#but its like this miniscule thing that still keeps her tied to who she was

[the-acid-pear]

A while back now i had made a post talking about how recurrent the theme of decapitation is in DSaF and something that really bugged me about that was how similar Dave and the phoneys in general seem to be. Like i had my ass standing in front of this cork board covered in pics and red string trying to crack the code of what it was about them and i finally realized that in a way or another this all draws back to Henry.

Across all of his victims there's theme about dehumanization, loss of identity, being turned into just an object. And this made me realize how true this is especially for Dee. (Prob for Jack too but I need to talk of the girl).

She was literally stripped of all that made her her, and before she could EVEN be much of a person to begin with. She was left stuck in this Literal limbo but also a metaphorical one in which she was robbed of a chance to grow up and become a person but also forced to keep going anyway, all while inside a body that is not her own and that even got corrupted by her own grief (see: the comment about the mask having tears in the marionn ending). The fact that we know so little about her does truly add to this because how many chances would you even get to be someone and find likes and hobbies when put in this situation?

And i think these things are what reinforce the tool argument, because in more than a way she is reduced to what she can do, but in a way similar to Jack where it is only half a choice they can take, having been shoved into this very important role that they had no saying in where if they dont, who else will? And so it becomes most of what they are. The tabano is back. I wrote this post from scratch and mentioned it and now it came back it really wants to be in his post.

She is the puppet, after all. It delivers gifts, and so she does. Because when it doesn't, like she had to stop doing because the kids found this body creepy, all she can do is retreat to her box and sleep, just waiting for a chance to be useful, because she was forced to be a something and not a someone.

THIS TO THE POINT where after she was freed, after all the souls were, she ended up coming back. She left... heaven or whatever because there were still souls out there to help, and she took it as her responsability to leave the afterlife and go there, and to me that goes from selfless to worrying. Almost like a cycle not even then she'd break because she accepted this as her reality when by no means it should be.

Anyway that's my analysis of Dee Kennedy she's so fucking tragic and I deeply mourn the childhood and life she was robbed of 👍👍👍

#luly talks #dsaf #dee kennedy #dsaf dee #a tabano is a gadfly according to google btw #anyway shout out to all those fanartists who give Dee her scarf back to me that's like. so. meaningful #the last physical tie to who she used to be her little red scarf that she wore to her birthday that she probably loved #that got turned into a trophy as her body got. i dont know. i still wish whatever happened there was clear #but its like this miniscule thing that still keeps her tied to who she was #yes i'm about to cry she makes me so sad it's unreal #also yes i had a normal childhood and grew up okay why are you asking?

[buckyownsmylife]

sunrise - ransom drysdale smut

The one where Ransom doesn’t care who sees you fucking

warnings: this is dubcon bordering on noncon, so please beware, public sex, office environment, kind of humiliation based on those two other things, jealous!Ransom, probably degrading names at least in thought, smut (p in v), crying during sex

Y/N’s P.O.V.

I knew he was pissed, I just never imagined he’d be this pissed. Not pissed enough to invite me to his work, urge me to disturb the meeting he had planned for weeks, force me to bend over the table and take me right then and there.

“See this? You guys see this face? This is mine, just like this pussy. No one else can make her look this fucked out. No one else can fuck her like this. No one. Tell them, baby.” And then he pulled me up by my hair, forcing me to stand up while still getting impaled by his dick.

“No one…” I gasped, instinctively moving my hips back in an effort to keep getting some more of that delicious friction that was driving me mad. “No one else can touch me, Ransom. Just you.” And just to make the whole scene even more debauched, and because slowly wasn’t something Ransom could do, he tore off the front of my blouse with one hand, exposing my breasts for his colleagues to see.

“That’s right, sweetheart. No one else can have you. You’re mine.” A choked out sound escaped me as his warm mouth closed around my earlobe. All around the room, I could see their eyes on us, drinking me in, taking advantage of this opportunity of having my naked body exposed since they knew - now they knew - they would never have me.

So much for keeping our relationship a secret. So much for reminding Ransom again and again that I might be his in the bedroom, but in this building, I was the boss. Here I was, submissive personality exposed as Ransom’s cock drilled me again and again, making sure to engrave this moment in every single man’s mind,  so they’d never forget who truly owned me.

“Now tell them how good it feels, baby girl. Describe exactly how having my huge cock fucking you has ruined you for anyone else. I want to make sure they won’t joke about getting you in their beds anymore.”

Oh, yes. The reason that has brought me to this specific position. The fact that boys had to be boys and talk during their lunch break about how much they’d like to have me on my knees for them. Ransom assured me that he wasn’t jealous, but I should have known better. I had seen the way that the veins on his neck and forehead had pulsed when he recounted the story. I had suffered through the release of his frustrations as he tied me to the bed and fucked me until I passed out. Still, stupidly, I had believed that would be the end of it. And now, I paid the price for my own stupidity.

“Tell them,” Ransom ordered, a quick slap over my pussy making me scream in frustration, in desperate need of a release. I scrambled to try to find my own voice, knowing it’d come out hoarse and whiny and in a tone no other man in the room except for my boyfriend had ever heard coming from me.

“I-It feels so good, sir.” I didn’t have to see him to know that Ransom was sporting the cockiest of grins at the appearance of the nickname he forced me to address him with. The lines between here, where I was “ma’am”, and our bed, where he was in charge, had officially been blurred. “I-I’ll never want another cock again. You have ruined me for everyone else.”

“Damn right I did.” A particularly harsh thrust against my cervix had me cumming loudly around Ransom’s cock, and I could hear from the depths of my own mind the river of expletives that he was spilling in an effort to control himself. “I bet you all thought she was this innocent little thing, huh?”

It took me a while to be able to focus on the sound of his voice again, instead of the overpowering thunder of my heartbeat and the filthy noises that our debauchered activities produced. When I did, it still took me some time to comprehend that his attention had moved to the company we had in the room, the captivated audience that still hadn’t seemed able to divert their gaze from the live porn happening before them.

“Or maybe you thought she’d be bossy even in bed. What a fucking disappointment, huh? Knowing that she’s just a little cockwhore for the guy that works in the reviewing department. That’s all you are, isn’t it, kitten? My personal whore.”

“Y-yes.” He didn’t need to remind me to answer this time. I craved his approval, I desperately needed the sweet rewards that he oh-so-graciously granted me when he considered that I was being his good girl.

And I knew that he was pleased with my instinctual need to please him, because a hand found its way between my legs, caressing the spot precisely above where he met me. “That’s my good girl,” he acknowledged, and I melted in his embrace, trembling in his arms at the second crescendo that promised to overthrow me.

“What? Does that feel good?” He knew it did. He knew. So it wasn’t that bad that I wasn’t able to find my own voice then, and answered only in whimpers and moans. He didn’t mind. Instead, I heard and felt the rumble of his laughter as he kept his punishing thrusts while still rubbing my needy pussy.

“C’mon, baby. I know you can do better than that. Really show them how I make you feel. Scream for me.” And scream I did, right as another wave of suffocating pleasure managed to drown me, my body falling slump over the table as the last of my energy was drained. Behind me, all Ransom gave me as a response was a dark chuckle, that paired with the feeling of his hand running down my back until it met my ass had me shivering against the cold wood.

Ransom’s P.O.V.

“You turn them on without even intending to…” I was simply voicing my own thoughts now, carefully taking inventory of every inch of precious skin available to me and only me, while I knew every single man in this room desired to be in my spot. “I bet they want to join us, sweetheart. I bet they’d give anything to be the ones thrusting their miniscule cocks into this sopping tight pussy. I mean, look around…” Gathering her hair on my fist, I forced her to raise her gaze to see her subordinates, some already blatantly touching themselves to the sight in front of them. “They can’t tear their eyes away from you. They want you so badly.”

Raising her to give a quick kiss to her wet cheek, I managed to catch a tear before I pushed her down against the table once more. My little cockslut, always so desperate for my cock, couldn’t even stop rocking her hips back instinctively to meet mine, even despite the state of overstimulation she certainly found herself in by now.

“And all you want is me, isn’t that right, kitten? No one else can make you feel this good, no one.” The pure, unadulterated power that I felt coursing through my veins as I fucked her in front of every single one of my colleagues was finally catching up to me, and I hissed as I felt myself about to spill inside of her.

“I’m going to breed you, baby. Right here, in front of everyone.” She whined as I felt the overwhelming rush of owning her on such a deep level, pulling her up and keeping most of her weight on me so I could nuzzle her neck while we gathered our breaths.

“See what you do to me?” I whispered, hands slowly caressing her exposed breasts while I made sure all of my cum was kept inside of her. “You make me lose all of my senses, sweetheart.” I knew I’d never hear the end of it later, but honestly, it wasn’t like she gave me much of a choice, with that idiotic decision of keeping our relationship a secret.

Now, this would never be a problem anymore.

I was awakened from my thoughts about our future as I felt her try to curl in on herself, hide her body from the still-there prying eyes. Her hands came up to cover her face and I had to laugh as I realized she could probably start crying anytime.

“There’s no reason to be shy now, kitten,” I admonished, pulling her hands from her face and keeping them behind her back so I could nip on her jawline. “There’s nothing left to hide. Now they know.”

#ransom drysdale smut #smut #ransom drysdale #my fics #ransom drysdale reader #ransom drysdale reader insert #ransom drysdale x reader #ransom drysdale fanfiction #ransom drysdale oneshort

[little-mad]

Downsides of Thievery Pt. 1

~ Next Part ~

“Maybe stealing from an interdimensional diplomat wasn’t my greatest idea,” Gavin thought to himself from his current position in a jail cell.

He’d been hesitant about the job right away. Stealing from humans was one thing, but stealing from alteons was on a whole new level. However, the payment the client had offered Gavin had been too tantalizing to refuse. Who knew it was bad to be greedy?

“Shit,” he grumbled under his breath. How was he supposed to know the diplomat would have some weird magical artifact thing that could detect and identify trespassers? That was just unfair. Gavin was a good thief, so good that he’d managed to make a career out of it. If he had been caught due to his own ineptitude maybe he wouldn’t be so peeved. But this was just a matter of not having enough information. Thus making it unfair.

Prison was something every criminal feared, but it was also something every criminal prepared for in some sense. If Gavin was headed for prison, he might not be so worried. Sure it would suck, but at least he felt sure his undeniable charms would make him friends in no time. But Gavin wasn’t headed for prison--no, he was being extradited to the alteon dimension.

Gavin shivered at the thought. Despite having stolen from one, he had never actually seen an alteon in person. Pictures and videos could only do so much, at least that’s what people said. Apparently the true gravity of an alteon’s massive size couldn’t be understood until you saw one in real life.

Not only would Gavin quite literally be put in the hands of an alteon, but he would also be getting taken to a completely different dimension that only a few very important humans had ever visited before. Maybe he should’ve felt special.

Were the circumstances different, Gavin might’ve even felt excited for the adventure. His work had taken him all over the world, it would be thrilling to get to see a whole new one. However, he had a feeling he wouldn’t exactly be getting the grand tour.

It was at that moment that Gavin began to hear footsteps approaching his cell. A few moments later, two business-suit clad federal agents appeared. Gavin scrambled to his feet and took several unconscious steps towards the back wall. The key jangling in one of the agents’ hands told him exactly what time it was.

“Your ride is here,” the female agent announced, a slight smirk playing at the corner of her lips.

Gavin scowled.

The key carrying agent swiftly unlocked the door and beckoned for Gavin to exit the cell. “Come on, we don’t have all day,” he stated impatiently.

“Aren’t you going to cuff me or something?” Gavin questioned, taking note of the fact that neither agent had brought handcuffs with them.

The woman’s smirk grew but she remained silent. “The alteon won’t need cuffs to restrain you,” the man responded.

Gavin instantly felt the pit of fear in his stomach grow. Horrible images of himself trapped in gigantic hands were invading his mind. Being given over to the alteons meant that his civil rights would be essentially irrelevant. Unless alteons had laws protecting humans, which he doubted, then they could do pretty much whatever they wanted with him. Gavin swallowed hard.

“A-actually, I’m okay staying here…” he stammered. God, he hated how pathetic he sounded. Gavin’s line of work required a lot of guts, and while a healthy dose of caution was always good, he had never considered himself to be cowardly in any sense of the word. But now...well now he felt like the biggest fraidy cat in the whole world.

The male agent gave Gavin what almost seemed like a sympathetic look. “Sorry, but that’s not an option,” he said, once again making a beckoning motion with his hand.

“Dad was right. I should’ve become a doctor,” Gavin thought miserably to himself as he very reluctantly exited his cell.

The trip up from the cell block to the roof of the building pretty much felt like a march to death. Federal employees stared unabashedly at the man practically being sacrificed to giants. Some wore looks of pity, while others had smug expressions on their faces, as if to say “serves him right.” Were Gavin in a better mood he probably would have scowled at the nosy jerks, or at least stuck his tongue out at them. But as things were, he was in no mood.

~

Rael sighed as he shifted his feet impatiently. It didn’t elude him that every human in the vicinity stiffened at his movement. He refrained from rolling his eyes. It was irritating how the humans constantly acted so skittish all the time, as if he would suddenly go on some sort of rampage.

“Why did they have to give me this assignment?” Rael mentally groaned.

Unlike many of the members of the Imperial Guard, he hadn’t joined with some idiotic fantasy of glorious duels and honorable battlescars. Rael joined because he knew it was the easiest way to elevate his station. Plus standing guard at the palace was easy work that he was perfectly content with. That’s why he had been less than pleased when he'd been informed he would have to venture to the human dimension to retrieve some human criminal.

Prior to today, Rael had only seen a human once, it had been from a distance and only for a second as they were being escorted into the palace. Therefore, he’d had no personal reason to dislike humans. It was just that from everything he had heard about them, they sounded so...annoying. And so far, his experiences with them today had proven that to be fairly accurate.

Rael suppressed a sigh as he glanced around. Thankfully the building he’d been told to go to was at the edge of a human city, meaning he wouldn’t have to put up with civilians gawking at him. The federal agents gathered on the roof in front of him were bad enough.

The stories about how giant being in the human realm would make you feel rang true. Rael felt positively colossal next to people who looked to be barely taller than his fingers. Not to mention the building he was standing beside, which appeared to be three stories, reached no higher than his knees. “Humans are lucky our imperialistic urges died a century ago,” Rael thought. Taking over the human realm would no doubt be a piece of cake, even with their supposed technological advancements.

“Sir!” Rael’s attention was caught by the shout of one of the humans standing on the roof below. He looked down to see the speaker was the woman who appeared to be in charge. “We apologize for the wait, the prisoner is being brought up now,” she announced. It was almost amusing, the way they had to yell for their tiny voices to even be perceived by him.

“Good,” Rael responded simply, electing not to mention the fact that the prisoner should’ve been ready and waiting for him when he arrived.

After a few minutes, Rael caught sight of the door on the roof entrance swing open. Three humans stepped out. The two dressed similarly to all the other federal agents practically had to drag the third one out. It was difficult for Rael to see from so far away, but the odd one out appeared to be a young man. He had light skin, a crop of messy brown hair, and appeared to be quite slim.

Rael raised a single eyebrow. “This is the prisoner?” he questioned as he eyed the man. He didn’t look like much, which was applicable to pretty much all humans, but Rael found it hard to believe that this one could’ve successfully stolen from an alteon.

“Yes, sir!” replied the woman in charge. “His name is Gavin Stone, he’s believed to be associated with many high profile robberies,” she explained.

Rael spared the human called “Gavin Stone” one last look before giving a shrug and reaching for the miniature iron cage attached to his belt.

The cage, which had been especially made for this occasion, was quite simple in its construction. The thing didn’t even have a lock because the latch to open the door was too big for a human’s miniscule hands to manage. It would do perfectly for keeping the criminal contained throughout the duration of the trip back to the palace.

The moment Gavin had laid eyes on the alteon, his body had practically separated from his mind. Physically, he was moving forward with the guidance of his two escorts, but his mind was still struggling to process the impossibly large person looming above him.

If the alteon’s size wasn’t strange enough, the guy looked like he’d stepped right out of a Renaissance Fair or something. His skin was a soft brown color, and he had long black hair that was tied into a loose ponytail behind him. His eyes were a striking teal color that stood out against his angular features. As for his clothing, he looked to be wearing what appeared to be some kind of light leather armor over top of a forest green tunic. Oh yeah, and then there was the fact that he had pointy elf ears.

Gavin had known the alteon dimension was almost medieval in nature, and he’d known the alteons had pointy ears, but it was still so damn bizarre to see in person.

As Gavin was in the middle of gaping, the giant began to move. He flinched at the action, and he noticed everyone else on the rooftop tense up as well. Clearly nobody was comfortable around this--this thing! “How can they hand me over to that?!”

It wasn’t until he had been practically shoved to the edge of the roof that Gavin’s brain caught up with what his body had been doing. Frantically he looked around him. All of the agents, including his former escorts, had backed away from the edge of the building closest to the alteon. This left Gavin stranded, with a giant man a mere few feet away.

With a hard gulp, Gavin tilted his head back to look up at the creature who was about to snatch him away. Those teal eyes were glancing down at him, and in his hand was a cage the perfect size for holding a stupid human who really should’ve just become a damn doctor.

#so yeah...i've got some new ocs #get ready for some juicy fearplay in this sucker #g/t #giant/tiny #g/t writing #g/t story #g/t community #my writing #oc: Gavin Stone #oc: Rael #g/t fearplay

[chrysalispen]

wip wednesday

i do not yet know what i’m doing with this only that i’m doing something with it. NSFW, mostly because foreplay and a touch of slightly dirty banter.

i’m dusting off the cobwebs but it feels good to work on something again!

=

A puff of warm breath tickled her nape and she felt his lips brush against the shell of her ear. "On the off chance that you might have gone to all this trouble on my account, let it be known that your efforts are immensely appreciated."

"I didn't, but I shall keep that in mind."

Nero sighed in mock disappointment. "You are far too forthright on occasion."

"Am I?"

The last button slipped free. Rough, warm palms ghosted feather-light paths over her stomach and along her ribcage and its mottled scars before coming to rest upon her breasts: covered only by the cotton raschel lace of the balconette. Her nipples, already taut from the room’s slight chill, ached from even that delicate contact; it was a struggle to keep herself from squirming.

"I said it before, did I not? And within earshot. I'm a sensitive young man who thrives upon encouragement."

"And constant validation, I don't doubt."

"You wreak havoc upon a man's poor ego, eikon-slayer," his voice was muffled against her neck and there were bites in his kisses, each half-concealed in the light press and damp heat of his mouth like dark chocolate and coffee. "Hubris itself fails before your legendary scorn."

"Your ego barely fits through the door as it is. I wager you'll recover from your slight.”

“You wound me, madam. I meant only to show respectful appreciation for your efforts to please me.” 

The lie was so blatant and so ridiculous she couldn’t stop herself from scoffing at it even as she smiled to hear it. “Had I walked through that door wearing full plate armor covered in mud and morbol spit from head to toe, I doubt you'd be so very appreciative as you are now."

"As it happens," his fingertips traced the lacy patterns in tiny circular paths and twitched, gripped just enough for a gentle squeeze, "I would sport with you even were you dressed in naught but an old popoto sack."

"Would you," she whispered.

The pace of her own breathing became uneven and truncated as he caught the little peaks between his knuckles. Her skirt hem rode high on her legs, exposing the tops of her stockings and part of the garters, and her own fingers strayed to trace her own thighs and upward, in the general direction of her smalls, where they alighted just atop the fabric to move in light and tentative strokes. 

Heat pooled beneath her touch, tingling like miniscule flames along the modest curvature of her mons. He did not stop her as she teased herself, but instead continued his own leisurely exploration. His hands wandered downward to cup her knees, then slid up and up over stocking and garter and the smooth unblemished skin of her upper thighs. It was there they paused, sheltering for the briefest of moments beneath the hem of her skirt before traveling farther still until his palms finally splayed open to brace her hips. The movement slowly rucked her skirt up to her waist.

"I would. I would tilt you over Garlond’s worktable in all of your filth, sweet thing," he growled, "and avail myself of your lovely little cunt until we were both spent."

A small and strangled noise rattled in the back of her throat. 

"I... suppose 'tis a shame we speak in hypotheticals." She had intended her response as flippant but there was nothing of indifference in that eager and breathless whisper. There was no hiding her desire from him, not like this.

His grip tightened, fingers digging with gentle but firm pressure into the soft and pliable flare of her buttocks until her own hand lay still and her fingertips curled like the petals of one of her lilies over the juncture of her legs. Once he was certain she would remain still for him, she felt his own rough fingers as they traced patterns over smooth skin from hipbone to flank, like the lines of one of his schematics: careful to avoid more intimate contact until the muscles in her legs quivered from restrained tension. 

"Perhaps you do. I make no such caveat."

#nerowol #chrysalispen writes #nero scaeva #aurelia laskaris #wip wednesday #lemony business #nero x wol #dirty talk is so hard to write whyyyy

[killalluchihas]

good vibes/bad juju - 38

While on a mission overseas, Gojo gets K-O’d by an unknown person. Within a week, every sorcerer in Japan has heard about it. (A JJK OC story - Rated M)

[Chapter One] [Ao3 link] [Previous] [Next]

—/—/—/—

chapter thirty-eight: again? She takes another look at him. Very tall, hair tied up in a bun. Scar over his eye. I have no idea who this guy is.

Yoshi doesn’t notice she’s missing a slap bracelet until Gojo is long gone. He just kept talking until he got a phone call about the mission he was supposed to be on—then he stayed for another half hour, casually placing things from her pantry onto the very top shelf of her kitchen cabinets until Yoshi kicked him out. She has six other new talismans to use, so it’s fine if she’s missing one, but it does confuse her.

As long as he's carrying that talisman, Yoshi can jump to his exact location. He knows this already.

However, Gojo left on Tuesday and the school event starts on Wednesday morning, so Yoshi doesn’t bother asking for the talisman back or going after him. It’s just a little annoying every time Yoshi looks down and sees six bracelets and no wristwatch. Her arms feel uneven, somehow.

When it comes to the school event, Yoshi’s more concerned about everyone else: the council member from Kyoto, the new students, and the teacher whose name Yoshi might have to write on her palm to remember. Shoko has mentioned the Kyoto teacher half a dozen times already, but without seeing her face or even hearing her voice, Yoshi definitely can’t recall her name.

Whoever she is, Shoko really likes her and Yoshi would like to make a good impression.

Wednesday morning is clear and bright, and hopefully that bodes well for the students’ competition. Yoshi makes her way to one of the school’s entrances, near the torii gates, still drinking coffee from the break room.

Toge notices her first, but Nobara’s the one to scream, “SENSEI! WHY AREN’T WE GOING TO KYOTO?!”

Yoshi lowers her coffee thermos, perplexed. “Because…we’re hosting?” Even Yoshi knows that part. One of the assistants, Iguchi or something, kept her up to date about school events. The competition today is a team event, and Yaga asked Yoshi in advance if she had any tagging system they could use to track the students’ progress.

“I can’t BELIEVE THIS!”

“No wonder our conversations have been a bit off,” Maki mutters. Megumi nods in silent agreement. They both look a little guilty, but it’s Panda that takes pity on Nobara and tells her what he knows. It’s all the information that Yoshi was also told, except Panda also mentions a student called Okkotsu that Yoshi has never met.

“So the teachers are—what, judging us from a luxury box all day?” Nobara aims her disappointment directly at Yoshi. “Sensei, you better promote me, I deserve a pay raise!”

“I’m not allowed to hand out recommendations,” Yoshi remarks, unmoved by Nobara’s puppy-dog eyes. “I’m here because Yaga gave me a minor role in today’s event.”

And since her students are endlessly curious teenagers, Yoshi digs into her pocket and shows them a plain tin box, engraved with miniscule sutras around its rim. Just to help build the anticipation.

“Another type of talisman?” Maki arches an eyebrow. “How many do you have, anyway?” she scoffs. But her eyes keep darting back to Yoshi, waiting for an answer.

“As many as I need.” Yoshi tucks the box away for now, intending to finish her coffee before she has to do any explanations. “Do any of you have a pollen or tree allergy?”

The students exchange some deeply skeptical looks before confirming that no, none of them have allergies.

“Great. I'll explain once everyone’s together,” Yoshi says, nodding towards the torii gates. The Kyoto group is approaching.

Isn’t Gojo supposed to bring the pink-haired kid here? Maybe he decided against it. Yoshi didn’t fully understand the whole situation with the curse-vessel kid. He was Nanami’s student, except Nanami isn’t a teacher, and the jujutsu council wants to execute the kid, so he’s in hiding.

Gojo mentioned the kid when he visited her yesterday, but he also spent a large portion of their time ranting about stir fry ingredients.

“Ugh,” Maki sneers, making eye contact with another green-haired girl that looks remarkably—What the fuck, Maki has a twin?

“Ara, ara,” Maki’s sister smirks, “It’s everyone from Tokyo all together… Disgusting.”

Compared to Maki, this girl’s voice is much smoother and softer. She sounds a bit like Naoya.

There are six Kyoto students. Two boys, three girls, and a robotic, human-shaped student that might also be male. One of the girls has bright blue hair, and the third girl is tiny. The other two boys are—

“You,” one of the boys growls, furious black eyes fixated on Yoshi. “We meet again, Ariyoshi Reina!”

Yoshi squints at him. Again?

He’s the largest of the group, and perhaps the oldest as well. There’s a scar over one of his eyes, and he isn’t wearing anything beneath his uniform jacket. And she has no idea why he’s mad, or why he even knows her full name.

“Eh? Reina?” Nobara blurts out, shocked. “Sensei, is that your given name?”

“Okaka…”

Yoshi can’t help but grimace. Her name is Yoshi and just Yoshi. “No one calls me that,” she mutters.

“You don’t even know your teacher’s name?” Maki’s sister looks amused. “Don’t you know anything about the sort of folk your school hires?”

Nobara’s quick temper boils over instantly. “What did you just—?!”

Yoshi pulls Nobara back before she can get too heated. “Actually, it’s just Yoshi,” she corrects the Kyoto boy, gently squeezing Nobara’s shoulder. “‘Sensei’ also works.”

“Very well, Yoshi,” he says again, so worked up that she can see the veins throbbing in his neck and along his temple. “Do you have any idea of what you’ve done to me?!”

“No,” Yoshi answers, plain and true. “What’s the problem?”

His face flushes red with fury. “You… You made me miss Takada-chan’s meet-and-greet!”

Yoshi tries. She really does. But no matter how much she tries to remember—“I don’t know who Takada is,” she confesses, apologetic.

He looks ready to either faint or beat her to a pulp. “SHE’S MY FUTURE WIFE—!”

He stops himself short as someone claps loudly, and his classmates hiss a few quiet words at him.

“Alright, everyone. No fighting amongst yourselves,” a tired woman announces, climbing up the steps behind the Kyoto students. She’s a bit shorter than Yoshi, dressed in formalwear—a miko outfit?—and has a large scar across her face.

She is definitely Shoko’s friend.

“My goodness, you children…” the Kyoto teacher sighs. But then her gaze finds Yoshi. “You must be the new hire,” she comments, striding over to Yoshi. “Ariyoshi-san?”

“It’s just Yoshi,” she corrects the sorcerer, shaking her hand when it’s offered to her. “Nice to meet you.”

“Iori Utahime,” she introduces herself brusquely. Iori, Iori, Iori. Shoko will be sad if I don’t get along with Iori. “Nice to meet you too. Hopefully, none of my students will cause you any more trouble.”

…Any more trouble? Is she talking about the tall kid?

Schooling her expression into a blank one, Yoshi tries not to look completely clueless. It’s bad enough that she feels totally underdressed wearing track pants and a threadbare jacket next to Iori’s crisp, clean traditional clothes.

“I hope so too, Iori-san,” Yoshi replies vaguely, bowing her head a little.

“Of course. Now, where’s that idiot?” Iori asks, suddenly looking disgruntled.

“Late,” Yoshi admits, but she can feel her missing talisman nearby, so—“He’ll be here any minute.”

“That idiot is never on time to anything,” Maki adds. She looks pissed off, but that might have more to do with the banter going on between the Kyoto students than Gojo. They seem to be gossiping.

“Yoshi-sensei, I have a question for you,” the big Kyoto student declares abruptly, shoving aside his robot classmate. “You dodged it last time!”

She takes another look at him. Very tall, hair tied up in a bun. Scar over his eye.

I have no idea who this guy is.

“Sure…” Yoshi stalls, “But first, remind me what your name is?”

“Todo Aoi, third-year student, grade one sorcerer!” he barks out at once. Yoshi didn’t want to know all that, but at least he isn’t offended by the question. “Now, Sensei, what’s your type?”

“Tch,” Iori steps in. “I’ve told you already, Todo-kun, as long as I’m your teacher, you may not use that as an excuse to fight any sorcerer you meet!”

“My type of what?” Yoshi wonders at the same time.

“Your ideal type of man!” Todo clarifies, though he looks cagey now that his teacher is glaring at him. “I won’t fight you here, but don’t you disappoint me too!”

“Todo!” Iori snaps. “Stop it, right now.”

Todo’s mouth clamps shut. But he continues to stare down Yoshi with intense black eyes, clearly expecting an answer.

Well. She does recognize Todo now, a bit. Specifically, she remembers her brief vow, fulfilled within minutes of saying it: if you attack me again, I’ll send you back to Kyoto.

Yoshi drinks more coffee, not sure what to make of any of this.

Todo grumbles, frustrated. “Do you have an answer or not?”

“Well…” Yoshi reflects on the question, and also the high school student that’s asking it. She can’t give a very detailed reply to something like that in front of all these kids, that would be awkward. There’s a line somewhere in there about propriety and whatnot. But then again, Yoshi doesn’t mind being open with them; like at her spa night with the girls, it’s good to know that your teachers are human too.

“I like athletes,” Yoshi settles on. “Someone who can really compete with me, like Ohtani.”

“…Ohtani?” Todo repeats blankly.

“Ohtani?” Iori gasps, excited.

“Yeah,” Yoshi confirms, turning her assessing gaze onto her fellow teacher. “You know who I mean?”

“Of course I do!”

“Oi, oi,” Nobara interrupts, head whipping between Iori and Yoshi. “Who the hell’re you talking about? What is he, a K-pop star? I’ve never heard of him!”

A smile stretches across Iori’s face. “Ohtani is a baseball player,” she explains to Nobara (and to all of the other students pretending they aren’t invested in this conversation). “He signed on to play in America last year, it was a huge deal for such a young player!”

“He’s a pitcher,” Yoshi adds frankly. “Has one of the fastest pitches in NPB history.”

Suddenly all of Yoshi’s students seem to deflate. “You nerd,” Nobara bemoans. “That’s such a Yoshi thing to say… he better be hot, at least!”

Maki rolls her eyes. “And a pitcher? Ugh.” She seems to be remembering the last training session she had with Yoshi, in which Yoshi tagged her no less than twenty times with her pitches.

“Yoshi-sensei,” Todo rumbles again, drawing her attention. He’s not looking at her, but scrutinizing the screen of his smartphone and rubbing his chin. “If this is your type…”

He isn’t the only one looking at his phone now. Toge and Megumi are crowding over a shared smartphone, and the Kyoto girls are peeking at Todo’s phone too.

“I’ve decided, Yoshi-sensei… that you might be worth my respect,” Todo concludes in his loud, gruff tone. He nods to himself. “It’s a pity you don’t know of Takada-chan’s excellence, but you’re an interesting woman!”

A ripple of shock seems to move through the Kyoto group. Todo just offers a wide, toothy grin. “Thanks,” Yoshi answers, baffled. It’s nice that the tall kid seems to like her, but now all of his classmates look wary.

Iori just rolls her eyes. “Honestly, kids are so dramatic…” She pauses, hearing the sound of squeaky, heavy wheels approaching. “What…?”

“Gojo,” Yoshi answers, not even bothering to look.

Iori mutters under her breath just as Gojo appears down the walkway, pushing a large trunk on wheels.

“Sorry for the wait, but Gojo Satoru has finally arrived!” he sing-shouts to them, beaming with excitement. He jerks the cart into an abrupt stop in front of them. “Ah, I see everyone’s together. I was on a business trip overseas—I will now hand out souvenirs!”

“None for you, Utahime!” he declares once he gets to Iori.

The Kyoto teacher is already pissed off. “I don’t need one!”

He moves on, fully ignoring Iori’s glares. “Yoshi-sensei, good morning! Thanks for not spoiling my surprise,” he says as he passes her.

Yoshi, about to ignore him in favor of her coffee, hesitates. “What?”

Gojo strides back to his weird metal cart without answering. “Aaand for everyone from Tokyo, we have THIS!”

She doesn’t really have the words to describe the dramatic flourishing that Gojo acts out, but it does end with him pointing at the metal trunk and sticking his leg up very high, like a ballerina. Now really isn’t the time or place for it, but Yoshi’s impressed by his flexibility.

Nobara mutters something unflattering about the white-haired sorcerer.

And then things get even worse, because then the pink-haired kid pops out of the box, and it occurs to Yoshi that the rest of the students already know the curse-vessel kid—and they look horrified to see him here.

“It’s your dead friend, Itadori Yuji!” Gojo announces, just as Yaga and a very old man appear at the gates.

For all the chatter that Gojo likes to throw at Yoshi, he sure has a knack for omitting the important details. Did he fake Yuji’s death? I would’ve remembered that, right?

As Yoshi questions her memory for the millionth time today, Gojo strolls back up to her and ducks his head to her ear. “You should show a little skin for Principal Gakuganji. Maybe he’ll finally have a heart attack.”

“Ew,” she hisses, emphatically zipping her jacket all the way up.

“That was a compliment!” Gojo insists as he drifts towards the principals, waving a thermos. “Show off a little, Sensei!”

Yoshi’s hands are empty. He took her coffee.

“Yoshi-sensei,” Megumi calls to her abruptly, scowling more than usual. “Did you know Itadori was alive? This whole time?”

She pauses. “Have you ever heard of the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution?”

“Hahaha!” Yuji’s the only one to laugh. Nobara has tears in her eyes, but she looks too furious to actually cry. “It’s not her fault, I was doing secret training with Nanamin! He kept Yoshi-sensei out of the loop,” he explains.

Yoshi resists the urge to look at the principals. “I’m still out of the loop,” she mutters.

From behind them, Gojo begins to gag dramatically. “Blegh!” He rears back in revulsion, tongue hanging out of his mouth. “Why are you drinking black coffee? Who hurt you?”

Her nose crinkles up in disgust. “You drank it?”

What a fucking weirdo. She doesn’t think the idea of an indirect kiss is cute in any shape or form. Gojo thinks it’s funny to lick the ground, so who knows where his mouth has been?

Gojo mimics her expression, as though he has any right to be revolted. “No, I just smelled it. I don’t know where your mouth has been.”

—/—/—/—

[Previous] [Next]

A/N: thank you to @nadiecomoyo for beta reading!! Miko - a Shinto shrine maiden Shohei Ohtani is real baseball player. His teammates on the LA Angels call him 'Shotime'. He played in Japan's pro league (NPB). He signed on in 2017, and now in 2021, he's absolutely killing it in the MLB. He is also listed at 193cm and 95kg in case you were wondering.

#gojo x oc #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen fanfiction #good vibes/bad juju #gojo satoru x oc #jjk ocs #jjk x oc #jujutsu kaisen ocs #jjk spoilers #jjk gojo #gojo satoru #jjk manga spoilers #jujutsu kaisen spoilers #jjk oc #jjk fanfiction #jujutsu kaisen oc #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #jujutsu kaisen manga spoilers #jujutsu kaisen manga #slow burn #the slowest of burns #i'm sorry

[pressedinthepages]

Allure

next fill for @witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo

also big thanks to @childoffantasy for beta-ing and @sometimesiwrite for helping me spin this story together <3

Prompt: Non-human genitalia

Relationship: Lambert/Essi

Rating: Explicit

Content Warnings: siren!essi, smut, non-human genitalia, discussion of a/b/o dynamics, cum play, squirting (sort of), a tad bit of overstimulation, oral (f/non-human receiving), penetrative sex.

Summary: Lambert hears a voice calling over the cliffs and instead of finding a threat, he finds some welcoming company.

Scents of salt and sea-crisp breeze filled Lambert’s senses as he tred beneath the moonlit coast. His coin purse was light, and he had found himself searching the shoreline for drowner nests or rotfiend camps. He had been walking for hours and hadn’t seen hide nor tail of any of the scaly fuckers, couldn’t even smell the deathly sweet tinge of decay on the air. Lambert had just about given up when he heard a voice, sweet and ethereal, calling out in a language unknown over the craggly cliffs.

His medallion hummed lightly on his chest and he tred carefully, his boots pushing through damp sand and sea glass until he rounded the base of a low cliff. Lambert stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her, golden-blond hair glowing in the light of the moon and the stars where she stood atop the cliff. She looked down, her voice carrying over the waves and the unrelenting breeze that threatened to lift her away. She held out her hand and stopped singing, and Lambert’s medallion stilled on his chest. He raised his brow, gave a quick glance around, and sighed.

Eskel’s been getting to me.

Lambert hopped up onto the lowest rock at the base of the cliff and followed a hollowed out trail set deep into the dark stone, keeping his steps light and his hand braced in the sign for Quen, just in case. The wind whipped through his short dark hair as he crested the bend, finding lucious beds of grass leading straight to the woman’s bare feet.

She stood with her back to him, her shoulders and hips relaxed. She wore a simple dress that was so thin, so light, that it was almost sheer, the curves of her shoulders and her waist silently taunting Lambert from where she stood. Her hair fell in light blond waves down the line of her back, dancing and twirling in the wind. Lambert took a deep breath in, trying to decipher what was her and what was picked up on the air.

His mind swam with her. She was of chaos and serenity, spice and salt, a sweet spring day and the sharp tang of poison. She was dangerous, and Lambert was fucking hooked.

Lambert cleared his throat and kept his eye trained on her, waiting for the pin to drop. “You uh...you alright?”

The breeze carried her breathy chuckle to his ears as she slowly turned around. Her eyes were blue, and just a bit too...shiny? Sparkly? Both? Eh, who gives a shit. “I’m doing quite alright, thank you for asking.”

Lambert took a hesitant step forward, keeping his hands by his sides to show no outward signs of aggression. “What are you doing up here?”

The woman glanced around and shrugged, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Singing.”

“To?”

“Whoever will listen.”

“Uh huh. Right…” Lambert nodded and took another step towards the woman. “What’s your name?”

The woman smiled kindly, showing canines that were maybe just a little too sharp, but it could’ve just been a trick of the light. “I am called Essi. And you?”

“Lambert.”

“A witcher, correct?” Lambert nodded and Essi crossed her arms. “Have you been sent to kill me?”

Lambert furrowed his brow as he held the intense gaze of the woman with the magical voice before him. “Should I have been?”

Essi shrugged and gestured widely to the bare evening around them. “People, these days, tend to fear what they deem ‘different.’ I am no exception.”

Lambert stepped closer once more, enough to feel the subtle shift in the air around her and catch the tinge of salt on his tongue. “You look human. I can tell you have magic, and that song...it’s enchanting...and not just in the complementary way.”

“You’d be correct. It’s a siren song, meant to ward off predators.”

Lambert nodded. “Part siren, then? Huh. How’d that happen?”

Essi tilted her head and sighed. “I’d...rather not get into it. It’s not a terribly happy story, I’m afraid.”

“Fair enough,” Lambert crossed his arms and breathed in the cool night air. “Are you...safe here? I mean, as safe as someone can be nowadays…”

Essi shook her head, her golden curls bouncing over her shoulders and around her collarbones. “Not really, no. I’m headed for Skellige, though. Just wanted one last night here…”

Lambert cleared his throat, watching her sparkling eyes dance over the tides. “You uh...you need any help? With anything?”

She looked back at him, her eyes slowly dragging down his body and back up again, burning with their intensity. Something darker, sweeter floated across the breeze and Lambert could almost taste the honey-sweet aroma that threatened to send him under.

“I could use your company for the night, if you’re offering.” Essi reached up and undid the button on one of her shoulders, letting the gauzy fabric fall open. Lambert swallowed thickly as the curve of her breast was bathed in moonlight, her nipple already pebbled from the chilly breeze that could cut through skin.

“Y-yeah. Yeah, I’m offering,” he said, closing the distance between them and finally reaching his hand out to touch her. Essi’s fingers tangled with his, pulling a shuddering gasp from the back of Lambert’s throat at just the simplest contact.

“Sensitive,” Essi drawled, baring her throat as her eyes gleaned down to where Lambert’s pulse beat beneath his wrist, “good.”

She pushed him gently as she stepped around him, still holding his hand and pulling him along. Lambert watched the waves of grass skirt along her ankles as she stopped, the wind still carrying her in an endless dance. Locking her eyes with his, Essi brought Lambert’s hand up to her breast and pushed his fingers into the tender flesh.

“Don’t-uh…” Lambert glanced around even as the insistent thrum of her heart sang up through her impossibly soft skin, “don’t you wanna find somewhere more private?”

Essi shook her head. “No one will bother us. The song, meant for so long to keep away those that would wish us harm, now keeps any and all at bay. The only reason you were able to find me is because I allowed it.”

“Why?” Lambert breathed, his hand resting still above Essi’s heart.

“Must there be an answer?” Essi tilted her head and ran her fingers down the line of Lambert’s jaw, watching the muscles shift and twitch as he clenched down and drew in a shuddering breath. Her other hand drew up past Lambert’s on her chest and released the other bit of her dress and let it fall to her hips, revealing the plane of her chest and the dips of her collar. Her nipples, dusky pink against the pale alabaster of her skin, pebbled in the cool air and Lambert was overcome with the urge to wrap his lips around them and drag his tongue over the sensitive nubs.

Lambert swallowed thickly and shook his head. “N-no, I guess not.”

“Good,” Essi whispered like leaves on the wind as she pushed up to her tiptoes and finally closed the miniscule distance that was left between them.

Lambert inhaled sharply through his nose at the first glance of her lips against his, his skin almost surprised at the gentle touch after so long without. She tasted of ocean air, light and crisp and it was almost as if he could feel the call to go deeper to sea in her kiss. He carefully squeezed the flesh of her breast in his hand as he brought his other to rest comfortably on her hip, toying with the edge of her dress where it still sat, momentarily forgotten.

He deepened the kiss, swiping his tongue over the seam of Essi’s mouth and groaning when her lips parted, her fingers threading up into his hair. He felt just the barest tingle of her magic along his scalp and down the line of his spine as she pulled him impossibly closer, slotting his leg between her own and dragging herself along his thigh. Lambert’s medallion offered a little vibration on his chest, which was dutifully ignored by its host.

Essi ran her hands down Lambert’s neck and to the straps of his scabbards on his shoulder. “May I?” Essi breathed into his mouth.

Lambert took a deep breath and brought his head back enough to look into her too-blue eyes, searching for that last little hint of ill-will that would make him take his swords and scram. All he found, though, were pupils widened with lust and lips swollen and shining from his own. He felt her fingers fiddling with the metal buckle on his shoulder and he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah alright. Go ahead.”

Essi hummed with a cheeky smile as she slid the leather out of the buckle, taking his swords, so deadly and threatening to anyone who would wind up on the wrong end of them, and setting them safely on the ground with a reverence one would typically reserve for precious jewels or beloved mementos. She undid the ties at his neck holding his jerkin closed, sliding her hands beneath the heavy armoured fabric and pushing it off of his shoulders and down his arms.

Lambert felt struck dumb as she went about undressing him, his arms hanging limp at his sides as his jerkin was set down on the ground with as much care as his swords had been. Essi fiddled with the ties on his codpiece, her fingers just barely glancing over his cock that had been willfully ignored for far too long.

He surged forward, digging the pads of his fingers into the softness of Essi’s hips as he fit his nose into the crook of her neck. He breathed her in while she yanked his linen shirt from where it had been tucked into his trousers. Essi’s hands, while still gentle and deliberate, moved with fervor as Lambert nipped and sucked on the delicate skin above where her pulse beat erratically.

Her hands were oddly cool on his skin as she pushed his shirt up over his head, Lambert’s lips leaving Essi’s neck for only the briefest moment as it was shoved aside. He brought her back to him, pressing their bare chests together and rubbing his thumb over one of her nipples, relishing the throaty gasp torn from her chest. He could feel the pull of chaos building behind his belly button, the fish hook yanking backwards into places within him yet unknown. Goosebumps erupted along Essi’s skin as Lambert’s hand passed over it.

“Your fingers tingle with magic hidden beneath the skin,” Essi whispered as he dragged his hands down over her stomach.

“Not like yours,” he said, pressing his lips into the hollow of her collar, “mine was trained into me. You...you’ve got magic older than what time can rightly tell.”

Lambert slid his hand down to the apex of Essi’s thighs and went to run his fingers along her slit. Though...it didn’t feel quite how he was expecting, even through her dress. But gods, he felt the gasp that she bled into his mouth like a punch to the gut, and he really couldn’t find himself to care just what lay beneath the thin layer of windswept linen.

Essi’s nails dug into the meat of Lambert’s shoulders as his hands dipped under her dress and over the swell of her ass, pushing away the fabric and leaving her bare in the moonlight. She stepped out of the dress as it pooled onto the ground and kicked it away, letting Lambert’s eyes dance over her naked form. She was fully aware that she didn’t look precisely human while nude, but she had been around long enough to not care, and to know that a great many humans didn’t care either.

“I’m sure you already know this,” Lambert breathed, dragging his fingers lightly up the outside of her thigh, “but you really are beautiful.”

Essi felt herself blush as she pulled him down for another kiss, her hands working at the laces of his codpiece and pushing it aside, reaching in and wrapping herself around the weeping cock hidden away. She smirked against his lips when he bucked into her hand. “You’re not so bad yourself, especially like this.”

Lambert smirked right back at her as he wrapped his arms around her waist and led her to lay in the grass, letting her golden hair splay around her head like spilled starlight. He kicked away his pants and boots and kneeled down by her knees. “I’ve never really had anyone like...this. Tell me what feels good?”

Essi nodded. “You’re doing well already. Not many ask my preference.”

“Well, then they’re assholes.”

“I won’t argue that. Slip your fingers into my slit, feel around. Tell me what you find.”

Lambert quirked his brow with a roguish grin. “So mysterious. I’m always excited about research…”

He slipped his fingers down into the warm embrace between her thighs, finding...something that might remind him of a small cock without much use of his imagination. But it was ribbed along the base and came to a finer point rather than the bulbous head he was so familiar with. As he parted her slit, it sprung free and bounced up to rest by the crook of her hip, clearly rigid with blood in the way that he might also expect. What he didn’t expect was the color. The slick, smooth skin was a deep navy blue, which transitioned to the color of the blushed corals that grew along the shoreline.

Lambert tilted his head and dragged his fingers down the stiff line of Essi’s length, watching as her back arched and she let out a strangled gasp. “Well,” he smiled, “I have found something that seems to feel very nice indeed. And quite lovely to look at. What do you call it?”

Essi chuckled as she ran her fingers through her hair. “Well...I think that the technical term is ‘anchor,’ though I don’t think that’s terribly sexy. I usually just call it a shaft and move on with my life.”

“And, ah, have I been treating it properly?”

Essi dragged her fingers down over her chest, lightly rubbing her nipples as Lambert almost started to fucking drool. “You’re on the right track. Now, you can gently wrap your hand around it and stroke up and down, almost like your own. Though I don’t much care for the squeezing. Touch me like you’d touch a glass with a bolt of lightning contained inside. It’s very powerful, sturdy. But it can shatter with the smallest push too far.”

Lambert nodded with a wink, “Sounds like something I’ve handled successfully before.” With that he took her gingerly in hand, feeling the smooth weight of it in his palm. It was slipperier than he was used to, which eased its movement in his loose fist. He didn’t have to go far, it fit almost perfectly in his hand with the exception of the coral-pink tip which seemed to be the most sensitive area. He worked slowly, carefully, despite the voice in his head screaming for him to get on with it. He wasn’t an idiot. There was a right and a wrong way to do this, and the wrong way meant a good time had by no one.

Essi felt a pleasant shock rumble up through her stomach and across her chest, her hips following Lambert’s loose grip as her breathing became deeper and more drawn out. “Ah, ah just like that. You’re a natural-”

“Can I taste you?” Lambert interrupted her, his eyes almost black with how dilated his pupils were. He could smell her arousal, that thick heady scent swirling straight down to his cock and fucking Gods he just really wanted to use his mouth on her-

Essi chuckled breathily, “Alright, yes! Again, just be gentl-nnngg…”

Lambert felt his cheeks flush when he realized that he had actually been speaking aloud, but he hid himself by dragging the flat of his tongue slowly up the line of her shaft. He could feel the ridges catching before smoothing out towards the tip, which he only barely lapped at when he felt her thighs tense around his head. Gods, she tasted like a gulpful of air on the purest beach.

After a few successful laps at her shaft, Lambert tilted his head, adjusted his angle, and carefully took her entire length into the wet heat of his mouth. Essi gasped and keened loudly over the cliffs, and Lambert wagered no one else had bothered to think of doing that. Numbskulls didn’t know what they were missing. He felt cool fingers weave into his hair as he worked, rubbing the textured base with his thumb and forefinger, which prompted a guttural groan from above him.

“F-fuck, al-” Essi swallowed thickly, willing herself to see this out. Gods-be-damned, he was good. “Alright. T-take your fingers and go back a bit, I ne-fuck I need something inside of me please.”

Lambert’s fingers stopped their back and forth drag around Essi’s shaft and dropped lower, sliding between slick lips and fitting comfortably into an opening that fluttered around the intrusion, drenching his hand with a fresh wave of arousal. It was quite the familiar spot for Lambert to find himself in, though it was...unexpected, what with her shaft having held the forefront of his attention so far.

He pulled away from her shaft long enough to make sure he knew what he was working with, “H-how...Essi, is this what I think it is?” Lambert’s voice was incredulous, almost sounding as if he had never known anything that had made him quite this happy.

“Essentially, yes.”

“Fuck, you’re incredible.”

Essi smiled, that oddly sharp canine tooth glinting under the moon, “All sirens are either Alphas or Omegas or Betas, and have the corresponding equivalent anatomy. With our own little twist, of course. I would be considered an Omega, if I were a full-blooded siren, but being half-human, I have my own unique variations. You should be more or less familiar with this territory. Unless I’m much mistaken.”

Lambert sighed happily. “Gods, woman. You are just a whole bunch of extra fun, aren’t you?”

He shuffled around for a moment, bracing himself on his knees and elbows with his head level with her core. Essi felt the warm fan of his breath over her before he slowly pushed two fingers inside of her, moving back and forth at a languid pace while his other hand resumed its gentle exploration of her shaft. “Is it extra sensitive down here too, or can I give you a little more?”

Essi shook her head as she felt Lambert’s tongue lap at the base of her length, teasing the ridges back and forth. “No more than typical I’d say, at least for what experiences with human women I’ve had. Th-the tip is the most sensitive, so you, uh...you can go for it. Just not too fast all at once, alright?”

Lambert nodded and carefully nosed down the line of her shaft and down to her entrance. His hand still moved loosely over the base while he licked into her core, broad strokes matching the pace of his hands around her and inside of her. Essi looked down and watched him with an odd expression. His eyes were closed and the high planes of his cheeks were flushed pink as the dark blue skin of her shaft bumped against his forehead with every stroke of his fist and tongue.

Meanwhile, Lambert was having a religious experience in the liminal space nestled between Essi’s thighs. Time didn’t exist outside of that spot, and for all he knew the world could’ve ceased turning and was hurtling towards oblivion. And if it were?

Well, he really didn’t give a shit.

His own cock was achingly hard, leaking pearly strings onto the grass between his knees. Lambert relished every twitch of Essi’s thighs around his head as he pushed his tongue into the warm embrace of her slit. He moaned from deep in his chest, his nose bumping against the ridges on Essi’s shaft while he still moved his hand around her.

Essi gasped and writhed as Lambert very gently ran his thumb over her extra-sensitive tip, not lingering or pushing her too far, just the barest shock of intensity before resuming his gentle exploration. Her hands flew to tangle into his hair and she could feel his smirk as he pressed his lips in soft kisses to the insides of her thighs. His chest rumbled with a hum as he slipped his fingers from her core and shoved them into his mouth, licking them clean.

“W-” she breathed, feeling the golden flames of his eyes trail over her skin, “why’d you stop?”

Lambert braced his hands on the ground and pushed himself up, the scruff on his chin shining with her arousal and the endearing smile on his lips. “Just don’t want this to be over before it starts. C...can I fuck you?”

Essi smiled and ran her hands over Lambert’s stomach, through the dark coarse hairs that led down to his cock jutting just next to her own hard shaft. “Yes,” she smiled, her blue eyes boring into his, “but not like this.”

She gently pushed Lambert’s shoulders back and sat up with him, slotting their lips together briefly before she flipped herself around onto her hands and knees.

Lambert groaned, running his hands up the back of her thighs and giving the soft rounds of her bum a squeeze. He slid his finger down to the slickness between her thighs. “Oh, fuck me sideways, woman.”

His hands were reverent, skirting tracks of stardust along her spine and down over the gentle swells of her hips. Essi arched her back and shot a devilish smirk back over her shoulder, waving her ass back and forth enticingly. “Come on then,” she said with a glint in her eyes, “be good to me.”

Oh, and if that didn’t go right the fuck to Lambert’s cock. He scooted forward on his knees and took himself in hand, running the head of his length through her slick folds a few times, catching on her entrance. He felt a queer growl reverberate through her skin and he chuckled. “Alright, alright. Patience, you.”

He pushed in slowly, feeling her envelope him in the most indulgent heat he had ever had the great grace to know. Lambert dug his fingertips into the meat of Essi’s ass, while Essi’s nails dragged tracks along the soft grass pillowed beneath her. As his hips blissfully met the backs of Essi’s thighs, Lambert let out a shaky breath in an effort to keep his mind clear in the hazy mist of Essi’s pleasure.

“You ah-” Lambert sighed as her walls fluttered welcomingly around him, “you alright?”

Essi reached back, grasping onto one of Lambert’s on her hip. “Very,” she breathed, her chest heaving and her cunt clenching and flexing around Lambert. “Now if you would kindly move, it would be greatly appreciated.”

“You know,” Lambert said as he slowly shifted his hips back before rolling back in, looking down at her shiny lips trying desperately to keep him buried within her, “you’re quite the spinstrel. You-nnng, you should be a bard…”

Essi chuckled lightly. “A half-siren bard with enchanted songs? A cliche if ever there was one.”

“Just a thought, trying to keep myself from finishing before we really get anywhere,” Lambert grunted, his hips picking up just a bit more speed. Essi planted her hands firmy back on the ground and met him thrust for thrust, the claps of their skin echoing back from the cliffs.

Both of them were being swept out to sea by their pleasure, rushing waves slamming back and forth between them. Lambert’s eyes flitted over every inch of Essi before him, from the soft waves of her golden hair that bounced with each snap of his hips, down the delicate slope of her back arching into him, the curly fuzz that surrounded her slit and brushed against him as he buried himself inside of her.

Lambert slowed himself, grinding his hips up and down. Essi grit her teeth and keened quietly, pushing herself back in an effort to encourage Lambert’s pace.

“C-can I flip you over?” Lambert huffed, tracking his hands over Essi’s hips. “I know it’ll be a lot, and if you don’t like it, we can go back to this. But...I think you might enjoy it-”

Essi gasped as Lambert’s cock just barely brushed against the tender bundle of nerves nestled deep within her. She nodded frantically, “Y-yes, we can-fuck, please Lambert…”

Lambert looked down, his eyes locked on the sweet blushed lips of Essi’s cunt as he dragged himself from her embrace. He groaned as he fell from her, thin tendrils of her slick still attempting valiantly to tie them back together. Essi slid down, slinking and twisting onto her back. Her shaft lay up on the mound of soft curls at the base, shining with her arousal as Lambert crawled atop her.

He leaned down, resting their foreheads together and searching those far-too-deep eyes. He could smell her lust dripping from her skin, but could see just a hint of worry hidden in her glances. “Hey,” Lambert whispered, brushing their lips together as he spoke, “like I said. You don’t like it, say the word and we stop. No questions asked.”

Essi took a deep breath and nodded, swallowing thickly. “I promise, I want this. So fucking much. It’s just...going to be a lot. I don’t want to push too far...but I also kind of want to push too far, if that makes sense.”

Lambert pressed his lips softly along the line of her jaw and down into the hollow of her neck. “It absolutely does. But not too far, not tonight. Maybe, if we see our paths cross again, we can have some fun with that.”

Essi waggled her eyebrows and gently rolled her hips, gasping when the base of her shaft rutted against Lambert’s cock. “Please, fuck me.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Lambert hummed as he lined himself up in her slit beneath her shaft, pushing back into her warm embrace with a growl that tore through his chest. The cool air on his back was shocked in great contrast with Essi’s body, hot and wet and so fucking tight.

Lambert gave a few good thrusts until he was buried deep within her, and fuck if he didn’t want to stay there until the world stopped turning. He leaned down, wrapping his arms underneath Essi’s back and letting his hands grip onto the backs of her shoulders. He felt her walls flutter valiantly around him and he groaned into her mouth.

Essi was shocked with just how much she felt Lambert. In her, on her, around her. Everywhere. He was fucking her slowly, intensely. Deeply. He wasn’t even really thrusting anymore, just grinding up into her and the coarse hairs on his stomach leading down to his groin brushed against her shaft every. Fucking. Time. She was almost delirious with the intensity, but instead of wanting to dance away from the ache, she found herself with the low burn of craving that had her fingers itching for every ounce of Lambert that she could reach.

Essi dug her nails into the short strands of his hair, mussing it before smoothing her hands down his neck and over his shoulders. Lambert shuddered over her, beads of sweat collecting at his temples as he nipped at her chin. Through the haze of her building climax, Essi only barely had the wherewithal to rub her thumbs over his nipples in time with the rolls of his hips.

And sweet fucking Gods above that was almost enough to do Lambert in. Just barely hanging on by a thread, he persists, determined to see Essi through to a satisfying finish. He felt her shaft pressing into the cushion of his stomach, the ridges along the underside sliding along the tender space of skin nestled right above his cock. “F-fuck,” he moans, tasting his own arousal on her lips, “w..what do you need? I’m so close, I-I need you to-”

“T-touch me,” Essi whispered, her eyes fluttering shut as another wave arousal threatened to send her over, so close but not quite enough. “The t-tip, not a lot, jus-aaaahhhhhhh-”

Lambert reached between their bodies, lightly glancing his fingers in gentle strokes over the blushed tip of her shaft. Her back arched high and he could taste her tears of overstimulation as the wave of climax finally, blissfully overtook her.

And...well. That was an experience that Lambert found himself woefully underprepared for. Sure, he was familiar with the sensation of a fluttering cunt flexing around his cock. But holy fucking shit was the rest of this uncharted territory.

Essi’s shaft spurted out long streaks of spend, much thinner and wetter than he expected. It actually reminded him of a woman he had been with years ago who let out a long release of liquid when he hit a certain angle over and over again inside of her and drenched the both of them in her slick. The same happened with Essi as she spent long and hard, spurts of her arousal wetting the downy hairs on Lambert’s chest and pooling in the soft valley between her breasts.

Lambert’s hips faltered and he ground himself once, twice, thrice more before pulling himself out and stripping his cock, frantically letting his own orgasm white out his senses. He spent pearly white ropes over her shaft and her stomach, letting it drip down into the petals of her cunt.

His chest heaved as he felt his senses poke and prod at his climax-squishy brain. He could feel Essi’s hands smoothing down his arms and up to cup his face, her lips pressing soft kisses across his cheeks and into his slack mouth.

It was the scent of their spends mixing atop Essi’s skin that brought Lambert back to the present, Essi’s saltier and with a sweeter musk than he would think. He leaned down and ran his tongue between her breasts, his hands cupping the tender mounds while he tasted her pleasure. Her spend was clear with a light blue-grey tinge, and fuck it was addicting. She ran her fingers through his hair as he mouthed at her, moving down her stomach and over the hairs at the peak of her core. Her shaft had softened and slid itself back away, but she still glistened beneath the moonlight with the evidence of their climaxes.

Lambert sat up, bracing his hands on either side of Essi’s hips. “Well,” he smirked, but Essi could see a soft twinkle in his eyes, “did I do a well enough job to earn an encore?”

Essi laughed lightly, “I’d say yes, with certainty. Though, not for quite a while. I think you may have ruined me for taking any lovers in the near future. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

Lambert dipped his head and captured her lips, letting their tastes mingle on their tongues. “Shall I come find you in Skellige?”

Essi hummed, “If you like. I shall not turn you away should you find me.”

“And if you find me first?”

Essi pushed his shoulders back, shifting and rising to meet him on her knees. “Then I shall call for you, just as I did here. Just follow my song.”

#lambert/essi #essbert #i love them a lot #smut #wrsb #witcher rarepair summer bingo #non-human #sortof monsterfucking #a/b/o

[hellishhin]

Hello! Day 21 is another of those questions I love haha: How would either Sadie or K'lai'a'la (I love them now okay) react if the other were turned to stone by a basilisk/gorgon etc? What if the fight took a turn for the worse and it'd mean they'd have to flee and possibly leave the other behind?

The can of words you have just unleashed.... is below the cut (and is fluff not canon at this point)

Content warning: monster, petrification, pain, injury, combat, death

"K'lai'a'la, can you see anything?" Sadie hissed through the darkness. The rough-hewn cloth of K'lai'a'la's tunic and the scent of dank rot were the only things invading her senses.

K'lai'a'la just shushed her and gave Sadie's hand a squeeze to ensure she was holding on tightly. Her eyes could pick up the miniscule amounts of light outlining the craggy path ahead. This network of tunnels was supposed to be safer than the mountain pass, or so they thought. Perhaps they could have bartered with Cryax to let them through. Surely there was something a dragon wanted but Sadie is convincing when she wants to be so they chose the tunnels.

It was clear to the elf very early on that light amongst the darkness would only draw unwanted attention. The tunnels were supposed to only be a few miles long in the westerly direction but K'lai'a'la was used to navigating amongst the trees. Without the sun or the stars to guide her, she had to hope that their path was obvious or perhaps they would stumble into more trouble than they bargained for.

Only K'lai'a'la's highly trained senses detected the slight scuff of moving across stone that did not match up with her or Sadie's footfalls. She threw Sadie behind her and pressed their backs up against the cold wall of the tunnel. As much as she had wanted them to stay quiet, it was almost impossible when Sadie could not see her feet. They had been found.

Smooshed up against the wall, Sadie pushed against K'lai'a'la's thigh so she could free her mouth enough to speak. "What is it? Let me cast some light," she hissed.

"No light," K'lai'a'la breathed, eyes scanning the dim rock formations for any movement but could not see any as of yet.

"Well what did you see then? You have to tell me something otherwise I can't help."

That just got a hand pressed over Sadie's entire face. The small one needed to be silent or she could not sense what approached. Despite the distraction, her eyes still caught a sliver of movement just between two stalagmites followed by quiet clicks and a near silent hiss. This creature had multiple legs, claws, and a tail. From the sound of its tail, K'lai'a'la would have to guess that it was either scaled or skin. Fur would not make that sound on stone.

They had passed a few smaller off-shoots a few dozen yards back. She did not know where they led but it was unlikely they could run a four-legged creature and fighting it, especially if they didn't know what it was, would be a risk K'lai'a'la wanted to avoid. As she opened her mouth to tell Sadie what they were going to do, a growl emanated from beyond them, near where the movement was just a moment ago.

She felt Sadie clutch her shirt tighter at the sound which was all the motivation she needed. One arm around the small halfling, she guided her quickly back the way they came.

"What is going on gods damn it K'lai'a'la let me cast light!" her voice rose just slightly and K'lai'a'la could feel her grip loosen to cast the spell.

"Do. Not." K'lai'a'la demanded in a hushed tone, fear adding more color than she would have liked.

But Sadie picked up on that fear. Her friend knew what was going on and she trusted her friend to keep her safe so she clung to K'lai'a'la even tighter and stumbled next to her.

As they approached the nearest off-shoot, it spanned just about the width her her arms if they were held out to either side. Before the opening was fully in view, K'lai'a'la knocked an arrow and prepared herself before stepping out and scanning the opening.

A mere yard in front of her stood a behemoth of a creature. A mouth full of dagger-like teeth seemed to grin at her just below a pair of hollow shining eyes set in pale rock-like skin. It only took the briefest of moments, one singular glance into those depthless, magic-filled eyes and she felt her body begin to stiffen. Several thoughts raced through her mind, lightning-quick. If she succumbed, Sadie would die. This creature is intelligent, it knew these tunnels connected and it sent them back here. It was waiting. There would be no escape, surely the creature knew the tunnel system and would find them again. But if she could make sure this was the last prey this creature had then perhaps her friend had a chance.

"Do not look," K'lai'a'la's voice was so calm that Sadie's heart leapt into her throat. Then the twang of her bow echoed off the stone. Sadie did not need another command. She wasn't going to be useless. She had spells and she would fight. A quiet word of encouragement to the weave and a few deft finger movements tied the strands into a small ball of light that shone brilliantly out of her wedding ring. Unfortunately the sudden light blinded her and she stumbled back from K'lai'a'la who did not seem to be moving to stop her spell.

Off course the stubborn small one did not listen but the creature whose life was lived in the darkness, also seemed to shrink from the sudden light. This was her chance, she could feel her legs becoming slow to respond, the stone beneath her feet feeling far too familiar for her liking. Her sight was compromised by the light as well but the creature was straight ahead. Exchanging her bow for a shortsword across her hip, K'lai'a'la charged, less than half the speed she could normally. Her sword tip reached out, she saw it sailing directly toward the basilisk's eye but then another wave of the creature's evil magic washed over her, and her sword stopped, mere inches from her target. Then everything went dark.

Sadie's eyes finally adjusted to the light and when she looked down the tunnel, she saw a strange stone formation blocking the way. This formation looked like it had arms and legs and a bow... and long hair... Sadie's gaze moved to the several pairs of scaled gray legs behind her. She would know the legs of a basilisk anywhere.

A shriek of anger burst from her tearing through the wave of pain that threatened to engulf her in that same moment. Her friend was hurt, perhaps even gone permanently and the creature that did it still had the guts to hang around.

The weave snapped and crackled around her "you fucker, I will kill you for hurting her!" Sadie began throwing spell after spell between her friend's statued legs. From her angle, the basilisk's eyes were hidden behind K'lai'a'la's midriff but it wouldn't be that way for long. With too much agility for a creature of that size, it scaled the wall up and over the barrier it created but Sadie was ready. She shut her eyes and thrust her rapier up toward the creature's gaping maw. It sunk into something soft and a shriek came out of it but it barreled down on her anyway.

More spells came from Sadie sinking into its flesh. She only let herself look at the legs all around her, she felt the weight of the creature snap one of her limbs but she was going to make it pay. It would pay in honor of her best friend who was absolutely not dead. There was magic in this world that would bring people back to life, Sadie had experienced it for herself. This was not the end for K'lai'a'la but it would be for this damned basilisk.

She fought valiantly for a halfling, the basilisk burned and scorched across its length but Sadie's resilience wore faster. She couldn't predict where the bit was coming next, only try to stay beneath its feet but it was not long before she slipped up. Jaws locked around her arm and she screamed, punching its face with her other. Her mind was simply full of rage and nothing but the creatures corpse could sate it, or her own.

#underwing challenge #bonus sadie footage #NOT canon #sadiestuff #drippingmoon #pain cw #death cw #petrification cw #ok I really don't know how this turned out but thank you for inspiring me to write this! #basically Sadie would die too lol #in this headcanon #kireen comes and saves the day #so everyone is ok in the end!

[bottleofspilledink]

God’s Watching, Put on a Show || Chapter XIII

“Welcome to the gardening club!” Veronica, a junior, the girl they’d elected last year before the senior members (that had previously made up a large majority of their club) had graduated, said to them, all cheery smiles and chipper voices, despite the admittedly low turn-out.

“Now, we’ll be doing introductions in just a minute, but as of right now, we’re going to be grabbing a pair of gloves and picking aprons out!”

She quickly ducked inside the gardening shed, opening a locker from inside and taking out about fifteen colourful aprons and laying them out on the table they prepared just for the occasion.

“Whatever you pick today is what you’ll be stuck with for the rest of the year, so act fast. All disputes will be settled through three rounds of rock-paper-scissors.” She said, looking at two girls whose eyes seemed to gravitate towards the same garment.

“However, you will be provided another apron if yours gets too worn and breaks, so don’t worry about really getting down and dirty, which, if you’re only just learning about now, what are you doing here?”

That pulled a chuckle out of the girls as they crowded around the table.

From that crowd stood Lilith and Eve, side by side, refusing to meet each other’s eyes.

Well, more Eve than Lilith.

Lilith was doing everything she could to make the other look at her, all attempts ending in failure, either in the form of being ignored or catching a different girl’s attention.

The air between them had stayed tense since they’d left the library, neither of them having the chance or courage to try and alleviate it, instead choosing to stew in it and hope it would go away on it’s own.

Clearly, though, it would do no such thing.

Her blue eyes scanned around them, in a desperate search for something to make light of, before it finally landed on one of the aprons upon the table.

Just looking at it was enough to make her cringe. If it was something she’d seen while out shopping with her grandmother, she would desperately steer the woman in another direction, hoping to heaven that it hadn’t caught the other’s eye lest she make her try it on.

“Am I really going to do this?”

She groaned internally.

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

...

“Hey, Eve!”

The blonde turned around, happy the other had decided to take initiative in getting rid of the tense air between them, though the response she’d prepared had died before it even left her mouth when she saw what Lilith was wearing.

On Lilith was a red apron with a white, frilly trim, a flannel pattern making up the red parts. It’s bottom part reached just above her knee, the ends of her skirt sticking out. That wasn’t what shocked her though, no. What was most shocking was the heart-shaped bodice that hung loose on Lilith, the ties at her neck and waist yet to be adjusted to fit her correctly.

“Help me tie this?” She asked, quirking a brow as well as a lip.

Oh, that sincere expression did it, laughter springing from her like a burst fire hydrant, it’s sound washing away of any awkwardness that lingered between the two.

“Holy sh-” She guffawed, unable to continue, glee stealing all that remained in her lungs. Breath escaped her in short huffs of joy every few seconds as she tried her best to get it to stop for long enough to speak, though it seemed that trying to keep it in only made it stronger.

“Aw, come on, Eve,” Lilith pouted, jutting out her bottom lip out so far it was comical. “Don’t you think I look pretty?”

She sighed wistfully, finally calming. But despite the absence of laughter, her joy was still there, made clear with the dopey, lovesick grin that spread her mouth ear to ear.

The hand that had once covered her mouth slid across the table to where Lilith’s was resting, giving it a slight, tender squeeze before she spoke. “You look adorable.”

It was Lilith’s turn to smile now, cheeks flushed as red as her apron. Oh, she’d chose to look like a fool a thousand time over just for another moment like that.

“Thanks.”

They stared at each other silently.

Something passed between them, a kind of secret, a sort of unspoken, unacted upon longing they shared; it was potent, tangible, electric, even. It would have been clear to anyone watching, though they would have denied it’s existence, refusing to acknowledge the simple, sinful fact that these girls were in love. Desperately so.

“Seriously though, can you help me adjust this?”

“Oh, yes! Of course!”

And with that, it had ended. A small moment of tenderness and love unabashed, a miniscule and infinitesimal minute in their short, but seemingly so stretched-out lives that they would treasure and look back upon with a fond nostalgia reserved only for such memories.

Lilith turned away from her then, swooping her hair over her shoulder and crouching down to give Eve better access to the ties.

She could only giggle at the action, “You know that’s not necessary, I’m only a bit shorter than you anyways. I can reach the ties just fine.”

The redhead decided to be cheeky, falling to her knees with a cackle, looking back at Eve with her signature smirk.

“Rude!” She said, delivering a good-natured smack to the girl’s shoulder.

“Not rude,” Lilith choked back a laugh, clearly already amused by her planned response, “just being honest.”

Eve tugged on the ties to tilt Lilith’s head up, “Oh, really? I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”

The split second of worry she’d experienced from the fear she’d gone too far quickly faded into a now familiar warmth spreading through her, knowing she was the cause of the hearty chuckle that came deep from Lilith’s chest.

“How short are you?”

“I’m pretty sure the question is supposed to go “how tall are you” but to answer that question. I’m five feet and four inches.”

“Then you’re short!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

Lilith finally rose, mostly to prove a point but also so Eve could get to the ties to go around her waist, holding her arms out all the while as a sort of “go ahead” gesture.

The seconds that followed made her heart hammer. She had to step forward, close to Lilith, to grasp the ribbons that for some reason rested by her front instead of her side. Eve reached around, praying no one would hear her heart hammer against her ribs as if it were trying to break free in a never-ceasing attempt to proclaim its love.

It filled her with shame.

Oh, but who could be bothered by such unsavoury things when they were so close to their beloved?

For a brief moment, it was as if Eve held the girl in an embrace, the type of embrace one would give to a lover. It was agony to have to move, yet infinitely easier to stay, to give in to temptation and press their bodies together, to bury her face into the crook of her neck once more, to let Lilith stand as a shield between her and the God she’d come to fear so.

But she ripped herself away and went back to her original task.

“Tell me, then,” She said, distracting herself from all she longed for, “how short are you?”

Her eyes were helpless to the way the ribbon accentuated the girl’s figure, try as she might to stop herself from ogling. It made the rather loose uniform seem tighter, bringing it closer to her body, showing off her waist as the fabric bunched.

She pulled the on apron strings a bit more than necessary, wanting to see more, needing to see more.

The sight filled her with ache.

She couldn’t help but wonder if Lilith ached for her, too…

“I’m five foot eight.” The girl said, finally turning to face her once she finished. Everything about her could be described as smug, from her smirk to the way she put her hands on her hips as if she had triumphed. “Decidedly, not short.”

“And just who decided that?”

“Society.”

“Okay then, what counts as short and what counts as tall.”

“Easy. Anyone below five foot five is short, anyone above is tall.”

Eve laughed, incredulous. “Where did you even get that?”

“From society,” Lilith answered with a laugh of her own.

Before their banter could continue, however, the club leader spoke and ushered them all elsewhere.

“Okay so we’ll be the ones to give you the gardening gloves. Don’t get too excited, though, they’re all green and have no patterns whatsoever.”

She pulled out a small crate from under the table, put there ahead of time, all filled with gloves that were tied together with rubber bands by the pair.

“You guys are gonna have to take them home and wash them yourselves. I suggest bringing a small plastic bag to put them in after use. Trust me, I ruined a textbook once ‘cause I was trying to catch the second bus and just threw them in!” She sighed, though clearly amused by the story now. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Once the laughter brought about by that little anecdote had died down and everyone had grabbed a pair, the girl casually strolled away from the table only to roll out a whiteboard from inside the shed, already half-filled with a neat script.

“Now, everyone please take a seat. Here’s the actual orientation!”

...

Out of the many things Lilith had done to impress girls in the past, this might have been the tamest, yet most ridiculous and out-of-character thing to date.

Here she was, sitting on the grass in a frilly apron, listening to someone talk about flowers and the correct way to plant them and how to hold a trowel. Well, half-listening. Try as she might to focus on Veronica go on about how to plant flowers and how to properly hold a trowel and what events they would be involved in this year, her eyes would always wander to the girl next to her, to Eve.

She doubted that Eve, herself, was aware of the smile that had made it’s way onto her face. Really, Eve was the picture of happiness with her rosy, dimpled cheeks and her shining tawny eyes, utterly mesmerized by the lecture.

Lilith was mesmerized, too, mind you. The minutes went by as she gazed at Eve, enraptured in every sense of the word. There was something ethereal about Eve, whether it be the shine of her hair, so glinting and gleaming so captivatingly that even the finest gold chains could do nothing to rival it, the way the light caught her face, making clear her cupid’s bow lips, highlighting the small, usually unseen freckles dotting over her nose and cheeks.

So many stories came to mind at the sight, most prominent of all being one she had overheard as a child.

It was during recess in second grade, her friend, Monica, sniveling and sobbing her eyes out as other girls teased her for her moles and freckles as Lilith stood by to comfort her, risking ostracization herself. She laughed at the memory. Truly, her history of doing anything for girls she liked stretched back even longer than she thought.

After the teacher had arrived and scolded the other girls, she pulled them aside, Lilith refusing to leave the other for as long as she cried coming with them, Monica refusing to let go of her hand.

There, in the corner of their colourful classroom decorated with plastic planets and paper fishes and cardboard elephants, she whispered to them in her delicate voice about how people were made in heaven.

She spoke of angels sculpting them from clay, their hands gently and lovingly shaping them before handing them over to God so he could breathe life into them. Sometimes, she said, the angles would look at them and love them so much that they would kiss the clay, blessing them, leaving a mark that would stay with them when they got to earth in the form of a freckle.

Oh, how she wished to become an angel, if only so she could kiss Eve, if only so she could place upon her the mark of her love.

Granted, she wouldn’t have lasted long as one…

But being able to kiss Eve would have been worth the agony that was falling from heaven’s “grace.”

“As that’s that for orientation! You guys can go now,” Veronica said, clasping the sides of the whiteboard as she wheeled it back inside the shed. “Oh, except Eve Peccator and Lilith Damien!”

She locked the garden shed and grinned.

“You two stay. We need to talk about a few things.”

Lilith, having been very gay for a very long time, had only one reaction to such words.

“Oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh-”

...

Eve, having been very scared of being like Lilith for a very long time, had a similar response.

It being: “Oh no. Oh God, please no. Oh-”

Really, the words made her heart drop, the half hour spent in utter glee suddenly fading into a crippling sense of danger and nervousness.

“Okay so,” Veronica began, “you probably already noticed that you two are the only members in their senior year, yeah?”

The girl walked them deeper into the gardens, casual as ever. “That’s going to cause us a few problems since I’m only a junior and we only have a day for club per week, unlike you guys who get two since you’re going to be graduating soon. I heard someone say it had something to do with adding to your portfolio?”

“Does that mean we need to leave?” Lilith asked.

While the fear of being discovered had faded since Veronica began to speak of gardening, it had shifted again, this time into a crushing sorrow. She hadn’t even touched a plant yet and now they were getting kicked out…

“Nope! We’ll just be making a few adjustments.” She then said, waving away their fears. “As it is, we’re kinda short on members so we can’t afford to kick anyone out.”

She quickly realized what she said was rather impolite and backtracked.

“Not that we were going to do that if we weren’t short!”

They went under the fruit trees, most of which were barren, having already been harvested, their leaves turning a seasonal orange. Then, they passed the vegetable section, filled with surprisingly healthy crops despite the colder weather. Briefly after, they passed the second shed, apparently filled with chemicals like weed killers and rat poison as well as the heavier equipment of the club, the woodchipper and a chainsaw, that Veronica said only they wouldn’t be provided keys for.

“But yeah, since me and the others will only be here on Tuesdays, you’re going to be given keys to the shed and to the garden gate along with some tasks and instructions I’ll be printing out before the next meeting.

“Wait, so we’re going to be here all alone?” Eve asked. “Without anybody else?”

“Yeah!” She already began filing through her key ring in search of the duplicate keys. “Well, except when we’re here, but your club time during Fridays will be spent alone.”

Eve was fairly certain she was going to scream. Or puke. Or pass out. Or maybe all of that at the same time. Looking over at Lilith, it seemed she was also panicking. (She wasn’t. In part, she was mostly shocked and worried for Eve.)

Veronica was finally able to wring out the keys, one silver and one gold, handing them to Lilith.

“I don’t suggest you try anything with them, you’re the only ones with the spare keys so it’ll be pretty obvious it was you two if anything happens.”

Lilith took them with a simple “okay” before putting them in her pocket.

“That should be it!” Veronica said, her (probably usual) cheer returning to her after speaking her warning. “Remember, gold key is the gate, silver for the shed.”

 ...

With those words, they were walking back to the garden gate, picking up their bags from where they rested on the sides of the shed.

They were leaving.

She had to do this and she had to do it now.

A deep breath for courage and…

“Hey, can we stay for a bit?” Lilith asked. “I’ve never actually been in here and I wanted to have more of a look around.”

“Uh…”

“We’ll lock up after!”

She risked a glance at Eve and silently hoped her plan would work. Lucky for her, it didn’t look like the blonde would bolt or bail.

“You know what, okay! Just be sure to use the lock and the latch when closing the gate.”

“Thanks!” Without waiting a second more, she grabbed Eve by the hand and together they went further back into the garden, Lilith pulling them behind the small space of the second shed.

There was barely a meter between the wood of the shed and the wire of the fence. No one spoke, the two girls simply staring at each other in silence.

It should have been suffocating and awkward.

It wasn’t.

No, it was anything but that. The silence was charged, as if they didn’t need words, as if it was speaking in their place, as if they could hear each other’s hearts hammering and let that speak for itself. Their stares were heavy and filled, a more intense version of earlier. Still filled with love, still filled with longing, brimming with tenderness, an unspoken yearning. Again, so potent, so palpable, practically tangible, utterly electric.

“Lilith…” Eve’s voice shaky. She hadn’t let go of Lilith’s hand, she hadn’t tried putting more space between them. “Why did you bring me here?”

All you could hear after those words was their breathing, ragged, nervous, yet still going, matching the frantic rhythm of their hearts.

She didn’t answer, instead pulling Eve to her chest in a hug.

“Okay, this is my chance.”

 ...

Eve couldn’t resist, couldn’t even pretend to, not a single protest coming from her mouth. She wanted this. More than anything else, she wanted this. Arms pinned to her side by Lilith, there was nothing she could do to reciprocate; to scared that speaking would make the girl pull away, she hoped, if only this once, that Lilith would hear her heart, her love.

The passage of time was lost to her, all Eve could focus on was the other’s face buried in the crook of her neck. Lilith’s breath was hot. She could feel every sigh, every rise and fall of her chest. Her lips would brush against her pulse with every shift. They were soft and warm, pillowy.

As suddenly as Lilith had grabbed her, she was let go.

The girl pulled away from her with a gentle, satisfied smile.

Surprising herself, she grabbed Lilith’s hand when she backed away.

Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Eve wanted more.

But how could she ever say that?

She let go and they left the garden, locking up, never letting loose another word.

 ...

Later that night, she would open her messenger bag to find a light brown book with a pastel yellow sticky note on the front cover.

In large, messy letters it read: With love, from Lilith.

_________________________

Taglist: @atahensic @anomiewrites @leahstypewriter @madame-ree @melpomenismask @littlemisscalamity @phillyinthebathroom @gaypeaches @extrabitterbrain @pirateofblood @i-wanna-be-a-rock

OKAY CHAPTER 13 IS HERE!! YAY!!!!

SO IN MY EXCITEMENT TO POST THE LAST CHAPTER I FORGOT TO MENTION THAT THE BOOK EVE WAS READING IS A PREVIEW OF THE OTHER BOOK I'M WORKING ON IN THIS UNIVERSE BUT FURTHER BACK: THE CULT OF DIONYSUS!!!!

Lmao since @atahensic and @gaypeaches were excited about that they're getting tagged twice 💛

That's all for this chapter!! Thanks for reading 😁💛

#Lilith and Eve #my writing #writing #writer #writers #writers of tumblr #writeblr #books #books and libraries #pride #gay pride #lesbian pride #wlw pride #lgbt #religious imagery #religion #christianity #religion tw #christianity tw #tw religion #tw christianity #religious trauma #literature #gay literature #lesbian literature #sapphic literature #wlw romance #lesbian romance #gay romance #romance

[rwriting]

washing machine heart // misa amane x kiyomi takada (deathnote)

description: the scene in which kiyomi asks misa to dinner, retold, rewritten.

word count: 1.5k

content warnings: ‘obsessive themes’ is probably the most accurate way to describe this, one mention of head banging as a self-harm practice, one mention of violence, one (mild) mouth description, mild cruelty? just the nature of kiyomi’s character i suppose...

song: washing machine heart by mitski

 Toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart, baby bang it up inside…

Kiyomi Takada walks with a polished elegance; practiced or effortless, it’s impossible to tell. Every step is marked, accentuated, with a click of high heels against marble. Misa thinks she can feel her heartbeat synchronising, beating in time with the sounds. In the little moments between steps, before clicks, she can hear her breath catch in her throat – every muscle in her body tense as she waits for the next; so she can feel her heart pound once more. It hurts, it does, but the emotions – the sheer overwhelming of their presence – is addictive.

I’m not wearing my usual lipstick.

A little faster, Kiyomi is walking now. She’s approaching someone – the tall, blonde woman who had physically restrained Misa yesterday. A trace of a scowl makes its way to Misa’s face, only to be cowed into submission by a smile. A reflection of the smile of the woman across the corridors, her glossy lips curled upwards. Misa licks her own, finds them dry. Oh.

Misa doesn’t think she’s ever felt inferior before. But seeing Kiyomi Takada, tall and poised – all porcelain skin and crimson lips is making her shy.

Misa doesn’t think she’s ever felt jealous before. But seeing Kiyomi Takada, her head thrown back from laughing at something her bodyguard had said is making her gut wrench.

Misa doesn’t think she’s ever been in love before.

I thought maybe we would kiss tonight.

The woman, the goddess, the one who could make her believe, make her beg, catches her eyes. Raises an eyebrow. Waves her way. Beckons her forth. Misa’s legs are betrayers – they walk, trembling, before she can even consider ignoring Kiyomi. Whatever for? Whether she’s wondering on why Kiyomi is beckoning her, or why she’d consider ignoring her, is unbeknownst to even herself. The second one is answerable, of course. I don’t want you to see me cry. As she steps forward, she brushes her fringe out of her face. I don’t want you see my love. Her eyes, her shingami eyes, making contact with Kiyomi’s. I don’t want to see you. The words floating above the grey-eyed woman’s head. I don’t want to be inferior. Her book under the mattress at home. I don’t want to lose you.

A few more stops and she’s there. Standing in front of and looking up into the eyes of Kiyomi Takada. The other woman, the body guard, her name (her name!) marking her out to be one Halle Bullock, looks at her with apparent disinterest. But there’s something underneath it. Before she can even consider trying to figure out her truth, Kiyomi is talking, a gentle smile resting on her face.

‘Miss Amane! Well, I certainly didn’t expect to see you here. Especially after the... events of yesterday.’

Baby, will you kiss me already and,

There’s something smug thinly buried in Kiyomi’s words. A flat shield, a thin veneer, a miniscule pretence of kindness, of regret.

It’d hurt less if she’d just say it clearly.

‘Well,’ Misa starts, composing herself, standing a little taller. ‘Awards shows continue despite personal spats, don’t they, Miss Takada.’

The curve of Kiyomi’s lips. ‘Of course. And a… mature… idol with your experience undoubtedly knows that well.’

There isn’t a way to respond to this. Even if she could find the words, the lump in her throat would prevent them from coming out with any conviction. Aren’t you meant to be an actress?

Misa keeps silent.

‘No matter. Let’s see… I think we should settle all this…. unpleasantness between us.’ Another blinding smile from Kiyomi. Maybe she should be the actress. Or maybe that’s how she truly feels. Misa isn’t sure which would hurt more. ‘Are you available for dinner this evening?’

Misa thinks her heart has stopped. It has nothing to beat in time with anymore, she thinks. There’s another possibility of course. A brown eyed boy and a notebook. But, one second, two seconds, there, she’s fine. Fine? Kiyomi Takada just invited her to dinner. She hopes she can control her mouth more than her legs – if she hadn’t walked over here in the first place, she wouldn’t have had to experience all this. She’s unable to decide whether that would be a travesty or a blessing.

Toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart, baby bang it up inside.

‘Your schedule’s empty, isn’t it?’

Kiyomi Takada is cruel, Misa Amane decides. She strokes before she slaps, caresses before she catches your skin, no, your soul with her palm, her words. She’s a sharp mind in an elegant body and a sharp tongue between beautiful lips. She’s a contrast to… everyone. The stoic silence of her own bodyguard, the petulant manner of Misa’s words. Even amongst the others, no one has her degree of delicacy, or her acute eye. For a second Misa foolishly wonders if there are other eye deals, with other gods. Because it seemed that Kiyomi could see all your insecurities, all your imperfections, all your worries, at scarcely one glace. Before you even knew them yourself.

Help me, Shinigami. It’s a plea to a god long dead.

Misa swallows. You can manage a smile, right? The expression feels unnatural, spread much too tight across her cheeks. But it’ll do. ‘That’s right. And very kind of you, Miss Takada. Did you have anything in mind?’

‘There’s a sweet restaurant nearby – small, and I can reserve a nice space for the two of us.’ The two of us. ‘I can make sure we’ll be alone – no paparazzi or overexcited fans to bother us. How do you say?’

She wants to say yes so badly. The thing she desires is tantalizingly within reach. And maybe away from all of this, things could be different. Leaving personal bias and unsubtle barbs at the door, they could speak – not as two women trying to one up each other (although Misa truly feels she’s just trying to hold her own), but just as two women.

She looks up into Kiyomi’s grey eyes, a gentle storm. It’ll never happen. And so, why does she still open her mouth to say the words?

‘Yes. I’d like that very much.’ You must really dislike yourself. Maybe you know you deserve this.

Baby though I’ve closed my eyes.

Misa walks home. It would be infinitely more reasonable to take a taxi, or some form of public transport, but she longs for a moment of solitude. Please don’t let him be in, she thinks as she opens the door to the apartment.

He isn’t.

Her sigh sounds eerily loud in the quiet of the empty room. The first sound the apartment has heard in a while (neither of them are home frequently) and it intends to savour it. Misa wants to savour something too – the memory of her and Kiyomi’s conversation. Either that or she wants to hit her head against the wall until she can’t remember it anymore. Beat it until it stops moving.

She does neither of these things. She opens the door to her room, the air stale and scented gently with cosmetics, and sits down at her vanity, her dressing table. She doesn’t look for her name in the reflective surface of the mirror, but she knows it’s there.

I know who you pretend I am.

I don’t even know myself anymore. There’s a pretence, a performance, a setting for everyone. There’s no one she’s herself with, and she’s rarely alone. And even then, even now, all alone, she’s not herself. She’s not anything. If someone walked in and said the room was empty, she would have believed them without question.

I know who you pretend I am.

Who am I around Kiyomi? Misa wants to say the name out loud, to hold it in her mouth, feel it slide off her tongue. But she doesn’t want to think about the answer to the question. She knows the answer anyway – spiteful, petty, childish. In awe. In desire. In love. Misa squashes the word, but can’t do the same to the feeling. The butterflies of her stomach, the pink of her cheeks. The fact that it felt, at times, as if she existed only to look at Kiyomi. To hold her image in her mind. To hold her dear…

But do me ti…

It’s an impossibility. There’s not even an ‘if we met earlier’ in Misa’s mind. She fancies, for a moment, that they are standing at opposite ends of a widening chasm, just moments away from the gap being too large for either of them to jump over to each other, and only widening more. How romantic… But even that’s not a visual metaphor that truly portrays their situation. Their situation? As if Kiyomi thought of this at all. A pitiful thought. Besides, there is no widening chasm. Their islands were never joined together, close together, to begin with.

Why not me.

Maybe when Misa had the chance to reach for something, she shouldn’t have made it Kira. Maybe instead of acting on her anger, her will for justice and revenge, she should have acted on her will to love, to life.

Why not me.

Maybe then she’d be someone worthy of loving Kiyomi Takada.

#my writing #deathnote #death note #misa amane #kiyomi takada #halle lidner #kiyomisa #washing machine heart

[rrrawrf-writes]

what is it good for?

pt. 1 || pt. 2 || pt. 3 || pt. 4

fun fact - the marles part of this entire lil thing is the og part of the story, and i initially wasn't going to write more of it, except then i did. ur welcome.

tw: descriptions of dead people, blood, poorly-researched medieval surgical procedures

Dayehmon waited patiently. He could have slipped his bonds and disappeared from the tent a dozen times over, even without the promise of his guards to turn a blind eye. Everyone understood the responsibilities that came with being the commander of the royal guard, but that hadn’t stopped General Porrin from ordering Dayehmon pinned down and arrested, as soon as they recovered the king from him. Every healer that wasn’t on the battlefield had been pulled to tend to Mafvin, and the crossbow bolt sticking out of his back, and Dayehmon had been hauled to a hastily-cleared storage tent, tied up, and put under guard.

His actions had stirred up quite the controversy. Lying back on the cot someone had brought him, Dayehmon closed his eyes and listened to the shouting and opinions thrown outside of his impromptu prison. Arliya protested, of course, but Porrin cut her off.

“He needs a far better reason to label himself king-killer,” she snapped at Arliya. “This reeks of treachery - His Majesty was protecting us.”

“His Majesty was slaughtering a corpse,” Arliya retorted, but when Porrin dismissed her on threat of being discharged from service completely, Arliya had stormed off.

Dayehmon closed his eyes and worried.

One of the guards, late that night, stepped in to offer him a drink from their canteen. “He’ll live,” they murmured. “I doubt he’ll even have a scar.

“All my hard work, wasted,” Dayehmon murmured back wryly, but his shoulders dropped with relief.

The guard gave a nervous chuckle. “He’ll remember it, at least.”

Dayehmon could only hope that was true. “Vitalia?” he asked anxiously, but the guard just shook their head before taking their place outside the tent, and left him to his own thoughts.

The upside, Dayehmon figured, was that he hadn’t gotten so much sleep since the last time he’d had to drug Mafvin. His hands had been tied in front of him, which was incredibly pointless, but to make everyone happy, Dayehmon had gone along with it. At least it kept sleeping comfortable.

His blessedly rare series of naps was interrupted sometime the next day by someone kicking the leg of his cot.

“Do that again, and I’ll chop your foot off,” Dayehmon murmured, his eyes still closed. The kick came again, harder this time. With a scowl, Dayehmon sat up, and glared up at his king.

“Don’t think that you’re immune to foot-chopping,” he warned Mafvin sternly.

“Don’t think that you are immune to execution,” Mafvin returned, just as seriously. He stood straight, with no sign that Dayehmon had shot him in the back, or that he’d fallen at least twenty feet. Of course, Dayehmon remembered, Mafvin’s magic had burned through that miniscule amount of magicsbane, quickly enough to cushion the fall even without Dayehmon throwing himself under the king’s body.

The two of them stared at each other a moment longer. As usual, Mafvin cracked first, the tiniest hint of a tired smile touching his lips. He twitched his fingers, and the pointless cords around Dayehmon’s wrists slithered away. He reached down to pull Dayehmon to his feet, and into a tight embrace.

Mafvin trembled. Dayehmon felt him shake as he wrapped his arms around the king, and he cradled him close. The canvas of the tent quivered, and so did the earth just under their feet.

Dayehmon slit his eyes open, lifting a couple fingers from Mafvin’s shoulders to gesture for the guard that had entered with the king to leave. They tugged the tent flap close as they left, and then Dayehmon sat on the cot, tugging Mafvin down with him.

Instead of sitting, Mafvin collapsed to his knees, breaking into a ragged sob.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. Dayehmon slipped his fingers into Mafvin’s brilliant red hair, then eased off the cot to join him, tugging Mafvin close as he wept and apologized, over and over.

---

The hospital tent was overflowing. All of them were, and the supply tents and barracks, besides. Every scrap of canvas not being used for the kitchen sheltered wounded soldiers, crying out in pain and dying faster than the medics could treat them. Two days after the battle, and Marles and the rest of the medics were still up to their necks in the wounded and dying and dead.

He hadn’t slept in two days - no, three. He’d been on the battlefield. Sometimes Marles saw things at the corner of his vision, heard things - susurrating whispers, cries for help he couldn’t tell were real, or his imagination, the souls of the dead clutching at his sleeves, until he snapped, “I’m doing the fucking best I can!”

The poor soldier he had his hands on whimpered and blinked up at him. “Y-Yes, sir, I - I know,” she whispered meekly. Marles blinked, hard, banishing the ghosts, and looked down at her as he twisted the tourniquet tighter. He slipped a gag into her mouth, grabbed his saw, and told her, not unkindly, “You’ll still have a life with just one hand.”

She whined around the gag, and he started cutting. He’d run out of herbs for the pain nine hours ago, and there had been nothing to put her to sleep for five.

---

His hands shook. Marles blinked, and blinked again, halfway through stitching up a soldier’s leg. His hands shook, but he wasn’t finished, but he couldn’t see clearly enough. Someone touched his arm, and Marles jumped with a gasp, whipping around. The string in his hands snapped; the soldier cried out in pain.

“Go to bed, Medic Summerborn,” someone ordered. Marles tried to focus on her, but he couldn’t remember who she was; one of the other medics, he knew. She firmly took the needle from his slippery, blood-covered fingers, and pushed him towards one of the cots crammed into the tent. It was empty; its last resident must have just died. Marles had given up thinking anyone was walking out of these tents of their own volition.

She had to force him onto the cot, and gave him a drink of water. It must have been mixed with something stronger, given the taste, and Marles sunk down, head swimming. “The supplies came in?” he asked, hopefully, but he was asleep before he ever heard her answer.

---

It wasn’t enough sleep. Marles woke up again because they needed the bed for another soldier. But his hands were steadier now, as he washed the dried blood from them. He didn’t recognize his face in the tiny mirror he kept in his bag; he looked only because he had blood all over the side of it, and he needed to keep himself clean, or else he’d bring infection to the soldiers he was trying, desperately, to keep alive.

It was the third morning since the witchking attacked, someone told him. Marles didn’t know why he bothered cleaning up. His hands were all over with blood again the second he stepped back into the tent, cutting away infection that had set into a soldier’s arm.

They’d stopped being recognizable. They weren't people any longer; they were bloodied arms, legs, gaping wounds in their stomachs, their chests, their hips. Clotted slices in the sides of their heads, unseeing eyes from the dead who had faded while the medics worked on someone else, because there weren’t enough of them, they weren’t fast enough, Marles wasn’t doing enough -

He ignored the ruckus outside the tent. Grabbing a needle and thread, Marles set to stitching the wound he’d just created. The tent brightened as the flaps opened, and then darkened again, as someone filled the entryway. The soldier writhing under Marles’ touch stiffened, and then whimpered.

“Stop crying,” Marles snapped, not even looking up. “It’s barely a handful of stitches, you'll be fine.”

“No,” she whimpered, trying to push herself up from the cot. “No, he’s here, please no -”

Marles cursed and left the needle in her arm, pressing her down by her shoulders. “Stop moving,” he snarled, reaching over. A crate shoved next to the bed held his supplies and his flask, heavily dosed with sweetsap. His hand bumped against a thick, wiggling vine, and Marles didn’t even register it as something that didn’t belong, as he grabbed the flask and shoved it between her teeth, anything to get her to stop moving.

The ruckus had entered the tent. Battle-hardened veterans cried out in fear, shaking in their cots; some of the other medics had stopped, staring at the entryway. Marles finished his stitching, before he could turn his attention to whatever the fuck was going on. He glanced at the vince again, thicker around than his arm as it snaked over the crate, moving -

On instinct, he grabbed a knife built for cleaving bones and threw it. It sliced through the vine, embedding itself inches into the crate. The vine cringed back, bleeding sap like an open wound.

Marles finally looked up.

He stood in the entry. More vines, thick and spiked, wound through the tent, curling underneath the cots and twining around the ankles of those still standing. The man in the next bed, hyperventilating, tried to get up. Marles yanked his knife out of the crate, and snarled at him, “Stay the fuck in bed.”

The soldier stayed the fuck in bed.

“What are you doing here?” Marles didn’t recognize his own voice. It rasped with weariness and anger - no, fury. His hands shook. His entire body trembled with rage.

The witchking of Cordell stared back at him, a similar rage on his own face. “Where is she?”

“Get out,” Marles snarled.

“No,” said King Mafvin. Marles stormed towards him, tromping over and through the vines that spread throughout the tent. The thorn-covered plants could have overwhelmed him in an instant, squeezed the life from his body, stabbed poison into every one of his veins, like they had done to Marles’ soldiers on the battlefield - but they peeled away from him instead, even as he advanced on the enemy king with a bloody knife in hand. The king demanded, “Where is my daughter? One of you bastards has to know -”

“Get out.” Marles stopped shot, just in front of the king; beyond Mafvin was an entire entourage of Cordellan guards and Eolan officers acting as anxious escort. “What the fuck are you doing here? You’ve won. Leave.”

The witchking didn’t move. “I want my daughter.”

“And I want my soldiers to stop dying,” Marles snapped. “Haven’t you killed enough of us? Was hundreds dead not enough for you? Have you come to finish us all off?”

“I just want -”

“Leave.” The word cut across the king’s voice like a scalpel. Marles glared up at the taller man. “Leave, before I slit your throat myself.”

Mafvin’s eyebrows arched. The Cord guard next to him, a darks-kinned man with three scars down the side of his face, stepped forward with a hand on his sword. But at a slight gesture from Mafvin, he stilled. The witchking said, with deadly calm, “You’re a medic. You can’t harm me.”

A sharp, brittle laugh tore out of Marles’ throat. He didn’t even recognize it as his own. It sounded like the splintering of bone as Marles amputated limb after limb. It sounded like the way the sharp halves of his broken heart rubbed against each other in his chest. It sounded like death.

“I can’t harm men,” Marles said, his voice low, but capturing the attention of every soul around him. “I can’t harm people. I can’t harm the enemy, who slaughters my friends before my eyes.”

His grip on the knife tightened. “But I can kill a monster.”

The tent went completely still. Mafvin stared at the short, lean medic with bloodied hands and apron stuck through with needles meant to pierce the flesh, his light brown hair tied up out of his face, and blood smeared across one cheek. Then the guard moved forward once again, placing himself between the king and the medic with his sword partly-drawn.

Mafvin broke the silence first. “As you’ve said,” he spoke quietly, not even certain why he was justifying himself to some Eolan medic, “I’ve won. These are my lands now. All I want is my daughter, and your peoples’ cooperation in giving her up -”

“Your lands?” Marles’ voice broke with incredulity. He stepped forward, heedless of the guard - who stepped back, suddenly alarmed that Marles would press his luck. The king shifted back, too, his eyes widening at the venom in Marles’ voice. They all moved as one, until Marles had driven them out of the tent by sheer force of his fury, the vines withering away into dust.

“I’m Lord Marles fucking Summerborn,” Marles seethed. “Once I would have been Duke of Averdale. I am Eolan and Cordellan both. If these lands belong to anyone, they belong to me.”

Mafvin stammered, “I only want -”

“Your daughter,” Marles sneered. Once, he may have understood that. Once, he may have had compassion. He would have walked a grieving father through the camp, helped him look under every flimsy cot and tent flap even while he already knew they didn’t have the princess.

Once, he might have cared. Once.

“Come with me,” Marles said, low, and stalked past the king and his guard, the handful of Cord soldiers following. Luned, the commanding Eolan General herself escorted the witchking through her camp - after Mafvin’s display, she had no choice. Marles moved to the edge of the tents, not too far away. Long, misshapen piles lay covered with white, blood-spattered tarps. In the distances, thick, oily plumes of smoke rose from the funeral pyres.

Marles stalked to the nearest ple, gripping a corner of the tarp and flinging it aside to show - corpses. Soldier after soldier, the bodies dressed in their torn, bloodied uniforms. In some cases, they’d been killed by swords and arrows, the wounds of honest battle.

In others, they were no more than skin blackened and charred to the bone. Or pierced through with bloodied crystal, or choked and twisted by vines and tree roots and branches, still dripping with poison.

The worst cases were those that seemed to have no wounds at all.

Marles pointed his knife at a woman near the end of the row, her hair cleared away from her face. “Is this your daughter?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous.

The color bled out of Mafvin’s face. When he gave no answer, Marles moved a step or two down the row. “How about her?” he asked savagely, gesturing to another of the soldiers. “No? Is she not here? Perhaps we should keep looking.”

He continued to where the tarp fell, uncovering more. Body after body, laid out, killed by the witchking’s wild, uncontrollable magic. “Do you see her yet, Your Majesty?”

Mafvin swallowed, but his voice came out in a dry whisper. “Stop.”

Marles tapped his boot against the shoulder of an older man, his arm gone, thorned vines wrapped around and through him. “He has a daughter,” Marles said. “A young girl - woman, now. Waiting for him in Riverwall.”

“Medic Summerborn,” General Luned interrupted, her voice strained. “Stop this.”

“Don’t look away now, General,” Marles returned sharply, pointing his knife at her - an offense easily punishable by dishonorable discharge, if not worse. “Don’t feel as though you are blameless in any of this. They marched for you and your father. They fought and killed and died at your orders. They believed there was a reason for all of this. More than just the petty, endless squabbling and greed of those who wear the crowns we pledge our lives to. Know that you’ll wear that crown one day. See them, and know your own power.”

Luned stared at him, took in a shuddering breath, gripped her sword all the tighter. But she didn’t say anything in return. Marles’ lip curled as he viewed the general and the king.

“You’ve all wasted my time enough already,” he said. “More have died, even now, without me. You’ve won, witch. I hope it brings you triumph. Glory in your lands, the earth you’ve scorched and torn apart for the sake of winning this fucking pointless war.”

He left the bodies uncovered, and stalked past the silent king, back towards the hospital tent he ruled with more sovereignty than any monarch could ever dream of achieving.

#iwrite #dayehmon #mafvin #marles #tw blood #tw gore #tw surgery #tw death #tw war

[dat-town]

fallen kingdoms sequel: rising courts

Characters: fae!Changmin & You

Setting : fae au, royal au

Summary: You should have known better than to trust faes. Yet, you seemed to forget how cunning creatures they could be. You couldn’t defeat them at their own games. [continuation of fallen kingdoms]

Warning: mentions of violance, war

Words: .6.3k

Dedicated to my dear @restlessmaknae​​ to whom I wish the happiest birthday ever and to have her dreams come true ♥ #BethDay (credit to @lily-blue​)

You swore you tried to adjust back to your mundane human life after getting back from the fae land but it was harder than you had thought. After experiencing the wonders of that world, this realm felt duller and emptier. You missed having magic and nature constantly around you so much that sometimes you found yourself wandering through parks for hours searching for miniscule signs of the footsteps of fairies. But the news about kids getting lost near the riverbank or coming back traumatized stopped, so it must have meant the gate was still sealed and everything was slowly back on its track.

Despite the magic on the borderline between the two worlds, you believed you could stumble upon something to feel closer to their world because the faes you had befriended in the Dawnblooming Court found little windows in the invisible wall between the Earth and their kingdom. At least you were sure that was the reason behind the sudden blooming plants in your apartment. Even your most sensitive plant that was on verge of dying suddenly came back to life and the fireflies outside of your window reminded you of a green world and smiles that tugged on your heartstrings.

You barely spent there days but it felt much more and out of all the things you suddenly missed, you had been missing Changmin the most. His consideration, his soft smiles, and even the mischievous glint in his eyes when he was being funny. You wished you could have gotten to know him better even though you were well aware that he was way out of your league. He was a king after all, a royal, a fae blessed with eternal life. So no, you weren't delusional, you knew his smiles weren't supposed to mean anything, that there was no future for the two of you. Yet, it didn't stop you from daydreaming.

Maybe it was because of your eagerness, that was your downfall. How naive you were and how much you wished for a reason, or even an excuse to go back. So when a letter made of pergamen miraculously appeared on your dinner table from thin air, you merely gulped at the sight and grabbed it with both hands, keen on doing something, anything. You folded the letter out, so you could read the pretty handwriting. Its content was sparing words yet those had terrible impact on you, sending your heart to palpitate.

Changmin is in danger. We need you. Please come. We will be waiting for you.

You didn't even think, you didn't need to. You got up, dressed up comfy and left your apartment, going back to the park by the Han river, following the same path you had taken with the dethroned king all those weeks ago. You knew that if weeks passed in the human realm, it meant months in fae land, so a lot must have changed. And it seemed like, things weren't back on their track as you had assumed, not entirely and you were willing to help with anything you could.

It wasn't easy to find the entrance. You thought it would be but the trees must have had some kind of charm on them because you lost your way in the woods multiple times before you found the familiar little fountain by the rocky hill. You fished out the golden coin Changmin had given you and took a deep breath before you threw it into the pool. Everything that followed fell like déja vu: the water filling up the tank, the crack in the rock, the wound on your palm, the pull from the other side.

But this time, you were alone.

There was no Changmin there to protect you when you were surrounded by shadow soldiers and Mavoc, grinning devilishly at you.

"So we meet again," he stepped closer and you wanted to pull away only if the closed gate behind you let it. "Lovely of you to come back after leaving without a goodbye. I have been waiting for this for too long," he said sweetly and blew some kind of pollen into your face that made you weak in the knees in an instant.

Then, everything went dark.

Faes couldn't lie, you knew that. That was one of your advantages as a half-human. However, you were stupid enough to not think of the possibilities. After all, Mavoc didn't lie. Not exactly. Changmin was in danger just not the way you imagined. Maybe he was in an even bigger danger because of you. Because you were a liability, you knew that and you hated it. You didn't want him to come and save you. You didn't deserve that after walking into a trap oh so naively.

However, it seemed like Mavoc had other plans. For one, this time, you weren't alone when you woke up. You weren't even in a cold iron cage. You were tied to a chair, sitting across the pointy eared monster drinking something that you hoped was red wine. He seemingly had the time of his life, while your head ached and the ropes were uncomfortably digging into your skin, burning your fragile human vessel when you moved.

"I underestimated you last time, I won't make the same mistake twice," the fae explained to you, elbows resting on the table as he leaned closer. He smelled like blood and death, like rotting trees. You gulped to suppress a disgusted grimace.

"What do you want from me?" you asked, voice wavering more than you wanted although you were determined not to give him what he wanted.

Mavoc looked you in the eyes, dark irises reminding you of moonless, hopeless nights.

"Oh I have big plans for you! You will be the queen on the chess table, darling," he laughed but you hated every echo of it. Turning your head, you saw the shadow soldiers by every gate and window of this hideout. It was dark, only lit up by the fire cracking a few feet away from you but it didn't warn you up enough to stop the shiver.

"How?" you gritted your teeth. When Mavoc smiled, you hated it.

"You will be the one who helps me destroy the king at his own coronation," he laughed, looking down on you. "Because Ji is just as stupid and naive and weak as you. He trusts you and that will be his downfall."

Oh. So Changmin was getting crowded again? That was the only positive thing you gathered today. Everything else scared you to the core.

"I would never."

"Oh, of course, you would. Otherwise, I will kill your family back home and make a slaughter out of the coronation," Mavoc threatened but you doubted this was his only chance. Why didn't he send an assassin if he wanted to kill him with the crown on his head? Why did it have to be you? There was something he didn't tell you, something crucial why it had to be you and not just some random fae girl. You were deep in thought when the dark fae across you let out a scoff. "Come on, don't act as if you were so close. You only met once. And he was the one telling your mother not to come back ever when she got pregnant with you."

This burnt the words onto your tongue. He couldn't lie, you reminded yourself and you knew that Changmin knew your mother from before, before she had left this realm. Was this why? Because she wasn't welcomed? That was why she couldn't even visit Sangyeon, your uncle? But Changmin hadn't even been a king then... right? It couldn't have been that he was dethroned so long ago and he wanted to get it back now. Maybe he was just trying to protect your mother because no, he couldn't have been the bad guy in the story, you refused to believe that.

"You are just twisting the truth," you accused Mavoc of choosing his words wisely to make you believe what he wanted without saying that out loud. This was the closest thing to lying he could do. It made you feel conflicted, just as his calmness.

"There's no need," he shrugged but you refused to believe him. Your faith in and loyalty to Changmin seemed to surprise the fae though. "Hah, you are an interesting one, aren't you? A human in the humans' world and a fae among us. Spectacular. No wonder Changmin wanted to keep you for himself. One of a kind toy you are for sure," he said, wondering aloud and you hated the way he talked about you and you hated the assumption that the boy with sparkling eyes you had once sat on your couch thought the same. If he was, then he wouldn't have let you go, then he wouldn't have cared about your safety.

"I don't care what you say, I won't kill him. I can't. I'm no trained fighter and my reflexes are slower than his. This is the worst plan ever," you said confidently. These were stupid excuses. You wouldn't have killed him even if you had a chance. It was too absurd, you weren't a murderer and you wouldn't have become one. You merely hoped that your mother could get to a safe place and the others expected something like this at the coronation. They had to, right? This is a big thing, they must be super careful and that must have been why Mavoc wanted you to go: because you could get in and because you could lie about why you were there. It wasn't a bad idea to begin with but it was a crazy one and it absolutely didn't take your human heart into consideration. That you cared too much to kill, that you weren't his puppet, his plaything whatever he thought.

"You just need to pour this into his drink," he put a tiny glass jar on the table. "We will take care of the rest. You will just smile and knock your glass to his in congratulations," Mavoc rolled his eyes as if it was absurd of you to even consider that he wanted you to kill Changmin. Oh right, he probably thought you were weak too. Well, if caring about people and having beliefs were being weak, then so be it.

"How do you know that I won't betray you?" you raised a brow, hoping to find loopholes in his plan. A way for you to escape. If they wanted you to get into the castle alone then there would have been nobody around you, nobody to follow your steps. Or was it naive of you to think that he would let you go alone? But if he wanted to make Changmin believe that you came back on your own because of the coronation, then that wouldn't have made sense.

"I don't trust you, so I will have my eyes on you, I can promise that. One wrong move and more faes will die than necessary," Mavoc said and you finally understood why he wanted to get rid of Changmin quietly and by you. If you killed him with the poison and then denied your wrongdoings by claiming you were controlled by him, then nobody would have believed you. Not even a single soul since unlike others, you could lie. So if they blamed it on you, he would still have had a handful of powerful faes on his side. He would probably act as the hero of the night, being Changmin's old commander, claiming it was all because of you, a human witch that the king lost his trust in him.

So no, you wouldn't help in that. You wouldn't let him destroy Changmin. But...

"I don't care about faes here. I just want you to leave my family alone. That means, my parents and Sangyeon, too," you said firmly trying to negotiate, trying to buy yourself more time, trying to save those close to you. Or rather: everybody from such a monster. 

"If Changmin gets out of the picture, I will be too busy to deal with anything else than your pitiful family, you can be sure of that," Mavoc said with a grin but you shook your head disapprovingly. You needed him to say it, with words. Otherwise there was no guarantee he wouldn't kill you or anyone else. But if he promised then according to the fae rules, he couldn’t go back on his words. It didn’t mean that they would be safe from him, but it would have made you a bit more relieved. 

"No. I need you to promise me. Promise me that you won't hurt them."

"If you make the king drink what’s in that glass, then I promise I won’t bring harm to your family. Otherwise, I can’t promise anything," he nodded at you with his lips in a firm line then crooked an elegant brow at you. “Do we have a deal?”

"We do," you gritted your teeth. You didn’t really have any other choice. He might not have been capable of manipulating and hypnotizing you because of your fae blood but he could have kept you in a dungeon for all your life until you rotted away. That much of a time would have been only a dust grain in his much longer life. And you needed to get away in order to warn Changmin and the others about the attack. If you seemed cooperating enough, maybe you could have turned that to your advantage. Maybe acting like a fragile human being fearing her life could help you for the first time in your life.

The dress Mavoc had gotten you was dreamlike, it took your breath away. It was unfair, the silky touch of the heavenly material, the lightness of it and the way it sparkled under moonlight. It fit you perfectly, which must have been some kind of fairy magic because there was no way he knew your measurements. Two fae girls even helped you with your hair, so by the start of the show, it fell to your shoulder in soft waves and pearls with flowers in a high bun.

Mavoc seemed to like the irony of something pretty killing Changmin. On the other hand, you weren't so eager about that. You still couldn’t figure out how to pass the message to Changmin without being too obvious about it and hopefully without getting your family into trouble. 

You were just about to go, the fae palace of the Dawnblooming Court standing tall and white in the middle of the forest only a bit away. It looked magnificent in all its shine. Greenery running down and the moonlight reflecting on its walls. You could see families of faes arriving at the royal residence, handing their invitations to the guards by the door. Mavoc told you that you wouldn’t need that and for once, you hoped he was right. You hoped that the boys you had gotten to know a few months ago didn’t forget about you either.

“Here are the two drinks. This one is the poison, the other one is a simple sleeping powder. You should pour them into the raspberry ale and drink the latter, so they wouldn’t suspect you,” Mavoc told you and you were surprised that he even thought about that. But with a dry throat you’d rather not say anything and just nodded. You took the small glass phials and hid them in the secret pocket of your long and layered skirt. “And don’t forget: we will be watching you, so don’t you dare spill the beans.”

How could you have forgotten that?

“Understood?” Mavoc leaned forwards and you turned your head away. Didn’t he know that you could lie? So you just shrugged before nodding.

“Yes.”

With sweaty fingers and heart hammering, you couldn’t have thought of anything else while you were walking towards the big gates. You could hear eerie yet hauntingly beautiful music coming out of the palace and you felt as if just by one look at you, everybody could get see through you. You didn’t know what to expect, but when you reached the guards, you wouldn’t have been surprised if they wanted to check your belongings looking for weapons or anything that could have hurt the newly crowned king.

“Invitation?” One of the guards looked at you and you were taken aback by the emerald green eyes he had.

“I don’t have one,” you admitted truthfully but before you could have added anything else, the fairy shook his head and pointed away.

“Then you’re not welcomed, sorry. This is a closed ceremony,” he told you firmly but you weren’t going to give up that easily. You needed to meet Changmin and tell him that he was still in danger.

“I’m Lee Sangyeon’s niece. He said I’m always welcomed in the palace,” you argued and the eyes on you narrowed questioningly before he turned his head and with a swift hand movement he sent away one of the lower ranked guards.

“We need to confirm that,” he said and you straightened your back, waiting patiently but nervously while others were let inside. You needed to suppress the urge to pick your nails and show your very much not fairy self, so you let out a relieved sigh when you saw Sangyeon approaching. Finally! He was going to know what to do in this mess of a situation. You whipped your head towards him when he called your name with a bright smile on his face, waving at you and telling the guards to let you through.

“Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re here! Changmin will be so thrilled! How did you know that the ceremony would be today? Gosh, you’re really pretty, I feel like a proud uncle for re–” he started to get really excited as you were walking inside and you grabbed him on the arm to halt his hasty movements. It was kind of sweet that he trusted you so much even though you appeared without as much as a warning sign but you wanted to yell at him for being so naive. He should have known better that Mavoc wouldn’t just give up like that.

“Can we talk alone for a bit?” you asked him in a serious tone and Sangyeon looked at you worried this time. But he nodded and led you away from the ballroom, into a room that smelled like lilies.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” he asked you and you gulped down your nerves before mustering up your courage to tell him all about Mavoc’s plan and asking him to let Changmin know and play along with the plan.

“The truth is I wa– I...” you coughed because your throat started to scratch. Suddenly you couldn’t breath, your lungs felt on fire. What the hell was going on?

Sangyeon looked at you with question marks in his caring brown eyes and you had a hand on your throat at the unfamiliar and scary feeling just before realizing what was happening.

Oh… you were a half fae after all. You might have been able to lie but you were supposed to keep your promises. At least, it seemed like that the promises made to faes definitely counted and now you couldn’t tell anything about Mavoc’s plan to your friends. This ruined your entire plan and at the thought you fisted your hand in frustration.

“I just missed you all,” you changed what you were going to say with a sheepish smile and it made Sangyeon grin.

“You’re cute,” he remarked endeared before telling you a dozen stories about what had happened in the meantime. Things had been looking up since Changmin got supporters from anti-Mavoc faes within the kingdom and apparently, he made peace with the Daffodilden Court and was going to marry their princess, Narcissa, in order to establish a long term alliance. When you heard him say that, you didn’t know why but you felt disappointed. Come on, as if there had been anything more between you just because he had joked that you should come back to check on his iron dungeon. But to mask your weird feelings about this situation, you pulled a smile and hoped it was believable enough.

“I’ll let Changmin know you’re here,” Sangyeon told you once you reached the ballroom and while he was away, you were thinking hard how else you could cross Mavoc and his evil plan. You saw some faes dancing some kind of loose dance, others eating fruits and drinking by the table. Some of them seemed familiar, others didn’t. You wondered whether Mavoc’s men were among them. After all, he must have planned something after you would give the king the poison. He must have been close, too.

“What a pleasant surprise,” you heard an amused voice say next to your ear and turning around you faced Changmin, smile bright and dimples visible. His hair was still as burgundy as ever, eyes sparkling just like the stars you had seen on your way there and the glass crown on his head looked like it belonged there.

“Better than your last visit to me,” you reminded him and you couldn’t help it, despite the absurd situation, you reciprocated his smile.

“Oh, you wound me,” the king put a hand over his heart but let out a chuckle. You knew he wasn’t mad at you and admittedly, him fainting on your doorstep wasn’t the best entrées ever. But if he knew why you were there, then he might not have agreed.

“Congratulations on your coronation,” you told him because you knew how hard he must have worked to get here and unlike his first coronation which was basically forced because he was the last of the Ji clan.

“Thank you,” he smiled down at you and even just this, a smile and him looking at you like that, made your heart flutter. You were a lost case, even worse now that you knew that he was engaged. “I’m really glad you’re here though. Was it one of the guys who invited you?”

You could have lied, you knew but you didn’t have the heart to.

“Something like that,” your mouth twitched and you almost fell onto Changmin when a waiter walking around with the drinks bumped into you from behind.

“Are you okay?” The king steadied you with a held on your elbow, looking at you with worry in his pretty eyes.

“My apologies. Is everything alright?” The waiter rushed to your help as well but there was something dark in his eyes, something that made you uneasy. You felt like throwing up when you realized you had seen him at Mavoc’s hideout. His tray had exactly two glasses of ale on it. You gulped. It was a reminder, a warning, a threat all in once.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” you lied and let Changmin lead you to a side table a bit away from the crowd. The waiter kept apologizing to him and it was the opportunity you realised: the glasses were on the table and Changmin wasn’t paying attention. You even felt your skin prickling as if you were being watched and against your better judgement, you took the phials out of your pocket and quickly poured their blue contents into the dark pink drink. You remembered all too quickly that the lighter coloured liquid was the sleeping powder while the other darkened even the ale’s original colour.

“It’s really okay, Changmin, nothing happened,” you put a hand on the fae’s shoulder in a reassuring manner. He still seemed worried but got relaxed under your faint touch and forced a smile when he turned to look at you again. The waiter dissolved into the crowd in the meantime. 

“Sorry, I’m just still anxious about Mavoc being free other there,” he sighed and the familiar name sent creeps down your spine. When he reached for the drink closer to him on the table, you didn’t think, you acted on impulse.

“Let me have that, it has more ice,” you said and got the glass in your hand quicker. Changmin just laughed off your silly explanation but didn’t protest. He took the other and the two of you clinked your glasses. At that point, you just wanted to get over with it, so you drank in big gulps as if you had been thirsty for quite some time now and when you drowned all of it down, so there would be no drop left, you grabbed on the edge of the table. In the meantime the dumbfounded king in front of you only managed a few sips.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, feeling something heavy on your chest while dizziness took over your head. You felt unwell right away but before you would have blacked out, you still saw Changmin’s eyes go dark, hands trembling so hard he dropped his drinks. You fell onto the floor with full of glass pieces and the king saw nothing but red.

Silence fell onto the Dawnblooming Court’s palace.

Everybody stopped doing what they were in the middle of and their heads snapped towards the source of the clattering noise. What they saw was their new king on his knees next to a girl in a gorgeous dress lying on the floor, unconscious, around her shattered pieces of glass and red rose thorns blooming.

“Who was it?” The king roared but nobody answered. He looked absolutely mad and it took Sangyeon to rush up to him, putting both of his hands over his chest to stop him from going closer to the guests as he was searching for the culprit.

“Changmin, calm down. Tell us what happened,”

“The waiter! Get that waiter here,” Changmin swiped his advisor’s hand away to go after the fairy who had bumped into them earlier. But his guards were quicker, so Juyeon and Sunwoo were already dragging him back to the ballroom. The king wasted no time to grab him by his collars and sneer at him through his gritted teeth.

“What did you give to her? And why?” he questioned in an authoritative voice.

“I didn’t give her anything. The drinks on the tray were the same as anyone else’s,” he said defensively and everybody around them knew that he couldn’t lie. Yet, Changmin didn’t believe him and a few surprised gasps were heard as ivy thyrses were creeping up around the boy’s body, tight against his chest.

“It’s not the time, Changmin. We should bring her to a safe place,” Sangyeon tried to calm him down with a hand pressing on his shoulder and pointing at you, however, the younger didn’t budge. As if there was nothing else he could focus on other than revenge and anger. He had this sick urge to kill this boy in front of him, to fill his chest with roses until he choked on petals.

“Something’s off,” Chanhee murmured as he looked at the alarmed guests. They were whispering among themselves. Changmin’s most trusted supporters were looking at him with doubt in their eyes and by the end of the table, there sat the princess of Daffodilden Court seemingly unimpressed by the turn of events.

“It must be Mavoc’s doing,” Sangyeon murmured under his nose, so that only they would hear. “She wanted to tell me something before but then she seemed weird, as if she was hurting. Maybe she was tricked into coming here.”

“But why?” Sunwoo furrowed his eyebrows, still holding onto the waiter firmly.

“Guys, this isn’t the most important now. We should find out what’s with her,” Joonyoung reminded everyone and the royal advisor was quick to agree. Two faes were carrying his niece’s unconscious body to one of the guest room’s while Changmin looked at the verge of breaking from the inside, it was almost like watching a lava boil. As if he could erupt anytime. He seemed even more hot-tempered than he usually was: he snapped at them for being slow, for being too rough with you or even just for staring too hard. Sangyeon found his behaviour strange, too.

“I’m going to kill Mavoc the next time I see him,” Tke king hissed and following his footsteps, withering flowers bloomed. That wasn’t normal either. So when they arrived at the infirmary, Sangyeon told Hyungseo about it who hummed to himself and nodded in understanding. After he diagnosed that the unconscious girl was merely sleeping with a great amount of jasmine in her system, he turned to Changmin who could barely sit still.

“Here, drink this. You will feel better,” Hyungseo pushed a glass of suspiciously looking green drink into the king’s hands. The royal looked disimpressed until Sangyeon promised him to search for Mavoc and his comrades, then he took the drink and gulped it down.

“So, can we go?” He started walking towards the door but then his steps got wobbly and he had to hold himself by the edge of a bed, faltering for a moment before falling head first onto the mattress made of soft plants. Everybody looked shocked, only Chanhee let out a laugh.

“He will sleep it off,” Hyungseo shrugged nonchalantly.

When you came to your consciousness, you were lying in a bed of flowers in an unfamiliar place but it was a lot more comfortable than the one you remembered being at Mavoc’s place. You felt as if you had been sleeping for days, so when you opened your eyes, at first you thought you were still sleeping. In the bed next to you, Changmin slept soundly but alive and breathing just as you did. His eyelashes casted a light shadow over his rounded cheeks, his lips rosy under the candlelight and your first thought was that he was unfairly pretty.

But then memories came back rushing to you and with a gasp you sat up in the bed, still in the dress that dark fae got for you.

“Oh you’re awake, good,” Sangyeon hurried to your side.

“What? What happened? How is Changmin?” you asked with an aching heart. You couldn’t have forgiven yourself if he had gotten hurt because of you.

“We figured out that Mavoc had been behind it all and we managed to find him. Your pearls helped too,” your uncle smiled at you kindly and you were glad that your silly idea to drop the accessories from your hair one by one on the way to the palace from the hideout could help. “And you know how he is, he told us how great his plan was: that he knew you wouldn’t betray him like that. He switched up the contents of the phials after showing them to you. That’s why you got the sleeping powder and Changmin some kind of potion that blinded him with anger. I mean, it was a fairly okay plan since he knew that if he died just like that, the court would have mourned him and searched for the culprit. But like this, they lost their trust in him after he almost lost his mind seeing you faint.”

Listening to the story, you suddenly didn’t know how to feel. You were relieved that Changmin was physically okay but at the same time, it seemed like you were just like a pawn on Mavoc’s chess board playing based on his plan until the end.

“I’m so sorry,” you whispered but Sangyeon was quick to reassure you that it wasn’t your fault.

He told you that it was probably all actually the Daffodilden Court’s plan all along because all of a sudden they wished to dance back on their agreement about the peace. Along with dozens of complaints about the king’s unstable state and aggressive actions at the ceremony, there came the message from the neighbouring kingdom that Narcissa not only didn’t want to marry Changmin anymore, but they showed support towards the previous general, Mavoc, and they demanded the new king to step down from the throne if he didn’t wish to engage in war.

It was a whole lot of information and you only let a smile paint your lips when he mentioned how funny it was when the angry bean Changmin fell down like a bag of potatoes when Hyungseo’s potion hit. It sounded funny but soon enough, after eating and drinking some, you drifted back to dreamland.

By the time, you woke up again, it was daytime and the boy next to you was awake. Awake and staring at you to be more precise, only getting flustered because he was caught red-handed and clearing his throat he quickly looked away. You didn’t call him out though, after all you had done the same.

“Good morning,” he smiled at you as if nothing happened and you realized that he wore more comfy clothes by now but he looked really nice in a simple white shirt too.

“Good morning to you too. Are you okay? Did Sangyeon give you a briefing too?” you wondered aloud and sat up, so you could talk more comfortably. Weird, you had never woken up next to a boy, even if you weren’t sharing one bed now, but it didn’t feel wrong, not at all.

“Yeah and honestly, I should have known better. Narcissa was being weird about this engagement her father forced us into. But I wouldn’t have thought that she would become allies with Mavoc,” he sighed and even though he didn’t seem careful, there was less grieving in his eyes than what you had expected.

“Aren’t you… sad about what happened?” you asked quietly, tentatively.

“I’m rather disappointed. If I was a great king, my people would know I’m not like this, they wouldn’t turn their backs on me because of this. So I’ll be working on that from now on, to become a king that his people can trust unconditionally.”

It was a good attitude but you wanted him to know that he was still a good person and a good king.

“It wasn’t your fault,” you reminded him and Changmin must have seen the determination in your eyes because he didn’t even protest.

“And it wasn’t yours either,” he let a kind smile paint his lips.

This time you were sure that his gaze lingered on you longer than it was necessary. You must have looked terrible, tired and ridiculous in your bedhead. Yet, he looked at you as if you were a miracle in his magical world. However, you didn’t want to delude yourself and didn’t dare to hope. It didn’t make sense anyway.

“I wish you wouldn’t have to leave again. I missed you,” Changmin spoke up, breaking the silence and his words were soothing like a cold breeze in the hot summer, yet your heartbeat picked up its pace and you felt a blush creep onto your cheeks.

“I missed you, too,” you admitted with a shy smile which made him unroyally giddy. His glittering eyes narrowed as he smiled wider and you knew that you would like to see it more.

“Can you stay a little longer this time?” he asked gently, not forcefully but there was no way you would have told him no. You couldn’t.

“Yeah, I can,” you told him, thinking just a little longer to yourself but all that magic pulled you in.

You made a home in the fae land while the king with his smiles made a home in your heart. You got friends here and Sangyeon was your family, finding a way to communicate with your mother when you wished. The atmosphere in the kingdom was still tense, on the verge of a war, but with your nursing skills, you could be useful in the infirmary next to Hyungseo who taught you about the herbs and magical potions which you really enjoyed. In your free time you explored this world, sometimes alone, sometimes Changmin showing you his favourite places, telling you stories and before you knew a mortal year had passed.

It took three in total for the war to end, to declare peace, so that the kingdom would be at peace. You learned a lot about fairness and consideration while you were watching your friends going off to fight. You spent your nights fearing for their life but at least you could be there, helping, instead of being at home, unknowingly. Time had passed faster here though, and one thing became evident with the amount of years rushing by you: at the fae land, you didn’t age either. It must have been because of your blood, so sometimes you even forgot that you hadn’t fully belonged there.

“But you do! You belong here,” Changmin protested one time you were out on his balcony, looking at the fireflies. He was very fervent about this topic. “It’s you who always reminds me why this place is worth fighting for. Don’t look at me like that! I mean it.”

“But the boys...” you shook your head in disbelief.

“They keep me going forward but you, you give it meaning. Faes tend to forget not to live on autopilot after centuries but you made me want to live so that I could share it with you,” he bursted out and your mouth fell agapé, looking at him in shock. You blinked wondering whether it was a dream and you held your breath as the king leaned closer, eyes fluttering closed.

“Oh my sparkles, sorry guys, I’ll be back later,” Youngjae yelped and walked backwards comically after seeing you move away after his sudden entrance and he wasn’t discreet at all: you could hear him yell about what he had seen in the corridor until Sangyeon made him shut up.

With flushed cheeks you looked at Changmin and you both chuckled before he took your hand in his, reassuring you once again that you belonged there. And in his arms, watching the stars above, you really felt like it. You found home.

#the boyz scenarios #the boyz imagines #tbz scenarios #tbz imagines #stories #fae au #fantasy au #royal au

[wantstoflyafraidtofall]

3x16 from Dean's perspective and the rescue from Hell

TW/CW: graphic depictions of Dean's death and what Demons look like.

read on Ao3

Tags: @kinda-not-really-vibing, @i-dont-even-wanna-know, @chris-krat

(fic under cut)

All that he has learned was how fragile and replaceable it all was. Every one of us gnats played a role but there were still too many for each one to matter. So why does Dean’s life seem matter more than the rest? Dean has been brought back more than anyone should be already, and it’s taken its toll. His soul is in tatters, held together by scotch tape and super glue, because he needed to be here longer for all the other souls that he could save.

And now it’s time to save them.

That’s what Dean had thought when he sold his soul for his brother, what he told himself so he wouldn’t feel like shit for bringing his brother back because he can’t stand to be alone. Now he wasn’t so sure that he had truly saved anyone.

The clock chimed, the black metal cutting across the white face of the clock to point its jagged claw at the twelve. The bell’s toll rang through the room, and Dean couldn’t help but to stare. It rang again and again as to mock holy churches and their white steeples filled with bronze bells being tugged into making music by their ropes.

The dark pillar of the grandfather clock melted into the shadows behind it, the pendulum swinging side to side with a smooth grace, pulling the chains and making the weights lift and fall, lift and fall, behind the clear crystal glass and thorny inlay.

The bells kept going, the sounds being knocked out of their bronze hollows. Each time the clapper struck the inside of the bells, making them shake to produce the beautiful symphony of noises, Dean couldn’t help feeling like those were more like melodic screams than music. He couldn’t help but feel like a bell, constantly knocked around to make harmonies for the pleasure of others.

When the dogs came, with their blood stained teeth in feral grins, dead white eyes framed in decaying flesh and matted fur, smelling of smoke and rot, Dean felt the miniscule vibrations of the bells deep in his bones, melting the marrow inside into a paste for the the dogs to lick out of each ivory shell.

He ran from the beasts who followed on legs of scorched bone and chunks of pulsing muscle that bent in all the wrong ways and places. There was no hope of keeping the things out now that he saw them, but he frantically poured the goofer dust in lines on the windowsills anyway.

Sam and Ruby stood by the door, Ruby asking for the demon knife and Sam debating handing it over. Dean’s body wretched when he saw Ruby’s face, skin hanging off the gnawed bones in fleshy, burnt ribbons. Patches of hair remained on the purple, white, and red skin and bone of her head, and her jaw was cracked and crooked, dangling from it’s socket, yellow, splintered teeth showing through the rotten holes in her cheek. When she spoke it jerked around, pulling the frayed tendons and clacking her crooked teeth together in sickening movements. But her eyes…

“Wait!” Dean finds his voice.

“You wanna die?” The demon turns to him, the scratchiness of her voice clawing out of her tongueless, flopping mouth.

Dean swallowed the rising bile in his throat as he watched her talk. “Sam, that's not Ruby,” He took a breath, “It's not Ruby!”

Lilith raises the remnants of her arm, launching Dean onto the desk in the back of the room, knocking the air out of his lungs and pinning Sam to the wall.

“How long you been in her?” Dean gasps out.

A vile grin twists the skin around her mouth in what Dean would assume would look like a childlike smile if she had more skin.

“Not long,” She gestures to her middle where light pink organs spilled out of the gaping holes in her skin, pulsating as they struggled to perform. “But I like it. It's all grown up and pretty.”

“And where's Ruby?” Sam interjected.

She tilted her head, the vertebrae of her back and neck clicking together in unnatural angles to make a sickening crunch. “She was a very bad girl, so I sent her far, far away.”

“You know, I should have seen it before... but you all look alike to me.” Dean grits out with a smile.

She glares at him before turning her attention to Sam, sauntering as well as a decaying corpse to Dean’s brother.

“Hello, Sam.” Lilith grabs Sam’s face in her rotten fingers, forcing him to look at her. “I've wanted to meet you for a very long time.”

Dean watches Lilith kiss his brother with her bloody lips, the muscles of her face convulsing under the thin, translucent skin where it remained on her face.

“Your lips are soft.” She whispered and Dean felt tears prickle in the corners of his eyes.

They wouldn’t have to deal with this if Dean had just left well enough alone. Sam has spent every waking hour(which was most hours) in pain trying to save Dean. Dean brought him back so he could keep living, and Sam isn’t even living. Now he has to watch his brother die.

“Right, so you have me. Let my brother go.” Sam snarled.

“Silly goose. You wanna bargain, you have to have something that I want.” Her body seemed to shake with her glee at the situation. “You don't.”

“So, is this your big plan, huh? Drag me to hell. Kill Sam. And then what? Become queen bitch?” Anger bubbled in his breast as he looked at the demon.

“I don't have to answer to puppy chow.” She hissed and a fresh wave of pain shot through Dean’s body, making him grimace and bite back a groan.

Lilith walks back to the door to the room where the hellhound sat outside. An exhilarated look took over her deteriorated features and blank eyes as she wrapped her fingers around the handle. “Sic 'em, boy.”

“No! Stop!” Sam screamed, still pinned to the wall.

The huge beast sprung through the open door, it’s scaldingly hot paws pinning Dean’s arms to the floor where he had dropped. It sunk it’s barbed teeth into Dean’s shoulder, ripping through the flesh with ease.

Dean screamed, squirming underneath the dog. Sam kept screaming while Lilith watched from the sidelines, a smile on her face.

The dog let it’s claws glide across Dean’s chest. Sam screamed again. Dean needed it to stop. He needed to tell Sam it’ll be okay and that he was sorry, but when he opened his mouth, he could only gargle through the hot blood bubbling up his throat.

The dog continued to tear at him, pulling his skin apart to bite at the soft organs inside and knaw his ribs. The pain melted together until everything felt like it was on fire and his vision was as red as the crimson puddle he was lying in.

Dean’s last thoughts before it all stopped was that he was that he deserved this. He deserved to go to hell and all the pain he’ll experience for the rest of eternity. And then the pain ended, only to be replaced in concentrated points where the beast gripped his soul, dragging him down through the earth.

He clawed at the dirt but it burnt his hands. He tried to scream but his lungs filled with ash and smoke as waves of scalding heat pummeled over him as they got closer to the waves of fire licking at the shores of ground up bone coating the ground. Hooks were driven through his limbs and the meat of his torso, jerking him up in the air above the lake of flames.

It was so loud. The roar of fire and cacophony of screams coming from the racks of mangled bodies. The cries from the bodies chained in the air or tied to the sizzling black pillars of stone holding up the inky black sky of smoke.

He deserves this.

~~~~

Long spiderwebs of cracks rocketed down the bedrock pillars as the ceiling of Hell ripped open. Dean dropped the rusted knife he held in his hand, the tatters of his soul reaching towards the creature pushing through the hole in the smoke. He watched as the white-blue being flew through the fire, the flames bending away from its many heads and hands. It opened its mouths and a high pitched screech overpowered the screams of the tortured souls.

Bolts of lightning struck out with each flap of the beings mighty wings, bending in arches and bouncing expertly off the many weapons brandished by the creature as it soared towards Dean, striking down the legions of demons rising to attack. It landed near him, shaping into a more human figure but remained haloed in bright light.

Dean let it approach him and wrap its arm around his chest, its hand burning into the skin of his shoulder as it took off, flapping its great wings and propelling them towards the bright gash in the smoke ceiling.

The creature was warm, not like the fire of hell, but warm like the distant memories Dean had of earth he held locked away where the black tendrils of hell would never reach. He let his soul reach out to the creature, wrapping itself in the soft feeling.

“DEAN WINCHESTER IS SAVED.” A deep voice rumbled through all of hell.

He was saved.

#dean winchester #sam winchester #lilith #castiel #ruby #angst #violence cw #blood cw #gore cw #death cw #pain cw #hell #angels #demons #fic #fanfic #supernatural #supernatural fanfic #supernatural fanfiction #spn fanfic #spn fanfciction #spn #my writing #fanfiction

[vivilove-jonsa]

#44 from the prompt list please❤🐺

#44 “You’ve always felt like home.”  

Thank you so much for the dialogue prompt, honey!  Despite this being one of the fluffier sounding prompts, it turned out not very fluffy but I hope you like it :)

**

“Can you come get me, Jon?  Will you take me home?”

Those had been her words two nights ago when Jon had picked up his phone after midnight.  

“I know it’s a lot to ask but…”

“I’m coming.”

He would always come and get her.  He didn’t want her to ever doubt it.  

But, he’s nervous now that they’re here.  Sansa makes him a little nervous.  She always has.  She was never like the others, never practically a sibling growing up.  He’s always been aware that they were something other to each other, something that went beyond family ties.  

Right or wrong, he’s been more than half in love with her since he was seventeen. He’s sure she never knew it which is fine.  It’s better that way.  That otherness makes things awkward enough.  No need to make it worse.  

“I know it’s not what you’re, um…used to.”

Should he have said that?  Shit, he probably shouldn’t have said that.  She left a mansion behind but that wasn’t all she left.  

But, he’s looking at his spare bedroom through her eyes with its dull paint and old carpet, trying to imagine what she’s thinking.  

His place is small; two bedrooms, one bath, laundry out in the garage and a miniscule kitchen.  He saw the kitchen at her place in the Vale.  His entire house could fit inside it.  He’s saving for something bigger, something nicer but he’s still paying off grad school and his current teaching position at the community college doesn’t pay much.

“There’s more important things than big kitchens, Jon,” she’d said when he’d apologized for its size on the way here.  

She was wearing a four carat diamond when she’d answered the door last night.  She left it sitting on the marble counter of that gourmet kitchen.  A clear message that they’re done, she’s done, she’s not going back.  Jon’s going to do everything he can to keep her from going back.  

She cracks open the closet and peeks inside.  It’s no walk-in and probably couldn’t hold a fourth of her wardrobe…if she’d brought more than one suitcase with her when they’d left.  

When she turns back around, she’s almost smiling.  “This is perfect, Jon.”

No, it’s not but Sansa’s always courteous.  “I’m going to make some dinner if you want to get settled and join me in a bit.”

“Sure.  I think I might shower real quick if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”  

It was a long car ride, a very long, very tense car ride from the Vale to White Harbor but they’d talked.  Mostly, she’d asked him to talk.  He’s not great at just talking but with Sansa he can open up given a little time. Fifteen hours on the road had been plenty of time to open up.  

He’d asked where they were headed just once past the Neck, turn east or keep going north.

“East.  Take me to your home in White Harbor if you don’t mind.  I’m not ready to…explain it yet.”

Jon wonders how they’ll take the news that she called him and not them, that she came home with him when she was leaving her fiancé.  

Her graduation party six years ago, both of them a little tipsy, a kiss and then another and another, completely unaware of the smiles dying all around them.  Robb’s shout, his aunt’s anger and his uncle’s silence.  It had been awkward alright.  Had they been happier for Sansa to be with a rich guy who cheated on her than her cousin?  

And were those kisses from six years ago why Sansa had called him?  

“I made soup and grilled cheese,” he calls over his shoulder when he hears her coming down the hall about ten minutes after the shower shuts off.

“Everything I need.”

He smiles as she comes up behind him, pleased that he’s guessed correctly on what comfort food to offer.  He can smell the fresh scent of his soap and her shampoo, that same papaya and vanilla scent she always used which he’d inhaled like an intoxicant when they’d been teens.  

She’s hugging herself and her chin’s trembling when he turns around. His arms open automatically and she’s clinging to him, her shuddering sigh squeezing his chest, making it hard to breathe.  They’re slotted together like two puzzle pieces, perfect, and he wishes the circumstances were different.  

Her lips brush his cheek, right above his beard near the corner of his mouth.  “Thank you. Thank you for everything.  I’m sorry to…”

“Anytime, Sansa.  And don’t say sorry.  You can stay as long as you want.”  Forever if you like.

She nods and takes down two bowls for him to ladle out their soup.  They sit down together at the table shoved in the corner of his little kitchen so that only two chairs are really usable.  

She lays her hand on the table, palm up, before they start eating. He covers it with his own.  “I guess you’re wondering why I called you and not Arya or my parents.”

“A little but I figure you can tell me about it when you’re ready.”

“Right there, that’s why.”  He raises his eyebrows in question.  “I knew you wouldn’t push and wouldn’t fly off the handle either.”  

He’d wanted to though.  When she’d called, he’d driven all those hours to the Vale with his gut churning and his mind thinking about all the ways he’d like to hurt that guy.

Their hands are still linked.  “It’s been over nearly six months to be honest…maybe before he ever gave me the ring and told me to move in after I caught him the first time.  I just didn’t know how to walk away then.”

“I’m glad when you were ready to walk away you called me.”

“Me, too but then again, I knew that I’d call you someday.  I just had to work up my courage first.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh huh.  You’ve always felt like home.”

“Because we’re family?”

“No because you’re you, Jon.”

#jonsa fanfiction #jonsa fanfic #dialogue prompt #vivilove-jonsa fic

[differentnutpeace]

Invincible Season-Finale Recap: My Father the Hero

We knew it was going to be bad. Mark Grayson was never going to turn his back on humanity, and when his father asks him to do that so they can conquer Earth, Mark responds by doing everything he can to stop him. And it’s not enough. Not even close. “Where I Really Come From” is one of the most harrowing episodes of superhero TV ever produced, with half of its runtime dedicated to a fight that matches extreme, spectacular violence with a devastating emotional conflict. It’s a very satisfying season finale that highlights how well Invincible develops its core relationships, and the action wouldn’t have the same impact if there wasn’t such a deep sense of loss behind each punch.  หวย บอล เกมส์ คาสิโนออนไลน์

One Great StoryThe one story you shouldn’t miss, selected by New York editors

The betrayal Mark and Debbie feel only intensifies as Nolan reveals his actual origin story, his intentions for Earth, and his true feelings about not just humanity, but his family. Debbie is little more than a pet, a companion that temporarily joins Nolan during this miniscule period of his millennia-long life. Mark would have been the same if his powers didn’t kick in, but he is Viltrumite so he matters. Viltrum isn’t the benevolent savior Nolan painted it out to be, but a militarized empire that wants to prove its supremacy over the entire universe. Survival of the fittest is the guiding principle of Viltrumite civilization, and they became an unstoppable intergalactic empire by wiping out the weakest from their society, cutting their population in half.

The Viltrumite slaughter sequence emphasizes the ruthless frenzy of this culling process, showing a variety of Viltrumite killings in quick succession. They are completely desensitized to the most brutal violence against their own people, so when it comes to conquering others, there’s absolutely nothing Viltrumites won’t do. I expected waves of blood and punches that shake mountains, but there’s an extra layer of sadistic psychological torture in this family feud. Nolan needs to convince his son that humans are worthless and expendable, so he keeps killing them in ways that will scar Mark for a long time.

When Invincible saves a fighter pilot after his dad flies through his jet, Omni-Man meets them on the ground and crushes the pilot’s head with his hand, getting brain all over his son’s face. When the battle moves to Chicago, a punch from Omni-Man turns Invincible into a human wrecking ball, crashing through buildings and a busy city street, killing anyone who is unlucky enough to be in his way. Mark tries to save a mother and her daughter inside a collapsing building, but he’s not strong enough and they’re both crushed in the rubble. We’re back in the war zone mode of episode two, and Mark’s father is the person responsible for all the carnage.

The most savage moment comes in the Chicago subway, when Omni-Man grabs Invincible by the head and charges through a subway train, ripping people apart with his son’s flailing limbs. It’s deeply disturbing seeing Mark’s body used as a weapon by his own father, but this is what the Viltrumite people do. Viltrumite can only exist if they’re willing to give up their bodies to the empire, and the penalty for breaking rank is execution. Viltrum’s philosophy isn’t all that different from a significant swath of humanity who believes in their inherent superiority and doesn’t want to jeopardize that by helping people who are struggling. Empathy opens the door to assistance, which leads to people becoming stronger, and strength is a threat. For his entire life, Nolan has been told that others are less than him so that he can be the best soldier possible, and now he wants to force that worldview on his son.

After knocking Mark’s teeth out, Nolan has a flashback to a vital moment in his understanding of humanity, when he and Debbie watched Mark play baseball as a child. Nolan feels like he’s wasting his time watching this stupid game, especially when he could have a much better view from the air. This is clearly a situation Debbie has been in before and she puts on a teacher voice as she gives him another lesson in humanity, explaining how parents find comfort in their children because they remind them of life’s joys, which can be easy to forget when the weight of the world bogs them down. Nolan finally understands it when Mark hits the baseball and slides into home plate, and it’s telling that Nolan only connects with humanity when Mark is victorious. What would have happened if Mark struck out, or if he didn’t make it to home plate before the ball?

This memory sparks some compassion in Nolan, and he stops thinking like a Viltrumite conqueror and looks at his beaten, bloodied son through the eyes of a father who is directly responsible for his child’s suffering. He stops punching, but he tries a different tactic: yell at his son and try to convince him that, in the grand scheme of a life that will go on for thousands of years, his relationships with the humans he knows now will mean nothing. It’s not a successful tactic, and emphasizing the loss Mark will feel in the future ends up backfiring as Mark shows his father what he’s lost right now. It’s too much for Nolan to take, and he flies off into space, burning off the mix of his son’s blood and countless human casualties as he moves through the atmosphere.

The back half of the episode focuses on the fallout of Omni-Man and Invincible’s fight. Mark spends two weeks healing while his mother has a very justified emotional breakdown, and the Guardians decide that it’s finally time to wash off that big blood stain in their headquarters. Debbie and Mark’s anonymity is preserved via a cover story about Nolan dying when the neighbor’s house exploded, but Detective Amber puts it all together and rushes to Mark’s side when he gets back home. No one can comprehend the trauma Mark has been through, but his friends know that he needs them by his side. The quartet of Mark, Amber, Will, and Eve really comes together in this episode, and now that everyone knows everyone’s secret identities, there are much stronger ties between them all.

A news report reveals the world’s response as people wonder how the man they trusted to protect them could hurt them so badly, and there’s definite social commentary in there about the corruption of those in positions of authority. And Viltrum’s not the only militarized force to worry about. Toward the end of the episode, we find out that the U.S. government has put chemicals in tap water that prevent people from seeing specific frequencies of light. And the GDA has an entire army of cyborg soldiers created by a mad scientist. There’s plenty of shady stuff happening on Earth too, and I’m curious to see if Mark’s disdain for Viltrumite authority will cause him to look at the GDA through a new lens.

The episode ends with a lot of set up for the second season, which was confirmed this week along with a third. Allen the Alien returns to announce that the coalition of planets is trying to assemble an army big enough to take on the Viltrumites, and Mark is a cosmic asset as the only Viltrumite who won’t fight with his people. This narrative alone is enough to drive an entire season given that it would take Mark (and friends?) to the far reaches of the universe, but there are a lot more story seeds planted during a montage set to The Hives’ “Hate To Say I Told You So,” a music choice that does a lot to shift the tone away from the crushing sadness of the last 40 minutes.

As distressing as this show can get, it still has an exuberant spirit that makes it fun to watch, and this montage is a reminder of that. Invincible’s first season did excellent work creating a rich superhero universe with many different corners to explore, and this montage promises even bigger things to come. But that’s not the final note of the season. Writer Robert Kirkman understands that a huge part of Invincible’s appeal is the contrast between superhero spectacle and the mundane aspects of human life, so when Allen asks Mark what’s next, he goes to his top priority: finish high school. The beat reinforces that Mark is about to enter another major transitional period of his life after graduation, pulling the character back down to Earth as he chats with an alien on the moon.

[lunarimagines]

EYE ON THE TARGET [1]

Summary: Your father gave Jungkook a lengthy set of rules when Jungkook was hired as your personal bodyguard. The list included no-brainers like: don’t let Y/N out of your sight, don’t let Y/N get hurt, and Y/N comes first. What your father did not outline in the rules, however, was whether Jungkook was allowed to fall in love with you or not. Good thing he didn’t…

A/N: I hope you enjoy the first part of the new series! Let me know what you think :) 

Warnings: language

[EOTT MASTERLIST]

━━━━

Being rich and famous got boring fast. It wasn’t that you were trying to brag, it was simply a fact you were willing to state. Being rich meant you had the ability to do anything you wanted but being famous meant you could only do a miniscule percentage of said things you wanted to do. Fancy dinner parties were never your thing, either. Once you’d outgrown the kids table you found yourself dreading them. The fact of the matter was rich people were shallow as hell and FAMOUS rich people were even more shallow than that. Needless to say, you were looking for some more excitement in your life. 

Which is why you found yourself sneaking out every night to go out with your non-rich and non-famous friends. You’d met them during one of the dinner parties you were forced to attend. They had been part of the kitchen crew and had welcomed you into their small circle. They weren’t rich or famous in the slightest, not even in the culinary world. You loved them.

They’d shown that life was still worth living and that there was always something new you could do for little to no money. Sure, some of those adventures were dangerous - once you’d gone to the skate park and Jimin, one of your newfound friends, had encouraged you to try his skateboard which ended in you having a broken arm - but most of them were simply exploring the simpler things in life. Tonight Jimin and Hoseok, another of your newfound friends, were going to introduce you to “dance dance revolution,” which you had googled after they’d told you about it. Like everything else they introduced you to in the past, this looked high energy and high fun. 

You grabbed your shoes from your closet before you tiptoed down the hall. Your father was still working and you could see his study light was on. If you wanted to avoid questions from him you would have to make a mad dash for the stairs. Taking a deep breath, you steadied yourself to make the run. 

“Y/N, come in here for a moment.”

You nearly crashed to the ground at the sound of your father’s voice. It was firm and steady and full of authority. You felt as if your bones were rattling as you walked quietly towards his office, discarding yours shoes outside of the door frame before stepping into his office. Your back was rigid and you clasped your hands behind your back to stop yourself from fidgeting. You knew your father would take it as a sign of weakness if he saw you fidget. 

He surveyed your outfit quickly before he turned back to his computer screen. His glasses reflected its blue glare and you tried to focus on that when he finally looked back up at you.

“Where are you going tonight? Out with those… boys… again?” he questioned slowly. Your breath hitched in your throat and your mouth became dry. You felt as though you were stuck inside of a tin drum, removed from the world around you. You weren’t shocked that he knew, but you were upset he knew. He kept tabs on every person in the family, including all of the employees, and made it his business to know everything about everyone, down to which streets they used daily. He said it was for safety reasons, but that sounded hollow and false. He did it because he wanted the control.

“Yes,” you replied, making sure your voice was strong and clear. “We are going to an arcade to try dance dance revolution.”

Your father raised an eyebrow and you dug your nails into your palm to maintain your composure. You could tell he was sizing you, trying to see if you were telling the truth or not. 

“Why?”

That was a question you weren’t prepared for. The answer was obvious to you. Because they were your friends. Because you enjoyed their company. Because you wanted to try something new. Because you knew there was more to life than fancy dinner parties and political meetings and public sightings at charities for the tabloids. 

“I have never tried it before and I would like to,” you said firmly. Your father nodded and held out his hand. You stared down at it blankly.

“Give me your phone. I want their phone numbers.”

You swallowed a merciless laugh that was bubbling in your chest. As if he didn’t already have their phone numbers. Regardless, you gave him your phone and watched in the reflection of his glasses as he pulled up your contacts list and copied down their phone numbers meticulously. Hoseok was first, Jimin was second, and Namjoon - another one of your new friends - was third. He nodded contentedly and handed your phone back to you, watching your expression carefully. You knew if you showed any annoyance he would question you, question if you should be going out with such boys, question if they were a good influence. You remained neutral as you thanked him and turned to leave his study.

“Oh, and Y/N,” he called from behind you, making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, “Make sure you are home before 11:30. I don’t want to keep the staff up late. If affects their performance.”

“Yes, sir,” you replied, leaning down to grab your shoes before walking towards the stairs. Your heart was beating painfully fast and your hands were clammy. You clasped the stair railing tightly as you walked down the winding steps, your feet slapping softly against the cold tile. Your toes were curled to avoid some of the cold from the floor. You nodded to the maid at the bottom of the stairs and bid her goodbye with a wave before you slipped your socks out of your shoes. You hopped around trying to slide your sock on before you felt a soft hand on your elbow holding you steady. You looked up to see the same maid, the one you’d said goodbye to, helping you. You weren’t sure you deserved the kindness and help of the people who worked for you. You made even more of a conscious effort to be extra polite to them. 

“Thank you so much,” you smiled. She nodded softly, a quiet smile gracing her own lips. 

You slid one sock on and started on the other.

“What are you doing this weekend?” you asked as you easily slipped the other sock on thanks to her help. You bent down to slip your foot into your shoe and tie it. 

“Hmmm, I suppose I’ll be here,” she replied quietly. You looked up at her with your eyes wide.

“I thought you had the weekend off?” you questioned. 

“I did, but your father is bringing in some new staff and as a veteran staff member I need to be here to welcome them.”

You scoffed as you tied your other shoe. “That’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t have to give up your weekend for this. You can meet them on Monday. The weekend staff will give them a warm welcome…”

“It’s nice to welcomed by everyone in many ways,” she said matter-of-factly as she handed you your bag from the hook by the door. You accepted it and slung it over your shoulder.

“You’re absolutely right… I guess I just wish they’d welcome them on Monday instead, then. You deserve a break, even though I miss you when you’re gone,” you teased, squeezing her hand before you opened the door. She smiled sweetly at you, her eyes crinkling at the sides. 

“Be safe.”

You thanked her one last time before you slipped out of the house and down the steps to the sleek Range Rover waiting for you. The driver opened the passenger door to allow you slide inside and across the buttery leather seats. You’d never realized how leather could be buttery until you’d sat in Jimin’s 2003 Honda once and felt the fabric itch your legs and realized that you barely even felt the seat underneath you when you were in the Range Rover. 

“Thank you,” you said the driver as he closed the door. You pulled out your phone to text the group chat and let them know you were on your way. Seeing Hoseok’s thumbs up emoji in response, you locked your phone and stared at the window as you reached the gates at the entrance of your vast property. They were wrought iron and ornate and you hated them in the dark. They were spooky the way they loomed up in the darkness, only lit from below by lights in the flower beds. You craned your neck to watch them recede into the darkness before turning forward and sliding down into your seat. You watched the trees pass by, sighing.

“Thanks for driving me so late. I’ll see if Jimin can give me a ride back,” you told your driver, feeling guilty. You knew he had a family and yet here he was. Your father refused to allow you to learn how to drive because you had “people for that, Y/N.” 

“It’s okay. Your father wants me to drive you back,” he said, looking at you in the rearview mirror. Now you felt even more guilty. 

“I appreciate it,” you whispered, trying to squash your guilt down. Maybe you would just pay for driving lessons yourself to allow your driver to spend more time with his family. Yeah, you would have Namjoon help you sign up for driver’s education. 

“Would you like to listen to music?” 

You looked up to see him looking at you in the rearview mirror.

“Sure. Jimin sent me a new playlist today,” you said, grabbing the aux cord and plugging it into your phone. You pressed shuffle on the Spotify playlist and the two of you listened to it in silence as you drove to the arcade. You saved some of the songs on the playlist to your own playlists but otherwise you remained still, staring out the window and watching lights flash by outside. You couldn’t wait to see your friends. Namjoon would help walk you through what you were feeling - the guilt that had settled like a rock in your stomach was difficult to ignore - and Hoseok and Jimin would cheer you with their naturally bright personalities. 

The car jolted to a stop outside of the arcade and you spotted your friends waiting in a clump on the sidewalk in front of the entrance. You grabbed your bag as the back door opened and you looked up to see Jimin’s smiling face. Your face broke out into a smile, your chest filled with warmth at seeing him. It was like staring at the moon: no matter how far away he seemed from your life, you knew he was always there for you and you felt the constant pull towards him.

“Ready for some dance dance revolution?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows. 

You laughed as you slid out the car, thanking your driver and letting him know you’d be ready to leave by 8pm.

“Why so early?” Hoseok questioned as he sidled up beside you and grabbed your bag, slinging it over his own shoulder. 

“He has a family,” you shrugged. “I want him to be able to tuck his kids into bed.” 

Hoseok smiled at you and bumped your shoulder. You smiled softly at him, ducking your head. You knew you sounded spoiled, but you also knew you were working to be more compassionate towards those around you. A side effect of growing up rich and famous was a dangerous sense of self-preservation. Most of the time that self-preservation manifested itself in the form of selfishness. You were unlearning the habits associated with your class and position in the world. It was something you had begun working on a few years after outgrowing the kid table at parties. If you wanted to live a shallow life you’d buy a kiddie pool and stand in it 24/7. 

“Okay that leaves us with 2 hours to play dance dance and try skee-ball,” Jimin said as he opened the door to the arcade for your group. 

“Here,” Namjoon said, handing you a thin white card. “We got you a card with some tickets on it. You just swipe it to play different games. And don’t worry about paying us back. This is our treat.”

You accepted the card graciously, flipping it over to see the name of the arcade stamped on the other side in big red letters. It wasn’t anything special and you felt as though you could snap it in half if you tried hard enough. But it felt special. You were going to put it in your box of keepsakes.

“Okay, stand here and scan your card here,” Hoseok said, stepping up on the platform beside you and pointing at the scanner. You looked down at the arrows on the metal slab and then up at the screen. “Don’t worry, we’ll walk through a tutorial first,” Hoseok supplied, sensing your hesitation.

You nodded and stepped up, slid your card, and stood there, uncertain. You should have looked up how to play dance dance revolution… You sighed, watching as Hoseok pressed start somehow and then pressed the tutorial button. 

“Okay, so,” he started, “you see the arrows on the ground? They correspond with arrows you’ll see on the screen. For example, when you see the arrow pointing front, step on the front arrow. Here, try this one.”

You watched the screen, a backwards arrow appearing, and you stepped back. The word ‘good’ was displayed on the screen, and you turned to Hoseok, beaming.

“Nice! Watch the next one!”

You turned back to see an arrow pointing to the left and you stepped on the corresponding arrow. Okay, this would be easy. You’d have to go slowly, but you knew you’d get the hang of it. It was a pretty straightforward game, so straightforward that even a novice like you could figure it out.

“Ready? We’ll start with an easy level,” Hoseok said with a smile as he exited the tutorial and chose a song for the two of you. 

You turned your full attention to the screen, your eyebrows furrowed in concentration as you watched the arrows. Your feet followed the directions and you grabbed onto the bar behind you for support as the song picked up. Beside you, Hoseok was holding the bar and laughing happily as the song sped up. You felt yourself smile and your facial features relax at the sound of his laughter mixed with your feet pounding the arrows in sync. Jimin was singing the song behind the two of you and Namjoon was filming the entire thing, the smile on his face showcasing his dimples. You laughed at the sudden wave of joy that washed over you. If only you could take a mental photo of this moment from an outside perspective to look back on. You were beginning to run out of breath from the game and from happiness. You didn’t even care if you were getting a good score. 

“Hey! That’s a great score for your first time!” Hoseok congratulated at the end of the song. It was no surprise that Hoseok’s score was better, but you were proud that you were only 70 points behind his score. 

“Thanks,” you huffed out, smiling widely at him as you stepped off the platform. 

Jimin stepped up into your spot and Namjoon took Hoseok’s platform. They chose a more difficult level and you watched in awe as the song started and they began moving in sync, their screens showing ‘good!’ and ‘perfect!’ each time they stepped. Hoseok was laughing at the concentrated look on Namjoon’s face, the way his mouth was parted slightly and he was squinting his eyes like he was an 80 year old man who’d forgotten to put his glasses on. Jimin’s eyes were sparkling and his smile showed his teeth as his feet moved at what seemed like 100mph. Their feet were hitting all of the beats and you couldn’t help but be impressed.

“Do you guys play this game a lot?” you questioned, not really expecting a response from the two boys playing.

“Yeah! We like to come here and play games and bowl a lot,” Hoseok replied for them. “Have you ever bowled before, Y/N?”

You nodded. You’d bowled once before at a birthday party when you were seven and they had used bumpers. It had been fun until some of the parents had gotten drunk and rowdy. 

“We should bowl next time then!” Hoseok exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. “We can use bumpers if you want. I can’t bowl well without them sometimes. I usually bowl granny style which Jimin makes fun of.” He mimed the action and you snorted as he wiggled his butt before ‘throwing’ the bowling ball. He straightened up and laughed with you, the sound seeming to bounce around the arcade lights around you. Everything was brighter with these boys. 

The boys jumped off the machines, sweaty and smiling brightly, to allow you and Hoseok to jump back on. You allowed him to pick another song for the two of you before gripping the bar tightly. You didn’t think of anything outside of the game as your feet hit the console. The rubber grip was rough against your hands as you twisted to hit the arrows. Your palms were sweaty and sore from grasping it so tightly to keep your balance. The boys cheered both of you on which only made your smile grow and your heart speed up. You felt warm and content as you finished another round of dance dance revolution, your score better than the first time you’d tried. Namjoon high-fived you as you stepped down. 

“Let’s try skee-ball. It’s kinda like bowling but smaller and much more frustrating,” Jimin said, slinging an arm around your shoulders and guiding you towards the skee-ball machines. He swiped his arcade card and the skee balls released and clacked down the ramp, coming to a rest near Jimin’s hands. “Watch and learn from the best, Y/N.”

Namjoon snorted and crossed his arms over his chest while Hoseok rolled his eyes with a smile. You watched as Jimin rolled the ball up the ramp, the ball landing in the 50-point hole. He turned back and winked at your small group and Namjoon nodded appreciatively at his efforts.

“Bet you can’t do it again,” Hoseok teased, his mouth falling into a lopsided grin.

“Watch me,” Jimin replied, turning back to throw another ball. It, too, landed in the 50-point hole.

Hoseok’s mouth dropped in amazement and he let out an incredulous laugh. “Oh it’s so on.”

He slid his own card in the machine beside Jimin and immediately began rolling the skee balls up the ramp quickly, though rather haphazardly. He hit 30, then 10, then 10 again, and finally hit 50. Hoseok let out a ‘whoop’ and Jimin laughed at him as he continued on his own machine. Jimin was hitting 50 and 30 points consistently. Hoseok was not quite as lucky, and he lost to Jimin by nearly 150 points. Hoseok let out a huff as Jimin turned to him with a smug look on his face.

“I should have made a bet with you,” Jimin joked. Hoseok shoved his shoulder goodnaturedly as he stepped aside to let you and Namjoon play. 

“Let’s try basketball instead, then,” Hoseok suggested and Jimin nodded, the two walking over to the basketball games instead. 

“Hey, can I ask you something?” you asked Namjoon as the two of you started your own game of skee-ball.

He hummed in response as he aimed for the 50-point hole. You were aiming to hit 30, nothing fancy. 

“Can you help me get a driver’s license? Like legally? I know about driver’s education but I don’t know anything else,” you said slowly. Namjoon nodded to indicate he understood, but he seemed to slow his movements.

“What prompted this?” he asked curiously.

You sighed, throwing the last ball, which miraculously landed in the 50-point hole. “I want to learn I guess. I feel bad about making everyone around me do these things that I’m capable of. Plus I really want some more freedom. Honestly, I’m a little scared to drive. I don’t like how fast some of the cars go, but I also know I’m not going to be a bad driver. My dad wouldn’t allow it. Imagine the publicity if I got caught even just speeding. I guess I just want to be able to hang out with you guys more.”

Namjoon gently placed a hand on your shoulder and squeezed it lightly after your long winded confession. He had a soft smile on his face, his already round cheeks looking more round than usual.

“I’ll help you get signed up tonight if you want,” he said. 

You couldn’t help yourself. You hugged him tightly, your arms wrapped around his neck. His hands hesitated before interlocking his fingers behind your back, his hands high on your waist. You breathed in his scent, a soft manliness you couldn’t put your finger on. It was like sandalwood mixed with lavender mixed with chestnut. 

“Thank you,” you whispered into his neck before releasing him. 

“That’s what friends are for, Y/N,” he replied, giving you a soft smile as Jimin and Hoseok rejoined your duo. 

“It’s getting pretty late and you need to be heading out in a few. Let’s head out front,” Hoseok suggested. You grabbed your bag from Hoseok and headed outside with the group to see your driver already waiting outside. You turned to your friends to tell them goodbye, all of them hugging you tightly before pushing you towards your car. You knew they’d text you as soon as they arrived home. You waved to them before you slid into your car and the driver shut the door behind you. 

“Did you have fun?” he asked as he slid into the driver’s seat. 

“Yeah,” you sighed, “I love being with them.”

He smiled at you in the rearview mirror, his eyes filled with happiness for you. He slowly turned out of the parking lot and headed towards your home, the car filled with amicable silence, the darkness only punctured by the streetlights. The bars were in full swing on a Friday night like this, and it was just at the peak time for them to begin to get busy. You could practically hear the women’s heels clicking on the sidewalk and the bursts of laughter from the concentrated groups of people out clubbing. The car pulled off the main street and down onto your driveway, which was nearly half a mile long. You watched the trees filing by the car like soldiers standing guard to your house. They blocked out the lights and sounds of the bustling city and made you feel isolated. You saw the fence looming before you, and you closed your eyes as you passed through it. The lights from your house shone brightly, sparkling in the water from the fountain out front. 

The car slid to stop and you opened the door before your driver could. He looked surprised as he came around the side of the car. You smiled at him, thanking him and wishing him goodnight before you headed inside, your bag bouncing on your back as you bounded up the front stairs. Walking inside of your home, you slipped your shoes off and placed your backpack on the hook by the door. It was oddly quiet in your home and you wandered to the kitchen to grab your water bottle and head up to your room for the night. You stopped short when you heard voices.

“I heard it’s to keep her under control. I heard him say he’s not happy with the staff she’s been around lately.”

Pressed your back against the wall as you listened to the gossip continue.

“They aren’t his staff, though. I don’t know why he’s so upset.”

“It’s because they’re staff in general probably.” You sensed the scorn in this voice.

“Either way, we’ll be meeting him tomorrow. I doubt she even knows about it. I really don’t think she has any idea. I heard he’s looking into their background more.” A deep sigh. “I hope this doesn’t hurt her spirits any.”

“Maybe she needs to be controlled though. She’s been going out with them very late at night.”

“If 6pm is late to you maybe you need to retire already.” A bout of laughter. Footsteps. 

You stepped forward into the kitchen and almost smacked into a maid coming out. 

“Oh! How was your night?” she asked you.

“I learned how to play dance dance revolution,” you replied with a smile on your face. “It was a lot of fun!” 

“Good!” she smiled, squeezing your hand as she walked by you. 

You slid into the kitchen and opened the fridge to get your water bottle. You noted three other maids milling around, cleaning and organizing. You said goodnight to them as you exited the kitchen and headed up the winding staircase to your bedroom. Closing the door behind you with a soft click, you plopped down on your bed with a quiet oof. Your room was illuminated by the warm glow from your desk lamp, which you had turned on before you’d left to allow it to greet you. You back softened into the mattress and the tension drained from you body. You found you didn’t even care about what the maids were talking about; nothing could take away the happiness you felt from spending time with Hoseok, Jimin, and Namjoon. 

There was a knock at your door and you called for them to come in, simply thinking it was a maid. Instead, your father walked into your bedroom. You shot up, sliding off of you bed to face him squarely.

“Tomorrow the new staff are coming in. I want you up and ready by 8am. That means I want you to have eaten breakfast by 8 as well, please,” he instructed briskly. 

“Yes, sir.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Short, concise, to the point. You watched as he closed the door behind him and then you flopped back onto your bed. You draped your arm over your eyes and exhaled deeply, your mood turning sour. It wasn’t that you were upset about waking up early; you were upset that it seemed like everything was changing suddenly. You had never had to meet the new staff before, so why was it different now? It wasn’t that you didn’t want to meet them, but this was forced and unnatural. Suddenly you wanted the day to be over. 

There was no better way to fast forward in time than to sleep. You pulled yourself out of bed and stumbled to your bathroom, flicking the light on and grabbing your towel from the heated rack. You placed it on the counter as you turned the water on in your shower and waited for it to heat up, adjusting the temperature slightly before stepping in and turning your back to the water. You let your body soak it in the stream, your mind blank. You washed slowly, watching the glass walls fog up. Sighing deeply, you stepped out and wrapped your warm towel around you. 

You picked a chestnut scented lotion, thinking of Namjoon suddenly as the scent hit you. He was a quiet smart, the kind that knew exactly what to do, and if he didn’t he would talk through it to figure it out. You missed him already.

Dressing in your favorite cotton pajama set, you walked back to your bedroom and crawled underneath the covers, your breath fanning across the pillow softly. You watched your pillowcase ripple slightly, your eyes glossing over. In a moment of clarity, you set your alarm for 6am. You felt lonely, as if your own soul had been ripped from your body. You hadn’t felt this way since before you’d met the three boys and you hated being pulled back into the feeling.

Not even bothering to turn off your desk light, you closed your eyes and breathed deeply. You would meet tomorrow head on. You would face it with dignity. But for now you were going to sleep.

It wasn’t a restful sleep. You had dumb dreams about falling, the most startling when you fell down the stairs after the first step hadn’t been there. You had walked down those stairs a million times before but suddenly they had changed and you’d fallen through the gap where the first stair was, your chin hitting the second stair sharply. You couldn’t even scream as you plummeted towards darkness. You never hit anything. You fell. And fell. And fell. 

The vibration from your alarm jolted you awake. You had never woken up so sweaty before and you felt the need to take another shower. You shut your alarm off and saw you had 23 new messages from your friends talking about the arcade, a new t.v. show, and cooking breakfast together on Sunday. 

you: i want pancakes

you: waffles hold more syrup but they’re a weird texture

jimin: oh i’ll drink to that

hoseok: okay hear me out… CHOCOLATE CHIP pancakes

namjoon: now i’ll drink to THAT

You locked your phone and slid out of bed, your feet hitting the plush carpet. You wiggled your toes against it, enjoying the tickle. It was a pleasant reprieve after you’d fallen through space and time in your dreams. Walking to the bathroom, you turned the sink on and waited for it to warm up before washing your face, drying it with another towel from your towel warmer. You followed through your usual morning routine, walking into your walk-in closet to choose an outfit you’d put together a few days before. You thought it was a cute outfit and you wanted to show the new staff you cared. 

At 7:20am you sat down at the breakfast bar to eat. A chef placed a muffin in front of you and a glass of ice water. You thanked him as you dug into the cranberry muffin, the sourness of the cranberries waking you up. You watched the t.v. on the counter. The chef had turned to some local news station and a weatherwoman was explaining the predicted forecast. The chef noticed you watching it.

“Would you like to watch something else?” he questioned quickly. 

“No, thank you. This is just fine,” you replied with a soft smile. “Also this muffin is delicious.”

He smiled brightly. He was young and fairly new and incredibly naive. You weren’t kidding about the muffin, though. It was delicious. He was just amusing with his lopsided smile and his soft humming as he cleaned up the kitchen as you ate breakfast. He was cute. 

“Be in the foyer in ten,” you father said briskly as he walked into the kitchen, straightening his suit jacket as he went. He grabbed the glass of orange juice a maid handed to him, downing it in one go. He was exactly the kind of guy who wouldn’t mind brushing his teeth and drinking orange juice. Hardass. 

You stood up and placed your glass and plate into the sink before going back upstairs to brush your teeth and text back that, yes, you could come over Sunday morning to make breakfast with the boys, before walking back down the stairs and arriving in the foyer with one minute to spare. You stood beside your father as the new staff began to file in, most with their heads down. You could tell who had been in the profession for a while and who was new. 

One caught your eye. He was close to your age, dressed in a suit and tie. He was handsome, more handsome than anyone you’d ever seen before - which was saying something considering you saw Jimin, Hoseok, and Namjoon nearly every single day. He walked with an air of confidence, and you could see the other staff members side-eyeing him as they lined up in front of you and your father. His eyes met yours and stayed there. You didn’t want to sound cliché, but there were literal stars in his eyes the way they sparkled. He kept your attention as your father cleared his throat and began his speech about “welcome to the family” and “follow your duties” and “we look forward to working with you.” You didn’t hear a single word. All you could do was stare at the boy in front of you. 

“Jungkook, you stay,” your father instructed as the other staff members filed out of the room. “Y/N, this is Jungkook. He is your personal bodyguard.”

You could see the muscles underneath his suit so you didn’t doubt he was capable of being a bodyguard. But really? Your PERSONAL bodyguard was a stretch. You didn’t need a babysitter and you knew that’s all Jungkook was: a glorified babysitter. You weren’t in any danger to warrant a bodyguard. You rolled your eyes internally at his statement, though your outside demeanor remained calm. 

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Jungkook,” you said softly, not breaking eye contact with the boy. You weren’t going to fight your father. There was no use. Once he set his mind to something he would stick with it. You were, however, not going to let Jungkook tag along behind you in your everyday life. The entire thing was so ridiculous. 

“Jungkook will be stationed by you nearly 24/7,” your father explained, “he is here to protect you, though, not wait on you. Do you understand.”

Yeah. You knew what a bodyguard was. That was their whole gig. 

“Yes, sir,” you replied. 

Your father nodded appreciatively, his hand coming up to shake Jungkook’s hand. “Take good care of her.”

Jesus, he was acting like the two of you were dating. You didn’t like Jungkook, you set your mind to that fact. You didn’t even plan on getting to know him, quite frankly. Sure, maybe it was childish. You didn’t care. This was too much for you to handle today, or any day for that matter. 

You turned as your father dismissed the two of you, walking back to your room to text the boys about the turn of events, when you realized Jungkook was following you.

“Do… do you need to follow me in my own home?” you asked curiously. You weren’t necessarily annoyed, just confused.

“Yeah… basically everywhere,” Jungkook replied, and he at least had the decency to look a little embarrassed. 

You nodded slowly, not quite sure what else to say. The entire thing was becoming more odd by the second, and you found yourself wanting to get away from Jungkook as quickly as possible. His gaze was making you uncomfortable. 

You quickly walked up the stairs and to your bedroom, pausing with your hand on the doorknob. You chewed your bottom lip pensively. You could feel Jungkook’s presence behind you and you felt obligated to say something, anything, to him. 

“I would rather you stay out here,” you stated, turning the knob.

“Of course, boss.”

You sighed deeply, annoyance filling your chest. “Do not call me ‘boss’.”

“What should I call you then? Angel?”

You whirled around to face him, taking a deep breath to compose yourself before opening your mouth to speak. You watched as Jungkook’s smile morphed into a smirk as he saw your annoyed expression. The shy boy from the foyer was gone, replaced with a confident boy who, although incredibly hot, was also incredibly irritating. 

“Y/N. You can call me Y/N. Does that work for you, babe?” 

Jungkook’s ears turned a bright shade of pink at the pet name for him. His smirk slipped as he faltered to find something else to say. You turned back to your room, slipping inside.

“Oh, and Jungkook? I like it better when you get shy,” you said with a wink, closing the door with a resounding click behind you, and leaving Jungkook standing outside with a lopsided smile on his face as he stared at the door you had vanished behind. 

#Jungkook reactions #jungkook scenarios #jungkook smut #bts reactions #bts scenarios #bts smut #kpop reactions #kpop scenarios #kpop smut #eye on the target m.list #myimagines

[makapedia]

meet me in the afterglow

"Ooffh."

It's like a brick has dropped in his bed. Taichi raises a brow and slips a bookmark between the pages of his light reading. "Yeah?"

"Eyes hurt," whines Chihaya, squirming and worming her way beneath the blankets. Her feet press against his ankles, on the thin strip of skin between sock and pajama pant, and her toes are like ice.

It takes everything in him not to jolt away from her. But he doesn't, and instead allows Chihaya to selfishly siphon his heat like the clueless doofus she is. "Go to sleep then," he says, as if it's obvious. Because it is. There's no sense in keeping herself up staring at their tv screen, no matter the reason. "You'll wear your eyes out like that."

"You're superstitious," she mutters sleepily, face pressed to her pillow. "I had the lights on. It's fine."

You'll wear your brain out like that, he thinks instead, but wisely keeps it to himself. Taichi's known her too long now to realize that reasoning with her is a losing battle. Once Chihaya's got her sights set on something there's no stopping with her. Stubborn like a bull and pretty like a doll, the duality of a queen.

He chuffs and shuts his book.

"Nooo," Chihaya says, shuffling, hands winding through sheets and blankets alike.

He thinks maybe she's reaching for him but manages to tie herself up in the bedding like a pretzel instead, and sits up to set his bedtime reading on the nightstand beside him instead of helping her unravel. Chihaya huffs and plops beside him, a defeated lump of blanket and silky hair, bangs staticy and standing on end.

It's cute. He hates how cute it is. She's so dumb.

"What're you reading?" she asks with her eyes shut. Taichi can't keep himself from brushing her bangs back from her face, forehead pale and smooth beneath his hand. "You don't have to stop because of me…"

"It's bedtime," he says.

"Nooooo…"

Despite the knot she's tied herself into she still manages to press those cold toes against him. She's got her foot up his flannel pant leg now, halfway up his shin. "You have an early morning tomorrow," he says, because it's the truth, but also because he selfishly wants her to stay like this, languid and comfortable and cuddly, and he'd give up almost anything, he thinks, to remain in this life like this with her for a little longer.

He loves Chihaya when she's lively, of course. He loves that trademark spark in her eye, her boundless energy, even her tendency to full-body tackle people when she's got her mind set on something - but he loves this Chihaya too, the one who lets her guard down and melts into his sheets like a sluggish cat. Maybe because it's not a version of her he'd ever thought he'd be privy to. Maybe because it's domestic and sappy and Taichi's spent a long time yearning, okay.

"Read to me?" she asks, turning her head, cheek resting on the pillow. She looks at him, eyes bleary with sleep, lashes dark.

He blinks once, twice. "Are you wearing mascara?"

"... Nngh."

"Hey," he says, leaning over her. It's easy to wrestle her down when she's legarthic like this. Chihaya is not one to wear makeup on a regular basis, and it's not that he's angry or anything, no. It's more like… curiosity.

She blinks back up at him now. Vaguely, Taichi realizes he's got her pinned down now, one knee pressed next to her hip, the neck of her (his) sleep shirt stretched askew enough for her pale shoulder to glow white in the light of his desk lamp.

There are dark smudges beneath her eyes. Well, she'd said her eyes hurt. There's no doubt Chihaya had been sitting cross-legged in their living room, staring at the tv and scrubbing her eyes.

"... Why?" he asks.

"I can't?"

He didn't say that. Taichi lets go of her wrists and plops down next to her. He doesn't get a say in what Chihaya can and can't do, and he doesn't really want to have a say in that, either. Chihaya is Chihaya, and she'll do what she pleases - all he can do is hope she won't get herself into something dangerous. Or forget to eat.

Chihaya yawns and seeks him out again. This time, he helps her find her way over, guides her arms and long, long legs through the mess of bedding she's made, and doesn't jump this time either when she tugs up the legs of his pants and warms her toes on him. He doesn't get a say in what Chihaya can and can't do, but he can be here to nurse her through whatever sleepytime desires she has, and if it's warmth and a shoulder to snooze on, Taichi is happy to oblige.

"It's not fair," she says, pouting a little. "Your lashes are longer than mine."

"They're not."

"They are!" She tugs at the hem of his shirt now, and Taichi tries not to shiver beneath the feeling of her fingers on his skin, pressed greedily to the warmth of his stomach. "They tickle."

Chihaya, competitive to a fault. Never one to just take a loss and accept it, even with something as miniscule and inconsequential as the length of their eyelashes. As if she's not the prettiest thing he's ever seen. Stupid.

"Sorry," he says, because he's too content to bicker with her over it, and rolls onto his side to gather her in his arms. Those fingers on his stomach shift around to press to his back instead, palms pressed flat to him, and he's not quite tall enough to tuck her face into his chest without scooting up, but bumping noses with her is still sweet, in its own way.

She might be cold but her breath is still warm on his lips. He gets lost in it for a spell.

"I still think you should read to me."

"Bed."

"Then roll the other way," she huffs. "Can't sleep with you facing me like this, there's no room…"

"You roll the other way," he says.

"My hair's not braided or anything. It's too looong, you'll suffocateee…"

Excuses. She just wants to be big spoon again. Greedy Chihaya. He huffs again and levels her with a look, lips pressed together, but she just closes her eyes and tips her jaw just enough to kiss him with the gentlest of touches, and his heart jumps in his chest, unbidden.

Competitive to a fault. It's unfair, using such methods against him.

"Roll over, Taichi," says Chihaya, lips grazing his. "'M tired."

Yeah. Alright. Chihaya can crawl into his bed and demand her way, that's fine. He's too content to really argue with her anyway. He waits half a moment, just long enough not to appear too eager, and settles into her arms without further complaint. Her palms slip back beneath his shirt, one hand pressed to his heart, the other cupping his waist, and if he were less comfortable, he might let his mind run away with this - Chihaya and her warm hands, Chihaya and her blunt nails, dragging down his chest - but this is nice too, cuddling, existing with her, and whatever, Taichi thinks, pressing a blushing cheek to his pillow.

Whatever. He'll wake up tomorrow to smudged mascara on his pillowcases and Chihaya drooling in his hair. There's nowhere else in the world he'd rather be.

#chihayafuru #taichihaya #this is just fluff and not much else but please enjoy! #unbeta'd and unedited because it's not even 11 am yet and i am half awake