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placeinthemiddleofnowhere · 8 months

Note

I feel like you're the right person to talk to this about:

I wanna tie König down to the bed and spend all day kisses those ridiculous muscles while he shakes and moans and begs for more. Big teddy bear needs some lovin' before you ride him until he breaks

Honey, Honey

Pairing: König x reader

Content Warning: smut (18+), hints of m!sub to m!dom, hints of enemies to lovers, use of a knife to cut clothes, tying up, teasing, spanking, biting, established messy relationship, no use of y/n or mention of gender/race

This isn't exactly what you asked for, but also this is my house and I make the rules so... have this as a treat

-🍯-

“And how did you picture this working out for you, hm?” König crooned, eyes positively deadly over the honey sweet veneer of his smile.

A little thrill of fear zipped through your belly, but you were resolute in ignoring it, unshaking as you chased off thoughts of abandoning your plan. Instead you straddled him and tested the tight bonds holding him in place, giving a little tug on each of the heavy ropes that held his hands in their strong red threads. You looked back at his squirming ankles for good measure too, satisfied when you could see he was powerless to do little else than writhe. He was all yours to do with as you pleased.

“Well, exactly like this I suppose,” you shrugged. “I don’t think I have to worry about you getting your revenge anytime soon - not when I’m about to get sent away on a contract for three months after this. I’ll make sure to phone Horangi to come get you when I’m on the plane, of course. I’m nice like that.”

“How generous of you to plan to free me.”

“As fucked up as we are, I’d rather not have a poor maid find you.”

“You don’t think I’d get myself out eventually?” he chuckled, tilting his chin at you.

“Oh no, not out of these bindings. I learnt from the best after all,” you said with a wink.

He rolled his eyes, damn well knowing he’d been the one to show you exactly how to tie someone else up like this. Clearly he’d never accounted for giving away his trade secrets to the enemy. However, he’d have to admit that he had started letting his guard down with you more and more recently. König always said that showing you his face was his ruin.

That face. It looked at you now with a full palette with emotions, anger and admiration and lust all splattered onto the scarred and mottled exterior to create a picture straight out of your fantasies. His blue eyes were burning like oil on the surface of water and his lip curled at you, snarling in challenge. Tame me then.

You leant down, letting your eyelids droop with raw want and slipped your hands over his wide shoulders, admiring the bumpy flesh that so rarely got to receive such gentle caresses. Even that hint of affection seemed to have König’s face easing, the long scar on the side of his eye not seeming so stretched anymore. His conspicuous sigh of anticipation only confirmed it.

A smile faintly burst onto your lips. Merely the idea of a kiss seemed to break his facade - how would he react when you delved further into your plans? You bit your lip at the thought then lowered your head, hovering your lips dangerously close to his.

“Is all this just to tease me?” he whispered.

“Do you really think so little of me?”

“I don’t have to think anything,” he grunted. “You’re an infiltration expert for a reason, honey. You’re a professional tease.”

Honey. That’s what he called you ever since the first time he’d ever worked with you. It didn’t take long for him to reveal that it was short for Honey pot. When he bent you over a crappy hotel couch and chastised you for tempting him.

“I'd only be teasing myself at this point, König. If you could see what I’m seeing right now, you’d know you’re in for a real treat,” you grinned.

His nostrils flared and you could feel his chest swelling up with his ragged breaths. He could probably feel your desire just the same, you thought, knowing exactly how worked up you were from the way you were sitting barenaked right on top of him.

You made sure to grind yourself into his body when you finally kissed him, letting him feel the full hot measure of how worked up you were. You’d done everything not to make a mess of yourself while you were tying him up, but now you were unashamed and even smiling into his mouth as you pulled him close and felt the tickle of his groan.

His tongue worked its way over yours, perfectly warm and wet. You were happy granting him a little control while you threaded your hands into his hair. The gruff noises he made in the back of his throat were vibrating deep inside you. They were enough to send your senses into overdrive, almost enough for you to rip the ropes to shreds and let him have you. Though you remembered who was really in charge and smirked, drawing away from his mouth again and watching as his face fell.

“Let me have you. Undo the ropes and we’ll forget about this stupid stunt of yours,” he said breathily, almost growling as he roved his eyes over your body.

“What would be the fun in that?” you chastised, clicking your tongue at his arrogance.

“You get my cock and I won’t have to waste time planning a way to make you pay.”

“But knowing that is fun for me, I need to have something to look forward to,” you grinned, soon lowering yourself again and bringing your lips to his ear. “And you know as well as I do, I’ll get to have your cock anyway unless you use our safeword…so?”

He shivered, his body trembling like a mountain in an earthquake. His throat was like the tumbling rocks. When you rose back up again you knew you had him beat, as much as he always liked to be in charge, it was undeniable that he was actually getting into this. He’d never admit it, but that didn’t matter. The twitching length underneath you told you everything you needed to know.

“Do your worst, honey. I’ll get my revenge soon enough,” he huffed, lying back into the pillow in defeat.

“That’s a good boy, König. I knew you’d see reason!”

“Don’t you dare,” he seethed.

“Don’t dare what?” you asked, getting to work kissing along the sensitive flesh of his thick neck.

“I’m not anyone’s- don’t call me good boy,” he groaned, voice breaking just as you liked a featherlight stripe against his collarbone.

So dramatic. You huffed out a warm breath against his goosebumped flesh and nuzzled along it, watching for every little twitch and withheld moan that dared show itself on his traitorous body. You knew for a fact his mind would be reeling from all the attention, but you didn’t care. Not as long as he wasn’t telling you to stop.

“Ok, I won’t call you my good boy then…” you murmured, now focusing yourself at his left pec. “But don’t pretend like you aren’t shivering everytime I say it.”

He glared down at you, but it only made him look so much more stupid when he was tipping his head back right as you took his nipple into your mouth. You grazed it with your teeth and licked and sucked at it, revelling in the cacophony of little breaths that rushed out above you. Apparently it was too hard to admit he hated this anymore.

It probably didn’t help that your hand had been roaming down between his navel and thighs for a little while now. If his whimper was any indication, you’d stroked the fight right out of him when you palmed his dick over his boxers. Those would have to go - they’d be off already if you hadn’t been afraid that he’d wake up before you could secure him.

“You’re responding so well,” you praised, “Sure you’re not gonna want a repeat performance of this?”

“Oh honey, I’m gonna put a- ah-” he moaned, jerking as you played with his cock and slipped your hands over his balls at the same time. “Ah- fuck you.”

König was chuckling and moaning in equal measure, his body was a beautiful dichotomy of grunted protests and singing moans. You enjoyed getting to work him over, smiling like a born vixen as every movement drew out a new noise, filling the cheap hotel room with a lingering note of sex. It was a good thing neither of you had expensive tastes, you thought distantly, you’d have already been thrown out the night before and you’d have never have gotten to experience this.

“You’re gonna do what exactly?” you asked, tilting your head as you looked down at the writhing mess below you.

König’s eyes opened hazily and he shook his head, grinding his hips up and seeking the pressure that he so obviously wanted.

“I’m going to put a collar around you and make sure you remember who’s in charge of who. I’m going to fuck you until your legs don’t work anymore and then I’ll scrape you off the floor and parade you in the street for everyone to see!”

“Really? You will?” you asked, watching on with glee when you took your hand away and drew out a disappointed low whine. “Is that a promise?”

You leaned over and picked up one of your knives from the floor, curling your hand around the hilt tightly when you realised it was one of your own. The familiar weight felt right and when you readjusted yourself on top of him, you were happily able to drag the cold metal over the band of his underwear knowing for a fact that you wouldn’t hurt him with the angle you held it at.

König went stiff as a board underneath you and glared at you again, teeth baring as he worked out what you meant to do to him. He looked wildly from your hands and to your face, eyes practically broadcasting his revenge plot from the dark depths of his blown out pupils.

“Don’t even think about it,” he warned. “Just slide them down.”

“Or what?”

“I’ll make you regret it.”

“I hope so.”

The cotton fabric of his boxers was no match for your knife. It slashed through them in a few easy cuts, running through the material like butter, best of all not even grazing König’s already heavily scarred skin. You liked the drama of the knife, but you didn’t want to hurt him.

Truth be told though, he was furious - he’d probably rather be hurt than have to bother to replace his underwear. If he were a cartoon character his ears would be steaming. However if the redness in his face was anything to go by, he was probably as close to it as he’d get, he certainly felt burning to the touch. He'd had every dignity taken from him now. Though still he didn’t say Austria, and so you didn’t stop.

You tossed the knife onto the bedside table where it dropped with a thundering clatter and threw the black tatters of his boxers to the ground, revelling in the full straining length of his cock from underneath the shroud. It was enough to make you salivate. Your mouth filled and your heart thrummed in your chest, but still you held your composure and opted to ignore it for the moment. Instead returning to kissing around his body and only occasionally running your fingers gently over his dick and around the rough dark thatch of his pubic hair.

“You’re a ah- fucking bitch,” he groaned, voice much higher pitched than you were used to.

His voice was ragged, he was getting pushed further and further toward madness. You’d been working him for only a few minutes, but clearly it was too much. He needed to feel your actual touch on him, a firm hand. He was desperate, voice all breathy even while he tried in vain to pretend like it wasn’t getting to him.

“Those. Aren’t. Very. Sweet words,” you murmured, taking a break through each to kiss his straining abs that were now far more visible through the fat of his tummy.

“You’re supposed to be the sweet one, honey,” he sighed, arching again as you licked at the spot just underneath his navel.

“I’m being rather sweet to you now, no? I could be fully taking advantage of this predicament you’re in and riding on top of you, taking whatever I want from you, but I’m choosing to use this as an opportunity to worship you instead,” you sighed, running your hands up and down his hairy thighs, gently scratching at him enough to have him clenching his teeth.

“Worship? This isn’t worship - it’s torture. I want to feel you. I need you to give me more!”

Oh…he sounded hungry before, but now he was starving. There was an extra low growl in his voice and now it felt like the air was thick with the salt of him. His chest was working hard underneath you, heart palpitating while he cock bobbed in time, rutting against you and seeking every little sensation it could.

You had to take pity on him. You had to give him more now.

“Well you only had to ask for it,” you hummed, finally licking a stripe straight down the vein on the underside of his dick.

He moaned out like a bull, the sound practically ricocheted off the walls. You giggled quietly to yourself and worked your tongue over him again, closing your eyes contentedly as you tuned into his deep siren’s call.

You’d now moved down his body so that you could get better access to him, and now you took full advantage of his rock solid muscles, gently rutting yourself against his outstretched leg while you licked at his shaft and balls. You delighted in every time his voice caught in his throat and his moans broke out like waves into the static of the room.

You alternated between licking him and then breathing over the trails of saliva, taunting him when you reached his head,only giving him the gentlest of kitten licks there that would send him spasming and cursing. He wanted more and more, but you refused to give in right away. Teasing him was much too fun, and he was right, you were practically a professional at this.

Eventually though, you couldn’t refuse him any longer and when you finally took him into your mouth, he hummed and relaxed so fully that it felt like he’d been paralysed beneath you. You were a venomous creature taking him in your mouth and he was your prey now, you thought, he was well and truly yours.

At least that's what you had thought.

You’d bobbed your head down only a few times, had just swallowed right down to his balls when you felt it. A hand working its way over your head and tightly locking you into place against the scratchy hairs at his base. It took you no time at all to realise your little plan had backfired.

You’d been so focused on his cock that you hadn’t noticed he’d worked his hand free. You hadn’t heard the snicking of the knife as it had cut through the other binding. You hadn’t felt König’s upper half shifting until it was too late. Now the icy realisation was freezing your heart and sending your eyes watering.

He was fully in control of you now, yanking you up and holding you fast against him while he cut his feet free and threw the knife over to the far side of the room. His arms locked around you and he twisted like a crocodile in a death roll, throwing you underneath him and locking himself over you, ready to mount you like the bitch he claimed you to be.

“I wonder how hard I have to fuck you to make sure your legs can’t walk you onto that plane later, hm?” König sneered, breath hot as his voice acidly poured into your ears. “Lets see how long it takes for you to break.”

You yelped when he fastened his forearm around your throat and forced you both upward onto your knees, forcing you steady against him. You could still breathe fine, but nevertheless you fought him, trying to scrap back for control. It was useless. He hit your hands away without issue and still managed to get what he was looking for. Managing to lean over to the drawer and fetch the lube before he threw you uncaringly back into the mattress and repositioned his arm, constricting it around your middle instead.

He spanked you a couple times, the jolt centering straight onto your crotch and reversing your roles straight away. Now you were the one turned into a whimpering little mess. You turned to him and begged him to be gentle, but he only offered you a crazed smile before shoving the lube bottle between his teeth and squeezing a generous amount onto his hand.

“Gentle is for good little things that do as they’re told,” he growled, spitting the tube from his mouth. “Or those who use their safeword…so?”

He was mocking you now. The air hung dead between you, cold and unforgiving and sending you shivering under the weight of it.

“Just as I thought,” he hissed. “You love it when I take control.”

You sighed out in full defeat and looked down at the messy sheets, now resigned to your fate. You’d be little better than his fucktoy in only seconds. The realisation had you biting your lip, it sent your pulse roaring in both your chest and low in your body as you now anticipated, none too ashamedly, getting split in two.

You gasped when he pressed his lubed up hand against you and began to rub at your entrance, coating it thickly with the cool liquid and working you up a little before pressing a finger in. Pumping it in and out to the rhythm of your dogged moans, twisting and stroking and not letting up for anything.

He spanked you every so often, alternating between preparing you and punishing you for what you put him through. Even while you protested and told him that you couldn’t come into a job covered in bruises, he didn’t care. He didn’t even deign to give your cries an answer. He just rocked you onto him, adding fingers and turning your ass into a tingling hot mess all while he kept his chest pushed into his back and held you tightly against his sweaty torso.

“I- I that’s ah- I need”

“What? Are you finding it difficult to speak already? Imagine how difficult it’ll be once I’m inside you,” he taunted, nipping at the shell of your ear. “You want something, honey?”

You moaned out and bucked back against him, trying for a last ditch effort to get back on top, but he only laughed. There was no escape. The deep timbre of his chuckle worked through your back like nails, bringing home the fact that there wasn’t any way out of this beyond giving your safeword, and like hell did you want to do that. Not while every inch of your body was egging him on to continue.

“I need it,” you whimpered, groaning deep when he massaged a particularly sensitive spot inside of you. “I need your cock, pleaseeee.”

“You need it, yeah? How bad? Tell me how bad you need me to fuck you,” König growled.

You could feel him in the depths of your body, could feel how deep your desire for him was rooted now. Your toes were curling, sweat was dripping from your brow with the effort it took just to stay in the moment. Everything felt so impossibly hot. It took every effort not to pant like a dog, show him you might become a complete animal in the face of his teasing and his ministrations.

“Please, please, please, König!” you cried out. “Let me cum for you, I wanna make you feel good. I wanna clench around you. Let me feel you, I need it. I want you to fucking crush me, put your whole body over mine, please I need-”

He cut you off completely when he ploughed into you. Your words straggling away into nothingness. His hips clashed into your body and he jerked backwards just as he entered halfway, conscious of the fact that even with preparation he was still fucking huge. Though it didn’t stop him complying with your request, bending you harshly down into the mattress, almost squashing you in his effort to envelop you completely.

“Little brat, this is what you wanted all along. Well then…take it…take it all.”

Your arms and legs were folded underneath you now, just as useless as König’s had been when they were tied up. You had nowhere to go. Not that you wanted to go anywhere. König continued to work his way into your aching body, stretching you out and drawing the most salacious noises from your lips like a violin bow, stroking back and forth in perfect crescendoing song.

He wrapped a hand around your neck and kept his other arm around you, holding you tight and fucking into you like two animals in full heat. He knew just what you liked. Even while you tried to keep up the pretence of a struggle, scrabbling away at the wet sheets, you both knew that this was what you craved.

“There you go,” he said, ramming into you with his full length, voice straining even through his smugness. “Not so superior now that you’re all filled with cock, hm? You’re moaning like a little whore… my little whore. How’re you going to cope when I’m away, hm? You gonna touch yourself every night thinking about this? Maybe I should film you, make sure you have a reminder of your place.”

Your whole body tensed and you felt a growl of disapproval work itself from your throat. Even in your compromised position, even filled up to a point where you could feel your whole body coursing with need, you weren’t letting him get away with that.

You twisted your neck and bit his arm, not bothering to voice your protests. Your teeth sunk into flesh and released a pained grunt from him, but you were only rewarded with a particularly hard thrust for your efforts. It had you screaming underneath him, forcing him to reposition his hand from your neck and over your mouth.

“I’ll have to get a gag for you if you’re going to start biting,” he hissed, only releasing your mouth when you forced his hand away.

“Don’t threaten…me with a good time,” you laughed, smiling all the more when you heard him laughing too.

“Fucking hell,” he sighed.

He gave up holding you down and rose up like a bear, grasping your hips tightly with his roughened fingers before he really lost himself in you. He built up the fire within you until it was roaring, each slap of his body against yours sending you juddering forward and moaning out as his cock drew out brilliant sparks.

“Fuck, honey. You look so good like this… Look so good fighting to stay up. You’re my little plaything yeah? You’re mine to tease and fuck as I wish. Mine.”

Your vision was starting to white out, your head was growing fuzzy. The beat of your heart felt like it was building faster and faster and every little muscle in your body clenched at the impending orgasm that rocked through you. With only a few more thrusts you were spent, tearing at the sheets and lost in the pleasure, feeling positively drunk as your head swam with endorphins.

You screamed out and let your body fall completely to König, allowing him to gather your jelly muscles up and quickly reposition you in his lap. Your nails dug into his back, your head fell into the crook of his neck. You whimpered when he slipped back into you again, shaking as the aftershocks of your orgasm punched through you all the harder.

“Too much,” you whined, “too sensitive.”

“Come on now, honey. You’re not nearly there yet,” König murmured, kissing your temple. “Not till you say the safeword or till I say you’re done, alright?”

He repositioned himself and you dug your nails into the meat of his back, completely failing to discourage him from rocking you against his cock. You felt like you were going to cum again just from the jostling movements alone. The realisation had you moaning so pathetically.

“C’mon, honey, I know you can keep going for me, can’t you? I know you can,” he encouraged, already starting to slowly thrust in and out of you again. “I’m only just getting started…”

#König #König x reader #konig #konig x reader #mw2 #CoD #cod fanfiction #Honey!König

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bellarkeselection · 5 months

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Knew Better But Still Picked You pt 2

Gif belongs to @miyagiverse

Part One Part three

Jackie has some rules set for the reader and Cole that might be hard for them to follow.

Tag list- send me an ask to be added @cognacdelights @connieisthesun @bbabycass

Cole shrugged some jeans up his legs while I tossed one of his tea shirts over my head. Tying my hair up in a messy braid. Jackie had stomped out of the bedroom and down the stairs clearly frustrated. “So how bad do you think she’s going to be about…us?”

“I have no clue. I’ve never seen her this concerned for me before since we’ve been friends forever.” I responded by slipping some socks on my feet sitting down on his bed.

Cole throws a blue tea shirt on coming over to me wrapping his arms around my waist tugging me to his embrace. “We could just stay upstairs for the day. To avoid my parents' possible wrath on both of us. What do you say?”

“Cole..” I warned him by draping my arms over his shoulders.

He leans down since he was taller than me, kissing me slowly. “How about now?”

“We can’t hide away.” I attempted to say while he kissed me again a little more passionately as if that would convince me and I hate to admit that it might be working.

The older Walter boy in front of me cupped my face in his hands. “The way you’re reacting says otherwise….jump.” I leaned into his embrace, moving my arms around his neck threading my fingers through his honey hair. He moaned when I did so and he moved his hands down where I jumped wrapping my legs around his waist but that’s as far as we got.

“Cole. Y/n, can you come downstairs now!” His father hollered where we broke the kiss.

Cole sighed and I could feel his muscles tense up. “Oh boy. Are you sure we can’t just sneak out the back door and go to the riverside?”

“Unless your parents don’t know about that place and Jackie’s phone has terrible cell service she’ll find us no problem. We have to go, Cole.” I explained to him running my right hand through his hair getting some of it out of his bright green eyes.

He lowered me to the wooden floor and planted a kiss on my forehead. We still held hands coming down the stairs until we reached the third to last step. His parents and my best friend were standing in the kitchen with angry looks on their faces. “You wanted to talk with us?” Cole stated calmly.

“Do you want to explain to us why Jackie is saying she wants us to forbid you two to be together?” His mother Catherine scowled hands on her hips.

Cole pretended to play like he was clueless. “I have no idea.”

“Me either.” I shrugged my shoulders following along with him.

Cole's father glared at his son. “Cole, don't joke around about this. We know Jackie isn't a liar. So I'd suggest you tell us the truth.”

“I don’t have anything to hide.” I replied.

Jackie stomped up, ending up in between us and the Walter parents. “Come on, you two. I know that you're lying to them. I saw you two laying in his bed this morning!”

“Okay, fine. Yes we were sleeping together in his bed. But not in the way that you think I swear.” Holding my hands up I figured it would be safer if we only lied about the horse riding and kissing last night between us.

His father glanced at his son, leaning against the fridge. “Cole, just tell us exactly what happened and your punishment won't be as bad since we already learned about you sneaking girls out of the house without our knowledge.”

“Which will never be acceptable in this house ever.” Catherine waved her index finger at him.

Cole dropped his gaze to the wooden floor and I felt him reach for my hand. I wanted to support whatever he was about to say but I still drew back keeping my hands clasped together in front of me. “Look you guys, I am not hooking up with Y/n. I just hung out with her last night and she didn’t want to wake New York up so she slept in my room with me.”

“Fine, if that’s all you're going to tell me then let's get onto the part that I came up with.” Jackie turned on her feet to the Walter parents. “Are you still open to the ideas that I came up with for going behind my back?”

Catherine shifted her gaze between us. “Jackie is very upset that you two lied to her about this. So we have decided that you two are grounded here for the evening.”

“What-” I gasped, never being grounded before in my life.

Mr. Walter leaned his palms on the island. “And if you don’t get all the chores done then you can't go to the homecoming prep rally.”

“I didn't want to go anyway. “ Cole shrugged his shoulders not fazed.

Turning my head in his direction I admit weakly. “I want to go. I've never been at anything like that in the city.”

“Oh…” Cole replied giving me a guilty expression.

Jackie moved forward grabbing my arm and dragged me out onto the porch so we could talk alone about this. “Jackie, this is ridiculous. We didn't sleep together.”

“But you did do something with him. I can see it in your eyes, Y/n. You're closer to him than you were a few days ago. He reached for your hand I saw it.” She throws her arms away from her sides.

Dragging my hands down my face I groaned at her. This was getting ridiculous that she is so concerned for my heart. “Jackie, I don't want to be having this conversation with you. You also had no right to involve his parents in this.” I appreciate it the support. But I haven't had a boyfriend yet so how was I supposed if he would be bad or good for me.

“If you just tell me what happened last night I'll go inside and tell them I overreacted. You just have to tell me the truth.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Shoving my hands in my pockets I huffed. “I shouldn't have to tell my whole life story. You're supposed to just trust me since I'm your best friend and you consider me to be your sister.”

“If I consider you like family then there's no problem in telling me.” She pressed onward.

Stomping my boots into the gravel drive I snapped at her not being able to handle it anymore. “Urgh! You wanna know what happened between Cole and me…we kissed. We kissed after he took me horse riding to see the stars. That's what happened between us!”

“You freaking kissed him!” Jackie raised hee voice at the same time the front door opened and Cole walked past us seeing her death glare as he went straight for the barn.

Whipping my head around I ran toward the barn leaving my best friend ending our conversation with her. “Cole!” Leaning in the doorway with my hands on either side of the stall with his horse, he avoided my gaze brushing his horse.

“Hey Y/n.” He mumbled.

I opened the door coming to stand closer to him so he'd possibly look me in the eye. “Cole, please look at me. I didn't want to tell anything about last night. Last night was something that I wanted to be my own thing that no one could take away from me. But now she's made me put it out in the open.”

“It doesn’t matter that she knows about the kiss last night. I just don’t want to talk about it anymore we have chores to do.” He grumbled walking out of the stall and gently pushing me out of the way so he could lock the stall.

Spinning around in my boots I snapped back at him. “If you’re bring an ass to make my best friend right I don't like it. I already told you that I chose you when everyone else tells me I should stay away.”

“I'm not trying to make her happy. I am trying to stay away from you. But I can't avoid being around you.” Cole spun around on his feet getting close to me where there was almost no space between us.

I parted my lips eyeing the side of his jacket pocket where I knew he had slipped his keys inside before we went downstairs and clearly his parents didn't know. “Then let's run away somewhere they don't know about. Like Romeo and Juliet but obviously not dying.”

“Are you sure you're not a little afraid of any danger, Y/n?” He questioned me, focusing his green eyes.

Closing the gap I wrapped my arms around his neck pressing up against him as much as I could. “I'm choosing to be with you aren’t I Cole Walter. Danger can be my new middle name. So let’s run away for the night.”

“Running away isn't showing them I'm a good influence on you…But I don't want to be apart from you now.’ He declared looping my hand through his and he peaked around seeing that the lights in the house had been shut off meaning everyone was asleep. He led me to his truck and I climbed in hearing him Starr the engine racing away from the ranch.

Pulling out my phone I turned my location off knowing Jackie would track me. Leaning back in the seat I put my hand over his freehand. “You are honestly more fun then I'd thought you'd be, Cole.”

“I was thinking the same thing about you, Y/n.” He intertwined our fingers together and the rest of the drive through the night was comfortable silence with both our hearts racing with adrenaline and fear.

Comments really appreciated ❤️

#cole x reader #cole walter #colewalteredit #cole walter x reader #requests open #noah lalonde #wattpad fanfiction #ask box is open for anything #comments really appreciated #jackie howard #horse ranch #forbidden romance #star crossed lovers #romeo and juliet

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greenhorn-art · 4 months

Text

World Champions | Artwork for World Champions by TheDefenestrator by TheDefenestrator, art by Blurb_brain

Fandom: The King's Avatar | 全职高手

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Category: Gen

Words: 71 944

At the end of season 4 of the Glory Pro Alliance, the government finally receives the information it has been waiting for: The other players have caught up. Or, In which Glory has been a government recruitment ploy for remote-piloted mecha operators all along.

About the Book

FONTS: Mundo Serif, Azonix [dafont], Segoe UI Symbol

IMAGES: Illustration by Blurb_brain [AO3]; cover image by NASA ID: 440611 [Rawpixel]; Planet Earth background ID: 6331593 [Rawpixel]; Circuit lines background ID: 3117935 [Rawpixel]; endpapers' image by Eric Eastman [Unsplash]; Swoksaar, Desert Dust, Lord Grim, Vaccaria, and Cloud Piercer [The King's Avatar Wikia]

MATERIALS: regular printer paper (8.5"x11", 96 bright, 20lb), 80pt bookboard, Iris Bookcloth (colour: Black Pearl), Neenah cardstock (8.5"x11", bright white, 65lb), waxed linen thread (white, 30/3 size), embroidery floss (shades 3750, 350, 3845, 370), leather cording (1.9mm diameter), Reeves’ acrylic paint (Mars Black, Phthalo Blue, Titanum White), Americana acrylic paint (glow in the dark), ph neutral pva glue (Books by Hand)

PROGRAMS USED: Typeset in Affinity Publisher, cover/title page/endpapers designed in Affinity Designer/Photo, QR codes generated with LibreOffice Writer, PDF arranged for printing with Bookbinder-JS

BINDING STYLE: quarto, case bound (slightly rounded, with oxford hollow, forgot to use tapes)

Fenes' "Glory's tech isn't handwaved" AU. This was great! Funny and creative, and I'm both amazed and full of admiration for Fenes' ability to juggle so many characters.

I was feeling excited and ambitious with this one. Tried some new fun things (double core endbands, painted edges) and used some new equipment (a lying press).

The Text

TITLE/HEADINGS FONT: Azonix says 'SciFi' to me, it's a bold, non-serif, sleek font.

BODY FONT: Mundo Serif, it's a decent serif body font I haven't used before. Felt like it worked with Azonix.

SCENE BREAKS: a special character in Segoe UI Symbol of a black & white icon of Earth, the globe showing Asia.

TYPESETTING: Finished typesetting the fic, left document open on my laptop, laptop's battery failed, file now crashes immediately upon reopening, issue persists with copied versions of file (；￣Д￣) . Thankfully I had a backup file for the typeset with the barebones of the text, so I didn't have to restart from scratch...

Title Page

My thinking: it takes place in space, the world's at stake, and it's the dawn of a new horizon for Earth. Glory and the titular champions are represented by Swoksaar, Desert Dust, Lord Grim, Vaccaria, and Cloud Piercer – the captains of what I'd call the 'big 5' teams. A circuitry board background element hints at the tech/mecha nature of the story's competition. It may not match Blurb's art, but I hope I was able to convey some of what the story is about.

The circuitry image is used as decoration throughout the book. I only used the avatars of the top five teams' captains because too many silhouettes would lessen their impact and readability. (Removing the backgrounds was tedious, but worth it.)

Here's what it should have looked like. The test prints for this and the BB art were fine, but I think my inkjet started running out of ink just when I printed the final copies and I didn't reprint them. (Too impatient, really wanted to finish up and read the book)

The Cover

World Champions is another Big Bang fic, and once again I based some of my design choices off of the accompanying artwork. The dominant colours of Blurb_brain's illustration are red and blue-green.

COVER PAPER: For the decorative cover material I used NASA's ASTER image of Poyang Lake. NASA has some really interesting photography some of which remind me of marbled paper, thought it could be interesting. I chose this image of Poyang Lake because 1) it's in China, 2) the colours were similar to Blurb's awesome illustration (fate strikes again, dropping matching images and artwork into my lap!), and 3) NASA is tangentially relevant to the fic, which takes place in space.

BOOKCLOTH: Verona bookcloth in the shade Black Pearl, a lovely dark navy blue colour. Thought it suited the cover paper and title page. (Bought it for this fic specifically, but the colour goes well with almost all of my decorative papers so it should see a lot of use in the future!)

Endpapers

The final decision that held this project at a standstill for two months. In the end I drew inspiration from the matchups against the final opponent in the story. The image I used is a little chaotic and a little too unrelated to identify why I picked it without an explanation, but this book is for me and I know why, so there. (Note that I played around with the colours and cropped the photo.)

Endpaper inspiration: the maps for the matches against the Infilhites

"a long bridge through an enormous tube-like hall, where light seem to come from every side through stained glass windows. It was visually confusing, limited lateral motion" "a warehouse, crates stacked on and beside metal racks that went all the way to the ceiling." "a house of mirrors, fully enclosed to be sure the Infhillte couldn’t fly out of it." "like a volcano, rivers of lava moving sluggishly down a slope, occasional vents of overheated air nearby." "a series of overlapping bridges between halls and stairways, level after level layered over an open abyss."

Trimming & Painting the Edges

Going all out, a 2-for1 deal: the opportunity to use my lying press for the first time and learn a new technique!

TRIMMING: Used a paring chisel and lying press.

CHISEL: The 1.25" wide paring chisel I used was form a modern manufacturer. (Vintage paring chisels are very thin, enough so that you can bend/flex the blade. But don't do that.) It's long and wide blade made it easier to register against the surface of the press for consistent cuts. Looks like this one below from Lee Valley.

LYING PRESS: My dad's project. Solid black walnut, hand carved screws and internal threads — he even made the tools to make the threads too! The jaws of the press are each 3 7/8" wide. It's big and heavy (though much smaller than full-sized professional ones omg), but there's enough of a flat surface to register the chisel against. A thicc boi, much like this one below from Bookbinding Supplies.

PAINTED EDGES: The idea was to have dark navy edges, speckled with white stars. I used acrylic from a tube to paint the edges — tutorials recommended it over liquid bottled acrylic, and I had an old set hanging around. Had to water it down because otherwise the paint just flaked off.

My test of trimming and painting went well. Then the trimmed book itself came out slightly crooked, the paint required significantly more watering-down than before, and the white paint did not want to be both opaque and speckle-able. Unfortunate, but still book-shaped! And now I have an idea of what to do differently next time.

Also, did not like the glow-in-the-dark paint. Looked too translucent in the light when compared to the white acrylic, and needed a thicker coat to be visible in the dark. (The thickness combined with the translucence and base colour kinda reminded me of boogers... Ended up scrapping most of it off, so there's not much left to glow.)

Endbands

Still in the mood to have fun and go all-out, I attempted double-core endbands for the first time.

TUTORIAL: YouTube @ BookbindersChronicle: Bookbinding 101 Sewing Headbands Session 2. Also watched @ DAS Bookbinding's Double-Core Endband // Adventures in Bookbinding, but I personally found Chronicle's closeup video easier to follow.

I used embroidery floss from a 100pk of assorted colours off Amazon, wrapped around a core of 1.9mm leather cording from Michaels. I drew from Blurb_brain's art for the general colours, choosing a dark base, with red, blue-green, and gold. The specific shades were picked to go with the cover.

#World Champions #TheDefenestrator #Blurb_brain #qzgs #tka #the king's avatar #fanfiction #bookbinding #fanbinding

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historianthesecond · 11 months

Note

hi!!!!! i was wondering if you could do a nikolai/reader fic that is similar to the rain scene (or, frankly, i'd be good with any scene) from the notebook:

the reader and nikolai had young summer love, then were separated for a long time, but both kept writing letters for years that were intercepted and never recieved. it all leads up to the angry/yearning argument in the rain where they say it still "isn't over" and some not-so safe for work activities follow.

again, just using the scene as a general guide but it doesn't have to be super similar. (hope that was at least somewhat cohesive and you know what I'm talking about. sorry for the rambling, i've just had this idea for so long and am super excited about it lol) tysm!!! <3

Hi! AAAAAAAA I'm so sorry I'm just answering this ask 😭😭 adult life sucks but anyway. I rewatched the movie now that you reminded me of that scene and yeah 1000% worthy it. I hope you like it! :D

I cut this fic in two parts, because the next one is going to be NSFW, so y'all can read the fluffly part without the filth 🥺👉👈 also because my smut scenes are so long for some reason, and it gets hard to edit 🤡

For All Those Memories We Tuck Away;

Nikolai Lantsov x Fem!Reader-----3K-----SFW

It had always been strange; like a thread that tugged down his heart every time he sensed your presence; familiar footsteps echoing in the hallways, chirping voices flowing through an open window as you walked toward the palace’s entrance.

Nikolai swept his gaze around the ballroom, catching a flash of your hair moving between a myriad of swirling bodies, your figure walking away from where he was talking with one Kerch merchant and his insisting wife that was trying to drag him toward one of their daughters, who was eagerly waiting for a dancing partner.

When he was younger, a childish part of him imagined that perhaps it was that both your hearts were linked by a thread, like the folktales about soulmates.

Now it would have been more of a coincidence.

He raised his empty glass of wine, playing with the delicate stem between his fingers. “If you’d excuse me,” Nikolai said once the merchant stopped talking to take a breath. “I’m afraid my feet are sore today; I wouldn’t wish to give a bad impression to your lovely daughter.” His hands gestured away toward the table filled with pastries and desserts. “I’ll go fetch another drink. In the meantime, please enjoy.”

Nikolai slipped between the crowd before someone could grab him back by the arm, his neck tilted upwards to scan the room, wishing to see another glimpse of you, or else, he’d thought it was a fantasy.

It wouldn’t have been the first time he imagined you, hoping to see you walking in the courtyard again, lounging in the garden, near the fountain, hands busy as you braid a flower crown. Bumping into you in a corner of the hallway, with your eyes lost in the flicking details of the sunlight reflecting in the decorations of the palace’s walls.

Just a painted reverie, hidden, ruined beneath layers of regrets and missteps overlayed over the decade that set you both apart. Grey and brown with the marks of ash and mud from the battlefield, streams of black ink dripping from crumbled paper’s edges, messy calligraphy from writing down on his knees. Streaks of green and blue of the open sea and the bright sky, the white of the paper replaced by maps and sails.

Nikolai forgot you, or so he pretended. Another distant memory of the past, from those fleeting moments when he felt happier, lighter as he bathed in the soft sound of your laugh.

He trailed down the path he saw you slipping into before, the longing sound of your giggle reverberating in a corner of the ballroom, frozen in all those occasions Nikolai had cracked a silly joke. Only that this time, he wasn’t the one amusing you.

His steps halted, jaw stiffened at the thought of him peeking out into the exit staircase only to see you chatting with another nobleman to which you'd surely be already engaged, if not married.

Curiosity will always take the best of him because he couldn't just walk away. For the first time in years, you were so close—only a door away, almost—but to him felt as if an unsurmountable abyss had opened in the marble floor.

His hand took the handle, turning it slightly. Cold wind blew in the hallway from the open entrance gates. He saw the rosewood hues of your skirt over the steps, your back mid-turned toward him as you waved goodbye to the Count’s only daughter.

Like a spring, your eyes settled on him before he could even conceal his staring.

Not like he could, of course, his eyes hoping to take you in every detail, as if that way Nikolai could engrave you, this new you, with your adult features, into his mind forever.

You looked away; the moment so fleeting that the Count’s daughter didn’t even notice. “Promise you’ll come to my tea party on Thursday?” she was saying, already crossing the entrance threshold.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” you replied with a chuckle, steps elegantly descending the stairs when your friend left, your body disappearing from his view as you tried to put as much distance as possible.

Nikolai opened his mouth, but for the first time in so long, words just wouldn’t come out. He darted down the stairs as he did when he was a boy—good thing nobody was looking at this unroyal attitude—, his boots muffled by the carpet.

Saying your name brought a strange sensation in his mouth, like a prayer gone awry. It echoed in the stillness of the foyer; and he repeated it, louder this time. "Wait!"

From the direction toward the former Queen’s gardens, your silhouette flicked between the shadows and glinting gold from the dusk reflected in the canopy, your back still turned toward him, shoulders slightly hunched.

Nikolai breathed your name, voice so low he thought he imagined it, his hand hovering on empty air as if trying to reach you, to gather the courage and jump the evident rift that set you apart.

You looked from above your shoulder. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

He stood there, mid-hallway, hands clenched in a futile attempt to appear calm. "You came."

From the myriad of invitations sent, he didn’t even waste energy in imagining you would assist at the ball, not when you had missed his coronation ceremony months ago.

“Elena told me I can’t hide from the King of Rakva forever," you said, settling on the corner against the wall, the wind carrying away the essence of summer flowers in Plein bloom. "It brings a bad reputation upon our house."

Elena, your sister-in-law. Nikolai had heard of your mother's passing during times of the civil war, but up until that moment, he never remembered before to at least send his condolences, even if your mother was never a fan of his despite his endless charm.

Nikolai doubted his mother the Queen would have confessed to yours the real nature of his real relationship to the Lantsov bloodline, no matter how close the two seemed to be, but your mother had given you your sharp wit. It wouldn't be so far-fetched for her to have to guess it on her own.

He walked toward you, eyes gazing at your hands, bare fingers. You noticed, hiding them behind your back in a swift movement.

“Would you like to come with me on a walk through the garden?” Nikolai said, his arm extended toward you. “I would be honored to have your company.” After so long, he wished to say, but couldn’t. It could have sounded like a reproach, and he didn’t wish to bare laid that hurtful part of him that was convinced of your oblivion.

You met his gaze, observing his smile that tried to be charming only to notice the slight tremor on his lips.

“I can’t deny a request from Your Majesty,” you replied, stomach fluttering as if you hadn’t matured at all when you grazed your hand on his arm.

“Then I should have sent to your residence a marriage proposal instead of the invitation for a ball,” Nikolai found himself saying, the words escaping before he could think of the consequences. A result of the old times, he supposed.

You feigned a chuckle. “Your Majesty is very funny.” Like always, hung on the charged air between you two.

“I’m flattered. Though it has its downsides, as you can observe. People usually assume I’m joking.” He observed the way your footsteps guided you down the path, barely an afterthought as your graze hand poked the flowers in bloom, your brows slightly pinched in focus as if you were arranging flower decorations in your head. “When I’m not.”

You looked at him from the corner of your eye, lips in a neutral line. “Unless you’re still engaged to that gentleman... Mr. Komary?”

You gazed away, cheeks hot from embarrassment. It wasn’t a secret that the only reason you weren’t engaged ever since you were children was because of your mother and her terrible way with lies.

Instead of telling the former Queen that she wasn’t interested in marrying her only daughter to a possible bastard, she had told her that you were already promised to a kid in the Wandering Isle. Family so discreetly that nobody could get a hold of his existence.

“I’m just here because it would be good to make acquaintance with the future queen,” you replied, your tone very monotone, eyes drawn in a far part of the garden, on white walls covered with vines, violet flowers like trumpets contrasting vividly against the marble. “I would like to honor my mother’s place as lady-in-waiting.”

It shouldn't have hurt this much, thinking that Nikolai had assumed the same ever since years ago. But it did, like the ghost of his first shooting wound, right in the chest. Seemingly mortal, though not really.

The sky was getting darker, clouds hiding the last rays of sunlight as the cold wind blew between the bushes, whispering a clatter of remembrances of two happy children laying on the grass and of giggling teenagers running away from the guards, heading toward the lake with the tail of your dress half-smoked thanks to one of Nikolai’s new inventions.

“And what about us?” Nikolai said because he had learned to play all his cards, to seize every opportunity. “Have you considered it’s better not to keep our promise?”

“Don’t worry about it,” you cut in, your lips curved in a sour smile. “We were just kids back then. You can move on.”

“Have you move on?” he couldn’t stop himself from saying.

You didn’t answered, so he stopped in the middle of the cobblestone path despite the drizzle starting to soak into his jacket, your hand falling limp at your side. “I’ve always thought that kids’ love is the most unconditional kind.” His eyes warmed you from the cold rain starting to embed on your skin. “Don’t you think so?”

You felt a familiar knot in your throat, hoping that he couldn't see the red on the whites of your eyes.

“You forgot about me,” you said in a whisper, scared that if you talked too loud, your voice would break. “You never wrote to me—you can’t say that. You have no right!” you shouted, embarrassed for your outburst when in your mind everything was already settled.

Nikolai furrowed, his hair starting to stick to his forehead. “I wrote you for months—so much I got a bump on my finger.”

You huffed, arms crossed over your chest. “You’d always have that bump,” you replied. “You write too forcefully, that’s why you can’t draw.”

He copied your stance. “I draw my inventions’ blueprints quite masterfully, in case you don’t remember.”

You scrunched your nose like a bunny, and despite his irritation, Nikolai had the urge to lean in and kiss you, knowing that your pout would disappear. “I mean artistically. You could never draw me.”

Nikolai couldn’t stop the smile from escaping his lips. "Perhaps we should give it another try," he said, his hand touching your chin, his eyes drawn to yours. “Sitting in that big red velvet chair with uncomfortable rest, chin up to stop the crown from slipping out your pretty head.”

“My hands would get too clammy from holding the orb and the scepter," you said from memory. “The orb would fall from my hands, and I would get indebted to the royal family forever.”

“The King wouldn’t mind,” he assured you. “He has a soft spot for you, I’ve heard. Always have,” Nikolai muttered, crooning his neck down toward you.

He could feel the warmth of your skin, the sweet essence of your hair that had become more citric than floral, and the way your eyes traveled from his eyes to his lips.

“I wrote you about each dusk I could see without buildings covering the view, hoping that it wouldn’t be the last,” he said in a mutter despite the rain surrounding you. “About how I dreamt of you, imagining that you lulled me with that little song you liked to hum when you were bored—to keep the nightmares away. How the fields covered in dandelions and sunflowers remembered me of you." He chuckled a strained sound. "How can you believe I never write you? You've sieged my mind ever since I have memory of our first encounter. Everything calls back to you.”

He rummaged inside the inner pocket of his jacket, getting out a tiny, disheveled pony figure between his fingers. It had been once white with black hair, a blue saddle decorated with painted daisies. But time had worn it out, brown spots of the wood peeking between the paint.

The silly but sincere gift of a young girl. Your favorite miniature horse toy to accompany him on the battlefield, just as his gift would stay with you on those slow nights of study in the emptiness of your bedroom.

"How could I ever forget you when you're always near my heart?" Nikolai muttered, passing a thumb around your cheek, feeling the warmth of your tears against the pad of his finger. “How could I let you go when this isn’t over for me?”

You smiled, your trembling finger passing through the figurine. “That’s Pearl.” From between the pocket hidden in your skirts, you produced a wooden soldier with its broken rifle—from that time Nikolai toppled it off from his balcony.

“You still have my little friend,” he said in a whisper that was meant to be a chuckle, but now strained.

“I couldn’t throw him away,” you muttered, barely holding back a sob. “He would feel very lonely.”

A lonely soldier that had become a lonely king.

Nikolai enveloped you into his arms, pushing you against a wall to alleviate the force of the raindrops all over your soaked hair; lips hungrily seeking yours to try and make up for the time he had spent imagining how a kiss from you would feel if it would taste like wine and chocolate pastries you had been eaten at the party. You gasped into his mouth, and for a second, he thought you'd push him away.

But instead, your arms hung around his neck, and he started swaying you from side to side as you cried against his chest. “Saints… I missed you so much.”

“I’m sorry, Kolya,” you said, voice muffled against his soaked coat. “I should’ve tried harder. I shouldn’t have believed Mother about your lack of letters. I’m sorry.”

His laughter rumbled on his chest down your cheeks, which made you smile despite your teary eyes.

“We were both very foolish and young to know any better,” Nikolai drew circles on your back. “A clear sign that we’re a perfect match, don’t you agree?”

"I thought a King ought to be wise," you couldn't stop teasing him.

He nudged you closer. “That’s why I need a Queen like you at my side, my lovely.” Nikolai kissed you again, convinced he wouldn’t get tired of it. Because how could he? It was one of his dreams coming true. “What do you say? Should I duel Mr. Komary? I’m an outstanding swordsman. An excellent shot.”

You smiled, hands brushing away the locks that had started to cover his eyes. “Good to know you’re as humble as ever.”

Nikolai winked. “Just another one of my long list of qualities.”

“I don’t think my brother would say no to you if you propose,” you said between the rumble of thunder in the distance, refuged between his warm arms. “Hypothetically, Ally would love to have an excuse to visit your workshop.”

“Only hypothetically, of course. I would be delighted to show him around.” He smiled. “Is he still interested in terrestrial transportation? I'm sure I can convince you to look elsewhere, like up, maybe.”

“You’re more excited to see my brother,” you feigned an offended pout. “Perhaps you should marry him instead?”

Nikolai shook his head, stealing a kiss from your lips as he chuckled. “I couldn’t win a duel against Lady Elena. She’s a scary one.”

“And I’m not?” you said, trying to push him away when the cold of the wall stuck to the wet bodice of the dress.

“I’m sorry, my flower, but no.” He took one of your legs up, so you could tangle them around his waist, allowing him to dip his head lower and kiss you even more. “You’re like a bunny. My adorable bunny.”

“Bunnies bite,” you replied after your round of kisses was over, tiptoeing to nibble at his lower lip just for a moment.

He looked at you, eyes filled with both love and desire in the way they got framed by his lashes. “By all means, do it again,” he said, which made you laugh. One of his hands slipped on your bottom, and you yelped. “But not here. Hold still.”

Nikolai walked back to the rain, both hands holding you closer to his chest as your legs hugged his waist.

“What are you doing?!” you whispered against his ear, arms around his neck as you bounced up and down with each one of his strides, trying to ignore the heat pooling down your stomach at feeling his warmth body through the wet layers of fabric.

"I'm carrying my beautiful fiancé to my chambers to dry her off, of course." The rain echoed on the roof of the private wing of the Grand Palace, and you couldn't stop from burying your head in the crook of his neck at seeing the guards flanking every other entrance. “I wouldn’t like her to end with a cough that could delay our wedding.”

You felt your cheeks hot despite the sudden trembles traveling down your body. “To your chambers? That’s very inappropriate.”

Nikolai kissed your cheek. “I don’t hear you complaining,” he said with a clear note of amusement in his voice. “Don’t worry. We’re almost there.” Another kiss, this one falling behind your ear. “I’ll make sure to warm you up whole, my lovely.”

#nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai lantsov x you #shadow and bone x reader #nikolai lanstov x reader #shadow and bone fanfiction #nikolai lanstov x you #nikolai lantsov imagine #shadow and bone x you

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ungrateful-cyborg · 3 months

Text

Social media comparison

Alright. I've tried different new/alternative platforms lately in hope to find something I really liked, and there are very promising ones. I didn't try everything, of course, but this is a kind of overview of my journey so far? Or just my thoughts on the matter.

I've tried Pillowfort, Bluesky, Mastodon (didn't last long enough to have much of an opinion, it simply didn't click), Dreamwidth and Cohost (as of today, can't post there yet).

My comparison under the cut:

► I appreciate that they're algorithm free, whether it's because they truly believe in an Internet rid of the most invasive of them or because it's too expensive to implement on a brand new platform or some other reason. Only the future can tell, but for now it's nice.

► Pillowfort: beside the post formatting that I find extremely comfortable, my favourite thing is probably communities. I feel like this is the strongest "pro" in favor of Pillowfort because this is where they truly distinguish themselves from other social media.

Communities, in a way, remind me of forums. They're however easier to take in hand since you don't have to deal with as many options and choices. In my opinion, communities on Pillowfort are a bit lacking in functionalities though. I think more tools to easily organize them would help, like a widget or something to link stuff so you can create and animate events within said communities.

(I also feel like Pillowfort would gain from not being dark blue. We have more than enough dark blue websites, and it doesn't go well with the warmth invoked by its name in my opinion, but that's a minor detail and just a matter of taste.)

► Bluesky: basically Twitter but better. No algorithm, for a start. The curated feeds are nice. They're a bit like communities on Pillowfort since they can be moderated but from a non-mod user, it's even easier to post in them: you just have to use the right keyword for your post to appear there. Well, if the mod left it open to all rather than chose to vet who can or cannot post in it. Lots of flexibility and control over your timeline overall.

I don't like the 300 characters limit, however. Never liked it with Twitter either. It's not really conductive to conversations, and the general design tends to make the website feel rather impersonal. It's really more like parallel talking than community building.

Overall I think it's a good tool to promote your (visual) art or website, etc. but not great for hosting conversations past commenting briefly what others are doing. I mean, you can make threads but it'll never be as good as Pillowfort or Tumblr for this.

► Dreamwidth: I'll start with saying that Dreamwidth isn't a social media, it's a journaling platform and I haven't used it much yet. Had in plan to post my headcanons about my muses there and stuff like that so I did spend some time trying to figure out how it works.

First, there is a lot of options to let you have complete control over who can see what. Like, a lot.

You can entirely personalize what your journal will look like. It's a bit easier than having your own website—since I reblogged a post about that yesterday—because you don't start from 0, so it might be a good option if you don't feel comfortable jumping into Notepad++ to start coding. You can just change a thing here and there, or nothing at all, or almost everything. It's pretty old school though, so for those completely unfamiliar with early/pre-web 2.0, it might not look very appealing at first. However, I'd say don't let that stop you! If anything, it's a good opportunity to learn a bit of code without pressure.

You can also create communities, which as you might have guessed is very important to me. When creating one, you can set up whether everyone can join, everyone can ask to join but has to be approved by a community admin or to limit the access to those you have personally invited. Like for your own journal, communities are completely customizable, and Dreamwidth allows adult content.

I'm not sure you can top DW communities in terms of functionalities—aside from making a forum—but it's not as intuitive as Pillowfort (though in exchange you get more customization). You're also more limited regarding image hosting (see here). That said, hosting services exist, many are free, and that's without mentioning that you can post on Twitter and the like and use the picture link in your DW posts. I don't think many will only use Dreamwidth anyway.

► Cohost: I was expecting nothing when I registered earlier today, but this is an overall good surprise: it's Tumblr, but better.

More control of what you see. More user-friendly UI. It's not fucking blue. Adult content allowed. You can change your main blog page and make it private.

The only two downsides I'd mention here would be that you can't customize your blog page appearance and you have to wait for one or two days before being able to post. Although if it means less bots, I'd rather wait.

And this ends my rather non-exhaustive tour of the social media/blogging/journaling platforms. If you catch any mistakes let me know. I didn't dive deep, this was just me sharing my thoughts.

(As far as I know, they all allow adult content and give you tools to not see it if you don't want to.)

#OOC #social media #Internet #cohost #dreamwidth #pillowfort #bluesky #long post

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fionajames · 4 months

Note

Hey, I like your little stories.

Could you maybe write something for Obi-Wan and Anakin inspired by the song 'Starlight' by STARSET, which is THE Obi-Wan and Anakin song of all time? Preferably something with a happy ending?

I hope that's a prompt you can work with. If not, just let me know. Thanks!

-@rainintheevening

A/N: Oh. My. God. Okay, so I'd never heard this song before this and it is 100% the Obi-Wan and Anakin song. Thank you so much for 1. REQUESTING and 2. "Hey, I like your little stories"?!?!?! I MADE THE EQUIVALENT OF THIS FACE: 🥺 TYSM!!! I hope you like this!!!

So obviously, lyrics in this are from Starlight by STARSET, I had a lil bit of trouble choosing which lyrics cause all of them are so great and ended up going with the chorus! Recommend: listen to the song whilst reading!!!

Alright, please send requests people and enjoy!!!! (Oh and dw, you get your happy ending.)

I don’t know what to say

Anakin stretched his limbs out, moving to walk up to Obi-Wan. Ahsoka wasn’t by his side as usual, instead in the Temple studying. Sure, he’d miss her, but it would be nice for him to have time with Obi-Wan, and she needed to catch up on studies.

The brunette moved to the ginger’s side, standing with his hands behind his back. The silence wrapped around them was comforting and warm. If he closed his eyes, Anakin could image he was laying in a meadow, sunlight coating him.

Obi-Wan opened his mouth to say something, and Anakin turned to him expectantly. But no words came from the ginger’s mouth, and instead he gave his brother a wry smile. Anakin laughed softly, a sound melodic and silky. If his laugh had a colour, in that moment it would’ve been baby blue, floating through the air like wisps of joy.

Obi-Wan laughed too, throwing his head back with it. Something about their soft, light laughter made the situation delicately elysian. They weren’t really laughing for a reason, they didn’t have anything to laugh about really. In fact the situation was rather bleak, what with the upcoming fight ahead of them.

But in that moment, the fight seemed forgotten, or perhaps neither of them really cared.

But I’m going to want you till the stars evaporate

Anakin shuffled to be closer to his brother, reaching up a hand to ruffle the ginger’s hair. It was a joke between the two of them. When Anakin was a Padawan - and shorter than Obi-Wan - the older used to ruffle his hair as a show of the height difference. But Obi-Wan’s smug act was quickly overtaken when Anakin grew taller than him, doing the action as revenge.

Obi-Wan scoffed and grabbed Anakin’s shoulder gently, pushing him away and watching the brunette stumble exaggeratedly. They both laughed at the childishness of their interaction, Anakin slinging an arm over Obi-Wan’s shoulders and dragging him into step, heading towards the loading bay.

They moved in silence, but it was still warm.

The brothers walked side by side, conjoined by an invisible force of threads, tying them together with a light so blinding it was beautiful. Anakin spoke up finally, the playful tone of his actions lacing his words like honey. “How have you been?”

Obi-Wan gave him a smile, his head tilted in a statement more smirkish than his expression. “I’ve been good.” Unspoken words floated between them; ‘I’m better now you're here.’ Neither would ever admit it, but the other’s presence was more comforting than hot chocolate on a chilly night.

We’re only here for just a moment in the light

A familiar voice called out to the pair, startling the warmth. It was like a chilled breeze floating past them, causing them to shiver at the broken connection. “Yes, Commander?” Obi-Wan asked, turning to his Commander. Anakin stopped walking too, crossing his arms as he gave Cody a wry smile.

“We’ll be landing soon,” the Clone announced, greeting them both with a nod of his head each. Even with the helmet on, both Jedi could tell he was apologising for interrupting them.

“Thank you, Cody,” Anakin replied, shooting him another smile before turning to walk again. Obi-Wan stepped to his side, setting the pace for their walk.

They walked in the quiet for a moment, subconsciously sewing the threads of warm comfort back together. “It’s going to be weird without Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan mused after a moment, tentatively pressing on the threads connecting him to his brother. He grinned when Anakin pulled on the strings in turn, showing he was alright. The strings were golden - unlike Anakin’s baby blue laugh - and glowed in the dimly lit corridor, illuminating the brothers.

“Probably for the better,” Anakin responded lightly, his voice cracking ever-so-slightly as he thought of his sister. “It’s unfair for someone so young to be out in the field like that.”

Obi-Wan smiled sadly, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder carefully. The meaning behind it floated like gentle words into Anakin’s mind; ‘You are too young, do not blame yourself.’ He returned the smile, pushing gratitude through the bond and to his brother.

One day it shines for us the next we’re in the night

Both brothers felt the ship jerk as they came out of hyperspace, and they simultaneously quickened their pace in order to get to the bay on time. The corridors rang with their footsteps and Anakin glanced to the ginger, a grin forming on his face.

They reached the bay quickly, and joined their troops on a gunship. Anakin stood beside his former Master, gripping the hanging handle with one hand, the other waving as he talked. He gave his orders to the troops, who all nodded before turning back to their own conversations.

Through the slits in the walls of the gunship, the brothers could see the night sky surrounding them. They were used to the inky black of Coruscant, staring in awe at the purple and blue sky, stars lighting it all. It was serene and ethereal.

“There are so many stars,” Anakin whispered to his brother, who nodded. Obi-Wan’s face was adorned with a dopey smile, his eyes reflecting the natural glow of the galaxy like a sea of swimming stars. Anakin turned back to the sky, knowing his own eyes were probably doing the same. He breathed in deeply, the chilly night air like icy water down his throat - satisfying and relaxing.

So say the word and I’ll be running back to find you

The gunship landed silently and the doors opened. The Clones instantly spilled out, but the Jedi were slower. Anakin stepped out into the lush grace with a curious grin, examining the landscape. He turned to Obi-Wan, who’s face portrayed the same awe.

They sadly bid their temporary farewells, setting off with their troops into the forest. They were to meet up again once they’d navigated their way around the abandoned village in the North.

Anakin stood with the hilt of his lightsaber in hand, the coolness of the metal soothing the adrenaline pulsing through him. They were silent as they trekked through the trees, laughing every time he heard one of the Clones quip something; often curses from tripping or words of admiration for the terrain.

He gasped suddenly when a cold feeling settled over him, seeping from the strings attached to his brother. He pulled on the bond worriedly, receiving a short, hurried tug in response. Anakin quickly ordered his troops forwards, and together they rushed through the brush towards Obi-Wan.

Anakin gasped when they reached him, a large black and furry creature standing over one Clone with it’s jaws parted, displaying hundreds of gleaming and sharp white teeth. The brunette hurried forward, impaling his lightsaber through the back of the creature. The blue lit up the clearing, giving him another visibility to see Obi-Wan battling another of the mystical creatures.

A thousand armies won’t stop me I’ll break through

Anakin hurried to help him, ducking and rolling underneath a swipe and retaliating with his glowing blue blade. Obi-Wan breathed out a ‘thank you’ before rushing to save a Clone. The brunette glanced around, counting at least a dozen of the huge beasts, towering over Clones. He had to admit, the creatures were mystically breath-taking, but in the same way absinthe glowed. Deadly, yet beautiful.

Anakin moved around, helping as many people at once as possible. At some point, he and Obi-Wan fell into a defensive position - back to back with their lightsabers in their right hands.

When a shrill scream broke through the air, Anakin turned to aid the fallen Clone, who was clutching his knee, staring at the spot where his leg had been moments before. A shot of pity coursed through Anakin’s body before he decapitated the creature, nose wrinkling in disgust when a place of the Clone’s armour dropped from its mouth.

He dragged the Clone to stand on his one leg, supporting him with a sympathetic smile. The Clone began lazily firing at the remaining creatures as Anakin helped him to the centre. Obi-Wan move to stand back to back with his brother again, protecting him from behind.

The remaining Clones hurried into the cluster, shooting at the last creatures. Anakin gave the Clone to Rex before lunging forward and jumping onto the back of one creature, plunging the blade of his lightsaber into its head.

As the body of the beast crumbled to the floor, Anakin stood up to see the bodies of the creatures littering the area, alongside the dead Clones.

I’ll soar the endless skies for only one sight

He closed his eyes for a moment, mourning their losses. Obi-Wan placed a hand on his shoulder comfortingly, sending waves of sympathy and warmth through their bond. Opening his eyes, Anakin gave him a grateful smile.

“We should rest,” Anakin told their troops, eyes locking with his Captain’s through the visor of his helmet. Rex gave him a sad smile, holding the Clone up with his arm. “Bury the dead.”

Obi-Wan nodded and the pair quickly set jobs for the uninjured, Kix tending to the legless Clone. Others had scratches and cuts - one trooper was crying tears of panic that he couldn’t see out of one eye - but some were just cleaning the blue blood from the creatures off their armour.

They gathered firewood and logs to sit on, the trees above them shelter enough. Anakin helped Cody and many others bury their dead, wincing as the last specks of dirt covered the white armour. They murmured their prayers softly.

Obi-Wan helped Anakin drag the bodies of the creatures into a circle around their camp, a barrier of sorts. They were tempted to eat the meat, but had enough rations and didn’t exactly feel like attempting to gut such a huge beast.

Of your starlight

Anakin yawned as he settled down on a log beside his brother, watching the smoke from the campfire swirl up into the night. He stared at the glittering stars and smiled, leaning back against a tree. The fire was keeping them warm, and the stories they shared kept them safe.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Obi-Wan whispered, his gaze locked on the gleaming sky as well. Anakin nodded, humming his agreement.

“I wish we could see this every night,” Anakin mused longingly, a content smile on his lips. Obi-Wan let out a soft laugh, mint blue wisps of joy floating into the air invisibly. They danced with the baby blue ones of Anakin, childish giggles floating through the air.

“One day,” Obi-Wan murmured, his words of hope like a warm drink in their hands. He reached over to rest his hand on his brother’s, soothingly rubbing his thumb over Anakin’s knuckles. “One day.”

Anakin hummed back happily, letting his eyes drift closed as the warmth over the fire covered him like a blanket. He glanced at the night sky and the stars one last time, before letting sleep wrap him up like a newborn baby. “One day,” he breathed out.

One day.

A/N: Wow so that was longer than I intended but happy none the less!!! Send requests please, I hope you enjoyed!!!

(Taglist: @transmascanakin (you get smth happy today, ig, but im gonna be back with ur punishment), @techs-goggles9902 (still not the trope srry, and i swear i'll do ur request soon!) and @skellymom)

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coraniaid · 9 months

Text

Have to hand it to you, staff. Lesser minds might have been put off by the constant chorus of people on here telling you that you didn't know what you're doing, that the changes you keep forcing through are deeply hostile to the site's existing culture and won't even work at attracting the new users you so desperately want. Weaker souls, indifferent to the needs of the shareholders, might have caved in and realized Tumblr Live was a terrible idea, rather than forcing it out on more and more people across the world. People with less bravery in their hearts might have had second thoughts about the fact that the new layout looks like dogshit. Not you though. You were resolute. You held firm.

You had the confidence to know that none of the people who actually use your site matter in the slightest. We're basically deadweight at best. How arrogant we are to think any different. What matters are the people who don't use Tumblr and never have, the people who have never even heard of Tumblr or who think it ceased to exist years ago, the people who might -- someday, somehow -- choose to make it profitable. If only you can find the right way to trick them into it. (They'll forgot to keep snoozing Tumblr Live eventually, I'm sure of it.)

And I must admit, the one thing that's always held me back from recommending Tumblr -- to friends and family and casual acquantances and total strangers I walk past in the street -- was the fact it didn't look like a shitty, off-brand Twitter clone. Now, at last, I can show them all the site with pride, basking in the warm glow of their indifferent "oh, is this the new X that Elon Musk is always talking about? It looks kind of bad, honestly -- I might try Threads instead."

And this latest experiment -- removing avatars from reblogged posts, on a site where most posts are reblogs, to make "more room for badges"? Another master stroke.

Personally I've always hated quickly and easily being able to tell which of my mutuals has reblogged something (almost as much as I hated having a purely chronological list of reblogs or being able to view previous tags -- thanks again for fixing those bugs!), but I love knowing how much money they've given you. Remember when people on here actually thought you were making fun of the idea of Twitter Blue, not earnestly co-opting it? Idiots, am I right? No wonder you have so much contempt for your userbase. We deserve it.

You don't need me to tell you to ignore the haters (and you wouldn't listen to me if I did), but I'll say it anyway. What do they know about Tumblr after all? They've only been here for a decade, most of them. What are they going to do if they don't like things, leave? Teach themselves programming to fix all the changes you've made? I'd like to see that. I really would.

But if I could make one modest proposal: why stop there? Get rid of gifs next, I say. Nobody on Tumblr really likes them. Nobody who matters, anyway. Get rid of asks. Get rid of text posts. (Pivot to video!) It's all just useless unprofitable clutter, isn't it? Think how much more space there'd be for badges and crabs on my dashboard if you got rid of it all.

#seriously if you've ever given staff money maybe stop?#it only encourages them

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lesetoilesfous · 1 year

Text

Ok so now the CORRECT prompt for @glowing-blue-feathermage: “It’s hard to write about being happy because the older I get, I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject”

@dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Fenders

Characters: Fenris, Anders

Tags: fluff, post-canon, old men in love

Rating: Mature

"Fen?"

Fenris' answer is a rumble that Anders feels in his chest, where he's lying against his husband in their bed, fiddling with his sewing. Anders leans back into him anyway, feeling the gentle give of a belly that had at last developed with old age and safety, despite every year Fenris had spent starving. Fenris' answer is to run his old, wrinkles fingers slowly through Anders' long, grey hair.

"Do you think we won?"

Fenris chuckles, lifting his book a little to look down past his chin at Anders, who's craning his head back to look up at him. Next to their bed are several haphazard stacks of books like mushrooms growing around the room: mixed buffets of Tethras romances and dense political tracts from Orlais to Seheron. The dwarven spectacles Fenris is wearing glitter in the candlelight of the room, magnifying his green eyes. "What brought this on?"

Anders shrugs, and ignores the twinge of an old scar as he does so. Instead he moves his legs against the bedsheets, enjoying the worn old cotton of them, before pressing himself against Fenris' warm body. In his hands, the cross-stitch he's working on is half-finished but already becoming clear enough: the Grey Warden emblem, realised in thread. He's planning to hang it in their kitchen.

"I should be dead." Fenris' fingers still in Anders' hair. "I mean, both of us should be, probably." Fenris makes a wry, sarcastic grunt in response to that. Anders grins at him. "I don't know, I just always sort of expected our endings to be more...dramatic. Going out in a tragic blaze of glory. Something that would make sense for the stories."

Fenris puts down his book, sitting up a little. Anders follows him, and the lavender-strewn hay of their mattress exhales a little sigh of perfume. Fenris looks at Anders thoughtfully. He can hardly not, these days, his warm brown skin wrinkled around his eyes, mouth and forehead in a way that lends a certain air of dignity beneath his long hair, as white as it had ever been in all the time Anders had known him.

Fenris reaches out a hand, and Anders meets it, letting his husband wind their fingers together. Their rings press in the space between their skin, but Fenris presses them tightly, until Anders can feel the touch of his wedding band in his bones.

"I think that it is in the interest of villains to tell young heroes who hope for change that the most they will ever achieve is self-destruction, and that long, peaceful lives with the one they love is the reserve only of the evil and corrupt."

Anders' mouth twitches, "I'd hardly characterise our lives as peaceful, love."

Fenris inclines his head, and lifts Anders' hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the backs of his fingers. "But they have been long. And that, I think, is enough."

#fenders da2 #fenders #fenris #anders da2 #da2 #dadwc #glowing-blue-feathermage

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octolingkiera · 6 months

Note

May I request more info about the rise au so I can better suggest additional characters?

yeah of course!! i honestly forgot to mention what kind of au it is in the post itself (i made the post and then got off tumblr for hours like i was trying to forget i even made it in the first place dlkgfjsdljg) but i'd be happy to provide more info on the au!

(the post in question)

so the au is the separated au i've been working on for over a year (first chapter is posted on ao3 as sunset hues, jetpack blues) and i'm looking to add more characters into the fic to spice things up a little

the general premise is that splinter was only able to save raph and mikey, leaving leo and donnie (known in the fic as lee and dee) with draxum. the fic starts about where the series does, around the events of mystic mayhem, and after raph, mikey, and april destroy draxum's lab, lee and dee use this as a distraction to run away.

i intend the fic to follow lee and dee as they forge their new life away from draxum, and along the way they meet their brothers and splinter and april and end up becoming heroes. i'm going to loosely follow canon (a retelling, sort of, as a lot of sep aus tend to) but i don't want to follow canon 1-to-1. i want to add some new arcs, some new adventures, and change the existing things to match the change of circumstances

the foot clan are still planning on bringing back shredder, that's a given, and some things might still happen along the same lines as canon (especially stuff that happens off screen and some of the stuff with raph/mikey/april) but i hate when fics just rehash canon, so i'm trying to add some excitement

some characters i've already considered are:

tigerclaw (he's a bounty hunter here)

miyamoto usagi (he's an adult here, and he owns a dojo in the hidden city)

bebop and rocksteady (i'm thinking they're battle nexus competitors)

mona lisa (i'm going to make her a yokai, possibly late teens, early 20s, and tweak her name to be ramona, with "mona" as a nickname)

miwa (borrowing this name to create a snake yokai that's friends with mona lol)

i jokingly thought it would be funny to add in the frog mutants from tmnt 87 lol

but i've been really stuck on how to add any more characters, and which characters to even add. i don't want them to be big characters or very important, mostly just characters that the cast can interact with to fill the world, but i'm not a big fan of OCs so i figured adding (semi) recognizable tmnt characters would be a fun workaround lol

adding some more characters to make yokai would be fun i think, bc rise has this whole city full of them and we only ever get to meet a handful and it leaves soooo many possibilities

i hadn't really considered adding more antagonists before (barring tigerclaw, who i have Plans for) but it might make for some interesting plot threads to add more of them. rise has a fun mutant cast but most of them get reused a lot and

sorry if this doesn't really help much but thanks for asking!! i'm very excited for this fic and i wanna make it the best it can be. i wanna talk about this fic so much but also i dont wanna spoil everything before i get around to writing it so it's a fine balance between explaining enough to be useful and not explaining too much lol

honestly, any suggestions would be helpful. just giving a place to start would help. i don't mind doing some research but i don't have firsthand experience with characters outside of rise, mutant mayhem, and anyone in the first three-ish seasons of 87

thanks again for the ask!!

#tmnt #rottmnt #tmnt 1987 #tmnt 2003 #tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2018 #same tags as last time to hit the same crowd lol #but yeah like #there's still so many characters i don't know #and some i've heard of but aren't sure if they're real or not #so i figured i'd ask #ask #answer #kiki delivers

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unchartedcloud · 2 years

Note

OR forgotten first meeting/locked in a room (Clexa)

Hey anon - when you sent this, did you mean, "I'd like 9k words of a totally new au"? Because what you're getting is 9k words of a totally new au.

Send us a combo of tropes and we'll tell you how we'd write them!

57 (Forgotten First Meeting) + 70 (Locked in a Room)

A John Wick (modern assassins) AU

TW: alcohol, sexual themes, gun & violence mention

Rated: M

It’s never a good sign when Lexa feels groggy upon waking. She’s either a) been drugged or b) at Doc’s office, most likely having been consensually drugged.

This drugging was not consensual.

The first thing she’s aware of is her surroundings. Relatively bright, fluorescent light. Green accents. The smell of cleaning solution and fresh linens. She’s in a room at The Continental. Lying on one of the small couches provided in the larger suites, if the vantage point is any indication.

The second thing she’s aware of is the muzzle of a Sig P365 pointed at her forehead.

“Finally,” the woman holding the gun says. Lexa blinks several times and focuses her gaze. A blond woman with curly, short hair. The curls are damp, as is the rest of her body; an easy observation, given that she’s wearing only a bra and underwear. “Care to tell me why the fuck you’re in my room?”

The woman’s tone is relatively light, given the situation. More curious and a bit peeved than outright angry, at least for the moment. Though how Lexa managed to interrupt this person’s shower whilst unconscious remains a mystery.

She blinks a few more times, waiting to move until her vision is reliably un-blurred. The couch is upholstered in a silken green fabric embroidered with coarse gold thread–a curious choice, given the difficulty of getting blood out of either–and the latter presses into her palm as she pushes herself up to sit. She neither watches the blond nor informs her she’s doing so; the Sig’s safety is on, so she’s clearly not in danger of being shot just yet.

The room is indeed unfamiliar. A suitcase is open against the far wall, its contents tossed; the sheets have been slept in and left mussed atop the bed; the closet door is ajar, the suggestion of an empty gun belt and a long rifle outlined in the shadows beyond. A quick flex of Lexa’s bicep tells her the holster beneath her left arm is empty. And she isn’t wearing her jacket.

She took her jacket off when she returned to her room in the afternoon…she’d poured herself a dram of whiskey, but it was from the bottle she’d brought with her. Had she swept the room first? Could someone have…

The Sig clicks, and cold gunmetal touches her right temple.

“Are you deaf?”

Lexa frowns. “No.”

“Well I’m not asking again.”

She angles her eyes to the side, turning her head two degrees to get the other woman in her periphery. Water drips from her hair onto toned shoulders, rolls down over a defined bicep tensed slightly in the work of holding the gun. Almost all of her is bare, the essential bits covered not by simple underwear, but lingerie: black, lacy, partially transparent, the half-corset bra she wears fades into strong abs. Her right forearm bears a geometric tattoo; the left bears the Sig.

So she’s attractive.

And familiar.

“I don’t know,” Lexa answers, and knows immediately the answer is unsatisfying. She can feel the pattern of the embroidery pressed into her cheek and rotates her jaw a few times. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“You could, though it would be somewhat unproductive given that this is, as I said, my room.” The woman sighs and pulls the gun back from Lexa’s face. It’s still in her hand; a sure, easy grip. A finger taps absently on the gun’s handle in a way that suggests habit rather than intention. And, perhaps, impatience.

“I suppose I shouldn’t kill you until I know whether you’re worth breaking the rules over.” Clear blue eyes roam Lexa’s body brazenly as if she were naked rather than fully clothed, and the edges of a smirk appear on the blond’s lips. “You certainly look like you could be.”

It sounds like innuendo, but Lexa doesn't give it the time required to process. She pulls her fallen suspender strap up onto her shoulder as she stands. "I wouldn't advise it. You've already tried once and failed."

The room spins. She has every intention of walking straight to and out the door to track down whoever thought this would be a fun prank to pull, but the drug is clearly still working its way out of her system. Not that she has any intention of betraying that; she covers by brazenly eying the blond right back. "Your lingerie was red then."

“Feeling okay?” The smirk is out in force now. “You look a bit…”

Lexa’s words sink in as the smirk falls away, replaced with an equally attractive frown. “Have we met?”

"Once." If she grits her teeth, the floor mostly stands still. It's enough that she feels confident about crossing the room without collapsing. "In Budapest."

“Budapest…” The woman taps the gun against her own shoulder, of all things, and looks up into the middle distance in a dramatic display of deep thought. “Hardly narrows it down.”

Lexa shakes her head before she can think to stop herself and grimaces. “Red lingerie in Budapest doesn’t narrow it down?”

“Not exactly.”

It does strike Lexa as strange that she meets no resistance on her way to the front door, but then again apparently this woman has just as much interest in Lexa being in her room as Lexa has in remaining in it. She manages to avoid the small table in front of the couch, round the edge of the bed, and make it to the door - where she meets a lock.

“The door is locked,” she hears, rather pointlessly, from behind her.

"I can see that." Lexa doesn't turn around, just goes on watching the doorknob as though its resistance to moving is another symptom of being drugged. "Why is the door locked?"

“If I knew that, you’d have woken up to an empty room.” When Lexa turns around, the woman is shrugging and in the midst of digging in her luggage. “Got a name, cutie?”

No gun, no jacket, a locked door…Lexa looks down at her wrist. Not even a watch. How much time remains? If the sunset is any indication, not much. She leans back against the wall to steady herself.

"These doors don't lock from the outside."

“Not usually.”

She’s pulling a dark blue dress over her head and adjusting it over her hips with a wiggle. Lexa finds herself staring at her ass before she manages to pull herself together. Her eyes are just tired, along with the rest of her body, from being drugged. Potentially by this woman, though that seems increasingly unlikely.

Which does remind her to ask:

"You didn't hear anyone break in?" She blinks hard, and finds herself staring at the blond's stretch of bare back instead. "Or them dragging a full grown human being inside?"

“I listen to music while I shower.” Somehow the gun is still in her hand, though her grip is relaxed and her arm is at her side. She gestures at Lexa with it. “You don’t remember drinking something you shouldn’t have? Maybe getting knocked over the head?”

Lexa doesn't merit that with a response. Music while showering? It's a miracle this woman is still alive.

"Have you tried to pick the lock?"

“No, I just noticed it was stuck and hoped a strong, pants-clad woman would come and save me.”

Lexa processes and is about to respond when the blond rolls her eyes and amends, “Of course I tried to pick the lock. The fact that I can’t narrows the suspect list down quite a bit.”

"Does it?"

The blond turns her back on her again and shakes her hair out, which Lexa finds only mildly distracting. Determined to get her feet under her she shoves away from the wall.

"Where's your lockpick set?"

She saunters over to Lexa, all hips and collarbones and eyes that seem to shift in color to match her dress. “Here,” she says, pausing only once she is fully within Lexa’s space. It takes Lexa a beat to realize she’s reached down to the nightstand beside them and opened the drawer. “Help yourself.”

She looks down. One lockpick set would have met expectations; two would have been smarter, assuming she didn't wake up in the room of a master thief. Instead, she finds a veritable drawer full of different sets, different makes, all in pristine condition. A comment comes to her lips and she lifts her chin to deliver it, but the other woman has stepped away, leaving the scent of citrus and spice in her wake.

So she swallows hard, grabs the top set of lock picks, and kneels in front of the door.

Surely she imagined the way those blue eyes bounced down to her lips.

"Well, I'm all ears."

“You want a drink?”

Lexa stops what she’s doing to level a raised eyebrow at the woman behind her, who is now standing at the small bar on the opposite side of the room. “I’m a little busy.”

She shrugs again and goes about fetching herself what appears to be a nip of whisky from the hotel fridge. “Suit yourself. Ever heard of Finn Collins?” The whisky ricochets off the crystal glass from the force of the pour, some of it splashing off onto the counter. The woman tongs one large square of ice from an ice bucket and plops it in, eliciting yet another small splash. “He’s a shit assassin, but he’s got connections. Including one of the world’s greatest locksmiths. He is also,” she swirls the liquid around and finally meets Lexa’s eyes, “after the Carl Emerson contract.”

What?

It's only because she's already locking her jaw that the word doesn't jump from her lips. Instead, Lexa only narrows her eyes and reevaluates her position. The contract on Emerson was too lucrative to stay exclusive for long–but she hadn't anticipated competition quite this quickly. Titus must have been talking to more people than he let on.

But as far as she's aware, Titus is the only one dealing this contract…which means her situation isn't the only thing she's reevaluating.

Lexa sits back, taking a breather with her weight on the ground while she studies the way a flower tattoo spills out from the back of that blue dress.

"Who are you, exactly?"

“Clarke Griffin.” She says it easily, readily. It even sounds genuine, and that smile that’s more of a smirk is back on her face. “Nice of you to finally ask. You got a name under those traps?”

Lexa frowns. “Under what?”

Now the woman–Clarke–raises an eyebrow right back. “Trapezius.” She gestures at her own with the hand currently unoccupied with a glass, leaving Lexa to wonder where she’s stowed the gun. “You have nice shoulders.”

She should be more concerned about the location of the gun than she is.

Clarke Griffin.

"You really don't remember trying to kill me?"

“I have killed a lot of people.” Clarke takes a sip of her drink and swallows - then narrows her eyes at the middle distance. “Red lingerie, Budapest…” the finger tapping is back, this time on the glass. “Tried to kill you, that does narrow it down…

“Oh, shit!” A resounding smack jars Lexa’s ears as Clarke slams the glass down on the counter. It’s a miracle the thing is still in one piece. “That was you? Fuck, what was that contract…Woods!” Now she’s pointing at Lexa like she’s caught her out in a lie. “Lexa Woods. I had no idea you were in the Network.” She shrugs apologetically, though that smirk is back on her face and Lexa gets the distinct impression that she is anything but sorry. “Misunderstanding, I’m sure.”

"Mm."

The light through the window shifts and Lexa is reminded of the ticking clock. She gets back on one knee and the world spins less as she turns and tries at the lock again.

"In your defense, Lexa Woods isn't in the Network." The lockpick jerks as she pushes a tumbler a bit too far, resetting the whole thing. She sighs, her shoulders deflating. "The Commander is."

Something happens then that hasn’t happened since Lexa woke up in this room: silence.

At first, it’s nice. She can actually hear the tumblers as they move and can identify more readily when she continues to fail. But then it starts to tickle at the back of her neck. Clarke hasn’t moved, and yet she’s quiet? Having known the woman personally for less than ten minutes, Lexa is confident that silence is not her natural state.

“The Commander?” she finally hears behind her. The surprise in her voice makes Lexa smile at the door despite herself. “You are the Commander?”

“Does that make you feel better about failing?”

“A little, to be honest.”

There’s more silence as Lexa manages to flip one tumbler…then two, then a third…that one clicks farther up, is a little more finicky, and then…

A clunk that Lexa has never heard in a lock echoes through the metal of the doorknob and the lockpicking tool snaps inside.

“...fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Lexa sighs and sits back on her heels, frowning at the keyhole. “The world’s greatest locksmith, you say?”

“One of. Locks that fight back are her specialty. I think some kind of bird is her calling card.”

“Hm.” Leaving the broken pick in the lock isn’t helping in any way, but it’s making it awfully hard to get it out. Several long seconds of twisting and pulling pass before she grunts, “For what it’s worth…I feel better about almost losing. I hadn’t realized Wanheda had been sent after me.”

“I’ve always disliked that nickname.” Lexa growls at the stupid little tool in her hand, still half-stuck in this absurd lock, and Clarke’s voice adds, “You sure you don’t want a drink?”

A fit of pique grips her and she slaps the door. “I suspect whiskey is how I got into this mess.”

“Ah. Well, you’re in it now, and I haven’t passed out yet so my whiskey must be fine.”

Lexa finally turns back around to see Clarke slam the rest of her drink back, swallow, lick her lips, and grab another glass. “Here’s how I see it.” She disappears under the bar to the sound of clinking glass, and then emerges again with two fresh nips. “There are three hours left of the contract. I can guarantee Finn is still scurrying to eliminate the competition. He scouts who has the contract he wants, eliminates them one by one, and waits until the last moment to pull the trigger.”

Clarke holds up the ice tongs and levels a look at Lexa. “Ice?”

Lexa finds herself shaking her head no.

“Right.” The cube plops back into the ice bucket. “So we have some time to discuss our exit strategy. And,” she slides the glass over the bar to Lexa, “to have a drink.”

Three hours…

She scans the room again as she pushes herself carefully to her feet. Lock picking is often an essential skill, but it's one she lacks the finesse to master; if Wanheda couldn't get it, with her reputation of sneaking into places she couldn't possibly be, then perhaps it's time to start working on a different plan.

Vents, windows, tools and points of leverage are catalogued as she crosses to the bar, feeling much steadier on her feet. But even so, once the glass of whiskey is before her she hesitates.

"Christ sake," Clarke rolls her eyes, "you literally saw me open it just now. Cracked the safety seal and everything."

An FDA approved tamper-evident seal is nothing for an experienced assassin to get through without altering, but saying as much seems unnecessary. Certainly after another handful of silent seconds the blond sighs, picks up the whiskey she poured for Lexa, and takes a sip off the top.

"Happy?" She asks, putting it down with a clink.

I'm content knowing that if Collins managed to poison this because you were listening to music in the shower, we'll both suffer, is what she thinks. What she says is:

"Every pane of glass in the Continental is bulletproof and shatter resistant."

“That’s true.” Clarke turns her back to Lexa - a known assassin, and a damn good one at that - to study the floor to ceiling mirrors that cover the far side of the room. This woman is insane.

“With enough bullets, perhaps,” she’s still saying, “but I didn’t bring an arsenal with me. You brought,” Clarke glances back over her shoulder to sweep her gaze up Lexa’s front, “less than that. I could keep working at the door, but it will take me some time. I’m open to less tedious ideas.

"Damn that man.” Her shoulders tense suddenly, drawing Lexa’s attention once again to an intricate floral tattoo that creeps around her shoulder blades and down her spine. “I may actually kill him next time.”

Lexa has never missed a contract. Not once. She's only even come close a handful of times. She hasn't yet decided this will be her first, but even coming close is grounds for revenge in her book. "I'll give you the gun."

The Continental spares no expense, least of all on its glassware; the crystal is solid and satisfying in her hand, and she gives its contents an experimental sip as she turns her back on Clarke Griffin.

Leaning back against the opposite side of the bar, she scans the hotel room's interior. One elbow rests on the arm she folds over her chest.

"Any chance of taking the door off its hinges?"

“You could certainly try.” A chuckle resounds from behind her. “I’d like to see how you plan to do so. Look,” a finger appears below Lexa’s right shoulder. “The hinges are hidden behind the doorframe. For aesthetic reasons, I imagine. It’s probably possible, given enough time.”

"Mm. Which we don't have." Lexa frowns.

“Well, we have some time. But perhaps not ‘breaking down the door’ time.”

Lexa considers her options while she takes a sip of her whiskey. It’s not bad, for something acquired from a hotel refrigerator. Balvenie of some kind, she thinks.

This woman–Wanheda, Clarke Griffin, whomever–knows about the Emerson contract. If she knows about it, she’s after it. If this Finn knows about it then he’s after it, too. Given that, who knows how many others may have knowledge of it. Lexa dislikes being forced to change her meticulously laid out plans, and she certainly did not have escaping a hotel room turned prison cell in the cards for this evening. She likes competition even less.

There has to be more at play here. Why stash her in this room? And how does Finn Collins fit into all of this? He must know Clarke. But how does he know who Lexa is?

“You seem rather unperturbed by this whole thing for someone who knows how much that contract is worth.” Lexa doesn’t have to turn around to direct the comment at Clarke; the blond has already stepped around the bar and is making herself comfortable on the corner of the bed, facing Lexa. “Do you have a plan for getting out of here? Or are you content to let Finn Collins walk away with your millions?”

“My millions?” Clarke folds one leg over the other, revealing far more of her thigh than was previously visible. “I didn’t realize you were giving up. That’s good to know.”

Lexa doesn’t reply and forces her line of sight to stay focused on Clarke’s face, which is of little help. Her lips twist into a look of disgust that has no right to look as pretty as it does. “I’d rather shoot Finn in the dick than let him have my money. It would be quite a loss for him, and frankly for me, but he’s pushed me too far this time. I might even shoot him in the mouth for good measure.”

"I imagine that would be less of a loss for you."

"Quite."

The vents are intentionally built too small to facilitate anything larger than a ferret to traverse them, the walls are reinforced with concrete and lead. Every element of the Continental meant to protect its occupants from each other has made it that much more effective of a cage–a stroke of genius she suspects is rare of this Finn Collins.

But why this room? Why her? Did he simply know they were both after the contract, and killed two birds with one replaced lock?

She pushes away from the bar and strolls to the windows, stands in profile against the fading light to keep Clarke in line of sight, and peers down at the street. Shatter resistant doesn't mean shatter proof…but they are several stories up.

"We get out of here," Lexa assumes, because there's no question that they will. She drops her empty hand to her equally empty pocket as a taxi scuttles by. "What happens then? I close my eyes, count to ten, let you run your separate way?"

“I think it’s more like I close my eyes and let you go,” Clarke meets Lexa’s eyes through the glass, “given that only one of us is armed. Though if I recall correctly, you weren’t armed last time we met either.”

“No guns, no knives.” Lexa allows herself a smirk around the edge of her whiskey glass. “I was without quite a few things, as I recall.”

She tips her chin towards the other bedside table, the one holding a hotel phone instead of an army’s worth of lockpicks. “I assume you’ve tried the front desk.”

“That’s disconnected. But,” Clarke emits a dramatic sigh, “since you did finally ask.” She produces a cell phone from, of all places, her cleavage.

How could she possibly have concealed a smart phone there so completely? Lexa's stomach flips at the thought, despite the enraging words now coming out of the blond’s mouth.

“He thought he’d blocked the signal, in his defense. But I’m a rather good hacker myself.” Lexa snorts. An understatement, if her reputation is any indication. “So it’s simply a matter of calling Charon and sorting it out. We’re locked in, not out. I’m sure he’ll make short work of the situation.”

"You can't be serious."

She may not have a gun, but that doesn't mean she's incapable of harming someone - and as she pushes away from the glass to face Clarke head on, fists clenched, she feels sorely tempted to do so.

"You've had a way out of here the entire time? Why didn't you take it??" She growls. "Emerson could be halfway across the city by now!"

“Well, excuse me for being curious when a stranger–sorry, someone whom I assumed to be a stranger–appears on my chaise lounge while I’m showering.”

Clarke has the audacity to look not only unconcerned by Lexa’s reaction, but is that pleasure in those blue eyes? Satisfaction? Lexa’s fists tighten.

“Alright, look.” Clarke holds up a hand in a universal sign of surrender, though Lexa hardly thinks it applies here. “The fact is that I don’t mind a little competition. I enjoy improvising, and our line of work can get so dull. I was curious about you. Even more so now that I know who you really are. I highly doubt an hour or so will make the difference between the Commander’s success or her failure. But I can call Charon at any time, whenever you like. Hell,” she moves so quickly that Lexa just barely manages to unfist her hand in time to catch the phone, “you can call him.”

Motion sensors cause the phone’s screen to light up as she turns it around. She’s confronted with a high resolution image of a female praying mantis in threat posture and a password prompt.

“It’s locked.”

“0813.”

Four quick taps later, a different kind of mantis appears behind app icons. It’s such a specific choice, Lexa needs to ask: “Why the bugs?”

“My most recent target considered herself somewhat of a maneater.” Clarke chuckles into her glass and shakes her head, perhaps recalling a memory. “She was also a Leo. Made for an interesting evening.”

“August 13th would be a Leo birthday,” Lexa says without thinking, and hates herself a little for it. Especially in light of the Cheshire grin she now catches from the corner of her eye.

“Exactly.” Clarke’s shoulders engage, biceps and abdomen tensing to keep her body steady as she lithely re-crosses her legs. Lexa suddenly can’t remember what comes after the front desk’s area code. “Leos like Leos.”

What the fuck was the next number…? Clarke watches for a moment, head tipped to the side. And with an even bigger grin, adds, “I’m a Libra. In case you were wondering.”

Right! Fuck. Her brain jerks back into gear, supplying the remaining numbers in short order. She puts the phone to her ear. “Taurus,” she admits, and Clarke “ooooh”s as she turns to face the windows.

“Front desk.”

Charon’s deep, placid voice picks up after the second ring, prompt and polite as always.

“Good morning.” Windows across the way reflect the sky, offering Lexa a glimpse of drifting clouds against a darkening sky. “I’m having trouble with my room’s door lock.”

“My apologies. The hotel can have that rectified right away. Which room?”

“Room number…” She looks at Clarke over her shoulder, prompting her to provide the answer. “518.”

There’s a pause from the other side. Several things must fall into place, because Charon says, “Ms. Woods, this is neither your phone number nor your room number.”

“That’s correct.”

Another pause. “Will you be needing a dinner reservation?”

The code drops surprisingly easily from his lips, given its meaning.

“That won’t be necessary. Just a locksmith.” After a beat. “A good one.”

“Understood. I will have my best sent up immediately. Please know it may take some time to solve the problem. I hope you will forgive the inconvenience.”

“Of course. Thank you.”

“Enjoy your stay, Ms. Woods.”

Lexa ends the call and tosses the phone back to Clarke. She doesn’t put it back in her cleavage, but rather stands up and walks past Lexa to place it on the bar.

“Charon to the rescue?” she asks.

Lexa nods. “He says it may take some time.”

“Oh, I’m sure it won’t be long. The man can really pull a miracle out of a hat when he wants to.” Clarke taps her phone to initiate the display. “If it takes an hour, that will still leave us with a little over an hour and a half. Plenty of time.”

Ire twitches again, making itself known in the corner of Lexa’s jaw. “It would be a full two, if you hadn’t delayed.”

“Perhaps. But then I wouldn’t have gotten to know that the Commander is a Taurus, and that would’ve been a shame.”

“Mm.” That is less than amusing, and Lexa lets her know mid-sip. The whiskey’s burn on her tongue distracts her somewhat from the new jitters beneath her skin. “This…Collins…must have known his trap wouldn’t hold us for long. Why wouldn’t he pull the trigger before then?”

Clarke purses her lips. “He might,” she admits, which makes Lexa’s blood nearly boil in her veins, “but I doubt it. He’ll be trying to take out others with the same information before he does anything, and even then Emerson is surrounded by a small army at all times. Finn may not be the best, but he knows a bad situation when he sees one. If he can’t find a solid way in - and he’s not that smart – he won’t pull the trigger. He’d rather forego a paycheck than risk his life.” She leans an elbow on the bar and crosses one ankle over the other, casual as you please. “A boring attitude for an assassin, but he’s stayed alive this long. I suppose that counts for something.”

He may not be smart, but Lexa is–and she has plans, plans to find a way in and deal with that army, plans that are no doubt melting away faster than the ice in the bucket behind the bar. She steps up to the corner of said bar, presumably to set her glass down…but doing so also puts her just on the edge of Clarke’s space.

“If I miss this contract,” she warns, “you and I will have a problem.”

Clarke shrugs, unperturbed. “I think there’s another, far more guilty culprit to blame, but fair enough.” She cocks her head to the side, her gaze studying Lexa’s still rather tense jaw and neck muscles. “You’re not a big fan of spontaneity, are you?”

“Modifying my plan to a changing landscape is a specialty of mine. But I prefer it if I don’t have to do so unnecessarily.”

“Did your plan involve getting drugged and locked in Wanheda’s hotel room?”

Lexa’s eyebrow twitches. “No, it didn’t. Nor did it involve Wanheda choosing not to help herself.”

A single, manicured eyebrow rises into Clarke’s forehead, that teasing smirk playing at the edges of her mouth again. Lexa’s eyes linger on its corners just a bit too long. “What makes you think I didn’t?”

She shifts her weight, one foot sliding slightly back. Her hand grips the glass tighter; it’s no Sig Sauer, but whiskey to the eyes and crystal to the face is still an effective combat strategy in the event Wanheda has decided now’s the time to sign her death wish. “Excuse me?”

“Oh relax.” Clarke waves at Lexa dismissively. “I don’t plan to kill you or get in the way of what I’m sure is a foolproof plan. Well, any more than I already have. I simply seized the opportunity to learn more about the mysterious Commander. Keep your enemies close and all that.” She takes a final sip of her whiskey and flicks the crystal across the bar when she’s finished. It teeters precariously close to the edge. “We all have our methods of survival, don’t we?”

Lexa's grip relaxes only slightly as she debates whether or not she can believe her. Clarke's glass only wobbles twice before its weight settles safely on the bar, a small but clear demonstration of her reflexive understanding of distance, friction, and weight. That kind of knowledge makes Wanheda one of the best shots in the business, can take the wings off a fly at a hundred and fifty yards, and yet…

A second later she decides: "A strange tactic for a member of the Network."

“I don’t think so. But it’s often to my benefit that my peers don’t understand, let alone share, my strategies.” Clarke holds out a hand, palm up, between them. “More scotch?”

Lexa hands over her glass wordlessly and tries not to focus on the warm, brief feeling of Clarke’s skin touching her own. She smiles and steps back behind the bar.

“I excel by being…unexpected. Surprising,” she clarifies unnecessarily. Glass and aluminum clink as she rummages through the fridge before producing another nip. Lexa is now close enough that she can see the label: Balvenie 15 Year. “I hear your strengths lie in being the best. The best shot, the tidiest kills, the cleanest trails. You’d think the Commander was a boogie man, the way some of our coworkers talk about you.”

"Baba Yaga," Lexa breathes, and thinks nothing of the gender aligned with that fantastical figure.

"There's a reason Charon can call me by my name without anyone in the lobby making the connection." She accepts the glass when it's offered, but doesn't drink immediately. "Precision is easier. If your competition doesn't know you, they can't lock you in a hotel room and take your kill from under you."

“Except someone clearly does know you.” Clarke folds her hands and leans forward on the counter on her elbows. The position accentuates her cleavage in a way that, Lexa assumes, is intentional. “Two someone’s, now. But don’t worry, your secret is safe with me,” she adds with a wink.

Before Lexa can express her mild–why only mild?–disbelief at that, Clarke asks, “I have to know: how did you get that mob boss in Tokyo? No one I know could get into the building to get a look at the guy’s face, let alone take him out.”

“Research,” Lexa answers flatly, because she knows it will irritate. And it does: the word is hardly out of her mouth before Clarke is whining.

“Oh come on! There’s no one else here, you have to give me something.”

“I’m not giving away trade secrets just because I happen to be trapped in a room with someone for an hour.”

“Oh please,” Clarke scoffs. “I think if nothing else, we can agree that there’s minimal overlap in our methods. And here I was, all ready to be impressed.”

They watch each other for several seconds of silence. Just when Clarke opens her mouth to egg her further, Lexa says: “I went in through the basement.”

“The construction site?” Clarke’s frown of confusion deepens when Lexa nods. “But Bellamy tried that and couldn’t get through.”

“Bellamy?”

“Sorry–Gemini. Or one half of Gemini, anyway.”

“Mm. I tracked Gemini’s attempt. The security system that stopped them has a habit of opening exploitable doors when it’s overtasked, which happens when, say, it’s running fire control protocols in three other locations in the building.”

“Okay. But there would still have been half his guys between you and the penthouse.”

Lexa just looks at her over the rim of her cup and drinks.

“Damn.” This time Clarke’s eyebrow rises nearly into her hairline. “Color me impressed.”

“Glad I could oblige.”

A brief pause. Lexa isn’t in the habit of casually conversing with…anyone, really, least of all her competition. But they have nothing to do but wait in this room, and in an unusual turn of events, talking to Clarke seems a better way to pass the time than sitting in silence.

“What happened with your Leo?”

“Oh, nothing all that notable.” Clarke pushes herself up onto her hands, leaning forward just the littlest bit more into Lexa’s space. “She was a princess, believe it or not. Tough security. I was posing as a sommelier. Not my forte, wine, but I’ve found that I hardly need to know much about my cover. People tend to overlook expertise in the face of…other assets.” She grins. “We had a drink later that evening, she gave me the information I needed to get inside, and they found her the next morning.”

It’s harder than she’d ever admit to keep her eyes on Clarke’s face. Other assets, indeed.

Wanheda’s penchant for the honeypot is well known; had Lexa not deprioritized finding the person who put a hit out on her in favor of catching her target, she might have made the connection prior to now. As it is, having fallen for the strategy herself has her affording the honeypot far more respect–despite one rather obvious flaw, in her book.

“How do you avoid being connected?” She asks, and it’s genuine curiosity that prompts her to do so. “Being seen so close to the target in public, by her security guards, by bystanders…”

Clarke nods along as Lexa speaks, as if she anticipated the question. Or has been asked it before, perhaps. Lexa can’t be the only inquiring mind to ever cross her path.

“You’re not the only one who does research,” she says. “My skills lie in knowing people. Their likes, dislikes. Desires and habits and dirty little secrets. People take note of the things that interest them, and ignore the things that don’t. That, a good disguise kit, and avoiding cameras can get you a long way. Besides, I have a good memory. Any information about a person could be useful, given the right context.” Her eyes take on a playful glint and Lexa can guess what she’s about to say before the words leave her mouth. “I managed to get to you, didn’t I?”

She lets herself have the little smirk evoked by that. “Sounds like I should stop talking, if I know what’s good for me.”

Clarke’s laugh takes Lexa by surprise. It sounds fuller than she expected; louder, more genuine. It could still be a part of the act, which would be rather impressive. But it could also be an honest response, a little part of Lexa insists. This woman is either the best actress Lexa has ever met, or she actually is enjoying Lexa’s company. It is, of course, unclear whether she’ll ever know the real answer.

“Don’t worry, I already tried to kill you once. I try not to repeat mistakes.” Clarke folds her arms and shrugs, a teasing look on her face. “Unless I get an offer I can’t refuse, of course.”

“Right. So the thing I said.”

“It would have to be a pretty compelling offer to go after the Commander. My wrist still aches when it rains, you know. Thanks for that.”

"You had a six inch long switchblade in your hand!"

"And?"

It is, objectively, a strange thing to share a chuckle over. But the Network doesn't exactly attract normal people.

"If I asked you who hired you…" Lexa lifts her glass and strolls slowly towards the couch, catching another enticing whiff of citrus and spice as she passes briefly through Clarke's space. Upon reaching the couch she sinks carefully back into it, resting one ankle over the other. "Would you tell me?"

Clarke steps around the bar, eyeing Lexa as she settles into the couch. “I don’t make a habit of revealing my contacts. Tends to lead to less contracts and therefore less money. But,” she settles back on the edge of the bed, this time in the middle directly across from where Lexa sits, “perhaps if we become better friends. And you had a compelling enough offer.”

Friends. Lexa perks an eyebrow instead of laughing.

"I'm afraid Collins didn't leave me with any gold coins when he dragged me here." She pats her empty pocket as though a demonstration were necessary. "Do you take IOUs?"

Clarke chuckles. “I certainly do. But how do I know you’re good for it?”

Lexa finishes off her whiskey and sets the glass down on the low table in front of her. "You don't. You'll just have to trust me."

“I see.”

Clarke leans back on her hands, her torso elongating in a way that draws Lexa’s attention–and this time, she doesn’t look away.

“Would you trust me?” Clarke asks. “If you were in my position?”

"I don't trust easily."

“And yet interestingly, that’s not a no.”

A smile twitches at the corner of Lexa's lips. "I suppose it's not.

"I think I would be inclined to trust you. But then again," she tips her hand palm-up in a shrug, "you can't know if you can trust I'm telling the truth any more than you can know if I'm good for the money."

“All true.” Clarke cocks her head to the side and her gaze takes on a quality Lexa hasn’t seen in her yet. Curiosity, almost to an analytical degree. It makes Lexa feel as though she were a specimen under a microscope.

“You are though, aren’t you?” Her voice isn’t teasing anymore. There’s curiosity there, and a hint of surprise–but no jest. “Telling the truth. If I were a betting woman, I’d say you do that more often than not. That’s a unique quality for someone in our line of work.”

She tries very hard not to squirm under this scrutiny. Revealing herself, willingly or not, is not something Lexa is accustomed to–so she shunts the spotlight off herself as quickly as possible. "No more so than genuine curiosity, I would say. Few would sacrifice time on a contract to ask a competitor's name."

“That’s, probably, also true.” When Clarke smiles this time, it isn’t sarcastic or self-satisfied. “It’s like I said. Knowledge is how I succeed–how I survive. I can get it myself, but I don’t always have to with the right contacts. With the right friends.”

There it is again: Friends. The concept is as foreign to Lexa as a sniper rifle is comfortable in her hands. And Clarke is bandying the word around like she really means it; like she really understands what it means.

There’s a pause where Clarke considers Lexa again. Gauging who knows what from her posture, her expression, her ticks. It should feel menacing, but it’s only making her feel…seen. One doesn't study the unconscious habits of a gun, of a weapon. The kind of attention Clarke gives her in this moment is the kind one gives to a person.

Perhaps it says something about her that this attention is so novel to Lexa.

“They had a feminine voice,” she says; suddenly, matter-of-factly. “Never got a name, but I traced the call to London. Analysis of the recordings provided a codename mentioned in the background: CW.”

She holds up a hand in a mirror of Lexa’s earlier gesture. “That’s all I know.”

For the first time since waking up, Lexa forgets about the ticking of the clock. She goes very still.

London. Feminine. CW.

Costia Waters.

"CW?" Lexa repeats. "You're certain? That's what they said?"

“I’m positive. I spent some time analyzing the background noise. Not even I like working for a ghost, but the money was too good to pass up. They were careful, but someone in the room must’ve slipped.”

Clarke’s eyes move between Lexa’s quickly, studying her reaction. “Do you know them?”

She stands up.

CW. In London.

She paces. Looks at the door without seeing it.

Costia is alive.

More pressingly: Costia wants her dead.

Do you know them?

"You could say that." Lexa turns on Clarke. "Did she tell you how to find me? What to say?"

“She gave me a location and a description.” Clarke raises an eyebrow but otherwise remains seated on the bed despite Lexa’s sudden movements. “I think you know me well enough by now to know that I don’t need to be told what to say.

“She didn’t mention your moniker, though. Either she was hiding it so as not to deter potential hires, or she doesn’t know it.”

An interesting prospect. Distressing, too. She sets her jaw.

"She chose well, apparently," Lexa mutters, uncertain if this new information makes her falling for Clarke's trap more or less humiliating. She runs her hand through her hair. "Fuck."

Clarke merely watches as Lexa paces–which Lexa only discovers when she remembers the other woman is there and finally looks back up.

“We’re fresh out of whiskey, but there’s some vodka and gin. Though this seems like it may be a tequila situation.”

Lexa frowns in response, her mind whirring so quickly around this new development that Clarke’s words hardly register.

“You look like you could use a drink,” Clarke clarifies. “Or seven.”

"What I could use," she seethes, her spleen mounting towards unbridled rage as she turns to glare at the door, "is a fucking pack of C4 so I can blow this FUCKING door off its fucking hinges!"

Immediately, Lexa expects some smug, half-clever comment from Clarke. Or worse, that she’s given away some valuable weakness by letting her emotions get the best of her.

But if that’s true, Clarke doesn’t respond the way Lexa anticipates. Instead there’s silence, and it’s so surprising that she whirls on her heel half expecting the woman to be holding that Sig again.

Instead she’s still just sitting there, watching. “I’m not here to hurt you, Lexa. Not this time, anyway.” She nods at the door. “And Charon will need more than twenty minutes. You could waste your time cussing out the door, or,” her lips purse in a delicious sort of way, “we could pass the time some other way.”

Lexa scoffs. "All the liquor in that bar could not be distracting enough."

"Pretty lucky that's not what I meant, then."

That draws Lexa up short. There's something new in Clarke's voice, that semi-permanent smirk taking residence on her face again, and the two combined succeeds–at least briefly–in doing what liquor wouldn't.

"Oh?"

“Well.” Clarke stands up slowly, as if a sudden movement might scare Lexa away. “We have some time. I think you know by now that I don’t plan to kill you this evening, and if I’m any judge you don’t plan to kill me. You like me.” She’s standing closer to Lexa now. When did she get closer? “I like you.” If Lexa reached out she could easily grasp Clarke’s hip. “And you need to let off some steam.”

Clarke stops just shy of a foot away and from this close Lexa can see the flecks of deeper blue in her eyes. She doesn’t touch her, doesn’t even reach out, but from here she could wrap an arm around Lexa’s waist. Or a hand around her neck to pull her closer…

Imagining it sets off a sudden and surprisingly powerful pang of desire in the pit of her stomach. That, in turn, sets warning bells off in Lexa’s head.

"You like me?" She should step back, at least attempt to deny her own interest–but is there any point? Clarke doesn't have to speculate; they've been in precisely this position before. "And here I thought I was just a job."

“Well, you were. But you aren’t anymore. And even assassins need a little…” she presses her lips together and looks up, searching for the words. “Break from reality, shall we say?”

There are at least two guns in this room. The drawer is full of lockpicks, which aren’t typically classified as weapons but could certainly be used to harm or kill by the right hands. There’s no doubt more killing implements that Lexa can’t see, peppered throughout the room by a hand that knows any shower or nap or moment of dropped defenses could mean death. And yet, Clarke has made no attempt to retrieve any since Lexa woke up.

It’s possible she’s waiting for the right time. Lexa hasn’t fully discounted the possibility that Clarke is working for this Finn Collins, paid to distract her just long enough for him to steal her target. Or to lure her into a false sense of security, let her lower her walls to then kill her without a fight.

But if Clarke wanted to kill her…Lexa wouldn’t have woken up on the couch at all. There’s no easier fight than one against a drugged and unconscious opponent on one's home turf.

“A break?” she prompts, eyes tracing the wave of a damp curl, and Clarke shrugs.

“All this…running around, second guessing. Always watching over our shoulders, certain that the next smiling face would kill us as soon as kiss us. The backstabbing, double dealing, constant suspicion.” She waves a hand. “It’s exhausting. And I, personally, think I deserve a break.”

Lexa snorts and voices a thought that’s repeated in her mind every few minutes since she woke up. “It’s a miracle you’ve survived this long.”

“Yeah, well.” For a moment, Clarke looks honestly, genuinely wistful. “Shouldn’t life be about more than just surviving?

“But, of course, if you’re not interested,” Clarke starts to step away without giving her time to process that, and Lexa knows, knows what she’s doing, “then–”

Her hand shoots out anyway. Clarke is nearly out of her space but she catches her by the wrist before she’s fully out of reach. The blond stops, looks back, and they hold each other’s eyes for a beat…until Lexa’s eyes drift down to trace folds of deep blue fabric.

More than just surviving. The last time Lexa tried to take a break, Clarke nearly killed her.

“...if I take that dress off,” Lexa looks up, green eyes meeting blue. “Will I find that Sig Sauer?”

“You might have, under different circumstances.” Clarke’s gaze doesn’t waver. “But not today.”

Lexa hesitates for a second. She’ll tell herself later that she absolutely did hesitate, and that this was a considered, measured decision. But the second goes by, and she sighs. “Fuck it,” she mutters, and pulls Clarke against her.

Their lips meet and, for a brief moment, it isn't desire that greets them but…familiarity. The kiss feels like a long awaited exhale, as if the last two years never happened–as if they’d already, somehow, spent a lifetime finding the ways they fit against each other. That’s absurd, of course. Clarke Griffin could not be a more experienced lover, Lexa is certain, and much as she’d like to, she can’t deny her attraction to the woman. Clarke's knowledge and her own pliability could account for the simple ease of this, the immediate pleasure, comfort, and dare she say, butterflies that meet this initial embrace. But still, for a moment, passion seems to ebb and time seems to pause. There’s only Clarke, only the soft feel of her hand in Lexa’s, the intimate way Lexa's arm automatically settles around her waist, and the way she naturally, gently, kisses her.

And then another second goes by.

Clarke’s arms are around Lexa’s neck, fingers twining up into her hair, and before Lexa can think she’s tightened her own arm around Clarke’s waist. Long fingernails dig, painful but not intolerable, into the soft skin at the nape of Lexa’s neck. Her breath escapes her in a sigh.

“Do we want…to take bets?” She says between kisses, needing to tug herself away from Clarke to get a word in edgewise. She tries again and Clarke’s teeth close on her lower lip, prompting Lexa to twist them both around and shove Clarke's back into the closest wall. “On how long it’ll take?”

The air rushes out of Clarke’s lungs from the impact as she chuckles, but Lexa doesn't give her the chance to catch her breath; she closes the distance, her hand on one side of Clarke's neck, tipping her head up and back, and her mouth on the other. Clarke's chuckle gives way to a higher pitch as she’s taken by surprise. “That depends,” she says, and Lexa feels her breath hitch beneath her hand as it snakes down Clarke’s waist, “on whether you refer to yourself or Charon.”

Lexa pulls Clarke’s dress up roughly and finds soft skin, inviting and warm…as well as a slim knife holster strapped to the top of her thigh. “Don’t worry,” Clarke says, and Lexa can hear the smirk in her voice, “it’s empty this time.”

It takes her longer to puzzle out when the hell the sheath got there than it does for her to take it off: she yanks the strap that holds it to Clarke’s thigh and a second later it drops to the floor with a thud.

“Disappointing,” Lexa smirks against her ear, her voice a low, breathless rumble, and Clarke makes a sound as her breath is trapped too fast in her chest. Hips press forward against Lexa's, and the hand on her thigh takes advantage of the new gap between her and the wall to grab a handful of ass.

"Well if that's how you feel," Clarke begins, and reaches down towards the nightstand beside her as though she intends to call Lexa's knife play bluff. But Lexa is quick to catch her hand and pin it to the wall. The fingers still twisted in her hair tense, the scratch of Clarke's nails turning truly painful.

"The last time you had a knife," Lexa grunts through the pain, "I ended up with a scar."

Clarke's hand turns to water in Lexa's grip, a twist and pull too fast for Lexa to track letting her slip free. Both hands then find their way beneath Lexa's collar, following the line of it down to its top button. "A scar, you say?" she asks, and Lexa can practically hear her replay their last encounter in the hopes of locating where and how.

"No need to sound smug. And you're avoiding the question."

“I think it is, entirely,” Clarke yanks Lexa’s collar forward, jerking her face up to hers, and nips at her lip again, “up to you.”

Lexa opens her mouth to say something clever back, but Clarke’s mouth captures hers and it’s all she can do to focus on breathing. Clarke’s fingers make quick work of the buttons and before Lexa knows it her shirt is untucked from her pants, her suspenders are down in the corner of her elbows, and teasing fingernails are trailing patterns across her abs.

“Fuck you’re hot.” Clarke traces the line of the scar she left on Lexa’s stomach. “I’m almost glad I didn’t kill you. Would’ve been a shame.”

"Almost?" Lexa repeats, and has to fight to keep her voice even. It's been so long, so long, since someone has touched her like this–her abdominal muscles, so unused to this attention, shiver and shy away from Clarke's fingers, making it difficult to breathe normally. Some part of her, adolescent, foolish, fears what Clarke will think of what she finds: muscle, yes, but bruises, too, a network of scar tissue only partially hidden beneath tattoo ink.

But then Clarke presses her palms flat to Lexa's chest and shoves, throwing enough of her weight and the leverage of the wall behind it to push Lexa back several stumbling steps. She catches her weight and closes her fists, instinct immediately bracing her for a fight…but Clarke remains against the wall, dress straining as she pants, eyes overflowing with such hunger as they rove from Lexa's waist to her face that it's a miracle she isn't consumed right then.

As Clarke reaches behind her back, green eyes never once leaving blue, hardly even blinking, Lexa should be ready for anything. She should be ready for the blond to produce a weapon of some kind, at the very least, but her muscles remain tensed for a wholly separate reason. The soft snick of a zipper coming undone reaches Lexa’s ears and a moment later blue fabric is cascading down Clarke’s body and pooling at her feet.

The sight is nearly identical to the one that Lexa was greeted with when she woke up an hour ago. But this time, there’s no gun. Lexa isn’t half-drugged, Clarke’s hair isn’t dripping wet, and the burning in her eyes has far less to do with curiosity and anger than it does with something else entirely. Something Lexa recognizes, though she’d come to suspect she may have forgotten.

Clarke takes a step toward her, then another, and all the while Lexa is rooted in place. Her breaths sound heavy to her ears as Clarke enters her space and takes both her hands, gently uncurls her fists and places them on her own waist. “Why don’t you show me what I missed last time?” she whispers.

She’s been ignoring this part of herself. She knows she has because it can come so close to love, and love, she’s learned, only ever leads to weakness. That hard won lesson is a difficult one to shake, but this…need sears through her at the invitation, because while the mysterious blond was enticing in Budapest, Clarke Griffin is all but entrancing now. Beautiful, yes, but murderously competent too, and it’s been years, longer than Lexa can remember, since she could show herself so freely in front of another person. Clarke Griffin, Wanheda, expert assassin and member of the Network. There’s nothing Lexa could reveal about her professional identity or skill set that would surprise Clarke now.

More than this, Clarke is indisputably, undoubtedly, absolutely fucking hot.

Lexa’s fingers tense, drinking in the soft, warm press of Clarke’s skin for just a moment before she drops them lower. Knees bent, hands under thighs, she pulls–and Clarke gives her weight over so easily and so smoothly it’s as though they’ve practiced this a hundred times before. No verbal communication need be exchanged: Clarke automatically drapes her arms around Lexa’s neck and holds on, allowing Lexa to pull her legs around her waist and pick her up.

With fingers buried at the nape of her neck once more, Lexa looks up into Clarke’s eyes and breathes, “With pleasure.”

There's a bit more where this came from - did I say 9k words? We actually wrote 11k - but the rest belongs on Ao3. Find us there!

#clexa #clexa fanfic #the 100 #the 100 fanfic #clarke griffin #lexa woods #commander lexa #writing prompt #john wick au #assassins au #nsfw-ish?#anon love #my fic

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