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darkdemeter · 4 months

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GUARD DOG

The DARK DEMETER WRITING CATALOGUE, WANDA MAXIMOFF COLUMN (ONESHOT) #4 —

—- not my gifs, credit to original posters! -—

Mafia! Wanda Maximoff x Werewolf! GN/Female/Male Reader

A/N — First time doing the sex pollen trope so it may be a bit stiff? Looking at doing more werewolf exposed to sex pollen stuff because I think it’s an interesting concept!

WORD COUNT — 24.7k

READER DISCRETION — Mafia/mob orientated stuff — violence — death — slight alluded to relationship with Natasha — trauma, some ptsd — mention and implied SA and forced sexual encounters (none main cast) — graphic depictions of torture, "animal" cruelty, experimentation and family death — exposure to sex pollen (reader only) — mention of previous usage of drugs (forced) — reader is dehumanised, usage of negative titles/names — sexual themes — SMUT** 18+ MINORS DNI — monster-tongue fucking — "Mate" usage and status — will feature "male variant" and "female variant" smut separate segments — I think that's it?

SUMMARY — All that you are is a guard. An obedient soldier. You have killed, maimed and other atrocities, but before you lose yourself you will do all these things for her. With the death of Pietro, Wanda remains as the sole heir to the Maximoff empire. As her loyal guard, it is your duty to protect her at all costs, and you will do so until your last breath; come what may. You now engage in a manhunt for Brock Rumlow, to exact revenge for the Maximoff heiress. However, it's not that simple. He's disappeared to the winds without a trace and so, those of the American brotherhood come your aid. However, when they bring news of Brock's whereabouts, it will force you to encounter a part of your dark history that you've purposefully kept hidden from Wanda. Ironic that you will venture to a place that still holds you captive yet is the stepping stone of how you gained your "freedom".

ACT I: AMBER & BLOOD

It all happens so fast. After a torturous incline of sinister lingering just out of reach, Rumlow finally struck. Wanda could very well have died tonight if it weren’t for you, unfortunately, Pietro is lost in the crossfire.

A black SUV rolled over with a fried, sizzling engine, and crumpled metal, Wanda’s leg is pinned between the driver’s seat and her own, unable to prevent Pietro from being dragged out.

His yells of protest mix with the blood curdling sounds of flesh being pummelled and choking on his own blood. Wanda cries out in her suffering, her agony that cuts her deeply like a knife, turning without pause. She now realises she should have listened to you when you told them it was a set up.

She’d been adamant the Rumlow Family had want for peace, such as them, and that with some luck, they could forge a new schematic and plan to control the European territories together in their newfound alliance. Foreign powers were not often taken in by those of the European empires and families unless they proved to have wealth, power, influence and anything else that could bolster their own standing.

How wrong the Maximoff twins were, to think of such pleasantries like children with an over imaginative mind for wishful thinking. To believe honey-coated words. They were revealing their hand of cards to the dealer before it was the right time.

She and Pietro only glimpsed at the surface of this opportunity, they didn’t take care in looking into the depths, they blindly ignored your advice to consider what was being offered. They had no elders to hit pause and test them, to let them properly judge the situation accordingly.

The only means of guidance the twins were offered after the death of their parents did little in doing the right thing. Blubbering messes, hidden agendas, so-called family friends that failed so miserably in their job to counsel the Maximoff heirs. Trusted members that swore they would do all in their ability to protect the interest of the family, blood and business all.

It then fell into the palms of your clawed hands. Hands that were often healing bruised and splintered knuckles if not blood stained. It was up to you to rectify their mistakes. To provide the support of being a shadowy advisor, because of the scolding looks you were given whenever you tried to voice your own opinion at the sit downs.

The ideal scenario of meeting with the Rumlows also implied that you were nowhere in the picture when the negotiations went down. Yes, Wanda and Pietro both agreed that your presence would only push Rumlow to refuse the deal, along with their desired terms.

Did they truly think that he wouldn’t agree under the silent oath that he would later turn on them, your presence there or not? Rumlow was the dagger in the cloak.

That’s why you were not in the car with them when it happens. But you were tailing behind them, to ensure that they were safe. That was your job, your purpose to be with the family, to protect them. And thankfully, given your experience, you knew something was off from the very start.

The black, winding street lined by the green foliage of woodland is shrouded in darkness, Rumlow’s men are convinced that this was the perfect spot for their ambush to take place. Their cars formed a blockade in the direction the SUV was driving through, the white lights blaring through the thick shroud of night, a thin and constant blanket of fog muffled their black silhouettes. They appear more ghost-like than they really were. But they were very much real.

Wanda continues to scream for her brother, pleading with the suited men to let him go, but they don’t. Instead, they laugh and joke while Pietro is beaten into a broken, bloody mess. His face is cut and littered with dark welts that contort his features, a hideous display of the brutality that could have been avoided if they just listened.

She tries again and again to pull her leg from the tight wedge but cannot. When the car rolled, it sealed her fate, locking her in place to endure the cruelty of their consequences.

You hear her shout for you then. Her voice, shrill and raw with desperation, she wills you to be at her side; unexpecting that her words seemed to be a work of magic when the large, muscular frame of your other side leaps from the canopy of trees and bushes behind her.

Rumlow thinks he is the only beast that none can trifle with. His memory is lacking or perhaps he’s purposefully blocked out the incident.

The men who are your now sworn enemies are caught in the frenzy of their panic, alarmed by the swift form that tears Pietro’s attacker into shreds in seconds, his blood rains down like a storm, covering them and the dark road illuminated by the streams of light.

From Wanda’s trapped place, she cannot help the swell of admiration and hope in her green eyes, the men cower before you as you protectively stand over Pietro’s unconscious body. The threads of her vocal cords are tightly constricted under the influx of tears that mist her eyes, making them faintly shine, yet she prevails to utter your name in the midst of her shock. To see that you actually came for them.

Like a guardian angel. A guard dog.

The fiery orbs of your amber eyes haunt the darkness and even so far to reach Wanda’s soul. To behold the gaze of such anger, she cannot even pray that those targeted by such hatred find rest when their bodies have grown cold and lifeless.

It is one thing to test the fury of a man. It’s a completely different story when one tests the wrath of a werewolf. As far as the reputation of your collar goes, you don’t take kindly to your enemies, as expected, nor are you known to be merciful towards prisoners. If they intend harm on those that are under your protection, they will die.

In the amber fires of your eyes that bare the gateway to the underworld, she sees that deeply driven will to protect. She finds comfort in that notion, that you are here right now, already one man torn to pieces, and several more to join him, she releases the breath in her chest like a floodgate as she utters, “kill them all.”

The large outline of your muzzle dips obediently and you turn your sights to the men sent to kill the heirs to the Maximoff Family. No mercy. There was to only be blood and carnage.

Your towering height only drives the stakes of primitive fear further into their hearts as your bloody jaws pry open, bellowing a baritone howl that freezes fauna and flora both, terrorising their once moment of harmony.

One of the men shouts orders to the others, his words die on the junction of his Adam's apple when you strike an arm forward. Your claws puncture first and followed by the digits of your pawed fingers, he chokes around the intrusion, and with an equally viscous tug you tear the cords from his throat.

Claps of gunfire echo with each flash, bullet after bullet try in vain to penetrate your hide, some find more prominent purchase while others ricochet off you and clank against the bloodstained road with false promises that that single bullet would be the one to bring you down.

For a family allied with the very facility that made you the ruthless killing machine - a family who have knowledge of their fingertips - they were greatly under prepared, sorely lacking the equipment needed to cause you any real damage.

One man gains a surge of bravery or stupidity and he runs at you, gun in hand firing until his magazine is emptied before he knew it, you see his very life flash before his eyes as you raise your opposite arm up and sweep downward. His scream is cut short when his head is shredded in half and blood gushes in oozing streams, he falls with a meaty thump to the ground.

Two men armed with shotguns empty their barrels, reload and fire again, the process repeats itself. It’s the middle one that awakens that predator drive in you when he turns and makes a run for it.

You run at the two men and dispatch of them, claws tearing through their suits and divulging the contents of their stomachs, their internal organs now unguarded by the crushed remnants of their bones, they topple free and onto the ground at their feet. Their legs are quick to give out as shock wracks their bodies, hands shakily attempting to pull their innards back in with little hope of succession.

The final man who now flees the scene wheezes, and quite loudly at that, firearm disarmed when your jaws clamp shut around his forearm and tear the limb from his shoulder with a squelch and a bone-breaking pop.

He clutches at the deformity of his missing arm and his hand is soaked with his blood, the wound leaves a trail to paint a streaky, black line that now shines under the uncovered moon; taking a leisurely peek through the veil of obsidian clouds.

You can tell that the shock is getting to him as much as he tries to carry on, he’s becoming weaker. He now stumbles like injured prey, exactly what he was to you in this moment, whimpering as he drops to the road with a helpless grunt.

He’s desperate from how he crawls from you. You slowly stalk behind him with some level of intrigue, head cocking to the side and your ears twitch against the blowing breeze, you snarl lowly when he turns to peer up at you.

“P-please!” he shouts weakly as you flip him into his back with minimal effort, “d-d–don’t! No–!”

You make him suffer for the trouble he and his fellow men put Wanda and Pietro through. You make the agony last, something that goes against the natural instinct to end a poor animal’s suffering; it was broken out of you in that facility.

You maul to hurt people. You kill to hurt people. All things natural and that bring you closer to that connection, that tie that binds you to the balance of nature, was ripped out of you to mould you into an obedient pet.

An animal that follows orders. The duality between wolf and human, both were equally broken in.

His screams of horror and agony tear through the night until he couldn’t anymore, his throat tired out from screaming to whatever god he held faith in, your teeth rip into his bowels and chest, flesh and bone minced into chunks of paste and blood. He now laid bare with the entirety of his midriff destroyed. The light in his eyes now faded.

The threat is now neutralised, you realise and swiftly you turn and trudge back to Wanda. When you reach her, she’s managed to just wiggle herself a little ways out of the open door frame, fragments of glass dig into her palms until they draw blood, mere droplets in comparison to what you drew from Rumlow’s men.

“Y/N,” she whimpers quietly in relief. Her face is scrunched tightly with a hiss as she attempts again to free herself, a strangled cry of frustration is what it takes for her tears to break free.

Your ears are pinned far back against your head at the sound. Brutally self-beating in her vulnerable state. You reach forward with a growl, you shove the leather seat forward and with the mechanical gears popping, Wanda’s leg is freed. You help in dragging Wanda out from the car, Your nose is wet and hot against her skin when you press it to her, inhaling her scent as you sniff her over for any potential injuries.

“I’m fine,” she assures you but the wrinkle of your muzzle tells her you don’t appreciate her diffusing the matter of your job. “Pietro!”

Wanda pushes herself to her feet with newfound strength. She hurries to her twin brother and rolls him onto his back, a gasp on her tongue, you hear her breath hitch in her lungs while she takes in the sight of him.

Her next move is hesitant but she has to know. She dips her head, turning it and presses it against his chest, her hand covering the deep cut right at her nose, the iron scent of blood fills her senses and her face winces.

The lively thump in his chest is silent.

“I knew this would happen. I told you, but you didn’t listen.”

Though with words so evident in their truth, Wanda finds them venomous and harsh to her ears, still in the grasp of shock, the loss of her brother is the final straw. Not only two years ago her parents were killed, and now another Maximoff finds themselves in the grave. She is the sole surviving heir to the Maximoff Family and their empire hinges upon her.

A burden, you feel, is crushing her from the inside as all eyes will now turn to her.

She sits on the edge of her lage bed with her legs pressed tightly together, hanging down over the side, hands folded in her lap in defeat. Her long hair shields her tears from you, when you glance up from your place at her vanity do you catch her reflection. A girl done in by the trauma. In the moonlight that pours through the window, her body is quivering in waves, mind and body at battle with overcoming the death of her brother.

You cannot help but wonder if maybe this is all your fault. Had her parents not been killed, had you been there to protect them, would she have been spared from it all?

She’s terrified. The grief that accompanies her loss doesn’t go unshared, you have your own reasons to mourn. Pietro, although a little too cocky at times, was a good brother and son who intended to change the playing field of your world. A young man who had a vision but ultimately was blinded by his ideas to see the world as it was, that there were those who saw different alternatives to get what they wanted.

And Rumlow was one of those people.

The heat of your body angrily laps at the streak of icy coldness of your blood when you hear behind you the shriek of a thousand tears, memories shattered into pieces, torn apart by the fragile thread between life and death and all the unfair tactics this life offers.

Wanda now screams into the palms of her hands, body caught in a violent spasm amidst the ocean of her pain. “H-he’ll come back any minute… he will, he’s just– just in a meeting–”

You walk slowly towards her and kneel down in front of her. “Wanda, look at me,” you growl and turn her chin up so her watery eyes meet yours.

“He’s gone. Rumlow isn’t going to play things out the way you both hoped he would. Think about it, he fucking almost ended this entire family tonight had I’d not been there.”

The delicate, plump shape of her lips part with a small and faint gasp, her eyes bore the slow realisation of what you were saying. Yet her eyes beg for you to take back what you said. To offer her an escape from it all, to just tell her what she wants to hear; not what she needs to.

It’s unfortunate news to her as you shake your head slightly. You cannot let her fall into the false dream that everything was alright. Like a bandaid, you have to rip it off. She had almost been killed. Had you not been there, after the men dealt with Pietro, they would have gotten her too. The thought of it causes an unwelcome shiver to run up her spine.

“Rumlow aims to snuff out the entire Maximoff Family in order to gain territory. And he’s not going to stop until he’s put you in the ground too.”

How could your words be so hard to hear but equally so right in their conviction? You were trusted by her parents, someone they considered part of the family despite your otherwise humble dismissal that you were just a guard to the family. They considered you equal to their standing.

And Wanda waved off your warnings as if you didn’t have a clue. Hell, she doesn’t even know half of what you had to endure at the facility. The horrors of your time growing up in that damn place are accounts you’re not overly excited to share with anyone.

“Wanda,” you say her name to draw her unfocused eyes, to bring her back to you, “you’re all I have to protect now. I swore that I would do everything in my ability, and I will. But promise me, you won’t do anything like that again.”

Your eyes hold her attention, firm and unwavering in the looming silence between you. She feels her heartbeat race a little quicker now as she becomes lost in the certainty of your protection, the caged beast beneath the surface, she nods. “I promise.”

“Good.” You sigh heavily as something finally eases the tension in your shoulders, you let them drop lower and bow your head, face inches from resting in her lap. Her fingers comb the length of your hair, soft and drenched from your quick shower to rinse off the blood that clung to your fur.

She lets her head dip as well and soak in the scent of your shampoo, a strong smell of pine, something naturistic, compared to the one she used. Not at all the scent she would peg you for with your rough exterior and stoic personality.

But that was all a front. Time and time again she’s seen a side to you that you keep away from others. A tenderness you reserve for her, even your claws tend to be drawn back whenever you’re just in her company. Much like they were now, she marvels at the sight of those sharpened tips that you use as a weapon, as they now reduce back into the nail beds.

Other than that, all she got to see was your dominating and intimidating stature, tough as iron front, letting all know that she was under your unwavering protection. That you guard her.

Your head rolls up and your noses brush against each other, breaths mingling together in the miniscule gap between your lips, an inch apart you would have considered inappropriate before. But that was when you were unsure and reserved, humbly turning down any sort of praise and keeping your feelings locked away in some dark corner of your heart.

Before you came to realise you were in love with her.

You try to calm the rapid increase of your heart rate as if somehow she is still in the clutches of immediate danger, that at any moment she will be taken from you. Her lips, so plump and full and kissable, ghost over yours in silent contemplation. She knows just as well as you that this teeters on a fine line, that this can jeopardise everything between the two of you.

And nobody could know. A werewolf guard and the heiress to one of the largest and well established criminal empires in the world, if anyone found out, it would cost you both everything.

What terrifies you is the thought that you could lose Wanda at any moment. The constant what if questions.

‘What if I were unable to prevent her demise? What if I fail her?’

“I just can’t lose you, Wanda.”

You shake your head at your own words, their meaning so plain and simple: a confession.

“I promised your parents that I would always protect you.”

It’s like she could see through the cover up. Yes, you did swear yourself to them that you would protect their children, their daughter, but you also used it as a line of defence. To save face from the awfully timed confession.

“They’re gone, Y/N. Swear it to me.”

Her hands cup the shape of your face, the pads of her thumbs soft, delicate against the contours of your features, the tiny and healed scars that littered your face alone, the rest of them were hidden beneath your clothes, how her simple touch calms you and makes you more alive than ever. Her touch is a revival. For once, you’re given the reprieve you long for. To feel trusted wholeheartedly. Loved.

Your hands run up the sides of her thighs until they pause right on the rise of her rear, your fingers grasp firmly and tug her that little bit closer, your forehead pressed to hers and that amber glow shines brightly in your eyes in the dimly lit room.

“I swear it.”

Your lips come together as two separate forces once held far apart for too long, now the pull draws you both inwards to the other, magnetic and electrical. Passionate and hungry. You waste no time in sharing one another’s taste as your tongues glide and entangle amidst the heat of your kiss.

Her fingers rake through your hair and tug on the roots, earning one guttural of an animalistic moan from you, the sound results in a wetness to pool between her thighs, and you can smell her alluring scent. Your hands knead her arse, your tight grip possessive as you have her in your grasp, after all this time.

You’ve done many horrible things in your long life. But Wanda drowns it all out. For a moment or more, you are free of the guilt, the shame, the fear of being capable of hurting her. You’d snap the next man’s neck or shoot a hundred bullets into a corpse without so much as a sweat. But you’d be damned if you laid a hand that intended harm on Wanda.

And that’s why you swear to her now, that your loyalty shall remain intact. Because you have killed for her. You will kill for her.

It came with the job but now it comes with the instinct, the desire to have her as your own.

Then again, that was the light of your soul, what little there was that isn’t eclipsed, the faction of your humanity and questionable morality, talking.

ACT II: ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE & WAR

ONE WEEK LATER

The party was hosted in honour of Pietro, a final toast and salute to the young male heir, a dear boy and treasure lost in the battles of struggling power. Many of the European mobsters respected the Maximoff Family, and would attend the party to pay their respects forward.

However, Pietro’s death did not only shake the foundations of the criminal underworld within Europe, but overseas as well it would seem. So when mobsters from the Americas attended the honorary party, to say you were more protective in regards to your duty to Wanda and the Maximoff Family doesn’t cut it.

Tony Stark and the band of his notorious brotherhood swagger in, Tony wearing a brighter shade suit than those of his company - who at least took greater care in setting their palettes to the familiar dark shades of mourning - the bright pink of Stark’s tie makes something seethe inside the pit of your stomach.

The disrespect of Pietro’s memory makes your blood rush and the wolf inside is itching to unleash itself right there and then. You can just tell he’s stirring up the party on purpose, no doubt to get the attention of Wanda, and your assumptions were correct when Natasha joined your side.

You took to seeing over the guests from the upper balcony that circles the lower level of the great hall. Your eyes narrow and zero in on the American group of gangsters the moment they walk in, not too long after their arrival does Stark lead them over to the bar, the server working double time to fulfil their order.

Natasha follows the target of your gaze and smirks. “You’re burning holes into them with your eyes.”

She sees the amber hue dissipate, but only slightly, the lowly embers ready to become a roaring fire once the right fuel is added, to be devoured by your anger. “They’re here for a foothold.”

You only hum, the sound is short and dismissive. “They’ll behave themselves and ask for nothing, if they know what’s good for them.”

“Stark has already sent an inquiry forward to have an audience with Wanda,” Natasha says and you finally look at her behind the hardened scowl, set hard into your face like stone. Your grip tightens on the glass nestled into your palm, the sound of a fragility splintering in your hold threatens the iced liquor of becoming a wasted mess on the floor.

You take in her appearance, red hair short and styled into wavy curls, makeup neutral for the most part, save for the shadowy appeal around her eyes and full lips painted in red to draw attention - even yours momentarily - to them.

She takes notice of your eyes wandering her body from head to toe and she playfully quirks a brow. “See something you like?”

As if to test your resolve, she arches her back ever so slightly, her already short, black cocktail dress rides only higher, leaving little to the imagination. The work of art is already standing there beside you. Once you would have leapt at the opportunity, but not anymore. That was the old you that would have instantly pulled Natasha to you and smacked her rear until they were red with your handprint, whispering in her ear all the ways you would deal with her teasing.

But the new you stands above that. You’re loyal to one woman and one woman only.

With an unamused shrug, you take a swig of your liquor. The taste rolls over your tongue with a rich, burning sensation.

“Not interested, Romanoff. I’m a changed wolf.”

She chuckles at that, head tilting to the side with a cheshire grin. “And here I was, getting all dolled up for you. What a waste.”

She juts her bottom lip out and you roll your eyes, gaze falling back onto the scheming mobsters below.

“Maybe not. You can always use your skills down there,” you nod your head in the direction of your eyes, “and convince them to back off.”

“You can’t always protect her from people like them. Sooner or later, she will have to engage in business deals, and you can’t keep her hidden in her ivory tower forever.”

“Not forever,” you correct sharply, “just until Rumlow is dealt with and she has recovered from Pietro’s death. The last thing I want is for her to be taken advantage of.”

What you’re asking of her is laughable to her by the way she quietly cackles beside you as if you told some hilarious joke. “Naw, Puppy, are you letting something show?”

You shake her head in response to her nonsense, you won’t be baited into feeding into what she alludes to.

“You know, I hate how it’s expected of us women, when our means of support is taken. Now that Pietro’s gone, she’ll be expected to marry some rich overlord or some don.”

That makes your blood run cold and skin turn searing hot. The idea of Wanda marrying someone like that isn’t what you want to be thinking about right now, no matter how true Natasha’s statement is, it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. Your tongue runs over your top teeth, a fang manages to nick the moving muscle, drawing a few drops of tangy blood to join the tartness of truth.

You bite back your next comeback, the muscles in your cheek clenching tightly like coiled springs ready to snap under the pressure, she and Tony both are equal in their game to piss you off tonight. Nobody wants to see a werewolf snap, even those who think they do, they’re quick to see the error of their ways. But Natasha always found the thrill in that, in her little games, she was always doing something to rattle your chain.

“Just do that for me, yeah?”

“And what if I don’t?”

She teases you again, bending one leg forward until her thigh brushes the centre of your groin. Her eyes are half lidded in her mission to weaken you, to break you in, and in this case you’re not taking a single liking to the notion; that someone is still trying to achieve what another has already done, too far gone in your head that it’s a fried mess of pure disturbia.

Your other hand curls around her bicep and you drag her towards you and spin her, pushing her back against the pillar next to you. She stares up at you, eyes wide and hopeful in their longing to watch you crack, your lips curl into a sneer.

“You don’t want to find out.”

You push her away from you, taking great care not to be so rough, lest she falls back and stumbles in her black high heels, she scoffs with a wave of her hand. “Alright, alright, I was just fooling around. I’ll deal with them.”

With a gust of a snort through your nose, you nod and take your leave after draining down the rest of your drink and slamming the glass down on a nearby server’s platter as you strut off. You pay no mind that the force you restrained only prior with Natasha had transferred over and the glass shattered upon impact with the metal tray, glass clattering and ringing like a steady beat of a drum.

Your little show with Natasha proved to be quite the performance to the American mobsters who occupied the seats by the bar.

You didn’t want to doubt Natasha, but you held some mistrust in her task to do as you asked, the matter more personal than practical to the business side of things, but you wanted to seek out Wanda.

You couldn’t blame her for lingering back from the party for the time being and drown herself in the sorrows of isolation.

But particularly after Natasha brought up the case of marriage, you had to seek Wanda out. Your fear is irrational, fearing that somehow someone who played the part of some wealthy don or overlord was with her now, down on one knee and presenting her a ring as they asked the question.

“Will you marry me?”

You all but force the door open with a thrust of your arm, the hand on the doorknob wary of the strength you forced to choke it with. You’d been so deep in your messed up head, you actually thought you heard someone’s voice ask the dreaded question.

You catch your unhinged jaw in the act, about to scream your objection before Wanda has a chance to either accept or deny, but she looks up at you from her place behind the large, dark wooden desk, the sacramento green leather only brought about to highlight her form.

She gives you a look of expectancy and beckons you in with a gentle wave of her hand and inviting, sad smile. “Y/N, please come in. Is there something to report?”

You shake your head in response to her question as you walk into the office - her office - but you believe that it was also to shake the intrusive thoughts in your head away. With a sigh of relief, she lets you involve yourself in her space and become accustomed to whatever strikes your fancy.

You walk across the way towards the table on the opposite side of the room beneath the large window, curtains tied back to reveal the onslaught of rain and brewing storm clouds. Even the heavens were crying over the loss to the Maximoff Family it seems.

You hit yourself with the stronger alcohol, tip the decanter and pour the rusty brown liquid into a short whiskey glass. You all but slam the decanter down, this time you thankfully avoid smashing it into crystalised shards.

Wanda turns her head in your direction. “Everything alright?”

“Just peachy,” you huff as you stare out the window, brows knitted together and you take a sip of your beverage. The burnt taste is stronger than the drink you acquired at the bar, but it does little to quell your troubles and bring about that soothing buzz that warms your chest.

“I take it you received Stark’s inquiry?”

“I did. And I assume, by the way you’re aggressively scowling, that he’s here?” she answers from her place at the desk. You take another gulp from your glass, lips pulling back into a thin line. Your eyes become thin with a glare, the stare awfully predatory with warning.

“Yeah.”

She stands from her seat and wanders over to where you are, the long skirt of her dress tightly fits her silhouette, the ruffle slit along her thigh provides some relief for movement, you watch as she carefully approaches you.

Her naked hand reaches up and with a touch so delicate in its pure nature to soothe, you lean your cheek into her palm with a rumbling purr, the sound brings a smile to her lips as you’re lured by the touch you were deprived off for most, if not all, of your life.

How can a mere touch be capable of healing the disturbed fragments of your tormented mind for but a moment? But just like that, the illusion of your wishful thoughts is shattered. Your tone is sharp and cuts straight to the point.

“Wanda, I strongly advise against it.”

“I-I know, but listen–”

“No, you listen!”

Wanda gasps aloud when the shackles of your mind threaten to snap right there, the mentality of a previously caged animal losing itself to the mindless blur returning for the fraction of a few seconds, you pin Wanda in place against the table you stood by, glass rattling together violently from the force behind it, your arms cage her at both sides. The second time she becomes trapped without the capability to escape.

She has no choice and is forced to watch a darkness creep into the blazing hellfire of your glowing eyes. “Men like him are dangerous. They are the definition of what makes a man untrustworthy. If you choose to see him, then you may as well have Rumlow be walking through the front door as well.”

“I think I can handle a few men in suits, dog.”

‘Dog...’

That was a fine line being crossed. She’s never called you that before and the shrinking of her pupils leads you to believe she regrets letting the word slip out. You can’t begin to dig up the memories of those old bones, the unidentifiable names and titles that stripped you of who you were. Your teeth ache from the pressure that compresses them together like metal plates of a vice, the muscles beneath eyes darkened by exhaustion, they twitch in recognition of the heat of tears.

Quickly, you squeeze them shut to hide the shameful level of care she'd see. The embarrassment you carry for that more than professional fondness for the heiress. There are just some things that are unable to escape you. In some form, either by something you do or by someone else’s hand, it triggers the past to return and hits you with a punch to the gut, forcing the memories back into the forefront to torment you.

Through a battle of grit you push aside the conflict that makes your head swim and dizzy. “Will you think that way during or after he has you pinned like this, as he and his men have their fill of you?”

It’s the question that makes the penny drop. One that doesn’t need an answer, you don’t want an answer to.

“Because believe me when I say this, Wanda, that I have bore witness to too many women who said very similar things and ended up as the victims at the dealing table; not the victors. All the while, I was ordered to sit. Stay.”

The number of times that shock collar went off to prevent you from protecting those women have only blurred together. The victims became faceless and shielded by the black behind your eyelids. You wouldn’t watch. The one luxury within the sea of evil your prior masters afforded you.

The striking green of her narrowed gaze widens, the act she portrays to exude confidence and power - qualities expected highly of her more than ever now - they drop within an instant of your words that shatter all hope. Words that bring about the monstrous turn of reality, the world infested by such evil that it plagues all who come into contact with it. You as well, counted as both the victim and driving force that instigates it.

She sees the recollection of something dark and prominent dominate your eyes, watching the dying embers of amber come to life like fire. Your dark pupils once lingering in the shadows of your thoughts stare Wanda down, right into every inch of her young, and all in all, untouched soul; while also having never left her alone to begin with. She feels the notch of fear bounce in her lungs. Threads of rubber bands quivering, at any given point ready to snap.

You’ve never given her reason before to be scared of you. But now, you both anxiously bask in the uncertainty of that now.

These were stories you had no thrilling interest in sharing for the passing of time. Oftentimes you’d rather take a silver bullet to the heart and be done with it all. But then who would protect her from the monsters?

Monsters who only needed the skin on their bones and the horrendous intention behind their actions to do unspeakable things that violate, destroy and corrupt.

The dread brings death to the liveliness that Wanda can only bring, a unique source that shimmers in her brilliant eyes, a green hue you knew you were enraptured by the moment you met her. She can’t even bring herself to say anything, to question you and what those eyes have had to endure before the Maximoff Family took you in; sheltering you for what you thought would be just a little while. But no, they took you in. Gave you a place to belong.

Before the Maximoff Family, you had served numerous other crime lords and the like. As a loyal hound tethered to their leash, you obeyed every whim, every command, no matter how heinous it made you appear; a feral animal at the ready with the simple utterance of an order.

You knew how these people did their dealings, how they operate and scheme. You’ve seen men getting gunned down across the table, women taken advantage of, and prisoners with sacks over their heads begging for their lives before their slaughter; by your hand or by that of your boss.

Wanda would be tested and prodded by the elders of the criminal underworld. And if they can see it can be done, you know they won’t hesitate to make her one of those women who were bent over and taken on the very table meant to guard their interests and forge alliances.

You refuse to let that fate befall Wanda.

So you take it upon yourself to educate her a little on the matters of criminal diplomacy and negotiations. You push yourself against her until her front is flushed to yours, her breasts having no space but to brush on your chest with every deep breath she takes. Through her dark lashes that bat at you with dark innocence and longing, the colour of her eyes forces a groan to tumble over your bottom lip.

“Still think you’re capable, Kitten?”

Your core is a fire that warms every part of her being, she’s drowning out the sorrows with you as her addictive fix, all that she can think about is how you create that electric charge that shocks her nerves and causes that wetness to pool between her thighs once again. The reverberating and husky texture threaded that gives your wolf a voice makes her head swim.

How that voice would feel against her sensitive, swollen bud as you devoured her, carnally and without restraint. To truly succumb to your beautiful nature and have her the way you would want to. Your nose burrows into the arched curve of her jaw and neck, her perfume hits your senses first, smelling of lilac and vanilla but beneath it, her natural scent hides.

She takes longer than she would have personally liked to answer you, the blurred haze of her mind frazzles any attempt to utter a response.

“I-I… I just thought that maybe he can– he can help us find Rum–LOW!” You bare your teeth against her neck with a low growl. Her body flinches against the wall of your body.

“Quit with the stuttering, and let’s try that answer again.”

A hand grasps hold of her face, fingers firmly pressed into the skin of her cheeks and forcing her gaze upwards. You’re leaving her with little to no choice. You remove your hand when her head moves within its grasp in a nodding motion.

The arch of your brow rises slightly as you wait to hear what you know that must be made known. You want her to admit it. “No.”

“Better,” you drawl, teeth grazing the plains of her warm skin, you can very well taste her but you crave more. Your hands hold her by her hips and your fingers dig into her, sure enough to leave bruising behind.

“Shit, I need you…” She’s on you in a flash of a second, lips hungry in their mission to ravish you and invade all thoughts you had prior, filling your mind with only her. Wanda’s legs leap off the ground and circle your strong waist and your hands support the extra weight you carry, the slit of her dress parts to reveal the tantalising prize of her thigh, in which you curl your palm around greedily.

You shuffle back, allowing your heightened senses to guide you back until the back of your calves butt up into one of the accompanying, sacramento leather sofas, you drop yourself into the cushion with Wanda straddling your lap.

Your lips latch hold of one another, caught in the erotic dance that shuts out all imposing forces. You use a hand to handle her and roughly pull her closer, fingers becoming entangled in the roots of her red locks. Her front rhythmically rocks into you as your clothed bodies try desperately to reach one another’s skin.

Fuck, how her body fit so snugly into yours and so perfectly, it’s like she was made for you. That somehow, Mother Nature herself, ensured that Wanda Maximoff be the only woman to belong against your body, to make your lungs burn with great fervour and stir the strongest instinct to protect. The fitting piece of the puzzle you never realised you were missing until now. Like two marble statues carved, you’re infused together, the bond of carven contact intimate and soul binding.

The call of something distant and past, a faint memory once far lingering behind reaches through the veil and beckons you to entwine the separate threads of your souls as one.

Your tongue darts out and teases her top lip. She moans, soft and deep, she parts her lips for you and you slither the eager muscle in, running it over her own, she moans again until you swallow the noise. Her fingers are clawing, clenching the fabric of your suit jacket until her nails scratch at the threaded seams, head tilting to the side as her hair falls onto her exposed shoulder.

Her taste is divine, hypnotically venomous that leaves you craving more with every passing second. Her core that’s now buzzing in her aroused state, she whines at the friction of your pants digging in between her thighs. Just as you, she craves more.

She drinks down the vibrations of a husky purr crawling up your throat, she lets out a small noise that all but has both your hands on her arse in an instant, tugging her impossibly closer while she continues to grind away; core against fiery core.

Her left hand trails down the length of your larger body until it rests over your groin. Your head dips back against the sofa’s back when she palms you, rubbing you firmly through your trousers. The muscles in your torso strain and flex, pangs of arousal shoot to every nerve end in your body.

“But maybe they won’t dare touch me if they know who I belong to,” she breathes out when she has a chance to break away from your lips, before a high pitched gasp is ripped from her chest. You buck your hips up, harshly to rub her sensitive bud through her panties, the sensation drills her further into lustful madness.

“Wanda,” you warn between clenched teeth, “that’s quite a few important men I don’t really feel like cleaning up after.”

“Imagine our relief.”

Yours and Wanda’s head snap in the direction of the voice. American, a hint of the borough of Brooklyn, and his eyes a cold, harsh winter of blue. He stood there at the entrance of the office alongside those of their criminal brotherhood, tall and broad shouldered next to a man who matched his height and physique, his own hair short and blonde but eyes very much the same; a reflection of something icy in his blue orbs.

James “Bucky” Barnes and Steve Rogers. You recall their faces. Not only theirs, but the others too share the same form of recollection, that of a dark skinned man, hair shaved back and facial hair styled similar, clean and simple. He too is equally broad across the chest as Bucky and Steve, his dark eyes ever haunted with that looming glare meant only for you.

To Sam’s side is a lithe shaped personnel, long, raven hair grazing to his shoulders and slicked back behind his ears, pale skinned and pointed nose, and of course, that wide and toothy grin that spoke one language: trickery.

Amidst the wall the four men form, adorned in their dark, three piece suits, was Tony standing front and centre, his short brown hair slightly brushed in an unkempt manner unique to him. He was a hard man to miss in a crowd when you think about it, in his extravagant suits and auburn tinted glasses.

They stare at you and Wanda, caught in the compromising position you find yourselves in, their eyes smirking and accusatory.

A deep, hostile growl rattles loudly into the air, laced thickly with silent tension, and Tony raises a hand up. He leans his shoulder and Natasha walks past him, a smirk of her own plastered on her lips. Her eyes, green and dark like the woodland canopy, portray the power she now holds over you. Of course, she would do anything to ensure Wanda’s dignity remain intact, but yours; she could have some real fun with you.

Natasha always favoured the power struggle when you both treated the other as nothing but a reliever of stress. When the dynamic of your relationship with Wanda hadn’t been so intimate.

“Well, to think I was actually correct that you were letting something show back there,” she chuckles and you tug Wanda closer to you, lips contorted into a snarl, “I don’t think you’re enlisted in your paperwork as a certified breeder, or that you’ve been granted your freedoms pass, Wolf.”

“Y/N?” Wanda questions with a whisper, her brows pinched in her confusion. You cannot bear to look her directly in the eye, just catching her stare from your peripheral.

You growl again and the flicker of amber brightens around your obsidian pupils.

“Natasha–”

“But Stark wants a deal. I advise we hear him out, don’t you agree?”

The room gathers silence like dust as you gather your racing thoughts and reel them back in. However much you despised the clean up, now seems like the one and only chance you have to keep this as a tight lipped secret. You would deal with Natasha on your own afterwards.

But Wanda beat you to it as the skin beneath her palms quivered and grew flaming hot to the touch, she had to draw her hands away lest you burn and blister her skin.

“Okay, we’ll hear you out. But my guard stays.”

“I believe they’re more than that, but very well, they’ll stay.” Tony huffs a haughty chuckle, nodding as he kinks his fingers in sign to his men to follow his lead, to approach you both. Wanda slips out of your lap and smoothes out any crinkles in her dress, chin tilted down to avoid looking up at the mob boss as he stalks closer to her.

She feels vulnerable, far more than she would have liked, the surge of confidence she had prior to being caught - that naive hope - of getting the upper hand vanishes before her very fingertips. Despite the power of Europe to sustain her as the top Family, she’s revealed her hand yet again to the wrong sort, the dangerous sort.

The sort that can now utilise you and her as a form of blackmail. The society of criminals as a whole finding out about this would bring a tidal wave of backlash towards Wanda, she would be hindered greatly, maybe even lose support and thus, the empire of the Maximoff Family would crumble into ruin.

And if Pierce found out, then there was nothing stopping him from dragging you back to that facility. Natasha is correct in regards to your paperwork. You’re no free dog. It darkens your heart to think that you never have been and most likely you never will be.

Seeing Tony stand in front of Wanda, testing the boundaries of her personal space, he intrudes and you immediately stand on your two feet and meet behind her, your firm front grazing against her back. Your hands ball into tight fists and the claws come back out, harshly they bite into your palms.

That bright light of amber never once threatens to go out like a singular flame of a candle. It’s a shadowed threat to them that the wolf is just beneath the surface, staring them point blank in the eye, you witness the faint, fiery glow reflecting in their own eyes.

Wanda is warmed by the heat of your body behind her, she almost finds herself leaning into you but refrains. She must remain strong in front of these men.

By the venom in your voice and the scarred recollection of something horrific past, she couldn’t underestimate these men, and especially not now. Not after what they’ve seen.

She gestures for them to make themselves comfortable. A tactic she picked up from her father whenever he conducted business, the non verbal form of communication to guide fellow associates and company to relax themselves.

Your eyes momentarily leave the tinted shades of Tony’s glasses, his eyes meeting yours after he sent a cheeky wink to Wanda, and your eyes narrow sharply when you spy Natasha coming around behind one of the sofas. With a baritone levelled hum, you catch Wanda’s gaze and you cock your head towards the desk, telling her to get behind it.

It was a matter of ensuring she wouldn’t be in such close proximity with the mobsters, that if they dare to try anything, they have several feet to cross before they can even reach her.

Wanda does as you indicate and with her head held high and shoulders dropped back, she struts to the large, red wood desk and takes a seat; once the men have taken theirs.

‘Good girl.’

A ghost of a smirk crosses your features. You’re proud that she managed to pick up on a thing or two, given the position you’re both now caught in, she’s going to regain some of that stolen power. She sits in the tall backed seat, the dark green brings her even brighter shade to shine and almost ominously. The wired wall lights fuel the room with a dark orange halo, but the storm outside grows bolder, thunder begins to roll in to fill the void of silence.

Each of the four men occupy the four sofas and Natasha lingers between Steve and Tony, she’s like a cat lounging happily, body poised against Tony’s sofa with darkened grace. And still she wears that prideful smirk. Your jaws clench hard, the familiar ache of your vice-like strength makes itself present and the muscles in your cheeks strain and flex.

You join Wanda’s side, a clawed hand rests on the back of the seat, but unlike Natasha’s relaxed pose you take to carrying a sense of duty and responsibility - chest puffed out and shoulders straight. You’ve seen these very men and more of their own brotherhood operate in sit downs before. Letting your guard down is not an option.

“So,” Wanda clears her throat and all eyes fall to her, “am I right to assume you want for a foothold in Europe?” You’re both amazed by how well she’s holding herself in front of Stark and his captains, but another part of you dreads how long she can keep it up for.

“That’s right.” Tony smiles wide with a nod of his head. “I understand that the loss of your brother has struck quite a nerve among the European Families. We wish to lend our support to you and aid you in finding Rumlow. As far as I’ve heard, he has mysteriously gone silent since the attack.”

“But at the price and percentage of the Maximoff’s empire and holdings,” you cut in sharply, tone bitter from the audacity Tony dared to flaunt. He was a blood and power hungry tyrant hidden in the guise of a peacock, strutting around with his colourfully crime-stained feathers - accomplishments that weren’t lacking admiration by many.

The men before you each glare at you in warning to keep yourself in check. They mean to challenge you, to restrain you and remind you of your shackled status, just like the others that scorned you for doing what was not in your job description.

But Wanda doesn’t allow these men across the seas to get away with such iron-glad judgement.

“Quite right, Y/N,” she praises, eyes bearing the form of daggers, “I cannot just simply agree to your support without knowing the finer details. Terms must be discussed, gentlemen, and I will not leave this meeting with no clean water in my basin.”

You feel the corner of your lips tug up at the flustered, annoyed sight of Tony and his men. Bucky and Steve glance to one another, the pure intent for murder springing to light as a bright flash of lightning blinks through the window. Loki looks to Tony, tight lipped and tongue to the cheek of his mouth in contemplation.

Are they figuring out that the foundation of their newly gained power is beginning to struggle? Fuck, you hope so.

“Then we’ll make our terms known,” said Sam with a danger-laced purr, “as a start, we want access to trade outposts and warehouses from Russia to Romania, as well as along the coast of Italy. On top of that, our asking price is fifty percent of the Maximoff holdings and shares, forty percent of earnings from the black market - twenty percent commission if the supplies are manufactured or supplied by us - and thirty-five percent earnt from legitimate business pools.”

You and Wanda spit in unison, “As a start?”

They really were coming straight in with the big guns. Tony usually was direct, but had a way to honey the words into better luring in the fish. Sam, however, was more abrupt and bold in his demands.

“I’m able to provide the necessary warehousing and trade routes for them in Russia,” Natasha affirms from her place, sharing a look with Tony. Was this part of some elaborate scheme?

As far as you could tell, Natasha was on board with keeping Europe completely clean of the American mobsters and criminal empires. What changed?

“No, that– that is too much…” Wanda’s stumbling over her words. She’s beginning to let those cracks show and you can see the telltale signs that the wolves are now closing in. Bucky smirks, dark, shoulder length hair casting a shadow over his bright blue eyes, nodding as he observes the ever faint breaking in Wanda’s resolve.

“I have holdings in the military that rivals Rumlow, and as far as I’ve investigated, you are fundamentally lacking within the weapons trade and already, you’re beginning to be cut off from your intel and extortion resources. Really, the only reliable bird you have to your ear is this stunning fox,” Loki says with a hand gestured to Natasha, who waves a hand at him.

“We have gained a surge of supply and demand for our weapons, thanks to me of course, and if you agree to our terms, I assure you that you’d want for nothing ever again.”

You cock your head to the side and narrow your eyes, a sliver of amber visible within them. As much as you would like to announce the man a thief, for being the likely one responsible for your out of pocket trades with weapons, you think better of it.

‘We’re not known to be saints at our roots. Our foundations are built on thievery, murder and extortion.’

Tony Stark is a brilliant minded man when it comes to manufacturing products and supplies, both for the public and the underworld. He had quite the gallery. But even then, he wanted for more. He wanted plots to further his expansion.

‘What if he asks…’

You swallow down the poisonous bile of wrath and disgust climbing your throat. No way in hell would you allow Tony to drop to one knee and live. If that is even his goal to ensure this alliance sticks.

More and more, Wanda slinks away in her seat, shying away from it all as the walls break further under the pressure of this attack.

Tony puffs his chest out, arrogant that their plan is working and weaving its way into the folds brilliantly, with Natasha there as a vouching card in their hand of cards. Steve and Sam both lean forward slightly and Loki grins again, pearly white teeth glistening and taunting in the ice blue haze of another lightning flash.

Thunder rumbles in, louder than before, providing a baritone and ominous tumble of beats. The tension grows thicker and Wanda sits back in her seat, mouth agape in her dissipating will to remain strong, fearing that she’s truly trapped herself and her hands fiddle together under the cover of the desk.

Something stirs within her core that pulls her green eyes to yours, slightly overstimulated and red with a glisten of tears, she’s telling you with her gaze alone that she needs your help.

She needs her guard to protect her.

With a furrow of your brow and hard pressed line of your lips, you assure her with a nod of your head. Wanda became painfully aware that she has to pass the reins over to you in this moment before it’s too late.

Natasha’s face instantly drops before the initial change. All she had to witness was that plea in Wanda’s eyes and that obedient nod of your head, she straightens in her place, almost submissively shrinking away.

The structure of your face begins to alter, morphing until the skin shreds around the protrusion of a long, canid snout and sharp fangs, Long, straight ears twitch from the brief moment of muffled noise, the fur on the nape of your neck mimics that of your hair and blends down the slope of your growing spine and outward stretching of your shoulders. You’ve grown several feet taller, if the men before you who now pin their backs to their designated seats had to guess it, they would have to summarise to at least eight and a half feet.

Your clothes become ragged scraps that fall to the floor, and what little still clings over the form of your body is shredded at the bends of the fabric.

Fur covers skin and a thick, bushy tail sweeps down to the wood panel floors, your body contorted to accuminate a thicker layer of skin and muscle, fur in a thinner density cascades down your front, most of the fluff of it covering from your shoulders and down the back of your arms and back.

A sight to behold, you’ve changed into a monster to strike terror into the hearts of the mob bosses. Powerful men who know your weakness, who are most probably armed with that very weakness. But are they favouring their odds to make the first move?

An angry bolt of lightning illuminates the scene for them, your hackle puffs up and with a fold of your ears, you snarl a viscous and predatory sound straight from the bowls of your gut, your very fur bristles from the vibrations throughout your body.

“Unacceptable. Try again.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Miss Maximoff,” Tony says between clenched teeth, head tilting further back when you bend forward enough that your back stoops low and your larger head is at level with Wanda’s.

The pink of your bared gums is slick with saliva, the long tendril of your tongue comes between your teeth, licking over the top of your lip and nose.

“Put the dog away, young lady,” Tony attempts to order only for Wanda to shake her head, refusing to obey his order. A raspy snarl bellows in the hollow of your throat.

“No, I think I’ll keep the wolf out.”

Tony visibly squirms in response to this denial.

Wanda tilts her head and sensing her eyes on you, the burning furnace of yours glances back at her and she smiles. She’s finding that resurgence of confidence in the comfortable luxury of your protection. With you, she wants for nothing.

“As they said. Let’s try this again,” Wanda says with her voice renewed with strength.

“Come on, you can’t seriously think you can–”

“I think she can.”

Steve holds a hand of compromise up to cease the bickering on both sides of the deal. His eyes move between Tony and then you and Wanda. “We didn’t come here to fight, Miss Maximoff. But we’ve had this plan on the back burner for years.”

“How unfortunate for you,” Wanda interjects with a click of her tongue. Steve isn’t impressed with the sokovian’s accented sarcasm. With a huff through his nose, he continues, “your father was unable to be convinced. We had hoped that you may be better where he was not. We’re offering you support here, a life line, all you need is to grab hold of it and say yes.”

Wanda’s brows pitch down and she gives the captain a chilling scowl that dare he admit haunts him, especially when such a beast at her side leans evermore forward, at the end of its tether and ready to attack. Never has he ever worried about you before during sit downs in the presence of your former bosses.

They had their ways to keep you in line, the only time you would shift would be to kill some prisoner who had no further use and thus, no purpose to remain alive when privy to such information, or to maul a fellow gangster that didn’t see eye to eye on the table’s terms.

Had they now turned into that very man?

Right now, Wanda held a dangerous animal in her grasp. With one command she can set you upon them and they would become the mauled victims in the meeting room.

“Forty percent within the Maximoff holdings, twenty in the black market with a ten-to-ten split on commission to our own donated supplies, the other five we place into a shares fund that we both equally have access to but must come under agreement to use it,” he pauses and when he sees you both nod, he knows it’s safe for him to carry on.

“For now, we want the trade outposts on the coastline of Italy and within Russia. We can sort out the finer details for warehouses elsewhere and the like at a later time. When Rumlow is kicked out of the fold, we refurbish you with his estates, a cut of his holdings and you can have access to those as warehouses and your own trade outposts. Some connect to fine routes that make for excellent business opportunities.”

Tony looks to have sucked on a lemon, lips pursed and dark brows pinched together. Bucky and Sam share much of the same expression, Loki although, appears mildly amused by these adjustments.

You suspect that they had come together and agreed that they would not be swayed into lowering what they originally asked for.

But all in all, you and Wanda find that to be your middle ground. She looks to you again as if to see if you approve. When she sees you nod to her, she knows she can continue.

“Very well, I accept those terms.” She then lets her eyes flicker up to Natasha. “I trust that you do retain some level of loyalty to the Maximoff Family, Romanoff. So I will let you deal with the matter of your offer in regards to warehouses for our new… allies. But I admit, I cannot exactly wave you through freely into settling in Europe until Rumlow is dealt with. Permanently.”

Natasha nods to this, obviously in agreement with it. To what exactly her own intentions are in allowing them to have access to her own warehouses is primarily not your concern; your only concern is Wanda. But you’d be lying if you weren’t a little curious about Natasha's motives.

There is a cold bitterness in Wanda’s final word. The grief still comes to her, the death still so fresh to her. And she plans to exact her vengeance against those who have taken almost everything from her.

Although defeated, the men become more at ease, and with a wave of her hand, Wanda dismisses your overprotective stance. She stands up from her seat, finger pads planted on the smooth surface of the desk.

Everyone of the four men eye Wanda, dark in their curiosity of her next move. “Now, about Rumlow…”

Tony clicks his tongue with a finger pointed upwards, memory finally catching up with him. He too stands up and for a moment you believe he intends to come at Wanda, your body jostles into action with a deep, rumble of a growl that fades into the next chorus of thunder. Wanda is quick to usher your calmness, hands delicate as she strokes the fur along your back and over the crown of your head.

Tony slightly stumbled back on his heel but ultimately made it to the table by the window. His sights were set on the liquor. He helps himself easily to the fine brand of whiskey and downs a gulpful. “He was in America but he covered his trail. We cannot say for sure where he is.”

“So how can we find him?” Wanda asks to hide her groan of defeated annoyance. Tony peers over his shoulder, but his focus does not land on Wanda as you suspected. No. They land directly on you.

The way his eyes bear into you like that, it unknowingly unsettles you. You shift your weight on the four pillars of your limbs and your ears flatten against your head as Tony takes another languid sip of his drink, hissing in delight at the taste.

“I know that he has a business partner that knows where he is. He’s In Madripoor. You may know him as Vision.”

Why, of all places, of the single partner to have knowledge of Rumlow’s whereabouts; why did it have to be Vision, Madripoor’s criminal overlord of the drug trade?

Each muscle in your face is touched by the sting of something best left forgotten, memories you wish you could just shake, a past that you wish every waking moment would leave you alone. You choke on a whimper, the sound weak and hitched tightly in your throat, it causes you to wince in phantom pain.

“It’s awake. Vitals are stable for now.”

A doctor whose identity remains hidden behind the white mask over their face, hovers in front of you, studying you behind the bars of your cage, they’re a voice drowned out by the overstimulated sense of your hearing. The background is filled with a high frequency ring, the people around you move in a blur, faces only recognisable and in focus in the line of your tunnel vision.

“Another dose.”

“Let me out!”

“Sir, if we give it anymore, it may have unforeseen side effects.”

“Another dose. As you wish, Sir.”

“Just give them the injection.”

“Let me out!”

That face you recognise haunts you, you scurry further away into your cage but no matter how far you retreat, the back of the cage pushes you forward until your face is against the bars and inches from his own. Alexander Pierce.

His eyes marvel at the sight of you. He admires the near end product of you. His finest pet in the facility, the role model for the others, and a grand and valuable asset. But he needs this experiment to work.

Another face comes into focus and you cannot fight the roar that shreds through your throat. He ushers Alexander away for a moment, their backs to you as they speak, their words going unheard as another figure moves to block them out of your sight.

“Preparing the asset for injection of the serum.”

“No!”

A doctor approaches you and within the clutches of a gloved hand, they raise a needle high into the sight of your peripheral. The liquid bubbles in the tube, the white lights above blind your vision and make the serum glow a reddish pink.

Your muzzle is restrained, but nothing physical holds it shut, by sheer force are you trapped in place inside that cage.

You're carted out and laid atop a metal table, the surface is cold against your back.

“Vitals are spiking, we need to tranquilise the asset now.”

“They can take it. I know they can.”

“Let me out!”

The sting of the needle penetrates the thick layer of your hide. Your fur bristles, your heart pounds heavily in your chest and your mouth feels dry and hot.

Your body violently convulses. Muscles become strained and skin constricts you, like leather straps holding you down, your very own skin holds you prisoner. In your chest a scream is locked deep inside. Your leg kicks out in a desperate flurry to move, the act is only half successful before a cramp reels your leg back into a trapped status.

“Y/N?...”

All you can do is pant, loud and thick in the overly bright lab, it feels so cramped being surrounded by these blurred ghosts.

“I don’t want this!”

“Mr Pierce, Sir, it may not take to the serum still. It’s body fights it.”

“They can take it. I know they can.”

“Second dose of the serum. Rumlow, please stand by in case of emergency execution.”

“I never wanted any of this!”

Your mind begins to cloud and mist over, your vision turns a shade of that reddish pink, you can hear the unsynced rhythm of all the collective heartbeats in one room. Your muscles spasm in timed units of two minutes, three minute gaps in between your muscles fall lax against the table.

Your natural body heat increases and you feel as though you’re burning away. But you’re not feeling the desired effects of the poison now flowing through your veins. You writhe and shake against the invisible restraints.

“Let me go home!”

You want to go home. Where is home? You have no idea what or where home is but all you have is a feeling. A deep-rooted feeling. Is it somewhere far away from here? It must be. It feels long gone.

Home can’t be the facility. Not in the iron bars, not the metallic and clanky shackles that bind you in place, that keep you there against your will. Home doesn’t restrain you. It comforts you.

“Where is home?”

Your own voice echoes but nobody reacts. It falls into the deafness of the void. They refuse to listen to the asset of their experiment.

“Where is home?”

Home cannot be the cold concrete of your cage, or the moth riddled lights that paint only the centre of your cage in a sickly yellow tint. Your home is elsewhere but forgotten. Never seen by you. Never embraced by you nor are you embraced by it.

“M-Mother!”

Shock rattles you, your vision flashes white before that reddened tint returns over your vision. You see your mother opposite of you, laid on a similar table but she’s turned on her back. Her ribcage is torn open and exposed.

“You’ll be alright, Y/N. Just think of me and you’ll be alright.”

Her body is knocked to the floor and instantly, the world around you is swallowed up by darkness. You smell the dried odour of blood and rotten meat. Only that shitty yellow light flickers to illuminate her body. From the darkness you see the foul creatures leap out and tear her apart. Their eyes are whitened with madness. Their minds are tortured into a spiral of neverending want for carnage. Lost to the touch of their humanity.

She cries out, howling and yelping as they shake her apart, her body remains still throughout the attack. She cries out to you. She’s begging you not to watch, urging you to never see it happen. Try as you might, you attempt to claw your way towards her, to defend her. You can’t. You’re unable to protect her from those monsters. No matter how far you crawl, the back half of your body dragging behind you like dead weight, you can never get any closer.

“Ready the injection.”

“Vitals are peaking, we cannot risk another dose so soon.”

“We’re losing vitals, we’re losing it!”

“Ready the injection.”

“Give them a moment. They’ll pull through.”

Your back, laced sweat, arches up from the bed, a groan is on the edge of your lips but cannot escape. You’re fighting. Fighting and struggling against it, it will not let you go. You struggle about, rocking your body from side to side, your muscles fall loose for a few seconds.

You try to cease this moment. But then you’re trapped again. Pulled back into the mixture of torment.

“Y/N, wake up. Y/N!””

Everything is dark red, the erratic pulse of your heart flushes pink in time with each coursing beat, the voices are drowning in the song.

Your mother is strewn about the cage, the corners blacked out, bleeding into the void beyond.

Your breath stills as the yellow light shuts off with a whirring moan.

You’re back in the lab. Alexander’s hand grips at the fur along your neck until he’s tugging it harsh enough to rip it out. “Don’t you dare give in, dog. Embrace it. I need this to work. I’m counting on you.”

You just want your mother back. But she can’t come back to you. She’s gone. She’s taken from you. Has been for a long time now.

You grew up in that cage alone.

Suddenly you’re knocked off that metal examination table. You see a woman in the blackness of the cage’s corner. She weeps into the crook of her elbows, hands bloody and clutching onto the iron bars. Her feet slip in the inky, crimson puddle at her feet whenever she tries to pull herself up to stand.

Her naked body is covered in blood and marks made by claws and teeth. It’s… confusing.

“G-get away– f-from me! M–monster!”

A shroud of dizziness cloaks your mind and you stumble slightly on your hind legs. Your vision goes from dark to bright, unable to make its decision and commitment. You see now that your clawed hands are covered in a warm and thickened substance, crimson and smells of iron.

“Another failed attempt.”

“Mr Pierce, the experiment has ended in another failure. It’s body cannot adapt to the serum as we hoped.”

Alexander Pierce glares at you from the window in the observatory room. His lips screwed into a thin line and his brows troubled by the news. His fists clench together until his knuckles turn white.

“What did you make me do to her!”

“Mark them down as unbreedable. Gas it.”

The vents hiss with an aggressive poison clouding the cage. You can’t see through the green haze, your lungs slowly giving out the more you breathe in the gut wrenching scent of the gas. The taste is awful on your tongue and soon enough, you taste bile along with it. Your body lurches forward and you fall.

The woman’s face had been hidden, unable to make out any distinct features, to put a face to an unknown name. She lays ahead of you some feet away, the gas having killed her far quicker than you.

Her hair that you swear was once a chocolate brown colour is now brighter. Her eyes lost that light of life but you can make out the green shade of them, and that unknown face and unknown name is now identifiable, you can hardly believe who you see before you - with you - dead in that cage.

“W–Wanda…”

You cough and sputter as the air in your lungs becomes far too polluted to continue breathing. A low, sombre howl fills the chamber and your vision goes dark.

“Y/N!”

Finally you find the willpower to scream and it utterly terrifies Wanda, chilling her to the core at the horrific shrill and raw intensity that ensures your vocal cords are shredded and sore. The much needed reprieve that brings tears to her eyes and a hand to clasp over her lips to keep herself from sobbing aloud, all because you’re in pain, you’re suffering, and she fears she’s unable to help you.

“Wanda! Wan… Wanda…” Your shoulders rise and fall in rapid succession, chest taking in the fresh air that thankfully isn’t polluted by the gas, only the four walls that are now imprinted with your screams.

She crawls the small distance between you both across the bed. When she finally reaches your side she brings your head to her chest as she ushers you to relax, the rest to that scarred mind filled to the brim with horrors you want to forget. You can’t forget.

However, the world is still a little fuzzy, at least it appears that way, as if the fogginess followed you out of that world and into this one. You wish to call it a nightmare, and it was for the most part, but the most ghastly and haunting nightmares always stem from the evil roots of the past.

“Wanda… oh, fuck, Wanda.” You sigh in your relief and you don’t hesitate to pull her to you, face burying into her chest, absorbing this one good thing that is her - just her - before the claws of that darkness tears you from her; and you fear for good.

You can always feel yourself slipping. You’ve run, only to continue slipping, and you still run, only to remain slipping away. No matter what, you know you’re falling into madness.

It’s just a matter of time. You’re a ticking time bomb at this point. And you’re left to wonder, how will you protect her then?

“Shh, shh… I’m here, Y/N. I’m here,” she whispers against your scalp, lips beating down a warm breeze that begins to recharge you and make the fuzziness go away.

Is this home? It’s uncertain but maybe it can be.

‘Maybe she is my home.’

“It’s okay, not real, Y/N. You’ll be alright.” Your arms pull tighter around her, the words of your mother echo in the misty haze of your memory, tears prick at the corner of your eyes. She whines softly that you’re squeezing her too hard. With an uttered apology into her breasts, you slightly ease your iron grip so she is able to breathe.

You don’t ever want her to experience being at a loss for air, to never suffer the suffocation she had to in your nightmare. All you want for her is her safety. There is nothing else.

But this is war and when love is thrown into the fray and spied as a weak point, there is no level of fairness to what comes next.

ACT III: MIXING POISON WITH PLEASURE

A FEW DAYS LATER

Streaks of light reflectively race across the sleek, black coat of the escort car as it passes over the long draw of the bridge. Steve and Bucky occupied the driver and passenger seats, the tinted shield muffles the snippets of their conversation. Perhaps old friends reminiscing on memories, talk of minor business advantages, all of which you can only suspect without much confirmation.

Tony and Sam sit across from you with their backs to the tinted panel, leaving you and Wanda to be the target of their sharp and penetrating observation, done so in silence.

Silence that is broken by Tony taunting you, his new hobby since being stuck on a jet together for a few hours prior to the drive. “Excited to be going back? A lot of familiar sights and faces to get reacquainted with.”

Something in your stomach flips and your palms grow clammy, eyes fluttering from side to side as you chase to calm the unease setting into your shoulders, heavy with the weight of the question upon you.

Your eyes freeze when Wanda’s eyes meet yours, a faint crinkle in her brows prods you inaudibly for clarification. An answer to the mystery of your place exactly in Madripoor.

A part of your past that you left ambiguous and for good reason. Wanda’s parents were the only ones who had knowledge of your origins, so to speak. How exactly you made your exit from the facility and right into the employment of some prideful overlord.

“Not particularly,” you answer quietly, the answer dry on your tongue. Ice clinking together when he orientated his wrist to churn the liquor, Tony chuckles over the rim of his glass, the nervousness in your tone a dead giveaway to the truth of your feelings. Repressed to save face.

“You’re rather well known among the populace,” Sam chimes with a cold drawl. His eyes are thinned into a glare. “For reasons… Well, I’m sure you know why. Can’t say the same for her.”

His head cocks in Wanda’s direction and you feel that worry simmer more in the pit of your stomach.

“Y/N, what are they talking about?” Wanda finally asks, voice strained by the betrayal of her hurt, the seed planted in her mind that she is some sort of outsider to the information that passes between you and the two men seated before you.

“It’s nothing, Wanda.” Your answer is fired too quickly to simply mean nothing. No, she knows you’re hiding something sinister.

“You know,” Tony sighs to conceal a gurgle in his throat, “I’ve said to Steve once that I don’t trust people without a dark side. But you…”

He utilises one finger to point at you, accusation at his fingertip, the ice clinks harshly against his glass now. “You’re the exception. I don’t trust you because you have too much of a dark side.”

Your brows pull down hard and your lips curl into a tight frown. You feel the animal stir below the surface of your skin. Your muscles tense until the skin begins to strangle around them. Outside, the familiar buzz of criminal life and night lights give away your location.

“And why exactly do you think I have too much?”

Your nightmare from that night comes to you in flashes. Perhaps Tony is right in his given reason…

He taps a finger to his temple slowly. “Because, I’ve found that Alexander’s werewolves always tend to be fucked up in the head.”

This underlying fact is not exactly news to you. But hearing it from another person, it begins to dawn on you. The slipping away. Your eyes falter until they see nothing but the toes of your boots.

Never would you think that you’d be on route to Madripoor. Back to the established territory of all crime, the residential host of the black market. A place which incidentally led you on the path you lead now, despite still lacking your freedom, the Maximoff Family did allow you some sense of it.

But you still weren’t in complete control of your life. When children mature, they’re expected to go out into the world and make a piece of it their own. When you matured, you were put out into the field and ordered to complete that task. And then another after that, and so on. Never given the chance to make a little piece of the world yours.

The world - the criminal world - made you theirs.

And because Alexander did a fantastic job in rearing an obedient pet, you were an expensive investment. Surely enough to continue pouring funds into the project that supplied loyal hounds into service. Last you heard, more and more werewolves came into demand after your rise of succession.

And a good part of it began here. Now Madripoor remembers you just as much as you remember it.

Steve pulls off to the side of the street, engine purring lowly, Bucky pats his shoulder before he shuffles out of the car. Sam pulls a handgun from the hidden holster in his jacket, checks over the magazine and slots it back in. Tony pours himself another drink as you, Wanda and Sam also exit the car.

“I’ll see you guys when you get back to the hotel. Try to stay out of trouble, dog.”

You rasp over the curve of your shoulder, eyes burning with that dangerous amber. Tony snaps his fingers at you to garner your attention. “Hey, keep the eyes from doing that. You’ll be recognizable enough, don’t let that get you pulled into a messy fight.”

You grumble in response to his warning. Like he’s ever been in a messy fight, too busy firing the gun when his assailant's back is turned. Wanda stands right next to you, brushing against your arm. Draped over her body is a long, fox fur coat that reaches the ankle of her black heeled boots. Her chin tucks into the soft textured collar to keep something of her identity unrevealed.

If she is discovered so early before you locate the man you’re looking for, things could escalate into that messy fight Tony wants you to stay out of. With a wave of his hand, the car pulls out and speeds off down the strip, leaving the four of you on the sidewalk, left at the entrance way that leads down into the slums of Lowtown.

It’s like Madripoor was frozen in time, everything is how you remember it. The dark and neon black market scene, stalls and cube stores packed with an assortment of supplies anyone in the business would need, whether that be for the amateurs - which were the usual target customers - or the cluster of smaller gangs. The big time runners had designated storehouses to spare where they obtained their supplies, and ran other dealings and hand-offs in and out of private rooms in the clubs.

The only thing that has changed only serves to prove Tony’s case; there are more werewolves about. Beasts loyally shackled to their masters, bought and enslaved to obey. In passing, you spot a rather poor sight. You’ve seen gangsters put their skill into the ring countless times and a way to earn reputation and some cash.

However, now they’ve taken it further and put werewolves into the pits. The crowd enveloping the ring cheer and shout, arms pumping in their enthusiasm for their bet to win. Meanwhile, two wolves are pitted against each other. A male and female, her body is more lean - and dare you admit it with a gulp - scrawny looking than the male’s. He’s been taken under someone with finer living circumstances than her, better resources and care.

Bucky, Sam and Wanda follow your stern inspection of the fight. You smell their mingling scents of unease at the sight.

“So this is what Tony meant,” you sneer. Bucky and Sam don’t answer you but you just know that if they did, they would confirm it.

The male has the female pinned, she yelps and in a flurry of panic, she snaps her jaws around the bulk of muscle on his shoulder, her teeth doing little to rip into the flesh hard enough to get him to back off.

He’s enjoying the torment of her struggle. The way he isn’t rushing to finish off the fight, idle in his stance above her as he holds her down.

It truly sickens you. Humans can be a foul lot, corrupt in their ways of seeking entertainment to cure their boredom and wealth to cure themselves of poverty. But it’s all you know.

Even then, a deep-seeded growl emanates from you and rumbles the tension laced air around your companions when you see the male become aroused by the squirming female.

“Come on,” Sam says rather quickly and wraps a hand around your bicep, dragging you away before you do something that will get them into trouble.

Wanda gawks at the monstrous sight, the female’s whines and howls echo in her ears, perverting her with images she never wanted to ever conjure up while Bucky steers her after you and Sam with equal haste to his partner.

You take no leisurely pleasure in walking through these parts and it doesn’t help that you get questioning glances from the large variety of locals. You too follow in Wanda’s lead in keeping your identity on the down low, you use the high collar of your jacket to keep your features unrecognisable to the crowd.

Sam and Bucky tail behind you both with a lax swagger to their step, eyes taking in the neon and polluted scenery around them. The slums are where the amateurs and those smaller gangs operate freely and without much prejudice. Above the poverty, Hightown shines with the more luxurious affordability, belonging to the bigger fish, the real criminal powers.

And Vision has that power within that grasp. Up there, rubbing elbows with the grand gentlemen and dolled up women, mingling and gaining alliances under his belt. So why venture into Lowtown?

Because once, these streets harboured a terrible incident, one that now leaves your face smeared on for show as wanted. Because just down the series of lanes and roundabouts of corners, there is a divide between the common criminals and Vision’s depot, because it also operated as a factory.

“So you’re not going to tell me anything about what was said back there?” Wanda asks. You tilt your head and you catch the sharp incline of her raised brow, her eyes piercing through the veil of your clouded, troubled thoughts.

“Not really something I want to go into detail about.” She huffs at your response. Ever the one to avoid the topic whenever the subject revolves around you.

It’s little wonder how she knows what she does about you. “So you have some sort of history with these men in particular, you have some estranged connection with Vision and with Madripoor, and to top it all off: Tony doesn’t trust you because of this supposed… dark side. What is it you’re hiding from me, Y/N?”

She’s getting assertive with each word as she walks in stride with you, eyes glaring up from the curtain of her hair, still keeping her chin as low as possible. Your lip curls up to reveal sharp, elongated canines.

You rasp coldly, “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

There is a challenge in those green eyes of hers, unrelenting to be brushed off. After the connection you both shared, the way your lips were in sync with one another and how your bodies melded together in the heat of that feral passion and need. She thought you could trust her, to be more open with her.

It seems she was wrong.

“Don’t take it to heart, Miss Maximoff,” Bucky drawls from behind and a growl resounds in your chest, “Y/N is what we tend to call a wounded dog. Licking the wounds of their injured pride because they can’t afford to let anyone in.”

“And on top of that, they end up all fried in the head,” adds Sam with a venomous tune. You can just sense the dance of his eyes, brows high and cheekbones drawn down in his taunting.

If they were trying to get a rise out of you, they were succeeding much to the unwelcomed behest of your annoyance, maybe filling in for Tony’s absence. But if they intended to heed Wanda with a warning of who you were before your employment as a guard for the Maximoff Family, then you fear that this is also a succession in the making.

Wanda stops in place and turns to face the two men behind her, willing herself to not shy away from them or the way they tower over her. “You speak of my guard as if they are purely a mad-driven, bloodthirsty animal who has no grasp of the human they are. Wolf beneath or not. Show some respect or else.”

Sam and Bucky also stop, causing you to commit halfway in turning to look at the scene. Sam sighs as his eyes divert from the Sokovian heiress. “Apologies, Miss Maximoff.”

But just like that, the act switches and he gestures with a hand, a dark smirk on his lips. “But look at this. I mean, criminals are wanted all the same. But in Madripoor? My, that is one persevering poster. One mean lookin’ animal.”

You snarl towards Sam and Bucky as they guide Wanda’s sights to the screen panel that displays a photo of you. Written beneath, it states the price rewarded for your capture and turn over to none other than Vision.

100,000 Madripoor dollars.

Her gloved hand lifts up, her plump lips - lips that you want nothing more than to savour and taste against yours again - agape in their shock to find a piece to the mysterious puzzle that is you and your shrouded past. A past you preserve in the shadows and where she believes you intend to keep it.

Away from her. Out of sight, out of mind.

Out of your own fucking mind. A twisted and corrupt mind. Is what these men say true? Are you some wounded hound licking at the gaping festering scars of your past mistakes and vulnerability?

Her fingers curl forward, mere inches away from the display of your face, fingertips just caressing the digital profile of your jawline when a hand snaps hold of her wrist. The grip is tight and a gasp is torn from her lungs, eyes watery in their gaze as they stare into yours; that amber hellfire prominent beneath the cooler tones of the neon lights and grey tinted smog.

Your jaw is clenched hard. She’s really struck a nerve now, unintentionally, but still, another attempt at crossing that line leaves you with a bitter taste of something resentful. Ashamed.

“Let’s go.” You leave no room for her to argue. With a hand on the small of where her back is, your hand momentarily feels the true soft, silkiness of her coat, you push her forward to continue walking. Then your eyes lift up to meet eye to eye with Tony’s men, the two of them basking in the way you hide Wanda from yourself.

Twin smirks stretching their lips, they both chuckle in cause of their muted plot. Now you’re beginning to think they’re trying to poison Wanda against you.

“What? We’re just trying to help the two of you bond, being some couple and all…” Bucky hums with a shrug, blue eyes darting between you and Wanda curiously.

“We’re not–” You bite the words that become overthrown when Sam’s hand slaps your arm.

“Besides, it’d make an interesting story for the kids.”

They walk now, passing on either side of you like the haunting walls of a tunnel that locks you into that place where your nightmare meets you halfway, blurring it all together.

‘Fuck, I hate this place!’

You take one look at the wanted poster, eyes shadowed heavily by the furrow in your brows. That’s when an idea springs to mind. Your crazy and fucked up mind… with a crazy and perhaps fucked up idea.

“Yo, you coming or what?” Sam hollers out to you and you visibly stumble back a couple of steps, shaking your head of whatever came over you there. A sense of sinking finds itself in your stomach again.

“Come on, the depot is up this way.”

You briskly walk past all three members of your company, blatantly you avoid looking in Wanda’s eye, simply pushing her forward again, as gently yet urgently as you can muster.

At the end of the street and another few corners and you were where you needed to be. Behind the tall chain link fencing, the yard is crawling with security as expected, watching over the compound’s goods waiting to be loaded into the trucks waiting in the docking bays. Thankfully, the guards pay no mind to you, as if you don’t exist to them. Ghosts within the smog.

“So this is it, huh?” Bucky sneers with a visage of judgement. “Doesn’t look like much to me.”

“Because this is one of his ‘private’ storehouses that also happens to be the manufacturing powerhouse of his supplies,” you retort over your shoulder.

“I’m sorry, you need to explain this to me again. You want us to turn you in for the reward money?” Wanda cannot believe what her ears hear. This will now be the fourth time you’ve had to reiterate your proposed plan of getting in.

“There’s no way they’ll just let us in. And if we sneak in, Vision will most likely flee. We gotta lure him in.”

“By using you as bait,” Wanda clarifies and you nod. She’s shaking her head, now in sheer, utter disbelief.

“No no, this could actually work.” Sam taps a finger to his chin, the gears in his head turning the wheels of schemes. “But if we’re going to do this, we gotta rough you up a little bit. Make it look like we’ve dragged you into the joint.”

Your brows arch in a way that expresses your confusion. “What exactly are you–”

Given no more time to question him, Sam strikes his arm forward into a left hook, and shit, did he go all in for it. The adrenaline in your blood pumps but not before the initial sting of the surprise attack hits you first. Wanda makes a noise between a gasp and a horrified shriek, her hands cup over her nose and mouth to muffle the sound.

“The fuck!” you spit harshly, biting back on the urge to shift right there and then. Sam had distracted you with his left and now he swiftly drives his right fist into your gut, forcing your back to the brick wall of the building next to you.

“Sh-shit, okay… n-now I get it…” Sam only nods with a shit eating grin and you’re convinced he’s enjoying this, soaking it in and will most likely brag about it to Tony and the rest of them.

“Come on, Buck, let’s rough them up.” Bucky didn’t need anything else to motivate him to join in, he steps around Wanda and at Sam’s side, he also drives a hard hitting punch into your stomach that causes you to keen forward with a groan.

Your head hangs forward and Sam brings his right knee up and butts your nose, splitting it. You grimace with a pained wince to keep a temperamental roar at bay.

Yeah, they’re fucking enjoying this.

You’re not even close to recovering, swaying on your two feet as a hand nurses the space between the bottom of your ribcage and stomach, you lift your head only for Sam to land a knock to the corner of your brow, temple buzzing a little. That’s when Bucky comes in with an upward strike, your lip busted in the fray of his blow.

You can only growl and grunt, having to further suppress the wolf below the surface so it doesn’t come back with an attack of its own.

“What the actual fuck are you doing?” Wanda hisses at the three of you. After a few more hits to sell the act, Bucky pulls his handgun free of its holster, racks the slide and puts it to your bruised temple.

“Adding a little bit of realism to the play. If we walk in and they’re not a little bit bruised up, then they’ll know something’s up,” reasons Sam with a glance to Wanda who shrugs, that scowl of her disapproval showing in all its glory.

The cute way her nose scrunches a little. Fuck, you can’t help but grin yourself with a breezy, husky chuckle, eyes sly as they look Wanda up and down. It must be the rush of adrenaline and pain that’s gotten you a little riled up.

“We have to make it believable,” you drawl, voice hinted with a lacing of sarcasm, but Wanda cannot help the way it stirs her core; nickname and all. Those eyes you’re giving her are doing things that make her cheeks become dusted with a pink hue.

Wanda shakes her head and she crosses her arms, firm in her resolve that getting the shit beaten out of you is a little more than crazy, in fact, she thinks it’s completely psychotic. No less, you weren’t given a fair warning in the beginning and now here you are, it’s like you’re getting off on being brutally beaten.

For you, it gave you a weird sense of reprieve. It took you away from the usual routine of pain and replaced it with something new - fresh - and it made you feel alive.

Much like when you shared a few passionate sessions of expressive want with Wanda. That kindling of being alive after wandering around, licking your wounds, feeling dead in a way to the world.

“I-I don’t think that was called for,” Wanda utters once her bottom lip is safely hidden beneath the fur of her collar. She’s shielding herself, her embarrassment and you can’t help the way the wolf becomes intrigued, head tilting to the side with that shimmer of amber passing over your eyes.

“If it gets us closer to Vision, then it’s worth every punch. Now come on, you looker, let’s hand you over to ‘em,” Bucky grins with a dark chuckle.

Your hand moves up to cradle your jaw, the scent of blood wafts into your nose and coats your tongue, Wanda’s heels clap against the pavement as she walks up to you. Her hand brushes along your hand and replaces it. She’s observing your face, a soft and troubled frown does little to hide the true concern from her orbs, ever so delicately glazed with a watery coat.

“I hated that,” she drawls with a strong and lowered lilt of her Sokovian accent. You can only find it within yourself to flash her a smirk.

“I don’t think this is the right plan. What if they actually take you away? Y/N, I don’t have any clue as to what’s going on here, but it just sounds like a terrible idea.”

“Wanda, you just have to trust me.”

There’s hesitation in her eyes, you can see it, conflicting with her want to trust in you, but how exactly could she just go along with this plan? She never saw it at the time, but now she knows Vision is a dangerous man, and whatever history you have with him makes her skin crawl uncomfortably. Who knows what you’re all walking into.

Still, she bows her head in agreement and you both tail after Bucky and Sam who weren’t too far up the way. “Are we ready?” Sam asks while Bucky repositions his gun at level with your head.

“Ready,” you reply and Wanda mumbles her own answer. With a roll of your shoulders, breathe in and out, adjusting yourself before you enter the lion’s den and then you let Sam and Bucky direct you inside as Wanda tucks herself to Bucky’s other side, a little distant from him.

“Hey, what’re you doing here? This is private property, you need to leave.” One of the guards stationed at the front gate of the depot approaches, gun in hand as he stares your group down, a few of his fellow guards also take a wary stance in your arrival.

Bucky cocks his gun against your jaw, tilting it up to showcase to the guard.

“We saw your wanted pet. Now we’re here to collect.”

The guard’s firm and sceptical gaze moved between the three before they settle on you, squinting in a moment of faint remembrance, out of knowledge by seeing your poster or because he was maybe one of the guards who worked here and remembers you by face, he gruffly huffs with a cock of his head.

“Yeah, bring it in. Take the stairs down when you get in and head through, the guard there will let you pass.”

The sound of a buzzer sounds off and it shakes your brain like nails on a chalkboard. The chain link fence rattles to life and slides open, the guard above loom as dark shadows from the white blaring lights behind them.

With a small mock salute, Sam passes the guard, following closely at his side now is Wanda and Bucky nudges you forward. You have to hand it to them, they know how to get an in. You distinctly remember seeing them bring in numerous prisoners and deadbeats who refused to pay up.

The guard wrinkles his nose at you and with a gurgle in his throat, spits at your feet. You almost break character with a laugh, dark and sinister before you imagine tearing him open until he’s nothing but bite sized chunks for the local street dogs.

The guard unlocks the door with a keycard and pin, the metal door hisses as it swings open. Entering the building and ignoring the way your stomach knots up, the pungent smell of iron, fuel and a hint the residue of the facility’s drugs suffocates your lungs and blocks your nose from smelling anything else, anyone’s scent.

You take the immediate stairs to your right, the hallway ahead blocked off, reserved as the onsight dormitory for security. Down into the depths of the factory, you walk the narrow walkway in the otherwise spacious room, rooms to both your left and right sealed off into smaller cubical styled holdings, protected under padlock and doors fashioned from old cages.

Old cages big enough to house something like you.

Another door is opened by the occupying guard watching over the room. He shares the same scornful look the first guard at the gate did, however, you pick out his features and identify him as one of the unlucky men who was caught in the crossfire. The side of his head closest to you and his jaw is mangled and flesh wrinkled, all down his neck before his vest and shirt cuts off the rest of the damage inflicted.

Again, you almost break character, but not because some guard had the audacity to disrespect your boot. No, it’s because of the memories in the lab you now stand in. It took Bucky a hard shove when he noticed your hesitance to cross the threshold. His need to remind you of the loaded barrel pinned to your jaw forces you to brave the nightmare before you.

The adrenaline, that smugness you airily carried. All gone. Your lungs give way to a shaken inhale and your eyes take in your surroundings of the lab.

It’s been a while since last you saw of the place, and nothing much has changed. No less the man in charge. Seeing him now, it really is a packing punch to the gut, your insides violently churn with a sickening swell of bile. This is an encounter you’d wish would never come to pass but here you are now, all to find out where Rumlow is. You had to stiff upper lip and face the broken record you left behind you.

But seeing him only makes this harder. Dressed down into a white, button up shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, he stands with his back to you, leaning his weight to one side.

“Yo, heard you were looking for a lost pet?” Sam hollers, garnering the man’s attention.

He turns to leer at you four, blue eyes cold and malicious, pupils shrunken in the way of a madman and hair haphazardly sweeps past his ear, shrouding half his face in shadow. Lines form on the outskirts of his cheeks with a deranged smirk.

“Ah. You found it,” he hisses in glee, “I must thank you sincerely for this delivery.”

You’re brought forward at the nudging of Bucky and now you stand under the scrutiny of Vision himself. A man-made monster by his own devices. His upper body contorts to lean forward slightly, head tilting heavily on its axle to gauge your expression, to probe at your mind, just as he had done so many other times.

Furthermore, it does little to boost your self-esteem when he whistles and snaps his fingers in front of your face. “Are you in there, dog?”

You swallow without response. With a snort of amusement, he’s satisfied by the compliance of your silence; your defeated resolve to fight back - though he does enjoy a good show from time to time. To see the rage burn in your eyes like a fearsome storm of fire. One that swears to devour him in the flames of your wrath once you broke free of your shackles. A storm that never came to pass until that fateful night, but a storm that didn’t sweep him away into ash.

He directs his attention to someone else and only then does your upper lip curl into a snarl, a feral sound of an animal under threat, or in this case, Wanda being under threat, Vision sneers at your attempt to intimidate him.

“Always one with a temper,” he sighs as if reminiscing on those memories, like they were days of happier times. Perhaps they were to him.

“Wanda, it’s good to see you again after all this time.” He pulls her hand up to grace her gloved knuckles with his lips, the eyes of a predator drinking in the sight of her discomfort.

“Vision.” Her tone of voice is cold. Strict and aimed sharply as a dagger to penetrate the fortitude of his unwanted advances. Vision was never one to take a hint. Much like Wanda’s lack of knowledge of you, you were left in the dark in regards to her relation to Vision.

Now you see it. They at some point in the past shared some form of intimate connection. One that she inevitably regrets with every fibre of her being that uses her body to shield herself. She all but rips her hand from his grip, her other hand subconsciously wipes at her knuckles. Vision quirks a dirty blonde brow up in the face of her denying act towards his given affections.

To ease the infectious growth of humiliation on his part, he shoves his shoulders back and cocks his head. “Come, you must be paid for a job well done.”

He directs two guards, two of your own kind, rendered obedient to his command, to lead you away from Wanda, Sam and Bucky. She’s mortified once your presence is eliminated from the group, leaving the three of them alone with Vision.

Bucky and Sam are quick to catch the wary glare you cast their way, a low threat to not abandon you there, to not let this play act go too far; the last thing you want to do is fall back into that pattern. To have Wanda be subjected to just a taste of what ordeals and trials you had to endure.

“I’m sorry to hear about your brother. He had a bright future ahead of him.” Vision’s condolences die on the tip[ of his tongue, turning into ash that rots away any ounce of sincerity for her loss. She cannot bring herself to respond verbally.

Wanda is moreso driven apart from you by Vision, his hand a little too close to lingering too low on her back, the sight of it forces a growl from between your clenched teeth, the two guards overseeing you snarl in your direction.

Obedient pets to him, twisted into a falsehood of loyalty. Wolves corrupted by the unfortunate dealings of their upbringing. Much like the ones in the fighting ring, like you, they don’t lead their own lives. They do as they’re told. They obey.

Following where the drug overlord ventures, he leads the three of them over to a far table in the corner, procuring a black suitcase. He hands it to Bucky.

“There we are, 100,000 Madripoor Dollars.”

Your eyes glance from the shackles to Sam and Bucky with narrowed eyes. Silently, through eye contact alone, you’re telling them to hurry the fuck up and spring into action, to get the situation under their control before things take a turn for the worst.

“Now, if you’ll be on your way, gentlemen–”

“We’d like to have the money recounted. Just in case, you know. Wouldn’t want the boss to feel cheaped out of our work,” Bucky snips suddenly before Vision could turn them away. He also notices the way Vision leers at Wanda like a salivating beast, no doubt he’d try to keep her with him as he practically booted them out the front gate.

This comes as a hindering surprise to the man, blue eyes glassed over with something void of any true human emotion.

With a nod of his head, he beckons over one of his assistants, and the summoned woman takes the case from Bucky to ensure the promised amount is all accounted for.

“What’s your whole deal with the mutt? Why pay such a hefty price for ‘em?” Sam questions, tilting his head in your direction. If they were here to divulge information about Rumlow, he wanted to make sure they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into.

Vision turns to follow where the man was looking and a dark smirk crosses his lips. Your eyes glow with the animal’s boiling rage, a formidable sight to behold and marvel at. He’s missed having you as his lab pet.

At first, Vision is reluctant to share his thoughts, however, something that is unreadable to your observant gaze, his smirk turns into a wide grin that causes Wanda’s complexion to pale.

“The Asset is among the very first of its kind to achieve such accomplishments. Paving the way for its kind. An investment with so much poured into it,” answers Vision.

“Would you like to see what my work entails?” His own question, laced in deranged malice, is met by three unsure visages.

‘What the actual fuck are they doing?’

Without so much as a word, Vision is herding them off behind a large control panel, screens displaying all sorts of data and diagrams of humanoid and werewolf anatomy. “As I am sure, you know I was partnered with Alexander Pierce for his little project.”

“Was?” Sam sneers in confusion.

Vision nods slowly. “Yes. After… numerous trials ending in failure, Pierce cast me aside. Told me that my work wasn’t good enough, that for all my progress with the serum, the desired goal wasn’t meeting his expectations.” He pauses to calm the venom behind his words. His eyes glare at the screens before they rise to meet your harrowing stare.

“Prepare it for trial exposure to serum SX-P,” he commands his workers, lithe fingers jabbing expertly against the keyboard.

“So why exactly did Pierce get rid of you?” Bucky asks now and Vision takes a moment to cease his actions and turn to look at him.

“Alexander’s campaign was relatively new and industrial to begin with. At first, potential investors weren’t convinced that werewolves could be rendered ‘tame’ to serve as liable enforcers and guards. There was a lack of trust in his project—” Vision began before needing to pause, the sound of your irritated growls bouncing off the four walls of the expansive lab as you’re led by the guards.

They shove you down to sit on the horizontal, metallic surface that centre’s the room. But you’re not going to make it easy for them, play acting or not. You thrust an elbow back, colliding into one of the two guards who stumbles back with a pained howl, hand nursing their broken nose that weeps with blood, the other guard retaliates with the butt of his gun. Your head lurches to the side, further damage to your already busted lips runs down the side of your chin.

His partner comes around for round two, fist raised high to land a blow to your contorted snarl, but Vision reels him back in with a single command. “Enough! I need it in as good condition as I can get it.”

He glares at one of the nerve wracked doctors. “And put the muzzle on the damn thing!”

The guards pin you down against the table and restrain your wrists and ankles in the shackles bolted down into the table.

Wanda is beyond the conceivable thoughts, utterly repulsed by this dark crater she must know festers in the world. That this treatment is inflicted upon you - and perhaps countless others - she looks to Sam and Bucky. Both of them mirror each other’s stoic expressions and tightly clenched jaws.

“We have to do something,” she whispers just enough for Sam to make out.

“As I was saying.” Rattling his throat of any vocal hindrance, he combs his dishevelled hair back. “It was vital to raise an exemplar to the species, to garner investment support. Thus, the animal before us contributed to that. But when the investors learnt that we didn’t have enough stable minded werewolves, it was cause of another concern. Given my expertise, Alexander then came to me… and I tried. I really did. But each trial failed, each match was torn to shreds.”

Your eyes meet Wanda’s, the tearful glaze that wavers beneath the fluorescent lights, your troubled brows only deepen into a scowl when a doctor procures a muzzle. It’s not familiar like the leather and metal barred one Vision often used for you, this one was crafted for a nefarious purpose. The guards tug your head back to keep you from engaging the doctor, their hands work swiftly in snapping the contraption around your mouth and the base of your neck.

That is when you’ve had enough of this charade. This is when you decided here and now that Vision will pay for all those years of fucking around with you, tormenting you, provoking you without giving you the chance to rectify the errors of his arrogant ways.

The moment that muzzle went over your face is when the game field changed. Your muscles strain and flex, body violently convulsing in your struggle to break free, your claws growing longer and clawing divots into the metal beneath your palms.

Alarms and panic ensues. It all moves in a tight framework of blurriness. Rage has blinded you to this point.

Wanda’s screams echo over the fog of your hazed and crazed mind, layering over into a morphing choir, other voices are muffled. All you can recognise are the two forms of something similar to your own towering one, their ears pin back and their snouts curl up to bare their teeth.

In a matter of seconds you're tangled between the two wolves, clawing and maining at their flesh until blood paints the polished floors, a racket of gunfire disturbs your ears. The nape of one of the guards is in the clutches of your jaw, you twist harshly and snape the elongated bone of their spine.

The second pushes you hard, bearing down on you with clawing fists and gnashing fangs that tear into the flesh and muscle of your shoulder and upper arms.

More gunfire blinks and sprays into your vision, white spots in the heat of your vision. Your hind legs arch up and kick the second guard off of you, their body flying back into a heap of equipment that combusts into a show of sparks upon impact. Workers flee in all different directions, more guards from the outside flock into the lab in a blaze of bullets.

Some penetrate through your thick hide and others aren’t so fortunate. Your ears twitch in response to Wanda’s voice, she shrieks your name, your head whips around in the direction to see her behind cover, Sam at her side as he takes shots at the guards.

“Look out!”

Her warning comes a second too late. A bullet fires at your shoulder, clean and true; an entry and exit wound. Your eyes momentarily meet Vision’s, a handgun of pristine gold flickering in the distance he kept from you. But your moment to strike is thwarted by the familiar reddish pink now shrouds you in a thick cloud.

The scent burns your senses and stings your eyes until the word wavers before you, your muscles fried and you’re choking on the smell of each chemical and pheromone in the gas. You roar amidst your stampede, chaos of tossing anything in your path aside. There are screams, pleas for mercy and shouts to shoot to kill; despite the conflicting order of Vision to keep you alive.

By now, the blaring alarms set off the emergency lighting, the once white lights darkening into a shade of red. Wanda calls your name again and again. You can’t see her through the tinted colour of the gas, your tail sways wildly from side to side, skin growing far too hot for your liking, you yelp in discomfort. Your body slumps against something that clanks together as the world around you spins. You grunt and snort to blow the burning scent from your flaring nostrils to no avail. Another fired bullet and hiss, and then a forceful gust of the same gas sprays directly over your face. Your howl as the agonising sting it causes, irritating your skin and fur, your clawed hands swipe at your face.

Your lungs feel like they are weighted down like iron anchors with each intake of air. You hear Vision laugh from above and your head snaps upwards, seeing him reign high above in his victory, from his place on the looming platform.

“But I figured it out, dog. Like all things natural to a wolf, it needed to be exposed just the same.”

His blue eyes beam wide in their amazement. Their admiration. You rear back as a shattering cry of a roar bellows from deep within your chest. Saliva coats over your gums and teeth and sweat has already begun to seep into your fur.

Vision gives a gesture of a mock salute before he dashes away, Sam and Bucky far too late and miss any shot they could have landed, the overlord making his escape.

“We gotta get outta here!”

“Where are we gonna go, Sam? There’s this fucking gas everywhere and—” Bucky cannot exhale another word, set off into a coughing fit.

“We have to find Y/N!” Wanda shouts to the two men.

She’s gaining higher ground. Her heels clatter against the metal framework of the platform. “I’I think I see them,” she calls out, head darting left to right, arching to see the dark shape before it sinks away into the reddish mist.

She continues to search until she is no longer able to. A scream is torn from her lungs when the platform shakes and jolts her forward, hands grasping the railing before she’s thrown over.

You stalk towards her with each step you take threatening to break the now unsteady frame you both stand upon. The once familiar glow of amber now feels strange to her, like she doesn’t recognise you - shouldn’t recognise you - and yet she says your name all the same. It’s the only thing that’s the middle ground now.

She backs away slowly and you continue forward until you arch forward swiftly, hands snatching hold of her, she struggles in your grasp. “Let me go! Let me go, Y/N!”

You growl in warning to her, the sound rumbles like booming thunder, she can feel it even through the thick layer of her coat.

Your nose buries into the crook of her neck, ignoring the way she squirms about in her resistance.

“We’re coming, Wanda,” Sam’s voice coughs from below, his shoes hitting each step hard with Bucky not far behind, skipping one step to reach you both quicker.

“Get off her,” warns Bucky with an arm raised, gun aimed at the bevel between your hellish, animalistic eyes. Eyes that he sees no humanity within.

You raise your head high to snarl at the intruders. There is little to remember or recognise, all that you feel is the need to kill and something more, something that stirs within your core. Your hips move to grind against Wanda, angling them to soothe that growing ache between your thick, powerful legs.

Wanda whimpers and that’s the last straw either man can take. They open fire and give Wanda the opportune moment to break free of you, she pushes away from you; but not before one of your hands snatch hold of her collar. She falls forward but Sam catches her before she can fall face first against the creaking metal, dragging her further away from you.

Bucky continues to rain bullet after bullet. The constant bite of the attack eventually deters you and your form moves, crashing through the side window of the lab. Glass bursts in a flurry and all that can be heard by the trio is the baritone howl that fades into the night.

Bucky pulls his phone from his pocket and lifts it to his ear when the call is received. “Steve, tell Tony we’ve got a loose collar problem.”

“Well, that could’ve gone much smoother. Now we have a sexed up hound on the loose.” Tony presses the glass to his temple with a huff in his low of defeat. Only Steve could have an idea how many drinks he’s had that night and he’s beginning to look a little rough for wear.

Bucky and Sam were in no top shape either, the two of them nursing their own bruises and scrapes in the fight to escape. They’d done well in keeping Wanda out of harm’s way, but as for them, they paid the price for it.

The tired sag beneath his hazel orbs. It makes her wonder just how bad this spanner in the machine is, how it affects Tony so.

Without her coat, Wanda is left only with a sense of unease, the article of clothing lost to the clutches of you; a missing you. She continued to replay earlier events over and over, trying to pick out and decipher each little detail’s meaning.

Vision obviously had a goal to win back Alexander’s favour. The abandoned project could have been yet another scheme to bring in profit, as Vision clearly made his intentions known.

He was after profit in the breeding ring.

“So regale me with the synopsis again: Pierce had Vision create a sex pollen engineered specifically for werewolves to then use on Y/N, however, it failed in the past until now, where you believe Vision has succeeded. That’s what I’m hearing, right?” Tony paces the kitchen now, pupils shrunk and hand quivering in the restraint of his outburst.

“Basically down to a T, Boss,” confirms Sam with a tilt of his head. Tony runs a hand down his face as he sighs audibly.

He takes a moment to reabsorb this information, Bucky grunting as he shifts his weight, having taken to laying on the couch. He took a werewolf arm to the stomach that flung him across the lab. In his books, he was deserving of a little rest.

“So how do we find them?” Steve asks after another moment of periodic silence. That’s when Tony’s eyes slowly float over to Wanda, that flicker of realisation dawning in his eyes, he lifts a hand to point at her.

“Where’s your coat?”

Wanda is chilled by the way Tony draws attention to this question, its nature a mystery that begins to make her head churn and her stomach flutter; and she isn’t sure in what way exactly.

“U-uh…” Her eyes dance between Sam and Bucky, uncertain to give her answer, but when Sam nods his head to her, she breathes in deeply. “Y/N took it. They… snatched it off of me, th-they tried to grab me but I slipped out. That was right before they fled.”

“Oh, well then, that solves our little lost dog problem.” The mob boss breathes an air of sarcasm to fan the flames of his words. But it also pulls everyone’s eyes to him, confusion visible in each of their own gazes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wanda asks and Tony chuckles dryly in response, eyes zeroing in on Wanda’s.

“It means that we can stay put. They’ll find you.”

Wanda isn’t sure what to make of it. Wandering down the hall to her separate apartment, Tony’s words play over the backdrop of your acts of slaughter, your actions of violence and aggression and primal desire. When you snatched a hold of her coat in the lab, she could sense it, that need to have her beneath you, to ravish her wholly without consequence or regard for anything or anyone’s order.

Having her within your grasp was an exotic experience. She felt the power you possess in its entirety without needing to experience every single level of it. She could just tell it was there.

‘They’ll find you.’ Tony’s words repeat themselves for the millionth time.

All she can think about is you. Where you are, if you’re alright, and how you’re coping with that pollen running in your veins. Tears coat her eyes in a blurred, wavering curtain. What if you got yourself killed?

No. She cannot think like that. She won’t think like that. But can she help it?

Still trapped in her mind with the troublesome thoughts and endless unanswered questions.

It begs one of the questions for her, how Tony can be so sure that you will find her, and how her coat had any relevance to his statement. His warning.

Soon enough, one cruel thought only breeds another. Vision’s disturbing fascination with his drug trade, with the sex pollen. It just makes sense - all of it - in the city of dark and neon. A criminal’s haven.

Something in the jumble of her scattered thoughts told her you didn’t consider Madripoor as a haven. What she saw in your eyes back in the lab; a raw and bone chilling expression of fear, she has only left to suspect that you see Madripoor as a prison.

Her chin wobbles slightly at the thought of you going through years of that hell and torture, to be trapped without anyone there to help you. To save you.

The city isn’t even an impressive sight to her. It’s poisonous, built on ruin and lies, betrayal and dirty money. What’s worse is that she’s lost you, some part of you, because of this fucking city. This cesspool of despair, destruction and corruption. Werewolves of a varying amount now dwell in those other towering buildings - hell, perhaps even in the same hotel as her - and below in the streets of Hightown. In the slums of Lowtown. And you’re somewhere amongst it all.

All because of those who used and abused you. For profit.

All Wanda can think at that moment is to just see you. To be near you. All she wants is for this to be over and to go home with you.

Everything she could ever want, she sees in you. She just wants you.

But Madripoor has taken you from her. Swallowed you up in the festering dark and neon glow. A wolf lost in the haze, with nothing but that desire to want. And maybe, if Tony is at all correct in his fearfully made assumption, you’re a lost wolf with a desirable appetite for her.

It almost feels like some dark, wet fantasy of hers. To believe that the only reason you have her coat now is to track her down. Because you want her. Her skin is plagued by a sudden chill that makes her spine tingle.

She takes a moment to bring stillness to her negative and lust spiralling thoughts to dry the unspilled tears as she finally arrives at the door of the apartment. Withdrawing her key, she unlocks the door and enters.

The room is dark, left to remain cold in the vacancy. Or so Wanda thought. Closing the door behind her and pressing her back to it, it takes her a moment to regain her strength and composure before she pushes herself off it; only for her back to all but smack hard against the door again. Her mouth fell agape and eyes widening.

Even in the unlit space of the common area, the neon haze of the opposing buildings floods in through the wide panel windows. But none of them compare to the sharp amber of your eyes hiding amidst the darkness. The lethal regalness of the true born predator that uses this element to their advantage. The common area is a mess, furniture torn to shreds, miscellaneous decorations littering the floor and the walls, canvases to long and jagged claw marks; a lot of them. You’ve practically left no space left safe in the chaos of your outburst.

And your large form is at the centre of it all.

“Y/N,” she breathes out, breaking the silence between you both. Your eyes flitter up to meet hers from your previous interest point, the accumulated bundle at your large, pawed feet. Blankets, sheets, pillows and anything else in your wolfish mind you deem comfortable to lay on the floor.

Wanda’s eyes move over you. Were you… building a nest?

Your amber eyes burn into her soul, the pit of radiant hellfire focuses on her with primitive hunger. The sight of her against that door makes your core become plagued by shockwaves of agony that disperse downwards, turning pain into an empty void of pleasure that moves downwards, to the aroused mound at the juncture between your powerful, muscular thighs. You could do some very damaging things to her up against that door.

And there she sees it, her coat clenched tightly in the grasp of your right hand. So Tony had been correct in the end. You used her coat to track her down from wherever you’d escaped to, only to then follow her scent here.

The heavy pound of your weight on your pawed feet moves closer to her, the article of fox fur discarded to the pile - or what she presumes to be a nest - and she’s soon cornered.

Muscles ripple beneath fur, the colour of it always a delicate sight Wanda found herself often cherishing. Soft to the touch, well groomed beyond the scars that litter your body, hideous marks that remind you of what you are. But to the hidden scope of Wanda’s own thoughts, you were the closest thing to sculpted perfection; the rough edges providing a ruggedness that many often depicted as ruthless and merciless.

But she knows that you use those sharp edges to protect her. To protect yourself.

“Remember me, Y/N. Y-you know who I am, l-look at me–”

Your muzzle wrinkles and you snarl, pink gums lined with long, sharp teeth bare at her in a display of what she perceives as hostility. She’s only begun to slide along the wall and away from the door before one of your larger arms thrusts forward. She yelps in surprise and flinches back, your other arm follows suit of the first, trapping Wanda between you and the wall behind.

Your maw extends down as a raspy snarl echoes in the back of your throat, the foundations of a monster with not an ounce of humanity left in the soul, her eyes are now coated with a hot layer of tears. “You know me, Y/N, I know you do! Look at me, remember me.”

She can’t even bear the thought to fathom the fates of the other victims. With Vision’s lack of details, it ended up being both a blessing and a curse. Now all she thinks about now is becoming another one of those victims. And how the aftermath would only break you.

“I remember, Mate.”

Wanda would celebrate in her relief, had it not been for that single word. Mate. Goosebumps form over exposed skin, her breath hitches in her throat and she cannot refrain from the needy moan surpassing her lips when you push your overly large body to hers, bending down low to grind the dangerously aroused location against her.

“I fucking need you. I need you so badly.”

“I–I…” The words escape her, leaving her to the dizzying of her own growing desire. To be beneath you, to have you ravish her beyond reprieve.

“One way or another, I’ll have you in that nest, Mate.”

The lilt of your baritone growl reverberates in the chamber of your ribcage, husky and primal laced. Dominating. Wanda’s mind swims with the endless possibilities, that black sea of fantasies rising up in crashing tidal waves. Her head arches back into the door and leaves her neck bared for you, the long, pink tendril of your tongue laps at the dew of her skin, deliciously sweet and intoxicating, it brings out a pleasurable rumble from you. One that she feels vibrates her alit core.

“Do you know how long I’ve been repressed, Lamb? All that torture and for what? Only to suffer without release. We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

Oh, there’s something in the way you blatantly threaten her with a fucking good time. A chill runs up the column of her spine and she mewls, you roughly begin to grind your body into her in your dire need. Suffice to say, you aren’t kidding her when you warned her that you’d have her one way or another.

“I want to help you now,” she whispers softly. Her hands roll through the texture of your fur, nails scratching at you like a kitten, your shoulders jolt with a rumbling chuckle. You purr lowly, breath hot against her neck, “You know how.”

The razor points of your canines rake over the sensitive spot, right where her mark belongs, and exposed to the point that you could do it; and she would have no chance of fighting it.

She pants now, whining when the bulge of your mound rubs over her aching pussy, already her lips are sweetened by her juices.

“I want this. I want you… Mate.”

Her scent is alluring to the point that you think it’s a drug of its own, a dose of it enough to get your blood pumping and your heart pounding, her words only serve to break the last restraints you barely have a hold of.

The action is swift and drags a gasp from Wanda’s lungs, your right arm scoops her up, resting her ass along your forearm as you hoist her up, in tandem your left hand claws down, slicing her short dress down the middle; leaving her milky skin exposed in her lingerie.

Your left hand moves her thigh over the curve of your shoulder and with this guidance, she does the same for her other leg, her drooling pussy just below eye level now. Her scent wafts into your senses and you growl, tongue running over the daggered incisors lining your maw.

“You smell good, Lamb.”

The drawl of your wolfish tone makes Wanda’s eyes roll back, her hips bucking at the pleasuring sensation of your hot, wet tongue licking a long strip upwards, from the edge of her folds to her pulsing clit. All her hands can do is clutch hold of the long, silky locks of fur that are reminiscent of your hair.

“Sh–shit!” she squeaks with jostled breath, “D-do that again?”

You obey her request with a haughty snort, snout wrinkled into a prideful smirk. The fabric of sheer and opaque of her panties being a perfect blend to pleasure and torture. She’ll want more soon enough, you’re sure of it. Your tongue laps upwards again and she groans quietly with a struggling pant. Her mouth hangs open, and shit, if that isn’t the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen then you can happily take a silver bullet to the brain.

Her body quivers with each stroke of your tongue, wide enough to cover her entire cunt each time, and a little rough to offer that desirable friction she craves, and of course warm to sooth the chill that envelops the rest of her skin. “A–ah! Hah!”

“Feels good, doesn't it, Mate?”

Wanda is pleasure-struck, unable to form a single tangible response by word. All she can do is nod her head frantically, streaks of her brownish hair fall over her visage contorted with delight, a moan bouncing in her throat. “M–mmhm…”

A dark chuckle escapes you and that smirk turns into a wolfish grin. “That’s not all this tongue can do.”

Her brows lift in curiosity and her plump lips fall apart with another moan, her anticipation is short lived by you putting her out of her misery or before she can question you. Your teeth slip between the band of her panties and her skin, revelling in the way her body shivers against you, with a quick snap the fabric is torn apart and gives the perfect view of her dripping cunt.

Your maw is buried between her legs in an instant, tongue greedy devouring the slickness on her folds, the taste as sweet as honey on your tastebuds, your ears pin back when her fingers ring further towards the roots of your fur.

“F-fuck, fucking hell, oh shit!” she gasps loudly, “Y/N!”

A hot fan of breath hits her sensitive bud as you part your powerful jaws wide open, you press the thinner tip of your tongue to her entrance, teasing her slickened folds until she’s mewling for you, fingers clenching your fur harder.

“Please… please,” she begs, doing her best to angle her weeping core for your leisure whilst keeping her thighs balanced on the broadness of your shoulders.

“Show me what else it can do.”

With a pleased huff with her begging, you angle your tongue and push forward. With each impending inch that sinks further between her southern lips, she whines softly - dare you say it - she’s howling tenderly in her reverie of euphoria.

With each surpassing inch she realises that your tongue alone is as thick as a well endowed man. And it only seems to keep going and her hips wriggle, lips trembling until her teeth sink into her bottom lip to keep her screams at bay lest the entirety of Madripoor hears what its finest werewolf does to defile her.

You grunt when you’ve filled her with all that you can with the pink and hot, muscular organ. Breaths heavy and heated, each wave hits Wanda’s clit and brings a delightful spring to coil in her abdomen and her pussy to clench around you.

Her back arches slightly in sync with the first thrust, the wet muscle powerful enough to make her gently bounce upwards, a breathless wisp of air is pressed from her lungs forcefully.

“Oooh, oh yes, j-just like that.”

You repeat the motion again and her legs squeeze closer around your large head. Her nails dig into the nape of your neck. Your arm that doesn’t support the weight of her lower body comes up and your clawed hand supports the back of her own neck, her head lazily drops back, eyes rolling into the back of her skull as her lips close shut.

Her hips roll into the next thrust, meeting your wet muscle halfway, and the way she moans makes you groan.

So your pace quickens and becomes rougher, her body bounces with each forceful stroke, continuing to roll her hips in tandem, following the set rhythm with a chorus of wistful moans and teetering howls of her own.

You’re enraptured by the sight of her. The heiress at your beck and call now, drawing closer to her starlit climax. She feels it, deep inside, like rubber bands coming together and twisting in wait for the inevitable snap.

She chants your name, a one word mantra that drives you to the precipice of lustful insanity.

Her tight walls only tighten with each push and pull of your long tongue, dragging against the current that seeks to pull you in forever with no chance to grant escape. More of her aroused juices get you drunk in your haze and your greed becomes damn near insatiable as you drink every drop you’re granted. The few stray drops of her sweetness only roll down the flexing front of your torso.

“I-I’m close.” She breathes deeply through her nose, eyes squeezed shut as her fingers claw the absolute shit out of your silky fur. All these things mixed together in a delicious combination makes you growl, and that sound shoots through your cunt-fucking tongue, and brings her walls to clamp around it hard. Her body is wrecked by the crash of her orgasm, coating your tongue with a mouth watering amount of her release, you groan at the taste.

Your tongue works at slowing down, stoking the fire to cool down, her breasts push and strain against the thin fabric of her lingerie, nipples stiff beneath the sheer’s opacity. With a husky grunt you pull the slick drenched muscle with a moistened pop, Wanda’s body reacts with a flinching motion.

Fuck, how you enjoy having her like this. Before now, you’ve held back, refused to carry on any further out of fear that it would be too much for her. Now seeing her, drunk on your mere tongue and her quietly pleading more of you, you think she can handle it.

When Wanda manages to recover enough of herself that her eyes open to look at you. She isn’t sure if she should be aroused or terrified by the expression on your canid visage. Your lips lift over the line of your gums, stretching to a smirk.

You drop the courtesy support you offered her, the only thing keeping her suspended at your eye level is the large form of your single hand, circling around the slender build of her waist. Her body is still recovering from her orgasm, lazily but trying, she supports in holding herself from falling back.

In this moment, she’s at the mercy of an eight and a half foot animal doped up on sex pollen. She’s at the mercy of you.

“Now, let me show you how a werewolf really fucks.”

COMING SOON...

— MALE VARIANT — FEMALE VARIANT — ACT IV

TREEHOUSE TAGLIST

@alexawynters @alyciaddict

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theonewiththefanfics · 2 years

Text

Bet On Me (one-shot)

Synopsis: There's a few bets going around: Y/N bets everything on the fact that Eddie is innocent, Eddie still thinks that he's a coward, and the kids want to know when Eddie will finally ask Y/N out. And Steve... Steve is just over it.

This is sort of an AU! because I refuse the ending we got. ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Pairing: Eddie Munson x fem!Cheerleader!Reader

Genre: a lot of fluuuuufff, some angst

Warnings: SPOLIERS FOR SEASON 4!, a lot of pining, cursing, mentions of blood and injuries and death, Eddie feeling very low and guilty of himself (someone give my poor boy a hug). I can't think of anything else, but please let me know if there is something I should add here.

Word count: 3773

DO NOT REPOST OR TRANSLATE MY WORKS ON OTHER PLATFORMS WITHOUT SPECIFIC WRITTEN PERMISSION!!!

The second the doorbell of Family Video rang at 12:34 PM during the Friday shift, Steve let out the most resigned sigh he could muster, because he knew who it was and what was gonna happen. The sound of the chains, of the stomping steps and the incessant tapping of palms against thighs in some indiscernible rhythm didn’t give Steve any other illusions history was going to repeat itself. All over again.

“Heyo, Stevo,” Eddie dragged out the name, plopping his elbows down on the till counter with a flourish. “So. Any new movies?”

But Steve was absolutely done this time.

“Stop.” He waved his hand in front of Eddie, not even deigning to answer the question. “Stop. Just stop this whole thing. You’re not here for the movies, you’re here because in just a couple more minutes, Y/N Y/L/N will walk through those doors to give back her previous week’s rentals, and it will give you your opportunity to just gawk at her, even though you actually want to ask her out. So just stop with this lame excuse, man up and ask that girl out on a damned fucking date already. You've been doing this for weeks, man, weeks. I know trauma brings people together and shit, and I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I do consider us friends, but even that has, limits because if I have to hear one more time any sort of groaning and moaning from you about Y/N, and still you’ve done nothing to change the situation, I will personally find a way to open the Upside Down back again and throw you through it, because God damn it, Munson, you will deserve it.”

Eddie, for once in his life, was truly and utterly speechless, watching as Steve’s chest heaved after the rant.

“Shit, Harrington, tell me how you really feel,” he mumbled looking at the countertop, drumming his fingers against it.

“Look.” Steve took in a deep breath and let it out, calming down a bit. “I get that you’re scared, okay? I do. Before I asked Nancy out, I thought I was gonna shit bricks, but the worst thing that could have happened is she could have said no.”

“No,” Eddie countered, pointing at him. “The worst that could happen is Y/N could start laughing in my face, tell the basketball team the freak of town asked her out, and sic those psychos on me again because there’s a difference between you and Nancy and Y/N and me – first we run in different social circles. You and Nancy were the King and Queen of Hawkins before even getting together; you were equals. Y/N... she’s a cheerleader, for Christ’s sake… while I’m the banished nerd, and second… you were never accused of murdering Nancy’s best friend, and still have those rumours fly around even after being vindicated.” That last bit was whispered, and to that, Steve had nothing to reply.

Y/N and Chrissy had been thick as thieves before everything went wrong with the Upside Down, but even Y/N hadn’t known she was struggling despite Chrissy looking up at her as her big sister just about to graduate her senior year. They seemingly had told each other everything, and yet she hadn’t known Chrissy was in such a bad place, she was willing to try drugs to ease the pain.

Even so, even after her body was found in the Munson trailer, not for a second Y/N had believed Eddie had had anything to do with her best friend’s death. For fuck’s sake, Chrissy’s eyes had imploded! How would someone who spent their evenings writing out a character sheet for a fantasy game be able to do that?But despite knowing that, Steve couldn’t deny how people still avoided Eddie like he was the actual plague.

“She tried to stop Jason from coming after you, you know,” Steve piped up, which made Eddie look at him. “Tried to talk some sense into the rest of the team to not come after you, countered whatever he said at the town meeting the night people decided to hunt you down. Y/N never believed you hurt Chrissy, would never, as you said, sic anyone on you. I’m pretty sure she’d fight tooth and nail against that. That has to count for something.”

Eddie’s heart clenched at Harrington’s words. Knowing she’d stood up for him was one thing. Knowing she’d done it in front of the whole town while they were ready to lynch him was another. But still… doubt was like one of the demobats, lurking around the corner before striking with fangs and claws.

When he’d been pulled from the Upside Down, bleeding from every possible crevice of his body, Eddie didn’t think he’d make it, and in some masochistic way, thought he shouldn’t make it. He still blamed himself for what’d happened to the sweet cheerleader he’d left mangled in his trailer. Maybe if Chrissy hadn’t gone to him, maybe if he’d told her he wouldn't sell drugs to her, maybe if he’d gone to literally anyone else and informed them about what she wanted, Chrissy could have been saved. So maybe he didn’t deserve saving either, but the rest of the gang had other plans.

Steve and Nancy had made a sling from the sheet he'd cut, tying Eddie’s barely conscious body to the other man’s back, and Robin and Nancy boosting them through the gate, before helping a limping Dustin as well. Then it was a race against time to get Eddie the help he needed.

Their group was a hurricane as they borrowed, or more like stole, Max’s mom’s car and rushed to the hospital, Dustin screaming at Eddie to stay awake while Robin kept yelling for Steve to push on the gas with Nancy attempting to staunch the bleeding by putting tourniquets where she could or simply pressing down on the wounds where she couldn’t.

It wasn’t much better when they finally reached the place, all of them screaming for someone to help Eddie, only to start giving directions to the ER team once they arrived as if they were medical staff themselves.

“I’m 0 negative,” Nancy breathed, pulling at her sleeve and rolling it up as far as she could as nurses called for a doctor and the rest helped place, Eddie, on a gurney, Steve also instructing for someone to check on Dustin’s bad ankle, who just diverted them back to Eddie. “A universal donor. He’ll need blood. He – he – he’s lost a lot of blood, he’ll need it.”

“Miss, you need to be checked as well.” A nurse tried to guide her to a different bed, but she ripped out from her grip. “Why don’t we do that before –,”

“I said I’m 0 negative.” Nancy’s tone had turned into a sneer as she stared the nurse down. “Either you take the blood, or I can do it myself.” The nurse had taken a step back from her, the determination in the young woman’s eyes didn’t leave room for arguing, so she just nodded and escorted her to a quieter place.

It took Eddie about two days and four blood transfusions to regain consciousness, despite his wounds being shallow, he'd lost a lot of blood, but his newly found friends were all there for him.

Steve took care of the food, Nancy made sure someone always remained by Eddie’s side as she set up rotations, while Robin had informed Eddie’s uncle about the situation, but it wasn’t just them.

Dustin with his bad leg, Lucas with his beaten-up face and even Mike who’d arrived back in Hawkins with El, Will Jonathan and Argyle in tow – all of them were there for Eddie, even going after the police as they’d handcuffed their Dungeon Master to the bed seeing as he was still the prime suspect of the murder of the Queen of Hawkins High. Max had even almost taken one of her crutches and smashed in an officer’s face, but Joyce and Hopper had busted in before that could happen, and despite everything, Eddie had smiled harder than ever. He’d never felt so loved in his life than in that moment.

However, once the presumed-dead ex-chief of police took the reins with a government agent who'd brought them to Hawkins, they were somewhat able to spin Chrissy’s death as Jason’s fault, especially because the other teen had died during the earthquake that’d hit as the aftermath of the gang having beaten Vecna, the Upside Down slowly crumbling in on itself, while the Creel house fell apart, Jason’s body never to be recovered.

The story they settled on was this – the basketball player had seen his girlfriend meet up with Eddie in the woods, and then he’d followed her later on in the evening to where they converged in Eddie’s trailer. Jason confronted the two, his jealousy being a known issue, and that’s when Eddie had left, leaving the couple to resolve their issues on their own, only to return a while later to find Chrissy dead, which prompted him to run in fear of his own life. Max Mayfield was set to be the prime witness to vouch for him, which she did no questions asked.

With the agent's help, they made sure it was a story the whole town, hell the state of Indiana was aware of as well. Of course, some was sceptical, some outright refused to believe anything of the sort, yet the police could do nothing but release Eddie from any charges and drop the case. But that didn’t minimize Eddie’s nightmares, nor did it erase the new scars littering his body courtesy of the Upside Down, and neither did it ease the guilt for leaving Chrissy, so hearing Y/N defend him, believing the lie they’d spun about how her best friend met her end, made his stomach churn.

She deserved to know. If anyone deserved to be aware of the truth, it was Y/N, which should probably be at the top of his confession list, but his spiral was interrupted when Steve cleared his throat, eyes trained on something over Eddie’s shoulder.

“Umm, you two okay?” A voice from behind him startled the boy, making Eddie whizz around only to be greeted by a smiling Y/N. “I’m here to bring the movies back?” The girl waved the VHSs in her hands looking at Steve. “That is if you still want them.”

Steve sighed nodding in her direction and she took it as her confirmation to step next to Eddie by the counter. “Yes, please. Don’t need three more deducted from my pay-check this month.”

Tentatively Y/N looked at Eddie and gave him a soft ‘hi’, before turning back to Steve, leaving Eddie to his gawking. “What got snatched?”

“Jaws 3-D,” Steve grumbled.

“Shit.” Y/N chuckled. “And not even the good one.”

He scoffed, hitting the till and giving Y/N the receipt. “Tell me about it.”

“You – uh,” Eddie cleared his throat, eyes shifting from his clasped and wrung hands to Y/N’s eyes. “You’ve seen Jaws?”

“Uh, yeah.” She nodded, smiling softly. “I really like horror and thriller, actually. Well, maybe not anymore.” Her smile turned into a painful grimace. “Don’t think I can stomach anything like that after everything that’s happened. At least not for a while.”

“That’s fair.” Eddie nodded along to her words. “Yeah, no, completely understandable.”

“Mhm,” she hummed, nodding along as well as an awkward silence settled.

Eddie looked up hoping for Harrington to interrupt them, but Steve was nowhere to be seen, having left the two to talk on their own. The once super senior cursed him for it, giving him no other choice but to continue on with the conversation, but then again – maybe Steve was right. And Eddie wouldn’t say that lightly.

He thought of himself as a coward. He’d run the second danger appeared and only stopped when Dustin, someone he really truly cared about, was in grave danger, but Y/N hadn’t. Not for a second, despite the fact she had everything to lose, despite the fact that Hawkins could turn on her, making her become the new town pariah, she’d stood by Eddie’s side without ever really knowing him. She’d bet on his innocence and won, even though she really didn’t know it was true. So maybe, he could be as brave as she was.

“Hey,” Eddie started and had to avert his gaze when Y/N’s Y/E/C eyes bore into his. “Would you – and I mean you can definitely say no, like no pressure whatsoever – but like, would you want to go out… with… me?”

Y/N raised her brow, a gentle smile playing on her face. “Like on a date?”

“It doesn’t have to be!” he immediately said and cursed himself for backtracking. “We can just be two people who just so happened to go to the same place to do the same thing at the same time… with one another.”

Y/N sucked in the air through her teeth, and that motion alone made Eddie’s heart drop. “I mean that does sound like a date, which I totally would go for, but I gotta say no right now.”

Of course, she’d say no.

“But.”

What?

“If you ask me in like…” Her gaze drifted to a calendar hanging over by the wall, mouth moving as she counted. “Six days, I’ll say yes.”

Eddie was prepared for rejection, but not that sort of a rejection, leaving him dumbfounded. “Umm… okay? Can I – can I ask why?”

Y/N chuckled. “Robin told me your little Hellfire minions and Max have a bet going on when you’ll muster up the courage to ask me out.” The smile on her face turned mischievous. “I sort of want Max to win. She was the only one who said you’d do it before the end of the month. And I want the boys to suffer with how close they got. So, I’d say two birds, or I guess three birds with one stone – we get to go out on a date, Max puts the guys in their place, and they learn not to mess with you.”

“You – you knew I wanted to ask you out?”

Y/N shrugged, fiddling with a bracelet on her wrist. It was her turn to become bashful and nervous. “I mean, I hoped it wasn’t them just making things up.” Uncertainty flashed in her eyes as she shuffled on the spot. “And now I’m sort of hoping you’re not in on this bet, and this isn’t gonna blow up in my face.”

“Yeah – I mean no!” Eddie grabbed onto her shoulders as he fumbled with his words. “This – I had no idea those shitheads had bet on whether or not I’d ask you on a date, but – but they’re right… I uh… the only reason I’m actually ever here is to uh, see you, and well, maybe get the courage to ask you out.” Eddie’s laugh was both out of astonishment and excitement. “Can’t believe those little gremlins bet against me after everything though.”

Y/N mimicked his laugh and bit her lip. “Okay then… I’ll uh, I’ll see you in a few days then? Hopefully it won't take you as long to ask me this time.”

Eddie’s ‘yeah’ was a breathless response, but nevertheless, a confirmation, as he stared at Y/N like she was a Sindarin elf straight from Lord of the Rings while she pointed at Steve who’d now magically appeared back at his station with a satisfied smirk on his mouth, startling Eddie so much he jumped back. “You tell this to Dustin, you’re dead meat much like your paycheck. I still have Sixteen Candles and Nightmare on Elm Street as hostages.”

“Come on, Y/N” he groaned, throwing his head back. “They’re my children! They’ll know I’ll be lying!”

“Then they’ll be the ones carrying your casket, so choose wisely.”

With that Y/N gave Eddie one final glimmering smile and skipped to her car. If Eddie still had one after everything, he’d be skipping to it too.

But when six days later, he was disturbed by a knock at the door, as Y/N had called him the day before to set it up in a way the kids could witness their talk, he wanted to bury himself six feet below and in that casket, Y/N mentioned to Steve.

Filled with nerves and jitters, he went over and pushed the doors open only to be greeted by a beaming Y/N as she glanced over her shoulder where he spotted Max ducking back inside her trailer while he noted a bunch of tiny heads watching from below the kitchen window curtain.

God, he was gonna throw up, he couldn’t believe what he was about to say to his dream girl.

“So...” She turned back to look at him. “Ready to ask me something?”

In all honesty, he was sort of glad, that she said he could ask her out only six days later, it gave him more time to mull over those thoughts in his head, and come to the conclusion that yes, he could do it and help out Max by winning the bet, but he’d never subject Y/N to the kind of scrutiny this town would put her through if they so much as had a whiff she’d been in the ten-mile radius around him, no matter her previous stance during the hunt.

“Look...” Eddie sighed, stepping down to be level with her. “You really don’t have to do this. We can go over, say I did it, and then Max can win, but we don’t have to go out on that date. I – I can’t make you go through that.”

As he said those words, he noted how Y/N’s smile slowly dropped, and if there was something Eddie hated more than the Upside Down, it was that.

“Eddie, I’m not here just because of the stupid bet the kids have going on. Honestly...” She crossed her arms and let out a deep breath as if steadying herself. “When Robin told me you wanted to ask me out, I didn’t believe her. Thought it had to be some stupid prank on your part with the rest of Hellfire, and when she said about the bet, that even confirmed it more. I mean what would a guy like you want to do with a girl like me, right? You hate cheerleaders, hate anyone that has to do with conformity and shit, so you had to have something Carrie-Esque planned for me.”

Eddie was just about to interject, especially at the notion he could ever humiliate her in that way, but Y/N kept on talking. “But then she said how you’ve been going to Family Video, how you’ve been bugging Steve and how Steve wouldn’t stop complaining about you to her, and so I took the chance that maybe, just maybe, it’s not a prank, but that you actually like me… so when I heard that rant you went on the other day, I knew it was real for you.”

He had to take an actual step back at her words. “You heard?”

“Yeah, I did. And I want you to know I never believed that you could ever even think about hurting Chrissy. Not once. You’re too good for that, too kind to ever hurt someone like that.”

Eddie’s eyes softened at her words. “You think I’m kind?”

“You put on this tough, metal-head act,” Y/N smiled at him and shrugged. “But… you literally took those kids under your wing, because you knew what it was like to be bullied, and didn’t want that happening to them too, taking on the brunt of whatever Jason and his goons threw your way. You’re not just kind – you’re brave too. You’ve stood up against a town that was ready to hang you. That’s bravery on a level I could never have.”

“You’re brave too.” Eddie instantly interjected, ready to reach for Y/N’s hands, but stopped himself, rubbing the back of his neck instead, fearing he might overstep a boundary. “You – I mean, you literally heard Steve tell me how you told the town to piss off my back about Chrissy when literally you had no evidence, I hadn’t hurt her. I was the prime suspect, yet you – you went against Jason and everyone else for someone who didn’t deserve it.”

“Yes, you did. I might not have been there, nor do I have any physical evidence, but I know, I know in my heart you didn’t lay a single finger on her.” Y/N stepped closer to him, putting her palms on Eddie’s face and rubbing her thumbs underneath his eyes. He hadn’t even noticed he’d started crying.

Eddie's words were nothing but a whimper. “But I left her there.”

“No one knew Jason was gonna do such a thing.” Y/N shook her head, brushing her fingers along his cheekbones. “And I don’t blame you. It was Jason’s fault… and as horrible as it might sound, I’d rather you be alive than have had the same thing that happened to Chrissy happen to you. That asshole got what he deserved. So, Eddie, let me say this again, and however many times you need me to – you. Are. Good. You are not a coward. And you deserve all the love in the world.”

A teary chuckle escaped him, as he leaned into Y/N’s touch. “Well, then would you give me the biggest honour in the world and please go out on a date with me?”

“Yeah,” Y/N said, beaming at him, a stray tear slipping down her own cheek, which Eddie carefully wiped away. “I’d really love to. And I know who’ll be paying for it.”

Eddie chuckled, pressing his forehead against hers, and her grin widened as he slowly reached for her hands and intertwined their fingers. “You really gonna bully Max for the bet money?”

Y/N scoffed squeezing his palms, thumbs rubbing over his rings. “I’m not heartless. I’m gonna bully the rest of the kids for not having enough faith in you. Seems fair enough.”

“Can I – can I kiss you?” Eddie’s voice trembled, but it shouldn’t, as Y/N leaned up herself and pressed their lips together in a sweet and slow kiss.

The collective ‘NO’ from the boys and a female cackling from Max’s trailer just added to the joy of the situation. Some bets were lost, some bets were won, but ultimately Eddie felt like the true winner. The girl of his dreams had taken a chance on him despite everything.

And now he was gonna be brave.

He was gonna love her until the very end.

Tags (crossed out wouldn't take):

Everything tags: @palaiasaurus64 @supernaturalbaesduh@thatawkwardlittlefangirl @sea040561 @staryeyedgirl @deathbyarabbit @m-a-t-91 @maladaptive-ninja-returns @averyrogers83 @in-the-end-im-still-trash @gallifreyansass @dewy-biitch @avxgers @unlikelygalaxygiver @magicwithaknife @ollyoxenfrees @bnhvrdy @tvwhoresblog @thatkindofgurl @sj-thefan @lestersglitterglue @im-squished @strangersstranger

A/N: I know I haven't written in AGES, but so many things just got in the way, I didn't have the time to but I have already like 4 other Eddie fics in the works.

EDDIE DESERVED BETTER!!! AND JOE QUINN IS AN ICON!!!!

#joseph quinn #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #netflix stranger things #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x fem #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson angst #eddie munson fluff #joseph quinn imagine #joseph quinn x reader #joseph quinn x you #joseph quinn x y/n #Stranger Things Spoilers

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bjornswoman · 7 months

Text

Enemy's cruelty

Author's note: Hello, I know that I've been away for a long time and I'm sorry for that but I needed some time away. Recently I came back in the app and realised that I never posted this part so this is my way to apologise for being inactive for so long. I hope you will enjoy this.

Pairing: Ubbe x Reader.

Genre: Mini!series, drama, angst, slight romance.

Summary: You are planning to leave Ubbe after the news you received.

Warnings: Violence (emotional and physical), mentions of strangulation, mentions of marriage and strong language.

My enemy and me masterlist | Nemesis's wish |

History had always had this odd tendency repeating itself.

The first one was Ragnar Lothbrok. He cheated on his wife with princess Aslaug – Ubbe's mother – and she showed up on his doorstep with child – his child. Lagertha had no choice but to leave him. After all, that should be the actions of everyone who had a little bit of dignity left in them.

History is the greatest tutor. It taught you that being a great man, doesn't have to mean that you are an equally great husband.

The sons of Ragnar had a long legacy behind them from the past coming from their father and from the future because they were destined to score great achievements matching their father's reputation or even overcoming him. Though they were famous about their battle and political exploits, when it came to their intimate relationships things were completely the opposite. All their glory were coming in contrast to the infamous rumours surrounding them.

To be honest, the loyal husband didn't exist – or it was extremely rare to exist among them. It was a common secret that they had their affairs in the lands they were raiding, but it was only because they wanted someone to warm their bed for some nights before they come back to their families.

You had never cared about Ubbe's affairs. In fact, you wished something like that happened because you wanted to be free away from this who you hated passionately. But never guessed that the day your wish came true would come. Also, you would never believe that you could feel any other feeling than hate or disgust or anything bad about this awful man.

This was the worst thing that could happen and it did happen at the worst time possible. Ubbe and you had started developing weird feeling for each other – but probably it happened for the best. You were only in the beginning of feeling less abhorrence about the other person and luckily you were back on same terms before you would disappear from Kattegat for good.

Thinking about taking your child and walking away made your heart clench in your chest. You didn't want young Ragnar to grow up apart from Ubbe. You wanted them close, but you couldn't keep them close anymore. You couldn't stay and be more humiliated than before. It wasn't right neither for you nor for your son.

You knew you had to leave immediately and you would when the boy would recover from the flue. He was better the past three days – the fever was almost gone.

The same as Ubbe. Ubbe was barely around. You two couldn't stand each other in the same house. As you were informed by Torvi, he was having restless nights at Great Hall in the company of his brothers.

He wasn't seeing Margrethe anymore.

He barely talked to her.

He didn't talk at all to you.

You didn't talk at all to him.

The only moments his tired hoarse voice made it in your ears were when he was talking to your son, but even then you didn't want to hear him at all. His voice was irritating you even more than before.

You didn't want him around, but you couldn't keep him apart from his son – not when you were about to take him away from him in a matter of days.

You were trying not to think – especially not for him and not when he was around. It was even worse thinking about him and sensing his presence being in the same place as you were.

It was one of those moments, Ragnar was laying on his father's lap and was listening carefully to the stories Ubbe was telling him about his father and the cities they had raided. Ubbe was speaking about his family's legacy proudly and your son was looking at him magnetized. It felt like he was hanging from each word coming out of his mouth.

You dared to dream about a total different life for a damned second, but you erased that bloody thought from your mind the following one. There couldn't be any other alternative life that Ubbe and you could live happily married with Ragnar. You were meant to be at each others throat.

You turned around and pretended to clean your already cleaned house because you didn't want to look at him anymore. You didn't even want to breathe the same air as him.

It was all back to normal – you were back to hate him. The only difference was that after all these events you hated yourself more than you hated him. You were at fault more than he was because you let your guards down. Even for a little amount of time you let yourself change your feelings. It wasn't a wasn't a great change but still it was enough to get hurt.

Hopefully, you wouldn't get to be around him anymore if everything worked according to your plan. You didn't really like the idea of Ragnar growing up without his father, but you couldn't stay. You had been enough humiliated so far because of him and his mistress.

You would have left sooner if it hadn't been for your sick son, but he was getting better now. If your plan worked right, you would be away from this place in two nights from this moment. You would grab your son and leave at dawn before the any fisherman or merchant saw you. You had even paid some fisherman a great amount of gold to let you sail on his boat in the nearest town and there you would find your way alone.

Your mind was so absorbed in your thought about your escape plan that you didn't notice Ubbe and your son moving from the bed. Ubbe stood up and had the child on his lap before placing him inside his crib. After that he came behind you, standing there uncomfortably without saying a word. When, in fact, Ubbe wanted to say something – anything.

You almost startled when you faced him so close to you, but you didn't do any action that would let him notice. It had felt so long since the last time you were facing each other this close – the last time you had fought about his child with that girl. This time didn't feel any different.

You were standing facing each other without speaking, but there were so many unsaid things between you. So much tension that both of you couldn't unsee the fact that it existed.

Before, in moments like that – when you were staring at each other – you were throwing blades at each other. It felt like a whole single combat between the two of you. The first to take his eyes away from the other was the one who lost the battle. But this time, it didn't feel like it.

The anger and hatred were participating as any other time. Only now, another emotion was there too, in addition with the other two. It felt like guilt, coming from both sides for different reasons.

Though Ubbe was the one to blame for the best part of this situation they were put into. It would be only fair to let her go without any word and he knew it himself deep in his heart, but it was hard to accept it – to deal with it. They weren't in the best of terms ever – in fact not even close to good ones – but she had never left or had done anything to humiliate him in public. Their personal matters were kept to themselves within the walls of this house – though it was a common secret that they weren't getting along. Apart from that they kept themselves civil in public and in front of his family even though they knew everything about them.

Ubbe cleared his throat first. He had been wanting to say something since the moment he set his foot in the house, but couldn't form a word. But he knew that he couldn't keep himself from speaking. He had to say something – it felt now or never. Ubbe wanted to clear his position, to apologize. He knew that you wouldn't let him do so.

You were a proud woman – he knew it as he knew that you wouldn't let him say anything about the matter that would be keep things civil between you. In any case, this would end up bad, like it always did. You would fight again and this time it might be worse than the other times because this time you had something really serious to argue about.

"The child seems better." This was the only thing Ubbe managed to say.

You rolled your eyes at his statement and felt your blood boiling. It felt like he was in disbelief that you managed to take good care of your son and he was healthy all over again. You were mad at him for all the other situation with the slave girl, but him undermining you was worse than cheating.

"Did you believe that he wouldn't?" You tone was harsh and bitter. At the sound of it, Ubbe's expression changed. His features hardened and his jaw was clenched. The battle had started once more – like any other time.

"Would you blame me for that? It isn't like you are the most caring person around." His tone was matching to your own which enraged you even more than before. You had all rights of Midgard to be angry and he was trying to turn it to you being a bad mother because you were mean to him.

It wasn't like you didn't know it – you knew that your actions towards him wasn't kind but the opposite. But you weren't this way to your son. Ragnar the Younger was your only comfort, your only companion. The person who made you like your life when you hated it more than ever.

Your love for him was sincere. How could it now be, he was your only child even though he was also the son of your nemesis you couldn't feel any less love for the person who grew inside your body and got out of it. He was yours and you adored him.

"But your whore is, right?" You felt like you were going to strangle him to death with your bare hands. After your words, you didn't even wait for an answer of his or any movement, you were mad and you wanted to take it out of you without pressing your hands on his throat. You had never did something like that – you had slapped him, yes, but your hands never went further than that. "If you believe that she is, you are stupid enough. I have learned not to underestimate any rival of mine and I certainly haven't underestimated you or her. How could I underestimate a slave girl? Slave girls can do anything to get them out of the low position they are and be in power and when they manage to free themselves, they want more and more." A fire was dancing inside the color of your eyes. You were mad and you couldn't keep the words from getting out – you didn't want to keep them.

Ubbe didn't get to say anything. His eyes were glaring directly inside your own burning eyes – his gaze was no different than yours. He didn't answer and you after a short breath you started again with the poisonous words.

"It's so easy to notice that she is a gold digger after your status. Just by looking at the way she has all of you – the sons of the mighty Ragnar Lothbrok – wrapped around her little finger you can say it. You fools have sincere and true feelings for her – how pathetic. But I won't blame you, you can't choose who your heart belonges – unfortunately. Just don't ever judge me again. You can't because you don't me." One long breath again. Your eyes always on his – sign of you believing every word that came out of your mouth. Ubbe was listening to you, preparing for his own little speech.

"I won't deny that I am a cruel woman – I know I can be harsh and bitter, but that's how I grew up. It wasn't easy for me either. I am not a thrall, but all my life it felt like I was. My fate – it seems – is controlled by men, treating me like an object they can use to secure some kind of alliance or a womb that's only use is to produce heirs. But I am a woman – a person." You almost tear up, but before even your tear came make it further than your eye you manage to wipe it away.

When you finished, Ubbe was running his hand through hair, ready to speak himself.

"You speak a lot without really knowing what you are saying – yet your words is your truth. I am not saying that life was kind to you – I can't know what has happened to you before I met you, I can only assume. My life hasn't been kind as well. Everyone is expecting extraordinary things from me because of my father – a father that was never there for me. Most of my life I've been only with my mother – who was never really there – and my brother – Bjorn. If it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't be the man I am." Ubbe was starting calmly and yet so intensely.

"As for Margrethe, don't judge her you don't know her the way me or my siblings do. The problem is between us – it had always been there. We are the people to blame about the tragedies of our lives. You and I have made mistakes and the worst of them all was our lack of interest in hearing to each other. You had problems and I had mine when we married and we let those problem tear us apart. Both of us haven't been the ideal person for the other, but here we other stuck with each other having a conversation that had to be made a long time ago.

"We fucked up our lives with our bare hands and now after all this time of failing ourselves we are called to deal with the consequences."

"You fucked up our lives big time." Your words came out in the most selfish way possible when his own were spoken wisely and reasonably. That was Ubbe people knew and loved.

"Me, alone? As if you are a saint." His bitterness was back, but it wasn't enough to make you stop. You were mad at him.

Yes, his words were right. You were the authors of your destruction and downfall, but his doing – his intimate relationship with her and the aftermath of it, their child – was the worst part of it and was his own doing. He had tore you apart and signed your end. He couldn't say it was both your doing. Well, partially it was, but Ubbe was the one to take the most of the credit about it.

"I am not, but I wasn't the one who humiliated you by sleeping and impregnating a thrall. Be the reasonable man you claim you are and accept the amount of the blame you have, along with the consequences that follow." You spoke calmer than before and took first your eyes away from his. You moved away from him to the crib of your son to check on him. He was asleep, luckily you were calmer than usual and he was able to take his nap.

"This incident is just the tip of the iceberg. We have equal amount of blame for the rift in our marriage." He continued behind you in a tired tone of voice.

Your eyes moved away from the small form of your son and moved to the much larger one of Ubbe. You rolled your eyes once more frustrated. You were done by this. You knew what you had to do to stop all these arguments and drama – you were going to leave just a couple of days had left for you to endure Kattegat and Ubbe.

"Which marriage are you talking about? There's no marriage. You destroyed that." You weren't yelling – just scoffing. But your words, you damn well that wasn't the entire truth. It would be the whole truth if you said that you both destroyed your marriage with your foolish actions.

Your scoffing made Ubbe even more than he was. He moved towards the table and sat down on one of the wooden chairs. You stayed at your former position. You were standing close to your son's crib in front of him.

"You are my wife and that won't change even though both of us would like that." Harsh and calm tone, enough to make your blood boiling for once more. Your lips pursed in a thin line and your jaw clenched.

"Yeah, I forgot you would love to free her and then marry her." Your own tone was an ironic one when you referred to her.

"I intend to marry her regardless."

Your eyes turned to meet his – his blue ones were already gazing you. It was one of those rare moments he caught off guard. For a moment or so you thought that you misheard him, but the fucking expression on his face told you otherwise – told you that you heard clearly his words.

"What?" Your voice wasn't louder than a whisper.

"I'll take her as a second wife of mine. I would tell you under different circumstances, but I have to realize that there would never be ideal or even better circumstances between us. So, yes, Margrethe will be my wife and she will give birth to my child." The whole time Ubbe was speaking, his eyes were studying you – your eyes, your expressions, everything.

You managed to take a couple of steps away from the crib. You couldn't even form a word, because you couldn't process his words.

"Your first and only wife you meant to say."

"You are my first wife."

"I am not your wife anymore."

Your whole conversation was happening – surprisingly – in the most civil way possible. No bitterness, not poisonous words, nothing. The first and hopefully the last time.

"This conversation goes nowhere. You are way too stubborn to understand a couple of things and I have a tone of fucking stuff to deal with. If you decide to calm down before the marriage, good. If not, then I'll take matters in my own hands the way I know." Ubbe stood up from the chair and moved towards you not too close, but not far enough.

"Don't do anything impulsive for your sake."

Low voice, quite threatening and eyes gazing deep in your soul. But you would never let him notice that. You were eyeing him the same way – you would never back down to none especially him.

"I am not afraid of you." Your voice was challenging and for the first time after days a vicious smirk formed on his face.

Ubbe leaned towards you, his hot breath fell on your neck. He took a sip of your scent before any word came out of mouth.

"Maybe not at the moment, but you will be." His voice was soft – softer than ever. Yet that was definitely a threat.

You didn't get to answer to that because he stormed out of the house, leaving you behind confused and angry – definitely not afraid.

The days felt insufferable. Each was another torment for you. You couldn't even step out of the door of your house, everyone was pointing their fingers at you, gossiping about your husband's offspring with the slave girl. They were mocking you – something that you proud self couldn't accept. You glared at them but that wasn't enough to restore your dignity. The only thing that would help your reputation would be to leave him for good and never ever step a foot on this damned grounds.

And the big was finally there. You were only an hour away from your freedom, but your heart was aching. It felt wrong and apart from this another strange feeling were eating you up alive. You felt like you shouldn't leave with your son, but this wasn't an option. You were out of options indeed at the end of the day.

You didn't bother to wake up Ragnar. You wrapped him in a thick fur and put your own black cloak on.

The sheet of snow on the ground and the roofs of the houses was thick. It was very cold this time of the night out there. You shouldn't be out, but you had to make it in the dock and leave to save any little dignity you had left after your husband's achievements.

You walked like a shadow in the way that led on the dock. Your weird feeling was getting stronger and stronger at each step you took towards the directions you wanted. It felt like your heart was trying to warn you not to go – not to leave Ubbe – but your mind was telling you otherwise. You had to leave, to get in that boat and move away from Kattegat.

Eventually, you made it on your destination and took off the hood of your cloak, but something felt off. Things didn't go as you planned them to.

Two men were standing in front of the dock and there wasn't any boat close enough. Moreover, the fisherman you had paid to help you was nowhere to be found. You were watching them like a hawk, trying to study them and find to get away somehow. There was no way back to Kattegat.

You turned around to step back – not to your house – to the forest. There should be a way to escape from the forest. However, when you did turned around, your eyes widened when you spotted Ubbe eyeing you with two men standing next him. Both of them were his brothers – Bjorn and Hvitserk. You couldn't read his face, but you knew by heart that he was angry and tried to hide it under this mixed expression.

Before you even thought about anything to say, Ubbe had already started walking in your direction. You couldn't really anything – you didn't need to. Both of you knew that this was the only right thing to do for the sake of your dignity, but Ubbe would never let you slip away in the middle of the night with his son on hands. Once Lagertha had managed to leave his father and Bjorn had gone her. Ubbe couldn't let you take his eldest away. He couldn't bear the thought of his boy growing away from him.

"I told you not to do anything impulsive, but per usual you didn't listen to me." Ubbe whispered to you when he was just a breath away from you. His hands wrapped around your son's little body and pulled away from your hands violently, waking him up by the way he pulled him.

The boy started crying and you yelling.

"Don't touch him! Give him to me! Ubbe!" You were yelling at him as he was walking at the other way around towards his brothers. You tried to reach him and take your son back, but the two men you saw earlier grabbed you by force by both of your arm and didn't let you approach. You were hitting them and were trying to break free but they were far more stronger than you. "No! No! No! You can't do that to me, Ubbe! NO!" You were yelling crying. Your son was crying as well on Hvitserk's lap. You sank on your knees, still trying to break free and reach your son. "You are a monster! I fucking hate you!"

Hvitserk was trying to calm down your son, but he couldn't unsee your state.

"Ubbe, maybe you should—" Hvitserk tried to reason with him, but Ubbe stopped him using both words and movements of his hands.

"Don't get involved in that, Hvitserk. This is between me and my wife." Ubbe's voice was stern as his steps were bringing him closer to your wrecked form.

"Your former wife. Former." You spitted as he was kneeling in front of you. He clicked his tongue inside his mouth when he heard you.

Swiftly his hand pulled your face by your chin and your eyes met – yours were burning full in tears and his had gone darker, they had the darkest shade of blue you had ever seen. Shortly after your eyes met, his hand moved from your chin to your throat. It wrapped around your neck so firmly that you almost couldn't breathe, but you didn't care at this point. The worst part of this situation you were into was your son's crying – it broke your heart. You wanted to reach him and caress him, sing to him and calm him down.

"You are my wife. Mine. Like it or not this is the way." Ubbe was speaking in hoarse and stern tone all the time. He was imposing and serious. "Now you have two options here and that's because I am a generous person. If it was for another man, you wouldn't have the option to see your son again, because you would be dead or worse." He left your throat and ordered his men to help you stand. At first you resisted, but eventually you did as he said. Ubbe stood up as well and for once more you were facing each other.

"Your first option is to leave. You are free to go where ever you like away from Kattegat – away from me." He started say and motioned to his men to set you free – something they did instantly.

You frowned you couldn't believe your ears. There has to be something there he wasn't going to let you leave just like that – not after all this chaos.

"But my son stays here. You will leave and never lay a foot on Kattegat. You will never see him again."

At the sound of this, you felt your heart clenching. It was like he had stabbed you with his knife directly in your heart and then ripped it out of your body. You couldn't leave your son behind and never see him again.

"No, I can't do that! You can't do that!" You cried and gazed only at your son, but Ubbe's hand wrapped around your jaw tightly and forced you to look at him, when you tried to look back at your son he didn't let you. He kept your face stable at your former position.

After your words, Ubbe smirked.

"So this leaves us with the second option. You will stay here, be my wife – my loyal wife – and you will move in the Great Hall with me. You will accept my marriage with Margrethe and give us your blessing. Also, you will never try to harm her or my child or else you will never see Ragnar the Younger again. That's a promise." He continued and left your face. After that, he moved back to his brothers who were watching the whole scene without talking after Hvitserk's attempt to reason with him. "I'll give you a second to think about your options. Think about it well."

Ubbe took Ragnar on his hands trying to calm him down himself, but he couldn't – Ragnar was still crying.

You approached them – tears were falling like waterfalls from your eyes – and opened your hands for Ragnar. Ubbe didn't give him to you even after he saw the boy's hands lifting towards you – he wanted you.

"You won't get to touch my son unless you choose correctly."

Before you mumble your answer, you wiped your tears from your soaking cheeks.

"Everything will happen as you wish. We will go to the Great Hall and I'll give you my blessing for your marriage. I'll take care of your wife and your child. Just give me my son. Please Ubbe." You hadn't felt more humiliated than this moment ever again. Even when you learned about the slave girl and her child, you didn't feel like this.

He let you have your son. When he brought him on your hands, you let your tears fall freely. You closed your eyes and smelled his scent. After that, you placed a long kiss on his forehead.

"He is my son and don't you dare think of doing something like this again, because next time I won't be this generous to you." Ubbe whispered to you and you didn't answer.

As long as you had Ragnar on your hands, you didn't care about anything else. Neither your dignity nor who Ubbe slept with. You were defeated for good. You had lost the war of your life. Your life had no meaning apart from your son. You were nothing more than a mother. Ragnar was all that had left in your life and you would give it to protect him – or end with the worst way possible whoever dared to harm him.

The following day you moved in the Great Hall, earning scoffing and mocking looks from the people in it – even the queen had a weird look on her face like she was questioning the choices you had made and your approval for Ubbe's second marriage with a thrall. The people who knew were the only ones who showed quite the sympathy, but still they were on Ubbe's side. You had no allies in this place. You were on your own as you had always been.

"Welcome in the Great Hall." The queen was the one to welcome you first. You didn't even pretend that you were glad about it, didn't even bother to force a fake smile on your face.

"It's good to have you here. Maybe you could help us with the preparations of the wedding." Margrethe was the one to speak next. She approached you smiling. Your gaze met the one of Ubbe's who was already on you, expecting your answer to his bride. You knew better than to cause a scene.

"Sure. It would be nice." You spoke, earning the laughter and mockery of Ivar. You couldn't blame him though. If it wasn't for Ragnar, you would scoff at yourself for your foolishness.

The day of the wedding was even worse than anything you had to endure so far. Maybe that was the worst day of your life and not the day of your own wedding to him. This day and the day you tried to escape with your son had been marked on your memory as the worst day of your life – you couldn't really choose which one had been worse than the one. You only knew that on those days you had been humiliated and violated in the worst ways possible.

You used to be a proud woman – now you were the exact opposite of that. You were dishonoured. You felt small and vulnerable in public, but kept trying to not break in front of the prying eyes. They had disgrace your honor, but you would never let them see how much it affected you.

You wore one of your finest dresses and put on your best of efforts to keep forcing fake smiles on your face. Your hair was braided on a tight bun. The dress you wore was black unlike the bride's white.

You were the first one to walk down the aisle and notice everyone. It was an open wedding – all Kattegat participated to confess your public humiliation, but you kept your forced smile there and waited for them. Ubbe and Margrethe followed shortly after you.

Everything was blurry for you until the Gothi asked who would give the bride to her husband. You forced a smile and without a lot words you gave her the ring made of gold Ubbe had picked for her. Then, the priestess blessed the three of you with the blessed blood of the sacrifice and it was you who had to give your bless about their union next, before the Gothi would bless the ring and Ubbe would put it on her finger.

That was the most difficult part of it. You weren't hurt about the fact they were getting married – you couldn't be. Ubbe had treated you the way your father did and that was enough to had the same feelings for him as you had for your father – to despise him. They treated you like one of their possessions, like an object. You wantes to believe that even the person he were towards you – Ubbe was different from him. But eventually they were all the same.

Margrethe lifted her hands which were inside a wreath and you touched it. You wanted to destroyed the moment your hands touched it, but you didn't do that. Instead, you freed her hands from and let it slip on the floor.

"You are free." You looked at her with your fake smile and tears threatening your eyes. Tears that you would never let them fall. You were stronger than that. Apart from relying on your own strength, you had asked Frigg herself to help you endure this. "Go, marry my husband... with my blessing." You paused for the shortest of breaths and touched your hands with Ubbe's and Margrethe's. After that you were enough not to remember the rest of the ceremony.

A feast came after this parody of a wedding. You were seated on the right side of Ubbe and Margrethe on the left. You didn't really payed attention to the conversations in the Hall, neither tried to start one. You were seated on your chair drinking ale from a curved horn.

You were quiet until Lagertha – or Earl Ingstad – approached and sat down in the empty chair next to yours. You smiled politely at her and fake. By the look on her face you were sure that she could say whether or not that smile was sincere. She knows more than people would like to.

"I have a question for you, though I know the answer myself." She started and got all of your attention on her.

"What would that question be?"

"Why did you blessed this union? Why did you stay?" Her voice was soft along, but her gaze sharp. She was studying you – reading your mind. "You and I have more in common that we would like. Once I was in your place as well. I know the feeling."

You took a long sip from your drink and worked on your answer for some seconds. You weren't going to say the truth – you weren't going to mention anything about that night. You wouldn't like to be called a coward, but better a coward than a childless mother. After all, you were there because of Ragnar the Younger, not because of Ubbe.

"Not all of us are as strong as you."

Lagertha seemed pleased by the way you chose to answer. Her hand reached for yours and she leaned closer to you. Her voice was softer than a whisper – you barely heard her – and when her words made it in your ears you were surprised.

"Yes, because you are stronger. No woman would let herself be disgraced in such way because of the love for her child. I – I didn't. When I left Ragnar, Bjorn didn't choose to come along, but eventually changed his mind. A son should be close to his father – yes – but no mother must be away from her child." Her words made your heart clench. As one mother to another she could understand your agony and pain for your only child.

A true smile formed on your face and you gave it to her, before she retreat to her original seat.

The rest of your night went by the same way it did before Lagertha showed up. Ivar would leave his offensive remarks which didn't really bother you anymore. Hvitserk wouldn't be in his usual mood due to this marriage – something like yourself. Sigurd didn't really seem offended or affected by Ubbe's choice to marry the girl. Bjorn was Bjorn – he was his usual self. After all he was the only one who never had or seeked any kind of relationship with her.

When you retreated to your chamber, you found Ubbe having Ragnar on his lap, talking to him about one more story of his family's saga. When he spotted you, he left the chair he was sitting and came closer to you, giving you the child.

"You were unexpected today." Ubbe noted and you almost let a bitter chuckle leave your mouth.

"I didn't have a choice." You spoke, looking only at your son. The only time you decided to look at him was to ask him about something. "And why are you here, anyway? Isn't your wedding night? Shouldn't you be with your new wife?" There were more than a question – more than you intended to ask – but it came out naturally.

Ubbe decided to avoid the answer you gave him after his remark and focused on your questions.

"I wanted to see my son." He said casually tickling with one of his hands your boy, making him jiggling and laughing. You smiled at the sound of his angelic laughter. "And you." This time his voice was much softer than any other time. Your eyes met and you tried to focus back on your son and not on the fast rate of your heartbeat.

"Ragnar is fine, I am fine. Go to your wife." You said quickly turning your back.

You were walking through the room, caressing your son's back. That was one of your desperate attempts to put him to sleep. He was upset the nights away from home – your former home. He wasn't used here and he would refuse to go to sleep.

"You are also my wife."

You sighed harshly when he reminded you – like you could forget when he was around all the time. Or you could forget when you were giving your blessing to wed another. Or when he forced you to stay. Or—

A soft knock on your door was enough to stop all your thoughts and prevent you from giving him any answer. Ubbe opened the door himself and revealed Hvitserk.

"Sorry to interrupt you." He spoke looking at you and you smiled at him.

"You don't. Ubbe was just leaving."

"Yeah, that was exactly the reason I came. We are expecting you. Don't be late." He whispered to his brother, but not low enough for you not to hear them. You didn't even want to think about the topic of their conversation, but you could imagine – much to your displeasure. Your mind was getting there not following your attempts not to. After these words from brother to brother, Hvitserk turned to apologetically. "Sorry again."

"Goodnight." You muttered and he winked at you. Ubbe closed the door, but not before he overheard your whisper to yourself. "I suppose that it will indeed be a good night." You laughed to yourself and he did the same as he closed the door behind his brother.

"We—" Ubbe started saying awkwardly. A hand was at the back of his head, scratching him skin. You stopped him, before he could even form a second word.

"No need to tell me anything. It's your personal life." You told him quickly, raising one of your hands – the one which wasn't holding the child – to stop him.

"You are part of my personal life." His voice was hoarse and calm for once more. As he was speaking, he was moving towards you for once more.

"I am part of your chores. I suppose." You smiled. One more real smile that evening. He smiled as well.

"No. Do you want one truth?" Ubbe was whispering now. He had stopped right in front of you. Your son was the only thing who kept you apart.

"Only one?" You kept whispering as he did.

Both of you were smiling.

"Just one."

"Go ahead, say it. I promise I won't tell a soul."

"Good. Coming back to you had always been my top priority since we met."

Your whole conversation was made of whispers and smiles – like a sacred prayer. One that was so sacred and holy that shouldn't be heard from the other. Your first and only silent one without yelling or anything loud.

You hadn't noticed how close to each you were standing until you stopped talking. All this closeness felt uncomfortable.

You took your eyes off of him and looked at your son – he was asleep. You smiled at the sight.

"He is asleep." You told Ubbe softly enough not to wake the boy.

"Yeah – um – I should probably get going." He was saying awkwardly as you were placing your son inside his crib.

"Yes, I think you should. Goodnight." You muttered and smiled uncomfortably at him.

Ubbe took a few steps back and mouthed a rushed "goodnight" before he was out of your door.

You felt yourself smiling at the memory of your previous conversation, the most real in all this time you knew each other. The only one which didn't end up in a fight or happened within one. The most calm and yet the most intensive you had.

If only this was the beginning and nothing had happened before that.

You moved you head in an attempt to remove these thoughts. Ubbe was in Margrethe's chamber with Hvitserk celebrating their first night as a wed couple and before he had forced to stay in Kattegat and suffer under the roof of the Great Hall.

Things wouldn't change with a couple of romantic thoughts. After all, any time you had one of those things had the tendency to become even more wild between Ubbe and yourself. As far as you stayed in the comfort of your chamber – away from everyone and their drama – you were safe.

Your child was the only person you needed around and Ubbe was the opposite – the person you definitely hated to have around. He and his new wife were the people you wanted to avoid and you were going to try.

Tag list: @bruher, @utterlyhopeful-fics, @hypocritic-trash-baby, @fofisstilinski, @brianochka, @thelirofnorthlands, @malamistka

#vikings ubbe #ubbe imagine #ubbe ragnarsson #ubbe lothbrok #ubbe #ubbe x reader #vikings au #vikings x reader #vikings imagine #vikings fic

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sapphixxx · 4 months

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Signalis, Authority, and History

There's a level of nuance to how Signalis presents the violence of the authority of the nation that doesn't call attention to itself but which I really appreciate. Which is basically just, all the officers and cops and spies who make life hell for people like the Gestalt mine workers, Ariane, and the Itou family--we get little glimpses into who they are in Adler and Kolibri's diaries and despite the propaganda and the authoritative tone they take in official communications, for the most part they don't seem to actually be particularly invested in the hard line of national ideology. They uphold it though, viciously, both because things were worse under imperial rule (we don't get hard details on what it was like but it's mentioned in passing enough that I believe it) and because they're scared that if they don't they will be decommissioned and easily replaced. They are literally stamped out of a production line after all. There's a subtext of well, if I don't do it my replacement will anyway and I'm not trying to die so what's the point of rocking the boat?

I think Kolibri stands out to me most clearly on this because in communications from the block warden regarding Ariane there is emphasis put on how it is unacceptable and suspicious that she should be so interested and invested in art and literature that does not serve the purpose of furthering the goals of the nation. But we know that Kolibris themselves are bookworms, Adlers are fiends for stimulating experiences, and both get miserable FAST when deprived of art and puzzles and entertainment and hobbies. Y'know, just like anyone. Far be it from being a paragon of The Nation only interested in productive labor, we are reminded that the block warden, too, hates this shitty town and wants to transfer but is denied. They're hypocrites, but not monsters, nor brainwashed puppets of the state.

The monstrousness at play is not contained within any particular subset of evil individuals, or even an inherent universal force of evil contained in the broad notion of The Nation. There is no cosmic evil force that makes them all do these things to each other. The monstrousness is within the social systems, the mechanisms of how authority perpetuates on a structural procedural level, held in place by fear and tangible threats of violence, each link in the chain restraining the next through those threats out of fear that if they don't, then they'll be next. Regardless how many, if any, of those people in this chain are true dogmatic hardliners, they must act as such because failing to do so opens them up to danger.

Here then I think of the quote that is so prominent, "Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl", from Lovecraft's The Festival. This is not just a chilling abstract visual that conveniently evokes a mineshaft-- in Lovecraft's story, this line refers to worms which ate the decomposing bodies of wizards whose wretched souls had remained after death, complete with the terrible powers they gained through contracts with demons. Those worms inherited both their power, and also the evil. The Nation, despite having overthrown the Empire, is built on imperial technology, in particular Replikas and bioresonance. So too, then, we can imply that The Nation inherited with those things some of the monstrousness of The Empire as well. There is no end of history, nor clean break with the past, no matter how violently it may seem to be rejected. That which remains from the past--and something inevitably always does--creates the present.

This is a game that is not shy about evoking East Germany. And I think all of this provides a sophisticated picture of repressive authority that we rarely see in fiction of the English speaking world, especially in games. The year the S23 incident takes place is notably 84, but, frankly, I find this to be more compelling and illustrative than 1984 (and I'm a librarian and have taught English classes so I get to say that). Orwell, let's be honest, presents a fairly one dimensional picture of authority, where people seize power and wield it against others out of seeming mustache twirling evil or malice.

Here though we get a more humanistic view. Authority did not come from nowhere and is not wielded arbitrarily out of gleeful cruelty or mindless brainwashed allegiance. People aren't "just following orders". Individuals have rich inner lives. They make decisions, and those decisions are based in the context they're in. Even the decision to carry repressive tools of the past into the present is a decision that was made strategically with the big picture in mind. Nobody woke up and decided to be evil that day. Everyone operates on self interest, and, we must assume, an earnest desire for things to get better. Even the [spoiler] program which served as an inspirational demonstration of The Nation's power, you can imagine the chain of officers and bureaucrats who genuinely wanted the people of the nation to believe in the future, to confidently trust that everyone was working together towards something great and beautiful. And, through a long chain of those people who couldn't say "No" without being decommissioned, we ended up with something unbelievably cruel.

We get to know Adler and Kolibri and the other officers not to say well they're human too, maybe it wasn't so bad that they condemned all those people to agonizing suffering, but to remember that if we keep looking for true monsters we will not find them. There are no monsters and there are no demons. There are only people making decisions. A better world is possible. A better world, where Adler is just a paper pusher who does puzzles after work instead of signing papers to authorize torture, where Kolibris are librarians instead of spies and cops, where EULEs can gossip and play piano and ARARs can do maintenance on facilities that don't contain torture rooms, is one that would not have led to the Ariane and Elster's tragic cycle and ultimate end.

Authority and its attendant cruelty is not contained, radiating forth from The Great Revolutionary and Her Daughter, it is within the social systems of control. When those two women die, that cruelty will continue so long as those social systems continue. Like Lovecraft's worms, no matter how long dead the evil of the past is, so long as it continues to be fed upon, that evil will not only remain, but evolve into something new in the present. A better world can't be achieved through the death of the old world alone, even if violent overthrow is warranted. There is no end of history. There is no clean break from the past.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

#Signalis #Didn't include everything because this is already very long #But there's a lot to add to this kind of reading from other former Eastern Bloc states that go beyond a kind of braindead #Simplistic Authoritarianism bad communism bad freedom good type of view common in the English speaking world #That go more into well what is authority and how does it work and how has it remained durable and violent before during and after the cold #The Romanian movie Bad Luck Banging is very good for this in expressing how things have been more similar than different #Under monarchy fascism communism and liberal democracy over the last 150 years there #replika joker voice maybe the real monster is SOCIETY #op #quality content

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inkymoonbunny · 2 months

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Astarion x Tav Fic Recs

These are just some of my favorites! <3 Mix of during game and AUs

Epistles of Saints & Sinners @elegantduelliste - Soulmate Marks AU during game. Astarion recognizes Tav’s soulmate mark, it matches his own, but he's not going to tell her that; he can't have a soulmate, it's just one more thing Cazador has stolen from him. Tav is just as drawn to Astarion, but her own history has left her guarded and wary of being vulnerable. Elle’s writing of the push and pull of their relationship is breathtaking and heart-wrenching. Matching a bard Tav, Elle's prose takes on a lyrical quality and her use of imagery is unparalleled.

The House of Astarion by Throckmorton420 - Labyrinth AU post-Elderbrain. Ascended Astarion lost interest in conquering Faerun once he came across the Labyrinth, it's much more his style anyway. Stealing Tav’s violin, he offers her a deal: solve his Labyrinth and he'll return her violin and grant her a wish. Realizing this is her opportunity to reconnect to the Weave, Tav agrees. Did I mention goostarion? Because there's goostarion! This fic is filled with mischief, whimsy, and so much heart.

Fools' Work @semper-draca - Pre-Tadpole AU. Cazador has sent his spawn after a mysterious box and luckily for Astarion, his latest target happens to have a lead. It should be easy to seduce her and steal the prize! Too bad she’s not as naive as Astarion believes. This mercenary Tav is perceptive and delightfully unhinged that makes her a great matchup for a scheming Astarion.

When the Dawn Breaks… @harcourtholmesii - set during game. Before Astarion was turned, he ignored his family’s disapproval of a Drow lover. Two hundred years later, Lavender has found the lover she grieved and believed dead. Astarion brushes away her questions but still sweeps her off her feet. He can’t believe his luck in finding a target that presumably knows him, one easy to lure back when he so desperately needs to keep in good graces with his master.

Until You @bloodinwine - Post-Elderbrain with modern world AU flavor. Effy thought Astarion needed a friend more than a lover, so now here they are as roommates and definitely not hopelessly in love pining after one another. Effy struggles to fight her way free of self-destructive tendencies and be the person Astarion needs her to be. This Tav is a loveable hot mess! I have never wanted to take a character by the shoulders and shake them so badly, thank you June for spinning Effy into the world.

Lacunae @karinamay - Series set during game. Tav was once Astarion’s target, but she slipped away. Upon meeting after the Nautiloid crash, she remembers but Astarion does not. This is the one that inspired me to start writing again. It’s sweet and heartbreaking and deliciously spicy!

Pour One Out @aevallare - Modern AU/1000 years post-Elderbrain. A spinoff from the much loved and fandom favorite Kindred featuring an anxious Auri that doesn't remember her past life and a tailor Astarion that's in awe of finding his love again. This is an Astarion that's had centuries to heal from his ordeal with Cazador, one that's been able to flourish in freedom. Astarion gets his chance to be a hero for Auri this time around. Aevallare's characterization of Astarion is absolutely unmatched.

All these fics are ongoing so you must be patient, but DO give them a read and the authors some love/kudos/comments!

#fic recs #bg3 astarion #astarion x tav #astarion x oc #fanfic #bg3 #astarion #baldur’s gate 3 #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fanfic #fanfic rec #epistles of saints and sinners #The House of Astarion #Fools' Work #When the Dawn Breaks...#Until You #Lacunae #pour one out

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sorencd · 9 months

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could you write something about reader being scared of wilson cheating on her but then he conforts her? cuz with the history of cheating that he has i would be scared lmao

SANCTUARY

a/n : thank u sm for the req! i love me some good old comfort w wilson. i don't know how this turned into 1.4k i told myself i would keep it short lol. reader is a doctor btw! and charlotte is the name i gave ur friend :)

w.c. : 1.4k

"dude, are you okay?"

your friend's sudden voice that came out of nowhere brought you back from your mindless gazing, you didn't even notice that you were absent-mindedly staring off into space. a few patients got scared because they thought you were judging them with your stare, and after a few complaints, your friend finally approached you to ask if you were okay.

"hm?"

"you're definitely not okay."

"i'm- yeah! i'm totally fine. you were saying?"

she crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow, not believing a single word that came out of your lips. you knew your actions were giving away too much, but even if you tried hiding the fact that something was bothering you, she'd probe and pry more relentlessly.

"what's wrong? there's something wrong. are you okay?"

you sighed defeatedly, there's no more escaping her. figuring that there isn't much to do aside from telling her what's on your mind, you pulled your friend into an empty room and shut the door. resting your back against the surface and in a hushed whisper, ushered her to come closer.

"are you pregnant?"

"what- no! charlotte what on earth- say that again and i'm no longer telling you."

"ok ok! i'm shutting the fuck up. you may continue."

a brief pause encapsulated the unoccupied room before you opened your lips hesistantly. opening up to people was something you always found hard to do, whether they be a family member or a close friend, you could never easily voice out your thoughts. but you couldn't really hold this in any longer, you needed to tell someone.

"i've been feeling... an awful lot insecure lately. not the kind that involves my appearance! that's saved for tuesdays."

"then what kind?"

"it.. it's about wilson.."

"what did he do? do you need me to chop off his-"

"no no! none of that! it's just... i'm scared i'll just end up as another ex-this or ex-that or someone that house would mention to him and james would gag whenever he hears my name. i don't know maybe i'm just being over-dramatic."

"have you tried telling wilson about how you’re feeling?"

"i've tried starting the conversation.. but i'd always end up chickening out. so now i'm stuck with these self-deprecating thoughts and i don't like it one bit." you ended with a huff, hiding your face behind your hands and tiredly letting your shoulders slouch down. "it's hard talking to patients when every single one of them would ask me if 'everything's alright', i should be the one asking them that!"

"you know, you shouldn't be bottling your feelings. a relationship goes two ways, don't be scared to tell any of this to wilson! asking for reassurance is never a bad thing, and it doesn't make you needy or demanding or whatever, it's your right as his partner! i'm sure wilson would understand, he loves you very much, how could he not?"

"you're right.. i'll talk to him when he have lunch together."

"you won't chicken out?"

"i won't. i swear."

"you better. i'll be watching you."

you quickly opened the door to avoid staying in the room for too long, you didn't want someone to catch you too talking about personal matters. charlotte waved you off before returning back to her department, leaving you alone. you decided that for the remainder of your vacant and spare time you were going to rehearse what you plan on telling wilson, you didn't want to embarrass yourself and stutter the entire time. so you scurried away into your office, determined to go through with your plan.

if anyone were to press their ear against the door, they would have heard your incessant muttering and would've thought you were insane. you had your feet propped up on the table as you recited word for word how you were going to tell all of this to wilson, despite knowing that when the time comes, all of it would be useless and you'd go completely off script. but it gets your mind off of things so you carried on. a familiar knocking pattern resounded over your hushed whispering, it was wilson. he had this specific knocking style that you grew accustomed too. you felt a shiver run down and a dreaded feeling dripped in each step you took on your way to open the door for james, since you kept it locked, not wanting anyone to see you panicking in your office. you twisted the door knob slowly, and behind it was wilson. standing happily and his usual dorky smile making an appearance when he saw your face.

"hi."

"hi. you ready to grab lunch?"

you turned your head to the side before answering, a habit that always showed whenever you were nervous and you never seemed to be able to get rid of it. to try and avoid him from gaining any suspicion that something's wrong and notice how tense and sweaty your palms were, you tried making small talk. 'i'm not myself at all.'

the entire short walk to the canteen you listened to wilson ramble about some case house had, and how they're having a hard time diagnosing the patient. and no matter how hard you tried focusing on wilson's voice the gnawing feeling won't stop buzzing and crawling at the back of your mind, you felt sick.

wilson, from the moment you opened the door to your office, knew something was up. you didn't have that bright favorite smile of his, nor did you have any snarky remarks to say while he was storytelling. you didn't contribute to the conversation at all, and it wasn't like you. it carried on even until you two came back from the canteen and retreated to his office. he wanted to ask you what's wrong, but he didn't want to pressure you into saying anything you aren’t ready to tell him. so instead he waited until you were the one to approach him. he was also half-nervous that if he ever asked, you'd just suddenly blurt out that you two should break up. and he'd rather not have that happen.

"james.. i'm..." now it was wilson's turn to be nervous. "you love me, right?"

you had this.. sad look on your face that wilson wasn't used to, he couldn’t describe it. you looked defeated, tired even. he began to replay the last few days, you were fine! you were your usual, loving, witty, happy self!

"yes, of course i do." he replied with all seriousness, dropping the files he picked up to reorganize them. "why do you ask?"

"it's nothing, really. and i don't know why i did."

he gently approached you, careful not to seem condescending when he gently took a hold of both your wrists.

"i'm pretty sure you going quiet is never a good idea and is 'nothing'. come on sweetheart, you can tell me anything."

when you looked up into his eyes and found nothing but sincerity, you cracked and gave in. you told him everything that was on your mind.

"i'm- i was.. i was scared, james. i was scared that you'd leave me for some... better girl or something i don't even know myself, and that i'd just end up as another one of your exes. i don't want that! i don't want any of this to end and i'm so so scared that it eventually would and i can't do anything about it and i couldn't tell you earlier because i was scare you'd get mad or somethi-"

"(y/n)."

the soft mention of your name stopped you from rambling on any further. and now you were in his embrace, his arms wrapped around you perfectly and tightly. when wilson pulled away, youhad tears threatening to fall from your eyelids.

"i'd never leave you for anyone else, (y/n). why would i when i already found the one? i already found you. you just- complete me. i can't put into words how much you make me feel content or- or happy, loved, it's like you were always here. i would have to be an idiot to let you go. besides, you know too much about me. you're stuck with me forever."

he still managed to make you laugh despite the tears running down your cheeks. you probably looked insane, laughing and crying at the same time.

"you're- i love you, james."

"i love you too, (y/n). don't ever be afraid to talk about anything, okay?"

"okay."

#james wilson x reader #james wilson #house md

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infiniteetcetera · 7 days

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I serve the ACOTAR fandom with a defense of Feysand, just not the one you’d expect…

One of the weirdest takes I’ve seen recently is the “Tamlin is actually the better guy so Feyre was better off with him.” Now listen, i’m not a Tamlin hater. Im also not a “Rhys has never done anything wrong and is perfect” type of fan. But this stance is simply so so wrong to me. Despite the flaws of all these characters I think one thing that is very consistent and just factually real in this series is that Tamlin and Feyre were wrong together and her and Rhys (even if you don’t like them together) make much more sense.

Tamlin and Rhys are foils of each other in a lot of ways and both go through a similar journey where their narratives flips in our protagonists view. The reality is, Tamlin has always had red flags and anger issues and been very paranoid and self righteous and Rhys has always been very secretive, manipulative, and controlling. He and all his friends tell Feyre this themselves. There’s textual evidence for both these takes in all the books of the series and despite claims that “Tamlin wasn’t himself in ACOMAF” or “Rhys wasn’t himself in ACOSF” I think if you’re actually paying close attention these two are written very consistently the whole series, flaws and all. They have many similar qualities that make sense from their similar backgrounds and positions in society. But there are differences too, and those differences are key in why Feyre chooses Rhys.

The first big thing is loyalty. Tamlin is loyal to his sense of morality and what he believes is right. Rhys is loyal to the people he considers his family, even above what is right. The two perfect examples of this are their separate paths in ACOTAR and their relationship with friends. Amarantha sexually pursues both Tamlin and Rhysand. They both have terrible histories with her that would make being in her presence awful, but Tamlin refuses to engage with her at all and his people suffer the consequences of it. IM NOT SAYING TAMLIN SHOULD HAVE EVER HAD TO DO ANYTHING WITH AMARANTHA miss ma’am is an irredeemable creep and we all know this, but this is the reality of Tamlin’s circumstances and choices, which directly parallel how Rhysand gave up his bodily autonomy and suffers for decades all because the extra bit of magic Amarantha lets him have is enough to keep his family hidden and safe. Even after all that, when Rhys has nightmares about UTM it’s not about what she did to him, it’s about Amarantha getting her hands on Cassian or Azriel. That’s what Rhys fears more than his lands being taken over or him literally being a sex slave, he doesn’t want his family hurt.

Regarding the second point, Feyre meets Tamlins Spring Court friends and simply doesn’t get along with any of them except Lucien. And Lucien, the one close friend Tamlin has, is constantly mistreated by him and canonically afraid of him. This is not just something new in ACOMAF, it’s sprinkled throughout ACOTAR too that Lucien is willing to contradict and argue with Tamlin because he’s Lucien but when Tamlin says what’s done is done it’s done. Meanwhile, we get snippets throughout the series of Cassian, Azriel, and Mor all directly laughing in the face of Rhys’ orders and straight up arguing with him as an equal. Even when Rhys does pull rank (happens maybe twice the whole series?) none of his friends are ever shown to be even slightly scared of him. It’s usually a combination of respect and guilt that keeps them in line.

I know that sounded like a Rhys defense blurb but it’s really not. If you value loyalty (which Feyre does) then yes, Rhys sounds better than Tamlin. But it should be noted Rhys is willing to do terrible awful gross things and cross villainous lines that Tamlin just won’t, and there’s value and honor in that too. I think this is best exemplified by a conversation Feyre has with Tamlin in ACOTAR about the war. Tamlin mentions he was so young he had to side with his family, but if he were old/powerful enough he would have fought for the humans no matter what because it’s just the right thing. Feyre our human narrator thinks it’s noble but says she wouldn’t do the same. Feyre’s first priority would be her family, even if keeping them safe meant not doing the right thing or doing something terrible like not fighting against slavery. THIS IS WHO FEYRE IS AND ITS ALSO WHO RHYS IS. It’s laid out for us so early it’s still a shock to me everytime someone claims something was suddenly changed in ACOMAF.

The next big thing for me here is going to sound simple but it’s personality. The few times Feyre sympathizes most with Tamlin and relates to him is when he’s discussing his flaws. When he mentions being called a wild beast she recalls how Nesta called her the same. She relates to Tamlin in being loved “thorns and all” and overall the thing these two bond over is this idea of being wild, untamed, and unrefined but that’s not who Feyre is, it’s who’s she had to be to survive. Feyre did not enjoy hunting, her dream was always to stop hunting and just paint and live an easy quiet life. Tamlin does have other interests, but overall the wild/hunter/violent part of him is predominant enough that he still clings onto it even though it does not benefit him. While on the surface these two seem to have things in common, Feyre’s shared traits with Tamlin are things she was forced into and doesn’t always like about herself.

Rhys on the other hand, these two are actually so incredibly alike. They have the exact same sense of humor (there are literally dozens of examples of this). They both value loyalty and protecting their family above all, even if it means being controlling, overbearing, and morally wrong. They both value being able to fight and take care of themselves because it’s necessary, but even this feeds into an I’ll do it myself mentality.

I’m going to get controversial here in saying this but I would argue even Rhys keeping the pregnancy thing from Feyre is something Feyre would 100% do in his position. That’s why she forgives him. Not because he’s got her manipulated or mind controlled to hell, but because it’s WHAT SHE’D DO TOO. Rhys wasn’t hiding it from her to force her to give birth or anything, he didn’t want her to worry and take on any burden. He wanted to control the situation and take care of her himself. That doesn’t make it right, but for someone who sees the world as he does (Feyre) it makes sense. There’s literally countless times throughout the story Feyre lies, sneaks off, and just generally hides thing from Tamlin, Rhys, and others. She goes to see the Suriel in secret during the war despite knowing Rhys would have let her go if she told him because she doesn’t want him involved and putting himself at risk. Her decisions are on a lesser scale than Rhys’ decisions, but that’s because she’s had less power than Rhys for most of the series. At her core though, Feyre’s morality and instincts are a lot like his. They are mates for a reason and honestly out of all of SJMs series, the pair of mates that make the most sense to the core of the term (except maybe Rowaelin)

Overall, I understand people have issues with this couple and with Rhysand that are valid (I can and will fight the Feyre haters though) but anyone who argues Feyre was better with Tamlin is just factually wrong and I think it’s a misunderstanding of her character and a weirdly infantilizing/patronizing take to make it seem like Rhys is manipulating Feyre all the time and she’s just too silly goofy to see it. We know for sure he is not manipulating her with his powers all the time (despite what the evil Rhys truthers think). Feyre might be younger and less experienced than Rhys but I promise you all she is not stupid. She knows what she’s doing with this man and has a lot more culpability in their relationship than people think. If that means you don’t like Feyre then I guess so be it (be wrong🙄) but I would say despite Rhys’ many flaws (and I do think there are a lot and a lot of people are valid in not liking him) him not loving Feyre and manipulating her is not one of them. He may still lie and keep secrets from her from time to time but this is something he confesses to her he struggled with in the past and would continue to struggle with in their relationship. Feyre knows this. She knows who Rhys is at his core even if some readers don’t and she loves him not because she thinks he’s flawless but because she understands his flaws and values his virtues over them. They’re still learning to work as a couple and pushing past the obstacles together, they’re both still healing from immense trauma the haunts them . Again they are not perfect, but they are definitely the most functional ACOTAR pairing we’ve seen so far and work not because they’re both heroes/good guys but because they’re both willing to be bad or good when the need calls for it.

#a court of thorns and roses #acotar #acomaf #acosf #acowar #feysand #pro feysand #pro feyre archeron #pro rhysand #feyre archeron #acotar rhysand #anti rhysand #anti tamlin #anti feylin #pro tamlin

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agendabymooner · 11 months

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closure ! max v. x ofc (hearth sister!ofc)

“it wasn't right—the way it all went down. looks like you know that now.”

summary: sylvie just wanted to prove that she was good enough for the red bull racing team, but everything that had to do with her history with max seemed to get in the way of her determination— and she made sure that he knew that.

content warning: panic attack (and its triggers), use of explicit language, mentions of absent father figure, j*s verst*ppen 🤢, christian horner, frenemies to lovers (ish), confrontational text messages (max and sylvie), max being oblivious to her mental state, mentions of max’s childhood (not detailed)

note: as someone who struggled to find peace at certain situations, I know what it’s like to struggle in asking for help. please remember that there are people that are more than willing to give you the support that you need.

(i may not be able to update any of the smau works for the next two weeks as i am out of town and i only have my ipad with me. i normally do the layouts on my computer. i’ll try my best!)

enjoy xx

masterlist

2016 Spanish GP

If fate worked like this all the time, she might as well jump off the cliff if any of her peers asked for it.

She had been pulled out of her lectures for the week only for her to sit and watch how the racing teams operated. She could only roll her eyes when Christian Horner recommended she should have her presence be known in the paddock and the track as she prepared to work in an F1 team.

Sylvie already knew how everything worked; she was going to be a driver, for fuck’s sake. She had been trained for it. She grew up attending the race weekends because of her father and grandparents. She knew everything now. Hell, she even had Toto Wolff for an in-law (practically). He could just rerun everything to her if she needed to remember.

Christian Horner clearly had a different intention towards her visit. He claimed that she needed to relive the experiences in the garage, the media pit and the hospitality. But she knew the truth.

She had a rapport, her history in the academy was obviously discussed to Christian at some point. How Christian never mentioned anything about her departure from the program to her sister, who now held parts of Red Bull and the other two teams, she never had an answer for. It wasn’t a secret to most. At least to those who were there the day she left.

Tilly was in the Mercedes area, leaving her little sister in the Red Bull hospitality as she listened to nothing. She felt so alone and isolated, her urge to go to Mercedes was overwhelming. But it wasn’t as if she could; Christian had already told her off about her role and position in the company.

It didn’t help that Max Verstappen, donning his number 33 shirt, was in the same building. He was quite adamant on keeping her company but she constantly avoided him, slipping out of his sight as soon as his eyes settled on her.

She found excuses, most of which had something to do with Daniel Ricciardo. The Australian hadn’t minded though, knowing that she felt uncomfortable being around other people especially around Max. Daniel never minded her excuses, instead making up a lie that’s believable to others. Just so she could escape.

Max’s family was there that weekend. Obviously, she knew his mother and Victoria, his sister. Max and Sylvie, the two 18 year olds, were practically soul twins. Born on the same day, grew up together, and had been attached to the hips since the day they could crawl— they were friends, no one just knew what had happened. His mother had always asked Sylvie’s mum about her and how she’d managed to let her friendship with Max dissipate like that. Victoria missed having Sylvie over for tea whenever she visited the Netherlands, asking Max about what he had done to let Sylvie go like that.

Jos Verstappen was a different story. He never liked Sylvie, only holding a certain amount of respect for Julius Hearth and Blanche Ford Hearth. He always wanted Max to be successful at motorsport and this meant that nobody could be as equally good as his son. Not especially when Max’s ability matched Sylvie’s. He always claimed that hanging out with “that girl” will simply distract Max.

Even if he nodded at his father’s direction, Max continued to be friends with Sylvie, spending more time together whenever she and her family would fly and meet with his family.

At the ripe age of 12, Max admitted to her that she’s the closest thing that he had to an imaginary friend. Like he was forced to grow up before he could even walk. She was the one who would pull up the PlayStation whenever he failed to please his father for the tournament of that time. Jos never liked her, but he didn’t know exactly what could’ve made him dislike her. Sylvie didn’t like him, either, because she couldn’t believe that she was the one who’d have to give Max the childhood that he deserved. There are times when she wished she could simply spew out the foulest words and lump him with her own father. Well… she had already considered him a shitty father, and there’s no changing of opinion now.

So for Sylvie to see Jos in the paddock, basically keeping his eye on his son like a pestering hawk? Yeah, she turned away from their direction.

Then another group of people came, the same arrogant smile all over their faces. They taunted her.

She could remember her last week at the academy, when she had enough. These boys questioned her abilities on the track as soon as she started, trying to get her to quit as soon as she could. She didn’t care about them, because whenever they’d race she remained on the top of their level. They hated her because of it. Then on her last day, she was left to be called a name that didn’t even fit her…

“Snake Sylvie!” Matt Bauer was what she called Max’s bitch. He never liked Sylvie and had always wanted to be in Max’s family’s good graces. Alongside him were Max’s two other friends. These three were the same incompetent fucks who never ended in Formula 2. Thus, ending their racing careers early. They were doing fuck knows what these days. Which was quite hilarious, if you were to ask Sylvie, because they were the ones who kept telling Max to “Keep working” or “toughen up and get the first place.”

She couldn’t remember their names when she met them again that weekend, her eyes were already blurry from the tears as she shoved her way through them. “Where are you going?! We’re just going to catch up, babe!”

She didn’t even stop, her feet speeding up as she attempted to wipe her tears away. Her lips let out a stutter of excuse me as she pushed her way into where the Mercedes garage was.

Second free practice didn’t start anytime soon and Sylvie was thankful for that. It, however, never stopped the camera by the engineering station from capturing the sounds of a sobbing girl and an image of her nearly soaked Red Bull shirt as she ran inside. Had she been stronger than this, she wouldn’t have ran to Toto.

As if he knew someone was coming his way, Toto Wolff immediately took his headphones off and turned. His face etched with worry as Sylvie wrapped her arms around his broad figure. She was hysterically sobbing and shaking, her tears almost soaking his white shirt as she kept her head tucked in his chest.

“Can we stop the camera? There’s an obvious situation going on in here and we need a moment,” Sylvie couldn’t hear his voice as it was something more of a rumbling noise. Meanwhile Toto’s stern expression made the cameraman do as he was told. “Hey, schwester, are you okay?”

She was relentless, sobbing as she kept her head down and her arms tightly wrapped around him. She couldn’t speak. Not breathe for that matter. It felt like the last day of the academy all over again. Having no voice felt like she was just as defenseless once more.

“Sylvie, do you want me to take you to your hospitality?” Her bloodshot red eyes, still tearing up, stared into his dark ones as her lips quivered and her head shook left and right. “Do you want your sister?”

Toto knew that the Mercedes hospitality was nearer to the Red Bull area than the Mercedes garage. So for her to go this far just for comfort… something told him that she didn’t want to stress out the pregnant woman and that she needed more than her sister.

He pursed his lips, feeling helpless as he kept an arm around her shoulder as they walked out of the garage. He nodded at his engineers as if he was letting them know about leaving for a moment.

He did his best at comforting her. Rubbed her back, shushing her quietly and gently leading her to the hospitality. People outdoors had gotten a glimpse of her situation and began to speculate, which forced her to hide her face once more as Toto glared at them.

“Come on, schatzi,” inside nobody had batted an eye on her. And instead of speculating, certain people merely looked at the two with concern. What the hell happened, they probably asked themselves.

She was too busy crying and hiding her face away that she hadn’t realized Tilly was already approaching the two. Sylvie didn’t look up until she heard, “What happened, bello?”

“She came to the garage,” Toto said quietly, looking down at his in-law with concern as he said, “she couldn’t say anything because she’s having a hard time breathing.”

“Oh, lovie,” Tilly whispered empathetically, her delicate figure reaching out to hug her little sister, “I’m sorry to hear that. Come, let’s sit down, yes?”

Sylvie could barely think throughout the process of moving from one place to another. They reached the Mercedes motorhome and found themselves in a private room, Sylvie’s lips were swollen and her tear-stained cheeks were red.

She wasn’t even aware that Toto left until his tall figure returned with two bottles of water in his hands. He simply placed it down on the empty table and exchanged looks with his girlfriend. They couldn’t even find a way to help her out of this.

“Listen, Sylvie,” the girl’s sobbing subsided for a moment as Toto said, “I will come back. Okay? I will check and make sure that you’re alright, but I have to go.”

“Yes, go,” Tilly nodded at him, “I’ll be here. Thank you for taking her to me, mon amour.”

“Alright, I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Toto murmured as he leaned down and pecked Tilly’s lips. “I love you.”

“And I love you,” Tilly smiled ruefully, her eyes trained on her little sister as Toto moved to stand and hug Sylvie. Sylvie could only hug his waist, not wanting to let go but had done so anyway.

“Take some time to breathe, lovie,” Toto said for the last time before he left hesitantly.

Nobody but the two were inside the motorhome, thankfully. Sylvie would be so embarrassed to cry in front of other people— as she had done so ten minutes ago. The silence was interrupted by Sylvie’s sobbing. Tilly couldn’t help but wrap her arm around Sylvie’s shoulders, trying to occupy as much space as a pregnant woman could. God, this was the only thing that she didn’t like about her pregnancy. She wasn’t able to comfort her sisters or anyone as much as she’d like to do.

The model couldn’t even think or try to let out a single word, only crying in her sister’s arms as she listened to her shushing. It didn’t take long until the tears dried up. Her energy drained from crying too much over some fuckers who couldn’t even make it to the podium. Them, and that one person would be able to do that on Sunday.

With exhaustion washing over her, her sniffles turned into something more silent as she shut her eyes. It didn’t take long for Tilly to notice this as she stood up, giving more space to the girl on the couch. “Get some rest, lovie,” Tilly said quietly, brushing Sylvie’s hair away as the girl drifted off to sleep.

She really didn’t like being here in Spain.

—

Argument just outside the motorhome was what had woken her up. It was normal to have frustrated drivers or team principals throw a bitch fit, but hearing an argument was a different story.

Her eyes stung from opening after her post-crying nap, her feet meeting the floor as she popped the lid of the bottle open, her parched body taking in the water that she swallowed.

She liked eavesdropping, she really did. She liked to provide her own input even if it’s not needed— she was nosey and everyone knew that. But what she had gone through just about an hour or so ago made her lose the energy and motivation to be her usual self.

It didn’t stop her from walking closer to the door and listening in to whatever argument was going on.

“She’s here to observe and work, she’s not here to spectate,” that was Christian Horner.

“But she’s not feeling well, Christian, she has to rest,” now that’s her favourite in-law. Not really in-law.

“Look, I get that you’re looking out for her but you have to understand,” Christian hissed, “she’ll be signing with Red Bull as soon as she graduates. I cannot have her working with the team if you’re constantly mollycoddling her just because you’re the closest that she has to a father figure. This is a professional work setting, Toto, and she needs to be disciplined to be a part of it.”

“Disciplined, in what way?” The sternness on Toto’s voice could kill, unless you’re just as stupid as Christian as Sylvie heard a scoff coming out of the Red Bull team principal’s mouth.

“Everybody’s going through tough times,” Christian said, “so what? Most of us are moving along anyways. Don’t treat her like a child and make exemptions. She’s never going to learn how to toughen up from it.”

“Hey!” Another voice rung out as the door opened slightly, making her step back as she heard an exclamation of, “That girl was distressed after she left your area— the place where she’s supposed to feel comfortable working in. It’s not her responsibility to bear the problems that are clearly happening within the area of your control, so don’t you tell us how to accommodate if you can barely take care of it. Alright?”

“Fuckin’ prick,” the door slammed shut as Sylvie’s figure remained frozen, her eyes watching as they met Lewis’ dark ones. He smiled gently and asked, “Hey. Are you feeling better now, sweetheart?”

She didn’t respond for a moment after she heard Toto say, “Just give it a rest. She’ll work on what she has to do, just let it go for now. Speak to Tilly, if you would like.”

“Don’t worry about them,” Lewis pulled her back to the couch and sat with her. He leaned back as he joked, “Lovers’ quarrel is what’s going on between the two.”

She chuckled quietly, unable to keep her facade. The laughter fell eventually as she muttered, “I didn’t mean to create such a scene. I’m sorry.”

“What? Hey, girl, no,” Lewis felt his heart break at her words as he reached and rubbed her shoulder for comfort. “Don’t be sorry for snapping. It’s brave of you to keep it together in the first place.”

“I really didn’t mean to make a big deal out of it,” her voice cracked as she tried not to cry. Thinking about it was exhausting and saddening. “It’s just— there’s—“

“It’s okay, take a deep breath,” Lewis told her softly. She did as she was told. Many would say that it’s a rare thing to happen but Sylvie listened.

“There’s just people,” Sylvie explained quietly, not looking at Lewis as she murmured, “I haven’t seen them for a while and… I felt so uneasy. Like it’s the final nail in the coffin. I didn’t want to make a big deal because it was at Red Bull. Nobody’s in there. Toto, you and Tilly are in Mercedes.”

“Sorry we couldn’t be there,” Lewis told her sympathetically. “But it’s a good idea that you went to the garage as quickly as you did. Now look, even Christian’s facing Toto’s wrath.”

“I don’t want to think about it anymore,” Sylvie whispered shakily, shutting her eyes close as she sighed, “I just want some closure.”

The next few days were dreadful. She hadn’t wanted to go back to England as much as she did that weekend.

The people she never wanted to see were there. The sad part of it was the fact that Max would continue to be a part of her life and job, whether she liked it or not. She’d have to tolerate him, no matter how much shit she had gone through because of him and those people around him. This was the second time she had seen him and felt so angry. It was like her life was a race. It starts out very well, with her at the pole. But then she crashes the moment she tries to take advantage and overtake.

On Sunday, Max landed in P1. Sylvie watched him pop the cork of the Moet out and showered his fellow podium winners with it. The text that she then received and sent spilled everything that had nothing to do with champagne. But rather explained how she ended up leaving the academy after that damn open tournament four years ago.

Max complains a lot, he could admit, but he never felt so guilty as much as he did when he practically berated her through a series of text messages. He always demanded answers to things that he believed had explanations, and he wouldn’t stop until he got it. But sometimes he wished his relentless demands were silenced by his conscience.

He felt extremely guilty and upset. It wasn’t because Sylvie Hearth refused to give in to his demands, but rather because her answers explained her hatred and anger. It wasn’t just any anger. It was an ounce of hatred and a lot of anger directed towards him.

Because really, he was the reason why Sylvie never turned out to be the first woman to become a Formula One driver. She never got the seat in Red Bull Racing and Max had gotten it instead. Now he understood why she would refuse to speak to or look at him as if they were childhood best friends and act like they were strangers.

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grippingbeskar · 2 years

Text

a welcomed distraction

obi-wan kenobi x fem!reader

word count: 9.8k (i have no idea how)

warnings: ADULT CONTENT MINORS DNI (oral f receiving, mxf intercourse, general sexual content) mentions of death, reader has deceased family so mentions of dead parents/siblings only briefly

a/n: sorry this is fucking LONG i dont even know why because there is hardly a plot but i tried. sorry but reader calls him master kenobi so thats hot? it’s fluff throughout tho bc CMONNNN ITS KENOBI HES SWEET AS. can’t believe the show is ending tomorrow i am so sad. manifest another season! okay bye!!

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

“You came all this way for me?” You smile at your former classmate turned Jedi council member, and he is just as gorgeous as you remember him. “I’m honoured.”

“You haven’t changed a bit.” Obi-Wan Kenobi bows slightly, his eyes never leaving yours. It was protocol, now that you had taken your rightful place on the throne of your home planet, but with the history you shared with the man in front of you, you quickly brushed off the gesture and came towards him. Pulling him into you, your arms wrapped around his significantly large frame. The last time you saw him, he was a scrawny padawan training under Qui-Gon, and had that ridiculous braid down his face, but seeing him now, you hadn’t realised how much you actually liked it.

“You certainly have. You changed your hair.” You pull away from him and he smiles at you, attempting to hide the slight redness that flushes across his face.

“Yes, well the council had that effect on me.” You link your arm through his as you lead him through the palace, your dress gliding smoothly across the marbled tile. “This palace is incredible. I take you finally redecorated?”

“You should of seen it when I started. Total shit show.” Obi-Wan’s laugh fills the room, and you try to slow the racing of your heart at the fact that he remembers so much about you, even if it was years ago.

You grew up in the Jedi academy together, your parents wanting you to hone your skills, and having no clue where else to send you as no one else in your family was Force-sensitive. You and Obi-Wan were fast friends, and it was with him that you spent most of your formative years. In fact, when you think of your time there, there is very little memory that isn’t filled with laughs and smiles caused by the Jedi knight. You used to talk about everything together, your future, and most relevantly how you would tear down the castle your parents built and start it fresh if you were ever given the chance to lead your home planet.

That seemed like a lifetime ago, and you never would have thought those ideas would be realised. You had two older sibling in line for the throne, so you thought your life would be similar to Obi-Wan’s now, him dreaming of sitting on the very council chair he now holds, you wanting to one day have your own padawan, and train them how your Master trained you. When your families home was attacked, however, you were the only surviving member of the royal household, and you were immediately thrust into the political turmoil of ruling a planet, and forced to leave your Jedi days behind you.

You remember where you were when you found out that your family had passed, and that you would be crowned Queen in the coming week, tasked with the impossible of bringing your planet together in the face of tragedy. Obi-Wan held you while you sobbed, tucked away in the furthest parts of his quarters in the temple while he whispered soothing promises that he would never be able to keep. You believed them anyways, but you were just children. Neither of you could hold the other to those things - not now.

It was enough for you, though, to have him here now. To remember what he meant to you, how you spent your years together, and that even if you could only have him in flashes, it was still the most real thing you ever felt.

“I never doubted you would succeed. You know I read every entry that came in about you in the Archives?”

“Really?” You knew Obi-Wan could feel your Force energy as it spun wildly throughout the room. You were out of practise and he was a council member, but he did an incredible job of hiding his reaction. Or ignored it.

“Of course. Even now, when I know you don’t need me checking up on you, I still feel like I am with you, like when we were young.” You both walked through the archway and the doors softly shut behind you. You had led him through to your private chambers to discuss whatever it was he had come here to talk about. In truth, as soon as you had heard it was him coming, everything else flew out the window, so you were completely clueless as to the official business.

“I’m the same. Did you get my holo-message? When you made the council?” Obi-Wan smiled warmly, and you knew the answer before he spoke.

“Yes - I was meaning to reply, everything has just been-”

“Crazy? I get it, don’t worry.” He just nods, and you hear him exhale. It had always been like this, both of you easily slipping back into the familiarity of each other, so when he didn’t respond to your message over a month ago, you knew it was just because he hasn’t had the chance to take a breath.

“I never thought it would be like this. The council always seemed so put together - I have no idea how they hid it so well.”

“It was the same when I came back home. My parents hid the stress so well, I thought it would be a breeze.” You still hadn’t unlinked arms as you both took a seat on the couch, only sliding away slightly so you could rest your back on the arm rest. You were surprised Obi-Wan didn’t pull away, he was always so shy when it came to physical affection. Maybe the years that had passed between you both had mellowed him. Either way, you were grateful for the small contact.

“Well, you have been handling things incredibly since you ascended. Thats actually why I am here.”

“Oh, right. Offical council business. I am all ears, Master Kenobi.” He laughs again, and his smile is still a little bit crooked when he laughs. You remember it being so when you were young. You remembered everything about his face.

“Yes. I am very offical now.” You laugh with him, and he seems to lose focus for a second as your laughter dies down, waiting for him to speak. “Right. The council wants you to come to Coruscant, for the national senate.”

“In person? Like, to sit in?” He nods encouragingly, but it doesn't seem to calm your sudden nerves.

“I know how it sounds - and don’t worry, I already told them about your preference to not speak to crowds.” You still feel a little sick, but that is replaced with warmth in your stomach when Obi-Wan’s hand rests on your lower thigh and squeezes lightly. “It would just be to the council and a few of the national board members. They are impressed with your diplomatic discrepancy, and want to see if it has potential to be implemented into the senate debates.”

“I feel sick even thinking about speaking in front of the council. Do you remember that time we broke the amulet - the one Dooku leant Qui-Gon? We had to explain it to Master Yoda, and I swear if you hadn’t spoken for me I would have passed out.”

“But I am the council now! It would just be me, and a few other people. I’d be there the whole time. They are truely impressed with you, they just want to hear more of what you have to say.” You tried to swallow the lump in your throat. You knew it was ridiculous - a Queen, leading a planet full of people, terrified to speak in front of a crowd. It had been something you had always struggled with, and even still today you avoided it as much as possible.

“I am flattered - truly! You know the councils opinion of me means the world, but I-”

“I know you can do this. Look around you! Look at what you have created. This planet was at a breaking point when you took leadership, in the face of tragedy. Your own tragedy, in fact, but now it is thriving! Your economy has been stable for its longest period yet, exports and imports have nearly tripled in your short reign, and even major crimes have diminished. Your people are happy, your planet is safe - your leadership skills could help millions more.” He spoke with such passion and truth, you almost forgot he was talking about you.

“You really have been keeping tabs on me.” You breath and he shrugs, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Like I said the night you left - I will always be your biggest supporter. Even light years away, I would be there for you.”

“I missed you, Obi.” His hand was still resting on your lower thigh, and your skin had become inexplicably hot under his touch.

“I missed you too. More than you know.” The room felt smaller than before, and it was then that you could feel him in the room. He was in front of you, but he was also all around you, like he was surrounding you in everything that was here. You hadn’t used the Force in a long time, and you almost forgot how overwhelming it was when you leaned into it, but you couldn't help it when it came to Obi-Wan. You would do just about anything he asked - which is why you were already feeling nervous about this speech you would be inevitably making.

“When is this hypothetical senate meeting, anyway?” Obi-Wan beamed at you, relishing in your defeated sigh.

“The next national senate is in three weeks, so just before that. You’ll do great, I know you will.” You don’t know how you pulled yourself away from him, probably the simmering nerves threatening to spill over, but you got up off the couch and walked over to the table where you left out your favourite wine, and poured two glasses.

“I suppose it would be bad taste to let my old friend fail one of his first solo missions as a council member.” He laughed as he reached the table, taking the glass, and his fingertips brushed your own as he did so. Everything he did shot sparks up your spine, but the way he was touching you without hesitation was so unlike the timid Kenobi you remembered. It was the only thing that had changed about him - well that and the hair.

“I appreciate the sentiment.” He took a sip of the wine, and coughed as he drank down the liquid. “You still have a taste for strong liquor, I take it?”

“What’s the point of drinking if it’s weak?” He shook his head, but took another sip. “Enough business talk. Tell me what you’ve been up to, apart from keeping tabs on me, apparently.”

“Oh, that is about all I do. My council meetings do tend to revolve around you, as does the rest of the world. That is how you used to see it, am I correct?” You nearly spit out your drink. Sarcastic Kenobi was one of your favourites.

“At least being on the council didn’t squash out your sense of humour. I was worried you would turn into one of them.”

“One of them? Did you expect me to turn into a little green man?” Now you do spit out your drink when you burst out laughing, and he joins you.

“You know what I mean! We always used to talk about how serious they were. You were a lot more of a rule follower back then, though. They thought I was the bad influence.”

“You were! That amulet was your fault, I stand by that.” You start shaking your head and finish the glass in your hand, the wine going straight to your head.

“Bullshit it was! You wanted to look at it!”

“Only because you told me it was cool! I was trying to impress you.” The confession seems to even catch him by surprise a little, but he recovers quickly by finishing his own glass.

“Well, I couldn’t have been half bad. I did graduate top of my class, didn’t I?” He rolls his eyes, a smirk forming on his gorgeous face. Oh Maker - you really did have a taste for strong wine.

“You will never let that go, will you?”

“Nope! I still remember how angry you were when I beat you.”

“Yes, because I spent all my time quizzing you when I should have been studying.” He grumbles a little, clearly still holding a grudge. Your cheeks go pink at the memory, because you think of what actually happened that night before the final exam, which was what set you apart when you graduated.

“I don’t seem to remember a whole lot of work getting done.” You can’t look at him when you say it. Maybe he forgot - it was years ago now. You certainly never forgot, but the way he brought up that night so casually made you think he hadn’t dwelled on it like you had.

“I - no, I suppose not.” So, he does remember. You don’t know what senario would have been more daunting. “You were always smarter than me anyways.”

“True.” He laughs and you beam back at him. “But you were always stronger. And more focused. I tended to get a little... distracted.” Now you were really testing his memory.

Obi-Wan shifts on his feet, and for a second you think you might have made him uncomfortable with the memory.

That night meant a lot to you - and it had been something you had always thought about. Even throughout all the years apart, that night before the final test, both of you huddled on Obi-Wan’s bed sharing the same textbook, you had never forgotten how it made you feel.

You were so nervous - you remember it because its how you feel now, with Obi-Wan slowly making his way around the table to come towards you. It wasn’t just the big test, though. You had feelings for him, of course you did, you still do. He was your best friend, pretty much your only friend, and he was the kindest, most loyal person you had ever met. You swallowed those feelings, however, because you were both going to be Jedi’s.

If only you had known.

You remember how close you were, because Obi-Wan is almost that close now. You could hear him breathing in the same, uneven pattern you hear now, although now it is significantly lower. You were both holding the textbook on the bed, reading opposite pages and making up little quizzes and questions to test each others knowledge...

* * * flashback * * *

“I am going to fail. I know it - with the Force in me I know it. I can see it now. My first premonition: a giant F on my stupid paper.”

“Don’t be dramatic. If anything, I’m going to fail. I know nothing about the history of Coruscant. Nothing!” He groans and shuts the book, shoving it off the bed, his hands coming up to cover his face.

“Now who’s being dramatic.” You dropped your head on his shoulder, and he froze up. You knew any kind of physical touch would distract him enough to make him forget about the test, at least for a moment. He would pass with flying colours, you knew he would. He’s the smartest person you know.

“I -I never can just - this is everything to me. And to you, of course. I just -” You lift your head from his shoulder and take his hands in your own. You see him physically tense up when you interlock your fingers in his.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi. You will pass this test. You will be the best Jedi there ever was, and you will be completely and totally fine. I promise.” You let your gaze drop to your hands, laying on your lap as you had turned to face him. His knuckles were nearly white with how tight he was holding your hand, and you were grateful you were looking down because you were blushing furiously.

“I would never have made it this far without you, you know.” You let out a breath - he would have succeeded in any senario. “I mean it. All these years, you helped me so much. I don’t know how to thank you.”

You look up and find his eyes, wide and vulnerable.

“You don’t have to thank me. You did the same for me. You know that. What are friends for?” His eyebrows raise and his mouth opens just slightly, before he regains composure and lets go of your hand.

“What are friends for.” He repeats and nods, like he’s trying to remember the sentence.

“Obi? Are you okay?” He just nods again. You can feel the shift in his energy, and you know that he is lying. “Hey, you are going to crush this test, okay?”

“Yeah.” He breathes and goes to pick up the book. You reach out a tentative hand and stop him, fingertips brushing the bare skin of his wrist. He freezes.

“Maybe we should stop reading for a bit. Meditate or something, distract ourselves.” Your hand stays on his wrist as he turns towards you. Both of you sit cross legged on the bed opposite each other, knees touching, You keep your hand on his wrist and he keeps his arm outstretched so you can touch him, letting it come to rest on your ankle.

“Distract ourselves.” He says, and his voice cracks.

“Yeah. I’m sure we can think of something to do other than study. I can count on one hand how many times we have actually gotten work done, anyways.” You catch his smile in the corner of your eye, and your hand is still on his.

“Maybe that’s why I know I’m going to fail.” He says defeatedly, and you shake your head, bringing one of your hands to the side of his face. His eyes go wide, and you snake your finger underneath the braid that hangs on his cheekbone.

“You are not going to fail.” He sucks in a breath.

“How do you know?”

“Because I know you. You know me, am I going to fail?” The question surprises him, and he creases his eyebrow, seemingly relaxing under your touch. Finally.

“Of course not. You could pass in your sleep.” You smile and he mirrors it. You feel the evidence under your palm.

“See? We are practically Jedi already.” You don’t know why, or what about this interaction makes you bold, but you lean in just slightly. His breath brushes against your cheek.

“I’m - I am-” He lets out a shakey breath, and you nod your head. His hands comes up to your face, holding you close.

“I know. Just - we need a distraction, right? To focus.” He nods, convincing himself and you.

“Right. To focus. Then we can be Jedi’s. After we...” You were pretty sure you weren’t moving, or breathing, or doing anything but blinking at him. You feel him all over the room, his energy a live wire wrapping around your chest. Everything about his Force was new and exciting, it was skipping around in spite of how still both of you were. You are sure yours was the same - speeding around him at the same rate that your heart was beating out of your chest.

“Obi-Wan, I-” Your eyes were still open when he pressed his lips to your own, but as soon as you realised what was happening you squeezed them shut and kissed him back.

He was warm. You don’t think you were cold, but Maker he was so warm. Your free hand pulled him closer by his robes and he eagerly leaned into you, lips moving faster and more urgently the more time passed.

You were both completely inexperienced, and you don’t know how technically good you were, but it felt so good being this close to him. Being close to him in a way that you had longed for all this time, a way you never thought was possible. You could feel the heat swirling low in your stomach, and Obi-Wans hands dropped from your face and fell to your hips as if sensing what you needed. He moved backwards on the bed, leaning against the wall and pulled you towards him, urging you to follow. You shuffled forwards not letting your lips leave his, afraid that if you stopped for even a second one of you would realise how very wrong this was, and would come to your senses.

Maker, you had never wanted to be wrong so much in your whole damn life. You moved up and straddled him, his hands tight against your hips holding you to him. Your back arched as one travelled up your spine, pressing your chests together. You were both breathing hard; catching tiny breaths between kisses. When you let out the smallest of sounds, something between a whimper and a whine, Obi-Wan’s mouth opened on pure instinct.

When his tongue slid into your mouth you returned the gesture with a grateful moan, both of you letting your hands glide where ever you felt. One of your own found his hair and you tugged on it. Something about his hair always made you want to feel it under your fingertips; when he would come late to training and it would still be all messed up from sleep, or when he got caught in the rain that one time, and showed up at your room with his braid all out of place, asking you to fix it for him. You had always wanted to feel it in your fingertips as you kissed him, and he leaned into it, returning your desperate noises with his own. Hands found skin under your shirt and you let him touch you wherever he pleased, silently begging for him everywhere.

Your hips moved against him, and neither of you were prepared for how good it would feel to have each other so close. For the first time since he grabbed you your lips disconnected, only to say the others name in bliss before finding him again. You pulled his bottom lip between your teeth and he moaned, eyes fluttering open to find yours, pupils blown out in lust.

“Sweetheart.” Obi-Wan says, and you feel your entire body shudder. His hand grips the back of your neck and pulls you impossibly closer. You were trying to keep your head on straight but when his tongue slips into your mouth again, you melt into his lap and take whatever he gives you.

Both of your hips were rolling out of sync, Obi-Wan shifting uncomfortably in his spot to get any kind of relief. You could feel how hard he was underneath you, and you wanted him to lay down - to move so you could feel it more.

If either of you did move, though, this would become more. Something you couldn’t excuse. The thought hit both of you at the same time, because you pull away and Obi-Wan leans his head back on the wall, tucking your head into the crook of his neck. You were both desperate for air, but more than that you were trying to calm yourselves down.

“We-” You started and he groaned.

“I know. Shit.” His hand ran down the back of your head, smoothing out your hair.

“Shit is right.” He lets out a breathless laugh, not letting go of your hip.

You don’t remember how long you stayed there, tucked away in his lap, but time clearly passed in a second as you woke up alone, in your own bed, and only just made the final exam with five minutes to spare.

Obi-Wan came down three minutes after you, and you both passed with flying colours, you beating Obi-Wan by one point, a multiple choice question about the history of Coruscant.

* * * flashback ends * * *

Obi-Wan moves around the table and now stands in front of you. You don’t know if he picked up on your little clue, or how much of your energy he can read clearly. Everything seems fuzzy to you now that he had reached you, and the wine was making your brain short circuit.

“You always had an affinity for distracting me.” You breathed a laugh as best you could. “I nearly missed the final exam that day, you know.”

“So did I! I don’t even know how I ended up in my room that night.” He tilts his head.

“You fell asleep. I didn’t want to wake you, so I carried you back.”

“You never told me that.” He just shrugs, like he didn’t risk everything, being kicked out of the academy for a simple gesture. If anyone had caught him, it would have been almost impossible to lie their way out of that. “You could have been caught. You should have woken me up.”

“You looked... peaceful.” He closes is eyes for a second, remembering. A period of silence passes, neither of you wanting to disrupt the fragile glass of a moment.

“Such a gentleman.” He laughs and takes the empty glass from your hand and places it on the table. He takes a step toward you.

“I should have come and found you sooner. After your families funeral and your coronation, they stationed me off-world, but I should of-”

“Stop, Obi. Of course you were busy, being a Jedi knight and all that. It’s what you dreamt of - what we dreamt of. For years.”

“I know, but I should of-”

“You know I was also running a planet. Kind of a full time gig.” You both laugh and he relaxes, shoulders slumping forward slightly.

“Yes, so I’ve heard.” You roll your eyes, and he smiles. “But I never stopped thinking about you. About that night.”

“I-” He steps forward and you nearly step back, completely surprised by his boldness. “Are you drunk, Obi-Wan?”

“No!” He scoffs and stays where he is, almost looking offended. “Well, maybe a little.”

You giggle in response as you stare up at him. He was taller than you now, and where before he stood at your height, now his breath only just brushes your forehead, towering over in front of you.

“I never stopped thinking about it either.” He stops smiling, eyes widening a bit. It is so like that first time on his bed, and it sends a wave of heat through you to remember him like that.

“You never brought it up again. I thought I had crossed a line.” He whispers, and you would miss the words if you weren’t staring at his mouth.

“No, God, everything was just so crazy after that day. It was only a few days after we graduated that..” Obi-Wan was nodding, knowing you were speaking of when you found out your family passed.

“Of course. It was-”

“A lot.” Obi-Wan breaths a laugh at your casual response.

“That is one way of putting it.” He concludes. You think back to when you found out your family had died. They were never particularly loving, and most of your childhood had been spent with the man in front of you, so trying to mourn them while also never really knowing them was all too consuming.

You were more distraught about the future you wouldn’t have - you had never planned to be a queen. You wanted to be a Jedi, to fight, or teach, just do something good in this world, and to do so with Obi-Wan by your side. It was like your life was pulled out from under you, and you only had about a day to process it before you were whisked back to your home planet to lead.

“You really lived the dream, though. Best Jedi in the galaxy, so I hear.” He drops your gaze, but stays close enough you can hear him smiling.

“Something like that, I suppose.”

“I always had imagined what it would have been like, if all this-” you look around at the highly decorated private quarters. Blue and gold streams through the tinted windows, lighting up the marbled floor. “-hadn’t happened.”

“I have no doubt I would still be second best.”

“Such a charmer, Master Kenobi. What happened to that shy little kid who used to hide whenever it was time to practise hand-to-hand?” He looks up at you, eyes ablaze with a look you can’t quite pick.

“I have changed, like you said.” Your breath caught in your throat as his tone lowered. You almost forgot how close your faces were. “I had thought about it too. What it would have been like if you had stayed.”

“Really?” He nods, holding your eyes. “So in your wildest dreams, you are only second best?”

“Maker, you are impossible.” He smiles through the sentence.

“I really did miss you, though. For a long time I thought about running away, coming to find you and Jedi-ing it up across the galaxy.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, all the time. Of course now, I am grateful for what I have, but I think we would have been awesome. Maybe a little reckless, though.”

“You? Surely not.” His eyebrows raise and you push him lightly on the shoulder. “I don’t think we would have made the council, though, like we used to talk about.”

“No?” He shakes his head.

“I think we may have gotten a little too... distracted.” Your eyes widen, and you have to blink a couple times. Is he... “If you had stayed.”

“But I didn’t.”

“You couldn’t.” He’s right. You would have stayed, if you had been given a choice. Stayed with him.

“Right.” You suck in a deep breath and try to blink away the fuzzy feeling in your head. You felt like you were spinning, and then everything went blank as Obi-Wan reached out and interlocked your hands.

His palms were rougher than you remembered, battle hardened you were sure. His hands were bigger, too, matching his larger frame. He still held you just as tight, knuckles going white as he pulled you toward him. He made no move to kiss you, but instead held you there, mere inches from pressing your bodies together.

“I almost forgot why I came here today. The flight over I had to re-read the message from the council.” You said nothing, just gripped his hand back with the same silent desperation. “Not once have I been unprepared for a mission, or gotten on a ship without knowing exactly what I plan to do. As soon as I saw it was your name, I just got on the ship and came to you.”

“I had no idea why you were here. I just told them that if you ever came, to let you in. No questions.” It was the reason he was able to come to your families funeral, and the coronation days after. It was pretty much the first change you made as Queen - the heightened security after the attack made it impossible for anyone to see you, but you couldn’t run the risk of him being turned away.

“See what I mean? Distracting...” His eyes drift down to your interlocked hands.

“Hmm. How am I supposed to get through this speech, then?” His eyes drift slowly up your body, roaming freely. You felt too hot - his gaze was burning into your flesh through your dress.

“You could always practise.” He finally pulls his eyes off the tiny straps of your dress, and looks at you.

“With you?”

“I am the council, after all.” His hand lets go of yours, only for his fingertips to drag upwards slowly, skimming the soft skin of the inside of your palm, up to your wrist.

“I- I don’t even know what I would say.” His hand stilled.

“I’ve never known you to be speechless. Try it now.” You huff a frustrated breath.

“Kenobi. This - what are we doing?” His fingertips are still touching your wrist when he pulls his eyes back to yours. You see them flick across your face, searching for some kind of sign of resentment or hostility. He would find none.

“You only call me that when your upset with me. Do you want me to stop?” You drop your head back and look up to the roof. Your eyes focus on the sparkling chandelier, twinkling your broken reflection back at you.

“I’m not upset. This just- it’s just not fair. I know that we can’t - better than anyone I know that we can’t. Well, you can’t.”

“We aren’t. I would never do anything to betray your trust.”

“Obi, that’s not what I meant.” You soften your tone. “I can’t handle having only half of you. You - my whole world has revolved around you for what feels like centuries. I could hardly stand watching you from a distance, because I know that- that what I want is not possible.” Your breath was shaking. You never imagined when he walked through the doors to the palace you would be laying yourself out like this - or maybe you knew yourself better than you thought. You did leave out your strongest wine.

“You can have as much of me as you would like.” He says lowly. It makes you realise that you aren’t kids anymore, and that maybe he doesn’t follow all the rules like he used to. Your heart jumps in your throat.

“You are on the Jedi council, Obi-Wan.”

“I know. I know.” He says, swallowing hard. “This isn’t something I take lightly. I know what it would mean. I would never have come if I didn’t.”

“You could lose everything you worked for.”

“I could.” And then Obi-Wan shrugs. At the idea of losing everything he cared about, he just shrugs. “I have met… people. New people, who have shown me that these kinds of things - there can be something like that in my life. If I choose it. After I made a decision, I took the first ship I could find and came to you.”

“I-“

“It helps if you don’t think about it too hard. I learnt many lessons from you, but not thinking is one that took me the longest.” He smiles, and your head hovers just in front of his chin.

Both of his hands rest on your hips and you step into him, his scent filling your senses. Vanilla.

“Do you remember that night, when we were sneaking around after training? We wanted to get those textbooks from the restricted section, and you were too scared to sneak past the Archivist?”

“Hey! I was- To be fair she was highly intimidating.”

“She was like a thousand years old.”

“With a very big cane!” You laughed and Obi-Wans hands held you tighter on your hips. “What about it?”

“This feels like that. We spent weeks trying to hide those books in our rooms, do you remember when Master Yoda came to speak to us, and-”

“Oh Maker, please do not bring that up right now. I am still embarrassed.” You laugh against him, and let your head fall into the crook of his neck. You take a second to breath him in. You don’t know how many times you have imagined this moment, where he finally comes to you.

“This was so much easier when we were kids.” You mumble into his robes, and one of his hands comes up to the back of your head, smoothing your hair down.

“I think it’s easier now.” Your eyebrows screw together, and he must feel it because he laughs. How could it be easier now? At least when you were kids you didn’t have any real responsibilities. Now, you had an entire planet on your shoulders, and he... “At least the council don’t have a cane.”

“And you said I was impossible!” His hands come up to your face.

“Come here.” He whispers, coaxing you closer. You leaned into him with little effort, and let your eyes flutter shut in anticipation. “You don’t know how many times I have dreamed of you.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea.” Your eyes were still closed, and you had no idea how close he was. His lips brushed against your nose as he lowered his head towards you, and you found yourself pushing up on your toes to hurry him.

“You think so?” You nod, feeling his lips against your cheek and his hot breath on the shell of your ear. “You are sure this is what you want? We can wait.”

“I have waited long enough.” Your eyes open and he smiles down at you, and finally, after years between, his lips finally reconnect with your own.

He moves slowly, teasing as he holds you in place with strong hands. You push up higher on your toes but he refuses to give you an inch of room, taking control and spinning you to the left so that your lower back is pressed up against the edge of the table.

He kisses you harder when he feels your hands in his hair, pulling and tugging in a desperate attempt to keep him here. A surprised sound is lost in his mouth when his hands drop to the back of your thighs, lifting you in the air before gently placing you on top of the table. You hear the breaking of glass next to you, and both of your heads slowly turn to the floor, where your broken wine glass lays shattered at his feet. He keeps kissing you as you look down, but his urgency makes you completely forget about the mess.

You wrap your legs around his back and force his body against yours, earning a groan from the back of his throat. His hands come down on your knees and slowly massage their way higher, bringing up the soft silk of your dress with their movement.

As he exposes more of your skin, his lips fall from your own and attach to your neck. You let out a moan at his teeth biting softly at the sensitive skin, and you feel him smile against you and then do it again.

“You’ve be- shit- been practising.” You tug at his hair again and he hums against your skin, the vibrations making your hips buck slightly.

“Only in my dreams.” The confession sends your mind blank, and you pull his hair back, attaching your lips back to his own. One of his hands holds your neck, the other coming to your lower back, letting you move your hips as much as you want. You can feel his hard length against your exposed core, the faint excuse for underwear under this dress hiding none of your arousal. You know he can feel it too, because he stutters out a few strangled moans every time you roll against him.

“Feels - good. Oh, shit it feels so good. I need you to-” You babble out as your legs lock tighter around him, and he pulls away. You pout, feeling like a child and reach out to grab his robes and pull him back to you.

“So impatient.” He smiles and kisses you again in a long, slow motion, enough to satiate you both so he can get a sentence out.

“And you are so good at being with-holding right now?” You try to focus on what he’s saying, but you can’t tear your eyes away from his lips, and how much you want them back. Want them in other places, too.

“You are right. If this dress wasn’t so pretty, I may have torn it off.” He tugs at the fabric of your dress, pulling it a little higher. The look in his eyes is purely hunger, and it makes your words get lost in your throat.

“I have a thousand dresses, you can-”

“Ah, but this one might be my favourite.” You shake your head and he presses a sweet kiss to your forehead. “Sit still for me.”

He drops to his knees in front of you, and the first thing you think of is how much you wish you could capture this moment forever. The way he looks, hair all over the place, robes pulled out in all directions; it is so unlike how put together you have seen him. Especially in any of the council addresses you have watched, which is all of them. He is always so proper and formal, but it took about twenty seconds with you to unravel all that composure, and it has you squeezing your legs together, searching for relief.

His hands run up along the exposed skin of your legs, fingertips just brushing the hem of your panties before coming back down to your knees. He was tall enough so that you could still see his face clearly if you leaned back, but you didn’t want to miss a damn second of the sight in front of you.

“You are still the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen.”

“Obi, please don’t tease me.” He looks up at you and presses a kiss to the top of your knee before urging your legs open with his hands, gently spreading you open.

“Are you going to pout every time you don’t get your way?” He presses sweet kisses up the inside of your thighs, taking his time to touch every sliver of skin available. “Always. So. Impatient.”

He hums each time he finds an unexplored stretch of skin, and occasionally gives into the temptation to softly bite and suck, leaving a row of marks no one but him will see.

“You’re an ass.” Your hands thread in his hair and he hums against your skin. Pushing your dress up higher over your hips, he slides you forward, edging you closer to the end of the table.

“You are so beautiful.” His hot words making you shiver, and you see the half lidded look in his eyes shoots awake when he sees your underwear. Thin, black lace hiding nothing from his intense gaze. It makes you, for just a second, want to hide from him, but then you remember who it is, and you let him take his time. His fingers tentatively hook over the thin fabric, and he seems to just stare for a second, enjoying the sight of his hands against your skin. “So beautiful.”

He drags the underwear down painfully slow, and you wriggle on the table to get him to move faster, but he doesn’t. He is meticulous, and you can see his eyes flicking to each of your legs, wanting to watch like he was unwrapping a present.

“Is this how you usually start offical council meetings, then?” He looks up at you, a half grin on his face and kisses your upper thigh. You can see a few of the marks he has left from this angle, and it makes your heart skip.

“Yes. The council is very close.” You start laughing, hands holding him tighter to stay upright.

“Going to be a busy few weeks for me then.” He bites a little harder on your thigh, and you let out a squeak. “Sorry, Master Kenobi.”

“Maker, it sounds so good when you say it.” He is so close to your centre you can feel your legs start to shake in anticipation. Your hands begin to gently tug and massage the roots you have tangled your fingers in, and he groans.

“You like it when I call you that?” He nods, leaning his face against the soft skin of your inner thigh. “I’ll call you that all day if you-“

“If I what?” You squeeze your eyes shut in embarrassment, but his hand taps your back, making them open on instinct. “You want me to taste you?”

“Yes, Master Kenobi.” He moans and his tongue finally dips into your pussy, soft and gentle. You cry out, and it is clear that he was holding back, because as soon as he hears your desperate sounds, he hooks both of his arms under your legs and throws them over his shoulders.

He holds you to him as his tongue laps at you, the sounds of your arousal hidden under both of your groans of approval. He was far too good at reading your body, knowing exactly where you need him without having to say anything but praise. He takes your clit into his mouth and sucks, and everything goes white.

The rough grip you have in his hair is the only thing keeping your body upright, and you can only hope he would tell you if you were hurting him because you need to see the sight before you. He occasionally looks up to you to watch you, and a small smile appears on his face every time he catches your eyes. One of his hands somehow snaked between your legs, because you feel his finger curl inside of you, setting a slow, delicious pace that has you panting.

“I love it when you call me that.” He murmurs, and then takes your clit back into his mouth, sucking and kissing until you aren’t sure if you are still on the table, or floating in the air.

“Oh fuck, Master.” He slows his finger inside of you and his mouth turns to kissing any skin except where you need him the most. “You’re so good. Please, I can’t-“

He slides two fingers back inside of you, and his mouth returns to your throbbing clit, and your hips roll into him on impulse. He was surrounded by you, legs still clamped around his head and shoulders, and his other arm was gripping across your lower back, ensuring you were close enough.

“Taste so sweet.” He says into you, and you can feel the years of built up tension simmering low in your stomach.

“Mmmfuck- please, please don’t stop - shit.” He groans into your pussy, and flicks his tongue right where you are most sensitive, making you whimper his name through gritted teeth. You were getting close, which is why you couldn’t hold back your groan when he pulled away again.

“Where’s your bedroom?” He leans his cheek leaning against your thigh, mouth still burning kisses into your skin like he can’t pull himself away. Both of his hands were now grabbing at the bare flesh of your ass, massaging and coaxing you to the point where you were almost completely off the table.

“Just come up here-”

“No. We can’t do this here.” He presses one more kiss, lower down on your leg before unwrapping your legs from his head. His hands drag slowly along the skin, and he lets his eyes wander around the sight in front of him. You liked seeing him like this, unabashed and staring like he had all the time in the world. Because he does.

“You don’t want to fuck me on this table, Master Kenobi?” He stands and lets out a long, loud groan, all of the air in his lungs brushing against your chest as he tucks his head into your neck.

“I want to have you on every elaborately decorated piece of furniture in this room. I want you to be like you were ten seconds ago, begging me not to stop.” Your legs almost start to shake just at his words, and you can feel how close you were to finishing on his mouth when your hips jerk against him, making a mess of his robes.

“Why don’t you, then?” You want him to. You would ignore every royal duty just to meet his every need. His strong arms wrap you against him and lift you into the air, and your arms wrap tightly around his neck as you squeal in surprise.

“Because when I take you for the first time, I want it to be the only thing you can think about when you go to sleep, because you are all I think about.” He spins around and walks further into the room. “Bedroom?”

“Through there. First door on the left.” You don’t fight him on that, pointing towards the smaller hallway and he kisses you sweetly while he walks. You can’t help but smile when he walks straight past the room you pointed out. “Missed it.”

“Hm?” He pulls away from you, eyes still half closed and looks around, quickly correcting course. “See? Distracting.”

You laugh as he bursts through the door, revealing your room. He’s still kissing you, eyes squeezed shut when he walks into your bed, so when he gently lets you go and you fall back onto the soft covers, you get to see his reaction as he looks around the room.

It is not as elaborate as the rest of the castle. When you were designing it, you wanted it to be a place you could check out of all the royal mess outside, and be at peace. You have even mediated a couple of times, not that you were very good at it nowadays. You designed it around the time you felt most comfortable, a place where you always felt safe.

“This looks like our rooms. From the academy.” He looms over you, taking in the grey metallic walls with wide windows, light stuttered by the cascading blinds. You shrugged shyly at him.

“I didn’t want my room to be the same as the castle. I guess I was a bit nostalgic when I designed this part.”

“I like it.” He says, still not looking at you. Your dress had fallen back into place, covering your legs, and you were growing impatient. You began to drag the fabric up, shimming on the bed.

As Obi-Wan had his back turned, examining the few things you kept on your desk, you took the entire dress off, leaving you completely naked on the bed, and Obi-Wan completely clueless.

“I kept my desk in the same place.” He observed, running a hand over the plain wood.

“Call it a coincidence.”

“Oh, I’m sure it-” He turns back to you and loses track of his words. It all happens so fast, but in the next second Obi-Wan is on top of you, kissing your mouth, your neck, down to your collarbone. Once he reaches a part of your skin he knows will be hidden, he starts the same slow, meticulous pace of biting and dragging his tongue, exploring.

His mouth starts to go lower, and your breathing quickens as his lips ghost along your stomach. He looks up at you, and you realise he’s still wearing clothes.

“I want to see you.” You whine, and he crawls back up your body, kissing a trail of heat back to you.

“Here I am.” You roll your eyes.

“More.” You tug at his robes, the various layers getting tangled and caught in your hold. He straddles you and sits back, eyes roaming your body as he begins the process of undressing. He had you boxed in so you couldn’t hurry him along, but you sort of enjoyed watching him.

He undid ties and fabric, each layer revealing more of his muscled torso. He finally reaches the final layer, pulling the shirt over his head with one hand. Your hands run along the exposed skin, and its your turn to drink in the sight of him. You try your best to memorise every scar and ridge on his abdomen, but you are impatient, and can’t stray your eyes back to his chest when he begins to pull his trousers down. He leans back down before you get a good look, but feeling him naked against you is almost better than seeing it.

“Is this okay?” He says breathless from the effort of holding himself back. You kiss him in response, shifting your hips to allow easy access, but he doesn’t move. “I want to hear you say it.”

“Yes. This is very much okay. Like, the most okay thing in the world right now.” He smiles and kisses you again, one of his hands traveling down the curve of your hips while the other comes up to your face, cupping your cheek. “Are you sure this is what you want? What I said before, I didn’t mean it like-”

“This is all I want. All I have wanted since that night in my room.” His face is hard - serious. You’ve only seen him like this in training, almost determined to make you believe it. The hand that travelled down your side cups your ass and moves your hips to lay flat on the bed. “I haven’t ever done this before. I - I don’t know how well I-”

“Anything you do is perfect. Perfect. Please.” You can still see some of the unsure nerves flitting in his eyes, and your mind drifts back to earlier, to what gave him that extra confidence boost. “Please, Master Kenobi.”

His teeth graze against your bottom lip and he slides into you, the room suddenly alive with both of your desperate gasps of relief.

“Oh, fucking Maker.” He groans into your mouth, before sliding out of you completely, and then back in. The process is blissful torture, and you feel every perfect inch of him inside you, hitting something that makes you see stars through the plain tiling of your roof. It wasn’t that he was larger than anyone you had been with before, but it’s just because it was him. He felt so perfect inside you, like he was made just for you, and even with his confessed inexperience his slow and controlled pace has you reeling.

“You feel so good- ohmygod- please go faster I-” You can hear him moaning something low under his breath but with the added stimulation of one of the rough pads of his finger on your clit, you don’t have the capacity to try and listen. You just continue to babble out plea’s and cries, the build up from his mouth before hitting you like a speeder.

“Faster, sweetheart?” You nod and squeeze your eyes shut. The hand on your face drops to hold himself up beside your face, hand finding yours and interlocking your fingers. “Like this?”

He starts to go faster, not slamming into you but just enough to build you up brick by brick. It’s mind numbing, the pleasure drawn out, every time he drove into you he was seemingly exploring a new part of you. He was kissing your collarbone, switching between each side, leaving wet kisses in his path, kissing your mouth each time he switched sides.

You couldn’t speak anymore, his relentless thrusts getting harder every time you moaned out his name into the room. Your back arched into his chest, and you could feel the flex of his abs against you.

“Baby, I’m - you feel divine I can’t -“He all but bites down on your shoulder and you try to move your hips to meet him, encouraging silently.

“Don’t stop! Please, please, pl-lease -oh fuck!” He went faster, the sound of skin on skin echoing. You were burning up underneath him, everything inside of you zapping into place for your inevitable crash. You were a shaking mess, and he was ruining you in the best way, every relentless snap of his hips had you begging for more, even though you weren’t sure how much more you could comprehend.

“I’m gonna- sweetheart” His voice cracked and you forced yourself to open your eyes.

“Cum inside me, please. I want you to-” You sounded more desperate than you wanted to admit, but from the broken sound that came from Obi-Wan, you would say it over and over again. His hips stuttered only for a second, and he came with the sound of your name on his tongue.

With the way his hand was working you, and the incredible sounds he was making in your mouth you followed him into his orgasm, the blood rushing to every nerve ending and blanketing over your entire body.

Everything went blank and you were almost positive you passed out, the feeling of pillow soft lips kissing up and down the front of your throat bringing you back to your body.

“Obi-Wan.” You managed and he was back to your lips in a blink, drinking you in like he still hadn’t had enough of you. You hadn’t had enough of him, either, and you returned his force with as much energy as you could summon. He had fucked you tired, though, because you could hardly pick yourself up.

“So beautiful.” He laid down next to you, clearly just as exhausted. You turned and watched as his eyes closed, and he wrapped an arm around you, bringing you closer to lay your head on his chest. Your hand comes up beside your face, tracing aimless lines along the multiple scars on his chest, and you sit in silence, trying to regain control of your mind enough to speak full sentences.

“Can you stay?” You whispered up at him when you felt his breathing even under your chin. He shuffles down on the bed, pulling back the covers enough so you can both easily slide underneath them.

“I’m afraid you will never get rid of me now.” He pulls you back to him, bringing your leg to rest over his abdomen, how he knows you like to sleep.

“Good. Council’s never getting you back now.” He laughs and kisses the top of your head, making you blush at the intimate gesture. “It wasn’t a coincidence. The room, I mean.”

“No?”

“I just really liked yours. It was always cleaner than mine, and it was warmer. I guess I thought it would bring me back to those days if I had a bit of it here.” Your wrapped your arm further around him, practically bear hugging him.

“Well, it is warm. Definitely not clean, though.” Your head shoots up at him.

“Hey! Not like I was expecting handsome strangers to whisk me to bed every time a council member asks to meet with me. You can clean it for me later, since you were so good at it.” You expect him to retort, but he just smiles.

“Handsome?” Your eyes nearly roll out of your head, but after what just happened, your more than happy to feed his ego.

“Very handsome. Bit of a light weight, but is a great fu-”

“Okay, that is quite enough.” He laughs and covers your mouth. You squirm away from his hold to continue the assault of profane compliments, but he easily holds you down. It turns you on a little more than you can admit, but you store the information for later considering the worn out look on Obi-Wan’s face.

“You know, when we get up in the morning, I’m going to have to explain to my staff who you are.” You say as you tuck the blankets up under your chin, nuzzling your face into his neck.

“And what will you tell them?”

“What should I tell them?” You feel his chest rise and fall and little uneven.

“A- I guess telling them a Jedi would only confuse them more. And me.”

“We can figure it out tomorrow.” He just nods, shifting himself under the covers.

“Hmm.” You feel the sound melt into the top of your head as he presses another kiss to your hair. “There is an explanation that would comply with both our interests.”

“And that is?”

“After a long night of negotiation, I was finally able to convince you to accept the contract of building a Jedi training academy on your home planet. One that I would personally oversee, hence the need for overnight accomodation.” You shoot up out of bed, bringing the sheet up only to cover the bare minimum of your chest.

“You what?” He smiles and leans up on his forearm.

“That was another reason I was here. They know your expertise exceeds your diplomacy - and they still talk about how much of a loss it was, when you left. The council wants you to come back, in a sense.” You think you were about to cry. “It was my suggestion, my first when I made council, to consider the construction of the Jedi academy here. It is just as safe as Coruscant, and with you as a ruler, the Force is just as strong. It would be a chance for you to live the life you dreamed of, while also adhering to your duties.”

You were crying. Definitely crying. Obi-Wan sat up and wiped a tear from your face, his brows pressed together in worry.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, I-”

“Upset me? This is the most incredible thing I... Maker, why didn’t you tell me earlier!?” He blinks a few times, and goes to speak but you cut him off, excitement taking over your need for sleep. “Of course I want to do that! It’s - that would be - wow, there’s so much I would need to do! I am so out of practise, I hardly even meditate anymore. Oh, and the council would need to-”

Obi-Wan kisses you, probably to shut you up, but you can feel him smiling underneath your lips.

“Why didn’t you say something?” You whisper to him, and a small blush appears across his face in the dim light of the room.

“I was distracted.” His eyes drop to where the sheet hangs loosely across your chest, and you breath a laugh. “Would you - the council sent me here to assess. See if I would be open to teaching here, if you would be, us, together. In the future, they even spoke of a Padawan-”

“I- I can’t believe this. I- all I ever wanted was to do this. You know that, right? My dream was to train, to work with the council, fight for what was right, and to share that with others.”

“I know. That is why I suggested you, not that they needed much convincing. You were the golden child.” You laugh tearily. The idea of getting to have that life back, while also being able to grow everything you have worked for since returning home. You let your weight fall into Obi-Wan, and he tucks you back into the bed, soft covers gliding along your skin.

“There’s so much we need to talk about.” You mumble, eye closed, already half asleep.

“We can figure it out tomorrow.” He repeats to you, and his breathing begins to even out behind you.

Everything you had ever dreamt of had practically come true, and it was fitting that it had all started with Obi-Wan Kenobi. He had been the source of almost every single happy memory in your life, and beginning this new chapter with him by your side, you knew that he would be responsible for the rest of them, too.

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