#and the triumvirate is all in the same room! finally!

[rubyjean-jacket-blog]

when you're 30,000 words into a fic and you finally reach the scene that inspired it in the first place

#fanfiction #writing #how did it get this long???? #writing problems #ao3 #fanfic #sarek spock bones and kirk are all finally in a room with each other #its been 25 chapters! #and the triumvirate is all in the same room! finally! #THIS WASNT SUPPOSED TO BE A SLOWBURN #IDK WHAT HAPPENED #star trek #star trek fanfiction

[nickgammon-stories]

Dylan Thomas’ Last Train Ride and a Long Lost Poem

Recently, while looking for something else, I found a yellowing typescript at the bottom of an old box file. It was a transcript of an interview with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, made over 40 years ago for an almost instantly defunct magazine that closed before its second issue. For those who don’t know of him, Vaughan-Thomas was a distinguished World War II correspondent for the BBC, who died in 1987. He became an iconic voice of the corporation, covering events like the 1953 coronation with his mellifluous Welsh lilt. Along with much else, he was one of a triumvirate of Dylan Thomas’s literary executors.

And the subject of the interview? A Dylan Thomas poem. Not a great poem, nor even a good one. But nevertheless, a poem composed at least in part by a great poet. And one that carries the traces of a Swansea which, like Thomas, is long gone but not forgotten.

Bearing witness

I had found him standing at the far end of the bar, surrounded by a group of people he’d just made laugh. Small and white-haired, Vaughan-Thomas had the aura of an elderly elf on the lam. He was clearly having fun, telling how, incredibly, as war raged all around, he’d stumbled on Botticelli’s Primavera in a deserted castello in Tuscany. There, too, were dozens of other treasures from the Uffizi, concealed under dust sheets in a dimly lit room.

Then he went straight into another story, set at the beachhead of St Raphael during Operation Anvil. As the smoke and murk from the bombardment cleared, an immaculately dressed Frenchman emerged from one of the few Riviera villas still standing. He carried a tray of champagne and exclaimed, “Bienvenue, messieurs!” before adding in English, “ … even if you are a bit late.”

If Vaughan-Thomas’s war sounds rather jolly, it wasn’t always so. He delivered a powerful commentary from Belsen shortly after its liberation, and some said he became a gentler person after bearing witness to that inexplicable brutality. As a war correspondent, he was perhaps best-known for his broadcast Air Raid Over Berlin, which aired in September 1943 and made him a household name.

And on that same 1943 night, as Vaughan-Thomas recounted: “Suddenly the telephone rings as I was trying to put the bloody thing together, and he says, ‘Hello hero!’ ‘Who’s that?’ I said. He said, ‘It’s me, I’m in the last pub in the Kings Road … bring the money.’ I used to get these calls, I mean, we all did. ‘Right, I’ll get there straight away,’ I said. ‘You stay where you are.’ So I did my broadcast Air Raid Over Berlin and all the rest of it. I then get a BBC car, which was as rare as radium in those days. And they get me down there, to the last pub on the Kings Road.”

It was a good hour before Vaughan-Thomas could be there, by which time Dylan Thomas was in full flight in his role as a roaring boy from Wales, reciting a poem about the strange goings-on one Saturday night in New Quay, the small West Wales seaside town. Thomas had begun to set the poem down clearly enough, but as the beer flowed the manuscript became increasingly illegible.

“In the final lines you have to look at it sideways,” said Vaughan-Thomas. “It’s my rarest Dylan manuscript,” he continued. “You see the poet, not exactly at work, but getting tighter and tighter and tighter, until he decides not to work anymore.” As they left, Dylan Thomas stuffed the poem into Vaughan-Thomas’s pocket. And he thought he’d lost it in, as he put it, the “reeling King’s Road”.

A mad legacy

Wynford Vaughan-Thomas and Dylan Thomas had been friends since they both attended Swansea Grammar. My father Clive Gammon did too. When reviewing a documentary on Vaughan-Thomas for The Spectator in the 1970s, he described it as “an eccentric and lovable school where no one was made to do anything much if he didn’t feel like it.” This benign regime was driven by the headmaster, Trevor Lloyd. Spotting Vaughan-Thomas and Dylan Thomas ‘mitching off’ to play billiards when they should have been in class, he yelled out the window, “I hope you get caught, you wicked boys!”

Peter Williams, a Swansea lawyer who ran cross-country with Dylan Thomas at the school, remembered him as “a cherubic boy with black curly hair who, to everybody’s surprise, won the school mile when he was 12,” despite being incongruously frail and avoiding any form of physical training. It was a feat newsworthy enough to feature in the Cambria Daily Leader. The newspaper clipping was still in Thomas’s wallet when he died in New York in November 1953.

Another event was in keeping with Thomas’s later, famously transgressive persona. Williams recounted how their mutual friend, a boy called Glyn, visited Dylan Thomas’s house on the same afternoon that Mrs Thomas had invited a group of ladies over for tea. Seated at the table, Dylan Thomas turned to Glyn and said, “They talk so much, they don’t hear a word anyone else says. I’ll show you.” So the small boys sat quietly at the tea table as the women chatted away. Suddenly Dylan Thomas said, “Pass the f**king cake.” Without hesitation or a break in the conversation, Mrs Thomas passed them the cake. “Told you, didn’t I!” he said.

“[It’s] the interesting thing about the whole Dylan saga,” said Wynford Vaughan-Thomas. “I mean, you can’t pin down stories to fact, but the fact that the stories are there is fascinating. The whole of the business of Dylan hangs in the air. He left a mad legacy behind.”

Not least the dark comedy of the poet’s last night in Swansea, when Vaughan-Thomas received an urgent call late one evening. En route to America, Thomas had got drunk, disgraced himself in some way with his hosts, then passed out. They’d had enough. “Get him out of the house, and he can’t stay here again.” In Vaughan-Thomas’s words, ”This was about ten-thirty at night! There I had this poet – and Dylan, when he was drunk, wasn’t easy to cart around. It was all very well people taking great romantic views about it. I thought, what in God’s name do I do? As I drove around Swansea, I thought I’d get him into a hotel. So I went to the Mackworth, which was still open then, but they said, ‘No bloody fear!’”

​​Vaughan-Thomas had a car, which was unusual as 1953 Britain was still suffering post-war austerity. So he drove from hotel to hotel, but the reputation of Dylan Thomas ran on before him. The bald truth is that, during the great poet’s final night in Swansea town, no one would have him.

Vaughan-Thomas continued, “And then a brilliant idea struck me, so I drove to the station. I said to the stationmaster, ‘Have you got a warm train?’ And he said, ‘Well, Mr Thomas, there’s a train that goes off and wanders all over the bloody place, but I think it ends up in Darlington.’ I said, ‘I’ve got a man who wants to go there.’ So I bought a ticket, with another on to London, and I put some money in his pocket. I carried him past the stationmaster at the barrier and I said, ‘My friend’s very ill’. And he knew Dylan, so he said, ‘As always.’ So we put him in a corner of this train which disappeared off into the dark. And I feel … well, no, I did very well by him … I don’t feel guilty at all about it. I posted him to Darlington!”

The next time Vaughan-Thomas saw Dylan Thomas, he was with the Scottish poet Ruthven Todd in McLean’s Funeral Parlour in New York City. He recalled, “Of course, he’d been done up like ‘The Loved One’. And Ruthven looked down at the body and said, ‘God! Dylan wouldn’t be seen dead in a tie like that!’”

The macabre farce continued when they lost the poet’s body soon after it had crossed the Atlantic on the RMS Media. The undertaker, Phil ‘the Death’ Evans, had been dispatched from Laugharne to collect the remains from Southampton. And then he simply disappeared, along with the corpse. Panicky cables were telegraphed from the funeral director’s head office in Chepstow to all parts of the country, in search of the hearse. Eventually Mr Evans was ‘headed off’ in Taunton, as he doggedly ploughed on, westward towards Land’s End.

Vaughan-Thomas asked him, “Evans bach, what were you doing in Taunton?” “Well, Mr Thomas,” he said. “Did you know I’ve never ferried further east from Laugharne than Blaenau in my life, and nobody told me the bloody country forked!”

The immortal Dylan Thomas

The ghost of Dylan the younger consistently haunts Dylan the older. Thomas’s story Return Journey is strongly redolent of a lost pre-war Swansea, which is made all the more poignant because the town has just been blitzed. The narrator isn’t only searching through the rubble for the vanished town. He is also searching for his lost Swansea self, who variously,

“ … speaks rather fancy; truculent; plausible; a bit of a shower-off; plus-fours and no breakfast, you know; … worked on the Post and used to wear an overcoat sometimes with the check lining inside out so that you could play giant draughts on him. He wore a conscious woodbine, too … and a perched pork pie with a peacock feather …”

The self-portrait is well drawn, but it’s as if each characterisation is performative. It’s tempting to suppose this is because he was a keen actor as a schoolboy. But I suspect the instinct for both role play and transgression was purely a carapace, and that the roaring boy in some way cocooned the fragile Dylan the younger.

Peter Williams recalled that Dylan Thomas began to drink when he was, “I suppose about 16 or 17 … I remember to my amazement seeing Dylan one night in the billiard room of the YMCA and he was obviously plastered, and he told me that he’d been drinking whisky. But that was almost shocking — it really was, because in those days for schoolboys to drink was almost unheard of.”

“I only started to know Dylan seriously,” Vaughan-Thomas said, “When I came back from Oxford to Swansea. I was unemployed and trying to find a job, and met Dylan, the young man about Swansea, the reporter. And suddenly I said, ‘I remember you! We used to drink together in the pubs.’” That was the same pre-war period described in Return Journey, when Thomas was about 17, had just left school, and was working on the town’s paper, the Evening Post.

It was during one of those nights, perhaps a year or so later, in the Plough and Harrow in Murton, that the second lost poem was born. Dylan Thomas, Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, Daniel Jones, and possibly the painter Fred Janes, had been enjoying themselves. Talk ran free and the conversation turned to the urinal in Pell Street, which had been – according to Vaughan-Thomas – “a splendid structure of complicated iron work” close to the Albert Hall cinema and the art school. It had been swept away, as he put it, “in an act of vandalism by the town council.”

The young men decided that a vampire should return to haunt the town councillors. So line by line, with Dylan Thomas orchestrating, pointing to each in turn, the poem was produced. And here it is for the first time since it was recited to me by the late Wynford Vaughan-Thomas at the Savile club in 1981.

At the corner of Pell Street a vampire appears

Singing garlic, sweet garlic, it’s sung there for years.

See it taps at the window of councillor Rees

And he sings as he taps a most sinister piece.

Councillor’s jugulars suck I with glee

Oh for the veins of a scrumptious JP

Tremble ye alderman! Town clerk beware!

As I hoover the veins of your succulent mare.

In the Guildhall bloodorium the council convened

The motion re. Pell Street and the blood-sucking fiend.

Proposer Rev Samuel, Labour, Llandor

Went WHOOP through the window, as the vampires roar

Singing, councillor’s jugulars suck I with glee

OOOOOH for the veins of a scrumptious JP

Tremble ye Aldermen! Town Clerk beware!

As I HOOOOver the blood of your succulent mare!

No doubt the drinkers would be pleased to discover that, 72 years later, the council came to regret that earlier act of hubris. In 2011, the Evening Post carried a short report:

A DESPERATE council has installed open air urinals to stop boozy locals relieving themselves … in Swansea city centre following escalating complaints about yob drinkers. A spokesman for the city authority said, “There is nothing more unsightly than irresponsible people urinating in public” … Mike Weaver, manager of the La Prensa tapas bar in Wind St, said: “My mother taught me to keep it in until I came to a toilet.”

#dylan thomas

[rrasado]

hmm, do you have any shenanigan stuff with adeuce and reader? Doesn't mattet the context just day-to-day stuff they get in trouble with due to their ✨foolery✨ - dobby

• Pass The Braincell •

Shenanigans = Stuff we did during face to face classes but I might be able to offer some 👀.

Daily antics with the adeuce duo:

You're in the same class as these two dorks, that in of itself is a spell for disaster. Then again you consider whether you got the best pick out the litter considering how the other students act.

Honestly, if there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that there would never be a dull moment with the two of them. This is both a good and bad thing depending on the hour yet the fact still remains that there will be some sort of mishap on its way to ambush your peaceful schedule.

Homework? Oh my Ace forgot to do his work- Deuce would've scolded him for it if he himself hadn't forgotten his own work back at the dorm, most likely his karma for doing his work during a time he was on the verge of sleeping. And thus their hope lands on you pulling out your worksheet for them to copy off of. Whether you agreed to or not.

"Geez cut us some slack alright? We're gonna change a few stuff anyways I mean- what dumbass copies word per word" "isn't that what copying means...?"

Suffice it to say they did make it up to you with a free lunch, Deuce definitely feels bad but it was better than no work at all right? A Stark contrast to your redheaded friend who seemed a bit too proud of making the cut.

The one time you three did get caught with your charity homework Crewel gave a stern lecture how changing the order of the sentence and capitalization isn't exactly the best way to paraphrase someone else's work, Deuce physically ran from his dorm and back to the staff's office to turn in his own work leaving Ace to fend off his own ass.

Cleaning time is just horrendously disastrous, the first thing you worry about here is not them cleaning thoroughly (that's the second) but whether they'll show up at all to lend a hand.

Ace like in the prolog has shown to slack off of duties but considering the threat of Riddle's wrath? A bit of tattletailing would at least get him to start picking up the broom. Deuce is at least helpful in not being difficult but putting you three in one team- honestly you'd mess up more than clean.

Throwing the gathered dust using the dustpan? Blame it on Ace, throwing and cracking the spray bottle in half because it wouldn't let any water out? Blame it on Deuce, spilling the bucket of soap water and flooding the room? They're pointing their fingers at you.

Sometimes Trey can only ever feel sorry for you bit his time as a chaos tamer lies within his generation with Riddle and the dorm itself so he can only send apologetic glances whenever he passes by you three and your dumbassery.

Skipping class? One says ai and the other says nay, so with you being the final point of your uncanny triumvirate it often depends on your mood whether you avoid those monotonous lectures (sorry professor Trein-)

Don't even get me started on your group chat, back then when it only consisted of you three (with Epel Jack and surprisingly Sebek later on) Ace has a tendency to make up 60% of the spam notifs in your GC, and it's all random magicam memes he reshares there tagging either you or Deuce (sometimes both) respectively if he deems a shitpost applicable to you guys.

"Ace don't you have alchemy-" "Shhh this idiot is juice face ok-"

Deuce the ever sweet but slightly knowledge sheltered dearie does chat, sometimes it's him using the GC as his own reminder inbox where he sends homework pages so that he doesn't forget. (With the amount of spamming Ace does, the GC is usually at the very top of Deuce's contacts) but there are rare times he does share some sort of terribly edited fact he found in the depths of some other socmed.

Most of the time they're just scam advertisements, and at one point you and Ace have had to sit him down for a stern talking that no Sarah69 isn't near him and she does not want to actually chat-

Deuce's chats = myth busting sessions

In the instance that he does open a virus he's at least diligent in helping repair the infected devices manually.

#Full Moon Foam #Moon Caffeine #am i speaking from expereince? youll never know ✨ #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland headcanons #ace trappola #deuce spade #twst headcanons #twst ace #twst deuce #twst heartslabyul

[danidrabbles]

Reverie

Notes: Astrid, it has taken everything in me not to spoil this for you. I hope this continues my streak of me surprising you. And I hope I do Triumvirate justice 🥺

Reverie plays out in @javier-pena's Triumvirate universe, somewhere between Part 1 and Part 2 (which I hear is coming soon 👀).

Pairing: Javier Peña x f!reader x Katie

Rating: Explicit (18+!)

Word count: 4.1k

Warnings: established relationship, masturbation, threesome (f/f/m), light choking, orgasm delay, mentions of oral (f receiving)/piv sex/fingering/dirty talk, bi panic, crumbs of plot, perhaps...angst?, food mention. I think that’s it, let me know if there’s anything I should add!

--

“Are you sure?” you ask, voice strained, eyes still bleary.

You’re leaning against the doorway to Javier’s apartment building, the man in question standing outside, down the steps, with a brown suitcase. The early Friday sun is finally rising, visible between the two apartment buildings across the street, and it trickles through the large windows and into the hallway.

Javier sets his luggage down so he can reach up and caress your cheek, smiling as he strokes over the small creases his pillow left on your skin. “Yes, you can stay here,” he assures. “Have a fun weekend without me.”

With a single phone call at 6 am, the DEA had thrown a wrench into your very important weekend plans: Finally enjoying a weekend off with your boyfriend. They sprung a last minute trip to Cali on Javier—

“I gotta go, baby,” he mutters before pressing a kiss to your brow, then to your lips. “I need to be at the Embassy in a couple minutes and I still need to pick Katie up.”

—and Katie.

They would be gone for the weekend, something about important meetings with equally important people, about drug lords in Cali, sentencing, paperwork, budget—it really couldn’t wait. But the thought of being without your two favourite people in Colombia is distressing.

Javier had assessed it right when he thought you’d get along with Katie. Occasionally getting a coffee together turned into dinners, and movie nights, and daily lunches, because you like her and she’s excellent company. She has interesting opinions, she’s funny, she gets really passionate about fishing... and you’ll miss her too while she’s away for work.

“Be safe,” you tell Javier before pulling him in for another kiss, “and tell Katie I said ‘Hi’.”

“I will,” he promises, squeezing your hand. “I’ll call you.”

As he pulls away and turns to walk down the steps, his hand slips from yours. You lean your head against the doorpost and watch as he loads up his car before getting behind the wheel.

You don’t turn away until he disappears from view.

--

“I don’t believe you.”

Your lips curl into a smile as you hear Javier make a sound of protest on the other side of the line. He’s been gone a day and this is the first you heard of him since he left. It’s nice to hear his voice, to hear him talk about funny, mundane, hotel related things. Pinning the phone between your shoulder and your ear, you reach back to hold the kitchen counter before jumping on top of it.

“It’s true.”

With a scoff, you wrap the phone cord around your finger. “The DEA has never set you up in a place that offers massages, Javi. Are you sure that—”

“Health Club has 3 treatment rooms, including rooms for couples,” he interrupts, voice almost monotone as he reads from what you guess is a flyer from the hotel. “Services include deep-tissue massages, hot stone massages, Swedish massages and facials. A variety of treatment therapies are provided, including—”

“All right, all right, I believe you,” you laugh. “Enjoy your Swedish facial later.”

“Hey now,” he warns, a warm chuckle sailing through the receiver with a crackle.

What follows is a comfortable silence, and you hope he’s thinking the same thing about you as you do about him right now, that you—

“I miss you,” he says, and it makes something swirl in your stomach. “Bed’s empty without you.” There’s a sound on the other end of the line, a rustle that sounds like paper. “Maybe I should get some room service to keep me company; we had this cake for dessert today…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, simply hums to bring his approval across.

The sound makes you laugh, as does the thought of him enjoying some rest and eating good food on a work trip—a very rare luxury. “That good, huh?”

There’s a puff on the other side, no doubt from him taking a drag of his cigarette, and your smile only grows when he begins describing the cake to you—moist, chocolate cake, with dark drip chocolate running down the sides.

You groan in delight. “That sounds amazing. Katie and I had something like this a couple days ago, at the place we always have lunch at...” Your sentence trails off at the end, not because it’s a question for him to answer, or because you have more to say, but because it kicks your brain into gear to remember the conversation you had with Katie that day, and as you do, Javi’s reply arrives muffled, far away…

It was after lunch. After the laughter, and the conversation, and the chocolate cake. You were walking back to work, side by side in the Columbian heat, the Embassy already in sight. And for the life of you, you couldn’t remember what prompted her to say it, what you had been talking about before she said it.

“I… I think about you a lot.”

You were walking in the shadow to avoid the burning afternoon sun, but the admission immediately made it feel as if you weren’t. “How do you mean?” you asked, turning your head so you can look at her.

She did the same. “In the daytime,” she said. “Things that remind me of you. Did you know that there are posters for that movie you mentioned plastered all over the city?”

You made a non-committal sound, because you honestly couldn’t remember, couldn’t think of anything but how badly you wanted her to keep talking.

“But also at work, when I see Javi,” Katie said, tipping her head down to the pavement and smiling fondly. “He talks about you all the time, you know? And I recognize you in his stories now. He once told me that you fell off a chair you were standing on, because you wanted to reach the very top of your kitchen cabinets, and when we were at your place the other day I thought, ‘I get it now’ — your kitchen cabinets are unusually high...” she giggled.

You laughed with her, releasing a breath you didn’t know you were holding. She means she thinks about you like a friend would, the voice in your head provided. Of course she does.

“I can’t believe he told you that,” you said honestly. You remembered from the Embassy get together at the bar that Javi talked about you to her, but you didn’t know he told such... mundane stories about you.

The steady clicking of Katie’s heels on the pavement came to a stop, and you realized you reached the Embassy.

“Are you still there?” Javi’s voice cuts in. And you’re thankful for the interruption. It’s better not to think too much about what happened next. “I swear this connection—”

“I love you,” you say. “And I really fucking miss you, too.”

Javier is quiet on the other side. He clearly hadn’t expected to hear you reply with that, and with so much emotion. “I love you, too,” he says eventually, and it sounds like he wants to say more, like it’s unfinished. There’s another rustle on his side of the line, and then the faint sound of a voice far away from the horn. Javi replies (“Yeah. Okay. Yes, I’ll be right there.”) before he turns his attention back to you.

“I have to go,” he says around a sigh, and it makes it sound more like I’m sorry. “Just a couple more days, okay?”

Your heart aches. It always does in moments like this. When you’re reminded of what he does for a living, that he sometimes has to leave conversations unfinished—not because he’s a stubborn grump, but because he has to leave you like this. You don’t hate it, you love him for what he does, but that doesn’t mean it can’t break your heart a little.

“I know, Jav,” you reply.

“I love you,” he presses.

And then the line goes dead.

--

Sleep doesn’t come that night.

Javier’s sheets are cool thanks to the air conditioner that keeps the room at a pleasant temperature, and you turn on the pillow, pressing your nose into it with a frustrated sigh at your inability to at the very least doze off for a couple minutes.

Sleep doesn’t come, but thoughts do.

It’s even worse with the smell of him surrounding you. You didn’t realize you would miss him this much; you’re usually fine on your own. It must be because of the prospect of having a weekend with him, you reason. You had your sight set on being with him for an extended period of time, and that’s why you’re feeling this strongly about him being away.

On top of everything, you can’t call Katie, either. She’d be up for a chat, you think. She’s a good listener. She’d lend an ear to your lovesick lamenting, and her soothing voice would assure you your feelings are perfectly normal, maybe can be explained through hormones, before promising she would come over the next day to help distract you. And the mere thought of that alone would put you at ease, it’d be enough to find your sleep.

But she’s at work. And Javi is at work. And you’re here. Unable to sleep.

With another turn, you flip back to “your side” of the bed, and as you pull the sheets up around you, you try to imagine Javi there with you; his smooth, warm skin moulded to your back, a strong arm wrapped around you and pulling you close, maybe cupping your breast if he’s feeling cheeky—

Your body responds with interest to the thought—there’s a faint, dull throb between your legs, and it makes your thighs twitch where they’re laying on top of each other—and that gives you an idea. Turning over on your back, you kick the sheets away; you might as well indulge, if you’re lucky it’ll make you sleepy enough to just drift off after.

With a shiver, you run your hand up your legs until you can fist the hem of the sleep shirt you’re wearing, pulling it up, up, up so you can hook the fabric over the swell of your chest. Your nipples stand at attention, now exposed to the cool air that drifts through the room, and you allow your hand to cup one of your breasts, swallowing thickly when you squeeze yourself. The hand comes up to your mouth, tongue darting out to wet your pointer finger. With a swirl, you spread the saliva around a nipple, sighing at the sensation.

You imagine it’s Javi, the very tip of his tongue circling your nipple before he draws it into his mouth, before he bites at it. You pinch yourself, softly. It makes you gasp, but it’s not quite right. If it was Javi, he’d do it harder, you reason, he’d want to hear you. In an instant, your hand catches up with your mind, and you pinch harder, make it hurt just right. Your answering moan is loud in the otherwise empty space, and you think about how it would make him smile against your skin, how he would do it again, and again, until you were begging for him.

It doesn’t take long before you can imagine him right there with you, his broad frame looming over you on the mattress. You think of the wide span of his shoulders, his soft, freckled skin, and his hand skating down your body to fit itself between your legs.

As if off its own accord, your hand mirrors your thoughts, your fingers skimming along the warming skin of your belly, wiggling under the waistband of your underwear before deciding to pull the garment down and off all together. You spread your knees, giving yourself more room to reach. Heat rises in your cheeks at the easy glide of your digits between your soaked folds, and you move them down to your eager entrance to collect more slick. It’s how he always does it, teasing you where you’re fluttering open for him before he eases one inside.

One of your fingers slides into you with ease, but it’s off; you should make it feel more like him. His fingers are thick, blunt, a nice stretch to prepare you for more of him, right now it feels much more like—

Yours, is what you should think, but it’s not. Hers, is what your mind offers up, and all of a sudden, as you slide another finger into yourself, it’s not Javi’s hand you imagine between your legs.

It’s Katie’s.

Suddenly, she’s there in your fantasy, between your legs. Her dark hair frames her face as she looks down to where two of her delicate fingers slip in and out of you with a wet sound. Javi isn’t gone from your thoughts, he’s there, working you over, a large hand on your chest, and Katie’s eyes flick up to him before she leans up and he leans down. Their lips meet in a searing, openmouthed kiss. You can almost see their tongues slip together before they pull away and exchange a dazed smile. It fills you with more heat, this mental image of them working together to get you off. You imagine Katie focusing back on you as you grind yourself against her hand, fingers curling wickedly, and you’re so close lightning fast. Your hips arch off the bed, and in your head Katie leans into you, her mouth so close to—

No.

You rip your hand from between your legs with a gasp, effectively starving off your impending orgasm. It rockets you back to reality, the steady sound of the air conditioner filling your ears, the ceiling of Javier’s bedroom back before your eyes. The heat radiating off of you makes you shiver, and against your own will, you think back to that moment you should just forget about, but can’t….

You came to a stop at the Embassy gates, but before you could have even thought about saying your goodbyes, Katie was suddenly speaking. “But there’s other times I think of you, too,” she said in the softest voice.

You thought you misheard her, but then her head shot back up to look at you, and the wide eyed, vulnerable look on her face gave you pause, made you realize you did in fact hear correctly.

“About both of you…,” she added carefully, before her bottom lip found its way between her teeth for a moment, and god, it made you feel like your heart was gonna tud out of your chest. Was she coming closer? Getting on her tip-toes? “Especially since… you know...”

You might have laughed at her sudden bashfulness had it not been for the deep urge to pull her in, lift her face to cover her mouth with yours. It had been instant and terrifying, and maybe you would have done it if it hadn’t been for Javier marching out of the Embassy with a shout of, “Katie!”, snapping you both out of your haze and back to reality; she was needed back inside and the moment had passed.

You should have used the time to ask her, you think now, to ask her so many things. If she could stay to discuss this more. How it felt to her so you could maybe make sense of your own complicated feelings. Ask her about her use of the word ‘daytime’, and if it implied there was a ‘nighttime’ where she thought of you—Javier and you.

Ask her if this is what she meant.

But deep down, you know.

You spend quite some time with her, during your lunch breaks, your movie nights You were familiar with the way she raised her brow, narrowed her eyes, and the look in her eyes had said it all.

So, if she can do it, why can’t you?

Because she doesn’t have a boyfriend, the voice in your head reasons instantly.

Javi.

Your body reacts with interest at the thought of him, and it floods you with relief. You can get off to the thought of him. You’ve done it countless times, before and during your relationship, and this is no different.

With a huff, you flip over, sit up on your knees and spread your thighs.

You concentrate on what made you think of him in the first place: His voice.

You think of how it sounded on the phone earlier, cracked, raspier though the receiver – especially when he said your name. It reminds you of how he sounds when you’ve got him rolled under you, your hands on his chest for support as you circle and grind low against him.

You close your eyes, conjuring up the image of your boyfriend under you as you slip your hand back between your legs. You swear you can feel the ghost of his hands on your hips, thumbs digging in between the folds of skin each time you roll forward. At the thought of that, you plunge two fingers deeper into yourself, before adding another with a soft moan.

That’s more like it, you think, and though your fingers are slimmer, it’s more like how he fills you at this angle. The delicate stretch of it makes it easier to imagine him straining under you, to imagine his broad chest covered in a film of sweat, his plump bottom lip caught between his teeth between gruff whispers of filth.

That’s my girl, he’d say, you think, and you find your lips moving along with the words. Taking my cock so well.

Eventually, he always starts meeting your thrusts. You grind against your hand at the thought, and it feels good, feels like the way the base of his cock or the soft give of his belly would catch on your clit.

You bring a hand up to rest at the base of your neck, your breast squeezed up under your arm, and in your mind's eye, the fantasy suddenly shifts, the arm around your chest no longer yours.

“How does he feel?” Katie’s voice trickles into your reverie, slow and syrupy, as if her mouth is right at your ear to whisper the question.

Your hand tightens around your throat, imagining it’s hers. You picture her soft body snuggly pressed against your back, and her free hand closing over Javi’s so the both of them can push you down, so your eager cunt can swallow more of his cock. The erotic picture it paints in your mind makes you clench with a broken moan, a rush of slick coating your fingers, slipping down to your wrist.

“I bet it’s good,” Katie’s voice continues. “Filling out that pretty pussy just right, isn’t he, honey?”

“It’s so good,” you confirm, curling your fingers inside of yourself to graze that spot Javi always finds with practiced ease. “I want to come so badly.”

The hand around your throat tightens and it only fans the flames simmering in your gut. Your gasp barely makes it out audible as you bounce up and down on the mattress, desperately grinding against your hand to chase it.

“Tighter,” Javi’s voice orders, low, raspy. “She’s gonna come.”

You find yourself nodding as well as you can, leaning into the non-existent weight against your back as you cut off your own air, ears ringing, thighs straining, so close to it—

NO.

“Fuck!” you shout into the room, your soaked hand gripping at the inside of your thigh. With an indignant huff, you flop down into the pillow, cheek scrunching up against the scented fabric. Why, is this so fucking hard? You miss your boyfriend, you want to get off—get off to the thought of him.

With a frown, you shove your hand between your legs again, digging your knees into the mattress as three of your fingers slip back inside of you with ease. It’s a matter of principle now.

Conjuring up a new fantasy, one that has Javier taking you from behind, has you squeezing your eyes shut in concentration. You imagine the heat of his body against your back, his fingers digging into your sides, and you press your fingers inside deep to imagine him slamming into you.

This is good. This could work. It’s like you can hear the low little grunts he always lets out when he fucks you like this. It’s music to your fantasy-ears, and you roll your hips back against your hand as your other tightens in the bedsheets. Your fingers brush up against something promising, and you desperately try to grind your palm against your clit, but the angle is off, and you hastily push your other hand between your legs, swirling two fingers over your clit as you push your cheek into the bedding.

The change in position makes your mind betray you once more, memories of that night playing behind your eyelids; Javier’s punishing pace, his arm slung around your waist, Katie’s dazed face, her soft fingers caressing your clit, and you, caught between them. It makes you sob, in frustration or pleasure, you don’t know.

All you can think about now is them, and how good it was. How good Javi felt behind you, how you could still taste Katie’s come on your tongue as you buried your face in the crook of her neck.

You try to change directions in your head; re-direct the erotic film of memory in your mind to something else, but you can’t. Because if your orgasm had been cresting slowly earlier, this was a fucking storm in comparison. It stirs low in your belly, laps at your every dip and curve. The muscles in your thighs clench in desperate anticipation of that perfect little moment where it all feels right.

Just let go, you tell yourself, the thought oddly clear in your mind as you barrel towards something that feels forbidden… but you’re too into it; you're enjoying this. It shouldn't be a surprise, not after everything that has already happened between the three of you, but it is.

"Come for us,” Katie’s voice in your head echoes, encouraging you.

And you want to, you want it so fucking badly. It has you rubbing your swollen clit in desperate little circles, but somehow, despite having to have stopped yourself from coming twice now, you keep teetering on the edge.

“Please,” you whine. “God, please…” A frustrated, desperate sound echoes through Javier’s bedroom, and you can barely tell if it’s really you, or the you from your fantasy.

Suddenly, Javi’s voice cuts in, soft and low like he’s speaking right in your ear, but the crackle in it reminds you of how he sounded on the phone. And all thoughts leave you at his words.

"It’s okay.”

The sudden rush of relief and endorphins makes you crash over the edge, liquid fire blooming from between your legs, down your thighs, and you come with a moan. The intensity of having edged yourself for this long makes you shake with each frantic pass of your fingers through the slick, spasming channel of your cunt, and it seems to last minutes before you have to stop, overstimulated, satiated, thoroughly fucked out. Your body lands back on the sheets, and you pant against the fabric, waiting for your heartbeat to return to normal and for the jelly-like feeling in your legs to subside.

You feel like you’re glowing, Javi’s voiced permission alleviating your concerns. But, as you come down from your high, as you pull your shirt back down your torso and crawl under the sheets, you realize it wasn’t his permission. You swallow the lump that’s suddenly in your throat, a manifestation of the shame of your blissed out mix of fantasy and reality.

Javier isn’t here.

He was a fabrication of your mind, in your fantasy…

But that’s what it was though, wasn’t it? A fantasy. It’s perfectly natural and normal. There’s nothing wrong with letting your mind run free, in this case, as long as it stays up there, and not in the real world. But then again, parts of this already occurred in the real world, your fantasy a mere extension and repetition of what has already happened.

Maybe it’s just something you need to get out of your system. Last time you were together, it all caught you so off guard, with Javi springing his idea on you. Perhaps you just need to purposely get it out of your system. And if you couldn’t do that by using your fantasy world, maybe you needed to get it out of your system another way...

Sleep doesn’t come that night, but the thoughts do.

--

Thank you for reading 🧡

#dani writing #userastrid #javier peña #narcos #javier peña x reader x katie #javier peña x you x katie #javier peña x you #javier peña x reader #narcos fanfiction #fanfic #pedro pascal character fanfiction

[xsamsharons]

come here often? - n. lantsov

pairing: nikolai lantsov x healer!reader.

genre/warning: fluff. mentions of injuries.

words: 1.6k

summary: in which nikolai and you aren't really close, until he falls on his face and you fall in love.

It was a rather slow night considering you were working as the main healer aboard a ship that had the prince of Ravka as its captain and also counted the three leaders of the grisha triumvirate as part of the crew. Night after night, people would come in though the makeshift hospital David had built into your room for you, injured by the weirdest things you would ever imagine, and go back out to no doubt keep endangering their lives on behalf of their country. Now, you were not saying that fighting for your country was an dishonorable thing to do, the opposite actually, but for the life of you, you just couldn’t seem to understand how someone could possibly willingly jump off a ship and into an ocean filled with monsters and mythical creatures, and not expect any injuries.

Speaking of, as of right now you found yourself attending the injuries of none other but the captain himself, he looked like he hadn’t slept in ages, and reeked of sea water and sweat. The first time you had met him you had been extremely nervous about actually using your powers on him, after all, you didn’t wanna be known as the healer who had permanently injured the future king. That day you had learned that Nikolai became pretty delirious every time he was suffering from physical pain given as he had had a broken nose and damaged rib, but he had claimed that ‘the other guy had it worse’. This would’ve be a normal enough to say, except in this case, the ‘other guy’ was an ancient mythical being that has been believed to only exist in Ravkan’s passed down stories. Ever since then, he has been ending up in your room almost every night, and with your unfortunate luck, he always seemed to arrive right in your shifts.

His face was framed by messy strands that had fallen from his red tailored hair, and on his chest were displayed a couple of gold necklaces that matched the buttons of his red coat. He had been talking to you and distracting you from your work ever since he arrived, and to make matters worse, he had to rest on one of the beds in your room all night just in case the fall he had taken on his face somehow caused more damage than you had originally thought.

“So, you come here often?” he asked with a crooked smirk and wandering eyes.

“You mean my room? Where I work?” you answered, rolling your eyes when he nodded his head and raised his eyebrows, implying it was a totally logical question. “Yes, I come here often. Not as often as you it would seem. Quite prone to hurting yourself, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I just like to visit my favorite healer.”

Ah yes, the flirting. It seemed it wasn’t enough for him to already bother you with his presence, but he also made it his mission to flirt with you as much as possible during his stay.

“Firstly, I’m the only specialized healer you know, so that line isn’t as smooth as you think it is.” you started, continuing to work on his nose. “Secondly, I would appreciate it if you could keep your advances to the minimum. We don’t want you to damage your brain trying to come up with more pick up lines, seeing as it requires a lot of effort for you to even get coherent sentences out.” you said sarcastically and watched his smirk grow.

“What is it going to take for you to finally admit you actually really like me?” he asked, and for the life of you, you could not understand how he’d come to that conclusion when all you’ve ever done is turn him down. Nonetheless, you figured you’d follow his game. If you were going to spend your whole night by his side, you could use some fun.

“Well, for one, I have never seen you not beaten up, or showered for that matter, so that would be a great start.” you said, tailoring his nose to look like Sturmhond’s crooked one after you finished tending to it.

“It’s not my fault I always end up here in the nights when we get ambushed.” he said in a voice that could almost be considered as a whine, and you found yourself smiling at how cute he sounded when he wasn’t being an asshole. Still, you furrowed your brows in response to something he’d hinted at.

“Ambushed? What, like by other crews?” you asked and he nodded. “So, you tailor yourself to not get ambushed for being a royal, but we still are ambushed even when you look like Sturmhond? What’s the point then?”

“It may be kind of useless now that everyone in Ravka knows us, but I like pretending to be someone else sometimes.” he shrugged, a look that you’d never seen on his face appearing. “It’s stupid, i know” he snorted, trying to shake off the weight of his sentence after you remained quiet for a few seconds.

“It’s not stupid.” you were quick to deny. “I get it, believe me. Growing up as a grisha in Fjerda, I wished every night before bed to have the ability to simply be reborn as someone else.” you admitted, missing the shocked look on his face.

“You are Fjerdan?” he asked.

“What? That’s not in my file?” you answered with a question of your own and he rolled his green eyes.

After you accused him of violating your privacy for reading your file and he defensively said that it was his job to know his crew, you spent a few minutes teaching him Fjerdan words and took advantage of the little knowledge he had about your native language by making fun of his tailored face, knowing he couldn’t understand what you were saying.

“So, how come you praise yourself so much about your aim but seem to get beaten up every night?” you asked.

“Hey! I am actually an incredible shot, thank you very much.” he replied, offense clear on his voice, making you snort.

“Can’t be any good if the only times I ever see you is when you are injured.” you said sarcastically, and he made a face that seemed a bit dramatic in your opinion.

“Not my fault you are trapped between these four walls every night.” he replied, and now it was your turn to act defensively.

“Excuse you! I have a life outside of the hospital.” you said in a light tone, to let him know you weren’t truly offended.

“People who have lives don’t need to remind other people that they do.”

“People who are great in battle don’t need to remind other people that they are.”

“Touché.” he said with a smirk.

You spent the next couple of hours talking to Nikolai about random topics, him not failing to deliver a pick up line from time to time, and the night was slowly but surely starting to slip out of your hands. Right now, you were back to him being the topic of conversation after you had ranted for a couple of minutes about how hard it was to have to grow up in Fjerda hiding who you were. As you teased him telling him he had to settle for captain of a ship because he wasn’t a good enough royal (a claim he denied thoroughly), he looked like he wanted to say something else, before Genya entered the room with a smirk on her face.

“If you two lovebirds are done flirting, you are needed up on the main deck. Sparring session gone wrong - again.” she informed you, rolling her eyes at the usual recklessness of the crew.

“Yes, ma’am.” you saluted sarcastically, before turning back around to face Nikolai again and check his injuries one more time.

“You should actually stay upstairs with us sometime, that way I can prove to you that I'm actually good.” he suggested once Genya was out of the room again. “Plus, the day should be sunny today so we’ll probably spar a lot.”

“You’ve flirted with me every night you’ve been here and the answer’s always been the same, what makes you think tonight is going to be different?”

“Oh, come on. I promise I'll shower and I will try to not get punched in the face. That way you get to see me showered and not injured, it’s a package deal you can’t just ignore.” he pleaded, in reference to your words from earlier.

“All right, maybe I'll stay upstairs after I finish fixing the crew up, and if I catch sight of a certain arrogant royal I know, I might stick around to watch a sparring session or two.” you gave in with a smirk, leading him to the door so he could leave you alone to fix your room up a bit before you went upstairs.

“I’ll see you when I see you then.” he said while bowing his invisible pirate hat, and walked away with a wink.

He left you standing at your desk watching as, just like every other night, he slipped past your door and out onto the main deck again. You watched as he caught up with Genya and said something to her with a smirk, though you couldn’t quite catch the words the spoke, and turned back around to tidy up your room with a stupid smile on your face.

bonus:

“Did it work?” Genya asked him with raised eyebrows and a smile, her question in reference to the plan they had come up with to get Nikolai to spend more time with you. It consisted of Genya tailoring his face to look like he had fallen on his face and busted his nose open.

“Like a charm.” Nikolai nodded, a smile similar to the one you were wearing back in your room appearing on his face.

a/n: making fun of sturmhond's nose is a personality trait and it's mine (and alina's)

#nikolai lantsov #nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai lantsov imagine #nikolai lantsov fic #nikolai lantsov fanfic #sturmhond #nikolai #x reader #imagine #fic #fanfic #shadow and bone #grishaverse #the grisha trilogy #nikolai duology #rule of wolves #king of scars #siege and storm #ruin and rising

[lightlyblooming]

A Vibrant Ghost

Pairing: Zoya Nazyalensky x Reader

Summary: The reader finds Zoya after being separated by the Darkling's attacks.

Words: 1.3k

You had always been Zoya’s secret. The little corner of happiness and love and joy in a world full of competition and anger. It had never gone further than a chaste kiss taken in the dark corner of the library and a few heated glances from across the room, but it meant the world to you. You hoped it meant the same to her.

You were her only true friend. The only person she felt comfortable around. The only person she let herself be vulnerable around. She treated you like her equal and never, ever, hurt you. You supported her from the shadows, cheering her on whenever she reached a milestone or was still going strong despite the world that seemed to constantly go against her.

You had been satisfied with that. It had filled you with purpose and reason to continue, even with all the shit that rained down around you day in and day out. You sheltered each other from the harsh expectations of life. It was nice, for a while.

Then Alina Starkov happened.

She came in and shook up everything. She changed the very reality that you and Zoya lived in. Zoya became more competitive. More harsh. She was used to a certain amount of attention. That attention was taken away from her when Alina came.

Instead of Zoya coming to you for that absent attention, she delved deeper into her training. She became so engrossed into it that she barely even saw you. When she did, the only thing she talked about was needing to get back to training. Being unable to truly talk to her was painful. It was so painful that you ended up telling her it was time to part ways.

She respected your decision, but you saw that it hurt her. She never looked at you. Even when she did, she looked away as if scorned.

You had thought about going up to her and mending your relationship. There was such a large hole that Zoya had previously filled.

Then the Darkling attacked and that was no longer an option. It was a complete and utter massacre. One that you were barely able to survive.

You ran as far and as fast as you could. Sure, you were a Grisha soldier, but you weren’t strong like Zoya. You couldn’t face death every second of every day and still be competent at your job. If you had stayed, you knew you would’ve died.

So you lived as a civilian hidden amongst the terrified members of a nowhere village in the north. You stayed there until the all-clear was given. The Darkling was dead, there was nothing more for Grisha to fear (except the Fjerdans and Shu Han, of course) and Nikolai Lanstov was the new king with a Grisha Triumvirate managing what remained of the Second Army. And, to no surprise, Zoya Nazyalensky was one of those three elite Grisha.

You had never doubted that Zoya would live. If anyone would survive that utter chaos, it’d be Zoya. The strongest person you knew.

When you got the news that she was in Os Alta, you didn’t waste any time packing your things and heading back south. It didn’t take long to get to the city. It was surprisingly easy to get into the Little Palace, thanks to your status as a Girsha soldier. Apparently, those who had not died had fled as you had, and they were quite desperate to have them back.

You were given a pair of kefta, assigned a room to share with one other person, as a lot of the rooms had been destroyed during the Darkling’s attacks. You didn’t mind; the palace rooms were far better than sleeping on a hay pallet in the corner of a horse stable.

It took a bit of bribing and smooth-talking, but you were able to get into the Grand Palace. You were awarded with a glimpse of Zoya, standing with King Nikolai.

There was something different about her.

While she showed the same harsh exterior, you could see in the way she held herself that she was more steady in herself. She had her purpose and she knew that deserved to be there.

She seemed so far away. She felt like a ghost. A vibrant ghost that had finally realized who they were meant to be.

You didn’t want to disturb her new life, so you stayed away. You watched from the shadows, admiring her beauty and her grace and the command she held over everyone around her. It enraptured your senses. You could scarcely look away. And you were happy with that. You were content to be on the sidelines, unnoticed and unseen.

Then Zoya noticed you.

Her eyes caught yours from across the room and you swore she nearly fainted. One of her friends had to come to her side and shake her out of her trance. Zoya glanced at you one last time before she was swept away to do something that had to be far more important.

At the end of the evening, you found yourself walking down an empty hall on your way back to the Little Palace. It was deathly silent for most of the way, then footsteps joined you.

You paused and turned around to see none other than Zoya walking towards you.

You couldn’t do anything other than stand there, frozen. She kept her eyes on you, pinning you to the spot effortlessly.

Zoya came up to you, glancing around the hall to make sure that no one was there. Then, without warning, she wrapped her arms around her. You couldn’t move, or breathe, or even comprehend what was happening.

Zoya had never, ever, hugged you. Not even the moments leading up to your only kiss.

She pulled away, bracing her hands on your shoulders. She looked you up and down, seeming to analyze every inch of your body. She put her hand on your chin, tilting it this way and that. You let her. There was no reason why you wouldn’t.

“You’re alive,” Zoya finally said, her eyes and mouth open in shock.

You couldn’t help your smile. It was so nice to hear her voice. “You thought I wasn’t?”

“There was the attack. After that, you were just gone. I couldn’t find you anywhere,” Zoya said, pulling away. “I had to accept that you were dead.”

“You looked for me?”

The idea had you grinning like a complete and utter fool. Your heart fluttered and your stomach tightened. Just the idea that she cared enough to look for you made you near-ecstatic with joy.

A blush colored her cheeks. Zoya stepped away, turning her back to you. She tried to hide it, but you knew it was there. You knew it was a sign of the truth.

“What else was I supposed to do?” Zoya asked, turning to look at you.

You blinked. You had no idea how to answer. Honestly, you had expected her to forget about you. Move on and act like you had never existed. You suppose that you hadn’t been completely wrong. She had moved on, but she certainly hadn’t forgotten about you.

Zoya sighed and looked to the ceiling. You stood there for a few moments, watching her. Then she looked down at you and simply said, “Follow me,” and went down the hallway.

You followed her through the Grand Palace and out into the blessedly cool night and into the Little Palace. She brought you upstairs and down many twisted halls. She brought you behind locked and guarded doors. It felt like an eternity before you finally got to where Zoya was bringing you. Her bedroom.

It was far more extravagant and luxurious than the room she’d been in before. It fit her, though. Nothing but the best for Zoya, who worked endlessly and deserved all the good she was given.

“What are we doing here?” you asked, wandering further into her room.

Steps sounded behind you as Zoya approached and before you knew it, she was standing in front of you, holding your chin in her hands. “Doing what I’ve always wanted to do,” she said, and kissed you.

Unlike the last time, it didn’t end there. It only deepened and went further until there was nothing but skin separating you two.

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone x reader #zoya nazyalensky #zoya nazyalensky x reader #zoya x reader #king of scars #nikolai duology #shadow and bone fanfiction #shadow and bone fanfic #zoya fanfic

[triptuckers]

Two Homes (part 5/7) - Nikolai Lantsov

Request: no Pairing:  Nikolai Lantsov x reader Summary:  even though you were determined to leave the palace as soon as you could, you now find yourself waking up in a luxurious room of the palace months later  Warnings: angst Word count:  4.7K..... yea A/N: for the sake of this series, nikolai never gave alina the lantsov emerald lol also this turned out longer than I planned it to be but do I regret it? maybe a bit not in the slightest, enjoy reading! :) (also I know I posted part 4 like yesterday but I want this one out there cause a lot happens & I want to post part 6 & 7 so bad) PREVIOUS PART | NEXT PART TAG LIST (two homes and/or all grishaverse fics): @godsofwriting@im-constantly-fangirling @ayushmitadutta @mrs-brekker15@dancingwith-sunflowers @thegirlwiththeimpala @parker-natasha @story-scribbler @romanoffstarkovs @daliareads @meiitanoia @itsnotquimey (if your name is in bold it means I couldn't tag you) @sanktaesperanza @whymyparentscheckmyphone @aleksanderwh0r3 @ilovemarvelanne1 add yourself to my tag lists here 

For someone who had dreaded going to Os Alta, you find yourself starting to actually like it. After pulling you aside, out of earshot of your father, Nikolai explained to you why he told your father he’d picked you as his bride.

When he told you it was to ensure he couldn’t control your life any longer, you got confused, asking him why he would do such thing. In response, he recalled the conversation you had at the gardens, when you told him your father had been controlling your entire life, and how people had made decisions for him his entire life as well. 

Nikolai merely said he thought you deserved to make your own choices for once. Even if it meant living at the palace, far away from Ketterdam.

You had agreed to stay at the palace. You knew you couldn’t go back to Ketterdam now. The news of Nikolai picking you as his bride would probably travel faster than you’d like to.

While you did like Nikolai, and you enjoyed the little time you had spent with him, you made it clear you still didn’t want to marry him. That a part of still longed for Ketterdam. 

Nikolai listened to you explaining your choices, and respected them. While both of you knew all eyes would be on you after announcing the engagement, you also knew you couldn’t push it back any further. Not after all the rumours. 

He did agree to wait with picking an actual wedding date, giving you enough time to get used to your new life. You had told him you had no intention of marrying him, but over time you found yourself thinking more and more about it.

You’re amazed by the palace, and the life you live now. Every day, you walk around the palace, finding new routes and rooms. You start to think you might never see all of it in one lifetime. And you visit the gardens as well. 

You keep the yellow flower Nikolai had given you next to the mirror in your room. But you’d never tell him that, he’d tease you endlessly about it. 

As more weeks pass by, you spend more time with Nikolai, as well as his triumvirate. He’d invited you to few of their meetings, telling you if you ever did get married, you’d have to attend them as well. And the sooner you got used to it, the better.

At first, it felt a little weird. You walk around with Nikolai and everyone knows you as his future bride. While it feels odd, Nikolai’s presence is a comforting one. And the more you get to know him, the more you actually start to like him. Maybe staying at the palace wouldn’t be so bad as you thought it would be.

He spends a lot of time getting to know you. You have long conversations about your life in Ketterdam and his time in the army. About both of your dreams for the future, and what you want to achieve. But you also talk about small and simple things such as your favourite dish, or a book you love. 

Most of the talks take place in the gardens or your room. You like getting to know the Nikolai beneath the mantle of king. You start to realise the two of you aren’t so different. If you had been born in a different city, you might have been childhood friends. 

On a particularly sunny spring morning, the two of you walk around the gardens again. Nikolai doesn’t even have to offer his arm to you, you already place your hand on it. After some time, you’ve slipped into an easy morning routine, which sometimes includes a walk through the gardens.

‘How long until the Summers Week blooms again?’ you ask him as you walk past the familiar bush.

Nikolai glances at the same bush. ‘Probably a couple of months.’ he says. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I think they’re beautiful.’ you as the two of you sit down on the same bench you sat on so many months ago, when you had escaped the ball. ‘It really is a shame they only bloom for such a short period of time.’ 

‘Do you still have that one flower I gave you when we met?’ asks Nikolai.

You glare at him. You just know he’d never let you forget it if he knew you kept it. ‘Yes.’ you say. ‘I wouldn’t throw it away.’

And indeed, a smug look appears on Nikolai’s face. ‘I’m delighted you didn’t throw it away.’ he says. 

You playfully roll your eyes. ‘I expect a new one when they bloom again.’ you say.

‘I’ll make sure to give you one, sweetheart.’ he says with a smile. 

You feel your cheeks heat up at the mention of the nickname. He’d called you nicknames on more than one occasion. You still weren’t used to it. Maybe it had to do something with the fact that Nikolai seems to always look good.

You look at the bush again, getting lost in your thoughts. Nikolai seems to notice. After a while of silence, he speaks up.

‘What’s on your mind?’ he asks you.

You wonder when get got so good at reading your face. ‘I’ve been thinking about, well, all of this.’ you say, gesturing to the gardens and the palace behind you. 

Nikolai turns so he can properly look at you. ‘And?’ he says.

‘I have to admit, life at the grand palace isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. And it has been nice not to have my father following me around all day long. I still miss Ketterdam, but maybe not as much as I used to.’ you say. 

You briefly look at Nikolai and notice a faint smile on his lips as he’s listening to you.

‘Plus, the company isn’t so bad.’ you say. ‘I know I made it clear I didn’t want this. But the time I've spent here has been very nice. Everyone is so kind, and I love the walks around the palace.’

‘What exactly are you saying, Y/N?’ says Nikolai, though the look on his face tells you he already knows. 

You take a deep breath. ‘I’m saying I’m willing to do this. I think I could be happy here. I’m willing to marry you. Even it it’s just for the sake of Ravka. I’d rather marry you than some old merchant back in Kerch.’ you say.

Nikolai smiles. ‘That’s good to hear.’ he says. ‘Was it my dashing smile or charming personality that made you decide to stay?’

‘Don’t get cocky now, Nikolai.’ you chuckle.

‘Sweetheart, have you actually met me? I’ll always be cocky.’ he says. 

You laugh and Nikolai reaches out to take one of your hands in his.

‘But on a more serious note, I really am glad you decided to stay. I didn’t lie when I said you’re nice company.’ he says. ‘And now I can finally give you this.’

He gets something out of his pocket and holds it in his closed fist.

‘Close your eyes.’ he says.

You slightly raise your eyebrows. ‘Really?’ you say. 

‘Really.’ says Nikolai, smirking at you.

You do as he says and close your eyes. You feel how Nikolai lifts your hand and slides something on your finger. You feel the weight of it on your finger and can tell what it is before Nikolai tells you to open your eyes.

A ring with a beautiful green emerald sits on your finger. Your lips part in surprise. He doesn’t even have to say it, you know this ring.

‘This is the Lantsov emerald.’ you say as you look at him.

‘It’s really just an emerald like any others.’ says Nikolai, looking at your hand which is still in his. ‘But that is what most people call it, yes.’

You admire the ring on your finger. ‘It’s beautiful.’ you say. When you look up, you see Nikolai looking at you with an odd expression on his face.

‘What is it?’ you say.

He simply smiles at you and shakes his head. ‘Nothing.’ he says. He gets up and offers you his arm again. ‘Shall we go back to the palace? It’s almost lunch time.’ 

You nod and get up as well but instead of laying your hand on his arm, you grab his hand and intertwine your fingers with his instead. The two of you walk back to the palace, and you try to ignore the way people look at your left hand, clearly eyeing the emerald ring. 

This would be yet another rumour that would spread impossibly fast. You had to write another letter to the Crow Club soon. You’d rather have your friends find out through you, than because of rumours. 

You’d been writing letters to the Crows since you decided you stay at the palace. You told them about your life at the palace, and in return they told you what was going on in Ketterdam. 

You loved receiving letters from them. They each took turns writing you, and all of them signed the letter. 

Once you had lunch, Nikolai got called away to another meeting, and you went to your room to write a letter to Ketterdam. As usual, you started off by asking them how they were doing, if any jobs went wrong, and a new prediction on how many card games Jesper had lost. 

You then wrote about finally accepting the fact you’d marry Nikolai. Despite the chances being low they could attend, you invited them to the wedding anyway. You told them you’d send them a formal invitation with the date as soon as you picked a date. 

And then the chaos started. Genya insisted on being in charge of the planning, and she also sketched you a few designs for your wedding dress. They were all equally stunning, and you couldn’t pick one. Eventually, Nikolai picked the one he thought would suit you best.

Zoya was in charge of putting together the guest list. When she asked you who you wanted to invite, you gave her the names of the Crows. She seemed a bit taken aback you’d invite them because after all, they were criminals. You hadn’t yet told her you’d been part of the Crows for many years as well.

When you looked at the list she was writing, you noticed your father’s name on it as well. He’d sent you many letters, which you ignored. You took the pen from Zoya’s hand and crossed his name off the list without a word. 

Time seemed to fly by at an alarmingly speed. Before you know it, you wake up on the morning of your wedding. Until this day, it seemed like a strange concept somehow. As if you couldn’t fully realise it. 

But when your eyes land on your wedding dress, you feel like for the first time, the realisation of what’s about to happen finally sinks in. You would marry Nikolai. You would take his name and you would become a queen. Of a country that’s not even your own.

A knock on your door catches you off guard and you call for them to come in. Genya enters, followed by a few servants. She’s beaming at you, clearly excited about today.

‘Are you ready?’ she says.

‘More like the most nervous I’ve ever been.’ you say.

Genya smiles at you as she sits down on the bed next to you. ‘I understand you’re nervous.’ she says. ‘But I promise you it’ll be alright. We’ll all be here right beside you. And it’s just one day.’

‘One day of ceremonies and traditions and then I’m a queen.’ you say, having an uneasy feeling in your stomach. 

‘Nikolai will be there by your side. And we will be there as well.’ says Genya. ‘Now let’s get you in that dress.’

She rises to her feet and motions for you to get up as well. You hesitate. 

‘Could you, um, go and get Nikolai?’ you ask her, avoiding her eyes. ‘I want to talk to him.’

‘Of course.’ she says and she immediately leaves the room. You get up and start to pace the room, ignoring the servants who are patiently waiting for you. It doesn’t take long for Genya to return with Nikolai. 

Nikolai smiles at you and asks the servants and Genya to leave the room, which they do. 

By the looks of it, Genya caught him while he was getting dressed. His hair is still messy and his shirt is hastily tucked into his pants. He walks up to you, looking at you.

‘What can I do for you?’ he says. 

‘I’m nervous.’ you say.

‘If it helps, I’m nervous too.’ he says.

‘But you always manage to hide it behind a curtain of flirty comments and confidence.’ you say. ‘I wish I could do that.’

‘Y/N, just because I always know what to say, doesn’t mean I don’t get nervous.’ says Nikolai.

He reaches out to take your hand in his and walks you back to your bed, where you sit down. 

‘Listen, it’s completely normal to be nervous. It’s a big day. A lot of important people are going to be present. But I want you to be okay with this, so do you still want to do this?’ he says.

You look at him and frown. ‘Yes, of course!’ you say. ‘We’re not going to cancel this whole thing because I’m nervous. I just hope I won’t throw up because of the nerves.’

Nikolai chuckles. ‘I’m sure you’ll be fine.’ he says. ‘If it makes you feel better, we could practice.’ 

You frown again. ‘Practice what? I know how weddings work, Nikolai.’ you say. 

‘It wasn’t the entire wedding I was talking about.’ says Nikolai. 

You look at him, waiting for him to continue. He looks at your lips instead. 

‘Oh.’ you say softly. That was what he meant. 

Nikolai slowly inches closer to you, leaning in. His eyes switch from your lips to your eyes, silently asking permission. You give the barest of nods and Nikolai closes the remaining space between you, softly pressing his lips against yours. 

You close your eyes and focus on the feeling of his lips on yours. All of the nerves seem to leave your body as you easy into him. When he pulls away, your faces are still close to each other.

‘Well if that’s what you call practicing, I wonder what the real thing is going to do to top that.’ you say.

Nikolai laughs at your words. ‘You’re getting better at your comebacks with every passing day, sweetheart.’ he says.

‘I learn from the best.’ you say, smiling at him.

‘Are you ready for this?’ says Nikolai.

‘I am now.’ you say with a hint of newfound confidence. 

Nikolai nods and gets up. ‘I’ll call Genya back.’ he says.

You get up as well and walk with him to the door. Before opening it, Nikolai takes your hand in his and presses a kiss to your knuckles. With a wink, he opens the door and steps out into the hallway.

Once Genya and the servants enter, she immediately drags you over and pushes you into a chair to do your hair.

‘You don’t seem nervous anymore.’ she says. 

‘I’m not.’ you say. ‘Nikola and I, uh, talked about it.’ you say, unable to stop your cheeks from turning red. 

Genya smiles knowingly at you. ‘I’m sure it was a good talk then.’ she says, emphasising the word “talk”. 

‘It was.’ you say, avoiding her eyes.

The smile never leaves Genya’s face as she finishes with doing your hair. The servants help you to get in the dress, and you finally look at yourself in the mirror. Genya had really outdone herself with the dress. It looks beautiful on you, as if it was meant to be.

You turn to look at her. ‘Thank you.’ you say. ‘Truly. It’s perfect.’ 

‘Don’t thank me. Nikolai is the one who picked the dress.’ she says. ‘Are you ready to go?’

You take a deep breath and nod. Genya links her arm through yours and you start walking toward the small chapel on the palace grounds. The guests had already arrived and were gathered inside. You can hear them talking and chatting excitedly even outside the chapel.

Genya hugs you tightly and disappears inside the chapel. After a few deep breaths to calm yourself again, you firmly plant your feet on the ground. No going back now. 

The doors to the chapel open and you watch as the guests all rise. A last deep breath, and you start walking. Were there really this many people on the list Zoya had put together?

You start to feel nervous again, but then you see Nikolai looking at you. He’s smiling brightly, and looks very handsome. You remember the feeling of his lips on yours, and find your confidence once more. 

You slowly walk down the aisle, smiling as well, and your eyes are fixed on Nikolai. When you finally make it to the front of the chapel, Nikolai smiles as you stop walking. 

‘Still nervous?’ he whispers softly, so only you can hear it. 

‘Not anymore, thanks to you.’ you whisper back. 

You take a quick look at the crowd. You only recognise the people that lived at the palace as well. Thankfully, you don’t see your father in the crowd. But your heart sinks as you don’t spot your Crows either. They didn’t come. 

You had invited them. Maybe they feared being captured if they risked coming to Os Alta? Whatever their reason was, you’re sure it was a good one. You’d send them a letter after the wedding, asking them if maybe an important job had come up. But still, it hurt a little they wouldn’t attend your wedding. 

The wedding itself seems to last minutes. You’re only focused on Nikolai. He holds your hand and you’re grateful he does. It helps keep you grounded. You had expected the wedding to be grand because after all, it is a royal one. But once you leave the chapel, hand in hand with Nikolai, you realise it turned out to be even better than you expected. 

The two of you are silent as you walk through the halls of the palace. You see the door to your room in the distance, but Nikolai walks right past it. When you raise your eyebrows in question at him, he points at the door to his room in the distance.

‘They’d expect us to share a room. It’d be a bit weird if we got married but sleep in separate rooms.’ he says. ‘Don’t worry, the bed is large enough to fit both of us without having to cuddle close. Not that I would mind if you did.’

You chuckle at his words as he opens the door to his room. You’re thankful to be away from all the guests. You appreciated that they all came to attend the wedding, but you got tired of listening to their congratulations over and over again. 

Once the door closes behind you, you immediately bend down to take off your heels. You watch as Nikolai shrugs off his suit jacket and runs a hand through his hair. 

‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ he says. 

‘It wasn’t bad at all.’ you say. 

Nikolai studies your face. ‘But there’s something on your mind.’ he says.

‘I just...’ your voice trails off as you try to find the best way to voice your thoughts. Nikolai takes your hand and pulls you down to sit on the bed with him. 

‘I thought they would come.’ you say softly. ‘I invited them, and I know I haven’t seen them in a while, but I thought they’d at least come to my wedding. I spent years with them.’ 

‘Maybe something else got in the way? Maybe something came up and they simply couldn’t make it?’ suggest Nikolai.

You shake your head. ‘Even if Kaz would plan a job, Jesper and Nina would burn down all of Ketterdam if a job prevented them from attending my wedding.’ you say. ‘I can’t think of a single reason why they wouldn’t come. I thought I meant more to them.’ 

‘What if you write them another letter? I’m sure if you just ask them, they’ll explain why they couldn’t be there.’ says Nikolai.

‘I was going to write them about it anyway.’ you say. ‘But first I want to change. As beautiful as this dress is, it’s incredibly heavy.’

‘I had a servant move some of your belongings here already.’ says Nikolai. ‘A part of the closet is now yours.’

‘Thank you.’ you say and you walk over to the closet, opening it. You pick one of your comfortable dresses and go to the bathroom to change. When you get back, you see Nikolai hasn’t changed yet. You didn't mind. He really looked good in a formal suit. 

You move to sit behind Nikolai’s desk to write a letter to Ketterdam. You try to sound polite, but a part of you wants to just write what you’re actually thinking. But the Crows mean the world to you, and you don’t want to hurt them or piss them off. 

Once you finish the letter, you seal it and hand it to a servant, telling them it’s urgent. 

When you get back to the room, you find Nikolai sitting at his desk, fidgeting with something in his hands. Curiously, you walk over to him. 

‘What are you doing?’ you say.

Nikolai looks up and holds out his hand to you. On his palm is a small boat, made out of a piece of rope. You carefully take it from his hand to examine it.

‘How did you learn how to make this?’ you as him.

He shrugs. ‘A lot of practicing.’ he says. 

You smile and hand the little boat back to him. ‘It’s nice.’ you say. ‘Could you teach me how to make one?’

Nikolai nods and pulls out a second chair for you. He spends the rest of the evening trying to teach you how to make a boat out of a piece of rope. While his fingers move smoothly and create the boats with ease, you struggle with it. After all, he had probably done it for many years, whereas you’re only trying it out for the first time. 

When you successfully finish your first boat, you decide to call it a night and go to sleep. Nikolai hadn’t been lying; the bed was big enough to fit the both of you comfortably without invading each other’s personal space. 

Your usual routines don’t change much. Except for the fact you know share a room and a bed. And you notice there are more lingering glances between the two of you. 

Like Nikolai had said, you’re expected to attend important meetings as well. You try to listen to it, but sometimes the meetings just aren’t interesting in your eyes. Luckily you always sit next to Nikolai, who is able to nudge your leg with his boot if he thinks you’re starting to zone out.

You have breakfast together every morning, expect for the mornings when Nikolai isn’t at the palace. You practice making boats out of rope, and you’re improving. Nikolai’s still turn out better than yours, but you’re getting there.

Every day, you ask if there’s mail for you. But somehow the Crows don’t send letters as frequently as they used to. And they had never given you a proper explanation as to why they didn’t attend your wedding. 

Most of the times when you’re lost in thought, you’re thinking about Ketterdam. You hadn’t been there in months, not since the ball. It’s as if the longer you stay at the palace, the more you miss Ketterdam. 

The city had always felt like home. And no matter how much you like spending time at the palace with Nikolai, you can’t help but to feel guilty for being away from Ketterdam for so long. You miss the city, and you miss your Crows.

Nikolai must have noticed something is bothering you, but you dodge his questions. You try to come up with excuses, but eventually, he pulls you aside and stands in front of the door, preventing you from slipping away.

‘Out with it.’ he says. ‘What is going on?’

You look at him, not sure what to say. 

‘Is it our marriage? Do you regret it? Is that why you’re avoiding talking with me?’ says Nikolai.

‘Of course not!’ you quickly say. ‘Nikolai, I do not regret our marriage. I happen like you a lot.’

‘Then what is it?’ says Nikolai. ‘You’re not yourself and I can tell something is bothering you. Let me help you.’

‘I don’t know where to start.’ you say softly, lowering your head and looking at your feet. It all seemed so childish now. 

‘I miss Ketterdam.’ you say softly. You feel tears burning behind your eyes. ‘I miss the harbour, and the tourists flooding the docks. I miss playing card games with Jesper, and going out with Nina. I miss talking with Inej and going over Kaz’ plans with him. I even miss reading to Wylan and trying to win a drinking contest from Matthias. I miss the Crow Club, and their laughter. I miss all of it.’ 

You see how Nikolai’s feet step closer to you and his hands cup your face, tilting it upward so you look at him. He brushes a tear away with his thumb.

‘It’s alright to miss Ketterdam.’ he says. ‘You left everything behind, I understand it if you miss it. It’s been your home for so long.’

‘But this is my home now.’ you say, your voice trembling slightly. ‘Here in Os Alta, with you. I shouldn’t long to go back to Ketterdam as much as I do.’

Nikolai smiles at you, but there’s a hint of sadness in his eyes. ‘I told you a long time ago I won’t let anyone else control the choices you make in life, sweetheart. If you want to go to Ketterdam, I think you should go.’ he says.

You stare up at him, letting his words sink in. ‘But I’m your wife. You’d let me go just like that?’ you say.

‘You are indeed my wife. But I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. If you think you’re happier in Ketterdam than you are at the palace, then you should go. Go and be happy.’ he says. 

‘But I'm happy with you too.’ you say. ‘I just miss my home, that’s all.’

He smiles again. ‘Then you should go home. This is not goodbye forever, you know.’ he says. 

‘Not goodbye forever.’ you say, repeating his words. 

You stand on your toes and lean up to kiss him. Nikolai pulls you closer and you wrap your arms around his waist in response. When you pull back, he rests his forehead against yours.

‘Go.’ he says softly. ‘Go to your Ketterdam, go to your Crows. I’m sure they’d love to see you again.’

You nod and pull yourself out of his embrace. Nikolai watches you as you quickly pack a bag with some essentials. You can’t bear to look at him again as you walk past him, out of the room.

You didn’t know Nikolai followed you from a distance, to see you off. As soon as you got on a horse and left the gates, he stands at the top of the stairs that lead to the entrance of the palace. 

He watches you as you become a smaller and smaller dot on the horizon. The triumvirate, who had seen the two of you leave, joins him on the steps, wondering what Nikolai is looking at.

‘Was that Y/N? says Zoya. ‘Where is she going?’

‘Back to Ketterdam.’ says Nikolai.

Zoya turns to Nikolai. ‘You let her go?’ she says. ‘Saints, Nikolai, why did you let her go?’

Nikolai doesn’t say anything and continues to look at the horizon. Genya is studying Nikolai’s face as he looks at you in the distance. Her lips part in surprise, but her eyes are sad.

‘Because he loves her.’ says Genya.

A/N: If you want to request something, make sure to read my house rules Here’s the list of characters I write for. Everything that I have written can be found on my masterlist. Please don’t repost my work, as I spend much time and effort on it!! Thank you for reading! Much love, Marit

#HA 😌 #me writing this & knowing what's gonna happen: hehe #nikolai lantsov #shadow and bone #grishaverse #nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai lantsov fanfiction #nikolai lantsov fanfic #nikolai lantsov fanfics #nikolai lantsov fic #nikolai lantsov fics #shadow and bone fanfiction #shadow and bone fanfic #shadow and bone fanfics #shadow and bone fic #shadow and bone fics #two homes series

[sanktnikolais]

this is what love does

A/N: so here is your friendly neighbor zoyalai who rewrote that scene in the Os Kervo main hall (Rule of Wolves chapter 46). Idk man this is what I have in mind and I just wanted to put more monologue and make some drastic changes KJHASDFLKHASDF 

i think their scene in this chapter could have gone better ngl ahjsfkajsf but if you’re okay with canon, i’m absolutely glad you are. I just needed to make this bc my zoyalai heart said so HHAHAHA

as always @wafflesandkruge enabled me again and volunteered to edit this mess so thank you ily  🥺

contains some spoilers for Rule of Wolves so pls beware before reading :> 

Word count: 4169

When the doors to the hall finally closed, Zoya released a breath of frustration. She wanted a moment of total silence, where she could shut out the voices of the people chanting her name or the affirmative tones of the dukes that agreed with Nikolai in nominating her as Ravka’s new queen. A bottle of brandy would be good too, and yet it didn’t materialize out of thin air just as she wanted it to.

          She put a hand to her forehead, feeling the fatigue from the war slowly drain what was left of her strength. This was madness—everything that had happened in the past few weeks. Headache after headache, they kept coming like the barrage of Fjerdan firepower they had just encountered in the battlefield hours ago. 

          But the biggest headache of all was standing right in front of her in all his confident glory, the small grin never leaving his lips even as Zoya scowled at him. Nikolai Lantsov was a royal through and through. And despite the dirt that still smudged on his face, or the dried blood on his collar, he never lost that spark in him, no matter what he said about not wanting to claim the Lantsov bloodline. 

          How could he suddenly expect her to do this on her own terms? 

          "Are you out of your saintsforsaken mind?" Zoya hissed at the smiling king. He still was the king, and would continue to be as far as she was concerned. "I could strike you with lightning right now but I don't think I have the energy left for that."

          Nikolai's grin turned into a wince. "Ah, but I'm always in the right state of mind," he said as he approached her with rather careful steps as if he was testing the waters around her. "And I have never been more sane and sober than now, Zoya."

          The urge to summon lightning at him was still strong, but she shoved the thought down. Ravka didn't need another funeral right now, and especially not for its king. 

          "Say something spiteful." 

          Zoya furrowed her eyebrows. "What?" 

          "You're scowling again, and I think the only way to really know you're angry is when you combine your scowl with harsh words." 

          “Do you really have a death wish?" 

          The infuriating king pretended to think for a moment, his eyes narrowing curiously as he scratched the spot behind his ear. “I think we’ve had enough of staring down death today—”

          Thunder rumbled in the skies as Zoya’s anger flared, and Nikolai flinched. But Nikola, being himself, recovered quickly with a grin. She looked at him in disbelief. It was both baffling and amazing how fast this man could change into one of his masks in just a matter of a second and then he was another person entirely. 

          It was their difference—Zoya didn’t have that skill. She’d never had the capability of pretending. Where she had walls around her heart to hide the girl who once believed in fairy tales and love and other nonsense, Nikolai wore his masks like they were his second skin, and it blended with the boy who just wanted what was best for his country, until he didn’t know who he was anymore. 

          She had never shown any signs of weakness or vulnerability, and even if she did, she would still deny it until she convinced her heart it had never happened. But he was different. He was ready to wear his heart on his sleeve if he wanted to, displaying his emotions at all times. And if he didn’t get anything out of it, he would put his mask back on like nothing happened.

          Zoya hid; Nikolai pretended. If she were to look at it, pretending was better than hiding. 

          “Is it really that bad?” Nikolai asked softly. 

          Yes. 

          No.

          I don’t know.

          If she were still the same person she had been three years ago, she knew she would have accepted the offer right away. But things had changed and progressed since then, and whoever she once was, someone who wanted so much power, was long gone. 

          “We both know I’m not cut out for this, Nikolai,” she replied.

          He didn’t say anything else, and just waited. Zoya huffed in frustration.

          “You’re the diplomat, the charmer.” She gestured in the air vaguely. “Even if you’re not of the royal bloodline, there is no denying that you’ve always had the knack for this. I’m just—”

          She was just what? A general? A Grisha who broke the boundaries of the Orders and achieved the impossible? An actual living saint? 

          Zoya let out a breath. A shadow passed on Nikolai’s face, his expression darkening to some kind of disappointment as if he already knew what she was going to say. But considering everything they had been through, it was definitely safe to say he knew her no matter how good she was at hiding. 

          She still said it anyway. “I’m just no one.”

          “Don’t even go there.”

          “You know I wouldn’t say anything I don’t mean, Nikolai. I was meant to be a soldier, to train and lead armies to their victory and be with them until our very last breaths. It was always like that.” And when Nikolai looked like he was about to contradict her, Zoya beat him to it by raising a finger to silence him. “Don't. There's nothing to say. And don’t start with me by saying you were never meant for the crown, nor the throne. That may have been the case, but you are what Ravka has needed for a long time. You fought for it instead of selling it. Hurt for it, bled for it, almost dying twice just to keep it from the mud. If that’s not what a king does, then I don’t know what I should call it.”

          “A job well done?” he offered, laughing lightly when she gave him a glare that could silence the Second Army in a heartbeat. “I’m merely joking, Nazyalensky.”

          “Can you be serious for once?” Zoya shook her head, heading over to one of the benches and slumping down on it. 

          It was only then she felt the weight of today’s war come back to her, and she found herself not wanting to stand up for a moment. Maybe she would just stay here until  the madness outside passed, though she knew it would take a while. 

          She hunched forward with her eyes trained on her hands clasped together on her knees. She couldn’t bear to look at him as of the moment, and it irked her as it felt like she was hiding yet again and she was already tired of doing that. But when an enormous responsibility was suddenly presented to her, along with the ability to hold power over everything else, didn’t she have the right to hesitate or even think about it? 

          It felt like being appointed to the Grisha Triumvirate again after the war the Darkling waged that almost took Ravka down with it, and they were forced to stand up on their own feet to save the country from drowning right after fighting for their lives. It was never fair, but they braved through it. 

          But at what cost? 

          It doesn’t stop with us. It never does.

          It was what David always used to say, and Zoya found those words haunting her every night after his death, knowing all too well she could have done so much better to protect him and save Genya from her pain. If it didn’t stop with them, what difference would it make if it was her seated on the throne? 

          Ravka was finally free, even if not completely yet, but the light at the end of the tunnel they had long since walked through was already bright as any star could have been. 

          A shadow on the marbled floor caught her eyes, and she looked up just in time to see Nikolai kneel in front of her, taking her hands in his. She almost—almost—wrenched away from him, but then she realized that it was him, the boy who wore his heart on his sleeve and bared everything to her without a second thought. He was looking up at her with such a soft, understanding expression on his face that she wondered if she was seeing right. 

          She blinked, and then she felt as if she was back at the ship again, hearing his confession that took the breath out of her lungs and made her heart beat like it had never been before. 

          And for the past years of her life and the rest that would still come, Zoya was sure she would never feel as frightened as she was now. 

          You promised yourself you would speak your heart when you had the chance, didn’t you? she scolded in her mind. Only the saints knew how much she had waited for this moment between them after the war. She almost didn’t have the chance. So why was she trying to run away from it again?

          He was so, so near, and yet she was still terrified to reach for him. 

          "I can't do this, Nikolai," she said instead. 

          "I will be by your side." Always, was what hung at the end and not said aloud, but she knew he meant it. 

          Zoya felt a small smile on her lips, the urge to touch his face becoming stronger than her will to fight it. What was stopping her? Her pride? Maybe it really was that, but her damn pride had already cost her enough. 

          So she reached a hand up to his cheek, her touch gentle as the breeze that fluttered in the room when her skin met his. 

          Nikolai learned in her hand almost immediately, a content sigh coming from his lips. 

          "I would give my life for Ravka over and over again, as I know you would too," she whispered, her thumb gently brushing his cheekbone. She dropped her hand and put it on top of his. "But I don't think this is what's best for Ravka. We have fought and lived through the wars it suffered. We vowed to drag it from the mud it had fallen into until our last breaths, and now that it can finally stand up on its own, I think it's had its fill of kings and queens and wars. Ravka now needs to listen to its people."

          Zoya knew it sounded ambitious and audacious, but it could be a start, a beginning of a new age. The journey would be a tedious one, as always, but she knew it was worth the try. Ravka was always worth the try, no matter how much it took from them. 

          Silence stretched between them for a moment, and Zoya was thankful for it being a comfortable one rather than a tense pause. She searched his eyes, trying to find the stubborn glint in them as a sign that he was thinking of arguing back. But she didn't see it. 

          There was only the look he had always sent her way, the same one he had when he bared his heart to her in the airship, and she felt her breath hitch in her throat. She really ought to strangle him for making her feel this way. 

          "Spoken like a true queen, I'd say," said Nikolai with a laugh. 

          Zoya scoffed, grateful for the sudden distraction. "I remember that I didn't agree with the proposal of me being the new queen, so that means you're still the king, Your Idiocy." 

          There was a hint of an amused grin at the corner of his lips. "What can I say? When I thought of what's best for Ravka, my mind instantly thought of you." 

          "Didn’t I ask you to be serious even just for once?"

          "You speak as if I were making those words up." 

          "If you know what's best for you and Ravka, you would stop trying to change my mind because my decision would remain the same."

          Nikolai smiled ruefully. "I know." He paused, turning his attention to their joined hands. There was an unusual slump in his shoulders, something she rarely saw him have. He sighed, and then slowly pressed his forehead to her knuckles. "I thought I lost you today," he said quietly. 

             Her heart clenched at the pain in his voice, but she understood it. She almost lost him today too. "You won't be rid of me that easily, Nikolai," Zoya said. 

          He chuckled, and it sounded more in pain than in amusement. Then he drew in a shaky breath before looking back up at her. "When I saw you fall, I thought the worst and I—" He stopped with a dry laugh. "But I guess you're right, I won't be able to get rid of you that easily." 

          She felt a smile curl on her lips. "I should be the one telling you that, but I figure it can go both ways," Zoya said, and before she could make herself hide away again, she gave in and lowered her forehead to touch his. In a soft whisper, she said, "But I've never been more grateful you're still here with me." 

          They were still here, alive and breathing, and she was glad they both got to see the end of the day. When she felt herself plummeting to the ground, she thought that it was her end, and she had accepted it. Exhaustion crept in her bones, her own strength not enough to whip up a draft to cushion her fall. But there was a gust of wind—from Nadia or from Adrik—that caught her, saving her from the deadly impact. 

          And then a voice. His voice, full of worry and hurt and pain, pleading her to wake. He was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes again, and it was during that moment she allowed herself to wish that he would be the one she would wake up to every morning, and the last one she’d see when she fell asleep at night. 

          It had reminded Zoya of the time she saved the king from falling once, back when they were just soldiers fighting for their lives in the Fold, and she wondered if he had been glad to see her when he opened his eyes.

          Nikolai reached a hand up to touch her cheek, his fingers light as if she were the most important thing in the world that he was finally allowed to touch. His eyes never wavered from hers. 

          "I would still choose you, you know," he suddenly said, his voice trembling. "Even if you didn't want to do anything with me anymore. Even if you were in some place else, reassigned to another position. Even if you didn't want me." He tried to smile, but it seemed to take more effort than just not. "I'd still want you. I'd still want you with everything in me."

          Zoya already knew how he felt for her beforehand, his confession back in the ship sharpening into focus in her mind. And yet she still felt like she heard him bare his heart to her for the first time, even when he had already been doing it for years. 

          It would be so easy to tell him that she felt the same; those three words that were hanging between them for a long time begging to be set free. But still a small, terrified part of her held back, and she realized that it was the girl she had once been, the girl who believed in everything before the cruel world took that magic away from her and replaced it with fear. 

          This is what love does. It took away everything, blinded one's logic and reasoning, and even brought pain that no one should feel. Why should people hurt when all they ever wanted was to have and feel the love they deserved? 

          “I know I’ve already told you this on the ship,” Nikolai continued, the rueful smile returning to his lips. “But I wanted you to hear it again, as I almost didn’t have the chance today. No prince and no power could ever make me stop wanting you.” 

          Zoya felt her breath get knocked out from her lungs again, but her doubts and insecurities continued to cloud her, lingering in her as if they were the only ones her heart knew of. “Maybe for now you will want me.” She paused, unexpected tears stinging her eyes. She closed them instead; she didn’t think she could bear looking at him. “But soon enough you will grow to hate me. I’m too sharp. Too angry. Too spiteful.” And you deserve so much better than that. “That’s who I am, Nikolai.”

          “Zoya,” Nikolai murmured.

          She felt his breath ghost over her skin, and yet she still refused to look at him. She couldn’t. But if there was one thing she knew about Nikolai Lantsov, it was his persistence for everything. 

          “Zoya, my love. Look at me,” he said softly, and this time Zoya finally obliged him. 

          An unwanted ache clogged her throat as she met his gaze, bright and warm and open. There was nothing in them except the sincerity he always had around her. In this light, his hazel eyes looked almost golden. He had a golden spirit. Then it struck her, as she remembered the words from a memory a long time ago, that maybe she was finally looking at that boy in her aunt’s story. He had been in front of her all along.

          Nikolai grinned, his eyes brighter than she had ever seen them, and there were tears clouding them as well. “You speak as if I haven’t seen you at your worst,” he said. 

          “You will grow tired of me, Nikolai.”

          “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. A tear escaped his eye, and she felt it land on her hand. He let out another breathless laugh. “I’d want you for the rest of my life, Zoya.” 

          Something broke inside her chest, and then a tear fell from her eye as well. Her fingers intertwined with his, their hold on each other’s hands tightening as if the other would disappear if they let go. He brought her hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. A few tears slipped on her hand as he did, but he had a look of contentment on his face, like he finally felt he was home. 

          More tears fell from her eyes as she pressed her forehead back to his. For years, she had let herself believe that she wasn’t worthy of being loved, that she was only made to be a soldier, a weapon to be used by her own country. 

          This is what love does. Zoya had been wrong from the start. Because in the end, Nikolai’s love for her was what made him see past her worst self. Every flaw and every scar, he accepted them wholeheartedly. She didn’t know how he’d come to love her, someone who had avoided any signs of kindness and sincerity he gave her, thinking that it would be used against her later. 

          There was no denying the pain they had caused each other through the years, when their words were too sharp and they wounded their hearts and pride before they could even have the chance to think of it. And yet they always came back to each other, their faith in each other still there if not stronger before. 

          Love was never without pain. It would still be felt over and over again because it was real. 

          And if tearing down the walls she had built around herself and giving her heart away would make her vulnerable to hurting, then perhaps it was something she was willing to do. 

          Because Nikolai Lantsov was worth every pain.

          So Zoya took the leap, drawing him up to her and pressing her mouth to his, and everything felt like it finally clicked into place. He acted immediately, and she could almost feel his smile against her lips. After the long days of wanting, her heart was at peace for once. The Fjerdans could have come back and waged war against them again, but she didn’t care about anything but the warm press of his lips.

          When the need for air became stronger than the need for each other’s lips, Zoya pulled away and rested her forehead against his. Her eyes were still clouded with tears when she finally said, “I love you.”

          To say that Nikolai’s grin was bright would have been an understatement. In the dull colored room they were in, he seemed to be glowing. He let out another breathless laugh. “I never thought I would hear those words come from you,” he said, his eyes alight with utter bliss. “But for what it’s worth” —he wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb— “I love you too.”

          Silence fell around them and everything focused on the man in front of Zoya. Perhaps she could stay here in his arms for another while and ignore the looming responsibilities standing right outside the doors. 

          She was his, and he was hers. For now, that was all that mattered. 

          “Is there really nothing that can change your mind?” Nikolai said, breaking the comfortable silence between them, and Zoya wanted nothing more than to strangle him right now.

          “You really had to ruin the atmosphere, didn’t you?” 

          He laughed lightly. “My ruthless Zoya, I am merely joking,” he said, and then his face became serious. For a moment, a small twinge of fear clawed at her heart. “Then what do you think about being a regent? At least until we find someone to rule properly, or until we could transition the monarchy towards something else.” He wrinkled his nose. “I mean, I said I would give you a crown, and this is my last chance to make good on my words even just for a short time. Besides, Regent Nazyalensky does have a nice ring to it.”

          Zoya raised an eyebrow, the idea not occurring to her until now. She furrowed her eyebrows. “You actually suggested something reasonable,” she said, earning a pout from the king. She looked at him with mild concern then, realizing the meaning of having a regent. “Are you really abdicating the throne?” 

          “I’m not joking when I said that the crown was never meant for me, and I think my bloodline really solidified that fact. I realized I was only fighting for this country, not the throne.” He shrugged as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And if that’s really your decision, I would be with you in every step of the way. But I hope we can stabilize Ravka until we can have a solution to my....sudden resignation.” 

          “What’s your plan if ever that time comes?” Zoya knew she was asking so many questions, but she couldn’t help it. This man continued to surprise her with his declarations and she had no idea what could come next. “Play pirate again?”

          Nikolai scowled at her, and she wanted to laugh at his expression. “Privateer,” he corrected like always. Then he smiled, his eyes suddenly having a faraway look. “For once, I don’t know. But maybe I would play privateer again as I’ve missed the seas terribly.” Then he turned to her, his expression gentle. “If I ask you to come with me as my first mate then, would you agree?”

          Would she? Zoya had never known anything outside her life in Os Alta. For years, it had been a continuous battle for the freedom of the country that took everything from its people, and she had no time to think about her freedom if she ever did retire from being a soldier. 

          But she could already see glimpses of a future ahead, a quiet and easy life, without any fear of having to go back to war. And in those glimpses, she could see him. 

          Zoya huffed, making it sound as disbelieving as possible. But she already knew her answer. “I’d make a horrible first mate as I easily get seasick,” she said. 

          “Ah, but I don’t mind. As long as you’re there with me,” Nikolai said, taking her hands in his again. He pressed another kiss to her knuckles. “So what do you say, Regent Nazyalensky?”

          The future was something she had no control over, she always knew that. The only way to know what it held was to continue fighting until she reached it, and as long as she had the right person beside her, she knew she would be alright.

          They had always been a team, she and Nikolai, and they would continue to be like that for as long as they lived.

          So without another hint of doubt, Zoya intertwined her fingers with his, squeezing his hand gently. “Alright, dearest privateer,” she said. “Let’s keep this country standing upright until then.”

          And they would. Together.

#zoyalai #nikolai lantsov #zoya nazyalensky #rule of wolves #rule of wolves spoilers #row spoilers #or that scene in os kervo hall #where i changed a few things #BC WHERE IS MY HUG OR MY SOFT MOMENT BEFORE THE SAPS LEIGH #:SOB: #they just came from the war #and not once did i ever see a moment of relief #that the love of your life survived the war KLJHASFLKJHASDF #i needed this okay #and as i've said i felt a bit off abt the continuation of ravkan monarchy #but queen zoya works too so #i think the best thing they could do was to be regents for a while until they can do something abt the monarchy #or slowly transition it to a democracy #even if it's going to take a while #nik could still joke abt giving her a crown and actually do it KLJHASFKLHJAS #and i just wanted a more emotionally constipated and terrified zoya having inner turmoil abt love #;-; #and they could sail the seas after #IDK MAN THE POTENTIAL OF THIS SCENE #I JUST WANT IT TO DELIVER MORE #SO HAVE THIS MESS PLS

[wafflesandkruge]

have your way with me until you go (zoyalai)

Nikolai and Zoya's morning routines are like clockwork. She wakes him with a drop of stimulant. He makes a witty quip. Neither of them acknowledge what's between them.

So when Zoya shows up late, it's reasonable to assume that nothing else will go as planned.

@grishaverseonline mission 06: free for all

a/n: it’s literally just 2k of pining, pls take it, it’s all i have to offer. meant to be a parallel to the carriage scene at the beginning of kos but it got a bit out of hand 😔 big thanks to @storm-dog-pirate and @mareshes for helping me beta!

ao3

---

When Nikolai woke, it was less surfacing gently from the sea of sleep than being abruptly spat out onto dry land by a monster. He inhaled sharply, his mind instantly assaulted with his surroundings. He was on his bed at the Grand Palace. Chains were once again fastened around his wrists. And an unfairly lovely face was hovering above his, her dark curls brushing his bare chest.

“Zoya,” he greeted with a groan, “how kind of you to grace me with your delightful presence this fine morning. I feel healthier already.”

She barely spared him a glance as she leaned over him to unlock the shackle on his right wrist. He caught a whiff of her hair, the same strangely familiar wildflower scent as always.

“Getting a head start on the flattery, are we?” Her voice was rough, strained. He could see a near imperceptible tremor in her hands as she fitted her key into the lock. It took her multiple tries to get the stubborn thing to turn. Odd, when she’d practically perfected the technique of unchaining a king from his bed months ago. 

He shifted to get a closer look at her. Dark shadows bloomed under her eyes, her brows furrowed as she attempted to unlock the last shackle. Her hair was in sore need of brushing. Saints, had she really emerged from her rooms looking like that? Perhaps she was human like the rest of them after all.

“Late night?” he attempted. “Fun night?”

“Only you would think of fun while facing war on six fronts, my king.” She moved away as soon as the shackle sprang open as if she didn’t want to be near him for any longer than necessary.

He sat up and watched her retreat into the sitting room, rubbing at his sore wrists. Had he done something to offend her recently? Besides daring to breathe the same air as her, naturally. He pondered the question as he washed and dressed mechanically.

When he emerged from his room, he found Zoya hovering in front of a gilded mirror with a ribbon in her hands. As he watched, she attempted to pull her hair into something more manageable than its current frazzled state, but each time she’d miss a strand or the knot would become undone as soon as she dropped her hands. His eyes met hers in the mirror. The dark smudges under her eyes only seemed to make them bluer than ever. An untold secret seemed to lurk behind their depths, but she’d probably sooner jump out the window than confide in him.

“You’re a mess, Zoya.”

“Says the man who was just chained to his bed.” There wasn’t nearly enough venom in her voice to reassure him of his general’s wellbeing. He crossed the room and plucked the ribbon from her hands. She made no move to stop him.

“You know, I once had a promising future as a hairdresser,” he remarked idly as he took a strand of her hair in his hands after a moment’s hesitation. It was impossibly silky, and if he’d been wearing his gloves, he was sure it would have slipped right out of his hands. The dark scars on his fingers were hidden among the loose curls, and for just a moment, he could pretend he was just another man. But Zoya would never be just another woman to him, would she? He used his fingers to carefully comb out the worst of the tangles. 

“Is that so?” The words were a challenge, or perhaps an invitation. He could never quite tell with her.

“Girls would line up at the door when they heard I was in town just to get the newest styles done by me,” he boasted. It was true, to an extent. By “girls,” he’d meant Dominik’s two little sisters, Faina and Polina who had adored their brother’s mysterious friend. They’d forced him to arrange their hair just like the ladies at court, and because he never did anything only halfway, he’d bribed one of his mother’s servants to teach him just so he’d have something to delight them with. For a moment, he could hear Dominik’s warm laughter as his sisters eagerly showed off their pretty braids. 

Some prince you are, he’d said with a grin as the two of them tore into his mother’s sweet pastries. All you’re good for is making the ladies happy.

Not just the ladies, Nikolai had wanted to say, but Dominik had already turned to yell at his sisters for playing too close to the river.

But now Dominik was gone, and all he had left was the broken country that had failed him. And Zoya, always Zoya. 

His fingers skimmed the warm skin at her neck as he pulled back another strand of hair. Zoya was barely moving, only letting out the occasional hiss when he accidentally pulled too hard. As he plaited her hair, his eyes wandered down to the collar of her kefta. It was slung unusually low this morning, and from his vantage point, he could see the tip of one of her scars, the paler strip of skin just visible beneath the fur collar. He couldn’t help thinking about how easy it’d be to lean forward and press a kiss to the back of her neck. Would she pull away? He swallowed and averted his eyes. Saints, this had to be some game of hers, didn’t it? Sometimes he wondered if the little things she did- sending looks his way that from anyone else, would have been a reason for scandal, or letting her fingers linger on his as she handed him something- were on purpose. But he'd heard the stories of the people she’d toyed with when she was younger and crueler. She played for the sake of the game, not the prize, and if the stories were true, she had yet to lose. He was never quite sure if she was playing the same game with him, but if she was, her winning streak wasn't going to be broken. He blinked and focused on Zoya’s reflection again.

“Zoya.”

“What?”

“What’s wrong?”

As expected, she crossed her arms and scowled into the mirror. “Nothing. Hurry up so we can be on our way, or people will talk.”

“People already talk. Why do you look like you stayed out drinking with Genya and didn’t get a wink of sleep?” He pressed the issue, not sure if she would tell him anything at all. Even after three years of rebuilding a country together, there were still some lines Zoya refused to cross. 

“Maybe I did go out drinking with Genya.” Her voice was curt, clipped. He didn’t believe her for an instant.

“Without inviting me? How treasonous.” 

“You were unwanted.” 

At least her poisonous tongue was back. He supposed it was better than nothing. His braid finished, he tied it off with a neat bow. “There,” he said softly, admiring his handiwork. He let his hands linger in her hair for a moment longer before pulling them back. “Now you look a fraction more presentable.”

In the mirror, Zoya’s lips quirked upwards. “What an excellent valet you make.”

He was instantly reminded of that night in the carriage, Zoya snug in his arms as they played the role of sated lovers. She’d seen him at his worst, and yet she was still here every morning to wake him and face the country together. He supposed he ought to have returned the favor somehow, but what did he have left to give? Somehow, Zoya didn’t seem like someone who’d have use for his eternal gratitude or respect. 

“Your buttons are done wrong,” he muttered as he caught sight of her kefta in the mirror. Either she’d had a very good night, or a very bad night, but he couldn’t decide which was worse. He spun her by the shoulders and hesitated for a moment before kneeling. Vasily’s voice echoed in his head as he refastened the first of the pearl buttons. A king never kneels, brother. But his brother had never met Zoya Nazyalensky.

He glanced up at her, but her gaze was faraway, her arms crossed over her chest as she worried at her bottom lip. 

“A king’s kneeling in front of you, shouldn’t you be a bit more excited?” he quipped, somewhat desperate to get a normal reaction from her. 

She raised a brow. “I’ve had plenty of men kneel before me in the past. Why would a king be any different unless he offers me a country as well?”

He moved on to the buttons over her stomach. “If I recall correctly, I already did. You weren’t thrilled.”

She stiffened. He rose to his feet again as he finished the buttons over her chest. The pearls gleamed in a neat line down the front of her kefta, nestled in the whorls of silver embroidery. He could spend hours tracing the patterns with his eyes, and he often did during particularly trying Triumvirate meetings. He resisted the urge to trace one of the spirals with a finger. Finally, he got to the buttons at her neck.

"Do take care next time to not look like..." His voice trailed off as his eyes left the saints forsaken buttons for a moment to find Zoya's exquisite face entirely too close to his. Even exhausted, her features still spoke of regality and poise, her blue eyes bright and defiant as they stared right back at him. Nikolai's eyes tried to return to the task at hand, but they met a distraction on the way, namely, her lips. Saints, her lips. He swallowed hard and tried to force his fingers to move. 

"Like what?" she demanded. 

"Like..." 

A girl in need of kissing. 

"...a toddler who tried to dress herself," he finished weakly. Then, as if his hand had a mind of its own, it drifted upwards and swept an errant lock of Zoya’s hair back behind her ear. His palm brushed her cheek and hovered there. He could scarcely breathe as if her closeness had sucked all the air from the room.

Zoya peered up at him from under her lashes, her gaze inscrutable. Then she sighed and let her cheek rest against his palm for the briefest heartbeat. Her warmth had barely registered before she was stepping back again, her general’s mask firmly back in place as if nothing had happened. Nikolai tried not to let it sting too much as he tucked his hands into his coat pockets. 

“Anything else for me to fix? A broken shoe? A lonely heart?”

The last one was a jest, but Zoya’s lips pursed as if he’d caused a problem she’d have to fix later. “No. Let’s go. The Triumvirate has been waiting long enough.”

She turned to go, then paused halfway to the door. A foolish seed of hope took root in Nikolai’s heart, only to be trampled with her next words.

“Don’t forget your gloves.”

She swept out of the room without another backwards glance, the scent of wildflowers and thunderstorms left in her wake. 

He would play her game, he decided as he found his gloves and slipped them on. Having his heart broken by Zoya Nazyalensky was still preferable to the impossibility of staying away from her. 

#y e a r n i n g #anyways i'm still screaming in the distance about nik kneeling for her #there was like an alternate ending where it was sadder but am asked for an almost kiss so #be grateful #grishaverseonline #kos #king of scars #kos writing #shadow and bone #nikolai #zoya #zoyalai #dominik #grishaverse #leigh bardugo #my writing

[wormsmith]

and when you are blind, your eyes i shall be // triumvirate

Summary: randomly generated prompt from touch list. #28: feeling for each other in the dark. AKA the triumvirate holds hands for an entire mission.

Relationship: James T. Kirk/Spock/Leonard "Bones" McCoy

Warning: sickeningly sweet fluff

Author's Note: no beta, no rewrite, we die like men. does this have any plot or excitement? no. do they hold hands a lot? yes. so it’s good.

“...Everyone here?”

“Here, Jim.”

“Present, captain. I will attempt to reroute power to emergency reserves.”

“Blasted lights,” Leonard mumbles as he finally stumbles into another body which is too heavyset to be Spock, so it must be -

“Hey, Jim.”

“Hey, Bones,” Kirk replies, sounding mildly amused as they blindly grasp each other’s arms. He frees a hand to snap open his communicator.

“Lieutenant, are you hearing us?”

“Yes, captain, loud and clear, “ Uhura’s pleasant voice comes through the communicator.

“Good,” Kirk replies. “Emergency reserves are out. We’ll restore power to the ship and see what we can find. Kirk out.”

The communicator snaps shut and Kirk gently squishes Bones’ arm just to make sure he’s still there. He receives a gentle squish in return.

“Spock?”

“Over here, captain,” Spock says, his voice now slightly smaller, more distant from his new location across the darkened bridge. Jim starts to make his way over, gently leading Bones behind him, who manages only to stumble once, swearing as he does so.

“What have we got, Spock?” Jim says, partially for a report and partially so they have a sound to follow.

“Drained energy reserves, captain. We’ll need to transport power cells to the engine room in order to restore the lights and all other systems aside from life support.”

“Sounds like we’re in for a little lights-out adventure, gentlemen,” Kirk says, his voice still tinted with amusement.

“It’s not a carnival game, Jim,” Leonard scolds.

“Of course not, Bones.“ Jim says, chuckling. “Where are you, Spock?”

“I am still here, captain. I have not-” Spock is interrupted as Jim’s hand finds his stomach. “-moved.”

“Oh! There you are!” Kirk says, pleased as he finds his way to Spock’s hand at the same time Spock finds his.

“As I said, captain,” Spock replies his voice a distinct mix of disdain and amusement.

“Not all of us have cat’s eyes, Spock,” Bones butts in, reaching his own hand out until he pats Spock’s chest, feeling his way to grabbing his hand, too. Leonard expects to hear more disdain from Spock’s voice, but instead, Spock joins their hands and replies calmly as ever.

“Even a Vulcan would need some semblance of refracted light to see, doctor. As we are in a starship with no windows and no artificial light, even I am rendered blind. However, both the Captain and I are familiar enough with the blueprints of the ship to reach the Engineering Room and disable shields, allowing transport of both ourselves and the power cells.”

“I think he likes us, Jim.”

“I find myself concerned with your comprehension skills, doctor. You seem to fail to acknowledge anything I say.’

“Try something interesting for once. Maybe admit you like holding my hand, Spock,”

“You may dream to your heart’s content, doctor.”

“Boys, boys,” Jim interrupts, a smile on his face. “We’ve got a job to do. The turbo-lift should be out, so let’s find a way down the emergency hatch without breaking something, shall we?”

“I think you’re the one we need to worry about, Jim. I counted eight shirts of yours that I had to throw away last week. Sometimes I think we oughta put a tracker on you.”

“You are injured an average of 1.87 times more often than the rest of the crew.”

“Now, now, let’s not team up on the captain,” Jim says. “Spock, it should be right about here, give me a boost?”

“Of course, captain.”

The Vulcan kneels down, letting go of McCoy in order to assist Kirk onto his shoulders while the doctor holds onto Jim’s waist, ensuring he doesn’t fall.

“Here we go,” Jim says, exhaling a breath as he opens the hatch. He grabs the first rung and hefts himself up.

“Careful, Jim,” Spock says as he feels the weight leave him.

“Wouldn’t want you to rip this shirt, too,” Leonard adds.

Jim laughs breathily as he steps to the side of the hatch and onto the light platform edge so he can lean down to help the others.

“I suppose I should be glad you two aren’t at each other’s throats, hm?”

“You love it when we’re at each other’s throats, Jim.”

“Doctor, please,” Spock says, judgment clear in his voice. Bones merely smirks in the darkness.

“Have I ever told you your voice could turn a sinner to the side of the angels, Mr. Spock?”

“You have not, though I certainly hope we will find some sort of light.”

“My hand, gentlemen, waving in the air, waiting for someone to hold it,” Kirk interrupts.

“Yes, captain.” Spock replies as he takes Leonard by the waist and guides him to step onto his own shoulders, assisting him upward. Leonard wildly feels around above him until he catches Kirk’s hand and hefts himself into the hatch. Lastly, Kirk and Leonard find Spock and together they lift the Vulcan into the hatch.

“There’s that Vulcan weight again, “ Bones groans, and Spock factually replies, “On stardate 23975.6, you informed both myself and the captain that my weight was, and I quote, ‘pleasant to cuddle, and warm too,’”

“Get your ass up the ladder,” Bones grumbles, and neither Jim nor Spock can keep themselves from smiling ever so slightly.

“Our mission, gentlemen,” Kirk says, because they do, in fact, have a mission to complete.

“Yes, Jim. Sorry. You go on, I’ll take the rear.”

“Thank you, Bones.”

Jim huffs as he hefts himself up the ladder and begins to follow Spock. Bones shortly follows behind Jim. A few minutes pass of silence, broken by the occasional sounds of a muttered curse from Doctor McCoy, or a huff from Jim as they stumble over their footing. Spock either never stumbles or merely never vocalizes the mistake. Soon, the three clamber out of the hatch and into the halls of the ship on the same level as Engineering, each wordlessly grasping each other’s hands as they exit one by one.

“Everyone still here? Uninjured?” Jim says, out of habit more than anything else. Spock replies “Affirmative,” and Bones nods before he realizes Jim cannot see him and echoes Spock with a “Sure, Jim.”

Jim nods and takes the lead as they head towards Engineering with Spock in the middle and Bones once more in the rear.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Bones says, with a sudden need to fill the silence.

“Are you afraid of the dark, doctor?”

“No! It’s just - are you seriously telling me a ship this empty doesn’t feel a little off to you?”

“On the contrary. I find liminal spaces quite calming.”

McCoy shudders for melodramatic reasons, and Spock gently squeezes his hand.

“I assure you, you are safe with me, Leonard.”

“Sure, Spock,” Leonard mumbles, too caught off guard by Spock expressing his affection to say anything clever.

“We’re almost there. Look,” Kirk interrupts, drawing the attention of the three men ahead of them.

The darkness breaks to show a large window into the outer area of the ship, the stars shining through the empty space in little glittering specks of white, blue, and smatterings of other colors. Their eyes are naturally drawn to the view of the Enterprise, hovering above their current location, the light refracting off of her hull in a dazzling display.

“The Engineering room should be just down the hall,” Spock says.

Kirk clicks his communicator open.

“Uhura.”

“Here, captain.”

“We’re almost to our destination. Tell Scotty to prepare a few spare power cells so we can get the freighter up and running again.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Kirk out.”

“I still don’t see what the Federation is doing sending their best to investigate empty old ore freighters,” Bones complains, staring out the window.

“I thought you wanted a break, Bones.”

“I want a lot of things, Jim,” Leonard says with a sigh.

The three men are silent for a few moments, taking in the view, each with their own thoughts and opinions on its beauty, and each with their hands still entwined.

Jim is the first to turn his gaze away, to take advantage of his current ability to see his lovers with the starlight dancing across each of their faces. Leonard turns his head as though he sensed Jim’s gaze and smiles. Jim leans across to chastely kiss that smile off his face, succeeding only in allowing a bright grin to grow in its stead.

Not to leave Spock abandoned, Jim tilts his head up to gaze at Spock. Spock glances down to meet his gaze, offering a gentle caress of his thumb over their entwined hands. Jim smiles and leans in to kiss Spock who merely hums a low note in response, gently brushing an ozhesta over Jim’s knuckles, tightening his hand in Leonard’s. Jim pulls away to look back outside.

The triumvirate pauses to offer one last look at the stars.

“. . . We’re wasting starlight, gentlemen,” Jim says after the silence is full enough that he thinks he will be able to remember this moment for as long as he likes. “Let’s get over to Engineering, Scotty’s waiting.”

“Of course, Jim,” Spock replies, his voice low and quiet.

“Lead the way, darlin’.” Bones says with the same timbre, as though just their voices might shatter the beauty of the moment.

Kirk smiles and gently tugs Spock and McCoy behind him, leading them once more into the dark.

#smith writes #star trek #star trek tos #tos #kirk #bones #spock #mcspirk #spirk #spones #mckirk

[calliecat93]

More Empath meta cause GDI I love this episode and it is SOOO much fun to analyze~!

McCoy sacrificing himself is of course the most famous moment, and for good reason. It is, imo, the scene that embodies everything that Leonard McCoy is and always will be. But I don’t see a lot of people talk about after, when it’s just Kirk, Spock, and Gem left. Can you imagine what it had to be like for Kirk and Spock? The cold, awful realization when they see Bones’ medical equipment laying there, but no sign of the man himself?

From how it sounded to me, Spock woke up before Jim did. Which means that when Kirk came to and saw Bones gone, Spock had to confirm that yes, McCoy went with the Vians. It had to be God awful for Kirk when that hit him. Hell you can hear it in his voice when he asks Spock “Why did you let him do it?”. While he’s looking downward He sounds like he just came back down from the realization setting in. Kirk had already had his turn being tortured. He knows EXACTLY what’s in store for Bones and that it’s going to be worst. His best friend, confidant, and emotional stability is going to die and unless Spock gets the Vian device working, he can’t do anything about it. He always finds a way out of everything. He doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario. But he got forced into one by the Vians. He was going to have to send one of his best friends, one of his crewmen, to their death. It’s like in The Immunity Syndrome, except far more cruel.

Worst, Bones took that option away from him. He got spared from the choice, but it didn’t change the fact that Bones is gone and Jim wasn’t allowed to do so much as argue back. So not only did he fail to protect his best friend, he failed to protect one of his crewmen that he’s responsible for. For a Starfleet Captain, this kind of situation would be utterly soul crushing. Fortunately Kirk doesn’t give up as he tries to figure out what the Vians exact intentions are, Gem’s place in it, and he bounces back instantly once Spock DOES get the device operating and confirms that they can teleport to McCoy. It presents the solution that Kirk desperately needed and has him giving the most Kirk-like response that he could ever give. Still in that moment, he must have felt far worst than any of the physical paint hat the Vians out him through. He couldn’t protect Bones (or Spock for that matter). He couldn’t think of a third option. He was utterly powerless.

Then there’s Spock... oh God Spock.

Spock obviously already knew what was going to happen the second he felt that sting in his back. He looks almost betrayed, calling it unethical. Not even illogical, unethical. When he’s up, he’s already back to work on the device though he DOES confirm that he got taken out the same way Kirk did: the good doctor’s hypo. I sensed what almost felt like exasperation. I can only imagine what was going through his mind. He may keep his emotions controlled, but whether he likes it or not he still feels them. The main thing that comes to mind is at a loss on how he allowed McCoy to sneak up on him to begin with. How he hadn’t even considered that a possibility when he’s fully aware of the doctor’s highly illogical nature. Especially when he himself had accused McCoy of having a Martyr Complex again in The Immunity Syndrome. The fact that he witnessed McCoy already do it to Jim should have added to the likelihood. He should have known better, but instead here they are.

I doubt it’s because Spock just forgot any of that. He was both trying to get the device as functional as he could before handing himself over and he was resigning himself to death. Okay, insanity but that’s still him losing himself. You could tell with the way he looked at Jim, this was going to be the final time he ever saw him. You could tell what he was feeling when Gem touched him and just smiled brightly. How much he cares about his captain, and McCoy as well. Simply put, he was more focused on making sure that those two got out alive that the thought that McCoy would take his place simply didn’t occur to him. Did he expect protest? Of course, it briefly happened in the initial talk. But Spock probably assumed that as usual McCoy would gripe and argue with him over it, but that would be the extent of it. Even if McCoy stayed stubborn over it and tried to interfere, Spock would be able to handle it just like, again, in The Immunity Syndrome. He was wrong. His logic was clouded, and thus he was unprepared to stop him.

Then there’s everything when they do reach McCoy. I don’t need to go into depth with this one. Everything that everyone’s feelign is clear as crystal.

Jim’s distressed for obvious reasons, even at first refusing to accept that McCoy’s dying until McCoy himself confirms it. Spock is barely holding back his clear distress snd concern, which... well, we all know the scene:

“You’ve got a.... good bedside manner, Spock.”

And Spock’s reaction.

That expression says it all.

I already posted about how much McCoy cares about these two. So much so that he sacrificed himself with no regard to himself. Not even for a second. He’d made up his mind and there was no room for anything else after. But I also pointed out how due to his disregard for himself, he didn’t take into account how said two people would react. He’d have still done it even fi he had, but still. He’s The Heart to Kirk’s Soul and Spock’s Mind. If so much as one part is lost, the other two may still be able to exist, but they won’t ever be whole again. He’s the one constantly helping Jim through any mental/emotional hangups that are troubling him. He’s the one constantly challenging Spock on his reliance on logic and ignoring his emotions/human half. He’s not always in the right when he does so, but it’s still a way to point out to Spock that that side of him exists and can’t be ignored. McCoy cares so much, sometimes maybe too much... and maybe at times it causes him to forgot how much that they care for him. And had it been them laying there dying even if beyond hope, he’d have fought to save them to the bitter end.

And nothing was going to stop neither Jim nor Spock from doing the same for him.

Or long story short: I just love the Triumvirate a lot and how much they love each other XD

(Image Credit: TrekCore)

#star trek tos #tos #mcspirk #can be viewed as mcspirk if you wish #the triumvirate

[attollogame]

19. for the angst drabble list with Dreamwalker and MC?

It’s a mind-numbing feeling, like you’re caught on a merry-go-round where the battery never ceases. You can see the exit, but then your horse rises once again, and before you know it, your opportunity has escaped. 

You don’t know what day it is anymore. 

The lights never turn off in the hideout or in your room. Time is passing, but you’re caught in the same place, stagnant in life. 

That’s how it feels as you walk these halls. Many would say this is an extension of his generosity, that he’s being charitable to you, given your previous work with the Triumvirate. You didn’t need the other members' murmurings to tell you the tales of what happened to others in your position; the stained apron in Malachi’s medical room, which you saw while being examined, was enough to let you know. 

If this is what they call his generosity, then you’re afraid to see anything less. 

He calls on you, on occasion. The conversations are surprisingly mundane—although you credit your previous relationship for that—but each time he calls on you, you can’t shake the feeling that it’ll be the last. Entering his office is like taking a gamble: if the slots come out wrong, it could cost you everything. 

Which takes you to now. 

You’re being led down a hall by a pair of unfamiliar hands, which keep a firm grip on your shoulders right up until they force you to stop. There’s a shuffling noise, but still no speech. Even as you’re pushed into a room and a door closes behind you, there isn’t a word spoken. 

So you stand in the silence. You can hear your breath, but you can also hear his, some distance away. The silence is soon broken by the sound of movement as the blindfold is pulled from your eyes, finally permitting you to see the room you’re in. 

It’s his office, just like you expected. It’s dark, as he often keeps it, but the red lights of the Under City flood into the room, bathing it in a sinister glow. If you stare out the window long enough you can map the exact point where his district ends and the next one begins. The room itself, though, is what you’d expect from him. The walls remain bare of any personal belongings, the shelves contain rows of books on financial matters, and his desk is meticulously clean, without even a stain marring its surface. It’s the most oppressive place you’ve ever stood in. 

You clear your throat, feeling emboldened, and give him a once over. “Was there something you needed?” 

He tilts his head, as if perplexed by your question, and his golden eyes slowly drink in your features. He’s as pristine as the room, perfectly poised at the edge of his desk with not a wrinkle in his suit. He’s wearing his mask today, though, which is a change. The black edges seem to blend in with the shadows around him, only emphasizing the way his eyes glimmer in the dark. He only wears it when he intends to go out. 

You’re reluctant to think what for.

“How are you finding your stay so far?” His voice is soft, but you can hear the authoritarian tone it carries, as it always does. “I hope none of the other members have been causing you issues. They aren’t quite used to having guests in the halls, after all.” 

That’s an understatement. The first night you were in the company of the Ovo 9, it took all of the other 7 members to keep Sysba from tearing your throat out. Dreamwalker didn’t even raise a hand to assist, instead choosing to watch with his detached stare. It was Voltaic who eventually managed to drag Sysba away.

You haven’t forgotten that. 

“They’re,” you pause, taking a moment to find the right words, “As one would expect.” 

You leave the ‘from a terrorist group’ out, sure that such a comment would offend him. He nods like he was expecting this before leaning back against his desk. For some reason, this creation of further space feels almost desolate to you. Dreamwalker was the only one you knew before you were taken by Ovo—under his orders, might you add. You loathe him for dragging you from your home, but you also cling to these nightly meetings as some form of salvation from your own isolation. 

You hate it. 

“I’m glad to hear that. Try your best to be accomodating to them, but,” he pauses, tapping his fingers on the edge of his desk, “Try not to act too friendly. You don’t belong here, especially not as a guest. It would be in your best interest to remember that. I’d hate for any of the other members to get too, personal, with you.” 

His words dig under your skin, and you clench your jaw in response. Of course you don’t belong here—you were kidnapped, you were forced as a pawn to draw the Triumvirate out—all because you let the honeyed words of the man in front of you sink into your mind. The pent up frustration which has propagated in the hours you’ve spent sitting on a bed staring at a wall grows, and grows, until finally it overwhelms you and you feel your hands clench to fists. 

“I don’t belong here, I don’t belong there, I don’t belong in this city,” you hiss, “Which is why I’ve been trying to get out this entire time! My sibling belongs in my life, my parents, my home. Pariah, Vasilisa, you, you all don’t belong! We shouldn’t have met, we shouldn’t have done what we’ve done. This was a mistake right from the beginning and now you’re just letting it fester.”

A silence fills the air after your words. Dreamwalker continues to watch you, his stare revealing nothing about how he feels regarding your words, before his gaze goes to something just past your shoulder. He jerks his chin, and you feel the blindfold removed moments prior slide back over your face. You stiffen, and before you can react, a pair of cold hands are cupping your face. 

“Try to get some rest tonight,” he sighs, his thumbs running along your cheeks. “Tomorrow, maybe you can visit the gardens. There’s not much life in the Under City but...there, it’s the closest thing to your world I can give you.” 

You feel his lips press against your forehead for a moment before he completely withdraws, leaving you feeling colder than before. A pair of hands grab your shoulders and you’re pulled from the room.

A bitter taste remains in your mouth as you’re led away. Even in the same room, he’s thousands of yards away. All you can do now, is let him go.

#char:dreamwalker #ty!! #Anonymous

[nazyalenskyism]

Moonlight

Summary: Another night, just the same, but Nikolai isn't holding back anymore. A/N: Another Zoyalai fic, who could've imagined? I hope you like it, comments are always super appreciated and my inbox is open if you ever want to send prompts or talk! <3 The rest of the fic is under the cut!       Ao3: Moonlight         It had been a week since the monster had emerged again, leaving the Triumvirate to chase him across the countryside yet again, only this time something had been different. Ever since the fold, Nikolai had been able to control the demon, and they had worked together towards a common cause, but every night since they’d won the war-- since their enemies had been defeated and engagements broken off, the monster had been rearing its head, as if it wanted something Nikolai didn’t have. And so, a week ago, his demon had broken free, and Nikolai had stood by, unable to stop it until it had nearly been too late. He had almost caused irreversible harm to her. To Zoya. So here he was, pushing open the door to her chambers, something he would never have thought to do before this madness had happened. But it had been a week and he hadn't seen a trace of her in that time, and he was the king. A king who was done pining, done yearning, and who was here to try fix the rift that had overtaken the most important relationship in his life.

        “Zoya, I’m…”

        “I know.” He found her leaning over the terrace railing, back to him, the wind pulling back her silky hair to reveal her arm, bandaged from her collar to her wrist, a stark contrast against her silver netted nightgown.

        “I should have said something…”

        “Said what, Nikolai? We both know how you are with words, what could you have possibly said to make this any better?” her voice was as stiff as her posture, a telltale sign that she wasn’t okay.

        “Does it hurt?” he asked quietly, taking a step towards her. He wanted more than anything to reach out and push her hair back, to see her face and what she was feeling, to know how to fix this. But that was the problem, he always had hope that he could fix anything, but he didn’t know if he was capable of this— of bridging this gap between them. Guilt had been gnawing at him from the inside out for a while now, and yet somehow, the man of many words, Nikolai Lantsov, had been at a loss. This was the first time he’d brought up the incident since then. He didn't try to apologize, the last time he'd tried that, she'd nearly killed him, and so instead he let go of whatever inhibitions he had left.

        “No.”

        He inched closer, “then why do you still have it bandaged?” he whispered.

        “Just in case…” she breathed, her face still determinedly turned towards the horizon.

        “Just in case…” Nikolai exhaled, slowly trailing his finger up her arm from her wrist, all the way across her collar, dancing up her neck to her opposite cheek, gently pushing her chin towards him.

        She didn’t look up as he stepped even closer, but she didn’t turn her head away either. “Just in case.”

        “Just in case of what?” His lips hovered by her ear, and he shivered when she tilted her head, his lips barely brushing over the crescent of her cheek.

        Her eyelashes fluttered, ‘what was he doing to her?’ “Your highness.”

        As if he sensed what was about to happen, he pulled his head back, “yes?”

        “Leave,” she said, with lethal softness. It was the only way she could push the words out, the only way she could give herself a moment to breathe was if he left right now.

        “Zoya--”

        She closed her eyes, “leave, Nikolai. Now.” Cold air washed over her as Nikolai drew back, the sensation of his fingers trailing across her skin lingering for a second longer than he did, Nikolai taking the last bits of warmth away with him.

        Zoya heard her door close gently, and she knew was alone on the balcony. She bent backwards over the railing as a clap of thunder echoed through the night sky, noticing how the distant lightning almost electrified her bones as usual, but not today. The rain began to fall, washing away the tears gathered in her eyes. Feeling chilled to the bone, she took a heaving breath as she realized that she was alone again.

        She didn’t know how long she spent outside, she was so tired, not wanting to sleep but wanting a break. She wondered what it would be like, if she had given in, if she’d let herself and Nikolai be more brave. Zoya was on her knees now, her body too tired to stand. All she ever wanted to say when Nikolai left a room was, ‘ come back,’ but no amount of silent screaming would ever let her be heard by ears other than her own. She would live hundreds of lifetimes, but she didn’t think that she would ever feel this way again. Every breath in his presence felt like agony lately, but she didn’t want anything else. She wanted to spend her mornings arguing over herring, afternoons in meetings and teaching her students, evenings in front of the fire, writing correspondence and sharing her stories, finally hearing his. But he belonged to someone else, even if that person wasn’t known yet, one day Nikolai would be married to her and do all those things with someone who wasn’t Zoya. And she would have to accept that.

        The sinuous thoughts winding their way through her mind, reminding her of all that she could never have were interrupted just as abruptly as they had begun. A sudden warmth engulfed her, and she realized a soft blanket was being draped over her shoulders as she ran her fingers ran over the king’s emblem lining the edges. “I thought I told you to leave,” she said hoarsely, eyes flicking up to Nikolai, while the king settled down next to her, arms wrapped around his knees.

        “And I did.”

        “Yet here you are again,” she ground out.

        “Yet here I am again,” he replied. 'Why did he have to come back?' It was always harder to pull away when he came back. As if the Saints were determined to prove her point, Nikolai turned towards her, moonlight kissing the lines of his face, and Zoya longed to follow the outlines with her fingers, the hollow of his cheek, curve of his neck. She chided herself, those weren’t the thoughts of someone who was trying to create distance. But he made everything so hard, she’d tried to hate him, she’d tried to leave, she’d tried everything she could think of to prevent the inevitable disaster from happening, but tonight, she was too tired. She wanted to know, just once, what it would be like if she didn’t have to fight to keep each of her walls standing, wondered if it would give her peace.

        Zoya waited for a split second before she made up her mind. Before she could talk herself out of it, she shuffled over, until she bumped into Nikolai. He was quiet for a moment, then, so softly that she almost missed it, he spoke. “Stop shuffling around, Nazyalensky, otherwise the blanket is pointless.”

        She scoffed, “you’re pointless.”

        “Not your best,” he hummed. Nikolai lifted his hand, tugging the blanket securely into place under her chin, his fingers lingering for just a second too long. ‘To hell with it,’ Zoya thought, and she leaned into him, her head resting on his shoulder, his arm curling around her almost instinctively.

        He paused again, “so, Nazyalensky...” he said, taking her hand in his.

        “Shut up.”

        “Make me,” he taunted, raising their intertwined hands and pressing his lips to her fingers.

        “Don’t think that I won’t,” she warned.

        Nikolai raised an eyebrow, “is that so?”

        Zoya surged up, pressing a quick kiss to his lips before resting her head back on his shoulder, imaging the dumbfounded look on his face.

        “That took you long enough,” he muttered.

        “Not long enough.”

        Nikolai let out a laugh, pulling her closer, “how long are we planning on staying out here?”

        “Until I feel like going inside.”

        “When will that be?”

        “Whenever you learn to shut up.”

        “If that’s the case, I think we’ll be out here forever.”

        “Shut up, your highness.”

        “I quite liked it when you made me stop talking the first time. Perhaps you should do that again.”

        Zoya rolled her eyes at him, as she tried to hide the amused smile curling at her lips. "I don't think I will." But for all her talk, in the end, she did.

#zoyalai #zoya nazyalensky #nikolai lantsov #nikolai x zoya #kos #tgt

[jasonsscar]

The Ingenuine-ness of The Trials of Apollo - an Essay

As someone who has been following every Percy Jackson release since 2012 when Mark of Athena was released, I almost cannot believe it has come to an end. After fifteen books with five books across three series, it has come to an end with Rick Riordan closing the world as we know it (while leaving room for a possible stand alone novel or two in the future). Although I have had my qualms with the Heroes of Olympus story, I was willing to give the Trials of Apollo a chance to redeem itself and allow myself to continue this journey one last time. Upon reading the Tower of Nero, I felt as if the journey did not fully come to a close, due to many factors but the main factor being how Rick Riordan has chosen to not write a story he was passionate about but because he would have rather wrote a story he was hoping to make money off of.

Frankly putting it, Trials of Apollo felt like a rip-off of what Riordan wanted to be Percy Jackson and the Olympians 2.0, but reminding the audience that it was 2.0 constantly. The cameos just so happened to be the only thing that his audience seemed to ever be looking forward to every book and Riordan knew this. Plenty of interviews that he did as each book got released, Rick Riordan has always had a point of bringing up who was going to be making an appearance in each book. The Hidden Oracle was Percy Jackson and the rest of Camp Half-Blood. The Dark Prophecy had the appearance of Leo Valdez and Calypso. The Burning Maze had the addition of Grover Underwood (who the audience hasn’t seen since The Last Olympian), Jason Grace and Piper McLean. The Tyrant’s Tomb had Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arrelano, the Hunters of Artemis and the rest of Camp Jupiter. The Tower of Nero had the appearance of all of the characters in one way or another. Overall, there were very few characters who were new to the series. Even Apollo, who is considered a “fan-favorite” god among the fans is not an original character to this series, having been introduced in Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Titan’s Curse. Nothing felt new and fresh and it is clear that Riordan is clinging onto these old faces that have enraptured his audience in the past to keep them holding onto this new series.

Although the characters were not the only problems that lead to the Trials of Apollo being as unpassionate as it feels. The plot overall was rather predictable from the beginning, hinting to the audience where it was going to lead to by the time the audience arrived at the Tower of Nero, the final book. Though, a fair argument could be set up that a larger scheme was at play within this series. The Hidden Oracle, the first book within the series, sets up that a company by the name of Triumvirate Holdings is trying to take control of all the oracles. Though, upon learning this information, the audience also learns about some information that is linked to the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books from none other than Rachel Elizabeth Dare herself: “... during the Titan War, Luke Castellan mentioned he had backers in the mortal world? They had enough money to buy a cruise ship, helicopters, weapons. They even hired mortal mercenaries… That cruise ship, the Princess Andromeda, was property of Triumvirate Holdings” (The Hidden Oracle 197-198). Just reading this scene alone could get long time readers to believe that something more was coming. The ending to the series was really coming, this could almost be the ending to wars in general, no more battles or even the ideas of quests because they could no longer be funded by this company. Sadly, that was not what happened, rather the plot becomes dry. It follows a direct sequence of events not getting as complicated as it had been in the Heroes of Olympus series (although, Riordan has since learned the Heroes of Olympus was definitely out of his comfort level as an author). 

This of course leads to how the Trials of Apollo as a whole ended. In the Tower of Nero the antagonists, Emperor Nero and Python, have been defeated. After conquering the many trials and the major quests he has been sent cross country to do, Apollo has finally returned to his rightful throne on Olympus, though, feeling out of place after what he had endured in the last six months. With the series having ended and Apollo having learned some valuable lessons during his time as a mortal, a lot feels unanswered. After the ending of the Last Olympian where Percy Jackson asked the gods to listen to their children and maybe take responsibility for some of their actions, they did not change. In the Heroes of Olympus, the gods were asked again to do this, take some responsibility, praise their children yet nothing happened. In the Trials of Apollo, Apollo himself comments on this when he says: “I suppose I could have raged at him and called him bad names… But it would not have changed him. It would not have made anything different between us. You cannot change a tyrant by trying to out-ugly him” (The Tower of Nero 377). This pegs the question, why only change one god’s perspective of mortal lives? The gods still have their issues, everything could have been resolved but was not. The book ends with the possibility of a stand-alone novel with Nico di Angelo and Will Solace after receiving news about a new prophecy for the two of them. Riordan will not close this series and the problems that could be fixed because he knows that it closes off all possibilities for him to continue and make more profit off of it.

Overall, while the Percy Jackson Chronicles as a whole is a rather fun read, I cannot help to be disappointed with the outcome of where the series stands as a whole. It has ended but it never really feels as if Riordan wants it to end. Some can argue that it is because some worlds never end. There is so much to discover but if that is the case, where is the close off then? Where is the satisfaction to the readers who have dedicated so much time and energy for this series? At some point, fans will grow tired and not be as passionate as they once were, because they will no longer feel that same passion in the words written. Instead they will begin to sense how the author is simply writing this all as a gamble for himself and to raise the already large sum amount of money he makes for the books he has written and sold.

Works Cited

Riordan, Rick. The Hidden Oracle. Disney-Hyperion, 2017.

Riordan, Rick. The Tower of Nero. Disney-Hyperion, 2020.

#this started as a joke #then four pages and 1k words later here i was #anyway idk have fun with this??? #its not that fun of read sorry #also nooot my best work the longer i look at it #lmfao anyway #pjo #hoo #toa #ton #ton spoilers #tower of nero #tower of nero spoilers #percy jackson #rick riordan #kari writes #kinda #i know i didnt follow the complete mla format but i kinda needed it to be accessible for tumblr #sorry bout that rip

[kinetic-elaboration]

April 3: 2x13 Obsession

Okay, trying this again! My live-blog thoughts from watching Obsession last night. I didn’t remember this ep very well, and I was a little uncertain about it going in. But ultimately I think it was a really solid Kirk episode and a really solid triumvirate episode.

How many times as hard as rock is this mineral you’re looking for? Let’s be precise. (Aka how Spock flirts.)

I’m really into the sets and special effects today. This big rock that is obviously Styrofoam. The ominous cloud of smoke.

Set phasers to disrupter-b? I feel like he just made that up.

Oh no, three red shirts set out on their own! I feel like this one is pretty smart, though.

Leslie!!! RIP my favorite extra.

“Something that can’t possibly exist… but does anyway.” That’s it, that’s the show.

Well Kirk’s obsession is obvious right away. That’s good. We’re getting right to the point.

They have to meet up with another ship in order to transport perishable vaccines!! I know from first-hand experience that that is very important! Get it together Kirk. Admitting straight out, “I’m okay with some other people dying so I can further investigate the monster” is not a good look on him.

Also I feel like TOS often confuses “cure” and “vaccine” (as in Miri) but even if these are actually vaccines, they could still save lives urgently!

McCoy’s autopsy report: uh, just look at their faces??

The Yorktown, the Farragut… someone on the AOS team loved this episode apparently. (I remembered that the Farragut was Kirk’s first assignment but I did not remember the Yorktown.)

Interesting that the creature smells of honey because “rotting honey” was the smell that indicated the presence of Area X in the Southern Reach.

Some gratuitous touching.

When Garrovick Jr. first showed up, the shot was so ominous and dramatic that I legitimately thought that the creature was a shape-shifter and that was him lol.

Is this another episode where Kirk sees himself in a promising young man and then proceeds to judge him incredibly harshly as a way of judging his own past self? I think it might be!

Garrovick looks like he’s sitting in front of a green screen during this interrogation. Honestly, the colors in this episode are really going off in general! I can see how this would be fun to watch on a new color tv.

“Go to your room! You’re grounded!”

“Put it in your report, Spock!” I really wish we’d seen AOS Kirk do that. Like, fighting with reports and regulations is one of my favorite parts of TOS but we only saw AOS Spock use that as a weapon and it was made to show what a stick in the mud he was but like… they all do it! And AOS Kirk should have too.

And now a scene where Spock and McCoy gossip about Spock’s boyfriend.

I honestly love McCoy and Spock scenes. They have such a great rapport… the respect is not even grudging, it’s clearly there, but they make it more palatable to themselves by adding in some barbs and little digs at each other. But it’s still McCoy that Spock goes to when he needs advice or even, as he says here, just someone to bounce an idea off of, and McCoy is there to listen to him.

Oh, Spock definitely understands obsession.

Kirk’s quarters are looking very purple today.

Mccoy is trying to wax poetic and Kirk just wants him to get to the point.

Time to lie down in an Emo Fashion again.

Not to be nitpicky, but if the creature killed 200 people on the Farragut, and that was half the crew… wouldn’t the Farragut be a lot bigger than the Enterprise? I don’t think that’s right. Also, not to be even more nitpicky, but how did they finally get away from it? Did it get on their ship? If it killed all the people on the surface, could they not have just… stopped hanging out on the surface?

Anyway. McCoy is such a good best friend.

Garrovick was Kirk’s Pike.

Oh no, bringing in the big guns: the boyfriend. A blue shirt conspiracy.

Spock sounds like he’s in one of those HR training videos. Like, he’s attempting to sound conversational while still blatantly quoting from the Starfleet Handbook.

“Why are we delayin’ here?” Heavy Southern drawl.

They really are ganging up on him.

Intuition is a command prerogative.

I love how Bones says “We’re not ganging up on you” after a long scene where they gang up on him.

Oh no, the creature’s on the move! Just straight up floating through space. Cool cool cool.

Kirk’s so distracted by the creature that he’s not even looking at Spock’s ass.

Another bad day for Scotty.

I like Chapel but honestly, imagine Rand in this scene with Garrovick… I miss her.

Garrovick, what an idiot. Throwing shit and hitting switches across the room.

I legit don’t understand how the creature moves in space. Or what this has to do with gravity… which doesn’t exist in space.

Monster hunt, monster hunt!

Spock is agreeing with Kirk now, about the creature’s intelligence.

Whatever is going on with the vents in this ship, it seems like maybe they’re not the most well made.

“Let’s just nuke it.” That’s always a good idea.

Spock is trying so hard to make Kirk feel better. Even calling him “Jim”—which he used to do almost every episode and now rarely does anymore.

Lol, now he’s off to try the exact same thing with Garrovick. “If Jim won’t let me comfort him, perhaps this other irrational human will.”

“Garrovick, let me explain your own thoughts and feelings to you. I’m an expert on humans, you know. I’m around them all the time.”

“I know you want to be emo, but could you please just listen to me??” The absolute transparency with which he’s trying to be helpful.

Kindness actually isn’t an emotion… it’s a choice. Spock really will call anything a human emotion in order to avoid having to deal with it.

I'm sorry but he SNAPS THE KNOB OFF, goes "eh," throws it away, and then tries to stop the gas coming through the vent with his HANDS? How did Sarek raise this boy?

Garrovick is so Dramatic. A true Kirk protégé.

The creature tried to eat Spock and Spock didn’t taste so good.

"I'm asking for your military appraisal of the techniques used against the creature." Professor Kirk coming out.

Poor creature was lost, I guess. Just wants to go home.

And SPAWN. That word just gives me flashbacks tbqh…

Kirk and Spock having their usual ‘who will sacrifice himself first’ – off.

Realistically it should be neither the XO NOR the Captain but this is a tv show.

I do remember this part. Carrying that weird little device down to the planet. It is very aesthetically pleasing. I kind of want it for my apartment, to display as like a modern art sculpture. Minus the bomb

Mmm, a delicious snack for the creature. Yum. Got that gross green blood taste out of its mouth.

LMAO at Garrovick trying to be all heroic, knock Kirk out, and become the sacrifice. You thought!!

Spock and Scotty at the controls so you know how serious the transporter situation is.

McCoy versus the transporter again.

"It was my cross-circuiting to B that recovered them." Yes, Spock saved his space husband, he saved the day, and we should all acknowledge it.

Aw, that’s sweet, Kirk volunteering to reminisce with Garrovick about his father.

The end! I ended up enjoying it a lot overall. We gotta stop having episodes where Kirk is questioned or learns lessons though lol. I want my unabashedly heroic captain! Still no matter what he is always a hero in the end. And as I said, really great triumvirate ep with good individual characterizations, and scenes with each part of the triangle together.

If the Farragut incident was 11 years before this, and, as established in the last ep, Kirk is 34, that means he was 23 at the time. Pretty young to be a lieutenant imo. He was also a lieutenant at the time he was teaching Gary Mitchell at the Academy, which I’m going to personally headcanon, starting now, was right after Garrovick’s death. He returns to San Francisco, takes a year or a semester off to teach, and meets Gary.

Next up is Wolf in the Fold, a rare Scotty-centric episode.

#the year 2021 #2021: star trek #2021: fandom thoughts #star trek tos

[crystalconjunx]

A Christmas Star

MegaStarBee NSFW

Starscream hadn't meant for Bee to see that particular fantasy.

One minute he was sparkmerged with Bee, and the next they were both lost in the recesses of his processor. They drifted together for a time, gliding through their memories of Iacon and Earth. Bee wanted to know what he remembered about "Christmas," as the humans had called it. He remembered ice damaging Thundercracker's wings and Skywarp trying to walk on a frozen lake.

Then his spark oh-so-helpfully supplied him an image of Megatron. They had been scouting for a new energon supply when they came across a large expanse of gardens covered in lights. It was rudimentary compared to Cybertronian decorations, but still pleasant.

Bumblebee knew that their past relationship was… complicated. He also knew that Starscream still possessed some feelings for the gladiator.

He ignored the warm acceptance and encouragement radiating from the little yellow bug in favor of accessing the thought. It was probably just another random memory of him and Megatron bickering, fragging, fighting. They were usually all the same.

Only, this wasn't a memory.

It was so much worse.

Bee yelped as the spark-conjured Megatron stepped forward and grabbed him. It pulled him in for a kiss, bending him backwards as the large silver phantom dipped him for better control.

Starscream yanked his real frame away from Bee's, sparkcasing snapping shut immediately.

Bee returned to himself with a jolt. 

"Starscream, what the pit was that?" He asked. "Is that- do you… want that?"

"It was nothing!" Starscream hissed. "Just a glitch in my processor or something."

"We should talk about this, Star. About him." Bee said.

"No, we shouldn't. You should know when to shut your mouth, autobot." He hissed.

He knew he'd fragged up the minute the words left his vocalizer. It'd been a long time since he'd said something so venomous.

He turned away and stormed out of the room, not needing to see the look of hurt in his conjunx's eyes to know it was there.

Nor the disgust that was sure to follow.

I have a surprise for you.

Starscream had received Bee's message about an hour ago and still he found himself questioning whether or not he should respond.

He was Starscream, Leader of Cybertron and part of the new triumvirate between Optimus, himself, and Rodimus, and he shouldn't have to apologize. He had never apologized for a thing in his life.

He still hadn't apologized to Bee. Not like he ever had before, but...

It had been two weeks since their last merge, and Bumblebee still hadn't brought up what happened. It was uncharacteristic of the autobot not to bring things back up.

Today was Christmas. The day he'd wanted to see if Star knew anything about. He'd wanted to share in some joy with him.

The Beetle undoubtedly had some tender-sparked autobot nonsense planned for the Earth holiday— not that he minded. He'd actually grown to enjoy Bee's little displays of affection, though he'd give up flying before he told the grounder that.

His pedes tapped gracefully onto the ground as he landed outside their shared habsuite and made his way inside. He frowned in disappointment when he noticed the lights were off in the main entry.

Not a large surprise, it seemed. A datapad sat open on the counter.

Meet me in the berth.

Oh, so that was the kind of gift Bumblebee had in mind, was it? His wings flared excitedly at the unusual display of boldness from his little conjunx. Perhaps that could be his way of apology, then.

He stopped outside the door just in time to hear the sound of a soft cut-off moan.

"Bee," he chided as he opened the door, "Have you started without me?"

Only, it wasn't just Bee in their suite.

Megatron, kneeling at the end of the berth, had his Bee's legs held tightly around his helm while he lapped at the minibot's valve with his broad glossa.

He locked optics with Starscream before he let another long lick drag up Bee's sensitive protoform, ending with a rough swirl against Bumblebee's node. Megatron held the scout's legs firm as he overloaded with a cry, legs quivering as Megatron kept his glossa moving against him.

Starscream could see the wetness across Megatron's faceplates when he finally pulled away. He'd been eating Bumblebee out for at least half an hour, if the yellow bug's flashing swollen nub, shivering legs, and breathless sobs were any clue. 

His own mouth dried as he remembered being on that end of the silver mech's tongue. 

"S-starscream," the yellow mech panted weakly when he noticed his sparkmate's presence.

"Your little conjunx here said you were having quite the fantasies about us, Starscream. He came to me and asked me if I would be interested in joining the two of you for a night. " Megatron said as lowered Bee's legs and he wiped the back of a hand across his mouth. "And just as I've told him, I'm more than interested. I was wondering how long would pass before I would have to approach you." He said. "And I didn't think you'd mind if I got started without you. Bumblebee here is just so responsive." Megatron purred as he climbed up onto the bed and pulled Bee's his hips flush against his own. He ground the front of his panel down against the smaller mech's valve, painting a wet streak across his frame as Bee's hands came up to rest against his chest with a whimper of his name.

"Megatron, w-wait," he pleaded, pushing weakly against the gladiator. "I n-need a minute."

"Are you going to sit over there and watch as I ravish your little autobot, or are you going to help?" Megatron asked as the seeker watched him tease the beetle's horns. "I don't mind either way, but I think your conjunx here would like you to join in."

There was a firing of thrusters and suddenly Starscream was on the berth beside them, hands dragging Megatron's helm down into a heated kiss.

The large silver mech's engine growled in approval as Starscream began to nip at his lips, already egging the gladiator to further roughness.

Suddenly the seeker was on his back, wings pressed into the berth with a large hand wrapped around his throat.

"Already so impatient. Good to see not everything has changed." Megatron teased. "Though I am interested to see what has."

Starscream arched his back in delight as the servos around his throat squeezed his main energon lines ever so slightly, then whined when they relaxed and Megatron simply let his large hand pet against his neck.

"Megatron," he gasped irritably. "Do something."

"Bumblebee wanted tonight to be all for you, Starscream," Megatron answered. "So you will give the orders. What do you want, Starscream?"

A pulse of desire wracked his frame at those words. He was in charge? That rarely happened when it was just the two of them. It felt like it rarely happened at all.

Of course he wanted Megatron to spike him. He wanted to be held down and fragged and used just like they used to do all those cycles ago. He wanted Bee to ride his spike while Megatron did his best to break in this new frame in the way only he could.

He nearly said as much, would have begged for Megatron to do so until he turned his optics to the side and caught a glimpse of his poor sparkmate.

Bee was an absolute mess. His legs were soaked in a mix of his and Megatron's lubricants, his valve lips swollen while his biolights flickered weakly. He whimpered desperately as Megatron's servos flexed around his smaller throat as the ex-warlord followed his lovers' optics.

Megatron let his fingers slide up Bee's throat and tease into Bumblebee's mouth, letting two large servos push against Bee's glossa.

The fantasies were back with a vengeance.

"I want… I want you to frag Bee," Starscream answered breathlessly. "He can take it. I know he can."

"But S-star, this is for you!" Bumblebee argued weakly as Megatron pulled his fingers away. "I thought— I can't—"

"We did promise to give him what he wants, Bumblebee." Megatron purred as he dragged the beetle back against his frame. "Besides, you enjoyed my glossa plenty. You're so nice and wet for me already, Bee. Imagine how good it will feel to have your tanks full of me."

Megatron turned Bumblebee around, letting him fall across Starscream's frame facefirst before bullying down against his back.

"O-open your cable ports," Starscream ordered. "Give your cables to me."

Both mechs complied, handing him their cables as he connected them both to an odd-looking splitter cable with some kind of switch. 

Bumblebee gave him a perplexed look, while Megatron offered Starscream a sly smile before pressing Bee down with one hand as he adjusted his hips with the other, lining the grounder up with ease before letting his spikehead tease into Bee's valve. 

Bumblebee's hands groped for something to hold, finally grasping for Starscream's sensitive turbines and accidentally digging in when Megatron finally began to push into him.

The seeker watched Bee's face intently as Megatron's thick spike sank into that small, fluttering valve just as he had done so many times before.

Bee was a tight fit for him. Tight for the toys that let him know he could take a spike like Megatron's.

Starscream knew better than anyone how much preparation it took to take Megatron's spike to the hilt, and the blinking of Bee's optics as the ex-warlord just kept sliding into him told that Megatron had done his best to fuck Bee wet and open with his glossa and succeeded.

The shared sensations through the cable had them all groaning in unison. They could feel everything from one another.

Megatron's massive spike twitching in Bee's tight valve, desperate to plow into the tight little grounder. He wanted the autobot to beg for him, to come in that soft gentle voice as they spilled over Starscream together.

Bumblebee was helplessly caught between the dangerous wandering servos of his conjunx on his horns and the heavy wall of Megatron's frame as he was being practically split in half. He was lost in sensation and pleasure, drowning in the attention and lost in a haze.

And then there was Starscream's wild, burning desires at the sight of his conjunx being taken by Megatron. They could feel his field, his thoughts, his spark pulsing in desperate want as if he was shouting them to the world.

Seeing Bee taken from him, being stolen away by the warlord himself, did things to Starscream that he'd rather not admit.

Right now, he wanted nothing more than to see Bee fall apart. He wanted to watch and pleasure himself as Megatron made Bee scream in pleasure after dominating his little frame right in front of him. He wanted Megatron to frag Bee until he begged for mercy and Megatron simply kept going.

Maybe that's why he was guilty.

Maybe it was a little twisted. It was very Starscream. It was very Decepticon.

But he wanted more than that, too. The fantasy and Both he and Megatron wanted Bee's sweetness. He wanted to kiss him slow and gentle and warm.

Maybe that was a little autobot of him. 

The cables flooded thoughts into him with a resounding agreement, an acceptance and return of his desires. A whimper from his conjunx.

The softness could wait.

"Let's give him what he wants, Bumblebee." Megatron spoke as he met Starscream's optics again and pushed himself home.

The little yellow mech's hips writhed against each slick inch of Megatron's spike until at last he was pressed against Megatron's hip plating. Each movement of his hips only served to grind the spike against all the node clusters that were scattered through his valve.

"So tight," Megatron hissed as rocked forward against Bee's frame, the small movement catching his ceiling node against a ridge and sending Bumblebee into a hard overload that had him scrabbling for purchase against Starscream's frame. The charge reverberated through the cables, Starscream groaning in pleasure and Megatron cursed behind Bee's head.

Bee was practically limp against Starscream now, unable to hold himself up as Megatron's thick spike kept moving inside him. Starscream's claws were rubbing teasing circles down his audials and his sensitive faceplates, rising every now and then to give a rough tug to his horns.

"Faster." Starscream commanded. "Start gentle, but get harder."

Megatron obeyed, half pulling out of Bumblebee and pushing his spike all the way back in as if he was calculating how hard he could fuck the beetle without breaking him.

Satisfied with what he found, he finally pulled all the way out and slammed back into Bee.

Starscream's panel clicked open as pleasure rammed through his systems, both of his lover's pleasure flooding him with mixed sensations. Bumblebee's voice box was clicking with static, desperately trying to reset as he cried and fought underneath Megatron's strength, attempting to escape the onslaught of pleasure as the ex-warlord gave him no quarter. Megatron simply wrapped an arm around him and pressed close, letting his thrusts remain slow but impossibly deep.

The room was filled with metallic clanking and the wet slap of hips as Megatron used the beetle for his own pleasure.

Starscream pleasured himself from underneath the both of them, hands on his own spike as their interfacing brought his overload to the edge.

He was never going to last long, not like this. Not with Bee's unfocused optics, not with Megatron's growls and the sounds of Bee's valve slicking each thrust while his calipers could do nothing but accept Megatron's spike.

He was close. He knew the other two had to be, too.

Without warning, he activated the splitter cable switch. All of his lovers' pleasure was suddenly being rebounded back into them. 

Megatron thrusted once, then twice, and suddenly slammed himself into Bee with a low, throaty groan. He held the grounder's frame harshly in place with one arm locked around his middle and another around his neck as he emptied his tanks inside him.

Bee's engine stalled and hiccuped, smoke pouring out of his frame as a gush of lubricant spilled from his valve and leaked onto Starscream's thigh. Megatron actually whimpered as their shared overload spun back into him, causing them both to fall into an agonizing loop of pleasure as their frames crashed and locked in place.

Megatron's spike was still hard and firm in Bee's valve, unable to depressurize and caught against his ceiling node as he kept emptying his transfluid tanks into Bee. His frame was limp and heavy, causing his spike to grind even more against the node and extending their overload as Bee fought desperately to escape the cruel cycling of pleasure.

Starscream was so close. He could feel Bee's frame on the verge of shorting, the dangerous turns of Megatron's engine as their fluids continued to flood down onto his thighs.

He reached down and switched the splitter cable back off, allowing all the charge to flow back into him.

The resulting wave of charge— or the piercing shriek of pleasure that followed— blew the bedroom light and left them trapped in darkness.

Finally, Starscream managed to wriggle out from underneath the two and disconnected the cables.

The other two mechs had managed to pull themselves apart and were already falling into recharge by the time Starscream got his wits back.

He huffed in irritation. Of course he'd be the last one left awake in their mess of a berth.

He hadn't even had his turn yet.

He crawled between the sleeping mechs and wormed his way under their arms. Oh well. 

Maybe Bee could be the one in charge tomorrow, he thought. He wouldn't mind taking orders as long as long as Bee was giving them... And Megatron had to follow them, too.

#valveplug #megastarbee #bumblebee #megatron #starscream #megastar #starbee #megabee