#also lets all pretend i spent time on the shading in this piece like i do my others 🙃

[westywallowing]

what I wouldn't give to get some coffee from her cafe/bakery 🥺

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous fanart #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #mlb fanart #mlb #ml fanart #ml ladybug #westy doodles #i just gotta draw them making some lil drinks like i just gotta #shes so cute!!!!! #like shed make so many peoples mornings #also lets all pretend i spent time on the shading in this piece like i do my others 🙃 #i hate shading AGDJFJ

[theladyofdeath]

I Burn For You {Eight}

An A Court of Thorns and Roses fanfiction. Elriel. Period AU. Regency. 19th Century.

Written alongside @snelbz .

Click here to read the summary and for more chapters!

A/N: To be honest, this chapter is just really sad. I'm sorry....but, also I'm not sorry at all. ;) Thank you for reading! We hope you enjoy.

T/W: none

Azriel stood outside of Gwyn’s door, knocking in the most obnoxious manner. It was nearly nightfall now and Elain had spent the past two days with him, cooped up in his room, pretending like the rest of the world, like the ton, did not exist. It had been paradise, a personal nirvana he never wanted to end.

When she had left that morning, he felt like a piece of him had gone with her. Naturally, he longed for a drink in her absence to distract him from wanting to run across town, straight to her, but he forced himself to continue his break from the bottle and went towards the docks instead, where Gwyn’s loft was.

“Is there a reason you are trying to break down my door, my lord?”

Azriel spun around to find Gwyn at the bottom of the rickety iron staircase, a humored brow raised. She held a bunch of celery and carrots in her arms.

“I bedded Elain.” He had not been planning on getting to that point in their conversation, but he blurted it out of his mouth as if he was being controlled by someone else.

Gwyn’s humor faded and shock controlled her features. Then she was hurrying up the stairs toward him. “Well what are you waiting for? Inside, inside!”

Azriel threw open the door, so hard that he feared he nearly split the wood, and Gwyn followed him inside before shutting the door behind them and latching the lock. He felt the lock would not do much if someone was truly trying to break down her door, but perhaps it gave her peace of mind. Practically throwing her vegetables down on her table, she asked, “Now, when you say bedded—”

“I defiled her,” he clarified, realizing now how much he truly needed to speak with someone about this, how much he needed to sort his thoughts. “Many times. Continuously. For the past forty-eight hours.”

Gwyn’s cheeks turned a soft shade of pink. Perhaps he was sharing too much. He told himself to rein it in. “Apologies, Az, but I thought I had heard news that she had accepted the Prince’s proposal.”

Azriel flinched. “She did.”

Gwyn blinked. “I’m sorry, I’m not following. She is engaged to the prince?”

Azriel nodded slowly.

“But you just deflowered her?”

He continued to nod, lips pursed.

Gwyn stared at him for a moment. “Yes, no, I’m most definitely not following.”

Azriel groaned and let his face fall into his hands. “She accepted the prince’s proposal then I kissed her in the gardens - well, first I kissed her in the carriage. Actually, she is the one who kissed me in the gardens. Nonetheless, she showed up on my doorstep the next day and told me that she loved me and then one thing led to another.”

“And is she still intending to marry the prince?” She asked, gathering her forgotten groceries and heading for the small kitchen.

Just as he was about to respond with a resounding absolutely not, he paused. They had confessed to loving one another and she had removed her ring, but… Was this a one time thing? Before she marries the prince?

She had said that if she wasn’t going to marry for love, she needed to know that someone had loved her. He’d assumed that, since they loved each other, she could call the marriage off.

But how exactly does one call off a marriage to royalty?

When he did not answer, Gwyn frowned. “Az—”

“I love her,” he breathed and met her gaze. Gwyn’s eyes softened. “I love this woman and all that she is.”

Gwyn nodded as Azriel fell onto her creaky settee. “I know. And she loves you, it seems. She would be a fool not to.”

Azriel’s cheeks were tinged with pink as he nodded. “Perhaps…but what kind of man would I be if I asked her to call off a marriage to royalty? We did not speak of it, of her marriage, not after what we did, not once. If she still plans to marry Tamlin, I cannot ask her to give that up.”

“But you wish to?” Gwyn asked, gently, as she joined him on the sofa. “You wish for her to call off her engagement and marry you instead?”

Azriel hesitated but nodded. “Yes.”

“You hesitate,” she said and turned to the side to face him. “Why?”

“I do not know.”

“Yes, you do.”

Azriel gave her a pointed look. “Elain is a lady. She is a prominent part of the ton. Her family has been for centuries. Her sisters are a viscountess and a baroness.”

Gwyn nodded along as he spoke. “And you are a Baron. What of it?”

Azriel’s body deflated as he sank back against the cushion. “When we traveled this past year, I felt more alive than I had in a long time. We lived so simply, so freely. I could not get enough of it. Now, I crave that freedom. I do not think I wish to be a part of the ton any longer. I wish to live without their rules and their judgements. My title means nothing to me.”

“And it does to Elain?”

“Elain does not always love the ton but it is a part of who she is,” he replied, voice low. “A part that I do not see her parting with.”

A silence grew between them. Gwyn didn’t reply, because what could she say to that? High society was as foreign to her as some of the places they’d visited during their travels, though she understood his discomfort. The one event she’d attended with him had been dazzling, but nothing she’d want to deal with on a daily basis.

Her voice softened, as if the walls suddenly had ears, as she asked, “And what do you intend to do if the prince realizes his bride is no longer a virgin?”

Azriel swallowed. He wasn’t sure if there was any way he could be implicated. No one knew about the kiss in the carriage, there had been no one with them in the gardens, and the only ones who knew she’d been with him the past couple days were his staff, who were loyal to a fault.

But Elain would be. There was no way Tamlin wouldn’t notice. By the time she’d gone home, he was able to enter her without a hint of pain crossing her face.

“Am I a horrible person?” He asked, and the question was genuine. “Have I done something I should not have?”

Gwyn gathered her feet beneath her. “Do you feel like a horrible person? Have you any regrets?”

Azriel took a minute to answer but shook his head. “No. I have no regrets.”

“You are a man in love,” she said, and reached over to squeeze his hand. “The heart wants what it wants and there should be no shame in that. I only worry for Elain, for I know how cruel this world can be to a woman. I cannot imagine the pressure that women of nobility face when it comes to their virtue.” Azriel looked away from her as she continued. “You must speak with Elain…speak with her about how she feels, about how she is going to go about her future. You must be honest with her, tell her all that you have told me.”

She was right. He knew she was, and the brutal realization was terrifying. He did not know what to do. Yes, he loved Elain, loved her more than he thought possible. Yet, he could not ask her to give up everything for him. Give up royalty. Give up nobility, all she had ever known. He could not ask her to be shamed by the ton…again.

“I know. I will speak with her,” he promised, quietly. 

“You need tea,” Gwyn announced and rose from the couch to make it.

“You are a good friend, Gwyn,” Azriel said, eyes following her. “Thank you.”

She gave him a mocking curtsy and a wink before turning to search for her teacups.

Azriel chuckled as he laid down on the settee and closed his eyes.

~.~.~.~

As Elain’s carriage bumped along the cobblestone pathway, she played with the ring she’d slipped back onto her finger. It twirled constantly, as if it, too, felt as if it didn’t belong there.

Two days.

Two glorious days spent with Azriel. In Azriel’s bed. Making love with Azriel. It almost seemed as if they were making up for lost time.

But it had also been two days that she had not been at home and she had no idea how many times her sisters had tried to visit her. She was grateful their father was out of the country, otherwise he certainly would have wondered where she had been.

After returning home to the curious eyes of the staff, Elain had quickly bathed and dressed herself. She was ready in record time, simply braiding her wet hair back, rather than wait for it to dry and be styled. In less than an hour, she’d been in and out.

She first stopped at Nesta and Cassian’s home on the edge of the city, but was informed by their doorman that the Baron was on a hunt with the Viscount. He told her that Nesta was visiting their sister and she thanked the kind man before hurrying back to the carriage and heading towards the river house.

Elain swallowed as the carriage halted before the elaborate front steps. Without waiting for the driver to dismount, she burst out of the carriage and was knocking on the door.

After Miryam informed Elain that her sisters were in the nursery, she nodded her thanks and made her way up the stairs, pausing just before she stepped through the open door. She could hear Nyx’s infectious giggling and both of sisters voices. They seemed to be in good moods, which was fortunate for her.

Taking a deep breath to steel herself, Elain entered the nursery.

Nyx may have kept babbling, but both Feyre and Nesta fell silent from where they sat on the floor with the babe.

“Hello,” she said, smiling and giving them an awkward wave.

Though Feyre continued to stare, Nesta, it seemed, had found her voice. “Where in the hell have you been?”

So much for the good moods…

Oblivious to the tension in the room, Nyx cooed excitedly and started crawling towards his aunt.

Elain melted at the sight and scooped him into her arms, peppering kisses on his chubby cheeks. “Hello, my darling,” she whispered, smiling before bracing herself and joining her sisters on the carpet. She set Nyx on her lap as she sat, fanning her skirt out around her. “I have been…out.”

Feyre and Nesta looked at one another. It was Feyre that said, “Elaborate.”

“I have visited you twice in the last two days, only for your staff to enlighten me that they had no idea where you were,” Nesta snapped, far less calm than their youngest sister.

“We were worried,” Feyre added.

Elain frowned, feeling guilty. That had not been her intention. With Azriel, she had completely lost track of time. Nothing outside of his home mattered.

When Elain did not speak, Feyre reached over to pat her on the knee. “Elain.” She met her sister’s eye. “You may speak freely with us. You know this.”

Elain took a deep breath and nodded. She knew she could tell her sisters anything, that there would never be any judgement. “I spent the last two days with Azriel. At his townhouse.”

Feyre’s eyes shot to Nesta but they both remained quiet, waiting for her to continue. When she did not, Nesta asked, “Why?”

Nyx giggled as he picked up a rattle and shook it.

A hundred different responses flooded Elain’s mind, but she did not hold back. If she was going to confide in her sisters, if she was going to ask for their advice and council, she had to be honest. “Because I could not allow my first time to be with someone whom I do not love.”

Her eyes burned as the words left her mouth, and before a tear could even fall, her sisters were beside her, their arms around her.

Nyx, not quite understanding what was happening, was trying to climb into Feyre’s lap. They pulled apart and even as Elain sniffled, trying to stave off the tears, she couldn’t help gazing adoringly down at her nephew. The image flashed in her head unbidden, a boy with golden-brown hair and the most beautiful hazel eyes she’d ever seen, a myriad of browns and green sparkling, as he looked up at her with a gap toothed grin.

It was so clear, so vivid, that Elain could have sworn it was a vision of the future, but she shook her head and ignored that fact that those hazel eyes were the same color as Azriel’s.

And so Elain told them everything. She started at the beginning, over a year ago, of the first time they’d met. She told them of the time he’d sketched her, at Cassian’s country home. Despite her shame, she told them of her juvenile behavior at the party following Feyre’s wedding, when Azriel had brought Gwyneth. It all spilled out after that. The kiss in the carriage, the gardens, and then how she’d wound up knocking on his door.

“I can’t help but notice you still wear the prince’s ring,” Feyre said, cradling a dozing Nyx in her lap, rocking side to side. “Do you…intend to follow through with the engagement?”

Elain stared at the rug they sat on and focused on her breathing. “When I was at Azriel’s, when we were lost in one another’s arms, in each other’s words, everything seemed so clear. Now nothing seems clear at all.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “I do not know what to do.”

Nesta shifted where she sat until her legs were crossed beneath her. “I think it’s rather simple.”

Elain’s eyes shot open and she looked incredulously at her sister. “Pardon?”

Nesta shrugged. “Do you love him?”

That burning returned to Elain’s eyes. “You know I do.”

“Then it is simple.” Nesta shrugged. “You will refuse the Prince and marry Azriel.”

“It’s not that simple,” Elain hissed, then felt bad when Nyx’s lip quivered. She reached out a hand and patted her nephew’s head until he was dozing off once more. “It is not that simple,” she said again, much quieter. 

Nesta’s lips formed a straight line. “Why not?”

Elain looked back at her spot on the carpet. “Because I have given Tamlin my word and I have already faced enough scrutiny in the past few years.”

Nesta fell quiet, taking in her sister’s words and trying to form a response but failing. It was Feyre that said, “What did Azriel say?”

Elains brows furrowed. “About what?”

“About what happens next,” Feyre said, as if it were obvious. “Did he say he wishes to be with you now? Did he mention he wishes you to be his wife?”

Elain sucked her bottom lip between her teeth as she shook her head. “We did not speak of it.”

Feyre’s eyes softened. “And if he asked? If he told you that is what he wished, would you accept his proposal?”

Elain wiped a tear from her cheek. “I wish nothing more than to be his wife, but it is not that simple.”

“It should be.” Nesta’s voice was low, firm, but she looked at Elain with all the love she could muster. “If he is who your heart desires, do not complicate it.”

“I have long come to terms with the fact that I may not get my happily ever after,” Elain said, smiling sadly first at Nesta and then to where Feyre held her son. “Not in the same way the two of you have. I do not wish to draw the scorn of Tamlin or of the Queen.”

Neither of them said anything, not as Elain’s eyes settled again on Nyx. Silver lined her eyes and she blinked it away before she could shed another tear. 

“Tamlin will be a good husband,” she said, wiping at her face, glad she had decided not to bother with cosmetics. “I will be well taken care of and my children will be powerful and affluent. But I will always love Azriel.”

Nesta’s eyes were soft as she looked at her sister, but it was Feyre that said, voice hesitant, “We’re overlooking a large detail here.”

“And what’s that?” Nesta asked. 

She glanced between her older sisters before she sighed and said, “The prince, of all people, is certainly going to expect his new wife to be a virgin.”

Nesta swore, colorfully, while Elain’s face paled.

She hadn’t thought about that, hadn’t even considered the fact that any future partners would discover that her maidenhead was not intact. All she was focused on was Azriel, how badly she needed him. And she had needed him. She’d needed him as much as she needed air to breathe or food to eat.

“I can…pretend the first time,” Elain provided, shrugging her shoulders. “I’m a good actress.”

Feyre and Nesta shared a weary look.

“I am certain that the prince has deflowered enough women to know when it’s real,” Nesta said. Feyre’s weary look turned to one of exasperation at her eldest sister. Nesta just shrugged. “What? You know it to be true.”

“If that were to even work,” Feyre began, shaking her head at Nesta before looking to Elain, “is it truly worth it?”

Elain blinked. “Whatever are you saying? Of course—”

“You do not have to marry Tamlin,” Feyre said, gently. “You do not have to become a princess, unless that is what you truly want. You are not being forced into this life. If Azriel is who you love, and he loves you, you can have a life together. You can have a family with him that will be well cared for, even if they are not royalty. Is such a status worth wondering what could have been? Is that life worth giving up one where you can truly be happy?”

Nesta remained quiet but watched Elain as Feyre spoke. Nyx was sound asleep, his quiet snores filled the air as Elain’s eyes shone, yet again. She was feeling too much, her mind whirling, too many options available to her. Since her coming out, all she had longed for was to find a man that she loved, that cared for her, that could take care of her, that was held in high esteem by the ton. She had a prince wishing to become her husband. She was on the brink of royalty. Yet, all she wanted was to be back at Azriel’s, wrapped in his arms without a care in the world. 

“I feel I should not be conflicted but I am,” Elain confessed, her voice coated in exhaustion and lacking emotion. The three sisters sat in silence for a moment before Elain asked, “What is it you think I should do?”

“We cannot answer that,” Nesta said, not unkindly. “You must do what you think is best for yourself and your future. Whichever path you choose, we will be here to support you.”

Feyre nodded in agreement and squeezed Elain’s hand. With a deep breath, Elain stood and walked toward the nursery door.

“Where are you going?” Feyre asked, standing with Nyx in her arms.

“To speak with Azriel,” she said, and anxiety erupted inside of her. “I must know how he feels now. What he wishes.”

“I will bring you on my way home,” Nesta said, and they kissed Nyx and Feyre goodbye before falling into the carriage of the baron and baroness. They spent the ten minute ride in silence but when they arrived at Azriel’s townhouse, Nesta said, “Use your mind, of course, think logically. But…it is also okay to think with your heart, too.”

Elain gave her sister a grateful smile before letting herself out. She walked to the front door as the carriage rolled away and raised her fist to knock but a voice scared her out of it.

“Elain.”

She spun around with a gasp only to find Azriel standing there, sheepishly, his hands in his pockets. She had not seen him in the dark, the flames from the lampposts too far away.

“Sorry,” he said, laughing quietly. “I just returned home.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Was saying hello to my horses in the stables before I went in for the night.” She wanted to ask him where he had been, but her voice was not working. “Not that I am complaining, because I am so glad you are here…but why are you here? It’s quite late and surely your staff has been wondering where you have been.”

It was true. She had no idea what her staff thought of her absence these past few days. “I needed to see you,” she breathed, swallowing. “To speak with you.”

Azriel nodded, and the light in his eyes dimmed a little. “And I with you.” He gestured to the door. “Shall we go inside?”

Elain nodded and entered, Azriel just behind her. There was no staff around and the house was quiet as Azriel led her down the hall, to his library. He closed the door softly behind them.

For a moment, neither of them spoke a word. Elain did not even know where to begin, but it seemed that Azriel had just as much on his mind because he was the first to speak.

“I have a confession,” he said, but he was not looking at her. Instead, he turned his back to her and ignited a candle so that he could better see her standing before him. The light coming from the walls was dwindling. After setting the candle on a side table, he said, “I had a lot of time to think during my travels.” Unsure of where this was going, Elain remained perfectly still and quiet. “Being with Gwyn was easy. Carefree. If I may be honest, I did not wish to come home. I loved the freedom that we had. When we were away, I had never felt so alive.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a gesture that Elain found adorable, even though nausea had begun to churn in her stomach at the mention of Gwyn’s name. “I long for that sort of freedom, Elain.” He finally met her eye and there were so many emotions in his gaze that she felt like crying. “For months I was drunk because I could not deal with reality. I had returned to Velaris and lost my freedom which was all I had because I had already lost you.” A tear fell down Elain’s cheek but Azriel remained where he was, feet away. “I will be honest and say that I thought about pursuing Gwyn, even though my feelings toward her are not romantic. But the life we had for those months was so easy. So damn easy, away from the ton, their judgements, their prying eyes and gossip.” He shook his head. “Yet, it never felt right, never felt whole, because I still longed for you…but these last few days, Elain, I have finally felt whole. When we were lost in our own little world, I felt at home for the first time since I was a child, when I was still too innocent to understand the ways of the world, the ton. When you left this morning, I instantly felt lost. You are my home.” A quiet sob shook Elain’s frame as she covered her mouth with a gloved hand. Azriel swallowed. “I love you,” he continued, quietly, and walked toward her at last. Gentle thumbs brushed away her tears. “I will not pretend that I do not, because I am madly in love with you.” Elain leaned into his touch as her tears continued to fall. “But I do not wish to pressure you, to make you choose and guilt you into choosing me. If you wish to marry Tamlin, then that is what you should do. If you wish to hold the title of princess and one day, perhaps, be queen of his territory, then you should. If you wish to have royal children and give them that life, then it is what you should do.” He stepped closer, so close that Elain had to look up to meet his eye. He brushed away her newly fallen tears before framing her face with his hands. “But if you are okay marrying a lowly baron, then I will remain in society and make sure that you and whatever future heirs we may have are perfectly cared for and cherished.”

Elain shook her head and closed her eyes. Azriel’s touch remained as she said, “I love you for that, Azriel.” She opened her eyes again and there was a pain in his hazel eyes that broke her. “But if I refuse the Prince, if I break our engagement, there is no more place for me in society.”

There they were, the words she had realized when speaking with her sisters, the words that had haunted her since she sat in the carriage. Elain’s entire life had been the ton for as long as she could remember, since the day she had been born. If she were no longer a lady, she had no idea who she was.

Besides, even if there was the slimmest chance that the ton would one day see her in high regards yet again, she could not ask Azriel to remain in a society that he hated. 

“My title doesn’t matter to me,” he said, cupping her jaw and tilting her face up to his. “My lands, country home, and this townhouse are only fields, forests and dwellings. And you know that the opinion of the ton has long been of little consequence to my brothers and I. But I would weather all of that for you. If you wish to break your engagement to the prince and, by some miracle, there are no repercussions for it, I will dance with you at every ball for the rest of our lives. We can host ridiculous teas and lavish dinners and balls of our own in the country.” He brushed a thumb over her full bottom lip. “But I will not lie and tell you that a simple life, with you, away from dramatics and scrutiny of society, would be my greatest dream come true.”

Lip wobbling, Elain let her eyes fall closed, to try once more to keep the tears at bay. As Azriel’s thumb swiped across her cheek, she knew she was unsuccessful.

When her eyes opened, they were shimmering with tears, but were clear.

“I love you,” she whispered, simply, as if that was answer enough. And it had to be. For now, at least. For now, that was all she could grant him. She came in hopes of speaking with him, of telling him all that was on her mind, of getting everything out in the open, but after his confessions, after he spoke his truth, there was not much left to say. 

Azriel nodded, his forehead resting gently against her own. “I know.”

She kissed him then, and it was soft and sweet and full of both longing and devastation. She did not blame Azriel for wanting a simpler life. With him, a simpler life did not seem all that bad, but she did fear it. She feared being tossed out of the only world she had ever known and into another. As a little girl she had dreamed of princes that would take her to far away lands.

She also dreamed of love.

As their kiss broke apart, Azriel’s arms went around her and she melted into his embrace. They did not speak. He did not pressure her to give him an answer, although she knew that she would soon have to.

Not tonight, though.

Tonight, they stood in the library, wrapped in each other’s arms without any indication of what the future would truly hold. 

#elriel #elain #azriel #fanfic #fanfiction #period au #regency au #19th century au #acotar #acowar #acomaf #acosf #acofas #a shacmc collab

[ickynights]

Food intolerance nightmare

Doyun was always known for having a sensitive stomach. Ever since he was a child he had to stick to a boring and bland diet to make sure he didn't spend all his nights glued to a trash can. Usually Doyun didn't mind dealing with boring foods and as he grew older he actually grew to like them. He found comfort in his safe foods yet there was always two foods he could never truly give up- pepperoni pizza and mint chocolate ice cream.

No matter how many gluten and dairy free versions he tried nothing beat the original. The only time he would allow himself to eat the combination was when he had either a really hard day, or he didn't have any plans and could deal with the consequences in peace. He didn't plan on indulging himself today but after having to stay an extra two hours to help one of his dance students with her dance lesson because her mother had quite literally threatened him- gave him more than enough of a reason to let himself go.

He also knew that his boyfriend Daniel was going to be staying at his apartment for the week. Throughout their three years of dating Doyun had only ate one of his trigger foods once. They had been celebrating their first anniversary and the cake that he assumed was dairy free was anything but the sort and let's just say Doyun ate way too much and his belly made sure to make him aware of his grave mistake. He spent the whole night glued to the toilet, puking his guts up and Daniel had been there by his side the entire time. Although Daniel likes to pretend he didn't secretly enjoy that night, Doyun knew deep down his boyfriend felt a certain type of enjoyment from watching and taking care of him while he was so sick.

There'd been many times since that night where Daniel had subtly hinted he wouldn't mind helping Doyun again had anything similar happened. Now he had the perfect opportunity to explore how Daniel truly felt about it and Doyun couldn't help but feel a little excited.

So after cleaning his whole apartment and taking a very long shower- Doyun ordered a large pepperoni pizza and walked over to the convenience store by his apartment and bought a small container of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

He placed the food in front of him and felt his stomach growl almost as if it was trying to warn him. He patted his belly and grabbed a rather large piece of pizza. The pizza was delicious and with each bite he could feel his stomach slowly start to bloat. It didn't take much to set the organ off and after the first piece Doyun could already feel his belly gurgling angrily at him.

He was half way through with his third piece when he heard his front door open. "Hey babe I'm here." Daniel's sweet voice filtered into the room.

"In the living room." Doyun called out while trying to mask the excitement in his voice.

Daniel walked into the living room and did a double take when he saw his boyfriend sat on the couch with pizza and ice cream sitting right in front of him.

"Um babe, why are you eating that? You'll get sick." Daniel asked nervously. The sight alone was enough to make his face flushed a bright shade pink.

"Why are you so nervous Danny?" Doyun chuckled and patted the seat next to him. "Come here, I want to cuddle."

Daniel slowly made his way over, questions and unspeakable thoughts running through his mind. "Baby are you sure you want to eat that? You remember last time don't you?"

"Of course I remember last time." Doyun replied and pulled Daniel down to sit next to him. "Want you to help me again." Doyun pouted and grabbed the olders hand placing it on his belly.

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Daniel questioned. He could feel his heart beating throughout his whole body. He had dreamed of this moment for years and he wasn't sure he could keep himself contained much more.

"Help me finish all this, okay?" Doyun whispered into Daniels ear and scooted himself to sit on the older's lap. He could feel how hard he was under him, there was no going back now.

Daniel shook himself out of his daze and reached for the box of pizza. He grabbed the first piece he could and brought the pizza to Doyun's mouth. He watched in delight as the younger ate, he placed his free hand back onto Doyun's belly. He could feel the younger's stomach churning and sloshing as it attempted to digest the previous slices. With each bite Daniel could feel Doyun's stomach press further into his hand.

As he was about to reach for another slice he heard a deep sickly grumble come from deep within the younger's belly. Daniel watched in sympathy as Doyun's face cringed in pain.

"Baby are you sure you want to continue? If your tummies too upset we can stop and just cuddle." Daniel said softly and kissed the younger's cheek.

"I want to continue." Doyun mumbled and burped loudly. "I'll be sick either way might as well not waste the food."

"Okay if you say baby." Daniel rubbed his hands soothingly over the upset belly. He took a few minutes to let the younger have a small break.

Doyun was starting to become increasingly more queasy and keeping himself from gagging anytime he let out a burp was becoming a real challenge. There was no way he was going to let himself get sick so early into the night. All he had to do was not think to hard about the sick gurgles that were running rapidly through his belly.

"Are you ready for another piece?"

Doyun nodded and relaxed back into his boyfriends chest. The next few slices went by rather quickly and soon Doyun had finished almost the whole pizza. He saved a few pieces for Daniel but he also didn't think he could handle another bite of the greasy cheese filled pizza.

Doyun's once manageable queasiness was starting to become full blown nausea and the cheese was making his stomach incredibly gassy. His belly was bubbling like a pot of boiling water and his burps which were once relieving were starting to become more sickening than anything.

"Your belly's really upset isn't it?" Daniel inquired voice filled with lust. "Do you still want to try the ice cream?"

Doyun's stomach growled angrily as if it was trying to answer for him yet Doyun still agreed. He rubbed his belly apologetically- all he got back in reply was a cramp that sent up yet another wet burp. Daniel opened the tub of ice cream and scooped a big chunk out for Doyun to eat. "Open up baby." Daniel instructed.

As Doyun swallowed he felt his stomach cramp. His belly was more full than it ever been and gluten and dairy from the pizza was making his stomach feel even more upset. With each scoop swallowed his belly cramped and churned in ways Doyun didn't even know was possible. He was half way through the pint when he felt a different type of rumble surge through his upper belly, it was loud, thick, and was followed by a small but productive wet burp.

"I'm gonna throw up." Doyun whimpered and gagging lightly into his hand. The younger was looking pale and Daniel could hear as his belly sloshed it's way up.

"I'll go grab the trash can, just try to hold it in baby." Daniel slowly took Doyun off his lap making sure not to jostle his belly. His carefulness didn't help at all though and Doyun's stomach flipped dangerously.

"Hurry up please." Doyun mumbled with his hand pressed tightly to his mouth. His mouth was salivating and he had to swallow down the burps that were threatening to come out.

Daniel quickly grabbed the kitchens trash can and ran back into the living room. He sat the trash can in front of the younger and sat next to him.

Doyun quickly took ahold of the trash can and gagged emptily into the can. His stomach was gurgling harshly and it was a matter of seconds before it decided it couldn't handle its contents anymore.

Daniel placed his arm around the boy's waist as he kept swaying with nausea. The two sat in silence for what felt like hours but was really just a few minutes. Doyun's stomach was incredibly nauseous yet nothing but empty gags were leaving the boy's mouth.

"Rub my belly please." Doyun whimpered breaking the silence, he placed the trash can down in defeat. He laid down into the couch and moaned miserably.

"Do you still feel like you're gonna puke?" Daniel asked and went back to rubbing Doyun's belly.

"Feel nauseous but I don't think my tummy wants to yet." Doyun replied quietly, although he felt sick- it always took awhile for himself to actually be sick. It'd only been a hour and a half since he started eating, normally it took a few hours before his belly allowed everything to come out.

"Why don't we go lay down in your bed then, hm?" Daniel kissed his boyfriends forehead and pulled him gently into his arms.

"Bring the trash can too."

Daniel carried Doyun to his room and placed the younger delicately on the bed. "I'm gonna go get some water and trash can. Do you need anything else baby?"

"No just hurry up." Doyun moaned and curled into himself.

Daniel grabbed everything the two needed and threw away the trash in the living room. He walked back into the room and sighed softly when he saw how Doyun positioned himself. The younger was circled around himself, with his hands pressed tightly around his belly, his face was sweaty and his mouth was drooling with nausea.

"My poor baby." Daniel got into the bed and took Doyun into his arms. "Just try to rest, okay? I’ll put on a show to try to distract you.”

Doyun not having the energy to say anything just snuggled further into Daniel’s hold. He shut his eyes and attempted to fall asleep. Daniel’s hand rubbing his sore belly and the quiet murmur coming from the tv allowed him to fully relax and ignore whatever was going on in his belly.

It had been about thirty minutes and Doyun had fully fallen asleep, Daniel choose to stay up just in case Doyun’s belly sent it contents up without warning. Daniel felt as bubbles and gurgles erupted throughout the upset organ. Doyun had been pretty quiet himself until Daniel felt his stomach churn angrily. The younger pouted in his sleep and placed his hand on his tummy.

“It must be getting bad in there, hm?” Daniel felt wrong for enjoying his boyfriends pain but it just happened that his nauseous face resembled his getting fucked face. It also didn’t help that Daniel always had a secret enjoyment of being a caretaker of others when they’re sick. He found it fascinating and whenever all this was over he knew Doyun and him had to actually talk about it.

Daniel was suddenly interrupted out of thoughts when Doyun suddenly sat up and retched a huge wave of puke all over Daniel’s front. The two barely had a second to process what the fuck just happened when Doyun’s stomach lurched with another thick wave of foul smelling vomit.

Daniel sat up quickly and picked up the trash can for the younger to finish. Doyun took the trash can into his arms and gagged another round of sick.

“Let it all out baby.” Daniel rubbed the younger’s back in attempt to soothe him but it didn’t seem to work at all.

After a few minutes Doyun’s stomach seemed to give him a break. His eyes were red and filled with tears, his forehead was drenched with sweat and loud sobs racked through his body.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know I was gonna do that. It just all happened so fast-“

“Baby relax it’s okay. Let’s go get into the shower okay? There’s no need to apologize.” Daniel pulled his shirt off and threw it to the side. The smell of sick was strong and his own stomach was lurching at the sight of the bed.

Doyun followed Daniel into the bathroom and allowed the older to wash him off. The hot water helped soothe his aching belly. His stomach was still rumbling loudly and there was no way he was done especially considering how much he ate.

#emeto #emeto kink #belly ache #stomach ache #lactose intolerance #gluten intolerance #sickfics #doyun oc #daniel oc #fluff #caretaking #belly rubs #tummy ache

[shelassos]

hours 

hours  :  our muses spend the entire day together.

It's the morning.

His careful fingers extract the glass and shrapnel out from Diana's bleeding shoulder; it takes a lot to catch the Amazon off guard, and even more to gain the upper hand over her. These were no ordinary enemies that they spent the night defeating, however, and the nasty gashes on her exposed skin are evidence of their might. It's strange, to be taken care of like this, to not just bleed all over the floor of her apartment and dig out the foreign objects herself. Alone, she always endures the sharp pains without even gritting her teeth, but with him, she lets herself flinch; she lets herself be vulnerable. It feels nice, not to pretend. It feels nicer, not to be alone.

When they're in his shower, their armor left in his cave, she notices his own fresh battle wounds. Diana traces them with her fingers and her lips, as though to kiss them better before they scar. If only it worked like that, right? If only she could kiss away the tragedies etched onto his skin. Her injuries are fading already, from her expedited healing of course, but she would swear on her life that it's also from the great care he showed for her. She treats Bruce with the same gentleness, washing the night away from his skin, welcoming him to the morning with her arms around his waist.

Afterwards, they fall asleep atop the black sheets of his bed, tangled in each other's arms, their skin and hair still wet from the shower. It's beyond exhaustion that they both feel, and the truth is their dreams often become nightmares. But at least they have each other.

It's sometime in the late afternoon.

Happy Valentine's Day, Diana whispers into his ear, before moving to press soft kisses all over his cheeks and jawline. She's wearing that red dress; the red dress. The one she wore when they first met, when she did not know who he was and Bruce perhaps suspected she was more than what she seemed. She's wearing it because she knows it is his favorite color on her, but this time, she has her dark hair in curls that bounce across her shoulders whenever she moves. For his part, she think he looks impossibly handsome in a crisp white dress shirt that will be wrinkled from her fingers, if not completely torn apart, by the end of their evening. She'll enjoy it on him while she can, before she gets too greedy, though.

He gives her a card ⸺I'm batty for you⸺ that makes her laugh her infectious laugh, and also flowers that widen her smile. She gifts him a coconut, and the polite confusion on his face is enough to turn her laughs into giggles. In my culture, it means I love you, she begins to explain, describing its importance in great detail. Bruce discovers his other present later on, after dinner, when she's kissing him heatedly atop the sofa and his hands begin to explore beneath her dress. He finds the lacy lingerie that matches the exact shade of her dress, and it doesn't survive the hour in one piece.

They unite as one, always discovering new ways they fit together, several times before making it back to his bed. She calls it love making because though they are not soft nor gentle, every touch is a tribute to their deep affection for each other. It's the second time this day that they fall asleep together, but this time, they somehow hold each other even tighter.

It's late, late in the night.

She awakens from his fingers stroking her black hair. His mouth is sweetly on hers after she incorrectly wishes him good morning. She soon sees that it is still nighttime, and what's more, she notices from his window that the bat signal is beckoning him, demanding his presence, weeping for it. Her arms fasten around him, but she would never ask him to stay. His is a vow that is as sacred as hers, and to ask him to sacrifice it would be a disservice to him. She won't, but the seed of a private hope is rooted deep inside her, that perhaps one day he might make the decision for himself.

❛ Can I come with you? ❜ She surprises herself by asking. It's a silently spoken line that she's always respected⸺ this city is his. His rules, his rogues, his responsibility. She won't ever impede on any of that, yet neither can she pretend she is not curious. She wants to know him as intimately as she knows himself, and for better or worse, this is a large part of who he is. ❛ I want to see your city from your eyes, ❜ she explains. Truly, there is no hidden motivation other than love for him. As much as Themyscira forged her, his connection to Gotha.m runs so much deeper than even that. She wants to understand.

There's an easy smile on her lips that she hopes is enticing. Her lithe fingers stroke his back, feeling markings she left there and ones she did not, while she holds him as he considers. The bat signal seems to become brighter, more demanding. Time is never on her side, but maybe this one night can be different from any of the others. ❛ I will even dress in black. ❜ And it is still Valentine's Day, after all. Shouldn't two lovers spend it together?

#nightvow #02. INBOX / may she bless you with the wisdom to see truth. #-places this in your palms-

[gibsonkatz8]

Fake Louis Vuitton Replica Baggage

There are a few key issues to look out for and keep away from. For fashions that use a single steady leather-based piece such because the Keepall, one side may have inverted logos on it. In addition, the company spends billions of dollars every year on marketing. According to Reuters, in 2018 Louis Vuitton spent 5.6 billion euros ($6.3 billion) on marketing, reaching 12% of group revenues. Their makers are actually putting attention to element a prime priority when manufacturing replica bags. They have successfully replicated the original bags – from measurements, the hardware used, the standard of leather used, the colors, and even the smallest details. I was a bit apprehensive about making this transaction especially since you have to use WU, but other evaluations impressed me into going ahead. That could be a bummer as a end result of these bags need to be proven round to everybody. With replica bags, you presumably can always flaunt your expensive designer style to everyone who can see, making them think that you're an empowered girl with an immaculate taste for fashion. Since they’re also cheaper in comparability with luxurious originals, you'll be able to always purchase a new one each time your bag will get worn out due to use. In the picture with the true vs pretend Louis Vuitton Millionaire sun shades above, we now have identified how the pretend merchandise has all of its inscriptions at the wrong font-weight. On the “PARIS” textual content, one line decrease, we now have spotted within the fake vs real Louis Vuitton wallet picture above how the fake wallet’s text is also too thin. Stepping apart from the clothes, we are now going to talk about one other one of the loved product varieties from Louis Vuitton, and this time we’re specializing in the equipment. 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What follows is my go-to guide for finding the perfect in replica purses on the internet. This guide will assist you to pick the perfect high quality with out arousing suspicion. In the image with the faux vs real Louis Vuitton items above, we now have identified how the replica merchandise has its “LOUIS VUITTON” textual content looking too thick, and the way the genuine item has its textual content thinner. On the other hand, the genuine Louis Vuitton bag has its “LV” letters on the zippers looking thinner, and they don't come out of the sneakers as much as the fake bags’ zippers. First of all, regarding the appearance of the inscriptions, the actual bag’s serial quantity seems to make use of a different font for the quantity “1” character in comparison with the one used on the replica bag. Today, we’ll be speaking all about tips on how to tell when you have a real Louis Vuitton bag and a number of the key methods you probably can spot a pretend while purchasing. Due to their luxurious status, high price ticket, and movie star endorsers, everyone seems to need to get their arms on one of these iconic types. Unfortunately, this has led to an enormous influx of knockoff reproductions, or dupes as they’re typically referred as. In 2016, Louis Vuitton revamped their packaging. Notice any variation on the brand’s font or pattern that doesn’t look fairly proper. Zippers are another element that can typically be overlooked in relation to the creation and purchase of counterfeit baggage. Another important aspect is the colour of the thread. wikipedia handbags The real deal will nearly always have mustard yellow or brown stitching, versus a bright yellow or different shade. One factor that you could check for, nevertheless, is if all of the logos reduce off at the same point.

#louis vuitton replica #best replica louis vuitton bags #replica louis vuitton

[gross80byrd]

replica birkin bag 8

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[hajimine]

perennial destiny — fushiguro megumi x gn!reader

synopsis: megumi does not like the concept of soulmates. he wants to be able to choose who he loves—and he chooses you.

word count: 1.2k

genre: fluff, soulmate!au but not really, established relationship, soft!megumi (this is so cheesy fr)

soundtrack: on a clear day by joe hisaishi

a/n: i’m ngl i actually like this lol so i hope you guys do too! tysm @rintaroll​​ for being my beta and for the song rec mwah ily (ew) <3

A light smattering of clouds paint the blue sky in splashes of white, providing you with a little bit of shade from the otherwise bright afternoon sun.

You gaze at the little ducks waddling around on the pond, following their mother’s path. Unconsciously, you feel your lips curl up into a smile.

“What are you looking at?” Megumi murmurs, face turned towards you as he uses his hand to block out the sun from his eyes.

Humming, you give him a cheeky smile. “Nothing.”

He scrunches his face slightly, biting back a smile. He's used to your antics at this point.

Using his forearm to cover his eyes, Megumi sighs contently, shifting the position of his head on your lap to make himself more comfortable. The added weight on your thighs feel comforting, almost. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

The two of you stay in silence for a while as you bask in each other’s presence, enjoying the moment. The dark-haired boy plucks a stray dandelion beside him, inspecting it closely.

“Do you,” he starts, hesitating. You hum, urging him to continue. “Do you believe in soulmates?”

You stay quiet for a while, pondering his question. “I think I do, actually,” you admit. “It’s kinda sweet—the idea of it all. I’d like to think that there’s someone out there who’s meant for me, y’know?”

Megumi closes his eyes, his eyelashes fluttering as he considers your answer. He's really pretty, you think to yourself.

“Don’t you think it’s a little bit dumb?” He asks finally.

The bluntness of his words takes you by surprise. You laugh, gazing down at him with a fond look in your eyes. There’s a small frown on his lips; the crease between his brows a little more pronounced than usual.

Carding your fingers through his hair, you watch as he relaxes under your touch, the tension leaving his shoulders bit by bit.

You settle on a simple question. “What makes you say that?”

Megumi sighs, “The whole ‘fate and destiny’ thing. I think not being able to live your life the way you want to is a little depressing.” He purses his lips. “What if you don’t like your soulmate?”

You turn to look at the ducks again, but they were nowhere to be found. Now, the pond was silent, and there were no ripples in sight.

The pleasant smell of earth seeps into your lungs as you breathe in. Never in a million years would you have expected to have this kind of conversation with him.

You didn’t exactly peg him as someone who would be interested in the concept of soulmates at all. A soft smile graces your lips.

“Well, I suppose there should be a system to prevent that,” you squint, “maybe they would make it so that it’s impossible for you to hate your soulmate.”

Megumi clicks his tongue. “That just makes us robots then.”

This makes you grin. “Robots?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, now shy. “If that's the case, you really have no choice in your thoughts and feelings, it simply strips your humanity away from you.”

You stop running your fingers through his hair for a moment and Megumi shifts, nudging your hand with his head to get you to continue. Cute.

Amused, you ask him, “Well, what if soulmates are real, and I’m not your soulmate, what would you do?”

He plucks another dandelion from the ground and inspects it before holding it close to his chest.

“It won’t change anything.” He says, not an ounce of hesitation in his words.

“Wouldn’t you wanna find your real soulmate?” You inquire, the flames of curiosity dancing in your eyes.

Without wasting a second, he sits up, turning around to face you. He studies your face for a second, eyes traveling down the curve of your nose and down to the slight upturn of your lips before returning to hold your gaze. 

Megumi speaks, eyebrows furrowed. “No. the fates or the heavens or whatever the hell is controlling our destiny won’t have any effects on my choices. I’m not about to be another pawn in the gods’ game of love. It’s the least I can do.”

And you laugh, light and bubbly; ignoring the fact that your chest feels abundantly lighter after his statement.

“You’re really serious about this, huh?”

His cheeks flare up, the headstrong confidence from a minute ago now gone, replaced by the charming bashfulness only a few have had the privilege to see. 

“Well,” he mumbles, “I’m not gonna leave you just ‘cause some prophecy tells me to. I like you. A lot.” Maybe a little too much, but he doesn’t tell you this.

The breeze tickles your face. “Yeah?”

Megumi refuses to meet your eyes, but he continues. “I want to spend the rest of my life with someone I chose myself. Soulmate or not.”

It is not his words that make your heart flutter—it’s the quiet blossoms in his cheeks, the sureness in his voice. If fate was a human, you’re sure that he’d fight her with no hesitation. Heck, even if she was a god, knowing Megumi, he would fight her too, even if it’ll cost him his life.

You watch him twirl the stem of dandelion between his fingertips. He doesn’t blow on it, nor does he make a wish like anyone else would in the presence of the perennial, he simply observes the flutters of white falling from its head. 

“So you would defy destiny if you had to?” You ask, knowing exactly what his answer would be even before he utters another word.

“Yes.” his dark eyes are steady, not a drop of uncertainty swimming in its depths. 

The soft breeze suddenly feels a little too warm for comfort. “That’s awfully romantic, don’t you think?”

And he blinks at you, but he does not yield. “Well, I just think soulmates are awfully unromantic.” He says, the corner of his lips twitching slightly.

A genuine laugh bubbles out from your chest. “You’re a curious one, Fushiguro Megumi.”

The smile on his lips is a fond one. “What about you?” He props his chin on the palm of his hand. “What would you do if soulmates are real?”

“Ah,” you pretend to think, “you’d be my soulmate then.”

He rolls his eyes at you, but the tips of his ears are dipped in vermillion. “But what if I’m not your soulmate?”

You spare him nothing but a glance, rising to your feet before brushing the dirt off your pants. As you squint at the setting sun, a contented sigh escapes your lips. On days like these, you could fully take in the beauty of the afternoon sky as you observe the shades of reds and golds dancing in the heavens.

“Then I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to find my one true love.” You hum, biting back a laugh.

The dark-haired boy scoffs and stands up, walking towards you with his hands in his pockets. Half a smile graces his lips as he reaches for your waist, pulling you close. With the sort of tenderness he reserves just for you, Megumi rests his forehead against yours. He feels warm.

Megumi smells faintly of the earth—a product of the hours he spent sitting under the sun with you—along with a hint of the cool menthol shampoo he uses to wash his hair. And together, they create a blanket of comfort and familiarity, one that you’ve grown to call home. You breathe in.

“I won’t let you leave.” He mumbles, eyes fluttering shut. His palms feel comfortably warm on your waist; gentle and light, yet sure and heavy at the same time.

There’s a playful sparkle in your eyes as your lips curl up into a smile. “I know you won’t.”

per·en·ni·al /pəˈrenēəl/

(n.) a perennial plant

(adj.) lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring or continually recurring.

a/n: as always, reblogs are highly appreciated! please let me know what you think of this fic, i always love hearing from you all! also: yes, there’s another flower symbolism in this piece lol <3

-> writing masterlist  |  taglist is in the comments

#jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #megumi x reader #fushiguro megumi x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jujutsu kaisen imagines #megumi x you #fushiguro megumi #jjk imagines #❀ —𝐁𝐘 𝐇𝐀𝐉𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐄

[heloisedaphnebrightmore]

Deception [Benedict Bridgerton x Reader]

Title: Deception Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x Female!Reader Word count: 4.5k Published: 21 March 2021 Author: Heloise Daphne Brightmore Summary: Violet's constant search for a wife for her second eldest son has become too much for Benedict. The only escape he sees is to ask you to pretend to be courting each other. But how long will it work for with your feelings eating you up from the inside. Bingo: [x] This is part of my Make me feel Bingo Card by @girl-next-door-writes​​​

Square filled: Fake dating

Bridgerton Masterlist | Masterlists

Make me feel Bingo Masterlist

If you enjoy my stories, please consider donating and supporting me on Ko-fi. Of course, it’s completely your choice, I will continue updating for free anyway :) Thank you <3

Benedict Bridgerton was a very capable man. He had a tremendous amount of talent in capturing the real beauty of the world in his drawings. He was confident, but still genuinely kind and caring for his loved ones. He also had a rather playful side to him, a somewhat child-like behaviour, one that the ton would not have appreciated in their society, but Benedict had the privilege to show his real personality to those who loved him, ones that never judged him for who he was.

However, there was one person he felt utterly useless around. When it came to you, he turned into an adorable mess, a clumsy one at that, even stuttering on occasions. Should you have known the reason for his unusual behaviour, it would have brought a rather large smile to your face, but Benedict dared not to reveal his feelings for you.

For someone who has been friends for so long, you both seemed to have found it hard to show your true feelings for one another, as though both of you were clueless. For Benedict it seemed you only spared as much attention to him as a friend would, whilst you thought he was merely looking out for you as a brother figure.

You sat in the ballroom, watching as he grimaced at his mother, who might have slightly forced her second oldest child to dance with one of the many stunning unwed ladies. The one he was forced to dance with however seemed to enjoy Benedict's company. He didn't talk, nor did he look at the woman, still she shined brighter than a diamond in his arms, proud to be so close to such a fine man.

Heaving a heavy sigh, you watched as he held his hand firmly on her back, leading her around the dance floor, making her giggle by just being close to her. Your heart ached at the thought of ever having to give up on him, at the thought of seeing him with another, someone he would choose to love, ignoring to see your longing gazes forgotten on him. How could he have seen, he never dared to look when he felt your eyes on him, nor did you dared to look when he forgot his on you.

Standing up from your chair, you walked towards the terrace, needing fresh air, trying to clear your thoughts as the slightly cool, windy weather stroked your cheeks. You knew you shouldn't have thought of him romantically, but you would have been a fool not to notice the handsome and caring man he has grown into. Watching Lady Bridgerton trying to find a wife to her son hurt both emotionally and physically and you couldn't wait for the season to end, to leave the balls and play-pretend behind you, running away from the inevitable.

"Help me!" you heard his desperate voice, but before you could have turned around, you felt his hand lock around your wrist, gently, but in a haste, dragging you after himself.

"Benedict, what are you doing?" you asked in confusion, trying to understand his chaotic behaviour as he pulled you along, passing corridors by corridors in the gigantic mansion.

"My mother," he sighed as he stopped his steps, breathing heavily. "My mother is becoming—" you waited for him to continue, but he seemed to have been stuck in his thoughts.

"Are you alright?" you asked, frowning at his frozen state, as though he couldn't find the words and his thoughts overruled his actions. You watched his hunched back as he fought to get enough air in his lungs, his eyes focused on a certain point on the marble flooring, completely out of the present. "Benedict!" you called him again, this time firmly, attempting to catch his attention.

"I know it!" he exclaimed, making you jump slightly at his unexpected enthusiasm as a rather wide smile spread across his face.

"What do you know exactly?" you inquired.

"It might sound foolish at first and I do not blame you if you think I have lost my mind, but I need your help," he explained, leaving you even more curious.

"What would I need to help you with?" you asked furrowing at the man as if he has forgotten to include you in his grand idea.

"My mother has been adamant in finding me a wife and there is only so much I can do to prevent her from continuing her crusade. I know I shouldn't ask you such a thing, but I can't possibly think of anyone else who I trust enough," he continued in a secretive manner.

"Benedict, you must be clearer. I don't understand what you wish for me to do," you attempted to push him to finally reveal his idea.

"I need my mother to stop searching for a wife and the only way I can do that is if I already found someone I am interested in," he started. "That is where I would need your help, if you agreed. Should you agree to pretend I am courting you, my mother would surely stop this nonsense and leave me alone," for a mere second you felt overwhelmed by the hope of his interest in you, but that was only until your brain processed his words. "Pretend" being the main focus of your attention, shattering the small shimmering light of hope within you.

You took a shaky breath, trying to compose yourself, attempting to hide your disappointment. "Surely you didn't think this through. Your mother isn't a fool, she would see through us immediately. You can't possibly think it's a good idea," you tried to reason with him, but instead of thinking it through again, he quickly shook his head.

"But it is. Think about it. You have said so yourself, you don't want to marry just yet and nor do I. It would be the perfect option for both of us, solving our issues," he added enthusiastically as if his idea was anything, but brilliant. He could clearly see the weary expression across your face as he stepped closer and reached for your hands, engulfing them in his large and warm palms. "We would only have to pretend for a short while, I promise," he tried to reassure you. Whilst you knew it was a foolish idea, the thought of being able to stay close to him even if for a short period of time, seemed to cloud your better judgement.

"For how long?" you asked looking up at him as a mischievous grin spread across his dashingly handsome face. One that you adored so much. "I wouldn't want to be a spinster, Benedict," you sighed heavily.

"I would never let that happen," he shook his head quickly, his previously playful smile long gone from his face. "Let us do it for a few weeks and we will see how my mother reacts. I'm sure if we work well together, you might even catch the attention of some very noble men too," he winked jokingly, trying to lift your dull mood.

You haven't had much time to contemplate, maybe a few seconds until you ran through all the options you have been provided with, which was basically none. You heaved a heavy sigh and shook your head, offering a sceptical look to Benedict. "Fine," you said, earning a surprised expression from him, your answer shocking him for a second, before he wrapped his arms around your waist and lifted you up, twirling you around happily.

"You are my saviour," he chuckled as he hinted a small kiss on your forehead, stopping himself as he realised what he had done. "I apologise, I didn't mean to—"

"I understand. You are simply happy I have agreed to such a scandalous idea," you rolled your eyes, but you couldn't hide the happiness you felt. Even if for a short while, Benedict was to belong to you, and it meant more than you could have possibly expressed. You knew you couldn't have him forever but having him for a couple of weeks made you feel like the happiest person alive.

"I owe you! I didn't think you would agree," he grinned happily, a childish warmness radiating from his stance as though he had won a grand prize.

"I still don't understand why I did. Surely, I'm a fool," you added quickly with a silent chuckle.

"We both are," he replied as he started leading you back to the ballroom with your arm linked around his. His gaze focused on the way ahead, but your eyes were rather resting on his attractive features. He was a stunning man, and you were sure if he had turned to look at you, he would have seen the amount of love you were harbouring for him. But as many times before, no one of you has ever turned.

Weeks passed by and if anyone, Violet Bridgerton was the happiest person to see Benedict growing closer to the woman, you, she had envisioned beside her second eldest son. She has made it very clear that a wedding should soon be happening, wanting nothing but a little baby in her arms. You never wanted to crash her dreams but hearing her talking about a future between you and Benedict was beyond painful. The thought of you waking up beside Benedict, his arm resting across your waist, his neck hidden in the crook of your neck, his breath tickling your skin made your heart ache, knowing it was impossible.

You stood in Somerset House, one arm hooked around Benedict's as he watched the paintings, his face focused on one particular art with dark colours and shadings, slightly depressing as if the artist tried to capture a horrible emotion. Art was always something that you found beautiful, but never really understood. When Benedict talked about the meaning behind each piece with a childish happiness across his face, it made you feel content. Although you didn't understand much of what he was saying, the adorable expression he wore was worth each and every moment you spent listening to him.

Looking at his handsome features as they relaxed into a content smile, made you mirror his expression. You couldn't look at him and not smile. As though his mere presence made you feel at ease.

"I feel your eyes on me," he chuckled with a mischievous smile, knowing that you have indeed been staring at him for the longest time.

"I'm sorry," you quickly turned away, feeling your cheeks and ears heat up in embarrassment. "I couldn't stop watching you. You were really focused on that painting and it seemed as though you were here physically, but not mentally. You unintentionally make this face when you enjoy a painting," you smiled shyly.

"A face?" he furrowed, not knowing of his own reaction.

"Yes, as if you were completely captured by the painting. You have a certain content smile across your face and even forget to blink at times," you giggled, placing your hand in front of your mouth, remembering his facial expression.

"Don't hide your smile," he said as he reached for your wrist and gently wrapped his fingers around your arm, pulling your hand away from your lips. "You are even more beautiful when you smile," for a second his words made you hope, as though he meant more than he let on. His eyes seemed as if they could see through you, reading each and every single thought that crossed your mind. For the shortest of time, it felt your feelings weren't as unrequited as you thought. However, you quickly had to remind yourself that your imagination was playing a painful game with you, one that would surely end in a heartbreak.

You quickly turned away, trying to shake those foolish thoughts away, before you decided to dwell on them any longer. Clearing your thoughts, you turned back to him with a phony smile across your face, biting your bottom lip to calm yourself. But his deep frown left you confused. "Are you okay?" you questioned as he tilted his head as if he was studying your face.

"You were biting your lips again," he replied. "You do that when you are nervous or feeling uncomfortable," he added, stunning you. Biting your lips was indeed a nervous habit of yours, one that you couldn't stop as it made you feel slightly at ease when you felt as if even your own thoughts betrayed you. You never thought Benedict even realised those irrelevant, minor details.

"I'm fine, Benedict," you tried to reassure him with a smile that you wore confidently but could not fool Benedict.

"Should you feel the need to talk, I'm here," he said, drawing tiny circles on the back of your arm that he was still securely holding onto, reassuring you that he was by your side whenever you were in need of him.

As happy as it made you, you couldn't shake the feeling of disappointment as you thought about the heartbreak when he would finally want to end your foolish little game and find himself a wife that he could cherish forever, leaving you with the most horrible heartache one could cause.

You knew it was inevitable, you knew it would kill you, but you loved Benedict and you would have never forced him to stay beside you for any longer than he wanted to. You were ready to give him up, to be happy even if with someone else. The thought of letting him go hurt, but you weren't sure of your own strength either. Thinking about how long you could stay beside him pretending to be a mere friend left you with just as much pain, if not more. But you were ready to sacrifice your own happiness even if to be able to spend one more second with him.

Days passed by since your slightly awkward encounter in Somerset House. You have pretended to be a couple so in love that you couldn't possibly stay away from each other. Lady Whistledown didn't miss to write a paragraph or two about the two of you, already planning your wedding, one that you found slightly excessive, but dared not to mention to keep your act believable.

As much as you enjoyed the first few weeks of your play-pretend, it was hard to keep it up for long. You loved every minute you spent with Benedict, but the longer you were beside him, the more pain you felt. You wished to make him happy, to continue your act, but you also knew that it wasn't forever, and that tiny little thought suffocated you.

You sat on a bench in the park, right after promenading with Benedict. He joined his brothers whilst your maid brought you a glass of water to refresh yourself. You watched as Benedict laughed with his brothers, a wide, adorable and carefree smile sat across his face. Weeks ago, you would have smiled at his happiness, but then and there, sitting on the bench, watching his happy form, you felt miserable. Each time you looked at him, your stomach jumped nervously, your breath caught in your lungs as he touched your arm. These tiny little details meant nothing to him, but for you they meant the world. He couldn't have known the effects his advances left on you, he couldn't have predicted to hurt you unintentionally, but in the end, he unknowingly caused you pain.

Standing up from the bench, you started walking towards the Bridgerton brothers. Heaving a heavy sight, you lifted your arm and tapped Benedict's shoulder lightly, trying to catch his attention. He turned around with a wide smile, looking at you curiously. However, your face must have forgotten to oblige as his smile quickly disappeared and concern took over him.

"Are you alright?" he asked as he nodded to his brothers and reached for your hand, placing it on his arm, leading you away from his family.

"I must talk to you," you started, your voice unusually grim.

"Go ahead. You are worrying me," he added impatiently. Trying to collect your thoughts, you stopped, halting the man beside you whose worried eyes didn't seem to want to leave you for a mere second. "Talk to me," he attempted to reassure you.

"I am really sorry, but I can't possibly do this anymore," your words earned a confused frown from Benedict, before he finally understood what you meant. "I know I promised to help you and I wish I could have done it longer, but I honestly can't do this anymore," you added as you fought against your tears, trying to keep them in place for as long as you could. You couldn't let yourself cry in front of so many people, you couldn't let that happen. Benedict straightened himself in front of you, trying to hide your face from the curious eyes.

"I understand. I am sorry for forcing you to do this. I never thought it could be this hard on you. I would never hurt you, you know that, right?" he asked, trying to contain himself from wrapping his arms around you, fidgeting with his hands beside his thighs.

"I know and you didn't hurt me, it's not your fault. It has just become rather difficult recently and I don't think I'm capable of pretending anymore," you tried to reassure him, making him feel less guilty. "I'm still your friend and I will always be your friend," you added with a phoney smile. Your own words were a lie. You didn't know how long you could pretend to be his friend, but you knew he needed to hear that, he needed not to blame himself. "I will be going home now, but surely I will see you later," you smiled up at him as you curtsied and nodded towards your maid, ready to head home, completely oblivious to the pained gaze he was watching your slowly disappearing form with.

Whilst you sat in your carriage, letting your tears finally run down your cheeks, leaning on your maid's shoulder, Benedict stood confused between Colin and Anthony, his eyes fixed on the ground, his thoughts filled with you only.

"Brother?" Colin called for him with concern in his eyes. It was unusual to see his brother unresponsive, without a playful smile. "Are you alright?" he asked, earning a frown from Benedict.

"I shouldn't have dragged her into this," he replied, but his words were directed more to himself than his brothers.

"What do you mean?" Anthony asked, seemingly more interested in their conversation.

"It was all a lie," Benedict replied, his gaze still fixed on the carefully cut grass.

"What was a lie?" the eldest Bridgerton brother asked again.

"All along we were pretending to be courting, so mother would stop trying to force me to marry," he scoffed, finally understanding the weight of his idea. "She said she can't do this anymore. That it was too painful to bear," he shook his head, guilt overcoming him.

"You really are a fool," Anthony replied with a sceptical look across his face, earning a confused look from both Colin and Benedict.

"How do you mean? Is it because we have been pretending?" Benedict questioned his brother. "I know it was foolish, but she agreed, I didn't know it would be particularly hard on her," he added with a deep frown.

"Brother, can you not see the way she looks at you? Always trying to make you feel happy, bringing a smile to your face even when she, herself is struggling to do so? Are you really that blind?" Anthony raised a questioning brow, as though he couldn't believe how oblivious his brother was towards your feelings.

"Should I understand?" he asked tilting his head innocently, searching for the right explanation. "We have been friends from a very young age, I am certain we have always tried to make each other smile in a difficult situation," he added, earning an eye roll from the eldest Bridgerton brother, ignoring his manners.

"When you said you were courting her, I thought you finally realised that you weren't the only one with feelings beyond friendship. However, after hearing about this foolish idea of yours, forcing a lady to pretend to love you, when in fact she has feelings for you is beyond stupid, brother, and I'm quite disappointed in you for not realising it yourself," he shook his head disapprovingly.

"Are you telling me she has feelings for me?" Benedict asked in disbelief, his brother's words lighting a weak hope within him.

"Indeed, took you long enough to understand," he scoffed.

"I have to talk to her," Benedict added quickly, heading towards the carriages in haste, carefully planning all he needed to tell you.

The ride didn't take long, 20 minutes at most, before he stood in front of your house, his hands shaking slightly, nervousness running through his whole being. Knocking on the door, a maid opened it for him, asking him to wait to announce his arrival to you.

You laid on your bed, cheeks swollen from crying, bottom lip red as a result of the constant biting of your nervous state. A knock on your door brought you out of your misery as your maid walked into the room.

"Mr. Bridgerton is here to see you," she said with a saddened tone, knowing of the arrangement between the two of you. Your eyes widened in surprise, you weren't ready to see him, especially not in your current, heartbroken state. "Would you like me to ask him to leave?" she questioned, looking at the panicked expression across your face.

"No, it's fine. Please take him to the drawing room," you instructed her and headed to the bathroom to make yourself presentable. Your eyes were bloodshot, your face was slightly swollen, and your clothes were beyond wrinkled. Attempting to straighten your dress, you stroked the material over and over again, but it didn't seem to work, nor did the cold water you washed your face with to remove the evidence of your miserable state. At last, you gave up and walked to the drawing room, knowing you wouldn't be able to do anything else with your appearance.

"We have just parted, Benedict," you said to the man as you stepped inside the room and took a seat across the sofa he occupied.

"I needed to see you," he replied, standing up from his place and taking a seat beside you. "I—, I talked to my brothers after you left," he started, stammering over his words, something he only did in his nervous state. "I am a fool and there is no excuse for that. I can't possibly imagine how hard it must have been for you to pretend—"

"I have told you already, I am completely fine," you tried to reassure him with a faux smile, one that this time Benedict didn't believe to be genuine.

"But are you?" he asked, earning a confused frown from you. "Do you know why I thought this foolish idea to be brilliant in the first place?" he raised a questioning brow, but instead of replying you shook your head. "I wanted to be closer to you. I merely thought it would be my chance to spend more time with you. Surely, I had no intention to marry anyone, and I wished my mother to stop, but my primary concern was you. I wanted to be near you at all times, but I couldn't possibly tell you how I felt, knowing you would only reject me," you couldn't control the surprise sitting across your face, your lips parted in shock, his words seemingly part of your most precious dreams. It seemed surreal.

"You are confusing me, Benedict," you spoke up, trying not to hope once again to then fall painfully.

"I'm saying I love you. I have loved you for so long, I can't remember when it started. I never imagined my feelings could be returned and I turned to foolish ideas to be beside you. I needed my brothers to open my eyes and scold me for being childish, for making me hope that I might have your heart even if only half as much as you have mine," he reached for you hand, gently squeezing it in his hold, reassuring you that he meant every single word of his.

"I love you," you blurted out, astonished by his speech, your own words surprising you.

"You do?" he asked, afraid to believe the words he has longed to hear from you.

"I do," you nodded, this time with more confidence, earning a wholehearted smile from Benedict as he leaned closer and wrapped his arms around you, embracing you in his arms.

"I made you cry, didn't I?" he asked as he pulled away slightly, enough for him to be able to look in your eyes as he placed his hands on your cheeks.

"It wasn't you. I was emotional, because I wasn't sure how long I would be able to stay beside you as a friend before it became too much to handle," you giggled awkwardly, feeling as if you have said too much.

"It was still my fault. I didn't consider your feelings," he shook his head, disapproving of his own actions. The tip of his thumb gently brushed across your bottom lip, leaving you with a ticklish feeling. "Have you been biting your lips again?" he asked as his eyes focused on your mouth. His attentiveness, his attention to detail and his closeness made you swallow nervously.

"I might have," you whispered, not daring to raise your voice any louder. Feeling his breath on your lips, the proximity between your faces, his warm palms on your cheeks made you feel intoxicated.

"You shouldn't do that. From now on talk to me when something bothers you," he spoke in a low tone, his voice soothing, making you feel safe. "You are doing it again," he chuckled, his eyes completely captured by the way your teeth bit on your lip, but this time it wasn't nervousness, but excitement. His closeness affected every tiny part of your body. "It really makes me want to kiss you," he breathed, completely mesmerised by your lips, as if an invisible force was pulling him towards you. You felt your heart beating at a dangerous pace, almost as if threatening to escape your chest and you could swear Benedict heard it just as well.

"Hmm," you hummed in a reply, incapable of creating a coherent sentence, before closing the gap between the two of you, a certain confidence rush taking over your actions. Instead of the surprised reaction you expected from Benedict, a playful chuckle left his lungs.

"Impatient, it seems," he added, before he returned your kiss, pulling you closer to himself, enjoying the feeling of your body in his embrace. He has imagined over and over again how it could feel to kiss you, to hold you, but none of those made-up scenarios could ever compete against the reality and the content it filled him with. "I wish to genuinely court you this time," he added as he pulled away from you.

"I very much hope so," you giggled happily, earning a playful eye roll from Benedict, before he captured your lips once again, wrapping his arms around you securely.

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[fangirleaconmigo]

Eskel is wounded in a hunt, and no one in the three towns he passes on his way back to Kaer Morhen will give him aid.

Geralt has a bit of a breakdown about it.

This is Eskel x Geralt hurt/comfort fic. You can also read it as x Lambert, but that isn't explicitly defined, as this focuses on Geralt mostly. But they obviously all love each other.

About 2500 words. Rated Teen I guess? Not explicit. Now beta’ed and posted on AO3.

------

Rage pressed out from Geralt’s chest cavity, like bony fingers clawing an escape. Freezing wind whipped his hair into his eyes. He growled in frustration and shook his head to clear his vision. He brought the sledgehammer down on the last remnants of the shed. It cracked and threw splinters into the furious wind.

A throat made a scraping sound behind Geralt. He jerked in surprise, and whipped around, eyes still wild.

“Hate to interrupt, but he’s asking for you.”

Lambert looked comfortable, as though he had been leaning against the tree for an age. Geralt dropped the hammer.

“Oh.” He looked around the wreckage of the perfectly good structure that he had spent a week building. The scrapes on his knuckles and the rips in his trousers told the story of his outburst, if the ruined shed hadn’t done so. “Fuck. How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough.”

Geralt pushed his hair out of his face with fingers that were unsteady and still unsure of why they no longer gripped the handle of a hammer. Then he rubbed his eyes.

“Take a breath, big guy,” said Lambert.

Geralt’s body instinctively obeyed, and his chest expanded as he pulled in a deep breath. What he had done was setting in. “Why didn’t you stop me, then?”

Geralt knew it wasn’t Lambert’s job to stop him from having mental breakdowns, but he felt defensive. He had given himself one brief moment of self indulgence, and all of this rage had just roared into being. The thought that he didn’t actually know what was inside the yawning chasm of his own heart was terrifying.

It was also embarrassing.

“We all need to let it out sometimes.” Lambert shrugged.

Geralt began to realize how cold he was, and therefore how freezing cold Lambert must be.

“Sorry. I’m an idiot.”

“Ah,” Lambert said easily, dismissing him out of hand. “It’s a relief to see someone else in this family admit to how fucked up it all is.”

Lambert did look relieved. There was recognition in his face. Kinship. Geralt felt a twinge of guilt. How lonely he must feel sometimes.

“How do you handle this? How do you get rid of it? It feels like shit.”

Lambert pressed the inside of his cheek with his tongue as he considered the question. “Being an asshole helps sometimes. Revenge is good. But don’t take my word for it, I’m not the model of fitting witcher behavior.” The last three words were said in a mimicry of Vesemir’s voice. He held both hands up in a sarcastic surrender.

Geralt thought for a moment. Lambert allowed the silence to stretch out between them.

“I know the new cleric down in Ard Carraigh has been working people up, turning them against us. It’s made everything worse,” said Geralt. The gut wrenching image of Eskel bleeding, gasping, and cradling his split open wound as town after town turned him away, blazed to life again in his mind’s eye. He clenched both fists. “It didn’t have to be that way. If only one of those motherfuckers, if only one of them had helped him...he almost...he almost died.” Geralt spat the final word and when he did, he could feel hot tears prickling his eyes.

“I know,” said Lambert. “Believe me I know. But he wants to see you, and you can’t go in there like this. Breathe.”

Geralt nodded and breathed again.

“How’s this?” offered Lambert, “If you don’t come to your senses by the time the snow melts, I promise I’ll help you come up with a really good way to fuck with that self righteous piece of shit in Ard Carraigh.”

Geralt laughed airily. “Yeah, alright.” He put his hands on his hips and waited for his thudding heart to settle.

Lambert’s eyes lit up with glee. “Really?”

Geralt nodded. “Really.”

“Alright. Now come on.” Lambert began walking towards the keep, and beckoned for him to keep pace.

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

Geralt washed his hands and cleaned his cuts. Then he changed into fresh clothes and let himself into Eskel’s room with the soft creak of a door.

Eskel lay in bed with his eyes closed. It was a large bed, piled with just about every spare quilt they had been able to find. A neat bandage was wrapped around Eskel’s stomach. Vesemir had done it as Geralt cursed himself for his shaking hands. Eskel was a shade more pale than his usual warm brown. He looked drained, of blood and of energy. The lines of his face were slack, and his hands rested with fingers laced across his chest.

The sight of him provoked a tangle of emotions in Geralt. The usual feeling gripped him of course...the one he felt whenever he saw Eskel’s familiar face...the full lips that melted him to a large helpless puddle whenever they smiled or kissed him....the round, solid shoulders that were the best place on the continent to lay your head. That bit wasn’t a mystery. It was just love. That was the most natural thing in the world for Geralt to feel for Eskel.

But the soft pink suggestion of blood beneath the white cloth kindled a very different feeling. That was the rage. Still there. There were probably not enough structures on the continent for him to destroy to sate it. Also, the slight puffiness in Eskel’s skin surrounding the bandage implied a nascent infection they would have to continue to fight off. That provoked a feeling of powerlessness that threatened to shatter him from the inside out. It intertwined with the desperation to kiss his soft stomach...to make it better somehow.

But he couldn’t make it better. He couldn’t heal him. He couldn’t protect him. He couldn’t do anything at all but be angry and fucking useless. Impotent, helpless, and fucking useless.

What good was it? He thought. What good was love, if no matter the degree of its ferocity, it would never be enough to protect the ones you loved?

For a moment he truly glimpsed the reality of his powerlessness, paired with the vulnerability of Eskel’s flesh. His body. His heart. It could just stop beating, and there would be nothing Geralt could do to help it. The breath sucked from his body, and he swayed, dizzy on his feet.

Eskel opened his eyes, and as he focused on Geralt, he blinked at the look of anguish on his face.

“Hey, wolf. Hey. I’m good. I’m here. C’mere.” He tried to lift an arm to beckon him to bed, but he winced.

His voice was soft and gentle, as though Geralt were the wounded one. That broke the spell of despair gripping him, and he rushed to Eskel’s side. He sat down gingerly next to him on the bed. Eskel leaned his head into Geralt’s shoulder. Geralt situated himself so he could wrap his arms around Eskel’s shoulders, and he dropped a kiss onto the top of his head.

Eskel made a noise of contentment. They sat there for a short moment, breathing together in the quiet room.

“Hey,” said Eskel. He looked up, concerned.

“What?” Geralt asked.

“Hey!” Eskel sat up and unwound Geralt’s arms from his shoulders. He squeezed Geralt’s hands in his. “You’re trembling. What’s going on? What are these scrapes from? Are you hurt?”

Geralt snorted and gently pulled his hands back, tucking them at his side. He was too much of a mess to hide his little breakdown. He would have to explain just a bit. “No. You’re the one that’s hurt. I’m fine. Just. You know. I hate...I hate seeing you hurt.”

Eskel tilted his head. “I said I’m fine.”

“You’re hurt.”

Eskel looked at him quizzically, and dug Geralt's hands back from his sides and clasped them again. He swept his thumb gently below his injured knuckles.

“This is our job, Geralt. Our life. We’ve been doing it for almost eighty years.”

Geralt swallowed. It was true. He felt ridiculous, of course. And defensive. Like he needed to explain himself.

“I know. I know.” He thought of why this was different. But it really wasn’t. Factually, this was just another hunt. Another instance of humans treating them like garbage. He shouldn’t care anymore. And yet? “And most of the time,” he pressed ahead, “I don’t notice. Wounds. Dressings. Combat. The sun rises, the sun sets. It is what it is. I tell myself that all the time. Why worry about something you can’t change?”

Eskel touched a stray bit of Geralt’s hair and tucked it behind his ear. “Then what? What was different about this one?”

He sounded so gentle. He was always so gentle. Geralt couldn’t bear it sometimes.

“Nothing,” he choked out. “There was nothing different about it. It’s just that sometimes...” he leaned back against the bedframe and looked at the ceiling. He just couldn’t look at Eskel right now. “Sometimes I look at you,” he continued haltingly, “and I see the bruises. I see the wounds.”

“You don’t usually see them?” Eskel was teasing him lightly, trying to make him smile.

“Not really. They’re just things to fix. Things to bandage. Things to watch disappear and then on to the next hunt.” He was silent for a good long stretch. Eskel didn’t fill it. He just brushed the palms of his hand and waited. “But then. Every once in a while, I see them for what they are. They are things and people who hurt you. Who stood there, and fucking hurt you. Who saw you as a thing to hurt. And I want to burn down the whole world.”

He pretended that he didn't notice the tear the slid down his cheek.

He finally looked at Eskel, who was sitting up now and watching him intently, with a complicated look on his face.

“Geralt. I’m fine.”

Geralt looked away again, dragging his arm across his face to dry it. “But you almost weren’t.” His voice insisted on breaking, against his will. He cleared his throat. “You could have died. And why? Because no one in three towns would help you? People who you’ve helped countless times??” He felt the thudding rage threaten to swell again like the first ripples of a tsunami.

“Geralt,” Eskel touched his chin. Geralt turned, and was rewarded with a soft look and a kiss. “I don’t have your pretty face, wolf. Even if I weren’t a witcher, they would react the way they do.”

Geralt knew it was true. Eskel’s looming size. His voice. The way his eyes seemed to glow. The scars. All things he loved. But not everyone else did. He clenched his fists. “Idiots.”

Eskel loosened his fingers and clasped them again. “It’s been ages since I got the scars. I’m used to it.”

“Yeah well. You shouldn’t have to be,” hissed Geralt. “Sometimes,” he remembered Lambert’s voice telling him to breathe, so he did. Eskel watched him with concern and something else. Affection. That was it. “Sometimes," Geralt tried again. “I just want you to have the gentle life that you deserve.”

And there it was. As sensible, as strong as Geralt tried to be...as he was, sometimes he was like a little child stamping about how unfair the world was. How he wished it were different. Ridiculous. Fucking stupid.

He waited for Eskel to tell him again that he was fine. To be practical, like he always was. To tell him that it was better than what a lot of people got. That most of the time, he liked being a witcher. That he was good at it. Eskel was like that. Even. Solid. Where Lambert wanted to punch destiny in its smug face, and Geralt hid from the spiteful bitch, Eskel just rode it. Like a ship on a wave. Sometimes he and Lambert resented his ability to do that.

But Eskel didn’t do any of that. He looked at Geralt, and his expression was so raw that Geralt was taken aback. And he was taken back. That was a look he hadn’t seen in many years. It wiped about seventy years away from Eskel’s face. Geralt was transported to this same room. But instead of a large bed, there were two bunkbeds. And instead of two grizzled witchers, there were two small, hopeful, frightened boys, who loved without wariness. Without skepticism. Without doubts.

Eskel pulled his hands to his lips and kissed each knuckle softly, in turn.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice husky.

Geralt shook his head. “Ah, for what? Me being angry doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t help you heal faster.”

“You don’t know that. It might.”

Eskel patted the blanket covering him. “Crawl in with me wolf. We’ll huddle together until it passes.”

The corner of Geralt’s mouth twitched into the hint of a smile despite himself. It was what Eskel used to say when Geralt had nightmares and he would stand stupidly around Eskel’s bed, hoping to be invited in. Geralt had always made up some excuse to accept his kindness. Something that wouldn’t be interpreted as weakness.

“Alright, but only because I want to keep you safe.”

Eskel grinned his lopsided, perfect grin. “I feel safer already.” That was what he used to say. Even as a child he knew how to respond to Geralt. How to handle his pride and his need to be the hero.

Geralt slid under the covers, still fully clothed. He laid his head on Eskel’s shoulder and gingerly draped his arm across his chest, avoiding his injury. With his free hand, Eskel turned his chin to face him.

They kissed, slow and unhurried. Geralt barely pressed against his lips, his fingers ghosting Eskel’s cheek. They could have kissed for a minute, or an hour, or a day. Geralt lost track of time, love settling in his chest and chasing away the rage and the fear. He could also hear Eskel’s pulse growing more steady. He could see that some color had already returned to his cheeks.

Maybe he wasn’t so useless after all.

Then, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Eskel called.

Lambert swung open the door and stood there with a shit eating grin. “Did Geralt tell you we’re gonna go down to Ard Carraigh and really stick it to some piece of shit priest? We’re gonna work out how to make him really suffer.”

Eskel raised his eyebrows and turned to Geralt.

Geralt shrugged. “I’m not saying I won’t.”

Lambert laughed and took stock of the two of them. “Look at you. Two bugs snug in a rug.”

“Come on,” said Eskel. “You too.” He patted the bed on the other side of him. Lambert’s grin stretched wider and he clambered in, pressing up against Eskel, warming himself with relish. He reminded Geralt of a blissed out lizard sunning himself on a rock. Eskel managed to turn enough to plant a kiss on Lambert’s cheek.

Lambert made that noise he always made when he loved something but didn’t want to admit it. It was like a combination of a snort and a laugh.

And when Vesemir came into the room in the morning to check Eskel’s dressing, he found them all asleep side by side.

He chuckled and watched them for a moment as they drooled and snored against one other.

The remaining Kaer Morhen wolves, together.

It was as it should be, how it always was, and how it would ever be.

They needed each other, after all.

#the witcher #geralt of rivia #eskel #geralt x eskel #gereskel #geskel #Eskralt #seriously we need to come to a consensus on this ship name #lambert #vesemir #this is not what i was supposed to be writing #but it is what wanted to be written

[lucky-catttt]

Maxwell Lord’s Aphrodite - Pt 2

Summary: When Maxwell Lord’s world comes crashing down, you, his personal assistant bring him back from the pits of despair.

Pairings: Maxwell Lord x Reader (female), Maxwell Lord x You

Rating: Mature 18+ ONLY, NO MINORS ALLOWED TO READ.

Word Count: 3,885

Warnings: Prepare to put a towel down or go touch some grass after, either or LOL Mention of genitals, oral sex, squirting, face fucking, choking, names, foreplay, degradation, aftercare, BDSM, sexism/sexual harrassment.

A/N: This is my first fan-fic, so the writing might not be fantastic, but if you have any pointers/advice please tell me! I’ve also added images and gifs to help readers imagine the scenarios and reactions!

“So what kind of proposal were we thinking of that would save Black Gold corporation?” Max quizzes, leaning back against his chair. You pause to think while finishing your pastry. “Well” you begin “This space is huge, around 4,300 square feet. The lease Black Gold is renting this office floor has no major restrictions on it, so you could potentially sub-let the space on the floor for a monthly or fixed term lease to people who work remotely or teams that don’t want to commit to a larger office space. It's becoming more common because of the GFC, people can't commit to large long term leases for whole office floors anymore. You could also rent out the boardroom by the hour & also lease the private manager offices to businesses that want their own private room. And we already have a reception near the lifts, just re-hire them and make them pretend they work for all the businesses on the floor, answering their calls, doing admin work like scanning and faxing etc. As far as the business’s clients that show up are concerned, each business looks like they own the whole floor.

If we do a cost analysis and then get a small investor to cover the startup costs, we could guarantee them a return if businesses pay contract deposits or pay their lease in advance up front. Plus the landlord we owe money to. And with the top floor with amazing views and location, we can charge top dollar” Max stares at you in disbelief. “Wow, are you sure you don’t wanna be CEO?” He laughs, still in shock. You laugh, blushing. “I started working on a business proposal for one of my university assessments, if we customise it for this project we could pitch it to some investors and banks and speak to the landlord about it as well” You reply. “I could kiss you right now.” Maxwell sighs, gripping his fist. “Please do” you giggle, leaning towards him. Max reaches out both hands to cup your face, before planting a passionate kiss on your lips. “Well, I guess we have a lot of work to do!” Max yells, before striding towards the bathroom to take a shower. Two weeks go by and the proposal is ready. Max calls you from the company car, on the way to your house to pick you up before the big investors meeting. “I’ll be right outside your place in a few minutes my sweet” He coos, beaming with excitement to see you. As his car pulls up, you collect your compendium, presentation cards and your pointer rod. Struggling with all you have to carry, Alfred rushes out of the car and up the steps to the front door, collecting all of your belongings. 

Maxwell peers over the top of his shades but the sun from behind your house blinds him. He shuffles across the seat and opens the car door, the sun now hiding from his view. As he removes his shades and looks up the stairs towards your front door, he sees you standing there, fixing your outfit. He’s stunned. 

It might be 1984, but you’re wearing a stunning outfit pulled straight from the 50s. A black suit dress with a pleat in the front with a thin gold belt around your waist. You accented the look with strap Mary jane heels, a black and gold handbag and a neat beret fascinator. Your hair was curled, accentuated with bright red lipstick and a single set of pearl earrings.

Max looks like he’s about to drop to his knees in awe, but his knees bend into a lengthy stride up the stairs, rushing to your side. “A heavenly vision of beauty'' Max gasps, giving you a kiss on the cheek in an attempt to preserve your makeup. He puts out his arm and you wrap your hands around it, as he leads you down your stairs to the car, staring at you the whole time, letting the universe guide his steps as this absolute goddess graces his presence. You both slide into the back seat of Max’s company car, his large hand immediately passing along your back and resting on your hip and ass, pulling you as close to him as possible. “I dont know how this presentation is going to go, but I can be absolutely certain that myself and every other person in that room will be enraptured by your presence”. he murmurs into your neck, squeezing your ass.

Max was wearing a pinstripe royal blue suit with black laced oxfords. His matching tie and pocket square peeking out. “I would kiss you right now but i don't want to get lipstick on your face just before our meeting” you blush, rubbing your nose against his. “I know. We have all the time in the world after” Max replies, running his nose down your neck, breathing gently against your skin.

 “We should probably prepare for the meeting, Max” you chuckle, seeing the office building not far up the road. You pull out your compendium and flip to an architectural blueprint of the office floor. 

“I had this drawn up by an architectural drafter last week. As you can see the large blank space is your office and private room, you already have the glass frosted for privacy. All the other office cubicles will be converted to private offices, as well as boardrooms, co-working areas and remote working hot spots.” Max’s eyes widen with surprise at the level of detail. “How did you get this done? I certainly don't remember commissioning this'' rubbing his chin. “I paid for it” you respond, nonchalantly. “You spent your money, for me?” Max inquires, now in disbelief. “Of course. I told you I would help you, Max. Consider it an investment”. You wink, flipping through more pages of the presentation. Just when Max thought he couldn't fall more in love with you than he already has, your hard work and giving nature makes his heart swell even larger to make room. After a few minutes the car pulls up to the investor’s office building. “Before we go in there, I want to ask you something.” Your eyes widen with intrigue. “While we're there, I’m not sure how these businessmen will react to a woman being anything more than my personal assistant. I’m not intimidated by you at all, but I suspect some of them might be” He continues, his eyes falling to your lap as he holds your hands. “Max, this project is my dream, but it’s your company, so i’m giving it to you to present. You’re the only person I trust with this”. 

As Maxwell begins to get himself together, you take a seat adjacent to where Max is standing. Although your knees are together with one ankle behind the other, you can feel some of the businessmen closest to you looking you up and down like a piece of meat. You quickly turn to face Max, giving him your undivided attention. “Well, I know you’re all very busy, so lets get started” Max smiles, wringing his palms together. The businessmen listen intently to Max’s pitch for the restructure of Black Gold corporation, before they begin to ask questions on financials. You begin to notice the men losing interest and Max starting to lose his confidence. He looks at you, his expression half pleading and half embarrassed. Without any hesitation, you stand up from your chair, striding over to Max’s side, picking up the pointing rod from the easel and pulling it to full length with one swift pull. 

The men all sit upright at attention from the sound of the rod. “If I may, Maxwell” you butt in, politely. “Gentleman” You steady the pointer rod against the chart on the easel “the profit figures on the project are as follows; 36 external view offices, charged at $3,000 per month each, generating $108,000 gross profit. The 25 internal offices with no view will be $500 per month, generating $12,500. We also have hot-desks with memberships starting at $20 per month. If companies want us to answer their phones, do their mail, bring them coffee, do their shopping, take their dry-cleaning, walk their dogs or bring them lunch, that's an additional fee. Essentially, we are looking at a monthly profit turnover of $150,000+. Our current lease fee is $50,000 a month with about $15,000 in body corporate and utilities, leaving $85,000 per month net profit, $225 thousand per quarter and over a million annually. We currently are looking for a combined setup cost of around $500,000. The more you invest, the bigger your return.” You swing the pointer road and rest it on your shoulder. 

Silence fills the room and you panic. Your assertiveness may have turned them off, so you pretend to be ditzy and dip one of your feet inwards. The men who are all sitting up at attention, look between each other and nod. Your charm and business acumen seemed to have put them under some kind of spell. “Thanks for your time gentleman. If you have any questions please feel free to call” you finish, walking around to hand each of them Max’s business card. The men begin to chat amongst themselves, before one of them approaches Maxwell. They introduce themselves and begin chatting about the pitch “You should be very proud of your assistant Maxwell” they chuckle “she seems very switched on and driven”. Max shoots you a smiling glance, before turning back “Yeah, I’m actually going to make her the CFO” he responds. “Well, we’ll deliberate here and be back in touch with our offer”. The meeting finally wraps up and you both head back downstairs where Alfred is waiting with the car door already open. You both slide inside and Max wraps his arms around you before passionately kissing your lips as the car drives back to his office.

“You want to make me the.. CFO?” you pant, breaking from the kiss. “Yes” Max smiles, staring into your eyes. “You have worked so hard and today at the presentation..I know you’re the woman for the job. Do you want it?” You blush, holding his face “Well how can I say no?”. The company car finally pulls up back at the office and you both head through the lobby and into the lift. Max stands behind you with his arms wrapped around you and his head on your shoulder, talking about the enormous amount of work that will potentially need to be done if this deal goes through. As the lift doors open into the reception area, you both step out and Max hears the phone in his office start to ring. You give him an excited smile, encouraging him to go take the call in private. He begins striding through the empty office before making it to his office, pushing the doors open and heading over to his desk.

You take your time walking back to his office, giving Max time to finish his phone call. As you approach his office doors, you hear the click of the receiver as he hangs up. You watch Max’s shadow behind the frosted glass walk up to the doors and swing them open, a neutral look on his face. You look puzzled, thinking it was bad news before he burst out laughing with a smile, swinging you over his shoulder and carrying you to his bedroom. “You did it baby!” He yells, slapping your backside before throwing you both down onto the bed. “We did!?” you scream, a wave of relief and excitement washing over you. “Yes! I’m so proud of you. You saved Black Gold corporation. You saved me.” Max smiles, brushing a lock of curls away from your face before cupping your cheek and passionately kissing you. 

You kick off your shoes, belt and take off your beret fascinator as Max removes his suit jacket, suspenders and belt, before kissing each other again. “I was so turned on by you today” Max moans, writhing his hands all over your body, before ripping the bust of your dress open, the two buttons pinging off onto the carpet. “Watching your voluptuous ass in that dress walking into that boardroom and how you commanded the room’s attention, took control and sealed the deal. I wanted to put you over that boardroom table and worship you like the goddess you are. But I guess I can do that now”. Something about wearing your favourite suit of his, the unwavering progressive support of women and eagerness to pleasure you unlocks your most ravenous sexual desires. You stop Max, sitting up at the foot of the bed. He gets up from laying down and looks at you, worried he said or did something wrong. “Whats wrong my love?” he asks, looking concerned. ****MAJOR SMUT WARNING AHEAD**** “Max… you’ve shown me the romantic love making version which was so beautiful, but I want to make you feel worshipped” Max gives you an interesting glance. “You’re such a giving person but I want to give back. You’ve suffered neglect and mistreatment most of your life. I want to give you a different kind of passionate sex. I have fantasies and wild ideas that I think will give you immense pleasure. I want you to….” You stop yourself, not sure how he will react. Max's eyes widened with intrigue. “Go on?” Max squeezes your hand. “Well” you begin. The passionate fire is burning hotter and hotter within you. “I want you…” you hitch up your skirt and sit across Max’s lap, with one leg over each side “to straddle my chest and fuck my throat while I rub my clit” you get closer to Max’s face, pulling on his tie “And I want to cum while you’re throat fucking and choking me with your cock” you begin to undo his tie “And then I want you to cum in the back of my throat and make me swallow it”. There’s dead silence, so you bat your eyelash extensions, throwing a sexy yet innocent gaze followed by “hmmm?”. Max’s mind goes completely blank, the blood rushing from every inch of his body straight to his cock, which you feel hardened against your crotch as you straddle him. “Uhh wow honey that sounds very dangerous.” Max chokes, embarrassed he's getting turned on at the idea of hurting you. 

“For you or me?” You giggle, biting your lip. “For you” Max says, wrapping his arms around you. “Are you sure that’s something you want me to do to you Hermosa?”. “Yes Maxwell. I love the way you worship and pleasure me, but I want you to feel the same way. I have a kink when it comes to being dominated. Seeing my man so turned on and using his strength and body to please himself using me, makes me feel incredible. I know you would never hurt me, it’s something I would love for you to experience” You answer before kissing his neck. “You really are too good to me, princessa” Max sighs, running his hands down your back to your ass, squeezing both cheeks. “Of course, we don’t have to if you don’t want to, Max” you give him a reassuring look, worried you might have overstepped. “No baby, I’d love to, if that’s what will bring you the most pleasure” He coos, kissing your neck.

You begin to take off your dress, revealing under a black and gold laced lingerie set. “Black and Gold” you chuckle, watching Max’s eyes widen at the level of detail. “How did I get so lucky?” Max pants, pulling off his shirt and pants, leaving his boxers to contain his rock hard cock. You go to reach for Max’s crotch when his hand stops you. “Before we do this” Max begins “I want you to stop me at any time if it hurts or you can’t breathe or you just don’t want to do it anymore. That is the most important thing to me”. You nod and smile at Max, leaning in to kiss him, before your hands start to remove his boxers.

You reach down and begin to tease his cock, tracing your fingers tips against the tip. With your other hand you guide Max’s hand down, placing it at the top of your panties. As he starts to put his hands under your panties, he notices there’s a hole in them. Max stops to inspect. “Crotchless panties? Me vuelves loco” Max pants before he begin kissing and biting all over your body.

You’re in for it now. Like a virus, you’ve taken over Max’s brain, flooding it with animalistic desire and passion. A switch has been flipped and hell bent on blowing your mind, leaving all of his inhibitions and reservations about what he’s about to do to you at the door. Max climbs on top of you, wrapping his large hand around your throat, gently squeezing as you gasp for air. “Is this what you want?” He growls into your ear, nibbling on your earlobe before kissing down your neck. You manage to nod before moaning, indicating that you’re enjoying it. He’s never treated a woman like this before, but he manages to find the personality and words seemingly from thin air, like it was repressed all this time. “Start touching yourself for me now” Max commands. You slide your hand down into your panties and start rubbing your clit, sparks flying through your body and the slick now leaking out of your pussy. He groans at the sight of you touching yourself. Max moves up the bed before straddling over your chest. With your head propped up on some pillows, you look in Max’s eyes and ready your mouth and jaw for his throbbing cock. Max thumbs your bottom lip before grabbing just under your jaw to keep your face steady. “Open wide like the good little whore that you are” he hisses, smacking the tip of his precum soaked cock on your face.

The degrading name only makes you wetter, as you furiously rub your clitoris whilst pinned under Max’s legs. You moan as Max pushes his cock into your mouth and down your throat. “Oh my god my love your mouth feels incredible” Max moans, his character from before severely altered by the pleasurable sensation. He realises his mistake and compensates by pushing his cock as far as it will fit into your mouth and throat. “That’s it, take it all” he smirks, exhaling with a moan. You use two fingers to scoop up some of your slick and rub it into your clitoris, which is now super sensitive. Your stifled moans humming against Max’s veiny cock cause it to twitch. With your hips bucking from pleasuring yourself, Max takes both of his hands and puts them on your cheeks. “Fuck your mouth feels so good” Max moans, slowly thrusting back and forth out of your mouth, his cock touching your uvula and causing you to gag with each stroke. Your eyes begin to roll back in your skull as you continue to moan & choke, your swollen clitoris edging closer and closer to orgasm. “You like this huh? You like it when Daddy fills your throat up and fucks it?” Max hisses, wrapping your hair in between his fingers, gripping hard as his thrusts gain more momentum. Thick strings of spit is now spilling out of your mouth, down your chin and onto your breasts. “You look

The taste of Max’s precum coating the back of your tongue. You’re fighting to contain your orgasm but Max’s cock and brutal punishing words are sending you dangerously close to the edge. “Mmmmm, mmmmm!” You choke, tears welling in your eyes as you’re trying to nod and send Max a pleasured innocent gaze, driving him wild. You concentrate on breathing through your nose, each time Max’s cock leaves the back of your throat for a split second, giving you enough time to take in air. You decide to start moving your flattened tongue against the shaft, rubbing against the tip as it passes back and forth. Max let’s out a groan “You’re such a good little putá for papá”. There’s no holding back now, you increase your moans to signal that you’re on the precipice of an orgasm. “Cum for me” Max hisses, continuing the ecstasy inducing tempo of thrusts into your mouth and throat. You continue to rub your clit and gesture for Max to keep his cock still inside your mouth and throat for this moment, riding the crashing wave of your orgasm, squirting furiously onto your legs and sheets below. The writhing and shaking of your body underneath him, the sound of your squirting and muffled cries and moans from behind his cock is too much and brings him closer much faster than he ever anticipated. The eye-watering sensation causes the tears to flow down your cheeks, causing your mascara to run.

As your orgasm begins to subside you gesture for Max to continue thrusting, which he does as he moves his large hands to cup your face. “That felt fucking amazing” Max moans, continuing his fast and hard strokes. Your gaze, burning with passion and framed within smudged running eyeliner locks with Max’s, his domineering yet still showing affection. “I’m gonna cum” Max pants, keeping the pace as his grip on your face grows tighter. “Fuckkkk!!!” He shouts, holding your head still as he holds one final thrust as far in as it will go. Your eyes roll back into your head again as you feel the warm thick ropes of cum spurt onto the back of your throat. It was lucky you had taken a large enough breath before that moment, enough to sustain you for the few seconds Max held his cock still inside your mouth, throbbing and pulsing as he moans and shudders, cursing in Spanish. Coming back to reality, Max immediately pulls his softening cock from your mouth and wraps his large hands on the top and bottom of your face, closing your jaw shut. “Now Swallow” he commands, bending down so that his face inches from yours. With a cheeky gaze you oblige and swallow the remains of his cum tangled in your throat, before opening your jaw to allow him to inspect if there was any left. “My good little leche putá” he whispers, before spitting in your wide open mouth.

As if like breaking character on a movie set, Max immediately reverts back to his original self, climbing off to the side to lay next to you. “Was that good for you my love? How do you feel?” Max asks, worried he’s harmed your physical and mental state. “Incredible” you pant, smiling, lying in a pool of your own squirt. Breathing a sigh of relief, Max quickly brings up the blankets to cover you both, embracing you and peppering your spit, mascara and tear soaked face with kisses. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Max quizzes, checking your chest and throat over. “No” you reply, your throat somewhat hoarse. “Okay good. I love you so much” Max sighs, brushing your hair out of your face and kissing your forehead. “I love you too, Max”.

————————

I got impatient and wanted to post it now so I guess this chapter is finished 💀

@anaaaispunk @mandoalorian @pintsizemama

#maxwell lord #max lord #max lord x reader #max lord x you #max lord smut #maxwell lord smut #max lord x f!reader #maxwell lord x f!reader #javier pena #pedro pascal

[lovesanmotion]

Light - Jeong Yunho

summary: cool uncle by day but mafia boss at night, jeong yunho is ready for anything; except for falling in love.

tags: @couchpotatoaniki (yes i am tagging you bcs you blossomed this idea to me hihi)

A deep sigh left Yunho's lips, lighting up his cigarette and sticking it between his lips before releasing pearly white smoke. His once neat suit was now covered in sweat, dust and a trickle of blood from earlier events, singlehandedly killing a mafia group from the neighboring city. He lifted his wrist watch and checked the time - 10:01pm. Sandwiched between his middle and index finger, Yunho raises his cigearette stick onto his lips and puffed out a smoke.

His once cool composure broke when around the corner, the slim but curvy figure of his neighbor - y/n y/l/n came into view. She had her head hung low, shoulders drooping down and walking gloomily home. But Yunho stared at her. Around y/n, he felt like a high school boy who has a crush on her. He didn't also missed the fact that it was too late for y/n to go home. Work hours ends at 5-6pm, but 10? Yunho wondered if you took an overtime.

As y/n passed him by, he couldn't help but smile to himself. Feeling his face heating up. Getting up from the bench, he dropped his stick and stepped on it before following you home. With his hands tucked inside his pockets, Yunho wondered why you ever chose to live in a dangerous city like this. Was it because the rent's cheaper? Or to live close to your office?

He stopped his tracks and hid behind a pole, watching you get inside your home building safely. Watching you get home safely is what Yunho's been doing ever since you moved into the area and with a smile on his face, Yunho walks back home.

As the sun sets into the blue sky, Yunho packs up a lot of candies in his pocket before leaving his home and strolling to the neighborhood park. Clad in a bright red and white striped shirt and pants a bright smile on his face, Yunho would never be mistaken as someone who killed a group of guys last night. The cool breeze swept past him, causing his bangs to fly away.

As he found the children playing merrily and happily in the park, his heart swelled with an overwhelming feeling. How he wished these children would grow up into kind and humble adults. When the children saw him coming up to them, a chorus of "uncle Yunho!" greeted him, followed by all of them running up to him for a hug, some even hugging his legs.

Sitting down on the wooden bench, he gave each child a piece of candy and chocolate. Their little smiles upon tasting the fruity and sweet treats brought a smile on his lips too. However, Yunho mentally did a head count on the children.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. One was missing, and the one missing happened to be his favorite. He was about to open his mouth and ask them where y/s/n when a small but cheerful "uncle Yunho!" greeted him from behind. Turning around, his eye's widened.

His neighborhood crush, holding an ice cream cone with one hand and the other holding hands with his favorite child from the playground.

"Mommy this is uncle Yunho! He's the one who always watches us and gives us candy when we play here!" A deep shade of red plastered on Yunho's cheeks. Slowly he turned away and sunk a bit lower on his seat, feeling himself getting shy. But he was a little surprised to know that y/n has a son.

Yunho watched as y/s/n joined the other kids in the slide and on his left side became occupied by you.

"Doesn't it get a little sad when you watch them slowly grow up? One day they are only crying for attention and the next thing you know you walk with them to preschool." Y/N spoke, taking a lick on the vanilla cone.

"Do you have kids at home?" Yunho shook his head. But he would very much like to have one with y/n.

"I'm y/n by the way!" He looked at the hand extended out for him to shake before looking at your smile. Yunho's heart beated loudly inside his chest, not missing the sight of the ice cream on the corner of your lip. He slowly leaned in and raised his hand, wiping the cream away with his thumb.

"Nice to meet you, y/n. I'm Yunho." He smiled at you, seeing that pink tint across your cheeks. Yunho thanked the gods that this might be the chance for him to properly talk to y/n. He turned to his side and striked up a conversation with you, slightly getting distracted with the way how you lick your ice cream.

"Uh..hello? Earth to Yunho?" Yunho snapped out of his trance and shook his head, batting his eyelashes. Yunho stared at you. "What was that again?"

"I was asking you earlier if you wanted to have lunch with me and y/s/n. Think of it as a thank you for watching over my son." Turning his head, he saw the children leave one by one until it was your son left sitting in the swing.

"I-I would love to!" He blurted out, maybe a little too loud. Yunho suddenly backed away, suddenly feeling shy but he only found y/n chuckling at him.

"That was cute. Anyways, let's me show you where I live." As Y/N got up, so did he. He took the pleasure of carrying y/s/n in his arms as he followed you to your place, he had to pretend he didn't know where you lived. How was he going to explain that he has been following you for months already?

"Welcome to our place!" Spoke Y/N in a cheerful tone. The place didn't look half bad. As he sets y/s/n down and removes his shoes by the doorway, he took in the appearance of your place. It isn't big nor small, perfect for two people living, light wooden floors, cream colored walls, yellow and green cupboards and a mini bookshelf thats occupied by books about numbers, letters, alphabets and story books.

"This is a nice place you've got" Yunho says, sitting down on the couch only to be sunk lower as he didn't noticed how the couch was small.

"I guess I was lucky to find this one. More greenery in the province than just seeing buildings in the city." Y/N spoke, Yunho watched her enter the kitchen. He got up and excitedly followed her like a high school boy following his crush around school.

"What are you going to make there?" He asks as he stood behind Y/N making her jump a little. Yunho didn't realized how close he has gotten to her, but he felt like his heart would burst at how small she is close to him.

"Does pasta sound nice?" Y/N tilted her head to the side. If only his mornings were spent this close to y/n, Yunho would be in heaven already.

As Yunho was about to say something, in came little y/s/n holding his school bag.

"Mommy, can you help me with my homework?"

Two heads snapped to look at y/s/n who stood by the doorway of the kitchen.

"Your mom would love to!" Yunho smiled at y/s/n, held y/n by her shoulders and pushed her out of the kitchen despite her many protests against it. Yunho opened the fridge to check what ingredients were available, he grabbed whatever he needed and placed them on the counter and started cooking.

It was only like last night, he was using the very same knife to slice throats and now he's slicing meat with the same knife. But Yunho was only occupied by the merry thought of cooking for his crush.

After half an hour passed, Yunho beautifully plated three pasta bowls on the table. He gave himself a pat in the back for doing an excellent job and was about to call y/n and y/s/n to eat when he heard some talking.

"Mommy do you like uncle Yunho?" A small voice, y/s/n, as Yunho thought. His heart raced upon hearing this kind of conversation. There was a moment of silence, Yunho was fidgeting to know your answer.

"Mommy can uncle Yunho be my dad?" Yunho clutched his chest dramatically, pretending to wipe a tear from his eye. But there it was again, that silence.

"Let's see, y/s/n. Want to see uncle Yunho if he's done?"

Yunho started to get up from his spot but hit his knee in the process, an inaudible sound came out of his mouth and suddenly the door swung open. Y/N and Y/S/N stared at him with a blank yet confused looks on their faces.

"Uh..lunch is ready!" Yunho smiled and instantly stood up from the ground. As he lead them to the kitchen, he was proud to see their expressions and sat down, paying attention to y/n's reaction before eating.

"So what do you do, Yunho?" Y/N asked while twirling pasta with her fork.

Yunho racked up his brain to think of what should he say. But he choked up in between.

"I'm unemployed at the moment" He says. There was no way he is ever going to tell that he kills people, raids warehouses and factories and regulates drug deals within in and out of the country. "What about you? What do you do for a living?" Yunho gulped the food down his throat before facing you.

"I, uh...I just work at, at a very boring corporate office. They don't pay much."

"Is that why you do overtime and get home late at night?"

"What?"

"What?"

Yunho stared at y/n wide eyed. That was wrong of him suddenly mentioning it to you. He shook his head and carried on the conversation by changing the topic.

For the whole afternoon, Yunho stayed with Y/N and Y/S/N, watching kids movies while having a snack. Y/S/N falling asleep in the middle of the movie. Yunho took the pleasure of letting y/s/n sleep on his chest, he could get used to being a househusband. With the sun setting, Yunho thought it was best for him to go home. But was stopped by y/n to join them for dinner. On the outside, Yunho thanked you. But on the inside, Yunho was giggling.

He cooked once more in the kitchen, clogging out y/n's protests. Dinner became a happy meal as all three of them became full. While y/n was cleaning up in the kitchen, Yunho asked permission if he could take y/s/n out for a walk, promising he'd be home by 8pm.

Yunho took y/s/n to the convenient store, handing him a whole bar of chocolate in his small hands. But the little boy stared at him.

"But mommy says I can't have too much sweets" the small boy pouted.

"But your mom isn't here right? This'll be our little secret. You and me." Yunho grinned at the small boy who flashed a toothy smile in front of him.

"Uncle Yunho do you like my mommy?"

"Very much." Yunho suddenly stopped as he looked back at the child with him, now grinning at him.

"Okay, that's another secret between us. Don't tell your mommy about that too okay?" The small boy nodded his head quickly, Yunho held his hand and walked back home with him. Unaware of two eyes following them as they head back.

(gif is not mine! credits to the rightful owner!)

#ateez fanfic #ateez x reader #ateez imagines #ateez yunho #jeong yunho #ateez oneshot #mafia!ateez x y/n #mafia!ateez x reader #mafia!yunho x reader #mafia!yunhoxy/n #kpop fanfic #kpop x reader #kpop imagines #kpop oneshots

[backtobackbakubabe]

Speak Easy Part 9

Dabi X Reader , Bakugo X Reader

Words: 3214

Masterlist

Reader has a siren quirk and has spent the past several years of her life as a captive being experimented on by “heroes” Now that she’s out she needs protection and safe place to heal. Who will be the one to put her pieces back together?

Words with ‘this’ is dialogue written in her journal rather than said out loud and and words with ~this~ is dialogue said in sign language rather than out loud.

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

You drank all day. Then took a nap, ate some pizza, and then continued to drink some more.

“Fuck Endeavor!” Dabi threw a pillow at the TV.

“Yeah fuck that guy! Small dick Energy!” You giggled at the sideways glare Dabi gave you.

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t talk about the size of my old man’s dick.” You and Dabi were lounging on the couch, your legs in his lap, empty beer bottles littering the coffee table. You were watching some trashy special on TV about Japans top heroes, and having fun roasting them all. Dabi chuckled as he rubbed circles into your calf. “I have to say… I didn’t think you’d still be conscious at this point. I had you pegged as a light weight.”

You snorted as you sat up to look at him. “Who the fuck you calling a… *burp* light weight?” You sat up too quickly and had to squeeze your eyes shut to keep the room from spinning. His hand came up to steady you and you leaned into his warmth. “I’ll have you know… I am a drinking queen!” You giggled and started singing Dancing Queen at the top of your lungs but replaced the word dancing with drinking.

He rolled his eyes at you before shoving you off of his lap and onto the floor. You landed with a loud thud, but you just continued to giggle. “Aren’t you a Siren? Isn’t your singing supposed to be… I don’t know…good?”

Gasping you held your hand to your chest in mock horror. “How dare you insult my singing. If I wanted, I’d have you on my knees in seconds.”

He smirked at you, “Wait, what does that even mean? Did you mean you’d have me on MY knees in seconds or you’d be on YOUR knees in seconds? Because those are two very different things.”

“UGH! You know what I meant!”

You gave him a pouty look to which he just chuckled in response. “I don’t think I do doll. Why don’t you show me.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “I refuse to fall for your perverted mind games. I’m too smart!”

Dabi got an evil glint in his eyes. “Too smart huh?” He pushed himself off the couch and held a hand out to you to help you stand up on wobbly legs. “You’ve made some bold claims tonight princess. You say you’re a drinking queen. You say your smarter than me. You said you could have me on my knees in seconds… I just don’t know if I believe you.”

You swayed a bit as you jabbed a finger into his chest. “Bring it on bacon bits. Let’s make it a competition.”

“Okay fine. But it’s only fun if we put something on the line. What are we wagering?” His hand started to travel down your side to grip your ass.

Slapping his hand away you stepped out of his reach. “Nothing sexual! Keep your hands to yourself.”

He watched as you tapped your chin in thought. Obviously you were taking this competition thing very seriously. You looked cute in your drunken state. Your hair was askew and your cheeks a rosy shade or red. Suddenly your eyes beamed, “I know! Truth or dare!”

“Uh what?” Dabi quirked an eyebrow at your antics. “Did you forget that we are adults?”

“Oh come on, don’t be such a buzz kill!” You rushed over to the kitchen and started pulling out cups and beer. “We used to do this at UA all the time! It’s so much fun, come on!”

Dabi groaned as he approached the table that you were currently setting up for beer pong. “Oh come on… I was hoping it could be sexual.” It was his turn to pout now. “We could always play a quick round of strip pong. What do ya say?”

You paused as you set up cups, “Hmm maybe later. I know as soon as my clothes start to come off you won’t want to play games anymore.” You gave him a taunting look, “At least not any innocent ones.”

He raised his hands up in defense, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I am more than capable of keeping my hands to myself.”

You snorted as you set up the last cup. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

He took his spot on one side of the table. “I’ll tell you what… I’ll compromise. For every cup we make we have to answer a question. If I win, we move on to strip pong. If you win or if I can’t manage to keep my hands to myself, I’ll do whatever silly little punishment you can think of.”

You shrugged your shoulders. “Sounds good to me.” You cracked you knuckles dramatically. “I hope you’re not a sore loser.” You were really confident for someone who was on the verge of passing out. But if you were being honest with yourself, you knew you were better at drinking games the drunker you were.

Dabi gave you a borderline evil smirk, “We’ll see how cocky you are when I make you play bare ass naked.” He threw a yellow ping pong pall at you, laughing as it smacked you in the face. “I’m sure there’s a some joke I could make about you liking balls in your face… bu-“

You tossed the ball and he watched as it sunk right in. One cup down, five more to go. His surprised eyes met your emotionless ones. You winked, “Drink up bitch.”

He scoffed as he yanked the ball out of the cup before downing it’s contents and flipping it upside down. “Alright… let’s get this over with…what are you gonna ask me?”

That was a good question. What were you going to ask him? You could only imagine the kind of secrets he had. Visions of all kinds of illegal acts and debaucheries crossed your mind. You were enjoying your little daydreams when he cleared his throat. “Any day princess…”

You tapped your chin, “Hmmm. Okay. Why did you leave the League?”

He groaned, “I thought you were gonna ask me something stupid like my favorite color… but no, of course you’d come out swinging.” His eyes looked a little nervous. “I technically never left, but I also was never really an official member. I’ve always done what I wanted. The only person I answer to is me.” His fists clenched, “But if you’re asking why I don’t really associate with them anymore… Well I may be a bad guy but even I have my limits.”

You knew that was probably all you were going to get when he squared his shoulder off and sunk a cup of his own. His eyes gleamed as he repeated your orders from earlier, “Drink up… bitch.” You stuck your tongue out at his before chugging your cup and loudly slamming it back onto the table. “Such attitude tonight? Makes me want to bend you over this table and-“

“Yeah yeah, bend me over the table and fuck me stupid… What’s your question?” Your cheeks flushed. From the embarrassment or the alcohol you weren’t sure.

He growled, “As soon as we finish this stupid game, I’m going to do just that you little brat.” His lips twitched into a brief smile. “So, I’ve been reading those really fun articles about you today and I noticed something… They never mention your hero name.. What is it?”

Your eyes grew cold and your arms came up to hug yourself. “I don’t have one.”

Dabi bristled at your short answer. “What do you mean you don’t have one. You graduated from UA, you worked at hero agency for a few years. Granted you were probably the only real hero in the entire building… but there’s no way you don’t have one.”

You shrugged, which earned you a glare. “Sorry, but I really don’t. When we picked names in school… Well I never really thought I’d actually graduate. Katsuki and Izuku had to talk me out of dropping out almost every other day. So, I didn’t take it seriously. After I got hired, they made it very clear the public would never know who I was. I was a spy. Spies don’t have hero names. They have code names. Mine was Helen.”

Dabi almost flinched at the amount of malice in your voice. Your happy mood disappearing fast. But his curiosity weighed heavy on him. “Why Helen?”

You tossed your ball and watched as it bounced off the table and into a cup. “That’s two questions… and that’s also two cups.” You wanted to change the subject, “My two questions are… Do you secretly like Shoto? And Why do you pretend that you don’t secretly love Shoto?”

“Ugh, Shoto’s a fucking brat.”

You strategically decided you were hot and removed the hoodie you had been wearing, leaving you in a tight tank top and a pair of his boxers. “Oh? I thought you liked brats?”

Dabi leaned on the table as he looked you up and down. “You’re playing a dangerous game there.”

“No… I’m playing beer pong. And in case you didn’t notice, I’m winning. Now answer the question.” You were having so much fun teasing him. You felt safe with an entire table in between the two of you. This was one of the first time the two of you had opened up to each other. Sure, it was because you were both drinking and only because you were playing a very juvenile game. But progress it progress.

He rolled his eyes at you as he gripped the ball in his had. “He’s my little brother… I don’t have to like him. I used to hate him actually. In my head he was the reason our dad was so awful to me. He was my replacement, the golden child.” He was quite for a little while. You could tell he didn’t really want to keep going. He was already more vulnerable then usual.

He knew if he wanted you to open up to him, he needed to offer the same courtesy. “Even now, I see the weird relationship they have and it pisses me off. My dad was awful to us, Shoto included. So, it makes me mad that he’s trying all of the sudden to make up for it, and even more mad that Shoto’s letting him.” He finished drinking his beer. “We’ve talked a lot recently and… at the end of the day he’s my baby brother. Sometimes I wonder if I had stuck around if things could have been different for him.” He finally made eye contact with you and sighed, “So to answer your question… I guess I like the kid a little bit.”

You squealed and clapped your hands. “I knew it! It’s almost impossible to not like him. He’s so adorable, and strong, and nice, and smart, and-“

“STOP! First you talk about my dad’s dick, and now you’re raving about how much you love my little brother… I’m literally right here?” His nose scrunched up in disgust. He shot his ball, it bounced off the rim of a cup and your hand was quick to swat it away. “FUCK! How did you even do that?”

“HA! No question for you. I’m too fast. My reflexes are too fast for you!” You giggled before chasing the ball that was now bouncing away towards the kitchen. You were already unsteady due to the alcohol but the second your socked feet hit the tile in the kitchen they slipped out from under you.

“Oof…” You landed hard on your ass. A few moments of silence passed before you rolled over and started laughing. You felt tears streaming down your cheeks and you clutched your stomach. You honestly could say you hadn’t laughed this hard in a long time.

You felt two strong hands lift you up from under your armpits. “Maybe we should call it a night soon. I have a feeling if I don’t stop you now, you’ll hate me tomorrow when your heads in a toilet.”

You wiped the tears from your eyes and laughed even harder. “I WIN!”

He picked you up and turned you to face him. “I know you’re drunk… but you still have three cups left before you win.”

“NoOo I win! You touched me! Your hands my contact with my armpits! Physical contact was made… I WIN!” You started poking him in the chest. “I win. I win. I win. You lose. I win.” You danced in a circle resulting in you falling into his chest.

His arms wrapped around you tightly, “That’s got to be cheating… You fucking wiped out on the kitchen floor. I still had questions I wanted to ask. This is bullshit.” His hand reached down and rubbed circles on the sore spot on your ass.

The alcohol was starting to hit you hard. You leaned into his warmth and could feel drunken slumber start to drag you under. “I’ll make you a deal. You can ask me one question. But you have to do the punishment I decide no matter what.”

He had no idea what you had planned and by the look in your eyes he probably wasn’t going to like it. “Fine. I’ll do it… Why Helen?”

You froze. You knew he was going to ask. You didn’t want to talk about it, but then again you knew he probably didn’t want to talk about his family. You were torn. You wanted to lean closer to him, to absorb his warmth, to let him hold you. But you also wanted to push him away, to stand on your own feet, to show you’re not weak.

His hand came up to cradle the back of your head, holding you to him, deciding for you. You took a shaky breath. “Well I don’t know how much Greek mythology you know… But there was a woman… Helen of Troy. She was supposedly the most beautiful woman in the whole world.” Dabi’s fingers ran through your hair encouraging you to continue. “She had powerful men fighting over her, on their knees begging for her love. She was the reason the Trojan War started. Most people think it was the Trojan horse that lead to victory over Troy… but in reality, it was her. She brought destruction to an entire country… just by being pretty.” You let out a long breath and felt some of the tension in your shoulders start to bleed out. “So, I was Helen. I was a pretty face that brought destruction to men.”

His hand rubbed up and down your spine. “Well they got one thing right… You are beautiful.”

A shaky chuckle left you as you gripped his shirt. “And if we’re being honest… You are more than capable of destroying anyone you wanted to. You’re just a badass, you are a beautiful badass and that’s nothing you should be ashamed of. Wear it like a badge of honor.”

Your next words were barely louder than a whisper, “I’ve done a lot of bad things.” He didn’t say anything, to which you were grateful. He just continued to rub your back. “I have no right to be mad about those articles… because I did those things.”

Dabi leaned away from to make you look at him. “It doesn’t matter what you did, because you did them with good intentions. I’ve done way worse and believe me when I say I did them all for the worst reasons possible.” His thumb brushed against your cheek. “They took advantage of you. They were the one’s giving the orders. They are the ones responsible, and they are the ones who will ultimately pay the price.”

You blinked back your tears. “I just feel so stupid. I believed so much in the hero system, I was so blind to what they were doing. How many of the people that I apprehended were innocent? How many of them just had interesting quirks they wanted to study? How many of them just didn’t agree with the system? How many voices did I silence?”

“You’ll drive yourself crazy if you think like that. People like us fell through the cracks and that’s not our fault.” You just nodded, done talking about it. There was nothing he could say at the moment that would make you feel better. Only time could fix this, if it could even be fixed at all. Dabi squeezed your cheeks together. “Now why don’t you tell me what this punishment is, because you looked really excited about it earlier.”

You nodded and pushed away from him, wiping your tears. “Yeah. Okay…” You took a deep breath pushing the painful thoughts out of your mind. “I want you… to prank call… Shoto…”

He immediately wanted to deny you. To say hell no. But you had just had a raw moment with him, and he had promised. “… Fine.”

He pulled out his phone and scrolled until he saw Experiment #4 and hit dial. What was he supposed to say? He had never done something like this before. Was he supposed to block his number? It was really late would his brother even answer?

You poked his shoulder and mouthed, “Put it on speaker.”

He rolled his eyes but complied. A few rings later and Shoto’s tired voice interrupted his thoughts. “…uh…hello?”

Dabi began to panic. The only thing he could think of were the immature jokes he’d heard when hanging out with Twice. “Your mammas so stupid… When I told her she lost her mind. She went looking for it…”

You lost it. You bent over in silent laughter. Not only at his ridiculous joke, but the look on his face was priceless.

“… My mamma? We have the same mother. It’s a little insensitive to say she lost her mind Touya. Wait is this code? Are you guys okay? Cough if you need help.” You herd rustling in the background. “Izuku get up I think Y/n and my brother need help. He said my mamma’s so stupid, when he told her she lost her mind, she went looking for it. I think it’s code.”

You couldn’t help it you let out a loud laugh, Shoto was as clueless as ever. Izuku took the phone from his boyfriend. “Sounds like a dumb joke to me babe. Hey Dabi… did y/n put you up to this?”

Something about hearing Izuku’s serious voice made Dabi uncomfortable. He sounded like an angry father who had just been woken up but his dumb children. “Uh… yeah…”

“Great tell her she’s hilarious, and next time she wants to wake someone up at three in the morning to call Kacchan.”

The line went dead and Dabi scoffed, “He really is an idiot I swear.”

“As far as I’m *hiccup* concerned all you Todoroki’s are.” You yawned and stretched. Your eye lids were getting heavy.

Dabi scooped you up and you immediately nuzzled into his shoulder. “One for your room, twice for mine.” You had never been in his bed until last night, but his bed was considerably more comfortable than your own. You held up two fingers. “Anything my drunk destroyer of men wants.”

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

Tags: tags: @falling4fandoms @wifunozomi @here-in-never-land @whore-for-anime @klecksstorys @aurorahoneybuns @theunknownrandom @insane-without-delirium @frenchsfryys @officiallydarkgeek @neofixcs @music-is-all-i-need @katsuki-bakubabe @unadulteratedtastemakerpoetry@dabislittlemouse@aimee1602 @pinkhatlizzy @kunaigirlx44 @nii-sanfucker@bestgirlb @silver-stardrop @bakubby99

#bakugo katsuki imagine #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugou x reader #mha bakugou #bhna bakugou #bakugo katsuki #bakugo x reader #dabi my hero academia #dabi imagine #dabi #yandere dabi #dabi x y/n #dabi x you #dabi x reader #dabi bnha #mha dabi #dabi todoroki #mha fanfiction #mha x reader #my hero academia

[consumeconstantly]

Lady Cross (first aid)

Summary: Somehow, Marinette always ends up biting off more than she can chew. It started off with a kid and a nasty gash on their knee. The sudden escalation to treating the new head of Gotham’s underworld? It can only be explained by the fact that she’s catnip for trouble. 

_____________________________________________

Marinette supposed she should have expected something like this to happen eventually.

Really, she patches up a few street kids and offers a meal and some resources and suddenly she's made a name for herself in the slums of Gotham. It’s not like she’s doing anything revolutionary. Well, okay, maybe she does cheat a little bit and uses her healing powers on a few of the tougher cases that really should have been out of her realm of expertise, but she’s living near the slums of Gotham for a reason. That reason being Marinette is just a little broke and can’t really afford to send everyone she comes across to the hospital, and the people who are injured certainly can’t. It’s not like she can leave them to die. That would be heartless.

When she stopped treating scrapes and cuts for kids on the streets as she came across them and instead found her apartment balcony frequented by families who needed her help, she couldn’t just say no. And so, more and more serious wounds started coming in. Kids brought their parents and friends. The parents and friends brought... well, if the police stopped by her apartment any time soon, she’s fairly certain they’d have a field day.

But again, it’s not like she’s going to turn these people into the police when they’ve come to her for help and have a small army of people who swear up and down that they’re good people and only doing what they have to do in order to get by.

Morality comes in such a variety of shades, who was she to judge? Ladybug and Marinette have both certainly had their fair share of mistakes that they’d gladly go back in time to rectify, and her hands weren’t clean of blood either. Sure, the Miraculous Cure may have brought people back, but their deaths were still on her. And Hawkmoth? Yeah, he’s alive now, but she hammered him into the pavement after dropping him from the top of the Eiffel tower, and she’s not going to pretend that she didn’t take a bit of morbid joy in that moment.

But back to the matter at hand. Which was, the notorious Red Hood—responsible for a coup amongst Gotham’s drug dealers and responsible for taking down a man whose morality truly vanished with the wind, Black Mask himself— was currently bleeding out on her second floor balcony, smoking a cigarette and lounging against the rail like he owned the place. 

“Lady Cross,” he inclined his head.

“Red Hood,” Marinette returned his greeting.

God, she really didn’t want to get involved with Red Hood. She wasn’t opposed to helping out street thugs and criminals, but Red Hood was a different league. He seemed to be a fairly decent guy, ensuring that kids weren’t dealt drugs and tried to keep them out of the circuit as much as possible. He took down plenty of worse criminals while he was at it. In fact, Marinette would go so far to say the Red Hood as one the good guys.

But the issue was, once she started treating people of a certain level, she’d be open game. And that didn’t seem very enticing to her. Not at all. Everyone knew that Red Hood had beef with the Bat Family for some reason or other, and also made enemies with almost every single rogue in Gotham, and a good number of enemies outside of it as well. Basically, Red Hood was a universal enemy of both the vigilantes and rogues. Someone she shouldn’t get involved with while she was trying to investigate the darkness surrounding Gotham whole running her online boutique and going to college at Gotham University.

Unfortunately, Tom and Sabine and her own stint as Ladybug taught her that she could never ignore someone in need. Marinette sighed and slid the mesh open, leading Red Hood to her living room. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

“Real nice place you got here,” he said.

With the mask covering the whole of his face, Marinette had no facial expressions to figure out whether he was poking fun at her current living situation or not. His voice sounded genuine, but vocal emotions were easy to fake.

The apartment she was living in was not on the nice side of town. There were three bullet holes in the wall between her living room and bedroom that she just didn’t have time to patch up, some pretty nasty looking stains on the ceiling near her kitchen, and a huge, spray painted red cross on one of her walls, which was where her street name derived from. Her floor and coffee table were also in states of disarray; she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to clean up after working on two commissions and the last guest whose wounds were heavy enough to warrant several rolls of gauze, which was now half stuffed into a garbage can sitting next to rolls of fabric. Perhaps not the neatest or most sanitary situation, but she didn’t have time to clean up before every single one of her unexpected guests came in.

Look, it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have time to fix things up real nice and neat. She’d only been living in the apartment for a month and a half, and most times, she barely spent any time in it other than to sleep, cram last minute projects for her design course, or to help heal people. Her living situation wasn’t the biggest of worries.

“Sit,” Marinette gestured to the one of the few pieces of furniture that she specifically bought for the apartment. She didn’t mind the stained, half broken, and extremely creaky couch the last owners left behind for the first week, but after she started bringing back her first… visitors, it seemed important that the couch was comfortable, sturdy, and most crucially, cleanable.

Rummaging through a cabinet, she pulled out a tattered briefcase she thrifted a while back to keep all of her medical supplies in. Not the prettiest of things, but she tried not to keep expensive looking items in her apartment because she wasn’t a fan of getting mugged. The medicine she kept was already expensive enough, she didn’t need to attract everyone’s attention by owning one of those metal containers used in hospitals. Even though most of the people who dropped by her apartment were thankful to be treated, she had a few instances where people tried to steal things from her.

“What’s the damage, doc?” Red Hood’s voice came through rather tinny through his helmet. 

Marinette grimaced. The helmet must have awful air circulation. It looked like some sort of metal, and wet and metal never smelled good together. “I don’t know, you tell me.”

“Thought you were supposed to be some mystic healer who came from the far east.”

She paused and looked at the man, trying to judge whether he was racist as well as rude. “That’s rather insulting.” 

Red Hood shrugged. Marinette applauded the man for showing no outward sign of pain at that, even though there was a bullet embedded in his shoulder, and shrugging had to bite. “That’s what the word on the street is, though you sound French to me. Thought I’d come and check out who’s healing Gotham’s criminals. What’re you planning?”

“Sorry to foil your plans, but I’m not planning anything other than getting my college degree and not pissing off the people I live near.” She paused, flipping the lock on the briefcase upwards. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use me as your go to healer from now on. You’re going to bring trouble my way.”

“Trouble? Me? Perish the thought.” His hand rested comfortably on the holister of his gun, ready to shoot if the girl pulled out a weapon from the briefcase. “We’ll talk about repeat appearances after I see how you do today.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Any wounds other than the obvious?”

“Just need the bullet out, and some stitches on the gash.” His shoulder and his abdomen, respectively. The gash looked nastier than the bullet; no shrapnel, but the cut on his stomach was jagged and wide. Not a normal, sharp blade. Probably needed a good cleaning.

She grabbed the tweezers, a sterilized needle, and medical thread. “That’s fine. Now are you going to undress, or am I going to have to cut your… costume… up?”

“Getting me naked already? We haven’t even had our first date yet.”

“Very funny, little Red Riding Hood. Now hop to it. I have class at 9 tomorrow and projects to finish tonight.” Somehow, trouble always seemed to find her when she least wanted it to. Not that she wanted to have trouble find her at all, but luck was a two way street, and for all that being Ladybug granted her good luck, she attracted criminals like catnip. 

“And here my informants had me thinking you were a regular Florence Nightingale.”

Marinette snorted. “They wish. I’ve got to ask who told you, because everybody should know the rules. You know, the ones where they don’t speak of my existence to their higher ups?”

“I’m not a rat,” Red Hood said, taking the top part of his outfit off. “And it’s not like you would have gone unnoticed anyways. You might be treating small timers now, but people catch on to healers pretty easy.”

“Because some gauze and sewing skills make me such a prime target.”

“No, your magic does.”

Shit. Marinette never told anyone she was using magic, and she rarely used it unless it was a dire situation. If she could patch them up using regular skills, she did. 

“Yeah right, if I had magic healing powers, do you think I’d be shoving my fingers into your shoulder to get a bullet out?”

“Not a very good liar, Lady Cross. You have this deer-caught-in-the-headlights look about you.”

“Thanks for the compliment. I’m also the deer that tramples through your windshield and takes a dump on the driver’s seat.” She maneuvered the tweezers a little rougher, hoping to make Red Hood hiss in pain. He just chuckled, amused. His high pain tolerance was getting rather annoying. She had half a mind to pour hydrogen peroxide over the wound just to see if that would make him show he was in pain, but thought better of it. Even though she didn’t like the man, she also didn’t want to piss him off. Or worse, have him come back and make her fix him up again. 

Threading the needle, she made quick, small stitches on his shoulder, sewing the bullet hole up, then put some petroleum jelly to speed up the healing process and reduce scarring. At least the wound was in a position that didn’t require a lot of gauze. She needed to go out and buy some more soon. She barely had enough to wrap around Red Hood’s waist.

“So, the magic,” Red Hood started. “Is it a conditional thing? Can you not use it all the time?”

“Again, I don’t have magic.” Marinette did have to use some antibacterial on the knife wound. He would need to take good care of that one to make sure it didn’t get infected. 

“So a meta, then. What are you doing in Gotham? Everybody knows Batman hates metas.”

“Not a meta, either, sorry to disappoint.” She tied off the gauze, then stood to wash her hands. “Make sure to clean the stomach wound well. Hope you have your tetanus shot, otherwise you should look into getting one.”

“Surprisingly, I’m inclined to believe you on the not-a-meta thing. Back to the first thing, then. Magic. Why don’t you show me the old razzle dazzle? Do you have to say one of those weird spells like the godmother in Cinderella? Bibbity bobbity boo?”

“You’re hilarious,” Marinette dead panned. 

“How’s this for magic? Bibbity bobbity boo, kindly leave. Shoo.” She followed his suggestion, made a show of jazz hands as well. “Pity I don’t use magic otherwise you’d be gone now. Anyways, it’s time for you to make your exit. It would be great if you didn't visit me again. Ever. Thanks.”

She ushered him out onto her patio, then slammed the sliding door. He saluted her before dropping off the side of the building. She could imagine the man under the helmet smirking.

Marinette ran a hand through her loose hair. “He’s going to come back, isn’t he.”

@jasonette-july-2k20

#jasonette july #first aid #jasonette #marinette dupain cheng #jason todd #gotham #original content #bamf marinette #sassy marinette #miraculous ladybug #maribat #dcu #red hood hears of a mystic healer and decides to check her out

[tefilovesreading]

Long overdue. Charlie Gillespie x OC

A/N: I’m really happy to finally share this one, it took me a while to finish it but I’m proud with the final result. I hope you love it as much as I do. 

Summary: Charlie and Olivia used to be best friends, until he left their hometown to pursue his acting career without saying goodbye to his best friend, ruining their friendship. They meet again four years later.

Word count: +6k

Warning: some swearing, mention of a panic attack, angst???? 

Special thanks to my lovely @theamazingtomholland​ for helping me out and your sweet words! Also thanks to @thelawiswiththerose​ !!

MASTERLIST 

When Olivia was just a kid, her grandfather used to joke about how she would grow up to become a historian because her memory was amazing,and she believed him. Until she realized that she had an excellent memory only when it came to things that matter to her or that made her the young woman she was now. She remembered meeting her current best friend on April 7th,four years ago. She knew her heart got broken for the first time on March 31st when she was only fifteen, it was a Monday, and she didn’t cry because she needed to get through her classes. Or how she lost a piece of herself when her grandpa died when she was just five years old on May 31st.

She unlocked her phone and felt her heart get a little bit heavier when she saw the date on the screen:

August 26.

Four years ago, when they both were eighteen, things were easier for sure, at least for Charlie. Olivia wasn’t doing bad either but seeing her childhood best friend kiss another girl in front of her wasn’t something she enjoyed. How could someone watch the person they’ve loved for years kiss someone else and not feel like they were getting their heart crushed little by little?

They spent the day with their friends, celebrating Charlie’s last birthday near the river before he moved to Toronto to pursue his acting career a week later. Olivia could still remember how happy he looked sitting next to the bonfire; his arms wrapped around his then- girlfriend laughing about something his friend had said. Sat just across from them, giving the couple and herself some space, she knew her heart was going to break again that night. And it did because he ditched her at the end of the night when he was supposed to make sure she got home safely just like he promised her parents he would.

She remembered how scared she felt walking back home in the dark by herself even when she knew their neighbourhood was safe and she wasn’t far from her house. But she was terrified of darkness and Charlie was the only one in their group of friends that knew it. Olivia cursed his name over and over again for putting her in that position, for leaving her alone, and thinking about the reason made her feel sick. Of course, she knew why he left without telling her but admitting it out loud wasn’t something she was willing to do.

Her phone vibrated in her hand and she rubbed her eyes, making her put that memory away. It was her mother letting her know that their flight had just landed, and they were ready for their two weeks in the Caribbean.

“Seems like it’s gonna be just us, Peanut,” she whispered to the black dog curled up next to her on the couch. Scratching the dog’s belly, she turned her attention back to the TV where Meryl Streep was singing Money, Money, Money.

Her stomach growled, remembering that she barely had eaten something and it was already dinner time.

Noises outside her house caught her attention, they sounded a lot like laughs, instead of making her way to the kitchen, she went to the closest window and peeked outside just enough for her heart to drop.

He was there laughing without a care in the world, his hair falling back in messy waves that her fingers suddenly needed to touch.

Closing the curtains before her neighbors could see her, she wiped furiously the lonely tear that managed to escape from her eyes before it could leave a trail down her cheek.

What was he doing here? He was supposed to be in Los Angeles, not here. She made sure not to be in town whenever she thought he could come back, spending numerous mother’s days somewhere else, or making sure she wasn’t home for his mother’s birthday. Christmas was easier because her entire family gathered up in her grandma’s house every single year. But he never came back to their hometown for his birthday, until this year.

The anger she felt after his birthday four years ago came back like an earthquake, making her body tremble with the feeling she kept bottled up for so long.

It wasn’t just the fact that Charlie left her on her own when he promised to take her back home. He didn’t apologize the day after for leaving her alone or the day after that one. Hell, he didn’t try to talk to her that entire week and when the week came to its end, he just left, not even saying goodbye to her.

Charlie moved out and never looked back. As if he completely forgot about the girl that was his best friend since they both were eight years old. The same girl that stood up for him whenever the mean guys at their school made fun of him for not getting the part after his first couple auditions. The same girl he spent so many summers playing with, countless winters playing in the snow with her until they felt like their fingers were beyond frozen.

That was what she was hurt and mad about. He forgot about her existence and all the memories they ever made together. And Olivia couldn’t do the same because even if she hated to admit it, she still loved him, maybe not like she used to, but she still had love to give to the boy standing outside the house she used to spend so much of her free time when she was younger.

And because the universe was against her, the dog ran towards the front door, barking at it and letting her know that she wanted to go out for a walk.

“We can’t go now, baby,” she shushed Peanut, but the small dog didn’t try to pay attention to her words and kept barking and spinning in excitement. She wanted to go out now and not even a treat would make her change her mind, “you are so stubborn, Pea.”

Peanut was a small dog, but her barks were resonating all over the house, breaking the silence and she knew it was about time someone came and ringed the doorbell to make sure everything was alright. A fast exit, that was what she needed, she could put her earbuds on and pretend she was going for a run, give them a small nod if they still were outside and get out of there as fast as she could.

She put her sneakers on, put on some music, opened the door, and tugged lightly on the dog leash to make her dog walk. Not looking at the people standing in the driveway was a difficult task, because she never stopped greeting the rest of the Gillespie family. How could she? It wasn’t their fault that her friendship with Charlie went to shit.

“Hey!” Meghan called her and turning her head slowly she nodded at them and pointed to her earbuds as if she were on the phone.

Charlie looked at her and realized she was avoiding his eyes, not even acknowledging his presence. Looking at the way her features had changed, turning her into a beautiful young woman, the childish features were long gone, which let him know how long it has been since the last time he saw her in person.  Her long light brown hair was now up to her shoulders and a few shades lighter. Watching her walk away made his heart ache in a way he didn’t feel since he moved out.

“I didn’t know the Gibson still lived here.” The words came out loud enough for his sister to listen to what he said, and she punched him in the arm.

“She made sure to be out of town every time you came home, dumbass,” making a grimace he nodded, not wanting to talk about the subject, “I still don’t understand what happened between you guys, you were really good friends, and I was sure you liked her as more than a friend.”

He rolled his eyes, knowing damn well Meghan wasn’t going to just drop it, “it’s none of your business.”

“My guess is you told her you liked her, and she rejected you,” Patrick said with a knowing look on his face. Charlie snorted and shook his head.

“Again,” he warned, “drop it, guys.” His brother held his hand up and went inside, leaving him alone with his younger sister.

“All I’m gonna say is you should try to not mess with her, Charlie,” Meghan held him by his arm, making sure he was paying attention to her word, “it was awful to see how sad and broken she was when you left and I know you said it’s none of my business, but I was her friend too and she pushed me away for whatever the fuck happened between you two.”

“I won’t, Meg,” he promised, guiding her inside so Olivia didn’t have to see him once she came back. But if he was being honest, he didn’t want to see the pain in her face she failed to hide when she saw him standing next to Meghan.

Sprinting back to her house, Olivia let out a sigh of relief when she saw that Charlie wasn’t outside anymore. She didn’t really know how to feel, sure she felt as angry as she did four years ago but seeing Charlie in person after so long brought a feeling she didn’t know how to describe. And of course, she wasn’t blind and knew that he looked even better than he did before he left, so that didn’t really help her situation.

Looking back to his house one last time, she caught him in the window, and he gave her a small smile she didn’t return. Instead, she unlocked the front door and slammed it shut. If Charlie thought that she would act as if nothing happened, he was wrong. Not even his smile could erase how betrayed she felt. 

After a long early walk with Peanut the next day, she hoped she wouldn’t have to go out and run into Charlie again. The feeling that he was going to try and approach her the next time they ran into each other gave her goosebumps. Olivia knew that talking things out would make her feel a lot better, but she wasn’t ready to do it. He would want to know why she was so angry and hurt and that meant she would have to tell him she used to be in love with him and how betrayed she felt when he left without apologizing, leaving behind their friendship as if it meant absolutely nothing to him.

With an iced tea in one hand and a book in the other, she made herself comfortable in the hammock her father hanged every summer. Peanut was trying to catch her tail and the only noise Olivia could hear were the birds above her.

She lost track of time and Peanut’s barks brought her back to reality. Crouched in her garden was Charlie, trying to get the black dog to stay put so he could pet her, but she was too excited to see someone and was running around him and barking.

“What are you doing here?” her voice came out hoarse, her body too tense with Charlie just a few feet away.

“I wanted to say hi,” he responded without looking at her and still trying to pet Peanut.

“Peanut come here,” Olivia commanded, and the little dog ran up to her owner, “you need to leave.”

“C’mon, Liv,” Charlie stood up and looked at her with puppy eyes, “I just wanna talk.”

“Olivia,” she corrected him and picked up her dog, “you need to leave now.”

“Why?” he demanded to know once he saw her walking towards the door. She turned around stunned by his audacity.

“You have no right to be here, Charlie,” he raised his eyebrows, taken back at her harsh answer, “you don’t get to call me Liv or come into my house so I’m telling you again. Leave. Now.”

“Just listen to me, please,” Olivia shook her head and went inside, slamming the door behind her.

She was able to take a couple of steps away from the door when she had to kneel, feeling like she was about to pass out, her heart pounding fast in her chest and her lungs barely being able to hold air inside them. Peanut licked her face trying to calm her down, but the tears kept falling down her cheeks.

“Liv, please.” Charlie’s voice sounded worried on the other side of the door. “Let me in.” A whimpering sound came out of her mouth and the next thing she heard was the door being open.

She wished Charlie’s embrace could comfort her and calm her down, but she kept crying into her hands. Her heart too fragile now that Charlie was everywhere, his smell, his touch, and his voice were too much for her.

Charlie picked her up and took her to her bedroom. A strong feeling of nostalgia took over him when he saw the room hadn’t changed much, probably because she also moved out and moved on with her life after he left.

“I’ll get you a glass of water and then I’m gonna leave, I promise.” A scoff was all he received.

“As if you knew how to keep one,” she muttered with bitterness when she heard him leave her room.

He placed a glass of water on her nightstand, “do you want me to call my sister to keep you company?” she shook her head and closed her eyes too tired to keep fighting against him.

“Are you feeling better?” Charlie asked again and wiped a tear from Olivia’s cheek with his thumb. With a small nod, she turned her back to him. “Liv, I really wanna talk.”

“Stop calling me Liv, please.” The mattress shifted when Charlie sat beside her, not wanting to leave yet.

“I’ve never called you Olivia.”

“Charlie.” Her voice sounded raspy and incredibly tired and he couldn’t help but feel guilty for making her feel like that. “I really need you to leave me alone and let me get my shit together. Please.”

“Right,” Charlie stood up quickly and looked around not really knowing what else to say, “I’m sorry, Olivia. I never meant to make you feel like I cornered you or something.”

She didn’t respond, and when she heard the front door closing, she covered her head with a pillow and let out a scream. She hated to feel so powerless, so confused and so hurt. It felt like he just decided to reopen a wound that took too long to close and now it was painfully bleeding again.

It was heartbreaking to see her sobbing on the floor and not being able to calm her, to tell her that he never meant to leave like that.

“Where were you?” his sister questioned when she saw him with guilt all over his face, “Charlie, I told you not to mess with Olivia. What did you do now?”

“I don’t know.” He did though. He knew what did just a few minutes ago and what he did four years ago.

“Is she alright?” the hazel-eyed boy nodded and then shrugged, rubbing his palms over his face, feeling the frustration take over his body.

“I needed to talk to her, but she shot me down the moment she saw me, and then I think she was about to have a panic attack or something. She was better when I left.”

Charlie didn’t remember seeing her like that when they still were friends, Olivia was so determined and optimistic, not as impulsive as he was but always open for a new adventure or a trip with him and his siblings. But then, he started to have feelings for his best friend and decided that it wasn’t worth it to ruin their friendship and buried those feelings by getting a girlfriend just to act as if he wasn’t in love with Olivia. He knew it was mutual but what was the point of dating if he was going to move to Toronto and she was going to stay in New Brunswick.

Leaving her after his birthday four years ago was one of the things he regretted the most. He knew damn well she was afraid of the dark and yet he broke his promise. Charlie tried to put some distance between them so it wouldn’t hurt as much once he moved out, but he ended up messing everything.

“She didn’t even let me call her Liv, Meg.” His sister sat next to him and hugged him.

“We stopped calling her like that after you left,” she explained feeling sorry for him, “I guess it reminded her of you too much since you were the one that gave her the nickname.”

At lunchtime, Charlie made his way to his ex-best friend’s house with a portion of his birthday cake and the Tuna Pasta Salad his mom cooked for lunch. It wasn’t like he was planning to have lunch with her, but if getting her lunch and dessert gave him another shot, he’d even consider getting her breakfast the next morning.

He opened the backdoor just like he just did when they were younger and went straight into the kitchen, hoping she wouldn’t catch him sneaking into her house.

“Fuck it,” he whispered when he didn’t hear noise upstairs. With the food now in a tray, Charlie went upstairs.

Liv was in the same place she was before he left earlier. The Scottie lifted her head when he entered the room but didn’t bark at him and curled up again next to her sleeping owner. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he put the tray down and let out his breath.

“Hey,” his voice broke the silence they were in and Olivia moved in her sleep but didn’t wake up, “I got you food, Liv,” He said again this time a little bit louder.

“What?” she questioned; her mind fuzzy with sleep to understand what was happening.

“My mom made lunch and if I’m not wrong, it was your favorite.” The answer was simple, but why would he even bother to get her lunch if she told him to leave her alone.

“What time is it?” she asked again sitting up in bed rubbing her left eye with her hand.

“Time for you to eat,” the boy pointed to the tray next to her and stood up, “I brought you cake, I thought you’d like it.”

“Thanks?” Charlie let out a soft laugh and left. “Charlie!” She called out and he came back with a hopeful look in his eyes. “I made it,” Olivia pointed at the cake and his cheek started to turn pink in embarrassment.

“You made my birthday cake.”

Olivia shrugged as if it was nothing. “Meg asked me to,” she grabbed the fork and continued, “you know it’s my job, right?”

“What do you mean?” Charlie sat again in the bed taking every chance to keep the conversation going.

“I have a bakery.” She had a fucking bakery, and he didn’t even know. How would he? He never made questions about her, but he thought his family would tell him such a big thing. “Thanks for the food.” And that was his sign for him to leave.

“Thanks for the birthday cake.”

Olivia had her own bakery and made him a birthday cake, it was her job but still, she knew it was for him and made it anyway.  That had to mean something, right?

Charlie was right, it was her favorite meal. She could have graduated from one of the most prestigious cooking schools in Canada but not even her fancy cooking school could beat Jeannette’s salad. She remembered Jeannette telling her that the magic was in her secret ingredient when she was younger and after all this time, she still wasn’t able to figure out what it was.

Her phone vibrated with a new notification and she smiled when she saw a picture of her parents with cocktails in their hands. She hated the fact that she’d have to leave a couple of days before they came back, but she needed to go and pack the few things she still had left in her old apartment back in Vancouver and move all her stuff across the country and into her new apartment.

The doorbell woke up the puppy from her nap and ran towards the door, letting Olivia know someone was outside.

“You would never think those barks belong to such a tiny animal,” Meghan chuckled when she opened the door and Peanut started to jump around her.

“Oh, I know, I get startled sometimes and she’s only eight months old,” she let the girl in not before giving the house across the street a nervous look.

“Char and my brothers went out,” Olivia nodded and thanked her quietly for the information, “I was bored so I thought you’d want to hang out.”

“Oh, sure,” she smiled at Charlie’s sister and felt guilty for all those times she said no whenever Meghan invited her over to hang out like they used to do, “I wanted to go to the farm and pick some fresh berries. I don’t know if you wanna go with me.”

“I don’t know,” Meghan scrunched her nose, and the gesture reminded the older girl of Charlie. If she didn’t grow up with them, she could’ve thought they were twins, “I’ll go only if you make me muffins.”

“That’s unfair,” Olivia said playfully, “I’m gonna change and we can head out.”

“I’m gonna stay right here so I can play with this cute baby,” Meghan cooed the dog and sat on the floor to play with her.

Running back into her room, she changed into some overalls and a top. She wanted to be comfortable on the farm and be able to move around without worrying about her skirt getting caught in the branches.

“I swear you and my brother are the only people I know that love wearing overalls,” Olivia’s cheeks blushed at her words, remembering very well how often Charlie used to come over wearing overalls and no shirt underneath.

“They’re comfy,” she said looking at her outfit with slight embarrassment.

“You look great, Liv.” Her eyes darted back at Meghan and decided not to make a big deal about the nickname.

“Your car or mine?” she questioned, picking up the keys and her bag.

“Yours, I don’t feel like driving.”

When Charlie landed his first role, he would spend a lot of time out of town filming, and eventually, both girls became closer. She could never compare her friendship with Meghan with the one she once had with Charlie because they were inseparable, they spent so much time together she was sure she had her first period when they were playing over at his house and both freaked out because they didn’t know what to do. Later that day he came over to her house with a chocolate bar and a single flower.

“My mom said you’d probably want some chocolate, so I got you your favourite.” She remembered the eleven years old Charlie said with his cheeks burning red.

She sighed at the memory, realizing how even such an important milestone in her life somehow involved the boy that was messing with her head lately.

“So…,” Meghan started once they both were on the road, “Charlie almost threw a tantrum because none told him you had a bakery.”

Olivia chuckled just imagining Charlie pouting with his arms crossed over his chest, “he never asked you guys.”

“It’s not that he didn’t ask about you,” She bit the inside of her cheek getting a little bit uncomfortable with the conversation, “I guess we all decided not to tell him about your life like he didn’t really deserve updates about you.”

“I get it,” stopping the car at a red light, she smiled at the girl sitting next to her, “I’m glad you didn’t have to deal with questions about me because if he wanted to know something, he should’ve asked me himself.”

Not like she’d have answered his calls or texts because she didn’t know if she would have. She thought she might have answered if he had reached out for her, but he never did.

Hanging out with Meghan was like breathing fresh air, both girls laughing and messing around while they picked fresh blueberries, their fingers getting tinted with the fruit’s juice. Snapping the last picture with their blueberries, they went back home.

“Can I post this one?” Meghan asked, showing her the picture where a smiling Olivia was holding a single blueberry in front of the camera while Meghan stuck her tongue out. 

“Sure, I like it. Send me the others so I can post one too,” she commented, looking at the picture quickly before turning her attention back to the road ahead.

Once they got back home, Meghan took place in one of the stools in the kitchen, while Olivia got everything she needed to bake. She was about to start the mixer when her friend got a text and cursed under her breath.

“Everything alright?” she wondered with a raised eyebrow, confused at her friend’s reaction.

“I have to teach a dance class and I completely forgot about it,” with an apology written all over her face, she stood up and gathered her stuff, “I’m sorry, Liv, but I need to go or I’m gonna have a bunch of angry moms complaining about my absence.”

“Yeah, sure. Go don’t worry,” Olivia assured her with a chuckle, “I’ll take these babies to your house once they’re ready.”

“You’re the best. Thank you!” Meghan stated before running back to her own house.

Deciding it was better to put on some music while she baked, she went to connect her phone to the Bluetooth speaker when the back door opened, and Charlie waved at her with a shy expression on his face.

“Meg said you could use some help with the muffins.”

“Uhm…” Olivia frowned her brows slightly, knowing this was Charlie trying to apologize and make things better, “just put on some music,” she handed him the speaker and started the mixer.

She wasn’t sure how she felt with him sitting on the stool his sister was on just a few minutes ago, but the burning anger she felt the first day she saw him was missing. But they were far from being friends again, she told herself.

“How was your hike?” The words left her mouth quietly as an attempt to make small conversation and feel a little less observed by him.

“It was great, we got a bunch of nice pictures,” and there it was, she smiled to herself when she heard the excitement in Charlie’s voice, “we had to come back earlier because Pat’s bike got a flat tire, but it was fun.”

“So, you guys went cycling,” she stated the obvious just to make him talk about his little trip. God, she missed the way Charlie used to tell her about his day and how excited he was about little things, the same excitement he had now as he told her about the perfect spot that he found to take pictures and how he promised to a couple that he would send the cute picture he took of them as soon as he could.

Charlie used to remind her of a puppy, filled with excitement and energy and she let out a chuckle when she realised he was just like he was when they were teenagers.

“Did I miss my own joke?” he questioned, tilting his head with amusement. 

Olivia shrugged, without bothering to look at him, too busy with her task, and said, “you’re just like a puppy, Charlie.”

“You used to tell me that a lot back then,” he pondered biting his lower lip, the energy in the room shifting at the mention of the friendship they used to have.

“I know.”

She didn’t know what else to say because she didn’t know how she felt about their interaction. Or the fact that Charlie was sitting there, just a few feet away from her just like they used to be when they were younger. Him watching and telling her stories while she busied herself with a new recipe.

“I’m glad one of us actually became a chef,” Charlie spoke again, breaking the silence. The girl didn’t respond, she poured the mix into the muffin cups not letting his words disrupt her. Once the tray was in the oven, she turned around and crossed her arms over her chest, feeling the nostalgia wash away and the resentment took its place.

“Some of us stick to what we said, Charles.” The bitterness in her voice made the boy close his eyes, knowing very well the course this conversation was about to take.

“How many times do I have to apologize, Olivia?” She scoffed and shook her head in disbelief.

“You haven't said sorry not even once, Charlie.” Sure he said sorry for getting into her backyard without permission and invading her space the past two days, but he never apologized for the shitty move he did four years ago.

“You don’t even let me talk!” He argued back.

“Oh, come on, Charlie!” Olivia rolled her eyes and pointed a finger at him, “don’t start with that bullshit because you had a whole week to apologize for leaving me on my own when you said you’d walk me home, but you chose to stay quiet and then leave the town without even saying goodbye.”

“Shit, Liv,” he whispered when he saw her eyes welling up with tears, “please don’t cry.”

“Do you even realize how bad I felt when you left without saying goodbye?” she questioned drying her cheeks with the back of her hand, “I saw you get in that car with all your belongings and I waited for you to come and say goodbye, to text me or call me but you just left and now you come here as if nothing happened.”

“Liv, I’m sorry,” he told her, standing up so he could get closer to the girl that was facing him with hurt in her eyes, fighting to hold back the tears from falling. “You need to believe when I tell you I’m fucking sorry for doing that.”

She jerked away from him when he tried to hold her. “Thanks for the apology,” Olivia inhaled deeply, the scent of Charlie’s cologne too intoxicating now that she was trying not to fall apart in front of him.

“If you want me to go, I’ll go,” he mumbled, understanding she probably needed some space.

“I’ll take the muffins to your place once they’re done.”

Charlie stood there, right in front of the girl that once was his partner in crime, but now they were practically strangers to each other and that was all his fault. He wished he could hold Olivia in his arms and tell her over and over again how deeply sorry he was for being such a coward, for leaving her without an explanation. He just wanted to take away all the pain he already caused her and somehow still manage to hurt her again. With a heavy sigh, the boy turned around and headed back to his house.

She sat in one of the stools, trying to calm her heart down and process whatever just happened. Charlie apologized but the annoying feeling that she needed more than just an apology didn’t leave her chest. An explanation would be good, maybe that way she would be able to actually forgive him and understand why he did it because right now, she didn’t really see them being friends again. Not when she was still holding a grudge against him.

Standing outside Charlie’s front door, with a tray full of freshly baked muffins in her hands, Olivia decided to go through the side door. She was met with nothing but silence while she made her way into the kitchen and saw a figure sitting with a guitar near the river through the window. Unlike her house, Charlie’s backyard was next to the river and the woods, where she remembered playing hide and seek with Charlie and Meghan when they were little.

She left the tray on the kitchen counter and headed to where Charlie was sitting. It was weird walking around his house, after all, she avoided the Gillespie family as much as she could when Charlie left and kept their interaction to a minimum, and hadn’t been inside in a long time.

“Hey,” she said softly, taking place next to him, “I brought the muffins.”

“Thanks, Liv,” he gave her a small smile before he continued playing a soft melody on his guitar. 

“I still don’t understand why you did it,” Olivia managed to say after a few minutes of sitting together in complete silence. 

“I didn’t want to, it just happened and then I fucked up things even more by not saying goodbye,” he explained and looked at her, “I thought I could just sneak out with Quinn because your house wasn’t far, I mean we were right here that day, and I wasn’t really thinking.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t talk to me that week before you left.”

He placed the guitar by his side, turning around to give Olivia his full attention, she looked at him with a mix of sadness and shyness in her brown eyes. 

“When I left with Quinn we were going to her place and hook up, I’m sure you know that, but we didn’t ‘cause I called her Liv right before we did anything,” her cheeks blushed at his confession but unable to believe his words entirely, “that’s why we broke up soon after my birthday, and I was so fucking embarrassed about my feelings…”

“You were embarrassed because you liked me, way to go, Charlie,” she interrupted him slightly offended. 

“I didn’t say that, let me finish,” He demanded getting frustrated with the conversation, “I was embarrassed because I called her your name because I was thinking of you in a moment I shouldn’t have,” he paused unsure of how Olivia was going to react at his next word, “that’s when I realised my feelings for you were a lot stronger than I thought and I got scared because I knew I was leaving.” 

“Charlie,” she told him, confusion laced in her voice “did you even like Quinn?”

“No, not really. I kinda forced myself to be with her ‘cause I didn’t want to ruin our friendship” Charlie answered and then let out a sad laugh, “I guess it didn’t work out as good as I thought.”

“You know I liked you, right?” her voice was barely a whisper and her stomach fluttered when she saw him smile at her and nodded in response, “was I that obvious really?” When Charlie nodded again she covered her face with her hands in pure embarrassment.

“I’m really sorry, Liv,” he apologized again, and she rested her head on his shoulder, “if I could take all that back I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“I guess I understand now,” Charlie could hear the soft smile even if he wasn’t seeing her face, “don’t get me wrong, it hurt like shit to see how you moved on as if I didn’t exist, but I get that you were scared and we both ended up messing up our friendship.”

“Do you think we’ll ever be able to be friends again?” Olivia turned around, meeting his gaze and sighed. 

“Maybe?” she answered, scrunching her nose unsure of it.

They stayed like that for a while, Charlie’s gaze moving from her eyes to her lips from time to time, debating if he should just go for it or not. It was her that took the initiative and leaned in, pressing their lips together in a kiss that, just like the apology, was long overdue. 

“I’ll take that as a no,” he murmured against her lips before kissing her again, leaving the shyness behind and cupping her face between his hands pulling her closer as if that way they could make up all the time they spent apart.

They both pulled away when they heard his older brother hollering at them from the balcony and Olivia laughed when Charlie flipped him the middle finger. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead.

Of course, they still needed to talk a lot and find a way to work things out now that their feelings were out on display. But she had a good feeling about giving them a new shot, because, after all those years, they still managed to find their way back to each other.

#charlie gillespie imagine #charlie gillespie x oc #charlie gillespie fanfic #charlie gillespie one shot #jatp cast imagine #charlie gillespie x reader #charlie gillespie x y/n #luke patterson x reader #jatp imagine

[lightrises]

"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.

#hollow knight #hornet (hollow knight) #hornet hollow knight #hk hornet #the radiance #hk radiance #herrah #hk herrah #hollow knight meta #sup folks it's been a minute since i dropped a whole dang essay but Here We Go!!!!!!

[xsugarysweetsx]

𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 7

A/N: Yes it has been slow and I am so sorry about that but I hope you all enjoy the chapter!

Warnings; some language; suggestive themes (kinda in a way); fluff; tension; relationship???; minor angst; tiny argument; nee character 👀;

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"It's cold you should come inside" you hear a voice approach you. It was pretty nice outside that morning, so you decided to sit on the porch for a bit and just think things over. You've been here for almost 3 and a half months already, you've been attacked and people got hurt. It was safe to say you felt the guilt, even though Erwin had woken up and Hanji was still herself as usual and held both held no resentment towards you. They keep telling you it was something you cannot control, and therefore not your fault.

It has been about three days since the incident happened. You remember having countless nightmares where Levi had to come and call me down. You endlessly apologized to everyone in the home, for bringing such a mess. you had spent nights losing sleep, afraid that Zeke may return. luckily during those late nights, you have someone stay up with, and talk with. sometimes he would bring you tea, and how do you smuggle in close to him. The faint smell of his detergent and lemon still lingered in your nose as you drifted into sleep.

"I'm okay...you should get sleep though.." you offer looking back at him. Luckily the porch was covered by a roof so he comes to sit behind you. You didn't know what you two were, you kissed and you feel the attraction--but what were you? would he consider?

"It's not your fault," he said calmly wrapping his arms around your shoulders as you sat between his legs. "you sound nostalgic when you're thinking a lot"

Even though it has been a short time he's picked up a few things from you. How you react, what you'd pick, and even little behaviors, the same thing went for Levi. You knew he liked his space to be clean, tea was calming for him, he kept to himself but there was more on his mind than anyone.

“I just can't help but think....something worse could have happened..." you admit feeling your heart sink slightly

"Hey..." he turned your head to face him "nothing was your fault. You did as you were told and we were caught off guard." he pecked your lips trying to bring peace to your mind.

"Levi..?"

"Yes?"

"...what are we?" you ask with genuine wonder

"Well...whatever you want it to be," he says "A kiss can be more than that or a kiss can just be a kiss," he explained with another peck to your lips it felt a bit loner this time.

"oooo someone is getting all romantic out here~~" a third voice joined making Levi groan. Now that he was affectionate towards you more Hanji loved to tease him

"Aren't you busy with research four eyes?" he asked her standing him and helping you up.

"Well, we've all been under a lot of stress lately and I thought maybe...we should go out" she offered with a hopeful look "We've got a nice swimming spot"

"Really? In the daytime?" you ask

"Oh, we have our ways" she winked "there's a small path through the forest with enough shade for us, and it's going to be cloudy today. Along with that, the swimming spot is in a cave so sunlight won't be a problem"

"Well, that's fortunate huh?" you perked up "I don't have a swimsuit though" you point out "Don't worry I think I have an extra you can try" Hanji offered "Everyone, get ready! We've got a swim day today!" She announced to make sure everyone could hear. It looked like you were taking a day off today. You turn to Levi and take his hand 

“I hope you can swim” you tease with a smile 

“Hm, we’ll see about swimming,” he said walking with you inside.

To get ready, he didn’t need sunscreen for obvious reasons. He got changed and threw on a white t-shirt and his swim trunks, and his shoes with some towels. He wasn’t that convinced to just go out after that night, but at the same time, some stress-free time was needed. Also, it was time to spend with you now. You were just amazing to be around and to know you had felt the same way he did. 

You made him feel like he was worth something again. Maybe it was because you had been around each other for some time now but, he did feel the connection. You balanced him out like the day and night, like warmth and cold. If he had to give his life to protect you. Walking out of his room he could hear Hanji squealing from your room. As he approached he hears

“Y/N when he sees you he won’t be able to keep his hands off you!“ she said in a high pitch 

“Hanji! I don’t look that good“

“Oh come on! As soon as he sees you he’s going to get a har-Levi! Look how well this fit her!“ Levi stopped and looked at what you were wearing. It was a black two-piece with a high-waist bottom. You hugged you perfectly with each curve, and dip in your body. He could feel his cheeks heat up with blush, which wasn’t common 

“Y-you look...nice..“ he said looking away in the other direction. “Anyway are we ready to go?“ he asked holding up his bag

“Sure are! Molbit and Erwin should be waiting downstairs“ Hanji smiled picking up her bag that seemed to weigh more than she did. As she waddled down the hallway excited to get to their location.

“Well she seems excited, “ you said coming to his side 

“It has been a while since we’ve all been out to have some fun since the whole Zeke thing happened, “ he said taking your bag in his hand and walking along with you 

“Well, I think you all deserve it. Some time to relax and unwind...don’t ya think“ you said bringing your hand into the crook of his elbow 

“Yeah...I think you’re right“

The walk along the forest was nice, there was a passage with hundreds of trees. The branches creating the perfect passage for everyone to walk and enjoy. You walked hand in hand with Levi, it was nice almost like your first date together. While looking at your surround you take in a deep breath, almost like you had forgotten what was going on. The breeze was fresh and crisp and clear.

“Hange, we almost there? I don’t remember it being this far away“ Levi asked after about 16 more minutes of walking. 

“Yeah, yeah grampa, just a little more and the cave should be just ahead“

“Huh, I’m not that old-“

“Well...“

“What do you mean well?“ he pushed on to hear your answer 

“Well...you’re 100 years older than I am so...uh...“ this caused laughter and giggles to erupt from the group. You thought you even saw a smile on Levi’s face. 

“Oh! We’re here!“ Hanji shouted as she ran over still waddling due to the weight of her bag.

She made her way to a regular-sized entrance, about the size of a garage. Moving the vines aside you look inside to find a much larger cave. It was like nothing you had ever seen! A pool filled with fresh water, it was clean, with icicle-like rocks hanging from the top. There was even a few small holes in the roof of the cave letting in some light. The light hit the pool at just the right angle to give it a magic glow

“Wow...“ was all you could muster up

“It’s nice isn’t it?“ Molbit saying putting down more of Hanji’s stuff “We used to come here every other week with everyone until...things took a turn. Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t properly introduce myself“ he held out his hand for you to take “I’m Molbit Berner.“

“Y/F/N, so how old are you?“

“I’m 127 actually“ oh, so he was a younger one...well in this group at least

"Well, let's get on the water then!" Hanji's voice echoes into the cave as she dives into the water. She had said something about a pocket of air in the pool and want to discover it. She had some scuba gear which she claimed to have bought. From the groan, Molbit made you could tell there were some holes in that story.

Everyone strips from their shirts and such, and into their swimwear. You do the same and feel a pair of eyes on you you turn around only to see Levi whip his head the other way. you were about to tease him when your eyes had caught a view. It's a miracle you didn't have a nose bleed.

This man was built like a god! For as short as a statue or was, he made up for it in different ways. You always knew he was strong but wow was he built. You would hear him working out in the morning, but you didn't think you'd have the guts to peek while he did. pretend as if it didn't faze you, and made your way to the water. The water was a bit chilly, but it was expected since it was the morning.

You decided to rush in until it was up to your waist, not wanting to extend the cold feeling. You swim out a bit more to rest your back against the edge of the pool

"Whoa look at Levi getting in the water so soon," Erwin chuckled "trying to impress a certain lady I see?"

"Shut it eyebrows" Levi flipped him off as he swam towards you with a light blush. "uh..hey," he said slightly bashful

"Hey, Levi.... aren't you cold?" You said trying not to seem awkward while a shiver ran up your spine.

"Eh, I can deal with it, I actually know a trick to get used to the cold water" he offered

"Really?" you ask

"You trust me?" he asks back, he receives a nod and moves closer to you. His arms come around your waist and pull your flush against him. Your legs tangling and swimming together "all right then."

He dunks you both under the water, the water encasing your bodies. You come back up and you gasp as a rare chuckle escaped his lips. Still holding your close his warmth contrasting with the coolness of the water

"Feel better?" he asked

"Oh haha, mister" you smile pushing him down underwater again. You had never seen him this playful. You giggle as you swim through the water trying to get away from him. You could feel his hands grazing your legs as your start to reach the shore of the pool on the other side. He eventually catches you causing you both to fall to the ground, with him over you. You were panting but still giggling. His hand comes up to brush away some hair from your face

"You're fucking gorgeous..." he whispered inching closer to your face. Small drops of water falling from his hair and to your face. You feel your eyes droop as the tension grows stronger. With a single swoop, he captures your lips in a kiss. It was loving and passionate but also gentle. Your arms droop over his shoulders and your fingers tangle in his hair, bringing him deeper into the kiss.

Sometimes you thought this was just a dream. Being targeted by a vampire, eventually falling in love with another one, and now, here you are. Sometimes you pinch yourself to make sure that you were awake, and 99% of the time you were awake. Either where you weren't complaining. Just as the kids started to get heated up, you felt something sharp against your lower lip. It must have been his fangs, damn. He pulls you up with him as he sits back and has you sit in his lap

"Levi...Erwin is still there" you shy away into his shoulder

"Damn eyebrows is probably asleep, he can't see us" he kisses your shoulder with a tight hug "But we can stop if you want."

"No, this is nice, and if he can't see us it's fine" you shrug your shoulders

"Listen I won't do anything while we're here" he warned you making your chuckle

Coming up you rest your forehead on his and lay a quick peck onto his nose. It feels almost as if you had known him for so long in so little time, He made you feel something strange, something foreign yet something you wanted to feel.

"I'm sorry" you hear him break the silence

"For what?"

"..for being a monster. You deserve so much in this world, I don't think I deserve to be with you. I-"

"Who was the one who almost killed me?" you interrupt him

"...Zeke"

"And who saved me, each time?" you ask again

"Me..." he whispered

"You" you cup his face "We may be from two different worlds but when our worlds collide, I feel something I've never felt before. Like, you're the one..maybe I'm jumping too far ahead but *sigh* you just make me go all blah!" you say hiding your face into your hands, why were feelings so hard to explain?

“I hope I’ll be the only one to make you feel that way.“ he said bringing his hands to your hips 

“Awh, Levi’s being soft with me“ you tease him “Come on they’ll start thinking we’ve run off to do things~, “ you said bouncing your eyebrows. Taking his hand he stands up with you and back into the water. Levi has you rest on his back as he swims back to your original spot. Hanji was back from her small trip

“Hey you two, did you get some steamy time in?“ Hanji bounced her eyebrows with a smirk 

“Did you find hit your head while looking for that pocket?“ he shoots back coming to a stop near the edge. 

“Very funny Levi, but no. There was no pocket it just leads out of the cave into a stream. Oh well, at least we got out of the house for once“

Coming out of the pool Levi grabs a towel for you and him. He puts one over your shoulders and begins to dry off his hair. Looking outside he still causes us to, the time, and what was around you guys. Even though this is supposed to be a time of rest, he could never let his guard down. Not after what happened. 

“It’s just about sundown we should head back“ everyone nodded in agreement packing up their things. Levi gives you an extra sweater to keep you warm. The walk was a bit cooler at night but still enjoyable. Sometimes it seemed you forgot about your city life. Your job, bills, money....your friends and oh god Mochi. You missed seeing him every morning. Luckily you stayed in touch with Sasha in which she sent pics of him every day.

You made sure to check on her and thank her for everything she’s been through with you. You promised her to make things up to her as soon as you could. Maybe you’ll take her to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Making it to the house the moon was full and at its highest peak. Walking inside Levi stumbles a bit making you worry 

“Whoa are you okay?“ he takes your hand to regain his balance ”you look exhausted.“

“Just fine. Go to bed I need to get something“ the way he said 

“Maybe I should go with you.“ you offer 

“No Y/N.“ Erwin got in “You should go to bed. He’ll be fine“ with a worried expression you look at all four of them and nod your head 

“O-okay then....goodnight“ walking to your room you couldn’t help but worry more for him. Walking inside you change out of your clothes and into some sweats and an oversize t-shirt. You laid in bed for bout an hour but you only tossed and turned, not able to get sleep. Something was gnawing at you to check on Levi. Getting up from the bed you peer into the hallway, everything seemed fine so you make your way outside. 

You were going to the kitchen first until you heard cursing coming from Levi’s room. Walking carefully you stay outside the room as you listen in 

“fuck...I can’t stop thinking about her...“ at first you had thought he may have been talking about the woman he was once with but then he said “I can’t put Y/N in that position. Damn it.....I know you’re there. I can smell you.“

You walk in shyly as you were caught spying in on him. He was slouched in his chair as he looked out the window, gazing into the sky. He looked so lonely and hurt.

“H-hey Levi, are you okay? You don’t-“

“You shouldn’t be here...“ he cut you off “I’m not like you Y/N...maybe you should just leave that way you’ll be safer.“

“Levi, what are you talking about? I can’t leave or Zeke might come for me, or he can come for you guys!“

“Out of town then! Another city, hell out of the country!“ he snapped his head towards you making you surprised at his attitude. “Far from Zeke and me.“

“Levi, what the hell has gotten into you? We had an amazing day today, come on talk to me“ you said coming closer to him only for your breath to gitch as he quickly pinned you to his bed.

"Don't you get it?! I'm a monster! A monster who can't get you out of my head!" he now admits "I want to have you for myself and no one else but...but you need better." he confesses as he lets you go and plopped down next to you on the mattress. Standing up you walk in front of him.

"Levi, look at me," you say gently taking his chin and tilting it upwards look at you "you are not a monster. And if you are one, you wouldn't have helped me, and I probably would have been with Zeke right now"

Straddling his love you bring your arms around his neck into a warm embrace. His arms come up hesitantly around your waist and pull you even closer. His lips pressed into the crook of your neck, nothing too intimate but something loving. he loved the way your fingers would play with the hairs at the end of his neck. How they would massage the skin ever so gently. For someone like him to have been cursed with immortality, how lucky could he have been to meet you within his lifetime?

He moves further back onto his bed until you're both laying down facing each other "Y/N?" he said in a quiet voice

"Yeah Levi?"

"I'm going to end that bastard if it's the last thing I do." he brings your head to rest in his chest as if shooting you from the world around you "I swear it on my life"

<><><><>

"So just what makes you so sure you're fit for this?" Zeke interrogated the young man who sat with him at the booth of a bar "After all you were just some rando around the neighborhood. Next thing you know you're asking to join me. Why is that?"

Leaning forward his face comes into the light. His chestnut hair casting a shadow over his face that held a grim expression

"Let's just say, I have an interest in our precious little Y/N. Along with a grudge."

"And your name?" he said puffing out a cloud of smoke

"Floch"

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