you decide you'll read them at your desk for a change. The smell of Tech’s typical caf blend is particularly inviting this morning. It’s been raining since last week, this morning the hardest yet. Thank the Maker you had a rain repeller in proper working order for the walk to the research center from the speeder cabs.

“Good morning, Tech.”

Sitting down, from around the other side of the desk, you can see he's in a walking boot now. An improvement from when you last saw him just two short days ago.

“Hey, that's a good sign! Think you'll be back with the rest of the Bad Batch soon?”

You take no offense when his eyes do not lift from the screen of his datapad. “Good morning. I suppose, yes…” He doesn't sound entirely enthusiastic like one might've expected, but you have enough of a grasp on his mannerisms by now to know that Tech is eager to return to his brothers in due time.

You've met the rest of his squad on a handful of occasions as they've come to check on him, making sure he's not missing all the action by keeping him up to speed on their exploits.

Smiling, you slide a cup of caf you believe to be Tech’s closer to him as you leaf through the notes from your locker.

“Don't let your caf get cold.”

The datapad drops away. “That is for you,” he explains, “if you desire to try it, that is. I recalled you expressing interest in the last blend of caf I brought in, saying that it smelled good last Taungsday.”

You blink, surprised he remembered those details. Well, not that surprised; you understood Tech had a remarkable memory that allowed him to recall obscure details. It’s saved you from a few headaches, like that same Taungsday when a visiting representative from Glee Anslem insisted upon having the innocuous bouquet of Nabooian Honeysuckles sent off for allergen testing. Whatever it was that provoked the Nautolan’s (thankfully minor) allergic reaction, it was not the flowers, though they were refused return.

Shame… the delicate white, orange and cream blossoms were such a thoughtful gift from Senator Amidala to the visiting representative and now they look so out of place on your desk, still in the elaborate ceramic vase they came in. You’re going to need to find a way to return it to Ms. Amidala once the flowers have shriveled and lost all their silky petals.

Thanking Tech for the thoughtfulness behind brewing you a cup of caf, you give it a careful taste and find the flavor far more robust than the instant mix the breakroom keeps on hand while you read the first of the notes. (Looked to be a heads-up that a commando had some grisly footage to be analyzed because Trandoshan pirates were involved and the credits were on Delta Squad being responsible.)

“Mmm… That’s nice. Thank you again, Tech.”

“You are welcome.” he replies, half-ducking his head back down into the datapad, though his eyes remain on you.

Framed by the yellow lenses of the black-strapped goggles he wears, there is an observative nature to those brown eyes. The phenotypic eye color for all Clones is brown, he explained to you once. Though yes, there were a few aberrations in physical traits among his brothers in the GAR, just not quite to the same scale as the experimental squadron that Echo from the 501st Legion (once thought to be dead) joined not long ago. Echo still keeps in contact with the 501st, Captain Rex and a brother named Fives the closest of all. You figure what he must have been reading off his tablet before he came in this morning were more messages from his brothers.

Setting aside notes as you read them, you’re careful to keep the scrap of poetry for last as always. Wonder what it’ll be today. A sonnet? Free-verse? Acrostic or maybe a limerick? Another haiku? Tech seemed to love leaving you haikus most of all.

Still finding his eyes upon you, you lay aside the last note about keeping an eye out for a missing label-maker and delicately clear your throat. “Yes, Tech?” You’re careful to offer him a friendly smile, a quiet measure of assurance that you’re not annoyed or disturbed by his watchfulness.

“Senator Amidala sent a letter of apology to the center regarding the honeysuckles and vase,” he begins, explaining the letter was forwarded to everyone who worked in the analysis department, “and since she feels terrible about the situation inadvertently caused for both her guest and the center, she suggested someone is welcome to keep both, if they wish.”

“Well that’s very kind of the senator.” you reply, giving the flowers on your desk a look of consideration, one that prompts a strange expression out of the genius you generously share your desk with.

You ask what the matter is with another swig of caf.

“I hope you don’t mind too terribly that I… accepted on your behalf.” Tech confesses, aware he’s more than likely crossed a line by doing so. You and Tech do not know each other all that well, but he’s strung together enough clues to have some idea of what you like. He’s noticed what you give the most attention to, and you had secretly been admiring the Nabooian bouquet for some time on Taungsday…

Cautiously, Tech adds, “You could always give them to a friend.”

Casting a third glance over the tri-colored flowers, Tech is assured that won’t be necessary, and he’d been correct in his assessment all along. “I don’t mind at all; thanks for saving me the trouble. I was secretly hoping to take these home, I’ve been obsessed with Naboo for a while now…” you admit, dropping your voice into a near-conspiratorial whisper.

There was an often sunny windowsill back home with plenty of space for the vase and flowers that would make for the perfect spot to show both off. Maybe it’d inspire you to finally take that trip to Naboo you always wanted. Naboo sounded like a nice place, nestled in the Chrommell system of the Outer Rim Territories.

Idyllic, picturesque, it was often described.

All this analyst-work had you in a position to see the glorious, the gory, and everything in-between in the adventures of the Grand Army day in and day out. Compiling reports near and far was beginning to instill a sense of longing for adventure in you; nothing grand was necessary, just something different. Something beyond the walls of the GAR research center here among the Core Worlds.

I’ll be satisfied with a taste of adventure. Just one bite. Just one, I promise.

The yellow-lensed goggles are adjusted. “What fascinates you so much about Naboo?” Tech asks, curiosity burning at him.

“Oh… I dunno,” you say with a shrug, smiling, “it’s hard to put it all into words.” And you wouldn’t exactly have the time, either, with your shift due to start soon. While you’ve still got the time, you should finish as much of the caf as you can before it grows cold, and finally get around to this new poem Tech’s left for you. Maybe he can already guess that you know these are from him, but a part of you finds it fun in some way to pretend you don’t.

Fixing an errant strand of hair back in place, you unfold the note and read. Another haiku, today, lamenting the dreary weather.

To simpler splendors Like summer's gentle breezes and honey most sweet - When will the rain stop?

You find it curious and strange - this possible complaint - given you know Clones come from the storm-cloaked world of Kamino. Surely this weather feels just like home for him; familiar, maybe even comforting. But maybe it’s not his complaint, it could have been your own off-handed remark from some time ago that he’s echoing back to you now.

Tech’s level of observation was truly incredible, sometimes. You already felt yourself missing his knowledgeable presence once he was healed up and returned to the Bad Batch. That wouldn’t happen until he was rid of the walking boot and cleared for active duty, which was mildly comforting to you, selfishly speaking. Logically you know this arrangement is temporary, and you will not always have your willing assistant.

A willing assistant who has given his attention to closing off communications with Wrecker, from the sound of things as CF99’s genius reads the messages under his breath. Tech is trying very hard to appear like he’s not taken notice that you’ve read his latest haiku.

You set the poetry aside along with the other locker notes, and pick up your clipboard full of the day’s tasks. “Take your time, Tech.” you promise, chuckling warmly as he flashes the famous pointer finger in your direction, requesting just an extra moment. “I know Wrecker misses having his big brother around.”

Tech says nothing in response to your teasing quip, only offering an appreciative if distracted smile before he’s ready to help you with your tasks for the day.

On Primedays, the first item of business on the list is often the most nerve-wracking of all your assignments, today no exception.

“Dammit, I grabbed the wrong screwdriver… Would you mind handing me the… the, uh…?” Tech takes the incorrect screwdriver from your fingers and replaces it with what you need while you struggle to think of the name for the correct type, much to your relief. “Oh, thank you Tech. Will you need this back when I’m done?”

Tech nods, a silent promise it was no trouble. “I will not. I’m finished with what I needed it for. Feel free to use it as long as you need.” He does not need to remind you to go slowly.

Your first research assignment of the morning involves dismantled bombs, and the additional Clone tucked in one corner of the room clad in the bright orange of ordnance specialists serves as an eye-catching distraction rather than a precautionary measure. Nicknamed Reddy, this Clone trooper is only doing his job, of course; he’s supposed to be here as part of the protocol. This facility has gone one thousand and twenty-seven days without an explosive incident, which is a comforting number, but there is no room for complacency. In the unlikely event a bomb somehow reactivates, Red Wire is here to snuff it out for good.

(Or tell everyone to evacuate and seek shelter if he somehow can’t.)

Helmet clipped to his utility belt, Reddy is reading the printed report, bobbing his head in time to some jaunty tune he’s got stuck in his head. “Disarmed and partially dismantled by… CT-9903. That’s your squadmate Wrecker, right?”

“Correct.” Tech replies tersely, hoping not to prove himself distracting to you. He’s only standing as close as he is to give or take tools as you need them.

Reddy nods his head in approval of the work scattered over the examination table. “He did a good job. Definitely has the gentle touch needed for bomb disposal.” Yes… Wrecker certainly had steadier nerves than yourself right now. You would prefer not to have shaking hands, no matter how incapable this bomb is… should be… of going off.

“Reddy…”

He catches the warning. “Sorry, ma’am.”

You just need to pull off a particular durasteel plate, and take detailed pictures of a unique section of wiring to enter it into the GAR database of known bomb constructs and find close or exact matches. Then Reddy has the pleasure of disposing of the remnants for you. Fewer distractions while you remove notoriously fiddly screws, the better.

So why are your hands still shaking now that you should be able to focus again?

“... dammit…” You’ve worked yourself up about the unsteady nature of your hands now. Stress will only worsen it, prolonging the tremble. Setting the screwdriver aside is the best course of action until you can find your nerve.

Rational thoughts, you remind yourself, everyone has had this happen to them at one time or another.

“May I?” Tech offers, voice softer than you ever remember it being before now.

He is careful in offering to help without immediately trying to take over your work. Tech recognizes you are capable in all the various aspects of your job, and he does not wish to undermine or blow off your expertise. He understands from experience how that can be frustrating, even disrespectful.

And Tech aims to be very respectful of you. He's been very careful in how he's hinted his interest in you thus far. (Maybe too careful.) The haikus in your locker had been because he heard you liked poetry, and he proactively accepted the honeysuckles Senator Amidala offered for the trouble because he thought you might like them. Sharing his favorite blend of caf was a decision more premeditated than the other two.

You step to the side, accepting the offer.

“Thank you, Tech...” you say, gesturing to the tools in an unspoken measure of please, by all means. Tech takes position where you previously stood, and begins to work on the dismantled explosive. Long, dexterous fingers make the process of loosening and extracting the remaining screws look deceptively easy.

“You’ll want your datapad soon,” Tech suggests helpfully, soon down to just two more corner screws to remove.

“Oh, yes…!”

Scooping the tablet off of the examination table, you habitually skip your fingers across the reactive transparisteel and pull up the camera function, priming everything to capture the colorful chaos of wiring and circuitry inside once Tech has removed the panel. Once it is lifted out of the way, Tech side-steps to allow you in front of the bomb once more so that you can capture records for the GAR database.

However, the camera will not focus.

“Strange…” You tap the center of the screen, hoping perhaps the datapad will behave like your modern comlink and auto-focus, but it does not give you the result you hoped for. You chuckle somewhat bashfully. “Sorry, it’s… been a while since I’ve used this old datapad for taking pictures.”

“Press the red, center button on the top row twice.”

Taking the advice of the bespectacled Clone beside you, the image on the screen comes into crisp focus, not a detail lost. “Oh, that’s what that button does.” This tablet is an older generation, but the facility keeps it because it's sturdy and reliable. No sense in replacing perfectly good technology so long as it continues to work.

“Been using these tablets for ages and I never knew that. How'd you know that?” Reddy asks from the corner, safely voicing his curiosity now that the hard part is behind you. “Just real tech-savvy, I take it. That how you get your name?”

Tech smiles knowingly. “Learning the ins and outs of each machine I use is crucial to my effectiveness in service of the Republic. Much in the same way you're here to assist the researchers, analysts and reverse engineers in bomb identification, in some cases.” The second question goes unanswered, you notice, but Reddy seems to let it go.

“Hah, can't argue with that comparison!” he says agreeably, his smile sunny. You’ve always liked that about this particular member of the bomb squad; Red Wire has an optimistic disposition and general attitude despite the nerve-rattling nature of his job. He’s not terribly jaded or gruff like some of the other Clones on rotation at this facility.

Once you've collected all your necessary pictures, you are promised that he'll take it from here. “Good work as ever ma'am. I'll clean up while you get started on the search.”

“Thank you, I appreciate the help as always from both you and Tech.” you say, patting him on the shoulder before you follow after Tech, who’s already making his way back to your desk, neck craned over his datapad. Stepping past the blast doors to catch up to Tech, you breathe a sigh of relief while Red Wire begins the disposal process, the hardest task of the morning behind you.

“Glad that’s over,” you say, finally feeling your quickened pulse slowing at last, “Thank you for the help once again, Tech.” You’re certain he heard the first thank you, but extra gratitude never killed anyone.

Tech’s deliberate stride slows to match with yours. “It was no trouble. I thought you might want the help.” A polite smile breaks the veneer of the usual expression of thoughtfulness and concentration you’ve become accustomed to in the time Tech’s been here.

You’re very familiar with how he appears when he’s concentrated: the furrowed brow, his shoulders rolled forward, the subconscious setting and unsetting of his jaw as he mulls over a million thoughts. Wowing your colleagues with how he could extrapolate info from separate, complex datasets within multiple windows on the screen of his datapad without error.

The way his brown eyes, deep and dark, looked like honey when framed behind his goggles…

Sitting down at your desk where you fire up the database you’ll be working with, already you see the slight furrow of his brow as Tech takes his seat on the other side, trading messages with his squadmates while he elevates his leg to alleviate the pressure of the walking boot. Tech misses being out there in the field more and more with every passing day.

“Tell ‘em I said hi.” you request with a soft chuckle before allowing him to concentrate on keeping himself in the loop. You just have to hope his handsome face painted in deep concentration doesn’t prove too distracting for you as you cross-reference your wire samples. The squad leader of the Bad Batch, Sergeant Hunter, had teased Tech once a few weeks ago, when he dropped by with Echo, on the depths of Tech’s concentration. That’s when you’d truly taken notice of it for the first time.

Tech, utterly embroiled in some “little” project he’d created for himself here at the research center, was staying long after your scheduled hours, repeatedly promising that you really don’t have to stay here.

You turn another page in your holomag. “I’ll be fine staying here a little longer. I want to make sure none of the senior analysts bother you. Again.” It was a slow Zhellday afternoon you had no other plans for, and a couple of people a little further up the chain of command really had a bug up their ass about Tech’s presence here today in particular, continually complaining about an incident with his crutches.

Someone hadn’t been looking where they were going and bumped into the mobility aids propped against a wall, knocking them over this morning. Unfortunately, there had been a tray of glass instruments set aside nearby that did not survive the crutches’ sudden descent. The senior analysts, most of them much older than you, wanted him thrown out of the facility and have the agreement with the GAR that Tech would be here until his broken leg healed nullified.

“He’s got a broken leg! Is he supposed to just hobble around the lab without his crutches? It was an accident, but I’m starting to suspect you’re looking for excuses to get rid of him because you’re feeling threatened by his intellect!”

Clone Force 99’s second-in-command hums shortly in delayed response, a frown marring his otherwise concentrated expression. Tech adjusts his goggles as he pours over some reference. The man with partial skull iconography inked across his similarly tanned face next to Tech carefully nudges him with his elbow.

“Tech, this is when you’re supposed to tell the nice lady thank you.” Hunter warns him, teasingly of course. He’s gotten back from a long deployment, and rather than going to the nearest mess hall with Wrecker and Crosshair, he’s come to check up on Tech, finding that he’s still at the GAR research center. He’s too tired to give any kind of reprimand just for the sake of appearances.

“Especially after this morning… Don’t make me do the nat-born thing, vod.”

Tech sort of scoffs, the threat of referring to him by his CT number, like a misbehaving natural-born child hearing the use of their middle name, by his brother having little effect.

“No thanks necessary, honestly.” You turn the page to your holomag, skimming the article to see if it’s worth an in-depth read, then meet Hunter’s eye. “It was honestly a bit cathartic to have a go at those jerks.” Decrying them as jerks to the squad leader of the Bad Batch was putting it real mildly given your true thoughts of them right about now.

Echo gives you a knowing nod. The sergeant smirks, and this is what gets Tech to break his silence.

“Don’t, Hunter.”

“Glad you made a friend, Tech.” Hunter says it with complete sincerity, so far as you can tell. Leaning back in the borrowed lab chair, Hunter kicks his feet up for a moment on a corner of the desk to adjust some parts of his armor. “Wrecker might get jealous.”

“I think we all would.” Echo says with a kind chuckle.

“Plenty of me to go around,” you promised the three of them, “I love making friends with the GAR.”

A few hours later, now four items deep into your checklist for the day with the wire cross-referencing behind you, you lean back in your chair and stretch your arms above your head, feeling something pop with great satisfaction. “Mmm! That felt good. Hey, Tech?” He nods to show he hears you, at which point you continue. “I’m thinking of running home real quick during lunch to take the honeysuckles home so I’m not wrestling with those on top of everything else I’ll have to take with me tonight. You gonna be okay on your own for a bit?”

“I will be fine.” he assures you, sliding the clipboard from “your” side of the desk over to his. “I may need the password to your desk-mounted computer terminal, however.”

“It’s ‘naboofields’. All one word, no capitals, special characters or letters.”

You root around your desk for one of the seemingly innumerable sticky-flim pads you possess, scribbling down the password - just in case - as neatly as you can before removing the top flimsi-note and hand it over to him. Honeyed eyes blink once in mild surprise after he inspects your handwriting.

“Not very secure, I know.” you laugh bashfully, straightening a few sheafs of flimsiplast before gathering up the stack of locker notes to tuck them in your pocket. Busywork to avoid any kind of lecturing look. But when you meet his eyes for the moment before wondering how best to pick up the ceramic vase full of beautiful tri-colored honeysuckle, you find no disappointment. Only more curiosity.

“Have you ever been to Naboo?” Tech asks. He’s noticed this particular topic has been cropping up a lot between the idle doodles on flimsi scraps of the bulbous Shaak grazing through lush emerald fields and little reminders you’ve written to yourself scattered across your desk lately. Ticket prices. Best time of year to go. Popular festivals. Fashion. You were weaving a curious pattern.

Tech doesn’t do this very often, but he hazards a guess. Could you perhaps be… homesick?

“Were you born there?”

You shake your head. “I wasn’t born there, and I’ve never visited before. Naboo’s just some… silly dream of mine lately.”

“Why do you say ‘silly’?” The question is earnest and sincere, and Tech sits forward off the backrest of the lab chair, posture straightening out. “Has someone said something unkind about your desire to see Naboo?” He couldn’t imagine why someone would disparage this; many galactic citizens express some level of desire to visit this planet in the Chrommell sector at least once in their lifespan.

He’s assured there’s no one being unkind to you when you wave him off, sliding the vase across your desk carefully. “No one other than me, I guess. I dunno when I’d ever have a chance to go visit between the work I do for the GAR, plus being in the middle of the Clone Wars for stars’ sake…” You’re considering if it would be worth telling him about your developing case of wanderlust, your craving for a taste of adventure. (Just a taste… just a taste!)

What Tech was supposed to do with that revelation, you weren’t sure. Did you want his help planning this whimsical trip? Or did you just need to confide in him with this harmless little secret?

“Would it be impolite to presume you don’t have many vacation days accrued in order to enjoy a short holiday?” Tech assumes you’re well aware of labor laws the GAR has to comply with for civilian staffing, like yourself, but he has no means of knowing how much PTO you have stored up without rooting into the system.

“Karabast, I- I hadn’t even thought of…” Your thoughts trail off as you look out one of the rain-spattered panes of transparisteel and determine you need to stop by your locker to gather your weather wear and rain repeller. When was the last time you had some extended leave from work that wasn’t a sick day, anyways? “I have some PTO I’m owed, but I try to be smart and save it for emergencies… I, uh, think I have more than two week’s worth.” Truthfully it’s been some time you looked at the amount of PTO you’ve accrued. It very well could be less than you remember, or more than you imagine.

Tech makes a quiet murmur of agreement that saving the time off for emergencies is rather smart, shrugging after a stretch of clearly contemplative silence. “I was merely curious.” The statement makes it tempting to tease him in return, say something like aren’t you always? but he has something more to say before you work up the nerve, gesturing to the clipboard. “May I watch the helmet footage for you while you take the Nabooian Honeysuckles home?”

“I was warned it was grisly.” you caution him out of kindness, thinking back to one of the locker notes. “So, as long as you don’t mind or won’t be bothered, I suppose you can look at the footage for me… Credits are on it being sent from Delta Squad.”

Scrutinizing the datadisc, Tech finds RC-1207 etched into it. Commando Sev, he tells you, went missing on Kashyyyk for a month early in the war… (Thank the Maker, his pod brothers had been fortunate in finding him.) Sev has never spoken of the experience.

“This should prove to be fascinating, in some regard.” Tech speculates, slotting the disc into an external inspection device to set everything up to complete this in your absence. Goggles are adjusted every so slightly, changing the way they are seated on his face. “I’ll leave the notes for you on your desk by the time you return.” he promises.

You make sure you’ve gathered the last of your things, saying that you better get going now that everything’s agreed upon. Carefully cradling the vase in the crook of your arm, you arrange the bouquet slightly with your free hand to avoid bruising any of the velveteen petals as you carry it.

Turning on your heel, you head for your locker to collect your rain repeller. “Appreciate it, Tech, thank you. I’ll catch you later.”

“Watch out for the deeper puddles, don’t slip.” Tech calls after you.

He’s overheard many of your colleagues using this phrase the last couple of days to warn one another; the longer the rain’s gone on, the deeper the areas of rain retention have become since the water table is oversaturated. There has been no break in the weather, but the end is in sight.

‘When will the rain stop?’ Soon. Maybe even tomorrow.

Habitually, you call back that you’ll be careful and another farewell, flashing him a sunny smile as you head out the door for the speeder cabs, the honeysuckles in one hand, repeller in the other. You don’t expect to be gone long.

Taking the vase full of honeysuckle home is your highest priority, right along with making sure the flimsiplast scraps in your pocket remain dry. Flimsi, while conveniently reusable, was hair-thin, had a slight transparency to it, and dissolved in water. (Why some disposable gowns for med centers were made out of the acrylic material when it was kriffing semi-transparent you had yet to figure out.) If you were careful of the shifting winds before you got to a speeder cab, Tech’s poems would stay safe and dry in your pockets, joining the others in a box of precious keepsakes at home.

Maybe you could put them all in a scrapbook one day, able to read and admire them all at leisure, or whenever you miss having new haikus show up in your locker once Tech’s broken leg is fully healed and he rejoins his brothers. Tech’s been careful not to voice how much he’s come to miss his brothers - else he risks sounding ungrateful for the research center agreeing to let him assist there after much back and forth - but you know he’s getting somewhat impatient.

“If I had known a second BX droid was around the boulder, I wouldn’t have tried to kick the first over the precipice…”

“That’s how you broke your leg?”

“Had it broken for me when the commando droid grabbed me, more accurately. Better me than Echo…”

He’d return to his brothers in time with the whole of hyperspace at his fingertips. Hunter would get his second-in-command back. The Havoc Marauder will have both of her pilots and it won’t be Echo spending time alone in the cockpit. Wrecker and Crosshair will once again have their brother to parse through factitious scenarios and the complicated mathematics necessary to pull it off relating to their enhancements to help one another in staving off hyperspace hypnosis.

And you’d go back to dreading Primedays and dreaming of clover covered plains on Naboo between every string of data you analyze for the GAR once Tech left. You’d miss the extra pair of capable hands and his talented, dare you say exceptional, mind. You’d miss the presence of yellow-lensed goggles and the steady, red light of the cylindrical camera attached to them that sometimes followed you around the analyst lab, that were as much a part of Tech’s face as the rest of his features.

You’d miss him and the harmless little crush Jais teases you over since helping you find out who your secret admirer was.

“Swing by your locker lately?”

“You have better eyesight than a Mynock but all the subtlety of a Reek, Jais. Yes I saw he left me another haiku.”

“What do they say?”

So much by using so little.

Tech has just seventeen syllables to work with, but boy does he make them work.

They will last far longer than any tender blossom, tucked carefully on the windowsill and lovingly arranged to fill in the gaps in the bouquet during transport. Home only for a short time, you settle for tucking the new haikus and other notes on the low table in the living room to sort through later tonight while eating dinner.

Come to think of it, maybe you should invite Tech over for dinner sometime, while he’s still here. (While there’s still time to leave things behind in order to remember him by.) He’s been staying in temporary accommodations in the unofficial research district since the nearest GAR barracks are an hour away, and the district isn’t too far from your place. You’re not sure what the protocol on this is (or if there’s any), and he’s more than welcome to turn you down, but-

This harmless crush has gone beyond only going one way.

You’re going to miss Tech when he leaves, not just because it means you'll lose an eager assistant who shares what he learns while you work. You've grown to like him in ways you haven't devoted proper time to exploring why with the nature of your work, but you like Tech too. And you don’t want just a vase full of honeysuckle that will one day wither and a smattering of haikus to remember him by.

You want something more. Something meaningful before he goes back to making mayhem for the Separatists.

And maybe it can start today, if you're clever enough.

It's time to stop daydreaming.

When you return to the research center, you first put your rain repeller away in your locker and collect the few notes that appeared while you were out. No new poems, only warnings that one of the senior analysts had a bug up their ass the size of a mynock (scratch that, a bantha) again over something minor, and it's best to stay out of their way until they cooled off.

“Hey, Tech, I'm back.” You announce your return from the lockers to avoid potentially startling him, finding him fiddling with a part of his vambrace. “Got some cryptic notes in my locker. Feel like I missed some excitement while I was away.”

“Yes… You certainly did.” One of the analysts lost their temper with the ‘newfangled’ caf-pot in the break room, Tech explains. Nothing newfangled about it in truth, it just wasn't working because it had been unplugged for cleaning and someone just forgot to leave a note.

“Speaking of notes,” he says as an aside, procuring a printed message from Lieutenant Waxer of Ghost Company in the 212th, “This came in just before you arrived while I was at the copier.”

Giving the lieutenant’s request a once-over, you find a general greeting after the Grand Army of the Republic’s letterhead, asking if someone would mind helping him locate the origin of a particular word in the language of the Twi’leks. Printed requests are deemed non-urgent, but it’s simple enough that you don’t mind adding his query to the bottom of your daily checklist, on which you find only the helmet footage crossed off.

“Thought you’d have gotten more done than this.” you say, chuckling as you take a seat at your desk.

Tech adjusts his goggles and meets your eye. “Felt it would be impolite to take your work from you when we had an agreement for just the footage.” He returns to fiddling around with his vambrace and his datapad, perhaps trying to sync something up.

His concern of taking further work from you without asking is very kind, and rather touching. You feel warmth in your face disproportionate to the heating system warming the labs on this rainy day. “Oh. Well, I wouldn’t have minded too much, but thank you. What’d you do instead until I got back?” You figure it didn’t take all too long to study the commando’s footage, finding the notes Tech’s took for you pinned underneath the datadisc the feed was stored on. Lifting the high-tech paperweight, you give the notes a glance.

It’s the same thin lettering as the haikus.

Tech tuts in thought while snapping a part of his vambrace back where it belongs. “General research. Nothing important.” He does not immediately elaborate on what he had researched, thinking you may want to take a moment to mentally prep yourself for returning to work and start on the next task at hand.

They were not concerns he (often) had to keep in mind with Hunter, Echo, Wrecker and Crosshair because he knew them so well compared to other people, compared to you. They spent the most time together and could give him a playful ribbing for overstepping boundaries, or starting detailed explanations when it wasn’t the best time. No one cares! was often said in-the-moment, and apologized for in ways that did not involve the words I’m sorry - and that was normal with his brothers.

So when you break into a big, friendly smile and draw out the word “Liiiike…?” while you continue to settle in, Tech knows it’s okay to elaborate. That you seem interested in what he has to say.

“It was the origin of halliksets. I became distracted when I learned they were quite popular on Naboo, and spent some time looking into that instead.” As he expected, you perk up with the mention of Naboo, interest piqued. “They’re made with seven strings, and the ore commonly used to make them comes from Kreeling, a mining planet also within the Chrommell sector.” The ore seems to be used to decorate the rounded body of the instrument, from what he had been reading. Ornamentation rather than function.

“Huh,” you say politely with a smile to match, “I had no idea. That’s really neat.”

You thank him for sharing before agreeing that perhaps you should get started on some of your work when he warns you that he can hear someone from another department coming, and it may be wise to appear busy.

For the next fifteen or so minutes, you and Tech are careful to appear focused on tasks from the clipboard. Something about figuring out why a standard caustic compound utilized by the GAR didn’t work. Tech casts a subtle glance over his shoulder while you muse over the specs, wondering just like you why someone from another department is taking their sweet time to leaf through all the disposable pipettes in the storage cabinet of all things. Trying to eavesdrop? Just really particular about their lab supplies? Who karking knows.

While looking into the humidity record on Felucia the day of the recorded equipment failure, you take a moment to open the system you submit your time-off requests to and look at the amount of paid time off accrued. Two and a half weeks. That’s not bad.

“Good to know….”

“What is it?” Tech asks.

“Oh, just poking into weather records,” you hum, hiding the portal, “Seems the caustic compound failed because of higher than average humidity that day. It was under six months old, so I don’t think it was a product age failure.” From the flashpoint of the Clone Wars on Geonosis, much of the equipment utilized barely sits on a shelf any longer than six standard months after its production and purchase for the Grand Army.

Clones were clever. Well trained. They knew how to account for things like planetary climate, weather conditions and equipment age out in the field, but you’ll always have the occasional fluke. Things beyond your control, beyond what you trained for. (Some things you could never train for.) But the Grand Army of the Republic could be trusted to give it their all, no matter the occasion, no matter the challenge.

You trusted men like Red Wire with your life here in the labs when you had to work with disarmed bombs, never doubting his ordnance training for a second. The same goes for the man sitting on the other side of your desk from you now, the injured leg in the walking boot propped up in a spare chair. You trust Tech too.

When the personnel from another department finally leaves, they’re grumbling something venomously about the missing label-maker under their breath, the word “di’kut!” loudest of all.

You recognize the Mando’a. Pronunciation DEE-koot. Multiple meanings. Idiot. Useless. Waste of space. (More accurately a waste of their time… Pretty sure someone already said the label-maker wasn’t in there.) You wonder where they know the word from.

Speaking for yourself, you’ve picked up a smidgen of the language from working as a researcher and analyst, and you’ve added a few more words to your repertoire from Tech’s uninterrupted correspondence with the Bad Batch that he’s allowed you to see some of.

And speaking of them… Now that you and Tech are alone, this might be a good time to try putting your plan in motion knowing how much PTO you have to work with now. You want to go to Naboo, and you want to see if there’s any way you can convince Tech to go with you. Maybe even meet you there with the rest of Clone Force 99. Make bumping into them look like a coincidence.

“Hey Tech, when you return to your brothers, any plans or ideas on where you’ll go first?”

A pad of sticky flimsi-notes is pulled from one of the many drawers of your desk, and you root around for a working pen while you wait on an answer. Calling upon courage from the very heart of the cosmos, you hope you can pull this off.

Tech answers the break in relative silence with a quirk of his eyebrow. “None that I’m aware of, but I suspect we’ll be going wherever we are needed.” There is a long contemplative pause, eyes flicking to his trusty tablet more than once as a few new messages from Wrecker come in.

“Is there some reason you’re asking?” He pushes the datapad aside now, giving you more of his attention, which is appreciated.

Shoulders bounce. “What if I said I was just curious?” You don’t expect him to buy that, he’s too clever. But you need a moment of quiet contemplation on his part to count out the syllables without messing up. Once you’re certain you have five, then seven syllables, you flash him an easygoing smile. “Being curious isn’t a crime, is it?”

“On some planets it is. Some rather… ridgid, often self-isolated cultures across the galaxy view curiosity as a sign of an idle mind and fear it will inspire mischief. Free thinking. Rebellion.”

The question had been rhetorical, and you don’t mind that he answered, but you find the fact quite sad. You also don’t want to begin to imagine how that sort of “crime” is punished. Curiosity is a natural part of life to all, to criminalize it is… frankly ridiculous.

“Well good thing we’re not in one of those isolated cultures.” you say, now thinking how you’ll finish penning this poem. Should you add your reasoning for why you wrote this at the bottom? (Would you even have room?) Maybe you should just tell him after he’s read your poem instead.

“Agreed.” Another message comes in from Echo this time, but Tech ignores it, continuing to hold eye contact with you; almost like he’s performing an inspection. “So I hope it does not feel like an accusation when I say I don’t believe you are ‘just curious’.”

“I did have an idea…” you admit, fiddling with the pen in your hand for the moment, “Since I heard Clone Force 99 isn’t keen on following every little order…” This is when you choose to slide the haiku you were working on over to “his” side of the desk, waiting in nervous silence as brown eyes scrutinize every Aurebesh letter laid bare before them.

Can't we ever go to a nice place, verdant fields of spring eternal? - Feel like breaking a few rules?

Tech’s eyes lift from the flimsiplast note, looking surprised. He didn’t take you for the sort of person who’d encourage breaking certain GAR protocols, let alone… Your name falls from his lips, asking what this is about in the same tender tone.

“I thought about what you asked regarding how much time off I have, and I found out I have two and a half weeks…” You explain, fiddling with the pen some more to occupy your nervous hands while he continues to monitor you. “I thought… Maybe once your leg heals up, and you’re cleared to return to active duty, you could find an excuse to spend some time on Naboo. Get to know each other better, perhaps?” He clearly has some kind of feelings for you that are in the earlier stages of reciprocation, and if you’re away from the lab, and he finds the time or the excuse to nip down to the Chrommell sector and meet up with you on Naboo, then neither one of you have to worry about behaving quite so professionally.

Looking down at the haiku once again, Tech takes in your explanation, your invitation, and offers a mild chuckle at long last.

“You know what my brothers will say if I tell them about this?”

You swallow nervously. “W-what?”

“That it almost sounds like you’re asking me on a date.”

You do what you can to keep your jaw from dropping, but there’s little to be done about the fiery feeling building in the apple of your cheeks that suggests there may be color blooming there. If you’re blushing, Tech certainly does a splendid job of politely pretending he sees no such thing while he gives your poem another look.

You do the same in kind when additional color builds in his own face and crawls up his neck from under the top of the body suit. “I take it you figured out who was secretly leaving you the haikus.” His smile is timid, but not quite as nervous as your own.

“I did. A while ago, actually.” you confess, confirming his suspicions. “I had help checking the cameras to see where the first one came from. I didn’t see a reason to say anything, or stop you.” You add that you’ve kept every single one, too, to some surprise of the computer and weapons specialist sitting across from you.

He sits forward now, carefully easing the walking boot to the floor. “You really want to spend time with me on Naboo?” Your earnest nod surprises him further. You do. Out of millions of Clones in the galaxy, you’re asking Tech (and his brothers by proxy) to join you in visiting the idyllic planet.

You carefully carve out a little portion of your PTO and submit the request as the very first step in the planning process, and while you await approval you and Tech will continue to work together as normal. You still have to behave professionally in the meantime.

Well, as professionally as possible when Tech decides he can now confess he has a backlog of haikus for you, enough so you could have one waiting for you in your locker every day until he’s cleared to return to fieldwork in a few weeks, in theory.

“Poetry every Primeday, honeysuckles today, and now you’re offering daily haikus? Maybe I will be asking you out on a date if you continue to spoil me like that.” you warn him, chuckling. Of course now you get the feeling Tech will make sure the weeks leading up to your time-off would consist of honeysuckle and haiku to ensure that you would.

And those were going to become some of your best weeks working as a researcher and analyst for the GAR, whether you got that time off or not, because it would be spent making precious memories with Tech.

That was what mattered most.

First time I've ever participated in one of these events, and I don't think I did too badly, considering I completely restarted this at one point! (Apologies for how long this ended up being, too, haha.) I hope you liked it, Tech-a! 🩷

Fic taglist: @msmeredithrose @lonely-day3636 @dukeoftheblackstar @dystopicjumpsuit

[Masterlist] [Taglist] [Requests: Open]

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thepuff09 · 4 months

Text

Just finished my 3 new pieces! I did a drawing of EightSidedSquare, a new version of @astronyu, and my first (real) version of @winsweep! Since my handwriting is god awful, I’ll include some alt text. Also, some commentary after the reveal! Hope y’all enjoy!

So here’s the notes:

For Eight, I love the idea that he’s actually a lil sparky guy. Part of me thinks that it’s a result of his mind being turned to electricity (wonder who could’ve done that), but I think it’s much funnier if it never gets explained. Also, I only just realized that, when I did my Moriyaa art, I gave him the farmer design. Pretty sure that was Eight’s thing tho. :/

For Astronyu, I would like to start by saying that this is one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever done. Only thing I don’t like is how big I made the forehead, but by the time I noticed, I had already used colored pencils so it was too late. Also, the reason why I did this one again is simple: I love the design, and I wanted to give the hair another try.

FYI, y’all have no clue how hard it was to not include a Golden Rat having a bad hair day. Maybe I will in the future.

Finally, Winsweep. I took inspiration from the official reference art by ViolettaFire on Twitter, which I’ll include below. As for my statement that this was technically my first attempt at Win’s design, that’s because I originally planned to have all of Win’s art just be his mask in different spots, such as hanging on an armor stand. But I decided that his design was so flamboyant and funky that I had to take a shot. I think it turned out pretty well.

Last thing, my current lineup for next pieces is Lux, maybe Aqualux, Folly, and a silly little doodle of Moriyaa and Eight doing that one hoodie handshake meme, which I’ll also include below.

Oh yeah and a GrandGousier, maybe have Rat riding him?

#my art #contentsmp #csmp #eightsidedsquare #astronyu #winsweep #colored pencils make me want to augh.mp3 #but they are better markers of crayons IMO

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general--winter · 1 year

Note

Hi I hope I'm not late to request anything! I was wondering if you can do any headcanons or whatever you feel like writing of arven finding out the his partner y/n had physic powers after walking in on them using their powers

author's note: Inspiration struck me with this one! I made a little mini one-shot. No, no, this absolutely isn't me displaying my Arven favoritism. But I must say, who else liked him throughout Scarlet and Violet and then began hardcore simping after the scene in Aera Zero? I know I did and I am not ashamed to admit it. Enjoy!!!

rating: general

fandom: pokemon

pairings: arven x gn!reader

word count: 535

warnings: none

summary: Arven finds out that his partner is a psychic. Now what does Mabosstiff have to say about him?

Arven thought of himself as a composed and coordinated person. Whether that is the truth is up to those who know him. What he will admit, though, was that he thought you were nuts when you claimed you and Mabosstiff were deep in conversation and that’s why he couldn’t bother you.

“Run that by me again,” he deadpanned after picking his jaw up off of the floor of his dormitory. “You’re talking. To Mabosstiff.”

“Yes,” you replied, patting the Pokemon on its head before standing up slowly to meet Arven at eye level. “We chat quite frequently, actually.”

He couldn’t believe his ears. Or his senses. His partner, the one he’d been dating for only a few months, was talking to a Pokemon? No, he figured that you just knew how to communicate with his most beloved partner Pokemon already, which was still impressive. There was just no believing the alternative. You haven’t known Mabosstiff for long enough to understand his queues, but there’s just no other way.

“How, praytell, did you manage to understand my dearest Mabosstiff so fast?” Arven shouted, pointing a finger at you with a weirdly playful look of terror across his face. “You’ve only been around him for a few months.”

Your reply was… unexpected. Completely vague and incredibly weird.

“Oh, I just talk to him. Like I would anyone else!”

“If you say that you talk in words, I’m going to have a breakdown right here and now.”

“Yes, we do. I can communicate with Pokemon through my mind.”

Arven is down for the count. You manage to scamper over and catch his head before it hits the ground, maneuvering him to lay on the rug. Mabosstiff lumbers over too to sit on the now-free lap of his partner.

“But that’s… completely unheard of. Impossible,” Arven muttered while you put a pillow under his head. “Someone would have researched this by now.”

“I was actually the subject of a study recently,” you said, fixing his hair. Arven gently swatted you away, but you kept stroking his locks.

“Has the paper come out yet? I’d love to read it.”

“No, but I’ll be the first to know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, by the way. But this was a funny way to have you find out.”

Arven laughed dryly, sitting up from his position on the floor. His hands immediately met yours on Mabosstiff, the two of you holding hands and petting the Pokemon. His butt wagged with his tail, and his true eyes were gently shut as his legs splayed out. Curiosity danced on Arven’s features as he turned to face you.

“So, although I am sure of the answer,” he began before you cut him off right away.

“You want to know what Mabosstiff says about you, yeah?” you finished with a wink.

Arven’s face dropped to horror. “You… can’t read my mind too, can you?”

“No, silly. Just Pokemon. Now, was I right?”

He nodded, glancing back down to his partner. “I’m just curious. I want to hear his words.”

“Mabosstiff always refers to you as his ‘bestest friend in the entire world’. He does want you to change his food, though. He doesn’t like it.”

#pokemon #pokemon x reader #pokemon scarlet #pokemon violet #arven x reader #rival arven #arven #request #one shot #god damn it the way he catches your character around the waist i #*chefs kiss*

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astridthevalkyrie · 1 year

Text

standing at the crossroads: chapter 9

Captain Levi is your lover. But more importantly, he’s your superior, and you’re well prepared to follow him to hell if he needs you to. And when people start turning into titans, and every bloody death is one step closer to the truth, hell may be exactly where you’re going.

Chapter 8 | Series Masterlist

taglist: will be added to reblog :)

chapter warnings: female!reader, character death, canon-typical violence

a/n: I love you all <33

Your eyes open.

You’re in a cart, and it’s dark.

It takes a few blinks for your sight to adjust to the darkness, and just another second for you to remember where you are.

A warm hand lands on your head. “Easy,” Levi murmurs; you can hear the hooves of his horse alongside your own. “I hope you’re well rested. We’re almost there.”

Using the cover of the night, you bring his hand to your lips and kiss his knuckles before sitting up straight to tie your hair back up. Graciously, you’d chosen to be the last in the squad to sleep in the wagon for two or three hours, a luxury that until recently, had been nonexistent. Sleeping during expeditions? What about all the man-eating giants?

Well, thanks to Armin and Hange’s brilliance, that was no longer a problem. Hange had her amazing titan killing contraption that had been working day and night for a whole month, and Armin had provided the revolutionary idea to start the mission right as the sun was going down.

You stretch your limbs out, flexing your fingers and wondering when you’ll see the city you never even got to visit before Wall Maria was taken. The one Ricky—a couple meters away, in conversation with one of the new recruits—had stolen from him. The one Gunther, Eld, Petra and Oluo, and countless others died trying to take back.

Taking a deep breath, you run your thumb over the bite mark on your hand, letting it harden your resolve. They got you here. You’ll honor that for the rest of your life.

Souls seem to speak through the wind. Quiet whispers that haunt the area, but bring it to life at the same time. A hushed tone, calling out welcome back, from the ones that were laid to rest here.

You’re shaking lightly. It takes a hand over your chest and another few deep breaths to stop. It seems like this is a winding road, easy to get lost on if the whole legion wasn’t here. It’s soothing that you’re not alone.

Once you hop out of the cart, you double check your ODM gear and make sure Horsey is alright, plucking a leaf from his back. Time to make the rounds.

(Before everyone left, Levi did give the squad a speech, then you gave a better one, but it doesn’t hurt to check in again.)

First you speak to Mikasa, then Sasha, then Connie, Armin, Jean, and finally, Eren.

“Hey, ace.” He doesn’t look to be startled, just a bit lost in thought. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay. Ready, I think.” Definitely not the word you would use based on how tense he looks, but sure. “I always knew I would take back my home, but now that it’s actually happening it feels…like I shouldn’t be here.”

Oh, you can relate all too well, considering you felt the same way back in Stohess. “Home is home, right? It may not be where we belong anymore, but where we’re from is always a part of us.” Placing your palm on his chest, you mimic breathing in and breathing out. Eren complies, but only for a second, clearly a little too stressed to be doing breathing exercises.

“What if we fail again?” he whispers. You’re not sure you’re meant to hear it.

Again, clearly referring to the 57th. It’s a good question.

You bite the inside of your cheek. “Try again tomorrow?”

Eren laughs softly, ducking his head. “Talking to you really clears my head, Lieutenant. You’re the best. Thank you.”

For some reason, that warms your cheeks. You’ve always been a bit susceptible to such sincere praise. With a warm hand on his back, you leave him be, and return back to Levi’s side. Wordlessly, he hands you Horsey’s reins, and you hop on his back, glancing down to where your captain is still on foot.

The lack of danger has relaxed even him. Not that you doubt he’d be able to slice the neck straight off any titan that decided to show up. It’s kind of nice, though, and you wonder if this is how expeditions will be once Wall Maria is taken back. Missions meant to explore rather than to fight. The pleasant smell of an early morning dew from a sun that has not yet risen.

And easy seconds to simply observe Levi. To watch him carefully scan the area and see the relief in his eyes when for once, there isn’t an actual threat. Then he shakes his head just a fraction of an inch, to snap himself out of it—no time for relief. And so he scans again.

Captain Levi, with his own little pattern. How adorable.

Taking care to keep quiet, you call out to him. “Levi.” When his head turns to answer, you quickly put on your most stern face. “Hey.”

His eyeroll accompanies your laugh. “Whatever happened to Expedition (F/N)?” he asks dryly.

Your mouth falls open as you whisper-cry, “You knew about that?”

The corners of his lips twitch. “I think the whole legion knew about that.”

Levi catches your hand mid-smack, then, almost naturally, kisses the back of your hand. From what you’ve read, the blushing maiden is usually not the one sitting astride the horse. Well, you’re not blushing, but still. What a state, to be flustered like this. You’re too old to be so easily wooed.

Unfortunately, your fairytale is rather rudely interrupted by the admittedly lovely sound of the river rushing, signaling that you have arrived. Just in time, as the sun begins to rise. Levi is on his horse in a second.

“All squads!” comes Commander Erwin’s booming command. “Move towards Shiganshina at full speed!”

Here you are. Six years after you’ve joined the military, and now you finally get to feast your eyes on the fabled city of Shiganshina. The ruined city of Shiganshina, in tatters. But if everyone could rebuild Trost and Stohess, then this city could prosper once more as well. You’ll work on the houses and place brick by brick yourself if you have to.

Charging into battle always has a certain romanticism to it—the halt of a clock as time freezes, the little breeze charging between your skin and the fabric of the uniform. They’re not tangible, but you feel these things in your bones as if they were sold along with the experience. Either that, or you have some weird attraction to adrenaline, which is entirely plausible.

Alarming, then, that everything and everyone seems to be moving in real time. Where is that cruel, romantic call to battle? Why does everything feel so serene, so…real? Is it just your mind playing tricks on you?

Usually when you lean forward on your horse or any horse, you’re used to a number of alarm bells going off in your head. Now, you feel nothing but the pleasant air. It’s a good feeling, but incredibly jarring. And it’s concerning, because you have to focus. You’re outside the walls, much as the lack of titans keeps trying to fool you from the fact. A few meters or a few miles or maybe even a few footsteps away, the Armored, Colossal and Beast Titans are waiting patiently.

A few months ago, you saw the Armored. In today’s best case scenario, you won’t have to see the others before they are swiftly dealt with in their human forms. But even that sounds…dark, at the very least. Back in your hometown, Annie Leonhart sleeps soundly (at least, you think she’s sleeping) and provides no answers. The commander has all but said that the only way to ensure victory today is to kill the enemy shifters, but then the question remains—who will actually provide the truth that the regiment has been searching for for a hundred years?

Are all the eggs going to reside in the basket of Eren’s basement?

Thinking about that is not focusing, you decide firmly. As of right now, the main concern is surviving and winning, not figuring out all the whys of the universe. That is not your goal, and honestly never has been.

The answers you seek, what you would like to grab onto Annie Leonhart’s collar and scream, do not relate to how she became a titan and what her mission is. What you want to know is whether the mission was worth stomping out the lives of so many soldiers. If your friends were necessary sacrifices, or just collateral damage.

Whatever the answer is, that is the closure you really require.

Which is why it’s perhaps a good thing that the rest of the Scouts will operate on a kill-first-check-basement-later basis. Should things be left up to you, you would show much more mercy to get the answers you seek.

Brandishing your swords, you place a soft kiss atop Horsey’s mane, quietly thanking him for riding into battle with you for so many years.

Then you stand, and at Levi’s signal, you jump.

All the Scouts, including many new recruits, fly into the air alongside you, swerving past houses. You dash your way to the front until you’re by Levi’s side, ducking under him as you approach the gaping hole in Wall Maria. It’s huge, something not even a giant boulder would necessarily be able to cover, but it’s okay, because Eren can do it, and he will. All of you will be at his side until he accomplishes what he came here to do.

You fly up, up, up until you’re at the top of the wall, and you land smoothly with the grand view of Shiganshina before you.

“Shit,” someone whispers. You turn and Ricky is next to you, looking a bit sick as he gazes upon the town.

Slipping your hand in his, you raise up a flare gun and fire the first shot, signaling the operation has begun in earnest. “We’ll win today,” you promise him. He doesn’t look at you, only continues to look morosely upon his father and sister’s final resting place, but his shaky hand squeezes yours.

“Good luck, kid,” he finally manages, in a choked voice. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

Reaching up, you plant a kiss on his cheek. “See you then.”

He runs off, and you leap in the opposite direction, scaling the wall with sharp eyes. No sign of sudden movement, and no abnormal titan to be found. It’s still only the sound of the wind and all the zipping from the ODM gear in your ears and nothing else.

Everything about your environment suggests a quietly abandoned town, when you know that is the furthest thing from the truth. This city was the first tragedy, the first real indication to everyone that this was not an unfortunate coincidence but an actual attack.

Even then, you could say that humanity was the victim. But now, with titan shifters and corrupt royal governments, the truth might be twisted enough to reveal that you did this to yourselves.

Again, you’re wildly off track. Your job today is to help Eren plug up the holes and then kill the enemies. A goal, one dimensional, as all things must be for war to flourish.

Sweet Rose—being a philosopher or an actor would have really suited you more. This is it, no more introspective thoughts until the battle is done and over with.

A flash of green goes up. Hange. Landing next to Jean, you give him the go ahead and he fires one as well, followed by another a few soldiers down, and another. The final flash is by Eren himself, not from a flare gun but his transformation.

“I have a nasty feeling in my stomach,” Jean mutters, “like something is about to go wrong at any second. I’m being ridiculous, right?”

Your eyes stay on Eren’s titan form as he begins to glow blue, sealing up the wall. “Focus more on staying alert than feelings in your stomach.”

“Thanks,” he responds grouchily. Only a few seconds later do you realize you’re slipping into old habits. Almost subconsciously, your body remembered that you’d been laughing moments before Gunther was killed.

But then, Jean had nothing to do with that. You’re assuming direct causation when you know the real answer is extremely unlucky correlation. And that…is still not what you should be thiking about right now.

Two flares confirm that one wall is sealed up. With that, you begin to run, keeping everything in your peripheral under close watch. There is only so much the Armored Titan and Colossal Titan will allow you to accomplish before intervening. You almost expect that they will come out from beneath your feet, crushing all the silly little human fools on top of them.

But they don’t. You’re still standing, still running. The way the straps from your gear dig into your thighs prove that fact.

“Captain Levi.” The man turns to you, along with Hange. “No shifters in sight, sir.”

Hange is the one who answers. “Good. Doesn’t look like we have any titan spottings either.”

She leaves to check on Eren, but Levi stays next to you, meeting your furrowed brows with his own demanding stare. “What is it?”

“Something is off.”

“I know. Keep your eyes open. Hey.” He tugs your hood down just slightly more. “I know that look. If something happens, you don’t hesitate.”

Levi never beats around the bush. You admire him for it. “Yes, sir.”

The two of you follow the other soldiers as they start to run. A part of you wants to shed your cloak, if only to draw the enemy out, to shout here I am! come get me! because maybe that would be better than this creeping suspense that keeps building.

When you switch back to ODM gear, zooming across the wall, it’s only a glance at Levi’s set expression that you need to continue. He’s still here. His judgment is sound where yours isn’t, and vice versa. As long as you remain by his side, things will make sense.

A flash is heard, and when you look up there is red smoke.

“That’s the signal to halt the mission!”

“Everyone, scatter and stand by on top of the wall!” Hange shouts. Levi is already moving up, and you’re right behind him.

“My squad, with me!” he orders. “Move towards Erwin!”

Mild suspense rears into ugly anxiety. Something has gone wrong. But you don’t worry, not yet. Levi may be the captain, but you are still the lieutenant that follows his orders quickly and efficiently.

“What are they doing?” It seems like some soldiers have begun to lower themselves off the wall, slowly making their way down.

“Searching,” the commander answers for you as you land next to him. “Arlert has proposed a theory—that Reiner, Bertholdt, or one of their allies is hiding inside the wall.”

“Inside?” Your brows furrow. “Oh! The titan in Stohess—“

“Precisely. Levi. (F/N). I want both of you at the edge.” Be ready, is the nonverbal demand.

You obey, looking down with your swords out. Swallowing slightly at the number of soldiers in such a vulnerable position, you call out to Armin.

“Hey!” When he looks up, you mouth at him, not wanting to get loud just in case his theory is correct as per usual.

Good strategy. Don’t get too close.

Armin nods at you, mouthing back. I won’t.

Before you can even think of mouthing something back, the soldier next to Armin yells. “Right here! This part of the wall is hollow!”

That’s the last thing he says before a sword is run through his chest.

In the time it takes for you to gasp, even in the second that your mouth is opening, before a single sound can escape your throat at the cruel, bloody murder, Levi is already moving. Reiner Braun jumps out of the wall, his sword stained with the soldier’s blood, the first enemy exposed.

And by the time you actually gasp, Levi’s sword is lodged in Reiner’s neck.

“Captain!” you shriek, jumping without thinking. Instinct hooks your wires into the wall as you drop, but Levi is flying up already, furious.

“Shit!”

“Captain?”

“What are these guys made of? A blade to the neck and the bastard still won’t die!”

A blinding light shoves you back, and it’s all you can do to hold Armin against the wall. In just a few seconds, you are face to face with the Armored Titan, a much closer, much more terrifying proximity than last time.

“Move up!” you order Armin. “To the top of the wall!”

He flies out of your sight and you dig your sword in next to Levi. “Any chance he’ll die in there? You hit him in the neck, right?”

“I didn’t get the nape.” His teeth are bared, wild anger in his pupils. Despite moving faster than anyone else, even he couldn’t get the drop on the titan. “I hit him in the chest too, but he’ll heal.”

Unlike the soldier he stabbed. You feel a jolt of anger too, but there’s no way to engage from this position. One hit and your blades will shatter.

“Keep your eyes open!” you hear Erwin shout from above. “We still need to find his allies!”

There’s a crackle, and then—

Several crackles.

The next thing you know, Erwin is screaming something else.

“Incoming boulder! Get down!”

Levi grabs you by the cape, securing you to him as the whole wall shakes. Screams litter the air and your alarmed eyes meet his. Smoke rises up, getting in your eyes.

Fuck. They blocked the entrance.

You move up with the smoke, coughing as you land by the others. Levi is next to you in an instant, glaring down the source of the boulder, a large, hairy titan standing in the middle of an army of them.

There he is.

Mike Squad’s killer. The bout of fury you feel is unmatched, knowing how different the odds are without some of the best soldiers in the Corp standing by your side. There are at least twenty large titans on each side of him.

“Commander,” your captain says, “he’s about to climb.”

This seems as good a time as any to bear forward Hange’s most brilliant invention. Strapping a Thunderspear on, you step up to the edge, moving your elbow back right as the Armored Titan grips onto the wall. He’s going to try and get to Eren, but you’ll make sure he doesn’t. A classic game of cat and mouse, except this time, the titan will play the mouse for once.

It won’t be the cat that gets blown to smithereens.

All you need is the command, but instead of that you hear something else entirely.

The next thing you know, several small titans are charging towards the wall at full speed.

Something strikes you in the chest, puncturing your heart in horror. The horses.

“Sir? What now? The Armored Titan is almost up! Bertholdt hasn’t shown yet, but he must be nearby!”

“Yes, I’m well aware.” Erwin hasn’t moved, hasn’t said anything, he only stares down the Beast Titan and you think his mind must be going a mile a minute. If he doesn’t act soon, this is going to be a bloodbath.

But even if he does act soon, the bloodbath isn’t off the table. They’re attacking on both sides, leaving no time for anyone to strategize.

“Let me blow him to pieces,” you growl, “Either of them. We blow up the nape and they’re ours for the taking.”

“No need,” comes the order, finally. “Dirk Squad, and Marlene Squad too! Join Klaus Squad and Belle Squad and protect the horses at the gate! Levi Squad and Hange Squad, I need you to take down the Armored Titan!”

Oh, you’ll gladly do that.

“Deploy the Thunderspears at your own discretion! Do whatever it takes to achieve your objective! This is our moment! Our chance to strike! The fate of humankind depends on this battle! Lay down your heart and lives, one final time, for humanity!”

He’s met with the chilling cries of at least a hundred people shouting, “Yes, sir!”

Your voice is among them. For the very first time, Erwin’s words strike you the same way Shadis’ words had the day Wall Maria fell.

It’s been five years.

It’s time to end this. It lies in your hands. All your hands.

“Hey, hold on, you three.” Right before you can jump off the wall, the commander halts you. “Hange can lead both your squads. I’m gonna need you right here, Levi.”

That doesn’t make sense—for one, Eren is the most valuable asset and should have Levi protecting him, and second, even if he’s needed on the other side of the wall, why would you not go with the rest of the squad?

“So I’ll protect the horses instead of Eren?”

“That’s right. And when the chance arises, you’ll strike him down.” A sharp blade is pointed in the direction of the leader of the pack, who is still sitting, watching, waiting. “You’re the only soldier I can trust to dispatch the Beast Titan.” Without even moving his head, Erwin’s gaze falls behind Levi, to you. “We have to kill him, one way or another.”

Should the Beast catch on, his eyes read, you will make sure he still gets there.

“Understood, sir. I wasn’t fast enough to finish off the Armored one earlier, but I’ll atone for that by taking the Beast Titan’s head. Lieutenant, with me.” Levi gives Erwin a meaningful look before jumping off the wall.

You squeeze Armin’s shoulder once more, then follow.

The second your feet touch the ground, Levi doesn’t waste any time. “We have to spread out. Some of the horses getting killed will still be a better outcome than all of them biting the dust. I’m going to go back up the other squads. You guide the recruits through, we don’t need any more meaningless deaths.”

All deaths seem meaningless, something you and Levi agree on. It’s a good way of telling you not to let anyone die.

“Yes, sir.” You’re up in the air again, quickly finding a rooftop to scour the grounds from. If only this fight was in an area you were familiar with, or had even seen before. Wall Maria is a mystery, a mystery you have no time to unravel.

Turning your head this way and that, you compare. The recruits have already scattered, either because of orders or their own fear, but the reason is irrelevant. The largest group is uncomfortably close to the incoming onslaught of titans.

Maria, you hate titans, even if that’s not politically correct to do anymore.

Flying towards them at full speed, you land right before they turn the corner, right as one of the titans does.

“Go back!” you roar. “Do not engage unless you have to!”

One of them squeaks, but your swords have been out, and as the titan reaches out, you turn on your heel and slice its fingers off. “Go,” you snarl, not a fan of repeating yourself in this situation, “go!”

And once you hear the hooves fading away, you’re free to dance.

Battle has always been like ballet. Your body moves the same way it did in your lessons. The same moves too—plier, glisser, sauter. In fact, if the titan wasn’t here, you’d look like you were putting on a silent performance for a silent audience. Your least favorite kind, what was the point of those recitals without applause?

At least this time, when you jump, spin, and cut open a titan’s nape, you have the spatter of its blood on your cape as the cry for an encore. An encore the crowd wants, an encore they shall get.

The recruits should have run, but the titans must be scattering now as well, so you give chase after them. Most of the senior Scouts are in the air, but they’re so preoccupied with keeping the titans at bay that they’re not able to handle the ones that have already started to go in deeper.

Finally, you catch up with the recruits from earlier. “Too many of you are here together. I see Sonia over there on that roof, three of you move towards her. And you two come with me. Quickly!”

One of the boys you have follow you is Marlowe, one of the MPs who had helped when the Scouts were being hunted by the government. The other is a redhead, who you don’t recognize and who has more sweat on his face than his horse has fur on his mane.

“Let’s be smart now.” Discarding one of your blades that has turned dull and brandishing a new one, you motion for the boys to do the same. “I know you need a hand free for the horses, but keep at least one sword out or you’ll die.”

Necessary fear mongering, unfortunately. Your orders were to keep them alive, and when everyone is safe you can concern yourself with keeping them happy.

Smaller titans are easier to fight, but they don’t make as much noise clambering around, so you don’t know one is there until it’s on top of you. As you lead the boys through the town, you pray that the Scouts deal with the titans before everyone gets cornered. There’s a number of surprise attacks, but nothing that either you or one of the other members isn’t able to take care of.

Until—

Goddammit.

You almost knock the wind out of Marlowe when you pin him and the redhead both to the wall before they can advance. The boys are louder than the horses—you wince before peering over the side again.

Three staggering titans clamber aimlessly towards where you’re standing. They’ll be upon you in a minute, and even if you could take them out one by one, there’s no way at least one of the boys won’t get grabbed while you’re occupied.

“Back the other way,” you hiss, but the three of you freeze again, seeing two walking from that direction as well. They’d been hot on your trail the whole time.

Shit, cornered exactly as you’d predicted. Hadn’t your grandmother suggested naming you Cassandra? Fucking gift of prophecy did little to help you now.

“What do we do?” the redhead whispers in terror, petrified. “Marlowe?”

“I—” Marlowe swallows, calmer than his comrade but still looking like flames were creeping up his skin. “I don’t know.”

“Listen to me.” You point your blade straight ahead. “Don’t turn, don’t take any detours. Both of you will go straight through with the horses. Run as fast as you can.”

“When they see us, they’ll break out into a run too!”

“You’ll let me handle that. Boys,” you order firmly. “It’s not a request. Go before we all get eaten.”

Marlowe takes a staggering breath, nodding. “Yes, sir. Come on,” he nudges the redhead forward. “Let’s go.”

With a single whimper heard, they run.

And just as the redhead said, all three titans give chase.

The second they’d taken a step out, you’d flown up high onto the roof. One of them screams, but you do your best to ignore it, because this needs to be timed perfectly.

They have to go after them. They have to get close.

Wisps of hair brush to the left as the titans rush past you, and that’s when you jump again, diving past the first two and straight towards the one that’s already reaching an arm out to grab them. Your feet plant on the titan’s back, and you need both of your swords to make a clean cut straight across the nape, sending the titan barreling down to the ground on its stomach.

You stand on top of it, victorious.

The redhead’s eyes are wide in awe as the other two titans barrel forward, both stumbling on the corpse of the first one. Using a trick you learned from Levi after much begging, you hook one of your wires into the wall and propel towards the other side, capturing the titan’s neck in your wire. A spin then gets you close to dig your blades into this one too.

Its body tumbles sideways, full on crashing into the third, which collapses front facing as well. With such an inviting opening, you jump from the falling body onto the already fallen, and with one sword this time, easily kill the final one.

Just like that, they’re dead and acting as a blockade for the other two.

“Lieutenant,” Marlowe manages to get out, “You…that was…”

“The titans have size on us.” Urging the horses forward, you motion for them to make for an opening. “We have brains on them. If you can remember that, we’ll survive this.”

Just then, as if to taunt you, a loud boom shakes the entire ground, and all three of your heads snap to the wall. A flash of light and an explosion light up the sky, sending everyone reeling back. Your chest lurches.

It must be the Colossal. Nothing else could have made that much of a blast.

With that, you bark at the recruits to go towards the other Scouts, zipping off without listening to any protests. Orders could change now that another titan’s on the other side of the wall. You hope the squads have taken care of the Armored by now, but if they haven’t, if they are now fighting the Colossal as well, they will need immediate backup.

From so far down below, you can still see the commander, whose back is turned towards Shiganshina. Going all the way towards him will consume too much time, so instead you fly towards where you see Levi, landing on the roof in front of him, with a vantage of the Beast Titan in front of you.

“You saw that, right? What should we do?”

“Hange and the others might have taken a hit.” Levi’s glare settles over your shoulder. “Hold down the fort here, I need to go on the other side of the—”

Something catches your eye. The Beast Titan has been mostly still thus far, but his arm moves, almost in a flash.

At first, you think he’s thrown another large boulder, but you don’t see anything.

Until you see many, many…

Many somethings.

With a gasp, you whirl Levi around by the shoulders, right as something sharp cuts your cheek. A drop of your blood lands on his cheek too.

For a split second both of you stare at each other, equally wide-eyed.

Then, his nails dig into your back and he crushes you against his chest as screams erupt in every direction.

Over his uniform, Levi’s heart pounds. Or, maybe, that’s your own heart, thrumming in beat with the sound of the drums. The drums? Of battle?

In the manner of a blushing bride, you pull away from Levi to turn your head over your shoulder, only to be greeted by dark, dripping crimson. Crimson like the corner spots of the beds in the hospital wing. Crimson like the taste of fresh scars on skin. Crimson like the color that dirties white bandages and orange uniforms every time without fail.

Beautiful red crimson stains the grass. Everywhere you look, everywhere there was a soldier standing, there is now only crimson—crimson—blood.

Unable to speak properly, your voice catches in your throat. “Cap…tain…”

Through the crimson mist, you see the Beast Titan’s arm move again.

“No!” you shriek frantically, jumping off the roof. “Fall back!”

Erwin’s scream tears through your ears. “Frontal bombardment! All troops, take cover now!”

“Get down!” Levi roars.

None of these words do anything to stop the assault. That hairy arm reels back, and a heavy foot steps forward.

Flying straight into the hazy red cloud, you spot banana blonde right away. His cloak is splattered with both fading and unfading blood.

Your best friend doesn’t see the rocks coming as he herds people back.

“Ricky!” He doesn’t hear your screech, even as you’re diving down.

Something tears into your left arm the second you tackle him behind one of the houses, both of you hitting the ground hard. Your cry of pain doesn’t even reach your own ears, drowned out by the second wave of casualties.

He’s holding you so tightly you can’t breathe, but for all you know it’s the panic that’s choking you instead. You’re squeezing him just as tight, not even swallowing as structures break on every corner.

It’s as though cannon fire is exploding around you, as though the screams are puncturing your eardrums, as though you can taste the metallic flavor of blood on your tongue. You’ve been in plenty of war zones, but never have you witnessed destruction on a level like this.

“(F/N), the recruits,” Ricky gasps, the trepidation dawning on his face, “we have to get them back—shit, your arm—”

“I’m fine.” There’s no time to think, you don’t know when the next attack will be. You tear a piece of your cape off as you stand, tying it firmly around the cut. “We gotta go. We gotta go!”

“I know, I know. This way.” An underlying panic laces his words, but you two run on adrenaline alone, shoving any of the remaining soldiers back as well, most of them new recruits. Dead bodies whose pulses you don’t even need to check are strewn everywhere, faces of friends and comrades who you have known for years. The initial panic bleeds into a hot, bubbling, terrifying realization.

You understand now. This isn’t going to be a battle, no.

It’ll be a massacre. It already is. The Beast Titan intends to destroy the Survey Corp right here and right now.

But you’re not dead yet. Against all odds, you’re still standing, despite titans and titan shifters and giant boulders’ best efforts. You’re running, Ricky is running, alongside the other survivors, everyone spreading like a wildfire. And as long as you’re alive, you’ll do what you do best and preserve every life the enemy wants to snuff out. Starting with the redheaded boy you met earlier, who you see up ahead is screaming in place on the ground, with Levi snarling at him.

“You wanna die!? Get up!”

“I’ll take him,” you say, right as Commander Erwin comes down from the wall.

Levi’s gaze falls down to your arm, his face hardens, and then he turns around without another word.

A strange, completely ridiculous time to feel such a rush of appreciation that he knows what the priority is, but there it is anyway. The rush of the fight is keeping your arm from stinging too badly anyways, so it’s truly the farthest thing from your mind right now.

The first thing is to get this recruit to safety.

“Come on, kid, we have to move.” The boy doesn’t twitch so much as a muscle. “Now!”

Even though he opens his mouth, no words come out. His face is soaked with tears, and your first instinct is to snap at him that if he wants to die, you have no problem leaving him here.

Your hand shakes. On the other side of the wall, there was an explosion. If Jean was caught in that explosion, then the last thing he’d have heard you say was a reprimand.

Your knees hit the ground as a fresh wave of rocks shake the ground. Pained, you realize that anything left of the Survey Corp is behind you, because there is no one left. Your comrades. Your friends. All gone, gone, gone.

Gripping his shoulders, you force the kid to look up. “What’s your name?” you muster in the least shaky voice you can.

He swallows, looking straight at you, trembling even with your hold on him. After a long, long second, he forces out, “Floch.”

“Do you want to win, Floch?”

It barely seems like he’s in the moment with you. “W-what?”

“Do you want to win?” One jerk of a head is hardly a nod, but you take it as such anyways. Anything to make him move, anything to keep him alive. “You won’t win sitting here, I promise you. No matter what, you’ll have to move if you want to win. I can’t say for sure if we’ll have a victory, but we will have a defeat if we keep sitting here. And until you get up, I won’t get up either. So either we both move, or we both lose.” Faintly, someone screams. “It’s your choice.”

Red pebbles roll over by your feet from the latest blow. The Beast Titan has no disadvantage. If he wants to, he can walk a bit closer, and make sure there isn’t a single building or person left undecimated.

There’s too much at stake for you to die here. But still, you hold the crying kid up, gently whispering come on, come on floch, let’s go until finally, he wipes his tears with the back of his hand, even as more pour down. Then he stands, allowing you to pull him up, before joining the others with a bowed head, clenched fists and no words left to hide behind. As though to stop the tears, his eyes are squeezed shut.

Even if you close your eyes, you can't ignore the stench of death in the air.

Ricky catches your hand in his, shaking his head at the despairing question in your eyes. “It’s bad,” he says, gaze turning from you to the proud beast beyond, “the commander says the colossal might have taken out Hange and Levi Squad. Everyone, get down!”

You duck, barely, but none of the rocks hit this time. The way your hand is shaking, making the Thunderspear on your right arm go clack, clack, clack against your gear keeps you in the present, but only to fantasize about putting the spear through the Beast Titan’s nape. Your left arm stings, dirtying the cloth you’ve wrapped around it.

There’s another crash, but this one doesn’t come from the boulders. In horror, you look up to see Eren…or more accurately Eren’s titan, sprawled on top of Wall Maria.

Maria.

They have the Scouts cornered. Only the Colossal could have thrown Eren like that, meaning that both sides are equally lost.

Weakly, you stagger back. Is this it? The end of humanity? After the Beast Titan kills you and Ricky, will it move all the way to Sina, and take Millie’s life too?

Just to mock you, more jagged rocks hit the houses, bringing down another set closer and closer to the Corp.

The redhead, Floch, is screaming something. It reaches your ears, but bounces off, fading to nothingness as you look at the battlefield. It’s been leveled, only a few more kilometers left before there is no cover, before everyone dies. Even if everyone scaled the walls, the Colossal would either crush them or burn them, or both. Now more than ever, death looms on every path. No escape. No maneuver.

And some people would say it was worth it. For the truth, for freedom, any price can be paid. You were content with your freedom atop the wall, where most titans couldn’t reach, where you could see vast lands and wave to smiling people starting their days in the bare cracks of morning. Freedom was leaving Stohess. Freedom was letting go of your selfishness. Freedom was falling in love.

Wouldn’t you get bored? you ask yourself in a voice that sounds like your mother’s, but the question is met with a swift answer. Not with him. It would have been enough. By his side? It would have always been enough. You’d never be bored.

Well, you’re by his side now. You’re definitely not bored. And you already achieved freedom. So really, there’s nothing else left to do but return to where you belong.

Even now, you seem to be more focused on your thoughts rather than the fight. You want to wonder if that’s a good thing, but that would only be adding to the point.

“I’m gonna go after the Beast Titan,” Levi is saying when you step next to him, “I’ll draw him away somehow and—”

“You can’t,” Erwin cuts in, so your protest dies on your tongue, “you won’t even make it near him.”

“Probably not. But, if you and Eren make it home alive…all things considered, I feel like it’s the best we can ask for. We’ve been brutalized.” He meets your eyes, broken but honest grays pouring into you. “To be honest, sir,” referring to Erwin but directed at you, “it seems like this battle will be where the Scout Regiment gets finished off.”

Till the end, (F/N)?

It would be so inappropriate to give him a last kiss.

Till the end, Levi.

But before either of you can make any more death pacts, Erwin hums, “Yes, if we had no way to fight back then you would be right.”

Both your heads sharply turn at the same time, and Levi questions disbelievingly, as though he thinks Erwin would ever lie to him, “Is there a way?”

“There is.”

Normally, at least a bead of relief would blossom in your heart, but not after the 57th expedition. Not after Stohess and not after you abandoned your best friend to save the man. If Erwin does have a way out of this, it will not be an easy way out, or even just a difficult one. His form of winning will be just as brutal as losing, you’ve learned. Even a victory will feel like a loss, like winning by dancing with the devil.

“The plan could go a few ways. Best case, you’ll have a decent chance of killing the Beast Titan. But for it to succeed, the recruits and I have to die.”

Never, never in a million years, did you predict the devil would be offering himself up on a silver platter.

“The Survey Corp may survive,” he continues, “but regardless, most of us will end up dead. Frankly, we’re almost guaranteed to be defeated no matter what.”

“So you’re giving up?” you ask incredulously. “We have other options! Why do you always resort to killing kids?”

Erwin has never responded to your jibes in a satisfying way. He either made you feel belittled by either not addressing you purposefully or leaving you out of his tight-knit group of friends, or he just ignored you, in a way demonstrating how little you mattered to him. It was so unlike Levi back in the day, who’d at the very least punished you for insubordination when he pleased. And you didn’t really care to pursue a plan to get a reaction out of him like you did with Levi before, but now, you wish he’d scold you. You wish he’d scream at you, even strike you down.

Anything other than a slight smile and a humorless chuckle. “Old habits die hard, I’m afraid.”

“So…so…” The words struggle to form. “Captain Levi kills the Beast Titan and the rest of just…just lay down and die?”

It’s cruel. Cruel beyond imagination. And even if it’s poor form to worry about those who will survive instead of those who’ll die, the thought of Levi, all alone even in victory makes you want to break down just like the houses and children surrounding you.

Erwin hesitates, then adds, “You’ll go with Levi.”

An uncomfortable, pregnant pause falls over all three of you. Your captain is the first to break it.

“Erwin—”

“Is this you being nice?” You almost want to scream too little, too late. “Some last merciful act?”

Your title as lieutenant and his as commander doesn’t even matter anymore. The Corp is dead. As far as you care, you’re ranked just as highly as Erwin now.

“I wish it could be.” With a tired, aged gesture, he points towards the Beast. “Arlert made a good point earlier. The reason the enemy keeps winning is because they simply know more about titans than we do. Something unexpected could happen even if Levi does sneak up on the bastard. Frankly put,” and you’ve never seen him look so unspeakably sorry about something in all the time you’ve known him, “I need a safety net.”

Well, at least he’s honest about his intentions. “You’re shitty,” Levi informs him in a tone of voice that sounds flat, but his jaw is set furiously. There’s no bite in his words, nor do you want there to be. Neither of you are angry about these orders. For once, you both feel the same thing towards Erwin, this consuming betrayal that he would do this to himself now, when the world still needs him. Levi still needs him—does he not know why Levi fights?

Of course he knows. The amount of possibilities running through his head isn’t matched by any other. If this is the plan he’s suggesting, that means he’s weighed all others and seen inevitable defeat. You’ve seen Erwin be a lot of things, proud and ruthless and cunning, but you’ve never seen him be wrong.

You scoff. “So I go with him, and the rest die. You, a-and the recruits, and—”

“And me,” a voice says softly from behind you. You know that voice, you’ve known that voice longer than you’ve known anyone else’s voice here.

In a manner so vulnerable that it’d be far better suited for a girl ten years your junior, you turn. For a fleeting second, you’re young again. In the barracks. Out in the field sparring. At the top of a snowy mountain, with a hand not warming you up but freezing you even more. Unable to control your laugh because his own is the most contagious one you’ve ever heard. How many hours have you wasted away with that voice?

You joined the Survey Corp, that should be enough to prepare you for the cold hard facts—no one is safe. Not your squad, not Stephen, not even the commander himself. Not you. There isn’t any evidence, nor any reason, for you to believe that he would live. You’ve considered his death so many times, almost seen it happen even more times than that. It’s plagued your nightmares moreso than anyone else’s demise has. And why? Maybe because his banana-colored hair would look the worst matted with blood. Maybe because you learned to laugh again by his side. Maybe because he’s your best friend.

It’s simply impossible to keep the tremor out of your voice. “Ricky,” you choke out, voice cracking as your throat closes up.

“Hey, hey, what’s that face, kid?” He cups your cheeks in his hands, like life hasn’t completely screwed him over. He kisses your forehead, nodding at the captain and commander behind you, and you hear them walk off, talking in quiet voices. Discussing the plan, the plan, the plan to kill everyone. “You’re not gonna get all weepy for a peasant, are you?”

“I can’t,” you beg, as he pulls you into a weak hug, so unlike his usual tight embraces. Your fist clutches the back of his uniform. Above him, dozens and dozens of rocks strike the wall, trickling down like nothing. “I don’t want you to go. Not you, Ricky, please.”

Almost every friend you’ve lost in the Scouts has been taken from you suddenly, no chance given to say goodbye. You wonder if that was the universe’s way of being merciful, rescuing you from this destroying experience of knowing what’s coming and not being able to do anything to stop it. But acknowledging that would mean giving some credit to the universe, and you’d rather stand in the line of fire than do that. The universe didn’t have to force Ricky Belle to grow up in a world like this.

He’s so peaceful now. Ricky was always emotional, crying at every death, wetting your uniform with his tears every time someone he so much as interacted with once got killed. But now, faced with the prospect of his own finality, his eyes aren’t even wet. You hate it—maturity shouldn’t mean that suddenly he greets death like an old lover. Wait until Lily sees this, you think, spitefully.

“Come on, twerp, what are my options?” Pulling back with his arms still around you, Ricky grins. “It’s either the rocks or thirdwheeling with you two lovebirds. You know I can’t be there when the heat of the battle has you two ripping each others’ clothes off right there on the grass.”

“That’s disgusting,” but a pained laugh escapes you anyway, somehow, even though the motion hurts your chest. “Ricky, what, what am I going to tell Millie?”

“Same thing I’ll tell Stephen.” He tucks a stray hair behind your ear. “That it’s been fun, but it’s time to go. At least I won’t be, uh, how did you say it, titan chow, right?”

Stephen. Ricky and Stephen. Stephen and Ricky. Your boys. Your friends. Your family. Half the reason you were in the Scouts in the first place. With both of them gone, what—what—what is the point? If Levi takes down the Beast Titan, there will still be nothing left back home. The people who deserved to see a bright future the most were snuffed out before they even caught a glimpse.

“I was supposed to protect you,” you stress. Ricky isn’t even shaking. “I can’t just let you go.”

The corners of his lips quirk upwards. “It was pretty easy for you before.”

You go rigid, eyes widening and mouth falling open. You meet his gaze, shaking your head desperately, as though to deny him. To pretend like you never abandoned him, even though you did. To object that it was easy, because it wasn’t. It was the hardest, worst decision of your life, one you replayed every time you closed your eyes. You’ll never forget. Never, ever, as long as you live.

“No sorries.” Ricky silences you with a thumb over your lips, the second the first apology is blurted out. “You did good, (F/N). You did what you had to do. Now let me do the same. Please?”

Maria, how much does this universe expect you to give? What a cruel thing to do, to ask your consent to let Ricky die. It has to be a punishment. This heart of yours has loved so deeply, and so it’ll bleed just as much. Equilibrium and all that shit.

“It’ll be just like our game. I’ll be hiding up there, in the stars, and you’ll have to find me.” His eyes twinkle, and with bated breath he hugs you again, this time with his usual fierceness, burying his face in your hair. “You’ll do it, kid, I know you will.”

Well, then, you’re defeated. With a last inhale, you do your best to memorize his scent. And then you whisper, “Okay.”

For the last time, you say goodbye to Ricky Belle.

And you turn around in time to see Levi, kneeled down, saying his final goodbye to Erwin Smith.

Times like these, you wish you were religious. So that you could clasp your hands together and scream at the sky please! spare us! i beg of you, forgive our sins and save us! If not to give these crying children something to pray to, then at least to comfort yourself that they won’t just go from this hell to a more fiery one.

“Everyone!” The commander’s voice is a stab to the stomach. “I’m about to announce our final mission. All troops, line up!”

Hands cup your forearms, then make their way down. Levi’s face is stony, but his course, tender hands compress your elbows, covered by your uniform. And yet it still feels like you can feel the rough calluses on your skin, almost lifting you up before you can sink. How rotten it would be for morale if the soldiers saw the two who didn’t have to sacrifice themselves embrace in comfort. So instead, you squeeze his arms too, keeping him rooted as he keeps you from falling.

It’s not like you have any words left to say. Both your eyes bore into his, and you shake your head slowly, letting him know that only you can see the piece of his heart that is now broken off. His throat bobs, and then he reaches up to wipe a tear that was never there from your cheek. Amidst the screams, he reminds you that you, too, are human.

“I told him to do it,” Levi admits, quietly and wildly. “It was my decision, in the end.”

The kind of confession he’s trying to make is best achieved over a glass of wine, after a good first glass has already been savored. When you can, after listening to every word with your utmost attention, pull him into your chest, and let him rest there, kissing his forehead whether he lets a few tears drop on your skin or not.

You can’t possibly hope to do that when so many rocks and screams and people are blinding you. Levi could admit to twisting the knife in Erwin’s stomach and you would only nod, and continue to hold onto him like you were his lifeline and he yours.

All else will have to fade until the reason for this sacrifice is dealt with.

Casting a blank glare upon the enemy, you finally, finally focus. “Tell me what the plan is.”

Levi’s head follows yours. “Me and you. We’ll take down the Beast Titan.” And everyone else will perish. “Will you do it?”

The way he doesn’t even need to look at you to know what your answer will be steadies you. Your hand slips down to his, discreetly intertwining your fingers. You can take it. You won’t let anything destroy you again, much as your heart will tear and your stomach will curdle. At these soldiers’ funerals, you’ll lift your head high and make sure their souls know they can count on you to make sure they are never forgotten.

For Stephen. For Nifa. For Rashad. For Gunther. For Traute. For Petra.

For Ricky.

“We’ll move in from the side. Use the bastards’ own guards to get closer to him. And then,” Captain Levi promises, with his nails digging into your palm as a swear, “we’ll make sure these deaths mean something.”

And so you find yourself on Erwin’s right, Levi on his left, facing down the soldiers who will give their lives at just the chance for your victory.

The commander yells, a terrible, horrible, wonderful speech that is not for you, but creates a pit in your stomach and a roar in your chest nonetheless. The entire time, you don’t tear your eyes off Ricky for a second. After he salutes, he’s the first to mount his horse. It takes Levi’s grip on your arm for you to look away.

And the last thing you do for Commander Erwin is give him the most genuine salute you have ever given anyone, one fist over your chest and one on your back.

Your heart and soul to the cause.

Behind you, you think you feel Levi give one as well, but it’s gone by the time you turn, and he begins to walk, starting the operation in earnest.

First you jog, then pick up the pace, then run, until you and Levi are almost racing. Possibly the only two surviving members of the Survey Corp. You’d find it romantic if it wasn’t so horrifying. Here it is, the sentimentalism of battle, because Levi doesn’t need to tell you to go ahead. He doesn’t need to tell you when to shoot your cables. He doesn’t need to tell you when to follow him into the air, because he’ll hardly breathe before you’re next to him. He needs only to be, and you will be right beside him.

This is a dream, one born from countless disturbing fantasies, of flying and falling and falling in love, all by his side. Your captain, your lover, your duke of destruction, your husband, your superior. It’s a nightmare, a nightmare you’ll never wake from because it’s all too real, but how many times have you felt like this, flying next to him? Nothing has ever clicked so well, so fast, so perfectly.

It’s as though the universe intended him for you, and you for him. Not only does Levi hold your heart, but he’s the one who made it beat in the first place. Hiding his laughter during the wee hours of the morning when you complained about your nonexistent neck cramps, he taught you love then. And now, with no one to hide from, now that he’s sure none of the soldiers can see him, you bear witness to his anguish, glassy eyes frozen by the wind on his face.

You don’t look at the source of the horses’ hooves thundering below you. You can’t.

Most people get drunk on alcohol. You do too, but not nearly as much as you get absolutely intoxicated fighting side by side with Levi Ackerman.

So it pains you to stop him at all, but you kick yourself out of the subspace you’ve fallen into to cope with the mass suicide charge. Before he can charge the first titan, you grab his arm. “Wait. Should we kill them?”

“We have to.” But even as he says it, the titan’s eyes shift towards the two of you, and yet it doesn’t move, just stays frozen in place. “Even if they won’t attack now, don’t you think they’ll provide him more cover later?”

“You’re not wrong. But we’re betting on this being a surprise, right? This is almost a guaranteed way of letting him know we’re coming. The smoke signals won’t matter if he hears us. Plus…” Your left arm throbs in pain suddenly, making your teeth grit. “I only have one pair of swords left.”

Again his fingers clasp around your elbow, murderous intent replacing the grief in his eyes as he stares down at your injury. “You could run,” he mutters, “there’s still time. Let me kill him.”

Unable to help it, your knuckles brush against his cheek, wiping away a drop of blood. “You’ll tell the commander to ride to his death, but you’ll spare me? That’s not right, Levi. I’m with you, now and always.”

He kisses you unexpectedly, tasting bitter but warm, and you’re sure any soldier would do the same if they realized they were all alone in the world, comrades slain all around them. That’s how you justify moving your lips against his, standing almost sideways against the wall with your hooks keeping you upright. This is not passion—not even love, although you feel it within you anyways (love, love, love, you love him)—just the natural way of things. Just like fighting, just like flying, just like breathing. His hand rests on your neck, thumb on your cheek, making sure your skin will always remember his touch. “Okay,” he murmurs, when he pulls back. “We’ll do it your way.”

This time, your gaze follows his, and you lock onto your target. Don’t get too addicted to victory, asshole.

Levi jumps first, and you follow, hooking onto the titan before jumping to the next one, with no movement except the titans’ eyes on you. Your fingers twitch, muscle memory screaming at you to slash the neck when it’s so wide open, but you push down the urge and concentrate on counting.

From titan to titan, seven…twelve…eighteen...twenty-two…

Twenty-five. And, you’re assuming, twenty-five on the other side as well. Fifty in total. Fifty-one counting the Beast Titan.

On the back of the final one, your fist clenches. There are still soldiers screaming out there. Riding to their deaths. Ricky could be one of them. Or he could be dead already, lying in a pool of his own blood.

Either way, they didn’t take your partner in crime alive.

The Beast Titan is huge. He must have a few meters on Eren’s titan (please let Eren and others be okay), and the fur covering his body makes him look all the more intimidating.

But he’s nothing compared to the man above you, who has blood around his eyes and blades in his hands. Under the rising soon, Levi is bathed like a holy figure, a great warrior of old, and he is in perfect position to strike.

Now, he mouths.

You move at the same time as him, going down as he goes up, a move that has never wronged you before and doesn’t today. With a hook in the titan’s back, you rush down, sliding in between his legs with a slash to both of them. Up above you hear Levi snarl, and sure enough, the Beast’s throwing arm is gone. This will be a quick fight, you know it, because you can hear the pain in Levi’s normal grunts. This isn’t a fair fight, this is revenge.

With a roar and a hand to his nape, the Beast Titan falls forward, but Levi’s ready for that too—he slashes his eyes next, not even needing to worry about regeneration with his speed. You jump as the captain goes high, and take out the other arm.

And for the grand finale, you leap back and allow Levi his killing blow.

Out of the nape of the monster a man is thrown out, with shaggy blonde hair and a beard, but that is all the observation you can make before your captain shoves his sword in his mouth. You swallow, but vault on top of the unmoving titan’s body, stepping next to him and staring down in contempt.

The Beast Titan. The destroyer of the Survey Corp. Just a man after all.

“After transforming, if your body’s severely damaged, it’s too busy healing to let you resume your titan form. Isn’t that right?”

The man can’t answer. Levi knows he can’t answer. You wonder what it says about you that it still makes you wince when he rips the man’s cheek open.

“Hey,” he seethes, “I asked you a question. It’s only polite to answer.”

You’ve…won. A victory that surely isn’t worth it, but it’s still a victory. The Beast Titan has fallen, and Levi—Levi has the injection. If one of the soldiers—maybe Erwin, maybe one of the recruits, maybe—maybe Ricky, if any of them are still alive, then maybe—if there’s two, there will have to be a terrible choice made—but at least someone will be brought back—

The body you’re standing on shakes.

Fifty-two, you realize in horror.

You don’t wait.

In a second, your arms are around Levi’s waist and you’re tugging, both of you plummeting towards the ground. He doesn’t wait either, and before you can blink, he’s spun you around so that he’s landing on his back and you on top of him.

“No,” you gasp, looking up, but your protests don’t stop it. No matter how quickly you race to your feet, it does not halt this new titan, crawling on all fours, to escape with the bearded man in its mouth.

Defeated words reach your ears. “Hey. Where are you going? Stop.”

With no sword in his mouth now, the man is free to scream. For the second time today, a blonde man shouts his orders for this battle. These orders, not for human soldiers.

“Go, now! Rip him to pieces!”

“Hold on.” Levi is still in disbelief—victory had been yours, was rightfully yours, a hundred dead soldiers could not amount to nothing. “I made a promise to Commander Erwin…that I would kill you no matter what it took.”

Hopelessly, you turn around. Titans are running towards you in both directions. Fifty left. More, for all you know. Clearly, you still know nothing.

“I promised!” he cries behind you.

There is absolutely no way for Levi to catch him now. Even if the two of you could defeat all of them, the Beast Titan will be long gone, outside of everyone’s clutches. The Scouts…they died for this. The commander and Ricky charged to their deaths on the slim chance that you would win. And Levi, he made just one promise and there is no way for him to fulfill it unless…unless…

You look up at the titans coming. If Levi just didn’t have the rest on his trail, then he could fight his way through half of them and catch the man. But there is no way to do that with so many more behind him, unless…

Unless…

Unless.

Ah.

Ah. So you’re finally standing at the crossroads.

Hadn’t you known it would come to this? The fateful moment when it would irrevocably be your life versus his? Hadn’t you spent months preparing for such a moment, confronted that harsh reality even before you joined his squad? It must be why you’re not surprised. Oh, how you’ve changed since that bratty girl from Stohess stepped into the Training Corp. The girl who didn’t need to try to do anything. The girl who put her fears above her heart. The girl who kissed Levi before running away from him. Running away from Levi, what a dumb notion. Even if it is what fate has led you to in the end.

“Go.” It’s a whispered command—insubordination, you think wryly—but even with the titans’ bellowing footsteps, you’re sure he hears you. “I’ll hold them off.”

Levi says nothing, but you feel him stiffen behind you.

With life playing cruel joke after joke on you, you’d be heartless to pay it forward and force him to make a choice between your life and Erwin’s orders. So you reassure him again, “I can keep them off you. If you go now, you’ll catch him.”

“And you’ll—”

“I have Hange’s death sticks.” Stick, not plural. “But yeah, um, this might be it.”

You feel his breath catch in his throat as if it were your own. And despite your best efforts, you know that it’s no less evil to do this to him. The image of humanity’s strongest, alone, hunched over with no one to lift him up, just the thought kills you already. But he isn’t the strongest just because he can fight. It’s because he is the best of humanity, which can take any pain and any hardship and still come back for more. Still, though, you’re not going to add to that burden. You’ll make damn sure the love of your life knows he doesn’t owe you anything.

“You don’t have to promise.” The breeze carries your words so you don’t have to turn, but you lean back slightly, so the back of your head can touch the back of his. “But just live for me, yeah?”

Not even in your favorite novels does a bride go out in a blaze of glory the day after her wedding. You’re more kickass than any of them.

The titans will be upon you in seconds. There is no time for argument—maybe a love confession, but he’d swore to you he wouldn’t. And he doesn’t.

At the last second, he speaks clearly.

“I’ll see you,” Levi finally says, his voice and mind made up, “soon, (F/N).”

“Soon, Levi,” you promise.

As you step away, you wish you could have gotten a last look at him.

Two sets of hooks sound in different directions as you fly up, tossing your sword and catching it to grip firmly before sliding around the first titan’s neck to slice it open. Forgive me, you hope he hears you, darling, I didn’t want to.

As you advance, you think.

You think of all the soldiers you’ve met. When you were a cadet, a private, a sergeant, and a lieutenant. Good-hearted people, kind people, brave people, and some bad people. All of them have been far better than you, but still you hope the fallen will accept you among their ranks. You believe you’ve fought hard enough. If everyone gets to rest, you should too, right? What’s beyond, anyway? Are they all living in harmony now, singing together? That sounds boring. Maybe they’re still fighting. That sounds depressing. Maybe they just are. That sounds like the best option.

You think of your father. How similar the two of you are now. The details of his death were never revealed, likely because the soldiers delivering the news didn’t know themselves. You wonder if he sacrificed himself for someone too, and if he was thinking of you. The man must have loved you, just a tad, because in a lost memory only now recovered, you can remember him ruffling your hair and telling you that he’ll tell you all about all the titans he slayed. As hard as you try, you can’t picture his face. Eventually, the survivors of today will forget the details of your face too. Or maybe they won’t, you’re drop dead gorgeous, ironic as the phrasing is.

You think of your mother. Her face is not one you can forget, least of all due to its resemblance to yours. Should you have apologized to her? It would not be a satisfying one. It wouldn’t even be a good lesson for anyone if you apologized to the person who hurt you the most. Because of her, you spent your life not crying. Do you even remember how to? How could she steal such a vital part of the human experience from you? It would have certainly made all the years of mourning easier if you could form some kind of physical manifestation of your sadness. No apology, but you wonder if she is capable of crying, and if she’ll cry for you. You won’t get your hopes up, though.

You think of your first squad. Eld, Gunther, Oluo, and Petra, who were as much a part of your build as a soldier as your own muscles were. Who took a part of your soul with them when they died. Somehow, even though you’ve achieved closure, the thoughts of them still make you feel ill, because if anyone didn’t deserve to die so brutally, it was them. None of them had ever brought harm upon anyone. All they had done was give their lives, always. The Survey Corp never knew such respectable soldiers and never would again. They would never know the truth, and it seems, neither would you. At the very least, you’ll be able to stand by their side once more.

You think of your new squad—Armin, Connie, Eren, Historia, Jean, Mikasa and Sasha—they, thankfully, have a shot. It’s more than enough, and if they’re still alive, you don’t doubt they’ll get to discover every secret this world’s been hiding. Those kids are different, each of them spectacular in their own amusing, clever, brave, titan-shifting ways. You only have regrets that you won’t get to be with them more, teach them more. There’s so much you wish you could say to them. And now good luck might be the most you can offer. A mental message being received is a little too much to expect from a squad that was only put together a few months ago, but you have faith. Even if they don’t get the memo, they’re good—they won’t need it.

You think of Stephen. Stephen Hansen, the most friendly boy you ever met. Stephen Hansen, who died before he even really became a man. Stephen Hansen, whose body wasn’t even in his grave. All the hours you wasted simply talking to a headstone should be considered criminal with all the theft of time. You don’t think you even talked to him for so long when he was alive. Stephen was your wake-up call, your rude awakening, but he was more than that—a comrade, a friend, a son, a person. The hole his absence left in you would never be repaired, or at least you’ll only determine differently when you can meet those pretty green eyes again, throw your arms around him, and tell him how desperately you’ve missed him.

You think of Ricky. You’ll have to apologize to him, you won’t be able to play the game because you’ll be joining him in the stars. You won’t be parted for long, and you two were so joined at the hip that it was almost inevitable. He’d laugh at you now, call you cheesy, and you suppose in some twisted turn he could be alive, but if he was, the pit in your stomach wouldn’t feel so bottomless, now would it. He really did keep you sane, rooted, always reminding you to laugh since the first time he met you. You never saw him take life as seriously as everyone else. He’s the only one who grew up next to you, the brother you never had, the last one left from the veteran Scouts, dying to protect his home. A sad intuition tells you he knew how today would end up for him. You’ll have to smack him in the arm for not warning you earlier.

You think of Millie, and wince at the mental image of her learning what happened. Though she doesn’t look it, she tends to get emotional. And you know what you’re doing to her. Not only are you her single competent dance partner, you might just be her favorite one (and if you said you were her best dance partner but she wasn’t yours, then what). All the people in your life you have an understanding with you’ve worked to make it so. Millie, though, you think was born just so the universe could show you that soulmates did exist. There is no other explanation for how another girl could meet your gaze from across the room at a party and understand just from a nod of your head that she should meet you outside so that she can talk your ear off about all the constellations. When people fell asleep during a rant, most people who were doing the ranting would take a hint that the other wasn’t interested. Not Millie, though, she would seek you out the next day with two books in her hands to drive the point home further. She was always the best, just so that you wouldn’t have to be.

You think of Levi. Oh, Levi Ackerman. How could you even begin to explain what Levi Ackerman was to you? No possible words or phrases could describe it. Nothing could capture the sensation of you and him in his office, straddling his hips as you settled down on his lap and kissed his soft lips. Nothing could accurately sum up the feelings you felt when he would cup your cheeks, nodding along to whatever tangent you were going off on, and stealing kisses in between. The novels that he would read with you as you cozied yourself in his arms. His breath at the back of your neck. The kiss he’d place at your nape to signal that he was done reading and you could flip the page. The way you would pretend you weren’t finished yet so that he could keep going, until you were a humming mess and the book would slip from your hands as he whispered in your ear. Lovely, sweet nothings that would be replaced by gruff commands that you adored no less in the morning. You’d let yourself get so, so greedy with him last night, marrying him for your own fantasies and having him confess his dreams—you’ll never see the tea shop. But you hope to Maria, Rose and Sina that he will. That he’ll gaze upon it and think of you and smile, knowing that a few lifetimes will be well worth the wait—and that you plan to love him even more the next time you get the chance.

Lastly, you think of yourself. With all this thinking, you haven’t been keeping track of how many titans you’ve killed, but it’s nowhere near a low amount, and you have to give it to yourself—you’re good. Like, holy shit, really good. There’s so many of them lying under your feet, and you did that with your last set of blades. Now, to cross one more thing off your bucket list…

With only a few titans left, you reel back and fire the Thunderspear straight at the ground. With a stunning spin, you fly away from the explosion that so many of the titans get caught in, up, up, up so far it seems the blast is propelling you, until the last bit of your gas runs out, and you fall back downwards, where a large flailing hand crashes into you and sends you flying towards to the ground. The grass approaches, closer and closer, your hair flies out of its bun and sets itself free, and then you think no more.

Mikasa has felt utter despair only twice in her life. Most would assume one of those moments was when her parents had died, but she’d been so confused and so scared in that moment that there wasn’t time to feel despair.

Someone else would guess one of the moments would be just now, when she’d stared at Armin’s burnt corpse in front of her. And she’d felt it all, horror, repulsion, like her very life had just ended, but it wasn’t despair. Maybe she knew deep down who the captain would choose, or maybe her denial had been so strong that the unlikely decision only coincidentally happened to be the one he made.

One of the times was when Eren died. She’d felt it then, a hand wrapped around her throat and squeezing, asking her how badly she really wanted to live. Asking her how much she could really pretend to care when the world had taken back the person who made the sky look a little less gray.

That was the second time.

The first was when Shiganshina fell. She wasn’t confused then, nor was she in denial. All she’d been was defeated, left wondering how she could have so much bad luck to not only lose her home once, but twice. How it was possible that Wall Maria had stood proud for a hundred years, but fell in her lifetime, in her childhood.

And the only thing that comforted her, in the next few days and months and weeks, as they watched Armin’s grandpa leave them and were put to work in freezing fields with nowhere near an adequate amount of food provided to compensate for their work, was an orange jacket and the memory of a soldier smiling at her.

She’d known she was going to join the Scouts, because Eren was going to. But to see a soldier do something other than drink or fight, to actually try and ask for her name and to sacrifice something to give her any kind of warmth, reassured her that even besides her small family, there was still something to smile about in this world and still someone to fight for those smiles.

So when she sees the captain staring out where all the bodies are lying, she speaks up. They are still waiting for Armin to wake, after all, and she needs to know, wants to see…

“Is the lieutenant with the others?” she asks boldly, knowing the captain may not want to speak with her right now. She knows she caused him pain. She knows that she is his most stubborn soldier. But she also knows that she told the lieutenant she’d find her once she’d confirmed Eren and Armin were alright, and well, they’re alright.

“No.” He points with his sword, newly stocked in his gear from one of their supply wagons just in case. “There’s still more titans there. That’s where she is. I’m going to go get her.”

“Let me come with you,” she requests. They have an understanding. There is a reason he knew about her feelings for Eren. As much as she hated it in the past, there is a connection there that goes beyond just them being family, and she can acutely imagine what he must be feeling. The commander, and the lieutenant—the lieutenant, of all people. She saw the way the captain stared at her. Mikasa was no fool. Even before the rest of them had the information revealed to them a month ago, she’d known. Underneath that supposedly apathetic look was gratitude, and love. The same gratitude she had to Eren for wrapping her scarf. The same love she had to Eren for simply living and breathing. Captain Levi looked at his subordinate like the world would stop turning if she wasn’t with him.

That’s exactly how it feels now. Like a crucial axis is broken, and the way of the world has cracked.

“Alright,” he agrees stoically, and they both make their way down the wall.

It’s a long walk, with no horses to rely on. As the titans approach, both she and the captain get their swords ready. A second after he attacks, she does too. It’s an easy fight. Neither of them are running low on swords or on gas anymore, and it actually feels…not good, but relieving to simply take down a regular titan, one that won’t go down until they blow him up or until someone burns alive. And there are so few left—the lieutenant may not have been an Ackerman like them, but she was still the only person who could keep up to her when it came to speed, something she assumed came with lots and lots of practice.

As Mikasa lands, she spots her. The lieutenant looks…small, not a word that would have ever been associated with her before. But there aren’t any obvious injuries on her body, no burns or limbs missing, and suddenly a surge of hope fills the girl’s chest. The lieutenant really is strong, so maybe she’s simply fallen unconscious. Maybe she’ll need some patching up, but she’ll survive. Maybe she’ll live, and Mikasa will get to find her as promised.

Captain Levi lowers himself onto his knees. With more care than he looks capable of demonstrating, he reaches for the lieutenant and pulls her into his arms tenderly, like she’s the most precious thing in the world. One of his hands cradles the back of her head, while the other closes over her wrist.

She can hardly breathe. Please, please, please.

There’s a small pause; maybe that’s the sound of the world creaking back to life?

“She’s dead,” the captain murmurs, and Mikasa feels that utter despair once again.

#attack on titan #aot x reader #levi x reader #levi ackerman x reader #levi ackerman #satc #superior #valkyrie stories

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miasmal-sweetness · 1 day

Text

Eye Level

NSFW - MDNI - 18+ ONLY

My brain is currently refusing to cooperate and work on any other writing until I spit out my dumb little one-shot with my favorite trope (size differences) with one of my favorite demons. So here ya go. Hopefully I’ll be back to writing out my planned Cloud fics afterwards.

Eye Level

Summary: Alastor x reader. 4.1k. You're short. You know it, everyone at the hotel knows it. You've assumed that it's some sort of divine punishment for whatever sins you committed while alive, but it's really not so bad, as long as no one hides your step-stool. Today, you've found a new problem with it, though, when you try to get a little closer to your favorite 7-foot-tall demon.

Warnings: NSFW, MDNI, dead dove do not eat, size difference (reader reaches Alastor’s hips), smut, reader is gender-neutral with reference to having a vagina, reader wears a dress and bloomers, Alastor being sadistic, reader being a masochist, Alastor calls you “good girl” because I’m a sucker for it

The red light of the sky outside is bleeding in to the hotel, burning your eyes and causing an ache in your head. You want to shut it out, but Niffty is busy cleaning all the windows. Rubbing your right temple, you shift on the couch in an attempt to angle yourself away from the worst of the light as you continue to read your book. The words on the page seem harsher than before against the rough, yellowed pages. In addition to Earth’s actual sunlight, you also find yourself missing the convenience of heading out to the pharmacy to pickup some painkillers that weren’t illicit substances.

“Something the matter, dearest?”

You lift your head at the sound of Alastor’s voice. He’s blocking the light as he stands in front of you, his long shadow easing the pain in your head. You have to crane your neck to look at his smiling face, but you’re used to it at this point.

“Oh, I just have a headache,” you say with a light shrug. “I’m okay. How are you doing?”

“Wonderful as always, darling,” he assures. “Why don’t you join me for a cup of coffee upstairs? I’ve found it works like a charm for a headache.”

You perk up at the thought. It’s a little late in the day to have coffee, but you’re not one to turn down a drink and a snack with Alastor. You take care of most of the cooking for the hotel, since Niffty took over your old job of cleaning, so having something made by another person is a nice treat. Plus, he’s good company—he’s the most polite person you think you’ll ever meet in Hell.

“I’d love to,” you say, sliding off of the couch. You smooth out your dress and tuck your book under your arm; you can finish it another time. Your certain that if you were taller, Alastor would do the gentlemanly thing you see him do with others and link arms with you, but that’s not really possible at your height. Instead, he leads the way by engulfing your little hand with his.

You’re barely focused on the small-talk he makes with you as he guides you up the stairs. His gloves are smooth, and you can feel his claws tickling the skin on your wrist and hand. You know that, as much as Alastor enjoys invading other people’s personal space, he does not enjoy allowing others in to his personal space. Despite this, he has been rather open to your presence; picking you up, holding your hand, ruffling your hair. It feels nice. It makes you feel special—like he’s bestowing an honor on you just by patting you on the head, one that the others don’t get.

You nearly trip over a step, and it snaps you out of your thoughts. Alastor stops you from hitting the ground by extending his arm, letting you put your weight on him for balance.

“Careful, dearest,” he chides, “I’m not always here to catch you.”

Your headache is back, caused by the heat rushing to your face and chest. “Right, thank you,” you mumble, ducking your head. “I-I was just thinking.”

“About what?” You should have seen that coming.

Your eyes dart around as he guides you towards his room. “Uh, j-just—the book you lent me,” you spit out. “I’m almost finished with it. It’s really good.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” he says, holding open the door for you. “It’s not often I meet another down here that enjoys a good book.”

You smile and step in to his room—immediately, you’re hit by the scent of paper, candles, wood that is well-cared for, and decaying leaves and other plant matter. You know his room changes. You know that what you see is different from what the others see when they enter. You’ve heard them mention the swamp that makes up half of the room, often complete with a decaying deer. Every time he has invited you in, however, it has been nothing other than a lovely room that looks like it belongs in some fancy townhome from the 1920s.

Just another thing that makes you feel special.

“If you have a favorite book, I’d love to read it,” you suggest as you slip out of your shoes.

Alastor’s grin grows even wider than usual. “Really? Well, I’ll have to think about it; I have quite a few in my collection that I favor.” It’s a lie, an excuse to put this off for later. There’s something he doesn’t want you to see. You can sense it, deep down in your gut, but you ignore it. He’s always shielded your eyes from the bad—from the gore of Hell, from those that would try to take advantage of you, even from some of the arguments among the others. This is no different.

Moving on from the topic, Alastor snaps his fingers, and a tray of coffee and small snacks appear on his dining table. He’s added cream and sugar for you; he doesn’t understand your sweet-tooth, but he does indulge it.

“Oh, and a treat for you, little one.”

He snaps his fingers again, and when you next blink your eyes, you find that a dish has appeared on the tray. It’s a slice of cake—the same you remember ogling outside the bakery window the last time you went outside the hotel. The hotel doesn’t offer payment for your services, so your measly pocket change was not enough to get it. He must have noticed your longing for that delicious, soft piece of cake. You don’t even remember the last time you had the luxury of cake. The last time was probably when you were alive, and you have the feeling it was one of those store-bought cakes that are dry and covered in thick, sickeningly sweet icing.

This cake is fancy. This cake is fluffy and standing tall, covered in berries and whipped cream with just the right amount of sweetness. And most of all—it means that Alastor paid that much attention to you on a silly outing that he didn’t need to be a part of.

“Thank you, Alastor!”

You throw out your arms and wrap them around him. It’s a chance as good as any. The closest you have come to hugging him is when he’s picked you up and carried you around like a doll. Surely a gift like this means he would be okay with it—although, the second you touch him, you realize you’re probably reading a little too much in to a slice of cake, and maybe it’s because you forgot to eat lunch.

Your arms wrapped around his legs, your feet in between his. And now you remember just how short you are compared to him. Normally, you’re either staring at the ground or you’re turning your head all the way up to look at his face, which makes it easy to forget that your head reaches an… unfortunate location that you have just unknowingly pushed yourself against.

Your face is burning again. Your head is throbbing. If you weren’t already condemned to Hell, this would probably have gotten you in. Your cheek is right against his groin. You fear looking up at his face for a reaction, but you do it anyway and see that, despite his smile, he looks to be just as shocked as you, if not more. And then it changes. The shock is fading. His eyes are getting darker, and that strange look in his eyes—one that you’ve never seen on him—is directed at you.

You force your body in to action. “I-I’m sorry!” you squawk, stumbling away from him. “Um! I-I just—I was excited; I didn’t mean to—uh, s-sorry, sorry!” You’re clumsily making your way back towards the door, nearly slipping from the lack of friction your socks have on the polished floor.

Alastor takes a step closer to you, and you bristle, picking up the pace. “Ma cher, don’t—”

“Sorry!” you cry one last time, slipping out the door and in to the safety of the hallway. You dash to the end of it and around a corner, where you wait to hear any signs of him following. Nothing. The only thing you hear is your own racing heart and the blood rushing through your body. You feel hot, shaky, and a little sweaty—your feet are sweating through your socks.

Your socks.

You forgot your fucking shoes in his room.

Groaning, you sink down to the floor and peel off your socks, freeing your overheated feet. You replay the event in your mind as you stare emptily at your toes, wiggling them all one by one. You just had to go and try to hug him—you couldn’t just be patient and wait for him to one day, just maybe, initiate it himself. At the very least, you could have been more careful. You think it might have been a nice hug otherwise. You can still feel the crisp fabric of his pants and the warmth he radiates; you can smell the light scent of smoke and cologne on his clothes. The button of his pants had been against your cheek, and you have no control against the intrusive thought of how the bulge in his pants had felt.

Smacking your cheeks with your palms, you shake your head, as though it would toss the thought out. You need to stop being a little creep and get your shoes. You have one pair of shoes, and you are not willing to walk barefoot anywhere in Pentagram City. The longer you leave them there, the more likely you are to abandon them entirely in hopes of never having a confrontation with Alastor. Well… maybe you could ask Charlie to get you a new pair of shoes? You groan at yourself; you’re already trying to get out of it.

You push yourself to your feet and dust off the skirt of your dress. You take quiet, slow steps towards his room. You can do this. Just don’t think about it. Did he like it? No, stop it. Did it excite him, like it excited you? Stop that! You’re wet—maybe from fear, maybe from arousal. Your hands are shaking as you reach for the doorknob. You contemplate whether it would be best to knock or simply crack the door open and grab your shoes without entering. Alastor is polite, though; you know he’d much rather you be decent and knock.

Heart racing, chest heaving with tiny and anxious breaths, you tap your knuckles against the door. It opens almost immediately.

“Yes, dearest? Have you calmed down now?”

You can’t bring yourself to look at his face; instead, you resort to looking at your bare feet. “I—um, I realized I forgot my shoes here,” you mumble, fidgeting with the hem of your dress.

He laughs at this—it makes you shiver, and you hope he doesn’t notice. “You were in quite the hurry,” he teases. “What scared you so badly, darling?”

You mean to simply snatch your shoes and flee, but the moment you cross the threshold, he’s closed the door behind you. Your heart is pounding, as though it thinks you’re sprinting down a hallway from a monster. But it’s just Alastor! He’s never harmed you, only kept you safe—and yet, you feel like you’re caught in a trap. You can feel the warmth of his body radiating from behind you; he’s close, and for once, you wish he’d be less comfortable with you in his personal space. Despite this, you can’t bring your dumb feet to move. You are caught like a deer in headlights.

“What’s wrong, pet?” He’s never called you that before. It’s new and exciting, even though you internally scold yourself for the warm feeling building up in the depths of your gut. “Why have you gone quiet? You’re not ignoring me, are you?”

His fingers ghost over your hair as he speaks, his hand finally coming to rest on your shoulder. It’s not as though you’re hiding your discomfort well, but that doesn’t stop him. Alastor’s left hand comes from behind you and cups your chin, slowly drawing you back until your spine touches his leg. You shut your eyes. You won’t look at him; it makes you feel at least a little less exposed, even if you know he can see the red in your face all the same.

“I don’t appreciate the silent treatment, dearest,” he warns, giving your cheeks a squeeze. “I guess I’ll have to find a way to snap you out of it.”

You’re lifted off of your feet; the sudden feeling of instability makes you open your eyes, even though you try to resist. Before you can register it, Alastor has dropped you on his bed—a bed that seems rarely used—and is now kneeling before you.

“You’ve been terribly rude, pet,” he chides, resting his hand on your knee. “First you get so close to me, then you run off and leave me wanting? Now you come back and refuse to say a word to me.” He clicks his tongue in disdain; its the feeling of his claws digging in to your skin that truly express his displeasure. You shift in place, but keep your mouth sealed. Your mind is blank, anyhow.

When his claws pierce your skin, you move out of reflex, jerking your leg away from his hand. Alastor’s grip is iron-clad and holds you in place so tightly that you can’t even move it a millimeter. Your skin feels hot and cold at the same time, and goosebumps are running up and down your arms. Your mind is getting hazy, to the point that your vision blurs as his other hand creeps up the skirt of your dress.

You try to control your breaths, try to look anywhere other than him. He’s relishing the sight of you as his fingers curl around the waistband of your frilly bloomers. He grips your hip harshly—you know it will leave a reminder in the form of a bruise later. His thumb lightly brushes over your clit, and your toes curl in response. It’s like he’s fascinated by the response your body has to it; he’s watching every twitch, shiver, and shake as he toys with you. Finally, a mewl escapes your lips. Something about the noise draws him out of whatever it is that he’s thinking, and he looks you in the eyes.

“I’m nothing if not a gentleman, darling,” he says, relaxing his grip on you. “So… yes or no?”

This is closer to the Alastor you’re familiar and comfortable with. He looks so calm and pleased that it’s like it’s just another day for him, one where he does not have his hand in your underwear and he’s just making you feel special by gracing you with a pat on your head. The familiarity is reassuring, and you’re such a sucker for how special he makes you feel, so surely there’s no harm in this…

“Yes,” you finally eke out.

Alastor’s grin widens; his thumb immediately resumes teasing you. His other hand strokes up and down your thigh, his claws tickling you and leaving red streaks in their wake. You moan again and are met with the reminder of his watchful gaze; unable to take the feeling of scrutiny anymore, you grab the lapel of his coat and tug on it.

You hear him chuckle and crack your eyes open again. He’s released you—for now—to shrug off his coat and set it aside.

“An eye for an eye, pet?”

He doesn’t give you a chance to agree to this suggestion; he pops open the buttons on the back of your dress in one quick motion. Your dress is pulled from your body, leaving you and your bloomers entirely exposed. You instinctively cover your chest with your forearm. This is hardly an eye for an eye—and you know, deep down, that he knows that and enjoys every bit of imbalance between you two. And you do, too, even if you don’t want to admit it.

His hands are on you again, this time running up and down your waist, back, thighs, and chest. He’s parting your legs and moving in between them, leaning down to press his lips to your throat. You whimper, now suffocated by the dizzying smell of tobacco. Alastor gives you a gentle peck, before his teeth graze your delicate skin and earn a moan from you. You instinctively bristle from the delightful pain, and he pushes your legs apart again.

“Relax, sha,” he murmurs against your neck. “Relax. Would I let you get hurt?”

Yes. He absolutely would. You know that, and you stuff it down. Who cares? Who cares if you get a little hurt? If he lets it happen? If he’s the one to do it, if he’s the one watching and enjoying it, that’s all that really matters.

So you relax for him and melt in to his touch, letting him guide you down to the soft bed. You don’t resist when your bloomers come off. You’re completely exposed to him, and he’s simply standing over you, grinning at the sight. The one sacrifice he does make is his gloves, shedding them to feel your skin in its full glory. His hands are much warmer without his gloves on; the feeling of them rubbing your legs is soothing.

“Alastor,” you mewl—for a moment, you realize just how pathetic and weak you sound, but decide that it’s fine to be pathetic and weak for him and slip back in to your haze. For every inch of fog clouding your mind, Alastor seems to gain a new degree of focus. You can’t tell exactly what it is he’s so focused on, so hungry for, but you enjoy it all the same.

“You sound so lovely when you say my name.” His voice sounds so different now—animalistic, growling. Your heart rate spikes again, but you’re not about to back out now, so you enjoy the adrenaline rush as you gaze up at the ceiling. You hear a shift of fabric, feel him moving between your legs as he looms over you. He slips one hand underneath you to feel the small of your back, and you finally realize what he’s about to—

“Ahh!” you hiss, curling your spine as you reflexively try to escape the source of the pain. You’re brought back to the reality of your situation for a brief moment; Alastor is over seven feet tall, you are definitely not, and he is definitely entirely proportionate for his height. It hurts, worse than anything you think you’ve felt before. You feel like you’re splitting open, despite how wet you are and the fact that he’s barely inside of you.

Alastor’s hands hold you in place by your hip and your arm. You can feel his own excitement and agitation from the tightness of his grip—so tight he’s trembling in the slightest—and the hint of sweat on his palms. “Behave, sha,” he orders through his teeth. He’s trying to suppress your squirming as much as possible, but you can still wriggle in his grip, and every movement of your hips sends a wave of pleasure through him. “Relax and behave.”

Your body is slowly adjusting to the pain, and his voice is bringing you back to that lovely, pleasurable haze. You force yourself to stay still and breathe through it.

“That’s it,” he murmurs with a sigh. “Good girl.” You shudder at the words, and he pushes himself further inside of you. You don’t struggle this time; you simply yelp in pain and squeeze your eyes shut to bear it. He releases your arm to grab you by your chin, forcing your head up. You open your eyes, your face contorted in pain; he’s smiling, of course. It’s a feral, sadistic smile, but it’s not quite the same one you’ve seen before he rips apart some idiot trying to wreck the hotel. This one is different, and you hope it’s one he’s reserved only for you. No matter how frightening it is, you’ll still delight in the honor.

You manage to relax a little more, having adjusted to the feeling of being torn in two. Alastor sighs at the feeling and once again pushes further inside of you. Every effort of yours to behave will be rewarded like this—with more pain, blood, and tears that prick your eyes. You had your chance to say no. You still could. But you don’t. You’re special. He wants you. And you want him—you want him to degrade you, too.

“It hurts, doesn’t it, sha?” he coos in a tone of faux concern. Still, you whimper and nod, curling your fingers in to the linens beneath you. “I know, pet, I know. It must hurt terribly.” Another inch inside of you, another swallowed scream.

“P-please,” you beg. You barely even realize the words are spilling out of your mouth. “I can’t—I can’t take it.”

“You can,” he assures, his hand moving down to your throat. No matter how much he wants to, he doesn’t squeeze. Not yet. He’ll save that for another time, another day. There’s nothing wrong with denying a bit of pleasure now to make it sweeter later. “You can and you will. I will make you.”

You try to scream when you feel the sensation of a burning, sharp pain pierce further inside of you, but he clamps his hand over your mouth.

“No,” he breathes. “You won’t make a sound unless you’re quiet about it. I am the only one who can hear you. This is just for me.”

You swallow back the scream; it feels like it’s still stuck in your chest, making it ache as it tries to beat its way out through your sternum. It’s too painful to breathe. Every single movement is painful. This is as far as he can go without really hurting you—without you truly breaking apart. You can smell blood. You feel like you can maybe taste it, too. The sight of it only spurs him on, and he pounds in to you without any concern for the pain it will cause you.

You can’t even scream; it’s too sudden. Once the waves of pain truly set in, you let out a weak cry and grab on to his arms in an effort to steady yourself. Spots of all colors are appearing in your vision as the sounds of the room—skin against skin, muffled groans that he’s trying to hold back, your own crying—get further and further away. Your grip on him loosens, and he notices.

“I can’t keep going if you’re sleeping, pet,” Alastor taunts, grabbing you by your chin and squeezing. When your pupils only dilate further, he takes a handful of your hair and pulls, giving your head a shake. That does it; you’re awake enough, for now. “There you are.”

You can’t escape the pain. You just have to live with it. Any time he sees you slipping out of consciousness, you’re awakened with a sharp jolt of pain. And now his movements are too fast, too harsh to even begin to pass out. Tears freely flow down your face at this point, as freely as the blood pooling beneath your thighs.

“A-Alastor,” you sob, one hand reaching up for him. “Please.”

The pathetic sight of you stupidly reaching for him is what sends him over the edge. His claws curl in to your skin, and blood drips on to the linens beneath you. He’s looming over you as you feel warmth replace the feeling of an icy knife in your belly, spilling out of you and on to your legs. His eyes are closed, he’s panting, and his brow is furrowed. You like the sight of it, but you can’t fully enjoy it when he’s still causing you so much pain.

Finally, his eyes open, and he pulls away from you without warning, sending another ripple of pain through you. You’re throbbing. You feel like you’ve been impaled and suffocated. You definitely did not cum. And yet, when the look on his face softens, the pain lessens. He’s back to the gentleman you know and adore.

“Oh dear,” he sighs, resting his cheek against his hand—a hand covered in your blood. “Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?”

As he helps you bathe and feeds you a potion to help heal some of your wounds, you let that haze settle in permanently in a part of your brain. As long as he makes you feel special, as long as he calls you sweetheart and pet and sha, you’ll take whatever pain he throws at you.

#dead dove #dead dove do not eat #dark fic #yandere!alastor x reader #mdni #miasmal writes #size difference

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chavahlahdraws · 1 year

Note

writing prompt!!! maybe howl's pov of a scene in hmc where he Knows sophie's not an old woman but is so baffled and amused and fascinated trying to figure out what is actually going on with her. why is she like this. and why is he high-key into it?

them working on a spell together and it goes disastrously wrong <3

im definitely going to do the second one too but … (fair warning i am an avid calling howl howell when it’s from his perspective supporter) also this has quite a bit of references to queer coded howl because i genuinely believe that at least part of why he had to escape to ingary is because he felt so out of place in our world :/ ANYWAYS

Howell raced towards Mrs. Fairfax’s house with purpose. He may not have succeeded at wooing beautiful Lettie Hatter, but he was a changed man after his last visit with her. He had been right, all this time! Of course, Howell had known Sophie was under a spell all this time, but now that he knew for sure that Lettie was Sophie’s sister, he also knew for sure that he was right! Thank goodness she was so young, though, because he had begun to think himself a bit strange for his feelings about her. Now it all made perfect sense.

He was desperate for answers, because for some reason it was still entirely unclear why (or by who!) Sophie had been put under that spell. Howell was determined to find out, and he was determined to break the curse she was under because it was so far proving to be the most difficult he’d encountered yet.

“Dear Lettie!” He announced himself loudly at her door. Mrs. Fairfax answered.

“Mr. Oak,” She said politely, a smile plastered on her face. “Lettie’s just in the grove, picking apples.” Howell nodded, shuffling past her quickly.

“Lettie,” He said with an undeniably darling smile. The dark-haired, beautiful Hatter girl responded in kind. He knelt handsomely before her in her dainty little garden seat, brushing his pinkish-ginger hair out of his eyes. “How have you been, my dear?” He said charmingly.

“Alright.” Lettie said, smiling widely. She stayed unnaturally frozen like that for a moment. “...How is Sophie?”

“Sophie?” Howell raised an eyebrow. “Oh, she’s been a bit worse, pain-wise, but if you know her, you know that she won’t take that and she’s as rigid as ever. And I’ve been trying to help her.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Lettie seemed very concerned by that.

“Well, she’s quite an old woman,” said Howell. “You’d have to be half-sisters, at most, or perhaps she’s-”

Lettie looked like she was about to burst. “Did you do something to her?” She blurted, managing to keep that unnatural smile plastered over her face as she said it.

“Oh, no!” Howell said, quite defensively. “I wouldn’t. She’s been like that since I met her.”

“Sylvester!” Lettie shouted. “Is she alright?”

“She’s fine,” Howell said, taking Lettie’s hand in his. “She’s perfectly alright, Lettie. I promise you.”

She heaved a sigh of relief. Her exhaustingly wide smile turned into an adoring gaze again. “Good.” She said, still seeming a little strained. It was just then that Howell noticed a very familiar figure, poking her nosy self around the hedges. He almost laughed out loud, because the very girl he was here to inquire her sister about was standing in front of him, not fifty feet away! She really was quite a menace, that blasted woman!

It suddenly occurred to Howell that Sophie might be jealous of the attention he was affording her lovely sister. Her courting still had the potential to be a wonderful excuse to find out more about her. Goodness, was Sophie a force to be reckoned with! She must have used some of his old seven-league boots to get here so quickly.

The dog that had been behind Lettie emerged suddenly, and she instinctively pet him on the head.

Howell squinted. “...Would you feel well enough for me to leave now, dear?” He asked gently, still holding her hand. He supposed that Sophie was here to speak with her sister.

“Yes!” said Lettie. “I am perfectly fine, Sylvester! Shouldn’t you be going, anyway?”

She seemed rather in a hurry as well. Howell kissed the top of her hand. “Until we meet again, Lettie.”

“Thank you very much, sir.” She bowed gracefully.

Howell held his arms out, drawing a pentagram over the grass with his index fingers. He pointed one of his hands in the direction of Kingsbury and launched his opposite hand, making himself dart toward the city. The markets there were renowned for their quality, and Howell figured he should buy Sophie a few extravagant presents for all her trouble. And of course, something for Michael, too, so she didn’t think him too strange for fancying her as an old woman.

Besides, he thought, the two of them would certainly need something to wear to the palace, if they were ever to blacken his name in front of the King. But all the same, he felt like spending some money.

Howell exited the spell softly, landing himself in a dark alleyway so he wouldn’t be seen. He magicked his suit just a little less noticeable, cast a spell of unrecognizability and stepped out into the sunlight. Admittedly, going out on the town was far less enjoyable when he couldn’t be lauded for his impressive sense of style. The boys back home always teased him for it. Dreadfully, too. He found he fit in better in Ingary anyways.

When he turned his head, Howell was suddenly captivated by a dazzling grey silk dress, sitting in the gold-laden window of a luxury shop. Oh, and there was a shawl to match! The thought of his old rugby mates suddenly vanished. Sophie would probably love it. It was as unassuming as she’d like to be, but surely as beautiful as she was too.

She had always rather reminded him of that girl he’d met on May Day, that lovely red-headed girl who’d been so scared. Howell hoped that was Sophie. He purchased the outfit immediately and walked out of the shop gallant, feeling like a new man again. He’d forgotten how rejuvenating this was!

More importantly, he thought, if Sophie was the girl he’d met on May Day, how had such a timid mouse of a girl gotten herself tangled up in this mess? Lettie didn’t match her beauty by any means, even in that little grey dress. Howell stopped in his tracks again, his eyes drawn to a fine petticoat shop to his right. He bought four from it, to go along with her dress. Grey as a color is generally very versatile.

Howell was still thinking about Sophie when he bought a velvet suit tailored perfectly to Michael’s measurements (which he had thankfully brought along). Then, in order to keep from buying another for himself, he picked up two more petticoats, some stockings and a pair of boots for Sophie.

“Who would have thought!” Howell said to himself after he had hauled the last of the parcels over his shoulders. “I’m such a generous soul,” He said, thoroughly pleased with himself. He’d better get back to the castle so he could get them their gifts. Howell cast a simple return spell with a circle drawn in the air and with one snap of his fingers, he was standing beside Calcifer’s grate.

“Where have you been?” He sizzled angrily, his green eyebrows furrowed. “Everyone’s been gone all day.”

“Oh, I know,” said Howl, setting the parcels down on the spelling table. “Sophie is up to all sorts of mischief, isn’t she?”

“And she’s brought Michael along with her.” Calcifer grumbled.

“She’s going to poison his young, spotless mind.” Howell sighed. “I’m going to wash up.” He said, dusting the ash off of his hands. “Please heat the water, Cal!” He sang as he ran up the stairs.

“Oh, bother!” Calcifer shouted after him. “Just wait until Sophie gets back!”

#hmc book #howl’s moving castle #howell jenkins #howl pendragon #howl and sophie #writing #fanfic #i don’t know if this is enough to post on ao3 lmao #howell jenkins is canonically queer change my mind #howl goes shopping #he’s crazy

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hairstevington · 1 year

Text

i wanna cut to the feeling (chapter 3)

Eddie Munson x Steve Harrington

Summary: Robin drags her best friend to a Corroded Coffin show. How were they to know sparks would fly between Steve and a member of the band? (aka, the fic where Steve fixes Eddie's hair before a show and falls in love immediately)

Word Count: 2.7K for this chapter, but it's an ongoing fic

Warnings: Everybody is a gay disaster, Hairstylist!Steve is a petty bitch, Rockstar!Eddie is a bit of a diva, Robin knows Steve too well, nothing crazy yet but I reserve the right to get crazy later

A/N: Here we go again, folks! I can't stop writing lol. Steve's jealousy in this chapter makes me laugh, so enjoy! PS, would anyone be interested in me creating fake lyrics to Corroded Coffin songs? As always, thanks for reading ❤️

Previous Chapter ~ Next Chapter

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“No way. Dude, that’s so fucking dope.” Eddie could not believe what he was staring at. “Guys! Come see this!” He gestured for the others in the band to come closer to him and this fan - Bri, that was her name - who had gotten a Corroded Coffin tattoo. She had an actual, permanent, badass tattoo about Eddie’s band, and that was the coolest thing that had ever happened to him. A tattoo? Hooooly shit. “Thank you, we are so honored.”

“You’re welcome,” she responded. “The song just meant a lot to me, you know? Like, I don’t know exactly what you were going through, but it’s so universal I think.”

The tattoo was a reference to one of the band's earliest songs, ‘86’ - written entirely by Eddie his senior year. He was flipping burgers at the time, which was totally humiliating, by the way, and they used to always use the term 86 when something ran out. Anyway, at that point in his life he felt rejected quite a bit. Left out. Eighty-sixed. You know?

It was probably their softest song, sound-wise, but that didn’t mean it was less angry than their other music. In fact, it was one he wrote while he probably felt the most angry, or hopeless at least. They hadn’t played it tonight, because it didn’t match the vibe, but it was one of his favorites.

And this girl, Bri, had a tiny 86 on the inside of her wrist. She had lots of tattoos, actually. He noticed one on her collar bone of a slice of watermelon.

“What’s this one for?” he asked, curious.

“I just really like watermelon,” she replied.

Eddie smirked. He kinda liked this girl.

“Tattoos are so cool,” Robin sighed, staring wistfully at her future date. “I wish I had one.”

“You can get one, you know,” Steve responded. “Oh, right. You do know, because of the time you dragged me to a shop and got all the way to the chair just to panic and run out of the store.”

“I thought we agreed to never mention that again.”

“It was relevant,” Steve shrugged.

He watched Eddie interact with Bri, like he was smitten or something. Steve wondered if that’s what he looked like. He figured he held it together enough before in the dressing room, but now? He really had to keep himself restrained.

This is fine. Pretending he didn’t like guys was something he used to do all the time. Eddie smirked at something she said, and ran his fingers through his beautiful hair. This is fine, god dammit.

Steve couldn’t get a good read on Bri, despite the intrigue. She was facing away from him, so it was hard to tell exactly how she was feeling, but she seemed somewhat receptive to Eddie’s charms. It’s just that she had also just accepted to go on a date with Robin.

Not that it’s bad for someone to accept a date and then flirt with other people. She was completely in her rights, and it didn’t really have anything to do with her anyway. With awesome, perfect, beautiful Bri who somehow had the attention of both Robin and Eddie. Fantastic.

Eddie was fully enraptured in his conversation with her, now.

Yes, okay, fine! Steve was kind of a jealous person! I mean, he had jealous tendencies. Or, more accurately, when he felt jealous he turned a little petty. If he had to have a bad quality, there are worse ones, you know? But otherwise, he thought he was a pretty good dude. He made decent money for a 24 year old. He was good at his job. He was loyal and protective, and he always tried to see the good side of things - tried being the key word there.

Eddie was way too good at flirting with these women, almost like it was nothing. How could he do that? Do the fans really mean that little to him that he’d just go after them all and wait for one to stick? It wasn’t the worst tactic, and it’s not like he was being disrespectful about it, but still. He was laying it on so thick it was insane.

Ah, shit. It was none of Steve’s business. Eddie could do whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted, but Steve had the petty, judgemental thought anyway - Am I attracted to a fuckboy?

“Well, it was so great to finally meet you. Hopefully I’ll catch you at another show sometime.”

Eddie was impressed at how cool and collected Bri was. She seemed to completely respect his work, and even though she was a huge fan and had a Corroded Coffin tattoo, she didn’t come off like she had an altar at home dedicated to them or anything like that - although Eddie couldn’t deny he’d still think that was dope.

“Yeah, I hope I do.” He smiled at her, genuinely, without a trace of the fake flirtation he was so used to putting on for these women. She smiled back, then waved goodbye and took off, leaving only Steve and Robin in front of him.

“Well, well, well.” Eddie’s eyes narrowed, eager to find out how this conversation was going to go. “If it isn’t my knight in shining…polo?” He noticed Robin snort at his joke, but Steve crossed his arms, defiant.

“Fuck you, it’s a Cuban collar.” Eddie’s eyes widened in surprise, which was the first big reaction Steve had been able to get from him. It’s kind of what he was going for, despite the fact he was coming off a bit aggressive. “And I don’t own any shiny clothing, that’s tacky.” He allowed the corners of his mouth to turn upwards just enough to show that he was, in fact, being a dick as a joke. Robin shot him a suspicious glance, and he knew it was only a matter of time before she figured him out, like she always did.

Steve tended to act kind of mean like this towards guys he liked.

“Please forgive my friend, it’s well past his bedtime,” Robin chimed in, sending another quick glare in Steve’s direction.

“I’ll let it slide since he saved my ass earlier,” Eddie replied. “Good to see you, Buckley.”

“You remember me???” Steve tried not to groan at how excited Robin sounded. He really needed to calm down. None of this was really a huge deal, anyways. It had just been a long day, was all.

“Well yeah, you were the only person in English class worth talking to. Come here, doll.” Eddie pulled a completely stunned Robin into a hug - this was two unexpectedly positive interactions with people in a row for her, and entirely unprecedented. Steve felt a pang of jealousy at the idea of Eddie having a crush on Robin, or even just him flirting with her right in front of him. Why did Eddie get no sass at the term doll when Steve was always yelled at for calling her darling? It was a stupid reason to be jealous, considering Eddie had no shot with Robin, and besides, why did Steve care so much about who Eddie flirted with anyway? They literally just met.

“So you guys actually…knew each other back then?” Steve asked, confused.

“Not well or anything,” Robin clarified. “We just had one class together my Freshman year. But yeah, Corroded Coffin started in Hawkins. How do you think I learned about them?”

“Shit,” Steve said, eyebrows furrowed. “I had no idea.”

“Seriously, where the hell were you in high school?” Robin asked, annoyed.

“I know, right? It’s not like my presence was subtle,” Eddie chimed in.

“I was…busy, alright?” Steve had been dealing with his own problems back then, so he wasn’t really in tune with a lot of what was going on at Hawkins High. He knew about the sports teams, because he was on them. He knew who hosted the best parties, and who started the chlamydia outbreak senior year - that was a wild few weeks.

“Yeah, busy being a douchebag,” she teased. Eddie burst out laughing, which pissed Steve off even more.

He didn’t know Robin back then, but she knew him, and she made it very clear they would not have been friends. But none of that mattered, because Steve matured a lot once the stupid teen pressure of popularity, social status, and the constant need to look cool disappeared. Robin was the one who initiated all that change, basically, when they worked together the summer after he’d graduated. The rest is history.

“Well, I’m glad you came out tonight.” Eddie did not make it clear whether by you he meant you in the singular sense, as in Robin, or you in the plural, as in you all - you both.

Despite growing increasingly annoyed with Eddie and his stupid sexy hair, Steve obviously hoped it was the latter.

Steve was somehow both exactly what Eddie expected while simultaneously full of surprises. Perhaps it wasn’t Steve’s actions and words that were surprising, but the way they came off. Steve was actively being an asshole, just like he had been years prior, but this time it felt less obtrusive, and a whole lot more amusing.

Fuck you, it’s a Cuban collar. That was the most ridiculous sentence Eddie had ever heard, and Steve’s sincerity made it even better.

It must have been hot in the pit or something - Eddie noticed Steve had unfastened the button closest to his collar (the one of Cuban variety, apparently - although Eddie had never heard that term before in his life). His hair was a little more disheveled, his posture more relaxed, and the way he talked to Robin was vastly different than the way he’d appeared to Eddie before the show, or how he’d ever looked back in high school.

Ah, shit. Eddie sighed, unable to put the stupid thought away once it had been created. Am I attracted to Steve Harrington?

Eddie tucked that thought away to deal with later, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it ruin his fun for the night. It’s not like he never thought about Steve’s looks - of course he did. It’s that Steve had always been attractive. He had always been known to be attractive, by everybody. It’s part of the reason Eddie hated him so much.

And it was supposed to be the loser’s turn now - Eddie’s turn - because he was finally starting to feel confident in himself and his looks, and he was finally starting to become successful.

Everything was coming up Eddie Munson.

Steve Harrington and his perfect arms were irrelevant.

Eddie was extremely pleased to see Robin doing well, however. She had been in the lower ranks of popularity with Eddie, even though neither of them were ugly people or anything. Now, she obviously had more confidence (even though she was still the same in regards to her nervous energy). She was wearing a crop top, showing off her midriff. Eddie didn’t know her too well, but most people could have deduced that she would never have had the courage to wear something like that in high school. Not that she’d have been allowed to, for stupid dress code reasons, but whatever.

“Hey, man, you ready to head out?” Eddie looked next to him to see Jeff, and realized the rest of the band had already packed everything up while Eddie was busy talking to the people at the door. It was kind of a point of contention sometimes, between him and the rest of the band, that they always seemed to do the behind the scenes cleanup while Eddie got all the credit. But it’s not that he planned it that way - the fans were the ones who would make them famous, give them money. Eddie was basically networking, although it didn’t hurt that it stroked his ego at the same time. The band, however, were being all professional and shit, which was nice too but not super metal. They’d hadn’t gotten in trouble yet or anything, and that was all because of them.

Which was good. But Eddie couldn’t foresee himself ever missing out on these interactions outside the stage door. Just the way it was.

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie responded. He turned back to Steve and Robin. “You guys still down to come along?”

Robin nodded, enthusiastically, which was a reaction Eddie expected. He braced himself for whatever snark Steve was going to give him - maybe he’d even make some excuse about having to go home because it was sooo late or whatever - it was literally not even 9pm.

But, yet again, Steve surprised him.

“Yeah, where do you have in mind?”

Eddie didn’t know why Steve was so down to go out still, because of the way he’d continued to look mildly annoyed the entire night.

And then he remembered the goofy way he was jumping around, singing earlier at the show, and he figured that Steve was somewhere in there still. And that Steve seemed like a good time.

Eddie told them their usual bar that they went to when they were in the area, and they all agreed to meet there.

“What the hell is wrong with you? He was being totally nice, and you were acting like a jerk for no reason.” Robin was lecturing him in her tiny green car that she loved so much as they made their way to the bar Eddie told them to go to - neither of them had been before, but she’d heard of it from a coworker and it sounded like a fun place.

“I know, I’m sorry. I’ll be better at the bar, I promise,” Steve said.

“You better, because this is a really cool thing to have happened to us and I’m not letting you and your stupid romantic self-sabotaging tendencies ruin it.”

“Oh my god, it’s a mildly cool thing, Robin,” Steve insisted, before processing the rest of her sentence. There was no point in saying, what are you talking about? Because he knew. They both knew. “And I only self-sabotage when absolutely necessary.”

“That’s a lie,” Robin scoffed. “You’re getting special treatment from an actual Rockstar just because you were in the right place at the right time. Just submit to the fact that it’s awesome, okay?”

“Okay, fine!” Steve exclaimed with his hands in the air.

“So you have a crush on Eddie Munson,” she stated. Steve groaned at the words being out in the open. “What’s the big deal? We’re not in high school anymore, and Eddie’s a good-looking guy.”

“First of all, it’s not a crush. I barely know him,” Steve corrected.

“I think you crossed into at least acquaintance territory when he let you cut his hair,” Robin replied. Steve thought about this, and couldn’t disagree.

“It’s also when I crossed into gay panic territory,” he admitted. Robin laughed, then nodded in understanding.

“Yeah, seems like an intimate thing. I don’t know how you’ve gotten this far without wanting to bang a client before.”

“Robin!” Steve yelled, exasperated. “We’ve been over this. It’s -”

“Extremely unprofessional, I know. Steve, you have to loosen up a bit. You’ve gotten a little…” She paused, grimacing at the hole she’d put herself in.

“A little what?” Steve waited patiently for her to finish. She sighed.

“I’m sorry,” she prefaced. “But you’re so focused on work nowadays that we don’t have as much fun anymore. And it’s kind of like…Well, like when I first met you.”

“Noooo, you take that back,” Steve snapped, shocked. He wasn’t upset with her or anything, he just couldn’t believe he’d ever get that bad.

“Think about it,” she responded. So he did think about it. He thought about all the nights he’d stayed in, how he’d become a bit of a Debbie Downer, how he’d become less open and more judgemental. It had even been a while since he’d called and checked in on Dustin. He sighed.

“Shit. I’m sorry, Robin.”

“Don’t sweat it, just do better. Mmkay?”

He’d do anything for Robin, literally anything. So, he was going to be the most fun he could possibly be for the rest of the night. It was one drink, with a decent band, on a Friday night, and it was going to be fun, dammit. Minor crush on Eddie Munson be damned.

It was just a crush, right?

(Next chapter)

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

Taglist: @ofherscarlettwitchways @paintballkid711 @abraca-fxckyou @allbimyself26 @jellybabiesforall @allbymyselfexceptformycactus @justaloadofgarbage-blog @alliemunsonsstuff @thefruityfours @hobbitnarwhal @calivanus @wreckmyplans-thatsmyman @antheia @goodolefashionedlovergal @lillemilly @undreamingscatworld @missmagillicuddy @steviesbicrisis @gamerdano @menamesniall @eyeslikewildflowers111 @callmesirkay @stringischeese @eds-trashmouth @mnl-enuh

#I honestly find it so funny how eddie has an entirely platonic interaction with a woman and Steve is like omg he's in love with her #like literally me too steve #st fanfic #i wanna cut to the feeling #eddie munson #rockstar eddie munson #steve harrington #steddie #eddie and steve #writing #robin buckley #platonic stobin #me #stranger things #stranger things au #modern day au #stranger things fanfiction

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princess-tulip-writes · 1 year

Note

I’m back

“Honestly, it feels like I’ve needed you my whole life. Like there was an empty piece of me that was just waiting for you. And now you’re finally here.”

Scratching his back gently when he can’t fall asleep

“I'll choose you. No matter how hard it is. No matter what people say. Every time, I'll choose you.”

I’m not leaving you. Not now, not ever

Slow dancing???! Like you’re alone there’s not even music maybe but just… slow dancing alone together

And again I’m such a sucker for Lucien but you can write for whoever you want of course <333

“such a nice evening, isn’t it?” you asked your mate, your attention looking out the large window that displayed the falling snow as it stuck to the dying grass and trees that surrounded your shared cottage.

even as you were gesturing to the scenery outside, lucien’s eyes couldn’t rip away from your glowing face, his heart full as your aura beamed at the sudden winter weather. his hand squeezed yours lightly, feet still swaying with yours as you both thought of different calming things.

“is it, my love.” he said. “a very nice evening indeed.”

he was referring to you, of course, his full focus was on adoring you in your blissful state. he was sure that later you’d want to play in the fresh snow, throwing balls of snow playfully at the youngest vanserra and eventually end up kissing underneath the winter stars by nightfall with icy lips.

you gasped in delight at the unexpected sight of a baby fox waddling in the snow past the nearest tree to the window, giving you a clear view of newly born mammal.

“lucie, look!” you exclaimed, pointing your conjoined hands to the fox in the snow, white powder coating it’s fur.

he hesitantly tore his gaze away for your excited face, a small smile on his face from the shared glee he felt through the bond.

“oh my, what a pleasant surprise that is, sweetheart.” he grinned, watching the small fox stumble over it’s own feet as it got used to the cold sensation of the snow; it’s first winter.

“it’s you.” you giggled, finally glancing at your mate to compare.

he scoffed, faking offense as he met your for the first firt time as you began dancing together.

the sudden eye contact caused a startling feeling of love fill in his chest and straight down the bond by accident, and shocking you as well.

your happy grin was replaced with a look of almost devastation, small falling off of your face and turning into a soft frown.

“oh, lucien.” you whispered, feeling the following sensation of insecurity from him as well.

“i don’t know what i did to deserve you, y/n. my life was so empty and miserable without you, and now… now everything is so bright and wonderful. my existence is actually worth something with you, i’m no longer the worthless brat of the autumn court, and i’m so grateful that the cauldron gave you to me, you were my missing piece, my love. you are so perfect and i have so many fl-“

“you are perfect, lucien. don’t ever think you aren’t because of the traumatic bullshit that happened to you. i wouldn’t want any other male in your place right now, in fact, the thought repulses me.” you correct, your voice stern. “i love you, and you’re my gift. with anyone else, i would be miserable.”

“you don’t have to say that, y/n. i know that if you had to choose between me or someone else, you’d pick the less damaged-“

“i would choose you. every time, no matter who. you’re everything to me, every little detail about you makes me life so much brighter and there is nothing that i would change about you other than the terrible treatment you have endured. that scar, that beautiful scar, is a part of you that drives me wild. you’re so brave and strong, i can’t think of any other male who would pull of something so traumatic with such beauty. the pigment even matches your gorgeous hair.” you smiled, enthusiasm dripping as you complimented your insecure mate.

his eyes bored into yours in utter disbelief, lips turning up into a small smile at your positive affirmation.

“come on, i’ll let you walk right out of that door if you wish to. you’ll take my heart with you, but i can’t watch you waste your life with someone so broken. you deserve someone who can give you more than me-“

you scoffed sadly, squeezing his hands as you felt his grip loosen, as if he was actually going to offer you to leave physically, not just hypothetically. but you wouldn’t, just as you had his, he had your heart entirely.

“i love you, lucien vanserra— nothing will change that. i’m not leaving— not now, not ever. i’m here, with you, forever.”

he choked back a sob, every wall breaking as his head hung low and rested on your shoulder while he cried in both joy and guilt.

“please, please— promise me that if you find yourself unhappy with me, you’ll leave. i can’t bare being the reason you are-“

“lucien, what aren’t you hearing?” you whispered, your lips placed against his soft hair as you spoke. “i love you, and i always will. sure, there will be times where we get pissed off at one another but we’ll always work it out. rough patches are common—“

“that’s not what i mean.”

you sighed softly, your heart breaking at how much doubt he has within himself. your mate, the strong, sexy male that you loved with your every fiber of your being, was so broken. you knew exactly why, and you kept in mind that those evil pieces of shit would get what was coming to then very soon. and you’d make sure that your face was the last they’d see.

“you could never make me unhappy—not that way, and never long term. i promise.”

that was the final word of the conversation, you’re both silent besides the soft sobs of your mate, soothing him through the powerful waves of emotion by giving him reassuring kisses to his temple and continued to sway you both.

his sobs died down soon enough, your sweater-clad shoulder wet with tears, not that you minded, as he repositioned his face to tuck in your neck, his lips grazing the sensitive skin.

“look, lucie;” you mumbled against his temple after your eyes drifted to the window once more, catching sight of the baby fox’s mother. “there’s it’s mommy.”

he sniffled, but lifted his head far enough so he could see. you grazed your thumb along his hand comfortingly, a way of telling him that everything was going to be okay.

lucien’s lips turned up into a smile once more, his face puffy and pink now, but nevertheless seemed happier.

“what a refreshing sight, my love.”

#lucien 🌷#lucien vanserra #lucien #lucien vanserra x reader #lucien vanserra x reader fluff #lucien fluff #fluff #lucien x reader #lucien x reader fluff #acotar #acotar x reader #acotar fluff #acotar x reader fluff #the autumn court bros 🍁

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celestialomnipotence · 4 months

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Hi, I was wonder if I can make a request for a oneshot or hc idea on security breach.

I was an idea of reader being an animatronic kind of like mangle on how they were a pull apart and put back together toy for young children, with their attraction being near the daycare.

Name ideas could be like "{reader}'s Friends and Play!", or {reader}'s dress up station". Something with a play on words with dressing up or play.

Because they are like one of those take apart and put back together toys were you could swap certain parts of the toy like hair, clothes, accessories, etc. And kids would come to the readers play area of have fun changing the design of the reader. It's being marked twords younger kid key it being by the Daycare.

But we all know kid could be a little to forceful or rough with reader, leading them to break and having to go to part and serves/maintenance almost everyday to get fixed. But since it cost money and time to fix reader, the Pizzaplex just desided it would be better to just discontinue reader and close off there area under the pretense of repairs.

But reader area never opened back up. And like the Glamrock + the Daycare Attendant just gradually forgot about reader. Than one day one of them just stumbled apon readers area and it just like closed off, with the inside being really dusty with tarp covering everything. Everything but reader who's slouched in a corner, broken looking like mangle with different part of her body making up her body in placed they shouldn't be.

It just feel like it would be hella angsty and a good oneshot for some angst and burn.

Get back to me as soon as you can, thank you for reading this^^

Pull apart-Put together Animatronic Reader pt 1

>Oneshot<

Kyo- Took me a long time to get to this but im finally doing this one! This will be multiple parts since im editing a post and cant draft it

So some details about Reader and a small synopsis

Reader is NB (I do not write for women, i apologize)! Just to make things simple and inclusive. As for readers appearance, they’re actually an advanced endoskeleton that can have part placed on to turn into many kids of animals with a few references to other animatronics! Not only that, but hair, accessories and clothes can be picked out!

Sadly the kids started cracking and destroying the parts and workers, not wishing to deal with these issues anymore, closed off the area and lied to everyone else… Until someone found reader.

Pick Apart my Heart

Late at night once again, Moon was out of the daycare again. He had the tendency to be out and explore but tonight was a bit different. There was an abandoned section near the daycare that appeared to be wiped from his database.

It seemed like an odd assumption but they once forgot to wipe him and Suns memory once before about a boarded off section. Surely it was the same this time.

Moon didnt need to destroy anything to sneak in as he crawled through some cracks in the boarded up door.

The room its self was big and… Similar to the daycare except covered in a thick layer of dust. Similar to Roxys make-up station, there were rows of dusty and tattered clothes, animatronic parts, hairs, accessories and…

Moon then noticed you, curled up in the corner. An odd sight, either you were shut off or havent moved in ages. A thick layer of dust covered your endoskeleton. Moon slowly approach but the click of his parts gave away his movements. Thats when he noticed the lights turn on in your eyes. Your… mismatched colored eyes?

…

Of course you hadnt been shut off but, you had personally shut of your optic circuits to fake a sleeping like state. Although since your heard noises, you turned them back on.

Looking up, you noticed… Moon. Hope bubbled up inside you before you spoke up. “Oh, its you, I never expected any of you guys to come in here.”

Moon looked… confused, as confused as he could look, before speaking himself. “How do you know us?”

It then seemed to hit you. Either their memories of you were wiped or blocked. One way or another you had to figure out if Moon and Suns are blocked. Surely theirs arent as their circuitry are more complicated than the other.

“I was an old put together animatronic here. Y/Ns Put-Together Play-Together. I dont have any of my parts on though, im too broken to do that anymore.” You caught yourself mumbling the last part as.. Your blob of parts shifted into what could only be assumed as you… In a state between sitting and standing.

Your neck was broken along with a leg where your arm should be and an arm where your leg should be. Although the leg you had in the correct spot was twisted backwards…. Along with a black cat tail similar to how Montys bends lodged where the tails attach.

Moon seemed to examine it all before finally responding to you. “Y/N… You sound and seem familiar. How are you functional?”

“My circuits and wires were built to bend and put in places kids couldnt take apart… My neck was broken by a teenager though, a dare by their peers and the reason I was put away.”

Moon seemed to think or.. Maybe even process what you said as you… Crawled towards him.

“We were friends before Moon. Surely you would be able to remember me? I was friends with… Well everyone here!- Theres no way all of you dont remember-“

You felt panic sink in now… What if everyone elses memory was wiped and everything you had was lost??

Moon then spoke again. “Look I dont remember you. Were closed tomorrow and I cleared a path so… Talk to someone else. Maybe Sun when the lights are on.”

It then hit you… Moon was always slightly harsh and straight forward… Maybe you could trick him into the daycare and force the lights on… Or maybe find someone else…

Moon seemed to back off to where he entered from. “Im going to head back to what I was doing, your exits here.”

As he left, you began debating your choices.

Trick Moon to turn into Sun and regain their memories or…

Find someone else. Either Monty or Music man are your next best chances.

Kyo- Make your choice for part two! Theres a week on the poll and I have each path planned. What do you think is best? Or do you just wanna see your favorite? (Yes! I will get to everyone else too just bear with me)

#fnaf daycare attendant #fnaf sb x male reader #fnaf sb x reader #fnaf security breach #fnaf

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