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peachesofteal · 27 days

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ghoap x reader / 18+ mdni / dark themes / prev here

‘C’mon, you never want to go out.”

You rub your temples, eyes closed in exasperation. “I’m broke, Case.”

“I’ll spot you. Come on, it’s Friday. I’ll get us into The Rook.” She pleads and pushes, tugging away your excuses and defenses until you’re backed into a corner with nowhere to run. Finally, you opt for a different tactic, lamely.

“Doesn’t that place have a waiting list?”

“Oh yeah, miles long. But the owner likes me.” The owner. How does she even know the owner of The Rook?

“I don’t know…” you linger, still bent over your tiny kitchen table, back bowed and tired, “isn’t it like, dangerous?”

“The Rook is neutral ground or something, I don’t know. It’s perfectly fine, I’ve been dozens of times.” A litany of stories exists about the speakeasy, from its origins to the current clientele, each as unbelievable as the next, and you’ve always imagined it to be this dark den of sin and debauchery, filled to brim with hitmen and lawlessness. “You have to do something other than work and sleep; you know. You’re missing out on your whole life.” She chides, attempting to launch into the same speech she repeats over and over every few weeks.

“Alright, alright,” you look down at your torn up cuticles and sigh, “I’ll go.”

You weren’t wrong about The Rook being dark.

It’s hollowed out under a club, nooks and crannies and little hallways splitting off in every direction, dim lamps and flickering candlelight casting shadows to the ceiling, bartenders dressed in all black working behind a massive, burnished wood bar along the back wall. Velvet couches, high top tables, overstuff armchairs flow in the space, and Case tells you there are more rooms if you’re keen to explore, explaining in hushed tones how there’s usually a band in one, a card game of sorts in another, a pool table somewhere, all with various styles of seating, and even another bar. It's elegant, decadent, sinful. Most of the people are startlingly beautiful, high heels and skintight dresses, perfectly made-up faces, polished onyx cuff links gleaming against expensive navy suits.

Even the drinks are licentious.

You decidedly do not belong here. Perched on a stool next to Case, you occasionally rub your wrists, casually wondering if it would have been acceptable to wear your braces, your carpal tunnel flaring into a swell of agony.

Wouldn’t that be a sight.

The bartender slides her two generous neat pours of… something, and you raise an eyebrow.

“On the house, from the boss.” He says with a wink, and she tips her head to ceiling with a bubble of a laughter, before pressing one of the tumblers into your hand.

“What is it?”

“Probably bourbon.”

“Oh, no thanks, I don’t-“

“Just shoot it.” She throws it back with ease, showing her teeth afterwards, a hyena leering in the lamplight.

Fuck it. Maybe it will the throbbing in your wrists will quiet down.

It’s thick, syrupy, hot in your throat. Burns all the way down and settles like lava in your stomach, uncomfortable until the sting ebbs into warmth, moving through your bones.

“Not bad.�� You rasp, and she smiles.

There are more free drinks. They stick to your insides like tar, slicking you in a heavy cotton, weighing your limbs down, loosening the tension in your neck and shoulders, peeling away your layers of discomfort one by one.

You’re surprised by how at home Case seems in this place, how comfortable she is, smiling and waving to the occasional person, making small talk here and there. She practically floats in her seat, black dress taut against every dimple and dip on her body, hair artfully twisted into something that could be considered modern art. She’s a gazelle. A heron. Something graceful and gorgeous, fine feathered and fabulous.

And you’re… a tired girl in a tired dress, counting her lucky stars that there seem to be so many generous patrons buying drinks tonight.

“Having fun?” She whispers, nudging you with her shoulder.

“How often do you come here?” Her eyes wander, flicking past you and then back, wistful caution etched across her brow.

“Often enough,” She sips her drink and then folds her hands together on the bar top, looking over shoulder, “Most of these people in here… are connected to organized crime somehow.” The information doesn’t surprise you, but hearing it confirmed, knowing it’s not just some story made up, some fairytale about boogeymen, makes you shiver.

“Like, the mafia?”

“The mafia is Italian, but they have a presence in the city.” She shrugs, like it’s all common knowledge. Like you’re out of the loop. “The Rook belongs to Kyle Garrick.” You shake your head, unfamiliar. “Of The 141?” your mouth goes dry.

The 141.

The 141 were a notorious organized crime group who ran half, if not more, of the city. You knew they owned clubs, bars, restaurants, and hotels, but you were never clear on the details of their illegitimate work, and you didn’t want to know.

You knew, for sure: they were men to be feared. Men capable of terrible things. Destruction. Death.

Their ongoing war with The Shadows was the reason the city was soaked in blood.

“Don’t worry,” she rushes out, hand on your arm, “like I said, It’s neutral here. Nothing happens in The Rook.” You nod meekly, head swimming. You’re more than drunk now, stuck in a sloshing ship, floor tilting beneath your feet. The urge to get away, to disappear slams into you like a truck, and you slip off the stool.

“Which way is the bathroom?” She points to one of those dark hallways, and you stumble through the throngs of people like a fresh born fawn, unsteady and teetering on the edge, approaching a hallway that splits into two.

Which way?

You pick one, sure you’ll run into someone who can point you in the right direction, but when it zigs and zags up to a polished wooden door, you stop short, confused. The alcohol has rendered you fuzzy, and your vision spins, trying to look for a recognizable placard.

Is this the bathroom?

It must be.

The first thing you realize when you push the door open, is a chorus of men’s voices, stopping on a dime. You hear them, before you see them, and immediately try to backpedal, tugging the door handle towards you, trying to close it. You’re wayward, with heavy, tired feet, and the movement is slow, slow enough that an opposing force pulls on the other side and then-

rips.

You fly forward into the room, dragged by your grip on the handle, spilling onto your knees with a shocked gasp, and someone curses in the background, another voice barking out a name.

Then, the room goes Sunday church service silent.

You gape at the table of men, transfixed in horror on the two familiar faces staring back at you, the unforgettable Scot and his marble etched partner, who was just in the shop only two days ago. They’re frozen, half risen from their seats, a cigarette burning away in an ash tray filling the air with smoke.

There’s a nickel-plated flash, and your blood curdles.

He has a gun.

“I…” you croak, still on your knees, unable to categorize or rationalize why you’re seeing them here, why one of them has a gun, why any of this is happening. “I’m sorry, I was lo-looking for the bathroom.” There are many men in this room, you realize. More than just the two you’re acquainted with, and your stomach rolls, nausea creeping forward, trying to bring the too many drinks you’ve consumed up through your mouth. “I’m sorry.” You say again, more clearly.

Obviously, you’re interrupting something.

“These aren’t the toilets, little girl.” A Russian voice booms over your head. “Unless you’re going to piss on the floor for us?”

“Nikolai.” The blonde cuts, Manchester accent rougher than sandpaper, and you shake your head frantically.

“N-no, I just got turned around, that’s all.” Your brain screams at you to get up, but your body is immobile, and you look away in fear.

A warm hand takes yours, tanned skin soft and sweet, gentle touch urging your face back up.

“It’s alright, doe. Ye’re alright.” It’s the Scot, crooning in your ear, wrapping an arm around your waist to bring you to your feet. “Let’s get ye to the bathroom then, aye?” You lean against him, breathing in cypress and ocean spray, letting him guide you out of the room, his partner right at your back.

“We’re not finished.” Someone calls out, and the bigger man clips out a response.

“We are now.”

#ghoap x reader #peaches writes #simon riley #simon riley x reader #john soap mactavish #soap x reader

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eilidh-eternal · 2 months

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You learn the truth

Part of the Metanoia series | Part 1 | Masterlist | Ao3 |

Thank you @gemmahale for reading this monstrosity and helping me fine-tune it <3

“Sergeant. How copy?”

Simon looms over Johnny in the team room, sidled up to a sagging couch that’s seen better days, and when he lifts his derelict gaze from the battle-worn photo in his hands he’s met with pinched brows, sloped granite, and folded arms. Worry, in the staid manner he’s come to expect from Simon.

“Solid, Lt,” he answers dutifully, devoid of his usual ebullience, and with a tenor forged from damascus and flint.

Simon rounds with a languid gait to the opposite cushion, stained with something dark, iron-rich and oxidizing in the loose weave, and lowers himself down beside him. Holds out a gloved hand. Johnny obeys his silent command and relinquishes what might just be the most valuable thing he owns. Deposits it gingerly in his waiting palm.

“How’s she doin’?” he asks, smoothing out a crease in the portrait.

“Started school this past year. Whole head taller than last ye saw her. Still carries that damn bear ‘round the house, too.” Takes his tea the same as Simon, according to Isobel.

“Better that than the bloody mask.”

“Aye. Better, that,” he agrees, and a ragged breath saws out of his lungs when he sinks back into the sun-bleached nylon.

“And your pet?” Simon passes the photo back and Johnny tucks it reverently back into his breast pocket, folded neatly and pressed close to his heart—where it belongs.

“Isnae ‘mine’,” he drawls, somnolence roughening his voice despite the afternoon sun pouring in through the concrete window. “Stubborn thing, too. Hasnae been answerin’ her phone.”

“That what’s got you mithered?”

“Worried,” Johnny corrects, and Simon folds his hands across his midsection, settling back alongside him with a throaty grunt and the echo of artillery fire in his bones, popping and cracking beneath the weight of his battle-worn body.

“All the same, innit?”

“Not with her. Not when she…” He toys with a clip on a canvas belt loop, rough fingers tracing the burnished amalgam of iron and carbon, and for a moment, he feels your skin. Metallic beneath his touch, chilled by the wind, precious and perfect in his hands. “You an’ her are cut from the same cloth. Dinnae care much for sharin’.” Even when you should.

You keep him up at night, itinerant thoughts always finding their way through the morass of post-operative lassitude back to you. Wondering what you fill your days with. If you still linger by the window in the placid hours of the morning with a steaming, ceramic mug warming your hands, marking the passage of time by the melting of the ice. If the final snow of spring has laced the wild cherry trees along the row with pearl-drop blossoms and an almond sillage. If you’ve seen the picture he managed to take from the ramp mid-flight, on transport to Laswell’s station, mareel lea of clouds undulating beneath a star-flecked velarium.

Thinking about all the things he said, and the things he didn’t, before he left. Burning with the memory of you, pressed flush against him; soft and warm and safe in the lambent halo of his arms. You felt like his in that moment, and he lies awake, breathing in char and soot from the moreish conflagration ravaging his chest, staining his throat a fuliginous shade of black with each serrated exhale.

He might have told Simon—if the big bastard weren’t rattling the ballistic glass in his sleep.

You’re standing in the pasta aisle, staring at the selection of boxed macaroni, and you’re drifting further and further into an endless, atramentous night.

Funny, you think, when the sun and stars live next door. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. None of it was supposed to be this way. Stars don't fall from the sky. But meteors do. And now… now you have to crawl out of the crater at the bottom of a pitiless ocean, navigate the upheaval of silt and abysmal detritus, and search for the surface without the gilded hand of the sun to guide you.

You should have stayed away.

Isobel would choose the box with the cartoonish bear. Johnny would make a joke about bears liking porridge, not cheesy noodles. You toss it in your basket with the rest of your ready meals, soggy cardboard already weeping condensation, and battle the undertow to the queue at the till.

You should have left them alone.

“Beautiful day, today is.” They don't know that the stars have gone nova. That the ossified remains of the Earth creak and settle in the brumal gloaming, caliginous and desolate. They can’t hear you, pounding on the ice, desperate for apricity in a nuclear winter.

Now you’re the one who’s alone.

“It is,” you lie, and the effluvium of ozone burns your lungs. Cauterizes the hemorrhaging, pulpy mess you call a heart, languishing in the frangible cage of your ribs.

Free divers can hold their breath for 10 minutes at a time. You wonder how long you’ll last trapped beneath a frozen mantle.

It snowed again, the morning Johnny left—pillowed the earth in anticipation of your fall—but several weeks of sleet and freezing rain has turned the pavement into a patchwork of slush and ice that mimics the glacial floes in your veins. Your wellies don’t have the same grip as proper snow boots. Crampons are better suited for the climb ahead. Neither are very practical for a quick trip to Tesco, though. Would look quite odd, standing on ice cleats in the pasta aisle.

The same can’t be said of the car park. With your canvas tote clutched close to your side, you pick your way through fissures of lingering snow. Opt for trickling streams of runoff rather than attempting to balance on the slick pavement. It’s slow going. Tedious. The lingering wind of last week's squall whips at your exposed skin. Lashes and bites, pumping a gelid venom into your veins, and the blackening, gangrenous bits of your mangled heart feel numb. Numb enough that you don’t immediately recognize the car parked next to yours. Twin sets of eyes, stratified ice, rich with moraine, watching from the windows. You don’t realize how the world suddenly feels too bright, staring up through a polynya, until you glimpse an aureate complexion and charcoal hair, silver-streaked with ash and tied up in a loose pony, emerging from the driver's seat.

Fenella MacTavish is a star in her own right. Has a gravity to her that demands to be felt and heard. The pull of your name on her lips drags you through the hole in the ice and dangles you there. Bait for something bigger. Hungrier. And she does it all with a friendly face, a cordon of coronal light woven into a beaming smile—aimed at the fallstreak hole that’s been punched through your sternum.

“Ye’re a fair way from home, lass.” The divisional line of the Baltic and North Sea, from the feel of it. Or maybe somewhere off the coast of Shetland. It doesn’t really matter. Dread still percolates down your spine and you blink against the sudden shock of the sun emerging from the clouds, lurid rays burrowing into your retinas.

“Better prices for produce on this side of town,” you hedge, and she looks pointedly at the sharp protrusions of box corners against canvas, faultline of her brow erupting with skepticism.

“Thought Tesco’s all have the same prices, more or less,” she reasons, and you watch the way she leans against the D pillar, arms folded and braced against a hiemal wind that tousles loose strands of hair about her face. A similar image of Johnny from several weeks ago effervesces to the surface of your memory and you shove it down. Drown it in the brine that spumes on roiling white caps.

You answer with an indolent shrug and make to step around her, slipping your hand in a fleece-lined coat pocket in search of your keys, but like the other MacTavishes you’ve come to know, Fenella has a propensity for prying questions.

“Have ye heard from Joh—”

“No,” you say before she can speak his name, gloved fingers curling around the worn canvas strap across your shoulder like it’s a lifeline. Trying to pull yourself away from the hole in the ice, procellous waves lapping hungrily at your feet where she dangles you from artfully strung words. It’s not technically a lie. Even if there’s a novel's worth of texts from him that have gone unopened and unanswered. “I have—”

“Come have dinner wi’ us,” she volleys back. Guts the wretched desiderium curled at the back of your throat, backed into a corner and hissing at anything that comes near. Coaxes the dolorous, indignant want festering in your chest into the light.

You want Johnny and his ribald jokes. Want him to look at you the way he looks at Isobel when they walk together. To hold your hand inside the pocket of his coat when you both forget your gloves on the way to pick her up from school. Remind you to leave work at the door. Shut your laptop and close the manuscript. Give yourself a break and come watch some mind rotting show with him and Isobel on the couch. Curl up in a tartan blanket, woven with his family's colors, and pretend you aren't falling asleep with your cheek pressed to his shoulder. Want to bake with Isobel and chase Johnny from the kitchen. Read to her on the nights he’s away, out at the pub on Main with friends from work. Be there, sleeping on the couch with Isobel, waiting for him to come home from assignment.

You want, and the teratoid it’s become circles with the porbeagles. Has teeth and a consciousness all it’s own, shredding through sinewy trepidation and tearing through every layer of adamantine flesh that you wear like armor. Stripping you down to the bone and sucking on the treacly marrow.

There’s no reason why you can’t. Johnny’s said as much. Made it patently clear when he all but tucked you into his jacket with him and let the warmth of sun-chapped lips bleed into your algid skin that night on your stoop. But there’s a picture in the livingroom of the townhouse next to yours that clamors each time you pass it. A ghost, bound to this plane by molecules of ink on photo paper, materializing at your back and whispering words of doubt from the umbrage. Telling you to leave. They aren’t yours to have.

You feel rime creeping up your legs, briny sea spray turning denim stiff in the darkening carpark. The sun is sinking, varicolored sky unfurling against the plumage of clouds and an austere snowscape, and it casts shadows across the city, long as the list of reasons you shouldn’t.

“Tomorrow night,” she presses, “roads ‘round here get a tad dodgy after dark wi’ the ice an’ all.” Her eyes drift to the ice surrounding your feet. Stare for a moment, like there are memories trapped there.

You’ve found your keys. Found them several minutes ago, and have been toying with pressing the panic button. Manufacturing some way out of this conversation. Your toes are numb, too. Whether it’s from standing in a river of runoff or Fenella’s snare, swaying precariously and staring down into the gaping maw of repressed desire, you don’t know. But you do know that you can’t stay here. Can’t keep staring at this woman who looks like Johnny and pretend you don’t want to know everything about her. Him. Them. That you don’t want to go to dinner with her and Isobel because you miss them.

“Tomorrow,” you begin, “I have a meeting. Have to stay late.”

“Tomorrow’s Friday,” she counters. “Bell stays up late to watch Still Game wi’ me. Sure she wouldnae mind waitin’ an hour tae have a friend join us fer some stovies.” You can see Isobel in the car behind her, twisted around in her car seat to watch the two of you, and your heart lurches in your chest. Gnashes and snarls at the web of lies you’ve woven around it, glittering trip wires disguised as a safety net.

Don’t get too close. Don’t get attached. They’re not yours. This will never be your family.

‘Go!’ it wails, and her eyes beg you to stay.

When you finally find your footing again, you take a step towards your car. “I’ll think about it.” Move carefully between cracks in the ice. “See if I can get the meeting moved up. Isobel should keep to her schedule.” Keep your eyes up. Don’t look at the monster she’s dragged out of you.

Fenella nods like you’ve agreed. Either chooses to ignore your feeble attempt at a polite refusal or twists your words into reluctant acceptance as she fishes her phone from her vest. Hums as she taps away at the screen, and you feel the echo of it when your own phone vibrates in your pocket beside your keys.

“We’ll see ye tomorrow night, then.” She smiles, wide and machiavellian, before she severs the snare and watches you plummet. Slips into the warmth of her car as you plunge through the hole in the ice and it freezes over once more. Chum in the water.

Staring at Fenella’s address on your phone screen effects a sinking feeling in your stomach. Drags you down to that abyss again, only this time, you aren’t alone. You weren’t alone before—not really. You’d just denied the truth of what was clawing its way through your chest. Couldn’t face what its existence means.

You stare until the screen goes dark, and then stare some more, until the oven timer chimes and you wade through your kitchen to silence it. Produce a hot pad from an adjacent drawer to pull a cardboard tray of lasagne from the rack, and nearly drop it when the chiming starts again.

Your phone vibrates on the table behind you, Johnny’s name lit up across the screen. Calling.

‘Won’t be able to use my phone a lot, but I’ll call when I can.’

The awful thing in your chest shudders in answer.

Every muscle in your body tenses. Aches to open the line. Grab it with both hands and pull. Drag yourself from the depths of your self inflicted misery and bathe in the ardent warmth of his smile. You want to talk to him. Want to hear that gravel rich timbre and your name rolling off the escarpment of his tongue.

But should you?

Should you even try to be something you aren’t? Something you never thought you could be. Would want to be. Should you—?

“Bonnie? Ye there?”

Oh, fuck…

“Yeah… I’m here,” you breathe, and it’s not salt water but kerosene that fills your lungs. Burns with self-loathing and penitence as it commingles with ozone. “Johnny, I—” Your voice pitches, teeters on the precipice of trepidation and want, and crumbles away with the marl.

You’ve been ignoring him. Ignoring how you feel. Absconding yourself in your abnegation and rotting on the ocean floor, too afraid to swim. To look for the light. Afraid of falling even further.

And all of that want comes pouring out of you now. Out of the hole punched through your chest when he left. In a briny deluge down the berm of your cheeks when he shushes you. From puncture wounds, perfect impressions of serrated teeth, sunk to the bone. Not letting go.

“I know, sweet girl. I know,” he soothes, palliating and emollient, but the breath you take scrapes against your throat, coarse with sand and silt. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too, Johnny.” You thought it would hurt, admitting it. That the jaws would clamp down and you would scream and kick and fight. You were so heavy, full to the brim with want, that you mistook it for that leaden, sinking feeling. Thought it was drowning you.

“Bell said she saw ye today. That ye’re goin’ to visit her tomorrow?” There’s hope in his voice, nestled in the colluvium that tumbles from his lips and settles at your feet.

“Yeah,” you decide then and there. “I am.”

The MacTavish home isn’t what you thought it would be, limewashed stone tucked at the end of a winding, gravel lane, cradled by the tussock and sedge of a heathland and perched on the slope of a shallow vale. Double paned windows cast a genial glow onto the drifts around it, tenuous peaks capped in flakes of gold, and a scintillant lamp floods the walkway, salted cobble, free of the ice your tires struggled to navigate on the narrow streets of Old Kilpatrick. The door is a bathic blue, nearly the same depth as the lacuna between stars on a moonless night, and a boar-head knocker greets you, impeccably polished silver despite its exposure to the elements. Your hand halts halfway to the ring that dangles from gleaming ivory tusks and hangs surprised between yourself and the refulgent star across the threshold. Everything about Fenella and her home is bright.

She ushers you inside, pulling you by a handful of billowing cashmere into the foyer, and promptly defoliates you of the flailing garment and congruent scarf wound around your neck, taking your bag and hanging it from a brass hook beside your coat. “Bell, come an’ look who’s here!” she calls down the passageway, and a brontide reverberates through the hardwood and soles of your shoes. A storm rattling the foliage of a coppice in the thick of Summer.

Isobel shrieks, effusive in the manner of her excitement, when she rounds the corner from the doorway to the left and catches sight of you, teddy forgotten and swiftly discarded in favor of launching herself down the wide hall. You rock back when she connects with your leg, sinking her hands into layers of chiffon, pleated at your waist and cascading to the buckles of your flats around your ankles.

“Ye made it!” She wears a t-shirt many sizes too big, sleeves billowing around her and the hem rolled and tucked up inside with a knot that presses against your shin. The cracked, peeling numerals 141 are barely visible, on her left side just below her breastbone, and her surname is printed just below, peaks and plateau of the M and T rising above the cloud of your skirt bunched up in her arms. Her hair is loose, curls tumbling just over her shoulders in an unruly race to the wide crew-collar of her shirt, and the smile she beams up at you is blinding. Disorienting. Burrowing into your brain in search of a home. Looking for its carbon copy, etched in a memory of Johnny, sitting on a wooden chair in a kitchen that mirrors yours.

A timer chimes, echoing off smooth plaster painted with a whisper of green, sage and seafoam, and an eclectic collection of frames maps a rich family history from the front door down the length of the passageway,

“That’ll be dinner,” Fenella announces, a hand coming to rest between your shoulders and another delving into her granddaughter's curls. “Bell, show ‘er where tae wash up.” She herds you both forward, and your stomach knots with budding nerves.

“Can I help with anything? Setting the table?” you offer, attempt to make yourself useful, and she tuts her disapproval.

“Nae, jus’ wash up wi’ Bell. Dinner’ll be on the table when yer done.” She slips by the two of you, disappearing down the passageway and to the right while Isobel fits her hand into yours and leads you through the door she came from.

There’s a sideboard adjacent to the washroom, and while Isobel scrubs the days mire from her nails you cast your attention to the portraiture above it. Echoes of a convivial home, filled with family during the holidays, outings in the city, and school portraits. Johnny’s service portrait hangs front and center above a shadow box, pin board nearly full with brassy medals and gaudy ribbons. Years younger and clean shaven, he looks boyish and bright-eyed, even with the army drab and neutral expression. But there's a familiar tilt to his mouth, permanently skewed in an inveterate smile, and a whisper of laughter in the gentle slope of his shoulders, not yet filled out with the corded muscle that’s become so familiar. Several inches to the right and many years later, he appears as you know him now. Dark shadow of stubble, interrupted by the stitchwork that created the twisting scar on his chin, and—

The bulk of his body is curled around a young woman, dark cloud of curls concealing her face, buried in the hollow space beneath his jaw, but the swell of her belly is obvious in her profile. Isobel’s mum.

“Yer turn!” Isobel lilts from behind you, but you remain rooted to the polished hardwood, staring at a ghost, and wait for the rebuttal.

They aren’t yours. This isn’t your family.

Budding nerves blossom in the loamy pit of your stomach, creeping along spiculated vines towards the moldering gaps between your ribs, and your heart stutters in its crumbling cage alongside the starving, pacing creature you call want.

Forget them. Leave.

You wait, and wait, and wait—and it never comes. The ink doesn't wail, the frames don’t rattle, and there is no voice whispering over your shoulder.

There is a darling girl, tugging at the fabric of your skirt and the mess of snarled threads around your heart, picking apart the tangled web you’ve been lost in, and she guides you through the fray to the washroom basin.

“Ah spoke wi’ Johnny this morn’,” Fenella begins, reaching across the table to wipe at the broth dribbling down Isobel’s chin. “Said ye finally had a chance tae talk.”

“Oh. Yes, we did.” You don’t tell her how Johnny did most of the talking, took your sniveled apologies for avoiding his messages and buried them in the colluvium. Caught you, from a world away, and lowered you gently to the earth when you fell apart in your kitchen. “He sounds well.”

“Aye, he does. Havnae heard ‘im like that since Kirsten died.” She leans back in her chair, half-finished bowl of stew all but forgotten. “Those two… och, they were a right pain in my arse. Where one went the other followed, an’ made twice the trouble for their Mam.”

The revelation glues to your brain, tenebrous and viscid.

“Has he told ye about ‘er, his sister?”

“She saw the picture in the passageway,” Isobel chimes in, babbling around a mouthful of roast potato.

Their Mam. The picture in the hall. Johnny’s sister. The ghost next door.

“He’s mentioned her once before.” You drag your spoon through cooling beef and potato, breaking up the congealed, starchy mass, and try to do the same with the memories that tangle themselves together in your head. “He told me about his wife; that she passed two years ago. I— He never said his sister passed as well. I’m so—”

“His wife?” Quicksilver brows fly towards the inky peak of her hairline, bewilderment etched in the incredulous slash of her mouth, lips drawn tight. “Johnny’s ne’er wed, lass.”

Your hand stills but your heart rattles, throwing itself against baleen bars, and the pinpricks of teeth, gnawing at the fallstreak hole in your sternum, threatens to crack your ribs open at the dinner table. “Isobel’s mother—”

“Is his sister,” Fenella finishes for you.

“Then, Johnny… Why didn’t Isobel’s father raise her?”

Fenella casts a furtive glance in Isobels direction and finds cordierite eyes staring back at her over an empty bowl, gleaming with a startling discernment. “Stay here,” she motions towards you, and plucks Isobel from the chair between you, balancing her on a broad hip. “All done, Bell? Let’s get ye settled in the den, hm? With Ghost?” Isobel clutches at her shirt for balance, dips her chin in agreement, and Fenella takes her from the dining room, leaving you alone with the savage things in your chest.

Sister. Never married. Niece.

It percolates through gray matter. Drips from the roof of your mouth, nauseating and saccharine, and when you swallow you feel the drop in your stomach like an iron weight. Wilted petals and desiccated vines withering. A febrile joy laced with bile bubbling up your throat; sickly cocktail of absolution and compunction.

There was never a ghost trapped in a picture frame. No headstone inscribed with the MacTavish name and the words ‘Loving Wife and Mother.’ Every poisonous word whispered in your ear came from the devil on your shoulder, sowing demurral and rooting it in reproval, and the roaring in your chest, thundering pulse in your ears, screams yes.

The muted playing of fanfare from the TV cuts through the cacophony in your head, and Fenella’s voice allays the discordance. “She knows more than she lets on.” A sigh filters through her nose with a ‘hum’ and she slides into the chair Isobel occupied previously. “She misses him. Misses him like a wean misses their Da.” Misses him the same as her Mum. Gone somewhere she can’t follow, a place kept secret from her, with no way to know when he’ll be back. If he’ll come back.

The unpleasant realization of that very real possibility scrapes down your spine, whetted talons screeching against corrugated bone.

“Johnny’s the closest thing Bell’s ever had tae a Da,” she elucidates. “They used tae work together, ‘fore Johnny joined up wi’ the Task Force. Passed selection the same year.”

“She—Kirsten—met him through Johnny?” She nods, smiling, but the curve of her mouth has a mournful edge.

“She did. Johnny brought some lads round for Hogmanay one year. Took his sister out wi’ ‘em tae the pubs. Said she took one look at Aaron MacAndrew handin’ ‘er brother his own arse at darts and knew she’d marry ‘im. Did so, the following year. Hardly made it another ‘fore she told us she was havin’ Bell.” The memory of her daughter brightens Fenella’s eyes. Bottled lightning, bouncing off maldivian blue glass. “We were all excited. ‘Specially Johnny; couldnae wait tae meet his niece. Brought home gifts for Kirsten and the wean from every tour and couldnae go to ASDA wi’out buyin’ another teddy or romper.”

“Did Johnny and Aaron tour together?” She nods solemnly.

“Few weeks after Kirsten had Bell they left. Got their orders a month earlier, an’ Aaron… He didnae let Johnny tell Kirstin ‘til after she had the wean. Didnae want her tae stress.

“They were tae be gone three months, so Kirsten stayed here an’ I helped wi’ Bell. Went a while ‘fore we heard anythin’ from Johnny. Said things got hairy. Had tae go dark. Stay hidden. We didnae know why ‘til he called again an’ said he was comin’ home early, but naw Aaron. Naw ‘til he was the only one tae come off the plane.”

Laughter trickles in from the den, pooling in the hollow silence that yawns between you and Fenella. “I…” you try, but every word you string together with the next frays around the knot in your throat.

“She was angry wi’ him for some time. Aaron had died weeks before he called, an’ he kept it from ‘er. Didnae want tae tell her on the phone. Wanted tae be there when she found out.” She shifts her weight in the chair. Leans forward to fold one arm over the other on the table. “Johnny took it hard, too. Losin’ his mate an’ then his sister. None of us saw her for the better part of a year after he died, an’ Johnny took the blame for it. She wouldnae see him. Didnae come ‘round for holidays. He thought if he made ‘imself scarce she might come out her shell, so when he heard from a Captain he used tae serve under, ‘bout the Task Force an’ the longer assignments that came wi’ it… He packed ‘imself up an’ off he went. Was another year ‘fore they finally saw one another. Never knew what was said between the two of ‘em, but they were close as ever afterwards. Right up ‘til she passed.”

“And she listed Johnny as Isobel's next of kin.” Fenella nods, bottled lightning limned with a silvery tide. “I… I’m so sorry. About Kirsten, Aaron, bringing it up— I shouldn’t—”

Despite the tears tracking down her cheeks, Fenella shakes her head. Smiles, and reaches across the table to clasp your hand in hers. “Ye dinna need tae apologize, lass. I should be thankin’ ye, really.” You try to pull away but her hand tightens around yours.

“Thank me? I haven’t—”

“Done anythin’? Lass, ye’ve done more than ye know. He talks about ye. Every time we go tae lunch. It’s ye, an’ Bell, an’ how excited she always is tae see ye. How he thinks she might fancy ye even more than he does. And he smiles. You brought that back.”

And fuck, if that isn’t everything you hoped for. To know that he smiles for you. Because of you. It alchemizes the iron in your stomach to lead, bathed in acid and leeching an acrimonious guilt into your bloodstream.

You ignored him.

Pulled away, just like his sister did.

And Fenella is thanking you.

Midnight settles over the MacTavish home in a mantle of crushed velvet and embroidered stars. Fenella insisted that you stay after dinner. Spend some time with Isobel in the den.

That was several hours ago.

Curled in the corner of a chenille couch, you sit with Isobel pressed to your side, head pillowed by the masked bear she clutches in her sleep.

“Someone’s finally tuckered out,” you muse, brushing an errant curl away from her face. “I should head home. Let the two of you rest.” Fenella stands from her chair beside the couch and maneuvers around the coffee table in the dim light of the TV.

“It’s late,” she rebukes. “I’ll naw have ye out at this hour. Stay the night. Ye can take yer rest in Johnny’s old room.” Fenella croons as she peels Isobel out of her cocoon of blankets and hoists her up into the cradle of her arms. “C’mon Bell, let’s show the lass where she’s stayin’ the night.”

“The roads really aren’t that bad, I— I should be able to make the drive just fine,” you insist, but the admonition in the gaze she levels you with quashes any further argument.

You follow, albeit hesitantly, from the den up a narrow flight of stairs, and hope that she can’t hear the tremulous rattling of your breath behind her. She deposits Isobel, teddy and all, in a colorful room, shelves overflowing with picture books and bins piled high with teddies and toys, tucks her snug beneath a hand-sewn quilt and leaves her with a peck on the cheek to guide you into the room across from hers.

She rifles through a chest of drawers, scratched pine and chipped lacquer, stood up against the wall opposite a wrought iron bed, draped in purples and greens that bring thistle to mind. “Ye can wear some of Johnny’s old things. I’d give ye somethin’ of mine but, well… I think ye’d be more comfortable in this.” Tracksuit bottoms and a pullover. She leaves it on the bed as she moves to where you hover near the doorway. “Washroom is just down there, on the right,” she directs, pointing to the far end of the hall. “An’ I’m just across the way if ye need anythin’. See ye at breakfast.”

With you and Isobel settled in your respective rooms, she ambles off to her own, door clicking shut softly behind her, and you’re left staring at Johnny’s clothes. On Johnny’s bed. In the bedroom where he grew up. Wondering how—if at all—you’ll be able to sleep tonight.

©️Eilidh-Eternal.2024 ~ The intellectual property of Eilidh-Eternal is not permitted for reposting, transcription, translation or use with AI technologies.

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milksuu · 16 days

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ᴀ ʀᴜʟᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴀꜱʜ & ꜱᴛᴏʀᴍ ───── ♛

pairing: evil!hiccup x f!mute!reader

wc: 1.7k

tw: yandere, implied kidnapping, obsessive/possessive behavior, mention of blood/violence, mention of death

synopsis: You regretted the day they left him for dead. And you’d regret the day you ever saw him again—he’d make sure of that.

A burnish gleam of orange blazed in the bleakness of night.

You watched from your hilltop window—the thatched roofs off the eastern slopes of Berk twisting and writhing in flames. Even from a distance, you heard the breaking moans of ceilings, the cracks and bends of collapsing wooden structures, and the piercing wails of scales met with sharp edges of iron. Despite The Red Death’s fall, dragon raids still plagued the lands.

Perhaps it was all a sign of retribution.

You were told to stay within the safe confines of your home. Your father hadn’t wanted to risk your life, considering how precious you’d become. The next Seer in line after Gothi, gifted with spiritual wisdom, healing, and authority of officiating the next chief.

But the price to pay had been steep.

The house was dark, not even the smallest candle lit. Nothing that would draw a glimmer of attention to the home. A creak ached the roof above, and you flitted your nose up to the rafters, drawing lines across the ceiling. Nothing but your shallow breaths filled the silent dark.

The hearth then erupted with flame and spark, jolting you from back to neck bone. Had you any voice, a strangled scream would’ve fluttered out of your throat. Twisting, you had almost forgotten to breathe. A figure shrouded in shadow and leather stood beside the crackling firewood. Light and dark danced in an undulating battle across the strangers’ features–revealing a horrifying familiarity.

“Hope you don’t mind if I warm this place up a bit.” That voice, boy-ish in tone, lacked any hint of innocence or niceties. He stretched a gloved hand towards the licking flames, doing nothing to warm the ice coating his insides. “Couldn’t help but notice you looked a little cold and—alone.”

A snap of wood made you flinch; addressing him with quivering lips and dilated eyes. Your long-lost greeting didn’t forebode well.

Every piece of leather tightened around his body as he shifted. Turning to ensnare you within his talon like stare. When embers casted a sheen across his face, you braced against the sight. Soft features long since abandoned, reforged into a visage of cold iron. Carved and littered with scars and nicks across his furrowed brows, cheeks, and clenched jaw line.

“Well, this is kind of embarrassing. Wait, no. That’s not the word I was looking for. More like—disappointing. That sounds like a better fit. For you and everyone else here.” Hiccup stalked forward, a contraption of metal clanking and scratching against the splintering floors. Each step clanged through you, until he stood one heartbeat away. “After all these years, I’d thought you’d have a bit more to say than a blank stare. Every night, I dreamed about how this conversation would go. Just like how I dreamed things could be better than what they were. Funny how you can plan for things to go a certain way, but then…”

He pressed his hands at each side of your head, the glass window behind begging to crack from the pressure. His scent permeated, forcing you to swallow. Once smelling of spring honey and rolling glades, now sundered to singe your senses like bone ash and lightning storms.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who’s a little different.” He placed a calloused finger into the dip of your clavicle. He dug and dug until your pained gasp fell deaf to his ears. Tilting his head, he curled the lip of his mouth. “So, just like Gothi, you gave up your voice. Good—great, actually. This works out better for me.”

The smile that crept over his lips never made it up to his eyes. Not like before. Those vibrant meadows sullied into a sickly, muddled green. Thick and ichorous. And dared you stare long enough, you could never trudge your way out. Although you already felt stuck within them, your hand slipped silently into the pocket of your dress, where your fingers brushed against the hilt of a dagger.

You drew it a mere inch before his hand captured yours, twisting until he pried it into his possession.

“Come on. We both know you were never good at fighting.” He chuckled, wagging the sharpest point between your trembling eyes. “I’ll admit it. I wasn’t either back then. That’s something we had in common…until I had to be. Guess that didn’t work out in anyone’s favor on this wet piece of rock. Now, did it?”

Your vision blurred. Screams of the village roared in your ears. Screeches of dragons pierced through the air, engulfed in smoke and fire. Having consumed so much in its wake, you felt the heat of chaos leech into the glass. Searing your back pressed against it.

“Woah. Hey, don’t cry. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” he swept a rough thumb over a falling tear stain. “Not all of them will die tonight. I mean, just think about it for a second. Can’t be chief and rule over a bunch of burnt corpses. How counterintuitive would that be?”

“As for you though…” he continued, and your heart stalled as he traced the cold metal down your flush cheek and neck, pausing just above your breastbone. “I’m only standing here, watching everything and everyone turn to ash around us, all because of you. And don't tell me you don't remember. When you mended my leg. Somehow kept me from bleeding out. Just before the entire village abandoned me.” His clouded eyes narrowed down. “Including you.”

Releasing you from his pinning weight, your legs wobbled. As if he hadn’t just snatched your foothold underneath. Terror kept your feet webbed in place, watching as he twirled your dagger in his fingers like a child's play thing. Crouching near the fire, he mindlessly poked and prodded at the stoking wood. He picked away a scrap of charred chipping, before plunging the blade into the flank of the burning log. You gazed at him, chest tight, aching. How he hadn’t flinched when the fire slicked around his hand like oil.

He dragged the smoldering stump from the hearth, creating a scorched line. When the licks of fire seeped into the house floors, he rose, one vertebra at a time.

“If I’m being honest, I probably would’ve done the same thing.” He unhooked a masked contraption from his belt buckle and tightened it over his face. The eye sockets were of yellow stained sea glass, and the mouth of it appeared like a muzzle of iron teeth. “Leave something already weak, then crippled to survive on its own. Gambling on the high-stakes of death. So sure of the outcome, no one bothered to turn over a shoulder.” Hellfire rose and swelled in the reflection of his mask. “Maybe they should’ve.”

The rapid hunger of the hearth fire blazed and curled across the floor of the home. Heat lapped towards your skin, drawing out sweat from your pores. Dense smoke began filling the wooden death chamber. You inhaled the black snowflakes, searing your lungs once they melted inside you. You slapped a hard hand over your mouth, coughing and shuddering against it. A pang of panic willed your body to move. You attempted to open the window behind you, but to your horror, it had been welded to the frame.

Your eyes watered, hugging the wall as you traced it to the door. When the handle clattered against your pulls and tugs, a ghostly laugh floated around you. The metal was bolted shut from the outside. A bout of nausea cramped your stomach. Fear darted your eyes toward the stairs, where the flames hadn’t yet reached—but soon. Perhaps the window of your room hadn’t been tampered with.

You darted towards the steps, and before you could place one foot up, a black beast stalked from the darkness of the second floor.

The floating embers danced hauntingly over the onyx scales, and gashes rippled in the firelight. Revealing wounds healed twice, perhaps three times over. That body of night perfectly reflected it's master’s outward appearance.

And as you drowned in those feral slits of pure abandon, it was apparent they also shared the same broken, unmendable soul.

“Oh. You remember Toothless, don’t you?” Your face paled, backing slowly as the Nightfury slithered down the steps like black ink. A predatory growl rumbled above the snapping and collapsing wood around you. Hiccup sauntered to the dragon’s side, patting the thick of his neck, pulsing with power. Another laugh at your expense. “Looks like he remembers you.”

You fought the claw of unconsciousness raking over every part of you. Choking, straining against your hand pathetically covering your mouth.

“Since you did me a favor back then, I’m going to give you one chance to make it up to me.” The mask muffled his voice, but the wickedness screamed, rattling your veins. “You can either choose to stay here and burn with the rest of Berk or…” he lifted a hand, hardly an invitation, but a devilish bargain. “You can choose me.”

In the thick of your pounding head and chest, you considered burning to death was the wiser option of the two. All that he was—what he’d inevitably become—held no promise of a life worth degrading yourself for. Nothing about you would be spared. And it wouldn’t be long till you dropped on hands and knees, begging for him to take your life. To end his drawn out game of torture. One he’d carefully crafted for years and years.

Just for you, only for you.

Still, you clung to life. A measly mortal thread. Your shaking hand lifted, painfully reaching for his fingertips. One step forward, and the world spun in wisps of red and black. Your lungs and heart throbbed, practically seizing. A calculated arm caught you, cradling you wholly, close as any lover would.

“Good choice.”

You heard the waning words of approval, and through the fading light of your vision, something fastened over your face. Your last conscious breath had been clean, airy—a pleasant contrast to the toxic fumes.

Then, nothing.

#hiccup #hiccup x reader #hiccup imagines #hiccup haddock #httyd #httyd fanfiction #httyd x reader #httyd imagines #how to train your dragon #evil!hiccup #yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere male #reader insert #x reader #fem reader

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historiaxvanserra · 2 months

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Every Exquisite Thing | A Regency AU

Summary: The first of the season brings with it so many things; new friends, new enemies, a masquerade ball, and a rakish young gentleman with eyes like burnished gold.

Pairing: Eris Vanserra x Archeron!Reader (Regency AU)

Word Count: 3.1k

This is the first part of a series that had been consuming my thoughs day and night for about two weeks. We don't meet Eris yet but we get glimpses and I like what I see 👀 I just wanted to give a feel for the regency vibe and see if we're feeling it or not! Next chapter well get Eris in all his regency glory and I promise you, he's worth the wait.

The townhouse that your family occupies on the main street of the Ton is unusually quiet this morning, you think. The first of the season typically brings with it an air of frivolity; the ladies in their Spring colors, gentlemen riding horse-drawn carriages through the cobblestone streets and the hum of the city beyond. A myriad of color -- lilacs and honeysuckle, dappled with the greenery that climbs along the facades of the townhouses -- a colorful oasis from the bleak gray and green of a Winter spent in the country.

However, today, the main square, where Pryhtian’s most ancient and noble families convalesce during the fairer months, is blanketed in an oppressive palette of indigo and gray as the last of the Winter’s storms ravages the world beyond Crescent House.

The sound of the howling wind as it rages like a great tempest through the streets rouses you from your perch on the chaise near the dying hearth.

The street below the parlor is veiled in the shadowed hues of the storm and not a soul in town has dared brave the wrath of the elements since the dourpour began. Hail patters dismally against the window panes of your families townhouse and an ice-kissed wind crawls its way along the exposed planes of your shoulders and collarbones and in the distance you hear the distinctive draw of a carriage along the main square, near Forest House. As you near the window you observe the hail as it falls like pearls from the darkening sky onto wet, cobbled streets.

From the oppressive darkness a carriage emerges; a considerable vehicle of polished wood, lacquered with dark emerald paint, the trim and doors are framed with delicate golden embellishments and the doors and rear bear a family crest, obscured by the gloom of the afternoon. The cart itself is drawn by four bay stallions with long, dark manes, sodden with the downpour. From the cabin steps a shadowy figure of a man, once obscured by the oppressive darkness, now illuminated by the lamplight; he’s all dressed in black, save for the white collar of a linen shirt and his long hair, curls away from his face in tousled, auburn waves. He burns most ardent against the bleak afternoon, even in the din of the oil lamps, he looks like something out of one of Feyre’s paintings. Or perhaps the formidable and brooding romantic lead of the romance novels Nesta so adores. Either way he cuts an intimidating figure in the dark streets of the main square. Tall and broad-shouldered, and rather rakish as he stalks up the steps of the townhouse opposite yours.

From your perch overlooking the street you see him turn outward; admiring the graceful planes of his face, the aquiline nose and high-cheekbones falling to the slender cut of his waist and hips and the broad spread of his shoulders and sculpted arms.

It occurs to you then that you have been all too obvious in your voyeurism.

You are watching him.

And he is watching you in return.

The very thought elicits something in you; something dark and sentimental and terribly anxious. It is a cruel, coiling thing, in the pit of your stomach. Some ill-fated omen. A harbinger of your own downfall. The ghost at the feast, or a raven in the night that spells your undoing. Whatever it is, there is a deep sense of foreboding in you at the prospect of what this dark figure might herald in with him.

The tolling of the city bells brings with it a flurry of movement on the street and your eyes meet his strange amber gaze across the way and he scowls. A deep furrow of a brow; the firm set of his jaw, the flex of a pale hand, before retreating into the house.

“Come away from the window girl,” Your mother chastises in her usual cutting tone as she eyes you from her place in front of the hearth. Her gloved hand inspects the fine silk fabric of the dresses the modiste had sent to her. She holds the fabric between those fine-boned fingers and drapes each swatch over the pale skin of her slender arm with a rehearsed ease as she takes the time to scrutinize every hand-sewn seam and embroidered adornment.

“Yes mama.” You say absentmindedly, casting one last longing glance towards the dark facade of the townhouse across the street, where the orange flicker of candlelight illuminates the window..

Your mother is an austere woman with a cutting sort of beauty rather unlike your own. Her eyes are cold and grey and her features, angular; feline in a way that is almost unnerving to look at. Though even in her age, she bares fine, high cheekbones, unblemished skin, and her long golden hair falls over the delicate slope of her shoulder in coiffed ringlets. She had been quite a remarkable beauty in her youth, it had been said. Now all that remains of her lost youth is an oil painting hung above the hearth-- the paint, yellowed and cracked with age-- and the legacy of her ancient and most-noble lineage.

Her piercing gaze falls onto you again as you take a turn about the room, perching on the cushioned bench in front of the pianoforte. You run a hand over the untuned keys and in your wake dust mites filter through the stagnant air.

That piano had once been the beating heart of this room; a symphony of high arching notes that rang through the halls of this house.

It has not been touched since Nesta left.

“You look drawn, my dear,” She says simply, her eyes cruel and unyielding as she looks over you and the fine silk draped over her arm, “green does so very little for your complexion.”

She considers you for a moment longer before turning to the modiste with a quirked brow. The seamstress at least, has the good grace to look apologetically between you and your youngest sister before nodding in agreement to your mother. She murmurs that a deeper shade of green would suit you better, though your mother ignores her entirely.

“Perhaps an emerald tone would suit better” she muses to no one in particular.

“It would make you look more…tempting” The modiste decides with a sly smile to you when your mother looses a shrill gasp. Your mother hums her disapproval once more from her spot in the armchair before turning her attention towards Feyre on the modiste’s podium as the slender woman takes her measurements for the last alterations to her gown.

“You look beautiful Fey,” You say lightly, pulling at your own faded sage gown as you regard your youngest sister, “the silver looks exquisite on you.” Feyre smiles brightly at you from her place on the podium and pulls a few strands of her long, golden hair to frame her face. She looks as though she is wreathed in starlight in the silver gown; the high bust lays perfectly over her chest and the cuffed sleeves are trimmed with silver thread and sheer lace and accentuate the slope of her strong shoulders, the skirts fall in a swathe of silk and chiffon and the pearls and opal sewn into the skirts catch like moonglow in the blue light. She smooths the skirts with a flair of her gloved hand and admires the matching slippers that peek out from the long hem.

“Hmm,” Your mother murmurs lowly, bringing a slender hand to her painted mouth as she assesses the garment carefully, “Yes - the silver favors you, my darling.” Your mother purses her lips once more and nods decisively at the modiste who offers a courteous bow in response.

“I have hopes that the Lady of Autumn might name you her ‘incomparable’, afterall.” Your mother’s voice is frightfully wistful as she casts a look up to her portrait hung above the dying fire. Beside it, on the mantle Nesta’s painted face stares back impassively at you and you feel anxiety twisting within you again. Feyre laughs. A small, disbelieving thing as she thanks the modiste and exits the parlor in favor of her sketchbook.

“She did so love Nesta when she was first presented,” You mother recalls, her eyes glassy as she sips at her cold tea with a grimace, “and your sister does so remind me of her.”

You smile fondly at the thought of your eldest sister; painfully absent for the last few years but missed dearly. Nesta had always bore the brunt of your mother’s cruelty -- until she could bare it no more -- and then you took her place.

“Yes mama, she will do very well at court.” You say genuinely, though your mother can’t bring herself to acknowledge you. You bite down the bitter taste of jealousy when her eyes linger on the portrait of Nesta hung along the mantel. The way her brows dip in a moment of fleeting grief for her favorite daughter.

When she looks at you again you get the sense that looking at you now -- in the pallid light of the storm -- is like looking in a mirror.

It is a mother’s curse you think.

A daughter’s burden.

Breathing deeply as the modiste pins the hem of the dress you find yourself thinking of the happy recollections of your childhood; you think perhaps your mother is reminiscing on those times too.

She had been the only daughter of an Earl somewhere on the continent once. Beautiful and graceful. Green and foolhardy. Named the incomparable of her own social season; she had dreams of an idyllic life in the countryside, summers shaded in the laughter of her many sons, and measured in the unyielding smiles of a good husband.

Of course, as was the way of things, her girlhood ideations had been nought but that-- dreams. Dashed and divided like stardust in a vast twilight abyss.

A series of scandals and bad investments led her to Pryhtian as the sole heir to an old name. A lamb to the slaughter by her own mother, to be the docile wife of some dull Lord, almost two decades her senior

In time, she did the same to her own daughters.

Time is a cruel mistress; and the woman she is now is one tarnished by the years. Imposing and cynical; demanding in a way that it was impossible to please her. In your youth you recall her endless cruelty towards you all, though none more than Nesta.

Her prodigy.

Her pride and joy.

It was that ceaseless need for perfection that drove Nesta away in the end.

So with the wave of her hand she gestures to you to take to the podium.

An ill-fated replacement for the daughter she lost.

Her perpetual disappointment.

The modiste is a young woman, who hails from the continent with beautiful dark hair that fell in coiled ringlets over her shoulders, she speaks to you in a low, velvet tenor and has a thick accent that distinguishes her to the natives of this land. She is favored by many of the young ladies of the Ton for her exquisite garments; each made with richly adorned and embroidered fabrics imported from her homeland. You watch impassively as she records your measurements and swatches a few scraps of fabric against your skin. The woman quickly discards the silver that Feyre had worn and opts instead for gold and offers your mother a few other options for your dresses this season; sapphire and cerulean, emerald and ruby, topaz and onyx.

Then selects a beautiful emerald gown, trimmed with jade and adorned with matching beads and crystals that shine with the glittering darkness of some forgotten forest when the light of the storm outside refacts in their many surfaces. The modiste admires the garment as she holds it up to you; her keen eyes finding yours and smiling brightly and nodding deliberately.

“This is the one,” She says, her accent so thick with delight that it is difficult to fully understand the words, “perhaps the Lady of Autumn might name you her favorite in your sisters place” She offers it jovially, almost in jest but your mother’s face twists nonetheless.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Your mother laughs cruelly as she regards you in the beautiful garment. You think perhaps that in you she sees all the things she hates about herself. Your mother takes a moment to scrutinize you; her eyes reap over every curve and divot of the skirts as they fall against you, every minute details to find fault where she can.

It is a mothers’s curse, not to know a daughter’s pain.

You imagine it is also a mercy too when she looks at you like you are her own reflection.

Her perpetual disappointment.

After another silent moment she nods her head to the modiste and rises to her feet. The tea cup rattles and rings viscously through icy air as she sets it down and wanders towards the doors.

“Oh Feyre darling, you look exquisite!” Your mothers voice is shrill and dripping with pride that elicits a strange sort of jealousy and you swallow down its bitter taste. In the foyer your sister glides down the marble staircase dressed in all her finery.

Feyre has the type of beauty reminiscent of a falling star; all pale skin, that looks like porcelain, dappled with the iridescent stardust that falls from the sky around her birthday each year. Her dress is one of flowing indigo and complemented by intricate silver embroidery along the cuffs and bust, the long line of her neck is adorned with pearls and diamonds that refract in the light of the chandelier; dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky.

She smiles brightly and her laugh echoes like birdsong around the hall as your mother takes her hand. And almost like an afterthought, your mother regards you with thinly veiled horror at the garment that clings to you like a plate of armor.

A deep merlot gown, inlaid with rubies and pearls; that cast a bloody halo as you step into the light of the chandelier. The skirts bleed into a train made of gossamer thin spidersilk that has a metallic quality to it that makes you feel as though you are some ancient Goddess of love and war.

Aphrodite perhaps, as deadly as she is beautiful.

Your hands, though they tremble, bare many gold rings, each polished to the heavens so that she sees her face distorted in their many unblemished surfaces. There is a part of you that hopes craves your mothers love more than you long to insight her ire.

But that part of you died the day Nesta went away.

“How do you suppose you’re going to tempt a man into marrying you dressed like that,” She chastices, pulling at the skirts of your wine red dress, “you look like a common whore.”

“At least a whore is paid to abide the insipid company of boring men.” you counter under your breath as your mother strides out into the street. You catch Feyre’s eye and she smiles at you like a feral cat.

The rest of the carriage ride is spent in solemn silence as the facade of The town hall draws ever closer. You mother’s idle gossip about one Lord of the other hardly seems the rouse you from though as you watch the world beyond this cart pass you by.

The storm had broken sometime around midday and the tempest gave way to sunlight; soft ochre and gold as it filtered through the open windows of your father’s library, where you had spent the afternoon. Nestled into the worn armchair favored by your father and a quiet comfort when he is away. There, in the confines of your father’s study, you allow yourself to dream; of debauched gentlemen and tortured artists. Stories painted with the vivid imaginings of Gothic heroines and vast and sweeping landscapes. Of temptation and sacrifice.

It is a hobby inherited from your sister and one much discouraged by your mother.

But as afternoon bled into night you were called away from the pages of manuscripts written in some foreign tongue. For, the Lady of Autumn’s masquerade ball marks the true commencement of the social season each year. It is a night of mystery and secrets; of dark romance and all things fanciful.

It is the one night a year that you allow yourself to be swept up in the excitement of the season and tonight every eligible Lord and Lady will don their finery for a night of high-arching orchestral music and sweeping dances that herald in the social season.

It is tonight of all nights where the Lady of Autumn will name the incomparable of the season; a young woman both fair and accomplished that will inspire awe and ire in equal measure. For her troubles she might hope to tempt an eligible gentleman into marriage by summer’s end. And as your mother gives Feyre one more adoring look you know that she is hoping that your sister will insight that awe tonight.

The carriage draws to a tumultuous halt outside the doors of the grand town hall and you hear the distant laughter of courtiers. The chatter of the ladies distracts you momentarily and you catch their idle chatter; something about the new Duke and his wicked beauty. A beauty as cruel as he is, they say. Their chatter dies when they meet your eyes and they devolve into mean-spirited whispers about the poor Archeron girls and their absent sister.

“Quickly girls, we mustn't be late.” Your mother instructs and steps from the carriage turning expectantly as you disembark from the vehicle with all the grace you can manage. Your stomach twists in knots and the anxiety is so consuming that it addles your mind. So much so that any intelligent thought you might have had seems to abandon you.

The gardens of the town hallare saturated in the light of the last shadowed sunbeams as they are obliterated by the rapidly falling night; veins of indigo and amethyst that streak across the black. The air is heady and thick with the smell of wildflowers and wine and every now and again you catch the scent of half-burned oak and bergamot’s on the evening breeze.

The first of the season is in full swing and the courtiers look like a jewel toned fire in their finery; swathes of ruby and topaz, dappled with emerald and carnelian. You had felt the shift in the air when the sun had begun to set in the sky; that anticipation so palpable you could taste it. It tastes like wood and wildflowers, undercut with something darker.

You abandon yourself to the thought of it; what he might taste like.

Hedonism; earthy and dangerous as you swallow it back.

In an hour or two, when the stars materialize like a million quarts against the velvet abyss, the Ladies will retreat into the mazes, in twos or threes and their Lords, like hungry wolves will begin the hunt.

A hunt that will last the season

#acotar #acotar x reader #acotar fanfiction #eris vanserra #eris x reader #eris x you #eris vanserra x reader #eris vanserra x you #eris acotar #eris vandaddy

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b4kuch1n · 11 months

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one thing I thought was missing from canon sk8 was the mine being haunted apparently. so we are bringing that into burnished house for absolutely no fucking reason

#sk8 the infinity #burnished house #(I am jokeing there is. in fact. a reason)#(you will not learn this until the divorce comes up)#(well the preliminary reason is I fucking love ghost stories and want to put them in everything)#(and that reki is afraid of scary things which makes him my favourite kind of victim. younger sibling coded for that only)#Im actually having a lot of fun alternating povs between reki and langa bc Ive like. accidentally grounded langa's in #very clear and present bodily sensations. straight up uncomplicated observations about materials in the world around him #while reki's gets all the hyperboles and pretty poetic stuff. I enjoy the idea of him being good at storytelling #ESPECIALLY bc him taking words to heart including scary stories. big deal to me ok?#love to write langa and going from things that clearly are present right there in the scene to the most insane thoughts a man can have #and then write reki and jump wildly between dork ass energetic shounen character speech and romanticizing the fuck out of concrete #weird thing to say after writing three fics of like 20K+ words in total about them granted lmao #but like. listen. I feel like burnished house is me going apeshit so far. this is truly my time to be the worst ever #same approach as I took with [REDACTED]. oh you think this is bad? just wait #I have already added TWO old people ghosts into this one. be in awe of my power #well. be in awe of it when I finish this chapter... I need to sleep rn dksdfhdskj #have a good nite lads. I cant wait to get to that one spot in this chapter where I go yess... YESS!!!! HAHAHA YESSSS #wish u the same for ur art endeavour. if ur art endeavour doesnt have something like that u should add it. my message to da world

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waitmyturtles · 1 month

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(Source)

The Lower House (House of Representatives) will be hearing Thailand’s marriage equality bill at 9:30 am Bangkok time (10:30 pm Eastern for those of us in the States). The bill, if passed, would still have to be approved in Thailand’s Senate.

(Source and source)

Below the fold is Bloomberg.com's report on the happenings (source):

Bill to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage in Thailand Heads to Parliament

Bill is supported by most major parties, needs king approval

Thailand would be first in region to codify marriage equality

By Patpicha Tanakasempipat, March 26, 2024 at 2:00 PM PDT

A bill to legalize same-sex marriage could face a vote in Thailand’s parliament as early as Wednesday. If it passes, the country will be the first in Southeast Asia to establish marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

The House of Representatives will take up the legislation, technically an amendment to the Civil and Commercial Code, for second and third readings when it meets at 9 a.m. Lawmakers may vote later in the day.

The bill would legalize marriage for same-sex partners aged 18 and above, along with rights to inheritance, tax allowances and child adoption, among others. Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin’s administration has made it a signature issue, and advocates say it would also burnish Thailand’s reputation as an LGBTQ-friendly tourist destination.

Taiwan and Nepal are the only places in Asia that currently recognize same-sex marriage, and recent efforts elsewhere in the region have had mixed results. Hong Kong has yet to comply with a 2023 court order to establish laws recognizing same-sex partnerships, and India’s Supreme Court refused to legalize same-sex marriage, saying it’s an issue for parliament to consider.

The Thai bill would change the composition of a marriage from “a man and a woman” to “two individuals,” and change the official legal status from “husband and wife” to “married couple.”

Thai laws have protected LGBTQ people from most kinds of discrimination since 2015, but attempts to formalize marriage rights have stalled. In 2021, the Constitutional Court upheld the law recognizing marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. Last year, a bill to recognize same-sex civil partnerships failed to clear parliament ahead of elections.

Rights advocates have higher hopes for the bill pending now, noting that it has broad support from most of the major parties. If it passes, it will need to be approved by the Senate and endorsed by the King. Then it would be published in the Royal Gazette and take effect 120 days later.

Srettha’s government has also promised to work on a bill to recognize gender identity, and the health ministry has also proposed legalizing commercial surrogacy to allow LGBTQ couples to adopt children. Thailand is seeking to host the WorldPride events in Bangkok in 2028.

Legalizing same-sex marriage could have positive effects on tourism, which contributes about 12% to the nation’s $500 billion economy. In 2019, before the pandemic froze international tourism, LGBTQ travel and tourism to Thailand generated about $6.5 billion, or 1.2% of gross domestic product, according to industry consultant LGBT Capital.

Formal recognition could boost the reputation of a place already considered one of Asia’s best for LGBTQ visitors, said Wittaya Luangsasipong, managing director of Siam Pride, an LGBTQ-friendly travel agency in Bangkok.

“It will become a selling point for Thailand and raise our strength in the global stage,” Wittaya said. “It will create a relaxed and safe atmosphere for tourism and help attract more and more LGBTQ visitors. We could also see more weddings by LGBTQ couples, which could generate income across industries and local communities.”

#marriage equality #marriage equality in thailand #thailand #thailand politics #pita limjaroenrat #srettha thavisin #this article is a very good look-see into how thailand has continued to leverage LGBTQ+ rights for soft power and now even hard power #lgbtq+#mileapo and freenbecky just visited with the prime minister last week #same sex marriage #same sex marriage equality

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seravphs · 1 year

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ੈ♡˳·˖✶ — GUARDIAN ANGEL! GOJO x FEM READER

Kneeling by your bed, rosary wrapped around your knuckles, lips pressed to the burnished rosewood, you pray.

God, please send me another guardian angel.

A blast of static from the TV behind you.

The one you sent me-

“Hey, how does the thing work?” Gojo says, accompanied by loud thumps. You cringe in silence.

He’s strange.

wc — 3.7k

tags — religion, Gojo has to reckon with the consequences of being the strongest, domesticity, attempted (failed) mugging/attack, Gojo kills a man for you (non graphic), Shoko’s a good friend, bs angel lore, I think of this like a prequel to reader’s villain arc lol, title from closer by nine inch nails

You wake up to a man standing over your bed. Understandably, you scramble backwards, hands over knees over legs over feet, all your limbs tangled together, until you bump into your headboard.

“Hi!” He says cheerily. “Wow, haven’t gotten that reaction in a while, not since- Anyways. I’m Gojo Satoru, your guardian angel. Please make breakfast, it’s 12 pm already and I’m starving. Your sleep habits are terrible.”

You shake, terrified. Nothing he said has gone through your brain.

“Um, hello? Deep breaths now. It’s really not that serious, can you stop that? Hellooooo,” he’s snapping his fingers in front of your face, trying to get through to you.

You panic and bat his hand away, but if you can touch him, that means he’s real. You’re not dreaming. There’s a strange man in your house calling himself your guardian angel. You try to pull yourself together enough to make a coherent sentence. What comes out is:

“Um. Guardian angel. What?”

“You don’t believe me,” he says.

You’ve heard it can be dangerous for people suffering from delusions to be forcefully brought out of their dreams. “No,” you say carefully. “I’m sure this is all a big understanding.”

“No, that’s okay,” he laughs. “I love getting to do this.”

Massive wings unfurl from his back. It’s a strange sight. The air seems to ripple around them, iridescent ebbs and flows of the universe to make space for the impossible. They seem to sprout right out of his shoulder blades.

It’s undeniable, irrefutable proof. Your brain can’t process this. It goes back to sleep.

You wake up to the smell of bacon burning in the kitchen.

Gojo hums as he cooks, his wings out. You’re almost worried they’ll get caught in the flames when suddenly you have something much more real to worry about.

“Ow!” He’s about to stick his finger into his mouth when you intervene, scolding him without even thinking about it.

“That’s dangerous! Don’t put your hands in your mouth, especially not if you’ve been cooking. Come here,” you tug him over to run his hands under the faucet.

“Who's the guardian angel again?” He teases, amused.

You answer him with another question. “Why are you cooking, anyways?”

“You’re starving me! It’s so late and you haven’t made breakfast yet - you know I could report you to the authorities for angel abuse, right?”

Somehow, you don’t believe him. There may very well be a division in heaven’s bureaucracy dedicated to looking after angels, but something about Gojo is just on the edge of unbelievable, like if you blink too hard, it might disappear without a trace. It’s the wings, probably.

You’re good at compartmentalizing, so you ignore all of the normal reactions someone would have to an angel randomly appearing in your apartment to instead make breakfast. Gojo already burned your favorite pan, so you stick it in the sink to soak while you rummage around for your second best set. Then you check the fridge. You’re out of butter and eggs. There are just two pieces of bacon left. Is it presumptuous to ask your angel to run errands with you?

You poke your head out of the fridge to look at Gojo, staring remorsefully at the burnt remains of his once-was-an-egg. He’s nursing the cut on his finger.

“Do you want to go grocery shopping?”

He smiles at you, slow and syrupy and-

He can’t do that. He’s beautiful as it is, as if God took extra time crafting him. Smiling only makes his beauty all the more painful, tugging at the strings of your heart. His snow white hair curls against the nape of his neck, a ruthlessly cute detail you notice when he tilts his head at you.

“I would love to. What’s grocery shopping?”

Introducing Gojo to the modern world is an exercise in both patience and childish wonder. There’s so much he doesn’t know. He tells you the last time he’s been on Earth was somewhere back in the 90’s.

“Like 1990? That’s pretty recent,” you remark.

“Like 90 CE.”

He’s delighted by everything, even the simplest of snacks, and begs you to add them to your cart. Ramune impresses him to no end. He’s enthralled by the taste of ice cream after the nice worker gives him a sample. You might really be reported to the Bureau of Angel Abuse at this point - all he’s interested in is junk food. It takes a while to finally wrangle him away from everything. In a way, it’s your fault because you hesitate to refuse an angel anything, and Gojo wants it all. You only manage to get him to agree to go home once you’ve tired him out.

There was a sense of reverence, at first.

There’s an angel living in your home. It’s hard to imagine getting used to that. Walking into the bathroom to the sight of Gojo brushing his teeth shirtless, his wings out, is a sight that will never get old. He manages to transform even the mundane into the divine. The sunlight strikes his hair at just the right angle to glow, giving him a faux-halo.

“Good morning,” he smiles. “I think I used up all your toothpaste.”

By day seven, you’ve wised up to Gojo’s tactics. If you don’t say no to anything, he’ll steamroll right over you, so you have to grow a backbone.

“Oh, Christ? Yeah, we’re old pals. We go wayyyyy back.”

“Please be quiet while I’m trying to pray.”

“We’re in the same therapy group, actually. He texts me all the time for advice-“

“Gojo. Shut. Up.”

He’s silent for all of a minute before he pipes up again. “I don’t think capital G up there would appreciate that.”

You have never missed a day of prayer in your life. No temptation has been able to sway you from your duties. Hunger, thirst, and pain all were swept away in the face of your faith. Were you seriously about to start now, being annoyed to death by a particularly useless angel?

The best solution to Gojo is always to ignore him. He needs attention like flowers need water.

Without it, he stalks off to sulk.

It’s night by the time he returns. He’s flying, which you usually don’t allow him to do, but you’ve driven out to a more remote, private church to pray. It’s owned by an old family friend, who handed you the keys without question. Half of this is for you, to experience god in the sanctity of nature, and half is for Gojo. You hate seeing him cooped up. Part of you feels like you’ve chained him down. You’re a trap in the form of a human, made to keep him grounded.

He touches down next to you, hair slicked to his forehead in sweat. When he stretches his arms, his wings move simultaneously. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him look more alive. He loves nothing like he loves flying, and you’re inclined to agree.

Maybe you’ll let him take you for another ride tonight. You love the feeling of the wind against your face, the sight of the landscape beneath you when he takes you up, the feeling in your stomach when he tucks his wings in and free-falls for fun. You’re not scared. Gojo would never let anything happen to you.

You might ask, later. Now, you send him off to the car ahead of you while you lock up. He’s cheerful as he heads off, whistling merrily. You’re glad flying has improved his mood. It’s equally painful for you whenever he’s upset with you. Perhaps it's simply a side effect of being a guardian angel .

The key is in the door when you feel the first hint of danger.

“All the money in your pockets, ma’am.”

Polite, for a thief.

“You’re not from around these parts.” He says as you spin around. “Should’ve known better than to go wandering around these woods alone. Whatever happens next is on you, sweetheart. If only you’d been a little more careful.”

He has a knife.

“What do you want? Money? You can have it.” It doesn’t matter much to you. As long as he leaves before Gojo comes back.

“Sometimes, ma’am, men don’t want anything but a thrill.”

Then he lunges at you, presses you against the wall, and pins you with a knife to your throat.

“Don’t scream now. No one would hear you anyways.”

He’s wrong about that part.

You hear him coming up the path before you see him.

“What’s taking you so long?” Gojo whines. “I wanna go home and watch Love Island already-oh.”

“Run!” Gojo might be an angel, but you’ve seen him cut himself making toast. He can bleed like any other man, gold ichor, yes, but blood still. You don’t want to see him hurt.

Instead, he sizes up your assailant, unfurls those beautiful wings - they always take your breath away - and in one swift move, simply tears you from his grasp. It’s faster than you can blink.

The man makes a muffled sound of fear and shock as Gojo seems to blink back into existence. You know he’s only moving too fast for your brains to comprehend.

“Stay here,” he deposits you on the grass behind him. It’s scorched, burned black from the temperature of his wings.

He turns up the heat. You didn’t think it was possible, but he was clearly holding back. The air seems to melt around him, heat waves shimmering off his skin, his white feathers. They glow with an otherworldly light, radiating heat.

You didn’t know true glory until this moment, and it frightens you. All other versions of blue fade in favor of Gojo’s eyes - a single, unyielding truth. He is a piece of heaven on earth, burning up. His anger is righteous. Holy. His true nature melts away his human appearance.

He’s a seraph, one of the highest order of angels.

You’ve never seen him fight before, don’t know how he gets his weapons or where he puts them. It just appears out of thin air. He carries a flaming sword in one hand, its pommel is white marble, its blade glass. Contrary to common belief, his voice doesn’t boom. In fact it’s all the more threatening because it is soft, a whisper so clearly heard it defies the laws of the world just because it can.

He raises the sword like an executioner and judge all in one.

You barely have time to close your eyes in horror when you realize what he’s about to do.

Real angels are not like the watered down, commercialized ones you can find today in any young adult TV show. Real angels are bloody. Real angels are the hand of God, ruthless and violent.

Real angels have no mercy.

You open your eyes again when you feel the now familiar heat on your skin.

He’s standing before you, beaming. It’s clear he expects praise. In heaven, it might’ve been given to him.

You can only stare at him in fear, not awe.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” He steps closer, his burning wings flapping. “It’s okay. I got rid of him. You’re safe now.”

You’re ashamed a split second after it happens because it’s so pathetic, but you can’t help it. Your animal instincts react instinctively to the threat, sending you skittering back on your palms and ass away from him.

He freezes. His wings remain moving. Perhaps, like a shark and its gills, he simply can’t stop.

“You’re afraid of me,” he says, stunned. “Why are you afraid of me?”

The heat from his wings is baking your face. You’re afraid if you speak, your skin will crack. Still, Gojo shows no signs of leaving you alone. If anything, he’s about to get closer.

“Stop,” you squeak. You throw out your hands in front of you like the world’s most useless shield. Your eyes are watering from looking into his radiance.

Helpless, Gojo does something he hasn’t done since he was just a newborn angel.

He asks for help.

Shoko Ieri looks nothing like him, so that answers one question you’ve always had. Gojo tells you she’s another angel, although you don’t see her wings past the first minute you’ve met. After Gojo summons her to the scene and she catches the way you look at him, she keeps them carefully folded in.

She helps you into the passenger seat when you can’t make your legs move to walk back to your car. You won’t let Gojo touch you, feeling torn at the look on his face when you flinch back from him.

He’s sitting on a stool at the island while Shoko checks you over for injuries in the kitchen. There’s no major damage, just the after effects of shock and adrenaline working through your system.

“You know I’d never hurt you, right?” He says, hurt and confused.

“You fucking idiot. You colossal blockhead. You-“ Shoko pauses, not because she’s run out of things to say, but because she has too many. “It’s not about you, right now, okay? I know it’s hard for you to get your head out of your ass, but can you at least try to be supportive?”

Gojo makes a noise like he wants to protest, but you shift your weight and that draws his attention back to you. The look on your face makes him fall silent.

Shoko leaves after she’s completed her examination, though she doesn’t leave you helpless.

“Do you want to come with me?” She says, carefully. “I understand if you don’t want to be left alone with him right now.”

You shake your head.

“Listen, I know Gojo scared you. I’m sorry. He shouldn’t have. He’s always been too reckless - ugh. The stories I could tell you. But I promise you, he will never hurt you - not just because he cares about you, but because he’s literally not allowed to. He’s your guardian angel.”

“I know,” you say, and that’s the end of that.

There’s an uncomfortable silence after Shoko leaves. You’re not sure how to navigate the once easy relationship between you and Gojo now. Always unable to keep still, he breaks the silence first.

“Do you want to talk about it now?” He says softly. Everything about him is dulled, even the gleam of his brilliant hair. He’s back within his human skin, even more modestly than before, as if he has taken care to seal up every crack that his true nature could spill out of.

You choose your first question carefully. “Why has the lord sent a seraph to watch over me?”

Seraphs are the highest level of the hierarchy of angels. They maintain the order of the world, fulfilling God’s will. For one to have come to you-

True horror is sinking in. You love your saints. You worship them devoutly, knowing each story by heart. You could trace a path through the church library of all the books you’ve read on them, giving the history of each spine.

You do not want to be one of your saints.

Joan of Arc died at 19. Saint Agatha was canonized for being tortured violently.

By sending you such a strong protector, your lord may be condemning you to die young, but that’s not why you cry. You cry because you are too weak to fulfill his command.

Life is sweet. You don’t want to give up the taste of tart oranges on your tongue, the feeling of the babbling creek over your feet, the songs of the birds in the morning. You don’t want to give up Gojo’s wake up calls, or the feeling of flying.

All these selfish, worldly pleasures should mean nothing to you when faced with the lord’s call, and yet-

You resent it still.

You’re so confused by it all. Why were you given such a burden and told nothing about it? What does any of it mean?

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. We don’t get told anything but who we were assigned to.”

“Okay,” you say.

“That’s it? Okay? I scare the shit out of you, and all you have to say is okay?”

“Gojo, I don’t want to fight anymore. Let me just go to bed, please.”

You’re woken up not by the light of Gojo’s halo, as you’ve gotten used to when he comes to your room demanding breakfast, but by the sun. The curtains are open, and sunbeams stream in over your pillow.

Gojo is in the kitchen making - not burning - breakfast. He doesn’t turn when you pad into the kitchen on slippered feet, but you know he knows you’re there. You’re feeling much better. Sleep has refreshed you from the major shock to your system last night, and now you feel almost half bad for your reaction to him. He only wanted to help you, after all.

It’s not his fault he’s strong. At the end of the day, he’s just another gear in the universe, like you. Neither of you are important enough to be privy to the greater, divine plan, not even a seraph. You shouldn’t have snapped at him. You’re in this together.

You stand on tiptoe behind him to peer over his shoulder into the pan.

“I’m making you breakfast,” he says. Is it just you, or does he seem almost shy?

What an impact you’ve had on him. Your heart breaks. You’ve only known him to be bold and uncaring of human customs like politeness. You didn’t think it would upset you to see him learn manners, and yet-

It’s a consequence of your rejection last night, as if he’s worried you’ll pull away again. This isn’t what you wanted, ever.

“We should talk,” you say.

“Yeah. We should.” He still won’t turn around, avoiding eye contact.

Before you can speak, he blurts out, “ Do you not want me to be your angel anymore?”

“Of course not,” you say, reaching out for him. He’s hesitant to let you pull him closer, take his hands in yours. “Gojo, why would you think that?”

“You’re scared of me,” he says, almost petulantly, like a sulking child. “You don’t like me anymore.”

“Gojo,” you can think of nothing to say but his name. Sweet Gojo. Selfish Gojo. Gojo, who you’ve gotten used to having around. Gojo, who has infiltrated your life and now thinks to leave like you can kick him out like that. Like you would. Gojo, who you’re fond of in a way you can’t articulate, despite the way he takes and takes from you. Gojo, who you’re willing to keep, despite everything.

Gojo, who you care about, enough to want him to stay.

Gojo, who cares about you, enough to want to leave.

He takes this like a rebuff and wrenches his hands out of yours.

You grab his face and forcefully drag his attention back to you. His eyes are wild like a trapped animal, but there’s no sign of fire. He’s carefully dampened any kind of godliness in him.

“Oh, Gojo. Please don’t. I want you with me, I promise. I would never ask you to leave.”

“You don’t have to,” he says grimly. A soldier to the end. He knows how to do the hard things. Sometimes, you have to cut the rot out before the wound festers.

“I am scared of you - please don’t make that face. You’re breaking my heart.”

“Your heart? What about mine?” He bristles.

“I trust you. Let me prove it. Take your wings out again. Show me your true self.”

“After seeing how you reacted?” He scoffs, turning defensive. You’ve exhausted his goodness, and now his emotions are getting the better of him, making the situation ugly. But you knew this would happen.

You know him.

And you know how to deal with him.

“Come on,” you say. “Think of it like exposure therapy.”

“I don’t want to see you look at me like that again,” he admits.

“I know you won’t hurt me,” you say. “Please. Do you trust me?”

He ends up on the ground cross legged, his wings spread, back to you. His wings are fiery, but carefully controlled. He won’t burn you.

You start small, running your hands all over his wings. They rustle underneath your touch like startled animals. When you tug gently at the ends, extending them to their full length, you realize how monstrous his wingspan truly is. From tip to tip, they’re larger than a grown man is tall. Your fingers creep along the thin ridge of his radius, deceptively thin beneath your fingers. If you didn’t know better, it would snap easily with just the barest hint of pressure.

He makes a small noise. You jerk back, worried you’ve actually bent the bone, but he’s fine. He pushes his wings back under your hands like a puppy seeking attention.

From the radius, you trail along the top edge to his metacarpus, then down to his feathers, all the way back to his scapula. From there, it’s only a few inches over to his actual shoulder blades. He shudders when you touch him there, your fingertips lightly grazing over the bone. You press down gently. His muscles flex under your skin, tense and wound up.

You realize that he's been suspiciously quiet for a while. He’s too still, as if he’s purposely holding himself in place. Have you hurt him without knowing? Would he tell you if you had?

“Gojo?” You pull your hands away from his wings and he shudders as if he’s been burned. “Look at me.”

He won’t turn, so you grab him by the chin and force his head up so you can look him in the face. Even down on the floor like this, he’s tall. His face is pink, his eyes wide like he’s been stunned. He looks almost like he’s in pain.

“What’s wrong? Why didn’t you say anything? Does it hurt?” You fret over him.

“Doesn’t,” he says hoarsely. “Feels too good.”

You freeze. It’s this sight of an angel in all his celestial grace wrecked by your touch, brought down by just the brush of your fingers, that makes you realize it.

It feels good to have an angel at your feet.

#sera writes #gojo satoru x reader #gojo x reader #jjk x reader

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sky-kiss · 2 months

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Raphael/Haarlep: Gift

A/N: Yeah, there's no real ending to this. I just wanted to write early days Raph/Haarlep trying to figure each other out a little. Also. The image is a lie, lol, cause this is a pre-glam Haarlep.

R/H: GIFT

He still recalls his sire’s words of introduction:

Don’t you like your gift, boy?

Gift, said with a smile, hiding the underlying disdain and the most truthful sneer. Mephistopheles watches him closely, chin resting in his right palm, looking the very picture of benevolence to any onlooker.

Gift, but it’s not a pet, tool, or toy standing across from him—no, his sire was never one for such half-measures. Raphael stares the incubus down, face impassive. They are beautiful, truth be told. Hair the color of burnished copper hangs nearly to the small of their back, skin sun-kissed, features lovely beyond the telling—they are every pleasant summer evening, every whispered dream by the seaside. The incubus is warmth and longing, humid hunger, made flesh.

Raphael notices none of this—it’s only their eyes he cares about. They are the same hellfire gold as his own, lit with the same fury. For a moment, just the one, he thinks they might understand one another.

The feeling passes.

Mephistopheles speaks in a cold tone just above a whisper, only a few degrees above frostbite: “Will you not thank me, son of Hellfire?”

“My thanks,” he says, and he hates that the response is immediate, that he is still too powerless to risk slighting the Archduke. Raphael flicks his attention to the viper he’s been gifted, “Does my prize have a name, Father?”

The devil laughs. “Ah, but I hope you of all people shall appreciate this…I took the liberty of renaming it something more to your tastes: Haarlep.”

Raphael’s head snaps up, lips curling back in a sneer. He opens his mouth to protest…

…and the incubus steps forward, winding their arms around his neck. The unnatural heat of their skin is a welcome balm compared to Mephistar’s unnatural chill. They lean close, near enough for their breath to gust across his lips. “You are a pretty thing, aren’t you? Yes. Oh, and you pout so sweetly.” They shut his mouth with a kiss.

Raphael hears their voice in his head, a far cry from the empty-headed lilt they’ve spoken with: Don’t give him the satisfaction, little brat—be silent.

~~~~~~

“Is there where you’ve fled?”

“Reside,” Raphael corrects. “The House of Hope,” the cambion holds his arms out wide, gesturing to the banquet hall. It is not half as grand as his Father’s citadel on Mephistar but…suitable. He has carved out a place for himself—it will not sate his ambition for long, but for now, he allows himself to feel satiated.

The incubus hums, dragging their fingers across the table.

“You are not impressed?”

Haarlep laughs, and there is a high and reedy quality to it that he does not like. “Asking me to lie to you already. And not even to the bedroom yet. Tsk, tsk, princeling—we are careening towards disappointment.”

“You will address me with respect, slave.”

“But of course, Master.” They croon, eyes blazing with naked defiance. Their wings flick, pinning behind them as the temperature in the banquet halls rises in response to Raphael’s temper. Haarlep bows their head in concession. By way of thanks, they say, “It is warmer than Mephistar.”

“Too delicate for the cold?”

They offer an olive branch. “This Home is…comfortable, princeling.”

~~~~~~

Raphael does not let the wretch share his bed.

If it concerns them, they do not say. Haarlep roams the House, antagonizing the staff. They are never out of sight and just outside of arm's reach. Some evenings, he'll feel their fingers brush across his mind, testing the surface of his thoughts but never pushing. Whatever else the creature is, they are not stupid.

They want his attention.

Raphael sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and setting the contract aside. "Ask."

He feels Haarlep's grin, even if he doesn't see it. The wretch lingers near the corner of his vision, rolling a coin across their knuckles, weaving it through their fingers. "Isn't it more fun like this?"

"No. If you have a question, ask. Be direct."

"Oh, but it's tedious. No play, no games…"

"...no whimsy," Raphael finishes, leaning back in his seat. He knows the creature well enough to anticipate their next movement—they're up from their perch in one liquid movement, sliding into his lap the next. He catches their wrist before they can undo the top fastenings on his doublet. "Ah, ah, wandering hands to yourself, pet."

Haarlep's lips curl up in a smirk, a note of respect creeping across their features. "You haven't asked why I'm here."

"Why waste the breath? You are my Sire's spy."

"Such accusations."

"Do you deny it?"

They scoff. "Of course not! No, no, I lie only when it suits me, dear. And I much prefer you know this truth."

Raphael winds an arm around them, nails digging into their hip hard enough to draw blood. Haarlep doesn't wince. "You're here because he fears me."

And Haarlep laughs, high and bright, and doesn't stop laughing when Raphael dumps them out of his lap. "Naughty and delusional, are we? No, half-blood, nothing so grand as that—the Cold Lord would distract you. And," they grin at him, cold, wicked, "Forget you."

"I will not allow that."

Haarlep's eyes light with something like respect, "Good boy. Hold onto that drive. Perhaps one day you'll make something of yourself."

Raphael offers an olive branch—he extends a hand to the incubus.

Haarlep takes it.

#bg3 raphael #raphael bg3 #haarlep #raphael x haarlep #bg3 fanfiction #my writing #this is nothing #i just wanted to goof around with them a little

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bucknastysbabe · 1 year

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https://www.tumblr.com/bucknastysbabe/715885981170057216/thinking-bout-voyeur-criston-while-banging-aegon biting screaming crying PLEASE

It is time. Incel Knight and Drunk Prince. Here’s some sheet metal to bite if I have satisfied you.

My Word is My Honor - Aegon II X Targ!afab x Ser Cole

Rating: Explicit

Tags: Dead dove themes, Voyeur!dark!Criston, Hightower scheming, Dark!Aegon’s dumbass ideas, Aemond is tired, Targ princess reader, pnv!sex, loss of virginity, cumming in pants, TW: so much manipulation

Taglist: @ilikeitbetterangsty @godrakin @lovelykhaleesiii @fairysluna @borikenlove @connorsui

Alicent had come to Criston to watch over her second daughter while they were searching for a betrothal. She mentioned Aegon being a nuisance. The knight raised his brows and stated, “Forgive me my queen, but those two don’t mix.” Complete opposites really. The green queen demurely put a hand on his chest, uttering, “Trust me on my his one, yes?”

He kneeled. “Yes my queen. My word as my honor.”

He wouldn’t fail her. That heavenly woman. But Criston wrinkled his nose knowing where he would find the sweet princess next. The cavernous Dragonpit, where Cole’s horse whinnied and stamped upon the smell of Dragon.

The second princess spent most of her time with or on her beloved he-dragon Crimsontail. An apt name, as the beast was a burnished copper that faded into a bright red tail. Criston ordered a dragonkeeper to lead him to Crimsontail’s nest. He grew wary of the sounds of the beasts all around.

There she was, attentive to her dragon, brushing him with something. Criston remembered her demonstrating that dragons shed and would have issues along their backs and tails, sometimes hind legs. He rolled his eyes, between Aemond and her he wasn’t sure who spent more time researching Ancient Valyria. So why was Alicent so worried about Aegon?

She had blossomed in a beautiful young woman at 10-and-8. She took after the Targaryen side in looks, angular features furrowed as she focused on the task at hand. Her dark blonde hair was braided up. Nothing like the doe eyes and soft cheeks of Aegon and Helaena. Some likened her to the ruggedly beautiful Queen Who Never Was, Rhaenys.

Finding her a match was going to be…difficult. Alicent was combing through the Reach lords, even some Dornish. House Tyrell was out of the equation with their lord as a toddling babe. The princess was painfully shy around lords and ladies. She spoke to the boys in the yard and her family minus Aegon. Criston and the girl were close.

She chirped, shucking down thick scales, “Ser Criston, what brings you here? Just straightening out Crimsontail so we can fly soon.” The knight loved to see her fly, twirling and dipping above the Blackwater. Alicent had restricted most of that since familial tensions were growing.

“You do remember what-,”

“Yes I know Ser Cole. Keep the flying to a minimum. Don’t want to smell of dragon when being presented to the Reach lords. Why can’t you just marry me to Aemond or something? That’s what us Targaryen’s do right?”

Criston frowned. He didn’t want her off in the Reach either, chained up and unable to fly. Didn’t really want her with stuffy Aemond either.-l

She continued, “I just want to ride, like Rhaena or Rhaenys. Explore the world! Not be a broodmare for whatever schemes we have planned.” Another thick chunk of dragon skin sloughed off, Crimsontail snuffling in pleasure.

“I’m sorry my princess. I’ll see if I can discuss anything. But I need you back and cleaned up in the keep. I have a horse for you.”

She ripped off another section before patting her beast and hopping off the stool, moving it away. The princess looked splendid in her leathers, meant to be a dragon rider. Her usually solemn face looked disturbed as she asked Criston, “Will they send me to some fat lord’s bed? That’s what Aegon said.”

Criston bristled at the mention of the little shit. Making everyone miserable for his own benefit. He wrapped an arm around her and hummed, “You know not to listen to Aegon. Let’s get back to the keep, and I’ll give him a talking to. Little brat, that one.”

She snickered and hopped on the horse, rest of the ride quiet.

Upon returning to the Red Keep, Criston could estimate Aegon was probably still sleeping off a hangover in his chambers. Beelining towards the wayward prince’s chambers he busted open the door with a pauldron. Aegon flailed and sat his bed-mussed head up.

“Fuck, ugh, what Cole?”

Criston stepped forward and seethed, “Stop spreading shite to stress your sister out. She’s nerve wracked as is with the potential betrothals.”

Aegon snorted, laying back down laughing, “S’not bullshit Cole, mum will shuck her off with a Redwyne, they’re very keen and have that fleet.” Criston exhaled sharply through his nose, “Don’t interact with her, okay?” He stomped out, slamming the door, Aegon’s delirious laugh echoing.

Criston frowned once again. Looked like he was going to do some servant quarters rounds tonight. Because those two interacting was strange. Aegon used to make the poor thing cry all the time and she once gathered a bag of dragon shit and hid it in his quarters until the eldest Prince had a meltdown gagging and sobbing. They simply didn’t mix. On very different wavelengths.

Criston couldn’t ever say it out loud but he held a possessive streak over the princess. He coveted her and beat his back bloody over it every night. To think that disease ridden worm would touch her made him want to get…stabby.

Criston reported his findings to Alicent and she gave him the go ahead to infiltrate the servants quarters no armor needed. But he had to watch over dinner, dark eyes looking for any…anomalies. But there was none. Aegon and Aemond argued over inane things, Helaena chatted with Otto, Alicent was quietly talking to the younger princess. Who did not look happy, mouth turned down as if she might cry.

Aegon’s voice grew dim. Criston watched him look over at his non-married sister and stare for a second too long. Aemond brought him back with a flick to the shoulder, bickering beginning again. More fodder for Criston’s investigation. Then she exploded, “I don’t want to marry that old man mother! Why cannot I marry Aemond? We are of like age, powerful riders, it will keep the blood strong.”

She wept as Otto and Alicent explained the need for their power when the cunt on Dragonstone struck. Aegon added, “That’s shite, we need more dragons hatched, marry her to the weed here.” Aemond remained silent, always in agreement with the Hightowers, Helaena trying to console her sibling.

Dinner ended with an abrupt snap from the Queen, sending everyone their separate ways. Only she and Criston remained. Alicent picked and chewed at her nails, the knight reminding her to stop. Doe eyes stared up at him, beseeching, “I don’t. I don’t want to do that to her. But I must.” Criston nodded in understanding.

“Our future must be secured. She may grow to love the man yet. The dragon is close to Old Town and Daeron. Aegon is too interested in schemes like this. I shall be infiltrating his quarters around the hour of the wolf. I will inform Steffon of the princess.” He knelt and kissed Alicent’s shaking hand, murmuring, “We will get this under control my Queen.” She nodded, frayed and shaken, leaving the room to walk with Lord Hand Otto.

He needed to change now.

Criston slunk through the servant’s hallways, tight and stuffy from the heat. He wiped sweat from his brow, checking his map. The knight drew near to Aegon’s quarters. As he got closer, muffled noises were heard. At the door, Criston stopped. Like a force beyond him stilled his hand.

“Aegon, I don’t know, I want to support the family.”

That was his sweet princess.

“Fuck the family, they’re sending you off for the grand war they want. The arbor, pfft, maybe you’ll see Daeron.”

He heard soft weeping again. Covers rustled and Aegon spoke, unusually syrupy sweet. Criston eased back the slat for one eye to look through. She was still clothed, Aegon in his small clothes. Softling, with a rounded belly, any muscle stemmed from his thighs from riding Sunfyre. He held her gently, pale hand in her darker blonde hair.

“Do you want to go to the Arbor or stay here?”

She whined, “H-h-here Aegon, you know that!”

He murmured, “I have an idea, a good one, for fucking once.”

She peeled back, eyes narrowing. “And what is that?” He hummed, “You want to be married to Aemond yes?”

She shrugged, “Better him than there, yes. What are you getting at?”

His hand trailed down to her stomach, eyes intense. He rasped, “I get you pregnant, we put the blame on Aemond. He wouldn’t leave you with a bastard, too honorable and hates them. So then a quick wedding and you don’t leave.”

She blinked some tears away, so naive sometimes. Criston was beginning to fume. But he didn’t want the princess to go either. Always so selfish, he was. The female pled, “Okay, we can do that, just be gentle Aeg. You haven’t always been very kind.”

Aegon’s act made Criston feel volatile. The crown Prince held and cooed, “I’ll make it good, you know I will sweet sister. I know how it feels to be a pawn, a plaything.” She nodded and threw her arms around his shoulders, heaving, “Oh thank you Aegon, oh!” The knight’s fists clenched when Aegon’s sullen lips turned into a smirk.

Criston wrestled in agony between busting the door down or letting it happen— stuck in suspended animation as the scene unfolded. Clothes being sensually removed, Aegon’s roaming lips, her soft sighs.

The Prince was above her now, hands deep on her thighs, keeping her wide. She threw an arm over her eyes, whimpering, “Ah-Aegon, please don’t!” He shushed, “Hm, no darling, you’re gorgeous. All Targaryen’s are. Wet for me too. I’m going to stretch you out okay?”

“Be gentle!”

He grinned under the candlelight, “I will sweet sister.”

Thick fingers, somewhat calloused from riding, swirled around between her thighs, flicking up once to catch her clit. She yelped and whimpering, chiding. Aegon slid a pointed finger in her cunt, sighing in ecstasy. “You’re a wet one. Aemond might enjoy this.” He pumped for a bit, added a second. The princess squirmed and rode his hand, panting, “Aeg, Aeg? I uh, I need to pee? Mmm! Oh stop it stop it!” He groaned and sped up, her slick noises heady.

Criston was ready to try again at her pleas of mercy until he realized. She howled Aegon’s name, gushing on his pumping hand and the bed below. The softling rasped, “That’s a good girl, baby sister should be ready for my cock now, hm?” He climbed atop of her slim frame and kissed the princess, likely rutting his stiff prick between her wet folds.

The knight’s cock was fit to burst, straining his brown breeches. His left hand itched to touch. No. No. He wouldn’t. He would leave after and report to Alicent. Be good. Not an oathbreaker.

They kissed and caressed eachother, moaning those carnal sounds, slick and emotional. She whimpered, “M’ready, want your cock big brother, help me, you’re going to help me.” He half-wheezed, “Yes my sweet sister, I am, I’ll make sure the seed takes. Pretty blonde babe, they won’t know the difference.”

Criston stifled his own heavy breathing at the sound of his cock penetrating her virgin cunt. She cried out in pain, clinging to Aegon. He kissed her tears away, shushing and promising how it gets better. And it did.

He fucked her in smooth glides, expertly knowing all the spots that drove a woman mad. She whimpered and clawed at his back, legs wrapped around his fatty hips. The princess moaned, “Yes, gods yes, so good! Full!” Aegon fucked into her harder, slurring dirty words and fondling, suckling, nipping her teats.

“I hope I don’t get too jealous when you get ripe with my seed, on that one-eyed fuck’s arms.”

“I’m yours, yours,” she babbled deliriously.

Criston closed his eyes and pretended her needy warbles were for him, shamefully palming his prick. Aegon’s hips were smacking roughly now, his hands on her waist. He growled, “Yeah you are, should’ve been mine earlier. Tis’ no matter, I’ll fuck you every night until your moon blood stops.” She arched and clawed at him, pussy slick and needy.

“Fuuuck, oh you’re gonna milk me dry sweetling, c’mon and let your brother fill you up, cum on his cock yeah?”

“Yes! Fuck yes!,” she yowled, Aegon clamping down on her mouth. Criston panted softly now, his breeches stained and cheeks red. This was all he needed to see. The flagellation awaited then he would report in the morning. He had to walk away, couldn’t stand to see that lovey nonsense afterward— that he craved badly.

The princess was sent away to the Arbor after recovering from a strange illness and a check from the Maester claiming her maiden hood was intact, just worn from riding the dragon so much. She hugged him bye, weeping before getting on Crimsontail. Her wide lilac eyes were painful to bear as she sobbed, “I-I will miss you Ser Criston, I don’t know if I can bear it.”

“I’ll send a raven dear princess, go on now. Daeron will be waiting.”

The goodbyes to the rest of the family were short. Aegon received a long look and she hopped upon the dragon, heading southwest. Criston thought about walking into the sea. Aegon thought about following her. She thought about burning it all.

#aegon ii targaryen #hotd fanfic #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon ii x reader #hotd smut #criston cole x reader #one sided love #dead dove #voyeur!criston

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